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leilabeaux · 4 years

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Luck Be a Lady

Chapter Four

Masterlist | One Two Three

Pairing: Alex x Reader

Word Count: 2161

Summary: Reader has some regrets and she learns something new about Alex.

Warnings: None

Author’s Note: And this is where I leave you. ::tips hat and rides off into the sunset:: On a real note, sorry for the lack of updates. Work and personal life has been hectic and wearing your girl down.

----

The bright lights of the Vegas Strip illuminated the living room enough that you didn’t bother turning on any lights as you left your bedroom. Now dressed down in your worn-out, oversized hoodie and pajama shorts, you walked over to the wet bar and pulled a bottle of vodka down from the shelf, not caring how overpriced it was. You thought about grabbing a glass but instead shrugged and took a swig straight from the bottle.

Settling on the wide marble ledge, you looked past your reflection in the window to peer down at the sparse traffic on the streets. You felt so physically drained after all the tears you’ve shed. You rubbed your bare face in embarrassment, mortified over letting all your emotions get in the way and ruining what was otherwise a nice evening.

Now that you weren’t in the middle of a panic attack, you regretted reacting too quickly when you told Alex to leave. You wished you could have him come back or at least text him so you could explain yourself but you two never took a moment to exchange numbers. Not like it would make much of a difference anyway, you were sure he was grateful to get some distance away from your crazy ass.

You didn’t bother looking over when you heard the door unlock and open. The clicking of heels confirmed it was your best friend doing her walk of shame, or stride of pride as she lovingly called it.

“So I didn’t see any sign of your Lover Boy when I snuck out of Marco’s room,” Bianca teased. You could hear her plop down onto the couch and then soft thuds of what you assumed were her shoes being dropped on the floor. “Is he here? Did you wear him out? Why are we sitting in the fucking dark?”

Light had filled the room after she clicked on a lamp. Although you were no longer crying, you knew your red, puffy eyes would give you away when you turned to look at her.

“Oh my god! What the fuck happened?” She rushed over to join you on the ledge. “What did that fucker do?”

“He didn’t do anything,” you gave a small smile, trying to put her worries to rest but as all the emotions from the night went through you again, you couldn’t stop your eyes from welling up.

Bianca wrapped her arms around you, comforting you until you were ready to talk. Her hand rubbed your back as you softly sniffled into her shoulder.

“What happened, sweetie? Are you sure he didn’t do anything? Because I won’t hesitate to put my shoes back on and kick his ass if I need to.”

“No, Alex was sweet and a total gentleman the entire night. So you can calm down with all of that.” You pulled away from her, drying your face with the back of your sleeve before giving her a quick run through of your night. “We were kissing and everything was good and...I don’t know. It felt familiar.”

“Familiar how?”

“It was like being with Trevor again. I know him and Alex couldn’t be anymore different but it somehow felt the same. And then all I could think of was him and how much I missed him. I just felt guilty like I was cheating on him.”

Bianca shook her head as she took your hand in hers. “Y/N, you have nothing to feel guilty about. Trevor's been gone for almost two years now. It’s perfectly fine to move on whether if it’s a relationship or just sex. I know he would want you to be with someone who makes you happy.”

“It still feels too soon, maybe I’m not ready to be with anyone. Ugh, as if being with Alex would be possible especially after I freaked out on him,” you clasped your hand on your forehead, grimacing over that memory. “And I basically told him I was married.”

“What? Why?” Bianca looked at you like you were crazy.

“He saw my ring and asked how long I was married. So I told him eight years.” It technically wasn’t a lie. You had been married for about eight years before a deputy stood at your doorstep, telling you that your husband would never be returning home. “You know I hate the pitiful look people give me when they hear I’m a widow. And I thought it would be easier to push him away if I pretended that I was a faithful wife. But fuck, man, I couldn’t even keep that up!”

“It’s not too late to tell him all of this. I think I might remember what room they’re staying in.”

“Okay, even if he doesn’t think I’m crazy after all of that, I don’t think me and him would work. He’s young and I barely had the patience to deal with Trevor when he was that age. And he doesn’t even live in this country,” you tried to reason with her and maybe with your heart.

“Okay, he’s young and he doesn’t go here. So what?”

“I just think getting into a long distance relationship after losing your husband is a disaster.”

“Or it could be something beautiful. I’m sorry, Y/N. But if this boy could give even a fraction of happiness that Trevor gave you, then I’m all for it.”

You gnawed on your lip as you considered what she was telling you. You were too scared to take the risk. You were convinced that it would only end in heartbreak and you weren’t sure if you had enough strength to deal with another one of those again.

“I think I’m just too tired to deal with any of this right now...or ever.” You turned toward the window, staring at your worn down reflection. Definitely too damn tired.

——

The snow outside of your kitchen window was coming down hard and didn't show any signs of stopping. You sighed to yourself while emptying the remainder of the wine bottle into your glass, silently praying that you wouldn’t find yourself snowed in in the morning.

You sat on the couch, pulling the cozy throw up to your chin and trying to get comfortable while your lovable dog and cat duo, Dallas and Leeloo, were busy fighting over the spot next to you. Unfortunately for the young feline, it seemed like the elder Labrador was coming out to be the winner.

You sipped on your wine as you scrolled through Hulu for something to distract you from your headache of a night—your first and definitely last Tinder date.

You had spent twenty embarrassing minutes waiting for your date to return after he excused himself to the restroom. There was no devastation on your part. You didn’t feel the same chemistry in person that you had over messages but you were willing to at least wish him a good night like a decent person. You deleted the app on your way out, already convinced that nothing good would be coming from it.

You weren’t even mad at this guy. All of your annoyance was aimed at Bianca who had spent the last six months encouraging—nagging and begging—you to go out and start dating. She claimed that it was officially time for you to start moving on but you suspected she just wanted you to see how wrong you were for letting the potential Mr. Right in Vegas get away.

You’d never tell her but she was right and you didn’t need a string of bad or mediocre dates to find that out. The nights you used to spend in bed wondering how life would be if Trevor was still alive were now spent thinking of what could have been with Alex. From the small amount of time you spent with him, you knew he would be the caring, supportive boyfriend who’d hang on every word you said and whisper into your ear to ease any of your self doubts and do anything to make you smile.

You had tried to search for him with the very minimal details you knew about him, during one very lonely night spent with a bottle of whiskey, but none of the Copenhagen based photographers named Alex turned out to be the one you were looking for. It shouldn’t have been too shocking but your drunk self still took it a bit hard, spending part of the night lying on the kitchen floor and crying into Dallas’s fur.

You gave up on finding something uplifting to watch and settled with the historical drama you had been slowly working your way through the past few months. You originally didn’t think a show about Vikings would be your cup of tea as you were more of a sucker for the period pieces with more extravagant, vibrant costumes but it came highly recommended by your Vegas fling. He said it was a pretty good show. After three seasons and nine episodes, he definitely wasn’t wrong.

You were down to the last ten minutes of the episode where Bjorn was going up to his brothers’ cabin. You had downed the rest of your glass only to spit it all out, your pets scurrying away to avoid the spray, when grown Ivar rolled over to show his face.

“What...the fuck?” You whispered to yourself as the scene cutaway. Your mouth hung open and your eyes were glued to the screen.

“What the fuck?” You repeated again when you saw Marco on the screen next to Alex. “Why would they do that to his hair?”

As soon as the episode ended, you sat still with your brow furrowed. You went through all the conversations you had and didn’t remember him saying he was an actor nor that he starred in this “pretty good” show.

You grabbed your phone to do a quick google search of who played Ivar. Alex Høgh Andersen. This entire time you had access to his name. If only you had given in to your urge to binge watch the show in one sitting you would have had it sooner.

You pulled up your Instagram and typed in his name. As you were about to click on his account, you quickly changed your mind and threw your phone next to you on the couch as if it scorched you. You weren’t seriously going to stalk this man on the internet, you were a whole grown woman who was definitely too mature to be drooling over some pictures.

Getting up to get ready for bed, you left your phone where it was so it would be less of a temptation. But you found that you couldn’t help but stare at it through the mirror as you aggressively brushed your teeth. Your curiosity was beginning to get the best of you.

You quickly rinsed out your mouth and walked toward your couch but then turned around, shaking your head as you headed down the hall to your bedroom. Leeloo and Dallas sat next to each other in the living room, both looking down the hall and not bothering to follow as if certain you’d be back.

“I’m just going to look at a few pictures. Just see what he’s been up to,” you explained to no one when you returned for your phone. Standing in the middle of your living room, you looked through his posts from the funny videos to his beautiful photography. You thought maybe you spent too much time scrolling through when you found yourself unable to stop staring at his well defined arm as he hovered over a mattress.

It wouldn’t be too crazy if you sent him a message to catch up and see how he was doing. Or would it? What would you even say? “Hi, remember me? The woman you ate out in Vegas. You know the one who broke down before you got a chance to get it in? Oh, and remember how I said I was married? Surprise! I’m actually a widow and lied because I got scared over you being so into me and even more scared when I realized I may have felt the same.”

You kept going back and forth over what you should really say to him, typing one thing only to immediately delete it. Seemed like anything you wrote came out sounding awkward or just dumb.

“Hi, I’m not sure if you remember me? It’s Y/N. The baker you met in Vegas.” It was enough to start a conversation but would he think you’re only contacting him because you now knew he was an actor. Your thumb hovered over send as you contemplated your choice.

You looked up at the clock and sighed out loud. You couldn’t afford to waste anymore time on this unless you wanted to be a zombie when you went into work in the morning.

You brought your thumb down and hit send. Fuck it.

----

End Notes: This is the last chapter of this part but not the end of their story. So don’t be too mad at me. Will Alex read her message? Will they ever meet again? Does Reader need to tell Bianca that she was right?

Tags: @castielsangelsx @xbellaxcarolinax @didiintheblog @jzr201 @kaitieskidmore1 @eroguroshoujo

#alex høgh andersen #alex høgh andersen x reader #alex høgh andersen imagine #alex høgh x reader #ivar the boneless #ivar x reader

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Vikings Season 6 Part Two Review (Spoiler-Free)

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This Vikings season 6 part two review is based on all 10 episodes and contains no spoilers.

Vikings has always been Ragnar Lothbrok’s (Travis Fimmel) story. First, we witnessed the rise of the man himself from farmer to visionary to earl to king to legend. Post-Ragnar, the show became an exploration of how Ragnar’s legend suffused and inhabited his sons, and the consequences of its interpretation upon enemies, frenemies, kith, kin and Kings the world over. And, now, the saga comes to an end with the second half of Vikings swansong sixth season, ten episodes that drip with all the blood, battles, tears, seers, fears, and philosophy you’ve come to expect from the History Channel’s flagship show (though this season will premiere on Amazon).

It’s tough to write a spoiler-free review of a show like Vikings, especially here at the show’s conclusion where it won’t be surprising to learn that the blood flows like wine. Who lives, who dies? Who returns, who stays away? Even acknowledging the presence or absence of a surprise within a certain context could constitute a massive spoiler. As a consequence, much of this review will read like the ravings of the show’s very own seer, a web of insinuations and mystical mumbo jumbo designed only to make sense once the prophecy has been made flesh.

Early in the season, Gunnhild (Ragga Ragnars) remarks: “Perhaps the Golden Age of the Vikings is gone.” This is a perfect distillation of the thematic ground covered by this half season. Here we have the fall of an empire, the erosion and sometimes amputation of the old ways, and the savage geo-surgery of a flailing world in flux. Absolute power corrupts absolutely; only the truly mad would seek to be king. The battle between paganism and Christianity, always at the forefront of the series, reaches its culmination here, and the episodes are awash with rich religious imagery and symbolism. There is also an answer, of sorts, to the question of which of Ragnar’s sons best embodies and encapsulates his legacy. Each of them carries a chunk of their father distilled within them: Ivar (Alex Høgh Andersen), his wrath, his thirst to conquer; Bjorn (Alexander Ludwig), his galvanizing spirit, his authority, his legend; Hvitserk (Marco Ilsø) , his pain, confusion and predilection for self-destruction; and Ubbe (Jordan Patrick Smith), his sense of adventure, his vision. Series creator and showrunner Michael Hirst knows that you come to these final episodes laden with ideas and expectations surrounding this philosophical set-to, and does a sterling job subverting or confirming them. His skill is in making the surprising seem inevitable, and the inevitable seem surprising.

Most of the Vikings’ world is bathed in blue and grey, an endless twilight of death and despair. Within these grim parameters the direction and cinematography never fails to evoke the beautiful, misty emptiness of the world: the howling of the wind on desolate hills; silence, smooth and dark, stretching towards the pale horizon. There are lots of sweeping aerial shots, which cast you, the audience, as Gods looking down on the action from above. The emotional distance this creates, especially above battlefields, reinforces the absurdity and futility of the bloodshed, something we’ve been encouraged to feel in every season, but never moreso than now.

The season is front-loaded with some thrilling sequences (including a suitably chilling use of CGI), and at least one moment that will make the hairs stand up on your neck, and hot tears fall from your eyes. The mechanisms of plot necessarily predominate in the early episodes, as machination piles upon machination, twist upon turn, and the pieces of the tragedies and double-dealings to come are moved into place upon fate’s great chess-board: a broken Bjorn has tough choices to consider following his people’s defeat at the hands of the Rus; Ubbe embarks on a westward quest in search of the promised land; Ivar and Hvitserk continue their uneasy alliance with each other within the fraught principality of the maladjusted, half-mad Oleg (Danila Koslovsky).

An accusation often leveled at Vikings is that it became a lesser show once divorced from Ragnar’s immediate orbit; that when he died, so too did the interest of many of the audience, who never quite took to his sons with the same level of enthusiasm. I can understand the hole that Ragnar’s exit left in the hearts of fans. He was a compelling, larger-than-life character, channeled with great charisma and presence by Travis Fimmel. But although this series is ostensibly about Ragnar, the story is also far, far bigger than him, a point this final season doesn’t fail to ram home. In fact, it’s the whole point. Besides, the performances of Alexander Ludwig, Jordan Patrick Smith, Marco Ilsø, and Alex Høgh Andersen have always been uniformly excellent, generating more than enough presence, individually and collectively, to carry the show in Ragnar’s name.

If there is a mote of truth in the accusation it’s probably attributable, in part at least, to the challenges of satisfying such a sprawling ensemble. One of the beneficial things about the show having shed so many characters over the past few seasons is that the sons now have proper time to grow, develop and, ultimately, crystallize. In particular Hvitserk, who was always the sketchiest and most ill-defined of the brothers, finally coalesces into something greater than the sum of his parts. Even his unhealthy attachment to Ivar begins to make sense, and comes to play an instrumental part in much of what makes the final stretch work so well.

Ivar himself has always been a joy to watch – surely one of the greatest small-screen monsters – but occasionally he could be one-note, albeit largely thanks to his predilection for painting himself into a corner and then having to fight his way out again. Ivar’s relationship with, and to, the young Rus heir Igor (Oran Glynn O’Donovan) helps to humanize him, allowing him to recreate the better aspects of his own relationship with Ragnar, this time sans grand, King-busting plan. Ivar even demonstrates, from time to time, something approaching humility, which can’t be easy for a self-proclaimed God. Plus there’s a moment between Ivar and Katia (Alicia Agneson) that’ll have you punching the air in triumph, and then thinking strangely of yourself for having fist pumped such a thing.

Why Vikings Is Ending

By Michael Ahr

Once the heavy gears of plot have cranked into place, the season dips into ennui, as characters drift, break down and take stock. This can make the season a slog to get through, especially if you’re binge-watching; like mainlining misery directly into your blood-stream. Even knowing that this was undoubtedly a deliberate structural choice – to make you feel the characters’ helplessness, heartache, angst and boredom; to understand what drives them to do what they do when Gods and men fall silent – you’re unlikely to emerge from the middle-to-end section brimming with vim and good cheer. Here, another central question is tackled: is there any escape from the seemingly endless cycle of death, destruction and revenge in which Viking society finds itself mired? What hope have Ragnar’s sons of escape when Ragnar himself, the most vocal advocate for a new way of doing things, ultimately perpetuated the cycle by posthumously siccing his sons on his enemies?

The final act makes everything worthwhile. Think of the middle act like purgatory before Heaven (or should that be Valhalla)? While not every storyline feels like it has an equal place and weight in the pay-off – the latter sections in Kattegat, especially, feel perfunctory and will probably struggle to elicit much interest – most of the series’ overarching narrative and thematic threads come together perfectly in the end, giving a deeply satisfying sense of simultaneous closure and open-endedness.

There are many surface similarities between Vikings and Game of Thrones, in terms of their stock-in-trade themes, settings, cast-counts, body-counts and bundles of R-rated violence. Where they differ significantly is in Vikings sticking the landing, and not just with the final episode – which is beautiful, elegiac and haunting – but over and throughout the whole final half of the season (give or take a few minor missteps).

Game of Thrones’ once stellar reputation will perhaps forever be sullied by an ending, and a final season that many felt was flat, rushed and cack-handed. This is not the fate that will befall Vikings, which, although it never attained critical, commercial or pop-culture success on anything like the same scale as Game of Thrones, now joins the pantheon of shows whose exemplary endings have cemented their legacies. Vikings can hold its head high among such luminaries as Rectify, The Affair, The Deuce, The Wire, The Sopranos (divisive as its ending proved), The Shield and Breaking Bad (pre El Camino, at least), having offered up a finale that is so resonant, dream-like, and profound that it serves retroactively to render all of the good things about the series better, and wash away any and all misgivings and doubts. It’s a gorgeous ending that will stick in your soul for a long time.

Bon voyage, Vikings. It’s been emotional.

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