#yourlocalmusicalprostitute

[likesomekindofcheese]

Promised- Finale (Grigor Dymov x fem! Reader, Arranged Marriage AU series)

Series Summary: When Emperor Peter's behavior towards your family threatens the alliance between them and Russia, the only way to solve it from breaking is through an arranged marriage with his friend, the handsome but heartbroken Count Grigor Dymov. A man you barely know.

Previous Chapters: One//Two//Three//Four//Five//Six//Seven//Eight//Nine//Ten//Eleven

Chapter Summary: You and Grigor enjoy a long-denied honeymoon

Content Warnings: Some discussions of sex and cursing and mentions of pregnancy and babies- don't worry, Y/N isn't pregnant. But VERY fluffy!

Word Count: 1584

A/N: Thank you guys so much for supporting this series throughout! Now I thought was the best time to conclude it! When season 3 of The Great comes out and should I get inspired, there might be a season 2 of this fic like what @ladystrallan did with I Really Wish I Hated You (which, btw, highly recommend if you love The Great Fanfics). Who knows?! But I hope all of you loved reading it as much as I loved writing this series!

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General Taglist: @stardust-killer-queen​ @queenlover05​ @seraphicmercury

Promised Taglist: Taglist: @itsametaphorgwil​ @bluesfortheredj​ @grigorlee​ @retropetalss @queenlover05 @joeslee   @grigorlee @itsametaphorgwil @always-a-fairycat @foxinaforestofstars @simonedk @i-wished-upon-a-star-one-night @queenlover05 @xviiarez @kiainspace @gwilymleeisbae @writeroutoftime @staradorned @iwritefanficnotprophecies @panagiasikelia @marshmxllowfluf @jamesbuckybarns​ @yourlocalmusicalprostitute​ @rhapsodyrecs​ @ladystrallan​​ ​

You and Grigor were planning on returning to court. You both just wanted something denied to you when you were rushed to be married and when there was a coup- a honeymoon. Three whole months of a honeymoon.

The days were never more lovely- lovemaking at night, awakening when one felt like it, the most sumptuous meals, playing cards by the fireside, reading to each other, and you showing off the various songs you knew how to play. You were starting to teach Grigor chords and his clumsy practicing of scales with mutters of “fuck!” at a mistake could be heard. You still kept shooting practice, but you were relaxed, not caring if you missed the odd target.

It was quite warm for Russia the past two weeks. Flowers were deep in their bloom in the gardens, and it was green everywhere. The vineyards seemed to be a far brighter green than you expected. Perhaps springtime was arriving sooner than you expected or maybe it was a warm spot for a few days. You had to wear your lighter silks as opposed to the warm furs to keep one safe from your new home country’s notorious chill.

As you and your husband toured the grounds together that afternoon, there were fruits of light green and dark purple. You would both look at each other, pluck the small fruits, and try bites of them yourself, feeling the juicy sweetness burst on your tongues, as if only briefly. Grigor would wipe the juice off of his sleeve and give you a kiss and you would taste the grape in his breath as if combined with yours you made your own special wine. Grigor was in his favorite deep green. You had insisted he keep a few buttons down so you could see some of his chest hair. You insisted it was absolutely sexy of him when he wore shirts (especially white ones) with a few buttons undone and he took note. Yes, it was the wrong color today, but you didn’t care. Perhaps that could wait for later tonight when you would hop on him like a rabbit until you screamed each other’s names, not caring about disturbing the servants sleeping below. You were in a bright red dress with golden floral patterns all over it and you perfumed yourself with rose water.

You matched and complimented in your dress as had your souls on the inside- each perfect and making only the other look better when beside it.

You emerged from the kiss and wiped your hand on your skirt.

“Could you hold my hand, my dear?” you asked, presenting your hand out.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Oh abso-fucking-lutely,” he replied, eagerly taking yours.

It was warm and encompassing, the fingers intertwined within each other to feel the pulse of each other. As you both walked back home, the day was fading. The sky turned into a mix of orange and pink and the crispness of evening etched around you. Once you approached back to the manor, the housekeeper greeted you both and assured you that dinner would be ready in one or two hours. Olga, the little servant girl, handed you back your beloved dog and both of you cooed over her.

“Oh and Madame Dymova! Here! Messenger said it’s from Paris! And it’s for you and the master!” she added on, handing over a letter with a familiar wax seal.

Before you could comment on it, Sonya let out a bright bark for want of attention.

“Here Sonya- found this! Here- Good girl!” Grigor offered.

From his pocket, he pulled out a truffle and fed it to the eager and always hungry pup.

“Would you like some wine? There’s a new one they just made here and it’s fucking astounding,” he offered.

“Oh, yes! And ask the kitchen for a plate of bread and cheese and fruit, perhaps?” you asked.

“I don’t see why not!” he replied, giving you a peck on your forehead before going down to the kitchen.

You made your way to the back porch area outside on your white seats and white chairs. You found it had not grown so chilly that you would require heaps of blankets as you have in the past. Sonya lay happily on your lap panting away. Though grown, she still saw herself as a puppy who had to have every last of her needs attended to, or else her mistress would hear her barking and mischief. But you loved her more for it.

You pulled from your reticule an unopened letter from the dress of your pocket. It couldn’t be your family- you heard just yesterday that you were an aunt to a beautiful little niece. Both you and Grigor were already making plans to travel and visit your family and for you to be introduced and be acquainted with his own. So, who could it be? Was it Catherine about her baby or the new education laws? Orlo recommending a new philosophy book to you? Who? You saw the name on it and gasped.

“It’s George! George wrote to us!” you told Sonya, who only tilted her head.

You then ripped it open and smiled, your heart touched by the contents. From the corner, you saw Grigor come out to approach the table. He smiled, holding two glasses of wine, and giving one to you.

“Why thank you, darling!” you chirruped at him.

“No problem at all,” he answered.

A servant immediately arrived behind and held a platter of cheeses, slices of bread, and apples. His blue eyes went to the letter.

“What is that? Who is it?” he asked.

You smiled, handing him the papers.

“Why, it’s George!? Can’t you believe it? She’s in Paris of all places! Oh, that must be wonderful! And here…she said she met someone who she truly loves and who loves her! Oh, I’m so happy for her! We must write back and ask her more about this!” you squealed.

“Why- how good for her! I’m glad!” Grigor wished genuinely with a shrug and a relaxed smile.

Both of you held up your glasses of wine.

“Should we toast to her?” you asked.

Grigor shook his head.

“I have a better one. To what brought us together in the first place. Here, Y/N-to the alliance!”

“To the alliance!” you agreed, daintily clinking your glasses.

Both of you took a first sip.

“It won’t be too long before we return- so much will be different…” Grigor began.

“I’m just glad Marial is in prison…I’ve slept better at night since then…” you sighed.

He did frown briefly. He took a deep drink and set down his glass.

“Well…part of me is eager. Been worried sick over Peter.”

“But you always are, you silly shit!” you teased, setting your own glass down.

He smiled at the words. You thought there was never a more beautiful smile than that of Grigor Dymov when he was well and truly happy. Your heart would always burst with love for him at the sight.

His letters seem fine and happy though…he’s thrilled about the baby. Got a name picked out and everything!”

“What if we have a baby- will we be even ready for that?” you suggested.

So far, your courses were like clockwork and Grigor would spoil you with bedrest and vodka and embraces when the cramps tormented you. But that doesn’t mean the time would never come. In fact, with all the fucking you had been doing it was a pure miracle it hadn’t happened yet!

“I don’t know if we’ll ever be, Y/N…but what about life after the coup? Things will be so…so different. Peter’s not in charge as much. There’s a royal baby on the way. George is in France. Catherine’s changing all the laws to what she wants. Everything is upside down…” he muttered.

“But we can take it…” you assured him.

He clutched his hand onto yours in response and you used your other hand to rest it on his cheek. He relaxed into it, using a hand to touch yours.

“We can take anything as long as we’re together, darling,” he replied.

“Of course, we can, my dear husband…” you cooed.

"Oh, say that again!” he insisted.

You crawled on his lap, kissing his face- his freckles, his forehead, his cheekbones, his chin.

“Dear husband, dear husband, my Grigor, my darling…” you mumbled between the kisses.

“Fuck, you make me hard. Keep it up and I might have to have you on this table before dinner!” he confessed.

“Wait until after dinner!” you insisted with a joking slap on his arm.

“If Countess Dymova requests it, who am I to deny her that!” he gave in.

You giggled and paused. Both of you breathe deeply the warmth of each other and the closeness.

He kissed you with soft lips again, but there was a chasteness- a tenderness to how he cupped your cheek when it happened. You cuddled into his chest as the sun set and he placed an arm around you to draw circles on your back as the dog lay contentedly smiling on the floor with her pink tongue out.

You were happy. After such chaos you had been through- you were completely happy. Dinner was about to be served. You had a home in court and out. You had a precious pup. You had friends. And most of all, you had found a happy, faithful marriage. And a husband who you loved and who loved you.

And this time the wine did in fact not taste like shit.

#carrie writes #promised #the great #the great fanfiction #grigor dymov #grigor dymov x reader #grigor dymov x fem! reader #grigor dymov x y/n #grigor dymov x fem! y/n #gwilym lee #bohrap cast #welsh disney prince #grigor dymov x you #arranged marriage #arranged marraige au #marriage of convenience #marriage of convenience au #the great fanfic #grigor dymov fluff #grigor dymov imgine #gwilym lee imagine #gwilym lee fluff #gwilym lee fanfic

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[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

We Were Something, Don’t You Think So? [Chapter 12: The Atlantic Ocean] [Series Finale]

You are a Russian grand duchess in a time of revolution. Ben Hardy is a British government official tasked with smuggling you across Europe. You live happily ever after.

This is a work of fiction loosely inspired by the events of the Russian Revolution and the downfall of the Romanov family. Many creative liberties were taken. No offense is meant to any actual people. Thank you for reading! :)

Song inspiration: “the 1” by Taylor Swift.

Chapter warnings: Mentions of historical war and violence.

Word count: 3.6k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @imtheinvisiblequeen​ @okilover02​ @adrenaline-roulette​ @youngpastafanmug​ @m-1234​ @tensecondvacation​ @haileymorelikestupid​ @rogerfuckintaylor​ @yourlocalmusicalprostitute​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @someforeigntragedy​ @mo-whore​ @mellowfellowyellow​ @peculiareunoia​ @mischiefmanaged71​ @fancybenjamin​ @anne-white-star​ @theonlyone-meeeee​ @witchlyboo​ @demo-wise​ 

There are rumors that a grand duchess survived, of course—they are whispered into life almost immediately after the murders at Yekaterinburg and never quite disappear—although no one can seem to decide which one. Sometimes it’s Maria, sometimes Olga, sometimes me, most often Anastasia; and for years, decades afterwards there are women who periodically surface and claim to be my most undomesticated sister, and each time I know they’re not just by seeing their photograph in the newspapers. The only consensus that can be found is that surely the survivor is not Tatiana, as she never could have vanished into the anonymous ether of humanity, not with that striking, elegant, gem-rare sort of face. No, everyone agrees that the most beautiful Romanov daughter died in Russia; everyone, that is, but Ben.

It is the last day of the October of 1918 when we board a ship bound for the New World. Ben, Joe, and I ascend the steps as Ben’s family—our family, now—waves us off from the dock: August, Kathryn, Opal, Leo, Luther, Ben’s mother…and Frankie, too. He arrived in London six days after our audience with the king, honorable discharge papers in hand and a perplexed yet grateful expression on his face. I don’t know if it was guilt, or a bribe, or one last favor to my father, or simple pure-hearted mercy once his shock and rage bled away, but King George V kept his word about bringing Frankie home. I never ask my uncle about it. I never ask him anything. I never speak to a member of any royal family again.

As we cross the Atlantic—the days shortening, the nights bitterly cold, bobbing dolphins chasing our iron walls, right whales breaching in the distance—Ben and I walk the decks like we did on that bleak journey from Saint Petersburg to London, but this time we do it as Benjamin and Lana Hardy. We married in a brief, uncomplicated ceremony in a tiny Russian Orthodox cathedral we found tucked away in North London; as a wedded couple, we will have a smoother passage through Ellis Island. We have also thought of a way to keep the Romanov jewels safe and undiscovered, as our luggage will almost certainly be searched upon our arrival: we’ve sewn them into our clothes.

Joe, predictably, makes many new friends onboard—Italians, Greeks, Turks, Spaniards, Poles, Russians, Hungarians, Jews—but he grows closest to an Egyptian named Rami. Rami, a Coptic Christian, fled Egypt to escape religious persecution…but not before falling in love with the daughter of a British archaeologist based there. He and Lucy are newlyweds too, always entwining their fingers and gazing into each other’s clear eyes and bubbling over with anticipation for their very own fabled American Dream to begin. Lucy is expecting their first child already, and as we chat away her hand often settles—unthinkingly, instinctively—on the modest swell of her belly.

At Ellis Island, we are pried at and interrogated and examined for any signs of defects, whether mental or physical or of the spirit. And as we are granted entry and rush down the staircase with our hands gliding over flaking metal railings—the same railings gripped by millions seeking new lives here—I remember my dream from the night before we were summoned to Buckingham Palace: water, metal, crowds, cobblestone streets, unfamiliar plants, a cold prickling drink that I will one day recognize as Coca-Cola, innumerable transparent bulbs of light. Perhaps that was more than a dash of intuition. Perhaps it was my parents letting me know it was alright to choose another path.

We find an apartment in Brighton Beach; between the five of us, we can afford to keep it to ourselves without squeezing in any additional boarders. That first night—after Kroshka has been placed in a rented stable stall down the street, after the luggage is unpacked, after we have eaten chebureki purchased from a street vendor, as the cracked and bare walls stare silently back at us—Ben sits down on the scuffed floor and covers his face with his hands, too exhausted to weep but drained and petrified down to the bones. “It’s the responsibility,” he says, and I know exactly what he means: it’s the weight of having to look after his family, Joe, our new friends, me.

The very next day, I get a job at a settlement house three blocks from our apartment. The pay isn’t much, but then again it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been paid for anything, and so that in itself gives me a great deal of satisfaction. I excel there; I am a proficient typist, I can read and write and speak a myriad of languages, and educated women fluent in Russian are hard to come by in Brooklyn. I teach new arrivals to speak English, I teach children to hold pencils, I teach adults how to find work, I teach women how to escape violent husbands and to prevent unwanted pregnancies. I clean faces and braid hair and look into eyes—shining, hopeful, thankful eyes—that remind me so much of my parents and brother and sisters that my heart aches, and then calms, and then opens wide to swallow up and engulf the abandoned people of this city, of this world. Little do I know that I will work at this same settlement house for fifty-one years, over half a century, longer than either of my parents lived.

Ben starts out at an afternoon daily newspaper company called the Brooklyn Eagle. In his spare time, he writes his own articles and shops around for publications that will take them. When we are in desperate need—when a storm shatters our windows, when the radiator breaks in the middle of January, when I catch pneumonia and need medicine and weeks of bedrest—Ben takes a few of the smallest jewels or a rope of precious metal to a pawn shop on the other side of Brooklyn and returns with a thick stack of bills with Alexander Hamilton’s face on them. Joe gets a job at a pizzeria in Little Italy so he can learn the tricks of the trade before striking out on his own. Rami works there too for a while before finding a position at a tailor shop owned by a Coptic Christian from Luxor.

Once they save up enough money, Rami and Lucy move into their own apartment in Astoria—where many Egyptian families are settling—and promptly fill it with fervently desired children. Joe marries a Sicilian woman named Christabella and moves with her to Little Italy. We see each other several times per week and I am present at each of Lucy’s births. Rami teaches me Arabic. I teach him Italian. Ben teaches me Old English songs from his childhood. Joe teaches us all to make pizza.

Sometimes—as I lay awake at night long after Ben has fallen into sleep, his breathing slow and serene—I wonder what became of the items I left at Buckingham Palace: the books, the scarf, the pillowcase. I wonder if they were lost, or thrown out with the rubbish, or kept by the Prince of Wales as some sort of strange memento. Sometimes I wish I still had them. More often, I am glad that I don’t.

I was a different person then. Perhaps it is better to make a truly clean start.

Within a year, and with the help of a sizeable contribution from me and Ben, Joe has opened up his own pizza shop in Little Italy called Signore Mazzello’s Pizzeria. It frequently has a line wrapped around the block during the lunch rush.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is 1925, and the nation is booming, racing, roaring. I am promoted to Assistant Director of the settlement house. Ben writes an article about his childhood in London and the New York Times buys it. When he sells them another—an anthology of the stories of the other immigrants who share our apartment building, many of them Russian by birth—they offer him a position as a full-time columnist. We stay in Brighton Beach but move to a townhouse on a quiet street with several bedrooms, a stable for Kroshka, and a small, fenced backyard. Ben sends word to his family in London that the time has finally come for them to join us across the Atlantic. They arrive on our doorstep one month later: Ben’s hushed mother, Frankie with his wife Althea, Luther with his fiancé Ethel, Leo with his poems, Opal with her paintings, Kathryn doting on the very slow and very grey basset hounds, August having grown into a singularly joyful and charismatic young man. The original plan was that they would stay with us only until they found their footing in Brooklyn, but as it turns out our home is always full; someone moves out, someone else moves back, it is a carousel of weddings and children and holidays and farewells and reunions. It is an undying warmth and fullness that I never believed I would experience again. It is heaven on earth.

Ben and I have two children, both explicitly planned. Each time he insists that I labor in a hospital, and each time he is in the room with me from start to end. We name them and we love them and we watch them grow like the flora of Central Park: eastern redbuds, blue mistflowers, scarlet beebalms, Carolina springbeauties, cinnamon ferns, calla lilies. Ben’s mother treasures our children and spends hours with them each day. They bring her a new purpose; they bring her peace. She says it is like being able to hold her own lost children again.

We make generous donations to settlement houses throughout New York City. When the aging owner retires, Rami takes over the tailor shop. Joe opens up three additional locations of Signore Mazzello’s Pizzeria throughout Brooklyn.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is 1936, and our adopted country is in the depths of the Great Depression. We help others float through the storm as best we can. At the New York Times, Ben takes on and funds several apprentices from working-class families. We volunteer at soup kitchens. We stock the pantry shelves at the settlement house. We teach our children about egalitarianism and democracy and compassion. We raise them to know nothing of my bloodline. They believe that I am British just as Ben is, and that we met as coworkers in London; we never mention that either of us ever set foot on Russian soil. This is a necessity: however unlikely, I am unwilling to risk the possibility of detection. Every once in a great while someone will give me a second glance, or narrow their eyes, or blink thoughtfully at me as if they have met me once in a dream…but it amounts to nothing. Even the Russian immigrants I work with rarely suspect anything. My accent and dialect are so far removed from theirs—so formal, so educated—that they can believe I learned it from a book. The last Romanov daughter is gone, buried like the rest of them. What is left is only Lana.

At Christmastime—a lean, humble Christmas—I read in the newspaper that David Windsor has abdicated the British throne and passed it on to his dull, dutiful younger brother. David left so he could marry the woman he loved, a woman forbidden to him, a divorced American named Wallis Simpson. As I sit at the kitchen table studying the lines of his face in the black-and-white photograph published on the front page, I wonder if any part of him was thinking of me when he announced his abdication to millions of British subjects via a BBC radio broadcast. I wonder if somewhere in the back of his skull lurked my shadow, my vanishing, my willingness to cut through the ties of royalty to embrace a life of my own choosing.

Rami and Lucy welcome their sixth child, a daughter they call Lana. Ben writes articles imploring the United States to accept refugees fleeing the rise of fascism in Europe. Joe has to close three of his pizzerias, but with a little help from Ben and me (and our stock of clandestine jewels), he is able to hold onto the original location through the worst years the American economy will ever see.

Some people sink, of course; there are always those who will sink. But we pull as many into the life rafts as we can.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is 1958, and Ben and I celebrate our 40 year anniversary with a trip to Australia. We see the kangaroos and koala bears and beaches and the vast, red wildness of the Outback, and while we think of Gwilym and Hazel Lee quite a lot we don’t spend any time at all contemplating the merits or failings of the British Empire. I have learned that it is futile, maddening even, to battle against things so far above my control; it’s like trying to fight the sea or the stars. I cannot set all things right across the globe, but I can improve the circumstances of thousands of souls. Surely there is no better way to repay the debt the Romanovs owed to the world. Surely my parents and siblings would understand if they could see me now…and sometimes, when I dream of them, I like to believe they can.

As I am leafing through a magazine one afternoon, I come across a photograph of David Windsor and his wife Wallis. They are at a polo match or a garden party or something like that—something frivolous, something regal, waving to the paparazzi—and before I can turn the page one detail catches my eye. Looped loosely around Wallis’ thin neck is the green scarf I bought in Moscow. The silver-thread bears are as bright and shimmering as I remember them. Wallis is flashing a wide, triumphant smile to the same reporters who had once maligned her as a conniving, lowborn whore.

He kept my things after all. Why would he do that?

I close the magazine, thinking of the strings that tie people together and then unravel and then come back together again in new designs. I think of how little each of us truly knows. Sometimes that’s a blessing, and sometimes that’s a curse, and sometimes we’ll never know which it is.

I am made Director of the settlement house. Ben is promoted to Deputy Editor of the New York Times. Signore Mazzello’s Pizzeria now has ten locations: four in New York City, one in Baltimore, two in Philadelphia, and three in Chicago. Joe has his sights set on Los Angeles next.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is 1963, and I watch as Walter Cronkite announces that President John F. Kennedy has been assassinated. His wife was right there in the limousine. The new president is sworn in as she stands beside him, shellshocked, embittered, her pink suit stained with her husband’s blood and brains.

Everyone is horrified, and everyone is sad, but my children don’t understand why I cannot stop crying, why I cannot sleep, why I cannot get the vision of a nation’s leader senselessly murdered in front of his family out of my mind. I sit in front of the television with tears leaking ceaselessly from my scarlet eyes, thinking of Papa, Mother, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, Alexei. It’s like I’m back in Saint Petersburg. It’s like I’m learning they were slaughtered all over again.

Only Ben understands. He bundles me into his arms and presses his lips to my temple and whispers that I am safe, that our children are safe, that my family would be proud of me. It is the same way when Malcolm X is killed, and then Martin Luther King Jr., and then Bobby Kennedy. I am torn apart by the thought of their wives and children left bereft, left forever scarred by their murders. It guts me and leaves me bleeding for weeks.

We anonymously donate the last of the Romanov jewels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is fierce public debate for years concerning who came to possess them and how. Each time there is a newspaper article or a television broadcast about the jewels, Ben and I share a small surreptitious smile. Signore Mazzello’s Pizzeria restaurants stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and boast over fifty locations. Joe leaves the business to his children to manage and retires with his wife to Atlantic City, New Jersey. He spends his days sunbathing on the beach, playing blackjack, eating cannoli, and gossiping with other Italians.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is July 13th, 1985. There are photographs of the loved ones we’ve lost on the mantle above the fireplace: Willis, Cecil, Louise, Ben’s mother…and there are even a few of Kroshka. The house is full of my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Ben’s siblings, our nieces and nephews and their children and their children, too. It is my great-grandson’s tenth birthday. His name—by pure coincidence—is Alexei.

There are children giggling and running through sprinklers in the backyard and basset hounds sniffing after crumbs of hors d'oeuvres and balloons everywhere. The living room is packed with people watching Queen’s performance at Live Aid on our single television, clapping along to Radio Ga Ga. Rami and Lucy arrive with the gift of a handmade sky-blue velvet suit. Joe and Christabella arrive with about twenty boxes of pizza. Ben and I and our two daughters are in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on Alexei’s birthday cake. It’s quite a challenge; Alexei loves dinosaurs, and the stegosaurus made of green icing has plenty of ragged edges to smooth out. Later, when Ben lights the candles, he will use a tarnished steel lighter with a bear carved into one side.

“Papa, Mum, have you seen this?” Tatiana, our eldest, asks. She holds open the pages of Time Magazine. “Some reporter based out of L.A. did a story on the Winter Palace. You know, where the Romanovs lived before they were deposed. He posed as a tourist and took a bunch of photos and smuggled them out of the Soviet Union, and now the Soviets are pissed. They don’t allow photography in the museum. And they definitely don’t want Americans capitalizing on their national historic sites. Anyway, check it out.” She turns the pages. Ben glances over at me. The butterknife has fallen out of my hand and onto the kitchen counter.

“Here, Mum, let me do that,” Louise offers. She plucks a clean knife out of the silverware drawer and resumes the meticulous sculpting of the stegosaurus.

“Amazing, huh?” Tati says, still flipping pages. They’re vivid, bright, in full color; they bring back memories I had forgotten I have. “There’s the Throne Room…the Malachite Room…the ballroom…the gardens…even the—”

“The private family rooms,” I murmur, dazed. “The bedrooms. The study. The dining room.”

“Yeah,” Tati replies. She’s still grinning, but her brow furrows. “Mum…are you okay?”

“She’s fine,” Ben says quickly. “She’s just tired. That stegosaurus has been giving us hell. I love the technique the reporter used here, opening with a vignette…”

Throughout the years, throughout the decades, as the century slips away from me, I have tried to avoid witnessing the calamities of my homeland: famines, purges, dictators, wars, censorship, rivalry, bloodshed and turmoil and insurmountable suffering. I barely recognize it at all; what was once Imperial Russia is now the Soviet Union, what was once Saint Petersburg is now Leningrad, what was once hope and the promise of a better future is now grim authoritarianism. I can still see my family in the Russian immigrants I helped settle here in New York City, but I don’t see them in the modern-day iteration of my birthplace.  

But these pictures Tati is showing me, these memories…they are not from some failed, foreign land. They are the places where Papa puffed on his pipe and told us ancient folktales, where Mother read in her wheelchair, where Alexei played with his tiny toy soldiers on the rug in front of the fireplace, where my sisters and I stayed awake laughing and whispering until morning sunrays shone through our bedroom windows.

I reach out to touch the pictures with my fingertips. My hands are wrinkled, knobby, arthritic, just like Mother’s once were. Tati is still watching me, concerned.

“I know, it’s so beautiful, but so sad,” she says. “Knowing that the people who once lived there were murdered so brutally. Those poor kids. To have all this, and then to have nothing. It must have been a miserable last year for them.”

“They didn’t have nothing,” Ben tells Tati gently. “They had their family.”

“Yeah, but I mean…do royal families even really know each other? Don’t they just get together for polo games and tea parties and…I don’t know…arranged marriages?”

“The Romanovs knew each other.” Ben smooths my silver hair fondly. His hands shake a bit now, but they’re still strong, still perfect. His scars have faded with time; they are nearly invisible. It’s almost as if our pasts never happened. It’s almost as if we’ve always been the people we are now, here in the New World surrounded by friends and family and golden possibilities. “They were…a bit of an anomaly among royal families. Nicholas was very attentive to the children, very loving. And Alexandra was too, to the extent that she could be with her poor health. They did everything together. They went sledding and horseback riding and swimming, they told stories, they played games, they shared meals, they took care of each other. They hoped and they worked and they prayed. They tried to shield each other from the burdens the world placed on their backs. In a lot of ways…the Romanovs weren’t all that different from us.”

“Oh, wow,” Tati says, fascinated, awed. “I didn’t know that. They really must have been something.”

Ben looks over at me, smiling. “They were.”

[ilongfor-the-arts]

Rockstar fic recs:

(I’ll update this if I find anything else good ;)

Fics:

Izzy Stradlin -

lust for life🌶

prompt smut🌶

best served cold🌶

Josh Kiszka -

pullout couch🌶

Feather Light🌶

Roger Taylor -

Medical🌶

Kirk Hammett -

Need🌶

James Hetfield (on ao3) -

stinking drunk with power🌶

hands🌶

Slash-

our little secret🌶

daddy’s girl🌶(WattPad)

Jimmy Page-

“Church girl” ficlet ⚡️

The Mile High Club 🌶

Gerard Way:

First Time for Everything 🌶 (3 parter)

Authors:

Greta Van Fleet - @garbagevanfleet @godlygreta @arcaneblaine @eatmejoshkiszka @stardustchordssammy @greta-van-fics @tripthelightfandomtastic

Etc. rock bands - @thesmokingguns @oldschoolimagineblog @lost-in-the-80s @s-lasxh @duffmckagans @eatmyshiftsticky @yourlocalmusicalprostitute @thepinklovewitch @xx-sikki-nixx-xx @brianbabey @tremble-and-shake @xocasper

#reading recommendations #fanfic rec

[demo-wise]

✨💜🌙SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING ✨💜

Ahh thank you soo much my love! Tbh I’m just gonna tag ‘em here ❤️

@benders-diamond-earring @yourlocalmusicalprostitute @inthedayswhenlandswerefew @almightyellie @upsidedownwithsteve

Love you all!!

#ask #ask game #munsonmuses #lauren answers #you have questions i might have answers

[backchattingdancer]

okay this is going to get a little sappy here so be warned @rossmccallsqueen, @roger-s-maracas, @inthedayswhenlandswerefew, @yourlocalmusicalprostitute

I want to tell you all something. So, I joined the Queen fandom kind of late. But before I had an account, I'd lurk on yours, read your posts etc. and I thought you were such amazingly cool people. And now- we're mutuals and my mind is literally blown. I love you very much and am so grateful I get to talk to you all and interact with your posts. Have an amazing day/night! ❤

#mutuals appreciation

[borhapgirlforlife19]

If I had to pick any song that makes me think of Joe, it’s this one. ❤️

@hurricanekat1991 @queenborhaplovergirl @amethyst-serenade @deanscroissant @marianne2020 @rossmccallsqueen @xtrashmammalstefx @inaretuza @manic-morgan-moon @lady-artemis27 @okilover02 @warriorteam1924 @leah-halliwell92 @iluvharrypotter172 @bohemiansweede @yourlocalmusicalprostitute @lofilulu

#Spotify

[yourlocalmusicalprostitute]

Hey yall, I worked really hard on this uquiz titled What Queen House are You?

It's designed to sort you into a Queen House like there are Hogwarts Houses. If you want take the quiz and tell me which one you're sorted into! Its only nine (9) questions so it shouldn't take too long!

#for my queue still ahead pity me #roger taylor #john deacon #brian may #Freddie mercury #uquiz #yourlocalmusicalprostitute #Queen #queen band #rami malek #ben hardy #gwilym lee #joe mazzello

[ecle-c-tic]

Hot Space for the album game!

MY TIME TO SHINE!!! Thank you SOOOOO much for the ask, I really appreciate it! I hope you're having a great night!

As you can tell I despise Hot Space, skskksks!

--

The cover: ICONIC! 10/10 amazing, beautiful, cured my acne, watered my crops, aced the tests.

Favourite song: Soul Brother, Dancer, Cool Cat, Put Out the Fire, Action This Day, Las Palabras de Amor, Back Chat, Staying Power.

Least favourite song: ...Under Pressure. (Just bc my love for everything is exponential!) I also don’t play Body Language a whole lot.

Underrated track: Staying Power, Dancer, Back Chat, Body Language, Action This Day, Put Out the Fire, Life is Real, Calling All Girls, Las Palabras de Amor, Cool Cat, Soul Brother.

Overrated track: Under Pressure!!!!!!!!

And I will give a colour that I associate with that album: Disco ball silver or like trumpet brass! (I’m done with the pantones sksksksk)

--

Much Love, Good Vibes! 💛🌞

send me a Queen album!

#yourlocalmusicalprostitute #THANK YOU #Queen opinions #gtkm #asks #I really appreciate it

[akindoftarot]

I'm so excited for the deck, like incredibly excited. I can't wait to buy it & use it constantly. Hopefully it's enough to create even more!!

oh gosh hard same!! i’ve just been so blown away by the response it got and how many people wanted to part of it and i’m so so excited to see it all come together into an actual deck!! and i’m thrilled that other people want this deck too!

#i know im responding to this late #i saw your message come in while i was at work and then i completely forgot to actually reply once i got home lmao #yourlocalmusicalprostitute

[somebodytoolove]

∞ 👀??

hey! :)) thank you for asking 💗

song: love shack by the b-52’s

i got me a car, it seats about twenty, so come on and bring your jukebox money

PUT A “∞” IN MY ASK BOX AND I’LL SHUFFLE MY MUSIC PLAYER AND GIVE YOU MY FAVORITE LYRIC FROM THE SONG THAT COMES UP.

#asks #yourlocalmusicalprostitute

[likesomekindofcheese]

what about a fic with Joe mazzello where your like...."huh babe yknow this other actor named joseph quinn in st4 sort of looks like your portrayal of John" and teasing him about it

Yes! You can bet I can take advantage of our new Tumblr Sexy man Joseph Quinn and his physical similarities to Joe!!!

(I swear, they need to play brothers someday!!!)

So first, let's make this a headcanon. And secondly, let's make the reader gender neutral.

COMMENTS AND REBLOGS ARE APPRECIATED!!

TW: Swearing, but pretty fluffy and that's about it.

So Joseph was upstairs playing video games while you were downstairs.

One plus about your relationship is that you recognized the need for space and appreciation for different interests :)

As he was pressing a button to make Mario jump for a coin he heard the distinct sound of a riffing guitar with some thunder downstairs. But today was a hot summer's day with the crickets lazily chirping as the bright sun faded. Not one dark cloud in the sky.

Hearing more, it was Master of Puppets by Metallica. He shrugged it off and kept playing.

He cursed when he lost his last life, unable to hear your footsteps up.

"Babe! Babe! You got to see this!" You said with urgency. Your eyes were wide with excitement more than panic.

"Y/N, what is it?" he asked, turning to look at you. His red hair messy from a whole day inside.

"Come downstairs...there's a guy on the new season of Stranger Things who looks like you!" you explained.

He follows down in curiosity. You pause and rewind the episode, muttering "blah blah blah skip skip skip show us Eddie!"

You then paused right on a frame of the Eddie in question.

"His hair is too long, sweetie!" Joe objected.

You whipped out your phone and pulled out a picture of your Joe as Deaky.

He blinked and his eyes darted from the phone to the tv to the phone and back again.

"H...Holy shit..." he mumbled.

"And wait until you see him without the wig!" you added on. You reached down on your phone and searched up a photo.

"The guy who plays him, get this, he's named Joe too!"

"What!?"

"Yes," you pulled up a photo of the other Joe in the phone and shoved it to the present Joe's face.

"And he looks like this!" you cried.

Joseph Mazzello's eyes went big at the sight and he began nodding in appreciation. Similar reddish hair. Similar face structure. Similar foreheads.

"Huh...his eyes are darker, and the bulb of his nose is rounder, I think," you said, you took Joe's face in your hands and "examined" it, much to his amusement.

"Maybe my mom doesn't have a secret about John Deacon but his father!" he joked. Both of you giggled.

"I'll let you know, he's everywhere on the internet. Buzzfeed, Tumblr, Twitter, Insta, and Facebook even. They're mad about him and his character in Stranger Things." you explained

Joe put his hands on his hips

"They could have cast me!"

"But what about your new movie?" you asked with a laugh.

"That's not the point!"

Both of you giggled and he placed his hands around your waist.

"Then, I better watch out if he gets near you." he teased. "I know you got a type now! He better not steal you away from me!"

"Not in a million years!" you insisted.

You gave him a kiss on the tip of his nose. "But he's not my Joe. My Joe is funny and multi-talented, and smart, and adorable, and not to mention pretty dark sexy..."

"Sexy, eh?" he returned with a kiss on the lips.

Taglist: @queenlover05@yourlocalmusicalprostitute @0x0spunky-monkey0x0

#carrie writes #jospeh mazzello #joseph quinn #joe quinn #joe mazzello #joe mazzello x reader #joe mazzello x y/n #jospeh mazzello x you #josepth mazzello x gn! y/n #joseph mazzello x gn! reader #joe mazzello fanfiction #joe mazzello fluff #joseph mazzello fluff #joseph mazzello headcanons #joe mazzello headcanons #bohrap boys #bohrap boys fanfiction #bohrap boys imagine

[hexiva]

Since finishing mr robot I cant stop thinking about Rami, am I entitled to compensation?????

Yes!! your compensation is: being thrown into Mr. Robot Hell with the rest of us. Welcome! Hope you survive the experience!

#Protect Elliot Alderson 2020 #yourlocalmusicalprostitute

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

We Were Something, Don’t You Think So? [Chapter 10: London]

You are a Russian grand duchess in a time of revolution. Ben Hardy is a British government official tasked with smuggling you across Europe. You don’t hate each other at all.

This is a work of fiction loosely inspired by the events of the Russian Revolution and the downfall of the Romanov family. Many creative liberties were taken. No offense is meant to any actual people. Thank you for reading! :)

A/N: Wow I really pulled a George R. R. Martin and just never updated my story, didn’t I?! I return now with no excuses but with plenty of excitement to at last be giving this fic the ending it deserves. There are only two more chapters left! As always, thank you so very much for reading. 💜

Song inspiration: “the 1” by Taylor Swift.

Chapter warnings: Language, mentions of war and violence, sexual content (not graphic).

Word count: 9k. She chonky.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @imtheinvisiblequeen​ @okilover02​ @adrenaline-roulette​ @youngpastafanmug​ @m-1234​ @tensecondvacation​ @haileymorelikestupid​ @rogerfuckintaylor​ @yourlocalmusicalprostitute​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @someforeigntragedy​ @mo-whore​ @mellowfellowyellow​ @peculiareunoia​ @mischiefmanaged71​ @fancybenjamin​ @anne-white-star​ @theonlyone-meeeee​ @witchlyboo​ @demo-wise​ ​

Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

“You are sneaky,” Joe says. He holds his cappuccino in one hand and wags a finger at me with the other. It took Mr. Lee’s kitchen staff a week to learn how to make a halfway decent cappuccino—I’m not sure if Joe’s passionate coaching was more of an asset or a distraction—and now he orders no less than four a day. “You are very sneaky. But not sneaky enough to fool me.”

I flip a page in the book Ben gave me, the one about British kings and queens. There’s a lot of information about the queens, he was right about that. Overhead the leaves are golden and oche and fluttering in the October wind; there is a softness to everything in London, the air and the sky and the trees and the people. It is unlike Russia in even more ways than I had remembered, in more ways than I could ever count. Joe and I are sitting in the courtyard behind Mr. Lee’s six-bedroom house and attempting to cultivate an appreciation for what the kitchen staff proudly call the Full English Breakfast: sausage, bacon, fried eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, ketchup, and a menacing hunk of black pudding, which is just a kinder name for grains mixed with pig blood. I’m sure Joe is fantasizing about biscotti and frittatas every bit as much as I’m missing blini and kasha. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, quite dishonestly.

“Why must you lie to me, Lana bella donna?” Joe sighs. “There is no sense in this deceit. I know it already, assolutamente. I told you. My people are fluent in love.”

Here’s what he means: we’ve been guests of Mr. Lee for two weeks now, and each night—even after Mr. Lee and his wife have retired to their wing of the house, even after the footsteps of the maids and butlers and flocks of Sealyham Terriers have quieted—I lie awake alone in my queen-sized bed and Ben is nowhere to be found. Meeting him again in secret is too risky, this goes without saying. There can be no whispers that ripen to be sold and bitten into once I have unveiled myself publicly and married into the British royal family. And yet, still, there are moments, fleeting trivial things that I had believed no one else saw: the way Ben laughs at even my clumsiest attempts at jokes, the way I graze his hand with mine each time he passes me a cup or a plate, the way he watches me from across the dinner table when he thinks I’m not paying attention. I crave him all the time, I am consumed by thoughts of him, I am acutely aware of where he stands in every room…and then sometimes I look at Ben and something about him makes me so profoundly miserable I almost wish I’d never met him at all. Almost. “It’s an infatuation. Nothing more. Like Papa and Mathilde.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” I dip a corner of buttered toast into the yielding, viscous egg yolk, golden like the sun and the leaves, like my impending future. Yet I find my appetite for gilded things to be dwindling. I peer up at Joe. “Do you think less of me?”

He shrugs with a wry smile. “I am but a humble deserter of my ancestral homeland. I have no judgement in me for anyone. Not you, not Ben, not countries or governments or armies, not revolutionaries. But the mess of it all does hold a certain sadness, no?”

“Yes. I suppose it holds a great deal of sadness.”

“Stai attento,” Joe says gently. His knowing dark eyes say it too. Be careful.

“You’re the one who wanted me to be nicer to him.”

“Yes, but you are between two worlds. And embracing one means slitting the throat of the other.”

“That’s very melodramatic of you.”

Joe chuckles, grins slyly, slurps his cappuccino. “I cannot help this. I am Italian.”

The back door bangs open and Ben comes out to join us in the courtyard. He is agitated, running his hands through his hair and frowning, looking much older than he is. He collapses into the chair beside me and lights a hand-rolled cigarette with the tarnished steel lighter he bought on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The bear etched into the side glints in the sunshine, pawing the air and roaring soundlessly.

“No luck with Uncle George?” I ask.

“He’s still up in Scotland.” Ben spends much of his time in Mr. Lee’s study making calls on the telephone. It’s not as if he can speak to the king directly, of course; Ben calls someone in the prime minister’s office, who calls someone else, who calls someone else, on and on until Ben’s message has reached Balmoral Castle, and then the same process plays out in reverse. It all seems rather illogical to me, rather needlessly ritualistic, although I suppose Papa once did business the same way. It’s not enough to keep mere distance between royalty and the outside world; one must steel themselves against it with both palms pressed against the door. “I keep telling them that I need a private audience with King George, but I can’t make him come back to London. I’m just a press attaché. I’m not someone who matters. And obviously I’m not going to say anything about you over the phone. I don’t think they’d believe me, and even if they did we can’t have the secret getting loose before your safety is assured.”

“You matter,” I object, pained.

Ben doesn’t dignify this with words; he rolls his eyes instead. Some days he leaves me under Joe’s supervision and goes to visit his family on the other side of London. I wonder why he’s never asked if I would like to come along. I wonder if he’s ashamed of me, of my affluence, of my distinct lack of working-class wisdom.

“The king must come home eventually, no?” Joe says, trying to be encouraging.

“Sure. In a few days, maybe. Or a week. Or a month. Who knows?” Ben’s gaze lands on my authentic English breakfast and he perks up considerably. “Oh god, that looks delicious.”

I nudge my plate towards him. “Please, by all means, help yourself.”

As Ben eats—fork nestled in one hand, smoldering cigarette in the other—I resume my reading. “How is it?” Ben asks around a mouthful of bacon. He looks young again now, unguarded, curious and smiling. There’s a pang in my chest that is half red-colored longing and half heavy, dark grief. I collect myself like seashells laid in a basket.

“It’s extremely educational. Although I do take issue with some of the subject matter.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Well, the chapter about Queen Mary Tudor, for example,” I say. “She was the first queen regnant of England—one of the only queens—and she had so much opportunity to make her country a better place. So much potential. So much education and talent and resources. And then she spent her reign burning people and obsessing over her indifferent husband, following him around like a dog, paralyzed by misery every time he traveled abroad. Such a waste.”

Ben shrugs. “She did exactly what her parents would have wanted her to do. She married a man of royal blood and submitted herself to him. Because she believed her worth was measured only by the heirs she could produce.”

“That’s not the point.” I’m frowning, irritable; this is not the response I had anticipated. I hate when Ben is sharp like this, covered in barbs of cynicism like needles. It makes me wonder if he really likes me at all, if it’s possible he ever did. “She still had choices. She could have been kind to her people. Charitable, tolerant, forgiving.”

An exhale of smoke; a metallic glint in his green eyes. “Yeah? And what choices would you have made, had you been our dear departed Mary?”

“I wouldn’t have let emotions distract me from my responsibilities. I would have focused on helping the people I could, not falling into some pit of despair.”

“I see,” Ben says as he mops up beans and ketchup with a slice of toast. “So you would still marry the indifferent husband, just have the herculean foresight and self-control to not become quite so maddeningly inert.”

“I don’t know,” I snap, flipping pages rapidly.

“What? You suddenly don’t know what you’d do?”

“I don’t know what inert means.”

“It means motionless or ineffective.”

“Right, so yes, I wouldn’t let myself become that.”

“Perhaps Queen Mary Tudor once thought the same thing. Perhaps bitterness has a way of making monsters out of us all.”

“I’m not interested in this conversation anymore,” I say, burying my face in my book.

“Naturally.”

“Oh look, it is a cloud shaped like a cannoli,” Joe says, pointing.

“You’re not hungry?” Ben asks me with some concern.

“Not for an English breakfast.” How could anyone be hungry for blood pudding and ketchup and baked beans? Baked beans?!

“I can ask the cooks to make something else,” Ben says. “What do you want?”

“No, that’s alright.”

“Seriously, what do you want?”

“I couldn’t bear to trouble them. Our hosts have been so generous already. Once I’m in a position to do so…”—once I’m welcomed into the British royal family—“I’ll have to ensure that Mr. Lee and his household are adequately compensated for this inconvenience. And to think, I was so determined to hate him.”

Ben is perplexed. “Why?”

I reply as if it’s obvious: “Because he’s a cousin of the prime minister. And the prime minister is the man who convinced the king not to offer my family asylum.”

Ben stares at me. Joe stares at me. A silence settles over the courtyard, punctuated only by birdsong and rustling leaves. “That’s not how I understood things,” Ben says at last.

“What do you mean?”

Ben sets his fork down on the now-empty plate and clears his throat. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not going to fix anything. It’s just going to hurt you.”

I marvel at how recently he has acquired an aversion to hurting me. It’s almost like learning a new language, one he hasn’t quite found his footing in yet. “I’d still like to know.”

“Forget it.”

Joe interjects: “You really must see this cloud, look, it is incredibile, I now have a violent hunger for cannoli…”

“Ben,” I say softly, like a plea.

His words come slowly, haltingly. “From what I heard…from Sir Buchanan, and from other people on the ambassador’s staff as well…it was the king who harbored the greatest reservations about publicly aiding the Romanovs.”

Uncle George? Uncle George was the one who didn’t want to save us? Uncle George dragged his feet until my family was executed and butchered and hastily disposed of like a secret, like stolen treasure or a tainted bride? “I don’t believe that,” I whisper, my voice hoarse.

“That’s fine,” Ben replies mildly. “You don’t have to.”

“Why would he do that?” I demand, my eyes blazing, daring Ben to battle me. “Why on earth would Uncle George not want to save us, his own blood, his own family? He loved my father. He loved me. He would never abandon us of his own volition. Someone must have convinced him there was no other choice.”

“Sure. Maybe. You’re probably right,” Ben concedes.

“You didn’t answer me.” There’s a white-hot fire in my chest like lightning. “Why would Uncle George not want to save us?”

Ben won’t meet my eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Because it’s not true,” I say, victorious. “Because you’re mistaken. You have to be.”

“That’s possible,” Ben murmurs.

We sit steeped in an uneasy quiet, Ben peering down at the table, Joe up at the sky, me at both of them. Ben must be wrong. Not purposefully wrong, no, not knowingly wrong, but wrong nonetheless. Uncle George would have saved us if he had known it was feasible, if he had known how truly desperate we were. The alternative is impossible. The alternative is unimaginable.

“There’s one more thing,” Ben says at last, as if he doesn’t want to.

“What?” I ask.

“The king may still be at Balmoral Castle, but someone else came home yesterday.”

I can feel my brow crinkling in confusion. “Who?”

Now Ben’s eyes finally find mine. “The Prince of Wales.”

“David?” I gasp. “Really? He’s on leave?”

“He’s at Buckingham Palace. I could try to arrange a meeting with him. Somewhere secluded, somewhere safe. Which brings me to my question for you. Do you want to see him today?”

“Do you think he’ll take me to stay with him? At the palace, I mean?” Will I ever see you again, Ben?

“I don’t know.”

My answer should be clear and immediate, but it isn’t; it catches behind my teeth like a horse’s bit. Reaching the Windsors has been my objective since I left Tobolsk in a trunk in the back of a mule cart, yet somehow this feels too sudden, too final. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a great precipice, the wind howling up to tangle my hair, my father’s blood in my cheeks, my mother’s palms on my back. But there’s only one correct answer. I surrender to it. “Yes,” I say simply, as if it took no thought at all. “Of course I want to see him.”

Ben’s still watching me, his eyes emerald-green and searching and pensive. “Okay.” He stands, bites his lower lip, shakes his head once like he’s casting out bad dreams. “Okay,” he says again, and then he retreats back inside the house.

~~~~~~~~~~

The clock tower chimes twice and ominous grey clouds are filling the sky as Ben leads me through Hyde Park, a sprawling and verdant place I’ve never been to before. He chats nervously while I barely reply; I feel like dark water, still and quiet and kilometers deep. Ben tosses me trivial trinkets of British history like tarnished coins into a fountain.

“Do you know what we call it?” he asks, nodding towards the omnipresent clangs of the clock tower.

I shake my head distractedly, skating my palm over the pliable purple petals of asters.

He grins. “Big Ben.”

“Oh. After you, of course.”

“Yes, because I am definitely that important.”

“I have a few things named after me,” I say. “A library, a hospital, an art gallery, a room in the Winter Palace, a naval base in Vladivostok…”

“Jesus Christ,” Ben replies. “No wonder you’re so humble.”

“Well…come to think of it…I suppose they probably aren’t named after me anymore. Or won’t be for much longer. The revolutionaries will erase my existence entirely, chisel me off the monuments. They’ll obliterate all the Romanovs. It’ll be like killing us all over again.”

Ben hesitates, then takes my left hand in his. This is unwise; and yet I let him. In fact, I do more than let him. I squeeze his hand fearfully, desperately, my fingertips reading his scars like Braille. “You’ll have plenty of things named after you here if you want them to be,” Ben says.

I squint up at the shadowy, tumultuous sky. “I’d rather have them named after Tatiana or Alexei, I think.”

“That could probably be arranged.” Ben releases me, shoving clenched fists into his coat pockets. Arranged by the man we’re here to meet. By the Prince of Wales.

Because a prince of a powerful nation could do anything, right? Anything he wanted. Anything at all. Except stem the blood tide of revolution, of course. Except turn back the clock and raise my family like Lazarus.

We round a corner and find a guard, uniformed and on horseback, blocking steps surrounded by tall, dense, dark-green juniper trees. His eyes flick over Ben briefly, dismissively. “Move along, quickly now,” he says, with an encouraging swing of his sword. It feels wrong for a royal guard to treat me this way, disorienting, like a clock running backwards. It occurs to me that this same man might have been serving me and my family the last time we were in London; yet now he doesn’t recognize me, now he doesn’t see me at all. But I’m the same person, aren’t I? I try to catch his eye. He doesn’t seem aware of me. I might as well be a goldfinch or a stone.

“I think we’re meant to go up,” Ben says rather meekly, gesturing to the steps, like it’s a tepid suggestion. He barely sounds like himself at all. Ben? Meek? Since when is Ben EVER meek?

The guard scrutinizes him. “Name?”

“Benjamin Hardy, press attaché for Sir Buchanan, the British Ambassador to Russia.”

“Right.” The guard moves his horse to the side. It’s midnight black and tall and shining and surely a purebred, its mane and tail lustrous, its dark eyes sharp and arrogant. Kroshka could never compare, and yet I find myself missing her. “His Royal Highness is touring the Italian Gardens. He is expecting you.”

“Thank you very much,” Ben says, bowing his head, and leads me up the staircase. The guard still doesn’t look at me, not even once.

We ascend, my heart in my throat, my feet numb and clumsy; I keep having to remind them how to work. My hands are trembling. My skin is sweated and cold, my sweater clinging to my spine. There is a break in the clouds and muted daylight cascades over us. The steps are ending just ahead. My grand adventure with Ben is ending too.

Ben glances back and asks in a murmur: “Are you ready?”

Yes, I hear Mother say confidently. Yes, I hear Papa concur with warm, dusk-pink pride in his voice. Yes, I hear Tatiana and Alexei and Olga and Maria and Anastasia whisper from their gravesite in some unknown corner of the world, waiting impatiently for vengeance. The revolutionaries may hold Russia, but they will never hold me. The Romanovs will live on. Our blood will run in the veins of queens and kings until eternity turns all the earth to ash. It is the best revenge imaginable. “Yes,” I tell Ben, as if there is no other possible answer.

At the summit of the staircase is a spacious landing overlooking water, lily pads, swans, fountains, the horizon. The Prince of Wales is standing near the railing, framed by statues of half-naked women emptying their pitchers into the pond. I might have blushed at that two months ago; now I feel only an ache of curiosity, of longing.

David Windsor turns. He is just as I remembered him, only better, clearer: tall, slim, blond, blue-eyed, graceful, composed, fit for a fairytale. An ocean of relief crashes through me.

Oh, thank God. I love him after all.

His mouth falls open. His cigar—Cuban, imported, made by another man’s hands—tumbles forgotten to the ground. He is the opposite of the guard on horseback; the Prince of Wales sees only me. I can feel myself glowing with exhilaration, with pride. I can feel my family here on the landing with me, translucent and bloodied, beaming with ethereal approval. “Dear Lord,” David Windsor marvels. “Is that really you?”

Nodding with tears in my eyes, completely overwhelmed and unable to speak, I run to him. He opens his arms and bellows amazed laughter. His embrace is kind and familiar, if a bit formal.

“There there!” David soothes, patting my back. “You’re alright now. You’re far away from those traitorous animals in Russia. How did you manage this?! What a shock, my God! Father will be elated!”

“I escaped,” I say, wiping away tears. David hands me a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. It is embroidered with his initials. “Ben…Ben rescued me. He and Sir Buchannan formulated a plot. Ben smuggled me out before my family was moved to Yekaterinburg. We…we…we were supposed to save them. I was supposed to come here and convince Uncle George to offer us all asylum. But I was too late, I…I…”

“You poor thing.” The Prince of Wales shakes his head and rests a hand on my shoulder. “You poor, poor girl. Traveling in secret and in God knows what sorts of conditions. Learning of your family’s brutal slaying while on the run like some criminal, as if you have ever done anything wrong in your life! What could you have done?! Just a dutiful daughter, a grand duchess, a little girl. You are an innocent. What have you ever done to deserve such suffering?”

I can’t seem to stop weeping. Surely David will understand; he knew my family too. He loved them too. “My parents…my sisters…Alexei…” Sobs hitch from my throat. “I would have done anything to save them, anything—”

“There there,” David says again. His words are gentle but weightless somehow, bloodless, dispassionate. “Please, dearest, do collect yourself. I hate to see women cry. It’s such a pitiful sight. There’s no need to despair. You are exactly where you belong now.”

“Uncle George will welcome me?”

“Oh, my dear, he will proclaim his love for you in front of the entire world.” There are things shifting rapidly in the prince’s pale eyes: strategy, surprise, hunger, satisfaction…and perhaps a threat of envy, too. “Yes, Father…he always approved of you, didn’t he? He always hoped that…maybe…someday…” The Prince of Wales smiles down at me. “You might marry into our empire. And here you are at last, at the end of such a dreadful voyage, on our doorstep.”

“I could never thank you enough for this,” I say shakily. “I…I…”

“Please,” he urges, uneasy. “Did you think there was any other possible remedy? Of course we will take you in. You are the daughter—the last heir—of a great dynasty, one whose blood has melded with our own for generations. You and I, we are both great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. We are both anointed by our Creator as the finest of mankind. Your house has fallen into ruin, this is true…but you are blameless in that. Just a grand duchess. Just a daughter. What could you have done to stop it? You poor thing. Poor, poor thing.” He smooths my hair once and then steps away, his mind already elsewhere. “I will call Father as soon as I return to the palace. I will tell him that he must come to London immediately. When he is back, he can summon you to an official audience, and then your survival can be announced publicly. The king—and only the king—must initiate everything, of course. And when your proper period of mourning has passed…” The Prince of Wales smiles again, this time vaguely and into the distance. “Other announcements can be made as well.”

I fold up David’s handkerchief and stow it in the pocket of my corduroy trousers. My husband, my husband, my husband, this man is going to be my husband. Surely if I repeat this often enough, it will start to feel real. “I would very much like to see Uncle George again. To be with all of you again.”

“Indeed.” The prince’s ice-blue eyes, as his shock evaporates, travel down to my clothes. “Dear Lord, what on earth are you wearing?!” he exclaims. “An old shabby sweater? A cheap scarf? Trousers? Well, I suppose you are in hiding. You must feel so out of place. Not to worry, dearest. You will be back to your old self in no time. And the sooner I go, the sooner you will be able to resume your rightful place.”

“I’m not going to the palace with you now?” I ask, unsure if I am disappointed or confused or pleased.

“I’m afraid that just won’t be possible, dearest. I don’t have the authority to invite you there, only Father does. And we can’t have this secret getting out before Father is informed, can we? He would be furious. I’m terribly sorry about the circumstances, but surely you understand. The attaché said he was staying with Mr. Gwilym Lee, I presume that’s where he’s been hiding you too? Are your accommodations there comfortable?”

And that’s exactly the way he puts it: comfortable. Not safe, not enjoyable, not enlightening, not affectionate, but comfortable. I suppose that’s the yard stick by which my kind measure their lives. Something in my chest is sinking, darkening. Did I really think that I love him? That’s impossible. I don’t even know him. Not really. “Very comfortable. Mr. Lee and his wife have been godsends to me. And Ben…” I turn to him. Ben is standing in the shade of the juniper trees and watching us with no expression that I can read. His face is a void, flinty and heartbreakingly beautiful. “He has saved my life over and over again. He has displayed both exemplary courage and judgement. He is my hero, my champion, my truest friend. I will be indebted to him until death. He must be adequately rewarded.”

“Is that so?” The Prince of Wales—for the first time, as if it is the dimmest of afterthoughts—looks at Ben. Ben bows deeply. David Windsor considers him for a few brisk seconds; then his eyes dart to me, back to Ben, to me again. “We will have to reward him,” David says, a winter-cold edge in his words. “Won’t we, dearest?”

“Whatever you decide is best,” I recover quickly.

The prince’s arm curls around my waist. He kisses me delicately on each cheek, feather-lightly, as if he might crack my skin like porcelain. “Good day, Your Imperial Highness. We shall meet again soon. Quite soon, I think. Yes, that would be for the best.”

The Prince of Wales descends the steps, leaving a silent open space like a grave in his wake. In Moscow, the communist revolutionaries have seized control and executed most of the Provisional Government. In Passchendaele, battlefields are being combed for dog tags to send back to the households of the dead. At Balmoral Castle in Scotland, King George V is about to receive a very urgent phone call. Somewhere—and I’ll never know where—my family’s bones are alight with the promise of redemption.

Meanwhile, here in Hyde Park in the heart of London, Ben and I stare at each other as sparce drops of rain begin to fall from a ghost-colored sky.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Why haven’t you ever taken me to meet your family?” I ask Ben. We’re sitting in the ill-lit, unassuming corner booth of a pub in West London. We each have a pint of brown ale. I sip mine tentatively; it’s thick and bitter and strange. Ben gulps his like water.

“I didn’t think you’d want to,” he says.

“Why wouldn’t I want to meet them?”

“Because…” Ben shows his palms penitently. “Because of what happened to your family. I thought it might be painful for you. To see my mother, my siblings. To be around all that.”

“Oh. I was worried you were too embarrassed of me.”

He seems genuinely puzzled. “What’s there to be embarrassed about?”

I smile down at the heavy oak table and say nothing, spinning my glass between my hands.

“Do you really want to meet my family?” Ben says.

“Of course I do. You’ve already told me so much about them.”

“Okay. We’ll do dinner at their house tonight.”

I watch him as he drinks his ale, his hair falling in messy twists over his forehead, his cheeks flushed, his emerald-colored eyes flitting restlessly around the pub. I remember how his hands felt against my face. I remember the way his lips tasted on mine. There’s a knot in my chest like barbed wire. The thought of never touching him again is indescribable. “How is it possible that no one has fallen in love with you yet?”

“I told you. All I’ve ever done is work.”

“It’s a shame. It’s a crime, actually. There’s too much good in you to not be shared.”

Ben smirks at me from beneath his curls. “I suppose at this point I’ll end up with an American.”

“What will it be like for you there? When you first arrive, I mean. It must be difficult to start over somewhere new without help, without many…resources.”

“As a relatively poor person, you mean?” Ben laughs. “I’ll be alright. I don’t need much. I’ll rent some dodgy little room somewhere and scrape by until I get my feet under me. There’s cheap lodging if you’re willing to share space. And I’ll have Joe. He’ll have the time of his life finding a woman for me. He’s been trying to give me condoms for years. He hides them in my pockets and luggage when I’m not paying attention.”

“Condoms?”

“Uh…” Ben blushes a deeper red, turning shy. “Something to prevent…children. One of several possible methods.”

“Ah. Yes, I don’t believe I’ll have the luxury of knowing much about that.”

Ben frowns at me, somber, anxious. I swallow a mouthful of my dark, bitter ale.

“You could stay,” I tell him suddenly. “Here. In London. When Sir Buchanan retires, I could ensure the royal family keeps you on as a press attaché for the next ambassador to Russia. Or any country you want. Italy, France, Greece, America, anywhere. I could convince David to do it.”

“No,” Ben returns with a sad smile. “I don’t think you could.”

The way he looked at Ben. The way he looks at me.

No, perhaps the Prince of Wales will never be a man who is swayed by his wife. I won’t have any power over him. It’s difficult to have power over someone who doesn’t love you.

“He’s not cruel,” I say softly. We’ve already discussed this, but I’m confirming it.

“No,” Ben insists. “Distant. Vain. Unfaithful. But never cruel.”

“Many women have suffered far worse,” I murmur, mostly to myself.

“Yes. And plenty have suffered less.”

“Is that what you’ll write about me in your article?” There’s no malice in my words, no fight, only curiosity. “That I’m materialistic…or mindlessly obedient…or spineless…or…or weak? Too weak to consider a different kind of life?”

“I don’t think you’re weak,” Ben replies softly, staring down at his hands. “I think you’re brave.”

There’s warm contentment rising in my cheeks. Pride, even. I’ve learned that there is nothing Ben respects more than courage, just as there is nothing I prize above honor. Perhaps we have learned to see both in each other. “Really?”

“You could come to New York with me,” he says in a rush, his eyes sparkling. “You could start over too, with me and Joe, you could be anything you wanted to be. I’d help you.”

I bark out a stunned laugh. I’m positive he’s joking. It’s a ludicrous prospect. “What, and live in some tiny room in a run-down apartment, shooing away rats with a broom, driving the mule cart to the market each week to buy beets and cabbages, sharing a toilet with God knows how many other people and no bathtub in sight? Can you imagine me living like that?”

But Ben doesn’t find it funny. It’s not just his head that drops; everything in him sinks, goes silent, goes still. He’s disappointed. He’s ashamed.

“Ben, wait, I didn’t…I didn’t mean…”

“We should go,” he says, and stands before I can stop him.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ben’s family’s home is not what I’d envisioned. It’s a modest little place squeezed between a bakery and a blacksmith’s shop—far from a castle or mansion, surely—but it’s not dilapidated. It’s simple, quaint, a bit overcrowded, but not impoverished. They have the entire townhouse to themselves: two floors, a few windows, a fireplace, a scuffed old piano in the living room, two basset hounds with wagging tails and drooping ears, a tiny garden in the backyard where the children tend pumpkins and kale and sugar snap peas. It’s not as desperate as I had imagined Ben’s childhood to be when he described it to me. I wonder how they can afford this.

“Let me show her, let me show her!” August, ten years old and grinning enormously, shouts as he drags me around the house and presents each room as if he lives in a palace, every piece of furniture handed down through dynasties instead of secondhand and scuffed. He looks very much like Ben; but August is brighter, more open, less pummeled by life. He makes me wonder what Alexei might have been like had he been born healthy.

Leo, fourteen, is wrestling with his mathematics homework at a worn desk in the living room. Opal and Kathryn are in the kitchen helping their mother prepare dinner: roasted chicken, gravy, potatoes, stuffing, glazed carrots, sticky toffee pudding for dessert. That was once Alexei’s favorite, I remember. I hope he can see me now. I hope he’s proud of me.

Ben’s mother is a whisper of a woman, very hushed, very thin, her face much older that her years. She is like a battered ship limping home to harbor. She is polite to me but remote; she is like that with everyone, except perhaps August, her youngest. She seems to be irrevocably exhausted, as if someone pierced the soles of her feet and bled out her capacity for loud, careless joy. She has short, black curly hair and hands gnarled with arthritis far worse than my own mother’s was. There are no portraits or photos in the house, but there are three small wooden crosses on the mantle of the fireplace, one for each of her lost children: Willis, Cecil, Louise.

As Ben and I help set the table, a young man around twenty limps through the front door. He has dark hair, glasses, a narrow bookish face, and a moderate clubfoot on his left side. He walks with the assistance of a cane.

“You’re here,” Luther says calmly to Ben, a smile illuminating his face. “Now we can read the letter.”

“There’s a letter?” Ben drops the spoons he’d been placing. “From Frankie?”

Luther fetches it from the desk drawer and hands it to Ben. We gather around him on the single frayed couch: me, Luther, Leo, Opal, Kathryn, August, the basset hounds called Pancake and Pickles. Ben’s mother listens gravely from the kitchen, stirring and basting, all the recipes living only in her head.

“When did it arrive?” Ben asks.

“Yesterday,” Leo replies eagerly. “We wanted to wait for you. We wanted to read it together.”

“I can’t believe you had the patience.” Ben rips the letter free from the envelope. The first thing he reads is the date at the top. “Only five days ago,” Ben says with a great exhale, and they all burst into cheers; even his mother casts us a weary half-smile. At first I don’t understand, and then I do: if Frankie wrote a letter five days ago, it means he survived the Germans’ last major counter-offensive. It means he’s likely still alive right now, eating his dinner out of cans while we eat ours off chipped, mismatched plates. It means he might still come home someday.

Frankie’s letter is short, probably because he refuses to tell his family what Passchendaele is really like. Instead, he writes about the books he’s read, the Allied soldiers he’s met from Ireland and France and Belgium, the weather improving, the sight of the stars at night, his memories of home. He writes that he hopes he’ll be back by Christmas. He writes about the now-infamous fate of the Romanovs, the gossip that has spread like wildfire and horrified an already shellshocked world. Little do they know that the true story has barely begun.

As Ben reads, August huddles up beside him, and Opal hold his free hand, and Leo’s eyes begin to glisten, and Luther braids Katheryn’s long golden hair; and I am reminded so much of my own family that I am flooded not with sorrow but overpowering, breathless love. I can hear Papa telling us folktales by candlelight, his voice changing with each character. I can see Mother sitting in her wheelchair and knitting a hat for Alexei, new mittens for Anastasia, a sweater for me. I can feel Tatiana combing and arranging my hair. I can smell the tobacco from Papa’s pipe. I can taste hot chocolate and snowflakes and wild raspberries plucked from bushes. For a moment, and only one, none of it happened: Papa never abdicated the throne, the wars never raged, my family never died. For a moment, I am home and always will be.

I’ll never have that again, I think.

No; the Prince of Wales is my destiny, he is as much a part of my existence as my own bones. But he will never give me what Papa gave Mother. I am only now understanding how rare my parents’ love was, how remarkable. It is an uncommon thing to find a true home here on earth, and it is magic if you can manage to keep it.

“Are you alright?” Ben asks, and I realize that they’re all watching me. The letter is finished and folded carefully in Ben’s hands. His hands…I can’t seem to stop looking at his hands.

“Are you alright?” his siblings echo with genuine concern, these children who know nothing about me except that I am ostensibly a typist named Lana Brinkley, a colleague of their brother, perhaps even his friend. I’m a nobody, and yet they see me with perfect clarity.

“I’m fine,” I say, offering up a smile. “I was just reminded of someone I used to know.”

All through dinner—as the voices of Ben’s family rush around me like the warm foaming surf of Greece or Italy or Spain or some other romantic kingdom I had once dreamed of marrying into—I am silently bracing myself for my future. I can see it like paintings in a museum: opening presents with my children under a towering Christmas tree at Buckingham Palace, attending polo games and crystalline balls, posing in tiaras for photographs, cutting ribbons at hospitals and parks and bridges, sipping afternoon tea with Queen Mary and the Princess Royal, holidaying in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, touring countries and territories littered across the globe where the sun never sets on the British Empire. And I do, I find, believe wholeheartedly that I would be safe here: the British are not hard in the way that Russians are, nor hereditarily restless like Americans. I would never be imprisoned, tortured, guillotined, burned, discarded like the entrails of a butchered animal. I would enjoy unparalleled opulence and security for the next half a century. How many people would kill to be me? How many people live on the edge of a knife, the color of each day bruised black with hunger, violence, disease, prostitution, deprivation, slavery, filth, war? I would be insane to subject myself to such risks when I was born so high above them. It would be like kicking a hole in a ship when it’s midway across the Atlantic.

Yes, I can see my life as if I’ve already lived it, and there’s nothing there that startles or horrifies me. The Prince of Wales would be a perfectly adequate husband, popular with his people and courteous to me. He would never criticize or yell or—God forbid—raise a hand in anger. He would be handsome and stylish and proud of our children. Perhaps he would even abandon his mistresses as our bond grows stronger through the years. I realize that the thought of him with other women doesn’t especially wound me. It would be alright to embrace him, to kiss him, to do much more with him. I can stomach the idea of that. We would have a pleasant co-existence…a comfortable one, to use his own word.

No, what gives me pause is something else, something unexpected, something that is just now dawning on me: not the presence of the Prince of Wales but the absence of anyone else, the prospect of never experiencing real passion, of never knowing what it’s like to have someone I’m mad for between my thighs, of David having feasted on heat and desire and wildness while I will never taste it. I think of the bitterness that will grow in me like a child I’ll never deliver. I think of writing some dull, too-careful letter to Ben once or twice a year while whispers tangle in my skull: What if? What if?

Luther’s voice rouses me, hesitant and bashful as he stirs his mashed potatoes and gravy together, avoiding everyone’s eyes: “Ben…listen, I hate to ask this…but there are a few more textbooks that I need for the Michaelmas term…the professors just told us about them, and I thought I had enough money squirreled away but I’m…well, I’m a little short…”

“I’ll take care of it,” Ben replies instantly.

“I’ll pay you back someday,” Luther insists. “I’m keeping a list of the expenses and when I have my own dental practice I’ll give—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ben says with a wave of his hand and changes the subject, and then I know exactly how his family affords this house. I know how they afford everything they have.

As the sun is setting and his mother is clearing the table to serve dessert—and adamantly refusing my offers of assistance, slapping my hands away with her crooked fingers—I follow Ben out into the backyard when he goes there to smoke one of his very inexpensive hand-rolled cigarettes, one of infinite tiny sacrifices his mother’s and siblings’ lives are now built on.

“He didn’t really say anything about my family, did he?” I ask Ben, meaning the Prince of Wales.

“No, he didn’t,” Ben agrees, vivid amber sunlight glowing on his face.

“He didn’t say that Papa didn’t deserve it. He didn’t even mention Tati or Alexei.”

“No,” Ben says again.

“Why wouldn’t he?”

Ben debates telling me something and instead replies: “I don’t know.”

“You have all these secrets now. You used to just hurl anything that crossed your mind at me like stones.”

“Yes, it is immensely inconvenient to have grown a conscious.”

I’m studying him in the receding light—fire like a yellow topaz—acutely aware that our grand adventure is waning like the starving crescent of the moon. “Can I ask you something else?”

Now Ben seems nervous. He flicks ashes from his cigarette with a restless hand. Everywhere I look I find the color of embers, like the whole world is burning. “Sure.”

“What made you choose the name Lana?”

He’s a little relieved, a little disappointed. “Oh. That.”

“If you even have a reason.”

“There’s a reason,” Ben says. “But you’ll hate it.”

“Yeah?”

“Firstly, I liked that it sounded like a nickname instead of something regal and important. Secondly, it’s easy to pronounce and won’t divulge your Russian accent. Thirdly, and most importantly…” He smirks guiltily. “It means something in Gaelic.”

Gaelic is one of the languages I haven’t gotten to yet. It’s a humble language, a working-class language, no royals study it to my knowledge; there is no recognized Irish royal family and there hasn’t been since the English invaded them in the 12th Century. But I suppose it’s likely that Ben has come across plenty of Irish people during his travels, maids and cooks and shipbuilders. He might have even grown up with some. “What does it mean?”

“Little rock.”

I erupt into giggles. It feels fantastic. “You…you named me…rock…?”

“Little rock,” Ben clarifies. “Which makes it cuter.”

“You are possibly the worst person who has ever existed, Benjamin Hardy.”

“Who’s going to keep your ego in check if not me?”

“My husband, I suppose,” I say, flatly now, as indigo night falls like a curtain.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Lees’ house is quiet and still like winter. The staff have gone home for the night, the Sealyham Terriers are slumbering somewhere with their noses tucked under their paws, Ben and Joe are outside in the courtyard tossing sticks into the firepit. It’s cold when the wind blows, but not cold enough to drive them inside. They don’t want to go to bed; they know it’s our last night together. Nothing will ever be the same after tonight. I don’t want to go to bed either.

I’m rummaging through the kitchen trying to find a pot, mugs, milk, sugar, and cocoa powder; my plan is to surprise Ben and Joe with hot chocolate, but I’ve never made it myself before. I’ve rarely navigated a kitchen at all before.

“Can I help you with something?” Gwilym Lee asks from the doorway, startling me. There’s a Sealyham Terrier wagging its stubby white tail by his feet.

“Oh, I’m so sorry…I hate to be an inconvenience…I was just thinking as we were sitting out there around the fire…perhaps some…hot chocolate?”

“Ah, just a moment.” He moves deftly around plucking items from cabinets and drawers. He’s a wonderfully benign person from what I’ve seen, and so is his wife Hazel. She has blonde hair and umber eyes and a way of telling the most cheerful, long-winded, dramatic stories. Oddly enough, she’s Australian.

“How did you meet your wife, Mr. Lee?” I say as he begins heating milk on the stove.

“Her father is a shipping tycoon back in Australia. He was here on business and brought Hazel and her mother along. I bumped into them at a Christmas ball and couldn’t stop staring at Hazel all evening. I asked her the most idiotic questions just to hear her talk.”

“What a romantic meeting,” I say admiringly. It’s the sort of thing princesses dream of. And grand duchesses too.

“It wasn’t all a fairytale, let me assure you. My parents were horrified.”

“I can’t imagine why. She’s lovely.”

Mr. Lee chuckles. “Because she’s not Welsh, of course! Although I suppose that wouldn’t be so obvious to you, being from…” He gestures vaguely, raises his eyebrows. “Elsewhere.”

I smirk down at my shoes as he stirs sugar and cocoa powder into the pot, neither confirming nor denying. “Now that you mention it, I have heard that the Welsh are…rather prideful of their heritage.”

“We’re like the Irish. We’ve never stopped bristling at British rule. And I come from an old, old family. There are artifacts in this house that date from when Wales had its own kings.”

“Rebellion everywhere,” I mutter to myself, feeling like I’m drowning in it. Perhaps everyone is, all over the world since the dawn of time; perhaps rulership is something that will inevitably be hated and act hatefully in reply. “So your parents wanted you to marry a Welsh woman.”

“Welsh was heavily preferred. From the Continent would have been acceptable. English would have been very bad, American even worse. But Australian? That was unthinkable! Australia was once a prison colony, you know. They’re just English people without the veneer of sophistication.” He grins, knowing how ridiculous it sounds, this shallow prejudice. “They’re barely humans at all.”

I observe Gwilym Lee, tall and poised, as he pours hot chocolate into three mugs: blue, red, green. Steam rises in the air like smoke, like ghosts. Something about the way he moves reminds me of Tatiana. “What made you decide to marry her anyway?”

He shrugs and smiles at me over his shoulder. “Life is long. With the wrong person, I imagine, it feels much longer.” He sets the mugs on a tray and gives it to me. “Anything else I can do for you, Miss Lana? Or should I say Lana bella donna, as Joseph does?”

“No, you’ve done quite enough already. Thank you, Mr. Lee. You shall be generously rewarded. I’ll see to it.”

From the shadowy doorway, he responds: “I’d rather you see to your own happiness.” And I’m left standing alone in the kitchen as Mr. Lee and the Sealyham Terrier vanish, the dog’s nails clicking on the hardwood floor.

I bring the tray out to the courtyard and sit in the firelight, sipping my hot chocolate, as Ben and Joe toast theirs and discuss the ethnic neighborhoods of New York City: Little Italy and Chinatown and Little Spain, Irish in Hell’s Kitchen, Norwegians in Bay Ridge, Poles in Greenpoint, Syrians and Lebanese on Washington Street in Manhattan, African Americans moving up to Harlem from the treacherous South, Jews in Borough Park, Greeks in Astoria, Russians in Brighton Beach. It’s the whole planet in miniature. Joe wants to live near other Italians. Ben wants to be able to volunteer at settlement houses and maybe even meet Jane Addams one day.

I’m listening to them, but from a distance; Ben keeps trying to draw me into the conversation and I ignore him. I’m too busy thinking about what I’m going to do next. I have an idea, you see; I’ve had it for longer than I could admit even to myself. It’s unforgiveable, but it won’t go away. And I know it’s the right thing to do because at last when I commit to it—silently, like the dead of night—I feel a great calmness settle over me, a great peace. As I cradle my mug of hot chocolate, my hands don’t shake at all.

Abruptly, I rise to my feet. “I’m going upstairs now,” I inform Ben.

He blinks. “Okay.”

“I expect you to join me in precisely one hour.”

“Okay,” Ben says again, thunderstruck, smiling. Joe stifles a rapturous laugh and pounds on Ben’s shoulder with his lithe little fists. Ben, still smiling, doesn’t seem to notice.

Upstairs, I take a bath so hot it fills the room with steam, and I lay in the tub listening to the echoing plinks of dripping water and the late-October wind rattling the window shutters. When I drain the water—opaque and shimmering with rose-scented soap—I can feel the weight of the past two years shedding off me like a snake’s skin, bleeding away like summer, disappearing down the drain. I sit at the vanity, brushing out my hair, naked and serene, gazing at my reflection. In the mirror, in the golden lamplight, I see not flaws, not history, not the future, not my family, not tragedy or triumph, but only myself; and I don’t think that’s ever happened before.

Exactly one hour after I left him, Ben opens the bedroom door. I’m waiting for him on the bed with my hair loose and wild, my skin dewy with steam, my heartbeat steady. He inhales, exhales, closes the door as quietly as possible. He walks to the bed and covers his face with his hands, his beautiful, scarred hands. I think of how pure his flesh is, uncolored by dynasties or pacts. I think of how everything he has he built himself. I stand to meet him, laying my hands lightly on top of his own.

“Ben?” I whisper.

“Yeah?”

“You can look at me. It’s alright.”

Slowly, hesitantly, he drops his hands. His eyes drift over me like snow: soft, quiet, melting away. I feel no nervousness, no shame. Ben is pulling off his sweater. I skate my palms down his chest, his belly, his forearms lined with ocean-blue veins. “Goddamn,” he gasps, resting his forehead against mine. I can feel the heat coming off him in waves. His fingers tangle in my hair. His clothes are in a messy pile on the hardwood floor.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” I say.

“Believe me, I want to.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” he breathes.

I climb onto the bed and he follows, touching my face and my neck and my breasts, kissing me so deeply the rest of the world ceases to exist. There’s no one but us, there never has been, there never will be again. The valleys and peaks of his body fit perfectly with mine. I guide his hands lower, lower, lower.

Ben cautions: “Are you sure? Now? With me? I don’t want you to regret this. And I might be legitimately terrible because I’ve never done this before—”

“I don’t care.” I’m smiling; I can’t seem to stop. “I don’t want my first time to be with some prince I barely know. I want it to be with you.”

“I love you,” Ben says. “But I guess you already know that.”

“I do now.”

It’s like a dream in the weak golden lamplight: our skin, our voices, the effortless rhythm we stumble unsuspectingly into, no pain, no thought, time running neither forwards nor backwards but fading away entirely like ink in water.

~~~~~~~~~~

Afterwards, we bathe together and put on pajamas—the Lees keep the dressers stocked for guests—and turn off the lights. Ben doesn’t offer to leave, and I don’t ask him to. We slip beneath the blankets and find each other again, our fingers linking together, our minds untroubled. Tomorrow will be different, surely, but tomorrow doesn’t feel real yet. It’s a legend, it’s folklore. It’s a myth people shared around bonfires, carved into stones, painted on cave walls.

I say in the darkness: “We really must thank Joe for the condoms.”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“How many more do you have?”

“Four or five, I think.”

“Hmm.” I kiss his stubbled neck, and then his jaw, and then his mouth with teasing darts of my tongue. I can still taste myself on him, inside of him, growing into his bones like roots. I can feel his lips smiling against mine.

“So you want your second time to be with me too, huh?”

“Silence, commoner,” I murmur, grinning, dragging him closer by the collar of his shirt, drawing him into me like the moon pulls the sea.

#ben hardy x reader #ben hardy fic #borhap fandom

[acdeaky]

the end of the night

warning: fluff, angst, use of strong language, dialogue heavy at parts

note: happy secret santa to @yourlocalmusicalprostitute ! here's a fic with joe, even though i know you said about wanting john! i couldn’t put john with the idea i had, so i went with joe! i hope you enjoy, mwah 💋

word count: 2.0k

the last year of your life had been one of the best for your career and your personal life. you and joe had celebrated your two year anniversary with a special trip to paris. after news got out that you were to be in a highly anticipated film being released in december, you had half a dozen auditions for new projects, two of which you got accepted for. 

the year previous had been amazing for you as well, especially the second half. filming began on your first main role in a movie and to say you were excited was an understatement. you were ecstatic. joe helped you through sleepless nights filled with nerves and/or excitement, he spent countless days on set with you and kept you company on your breaks, as well as doing his job too. 

somehow, each day you two spent together throughout the past two years, you had fallen more in love with joe - something which you didn't think would be possible. but it happened. and the excitement of your premiere caught up with you throughout the press tour. and, once again, joe was there by your side for every moment. 

you’d enjoyed filming and promoting this movie that you forgot about the christmas release date. throughout the entire month of december, running up to christmas that is, you felt like you’d done nothing but work. it slipped your mind that the days to christmas were counting down, until it got to the premiere.

december 19th: you and your cast mates were lined up along the red carpet, smiling and waving at the cameras. joe was by your side the whole night. he chatted with you and the interviewers and watched as your face lit up while meeting and talking to fans. you both were in a state of bliss that night, smiling and getting along with your cast mates.

but after the joy had settled and everyone had gone home or back to their hotels, it was a different story.

stumbling into your hotel suite, you and joe giggled hysterically, the amount of alcohol you had had finally taking affect. you had shown him something on your phone in the lift and both of you were still laughing at it. it wasn’t that funny, but joe was trying to keep you happy before saying what he wanted to say.

“i’m gonna hop in the shower,” you managed to say through light giggles, pulling off your shoes and then carefully tried to unzip your dress from the back. “do you wanna join?”

“no, love, i’ll let you have one.” joe smiled, walking over to help you.

“if you’re sure, baby.” joe only nodded in reply as you glanced over your shoulder. the zip of your dress was down at the bottom after joe helped and you easily slid out of the short sleeves and let the dress rest in a puddle at your feet.

stepping out of it, joe reached down to grab it, holding it delicately and laying it across the back of the sofa of the suite. as a thank you, you kissed his cheek lightly, resting your hand on his blazer clad shoulder.

“don’t worry about taking this off and joining me at any point, joey. i’ve missed you,” your hand moved down from his shoulder over the lapels on his blazer. the fabric was soft, good quality shit, and running your thumb over the front brought you back to earth. “i won’t be too long.” and with that you turned around from him, waltzing into the oversized bathroom and stripping off the rest of your clothes before stepping into the shower. 

joe never joined you. he stayed inside the bedroom of the suite and took off his blazer, laying it over the sofa next to your dress. he toed off his shoes and placed them next to yours which had been carelessly thrown at the foot of the bed. his tie joined his blazer over the sofa, but joe kept his shirt and trousers on, not fully ready to undress just yet. 

there was something he had to do. 

just like you had said, you weren't too long. you dried off in the bathroom, sneaking into the bedroom to grab some pyjamas and quickly getting changed. after hanging the towels up, you stepped back into the bedroom, pulling the fluffed up white covers back and called to joe. 

“baby? are you coming?” was all you said. joe suddenly appear from the living area of the suite, his once crisp white shirt now slightly creased and untucked from his trousers. “i thought you'd be ready for bed?” you asked sweetly, snuggling further down into the sheets and silently beckoning him to bed. 

“i will, i will, i just- i need to talk to you a minute.” joe just sat on the same side of the bed as you, his fingers and thumbs twiddling as he tried to calm himself. 

“joey, what's wrong? has something happened? are you okay?” a million thoughts and questions raced through your head. the silence coming from him was the first thing that worried you; joe was barely ever quiet. 

“im fine, love, i just wanted to talk to you about something.” joe’s head was still down, his voice coming out at almost a whisper. before you even replied, you shifted forward, grabbing one of his hands and placed it in-between both of yours. all of your attention was on him now; his posture and attitude worrying you, his behaviour extremely unusual. 

“okay,” you said with a shaky breath. “go for it.” 

“i love you. so so much. and you know this, but i just wanted to say it. these past few weeks, hell these past two years, i’ve be so unbelievably proud of you, of what you're achieving and what you've achieved. but honestly? i miss you, a lot. like, a hell of a lot. you’ve been there, of course you’ve been there, but you haven’t been here completely. part of your mind has always been thinking go work, or the next step, and i feel like we’ve not spent time together like we have done before. christmas is in less than a week and the minimal amount of presents we’ve bought is ridiculous. and i'm not blaming you, i never would. god, i can't blame you when you’ve been caught up in work because that's your job, it’s what you do.” joe had to breathe for a minute. he still hadn't looked up, his eyes were still fixed on where your hands were encasing his. 

“as much as there's been an us lately, there also hasn't. the bed feels empty even when you're in it next to me. the house seems quiet even when you’re downstairs rehearsing to watching TV. there's just been something not right and i didn't want to say anything earlier because i wanted you to enjoy celebrating the movie, because you should, instead of thinking and worrying about what i've said. i'm not trying to make you feel bad or guilty, because i just couldn't do that to you, but i just had to say this. i had to say something.” 

“fuck, i'm so sorry.” was the first thing joe said when he finally looked up at you. you knew exactly why. your face was definitely a deeper shade of red to match your bloodshot eyes. there had definitely been at least three tears that marked your face and fallen onto the cotton sheets below. joe knew what you looked like when you cried, he had seen it happen so many times before. but every time that happened, the first thing he would do would be pulling you into his arms, a hand stroking the back of your head as he whispered sweet nothings into your ear. 

this time, though, he did none of that. just like you, his eyes were bloodshot and there was guilt behind them. you saw it as soon as he looked up at you. you think that was why he pulled his hand from between yours and shot up so quickly. his hands ran through his hair, pulling it this way and that way. 

you sat motionless on the bed. your hands were still where joe’s left them, your face was in a state of shock, in fact, your whole body was. the only sounds came from joe’s laboured breathing and the few outside noises of cars and noisy pedestrians passing by outside. 

that wasn't what you were expecting. 

it wasn't what joe was expecting. 

but it happened. 

it took a few minutes for you and joe to come out of your heads and acknowledge each other, it was your short sniffles that brought you back to earth. joe’s movements stilled as he faced where you sat on the bed. his eyes were even more bloodshot than before and his hair was so dishevelled. all you want to do was reach out and kiss his tear stains away, but that wouldn't work this time. 

“you don't need to be sorry,” came your broken voice, disrupting the near silence in the room. “you're right. i’ve been so interested in work and this movie and movie forward in my career that i forgot about everything else. i’m sorry i haven't been here as often, or as present as i should be, like i used to be. without realising it, it’s just happened. and i’m sorry, joe. i’m sorry i haven't been there properly, or fully. i’m sorry for making you worried and making you feel like this. seeing you like this just breaks my heart. and it’s all my fault.”

joe stayed stood there, taking in the words you said and the sight before him. after everything tonight, after all the laughter and love received by the both of you, the end of the night turned into something out of your personal nightmares. without saying a word, joe finally move forward. his body practically crashed onto the bed and he pulled you into his arms once again. he sat with his legs over the bed, pulling you onto his lap and wrapping his arms around you. 

“its not your fault, it’s not.” he whispered over and over again in your ear, his hand stroking the back of your head. both of you stayed there for what seemed like hours, crying into the other’s shoulder and readjusting your grips periodically. 

“i love you so so much, and we’ll figure this out together, yeh?” joe whispered into your ear after a few moments of silence. at some point, he begun rocking you backwards and forward, settling your crying and calming your breathing. no words could leave your mouth, making you nod your head in agreement. “lets get you back into bed.” 

joe’s movements were slow as he lifted you off of his lap and into the sheets. he helped you lay down fully before pulling the sheets over the rest of your body. instantly, you snuggled down into them, making yourself comfy and waited for joe to join you. he finally removed his shirt, placing it and his trousers over the back of the sofa. joe didn't even bother changing into his pyjamas; all he did was pull out his pair of sweatpants, pulled them on and crawled into the bed next to you. 

as soon as he settled, he pulled you close to him. your chests were pressed together as his arms rested around your waist and your arms rested are his shoulders. it was the low sounds of joe’s breathing and his sweet nothings that sent you off to sleep. just before you fell asleep, you made a mental note to be more present, to be there for joe when he needed you. 

an “i love you.” was whispered just before you fell asleep. 

that night could be classed as one of your bests and one of your worsts, but with joe there by your side for the whole thing, nothing else compared (even if you did end up crying one way or another). 

- 

TAGLIST: @never-kept-the-same-address @j0hn-deaky @sohoneyspreadyourwings @brian-maybe-not @deakysbabybooty @1001-yellow-daffodils @retromusicsalad @hardcoredisneynerd @painkiller80 @leatherjacketmazzello @scarecrowmax @mebeatlized @seesiderendezvous @alright-mrfahrenheit @someone-get-a-medic​ @miamideacon​ @chlobo6​ @teenagepeterpan​ @spacedustmazzello​ @deakysgurl @forever-rogue @xcdelilahxc @keepsdrawing​ @igotsuckedintothevoid @kill4hqueen​ @supersonicfreddie​ @laedymoon @inthedayswhenlandswerefew @warriorteam1924​ @painandpleasure86 @boomerangbassist @mamaskillerqueen 

#joe mazzello #joe mazzello fic #joe mazzello x reader #joe mazzello imagine #bohemian rhapsody #secret santa #borhap secret santa #borhapparker's borhap secret santa #yourlocalmusicalprostitute #acdeaky

[demo-wise]

Just You And I

Prompt #97- “I apologize sincerely if my handsome/beautiful face has kept you awake all night”

Summary: Reader is having trouble falling asleep without Joe with her, so, yeah.

Pairing: Joe Mazzello x fem!Reader (but could be read as gender neutral)

Warnings: None.

Word Count: 1k+

A/N: This amazingly Joe prompt was requested by my lovely friend, @yourlocalmusicalprostitute​. Maeve, I really hope you enjoy this, it’s a bit on the shorter side, but I think it’s pretty alright. Thank you so much for sending the request in! I was so excited when I saw what the prompt was and that it was for Joe because I can literally picture Joe saying this in real life. Hope everyone has as wonderful a day as can be expected in quarantine!

Prompt List

It was almost one a.m., and he still wasn’t home yet. You were getting a bit nervous. Ever since marrying Joe, you’d come to realize how much - and how late - he tended to work, though he was always able to make it home by 12:30 at the latest. You weren’t jumping up to call the police, but your nerves did raise a little. Alas, you forced yourself to go to bed and hopefully he’d be home by the time you were dozing off. 

He wasn’t.

You woke up about a half hour later to the door opening, and you immediately jumped up to greet Joe. He had just closed the door behind him when he spotted you, and he gave you a bright grin in greeting as he hung his jacket up on the rack and kicked off his shoes next to the door. You returned the smile, yours much more tired, and made your way over to him in your ridiculous pajama pants and wrapping your arms around his torso, leaning into him and pressing your cheek to his chest.

“Hi, Joe”

You felt him smile against the top of your head, “Hey, babe,” he spoke softly, his voice a bit muffled against your hair. You all but dragged him to the bedroom, letting him get changed out of his work clothes and into something comfortable and awaiting him to climb into bed and cuddle with you, but he didn’t. Instead, he walked over to your side of the bed, and pressed a kiss to your forehead, one of his hands moving to tuck some of your hair behind your ear. You furrowed your brows.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” you questioned, and Joe shook his head.

“I’m still kinda awake, so I’m gonna go back downstairs for a while. But don’t worry, I’ll be back soon enough to sleep with you,” Joe winked, and you nodded with a poorly suppressed smile, watching as he left the room and hearing his footsteps down the staircase. Faintly, you could hear him click on the TV, and you closed your eyes, trying your hardest to fall asleep on your own, which was difficult since you were so used to falling asleep with Joe. It took a bit, but eventually you were able to doze, though it wasn’t an easy rest, as you’d woken up at least three times alone before you finally decided it was enough. It was only about an hour or two after Joe had gone downstairs, but you were so groggy that it felt like it was all hours of the night. You reached the living room to find Joe sitting on the couch, a half-empty bag of chips folded up on the cushion next to him, mindlessly watching the end of a movie. He took notice of you and turned to face you, taking in your tired expression and giving you a smile, which you returned.

“Hi, honey. What’re you doing up?” he asked, beckoning you over to him almost immediately, which you did without hesitation, curling against his side and feeling his arm come to rest around your shoulders. You shrugged lightly.

“I dunno, I kept waking up, so I figured I’d come down here and see what you were doing,” you pulled him closer, letting your head rest on his chest. Joe cast a glance down at you and smiled at the sight, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of your head.

“Well, my dear, I apologize sincerely if my handsome face has kept you awake all night,” he teased, gesturing - rather dramatically - over his face with his free hand, and you let out a loud laugh, despite your exhaustion. Joe laughed a bit as well and rubbed along your shoulder, “The movie’s almost over, so I’ll be up in a minute if you want to go back to bed,” Joe tilted his head to examine your half-lidded and slightly red eyes, “You look exhausted,” he noted, and you nodded, muffling a long yawn with your palm.

“Yeah, I am, but,” you nuzzled yourself back into his side, “I can wait for you”

“Y/n,” Joe lightly scolded, “you and I both know you’ll be out within two minutes”

You only shrugged in reply, already dozing off in Joe’s embrace. Joe laughed a little when you started snoring not a minute later. I told you, he thought to himself, briefly squeezing your shoulders.

As soon as the movie was over, Joe switched the TV off, he had grown tired himself and now wanted to fall asleep in his welcoming bed with you. He carefully removed himself from you, laying you down across the couch while he retrieved the bag of chips and a plastic cup that had been left on the coffee table. He tossed the cup and put back the bag of chips, returning to you shortly. He smiled again when you shifted slightly in your sleep, mumbling something incoherent, and he bent to gently scoop you up in his arms. You almost immediately leaned into him, though you didn’t wake up, at least not fully until Joe eased you into your side of the bed, tugging the duvet up to your chin.

You rubbed at your eyes, “Joe?”

Joe brushed a strand of hair out of your eyes, “I’m here, darling”

“Are you coming to bed?”

Joe let out a quiet chuckle, “Yes, honey, I’m coming to bed”

You nodded, saying nothing else until Joe had slipped under the sheets as well and scooted over to you in order to pull you into his arms.

“G’night, honey,” you mumbled tiredly into Joe’s neck, and Joe could’ve sworn that he swooned right then and there. He loved living the domestic life with you. Every moment he was with you, whether it be good or bad, he felt himself falling more and more in love with you than he thought possible, and he found himself getting reminded of how much he adored you, and that your beautiful face, even with your morning breath and bedhead, was the only one he wanted to wake up to for the rest of his God-given life. He held you against him tighter and kissed the side of your head.

“Goodnight, y/n”

Taglist:

@ehii7

#prompt request #request #joe mazzello x reader #joe mazzello #borhap x reader #borhap boys #just you and i #yourlocalmusicalprostitute #maeve #always lovely to hear from you #of course #thank you so much for sending the request #i loved writing it! #i'm a sucker for anything domestic with joe #enjoy lovies!