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hussyknee · 1 year

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Red, White & Royal Blue: Collector's Edition Henry PoV bonus chapter by Casey Mcquiston.

(transcribed from the page pictures posted)

This is the coda to the end of the book, so don't read it if you haven't read the book first. Sadly, the Collector's Edition doesn't seem to be available on Kindle so. Arrrr matey.

Download link for file at the end.

....

HENRY

“I am not asking you to believe in it, or even to like it,” Henry says stonily. It’s been a long morning already. He is beginning to perspire. “I am simply asking you to show a modicum of respect.”

“To–to your quiche?”

“Yes. To my quiche.”

Bea puts down her tape gun and wipes her eyes. “Pez!”

“Yes?”

“Henry says he’s going to make us a quiche!”

Pez’s squawk of a laugh bounces down the stairs. “Pull the other one!”

“I make them all the time for Alex,” Henry insists. “They are perfectly edible.”

“So, when you promised us breakfast if we got up early to help you.” Bea says, “you meant that you were going to make us breakfast?”

“Yes!” Henry says hotly. “Stop laughing!”

“I’m sorry!” Bea says. “It’s only that...well, Henry, the last time you cooked breakfast for me, you were twelve and you put a sausage in the microwave until it exploded.”

“That was your idea! And it’s been ages since then! I’ve studied, all right? I’m quite good now. Those pictures I send the group chat aren’t just for show.”

“Oh, aren’t they?” Bea says rudely, as if his incredibly generous offer to cook her a shallot-and-thyme quiche with mushrooms from the farmer’s market means nothing at all. As if he’s lived in this house for five entire years without learning to use its kitchen.

Perhaps if their lives weren’t so chaotic, if Henry weren’t flying out of New York every time Bea had a spare moment to fly in, he could have proven this to her earlier. But Pez, who lives mostly in the city now and visits so frequently he’s earned his own Secret Service code name (Cardinal, since Henry is Bishop), should know better.

“Percy Okonjo,” Henry says as Pez joins them, “you were here last weekend when I made mince pie. You loved it.”

“Did I?” Pez wonders aloud, with an annoyingly Bea-like lilt.

“Look at this apron!” Henry gestures to himself and the navy blue apron he’s wearing. Alex gave it to him for his birthday last year. “Would a man who can’t make a quiche have an apron like this? It’s monogrammed.”

“You’re royalty, babes,” Pez points out. “Everything you own is monogrammed.”

From the pocket of his serious-home-cook apron, his phone buzzes. Reinforcements. The FaceTime connects, and Alex says, “Good morning, love of my li–”

“Alex,” Henry interrupts, “tell them about my quiches.”

Alex pushes up his sunglasses and frowns into the camera. He looks so lovely with his faded T-shirt and jean jacket and shaggy hair. Pure American heartthrob, might as well have a cowboy hat on. Henry never does tire of it.

“Sorry?”

“Bea and Pez don’t believe I can make a quiche.”

“What? Have they seen your apron?”

“That’s what I said!”

“Henry’s quiches are great!” Alex says loudly, to the kitchen at large. “I almost never find shells in them!”

That sets Bea and Pez off again. On the screen, Alex’s face crinkles into laughter.

“Thank you very much, Alex, you’ve been a tremendous help,” Henry groans. “How are things? Florist this morning, wasn’t it?”

“Just finishing up.” Alex says with a grin. “Final approvals done. Everything looks great.”

With only one week until moving day and two until the wedding, it made sense to divide and conquer. Henry agreed to stay in New York and finish packing up the brownstone with help from Bea and Pez, while Alex, June, and Nora are ticking off the last of their checklists in Texas.

“Of all the surprises that wedding planning has brought us,” Henry says, “your ability to micromanage floral arrangements has certainly been...one of them.”

“You know I love to curate a vibe,” Alex says.

“That you do,” Henry agrees. “Where are the girls?”

“Getting donuts,” Pez answers before Alex can. He holds up his phone, open to a photo of June blowing a kiss while Nora fellates an éclair.

“Donuts!” Bea says. “Now there’s an idea!”

They spend the rest of the day drowning in cardboard boxes and bin liners, packing everything but the furniture and the downstairs television. Pez reminds him once an hour that they could pay someone to do this, but Bea is stubborn, and Henry is reluctant to let anyone else wade into all the intimate trappings of his and Alex’s life. It was bad enough explaining the contents of the trick drawer in their dresser to Pez, much less some mover he’s never met.

When it’s done, Bea puts A Knight’s Tale on in the living room and promptly falls asleep on Pez’s lap. Pez passes out too, but Henry stays awake, because Heath Ledger deserves an audience. And because he knows if he doesn't wake Bea and move her to the guest bedroom, he'll have to hear about her back spasms in the morning.

David hops up beside him on the loveseat, and Henry strokes the top of his snout until his little body relaxes into Henry's side.

"Nervous old boy," Henry hums. It still does seem like the ultimate irony that the dog he adopted for emotional support has anxiety. David has grown more and more worried all week, as more and more of his home disappeared into boxes. "We won't leave you, I promise."

The brownstone has been a good house for them. Sturdy brick walls, neighbors that actually let them be. Henry has loved it more than he ever loved Kensington, or at least as much as he loved Kensington when his parents both lived there too. Some mornings, when he comes downstairs to find Alex with the coffeepot and the kettle already on, he feels the way he did when his family all slept under one roof. This roof is quite a bit smaller than that one, but the feeling isn't.

So, perhaps David hasn't got entirely the wrong idea. It is hard to let the place go. For the past month, Alex has kept asking Henry why he's staring, and the truth is that he's been committing to memory exactly how Alex looks in every room. How the bannister fits in his hand, the place on the foyer wall where he always braces himself to pull on his shoes.

Everything that's happened in the past five years has happened, at least in part, inside this house.

…

It's seven months after Alex's mother's second inauguration, and Henry is wishing he had never even heard the word "credenza." Then he wouldn't have to decide where to put one. Alex is arriving in half an hour to help him move it, but Henry still doesn't know where. Across from the fireplace, perhaps? But what if he wants to put a sofa there? Does he want a regular sofa, or a sectional? Should it go upstairs, in his study? Or should he leave room for bookcases?

He longs to be back on a beach, sipping something from a pineapple.

It’s been a long, glorious summer since Alex packed up his White House bedroom, called Henry, and asked, "Do you want to get the fuck off the continent?" They did Dubai first, then Lagos. Rio, for old time's sake. Buenos Aires, paper lanterns in moonlight and Alex flirting with the bartender for free drinks. June through August became a lovely blur: Alex asleep against his shoulder on the plane, Alex throwing his Portuguese phrase book out the window of a speeding car, sand in unmentionable places, Alex Alex Alex. Endless runways and half-arsed disguises, swimsuits that got smaller and smaller until they simply didn't wear them anymore. Falling in love, the sequel, with fresh suntans and all the time in the world.

And now here they are in Park Slope, where Alex is renting the second floor of a brownstone two blocks from Henry's.

It's practical, they agreed, to live in the same neighborhood before they live at the same address. They've scarcely gotten a chance to date the normal way yet– if it can be called "normal" when their combined security teams are headquartered in an empty apartment down the street. Still, Henry wants this to last.

They've sprinted headlong into everything so far, but now he wants move slowly, in delicious increments. He wants to savor nights, minutes, firsts, to covet them and then let them dissolve on his tongue, like the sugar cubes he snuck off his gran's filigreed tea trays when he was small. He wants a life.

He wants someone to tell him where to put this damned credenza.

It's a vintage Broyhill Brasilia piece, walnut with clever brass drawer pulls. June helped him pick it out when she was in town with meeting her editor, but she never gave him any advice on where it should go. He hasn't ever been allowed to decide where furniture should go before.

So, it’s...there, in the center of the empty living room, the first piece in the entire house.

“Maybe you could start with a rug or two,” says Alex from the foyer.

Henry turns to find him with his keys in one hand and a paper bag in the other, smiling in a beam of mid-morning light, and, ah. Yes. There it is. That sweet, sharp gasp of nerves. The half second when he forgets how to use his mouth. If he knows nothing else, at least one certainty remains, which is that seeing Alex Claremont-Diaz in the flesh will always do this to him.

Alex in a photo is handsome, but Alex in life is a symphony. He’s refracted light with a cherry cola chaser. He’s got a Fibonacci jawline and a troublemaker smile and thick forearms built for posing in doorways with his sleeves rolled and thumbing corks out of champagne bottles. The first time Henry ever told Pez about him, he said, “God, but he’s lethal.” It’s only worse once you get to know him.

“Weird place for a credenza,” Alex comments. He kisses Henry’s cheek, then passes him a warm bundle wrapped in parchment paper. “Hope you like sausage-egg-and-cheese.”

“I don’t know where to put it.”

“Sandwich goes in your mouth, typically.”

“The credenza.”

“Ohhh, right,” Alex says, pretending to have just caught on. He winks. Henry sighs theatrically but accepts a second kiss, on the lips this time. “Why don’t you just put it right here?”

He points to his left, where a blank wall stretches from the front door to the foot of the stairs. It does, upon closer inspection, appear to be the exact right size.

“Oh,” Henry says.

This is where they overlap. Where he ends and Alex begins. Great gooey puddle of feelings, meet course of action; endless burning energy, meet point of focus. Agonies, meet your most obvious, most natural, most inevitable conclusions. It’s frightening sometimes for a person like Henry, who has spent his entire life pedaling his agonies about like baguettes in a posh little bicycle basket. What is he to do with them now?

Yes," Henry concedes, "I suppose I could," and Alex laughs.

...

It's the summer of 2022. Henry has opened his third shelter, and Alex has just finished bulldozing his first year at NYU Law.

A few boxes of books still wait at Alex's place, but otherwise, he lives in Henry's brownstone now. Their brownstone. A UT pennant beside a Chelsea scarf on the living room wall. A fridge full of Topo Chico and Bulmers. Two pairs of shoes by the front door, brown Barker derbies and Reebok trainers. Nobody could mistake it for anyone else's.

It's their first Chore Sunday (Alex's idea), and Henry has put the last of the laundry in the dryer. He's in the kitchen doorway, watching Alex unload the dishwasher.

Alex once told Henry the type of man he's typically attracted to: tall, broad-shouldered, pretty eyes, a little haunted. Bit of attitude and a smile that makes you curious. For Henry, it's never been so simple. He liked boys in his classes because they bothered with the assigned readings and fancied one of Philip's awful Eton friends because he could sail and smelled of cinnamon. The only thing all his Oxford boys had in common was that they didn't know how to speak to him. He's never had a type, and he's always been sure Alex was singular, anyway. Alex is unlike anyone he's ever met before or since.

But here, now, watching Alex bend to remove a salad bowl from the bottom rack, he is confronted with the hard truth. All those boys did, actually, share one trait.

"Are you gonna help me with this," Alex says without even an investigatory glance over his shoulder, "or are you just gonna keep staring at my ass?"

...

It’s Christmas 2022, their first since Alex officially moved in, and Henry is going to make a yule log if it kills him.

Perhaps he’s been too ambitious. He’s rather new to all. Growing up, he was rarely permitted in the kitchens, and he concentrated his uni diet on fast food and takeaway. He can make toast and boil an egg, and he’s got a deft hand with the coffee percolator and a gin swizzle from time to time. He knows about food– the finest foods, actually, he’s yet to meet an Englishman who can select a better brie– but he never learned to cook, until recently.

Recently, as in when Alex became too fanatically involved in his second-year coursework to remember to feed himself.

It began with force-feeding Alex a bacon butty twice a week. Henry’s arms suffered little constellations of grease burns, but bacon was easy. And those faded, so they didn’t deter him for long. Curiosity piqued, he taught himself the basics of pasta, how one can simmer almost anything with garlic and onion and butter and it will taste good over noodles. It bolstered his confidence enough to truly commit, and now, between hours at the shelters and video calls with his mum, he watches tutorial after tutorial on how to brown butter and roast chicken. Only half of what he makes turns out the color it’s meant to, but he loves it.

He loves walking to the market on the corner and hunting down specific ingredients from the family recipes June sends him. In fact, it’s become such a regular pastime that the paparazzi have cottoned on, which is why his mother finally forced his security team to hire an actual body double. Now some bloke named Angus with his height and build and nearly the same face goes on diversionary strolls while Henry peruses jarred chilies.

With all his independent studying, he was certain he could manage a dessert. He wanted to do something impressive, since they’ve convinced their families to let them host Christmas dinner. Only, his sponge has gone all wrong, and if he’s learned anything from Bake Off, he knows it’s not meant to have cracked in five places when he tried to roll it up. Paul Hollywood would have him pilloried.

“Think you might’ve left it in too long?” Oscar asks from across the kitchen island. He’s wearing his white elephant prize, a sweatshirt airbrushed with the slogan YOU CAN’T SPELL CONSTITUTION WITHOUT TITS. Inexplicably, Henry’s own mother brought that one. “Lookin’ kinda dry there.”

“I appreciate that you are trying to be helpful,” Henry enunciates, “but if you say one more word I may start crying, and then we’ll both lose some respect for me.”

Later, when Pez has persuaded him to “call it, mate, put it out of its misery,” he carries his disgraced platter of ganache and cake and marzipan out into the living room and lets everyone go at it with spoons. The house feels full to bursting, and not just because of the Christmas crackers. There are all three of Alex’s parents, Henry’s mum, June and Nora, Bea and Pez, Shaan and Zahra on speakerphone, occasionally an awkward Philip and Martha via FaceTime, and, because he had nowhere else to go for the holiday, Angus.

(“I don’t like him,” Alex muttered when Henry suggested inviting his own body double to Christmas dinner.

“Why not?”

“Because he looks exactly like you, but I find him deeply unattractive, and that freaks me out.”)

Ellen tells everyone the story of the year Alex got his first real bike for Christmas and knocked out his two front teeth by Boxing Day, which prompts Catherine to recite eight-year-old Henry’s letter to Father Christmas, in which he requested a leather-bound journal and a holiday to East Wittering so he could gaze at the sea. Bea pushes Henry behind the upright piano, and he takes requests for an hour. It only ends when Pez rewrites half the lyrics to “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” to be about his own lactose intolerance. No one wants to follow “tidings of Lactaid and soy.”

After the third round of mulled wine, when Alex’s parents have called their drivers and his mum has retired to the guest room, June and Nora find themselves under the mistletoe. Everyone whoops and whistles until Nora finally pulls June in by her Christmas-light necklace and kisses her to a round of applause. June's cheeks turn red, but she looks pleased as anything.

"I can't believe it took this long for y'all to finally kiss." Alex says, to which Pez bursts into laughter. "What?"

"Alex," he says fondly. He drains his glass and pecks Alex on the forehead. "You gorgeous, stupid little turnip."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Pez just shakes his head and strolls off to the kitchen.

"Wait," Alex says.

He frowns, like he does when he's trying to recall something incredibly minute and specific from his torts textbook. Then, suddenly, a light goes on, and his own mug is clunking on the lamp table, and he's running off after Pez.

"Pez, what's that supposed to mean?"

...

It's late morning the summer before Alex's last year of law school, 2023, and Alex is the first word out of Henry's mouth.

Truthfully, that's how he begins most mornings. On a Monday morning five time zones away, "Alex" pitched low to the screen of his phone. On a Friday when Alex's early lecture is cancelled, "Alex" in F major, muffled in the pillow as his body moves and the day stretches out before them. Half three the night before an exam, a hoarse "Alex," followed by, "turn the bloody light off and come to bed."

This morning, it's because David is barking at the door. A rainstorm is brewing, and if jet lag didn't have Henry dead under the bedclothes, the gray gloom would. Alex was the one who surfaced from sleep half an hour ago and blearily ordered three entire pancake breakfasts from some 24-hour diner a few neighborhoods over. He should have to get up and answer the door.

“Alex.” Henry mumbles, turning over.

Alex has got the quilt tugged up so high he’s only a shock of wild curls on white linens.

“Nnnghh,” Alex groans from the depths.

“Breakfast is here,” Henry says. The doorbell helpfully rings again. David howls.

Alex’s face appears, pouting. There’s a crease from the pillow down one of his cheekbones, a comet’s tail in a constellation of freckles. “Can you get it?”

Henry rolls his eyes but smiles. Inevitable.

He drags himself out of bed and pulls on the joggers and hoodie from last night’s flight. It’s not until he feels the breeze on his ankles as he descends the stairs that he realizes they’re Alex’s, not his.

On their doorstep, a pink-haired delivery girl is looking bored under her bicycle helmet.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Henry says. He fishes a crumpled bill out of Alex’s pocket. “For your trouble.”

The girl pulls a face.

“Got any real money?” she asks. Her accent reminds him a bit of Alex’s mum.

He blinks down at her hand, which is holding a twenty-pound note. “Ah. Sorry again. Er.” He snatches his wallet out of the bowl on the credenza and gives her all the American dollars he has.

“She’s gone, Davey,” Henry says afterward to David, who’s now fretfully circling the living room. “You’ve protected us from another fearsome home invader. Well done.”

He lets David out into the back garden to do his business, then carries the food upstairs. Shockingly, Alex is awake and propped up against the headboard.

“I’m getting too old for red-eye flights,” Alex says, rubbing his eyes.

“Love, you’re twenty-five,” Henry reminds him. He deposits the bag on the nightstand, and Alex wastes no time tearing through the plastic and tucking in to his breakfast. “And I’m older than you.”

“Yes, you are. But like... I get why we have to go to Philip’s kids’ christenings. The cousins, though?” He sets to work smothering his pancakes in syrup. “I mean, at least my cousins would stack their baptisms. One and done, baby.”

Henry opens his mouth, prepared to answer with one of a thousand things. That the tabloids will have even more of a field day than usual if he stops doing his chores, that there will always be a church dedication or a swan upping or an appointment for a top hat fitting, that he’ll always be obligated to have one foot in London and one day they’ll have to choose where to settle down. It’s far from the first time they’ve had this conversation.

But then Alex shovels a massive bite of pancakes into his mouth and says, “Anyway, I love you. Do you wanna have June and Nora over tomorrow? We can play Mario Party again. I wanna see them get in a fistfight. Oh, and my dad’s in town next week, and he said to tell you he’s bringing that book you asked about–”

And that’s when Henry knows: He doesn’t ever want to go back.

...

It’s the end of spring 2024, and Henry is not eavesdropping, per se. He excused himself to answer a call from Shaan, which really could not be avoided. Shaan has taken to his new life as a househusband with predictable aplomb, and most of his calls these days involve Henry getting to talk to a baby who is clearly destined to become prime minister. He simply can’t send that to voicemail.

It’s the first time they’ve had room in the schedule for his mother to visit since Alex accepted his law job, which Henry understands very little about but has been assured is the most strategic next step for Alex’s career long game. When Henry left the room, Alex was still trying to explain it to Catherine. It all sounds terribly prestigious.

He is just returning to the sitting room with a fresh pot of tea when he hears his name from around the corner.

“–and the next morning Henry and Arthur vanished,” his mother is saying, “and when Uncle Algie called, I told him that Henry couldn’t go on the annual pheasant hunt because he was violently ill, but actually Arthur had taken him to Rome for two weeks on the set of that go on ridiculous car heist film he was working on, the one with, oh, what’s his name–“

“Jason Statham,” Alex says promptly, through wheezing laughter.

“That’s the one!”

“Loved that movie,” Alex says. “I can’t believe Henry got to be on set.”

“It was all Arthur’s idea, but he was right to do it. Uncle Algie is a dreadful bore, and Henry despises his son. Guilford. Did you meet Guilford at the wedding?”

“Henry made sure I avoided it.”

“Yes, that’s for the best,” Catherine says daintily. “He has matured into an absolute dickhead.”

Henry wishes he was in the room to see the way Alex sputters out, “Oh my God.” Alex always forgets that Catherine went to uni and married a commoner from Sheffield.

And then Alex sighs and says, “When Henry and I get married–”

Henry manages to recover the teapot before he drops it.

It’s not a surprise to hear Alex mention marriage. They’ve been sorting it out for years: political logistics and Alex’s child-of-divorce anxiety and a thousand questions about a royal wedding neither of them actually wants to have. He’s already bought an engagement ring, even, and judging by how tetchy Alex gets whenever Henry tries to put his underwear away for him, he’s not the only one.

But it is the first time he’s heard Alex mention it to his mother. He dropped it so casually, so matter-of-factly, as if he’s been talking to her about marrying Henry for years. Henry supposes it’s possible he has been. Is this why Alex had tea with her in London last month and told Henry he wasn’t invited? Have they been conspiring?

They’re discussing hypothetical guest lists now, which cousins secretly hate one another and who wore an inappropriately large fascinator to whose birthday tea, but Henry isn’t listening anymore. He’s thinking of a cafe table in Rome, his dad waving over a second round of gelato.

In his memory, he’s nine years old, and his father is saying, Whoever you marry, Henry, make sure they think your mum is a laugh, because she is. She really is.

He clears his throat and finally rounds the corner. “Tea, anyone?”

...

It’s 2024, and nobody knows they’re engaged.

Granted, they’ve only been engaged for about three hours, but Henry is curious to see how long they can go. It feels nice to keep a secret that doesn’t have to be a secret. It’s more that they’re keeping it like a pet, or something especially beautiful from the garden that they’ve coaxed into a jar.

A record is spinning on the turntable, one of Alex’s, maybe the Joni Mitchell he borrowed from Bea. They’ve shoved their phones under the couch cushions and ordered a pizza the size of the moon, and now they’re sitting in the center of the living room floor, demolishing it. They kiss, then eat more pizza, then get distracted kissing again. Henry licks a streak of pepperoni grease from Alex’s forearm, which is a fantasy he didn’t know he had until he’s living it. They tangle up on the rug, and Henry decides he’ll take Alex sailing next weekend, or even out to the edge of the river, just to see him against a horizon.

Four-nearly-five years in, the main thing he’s learned is that Alex is a world without end. All Henry wants is to go on with him forever. To keep finding new favorite parts, to keep turning things over and studying their soft bellies and finding the best bits.

So, he will.

...

It snows on New Year’s Eve 2024. Alex looks out the window and shrugs off his coat.

The Young America Gala may be no longer, but Nora, June, and Pez aren’t to be stopped from throwing a New Year’s party, especially now that Pez has gotten his own part-time flat in the city. They’re the three fates of New York City’s holiday social circuit: birth (June, managing invitations), life (Pez, topless), and death (Nora, also topless).

“What if,” Alex says, turning to Henry on the foot of the stairs, “we don’t go to the party?”

“Nora will murder me,” Henry says. “She told me she’s not afraid to do that now that I’ve given up my title.”

“Murder is still a crime even if you’re not officially a prince.”

“Yes, but she said, quote,” he puts on his best American accent, “They can’t put me in the Tower anymore. Who’s gonna arrest me now? Mr. Bean?”

“Why don’t we just send Angus? It’s dark. Maybe she won’t notice.”

“Where’s your double, then?”

“We live in New York, I’m sure I can find a male model somewhere.”

“As always, sounding the very bass string of humility.”

“Is that fucking Shakespeare?”

“Henry IV.”

“I’m gonna give you a wedgie, you fucking nerd.”

In the end, it doesn’t take much to convince Henry to stay in. Lately, it never does. Alex texts June a flimsy excuse, and they toe off their shoes and relax out of their button-downs.

Henry does have to admit he’s exhausted, in the way that one only can be on the last day of the year, when every other day of the year piles way up behind it. It’s been a big one: Alex’s first law job, the endless press about Henry’s decision to surrender his title, the engagement, Bea’s wedding, the incident with the croquet mallets and the Dutch ambassador at Bea's wedding.

Sometimes Alex jokes that they squeezed it all into one calendar year because no headline can stick if there's another next week, but it's only half a joke. They've been bone-tired for months.

"I'm surprised you're the one who wants to stay home," Henry says. "I remember a young lothario who lived to ruin people's lives on New Year's Eve."

"Ruin?" Alex says. "That's not how I remember it."

"It certainly felt that way at the time."

They drift to the kitchen, past all the traces of the year. The dried flowers, the new scuffs on the floorboards. The box of bound manuscripts of Henry's first finished poetry-ish short-fiction-ish essay-ish collection. The holiday cards from senators and diplomats and old Texas friends, topped off with Alex's favorite of Rafael Luna and his astonishingly fit partner in matching Christmas jumpers. Henry would think Raf had been forced into it if it hadn't come with a case of beer and a note of thanks for letting him stay over the last time he visited Alex and had one too many tequila shots at drag bingo.

Alex withdraws a bottle of Clicquot from the refrigerator and says, "We're not washed, are we?"

“We're aging," Henry points out.

"That's right," Alex says, eyes immediately sparking at the opportunity. Henry preemptively sighs. "You're almost thirty."

"Almost twenty-eight is not almost thirty."

"It basically is. You're old. You'll be thirty a whole year before me. You'll be popping antacids and I'll be in the club, popping my p-"

"You're not even in the club now."

"I could be, I'm just choosing not to, because I don't want to deal with the snow. That's not aging, it's growth."

He slides Henry a glass of champagne and adds, "It's probably time for us to start talking about what's on your Do Before Thirty list, huh?"

Henry takes the glass and chooses going with Alex's bit over pointing out that he's entering his late twenties, not dying.

“I’ve done quite well on that front so far, actually,” he says. “Wrote a book. Started a nonprofit. Engaged to the love of my life.”

“Involved in an international sex scandal.”

“Shook the hands of all five Spice Girls.”

“Best dressed at the Met Gala.”

“Cried in the Water Lilies room at the MOMA.”

“Grew your hair out, then cut it all off.“

“Taught myself to make beef Wellington.”

“That one’s, uh, still in progress,” Alex hedges. Henry gives him an affronted look. “But, yeah! Definitely. And you got really good at scones.”

“That I did.”

“Right,” Alex agrees. “So what’s left? Streaking? Dropping acid? Having sex on our kitchen island?”

Henry takes a moment with that one.

“Having sex on our kitchen island?”

When the clock strikes the new year, the house is quiet. The timer on the light over the front stoop clicks off. The champagne bottle rests between two glasses on the edge of the sink, spent and sticky around the rim, a single soggy strawberry at the bottom of each flute. Miles out from their apartment, fireworks fight the snow over the East River, but in their kitchen in Park Slope, the only sounds are the two of them.

Henry, almost twenty-eight, presses his warm body to the cool marble and gets his midnight kiss.

...

“Do you know what today is?” Alex asks on a lukewarm September.

It’s 2025. He’s in the doorway of Henry’s study, where Henry has been all evening, answering emails.

“Hm? No.”

When Alex doesn’t immediately fill the silence, Henry looks up from his laptop screen.

“What is it?”

“Five years since the story broke,” Alex says.

It takes a moment for him to realize what story Alex means; there have been so many of them. But of course, he means that gigantic, terrible one. The one that changed their lives forever.

“Oh,” Henry says. He closes his laptop, leaning back in his chair and away from it. “Well. Hated that.”

“Yeah,” Alex agrees. “Zero out of ten. Would not do again.”

His tone is light and casual, but when he folds his arms across his chest, Henry can see his glasses in the front pocket of his flannel. It’s been months and months since the last time Alex didn’t feel confident enough to wear them.

For his part, Henry can remember much of that day, but not all of it. He remembers stirring sugar into his morning tea when Shaan walked in wearing an expression Henry had never seen before. He remembers Pez arriving like the cavalry in Gucci slippers, hustling Henry away from his handlers with the same graceful disdain he used to direct at Eton classmates who stared at them too much. He remembers Bea finding them in the music parlor and refusing to hear Henry’s apology, and he remembers Alex’s call and Alex’s arrival.

The funny part, though, is he can’t remember anything between Bea and Alex. He knows that Philip was involved, and there were stories on every news channel, and he spoke to his mother at some point. But the space in his memory where those hours belong is simply blank. His psychiatrist says it’s post-traumatic stress disorder, and Henry is inclined to agree, considering the two of them spent the entire following year recalibrating Henry’s anxiety and depression medication around the event.

Those hours will always be gone. There are things he will never get back.

Most of the time, though, when he thinks of that day, the second worst thing that's ever happened to him, he thinks of Alex's hand in his under a Buckingham Palace table. He remembers, clear as a bell, Alex's voice telling him they would survive it together. It happened to Alex too. It wasn't what they would have chosen, but it was what they received, and they've done their absolute bloody best with it.

He rises from his desk, crosses to the doorway, and gathers Alex up against his chest. Their size difference isn't that pronounced—Henry is taller but lean, Alex shorter but sturdy—but in moments like this, he's thankful for the way Alex's cheek perfectly aligns with the crook of his neck. He's grateful for how effortless it is to slip a kiss to Alex's temple.

Neither of them says anything else. It's all been said a thousand times, in speeches and through official statements and in the dark when it's only the two of them. It's enough to stand here in the center of the house, in the quiet, and let it hold their weight.

...

At the end of 2025, Henry has a bad day.

There's nothing specific that causes it. The days just happen like this sometimes, even with all the therapy and medication and supportive partnership and fulfilling creative projects in the world. There are other people, he supposes, who don't spend their lives waiting for the next bad day. He's had every bloody luxury but that one.

Alex comes home from work to find him curled up on the armchair in the study, staring out the window at the light-polluted night sky over the row of brownstones across the street.

“What are you doing?" Alex asks him.

"Looking for Orion," Henry deadpans.

Alex kneels on the rug in his tailored suit pants and rolled-up sleeves and rests his cheek on Henry's knee, the way he often does when Henry's in a mood. Henry's fingers slide into his curls. They've grown a bit longer in the past few months. Lately. Alex looks quite like he did when they met, except for the glasses and the stubble dusting his jaw.

“I’m tired of big law, “ Alex confesses. It would appear he’s in a mood too. “I know it’s only been a year and a half, but...I kind of hate it.”

Henry contemplates that, along with the dark circles around Alex’s eyes.

“You don’t have to do it, you know.” Henry tells him.

Alex looks at him like he did in that hotel room in Paris the first time they woke up together, like the only thing he knows for sure about what he’s being offered is that he wants it completely. It’s an intimidating look to receive, but it’s only ever improved Henry’s life in the end.

He kisses Henry’s knuckle, just below his ring.

“I have some ideas.”

...

In February 2026, a flu sweeps through Park Slope. Neither Alex nor Henry can agree on who gave it to whom first– Henry knows it was Alex, since he’s been up late consulting with his mum about a voting rights bill in Texas, and his immune system always suffers when he gets upset about Texas—but regardless, they’re trapped in the brownstone together for a week. At least Alex doesn’t have to work through his illness the way he usually does, since he resigned from his job last month.

Somewhere around day five, Henry realizes it’s the longest consecutive amount of time they’ve both been home in years. They always seem to be leaving or returning: rushing off to appearances, climbing out of security caravans in half-undone suits, meeting Cash at the curb at three in the morning with bags over their shoulders. It’s nice, in a way, to get reacquainted with this home they’ve built together.

While Alex naps, Henry paces the entire floorplan.

The first floor, with its long living room and the original beams and mantelpiece, which Henry had restored before he moved in, because he always has been precious about the history of things. Then the kitchen and the deep blue cabinets and the wide back window over the knotty pine dining table handed down from Alex's dad. Upstairs, on the second floor, the guest bedroom with all of his mum's preferred hand creams in the attached washroom and the sitting room with the shelf of swan figurines Pez started collecting years ago in a dramatic fit of June-related yearning. One more flight up to the top floor, with his study and Alex's office and the hall with their photo from Shaan and Zahra's wedding and, at the far end, their bedroom.

The bedroom is his favorite part of the house, and not only for the obvious reasons, no matter how much Alex tries to imply otherwise with suggestive eyebrows. He loves the high ceiling and the chipped plaster medallion of roses at the center. They picked out the bed together, and every morning that he wakes up in it, he gets to turn over and see Alex's loose pens and glasses wipes scattered atop the dresser and know that this, his life, is still real. Perhaps he likes the room best because it feels separated from every other part of the house, lifted up and bundled in, which is the first time he's ever been safe in a tower.

Most importantly, of all three levels of bay windows jutting from the redbrick front of the brownstone, only the one in the bedroom has a seat. They've filled it with velvet pillows and mossy green cushions, and once or twice a year, on one of their vanishingly rare slow days, Alex will climb in and fall asleep.

That's where he finds Alex when he eases into the room with a mug of soup in each hand. He recognizes the quilt wrapped around him: they slept under it in Alex's childhood twin bed the night Ellen won her second term, and then Alex crammed it into his suitcase and brought it back to Washington.

He stirs as Henry sets the mugs down on the dresser.

“Thanks,” he says in a hoarse voice.

Henry nudges in beside him, gingerly removing Alex's glasses from beneath his elbow before they get crushed.

"You know," Henry says, "I chose this house for the bay windows."

Alex blinks at him, fully awake now. "Really?"

"I thought you might like them. You always talked about the one you grew up with. Hoped they might make the place feel like home."

Alex smiles. "They do."

Henry looks at him in his quilt, sleep-mussed and flushed from fever and overdue for a shave, and he remembers that night in the yellow house in Austin. Before Alex led them back to his old bedroom, he peeled up the cushion in the living room window seat and showed Henry pages of elementary school scribbles still hidden there. And he told Henry that he thought once of hiding a picture there too, if only he'd had the nerve to tear it out of his sister's magazine.

Love, Henry has found, has a way of growing backward. You fall in love with a person in the present, and then every person you've ever been gets to fall in love with every past version of them. A sleep-deprived Georgetown freshman falls in love with an Oxford sophomore who's testing out undoing the top button of his shirts sometimes. A ruddy-cheeked teenager with his nose in a book loves a backtalking lacrosse captain. A boy comes home from school with perfect marks and sees a picture in a magazine, and the boy from the picture pauses on a palace staircase.

The crux of it is, he loves every version of Alex to ever sleep under that quilt. Everything else is mostly set dressing

"I'm having a thought," Henry says.

"Congratulations," Alex deadpans automatically. Then, "Tell me."

"This life we have here," Henry says. "This house. It's good, yeah?"

"Yeah, of course it is."

"But we could have a good life somewhere else too."

Alex frowns. "Like where?"

"Somewhere... farther from everything, maybe? Somewhere we could slow down, and things could be quieter, and you could do the work you want to do. I think I could use some time away from it all, honestly. Maybe I wouldn't even have to have a body double anymore."

Alex considers that for a long moment. They both know where Henry means, even if he doesn't say it. Besides New York and DC, and London on its best days, there's really only one place Alex would seriously consider living. They've joked about it before, but Henry's always thought it might be nice to spend a few years somewhere completely different than he's used to. A place where he could see the stars.

At long last, Alex sniffs and says, "You're gonna fire Angus? He was just starting to grow on me.”

...

“If you don't wake Bea up, you're gonna have to hear about her back spasms in the morning,” says a voice that is most certainly not Heath Ledger's.

Henry startles awake to find Alex leaning over his shoulder from behind the loveseat, curls everywhere. The room is dark, and the end credits are rolling.

"You're not home until tomorrow," Henry mumbles.

"Moved up my flight," Alex says. He's so close to Henry's face, he's gone a bit cross-eyed. His lips bounce off the tip of Henry's nose. "I missed you."

It's only been a few days, but the truth is Henry missed him too. He supposes he should be used to empty beds and time differences by now, especially when they began that way, but he suspects he'll never stop waiting at the door. You know what will be the best part of getting married?" Henry asks Alex.

"The line dancing."

"The way I won't have to miss you nearly as often."

Alex softens, then maneuvers himself over the armrest until he's draped across Henry's lap. David climbs on top of him and curls up on Alex's left buttock.

Letting go of the house has been hard, but this particular decision was easy, once they finally said it out loud. A gradual, careful withdrawal from public life, at least for a few years. They’ve given so much of themselves to the world and had the privilege of feeling a legacy take shape beneath them, but they need rest too.

It was June who convinced them, actually. Even now, there are certain things only June can say to Alex. Early in the spring, when she was finally transitioning out of her speechwriting job for Raf, she called Alex from Colorado and told him she was moving to New York to be closer to Nora and Pez, and she wanted to sublet the brownstone. When Alex pointed out that he was still living in it, she said, "We both know you've been looking at farmhouses in Austin for six months, it's time to shit or get off the pot."

(Henry loves his particular collection of Americans. They truly do say what's on their minds.)

The new house is beautiful. Henry's only seen it in person once, but the previous owner was a reclusive tech executive with shockingly good taste, so Architectural Digest featured it last year. He's had the article open in a tab on his phone for two months, and he scrolls through all those perfectly lit photos twice a day, getting high on possibilities. Lazy mornings in the wide sunroom, midnight dives in the lake. It's easy to imagine Alex mellowing into a brisket-smoking, tamale-rolling Texas dad out there, and it's just as easy to imagine them basking under cedar trees until their mid-thirties and then deciding they're ready for another round. The wonderful thing is, they can take their time either way.

It isn't a full release from their obligations, but it is the next step after formally relinquishing his title. More boundaries, more of their own rules about what they will and won't do. No royal wedding, but a private ceremony at the lake house and a honeymoon unpacking boxes. A job for Alex at a smaller firm where he can finally get his hands in the earth. A quieter life.

"You're right," Alex says. "You know what else is gonna be awesome about married-people life? We can have actual, real-life date nights. Just imagine it: free refills and bottomless chips and salsa."

"Oh, I've got another one," Henry says. “You can finally show me how to navigate an H-E-B."

“Baby, don’t talk dirty to me in front of company.”

“Please,” says a groggy voice from the couch.

“Hi, Bea.”

“Time’s it?”

“One in the morning.”

“Ugh.”

Grumbling and tugging a blanket around herself, Bea wakes Pez and the two of them head off to wash up before bed. The odds of Pez returning to the couch for the night or availing himself of their bed so that Alex has to sleep on the couch are just about even, based on six years of Pez falling asleep at their house. It’s a comfort to know that when they leave the brownstone and June moves in, Pez will still be making himself at home in it.

Downstairs, surrounded by boxes, Alex crawls out of Henry’s lap and slides a large shopping bag out from behind the loveseat. “I brought you something.” Alex says.

Inside the bag is a box made of the sort of heavy cardboard that augurs something expensive. He imagines Alex hurling his patched-up rough-ridden leather duffle into the overhead compartment of the airplane and then sliding this bag under the seat so carefully that there’s not even a crease in the paper.

He takes the lid off the box and unwraps layers of tissue paper to reveal a hat. A cowboy hat. It’s made of gorgeous, thick felt, with a cattleman crown and a satin lining. A nearly identical one has hung in Alex’s office since he moved in, though Alex’s is midnight black and this one is a warm, pale sand. Where Alex’s hatband has a small gold buckle, this one has a silver pin in the shape of an English rose.

“It’s a Stetson,” Alex says. When Henry looks up at him, his cheeks have darkened faintly. “I know it’s not really your thing, but you ride horses, and it’s kind of a big deal where I’m from to get your first Stetson, so I wanted to be the one to give it to you since you’re about to be an honorary Texan. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want–“

“I love it,” Henry interrupts.

Alex pauses, then breaks out in a grin. “You do? I was afraid you’d think it was a joke.”

“It’s the least ridiculous hat I’ve ever been given,” Henry tells him. “It didn’t even come with a matching tailcoat.”

“Nah, but maybe we can get you some Wranglers,” Alex says.

“Some chaps, perhaps.”

“I just told you not to talk dirty to me.”

Henry laughs and kisses him over the open box, thinking of the next year of their lives. Sunday morning fry-ups, swimming holes, a wedding cake that doesn’t wind up on the floor. Tomorrow he needs to ask if Alex checked on the bakery while he was in Austin, and if they have any more packing tape, and whether Amy’s daughter has gotten her flower girl dress yet.

Tonight, though, Alex is home a day early, and the house is making all its soft, familiar night-time sounds around them. No one sees in through the windows. No one comes in through the gate.

“Henry,” says Alex.

“Alex,” says Henry.

“You and me,” Alex says.

“You and me,” Henry agrees.

End.

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themotherofhorses · 4 months

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paloma: first meeting

— simon "ghost" riley x oc!silentdove reyes.

summary: he's not annoyed, per se, but ghost is just not really in the mood to chit-chat with the american airman scurrying around the base. at best, he tolerates them.

(or the first exchange between ghost and his montanan woman.)

warnings: none, aside from explicit language.

note: okay, so despite this being an obvious OC-insert series, i invite anyone and everyone to read it :D this is actually my first time tackling an OC-insert fanfic (as well as writing ghost) so im still trying to get the rhythm of things.

dividers by: @saradika

paloma (masterlist) | main masterlist

[2021]

Simon Riley won’t ever admit it — never aloud, anyway — but every time he steps foot on American soil, he feels more akin to a wolf draped in sheep’s clothing.

In his mind, he sticks out like a sore thumb. He is not a hero, really; unlike the lot teetering around the military base he is currently stationed at for the next five or so weeks, he is less flesh and blood, and more a phantom. Or something along those lines. Actually, that could explain why there is such little traffic aimed his way. But he doesn’t particularly care. His schedule lacks the room to voice any complaints.

Right now, his main concern is doing his job, and doing it right.

Two weeks back, Price had him fishing out his passport tucked away inside his bedside table. “Fancy a two month getaway to the States?” Great Falls, Montana, to be exact. High west, nearing the border of Canada, and surrounded by land he’s only ever seen in those silly ass spaghetti western movies.

The view is nice, he’ll admit. Beautiful, even. Exhilarating. He now understands why they refer to Montana as “Big Sky Country.”

Malmstrom is much smaller than he imagined, and homier too. The Air Force base is nestled within the city’s east side, offering its own museum and park. He’s quite grateful for the latter; the trails allow for his nighttime walks when the nightmares prove too shitty to sleep.

Great Falls is pretty as well. Price would like it, maybe Garrick too. He knows the two are big on history, and almost every inch of the city is drenched with some memory belonging to the old frontier days.

Upon arriving, the yanks provided him with his own private office, housed in the back of the 341st logistics readiness squadron. It’s nothin’ fancy, really, just a wee room furnished with a dark mahogany desk, two windows, a steel cabinet, the Montana flag to his left, and the American to his right.

Again, he’s not one to complain. Something’s something.

Earlier, one of the higher-up airmen, a Staff Sergeant Benson (he believes is the name), had handed him a folder jam-packed with a shit ton of mission statements — logistics, strategic planning, reports of previous global concerns, and reviews of the base’s Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. All the documents are dated in a time range varying between two months ago to 0800 this morning.

In the back of his mind, he can already hear Price chuckling.

“Have fun, Simon.”

Bloody bastard.

So now, Ghost sits hunched over the desk, feeling a little too damn big for it. All the paperwork is strewn about messily around him, with sticky notes, a pen, and some other random shit of his. No one has yet to visit him; until that happens, he feels little need to remain organized.

His boot taps against the floor. “—Initial efforts to clean polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from launch facilities at Malmstrom AFB are ongoing but seeing success…” Ghost reads under his breath. PCBs? That’s nice to hear.

“...after PCBs were detected on surfaces in launch facilities at all three of the command’s missile wings.”

PCBs. Polychlorinated biphenyls — man-made and highly toxic, consisting of carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine atoms. He clicks his tongue, shaking his head as he flips onto the next page.

“We know they’re present on what appears to be otherwise pristine surfaces, due to the survey—”

—a sudden knock interrupts his reading.

With a curse on his tongue, Ghost sets down the report. He quicks a sneaking glance at his watch. 1342 hours. He’s due in a meeting at 1700.

“Come in.” His voice sounds low and raspy, the two words sounding more like a growl than a greeting. He’s not annoyed, per se, but Ghost is just not really in the mood to chit-chat with the American airmen scurrying around the base. At best, he tolerates them.

(In his mind, they’re all little Graves, ready to stir up a headache.)

The door slowly cracks open.

“Lieutenant Riley?” A female voice calls out — soft and cautious; Ghost’s chin drops against his knuckles. “Apologies for the disruption, sir, but I have some additional paperwork I need to drop off with you, at the request of my superior.” He grunts, and the airman then steps into his office, quickly shutting the door behind her before meeting his eyes.

It is entirely unlike him, Ghost knows, but his brain almost short-circuits right then and there. Two dark brown eyes, framed by thick lashes, peering up at him. Shit. He’d always thought brown was such a pretty eye color on a woman, but hers stretched further across common compliments.

Both of ‘em — they held no animosity, no uneasiness or fear, nothing.

That, itself, is quite fucking bizarre. He’s not used to that.

Ghost is .... well, Ghost. He knows the mask he is always donning on his face isn't exactly a sign of welcomeness. Just his mere presence is enough to startle the living shit out of rookies, baby recruits, wide-eyed sergeants, and the like. There is something inherently unnerving when you are unable to get a good reading of the person you're standing across from.

She’s brave, he thinks. Or merely oblivious to who he is.

“Here you go, sir,” the airman says while placing the packet of new documents down on his desk. Her lips are shaped prettily, plump and shining with a fresh layer of gloss, and across her nose is a splatter of faint freckles. Under a different circumstance, maybe he would’ve taken the time to try and count them all.

Ghost swallows hard, incapable (for what feels like the first time in his life) of mustering up an appropriate reply. “Ah, thank you, ma’am.”

The airman's brow lifts.

“Reyes,” she then corrects him with a kind smile, gesturing to the name badge sitting above her right chest pocket. Sure enough, in bold military lettering, reads Reyes. “My name is Senior Airman SilentDove Reyes. I am actually a cryptologic linguist analyst here on base; but sometimes I run errands for others, when not needed for a translation, of course.”

There is a slight chirp in her voice that Ghost picks up, along with the way she casually rocks back and forth on her feet. She seems awfully young, no older than 22, possibly 23, but even that's cutting it; a kid, compared to him. Maybe 5'7, with dark hair pulled back into two tight braids that fall at her belted waistline.

A stark contrast compared to him.

He's oddly curious now — about her age and first name and those long braids and why she stands before him, calm, collected, and sure — but he knows damn well this is not the time nor place for any questions. Both of them are on the clock, and it is likely she’ll need to report back to her supervisor soon.

He offers her a curt nod. “Well, thank you again, Reyes,” he states, keeping his voice flat.

“You are welcome, sir.” She turns to leave, but when her hand latches onto the doorknob, Reyes glances over her shoulder at him, “—oh, and Lieutenant? If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

–

The successful cleaning came after a bioenvironmental team at Malmstrom AFB …. Malmstrom AFB .. consulted with engineers and ….. and medical experts on the cleaning …. cleaning processes and–

–and agents most likely to effectively remove the chemicals….

He knows his mind is wandering off, in desperate search of that pretty senior airman from fifteen minutes ago. “Bloody fucking hell,” Ghost grumbles, leaning back in his chair. His head lolls back as he blinks upward, studying the ceiling overhead. The texture is popcorn, a creamy color, with a simple fan jutting down. One light bulb, probably a recent replacement.

Fuck. He doesn’t need this shit. Not one bit.

Five more weeks and he’ll be gone from here.

Ghost rechecks his watch, feeling a bit peeved at the time. 1411. He has several more hours until he can leave all this work shit behind for the evening, and maybe catch a short walk before hunkering down for the night. He doesn’t like sitting down for too long; it causes him to become restless. Agitated. Overthinking.

He doesn’t want distractions. He doesn’t need ‘em. Distractions ruin work ethic; clouding up the mind while fucking up all sense of responsibility. Price will have his ass if he – somehow – becomes compromised. And he'll never hear the end of it from Johnny.

Settling back into the paperwork, he decides that he won’t allow himself another second thinking about all that – the American airman and her pretty brown eyes and high cheekbones and first name.

Something tells him that’s easier said than done.

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twisted-turtels · 3 months

Text

Crossed Paths (Pt.1)

Farleigh Start x black!fem!oc

Author’s note: this is so random of me. Welcome to my new fixation, Farleigh Start from Saltburn. I wonder how long this story will last lol.

969 words is crazy i dont even write this much for my classes lol. it takes me days to get to 1000 words.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Crossed Paths

“Mama, there is no need to worry about me. You don’t trust me?” Jordan says. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I don't trust the rest of the world. You're my baby, and you’re leaving me. Going all the way across the world!” Monica, Jordan’s mom, exclaims.

“Ma, you know this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I have never left this country, and I get the chance to study at one of the oldest and most prestigious universities for free! There’s nothing to worry about,” Jordan explains, “Listen, I’m about to pull up to my apartment, or shall I say ‘flat’ as the Englishmen describe it. I’ll talk to you later. Goodnighhhht.”

“Goodnight, baby, I love you. Don’t go crazy over there now!” Monica hangs up.

Jordan gets out of her taxi and takes in her surroundings. University of Oxford, I can’t believe I made it. Jordan clumsily gathers her luggage from the taxi (It’s a lot of stuff) and walks towards the entrance to her accommodation. As she struggles to make sure none of her luggage falls, she accidentally bumps into a tall figure.

“Fuck.”

“Oh shit, I am so sorry!” Jordan looks up and exclaims. She sees a tall, pretty, light-skinned man staring down at his now-stained shirt. He’s black, she thinks. “Yes, and so is my shirt,” the man says sarcastically. “Oh, I did not realize I said that out loud. I’m sorry again. I’m kind of struggling, and I guess I wasn't paying-” she tries to explain, “You’re American?” the man interrupts. “Um, yeah, I just got in today, if you can’t tell. I’m here for an exchange program,” she continued. “Not many of us here. Listen, don’t worry about the shirt. I hope to see you around, but I gotta be somewhere soon,” the man quickly says and walks off.

“For sure,” Jordan trails off, saying before she looks at her bags, I guess I will take this up myself. “Ugh!” she groans.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jordan sits in her flat and looks at the now unpacked space. I did a great job. I think I'm gonna put a Texas flag on my wall, too. She slumps down on the couch and looks at the flyer on her coffee table. ‘Undergraduate Social! 5 PM,’ it reads. “I guess I can attempt to socialize,” Jordan looks down at her watch, “One hour to get ready, but I don’t have to be there at exactly 5 pm though,” Jordan thinks aloud. I wonder if I’ll see the man from earlier?

After freshening up, Jordan gathered her keys and wallet and went to the social. She entered the student union and noticed it bustling with students and professors. While looking around, she subconsciously looks for the man she met earlier. Not many black students, she notes. She takes the time to go up to different organization tables and gather information. As she moves from table to table, she feels a delicate hand tap her shoulder. Jordan turns around and notices a blonde girl standing in front of her.

“Hello!” the blonde girl exclaims.

“Hello?” Jordan questions.

“Sorry for the abruptness, but I just wanted to introduce myself. You seemed lost. My name is Venetia, and I wanted to ask, are you American?”

“Uh yeah, I am. I’m from Texas, actually.” Jordan explains.

“That’s really cool. There aren't many Americans here. I do know another one, though, who just happens to be my cousin. Would you like to meet him?”

I do need friends, so it wouldn't hurt.

“I don’t mind that at all. Lead the way. Also, my name is Jordan, by the way.”

“What a lovely name. Follow me!” Venetia instructs.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Boys, I would like you to meet Jordan! She’s American just like you, Farleigh!” Venetia exclaims

Jordan stares at the tall man. “Oh, we’ve met Vee. She’s the one who spilled tea on my shirt.” Farleigh explains with a stoic look on his face.

Jordan stares at her feet sheepishly, “Yeah, really sorry about that.”

Farleigh stared the girl down until he smirked, “I’m just playing; it wasn’t a big deal. It's nice to put a pretty name to a pretty face, though.”

He just called me pretty.

“Ignore Farleigh, he’s a little jokester. Aren’t you cousin?” Venetia teasingly asks as Farleigh rolls his eyes. “Anyway, this is my brother, Felix,” Venetia gestures to another tall, handsome man. Are all British men above 6 feet and handsome?

“Hello. Sorry for my sister practically dragging you over here,” Felix jokes.

“I did not drag her over here!” Venetia exclaims

“Haha, it’s okay. I need to put myself out there more honestly, don’t want to be alone during my time here.” Jordan reassures.

“How about I get your phone number?” Farleigh blurts out, he then corrects himself, “ How about we all get your number so we can continue hanging out more? Obviously, I don’t want to be the only American in the group.”

“I thought you would never ask,” Jordan pulls out her phone to notice it’s dead, “Oops, phone is dead. Let me just write it down.” There is no paper. “Can I see your hand?” Jordan asks Farleigh while taking out a pen. Jordan softly holds Farleigh’s hand and writes down her number, “You can pass this on to the rest of them,” Jordan smiles at Farleigh.

“It was really nice meeting y'all, but I have to get ready for the first day, so I’ll see y'all later,” Jordan waves and walks off.

Oh my god, when did I get so bold?

The group looks at each other in astonishment as Jordan walks away. “Ooh, Farleigh, she gave you her number,” Venetia teases. “She gave it to all of us,” Farleigh defends himself.

“She says y’all,” Felix points out. “That’s so Texas of her.” He jokes.

#saltburn imagine #farleigh start #felix catton #venetia catton #oliver quick #farleigh imagine #farleigh x reader #farleigh start x reader

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argyrocratie · 1 year

Text

Two stories of the russian revolution where John Reed and Nestor Makhno recount how they nearly got killed by their own side over a misunderstanding

- - -

-John Reed from “Ten Days That Shook the World”:

The truck hurtled on toward Romanov, through the bright, empty day. At the first cross-roads two soldiers ran out in front of us, waving their rifles. We slowed down, and stopped.

“Passes, comrades!”

The Red Guards raised a great clamour. “We are Red Guards. We don’t need any passes…. Go on, never mind them!”

But a sailor objected. “This is wrong, comrades. We must have revolutionary discipline. Suppose some counterrevolutionaries came along in a truck and said: We don’t need any passes?’ The comrades don’t know you.”

At this there was a debate. One by one, however, the sailors and soldiers joined with the first. Grumbling, each Red Guard produced his dirty bumaga (paper). All were alike except mine, which had been issued by the Revolutionary Staff at Smolny. The sentries declared that I must go with them. The Red Guards objected strenuously, but the sailor who had spoken first insisted. “This comrade we know to be a true comrade,” he said. “But there are orders of the Committee, and these orders must be obeyed. That is revolutionary discipline...”

In order not to make any trouble, I got down from the truck, and watched it disappear careening down the road, all the company waving farewell. The soldiers consulted in low tones for a moment, and then led me to a wall, against which they placed me. It flashed upon me suddenly; they were going to shoot me!

In all three directions not a human being was in sight. The only sign of life was smoke from the chimney of a datchya, a rambling wooden house a quarter of a mile up the side road. The two soldiers were walking out into the road. Desperately I ran after them. “But comrades! See! Here is the seal of the Military Revolutionary Committee!”

They stared stupidly at my pass, then at each other.

“It is different from the others,” said one, sullenly. “We cannot read, brother.”

I took him by the arm. “Come!” I said. “Let’s go to that house. Some one there can surely read.” They hesitated. “No,” said one. The other looked me over. “Why not?” he muttered. “After all, it is a serious crime to kill an innocent man.”

We walked up to the front door of the house and knocked. A short, stout woman opened it, and shrank back in alarm, babbling, “I don’t know anything about them! I don’t know anything about them!” One of my guards held out the pass. She screamed. “Just to read it, comrade.” Hesitatingly she took the paper and read aloud, swiftly:

“The bearer of this pass, John Reed, is a representative of the American Social-Democracy, an internationalist...”

Out on the road again the two soldiers held another consultation. “We must take you to the Regimental Committee,” they said. In the fast-deepening twilight we trudged along the muddy road. Occasionally we met squads of soldiers, who stopped and surrounded me with looks of menace, handling my pass around and arguing violently as to whether or not I should be killed...

It was dark when we came to the barracks of the Second Tsarskoye Selo Rifles, low sprawling buildings huddled along the post-road. A number of soldiers slouching at the entrance asked eager questions. A spy? A provocator? We mounted a winding stair and emerged into a great, bare room with a huge stove in the centre, and rows of cots on the floor, where about a thousand soldiers were playing cards, talking, singing, and asleep. In the roof was a jagged hole made by Kerensky’s cannon..

I stood in the doorway, and a sudden silence ran among the groups,who turned and stared at me. Of a sudden they began to move, slowly and then with a rush, thundering, with faces full of hate. “Comrades! Comrades!” yelled one of my guards. “Committee! Committee!” The throng halted, banked around me, muttering. Out of them shouldered a lean youth, wearing a red arm-band.

“Who is this?” he asked roughly. The guards explained. “Give me the paper!” He read it carefully, glancing at me with keen eyes. Then he smiled and handed me the pass. “Comrades, this is an American comrade. I am Chairman of the Committee, and I welcome you to the Regiment...” A sudden general buzz grew into a roar of greeting, and they pressed forward to shake my hand.

“You have not dined? Here we have had our dinner. You shall go to the Officers’ Club, where there are some who speak your language...”

- - -

-Nestor Makhno from “L’insurection paysanne révolutionnaire”:

Without suspecting a thing, I continued to visit my various relatives at night, thus aggravating the suspicions which now spread to the rest of the village. I didn't know that for a while and everywhere my relatives were questioned about me.

One evening, having pooled money together to buy beer and homemade vodka, the youths of the village organized a party not far from where I was staying, resolved to seize me during the night to go and kill me in the fields. and bury my body there. They unearthed the revolvers, sawed-off shotguns and sabers they had hidden during the spring events and looked forward to evening.

Among them was my cousin's son, my own nephew, who knew nothing about that plan. The drinks helping, the conspirators began to question him about me and asked him to introduce me to them, supposedly so that we could get to know each other. My nephew dithered as long as he could, then decided to come get me.

The invitation seemed opportune to me, because not being able to go back home, I had decided to organize an insurrectionary vanguard from here. The party was happening across the street, in a large shed, with a large low table in the middle. The youths were seated around it and, to the side, gypsy-style, on a tarpaulin on the ground, were older peasants. The first drank and sang peasant songs. The latter played arba, a very popular card game in Ukraine during the long winter evenings. At my appearance in the shed some rejoiced and others were disturbed. I noticed it, without guessing why. Suddenly, as darkness descended on the shed, one of the older ones shouted, "Guys, give the newcomer some beer!" I had nothing against it, but feeling a tension rising around me of which I did not know the cause, I preferred to refuse. I was then asked to sit down to join in the game. Refusing again, i retorqued in brief and straightforward terms that the peasants and workers had better things to do in the circumstances than to play cards.

The youngsters pricked up their ears, the older ones elbowed each other knowingly, winking and giggling. I didn't pay much attention to it. My speech became more and more militant. I planned to form with these young people a first circle, then to select the most ardent to form an insurrectionary combat group. Focusing on what i was saying, I did not notice that the young people were listening to me with increasing attention, that the others, having left their cards and stopped their stupid giggles, had risen and turned to me with their mouths agape. When I denounced at the end the criminal bands of the Austro-German junkers and the hetman, the bloody reaction carried out against the workers and above all against the peasants, when I enumerated their cruelties towards those who had dared to expropriate the pomeshchiks and the kulaks, and whose corpses were now swinging from telegraph poles, how men were shot in front of women and children to spread terror among the population, the youths, unable to stand it any longer, got up shouting: "Here we only know how to play cards!” The older ones retorqued: "We old fools only know how to play cards, it's true, but yourself, you prefer to get drunk..."

Their voices mixed and they ended up all approaching me, without consulting each other, in turn, smiling at me in silence or speaking in an emotional voice, to shake my hand. Then two of them came closer to me and turned to their companions: "Comrades," they said, "it appears that the comrade here is not who we thought he was and we must tell him." "That's true, that's right" agreed the others.

Then the two men, Korobka and A. Ermokratiev, led me to a corner of the shed where they cleared a pile of clothes. I saw the sawed-off shotguns, revolvers, sabers and bayonets. "This is the armament we have left over from our participation this spring in the Red Guards. These weapons were to be used against you, comrade, because we took you for a spy. We had decided to kidnap you last night, to cut you into pieces to make you talk, then to finish you off and bury you in a field. »

I listened to them calmly at first but could not contain myself for long: a shiver ran through my body, the heat rose to my head. For a minute or two, I remained shaken, then getting back control over myself, I asked them, "How could I attract such suspicion?" They just replied, "Now that we've heard your speech, we don't have any suspicions. We only regret that your relatives were stupid enough to hide the truth from us. It was a close call tonight comrade.” A nervous wreck, I wanted to go back to my dwelling. The ringleaders insisted on escorting me to my door and apologized for their mistake.

#russian revolution #nestor makhno #john reed #anarchism #communism #long post

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honeymelonpm · 2 years

Note

Could you please write a fic for Yandere Marc, Steven and Jake. Maybe comfort with age regression? I hope you have a great day!

~Baby~

Characters: Marc/Steven/Jake x Reader

Summary: Reader has a stomach ache.

Warnings: Yandere (Kind of), Age Regression Themes. (The reader doesn't want to eat because they have a sore stomach.)

Requested by this beautiful anon! 🤍

Carrying a tray of buttered bread and chicken soup to the large bed centred in the open loft, Steven mouthed the words that left your mouth as you recited a passage about Ancient Egypt from a textbook aloud.

"Here you are, love." He placed the tray atop the folded blanket at the end of the bed.

"I'm not hungry," You mumbled, keeping your eyes on the book in your lap.

"Don't be silly, you barely had any breakfast, now here," He said, tearing off a piece of bread and dipping it in the soup, "Eat".

Shaking your head, you continued skimming through the page.

After a few moments of silence, you felt the dip in the mattress disappear, relieved at the thought that you had managed to get your way.

The shuffling of feet came to the side of your bed as he bent down to your height, "What did he just tell you to do?" A familiar American accent spoke to you in a stern manner.

Your shoulders slumped slightly as you shrunk in on yourself.

"Hey," He tapped a finger under your chin, "Look at me when I talk to you."

You did as he asked, keeping your head low, but your eyes even with his.

"Why aren't you eating?"

You took a moment to yourself, fiddling with the corners of the pages, "I have a stomach ache".

Marc's serious expression relaxed, "Honey, if your stomach hurts why didn't you just tell us?"

Slowly shrugging your shoulders, you whispered "I don't know".

Standing up from his crouched position beside you, he walked past the tray at the end of your bed and continued to the kitchen, reaching for the top cupboard.

You watched from the comfort of the bed, as he pulled out a metal box and placed it on the counter. He froze in place, his eyes glazing over a little. He stood like that for a while, before blinking and coming back to his senses.

"Mi bebé feels sick huh?" Jake croaked as he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the box.

When you didn't answer, he looked up at you.

As your eyes met his, you gently nodded your head in response.

"Hmm," He quietly groaned, taking a packet of ibuprofen from the box and walking over to the fridge, retrieving a small plastic tub of chocolate pudding.

"Steven uh-tells me that you've been reading."

Once again you nodded your head, causing a small smile to creep on his face.

You silently watched as he peeled back the foil on the pudding and began crushing a tablet in between spoons.

He put the packet of medicine back and locked up the box before putting it back out of reach.

"Here you go mi amor," He muttered under his breath as he carried the cup over to you, before spooning a generous amount and holding it to your lips.

Taking the spoon into your mouth, you tried your best to ignore the bitter taste of the medicine that he tried to conceal in the chocolate.

"There you go cariño," He whispered under his breath, feeding you another spoonful.

#fanfic #moon knight #jake lockley #marc spector #steven grant #yandere #comfort #x reader #age regression #request #asks

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ellethespaceunicorn · 9 months

Text

Bright Like The Moon: Chapter 11

Chapter 11: I Got Soul, But I’m Not A Soldier

Rating: Explicit, 18+, Minors - DNI

Fandom: Night Hunter

Pairing: Walter Marshall x Black!OFC

Word count: 3K

Summary: Kamaria Mansfield is hired at the Minnesota Police Department as an intern. Detective Walter Marshall is overworked and unsatisfied. Takes place post-film.

Chapter Summary: Kamaria’s attackers are sentenced. Walter devises a plan.

Chapter warnings: a teeny bit of court stuff (sentencing), angst, panic attack, vaginal fingering, oral (f receiving), p-in-v sex, creampie

A/N: I AM NOT A LAWYER, nor do I pretend to be one. I did a little research(pray for my search history), and that’s it. Suspend your belief a bit here, folks. Un-beta’d, we die like people who tried their best.

Dividers: @firefly-graphics

Support/Reblog banner by me

Cover Art by me, model for Cover Art credits

Cross-posted on AO3

~*~Spotify Playlist~*~

Series Masterlist

My Masterlist

Kamaria’s POV

One Month Later

I never wanted this whole thing to end up a mini-circus.

But that’s basically what ended up happening in the few short months since my abduction and assault.

From the plethora of therapy appointments that both Walter and I have attended to the meetings with my legal team, I thought I was already bogged down with talking about what happened to me.

I told myself that no matter how many times I wrote it down or said it aloud, there was always going to be this piece of me that felt as though I could step right back into that nightmare but I wouldn’t allow myself to.

I had done so much work to crawl out of that hole and I’ll be damned if I put even a toe back into that deep, dark space ever again.

But the moment Walter and I stepped into the courthouse today for sentencing, I could barely hold myself together. I knew I would have to see Justin again, which wasn’t great but it wasn’t horrible. He was just another victim and if not for him, I would’ve never got the chance to escape. I might have never seen the love of my life ever again.

I don’t owe him anything, I know that. It doesn’t make it feel any better knowing he’s going to be facing jail time. And it all stemmed from his involvement with a man who turned my life upside-down.

Lloyd Hansen.

His face haunted my dreams. His words haunted Walter. And his actions changed our lives forever. I wanted him to be tortured in some far-off dungeon where no one would be able to hear him scream. I needed him to feel broken, lost, and alone.

I knew the judge wouldn’t give him the death penalty but I would have loved to have seen him get a lethal injection of Pavulon, potassium chloride, and midazolam. I fantasized about the midazolam failing to sedate him. Maybe the Pavulon kept him immobile while he felt the suffocating feeling of fluid in the lungs. And the potassium chloride without a sedative? The lava slowly tearing through his veins would be unimaginable pain.

But that daydream would never come to life. I mean, all he did was kidnap and rape me. Let’s not get started on the unfairness of the American legal system. I could be here all day long.

The uncomfortable wooden bench under me wasn’t enough to distract me from where I was. Walter in my ear with soothing words didn’t stop me from staring at the back of Lloyd’s head the entire time. My worry about what they would do to Justin didn’t stop me from feeling like he deserved to be punished. He still acted in my worst interest whether or not he thought he was doing some version of the right thing by helping me escape.

I barely pay attention until the sentencing is read. Walter grips my hand tight and I focus my energy on watching the two men stand before the judge to get their lashings. I could tell he wants to bury Lloyd, and he feels somewhat sad for Justin but he would not let it sway his judgment. I take a deep breath and listen as their fates were decided.

Justin is sentenced to 16 years with the possibility of parole for drug possession and being an accomplice to kidnapping. He cries loudly as the officers take him away.

Lloyd is sentenced to 70 years without the possibility of parole for criminal sexual conduct in the second degree, rape in the second degree, and kidnapping in the second degree. He smiles, looking back at me to wink before he is taken away.

Relief was too small of a word for what I felt. It was more like liberation, emancipation, or deliverance. The massive weight of anxiety fell off of my shoulders as if it wasn't glued to me for the past few months.

My eyes become blurry with unshed tears, I try and blink them away but they fall down my cheeks before I can stop them. Clearing my throat, I try desperately to calm myself but nothing works. I hiccup, my breathing stuttering as I fail at stopping a panic attack from starting.

Before I know it, Walter is ushering me out into a small room just outside the courtroom. His hands are on my face and he is speaking slowly and clearly, knowing my brain is catching up to the here and now.

“It’s over, Kam. We never have to see those bastards again. You’re safe with me.” He kisses my forehead and my breathing slows as if it was a button to be pressed, “Are you here with me?”

I hear his question and look up into his eyes, “I wanna go home. I want you to help me forget all about this. I just wanna be with you and not think about anything else, please?”

“Of course, Princess.” No sooner are the words out of his mouth is my hand in his and he is walking me out of the room.

We speak shortly with my attorney, or rather, Walter speaks for me as I'm still a bit in shock at everything. Once hands are shaken and goodbyes are said, we make our way out of the courtroom and out of the courthouse.

We make it to Walter’s truck and as I get in, I realize how hot he looks in a suit. As he walks around the front, he pulls off his blazer. The way his dress shirt clings to his strong back, wide chest, and defined arms has me salivating. Inside the cab, he notices me staring.

“What?” He nervously chuckles and his eyebrows shoot up.

“You clean up nice, you know? I mean, you are sexy in a suit.” I can’t believe I was so anxious this morning that I didn’t notice how the blue in his tie brought out his eyes.

A pink hue colors the tips of his ears and his neck. I just made Walter Marshall blush. As if reading my mind, he looks around before his eyes come back to me. Biting his lip, he shakes his head.

“Princess, we are not fucking in this parking structure. As much as I want to bend you over the bed of this truck and fuck you until your moans are bouncing off of the cement walls, I’d much rather have you in bed or the couch or the dining room table.”

“But Daddy, I want you.” My hand slides over my thigh and underneath the skirt of my dress.

“You think I don’t want you, babygirl?” He takes my other hand and places it over his hardening length, “I want nothing more than to be inside you. But I’m taking us home first.” He starts the truck and moves out of the spot, starting us on the road home.

“Yes, Daddy.” I concede, my fingertips touching the gusset of my panties where a wet spot is forming, “Daddy, can you drive with one hand?” I try and get him to touch me in one last hopeful effort.

Without looking away from the road, his right hand comes to rest on my thigh and gives it a good squeeze. Slowly moving between my legs, he cups my pussy and then moves a single finger up and down the front of my panties.

He presses a finger in til he feels my clit and rubs there a bit. My moans fill the cab of his truck and I lean back in my seat. Sliding his finger down, he moves my panties to the side to feel the evidence of my arousal. He removes his fingers and sucks them into his mouth before returning them to my entrance. Pressing in, he is welcomed by my wet heat. Starting a rhythm, he oscillates between steady strokes and clit stimulation.

Before long, we are close to home. During the final stretch of streets, he slows down right as I could feel my orgasm approaching.

“Fuck, you are absolutely soaked. Poor little pussy really needed some attention. Just hold it for a little longer baby. I’ll let you cum soon enough.”

“Yes, Daddy.” I moan, my brain tries to keep up but it’s just too flustered with a pre-orgasmic stupor. I don’t even notice that we make it home and are in the driveway until I feel his fingers slip free.

He reaches his hand up to my lips and I suck them dry, tasting myself on his thick fingers. He grips himself through his slacks and takes his hand away. He looks me up and down then exits the truck. Walking around the front, he keeps his eyes down, unbuttoning his cuffs and folding them up those veiny forearms. Once he reaches the passenger side, he helps me out and closes the door behind me.

With a giant paw wrapped around my hand, I am being led into the house quickly. As soon as the front door closes, Walter lifts me off my feet and wraps my legs around his waist. Walking the distance to the bedroom, he reaches a hand behind me to unzip my dress.

He puts me down in the bedroom, and my dress pools at my feet. He kneels to help me step out of the dress. My bra and panties were the next to go. I stand in front of him in a simple pair of black heels.

“Any objection to the heels staying on?” He asks, letting a new fetish be known.

“No, Daddy,” I murmur, suddenly struggling to keep myself together given that he is fully clothed and I am in my birthday suit.

“Good. Sit down and open those legs wide for Daddy, Princess.” His hands roam from my ankles to my inner thighs before he kneels between my open legs.

Walter’s POV

Using my thumbs to open her outer labia delicately, I'm pleased to see her honey dripping. She was so worked up in the truck and this poor little pussy is ready to burst.

But not yet. I’m going to tease it first.

I gather some of her juices on a finger and swirl it around her clit, but I never quite make contact with the swollen bundle of nerves. I kiss her inner thighs and nip at them which always makes her groan and I am once again showered in her sex noises. She has the best fucking sounds. From her words to the sounds her body makes, it’s all beautiful.

I move my finger to circle her entrance and slip in slowly. Her hands go to her breasts, she knows I haven’t given her permission to touch me yet. She also knows that grabbing my hand will only stop my movements. But she is always allowed to touch herself while I’m taking care of her cunt.

Her tight heat envelops my finger and I move in and out of her folds. It’s torturously slow and I can feel her body trembling with the anticipation that I’ll either speed up or add another finger.

When I don’t do either, she wiggles her hips and whines. The quick slap to her clit has her remembering to use her words.

“Daddy, can you please use two fingers? Please? I need it,” The sound of her begging is music to my ears.

Instead of answering, I wet another finger in her nectar and slide it in slowly to let her adjust to the thickness. The immediate squeeze around my fingers is mind-blowing. I can feel her inner muscle on my fingertips and I massage it gently, but not enough to let her cum.

Leaning in, I circle my tongue around her clit as my finger did before. Only this time, I relent and give her clit sharp flicks with my tongue. She’s putty in my hands and that’s how I like it.

All she needs is me, and all I need is her.

I take her nub into my mouth and suck it gently, still tonguing it ever so gently. With the mix of her in my mouth and on my fingers, it’s not long before my cock is hard as a rock and pressing against the front of my boxer briefs.

I squeeze myself through my slacks and go back to eating this delicious pussy. I decide she can cum and I speed up my fingers and suck her bud harder. The moans that flow from her signal that she is close and I relish the change in the room when she finally lets go.

Curling my fingers, I continue to stroke inside her as she rides out her orgasm. Giving kitten licks to her clit as her hips wiggle, no doubt feeling very sensitive. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that the more sensitive she is, the harder her next orgasm will be and I wanna feel that one on my dick.

With my fingers still inside her, I stand up and unzip my slacks and pull out my painfully hard length. Pulling out of her warmth, I use that hand to stroke myself. I watch her as she watches me use her cum as lube.

Moving her up the bed, I climb in. With one hand on her stomach, I use the other to position myself at her entrance. Sliding home, I groan at the sensation of her core molding to my girth.

It is always so surprising that it never gets old. I love that first moment of being inside her. Letting her adjust to my fat dick for a moment, I pull back and push back in. I hold both of her thighs open so I have full range to fuck her.

Pushing her legs back as far as they will go without hurting her, I start a punishing rhythm. The slap of our bodies moving together is a symphony. The movement of her breasts and stomach reminds me of an ocean wave ebbing and flowing. This woman is perfect, inside and out.

Letting go of her legs, I lean down and kiss her passionately. Holding her close, I continue to fuck into her. In this position, I can stimulate not only her G-spot but her clit as well.

It’s not long until I feel her breathing hitch and feel her pussy fluttering around me. Her moans turn into sobs as her orgasm takes over her. I grind my hips into hers and help her to stretch it out.

I get back up on my knees, my hands on either side of her head. I look down into her eyes for a moment and resume kissing her cervix with my tip. She throws her head back and I take the opportunity to kiss and suck at her neck. Leaving lovebites behind isn’t usually my style.

But anything goes today. And she is gonna have to try and cover up evidence of my love. On her espresso skin, I have to suck very hard to leave a mark. Challenge accepted.

Her hands are in my sweat-slicked curls before long and we reclaim eye contact. Something in her eyes draws me in and pretty soon, I am fighting to hold off my orgasm.

Just like she always does, she comes to my rescue.

“Daddy, I need your cum inside me. Please cum for me?” Her big brown eyes pierce through me like a fucking bullet and I’m done for.

“I’m gonna cum for you, Princess. Fuck! Ugh,” With one last press forward, my balls tighten and I shoot my load into her greedy little snatch. I feel like I’m cumming for what feels like a full minute.

I stay inside her, attempting to regain control of my body and my brain. She strokes the hair at the nape of my neck and I kiss over the already bruising spots on her dark skin. When my softening cock slips from her, I sit back on my heels to look at my handiwork.

Her swollen pussy is leaking with my spend and I feel that swell of pride inside me. She’s nice and full because of me. I unconsciously rub at her stomach as I watch my jizz leak and I feel her hand on mine.

She just smiles at me as I look into her eyes. There is something behind that smile, but I don’t have enough brainpower to work through it right now. I lay next to her and pull her into my arms. I listen as her breathing evens out and she falls asleep shortly after.

Looking down at her, I wipe my thumb across her brow and she stirs a bit before settling back to sleep. I smile and try to get my brain to work, but it’s to no avail. She’s wiped me out and I couldn’t be happier.

There are a few things that would make me happier. But all in due time. I figure I’ll start small and work my way up.

Step 1: Ask her to move in with me because she already basically lives here.

Step 2: Ask her to be my wife because I already made up my mind that she is the love of my life.

Step 3: Ask her to make a baby with me because she’s so great with Faye and seeing that belly of hers swollen with my child would make me so happy.

But I will worry about all that later. We can take our time with everything. Neither of us is very keen on rushing things. But one thing is for certain.

We want to spend the rest of our lives together. That’s what matters.

Chapter 12 (coming soon)

A/N: Welcome back to my story. Haven’t posted since June. I missed my babies. Songs for this chapter are All These Things That I’ve Done by The Killers and Streets – Silhouette Remix by Doja Cat.

**Tag List**

@brattymum96 @ambinxe @avengersfan25 @kebabgirl67 @enchantedbytomandhenry @astheskycries @rebelangel1102 @deandoesthingstome @liveoncoffeeandflowersss @foxyjwls007 @rosiesluv7 @livisss @slut4henrycavilll

Let me know if you wanna be added (or removed) 😁

#walter marshall #walter marshall fanfic #walter marshall x black!plus size female #walter marshall x black!plus size female oc #walter marshall x ofc #walter marshall x black!ofc #ellethespaceunicorn fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill #walter marshall fanfiction #walter marshall fic #night hunter #night hunter fanfic #night hunter fanfiction #bright like the moon

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theesteemedladydebourgh · 25 days

Note

are you british and if so do you have any advice for americans writing the hp fanfics? even you are american do you still have advice lol

my best advice is to learn from listening to/reading British media. a naturally good starting point is the HP books, because they’re obviously what we’re modeling on, so studying the dialogue is a good way to notice patterns.

also watching british shows/interviews with celebrities etc is a good way to get exposure (or, if you know some brits in real life/have enough gumption, you could try asking them to read dialogue aloud to see if it seems natural 😂).

because it’s fanfic, and it’s not that serious, don’t worry too much about this, but if you really want to go for authenticity, doing some research on the different types of accents in the UK, and listening to videos of people from those places could help you nail specific characters (I don’t do this tbh, aside from any particular mannerisms that really belong to a certain character. this is a kind of odd example, which I didn’t even realize I did until just now, but my James usually starts conversations with “hey”, whereas Lily goes for “Hello/hi,” which I think subconsciously came from a class/geographic divide that I’d noticed irl, because I’ve met a lot of posh southern English boys who religiously use “hey” as a starting line).

overall, don’t worry about it too much, aside from avoiding really obvious expressions or phrases that seem ‘American’ (like, “hey dude, I plead the fifth!”), or overusing British words like “bloody” or “mate” to the point that they get repetitive or annoying.

but at the end of the day, I’ve read a lot of amazing fics that were clearly written by Americans, and a lot of amazing ones that were written by Brits, and they all have the potential to be great stories :)

and if anyone else has advice on this, please add it! 🫶

#ask #ange gives writing advice

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first-edition · 1 year

Text

Breaking Seasons

New chapter update every Teusday Thursday

HELLO and welcome to the book before we begin this is a Spencer reid x y/n reader book. She/her pronouns however you can change thing to your liking.This book is based in the land of criminal minds so if you've watched it some things hit hard just be aware. Chapters containing graphic info such as smut or active severe violence will be labeled as such.If you want short blurbs or story's please feel free to follow my tumblr page where more content for you to read will be. You can also view this story on my Wattpad for more dexterity.

https://www.wattpad.com/user/JelsaSnowflakes1

Thank you and i hope you enjoy!

Cw- violence, mature language and speak, gore, eventual smut, fluff, angst, abuse, childhood trauma, sexual themes, vewier discretion is advised.

Summary- When y/n takes her sick friends criminology class to take notes in the winter, she meets the guest speaker, BAU-FBI agent Spencer reid. After getting to know more about each other due to a college school related case, that ends up involving y/n herself, they naught just have each to keep warm.

Story begins under cut. Chapter 1

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Icy and winter day last nights snow fall taking a toll on the campus. Cars covered in blankets of white powder, other students and member slipping and spilling their morning Starbucks, and student being late to class as the outside campus dorms were snowed in. But in your case attending a class for your sick friend. You enter the room sitting where she would normally sit.

"Please please please take my criminology classes for the week there's a guest speaker from the fbi and I need the notes" she begs you coughing up a storm after making you go soft and say yes.

Waiting for the class to start your phone buzzes. A text bubble from your friend that reads,

'Thank you so much! I owe you one'

Causes you to roll your eyes.

The door of the room open and the so called "guest" walks in along with two other agents and what you assume to be the usual professor. All the girls gasp a fawn of the African American man who's beefier than the long term gym teacher and what seems to be the entire team.

"Hello everyone my name is SSA Derek Morgan, and this is SSA Jennifer Jareau, And that there is Dr. Spencer Reid. We're ver pleased to be here to talk to you about the BAU and what we do as profiler accept reid here will do all the talking."

Derek steps back as him and Jennifer wave and leave along with the professor leaving some girls sighing in disappointment.

"hi I'm Spencer readier you can call me doctor, or dr Reid, or Dr Spencer, or um...anyway I'll be teaching your class for the next week. I started the Bau when I was 21 although I wasn't aloud in the field until 22, I'm currently 25 and I live by myself in Quantico Virginia, I have an eidetic memory and can read 20 thousand words per-minute so if you could go around and tell me your names, age and major that would be great." He smiles putting his hands together.

A guy named Matt goes first and the train begins for a god 5-10 minutes leading up to you. You debate on telling them your real name or using your friends name but it doesn't take long before all eyes are in you and your snapped out of your thoughts by the person next to you nudging your leg.

"And you are?" Spencer asks looking up moving his hair behind his ear.

"I'm y/n l/n I'm 23 and my major is astrobiology." You answer

Spencer frowns. Confused as everyone else before you had said criminology or something to do in the subject of Fbi workings.

"Astrobiology? The study of stars and outer earth?" He asks baffled somehow.

"Yes. Oh I'm not actually I'm this class I'm just attending for my friend, Mave Donovan she's majoring in biochem and forensics she's sick so I'm here taking notes until..she um recovers." you suddenly set conscious as everyone stares at you.

"It's nice to meet you" he says you nod the next person goes releasing some stress.

The entire class you took notes barley looking up and just listening when it came time for classes end you collected your belongings and got up following the others out unknowingly leaving your book behind. Most days you watch tv or play games in your phone or iPad but you picked up a book at the library one days and now you can't put it down.

Half way across the campus to your car you feel a tad bit empty. Looking around yourself and in your bag,

"Shit." The word leave your mouth ushering you to leave with urgency back to the room. Rushing back to the door it opens abruptly. You step back quickly slipping on stray ice only to be grabbed back up into the Dr Spencer reid.

"I'm sorry!" You both say

"Sorry I didn't realize anyone was out here."

"Yeah no...I left my book I just came back to get it."

"You alright?" He asks

"Slippery." You reply and pull back from him.

"By any chance is this it?" He asks holding up the copy of Romeo and Juliet.

"Yeah, yes thank you." You say taking it and placing it in your bag.

"Romeo an juliet Hm?" He says

"Yeah I'm not actually one for reading but I saw it in the library and couldn't resist."

"It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet" he says

You smile awkwardly and nod.

"Good to know" you reply.

There's a small shared silence between you two before you speak up at the buzz of your phone.

"Sorry I'm gonna get going I'm parked at the quarter lot it's a bit of a walk." You say

"M-mind if I walk with you I've parked there as well." He replies. You shake your head No and begin your walk with him to the lot once again.

"So what exactly does the bau do?" You ask

"BAU stands for behavioral analysis unit we used to be the BSU behavioral science unit but not anymore, its part of the ncbac the National center for analysis of violent crime which is also part of the cirg, critical incident response group, and um..im r-rambling I'm sorry."He apologizes and rubs his nape.

"No, it's alright, it was interesting." You reply which makes him smile.

"U-um im a profiler. I profile people based on what murder they commit. I can see things others can't or would like to see. I study their patterns, behavior."

"You can tell everything about someone by looking at them then" you say

"N-no well hmm?" He thinks you giggle

"Do me." You say and stop. He turns to you.

"Well then doctor...profile me." You reply holding your bag strap.

"Mm well i'm not as good as Arron hotcher, my boss, but um...i can tell you have a cat by the fur on your scarf." He says

"It's too easy to guess something else."

"Okay by the way you wanted to get back to your car so quickly before I can tell you don't live on campus or in a dorm and you probably own a car that is on the more expensive side." He says. You nod and smile.

"And yet I can tell that you have no pets although you wish you wanted one but you can't because of how often you travel." You say

"Well done." He smiles "you could be a profiler."

You shake your head no and look back up at him once again looking down again.

"Again but try harder." You say he nods and observes you as your foot moves around in the snow below you.

"Alright...you live alone, and you have for 4 years, your drawing in the snow with you foots which means you have siblings and played with them every winter, your not fond of eye contact because you keep looking down, it's due to a previous relationship between a parent who abused that privilege to look you in the eyes. By the way your phone is buzzing and you keep ignoring it. I assume it's a significant other...or ex that you don't want to see or talk to." He says waiting for your response.

You chuckle. Beginning to walk again.

"So...that's what you do." You reply

He frowns.

"You talk a lot," you smile at him.

He chuckles and you continue your walk to the lot. After reaching it you find that you're conveniently parked next to each other. His a Prius yours, a GTR.

"You were right Dr Reid about the cat, the car, the parents, the ex." You say.

"What about siblings?" He asks you to press your car key to start it up to make sure it's warm.

"My sister...passed away when we were 14." You reply.

"Sorry." He says you shake your head. "It's alright," you say, putting your bag in your car.

"Will I see you monday?" He asks

"I have to take notes." You say and get in, putting on your seat belt and driving off.

View chapter 2 here

#spencer reid smut #spencer #Criminal Minds #criminal minds x reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #Crimnal #minds #Bau #spencer reid fandom #spencer reid book

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checkoutmybookshelf · 8 months

Text

Lady Whistledown Returns: Chapter 4

Six writers, inclement weather, and one villa. How will the situation handle an unexpected visitor?

Need to catch up? Find previous chapters and works on AO3.

This chapter does not have any content warnings.

The first few weeks at Villa Diodati were characterized by incessant thunderstorms, pouring rain, and temperatures close to freezing. The papers increasingly attributed the weather to a volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies, but their stories differed, and Byron opined that the persistent fog that the American newspapers insisted was reddening the skies and dulling the sun couldn’t possibly be anything but American hysteria. Anthony’s letters had been full of concern about bringing the crops to maturity, and Kate’s and Violet’s letters had been full of little else than Anthony’s temper and the utter inadequacy of that year’s fashions for the temperature. Eloise’s letters bemoaned the lack of meetings about women’s rights and insisted that Penelope introduce her to the daughter of the great Mary Wollstonecraft. When Penelope had mentioned this to Mary, she had half sighed and half giggled, and agreed to include a short missive to Eloise in Penelope’s next letter to her.

After nearly a week of evenings of the Bridgertons, Shelleys, Byron, and Polidori huddling around a fire in the drafty sitting room attempting to find topics of conversation that were not bemoaning the lack of summer, Byron produced Fantasmagoriana—a French anthology of German ghost stories—with so much flourish and fanfare that Penelope half expected him to claim the works of Shakespeare. He proceeded to insist on dramatic readings to “suit the mood of the evenings.” Penelope enjoyed the first evening; Byron was an engaging reader, nearly theatrical in his voice and in how he used the space in the room as he read.

Subsequently, however, Byron became less and less enamored with the exercise. He was politely complimentary of Mary and Penelope’s readings, but barely civil with Colin and actively derogatory with Polidori’s and Shelley’s readings. He took to pacing about the room as others read, distractedly and distractingly cracking his knuckles.

Penelope began writing short editions of Whistledown to bleed off the stress and tension of Byron behaving like a particularly tetchy bomb that seemed to refuse to just go off already and resolve the tension. She shared these privately with both Colin and Mary; collectively they agreed that while the short works were perhaps a bit cutting, they were not inaccurate.

By the evening that would have heralded Byron’s second turn to read aloud, he had become truly insufferable, spending his days alternating between brooding in the day room while spread across a truly astounding amount of furniture and disappearing altogether. As the group gathered, expecting to finish the book that night, Byron bounded in with all of their travel writing cases in his arms.

“Inspiration must strike,” he declared, enthusiastically shoving writing cases into arms. Penelope and Polidori politely exchanged cases, as did Mary and Colin while Byron gesticulated wildly, nearly decking Shelley in the head with his own sturdy case. “Forget simply reading others’ uninspired ghost stories; we can and we shall do better! I insist that tonight we shall be a salon of writers—we shall write! Imagine your fears, your ghosts, those things that give you horripilation or would compel you to absquatulate. Put them in truth and hideous beauty on the page!”

“Do you think he knows he is giving us all a very particular horror to write about?” Colin whispered for Penelope’s and Mary’s ears. Penelope smiled, burying a giggle. Mary’s slight smile was distant, her eyes lighting up and becoming pensive. The evening was ultimately far more enjoyable than the previous ones had been, with Colin and Penelope experimenting—albeit somewhat unsuccessfully—with a genre that neither had written in before. By the wee hours of the morning, the group had pages written and were beginning to droop. Each giving a brief outline of their idea to the others, affectionate jibes and praise were exchanged as each made their way to their respective beds.

As though in reward for their efforts the previous night, the morning dawned relatively clear-skied and sunny. Penelope and Mary insisted on taking Mary and Percy’s son out to explore the grounds and perhaps wade at the edge of the lake. Byron was once again sprawled across an entirely improbable amount of furniture, writing on his so-called fragment, and declined to accompany the ladies. Percy opined that he was “feeling somewhat delicate,” and Polidori insisted that Percy rest under his care as a physician. Colin had initially agreed to accompany the ladies and young child—he and Colin got on quite well, given Colin’s experience with his own nephews, and Penelope never tired of enjoying Colin behaving utterly ridiculously to win a chuckle from the boy—but Byron declared that he would simply be at sea without a writing partner, and Colin was forced to remain behind or be rude to his host.

Once Pen, Mary, and Mary’s son had departed and Polidori had declared Percy “fragile in feeling only” and all four men dove into their writing cases and continued writing. Eventually, the four began trading pages and opining on their progress. Byron quickly lost patience with the group dynamic, and began to sigh and moan as though he were dying.

Thoroughly out of patience, Colin begged off with a splitting headache and retired to his and Pen’s room. He was rummaging through one of their cases for a book or newspaper to read when the door opened.

“I thought you and Mrs. Shelley would be longer—” he began, turning toward the door in expectation of seeing the sun flame off red curls. His voice died away upon seeing the dark coat and hat of Mr. Worth. The queen’s agent wore a deeply uncomfortable expression.

“Mr. Bridgerton,” he said, nodding politely.

“Worth. Why are you in my bedroom?”

Worth’s expression grew even more uncomfortable and something deeply guilty crossed his face for a moment. He refused to meet Colin’s eyes. “Mr. Bridgerton…” Worth’s voice petered out.

Colin watched Worth visibly struggle with himself, shifting from foot to foot and wringing his hands. The other man’s obvious discomfiture would ordinarily have Colin pouring a drink and making a lighthearted quip to ease the tension, but in this case he was increasingly white-knuckling the bedpost. This had to be about Penelope and the Whistledown book. If Worth was here to arrest Penelope, Colin would tie the man up in their closet, take Pen, and run for it, consequences be damned. He had friends across Europe, they would be able to get beyond the reach of the crown. Thank God that Pen wasn’t in the villa just then; he could be confident that Worth did not have her.

The agent would not simply speak, and Colin’s patience was wearing thin. He cleared his throat expectantly, but when that failed to spur the other man into speech, Colin unclamped his hand from the bedpost, took a step forward, and said, “Spit it out, man! Why are you here?”

“Her Majesty Queen Charlotte has extended an invitation to you, Mr. Bridgerton. You are to come with me instantly.” Worth still wouldn’t meet Colin’s eyes.

Something tense in Colin’s chest eased. Worth wasn’t here for his wife, and his answer to this invitation was clear. “I am afraid I will have to disappoint her Majesty,” he said. “Penelope and I are guests of Lord Byron, and it would be unthinkably rude to leave suddenly. Let me show you out.”

As Colin took another step toward the man to make good on his words, Worth held up a hand.

“Excuse me for my lack of clarity, Mr. Bridgerton. Invitation was clearly insufficient to describe the nature of the request. The queen demands that you return to London in my custody immediately.”

Colin’s barked laugh was a combination of surprise and derision, and he used it to cover a step toward his armoire. His sword hung on the inside of the door; if Worth wanted to make an issue of this, he would be sorely mistaken thinking that Colin would be an easy target. “You cannot imagine that Penelope and I are simply going to let you arrest us and drag us back to London, sir.”

“Not Dame Penelope,” said Worth, quickly. “Just you, Mr. Bridgerton. And I would hardly call it an arrest. We refer to it as being recalled.”

“I am not an agent, Worth. I would call it an arrest. And one in which I must disappoint you and her Majesty!” Colin had made it to the armoire, and smoothly retrieved his sword, drawing himself up to his full height as he pointed it directly at Worth.

“Apologies, Worth, but I will not be returning to England with you.”

“Mr. Bridgerton, please. I beg you not to make an issue of this.”

“Step toward the armoire, if you please,” ordered Colin.

Worth took the step as he responded. “I have no quarrel with you personally, but I ask you again, sir, to please come quietly.”

“It will not happen. Another step.” Colin’s reach was long, and he had the point of the sword level with Worth’s throat, if a polite few inches away from the flesh.

“What do you plan to do?”

“Surely you cannot expect me to share our plans with an agent who is trying to arrest us,” retorted Colin, advancing the blade a few inches as Worth took another step, clearing the bedroom door.

“No, I cannot. But I can keep you talking long enough for this!” Worth’s voice raised slightly on the last word, and the bedroom door opened with force, but not so much that it banged into the wall or made a sound that would draw attention. Ten men in identical coats and hats, all armed with swords and knives, crowded into the room. Many blades were leveled at Colin. “Please, Mr. Bridgerton. This need not descend into barbarity. Lower your blade.”

Despite his practice both at school and with his brothers, Colin lacked the expertise to overcome so many opponents alone. Being cut to ribbons would do neither him nor Pen any good, so Colin lowered his sword, slowly and grudgingly.

“Drop it on the floor and kick it to me,” instructed Worth.

“What precisely do you intend to tell people?” asked Colin, complying.

“Nothing. Her Majesty intends for no one to know.”

“You cannot imagine that you can forcibly abduct me and Penelope won’t bloody well notice and write to Anthony,” cried Colin, one knee flexing as he instinctively tried to go for his sword and just as quickly checked the motion. Unfortunately, his motion spurred the other men, who more or less jumped him en masse, forcing Colin to his knees as they pinned his arms behind him.

“This plan will fall apart before we are across the channel. Letters travel faster than twelve men do,” said Colin, in a moment of stillness.

“You underestimate her Majesty’s experience in these matters.”

“Sound more mournful about this Worth, it’s such a tragedy that you’re kidnapping me,” snapped Colin.

“It’s true, Dame Penelope will realize you’re missing,” said Worth, fishing in an inside jacket pocket for a moment as he walked to the bed. “However, she will not write to the Viscount. She will not write to anyone. Not once she has read this.” He placed the letter on the pillow, the words “Dame Penelope” writ large and clear on the front, above a decorative wax seal. Back still to Colin, Worth sighed. “Gag him.”

Colin tried to yell and fight the hands holding him. Realizing too late and with a sudden, stomach-turning jolt that if he was not discovered now, he would not be, and Pen would be left alone in Europe. Unfortunately, the queen’s agents were far too practiced. Before the words had finished leaving Worth’s mouth, Colin’s head had been pinned against someone’s chest or shoulder, and his jaw was first forced open as someone’s balled up handkerchief was thrust between his teeth and a length of rope followed it. The free ends were bound behind his head, keeping everything in place and muffling every yell.

“My apologies,” said Worth to Colin. “I had hoped you would see sense and come quietly, but I must carry out my duties, regardless of your cooperation.” Turning to the other men, Worth said, “Get him out of here. Down the back stairs, and do it quietly.” The agents bundled Colin out of the villa and into one of a pair of utterly nondescript carriages.

The hours-long carriage ride began a somewhat tumultuous journey back to England. Worth initially allowed Colin relative freedom of movement, with at least three men accompanying him at all times. However, after Colin leaped overboard on a riverboat to escape and forced them to hunt up and down three miles of riverbank to find and recapture him, Worth ordered his hands tied and ankles hobbled when they were on the move.

Colin blessed his school friends for teaching him how to pick pockets because he was able to swipe a small knife in a town they crossed through, and he cut through his bonds. He nearly gave the agents the slip down a side street, only to be cut off by a wagon that stopped suddenly when the horses pulling it shied away from a startled cat streaking across the cobblestones. Before the agents pulled him away and dragged him back to the floor of the inn they had taken over for the evening, Colin bruised all of his ribs.

After that stunt, Worth disappeared for a few hours and returned with a packing crate meant for furniture. Colin was transported the rest of the way to the channel in the packing crate—with a few extra holes for air drilled into it. Out of sheer frustration and lacking any other options, Colin passed the time riding in the crate by singing the filthiest sea shanties and drinking songs in every language he knew at the top of his lungs. The jostling grew rougher the louder he sang, and Colin added a full body’s worth of bumps, bruises, and splinters to his very bruised ribs. Just as he was beginning to feel nauseous from the motion of the ship, Worth levered open the top of the crate, shackled Colin’s wrist to his, and after warning Colin that he couldn’t swim, walked the pair of them up to an isolated section of the stern. They saw no other passengers, and even the sailors seemed not to see them. Colin’s motion sickness immediately faded away, but the nausea remained.

He had been gone from Pen for days. He had no notion of what was in the letter Worth had left her, and had no idea whether she had taken any action. Or what that action might be. Musing on what Pen might choose to do was merely a distraction, and Colin knew it. What was Lady Whistledown in Penelope was more than capable of getting her safely back to England and Bridgerton House to work with Anthony to fix the situation. The simple truth was, he missed her. Missed her presence at his elbow, missed carding his fingers through her loose curls at the end of the day, missed the feeling of her warmth in his arms. More than anything he missed her quick wit and the way she goaded and challenged him to meet her and play on her level. They had not been apart since their marriage, and this separation stung all the more for being unwilling.

That he hadn’t been unable to escape the custody of eleven agents was not precisely unexpected, but it rankled his pride and made Colin feel as though he had failed Pen somehow, because he had not been able to get back to her. Worth searching him for anything that could have conceivably been used as a lockpick even after he had been locked in a box for days on end had been gratifying but entirely unnecessary.

Colin stared moodily down into the waves of the channel, debating the odds that Worth had lied to him about being unable to swim. The tightening of his hands drew the other man’s attention, and Worth stepped back a few paces from the rail, gently but firmly dragging Colin with him.

“I’d as soon not drown with you in a futile attempt to escape,” said Worth, tone an odd mix of dry and apologetic. “I genuinely cannot swim. My parents were poor; I never learned.”

“How did you manage to get yourself appointed as an agent of the queen then?” Colin asked, curiosity genuinely piqued. Between escape and irritation attempts, he had noticed shades of Oxbridge in the bearing, speech, and attitudes of the ten men who had been keeping an eye on him, but Worth had not struck him as a younger son of a ton family who had eschewed the military or the church.

“She caught me trying to steal the family silver.”

Colin’s startled laugh sent seagulls bursting into flight from their resting places along the lines. “Surely not! Don’t they execute boys who try that?”

“Careless ones, certainly,” replied Worth. “But apparently the fact that I made it unseen into the palace, stole a livery, and made my way utterly unnoticed to the royal apartments was amusing enough that Her Majesty took me into her household and trained me up with an eye toward making me an agent.” He stumbled as the ship listed sharply to one side on another’s wake. Colin caught Worth before the man could drag them both down, his sea legs compensating instinctively.

“Not a sailor, I see,” said Colin, awkwardly moving to clap Worth on the shoulder but not quite having the right angle to do so because they were cuffed together.

“Not in the least. Barring the imperative of duty to queen and country, I should count myself lucky never to have to set foot on another ship for the rest of my life.”

“Quite the strong sense of duty too, to kidnap a fellow away from his wife.” The lack of vitriol in his voice surprised Colin. He rather liked Worth, in spite of himself, and the fact that the man was not threatening Pen apparently bought him more good will than Colin had intended to sell.

Worth shuffled his feet awkwardly, just avoiding meeting Colin’s eyes as he stepped to the rail and held on. “This truly is simple duty. I hold no animosity towards yourself or Dame Penelope. Her Majesty is a complex woman. Capable of great magnanimity and equally great cruelty.”

“I should never expect a man to speak ill of his benefactors,” said Colin. “But neither would I expect him to speak well of anyone threatening his family.”

Rather than answer as the docks of London drew ever closer, Worth reached into an inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a flask. Between them, the two men drained the flask in companionable silence before Worth was obliged to chivvy Colin back into his packing crate for the journey to the palace.

#polin #the polin fic #bridgerton #polin fic #polin fanfiction #polin fanfic #colin bridgerton #penelope featherington #penelope bridgerton #colin bridgerton and penelope feathertington #colin x penelope

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