#and the italian wind is never wrong

[disasterofastory]

What about Legolas x F!reader? Maybe she is a friend of Eomer and Legolas gets jealous about all the time they stay together? And some hot moment? I don't know, this is just an Idea. So, I'm sorry for my bad english but I'm Italian. Have a good day❤️

Just a reminder Legolas x Reader Warnings: jealousy, smut

Summary: Legolas reminds you of the reasons you are with him.

A/N: Please don't be sorry for your English. I know the struggle. :)

The grassland is covered in a bright golden hue as the sun reaches the top of the clear blue sky. The lush, green grass waves like the ocean as a breeze runs through the peaceful scenery. Everything is so quiet and calm. It is almost impossible to believe the dark power that works and marches forward underneath it all. The warm rays of the sun caress your bare arms and your cheeks. The tree you lean against is tall and strong, bending its branches to the will of the slight wind. The rustle of the leaves is a sweet whisper in your ear as you focus on the story in front of you. The book is a pleasant weight on your lap. The pages are old and thin between your fingers.

"What are you reading?" Legolas's voice breaks your concentration, but you feel nothing but happiness as you turn your eyes from the long row of words to the tall elf standing a few meters away from you. "Just a book," you shrug. "Tales for children." "Are they good?" He asks, sitting down next to you with a few elegant movements. "You know how it is," you hum, closing the book and putting it on the ground. "The good always wins, and the bad guys pay for their misdeeds as they should." "It was easier to believe in it when we were kids, no?" The elf asks. You can almost see his blue eyes darkening with ominous thoughts. "Sometimes it's harder when you are an adult, yes," you reply, reaching out for his hand to link your fingers together. "But there is always hope." "I heard you will go with Gandalf." "Yes," you nod. "He thinks Eomer will listen to me." A slight frown appears between his brows. His lips turn into a thin line. "Are you friends with the rider?" "Something like that, yes." "When we met them, he asked you to come with them." You barely recognized him when your way met with the riders during your search for the hobbits. You smile and nod in confirmation. "Why are these questions?" "Why didn't you? Went with them, I mean." "You are my home, Legolas," you reply, squeezing his hand in yours. "I won't leave you." "But you will go with Gandalf." "He asked me," you reason, getting a little bit confused. Something is off with Legolas, but you can't find out what. "And it's just for a few days. We need every help we can get." "Are you sure?" He asks. He feels selfish, and guilt eats him up inside because of it, but he can't help himself. He knows orcs and death will wait for you in Helm's Deep, but he can't bear the thought of you staying with the riders. With Eomer. "Legolas," you say his name softly, cupping his cheek with your free hand. Your thumb caresses the soft skin under his eye. "Of course, I will come back to you. There is nothing that can keep me away from you." He smiles at your words. The slight curve of his lips gives him something angelic and ethereal that you can never get used to. You still don't understand how the elven prince can love you, a simple mortal, but he does, and you stopped questioning it years ago.

Soon, his lips find yours, and the kiss that always starts so gently is impatient and rushing now. His hand lands on the back of your head to keep you close, while his tongue slips into your mouth with ease. He invites you to a dance that's intimate and familiar. "Don't get me wrong," you hum when he breaks away. His breath still fans over your lips. It smells like ale and fruits. "I love your kisses, but you still don't tell me something." Now, the guilt is transparent on his delicate features, and he looks down at your intertwined fingers. The small gesture makes his years younger. "I just…" he sighs. "I just don't want you to find something with the rider that will make you stay with them… with him." "Oh, my love," you laugh, pecking his lips when you notice the slight blush spreading on his cheeks. "There is nothing that makes me stay where you aren't." Your words are followed by another kiss. It's feverish and bruising and makes you lose your breath for long seconds. His hand finds the loose curls at the nape of your neck, and before you know it, you are lying on the grass with Legolas above you. When he looks into your eyes, the glint you know so well by now is back in his bright blue irises. "I love you," he says, caressing the line of your jaw. "I love you too," you hum against his lips before gasping at his sudden touch. " What are you doing?" "Just a reminder of what I can do to you." He bares your legs with a few quick pulls on your dress until his hand finds its way between your thighs. "Legolas," you gasp again, looking around your surroundings. "What if someone sees us?" "I will hear them before they can see us," he promises. "Do you trust me?" The question makes your legs spread open before his caressing touch. "Of course."

His lips wander down your neck, caressing the soft skin there with slow, lazy kisses while his long fingers find their way to your center after pushing your panties aside. His fingertips slide over your fold easily. Your wetness soaks him within a few seconds. "You are so wet already," he hums. His words flutter in your chest. Your heart thuds against your ribcage. "Legolas," you pant his name, grabbing his shoulder. Your other hand tries to find some support on the ground. The grass is soft under your touch. "I'm here, love," he replies. "And I won't go anywhere until you cum around my fingers." Your eyes fall shut as the pleasure flares through your body. It burns your veins and spins the world around you. His thumb draws small circles on your clit, helping you to chase your orgasm. His breath fans over your neck, and his voice make you tremble some more. "Who makes you feel this good?" He asks, and when you don't answer immediately, he doesn't wait to push two fingers inside your aching hole. Your head falls back, and a moan breaks up from your throat. "Say my name, Y/N," the elf demands. "Let everyone hear who you belong to." His name leaves your lover's name in breathless whines as his hand speeds up between your legs. He pushes you to the edge and doesn't give you enough time to process what's happening. "Cum, Y/N," Legolas says. "Make a mess on my hand. Give me something to remember while you are far away from my arms."

Pleasure washes over you as the burning coil snaps in your lower belly. Your muscles jerk, and your breath stops for a long second. Your orgasm comes quickly and powerfully. It feels like Legolas's arms are the only things that keep you in one piece.

When you open your eyes, you see him licking your juices off his fingers. A satisfied smile plays on his lips the whole time. "You will get more when we meet again," he promises.

#legolas imagine #legolas x reader #legolas smut #lotr smut #lotr imagine #lotr x reader #the lord of the rings x reader #the lord of the rings imagine

[zcorners120]

Hey how about road trip with charles + car sex

omg omg yes

charles leclerc x fem!reader MASTERLIST

synopsis; you and charles decide to go on a road trip around monaco and southern france, taking the usual sexual twists

warnings; S M U T 18+, p in v, public sex, sex in car, oral!m recieving, spanking, cockwarming if you squint ?

The wind blew against the two of you, hair flowing backwards. The music pounded against the French countryside, earning some questionable looks from some innocent cows.

“2 more hours!” He yelled out against the music, waving his hands about like a madman.

“Eyes on the road, playboy!” Laughing out, pouting your plump lips out.

"Amour, I'm a Formula One driver, I could drive with my eyes shut any day." He brags, gesturing his hands like an Italian, clearly getting his nationality wrong as you narrowed your eyes.

Holding your phone up you recorded the two of you singing along, looking like maniacs in a car driving on a deserted road.

"I BITE MY TONGUE IT'S A BAD HABIT. KINDA MAD THAT I DIDN'T TAKE A STAB IT!!" You both sang out, much to the protests of the cows mooing, probably wanting a French song.

The sun was starting to set, casting colourful hues of magenta, tangerine and navy painting the sky; prior traffic delaying the trip.

"God I'm getting so tired, can't these cars just move?" He complained, ruffling his hair with his hand.

"Don't think that's how it works, it may just be roadwork." You tried to justify, despite being in a standstill for 40 minutes.

"Is there not anymore energy drinks left?"

"No, I only took two for us, sorry. But I know what could wake you up." Voice dropping an octave lower by the end of your sentence, as Charles turned to you with a quirked eyebrow.

You lifted your body up, managing to get on all fours towards Charles. He started to see where this was going, getting excited. With one hand on the console, you lowered your body out of sight, rushing to pull his pants down.

"Someone's eager." He spoke cockily, watching you pull his grey joggers down.

You huff, ignoring his annoying comments. Pulling back his calvin's, you started to touch his semi-hard cock, noticing him slightly twitch as you spat on it. It didn't take long for Charles to gather your hair and guide you slightly to deepthroat him.

His small groans and mumbles of affection filled the car, the windows slowly gathering steam and blocking the graphic scene out from surrounding civilians. Gagging on the length of him, you took one hand to touch his balls, the other stroking the part of his cock that you can't take.

Charles taking his free to smack your ass, your technique making his veins more prominent.

"I'm about to fucking- cum. Jesus Y/N." He whined out in desperation, right as you pull your head up.

His loving eyes analysed your face as his precum mixed with your spit dribbled down your chin slightly; "Let me ride."

He nodded slowly, watching you pull your skirt over ass.

Sitting down on his slick cock, meeting with your heat; choked a gasp out of the both of you.

"Holy- fuck!" You moaned out, hand sliding down the window as though it was going to support you.

You started to slowly bounce up and down, clenching around his girth; feeling every inch. Just as you thought it couldn't get any better, Charles started to lift and thrust up into you. Wrapping your arms around the back of his seat for stability, he started pounding into you with such speed and force you couldn't help but moan loudly.

The car shook slightly, giving anyone from the outside an idea of what's going on. "Fuck- I'm so close Charl-"

His pace never faulting, you could feel the small knot in your stomach about to burst; the car clouding with both your moans, Charles smacks against your ass, and his balls clapping against your ass.

He all of a sudden stopped, "Why've you stopped?" You panted out, slightly annoyed as you were close.

"There's a guy coming towards saying traffic's moving, hold on." He grunted, and as you turn back, you realise he wasn't wrong.

You went to jump back into your seat, panicking, but it wasn't going to happen as Charles hand wrapped around your waist; keeping you in place on his lap.

"We're going to get caught- I need to get back into my seat" You protested, much to his fingers digging into your waist.

"Just- Stay, it feels good. They're not going to come here anyways." His French accent peaked to try and convince you, as the man slowly approach; not even noticing the two of you as he signalled Charles to drive forward.

You grinded against Charles as he drove slowly forwards, (please don't ever do irl ! ) as you both realised this new-found kink.

#charles leclerc #cl16 #formula 1 #f1 #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc fluff #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc one shot #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc smut #charles leclerc drabble #scuderia ferrari #f1 fandom #fanfic #ferrari f1 #imagines #ferrari #f1 x reader #f1 fluff #f1 fanfic

[allthefandomthings55]

Life in the Limelight

Chapter 2

“Y/N, I got something for you.” 

I look up from my computer to look at Ben. “For me? What do you have for me?”

He smiled at me, “You know that card you asked me to run from the guy you talked with at the coffee shop? Yeah well everything checks out. His name is Spencer Walter Reid. He’s from Las Vegas and graduated when he was 12 went to college and got three Ph. D.s, two B.A.s and is working on another B.A. It looks like as soon as he could he went into the FBI. His record is clean and he’s  never been arrested.”

You look at him interested, “Oh, ok thank you. Did you get a read on him at the shop?”

Ben came closer to me, “Yeah. He seems like a good guy and that he was interested in talking to you not about you. Y/N I know you’re intrigued by this guy because he doesn’t recognize you and I say start out as his friend. You don’t want to move too fast.” I nod my head deep in thought. Ben leaves and I’m alone and I decide to text Spencer. 

Me

Hi Spencer it’s Y/N. Sorry I haven’t texted, it’s been a busy couple of days.

Spencer

Hi Y/N. It’s no problem or worries. I’ve been busy at work. How are you?

Me

I’m good. I was actually wondering if you wanted to get lunch and chat some more? I have been seriously lacking in the friend department and you seem like you’ll be a good one.

Spencer

Sure! I’d love to get lunch. I think I should be around this Saturday if that works for you?

Me

Yeah that works for me. How about 12:30? Then it might not be as crazy as it usually might be?

Spencer 

Yeah sounds great. Anywhere specific you’d like to go?

Me

Yeah I have a friend that owns a restaurant and it’s really good. Decently priced too if you’re interested. 

Spencer

Sure. What is it called? 

Me

L’unico

Spencer

One of a kind in Italian? I’m interested

Me

Yeah, she’s Italian

Spencer

Perfect, do you want me to pick you up or do you want to meet there?

Me

I’ll meet you there. 

Spencer

I’ll see you then

I looked around to make sure I was alone. I then got up and did a little dance. Being famous is hard. Not financially or anything like that, but it’s hard to make friends when you’re famous. You can never tell if people want to be friends with you because you’re famous or because they’re actually a good person. I got back to writing the song I was writing before Ben came in. 

Lying, thinking last night

How to find my sould a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don’t believe I’m wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone

Aone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody 

Can make it out here alone. 

There are some millionaires

With money they can’t use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They’ve got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone. 

But nobody

No, nobody 

Can make it out here alone. 

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone. 

Now if you listen closely

I’ll tell you what I know 

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan, 

‘Cause nobody, 

But nobody

Can make it out here alone

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone

(This is a poem by Maya Angelou called Alone)

I looked up from my notebook proud of what I’ve written. It comes from deep within my heart. I don’t know what the song will be called yet but that’s the best part of writing a song. I closed my notebook for now, being done with writing for now. I decided I’m going to go to the gym I have in my basement. The one unfortunate thing about being famous is that I can’t go outside very often without being seen and surrounded. 

#aaron hotchner #david rossi #penelope garcia #derek morgan #emily prentiss #Spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #criminal minds #criminal minds x you #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fandom #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #Spencer reid fanfiction

[writingjourney]

ouch | cardinal copia x gn!reader

summary: copia tries to retrieve a valuable item, you find him in this very unfortunate situation.

content: 1.3k words, awkward copia fluff, mention of blood/minor injury

to tackle my writer's block @leezlelatch gave me a lil prompt (the indented part) because she is the best ♡

Masterlist – Ao3 link

✦ ✧ ✦ 

Cardinal Copia, on all fours, crawls further under the stone bench just off one of the corridors which frames the courtyard. A rather large bush sits behind it, roots and branches tangled and creating a barrier. He pushes and reaches, cursing to himself as his biretta scrapes against the underside of the stone. Why didn’t he take it off? His cassock covered bottom hangs out into the hallway, shimmying this way and that as he attempts to crawl deeper.

“Can I help you, Cardinal?”

Clunk. 

A loud groan followed by a string of Italian curses. His back hits the bench with the full force of his scare. If the burning pain right by his shoulder is any indication he chafed his skin on the rough stone pretty badly, most likely ruining the fabric of his cassock in the process. In an attempt to free himself, his head hits a particularly unyielding branch and a few of his hairs get stuck among the sticks. As he wriggles free, another branch snaps against his face, barely missing his eye as it bites into his cheekbone like a whip. The stinging pain makes him hiss and a spiky leaf uses the opportunity to find its way into his open mouth.

Vaguely aware that someone is still standing behind him, watching all of this unfold, Copia’s face turns the same crimson shade as his vestments. And of course he knows the voice, he’s been imagining, hoping to hear it every second of every day for the last two months. Only he prays to Satan that he is wrong. This cannot be the time his crush approaches him, not like this.

“Cardinal, are you okay?”

Undoubtedly, it is your voice.

Oh no. How long have you been standing there behind him with his butt wobbling in full view? Watching his embarrassing attempt at retrieving the little love note he was writing for you, asking you out on a date, before a gust of wind betrayed him?

Copia crawls out from underneath the stone bench, ready to face his shame with all the dignity he can muster. To his surprise, he feels a hand on his shoulder and you crouch down right beside him, gazing upon him in such genuine concern, not even the hint of a gloating smile on your worry-ridden face. Copia can’t believe you’re not rolling on the floor in laughter at his skit-worthy performance. What a fool he must make! But you only help him up, grasping his elbow as his knees start shaking dangerously and sitting down beside him on the bench. Your hand never leaves his arm, a gentle sort of grip that lets him know you’re not ready to let go until you know he’s well. The pressure is comforting, your fingertips dig into the tense muscles of his forearm.

Impossibly close to you, Copia’s heart now hammers in his chest, his face still hot and burning, but he cannot bring himself to meet your eyes again. Another light breeze carries your perfume to his nose and his stomach does a summersault.

“Cardinal?” Your voice is laced with anxiety. “Cardinal, you’re bleeding.”

That captures his attention and when he finally looks at you again, you’re already fiddling for a tissue.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” 

It’s his own voice speaking, undoubtedly, only he doesn’t recognise it. His words are a lie, his back hurts like hell and the burning pain in his cheek isn’t pleasant either. Lucky for him, you’re having none of his feeble attempt at appeasement.

“We need to go and clean your scrape,” you state in full-nurse mode, wiping his cheek so softly he’s barely even feeling it. You’re so close to him he’s sure he can feel your breath tickling his nose. “Cardinal, are you in shock?”

“Hm?”

Copia simply cannot take his eyes off of you and his brain has long since said goodbye to any sort of rational thinking. Oh, how often has he thought of this beautiful face, dreamed about having it within such a comfortable kissing distance.

Then, your voice again. “Cardinal, what did you lose?”

What…

He remembers. Oh, he remembers and the sudden influx of panic ends his reverie.

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” he replies. “It doesn’t matter, sibling, really.”

“I’ll see if I can get it.”

And before he can stop you, you’re crawling under the small bench, right between his slightly parted legs, pushing them apart further. Oh Satan, he’s sure he’s going to have a heart attack any moment now. Your attempt is much more graceful than his, though, and a terrifying minute later (that he does not spend staring at your backside at all) you come back to the surface.

“I got it!” You sound triumphant and the smile on your face makes him forget about the contents on the now crumpled piece of paper until your eyes dart down, undoubtedly catching your own name written in his best cursive. “Oh.”

He wants to rip the scrap from your hands but his muscles make no attempt at moving, no matter how often his panic-struck mind tells them to. Instead he stares at you in horror as you read the words.

Dearest Sibling ______,

Your eyes sparkle like the stars in the depths of the night sky and your smile shines brighter than the full moon. I wish to see it for longer than just a few seconds every day. Please, will you go on a date with me?

☐ Yes ☐ No ☐ Maybe

Yours in hopeful expectation Cardinal Copia

Your eyes finally glance up, then dart back to the page, then back to him. Your lips are so tightly pressed together that Copia simply knows you’re struggling to find the right words to reject him. Even in refusal your kindness is beyond measure, and his heart aches in the most bittersweet way.

“Where’s your pen?” you ask.

For a second, Copia struggles to comprehend. Pen. Right. He reaches into his pocket and retrieves the black-inked fountain pen, handing it to you with shaky fingers. Before he can drop it, your hand closes around the metal, your bare thumb brushing his gloved one. And then it’s gone again.

The cross is done in two swift strokes, though Copia cannot see where you placed it from his angle on the bench, and then you fold the paper neatly in the middle. Even now you look so tense and focused, and when you hand him back the note his anxiety is through the roof. He briefly considers not looking at your answer, half expects you to leave him sitting here anyway and let him die of a broken heart… or the infection he’ll possibly get from his cut.

“Cardinal, won’t you read my reply?” you ask, voice soft, the most subtle hint of a smile on your face.

Copia sighs deeply and unfolds the paper.

☒ Yes

His breath catches, the relief so overwhelming he lets out a shaky sob, running his finger over the cross that you so deliberately, so easily placed there. He swallows the tears, unsure where they even come from. When he finally looks back to you, your face has lit up and you seem to be just as ecstatic as he feels.

Copia jumps up to hug you, but a sudden pain shoots into his back and instead of a happy laugh he lets out a pained groan.

You’re by his side in an instant, wrapping a protective arm around his waist as you tenderly cradle his face with your other hand, careful not to graze his cut cheek.

“Looks like our first date will take place in the infirmary,” you say, smiling in sympathy as you run your thumb over his jaw.

Copia shakes his head. “It may start there, but I have very different plans for how it will end.”

His words earn him a bright smile. When you lean in to kiss his unharmed cheek, he can feel his heart bursting in his chest. He already knows that this day will be worth all the cuts and bruises.

thank you for reading ♡

Masterlist – my Ao3

#cardinal copia #cardinal copia fanfiction #cardinal copia fluff #cardinal copia x reader #copia #copia x reader #the band ghost fanfiction

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Made for Him II

Warnings: this fic includes dark content including rape/noncon, blood and gore, violence, death, grief, and other potential triggering elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Peter finds himself alone after the loss of those around him, so he decides to find a cure to his grief.

Characters: Peter Parker

Note: I hope you enjoy the second part...

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. Thanks to everyone who reads this one and thank you for all your energy.

Love you all like Garfield loves lasagna. Take care. 💖

The Creator

Peter was bad at giving up. His persistence was both an asset and a flaw, praised by some and bemoaned by others. After hours watching the body, watching another loss, he shut down the machines and left her. He was too disheartened to clean up. The thought of disposing of her made him sick. 

It should have worked. Why didn't it work? 

He chewed his lip as he climbed up the stairs and closed the hatch, the heavy bang barely registered in his ears. He just couldn't figure out where he'd went wrong. Her neural receptors were alight with activity and the synapses were sparking wildly, her heart kept a steady beat and her breath rose and misted in the cold air. But she just wouldn't wake up.

She was a shell. Just like Tony's stupid suits. There was no life there, only spent energy and wasted time.

Peter took off his helmet and plunked it on the counter. The Italian humidity was not so bad as before but his hair curled damply around his face from so long in his suit. He glanced out the arched window and stared at the sky, a dimming greyish violet. A storm was brewing and would help ease the thickness that lingered.

He finished stripping away the heavy equipment, the gloves were tinted from her blood and the interior smelled of his sweat. He kicked it into the corner and swore. He would have to try again but he didn't know if he had the heart for it. He was so very tired and so very lonely.

He opened the fridge out of habit but had no appetite. He let it close and turned with a snarl and threw his fist into the stone wall of the villa. It cracked and a large chunk shattered onto the floor. He didn't feel the pain, he never felt the physical damage but he felt everything in his soul.

That was something he could not manufacture. Likely, what he was missing, but how could he infuse a living form with that mystic enigma. He laughed at himself sourly. He was deluded into thinking science fiction could ever be reality. Maybe he was mad, maybe he'd finally gone over the edge. It was a startling moment of self-reflection fractured by the sudden sharp crackle of lightning. 

He went down the hall and looked down the coast at the dark waters. The sky had quickly turned black as the storm moved in. Suddenly his vision lit up as lightning roared down and fizzled across the waves. The ebb and flow crashed loudly as the winds began to burgeon and bellow. 

Peter watched, transfixed by the violence, as thunder rumbled through the clouds as the air broke and he felt a rare coolness crawl over his skin, the hair standing on his arms and neck. Boom, boom, crack! The tempo beat wildly as he was swept up in the terror.

Thump, thump, thump… At first, he thought it was the thunder but it was hollow and much closer. The sudden muffled crash of metal made his heart skip. His feet moved on their own as he raced back to the kitchen and flung open the hatch.

There was movement from below, clattering, clinking, an odd groan. His steps hammered down and he hopped over the last few stairs.

The tray of instruments was overturned, the air still frigid and still. The metal table was bare but for the crisscrossed tubes that led to the other side. He rounded it as his ears itched and his throat lumped.

She was there, shivering and yanking on the wires hooked to her. Her face was contorted with confusion and fear, but most significantly, she was awake. She was alive!

Her eyes flicked up from her struggle and rounded as she saw him. She gave a strangled groan and clumsily wriggled away from him but not far as she was caught up in the tubes. He raised his hands as he neared, plaintively as if coaxing an animal.

"Hey, I'm not going to hurt you?" He cooed.

She thrashed out as he got close and he caught her arms. They were warm and strong as she wrestled with him. He squeezed her wrists until she stilled and he cautiously let go of one. He felt along her hand and took out the IV. She didn't resist as she was awestruck at his actions.

He glanced up and found her watching his hands. He continued to detach her and took the sensor from her chest. She was naked still but unaffected by it. He removed the ring from her head and she grabbed him suddenly.

She raised his arm beside hers and looked between them. He watched the horror swell behind her eyes and she shrieked as she let him go. She searched her body and her wails got louder as she felt the stitches he placed on her, like spiderwebs holding her together.

"It's okay," he said, "please--"

He reached out and she swatted him away. She pinched a stitch and tugged, whining as blood began to bead from the incision. He tore her hand away and grabbed the other.

"No! No!" He hissed, "don't do that."

She stared at him and her forehead wrinkled. The air rushed from his lungs as he realised she couldn't understand him. He had little hope of her retaining memories of her former life, he'd counted on it, but she didn't seem to understand anything at all.

"Come on," he stood and pulled on her until she did the same. She was unsteady and stumbled against him. She clung to him and he basked in the feel of it. "Here."

He picked her up and she cried out in surprise. He cradled her against him and headed for the steep stairs. He climbed treacherously and when he got to top, she babbled at her new surroundings. 

He took her through the kitchen and into the front room. He placed her down on the sofa and watched how she felt the cushions and pressed them with her fingers.

"Please, stay," he said as he backed away and showed her his palms, "stay."

He pointed to the couch as she batted her lashes dumbly. He slowly inched to the door and watched her as she craned to see him. He repeated his order and gesture and quickly flitted away.

He raced upstairs to the closet he filled in expectation. He took out a dress without looking and came back down. He heard whining as thunder hammered down and shook the villa. He found her under the table, hiding from the cacophony. 

He set the dress over the arm of the couch and went to her. He drew her out from beneath the table and guided her back to the couch, she flinched and exclaimed every time the windows flashed or the sky boomed. He calmed her by rubbing her arms and she looked at him curiously. 

He was frozen by her gaze. Slowly she lifted her hand and touched his cheek. Her gangly fingertips dragged along his jaw then she spread her hand over his face entirely. She pulled back and felt her own face and sobbed. He caught her hands and hushed her. He put them in her lap and reached for the dress.

He helped her poke her arms through the cap sleeves and got her head through the top. He pushed the fabric down and stood to help her up so the skirt hung down to just above her knees. He smiled. She looked wonderful.

The thunder quaked around them and she whimpered and fell against him. She latched onto him as she trembled and he brought his arms around her. He rocked her until she calmed, though she still winced at every noise.

He sat her down again and held her. She fidgeted restlessly as the storm lulled and only the patter of rain remained. He dared to let her go and took the thin woven blanket from over the back of the couch. He swathed it around her shoulders and she clutched the edges thankfully and played with the fringe like a child.

He stood and she let out a sharp breath. He paused and caressed her bare head. She watched him as he slowly pulled away, keeping his eyes on her as he went to grab his tablet from the shelf. He went back to her and sat as he unfolded the case and propped it up.

He scrolled through his files and selected a video. His collection was not vast but carefully curated. He wanted her to be happy so he kept to a particular genre.

She leaned forward and gaped at the tablet, her nose almost touching his hand. He chuckled softly as the credits began to roll and Audrey Hepburn's name flashed below Gregory Peck's. He sat back and drew her to him against the cushion and fixed the blanket around her. 

She slapped his arm but he realised it was unintentionally gruff. She felt his sleeve and pressed her thumb to the muscle beneath. He let her explore across his chest and she grabbed his chin, once more looking him over. He took her hand and twined his fingers through hers.

"Alright," he said and nodded to the tablet, "watch."

Her eyes flicked to the screen and she blinked at the images of other people. She squeaked and pointed at it then waved her hand in excitement. He smiled as she leaned forward again, gaze intent on the scene playing before her.

He was happy because he knew she would never leave. She couldn't. She needed him. Besides, he doubted she'd even have the thought. He was her creator, she belonged with him. Belonged to him

#peter parker #dark peter parker #dark!peter parker #peter parker x reader #frankenstein #au #mcu #marvel #spider-man #avengers #fic #dark fic #dark!fic #series #horror au

[forthegothicheroine]

One of my favorite negative reviews

I can’t find a full text of it online, so I’m going to copy out some big chunks of Stephen Hunter’s retrospective on Gone with the Wind, which apparently resulted in lots of angry letters to the editor.

Long, stupid, ugly and, alas, back for the sixth time (in theaters, innumerable television showings have preceded this rerelease), it is probably the most beloved bad movie of all time, as its adjusted box office gross of $5 billion makes clear. If you love it, that is fine; but don’t confuse its gooeyness, its spiritual ugliness, its solemn self-importance, with either art or craft, for it boasts none of the former and only a bit of the latter. It is one of the least remarkable films of that most remarkable of American movie years, 1939. In fact, far from being one of the greatest American films ever made, I make it merely the twenty-eighth best film of 1939! It may not even have been the best movie that opened on December 15, 1939! It is overrated, overlong, and overdue for oblivion.

Of the various characters and actors:

It’s profoundly misogynistic...the secret pleasure of the film is watching Scarlett O’Hara being punished for the sin of selfhood. The movie delights in her crucifixion, even to the point of conjuring the death of a child as apt punishment for her ambitions. Her sin, really, is the male sin: the pride which goeth before the fall...

Leslie Howard was a great actor and a brave man, who raced home to join his unit when World War II broke out, thereby missing the famous December Atlanta premiere. He was killed in 1943 when the Nazis shot down a plane he was in. Let us lament him as we lament all the men who gave their lives to stop that evil. That said, the truth remains that on screen, he was a feathery creature, best cast as the foil to Bogart’s brutish Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest, where his cathedral-abutment cheekbones gave him the look of an alabaster saint in the wall of an Italian church. But he was about as believable as a sexual object as he would have been as Duke Mantee...

The wondrous Olivia de Havilland was an actress of spunk and pizazz, and she gave as good as she got, even across from such hammy scene stealers as her longtime costar Flynn. But she, too, is trashed by Gone with the Wind as sugary Melanie Wilkes, a character of such selfless sweetness she could give Santa Claus a toothache.

Of the film as art:

Too much spectacle, not enough action. David O. Selznick, who produced the film and rode it to immortality, didn’t understand the difference between the two. Thus the film has a fabulous but inert look to it; the story is rarely expressed in action but only in diorama-like scenes. It is curiously flat and unexciting. Even the burning of Atlanta lacks dynamism and danger; it’s just a dapple of flickering orange filling the screen without the power and hunger of a real fire. And the movie’s most famous shot- the camera pulling back to reveal Scarlett in a rail yard of thousands of bleeding, tattered Confederate soldiers- makes exactly the wrong point. It seems to be suggesting that Scarlett has begun to understand that the war is much bigger than she is. And yet she never changes. The shot means nothing in terms of character; it’s an editorial aside that really misleads us.

Of the film’s message:

From its opening credits, which characterize the South as a lost land of lords and ladies, to its final images of Tara nestling among the Georgia dogwood, the movie buys into a myth that completely robs the region of its truth. Love it or hate it, it’s a land (as Faulkner knew) in which the nobility of its heroism lived side by side with the ugliness of its Original Sin: slavery. I’m not attacking the South here, just Margaret Michell and Selznick’s version of it. Other movies or 1939 were beginning to find the courage to express some subtle ideas. One of them was John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln.

Of its comparison to other 1939 movies:

I found 797 titles from the year 1939, had seen fewer than a tenth of them, and even on that small list there were 27 that struck me as fundamentally better than Gone with the Wind, movies that I would watch again with utter delight. They are: Allegheny Uprising, Another Thin Man, Babes in Arms, Beau Geste, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Dark Victory, Dodge City, Drums Along the Mohawk, Golden Boy, Gunga Din, Juarez, The Light that Failed, Made for Each Other, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Real Glory, The Roaring Twenties, Stagecoach, The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, The Three Musketeers, Union Pacific, The Wizard of Oz, The Women, Wuthering Heights, and Young Mr. Lincoln.

Dammit, my dear, I’m just being frank.

#old hollywood #racism cw #gone with the wind

[itslottiehere]

se telefonando (h.s) — one shot

hello beautiful people 🤍 welcome back! it’s been a while, but life’s been crazy so i couldn’t post anything for a while. but I'm back with this little blurb inspired by my vacation in tuscany <3 it’s not my favorite piece but I hope you’ll enjoy! please, let me know what you think, in your tags or in my asks! without further ado, happy reading!! <3

masterlist | leave your feedback or requests here

tw: none, just fluff with no plot, a bit of pining ??

word count: 3.2k

–

the tuscan countryside was speeding outside their car’s windows, a scenery of vineyards kissed by the august sun looking back at them. she insisted on driving this time and let him enjoy the ride: the wind blowing through his hair, and also the breathtaking view tuscany gifted to all of its visitors.

he didn’t argue, both because of the reasons just listed and the fact that she turned into a middle aged angry italian man whenever they were driving. to hear her usually soft voice cursing out in italian a driver who suddenly stopped and turned without putting on the blinker, never failed to make him laugh.

ever since he’s met her, he’s been learning italian: he learned the curse words first — which, he had to be honest, held a certain power — and bit by bit, he began understanding longer phrases and even managed to say some in almost perfect italian. almost.

“you have to roll the ‘r’, it’s a distinct sound, roll it!”

“we don’t have that! i don’t even know where to begin with!”

after a while he got the hang of it, still not perfectly, but way better than when he first started.

ever since the beginning, she told him that she didn’t really like when people mispronounced stuff.

“i know it’s a hard language, and i’m not asking people to learn it perfectly! just please, for the love of god, stop pronouncing ‘bruschetta’ with that “sh” sound! it’s pronounced with a hard sound, like an “sk” sound. it’s easy, i promise!”

and of course, he loved pronouncing it wrong to rile her up. that menace.

they were driving down the country road to where she planned they had dinner, a little music was playing on the radio. failing to find something she actually liked, she turned to him.

“H, would you mind putting something on from my spotify? there’s a playlist i think it’s perfect for this.”

her and her playlists. she swore she could master a playlist for every occasion; and she wasn’t half wrong.

the playlist was titled “20 going on 80”, which made him chuckle, and when he scrolled through it he understood why: it was filled with old italian songs, some he recognized, some he never heard before and some with a title a little too difficult for him to understand.

she spoke up again.

“can you please play ‘se telefonando’? it should be the first.”

he kind of knew this one, even if it was only the “se telefonando” part of it, but hey, that was still something.

mina’s voice filled the car, the windows rolled down and she placed her left arm outside the one on her side, her hand cutting through the wind while she sang at the top of her lungs the heart wrenching lyrics.

.

“se telefonando io potessi dirti addio, ti chiamerei.”

(if by calling you i could tell you goodbye, i’d call you.)

“se io rivedendoti fossi certa che non soffri, ti rivedrei.”

(if by seeing you again i could be sure that you aren’t suffering, i’d see you again.)

“se guardandoti negli occhi sapessi dirti basta, ti guarderei.”

(if by looking into your eyes i could tell you ‘enough’, i’d look at you.)

“ma non so spiegarti che il nostro amore appena nato... è già finito.”

(but i can’t explain to you that our love, just born... is already over.)

.

when the chorus repeated once more, harry looked at her and how she was singing that song with her whole chest, her whole body, almost lifting her hands from the steering wheel, as if she couldn’t stop herself from doing those movements.

once the song was over, she quickly looked at him.

“what are you looking at?” she asked him smiling.

“nothing.” he smiled back. “is she your favourite?”

“oh tesoro, you can’t ask me that! i can’t choose a favourite, it’s like asking a child to choose a favourite stuffie.”

“i think she is mine.”

“really? you like mina?” she inquired, quickly glancing at him.

“yeah.” he nodded, and then concentrated to get his next words out. 

“mina è la mia preferita!” (mina is my favourite).

he beamed when he saw her smiling at his phrase in — what he considered — perfect italian.

“that’s amazing! you even rolled the r’s!”

.

they kept driving around the italian countryside, the music still playing from the speakers and getting interrupted from time to time by the robotic google maps voice, telling her where to go.

“so now we’re heading towards Bolgheri, a famous village where a famous italian poet used to live during his childhood. he was actually the first italian poet to win a nobel prize, back in 1906.”

“ah look at you, giving me all sorts of trivia, my very own tour guide.” he smirked.

“oh shut up, they make us study this stuff since elementary school.” she rolled her eyes, but a little smile tugged on her lips.

they kept driving until they reached this beautiful road that lead right to the entrance of the village, both sides of the road filled with a straight line of cypresses.

“these trees are the subject of one of his most famous poems.” she gave him a side glance. “now, i wouldn’t want to put you in danger, but i know for a fact that if you get yourself out of the window you can get an amazing picture of the road. just saying.”

“and how would you know that?” he cocked his head to the side, the sarcasm clear in his voice.

“i may have or may have not done it once...” she paused, and he looked away. “or every single time i come here.” he snapped his head back towards her when he heard her continue, and chuckled.

“so, how am i supposed to do this without dropping out of the car?” he questioned.

“unbuckle your seatbelt, i’ll slow down and keep a grasp on your shirt. at least, that’s what my mum always did whenever i wanted to do that and i’ve never fallen out the car. it should work.” she said, shrugging at the last part.

“oh well, that sounds safe.” he answered ironically. “alright, let’s do this.”

she wasn’t half wrong, the view displayed in front of him was something out of an old movie. the warm august sun brought out the bright green of the cypresses, the little breeze caused from the car motion ran through his hair. he snapped a few pictures, but spent most of the time drinking the landscape in, relishing on the feeling of the sun on his skin and, also, of the hand death gripping his shirt.

he could understand why someone wanted to write poems about something so beautiful.

after a little while, he felt a little tug on his shirt, followed by her voice calling out loudly enough for him to hear. “it’s time to come in, we’re almost there.”

.

they strolled around the tiny village, with her stopping to every tiny shop to look at every trinket she could lay her eyes on. harry just looked at her fondly, not knowing how he got so lucky to be in one of the most beautiful places in the world, with one of its most amazing people.

“what are you looking at? see something you like?” she asked him, truth in her voice. she was really asking him if he wanted something from the stand, as if he wasn’t looking at it, standing right in front of him. he just shook his head no, so they bid their goodbyes to the vendor, and went back to the car.

“wait, weren’t we supposed to have dinner here?” harry turned to ask her.

“not in the village, some place very near though. i promise it won’t be long and that i’m sure you’ll love it.” she answered with a bright smile. harry quickly mirrored it.

.

the drive was shorter, but there was still time to listen to a little music. harry kept looking at her with heart eyes, not understanding how anyone who looked at her didn’t fall in love with her instantly, seeing her like this: the wind blowing through her hair, eyes covered by her old sunglasses – but he knew they were sparkling –, a smile gracing her lips while she sang at the top of her lungs “maledetta primavera” by loretta goggi. 

.

“why is she cursing out a season?”

“what the hell are you talking about?”

“doesn’t “maledetta primavera” mean ‘damned spring’?”

.

he kept thinking about it, how could anyone not be enchanted by her, but then he remembered that this, this version of her, was for his eyes only. she always told him how safe she felt with him, free to be herself at all times and just do whatever she felt like. it was always quite a good stroke to his ego.

once a new song started, he was surprised to see her smile fade from her face.

“what’s wrong?” he asked immediately, kind of afraid of the answer.

“nothing’s wrong, i promise! just can you skip this?”

“yeah, sure... can i ask you why?” it was the song of her and her ex partner, wasn’t it? of course it was, how could he have been so stupid, she was still-

“it’s stupid” she chuckled “it’s just that this is one of my favourite songs and i can’t be driving when i sing it. we are going to drive into a ditch if we do, and i would like to have dinner first.” she smiled.

“who knew that-” he checked her phone to see who was singing “- massimo ranieri turned you into a crazed fan girl.”

“tesoro, massimo ranieri is a poet. and “perdere l’amore” is the love song.”

“well, if you can’t sing it, can you at least tell me what is it about?”

“uhm, sure. it’s a bit sad, though.” she cleared her throat. “so basically it’s about a love story that ended — of course — and the consequences of it. how much you want to curse out the world, put your head through a wall because you’ve realised how much stuff you’ve done wrong and realised it too late.”

harry waited for a bit, then spoke. “ouch.”

“yep.” she nodded. “but cheer up now, we’re almost there.” she said while taking a turn into the parking area.

.

the place was absolutely beautiful: it was a sort of garden, with wooden tables under vine branches; the rest of the garden was filled with ground level tables where people sat on some kind of little carpets, so they wouldn’t get dirty. trees hugged the scene and the sun was setting, painting the sky a peachy pink colour. the whole image was straight out of a painting.

“H?”

harry shook his head at the call of his name, too lost in the scenery displayed in front of him.

“sorry, love. yes?”

she smiled. “i was asking you if you don’t mind choosing a place for us to sit and i’ll go in to order something for us? would you prefer red or white?”

“whatever you want, i’m sure i’ll like it.” he smiled back, watching her walk away. after choosing a table on the ground, he waited for her to come back.

he couldn’t ignore the pull of his heart anytime he saw her walking towards him. not when he’s picking her up after work, a bit disheveled but still beautiful; not when he walks into her home and sees her down the hall in her sweats; and especially not when she’s walking towards him, two glasses of wine in her hands, a white sundress hugging her form and making her look like a celestial being.

the sun behind her showered her in a warm, golden glow, painting her as if she were an angel. he was so lucky to just be able to look at her, he thought.

“there you go.” she smiled, giving him his glass. “you chose the best table, tesoro.”

his heart grew three sizes at the pet name: no matter how much she called him that, he would always feel giddy.

.

“what does that mean?” he asked.

“literally, it means “treasure”, but we use it like you could use “darling”, i guess.” she paused for a second. “it’s just so sweet, i think. telling people that you think they are a treasure, something you consider yourself lucky to have found, you know?” she looked at him, a small smile on her lips. harry thanked the gods above that the room was dark, or else she would’ve seen how his cheek turned a bright strawberry colour.

“and you’re mine. i’m very lucky to have found you.” she continued, not letting much time before adding. “alright, ready for harry potter and the order of the phoenix?”

.

“thank you. for this and for bringing me here, it’s lovely.” he said, grabbing her glass as well so that she could sit down. “i should’ve chosen a normal table, right? you and the dress on the ground doesn’t seem-“

“hey, hey. it’s perfectly fine, i wanted this table as soon as i saw it. don’t worry.” she smiled. “and you’re welcome, tesoro; i love this place so much. i’ve come here once before, but it’s even better now.” she said, fixing her dress.

“oh really? what changed? did they renovate or something?” he inquired, putting his chin in his hand.

“mmh, no. i just have the best company a person could wish for.” she smiled sweetly, and harry’s heart was doing somersaults in his chest. he was thinking about what to do or say to avoid any attention to his — now — crimson cheeks, when she saved the day.

“cin cin!” she raised her glass, inviting harry to do the same with a nod of her head. “that’s our ‘cheers’! and when you make the glasses clink, you have to look in the other person’s eyes or else it doesn’t count.”

he chuckled, shaking his head. “you guys have the weirdest little habits, i swear.” and man if he didn’t love all of them.

“hey! i don’t know why it is like that, but you need to! so look at me and clink your glass.”

she bore her eyes into his, looking deep into his soul. he’d spend his days looking into hers, those pools of warmth that always held a special softness whenever they gazed at him.

“alla nostra salute, a noi e alla nostra amicizia.”

(to our health, to us and to our friendship),

she said, raising her glass towards his.

harry repeated the words at his best, and clinked his glass with hers, looking deep into her eyes. afterwards, they both took a sip of their wine and of course, it tasted heavenly: she always had the best taste, even if he was the one supposed to know about this stuff.

after they placed their glasses back on the table, harry spoke up.

“it’s just so beautiful here, isn’t it?”

she nodded. “it absolutely is.”

“have you ever thought about moving back here?” he asked her, surprised he never did before.

“i mean, i left for all the good reasons, but yeah, i think we’ll move here once we’re old, right? once we don’t have to work anymore.”

harry felt his heart skip a beat. did he hear that right? “we?”

she took another sip, “yeah, we, of course. don’t you think we’ll live together when we’re old?” she looked at him, as if she was waiting for an answer. “we’ll move in a nice place here in the countryside, you can play music all day and i’ll finally have my garden to attend to and we will just live a nice, slow life, enjoying each other’s company. wouldn’t that be lovely?”

wouldn’t it? this is what his dreams were made of, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to have this.

was harbouring an all consuming crush for your best friend not the best idea? perhaps.

could he stop himself? absolutely not. especially not when she threw stuff like this around. she thought not only about their future, but their future together. and not in a “we’ll be old and maybe learn to play chess” kind of way, but in a “we’ll live together and get old together” kind of way.

how couldn’t he feel his heart sink in his chest when she said that she planned to have him in her life for that long?

the dinner was lovely, she ordered for the both of them and she nailed it, everything was absolutely delicious. they ate and chatted the whole evening, but when he saw her shiver a bit, he decided to speak up.

“are you cold? do you want to leave?”

at that, she shook her head. “no, i don’t want to go.”

“but you’re shivering, you’re gonna get sick-“

“but i don’t want to-“

“here, at least take my jacket, alright?” he stood up and went over to her spot, put his jacket on her shoulders, smoothing it over her arms with his hands (a poor excuse to touch her in some way).

when he sat back in his seat, he looked at her and decided that he wanted her in his clothes till the end of time. she snuggled in the jacket some more, burying her nose in the fabric and inhaling his cologne.

they stayed there a little while longer, the stars making an appearance, so clear to spot in the clear summer sky, being so far away from the city lights.

“ready to go?” he smiled at her, putting his hand in front of her to lift her up from the ground.

“always, tesoro.” she smiled back at him, accepting gladly his hand that hoisted her up, putting her right in front of him.

the light from the stars was reflecting in his eyes, making his pools of green shine even brighter. there must’ve been something in the air there in italy, because he somehow became even more beautiful. how’s that fair, she thought.

she smiled at him and wrapped both her arms around his left arm, snuggling against him. harry looked up at the sky, wondering how he could get so lucky. he walked towards the car with her clinging onto his arm as if he was going to disappear into thin air; kissing the top of her head, he spoke softly.

“vuoi che guido io, bellissima?”

(do you want me to drive, beautiful?)

she looked up to him, smiled and nodded.

once they settled in the car, she took harry’s hand and placed it onto her thigh, playing with the rings on his right hand. a gesture she’s done so many times, but in that moment, somehow, it felt different. he could feel a new flower of hope blooming into his chest.

“so, are you ready to hear me sing “perdere l’amore” till your ears are bleeding?” she turned to him, grinning.

he glanced at her, quickly bringing his eyes back on the road. flexing his right hand, he squeezed her thigh lightly.

“bring it.”

–

tag list: @theekyliepage @harryssky1 @neverstaisfied

#my writing #harry styles #harry styles os #harry styles one shot #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles blurb #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles smut #harry styles writing #harry styles imagine #harry x reader #harry x y/n #harry styles fic rec

[multi-lefaiye]

SALVATORE INKTOBER 13. BAPTIZED IN BLOODSHED

Following the bloody death of Joseph McCartney in 1963, Seamus became a different boy. Harder, angrier, overall more cruel. While he'd never been particularly pacifistic, he became significantly more confrontational, throwing threats at anyone who sparked his ire. After that night, he defensively squared his shoulders and bared his teeth, puffing up like a furious cat to make sure the world knew not to mess with him. He began carrying a switchblade of his own, one he claimed to have pilfered from McCartney's corpse.

He'd already killed a man, and he wasn't even sixteen yet. Who knew what else he'd do if the wrong person pissed him off?

By this point, Seamus no longer felt like he had any connection to the little girl he'd been before, if he ever did to begin with. Regardless of who he was before, he'd proven himself just as much of a man as anyone. Leslie Burke was gone, and Seamus O'Neal was here to stay. He may still be young, but he was a man through and through.

This attitude quickly proved lucrative for him, and Seamus rose through the ranks of the Emerald Devils. Being Clarence's ward definitely gave him a leg up over the men around him, but he proved his mettle just fine on his own aside from that. Within a few years, he'd likely become an enforcer as well, leaving his mark on the world of organized crime.

However, in the fall of 1965, everything changed. Following a raid on a warehouse managed by the Devils, Clarence was arrested, along with several other high-ranking members and foot soldiers. Only a handful of mobsters escaped that night, including Seamus, who was able to scramble out through a back door before anyone could see him. He lost a shoe in the process, but he was otherwise undetected and unharmed.

Despite his influence in the underworld, the case against Clarence O'Malley was air-tight and damning. In the end, he and his associates were convicted of racketeering and drug trafficking, each sentenced to 25 years. Following the trial, the Emerald Devils all but dissolved, its members scattering to the wind to avoid being subject to the same fate as Clarence. Including Seamus, the bastard he'd taken in and raised as his own.

In the three months that followed, Seamus floundered, left without a purpose after the loss of his crew. He still lived with his aunt Daisy, but she became withdrawn following her husband's arrest and hardly spoke to the boy. Just as well, he supposed. He had more important business to attend to than his aunt's mourning.

For one thing, he had to find a new way to earn money for his family--not only his aunt, and his mother and siblings as well. Beth had moved back in with their mother, and Martin had recently been medically discharged following a devastating injury on the front lines. Even if he wasn't on speaking terms with his mother and siblings for the most part, he knew it was his responsibility to provide for them.

So, he began taking odd jobs, various under-the-table gigs for anyone who would hire him. He may not have been educated, but he was willing and able to work, and that certainly counted for something. Much of the work wasn't exactly legal, but it wasn't like that was much of a concern for him.

Then, in the summer of 1967, he received a phone call from his older brother Jesse. At first, it seemed Jesse just wanted to catch up, prattling on and on through the receiver, but it wasn't long before he got down to business.

How's your Italian? Jesse asked.

Bad, Seamus replied curtly. Why?

You'd better study up. Jesse's grin was audible in his voice. I might've just gotten you a job.

wow this was so much longer than i meant for it to be- anyway here's the first of the "inktober but without the art" posts i'll be doing! my goal with the rest of the prompt list is to just finish up the prompts and tell the rest of the story. whatever i gotta do to accomplish this goal, i'll do. yeehaw!

i don't think they'll all be this long, but this one had to cover a lot of ground lol. this is also forcing me to iron out details that have been pretty vague in my mind for a while, haha!! so that's good.

unofficial lil inktober taglist (ask to be + or - ): @skitzo-kero @anexor @vacantgodling @invaderskoodge @albatris @abysslll @whonsper @astral-runic @chaieyestea

#multi makes text posts #multi's writing #inktober #inktober 2023 #salvatore inktober #ask to tag

[adamwatchesmovies]

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Some of the jokes in A Fish Called Wanda haven't aged well - this shouldn't be a surprise considering it was released nearly 35 years ago. They’re worth forgiving for the amount of laughs and memorable scenes the film has to offer.

After a successful jewelry heist, four thieves are forced to stall their escape when their ringleader, George (Tom Georgeson), is arrested. While animal lover Ken (Michael Palin) waits for his boss’ instructions, femme fatale Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her lover (who is pretending to be her brother) Otto (Kevin Kline) try and deduce where the jewels are hidden so they can run off with them. They hope George will disclose their location to his barrister, Archie (John Cleese). To get the information out of him, Wanda begins seducing Archie. Jealousies and double-crosses make this already complex situation much messier.

The characters are this film's strength. Michael Palin is hilarious as a man suffering from a horrible stutter who is assigned to take out an old woman who will be the key witness at George’s trial. An obsessive animal lover, his attempts to take out the lady wind up traumatizing him because he keeps screwing them up and killing some of her many dogs instead. What’s that? Are you upset because a beloved pooch might bite the dust instead of a human being? Well, it if makes you feel any better, Ken is upset about it too. The woman though? Nah, she can die. He doesn’t care.

Next, we have to talk about Otto. He’s this wannabe lothario who is crippled by his insecurities and incapable of keeping his jealousy in check. He knows Wanda is only putting the moves on Archie so they can get rich and leave the country but he can’t stop himself from making what should be a simple situation needlessly complicated. He’s so dumb you wonder what Wanda sees in him. Then, you realize she has this uncontrollable fetish for foreign languages. So what if the only Italian Otto knows is pasta and cheese-related? It’s all it takes for her to start tearing off her clothes.

Speaking of Wanda, she’s double-crossing everybody. Despite her excitement for foreign words while in bed, she’s way too good for Otto. She’s too good for George - whom she has fooled into thinking they’re a couple. An expert manipulator, she could have anyone wrapped around her finger… except maybe Archie. Well, no. She can definitely get the barrister’s attention. The question is whether his brick-solid Britishness will get in the way. All of these characters thrown together in this whirling dervish of a heist gone wrong make for big laughs over and over. Sometimes it gets dark, sometimes it gets absurd. It’s constantly making you wonder what’s next and filled with memorable scenes. There is a running gag about Otto pretending to be gay - it's so Ken doesn’t suspect he and Wanda are in cahoots - that feels a little weird and the movie feels a bit like it’s making fun of Ken for his stutter, but the gags still work for the most part.

A Fish Called Wanda is a smart film that uses its characters wisely, contains nothing but great performances and never holds back. That may ruffle a few feathers nowadays but it's hard to argue with the results. The characters are so great and they make for many big, memorable laughs. (On DVD, April 29, 2022)

#A Fish Called Wanda #movies #films #movie reviews #film reviews #Charles Crichton #John Cleese #Jamie Lee Curtis #Kevin Kline #Michael Palin #1988 movies #1988 films

[dkniade]

Instruments and Symbolisms in “Letter From Ajax” (Childe’s Demo Theme)

Let’s see…

The piano motif at the start is the same as the one in the battle theme of Dragonspine, a snowy region

Pianos are used to bring up the imagery of ice, like in “Symphony of Boreal Wind” (Andrius phase two boss theme)

Fitting, as Snezhnaya is also a snowy region

A faint acoustic guitar sounds for a short moment, in a charming way

I could be wrong, but is the guitar in an European or Italian style? The Harbingers are based off of the Commedia dell'Arte stock characters of Italian opera

The steady rhythm of the electric guitar is reminiscent of boots stomping in snow

The lead guitar that comes is highly distorted too, which sounds like electricity

The cymbal crashes sound like splashes of water

The chorus at back sounds religious, yet in a sort of “light deathliness” with a “liturgical religious vibe” (as MarcoMeatball describes in his reaction to Childe’s three boss themes, specifically “Wrath of Monoceros Caeli”. It’s a wonderful analysis, by the way. Please check it out!) This religious feeling relates to the Tsaritsa

Cymbal crashes come in again along with the distorted electric guitar

The end has a dizi and the piano motif again, symbolizing Liyue and Snezhnaya

Okay, so together we’ve got

piano, faint acoustic guitar, rhythm electric guitar, lead electric guitar, crash cymbals, chorus, dizi

Which should stand for

ice/Snezhnaya, Harbingers’ origins of Commedia dell’Arte, boots stomping in snow, Electro Delusion, Hydro Vision, Tsaritsa, Liyue

Wonderful. I’ve never quite made the connection between how instruments can be used to symbolize different elements until this game’s character demos.

#dusk analysis #letter from Ajax #Childe #Tartaglia #Genshin impact #motifs #music analysis #Genshin analysis

[kneelbeforeclefairy]

Newsies fandom, you know what I love about you? Most of you, I imagine, are not from NYC. I venture most of you haven't been here. And you talk about all these places and neighborhoods and landmarks in your fics and headcanons....and you can tell some of you have done your research (EXHAUSTIVLY) and some toss numbered street names at things and call it a day. (Which is FINE by the way. ) And new york has changed SO much since 1899. Newsies square is long gone, the streets themselves have been changed, buildings have been demolished. But you can tell you're all trying to get the FLAVOR of the city down, and who's to say who's wrong or right, when so much time has passed. And these places are just names to you, so everyone interprets what Central Park and the Bowery and the harbour feel like to them, and everyone's got their own ideas, and it's kind of amazing seeing the differentiations and people making headcanons about my beloved city, both today and a hundred years ago. No two are alike.

But what I LOVE. is that all of you. Every single one of you. Has gotten Brooklyn right. I don't know if the movie and/or musical does a good job at selling the VIBE or if everyone just arrives on the same conclusion. Brooklyn is....well it's like that.

Brooklyn is the Texas of boroughs. It used to be its own city, and it hasn't forgotten that. If Brooklyn detached from the rest of NYC it would be the fourth most populace city in the US. Brooklyn has more people than any other borough. It has more people than some STATES. And every single one of those people is batshit insane. Everything in Brooklyn is batshit insane. You either love Brooklyn or you hate it. It's full of people who are either tenth generation brooklynites, or transplants from two years ago, but they all defend their borough thoroughly. They see the world through the eyes of Brooklyn. Some don't like to leave it too often. Every single one of them would object on the grounds of Brooklyn.

And no one else wants to GO to Brooklyn, it's just too damn far, and no matter how you slice it you have to go through another borough to get there, especially from Queens which is GOD DANM ATTACHED, so you wind up never interacting with Brooklyn. And it's not like there's nothing there. Brooklyn is pretty cool sometimes. There's SHIT out there. But every time you go there you gotta take a ridiculous journey on multiple trains, or a bus across a bridge, or WALK ACROSS A BRIDGE or take a fucking ferry? Which is a thing now? Which is cool? I guess? But it's still a fucking ferry and who has time for that unless you already live near a ferry stop. And an hour and a half later you've moved ten miles and you're in fucking BROOKLYN and there's an independent coffee shop, a bougie bakery, and a Catholic church, and if you take ONE WRONG turn you wind up in the creepy part of Brooklyn, which is actually all parts of Brooklyn, sandwiched in between the gentrification, and there you will find a series of creepy warehouses with graffiti that runs from God damn art to mildly disturbing for reasons you can't explain. And no matter how deep you go there will be an Italian guy to yell at you.

And every time I GO to Brooklyn, which I endevor not to do, I have a good time, don't get me wrong, but some Brooklyn shit happens. What is Brooklyn shit? I can't describe it. Brooklyn shit. Everything that happens in Brooklyn is so FUCKING Brooklyn. I've been to Brooklyn more in the past month than I have been all year, and every time I go to Brooklyn, some Brooklyn shit happens, and I come out like a war veteran going "I'm not afraid of Brooklyn....it's just everything in it that makes me nervous."

#this rant brought to you by the logistics of getting a bunch of people to brooklyn #Newsies #new york city #this isnt even really about newsies but it sorta is

[princelylove]

your highness..i've become an abbachio stan?? somehow he's invaded my mind.

and i can't stop thinking about his makeup, for some reason. just a gut feeling i have, but abbachio's like **mad** insecure. he feels like he needs a mask of something, and in my mind makeup symbolises that. when he's around darling, he deffo doesn't wear as much around them-- a subtle way (or in his mind, at least. for most of us, it'd be minuscule; dare i say, atomically small) way of being vulnerable with darling. or maybe i'm completely wrong about him idk. golden wind is my least favourite part so...

your loving peon who comes with a gift of a mysterious bubbling blue substance in a beaker that resembles dawn dish soap if it was boiled and liquified --- 🌸 anon

…. I am not drinking that. Go put that back where you found it.

Leone is like an old italian woman in the sense that you never see her face not fully done. Even when he kidnaps you and you live with him full-time, you won’t see his bare face unless you sneak into his room late at night- In which he’ll ask what the hell you think you’re doing in there. (Because it looks like you’re coming to kill him. Don’t sneak up on a mafioso.)

I agree with makeup being his mask. He feels as if it’s a temporary fix for his ‘shameful’ face- his self confidence is like one of those “I hate myself but I’m still better than you.” types. His makeup makes him feel presentable, and without it, he just can't function. He'd never want you to see him like that- too vulnerable, too... weak.

But, if you're lucky, or maybe you get up early enough, you'll find him starting his makeup routine. If he trusts that you do love him... he won't shut the door in your face immediately.

#🌸 anon #yandere leone abbacchio

[kitkatt0430]

☕️ on mash. maybe you have some thoughts about Charles as more human and sophisticated version of Frank?

MASH really did a great job when it brought in replacement characters. The new character would fit into the niche the previous character left behind while still being entirely distinct and new. They'd embody some of the same traits as the character they were replacing and act as their opposite in others.

Charles and Frank are a really great example of that trend. Charles and Frank are both haughty and aloof, classist, egotistical, and not great at connecting to others. And to some degree Charles fills the niche Frank left of being someone for Hawkeye and BJ (or Trapper before him) to have as a local antagonist on occasion.

But Charles is, in many ways, the person Frank aspired to be. Where Frank would feign confidence but wind up cowering behind Margaret, Charles is outspoken and firm in standing up for himself when he feels wrong. Frank would often do end runs around people, submitting overblown complaints or taking events out of context in order to get back at people he felt slighted him through their official records; Charles would more often than not simply confront people about his problems with them and settle things personally. But unlike Frank, Charles recognized sometimes that meant admitting to being wrong. Charles is from an established and rich family in Boston and went to Harvard, graduating Summa Cum Laude; Frank by comparison struggled his way through medical school and is heavily implied to be more of the 'new rich' type by comparison. And Charles is still single, while Frank was unhappily married to his wife Louise and was implied to have had several affairs before he took up with Margaret on the show.

But Charles isn't just Frank's wishes for himself turned into a replacement character; he really is a much more humanized version of the role than Frank was.

Frank would be offered opportunities to do the right thing and grow as a person time and again. But he would always refuse them In one episode a village near the 4077th was destroyed by 'friendly fire'; Hawkeye and Trapper file a report detailing that that it was US troops that destroyed the village and injured the civilians. They ask Frank to sign with them in solidarity and he refuses because he doesn't want to rock the boat. And, well, his 'rah, rah, US can do no wrong' attitude kicking in too. Later, when Hawkeye and Trapper are praised for doing the right thing, Frank writes his own report in an attempt to impress Margaret. When it appears there's a cover up going on, however, Frank abandons his report pretty much immediately. It's not the first time he refuses to do the right thing unless there's something in it for him nor is it the last, either.

Charles, however, often learns and grows from his mistakes. A good example is when his sister gets engaged to an Italian man of a lower social class; Charles massively overreacts and writes some ill advised drunken letters about it. Shortly thereafter, he receives a follow up letter from his sister that the wedding is off because her fiance's parents didn't approve of her religion. It's a sobering experience for him to realize that while he was being judgemental and discriminatory towards someone he never met, his sister was being judged and discriminated against too. He sends her a telegram to arrive ahead of his letters, conveying his apologies in advance for his bad behavior and his wish that he could be there to support her during this awful time. He didn't stop being a classist jerk after this, but his behavior was definitely tempered by the experience and he was less judgemental afterwards.

Where Frank would belittle patients who struggled with their mental health (a bit ironic given his own mental health was what eventually led him to leave the camp), Charles would connect to his patients on a personal level and try to help them deal with the trauma they were suffering - such as the disabled pianist that Charles encourages to continue playing despite the nerve damage in one hand. Charles truly agonizes over the pianist's struggles, in part because music has always been his refuge. And where Frank would be racist towards South Koreans and outright dismissive of the well being of North Korean or Chinese patients when an enemy combatant would be placed in their care; Charles connects with Chinese POWs who are musicians, learning to appreciate their music and teaching them to play pieces he knows.

And where Frank would try to drag people down to his level, most notably with Margaret during their affair... Charles tried to uplift those around him. Charles and Margaret's brief initial attraction fizzles into a close friendship instead and she's the first person he thinks of to share the finer things in life with, not because he wants something from her the way Frank would have but because for him there's a greater enjoyment to be found from sharing something that brings him happiness with a friend.

There's so much more to go on about with comparing and contrasting these two, but I think I'm running out of steam here.

#kitkatt0430 answers #kitkatt0430 rambles #mash #fandom meta #mash meta #frank burns #charles emerson winchester iii

[effervescentdragon]

could i bother you with some nigelio maybe? something happy 💛

i dont know how happy this is anon, but i tried 💛

He remembers the happy days with the most clarity.

(He refuses to remember the rest. It weighs on him, like a Formula One car does when it turns in the air and you land the wrong side up. It also feels just as hopeless, just as terrifying, as the car always does, after.) 

They drive along the Cote d'Azure. He lets Elio drive, because he knows the roads better, and there is less chance of them getting lost somewhere. (He lets Elio drive because it's easier to watch him from the passenger seat, without worrying about the road.)  His hair is wind-swept, his eyes hidden behind the sunglasses, but the smiley lines around his eyes are still visible from where Nigel is observing him.

Italian music plays on the radio. Nigel doesn't understand it properly, but it feels loving, and a bit melancholic. It suits Elio, Nigel thinks. It suits his soul, and it soothes mine. Elio sings along sometimes, turning to Nigel, repeating certain words with a smile that seems to hold secrets, loat in translation.

Nigel doesn't mind. He would let Elio have all the secrets for himself, never to be shared and never to be told, if only Nigel gets to keep Elio himself.

He looks at Elio's fingers on the wheel. They move quickly, exchanging the ivory of the piano keys for the supple leather of the car. Nigel doesn't really understand how someone can love both - racing and piano. They seem diametrally opposed to Nigel, the roughness and the speed of the track compared to the delicate softness of the music.

(He will think on it later, and he will think on it a lot. He will spend many sleepless nights thinking about everything, and he will come to a conclusion that they are not that different. Both racing and piano demand high levels of creativity, determination, and precision. But the most important conclusion he will come to is that they are both art in its truest form, and they are both beautiful, and it takes an extraordinary man to master them both. And if Nigel were to choose one word to describe Elio, it would be extraordinary.)

Elio laughs suddenly, and turns the wheel. Nigel yelps in surprise, reaching for the grab handle. That only makes Elio laugh harder, and Nigel can't begrudge him any happiness, so he laughs along. He doesn't mind being the joke, if it means Elio is laughing freely, laugh lines prominent around his eyes and lips.

He drives them off the main road, and the scenery opens before them as they descend on a small path, barely wide enough for one car. The vegetation thickens, then dwindles, until they are on a wild beach. Elio stops the car, basically jumping out of the car. There is nobody and nothing around them, the beach hidden from the rest of the world by the cliffs on both sides, the road obviously only there for those who know where to search for it.

Nigel follows him out of the car, still looking. The wind blows, but it's still too hot, the heat of summer unrelenting.

"Come on, Leone," Elio calls, halfway to the sea already. "It's too hot not to go for a swim," he says, and pulls his shirt off. Nigel knows his blush is evident when Elio laughs again.

"You Brits and your modesty." He throws his shirt on the ground, then carefully puts down his sunglasses. "Come on," he says, unbuttoning his pants, and Nigel thinks I would follow him anywhere.

He tries not to get distracted by Elio's naked skin, which shines like gold in the warm August sun. Elio must take pity on him, because he turns around and starts walking to the water, affording Nigel some privacy. He takes of his clothes quickly, trying not to think on why this is different than the million times he's changed himself on track before his whole team.

"Come on, Nigel!"

When he turns, Elio is already in the water. The sun shines on him, and Nigel is blinded by his beauty and his smile. If he were a poet, he may know how to describe the sight before him. Bit he is not, he never was, so all he can think is that if the sun had a favorite, Elio would be it.

"Yes, yes," he yells back, walking towards Elio. "Is it cold?"

Elio inclines his head, contemplative.

"Come in and see," is what he settles on, and Nigel can't help but chuckle. "I wouldn't trust you with the assessment anyway," Nigel says, and Elio smiles, and Nigel doesn't even mind that the water is colder than he expected. Not if Elio smiles like that.

They swim, racing each other to some imaginary line, fighting about who won. They race back, and fight about who came first again. They laugh a lot, and fight some more, and splash each other like children. Elio tries to drown Nigel, but Nigel has the advantage of a bigger stature and the disadvantage of not wanting to hurt Elio even in jest, so they only end up drinking too much salty water than is probably advisable.

When they get tired, they just float on the water. Their fingers touch occasionally, as if to reassure one another that Yes, I am here; I haven't floated away; I'm not leaving you alone.

They come out of the water eventually, shivering a bit. Elio finds a towel in his suitcase, and they share it until they are dry enough to put their clothes back on. They sit on the beach and bask in the last rays of sun, laughing about how they won't make their reservations.

"You know," Elio says, staring into the setting sun. "If I could choose a perfect day, it would be this."

The sun paints his face red; somehow it suits him. He looks like a warrior of old, or maybe one of those old Renaissance paintings, or maybe both. Nigel doesn't want to leave, even though he is hungry and tired. He wants to lay down and sleep on the beach and look at the stars. He wants to stay with Elio in this moment forever.

"Me too," he says. "Me too."

Elio smiles at him, and Nigel's heart skips a beat. That is nothing new to him when it comes to Elio, though, so he can ignore it. Elio closes his eyes and turns to the sun, determined to soak up every last ray.

Nigel only looks at him, from the side, from the periphery, and wishes he were a poet, so that he could explain the feelings that pervade his whole being.

(He will wish for that after, more than ever. He will wish he had the words to describe that day, because Beautiful is lacking, Lovely doesn't even begin to cover it, and Nice may be the understatement of the century. Most of all, he will wish for words to explain Elio, because, well. Because even Everything still feels inadequate, even after all these years.)

"I will remember this day for the rest of my life," Elio says with a determination Nigel knows to be true. "You must know this."

Nigel's chest feels heavy. He swallows the words that bubble up in his throat, and nods.

"So will I, Elio. I know I will."

They sit on the beach and watch the day turn into night, and listen to the waves crash against the shore, and just breathe, their fingers a breadth apart on the sand.

(What they didn't know, and never will, is that both their breathing and their heart-beats were in sync. What Nigel doesn't know, and never will, is that Elio spoke the truth. What Elio doesn't know, and never will, is that Nigel did too.

What neither of them knew, and never will, is that if one of them reached even an inch, they might have had only a bit more time.)

#okay so this isnt really happy but in my defense im feeling soft #idk this is my first time writing them im sorry i hope you like this anon #my writing #classic f1 #f1 rpf #nigelio #effervescentdragonwrites #id call this soft but like this is canon compliant #drabble #i guess

[aaluminiumas]

Hallowed Be Thy Name

If you like this work, feel free to check other ones here or on my AO3.

Unlike all other dwellers of Crockett Island, who primarily focused on life eternal rather than things more mundane, Mildred Gunning never ignored death as a concept and spent a lot of time at the churchyard, taking care of her father’s grave. Almost two decades later, life threw another trial in her way: her husband, a decorated war veteran, suddenly died, giving her another reason to visit the cemetery more often. Even though Millie never loved the man, she had to admit that he had tried everything in his power to deserve her affection and respect—and out of this sheer respect, she occasionally stopped by his tombstone and initiated a conversation conducted in an undertone.

Finishing a quick tour around the gravesite and a short chat with her father, Mildred sighed and braced herself for what she considered an ordeal worthy of a Bible story: after so many years of endless pretense, gimmicks, circumvention, and deceit, she had finally decided to speak her heart out and confess to her deceased husband that she had never been a faithful wife. It was awfully late. It was awfully unfair. It was awfully wrong, and George, though a calloused soldier, never did a thing to justify such treatment on her part, but when he was alive, the woman couldn’t screw up her courage and openly admit her adultery. She suspected that he might have been aware of her affair, but as he’d never brought up the subject, she stuck to the initial tactics and kept her mouth shut until it was too late. George, worn out by war and exhausted by medical complications caused by his old wounds, peacefully died in his sleep when Millie was preparing dinner.

Both John Pruitt and Mildred Gunning could sigh with relief. If their secret had ever been discovered, George carried it to the grave.

Standing there in the wind and rubbing her hands to protect them from the cold, the woman tried to gather her wits and galvanize herself to move. She hoped she could muster all her oratorical skills to warrant her behavior and motives, but she suddenly clammed up, and even in a private talk with her deceased father, Mildred failed to fish out the right words. Her confession would not change anything for George. It would not change anything for her or John either; even though they had called it quits long ago, they still maintained a relationship teetering on the brink of excessive affection. When he saw her, his voice shifted to a softer tone. When she saw him, her eyes glowed as if backlit by thousands of stars drowning in the darkest depths of the ocean. Both avoided staying together for too long, but neither could resist a friendly confabulation, which threatened to lead them to the good ol' days and long evenings by the fireplace. Not infrequently, Mildred envisioned John explaining Latin or Italian to her, making allusions to Dante and other distinguished minds of the past. The powerful temptation to reverse the time and throw herself headlong into another bout of passion often took over, but Millie had already mastered the prowess of self-control, owing it to her deceased husband. 

           “You know, Dad,” the woman whispered, as if starting a general rehearsal before the intimate conversation with the man who could not hear her, “I tried to live an honest life. But sometimes things just don’t play out the way you plan them to. Now it’s my turn to firmly steer it in the right direction… while I still can.”

            Awkwardly shuffling from one foot to the other, Mildred eventually squatted before the tombstone with her father's name gouged in it. She cleared specks of dirt and removed dry leaves from the ground. Standing back up, she patted the stone, her fingers lingering on the rough surface. Her father, known for his sincerity in the community, would probably frown. Or wouldn’t he? As a trustworthy partner in crime, he helped her keep her tiny secrets from the rigorous mother, always ready to roast her daughter for a minor gaffe. Would he support her? Would he give her a bear hug and protect her from the entire world turning against her? Would he console her, telling her to keep her pecker up? Apparently, their relationship would have transformed into something new. Quite possibly, he would have been repelled by the attitude she demonstrated. But Mildred wanted to believe that her Dad would take her side when she withstood pressure from fellow dwellers. After all, his death had taken its toll and affected her psychologically; had he not died, she would have passed entry exams, enrolled in a college, and would now eventually be happy in a place where people never paid attention to a family drama. On Crockett Island, family dramas replaced stultifying gaudy soap operas, often broadcast in snowy images.

            Well, this might be too positive a picture, but at least she used to have high hopes.

            With a sigh, the woman pulled away her hand and, shivering with cold, hid it under the brown coat.

           “Bye, Dad. I gotta go.”        

Her voice dispersed in the susurrus of the wind, thrashing high above in the branches. Mildred lingered for another moment and ploddingly trudged to George’s grave, situated a few rows farther to the north, closer to the ocean, so he could hear the sound of waves for the rest of eternity. 

Crockett's churchyard, receding into the gloom of the scanty forest, a tiny, somber, but surprisingly tranquil place had long become Millie’s haven where she could hide from the prying eyes and appraising looks. Strolling across the long rows of graves, the woman often speculated about the familiar names she saw dented in stone. Her teacher, Mr. Salisbury, died of a heart attack almost fifteen years ago. His funeral was a mess as the new priest had just been appointed and he barely knew the protocol. Amy Nottingham. Pneumonia. The old Grandma Sally. She smoked a pipe till the age of ninety-two and cursed like a sailor. Rumors said she’d never been married but was somehow engaged in weird services, so she playfully teased the priest, while openly despising the church as a social institution. This iconoclast of a woman always attracted attention: locals glowered at her, lambasting her in their gossip, babbling incomprehensible excuses each time they heard her nearing. Grandma Sally remained impassive if not outright frigid. Perching on the bench and holding the perpetual pipe in her gnarled hand, the woman emanated a powerful aura of self-confidence and outstanding poise. Little did she know, Millie thought every time she walked past the woman's grave. Then she usually halted before the tombstone and gazed at it for a solid minute, trying to recall Sally's placid expression. Despite her assiduous efforts, all Mildred could remember was the old crone’s shrewd squint. That prompted a galvanic thought: maybe—just maybe—the creaker with the pipe smelled something from her own undoubtedly extensive experience. Unlike her fellow dwellers, Grandma Sally kept her mouth shut, and that quality alone caused outrageous slander and scuttlebutt: she used to be a midwife, or a nun, or maybe both; she might’ve fled the authorities and finally settled down on Crockett; she may have committed so macabre a crime and her documents were in such disarray that Crockett was her only option. Needless to say, her figure was enveloped in mystery, unlike her plain, pathetic daughter, who failed to inherit even the sense of humor. 

Beside Sally, her perpetual partner, retired Navy Captain Snippet, was buried. He had died several years before her, though he was twice as young. Sister Jane, the nun. Rejected formal funeral. Peter Trifler. Claimed himself to be a buccaneer; told stories with a twist ending to the children of the island. Nurse Sandra Stickhorn. Blank. A tiny grave for an infant named Beverly. Millie, herself a mother, couldn’t ignore it and shuddered every time her eye fell on the name. Mrs. Keane, totally woebegone with grief, seemed to have gone crazy in the most medical sense of the word. Religious to the core to begin with, she obviously wanted to morph into a saint: her pious lectures filled with Christian pathos penetrated every crook and cranny of the place. Despite her natural dislike towards the waspish and hypocritical woman, Millie couldn’t but feel sorry for her: Mrs. Keane struggled to get pregnant and then failed to deliver the baby. Twice. Her only successful attempt was now buried under a sprawling tree facing the ocean. Stopping by the small hill over the grave, Mildred brushed away the dirt and thanked God for her robust and salubrious Sarah, who had inherited her resilient father’s health. 

The woman passed several unknown graves. They’d been there for so long that nobody remembered their names. By some quirk of fate, George, probably the most famous dweller of Crockett, was buried among them. The veteran committee took pains to arrange the ceremony and ensure the grave space; they also insisted on laying the man to rest on the mainland among his comrades, but Millie, the only surviving member of the family apart from their teenage daughter, adamantly resisted. Who would’ve visited him then? His parents perished here; his friends stayed here, his wife, after all, had bright memories about the time they shared. He would be so lonely there on the mainland he never really liked. Once he had confided in her that he had wished to come back to the small island drifting in the ocean and glare at the waves for days, listening to his beloved wife humming songs under her breath in the kitchen, baking her pancakes, pies, and meringue cakes. 

He would be so lonely there. She just knew that. 

 “Hi, George,” Mildred uttered in a voice laden with genuine warmth and endearment. Nevertheless, the woman felt approaching trepidation, rising within and palsying her limbs. “I’m sorry I’m late.” 

In more ways than one.  

As if completely mute, the woman silently sat beside the tombstone, folding her hands in her lap and avoiding looking at the engraved name. For some reason, the woman felt a slithering, viscous sensation, a weird mix of rebuke and shame. She should’ve told him earlier. She should’ve solved this puzzle long ago. 

 “I don’t know where to start, to be honest,” Mildred muttered, feeling her throat going dry. “So I’ll just blurt it out. George, well… Sarah is not your daughter. She never was.”

She waited for the words to sink in and dissolve in the gust of wind mantling her words. 

There was no right way to say it. There was no right way to live it through, but they managed to exist in this condition—or would the word plight suit the situation better? —for more than a decade, having their simple joys and quarrels like any other family on the island. He wasn't a bad husband, really; he never shirked his responsibilities and had a peculiar sense of humor. He could be abrasive and cantankerous, true, and Millie had to deal with his undulating demeanor, aggravated by the war, but George faced a more dreadful ordeal: he had to cope with the woman who never loved him back. 

Mildred winced at the thought and touched the man’s grave, her delicate hand gently pushing away the scanty vegetation, so his name would be clearly seen. They had maintained a picture-perfect image of a small but happy family, while neither of them felt a modicum of happiness. Millie, deceiving the man from the very beginning, tended to take it out on him, uncontrollably snapping and muffling her weeping in the pillow every night. She looked miffed all the time, ready to start caterwauling whenever his fingers hovered over her upper arm. The macabre perspective of spending her life with someone she had grown to neglect made her miserable, and she reconciled reality only a few years before his demise.

The vicinity of the church made things worse. The masses she was bound to attend exacerbated the already intricate situation: her quick pregnancy compromised the religious nature of her character and the veneration she diligently evinced in public. Eventually, Mildred evaded sermons to further scandalize her piety. Luckily, she quickly came up with a relatively solid excuse, claiming that the priest’s frankincense triggered her nausea.

It couldn’t be farther from the truth. Millie, playing the role of a faithful wife, stared in the window for hours, trying to spot the familiar black-clad figure striding along the street with the Bible in hand. Occasionally, his dark eyes fell on the tiny figure, patiently knitting another pair of mittens. They exchanged pleasantries; the woman kindly invited him to dinner, but both knew he wouldn’t come. Sometimes John stopped by to apologize for the absence and brought her a card from Florence. Not casting suspicion on the woman he adored, the priest wrote a short inscription: “Greetings from Florence! J. Pruitt.” He’d brought a heap for other dwellers, too, but Millie nonetheless spotted the hidden message he conveyed by the choice of the picture: Dante became their coded language, and Mildred quickly grasped the meaning behind it.

After that minor episode, she went completely unhinged, she remembered. George, who genuinely loved the woman with his entire heart, did all he could to comfort her during these difficult months. In his steel tone, he barked back at the sneering churchgoers and indemnified his pregnant wife from scandalmongers suspecting the sin of adultery. Even if he shared the suspicion, he never let them know. Up to this day, Millie wasn’t sure if he realized she did not belong to him.

           George Gunning, hardly a fan of religion to begin with, turned into a convinced atheist who couldn’t stand acolytes and zealots bruising their foreheads by the holy images. Had someone breathed out a word in his direction or in the direction of his wife, the man exploded. If someone glanced at him or his wife askance for not appearing at St. Patrick on Sunday, he went berserk, and people thought better of messing with him. In the end, one stern glare was enough to put them in their place, but the price was high: George practically became a pariah in the close-knit community, acquiring a meaningful nickname—Maul. Only a handful of people ventured to take a detour to his house for a quick chat.

 “Do you recall how you practically leveled the whole island to the ground when the Keanes traded rumors and started whispering behind my back?” she smiled meekly, edging an inch forward. “They never said a word since then. Even now, they prefer to stay clear and keep their mouths shut. So much the better.”

Millie sighed and averted her gaze to the horizon, ruminating on the events of the past. He adored Sarah, too. Either he only saw the reflection of the wife he revered or was sincerely attached to someone so small and brittle, George took care of her from day one. Excited to the quick, the man learned to swaddle the baby and gleaned information on feeding and bathing. When Sarah grew older, he taught her to ride the bike and play football. He also called in the war veteran committee to refresh his connections: eventually, he arranged a tour to the American Museum of Natural History in New York for the kids of the entire community, but specifically for Sarah, trying to show her the multifaceted world she was sequestered from.

As someone whose education lacked expertise and refinement, he insisted that his daughter go to college, no matter the cost. Unable to hire a professional tutor here, he enthusiastically endorsed Millie’s plan to send Sarah to the priest for more formal education. At home, he explicitly stated that he would ensure her future in whichever place she chose, be it a remotely known provincial college or the Ivy League. This may have been an overreach, but Millie was impressed: naturally irate, mentally injured at war, the man became more and more irascible as the years went by, but Sarah remained his favorite person in the world. And he kept his pledge: she did get the scholarship.

 “George, this is so…unfair, I know,” Mildred bit her bottom lip, “Had I been smarter, I would have never caused you so much pain. I was an egoistic little hag, thinking the world was spinning around me and my caprices. I should have confessed. I should have never started what I started.”

Millie’s eyes swiveled back to the simple bold letters on the stone. He did his best, she knew. Malignant in the residents’ minds, George wasn’t really all that baleful. He occasionally swore and snarled at the neighbors, but he never put up a fight or caused a serious problem. Sometimes, the couple watched TV together, drinking beer, and the man constantly cracked jokes, revealing a sensitive, loving man ensconced underneath the crust of a frigid war dog. He rarely sloughed off this mask, but Mildred cherished every moment he dared do that: whenever he exposed his vulnerability, Mildred felt a growing sense of affection. 

She could reminisce one particular moment solidly wedged in her brain. On an evening, having sent Sarah to the priest, Millie eased into the armchair near the fireplace and started knitting a pair of socks. George, unusually quiet, was making a wooden toy for Sarah, governed by his imagination. For a moment, he got withdrawn and said that he’d never felt better in his entire life and thanked Mildred for giving him closure. She didn’t understand him at the time, but now the woman was beginning to comprehend what closure he was talking about. 

 “George, I am so sorry. But I am so utterly grateful. No matter how much we fought, I knew I could always rely on you, and you would always be on my side, even though I was the one mistaken. I failed to be your pillar, but you always were mine. You bolstered me even when I clearly did not deserve it. You protected me when I was the problem. You taught me to confront and to resist—before you, I could only hide in the farthest pew, hoping no one would notice me. With your help, I became a good, responsible mother, and I believe, I still believe that we raised a wonderful daughter. She’s a skeptic, just like you,” she couldn’t suppress a smile, “But she also knows how to stand up for herself. She’s tough, George. You would be so proud of her now. You would be so incredibly proud of her.”

Suddenly, Millie felt a lump in her throat and fiddled with the hem of her skirt. The bleak sunset backlighted the depths of the ocean, bringing a gossamer of algae to the light. As if on cue, Mildred realized it was time to go: George preferred to stare at the waves alone. 

#fanfic #fanfiction #midnight mass #father paul hill #monsignor pruitt #hamish linklater #millie gunning #hamfam #mildred gunning #john pruitt #george gunning

[kingkatsuki]

hello, miss jo!!! ૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ♡ for your wedding ask game — i'd love to marry bakugou in an old ass building, something like one of those small renaissance french chateaus, or an italian garden with lots of statues and greenery and hidden corridors i can go and hide in

and fairy lights... lots and lots of fairy lights

Bakugou rarely comes home late, and if he’s going to be late he always lets you know. So when he doesn’t come home for dinner you know somethings wrong- immediately going to social media on your phone to try and find any civilian reports of Dynamight out tonight. Scrolling through as you see videos shot by pedestrians of Dynamight blasting through the air as he fights a villain over twice his size. Becoming more worried the more you scroll as you see people claiming him to be hurt, even the news headlines begin to come in with tales of him hurt in action. But no words can describe the relief that floods through you when you hear the key in the front door and come into the hallway to see your boyfriend stumbling through covered in soot, debris and blood. Immediately rushing towards him to check the damage yourself as he tries to bat you away, “‘m fine woman, stop freakin’.” as you then go from upset to annoyed as you shout at him for trailing blood through the house. But he dutifully goes to the bathroom- a routine you’d both picked up whenever he’d come home like this as you ready the medical kit. Working at dabbing his wounds as he sits on the toilet seat, your thighs slot between his comfortably as he wraps his arms around them. You’re continuing to mumble beneath your breath as you chastise him for being careless (again) and tell him that if he does this again you’ll hurt him yourself and he just comes out with it- “Marry me.” And at first you don’t even hear it, still patching him up as you rant about his safety but then you stop and take in the words. He doesn’t even have a ring, but he just knows in that moment he never wants to be without you.

The wedding was such a grand spectacle, all your friends and family along with the top Pros from around the country. The building was an old style chateaux, something you’d dreamed about since you were a child and everything was perfect— even though the crowd and the cameras were overwhelming (something that came with the territory for being with the number three hero Dynamight, not that it made it any easier). Bakugou pulls you away from a group of ladies talking to you abruptly as he drags you down the long, winding hallways of the listed building. Smirking as you trip up the stairs on your long gown as he retraces his steps to come behind you to pick up the train so it now sits around your upper thighs as he holds it in his arms, ignoring your protests that people can see your garter as he continues guiding you towards an empty castle balcony with the most gorgeous views of the rose garden below. The sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, leaving the balcony coated in a beautiful glow of fairy lights that wrapped around the ledge and along the double doors to the building. A peaceful serenity compared to the loud, boisterous bustle of your wedding reception as you’re finally given a moment to breathe. “Could see the crowds were getting too much for ya.” He hums as his arms grip the balcony ledge on either side of your body as you stare out at the view, his chest pressed to your back as he pressed soft kisses to the column of your neck as you both stare into the distance. Finally able to enjoy each other’s company as husband and wife for a few moments before you knew you’d have to return back to the party.

#ask games #ask game