#THE POSSIBILITIES OF CARD/ARTS WE COULD GET IF THIS TURNS OUT TO BE TRUE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

avengersassemble-fics · 3 months

Text

Linger

chapter 01 "such a fool for you" masterlist 2.4k words

The grandeur of Lady Danbury's ballroom shimmered with the radiance of candlelight and the elegant attire of London's high society. It was the much-anticipated event that marked the commencement of the social season, something the whole ton looked forward to.

It was where the Queen picked her diamond, where the tone was set for the new season, where ladies vied for the most eligible bachelor’s attention. It was places and events like these where you got glimpses of him.

You were no stranger to the Bridgerton family, you practically grew up side by side with Daphne. She was your dearest friend. But that meant also growing up close to her older brothers, one of which you had pined for for years. Since you came to even know what the word or feeling meant.

Benedict Bridgerton had been the man you dreamt of, longed for. He had an air about him that captivated anyone who paid attention to him. Dark hair, deep eyes, a generous smile, and a soft touch (when he did graze your skin during dances or careful passes). You were a fool for him.

Several summers back, when you were just 15, your parents had made haste for Paris. A true hub of sophistication that matched London, you were able to hone your language skills and etiquette, as well as see some fine art along the way. When you returned just before your debut last season, so you could go through the challenges alongside your friend Daphne as new debutantes.. You noticed a change in Benedict.

He was more watchful, more keen to seek you out, more than willing to have his name on your dance card. He had also made it known when he didn’t particularly like a potential suitor.

Last season, he had all but ran off any gentleman who had wanted to even formulate the idea of courting you. This season? You vowed you wouldn’t let him stand in the way, unless he had some kind of explanation for his behavior.

Tonight, you had sought out Daphne as soon as she arrived, eager for some companionship that did not warrant endless get to know you questions from a gentleman.

“Has your Grace sent you off to fend for yourself this evening?” You asked her from behind, which made Daphne immediately turn on her heel to face you.

“I’m afraid he has,” she played along. “Though with my most trusted friend by my side, I believe, together, we can handle this evening.”

Arm in arm, Daphne and you made your way through the crowded room, towards her family. Always nestled together, deep in their own conversations within one another, it was sometimes like the rest of the ton didn’t matter.

For Benedict, that was true, until he could make out your form coming closer with his sister.. And looking as enchanting as ever.

“Remarkable,” he muttered to his brothers, Anthony and Colin. “Utterly remarkable.”

They followed his gaze over to where you were on the far edge of the group, reacquainting with their mother. Anthony hummed a sort of acknowledgement and Colin rolled his eyes.

“I swear, if I had a shilling for every time you mumbled under your breath for her, I'd be a rich man,” Colin said, earning a glare from Benedict.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he tried to play off. Anthony laughed lightly, clapping his hand down on his younger brother's shoulder.

“Are you just going to run off more possible suitors for her this season?” Anthony asked in a hushed tone. Benedict shook his head.

“I did no such thing,” Benedict protested. It was Colin’s turn to sigh.

“Good God, get a hold of yourself,” Colin said lowly. “You could just tell her your intentions.”

Benedict stewed over his brothers words for the majority of the evening. He weighed the cons, but the pros vastly outnumbered anything that could prevent him from you. But he needed some time to get his head straight, his spirits up, before he approached you before the end of the night.

“Sorry to intrude,” he said as he interrupted whatever conversation you were in with his sister. If Benedict had to watch you dance with another man one more time this evening he might need a lobotomy. “Daphne, may I steal her for a moment?”

“If she wishes to be stolen away,” Daphne said and you nodded your head. Daphne gave an all too knowing smile, not at all oblivious to what was transpiring between her brother and you, before leaving your sides.

“Ben,” you spoke to him quietly, and he immediately felt his skin aflame. “You wish to steal me away?”

“Just for a moment of your time,” he managed to get out. “You have been rather occupied with dances and conversations this evening.”

“Well if one hopes to marry, you must divulge a little,” you replied and your slight smile made his stomach twist. “Though if you wanted my attention earlier, you could’ve stolen me away sooner.”

Benedict smiled, though it teetered on the line of a grin. He was so enamored of your wit, and to be on the receiving end of it, unlike the other men in this room, was dear to him. Was this a flicker of admission on your part?

“Do you wish me to steal you away?” He asked softly. He could see your eyes flicker over his face, trying to read him, read what his intentions were. But you knew.

“If only you knew what all I wished of you,” you admitted, a bit breathless. If anyone was watching or listening, you knew the whispers that would be spoken. How improper it might be, even if you two were beating around the bush.

Before Benedict could respond, you two were interrupted by another gentleman who wanted your attention. Much to his dismay, you returned his attention and even accepted a dance. He had to watch you be whisked away for a dance and Benedict seethed.

Retreating back to his brother's side, Anthony grinned after taking a sip of his brandy. “Go well?”

“Say another word and I may end you,” Benedict grumbled and Anthony laughed.

You did your best to steer clear of the tall and handsome Bridgerton for the remainder of the evening. You were close to accomplishing that when you had slipped away from the prying eyes of the ton and into the night.

The air was warm, slightly cooler than earlier in the day. The moon was hidden behind clouds but it did not hinder its illumination. Lady Danbury’s gardens spanned as far as you could make out as you rested against the railing of the stoop.

You just needed a moment to catch yourself. To try and calm your mind-

“Do you often sneak away from the countless gentlemen vying for your attention?”

So much for slipping away unnoticed, but did it surprise you that Benedict followed?.. partly. You turned to face him as he stepped closer to your side, hands tucked behind him.

Little did you know it was to conceal the tremble in them.

“Only when I need a moment,” you admitted.

Benedict sounded a soft understanding as he came closer. His gaze seemed darker, even without the consideration of the night. He was searching your face for something, though you didn’t know what.

“What did you mean?” He asked softly. “When you said I didn’t know all you wished of me?”

You tensed up slightly, cursing yourself for your brazen but true words earlier in the evening. You could feel your hand tighten against the railings.

“Ben.. maybe this isn’t-“

“Please,” he said, his hands finally becoming visible as he reached out to touch your arm with one, the other on his chest. “Forgive the urgency in my words, for my heart and soul can no longer bear the weight of this unspoken truth. There's an ache within me, a relentless torment, fearing that time may slip through my fingers.. That you may slip through my fingers.”

“I cannot go on not telling you how ingrained you are in my mind. How even the mention of your name by my family makes me weak in the knees, how you have bled into my canvases, into my essence.

“I am tethered to you, my dearest (Y/N). The thought of you accepting a courtship from another man casts a shadow over me I don’t want to see to fruition. Perhaps that is selfish of me.. but if that means having even a chance to have you then I will be selfish.”

You weren’t sure if you had taken a single breath as he spoke, as he laid himself bare to you of his intentions. Everything made more sense now. How Benedict had looked at you for the last year, how he had cut in when men approached, how he practically chased away your potential suitors. If you were a fool for him, he was equally a fool for you.

“What do you ask of me?” you asked, your tone quieter than you intended, but the notions of everything occurring was making your mind and confidence dizzy.

Benedict hesitated, his gaze unwavering but completely captivated by the way your eyes seemed to shine. Was there any way he could be more captivated?

“What do I ask of you?” he echoed, a hint of vulnerability in his voice. “I.. Ask for a chance to court you, to explore the possibility that there is something more between us then familiar friends. I do not wish to rush or pressure you but my feelings for you run deep.”

Benedict sucked in a breath before continuing. “Will you allow me the privilege of courting you?”

You could see the sincerity and pure intention behind his eyes. It was what you had wanted to hear from him since before you debuted last season, something you had only been able to think about in your daydreams. Was he your future?

“Yes,” you breathed and could immediately see the tension he had in his shoulders deflate. “Your honesty is refreshing and.. In fact, it has left me a bit dazed. I believed you to be an artist not also a wordsmith.”

Benedict chuckled, the sound was warm and made you smile along with him. The hand he had on your arm skimmed upwards to cup your cheek. His gaze felt heavy on you, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look away.

“If you have appreciated my honesty up until this point then maybe I can push my luck further,” he said to you. The playful glint in his eyes shifted to a more mischievous expression. “I must confess, I have been tempted for quite some time to do something I probably shouldn’t.”

His thumb traced over your skin to your lips, gently gliding over your lower lip which fell open slightly to catch a breath.

“I have thought about kissing these lips many times,” Benedict admitted, his voice suddenly sounded low and intimate, and it shook you to your core. “I’ve imagined the taste of sweetness that must linger on them. It’s like the mere thought is an irresistible temptation, and I find myself longing to explore a flavor I don’t even know, yet drives me wild with desire.”

“Do you ever wonder how you must taste to a man who cannot seem to get enough of the mere thought of your lips?” He asked you.

God.. He would be your undoing, any ounce of restraint you had was quickly evaporating. You had yet to respond, but Benedict watched as your cheeks flushed, your chest seemed to rise and fall more prominently.

“You seem to like being praised,” Benedict remarked. He knew what he was doing, you were sure of it. The way his eyes darted over you all but solidified it. “Are words all I needed to get you in my grasp this whole time?”

“You’ve never been this brazen before, Mr. Bridgerton,” you finally managed to get out. The way his thumb hesitated under your lip made you wonder if he liked hearing that, or maybe hearing it from your lips. You hadn’t ever wondered if any man had thought about the taste of your lips like he had shared with you, but now knowing he had thought of it immensely would linger with you for who knows how long.

“Careful,” Benedict warned you. Was it possibly for his tone to shift even lower than it already was? It sounded like it. “I have not given into my desires but that can quickly change.”

“And cause a scandal?” You asked him and all he did was chuckle.

“You know I don’t mind the whispers,” Benedict reminded you. “But.. I promise to preserve your reputation. So long as you don’t call me that again.”

“I believe we may be at an impasse,” you whispered. “Because I quite like calling you that, if it elicits even a similar response you have given me this evening.”

Benedict realized that there was definitely a flourishing connection here, because he knew you would never be so open with him if you hadn’t already had some sort of affection for him. He decided he wouldn’t waste this chance, to have or claim you.

“We should get you back inside,” Benedict said after clearing his throat of nerves. “Before anyone notices we are gone. You, more so than me.”

“You may be right,” you agreed. Benedict reluctantly removed his hand from your chin, and watched as you moved around him back towards the door. You stole a final glance from him before disappearing around the corner to return to the winding down festivities.

Benedict took a moment to collect himself, for this was the change to everything. He knew this would be a tumultuous journey, one he had craved and wanted but never believed would come true. After a few minutes, he took the same path back inside to remeet with his family. He couldn’t wait to return home and tell his brothers he had actually done it - he had asked to court you and you accepted.

You were aflame with a new purpose. Everything was shaping up just as you desired, with the man you had dreamt of for years. You knew that this courtship would prove to bring you both closer and eventually.. You would be wed. You would have him.

…Right?

#benedict bridgerton #Benedict bridgerton x reader #Benedict bridgerton x you #Benedict Bridgerton fic #bridgerton fic

233 notes · View notes

spinchip · 8 months

Text

NEVER THE DARK

Chapter 10

Read on Ao3

Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9

WARNINGS for his chapter: Kai feels minor effects of alcohol withdrawal. Kai and Samira drink together, feeding Kais alcoholism. discussions of blood and passing mention of needles. Discussions of death and murder. Chapter art includes depictions of body horror focusing on multiple eyes

WE DANCE ROUND IN A RING AND SUPPOSE// BUT THE SECRET SITS IN THE MIDDLE AND KNOWS

They don’t leave immediately. In fact, Samira insists on dessert- which ends up being the petals off a sweet flower grilled and served hot that she doesn’t stay to eat.

“I have other things to attend to,” she says pointedly, “I’m the one that keeps this place running. I can’t shirk my duties to hang out with you every time you show your face, Birds. Even if we are best friends.” She grins teasingly at that before her face turns serious again.

“I’ll arrange supplies for your trip and have a room prepared for the rest of you.” She announces, standing with a clap. “You do not need to check in before you leave. Come back in one piece, Birdy.” She says the last part directly to him, pinning him with a stern look that’s soft on the edges.

Kai can’t help the creeping dread that blooms from the center of his chest, a malignant tumor of suspicion and worry that increases each time Samira smiles at Birdy. They were awfully chummy. Didn’t Birdy say Samira was bad news? Then why did they seem so close? The whole situation makes his skull throb. Or maybe that’s just his persistent headache.

“I will return with three funeral flowers.” He promises with a nod.

And now Lloyd is going off alone with the possible double agent. Kai’s only solace is that Samira hadn’t had the chance to speak to Birdy alone, so if he was planning on double crossing them she had no way to know who they were or what they were capable of. If it comes down to it, their elemental abilities might be the card up their sleeve that saves them.

“Wox will return to escort you to your room. For now- sit, eat, talk about me behind my back, I don’t care.” She sweeps out of the room, the click of her black heels fading as she retreats.

Kai rounds on Birdy, pinning him with a sour look he says, “So how dangerous is this mission you two are going on?” At the same time Nya asks, “What else can you tell us about the gauntlet?”

Birdy chooses to engage Nyas question first, “Nothing.” He says, angling his mask towards her, “I did not know the true origins of the armor. I was bluffing.”

“What?” Jay squawks.

Up on the Dias, Barath throws his head back and laughs. It’s a hearty guffaw, one that makes the Ninja jump since they’d completely forgotten the man's presence. He pushes his chair back and trots down the stairs, “Oh, that’s rich! She would be so mad!” He giggles, “Only you could pull off something like that. How’d you know she’d cut in?” He pulls out his chair and throws himself into it, forgoing a spoon to drink his cold soup directly out of the bowl.

“She is from Cloud Kingdom,” Birdy explains, “She cannot allow a story to be told poorly, not one that she knows well.”

“That’s quick thinking.” Nya praises.

Kai crosses his arms, “Can we get back to the matter at hand? Super dangerous mission, remember?”

“Yeah,” Uneasily, Lloyd laces his fingers together, “What exactly are we going up against?”

Barath speaks before Birdy can, “Poisonous gas!” He announces enthusiastically, “Caustic, acidic, deadly- it attacks living cells quickly, burns through skin and bone until you’re dead. Sad.” He takes a moment to make a sad face before snapping out of it, “Not immediately of course. There’s a time limit before it eats you to the point of no return. But it makes your head fuzzy, all disoriented until you can’t find your way out. It’s called the Graveyard, and for good reason! That’s where you’re headed.” He pokes Lloyd in the chest with his unused spoon.

Cole looks at Birdy, ”How are you and Lloyd supposed to go in there?”

“Lloyd will not be going in at all.” Birdy says firmly, “I will go in alone.”

“Birdy’s whole situation, whatever it is, makes him unusually resistant to the mist. Wish he’d let me put him under a microscope! Your mutation must be incredible.” Barath informs them with a dreamy sigh, “He can last longer than any other man brave enough to make the trip- hours, in fact. The mist will get to the point where it will start to eat at his clothes before Birdy here feels a tingle. Please let me dissect you?”

“No thank you.” Birdy lets him down gently.

“You’ve never seen his mutation either?” Nya jumps onto that piece of information curiously.

Birdy answers for him this time, “No.”

Barath leans forward to whisper slyly, “Only one person has seen his face and lived to tell the tale!” He sits back and lets a heartbeat pass, “That’s Samira.” He clarifies.

“We figured.” Kai comments dryly. “You look normal, what’s your mutation?”

“It’s rude to ask about others mutations.” Barath says blithely as he sets down his empty bowl, “Lucky for you I don’t care for manners!” He grabs the hem of his shirt and lifts it up to reveal a torso criss-crossed with scars upon scars, some fresh and pink and others old and faded. they’re big nasty looking things, as if his skin had been brutally flayed and torn.

He points right above his belly button where a teeny tiny protrusion is budding, just barely formed enough for them to be able to tell that it’s a little hand, “Extra limbs! Arms on arms, really. I grow them easy! And I lose them quickly, but it’s for my research so it’s worth it.” He puffs out his chest proudly, “I’ve pet some of the most ferocious animals the realm has to offer! Not without casualties of a few arms, but who cares about that when the pursuit of knowledge is a fine justification.”

He drops his shirt and goes for his dessert, chewing on the leaves absently.

An awkward pause passes, but before any of the ninja can break it the sound of clunky boots fades in. Wox thunders his way up to the cavern opening with a sour look on his face, “Oy, you lot ready to be shown to your chamber? It’s all nice and ready for ya.”

“Wox!” Barath greets pleasantly, “You’re overdue for a check up. Do let me look at your mutation sometime soon, yes yes!”

“Sure thing Doc. Maybe once I’m off duty as these trespassers babysitter.” He sneers the last word as the Ninja stand from the table and approach him.

Nya bristles, “We don’t need a babysitter.”

“No, you don’t, because you shouldn’t even be here. Samira should have thrown you in prison after she first laid eyes on you! But for some reason she likes you,” He swings his head around to pin Birdy with a yellow-eyed glare, targeting him with that last accusation, “Even after you-“

“If you want a rematch, Wox, all you have to do is ask.” Birdy says, but his voice is… off. Monotonous. Dead. It’s like Wox triggered a coldness in his demeanor that the Ninja hadn’t seen before, “Allow me to end this pettiness and stop wasting both of our times.”

The insult makes Wox’s lips curl to bare brutal white fangs, and he responds by crowding into Birdys space, “Oh you can bet this fight won’t be a waste, Butcher. You remember our first scrap, don’t ya? Not so cocky then, were you?”

Birdy takes a step back, and Kai can almost see him snap out of and shake off that chilling persona he’d just worn so easily. He knows for certain that Birdy doesn’t break eye contact with Wox out of fear. His mask tilts toward the ground in some deeper, more insidious shame or guilt, “I apologize for lashing out. We have made a deal with Samira. Please, escort us.”

Wox’s fur, which had stood up stiff and straight at Birdy's initial insult, lays flat again. He backs down too, stepping back out of his space “I spoke outta line too.” He says and even he seems surprised at his words, “Let me show you to your room.” He turns and marches out of the room. Birdy follows him and determinedly doesn't look back at the Ninja. When Kai glances at the others, he sees his own expression mirrored on their face. What was that?

Finally, they were feeling that same suspicion he was.

He leads them back down the hall to a fork in the pathway, taking them into the dark of the new tunnel without missing a step. He pauses briefly as they come upon another fork in the road. He motions to the left path and jerks his head at Birdy, “This is your stop. Down the hall to the left, you know the way. Ila is waiting for you two.” He glances back at the others, “The rest of you will follow me.”

Birdy looks at Lloyd for a moment before they both split off from the group. “Wait, Lloyd-'' Kai breaks away too, going to Lloyd's side. He pulls him into a hug, “Be safe. Don’t let your guard down.” He says it loud enough for everyone to hear, not hiding the dark look he shoots Birdy's way that promises swift and violent retribution if Lloyd comes back with a single hair out of place.

“I won’t.” Lloyd promises, “Don’t get too bored waiting on us to come back.” He gives him a pointed look that Kai knows means snoop around!

He waves to the rest of them as he and Birdy finally disappear into the darkness.

“I have a bad feeling about this.” Kai mutters, continuously glancing back at the path where they parted. Wox’s ear flicks like the words irritate him, but doesn’t comment.

“Birdy has been nothing but helpful.” Cole reassures him.

“I don’t trust Birdy.” Kai ignores Cole's words, running a hand through his Mohawk nervously.

Wox leads them through a series of elaborate interconnected tunnels going up and down and around so many times Kai’s not sure he knows his left from his right anymore. He leads them down another hallway filled with doors and stops at a random door, pushing it open with his foot. The room… is nicer than Kai was expecting. It’s huge and cavernous, with high vaulted ceilings and stone floor. This is no architectural craftsman ship to the walls, just smooth stone that rounds where it meets floor and ceiling. Several bed palettes are set up on the floor layered upon plush carpets and dry purple moss that insulates from the cold floor. There’s a low table on the other side of the room with pillows on the floor as seats, a pitcher filled with water and a stack of cups sitting on top for them. Thin fabrics are hung up around the walls to add a bit of warmth to the sterile walls.

As the Ninja file in, Wox starts on what sounds like a memorized speech, “As you are guests, you are permitted to leave your room at any time and use the amenities offered by the palace as follows: Restrooms, Public Bathhouse, Kitchen, and Library. At your request and with supervision, you are welcome to tour the rooftop garden or the Jelly farm. As your allowance to stay here depends on an agreement between another member of your party, you are not permitted to leave the premises until the deal has been completed. Caphishe?”

“We understand.” Nya nods with a tense smile, “Thank you.”

Wox ducks his head a bit, suddenly shy, “Ain’t nothing.” He says gruffly, looking away from Nya, “Boss asked me to make sure you all are settled, so call my name if you need anything.”

“Well, actually, I am interested in the Rooftop gardens or the jelly farm.” He’d already thrown himself down on a bed mat, but Cole sits up in curiosity at Wox’s words.

Tilting his head, Wox ruminates over the request, “Didn’t expect ya to want a tour so soon,” He admits, “I’ve a few things I’ve gotta tend to, but I can come back in an hour or two and escort you.”

“That’s… very kind.” Kai says slowly.

Wox seems to understand the implication of the words, “Samira appointed me as your lots handler. It’s my job, and I’ll do it well.” He crosses his arms but there’s no fire to the action, “We may be warlords, tyrants, and monsters but there are rules here we follow. It’s just how it is.”

He steps out of the door and does a casual salute, disappearing down the hall before they can ask any further questions. Nya makes sure the door is closed before turning back to the others.

“So this is bad.” She grimaces.

“That’s an understatement.” Kai crosses his arms, flopping back onto a random bedroll.

Cole lays back down himself, “We’ve trusted Birdy to get us this far,” he starts, “We just have to trust him to get us to the end.”

Nya busies herself by dumping the realm of madness water from the pitcher out in the corner and filling it with clean water they can freely drink. That done, she paces for a moment before rearranging the pillows on her own chosen bed. Kai stares up at the ceiling, thinking. He’d just let Lloyd walk away. It’s not like he could stop him- Lloyd was his own person, a whole grown man who could probably whip Kai’s butt in a fight if he wanted to (Damn chosen one special powers…) but the image of him disappearing into that dark hallway plays on repeat in his head. What if Lloyd didn’t come back? And Kai just let him go without a fight? With a stranger? He was being ridiculous, Lloyd could handle himself, especially against someone like Birdy. He would be fine. Kai worried anyway. FSM his head hurt, all he wanted was a drink.

A shadow passes over Kai's face and he opens one eye to Jay standing at the edge of his bedroll. He’s about to ask what he wants when Jay nudges him with his foot, “Scoot.” He orders, looking at Kai expectantly. When Kai stares at him too long he eloquently clarifies, “Scoot over.” with a firmer love tap.

Kai shuffles over and Jay collapses next to him, sighing as he melts into Kais warmth. It’s… nice. It’s been a long time. He puts his palm flat against Jay's back and tries not to think about Zane.

At some point, he falls asleep, because next thing he knows is Nyas hand on his shoulder shaking him awake. “Do you want to go with us to see the rest of this place? Wox is at the door.”

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Kai dislodges his arm from under Jay's head (waking up the man in the process if the sleepy ow! is any indication.) “I'm coming,” Kai shakes the remnants of sleep off as he stands up, stretching. He would be more snappy with her for waking him if he wasn’t instantly reminded of their predicament. That was the first substantial rest he’d managed to get the entire time he’d been in the Realm. These past few nights he’d felt so restless and off.

Cole lingers on the edge of the conversation. He waits a moment before saying, “You two looked cute.” Which he offers carefully.

“You should have joined us.” Kai says automatically.

Shrugging, Cole averts his eyes, “I didn’t want to ruin the moment.” He admits with a cough as Jay stands, finally dragging himself to the land of the living.

Frowning, Kai squints at him quizzically, “How would you have ruined it?”

Cole pins him with a bewildered expression, as if he can’t believe Kai would even ask. “Nevermind.” he says with a sigh, turning away.

“Hey,” Kai reaches out and takes Cole's elbow, “What’s up? I'm listening.”

“That’s a surprise.” Cole shoots back immediately.

Kai recoils at that, totally lost. Behind him, Jay is looking awkwardly between the two of them, just as lost.

“Let's just drop it.” Cole mumbles, “C’mon, Nya is waiting on us.”

They join Wox and Nya at the door, “Hey, you look nice.” Jay comments, “What's the occasion? Got a hot date?”

Wox, who’s fur has been freshly washed and combed, and who’s wearing a noticeably cleaner looking tunic and wraps, flattens his ears at Jay, “I always look like this. I appreciate hygiene and fashion.” He says with a scrunch to his eyebrows, as if attempting to read off a cue card in his head “And I have a sensitive soul.” He adds randomly, sneaking a glance at Nyas face.

Nya blanches, catching on, “RIGHT. Well! Why don’t we get this tour over with?” She guides Wox ahead of her, turning to shoot Kai a look that screams why me?

“Of course, my lady.” He snatches up the opportunity to link their arms, even if it’s awkward with his mutation, “I’ll start with the bathrooms-”

After a quick potty break and a snack in the kitchens, Wox motions to a large set of double doors, “The Library, but trust me, ya don’t want to go in there. The place doubles as Baraths study, and the good doctor is a bit… unhinged in his work. One second you’re stopping in to say hello and the next the fur on your face is burnt off as a result of one o his experiments.” He scratches at his chin fur irritably, “Let’s move on to the Garden.”

As they turn away, Nya shoots Kai a look over her shoulder before turning to Wox, “So, what do you like to do in your free time?” She asks sweetly, stepping in time with him.

Kai gets the hint as Wox’s attention is centered solely on Nya. He nudges Jay and motions back to the library and Jay connects the dots with a thumbs up. He slips away from the group to go poking around. The pattern repeats in the rooftop gardens, this time Cole gracefully bowing out to poke around the seed beds and strange plants. Kai is given the opportunity to snoop once they cross into the Jelly Farm.

The hallway they’re trekking down dramatically opens up to a massive cave, the ceiling vaulted hundreds of feet above their heads and the floor dropping away into deep black pits. Archways branch off the path they walk like intricate natural scaffolding, some natural but several more are manmade, all looping in on each other. Each pathway connects to others to make large round enclosures, and within each of these floats a massive sky jelly. They look even bigger than Kai first thought they were, the ghostly sheet-like bell nearly bouncing off the ceiling and the arms and tentacles glowing softly far beneath him. Railings made of steel and rope line each of the bridges other than certain access points, where workers covered in strange full body hazmat suits seem to be rappelling down the animals to collect the venom dripping from the tentacles.

Wox motions down a path towards the far wall, a little notch cut out, “That’s Samira's office. Off limits to anyone other than her.” He says warningly as Nya opens her mouth, apparently not smitten enough to bend the rules for her.

Which is Kais' cue to leave. As Nya prods Wox to tell her more about the Jellys, Kai splits off from the pair and expertly sneaks around the occasional worker or patrol before slipping into Samiras office. It’s a short hallway that leads to a heavy wooden door that he picks the lock open easily. Once he’s inside, he closes the door silently and gets to snooping.

Or he would have. He stalls once he turns around to face the room and there, sitting on her desk, is a nicely bottled dark liquor that calls his name. He swallows thickly before snatching up the bottle and immediately uncorking the top- it smells like some deep spice that doesn’t exist in Ninjago, tantalizing and exotic. He brings it to hover at his lips before his rational brain bonks him on the head. No! Now is really not the time, Kai! He scolds himself, setting it down with a thunk and rounding her desk to get a look at the paper stack there. He doesn't read a word of it, glancing back up at the drink.

A taste couldn’t hurt. All he’d wanted since entering this realm was a drink- it was all he could think about. He deserved it, didn’t he? For doing so much? For putting up with that stranger? He flips over the glass that was next to the decanter and pours himself a generous glass before he can think. He dilly dallies again, swirling the cup. He really shouldn’t. He stares at if for a long time, longer than he cares to admit.

He puts the glass down and shifts a stack of papers to the side- it looks like Samiras personal notes. He paws through the pages and grimaces as fresh ink streaks his fingers, lingering on each page until a specific word sticks out to him. The page was dated a handful of months ago.

Birdy scared me today. He lashed out after I confronted him about Farley, I thought he was going to hurt me-

Kai doesn’t process the words, his eyes skittering back over to that drink. He licks his lips. Fuck it.

As he picks up the glass to take a drink, the door opens.

Samira doesn’t look surprised to see him, but she does raise a brow at his actions. Nobody says anything for a long moment before Kai slowly sets the glass down, hand twitching towards the handle of his sword that he kind of can’t believe they let him keep, “Calm down.” Samira rolls her eyes, stepping over to a cabinet shoved against the wall and pulling out another glass from the top drawer, “I’m not upset.”

“You’re not?” He asks as he watches her pour herself a glass.

She sighs and it's a put upon thing, “You’re a ninja. It’s in your nature to snoop, and Wox is woefully easy to distract.” She tips back the drink and savors the taste, “Though I figured I'd find this room ransacked for information, not… used as a refreshment bar.”

He winces but picks up his cup again, “Yeah, well…” He doesn't have anything to say so he just swallows down a gulp of whisky-adjacent liquor.

“Hey,” She warns, “This is for sipping. Savor it.” She orders. When he obliges, she doesn’t quite smile but she does nod her head back towards the main room, “Take a walk with me.”

It is an exceptionally smooth drink, spiced and warm. It still burns going down, but it's a good burn. Kai feels like all his headache and lingering irritation melts away with each sip.

He falls into step beside her as they drink together. She swirls her drink in her cup as people call out hellos to her, “It was chaos when I first came here.” Samira runs her fingers lightly over the rope banister, “You may think my methods are harsh, but please remember who I am dealing with- these people have been exiled for grievous crimes. They cannot think I am soft. My strength as their leader is what makes this place run so smoothly.”

“...Okay.” Kai doesn’t know what to do with this conversation.

She motions him along another path, taking him down a hallway into a room filled with machinery. Vials of paralytic poison sit to one side with several people working around the humming contraption. Kai and Samira watch as bottles upon bottles of glowing pink liquid are fed into the assembly line. It chugs and churns until a measly five perfectly round pink marbles come rolling out on the conveyor belt at the end of the line. Samira picks one up, examining it, “There was no community, no society- just violence and lots of pain.”

“Mutations are hard on the body, Kai. uncomfortable at best, agony at worst.” She keeps the marble and leads him back out to the jellys. She walks up to one- this Jelly is older. Its bell lay flat and thin across its head with scars and tears along the edge, it’s missing a few tentacles and several lures, and it’s a few shades duller than the other animals that fill the room. It’s floating lower than all the rest too, the luminescent tentacles it has left drag across the floor so far beneath their feet. Samira leans against the rope confidently, “I saw Miss Emma here use her poison on a horse-“ She starts, patting the animal on the head where the poison doesn’t seep, “Paralyzed it and ate it right up, and it gave me an idea. She numbs you first, before she eats you. If I could use her poison, refine it just right, maybe I could take that numbness and use it to take away that pain.” She holds up the marble- the pill, “And with a bit of help from Barath, I did it, and I built Oasis around this thing right here. It’s amazing how easy it is to bring people together when pain is out of the equation.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Kai asks with narrowed eyes.

She sobers up, sipping at her whisky, “After all I’ve been through, Red, I know pain. I can see it.” She takes a moment to really study him, “You’re in a lot of pain, Kai. Aren’t you?”

He looks away, down at the glass he’s suddenly gripping so tight his knuckles are turning pale.

“That’s why you chose to drink instead of looking for information, isn’t it?” She looks at him kindly, face the very picture of a supportive and worried mother.

Kai’s not sure why his hands are shaking or why he suddenly feels so exposed and vulnerable- maybe because he hasn’t been able to drink since they came here, and he’s been deprived of the usual escape into intoxication, but he finds himself talking before he can think, “His name was Zane. He died saving me and I… I was too helpless to do anything to help him.” he blinks down at his cup. He should stop drinking. He throws the rest of it back like a shot anyway.

“Here.” She says gently, handing him the pill, “It works just as well on emotional pain.”

He looks up at her suspiciously, “You don’t want anything in return? I just saw how hard it is to make these.”

“Oh Kai,” She smiles and pushes the pill into his hand, closing his fingers around it herself, “The first one is always free.”

Barath doesn’t blink from where he’s huddled at his desk, writing chicken scratch in a leather-bound notebook when Jay slips in. There’s no way he doesn’t notice him, not with how his large desk directly faces the door, or how Jay immediately side steps into a stack of books and sends them thumping to the ground. For a place Wox had called the Library, there’s not much library happening. There are a few shelves lined along the wall, sure, but most of the books are piled into sections on the floor while the actual shelves are filled with notebooks, files folders, and active experiments or samples. Jay carefully avoids looking at the clear front glass container packed with bags of blood.

That’s the first time Barath addresses him, “Squeamish, Jay?” He sounds more subdued than he had at dinner, the energy in his private lab more serious and careful than the looseness of Samiras grand hall. “It’s quite normal to feel that way. Not used to blood?”

Jay approaches the desk that Barath still hasn’t looked up from, “I’ve dealt with blood plenty, but it’s not something I can get used to.” He laughs awkwardly, “blood belongs in the body, not out of it.” He jokes.

“You would be surprised, perhaps, at how prevalent hemophobia is here. I’ve drawn blood from warlords, serial killers, and much worse who close their eyes as I prep the needle. Seems a bit backwards, doesn’t it? I suppose it's different when it’s their blood.” He finishes his entry in the book and flips it shut, finally looking up at Jay, “I’ve never been frightened of blood! It’s fascinating, really, especially the samples I've seen here. So unique. Would you like to see?” already he’s stood up and strode to the fridge, pulling out a drawer filled with blood cultures neatly labeled.

“Uh, I'm- it’s okay! Really. I mean it.” He laughs nervously, “Uh, shouldn’t you be more careful with those? Whoever organized them is probably gonna be ticked off.” He adds on, raising a brow.

Barath continues to paw through the samples, humming as he picks up a few possible candidates before casually tossing them back. The neat labels on top juxtapose his haphazard actions, “I organized them.” He says blithely, finally picking out a sample he liked and slotting the draw back into place with a slam, “I have never cared much for consistency, Jay. That's why I chose to come here.”

Jay feels his jaw drop, “You chose to come here?”

“Of course!” Some of that energy from dinner spills into his body language, a pep in his step as he approaches one of the large sheets in the room, “Look around you, Jay! This is a veritable garden of Eden- a buffet for the mind. This world is ever changing, ever growing! I’ve learned more here than I ever thought possible. What I thought I knew in my home realm has all been dashed away by this realm's chaos. What I thought I knew yesterday will be wrong today. How delightful!”

He pulls away the tarp to reveal a mechanical monstrosity, several tubes and knobs, cords that lead into a strange metal box. There’s blinking lights and baubles and it takes Jay too long to realize it was a microscope. “I am on the front line of an uncharted world, Jay. My books, my papers, my research is the first of its kind. How thrilling! What ecstasy!” He slots the blood sample into place.

Jay can’t help but be drawn to the machine like a moth to flame. It’s not exactly well put together- the welds are a bit ugly, the machine is over engineered and clunky, but it’s clearly far more advanced than the microscopes Jay had seen in Ninjago. “Did you build this?” He asks, ghosting fingers over mis-matched metal.

Barath grinned with all his teeth, “It took a while to figure it out. I admit, I took some of my old equipment for granted.” He had years here to try new things, and the cobbled together mishmash of it showed. “Are you sure you don’t want to look? The way the mutations affect the blood is quite a show.”

It’s tempting, but Jay felt a little queasy just thinking about it, “I… didn’t come here to talk about blood.”

With a shrug, Barath looks into the barrel himself. He takes a moment to adjust the knobs, “I know that.” He says, picking up a small trigger stick and holding the button. There's a series of several flashes and the box next to the microscope hums to life, printing off several sheets of paper, “You came to snoop.”

Jay blanches, “W-What! No way, I just wanted to- Wox led us on a tour, and the library is free for us to use so- so-”

Barath leans away from the instrument to smile at Jay, “I’m not angry, Jay! Come now, you really believe that Samira, Wox, and I don’t know your intentions sneaking off from the tour like you did? Do you really believe Wox, one of the more fearsome and brutal warlords of Chima, didn’t notice the party getting lighter? We are criminals, Jay. We expect this!” He grabs the stack of papers and scurries back to his desk, taking out a quill and ink so he can begin to carefully label and date each image he took of the blood.

“Oh.” Jay says simple. There’s a pause, “So you don’t mind if I poke around?”

Barath looks up from his work and sizes Jay up for a moment. He takes a break from labeling the papers to lace his fingers together on top of his desk, “I’ll do you one better: Any questions you have, you are free to ask. My mission is the pursuit of knowledge first and foremost, and I will share that knowledge whether Samira wants me to or not. I will tell you the truth!”

Well, that sounds a lot easier than flipping through books all night. He moves another stack of books off of the chair in front of Baraths desk and sits, twiddling his thumbs.

“Well?” Barath prompts.

“I uh… don’t know what to ask.” He admits.

That seems to baffle Barath, “You’re in a world where people grow multiple eyes and it rains acid, and you have no questions whatsoever? Where’s your whimsy?!”

“Okay, okay! Um… So, Samira, is she like- the original banished person? She was here first? Is that why everyone listens to her?”

“Oh, no!” Barath leans back in his far more comfortable looking chair, “Samira is far from the first! But you won’t run into any of those- we call them the Ancients. They are gone now. Dead, mostly, or lost to their mutations long, long ago other than- well.” He gets a sparkle in his eyes, “I have this theory on mutations- it’s physical of course, but I believe a great deal of how and why you mutate depends on the strength of your character and will! The stronger your constitution, the longer you keep your sanity.”

“The last of the Ancients was alive just a handful of years ago. It’s a name you know! Birdy.”

“Birdy…? But Birdy is still alive.”

Barath grins, “The Birdy you know is alive, yes, but he didn't just take that mask from her. He took her name as well- of course, that was not her true name, just the moniker she went by here. She had an iron will and never once bowed before anyone, even at her lowest.” He shifts back to Jay's original questions, “Samira is the leader of Oasis because she is good at bending people to her will, at figuring out exactly what people want, what they need, and how to use that to control them. Samira made these people rely on her, and how she has all the power.”

Jay picks at his nails, dread filling his stomach as he thinks over Baraths earlier words, “Did Birdy- current Birdy... kill the old one?” He asks, feeling a cold wash over him at the idea that Lloyd was out with a murderer.

Barath takes a long moment to think, “Perhaps I should tell you all I know about Birdy.” He says, suddenly solemn, “But you must be warned- this is not a conversation had lightly. Can you handle this truth?”

“I have to know.” Jay says firmly.

Barath begins to speak.

“Oh!” Ila says, startled.

Cole spins around to face her, feeling a hot flush of embarrassment that she’d caught him playing in the dirt in one of the garden's grow beds, “Uh, I wasn’t doing anything weird.”

She laughs a little, stepping into the greenhouse more. The garden sprawled up one half of the palace roof (mountain top?), stairs leading from one platform to the next. They were on the second platform out of three where several large greenhouses took up nearly every available inch of space other than walkways, “You just surprised me,” She says lightly, “I took longer than normal to clean up the kitchen, I thought I would have missed you.”

That seemed… weird. Did she know he would be there? Maybe Wox told her they were going on a tour..? “Were you trying to miss me?”

She pauses too long to be anything other than strange, “No.” She says finally, “Do you like the greenhouses?” She asks politely.

He drops it uneasily, “It’s cool in here, yeah. I’m not familiar with any of these plants, though.”

“I help tend to the garden, I could probably give you a quick rundown.” She offers, stepping up beside him to examine the plant he was in front of.

“No, that’s okay- but I was wondering… If these Funeral flowers are so important, why don’t you grow them here?” He gestures around, “Instead of making dangerous trips into the Graveyard?”

“Oh, well,” She turns around and sits on the edge of the wooden planter, “Funeral flowers don’t produce outside the graveyard, despite our efforts. We tried filling a greenhouse with the fog but it never lasts, and the plants never flower. In fact, come with me!” She stands again and beckons him to follow with one of her tentacles, leading him out one greenhouse and into the next. They weave between planters until they come upon an ordinary looking bundle of green grass. It looks like it would be right at home in a field on Ninjago, “Here they are. Funeral flowers.”

“These?” He squints at the plain green things.

“I told you, they won’t flower. Usually a flower stalk would be right in the middle of these with a white bud, but no matter what we try they just don’t grow outside the graveyard.” She sits down again, “They’re strange, delicate plants.”

“So now you have to trek into the mist for them.” He nods.

“We didn’t used to have to go so far,” She admits, stretching each of her tentacles out like she's working out a sore muscle, “They used to grow right on the edge of the mist- big patches of them. Barath was the one who discovered them. We didn’t know what we know now, and we picked them without thought- but Funeral plants don’t survive a rough harvest. We yanked the flowers, and the roots died, and now we have to travel deeper and deeper for them.”

“What’s so special about them?” He finally asks, sitting next to her.

She tips her head to the side, looking up through the glass ceiling at the swirling red sky, “It’s a cure.” She says seriously, “It reverses mutations, brings back fingers and skin as long as you're not too far gone. One plant is enough for thirty pills, each enough to significantly improve mutation symptoms. One pill can buy you nearly anything you could ever want here, that’s how valuable they are.”

Cole whistles low, “Wow.” He looks at Ila, considers how human she still looks, other than the tentacles, “You’ve had one?”

“Three total over the years.”

“Samiras had a lot more than that, I'm guessing.”

Ila shrugs at that, “I’m sure she has, but I don't know exactly. Samira has looked the same for a long, long time, so I think she uses her supply to regulate instead of cure.”

“Birdy?”

“Birdy has never accepted a cure pill.” She tells him, “He’s got some issues about that stuff.”

Cole quirks a brow, “What, does he not want to owe Samira anything?”

“More like he doesn’t think he deserves good things.”

There’s a pause as Cole chews on that. Birdy had been nothing but understanding and kind to them, even listening to Cole's input when he had it. He hadn’t seen a dark side to Birdy other than maybe his earlier interaction with Wox, but everyone was so certain he was this dangerous, unstable guy. Even Birdy himself.

“What can you tell me about Birdy?” He asks finally.

“He’s courteous and polite,” She starts, “He always offers to help me clean the kitchen, or even cook. He does favors without asking for anything in return.”

She stops, and Cole waits.

“And?”

“...And he’s hurt a lot of people.” She forces out, and then begins to talk.

Nya hangs off Wox’s arm and tries to keep him talking, both of them marching along random hallways as he tells her about the construction they did to reinforce the walls along this particular corridor, “This whole place was a nest, once. Like a termite mound, but for some other animal- we don’t know what. It was long abandoned when Samira laid claim to it.”

She hums along, prompting him to go on when they round a familiar hall. The hall with their room in the middle- Nya glances behind them and there are no Ninjas in sight, “Why don’t you show me the library again?” She asks, leaning against him with a bright smile.

He rumbles out a low laugh, “I like ya, Nya, so I’ll let you in on a little secret.” He leans in a bit, “I know your friends aren’t behind me anymore.”

She jumps away, fully expecting him to be angry at their trickery, but he doesn’t seem bothered at all. Nothing happens for a long moment, they just stare at each other, “...You’re cool with that?”

“We expected it.” He says simply.

“Oh. huh.” She runs a hand through her hair, “Well, thank you I guess. I’m just gonna…” She motions to her door awkwardly, stepping over to it and going for the handle.

“Nya, wait.” He takes a step towards her, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Oh, Wox.. um, i’m flattered but I don’t…”

He snorts at her attempt at a gentle rejection, “Don’t worry, darling, that’s not what I was going to say.” He debates for a moment, “I was not lying before, I do like you, Nya. You remind me of someone I once had the privilege to love, but there is no room in my heart for anyone but my better half.” It occurs to her suddenly that all his earlier nerves around her had simply... vanished. He was... pretending? So that she would think she had the upper hand..?

She feels her confusion show on her face, “Then…?”

His face grows serious, “The people of this realm are not good people. I know that, I've seen many of them at their worst… But Birdy is by far one of the most dangerous people here. It is wise for you to cut your losses and leave him, for your own sake.”

“What are you saying?” She feels herself turn pale, sweat beading on her forehead.

“Banishment to this realm is rare now. It doesn’t happen anymore, the people here now are all that there will be. Ever. Yes, we all have our dark and violent pasts, but there is an honor code between us all now- we don’t kill. We fight, we hurt, we steal and we lie, but we do not kill. Those that do are exiled, made to live in the deserts and wastelands… But Samira likes Birdy, so she allows him to break some of our rules. He should not be here, Nya. He is a murderer.”

Kai pockets the pill, unsure about taking it. He wants another drink, But Samira seems less inclined to share her liquor. They walk together for a while longer in silence.

“Birdy and I are not friends,” She says suddenly.

Kai looks over at her, confused, “Huh?”

“He is a valuable asset to me, but we are not friends. I protect him because it is in my best interest to stay on his good side… but I see myself in you, Kai and I must be honest with you. I have to warn you.” She says seriously, coming to a dead stop in a dark corner between the scaffolding walkways.

“Warn me? About Birdy? I knew he was bad news!” He huddles closer to her, eager to uncover the truth.

“You have good instincts, Kai. Bad news is an understatement.” She motions him to follow her and she quickly leads him back to her office, pouring the both of them another glass of whisky to steel her nerves before she lays everything out on the table for him. “This is a place for the realms worst villains, Kai. You don’t know the kind of horrors I've listened to people brag about- but what little I’ve learned about Birdy has eclipsed those stories completely. He was the Emperor to the Never Realm, and while he was in power… he destroyed crops, leaving his people with nothing. His dungeons were always empty because he killed his prisoners before they ever stepped foot in a cell. Devastation, wanton destruction, massacres, genocide- he took part in it all. He didn’t even bat an eye. He decimated his land for power, Kai.”

Kai feels dizzy, sipping at his drink so the burn will center him. Sure, he wasn’t the most trusting, but even he wouldn’t have expected that type of laundry list for the soft spoken Birdy, “But he seems…”

Samira looks down at her cup, face pinching in sorrow, “Not too long ago, only a year and a half at most… he came into Oasis drenched in blood. He had a traveling companion, a fox from Chima…” She looks up at Kai, anguish in her eyes, “He wasn’t a threat to anyone, Kai. Farley wasn’t even supposed to be here. Birdy slaughtered him- we never found his body.”

Kai shook his head because that just… it couldn’t be. Not Birdy. It didn’t even sound plausible!

Samira reaches into her desk and pulls out a photo- it’s obviously old, not taken by a modern camera like the ones from Ninjago. It shows the market on the outskirts of town, filled with people. Ila is at the center of the photo smiling sweetly. Samira points behind her, at a figure in the crowd.

“Look.” She says urgently, “Really look.”

It’s a fox, slender and young, but everything else falls away. Kai’s vision tunnels. Strapped to the foxes hip is a unique copper dagger, blade curved and wickedly sharp, with an amber stone embedded in the hilt.

It’s the same dagger he’d seen Birdy use almost every day since they’d met.

The same dagger he’d used to prepare meals, to shred wood for kindling, to cut away stubborn vines so they could easily walk along the forest path. It’s the same dagger.

“That knife belongs to a dead man, the mask belongs to a dead woman. I know he killed Farley, he told me himself. He’s carrying around trophies, Kai…and I am scared to think that you or any of your friends might be next. I believe you're safe for now- he wants you alive for some reason, it’s important you are alive… but wherever he’s leading you… I don't know, Kai. I worry the next time I see him, he’ll be wearing red. Another trophy.”

Kai swallows down the rest of his cup and shakily pours another.

Birdy was a murderer. A monster.

And Lloyd was alone with him.

#ninjago #lego ninjago #kai ninjago #jay walker #nya ninjago #cole brookstone #zane julien #lloyd garmadon #ninjago never the dark #ninjago au #alcoholism #blood #needle mention #death #murder #samira: i love manipulation !#multiple eyes #body horror

35 notes · View notes

roaenexists · 5 months

Text

Oracle decks are any divination art cards, like Kipper, Tarot, or archetype decks. It's an umbrella term and includes a lot. Today I want to talk about how to use the decks that don't follow any specific pre-established system.

These oracle decks tend to very focused on a limited theme and this can lead to infrequent use. How often do I need to check in on who my spirit guides are? How often do I need to do a reading on my yoga practice? Not never, but also not often, right? And then I've got my favorite deck or two that I could use daily and still get fresh, tailored takes. Look, not all oracle decks are made the same, but I certainly want to use them all as much as possible. Get my money's worth, you know?

So today I mixed my favorite archetype deck with three other oracles (this many is not necessary i just have a problem) and got one of the most powerful, cutting, and simultaneously supportive readings I've had in ages. I had a nice cathartic cry even. And not a tarot card to be found.

Now I'm not saying you need to go out and buy every super niche oracle deck you can get your hands on, but let's say maybe you've bought some cards that aren't getting as much use as you'd hoped. Before you rehome them or turn them into an art project (an alternative we should all consider more often), try using them with other weird lil cards. Maybe the message to love yourself because you're made of stardust or whatever will ring more true when it's paired next to a firefly that doesn't have keywords. And vice versa, maybe you don't need keywords on every image if something else in the spread brings even the vaguest of messages to the table. You get me?

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir but this was a revelation to me so maybe it'll be helpful for someone else to see, too. Just get freaky with it. No one can stop you. Combine your ancestor oracle with your affirmation deck with your herb cards. Now we're cookin.

#roaenpost #witchcraft #witchblr #witch #baby witch #tarot #tarot cards #tarotblr #divination #oracle cards #oracle deck #cartomancy #witchling

23 notes · View notes

rei382 · 2 years

Text

A Lovers’ Reading

Fic by Rei382

Art by @ibelieveinahappilyeverafter

Fic written for Wizard Hearts team activity

Summary: Harry and Draco walk into The Thirteenth Stone Lithomancy Store looking for advice for the future of their relationship.

The door bell rang, and I looked up from the counter as the door opened. Of course, I knew this was going to happen. A Seer knows everything that is about to happen. But not always the exact details.

“…need to, Love,” Harry Potter had said.

Another man walked through the door. The Malfoy heir. I raised an eyebrow. Even though I was blessed with the Sight, it is limited. I was not aware that The Saviour and the Malfoy heir were involved. Interesting. I will have to go to the back and check my crystal ball as soon as the high-profile-kept-low couple leaves the shop.

“Yes, Harry; we do. How do you expect me to make such an important decision without consulting, first?”

I watch as Harry Potter puts back the crystal he’d picked up. I was not surprised to see him pick an Obsidian. It is a well known fact that the Boy Who Lived had the tendency to attract negativity to himself, and my Sight had guided me, years ago, to know that this boy needed help finding his true self after not being allowed to discover himself.

The energies never lie.

“I don’t. I just don’t think that consulting cards is the way to go. You’re supposed to be consulting me. We’re supposed to make this decision together – “

“I consulted with you. But in order to make up my mind, I need to consult someone who possesses the Sight, as well. We can’t leave something as significant as this to our simple minds.”

“Your mind might be simple,” Harry Potter muttered under his breath, but I heard him.

The Malfoy heir had apparently heard him too. “What was that?”

I had to agree with Malfoy’s suspicion. Harry Potter was a wise man. Everyone knew that. But it seemed that when it came to the Sight and the flow of energy, he was no better than an ignorant Muggle. It was quite clear that the Malfoy heir’s mind was quite the opposite of simple. It seemed that it was Potter’s mind that was simple.

I held back a scowl, and, instead, wore my kindest smile. “Hello there. How may I help you?”

The boys looked at me. I knew they were barely aware of my presence, and my good manners had indicated that I should not have interfered in what was obviously an important and private conversation. But my Sight had clued me that the conversation was heading towards an argument – and arguments are bad for business.

A Seer’s got to eat, too, after all.

“We’re just heading out – “

“Yes, please, thank you. I need a reading, please.”

I could see the frustration on Harry Potter’s face before it appeared in his features. I turned my attention to the Malfoy heir. “Gladly. What kind of reading would you like, sir?”

“Draco – we have to be careful, make sure to keep our secret safe!”

“Harry, stop worrying! Seers are bound by Confidentiality Spell.”

I didn’t need to look to see Harry Potter rolling his eyes and turning from us. At the corner of my eye, I saw him picking up a bag of specialty tea leaves. I turned my full attention to the Malfoy heir. “That is very correct,” I said with a smile. “What reading can I do for you, my dear boys?”

I watched as the Malfoy heir glanced at Harry Potter, then took a deep breath. This type of behaviour is not foreign to me. I remained silent, letting him have as much time as he needed to let the words out.

“I would like to have a reading to tell me if we should get married now, or if it’s better to wait until we decide to go public about our relationship,” he said, finally.

I felt that my Sights has failed me – or perhaps it was I who failed the Sight. Out of all the possibilities I Saw, I did not even consider that they were considering marriage.

I gathered myself. “Of course, of course,” I said, and summoned my cards.

The reading was unequivocal. “If you so wish it, boys, you should get married right away.”

#drarry #wizard hearts 2022

13 notes · View notes

lastweeksshirttonight · 1 year

Note

4, 11, 16?

4) Favorite quote from the Taskmaster Book of Quotes --

Googling tells me that I, on Season 10, am just about to get to Greg starting to talk about his Book of Quotes. So looking at these with literally no understanding or context, I have to go with "It's floating like two dicks." That sounds like something I'd say.

11) Dream contestant(s) for the future --

Honestly my dream contestant is both never going to happen and a bit of a surprise considering my blog - RM of BTS.

RM is on a variety show with the rest of BTS called "Run BTS", and the best description I csn think of for it is "the seven richest men you can think of get into knock-out drag-down competitions over ramen coupons and $15 gift cards". It's honestly fairly close to Taskmaster, except every episode is one whole task.

RM strikes me as behaving like Ed Gamble, if Ed Gamble also acted like he's the smartest person in the room. RM would regularly explode while trying to fish a thimble out of a bathtub without touching either or whatever. RM's prize tasks would also be legendary, as he is a true Art Hoe and Greg would be losing his shit over the obtuse metaphorical meaning of whatever thing he shows up with.

I don't think TM could even begin to afford RM, and he's also not a comedian, but he'd be so so fun to watch fall apart.

Some more potential dream contestants who are a bit more likely to happen:

- John Oliver, obviously, because of my single-minded desire to see him in as many pieces of media as possible.

- Demetri Martin, because I have no idea how his extremely cerebral stand-up would translate to this show. I think poorly, which would be amazing to behold.

- Ed Byrne. Dara opened the door, let's get my college Mock the Week fave on there!!!

- Karl Pilkington. I think we see that a theme for my most wanted players has more to do with how weird or unique they'll be on the show, not if they'd actually be skilled at Taskmaster. So obviously I have to see how Karl would deal with this.

16) Favourite contestants --

I'm gonna divide this into two responses. My favorite overall contestant, in terms of performance, skill, chaos, and likability, is Richard Osman. He was the first contestant I watched that I fully rooted for, and he turned in one of my favorite creative tasks ever, the Bittersweet Symphony riff for his nursery rhyme. Runner-up here is Russell Howard, because good god what was he doing that whole time. Incredible. He should have gotten first place for the hypermasculine Top Gear tattoo (genuinely the hardest I laughed the entirety of season 6).

My favorite contestant for extremely shallow reasons is Mark Watson, because he's hot as hell. (I have a definite type.)

#taskmaster #taskmaster uk #lee's question hour #john oliver #kim namjoon #rm #rm bts #demetri martin #ed byrne #karl pilkington #mark watson #richard osman #russell howard

7 notes · View notes

itsagrimm · 2 years

Text

The Spider's Web

For this year's Bounty Hunter Week i had the honour of working with the amazing @heumilch. We brainstormed together and she supplied incredible ideas and artwork while I researched and wrote little companion pieces to her art.

See the full picture of todays art piece here.

Not sure about the referenced tattoo art? More information here.

CN Gambling, Prison

It was a hot and dusty day. Cad Bane shouldn’t have been too surprised by that weather - it was tatooine after all. And yet an odd calm was over Jabba's palace. With the suppressing mid rotation heat everyone found a way to either cool down, sleep through or otherwise survive the hottest time this side of the hemisphere.

The Duro’s took a tiny sip from his cup. Water was expensive and he did not want to blow all his just earned credits on plain water after a successful hunt.

“Junk?”

It was Sugi, sitting across from him at the sabacc table.

He growled and put down his cards to “junk” them. Bad luck this time.

Bane leaned back and watched as Sugi, Embo, Greedo and Latts Razzi continued playing this round of Sabacc. Sabacc was a simple game. Players tried to get a sabacc, meaning as close to zero with their card value as possible, by discarding or drawing cards.

It was also a lazy game.

No running.

Not too much thinking.

Nothing that could add to the overwhelming heat.

The shady bar corner in Jabba's throne room nearly passed as a cantina, had it not been for the grand throne above the dais. With Jabba gone, Bane nealy enjoyed sitting in the cool shadowy room. It felt, dare he say, relaxing.

“Bane, your turn to deal the cards.” It was Greedo, sitting next to him.

The Duro’s took up the deck of cards and started shuffling them for a new round.

“Hey there, didn’t you forget something?” Latts Razzi teased with a playful tone.

The others nodded.

“Whaddaya mean?” Bane growled lazily.

“It’s Sabacc, the cheaters game.” Sugi chimed in. “Would you mind taking off your coat so that we can see your lower arms in case you have hidden cards there?”

“Are ya sayin’ ya suspect me of cheatin’, young lady?” He growled.

Sugi grinned gleefully.

“With a reputation such as yours, it would feel borderline impolite to not at least consider you possibly cheating.”

Bane considered the words before shaking off his coat and starting to roll up his sleeves to his elbows.

“Fair point, ya happy now?”

Sugi stared down at his revealed arm, looking onto the spider's web on his left elbow. The black ink contrasted harshly with his blue skin.

“You are full of surprises, Bane.” Latts Razzi commented. “ That’s a nice piece. Would not have considered you as one sporting a tattoo.”

“It’s not a pretty decoration.” Bane hissed while shuffling cards and passing out two for each player. “It’s an earned thing. Ya’ in?”

Everyone shuffled to set their bets or junking their cards.

“How is it earned?” Sugi asked while discarding and drawing a new card.

“If ya’ have to ask ya’ haven’t earned one yet yourself.”

It was true. Bane had gotten it in a shithole of a prison cell back when he was still a dark blue boy from Duro. The memory now felt near sweet, but back then he had felt nothing but despair for sitting in the cell for days and days on end. On a particularly low day his cellmate, an older human, had told him of the spider's web. How it showed what it was like to be caught and in prison. How oppressively slow yet inevitably fast time in prison moved, slipping through and violently wasting life, all while young Bane had to sit around, collect dust and even spiders started spinning their nets on the forcibly fixed.

No, prison was torturous. The pain and the image of the tattoo, of something he had decided to have in a place where he had little autonomy, continued to feel like a triumph over the monotony of everyday prison life. Inside and outside a cell.

Embo grumbled something and junked his cards. So did Sugi. Only Greedo and Latts Razzi continued, staring at each other with their most expressionless sabacc face before revealing their cards.

Greedo minus one.

Latts Razzi zero.

She smiled triumphantly.

Bane passed the deck of cards to Greedo for him to deal out this round.

Before Greedo even touched the cards, he started pulling up his sleeves, revealing a similar spider’s net on his elbow.

He snickered.

“We all started somewhere.”

Bane nodded, impressed by the size of the tattoo on Greedos arms.

“Where were ya? Looks like you had latsof’ time.”

“I had. Grew up on Rodia, they are strict there.”

“So I’ve heard.” Bane growled.

Embo shuffled next to him and the Duro turned his head.

The Kyozo bounty hunter lifted up his sleeve to show another spider’s web, white lines contrasting harshly with the Kyozos skin.

“Looks like we don’t just share a taste for hatssss and armor.” Bane commented with a nearly approving smile.

Embo made a sound which could pass as a laugh.

“What is this?” Sugi tried again. “Is it the old men only tattoo?”

Bane turned to Suki.

“I hope for ya, it is.”

@bountyhunterweek

22 notes · View notes

animehouse-moe · 1 year

Text

D-Frag! : Near Limitless Fun

Yes, this is an old series. Yes, it can be hard to find physically because of that. And yes, it is fun as all hell. I recently managed to get my hands on all but 3 volumes of the series so I've done a re-read from scratch on it, and it really is just incredibly hilarious. It can be a little formulaic with the whole straight man routine, but it gets both incredibly meta and off the rails with it. I mean, the sheer amount of jokes that they break out in relation to it always keeps it fresh. Getting tired of Kazama making comebacks? There's probably a joke or a remix on the horizon for it. And personally speaking it always gets me, whether it's one volume in or 16 volumes in.

Anyways, let me backtrack a little. What is D-Frag! ? Well. Well.... It's a high school comedy taken the max of what can be weird, with lots of other little bits mixed in. Kazama is a young delinquent who comes to Fujou high believing he'll be able to take it over and make a name for himself. Too bad he gets suckered in by the curious ongoings of a video game club and gets tortured into joining them. From there, his high school career of insanity and infamy as the king of comebacks (and second fiddle to the most fearsome people around) begins as they galivant and explore and in general cause mayhem and headaches.

Oh yeah, and there's 17 volumes and it's still not been a full year in real time in D-Frag! Yeah, that's right, this thing is stretched out, but you don't even think about it. One could only imagine how experiencing all of these moments one after the next would affect a young high schooler. Moving on, some art to break up my monotonous explanations of what D-Frag! is!

I don't think words could really explain what's so appealing to this manga. It's got such a classic feel to it and is so incredibly true to itself. No matter what trope it brings up, it'll subvert expectations and find a way to turn it silly and diffuse any and all tension. It builds things up and up and up, and just as it's about to place the final piece on top to complete it, Tomoya Haruno (the author) comes swooping in to topple it in the most satisfying way possible.

Not to mention, it's running jokes are absolutely top notch. There's definitely some that are rather cliched, but also more than a few that are fresh and enjoyable within the overall approach of the series. Like the constant jokes about the envy and fear that Takao's (one of the characters) chest instills in fellow women and girls.

It's really hard to talk about how D-Frag! is so much fun and such a great read without spoiling because I could talk on end about how refreshing, unique, and interesting redacted was. Or how the entire redacted arc was a wild card that was incredibly fun. Maybe this. Parents exist in D-Frag!, they really do. We see both Kazama's mother and father, we see Roka's mother, Takao's mother, Chitose's older sister, and a handful of others. Oh yeah, and just for effect, Sean Connery is a teacher at Fujou High.

And who totally could would forget the unique side characters of D-Frag! ? There's , and there there's , and of course you can't forget about . Jokes aside, the side characters have a real thing for being bald and weird in general and I'm all for it. It's so out of left field and random that it feels like two series collided to form this single one.

I swear, at least one chapter every volume has these ridiculous battle shounen introductions and interactions, and no matter what they get me every time. And they're so detailed? Haruno sensei absolutely put a good amount of effort into designing them and adding random throwaway details just to make them seem more absurd.

I don't know, I fully admit that D-Frag! isn't some foundational, groundbreaking series that has incredibly well timed or apt and effective humor, nor is it something super relatable or anything that really stands out by critical metrics. But to me, it's just plain dumb fun. One stupid thing after the next, one ridiculous escapade followed by another, guided by Haruno sensei's incredibly odd sense of interest and direction. It's something I don't know I'll ever grow tired of because Haruno sensei has stumbled upon a golden formula for D-Frag!. We're going to hit 15 years of publication this year, so here's to many more. (Also, check out the anime, it's loads of fun for what it adapts from the manga).

#d frag #D-Frag!#DFrag!#DFrag #manga #manga review #manga recommendation #manga reccs #harem manga #comedy manga #anime and manga

5 notes · View notes

jobey-wan-kenobi · 1 year

Text

I posted 5,224 times in 2022

That's 3,808 more posts than 2021!

75 posts created (1%)

5,149 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@youcandalekmyballs

@moonlightsdreaming

@jobey-wan-kenobi

@quasi-normalcy

@academicgangster

I tagged 3,759 of my posts in 2022

Only 28% of my posts had no tags

#q - 743 posts

#tweets - 185 posts

#revolutionary girl utena - 173 posts

#art - 142 posts

#the good place - 132 posts

#tropes are fun - 132 posts

#pokemon - 124 posts

#dracula daily - 114 posts

#nd - 109 posts

#tumblr moment - 95 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#(turned out this card was completely useless in gameplay tho... took me way too long—and several ass-kickings—to accept this patent fact)

My Top Posts in 2022:

To continue the Larry=Dennis parallels, of course at some point there were calls for them to just replace the latest bozo pol with Dennis.

Now, this isn't quite as much of a joke as it is in real life, because, you know. The engines can talk and stuff. Isabella once ran for office, Trevor has served as an alderman, etc.

Sudrians have also, of course, been seriously talking about drafting railway vehicles into their government for years. For one thing, they have great name recognition. For another thing, Skarloey, Rheneas, Duke, Edward, and Toby have all been discussed, at various points, as perfectly reasonable candidates for mayors, MPs, etc.

Now, usually this gets no further than (at most) the Thin or Fat Controller feeling the need to make a statement reminding everyone that their respective railways could not possibly spare the potential candidates in question.

Dennis, though. After a memetic press conference photobombed and then taken over by the laziest diesel ever built, the island starts clowning about just replacing Exiting Disgraced Politician with Dennis.

And FC3 is all like, "Yes, we fully support Dennis if he chooses to pursue a career in government service. 🙃 Please. Do it. He'd be great."

27 notes - Posted July 10, 2022

"This engine is a Metropolitan-Vickers diesel-electric type two!"

'... lol I'm being so Normal™ right now.'

40 notes - Posted August 10, 2022

The Engines as Mentors

Okay but I'm eternally salty that TVS in particular—though it was RIGHT to expand the NWR fleet—failed to use the dynamic of the OG characters from the books all functioning as Mentors and Elder Statesmen to the newer and more obscure and younger engines.

It would have been THE way to effectively integrate the newbies (looking especially hard at you, HIT era). Like, some of the best use of the new characters already are when they fall into a mentee dynamic with one of the established characters. But the TVS writers really only ever let this happen with, like, Thomas? To a degree? And Edward? A bit? And then the best and most beloved BWBA episodes (BWBA!) are when Gordon and, again, Edward get more of this sort of material. And then again, in fuckin' AEG, the most popular thing so far seems to be Gordon's whole Grumpy Dad shtick.

But I think canon and fan writers should have done this with all the classic characters. After decades as The Famous Eight—erm, Ten—(but not Eleven—to me Oliver is in that category of newbie that needs looking after. which is what the rest of the Little Western spends most of his one book doing!) they are all kinda old af and well-qualified and honestly just should be mentoring the diesels and younger steam engines and whatever wide-eyed newcomers are brought to the Island Where Fever Dreams Come True and Culture Shock Is Probably One Hell of a Bitch.

LIKE. Percy. Yes, absolutely Percy! He's inconsistent about standing up for himself or making good decisions in his own working life but honestly his instincts when it comes to others have always been completely on-point. And he never has any hesitation about acting on his instincts so there is a recipe here for big-brother success. He must be so wonderful with uncertain new engines. I think he would have been much better for taking Molly under his wing than Thomas, and he must be a god among many of the newer tank engines. Like the dynamic I tried to paint in my headcanon post about Harvey—Percy gives whiplash as your mentor because he will always support you 100% but sometimes he will suddenly make the most baffling decisions and if you are not, yourself, a natural chaos gremlin, you are just along for the ride and possibly dying of secondhand embarrassment. But again, you also get over it because no one will ever show up for you more consistently than Percy the Caterpillar Engine.

The BWBA era thing where Gordon winds up mentoring Rebecca is... like, fine, I guess. I don't have any complaints about it, but—as I tried to show in my ficlet with him and Derek—I think Gordon's most typical mentorships have two unmistakable characteristics:

it is insanely arbitrary as to whether or not he decides to take you on. if you wind up in his circle of trust you probably weren't trying or even remotely expecting. it is also hard for anyone else to understand why Gordon looked at a new engine and said to himself "Yes. That one." Because the way Gordon makes emotional decisions is utterly impenetrable—this is RWS canon. Why did Gordon one day go from being Pure Unadulterated Jackass Whose Only Thought So Far In His Life Has Been "Me! Me! Meeeee!" to the engine who (evidently? without?? snark???) suggested the Fat Controller let Henry out of the tunnel to take a turn on his train? Honestly we don't know but it remains Gordon's signature style. Why did Gordon do an about-face after James took the express and graciously decide James was his new buddy? Well, to save face of course, but Gordon is also not above a good grudge so it feels like a coin toss. Why did Gordon decide to be super gracious when he rescued Percy and Thomas from their RWS scrapes? No one knows but somehow these moments are so quintessentially him (even though showing up moaning and scolding would have also been quintessentially him). And—most relevantly of all—there is what I regard as his archetypal moment with BoCo. 'My dear engine! You SAVED MY LIFE.' 'I mean, you're welcome for getting rid of them but they were never actually going to kill you.' 'YES THEY WERE. THEY HAD MURDER IN THEIR HEARTS. YOU ARE A GOD AMONG DIESELS, STANDING STRONG AGAINST THE FORCES OF DARKNESS.' '... Sure.' Gordon logic is not the same as earth logic and his reasons for rejecting or accepting others seldom make much sense.

If he does take you on, you may not even notice. Gordon is very stuffy and kind of... emotionally remote. His mentorship style consists of long rambling bouts of relating/boasting about his own experiences and/or advising you, without you able to get much of a word in edgewise—but then, he does this with everyone who is ever stuck with him—and doing extraordinarily nice things for you such as pulling strings to get you the best assignments or upgrades but he'll do it all behind your back, so it might take a while before you realize. (But you'd better, because even though he deliberately decides to do these things in secret, he will also privately feel hurt and hard-done-by if you don't figure it out and thank him. Or at least exclaim happily in his presence and sing the praises of your unknown fairy godfather.)

So yes, mentor!Gordon is a lot like friend!Gordon and worker!Gordon. He is pretty damn high-maintenance but he is also genuinely quite worth it. What his relationships lack in... comprehensibility they make up for in loyalty and generosity. ALTHOUGH. It's worth laughing because I think most of the engines he takes on are decent, polite engines who perhaps have some self-confidence issues. Basically it's like any engine he meets afterwards who is in the Edward mould he is actually magnificent to, which is hysterical considering that one of the keynotes in early canon was Gordon bullying the shit out of Edward. (I still think that wasn't malicious though, and more Gordon did not yet have the remotest understanding of Himself, Theory of Mind, or How to Be a Friend.)

If you have self-confidence issues but you do not win Gordon's capricious favor, never fear! You have James. Who is even more capricious, but that's not to say he's never been the most faaaaaabulous mentor in the world, c'est ne pas? Look. I want to see James as the catalyst for shy newcomers having a glow up. In appearance and attitude. I don't think he does he often but it has definitely happened around twice. I somehow have never actually watched "Rosie is Red" or "The Fastest Red Engine on Sodor" while paying attention but I've been assuming that's exactly how Rosie's Confident Girl Arc went down. Maybe he could be a similar idol for Neville or Flora. Another thing that has happened twice is James just flat-out corrupting a couple of the Good, Buttoned-Down Boys and Girls. I still want to see James take, like, Porter or Arthur and teach 'em anger. Introduce them to the world of (tiny) rebellions. By the time James is done with them, they are starting to Display Behaviors, and Act In Certain Ways.

Henry, I firmly believe (sticking out my tongue at most of the TVS and magazine writing for him), is actually regarded very intimidating. Like Gordon and James are intimidating too, but they are also known jackasses and the universe is known to have slapped them around reliably when they get too far up their own tenders. Also Gordon usually puts on an air of affability—in RWS it's Henry who is the Grumpy One (and meanwhile James, though he has a foul temper, is just too ADHD to be properly intimidating). I suspect Henry's actually always had the reputation for being extremely snobbish. Which is silly because he's only mildly to moderately snobbish, but there you are. He also doesn't put himself out there socially, but of course if you put yourself out there to him he's perfectly friendly. Anyway newcomers and young engines wouldn't know this right away. I think Henry's specialty is mentees in the mold of Bear and my OC Laura and even Rebecca—extroverted, expressive engines who show him respect. In those cases you see his best side, all kindliness and unstinting support. And Henry's support is really valuable, for the usual reasons that all the OGs have a lot of pull on the railway but also because Henry is surprisingly sage and sensible. He doesn't have the reputation for it the way Edward does, due to some of his notoriously poor decision-making in his earlier years and the way he can still sometimes be a bit literal or naive. But even if he's had to learn most things the hard way, he hasn't lied to himself about it and therefore he's developed a very clear-eyed view on things. Refreshingly simple and sound. We see this already in the RWS Super Rescue—he's got Bear and Spamcan pretty well-pegged long before the story ends. He also values engine solidarity in a really consistent, utterly unpretentious way that shows you he doesn't even think about it, it's just become a part of who he is. I love it. And, of course, he's bold as brass. He once hissed steam at his boss and essentially told him to fuck off for no better reason than it was raining and he just wasn't feelin' it. He had the most horrid wreck in the series and after being rebuilt he just got right back on that horse, pulling Flying Kippers again for the next century without the slightest sign of trauma. So if you need him for something, he won't hesitate to move earth and heaven for a friend. He may be a bit of a hypochondriac and likes to predict doom and gloom but he is fundamentally pretty fearless when it comes time for action. (Cut him a break with the elephant thing—he's allowed to have tunnel-related trauma, okay?)

Of course there was one extroverted engine inclined to hero-worship that Henry rejected in canon as a mentee, and that was Philip. Which brings us to Edward, and I fully agree with the fandom consensus that he is the mentor ever, capable of and inclined to look out for, like, everyone. All I'm saying is that I think the others can also step up in this way... Anyway, Edward's specialty of course is engines who are in the mould of Thomas, engines who are excited and eager to work but who talk a lot and might have a streak of mischief and who are definitely considered Too Much by everyone else. Edward likes energetic gremlins. They've always kept him young at heart. And, more importantly, they trust him so completely. Probably because they can tell he's one of the few who genuinely doesn't mind them at what everyone else considers their Most Annoying. He never tells them to hold still or quiet down or make themselves smaller in any way, so they are incredibly receptive to whatever he does tell them.

But what if you're Too Much and you are not eager? If you are not susceptible to admiring Edward's stellar work ethic? I think this is where Thomas shines. Like I think HIT abbreviated and simplified the conflicts with Dennis and Billy too much but it was such a gold mine. Because Thomas, see. You get these little sneaky rotters who don't want to listen to anyone—and at first Thomas seems like the most out-of-touch engine on the rails. Coz Thomas is a tryhard. He also has that whole "corporate positivity" thing going on. Like, the way I resolve the way TVS massacring my boy is by supposing that, after all, Thomas might have really tried to adopt that persona, especially in the '80s when he was inducted into the National Collection and the, well, television series got underway and Thomas becomes damn near the most famous locomotive in the world, certainly he knows he is an icon for children, and he might have figured that, well, this means I have to be a Good Role Model and Teach Children Valuable Lessons. And so he really did try to do this whole pep-talk, moralizing, sugary sweet encouragement thing (and he has a Word of the Day calendar, lol).

And the Dennises and Billies of the world look at that and—understandably, I think—retch a little. But then they double down. And the thing is, when they push Thomas too far, Thomas forgets to be sweetness and light, and just becomes himself. First of all, a foul-mouthed little drill-sergeant wannabe ("Cinders and ashes!!!!" "Who's been late every afternoon this week?!" "You're too fat—you need exercise!" "IF YOU DIE? IF YOU DIE, MOTHERFUCKER? SO WHAT?! I WOULDN'T GIVE A SHIT COZ I'D BE TOO BUSY FINALLY RUNNING MY GODDAMN TRAIN TO TIME." - all direct quotes from Thomas the Tank Engine, ladies and gents) Secondly, an extremely experienced engine who really has done a bit of everything by this point (he even hitched a ride on the Wild Nor'wester that one time, lol) and who is pretty skeptical so he's hard to fool (Percy was the last engine to really ever get one over on him, during the Ghost Train incident, and that's ancient history by this point). If you try to get away with doing a shitty job he's bound to notice and he will be quite acid-tongued if you've pierced his PR Persona. Third, although he can be kinda self-involved and the last to "get" what's going on with newcomers, he is surrounded by his old friends, who are all pretty good about either clocking an engine's whole Deal, getting all the tea like the gossips they are, or both. So while he was still in his amiable-idiot stage of your acquaintance, you, poor rebellious fool, thought you had the run of things but all the while he was getting up to speed on your whole deal. Which means you won't be prepared, should you really commit to ongoing antisocial behavior, for Thomas the Beacon of Children Everywhere to abruptly cast up your entire life story to you and to read it for filth, telling you the merciless truth about yourself in a way that the other engines pieced together but with which they probably never hit you deadass between the eyes.

Of course, this doesn't mean the would-be punks and malcontents who get onto Sodor are instantly cured, lol (though it has gone down that way a few times—my alternate version of Billy's intro story would feature an end where he's just gobsmacked into submission). Sometimes it just means you are going to decide Thomas is your Hated Enemy for Life, but you know what? You will have to step up your game in order to compete with him or even to gain enough clout to try and sabotage him so you're still playing into his hand (if we accept TVS's idea that 'Devious Diesel' did become a part of the Sodor family, I think this is how he was successfully integrated. At some point Thomas unexpectedly read him the riot act and Diesel was like 'who the FUCK are you?? like i know i already had beef with all the main line engines but where the hell did YOU come from???' but then after decades of competition they are essentially frenemies). But mostly the thing is, you are shell-shocked for just long enough, and you'd probably shift to being a bigger asshole than before... but, during that period where you're still burned, you are also looking at all of Sodor and every engine on it with fresh eyes (because if Thomas the Merchandise Engine could ream you out like that, perhaps you underestimated everything about this place). And you are noticing something else. Once Thomas has scalded you with his bitchery, he's also your friend. It's almost his version of sharing his lunch with you on the playground. (Something something salt and vinegar.) For all he rode Henry so hard from some of the earliest days of canon, I bet you he also beat down any 'outsiders' who took shots at him. For all he and Percy squabble, they are the closest of friends (and they weren't! for decades! but the more they squabbled, the closer they got). Getting into a knock-down fistfight is alarmingly close to Thomas's love language, and by the time he's savaged you verbally he is also invested in you. Once he's told you what he really thinks of you, he's also going to start showing up for you genuinely.

And that's when the little shits see the final side of Thomas. The genuine good humor. Obviously it doesn't win over everyone but there is a real groundedness and humility that I am sure Thomas can show (I tried to show this in the fic I made with @shinygoku based off their artwork of Thomas and Daisy) that is hard to resist. He's also fucked up along the way in every way imaginable so even when he side-eyes you, he's not looking down at you. I can just see him showing screw-ups a lot of grace so long as they let down their guard even somewhat because he's been there. Hoo boy, has he been there. That's why kids actually love him (it's not your vocabulary lessons and beaming smile, Thom, though the effort is appreciated), and it's why young engines can wind up loving him too. He doesn't hold what you've done in the past against you; he genuinely believes in second chances (and third, and...). Plus he knows every engine needs some excitement and responsibility in their lives. He has never forgotten the insanity-inducing frustration of being tethered to Vicarstown station.

Basically, once you cut past Thomas's earnest (and bullshit) attempt to be Perfect Kids' Role Model, he's actually always been great at keeping it real. And that's where a genuine respect can often grow.

43 notes - Posted December 14, 2022

us, for ages now: lol ishmael was so gay and autistic, he woulda done numbers on tumblr

ishmael in the year of our lord 2022: doing numbers on tumblr

182 notes - Posted December 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

the absolute contrast between most of the dracula daily content and mina's entries...

renfield and seward: stuck with each other (we're sposed to feel sorry for seward i think? but renfield is just vibing in a damn lunatic asylum and seward is a self-important jackass, so, you know. fuck him. i hope renfield feeds his corpse to some flies.)

captain of the demeter: his men are disappearing and he's facing imminent mutiny

jonathan harker: literally battling the forces of hell for his life and soul

mina: ahhhhh holidaying at the yorkish seaside is so pleasant! 😊 the scenery fulfills the soul! 😊 i tried to get one of the old locals to tell me a spooky story but he preferred to go home for tea haha, so quaint

also mina: i met my darling lucy at the station 😊😊😊 and let me just tell you, diary, that girl of mine looking fine af

594 notes - Posted July 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #why did they not shorten the engines as mentors post???? 😭😭😭#3 out of 5 are ttte and then the top 2 are drac fml #very long post

2 notes · View notes

careeralley · 2 months

Text

Great Gift Ideas for Colleagues and Officemates

Navigating office gift-giving during special occasions can be stressful. Deciding on appropriate spending and suitable gifts for colleagues can pose a challenge, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Utilize these fantastic, office-approved gift ideas to ensure every professional celebration, whether it's a boss's retirement, Secret Santa event, or revenue milestone, receives the recognition it deserves. For the Golfer At some point in your life, you will encounter a boss or supervisor who loves to golf—it seems to be a strange rite of passage in the professional world. If this is true of your boss, or a colleague, some golf-related presents are sure to fit the bill. You could buy a gift certificate for a turn on the swanky golf course in town so they can go and hit some balls down the fairway, serving as the perfect way to help them eliminate the stress of the workweek. If you are looking for an inexpensive present, consider some hilarious golf socks that they’ll get a kick out of. Any golf lover will appreciate your golf-themed gift, and you can find a range of items in this arena, including accessories like a stylish golf bag, that won't break the bank. When special occasions arise in the office, giving gifts can be a source of stress. Questions of what’s appropriate to spend and give to certain members of your work team can be tough to answer, but it needn’t be stressful. Click To Tweet Group Presents A group presentation is the best option if you’re looking for gifts for a large portion of the office. This might mean catering a gourmet meal at the office or taking everyone out to eat. If you’re looking for something a bit more unique, consider buying movie tickets in bulk, and then putting together a movie night basket for each employee and their significant other/family. Still unsure? Think outside the box and sign up the office for a fun camaraderie-boosting day of exciting fun! Websites like FunSherpa.com curate a collection of local adventures, including hot air balloon rides, white water rafting trips, and more. If you’ve got an employee roster filled with daredevils, this is sure to be a big hit when revealed. Office Décor We spend the majority of our weeks in our offices, so office décor is never a bad present idea when it comes to colleagues, superiors, or employees. Office décor also serves a practical purpose; first impressions are everything in business, and if you often field clients in-house, it’s important to pay attention to office aesthetics. If you’re looking for art to liven up a colleague’s bland wall, consider purchasing an inexpensive print from Society6. There are styles of all types, and if you’re unsure if they’re into abstract art or tend to lean towards the impressionistic, the site also offers gift cards that you can quickly download and hand over—perfect for any last-minute gift needs. Combating “Office Back” If you haven’t heard, our office jobs may be leading us to an early death. Scary, I know, but what’s to be expected when we spend more than 40 hours a week hunched over at our desks? It’s easy to forget about maintaining proper posture when we’ve got a deadline to hit, and the ache in your back at the end of a long work week is cause for concern. The best way to combat the negative effects of sitting all day? Making it possible to stand and work at the same time. Numerous companies offer a variety of movable desks that will take employees from sitting to standing in a matter of seconds. One company called VariDesk offers desk conversion units that can be used on top of an existing desk. This is a gift that can grant your employee or colleague better health, which is something we all deserve. Don’t have the money to shell out for an entirely new desk? Consider purchasing your employees an ergonomic desk chair to help perfect posture during the day and make sure they have the lumbar support needed for optimal comfort during long hours at the office. Finding appropriate office gifts has never been easier. No matter your budget, this list is sure to help you find something perfect for your boss, favorite colleague, or stellar employee. You can also check uniquegifter.com for tips on how to wrap your gifts. Read the full article

0 notes

the-dream-beyond · 7 months

Text

Episode 17: "The Future of Work: Exploring the Portfolio Career with Christina Wallace"

Christina Wallace

You know, there are some people that are really afraid to try something for fear that, you know, they'll lose all their money. And I find this particularly true of people who grew up with resources. Because they internally, they'll never say this out loud. But internally, they fear. I grew up with someone else's money, I started my career with someone else's money. And if I lose it all, I don't know if I can build it back.

Nik Tarascio

So if there's any part of you, that feels called to more than what you have, right, whether it's I'm in this career, but there are other things I really want to do with my life, or there are other areas of pursuit, or I was creative when I was younger musician, and I didn't pursue that thing. Obviously, that's my story. This next guest is really going to touch on why it's so important to give ourselves that permission to be, as she would call it, the human Venn diagram, the multi-hyphenate, the many things that we want to do to give ourselves that permission to follow some of that excitement and curiosity and find that joy in our lives. I hope you really enjoy it.

Welcome to the dream beyond. I'm your host, Nik Tarascio. I'm a CEO, musician, and overall seeker of Truth, inspiration, and simply put, how to live the most fulfilling life possible. Growing up surrounded by extremely wealthy and successful people gave me unique and unfiltered perspectives of those who have seemingly made it through on the dream beyond, we're letting you in on what it really takes to achieve your dreams. What happens when it turns out your destination isn't the promised land, you are expecting how to process the lessons from your past while mapping of course to true fulfillment. Let's get started.

Thanks for listening today. And I'm here with a self-described human Venn diagram. She has crafted a career at the intersection of business tech in the arts. She's also a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, what a flex where she teaches entrepreneurship and marketing. She's also an author, serial entrepreneur, co co-host of the podcast, the limit does not exist. And she's a singer that's near and dear to my heart and adventure. Please welcome Christina Wallace to the show. Thanks for being here, Christina.

Christina Wallace

Thanks for having me. I'm so thrilled.

Nik Tarascio

Yeah, I'm really, really curious about this topic of what your book is about. And again, I, I just recently found out about this book, The Portfolio Life, and I'm gonna see if I could say the whole time whole title, how to future-proof your career, avoid burnout and build a life bigger than your business card like this speaks so to my heart, and I want to kind of go back in time too as someone that now has, I think you refer to it as the multi-hyphenate. What did you want to be when you were a child? And you thought about like, this is what I want to be when I grow up? What was that for you?

Christina Wallace

I only really remember being asked this question once in the fourth grade. And I remember very clearly my answer, because it it strained credulity of the adults around me, I said, I wanted to be a professor, and author, president, and an astronaut, all at the same time. This was crucial. I didn't want to do this consecutively. I wanted to have all four of these careers at the same time. Unfortunately, I mean, I've hit the first two professor and author checks. However I applied to be an astronaut years ago through the NASA astronaut candidate program and was rejected. So I'm sorry to say, this life dream is not happening.

Nik Tarascio

That's horrible. Why did they reject you? Do they give you any reason?

Christina Wallace

They didn't. I mean, at the time they had, they had recently opened their candidacy. I mean, for the most part, they prefer like PhDs right? Across the sciences, the stem, PhD is sort of the preference, but they had relaxed the education requirement for a while when they were encouraging STEM Educators to apply. So you didn't have to have a PhD, you could apply with just a master's, or even just a bachelor's degree with, you know, equivalent experience. And at the time, I was running a program for girls in computer science, based at the Muse, American Museum of Natural History. And so I was a computer science educator, and I thought, ah, you know, I sort of qualify under this new rubric. But alas, I was not chosen and they didn't tell me why.

Nik Tarascio

That's horrible and death of a dream I imagined but you still have time

Christina Wallace

to go get that PhD and then the LASIK surgery because I have terrible eyesight and then you know, there's there's a couple of hurdles to going to Mars at this point, I'm afraid. Yeah.

Nik Tarascio

And so like, you in fourth grade, I already had this sense of there's many things I want to do again, at the same time, which I love. How did you like how did you find guidance? Or how did people show up in your life when you would share that? What kind of feedback would you get? Would you get that you should only focus on one thing like that's not really how the world works like, What did you say? variants of that process.

Christina Wallace

I mean, for the most part, I was this precocious kid, I went to a very small private school that I was, you know, two to three years advanced from my classmates in every subject. And so the school was not prepared to deal with that. And so for the most part, just like sent me to the corner with textbooks from the grades ahead and said, teach herself. And so it sort of, I don't know, it fit into my overall vibe, which is like, oh, that Christina, roll your eyes, but at the same time are kind of like if anyone's gonna do it. It'll be her, you know, so they didn't dissuade me exactly. But there was also this like, yeah, yeah, that's cute. And I think it was in two parts, one because of just maybe the ridiculousness of my aspirations. And two, because I grew up in a working class community in the middle of Michigan, like, it would have been as ridiculous to say, I want to go to Harvard, as I would have said, to say, I want to go to Mars, right? Like both of those things were not within the scope of the dreams that most of the kids that I grew up with had so. So I think for the most part, they're kind of like, that's cute. She has big dreams. And at some point, she'll, she'll realize how the world works. And we'll let someone else burst that bubble. Little did they know, the bubble never burst.

Nik Tarascio

Yeah, I mean, I'm just amazed. I was really curious, as I was thinking about what I was gonna ask you, I did not expect you to have an answer like that I expected something completely left field be like, No, I already knew I was multi hyphenate. That's kind of my identity. And like, so tell us more about like, kind of the high level of the concept of the portfolio life in the first place? Where did that come from? What's the message you want to send to people?

Christina Wallace

Yeah, so I had this idea before I came to business school kind of growing up in a world without a financial safety net, without much of a safety net of any kind. Particularly when my first career being in the performing arts, in the nonprofit arts world. I had this feeling from early on that I needed to be multidisciplinary, I needed to have multiple irons in the fire, in order to sort of be my own safety net to to be prepared, if something fell apart, if I got fired, if I got laid off, if a if a show I got cast in never ended up happening, right? Like, I needed to have multiple bets in play, because I didn't really have a safety net any other way. And then I got to business school. And I learned about portfolio theory, which was not something I was exposed to growing up. But the premise, you know, the premise of portfolio theory is, you have a mix of assets that have different risk, different return profiles, and you design that mix, depending on this season of life you're in, right.

So when you're young, and you can take a ton of risk, you tend to have a lot of money in stocks and very little money in cash or bonds or, or fixed income securities. And then as you get older, when you need to be taking less risk, when you need more certainty in your cashflows, then you rebalance that portfolio allocation to be less risky, more stable. And I it was just this like aha moment of number one, we never expect you to put all your money in one basket from an investing point of you. So why are we teaching people to put their whole career on one trajectory, especially given the amount of change that we are experiencing our generation, certainly younger people from us, the amount of change that we are experiencing? Is is a little bit like unfathomable. It's like every five years, there's like a once in 100 year event, and you're like, can we just stop for a hot second. And so and so to have that diversification, is kind of the only way to be prepared for this sort of predictable unpredictability of the world. But also, there's this element of rebalancing as you go through these chapters of your life, the seasons, what you need changes for these different stages. And so there might be a season where you say, I'm single, I'm young, I can take big risks. No one's depending on me.

Let's go and do something crazy. And then you might have a season or like, actually, what I value the most is control over my time, predictability, flexibility, I have people who need me I have other responsibilities. That's what I'm going to optimize for. And so this notion that you can take this mix of activities, paid work, yes, but also all the other things in your life. And really be intentional about how you design it for the season you're in. I think that was the moment that I was like this. This is a model forget work life balance work is in the context of your life. Think about a portfolio instead.

Nik Tarascio

I liked that a lot. And it's something that again, I've never heard the concept of For. And my mind immediately goes to like the permission. I never gave myself to do that. I mean, it was more, I think like people would make fun of it or make little jokes if like, Oh, it's so cute. Nick has a music thing he's trying to do, trying to run the aviation business as a pilot and mechanic. And it was just like, yeah, you just have a focus issue, and I really was curious to understand from you is, as you encourage people to consider that path. How do you help people navigate what is too much and not enough?

Christina Wallace

Yeah, it's a great question. So on the too much side, I think there's a natural point, as you start to diversify, I'm confident you have felt this moment, I certainly have many times, where like, there's too many balls in the air, like you're juggling all the pieces. And either just total, it's too much, or just one of them becomes really unpredictable, or super variable, or like there's a surge, right. And, and collectively, the whole system feels the stress feels the strain, like you're not sleeping, you're constantly running through the to do list and you're like, how am I going to squeeze this in, and if I just skip that meal, then maybe I can get this rehearsal, you know, like, the whole thing doesn't work.

And so on the too much side, I think there's a natural tinkering, that you're gonna have to go through as you start to build out your portfolio of like, Hmm, I think I still have some capacity here. But it can't be a thing. That is, you know, every Tuesday night, from seven to 10, it has to be something that is maybe a little more under my control, I can squeeze it in whenever I have some space, right? So there's both like a commitment piece and a cadence piece of as you're kind of putting the pieces together. And that just requires some tinkering, especially when you go through these changes in your seasons of life, where like you used to be able to balance it all. And now as I do, I have two small children. They're one and three years old, and they are constantly sick. Constantly. Thank you daycare plague. And so even though you know, even when they're sick, I can I can stay home with them. I can, you know, put on Sesame Street or some other show. And I'd still write like, but I I have to be in control of when I pull that ripcord and say, okay, clear my schedule, I got to work from home today. So, so you start to kind of like tinker with that. On the on the not enough side. It's sort of to your point about permission that you give yourself, right? A lot of this starts from the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And this is why this all starts from and I outlined these kind of four pillars of the portfolio life, it starts from a place of identity. This is what I describe myself as a human Venn diagram. That is, that is been how I introduce myself, that has been how I talk to myself for over a decade.

Because if you start with Well, I'm a pilot, you've already told yourself, I don't have permission to go play guitar. I don't have permission to start a podcast, like why would a pilot have a podcast right? So but if you start you're with like, I'm an adventurer, I'm a connector, I'm a storyteller. I like to see new things and like find ways to mash up new ideas, like you're pulling your identity up a level, to be a lot more about how you see the world, or what you have to offer when you enter a room. And that opens up permission to yourself to say, Yeah, I I can add that to my portfolio that is consistent with who I am and what I care about and the kind of impact I want to have on the world. That's not me being flaky, or can't make up my mind that's like no, that is who I am. So this it starts from excavating in many cases, the things about ourselves we might have put away because we needed to grow up and look serious, bringing them back out, flesh out your Venn diagram and then look for those opportunities those intersections to say no I and I'm this and I'm that it's not an OR and just play

Nik Tarascio

that's I mean there's the permission piece there is so hard for me as you're saying it it's just the amount of people again I just think like there's a there's a shame component that comes along with it because I imagined that it's really scary for someone to hear Wait a minute if you can be multi hyphenate maybe I could have been too but I gave up on myself a long time ago. And just your very existence shakes me to the core and makes me regret my life. Like I the amount of people that hear justify, well, you don't understand I really had to just focus on this. Like I'm wondering do you get people that resist this concept when you tell them? Oh for sure.

Christina Wallace

Because there is that element of like crap, I made the wrong choice. And my my response to them is like You're not dead yet. Like, literally unless you're dead, it's not too late, you can always make a change starting today. And, and I feel like there's so there's this drawing that I got permission to include in the book, I love this, this graphic, it's from an illustrator who blogs under Wait, wait, but why on Instagram and on Twitter. And it's this idea of like, the different paths you could have taken in life, right? So you start with like this one.on, the day you're born, and then growing out of this data, all of these different options.

And it highlights the path that was chosen kind of all the way to this point of today, there's like this little, you know, vertical line, here's where we are today. And if you look back, you see all the paths you didn't choose, which is where a lot of people spend their time looking, they look at what could have been, but they didn't go that path. What I love about this drawing is starting from this one single.of where you are today, just as many lines kind of spin out of where that person is today, the choices you still have ahead of you. The options that are still available to you are just as plentiful as the lives that you didn't lead. But you have to have that perspective, you have to have the ability to see the options still ahead. And I'll give you a great example of this. My best friend Catherine Jennings, I include her in the book. She in high school in early college years, she grew up in the South, she grew up in Tennessee, and wanted a family.

Obviously, a woman had this perception of what it meant to be a working woman with a family in the south. And so decided kind of early on, she wanted to be a doctor but decided, you know, it makes more sense for me to be a teacher that seems consistent with the story of this life I want. And so she studied biology, she got her master's in teaching, and she spent the first decade of her career as a middle school biology teacher. And she was excellent at it. And after about seven or eight years, she was first in Knoxville, where she grew up after about seven, eight years, she was starting to get a little bit frustrated with teaching in an under resourced public school situation. She thought, Okay, let me just try a different context. Maybe that's where the friction I'm feeling is. And so she moved to Brooklyn, she moved to New York. And and we got to live together again, we were college roommates. So we've known each other a lifetime at this point.

And she moved to Brooklyn and started working at a private school, very fancy private school, and where she had all of the resources and all of the support. And she again, was amazing at it. But she still felt that friction. And finally after like one, you know, too many yoga retreats finally was like, I know what that friction is, it's that I wanted to be a doctor and I sold myself short. And then the very next thing Kat did, rather than beat herself up over the fact that she could have been a doctor and was not going to be, she started looking into options to become a doctor. And at 36, she quit her teaching job and went to medical school at Columbia. And she's graduating in two weeks to be an OBGYN, and got a top tier residency at the University of Pennsylvania where she will be 40 as she starts her new career, but she had this incredible perspective of like, I'm not dead yet. I still want this 12 years later, I still want this. So how can I make that possible.

And in between all of this, she realized, I can still have a family. She got married, her wife is following her to Philadelphia, and they have all of these all these different models for how they could have a family. But it required opening that perspective of it's not too late. And what other options do we have for this thing we say we want other than the obvious straight line, traditional path. That is the bias we probably all start from.

Nik Tarascio

I mean, I was about to poke the bear here. And I wonder if I should do this, but I'll do it anyway. Because that's generally how I go. I'm wondering about the correlation between like, what I hear a lot of is that there's a chance to like fall into the hedonic treadmill of like novelty seeking, like there's like that's like the dark side of this, like, what if I go into that side, and I also imagine that like in the same way people have a, a mono relationship to work. I think a lot of people have a mono relationship to relationships. And so I'm wondering how going down this road, you know, do you see that people that are multi hyphenate also show up that way in relation because as you were talking about this woman, cat and kind of how she's figured out like, hey, we need to question the structure so that I can still make this possible to have a family and still pursue being a doctor. Yeah, like that. Is this novelty seeking at the end of the day? Is this like a lot of what drives this? Is this like a necessary ingredient for fulfillment?

Christina Wallace

I wouldn't call it novelty seeking. But I do think you're right that once you start questioning, so playbook that you were handed as a child, and that you were socialized into as a young adult. It sets off some bells, where you might be feeling friction in other parts where you say, maybe this, you know, lifelong monogamy, maybe that doesn't fit. Maybe that's why I keep having frictions in relationships. Maybe there is a polyamory are a portfolio approach to partnerships that would suit me as well. And I actually talk about that in the book, I've had a number of folks reach out and say, This is the first serious book I've ever come across that acknowledges the polyamory might be a model that fits people. And I think it's that same permission. You know, it's funny that you, you ask this as though like, but what happens if you question one thing, and it reminds me what I when I, you know, I was in therapy many, many years ago, I love therapy, I highly recommend it.

But I was in therapy, I had an eating disorder in high school, I was all I was I have this very complicated relationship to food. And I always had these moments with my therapist, where I was like, if I give on this one thing, and allow myself to splurge on calories, and this one meal, this one snack, this one thing, it'll just spin out of control, and I'll just gain, you know, 1000 pounds, and it will, it will all be over and she's like, do you really believe that? Do you really believe that if you give yourself a little bit of compassion and flexibility that you are incapable of recognizing, what is the right amount for you? And I think it's the same thing that that people who fear that flexibility say, well, first you question jobs. And then you're gonna question monogamy and what next? You're like, are you know, are you just are you really that afraid of, for the most part, looking in the mirror? And seeing who you really are? And what you really want? Like, is that what scares you? And you're using these, these structures as an excuse?

Not to figure out what's it at the core of what you need? I do think maybe there is a risk of this novelty seeking. But it starts from a place of what do you need? What do you need? And what do you want? Those are the two questions that starts this exercise. What do you need for this chapter of life? And what do you want? And, and not just what do you want out of your job? What do you want out of your life? When you get to your deathbed? Who do you want to have loved? What do you want to have seen? What imprint Do you want left in the world on the day you leave it and get specific I make you write out 100 of these wishes in the book everyone can do about 3035, I press you to do 100 Because you start realizing all of the crazy shit that you didn't even have the guts to write down in the privacy of your own room. And that is when you start to really uncover. I want these things. And I'm not doing anything in the current version of my portfolio to drive any closer to those things. Yeah, and that's where it gets a little scary.

Nik Tarascio

I'm glad we went there. Because that's really, I'm very pro, like, figure out all the things you want and figure out how to have them in your life. But there is like, I'm reacting to that inner shame voice that has really been the thing that has anchored me. It's all the people in my life that said, you don't even know how good you have it, you should be so grateful for what you have. And you know, again, look at where you grew up in the world. There's all these starving people. And yet that's like this desire to want more, I think is one of the biggest barriers of like, I'm not allowed to have the desire of even fantasizing about what my life could be. So this idea of doing the 100 things. Yeah, sounds really interesting. Because it's like, yeah, do I even allow myself to have that many things that I want?

Christina Wallace

Yeah, I mean, you called it exactly right. It's this shame that says, like, I should be happy for the good enough. And I think, you know, I look around at the voices that the the folks that are sort of shaping culture and politics and business, the world at large, I see a lot of really miserable people, who for the most part, have gained power as a way to to counteract their misery in my opinion. And I I think it is a radical act, to find joy, and to build a joyful life. That feels fulfilled, I think we'd have a lot less damage. If we had more joyful people, fewer miserable billionaires.

Nik Tarascio

Yeah. I mean, I would agree with that, which is, I guess it goes back to for you. Where did your permission come from? Like, I'm wondering what conditions created the ability for you to whether at such an early age, carry that all the way forward? Or maybe even find it again in your life at some point of like, Yeah, fuck it, this is what I want. And I'm only answering to me anyway.

Christina Wallace

So a big part of it. I, you know, I've sat with this question for years, because, you know, now I'm raising two kids, I'm kind of like, okay, what, how do I do this? How do I raise them to, to have that inner voice that that says, No, this is what I care about. And I think one of the biggest contributions in my childhood was that I was an outsider, I was in a very small school, you know, like the same 12 kids and your grade for your entire education. So like, no one will forget that time you I don't know, like, pooped your pants in the second grade, right? Like, your, your, your story carries with you. And I was a total nerd. I was a little bit awkward as a lot awkward.

And I didn't have any friends. I didn't, I think my first friend I, I was 15 when I had my first friend, and it was an incredibly lonely childhood, Nancy Drew ended up being a very close friend. But what it gave me was, it gave me the confidence to just fuck it to do what I'm what I'm gonna do. Like, if they don't like me, no matter what, then I might as well just go by the beat of my own drum, right? They're not gonna like me if I try to fit in. So, so why bother. And it just gave me such independence, that when I got to my early 20s, my first job at the Metropolitan Opera, I worked, you know, six days a week for the entire season. But then in the summer, I got six weeks off. You couldn't take a day off over Christmas, but you could have six weeks off, which is unheard of when you're 22. Right. And I wanted to see the world I had never traveled anywhere. I didn't have access to that growing up.

But none of my friends had six weeks off. And so it was that that crisis moment of like, do I go by myself? Or do I lose this opportunity? I was like, Well, I didn't have friends for a long time, don't need friends to travel, and I packed a backpack and went to Europe. And the next summer I went to South America, and the next year, I went to East Africa and, and it's sort of one thing after another, I practiced being alone, I practiced making friends on the road, being in uncertain situations, and I got comfortable with discomfort, or at least maybe familiar, if not comfortable. And that familiarity, gave me freedom to try big things, and maybe fail. But to know that anything short of that was gonna be really unfulfilling.

Nik Tarascio

That's heavy, that's heavy. I'm just like sitting with the finding, like being able to tolerate discomfort. I mean, it's a big I've talked about on on some of the other podcasts I've done. And I talk about how desire is such a hard thing for most people, because we've not been taught how to sit in it without taking action of resolving it. Whatever that thing is. It's like, Oh, I feel sexually charged. watch porn. I feel like I hate my job. I'm gonna act out and be an asshole. Like, there's just like, we generally just taking immediate action.

Is there any advice you have for people again, because I just imagine a lot of people will be excited about this concept of finding these multiple paths that could go down. But for a lot of people, it's a dark night of the soul. It's like, I'm gonna have to face like you said, all these multiple paths, and at least grieve some of the past ones before I could really focus on creating the new ones. Yeah. How did you learn to do that? Besides like putting yourself in challenging situations? Is there anything you've read? Any guidance you have for someone that says helped me learn to sit in my own discomfort?

Christina Wallace

Yeah. So one of the opportunities I mean, this is sort of consistent with with travel, but I needed to practice it in other contexts, too. I took up long distance running. I am not a natural athlete. I'm just not and and running in particular, I'm really, really slow. So long distance running half marathons, marathons. They take me a long time. And, and I decided after my first startup failed, which was the first real failure I had ever experienced. I was 20 728 And I never failed. And then I did really publicly really painfully. And that failure was so inconsistent with my internal narrative, right? I was so smart, I was so ambitious, I was the chick who was gonna pull it off. And then I wasn't.

So I was like, well, that's contradictory data. And I don't know what to do with that. And so I decided to start running partially because it's free to run like all these other sports costs. I was like, running, I can just do with some shoes. But it gave me the chance to practice showing up and being miserable for like two and a half hours, three hours, over and over and over again. Because I really struggled with this idea of being bad at something, I struggled with the idea of like, I'm putting in the work, and it still sucks. And, and it gave me the opportunity to sort of build that muscle of being uncomfortable, of being bad and trying and over the course of that it changed my narrative to not I'm the person who succeeds, but I'm the person who shows up and works hard. And that gave me permission to try a bunch of other things that I wasn't sure I was going to succeed at. But I really wanted to try. And so I think in some ways to build that permission for yourself. And this dark night of the soul and the grieving for what you could have been, also requires facing down, like, what is it that has stopped you from trying up to this point? And it's going to be different for everybody.

But, but having a real and honest reflection about like, what is that Achilles heel? You know, there are some people that are really afraid to try something for fear that, you know, they'll lose all their money. And I find this particularly true of people who grew up with resources. Because they internally, they'll never say this out loud. But internally, they fear. I grew up with someone else's money, I started my career with someone else's money. And if I lose it all, I don't know if I can build it back. Right? And so there's this like, you have to figure out what is that thing that's preventing you from taking those risks, and then get creative and devise a way to practice that discomfort in small ways. So that you're really comfortable with it, when it when it comes time to do something big that matters?

Nik Tarascio

That's a great answer. You're gonna You're an incredible storyteller. By the way, that's why I keep poking at you. I'm like, I'm really curious about the concepts in the book, but you just have such an amazing way of kind of telling your journey through it. And I think people really can find themselves in that. So going back to the pillars, I think I remember the first pillar you said was identity. What were the other three?

Christina Wallace

Yeah, so optionality is the second one. And that really only comes from the moment that you can find your identity, bigger than your job title, is when it opens up all these doors and recognizing sort of in tandem with that. It's not too late. Unless you're dead, it's not too late. That's what gives you permission to see these options. Pillar three is about diversification. So this is particularly relevant given the amount of contextual disruption that is just happening in our lives. I mean, I locked in the text of this book in November of 2022, before anyone had ever heard the phrase chat GPT. And now like, every white color industry is quaking. Just really concerned about how much AI and and all of these tools are going to fundamentally re organize these industries that like if you're in law school right now, if you're in accounting school right now, you should be terrified slash, you should really be thinking about what are other ways that I might want to show up in the world because the number of lawyers that the world will need is going to shrink, the number of accountants, it's going to shrink.

So in the face of all of these disruptions, whether it's technological, geopolitical, ecological, whatever those things are, recognizing a 40 year career is never going to exist, but even a 10 year career might not be true. So what are the different ways that you can deploy your your skills, your interests, your networks, your curiosities, such that the world can do what it's going to do? And you're not going to have the rug ripped out from under you? The Because you had all of your eggs in one basket. So diversification is pillar number three. And then the last one, pillar four is about flexibility. That's what these first three pillars offer you, your identity, the optionality, the diversification, it gives you that flexibility to rebalance. The mix of your portfolio for the stages of life that you go through recognizing what you want is going to change, what you need is going to change. It's not flighty to grow and change. And a big part of this is sort of letting go of whatever this previous narrative was about what who you were and what you wanted, and how you saw the world and say, Okay, that was true. And now, here's what I need for this chapter. Let's go.

Nik Tarascio

So good. And I immediately go to everyone who defunded arts programs. Each ship like truly, like, I don't know, it just like the creativity that we foster in kids and the ability to show them that like, Hey, I know this is the way it is today. But as the world's accelerating into uncertainty, having that creative muscle, finding unique ways to do things, allowing yourself to self Express, I hear so much of that stuff that it was always hard for me to justify it of like, why is it that there are so many people in business that have the secret musical talents, and the secret creative path, and I'm like, well, because they're the ones that are, they're the ones that are navigating the uncertainty, or other people in some of these white collar jobs you talking about or just crashing head on like a crash test dummy into a brick wall.

Christina Wallace

That's exactly it. And I think it's so frustrating having gone through the last like 15 years of everyone being like stem stem stem like forget about the arts, let's just fun science and technology and all these things. And I'm like, I love stem, I was a math major, I get it. But But as I look around it, like the number of things that we can now, automate, means the most valuable workers as though that's the only metric that matters, it's not that the most valuable workers are going to be the ones who understand technology, but have that higher level thinking that creativity, those connecting of ideas, and that is trained through the arts, that's trained through reading, and writing and storytelling and making something out of nothing.

And that's an entire, I don't believe that only some people are creative, I believe everyone is I mean, you look at kids, kids are universally creative. And at some point, we stop emphasizing it, we stop encouraging it, and they lose the practice of creativity. And truly, that is what I believe is the like the human value add in the next five years of AI outsourcing all the stuff that can be, we're still going to need people, but it's through that lens of creativity. And that's where anyone I talked to now. I mean, this is where all the case studies in the book, almost every single one has a creative pursuit as part of their portfolio. So anyone I talked to now I'm like, did you have the trombone in your closet, like bring it back out, you want to try stand up comedy, like, go sign up for that class, whatever that thing is, you want to ceramics, by all means, like, get started, it's not too late. You're not dead yet. Find a way to bring that practice into your life.

Nik Tarascio

What advice do you have for people that want to go down that road but cannot overcome the inner critic, especially in the creative pursuits, right? Like, I think a lot of people are not, they don't feel safe to share their art, or share their creativity and be in it because they're like, I have this voice that says, That's so stupid. That's not good enough. Do you have any advice to those people?

Christina Wallace

So the first thing that I suggest is to get outside your head and just go talk to the people who know you really well. One of the things that I did when my company failed, because I was just I couldn't see myself clearly. I was like, What do I have to offer the world? Who am I like, what is going on here? Is I went out and had coffee. With everyone in my network. I did 70 coffee chats, you do not need to have this much coffee, you know, 1520, folks, it's enough. But I went out and talk to the people who knew me the best. And I basically asked them like, what do you see? When you see me? I asked them three very specific questions. When have you seen me happiest? What do you come to me for? Like, what's that moment in your head? You're like, you know what, I should see what Christina thinks about this. And where do I stand out against my peers?

And what I think is really illuminating about this when you go and have these conversations with people who know you. I would bet dollars to donuts that they're not going to say you know, you are happiest when you are building Excel models. You know, 15 hours straight right? They're not going to come up with like a very specific skill or you know, line on your resume. What they said to me was your happiest When you're in charge of your calendar, you don't mind working hard, you love working hard, but you want to do it on your terms, you have to be in control, you are happiest when you're building something from nothing, which was crucial, because at that point I was going down this path of being a manager. I know again, you can manage people, but you also need to be a creator, to be happy. You need to make things and not just manage things like that is a really important insight. So having these conversations, hopefully, will help you recognize that what people see in you is so far beyond the very sort of tightly constructed box that you may have put yourself into, they might point out, you're an amazing storyteller.

You are the life of the party, you're the person that like, if the music dies, they hand the microphone to to vamp until they figure something out, right? And you're like, Oh, interesting. What other worlds might I get to? To try that piece of me? I think the other piece of it is like, maybe you connected to something you left over from childhood, you put it away, you didn't want to do that anymore. And maybe you never loved that thing. Maybe you like hated playing scales on your violin. Okay, so leave the violin behind. You want to pick up the ukulele? Do you want to, you want to learn to jam and do cover songs for the Beatles instead of classical music like, there, there are other versions that you can bring forth, that might actually resonate, because I feel like when you hit on the creative pursuit, that actually clicks for you the shame, it gets drowned out. Because it just offers you so much more. I'm not saying you have to go and perform an open mic night, I'm just saying like, jam in your living room with some YouTube songs on you know, like, you can start small. But I really encourage you to go and talk to the people who love you. Because I promise they see a version of you. That's really amazing. And you might not see it.

Nik Tarascio

That was a great answer. I'm like, I've got some phone calls I gotta make. No, I really do. I love that idea of reducing the burden of or coming to terms with the fact that we can never see ourselves as clearly as the collective of our network can at times with the collective our families and close friends. And I remember doing a similar exercise. I don't know if you're familiar with landmark, little culty. But whatever. And I'll probably get negative, I'll get some trolling for saying that. But they had us go out and do an exercise where it was like, go ask, like, figure out all your different networks. I mean, it was like music aviation, my entrepreneur groups in New York, like Summit Series, like all these different groups that was part of their like, pick one person who's representative of those communities, and ask them what you're the best at what actually is what does the community think you're the best at? What does the community think you're not very good at?

And it was like, and what can they really depend on you for? And going through that exercise. And I might have messed up some of the questions, it was shocking to find out that my family's answers were completely different from my friends, circles, answers. And so not only found out like the value of bro, but how I showed up differently in different environments. And I was like, well, that's something interesting to audit is, am I not authentic in certain spaces. And doing that gave me a lot of permission. Like the hardest thing I heard was my friend, my friend Peter said to me, he goes, you know, you talk about a lot of things you want to do, but no one actually believes you're actually going to follow through on any of it. And I was like, holy that hurts. That was my entrepreneur group, by the way that was like my entrepreneur friends circle. And it was such a powerful moment of like, that gave me the awareness to see that I don't give myself permission.

That's why it's so cool to kind of go back to that earlier question is why it was more like I could go sit, you know, sit at home and cry and be like, everyone thinks I'm a schmuck. Or I could say like, what about me, is not allowing me to have the permission to actually complete the things I do. And it was the fear of judgment. Yeah. So it's, it's so interesting to hear your answers, especially because I know that they're off the cuff. Like, I'm just throwing random stuff at you. It's really beautiful to hear that and my heart sings that the thought of what if we just gave people that permission to find that creative part of themselves, the world would be such a better place.

Christina Wallace

Yeah. So much. And you hit on exactly it that i Everyone I talked to you about this their first, you know, responses sort of like, well, the world isn't gonna let me do this. And I was like, Is the world not gonna let you do this? Or are you not gonna let you do this? Because I guarantee you like 95% of this is about you, not granting yourself permission to try this. And then 5% of this is you have to connect the dots of whatever it is you're doing so that everyone else can understand how it fits together, right you You've got to do some storytelling to help make sense of because on a resume or my LinkedIn, like you read it without any context, and you're like, I don't know what this chick is doing. And that's, that's okay, that makes sense. So it's my job to connect the dots and help you process. What am I doing? How do I show up in the world? What do I have to offer when I enter the room? 95% of this. It's the permission you have to give yourself first.

Nik Tarascio

Yeah, yeah. Again, so so well stated. And it it makes me wonder, because I imagine that you move through life as a storyteller. Like, I almost feel like your life is like you are intentionally writing the pages. And like, it's just an unbeautiful unfolding of a great narrative. What, what is the theme of the story that you're trying to tell with your life?

Christina Wallace

It's a great question. You know, I, I gave a talk a couple of years back at the French Embassy in New York. It was a last minute invitation. They needed a woman. They had all all dude lineup, and they needed a woman. That was how they invited me. Fine, and but the question was, what is your passion? What do you like? Why are you here? And I was like, Man, I gotta come up with why am I here and give them like the five minute version. And I didn't have too much time to overthink it, which I think was a gift. Because I came up with truly what it seems consistent with all the individual efforts that I have pulled together from my work in my life is that I, I desperately want other people to feel welcome.

And to feel like they belong. And I have to believe that comes from the first 15 years of my life where I didn't, I didn't feel welcome, and I didn't feel I belonged. And so I have, have made it my work, whether I'm building a fashion company, with sizing that actually takes into account, bra sizes, and height and body shapes that actually reflect what women look like. Whether it's a program for girls in computer science, so they can see the impact they can have and how the world gets built, once they recognize that they are wanted there. Or whether it's a book that helps people be be all of the things that they want to be rather than the one thing they thought they had to be. I don't know. I just I feel like if people recognize that they're a little strangely shaped puzzle piece is wanted and welcomed. I think we'd have a lot of power Unleashed for good.

Nik Tarascio

Yes, to all of that. I feel very seen right now. I gotta tell you. I'm like, Are you speaking to me or the audience right now? What is going on? In my mind? Yes, exactly. So that that kind of brings us to my last question for you. And again, as someone who has achieved so much, who has so many hyphens already. What is your dream beyond?

Christina Wallace

Wow, I think you might have actually rendered me speechless. Honestly, it's, it's exactly what I have right now. I, I did an interview last week, the week before? Or someone asked, Are you happy? And it took me by such surprise, I like burst into tears. Because I am. I am I, I have the most beautiful family with a partner that I worked very hard to find. Let me be very clear. 10 plus years of dating in New York City, I worked hard. That is hard work. I deserve this amazing partner and I have him I have a career that I adore. I I'm incandescently happy which was for 15 year old Christina. I think she wouldn't even think that was ever possible. And so I don't know my dream beyond is I want more people to feel like this.

Nik Tarascio

Oh, thank you for sharing your story. Because I think that's a really great step and making that possible. I know I feel more permission. So thank you and I am I'm like really happy to see you happy. Thank Yeah, I remember when we spent time probably about a decade ago, like I did see you seeking are quite the seeker and it's nice to see, it's nice to see you, like just arrived, you have just arrived. It's really beautiful. So I hope. I hope everyone heard some of the things I heard in here, which is really that self permission. Like really people giving themselves that self permission, really connecting with that play part, the young part, the creative part that we've in many cases stuffed down and found to be superfluous in our life. And I think more than that, I would love it.

If anyone that hears this would share in any way with me or with Christina, what are some hyphens that are blank spaces right now that you want to fill in with something? Yes, I would love to hear that. And just, I'm happy to be in supportive saying, go add some onto your name. Don't go nuts, like onto your titles onto your experience. Just add some stuff on there. Have some fun with yourself. And if you're moved by what Christina shared, you can check out her book on is it on everything I imagined? Ebook platforms, all the places Yeah, so you can check it out. It's again, the portfolio life, how to future proof your career, avoid burnout and build a life bigger than your business card. Please write reviews on Amazon.

It's a great way to get that ranked up. And now I'm such an advocate for you, Christina after this interview, I'm like yes to everything you said. I want to see your dream beyond come true to and if you can't buy the book for some reason you can you can request it from your library. And again, I just hope you're as moved. As always as I am. I feel so fortunate to have Christina You spent all this time with me and I'm like, sometimes it feels so self indulgent because I get to ask you all these amazing questions you give me such beautiful answers. So thank you for speaking from the heart and of course, it is really reinvigorating for me to see like it works when you when you when you work at it, because I know that there's one thing I remember about you, you're someone who always worked at it. And it's really beautiful to see it works out when you really honor yourself. You listen to yourself and you go build what your heart most desires. Thank you so much. Cool.

Well thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to the dream beyond. I hope that you receive whatever message or inspiration you're meant to get from today's episode. I had a great time recording it for you. If you love the show, please take 30 seconds to subscribe rate and review it. That really helps get the word out. And if you want to connect with me, you can find me at

Instagram

YouTube

0 notes

gotnofucks · 3 years

Text

The Unreformed Rake

Pairing: soft!dark Ransom Drysdale x Reader

Summary: Ransom Drysdale is a notorious rake, but he seems to have taken a shine to you. When he plans to make you his, nothing would stand in his way. No is not a word he understands.

Words: 3k

Warnings: Slightly dubcon touching, fingering, semi-public touching, forced marriage hinted, 18 + Only

A/N: This is my submission to Siri’s 5k Softdark challenge. Congratulations love @stargazingfangirl18 , you do us hoes so proud and keep our punanis so happy! I chose the prompt “Come on, just a little taste”. It’s highlighted in the text.

If your corset was a millimeter more tighter, you’d be dead. The mammas cared more about getting their daughters married off than about them making it alive through the ball. You were glad that as a second daughter you didn’t have too many eyes on you. All you had to do was let three to four men twirl you around the dancefloor to appease your mother, and then you could sit back and enjoy watching your older sister Anika try to catch a husband.

Mostly, the balls weren’t too bad. You got to meet with your friends and eat some delicious food without the constant supervision of your mother, sometimes you’d even find a decent dance partner who wouldn’t step on your toes or whose hands wouldn’t wander south of your back. You could have made it through the evening unscathed had one handsome rake not made an appearance.

The moment Lord Huge Ransom Drysdale stepped into the hall, all eyes were on him. And his were on you. He made a spectacular vision, donning the bright colours that most gentlemen stayed away from, and yet he looked more masculine than any of them. The eyes of every unwed lady followed his movements, their mothers urging them to approach him despite his reputation.

Everyone knew Huge Ransom Drysdale was a notorious rake; his stories were told at tea parties in hushed tones and often accompanied by giggles. He was proficient in the art of leaving a trail of broken hearts and stuttering men, but more than that, he was a master at getting under your skin. His eyes hadn’t left you for a moment, fixating on you and your current dance partner who was glued to your side like lichens to rock.

“You dance most marvelously Miss Y/N, would you do me the honour of the next one too?” He asked, looking smitten at you.

“Now now Allen, you wouldn’t hog Miss Y/N’s attention all for yourself, would you?” Lord Drysdale’s mocking voice carried over to you, the man walking languidly until he stood before you. “There are a number of other ladies in want of a partner, if you’d be kind enough to relent Miss Y/N’s hand to me.”

Allen bowed to him, recognizing the superior title and the man who held it. Placing a small kiss on the back of your hand, he beat a hasty retreat from you side like the coward you knew him to be. Lord Drysdale chuckled, raising a brow at you before offering you his arm. You had half a mind to turn your nose at him and storm away, but your mother would have conniptions if she learnt you said no to a Lord.

“You have a lot of nerve and no tact Your Lordship” You said in a whisper, allowing him to grip your hand and bring you closer. The music began and he spun you out gracefully before bringing you back into his body, much closer than was socially acceptable. His fingers were firm around yours, the hand on your waist tight, singeing the flesh underneath with his touch.

“You know I am a tactless bastard, that shouldn’t be news to you.” He said with a charming smile that could fool anybody but you. He put a façade better than any theater artist you knew. He led you around the other dancing bodies dexterously, not looking away from your face. After a moment, he abruptly asked, “Who were those three morons you danced with earlier? Didn’t I sent word that you must keep your dance card empty but for me?”

An appalled gasp escaped you and it was with restraint you kept yourself from bolting away from him. “Are you having me watched?”, You hissed in anger, wrinkling your forehead. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Of course I have people keeping an eye on you. Can’t let anything happen to my future wife.”

Because you couldn’t leave, you did the next best thing. You stepped on his toe with all your might, digging your hell into his feet until he groaned in pain. He retaliated by moving his hand from your waist to your backside, giving a firm squeeze to your ass that had you choking on a scandalized scream.

“Hugh!” You chided through gritted teeth, looking around quickly to see if someone had noticed. Amidst the sea of dancers, nobody focused on you alone, but it would be enough to ruin a lady’s reputation.

“You know that’s not what you call me.”

His blue eyes turned darker, more challenging and predatory as he leaned closer until his chest brushed against you. You struggled, trying to put distance between you as discreetly as possible but he wouldn’t give.

“Let go!” You said, digging your nails into his shoulder to no avail. The thick padding of his clothes prevented any harm.

“Say my name.”

It was an order, one that if not met would hold consequences. People thought they knew the philandering Lord Drysdale, but they had little inkling to the danger that resided just beneath the surface. You knew. Your gaze dropped away from his, head a little bowed in defeat.

“Ransom.” You whispered, and he let out a shuddering breath as if his name on your lips had taken away more from himself than from you. He wouldn’t let you address him as anything else, not you who he claimed would be wearing his ring soon.

The dance slowed to a stop, people clapping, and you pushed away from him, halfheartedly joining in the applause. Ransom stood too close, his hand on your waist still fast and you slapped it away in irritation.

“Look, just stay away from me. I don’t want mamma to see us together.” You said, weaving through the throngs of people and trying to escape him. He followed, keeping at your heels with no problem, playfully pulling at your sleeve.

“Stay away?” He scoffed, almost as if in wonder of your audacity to even demand that. “You’re gonna be Lady Drysdale soon, you need to get used to my presence. I will always be close. Very close.”

You turned on him, raising a finger and wagging it in his face. Heat was settling over your face and neck, seeping beneath your neckline and into your chest that was heaving. Ransom’s eyes trained on the rise and fall of your breast, a wolfish grin on his face as he licked his lips in appreciation and anticipation.

“I am not going to marry you Ransom!” You yelled in a whisper, amazed at his arrogance. “You keep away from me.”

In a second his fingers encircled your wrist, pulling you away from the floor into the shadowy corners as you protested. Sweeping aside the curtains, he pushed you into an alcove, pressing you in deeper with his body as the curtains fell again to shield you from curious eyes.

“We’ll have to do something about that mouth of yours.” He hissed cruelly, caging you between his massive arms. “You can’t go around speaking to me like this.”

His face neared yours, eyes dark and dangerous as they glared into you, his mouth opening slowly. You knew what was going to happen and you turned your face at the last second, his lips finding your cheek instead. Warm breath fanned your already heated skin, a flutter of butterflies setting your nerves astray.

“Stop! This isn’t proper.” You said, squirming as Ransom refused to back away. He chuckled in derision, forcefully turning your face to his. You hated how he still looked so beautiful, despite the sneer and arrogance.

“Wouldn’t be the first time we did it. Or did you forget about those stolen moments after the lakeside picnics? What about those walks in the park where I’d press you into a bark of tree and ravish this sinful mouth? We’re long past proper my darling, and the only reason your virtue is intact is because I am affording you the dignity to keep it until our wedding night.”

Your gaze lowered in mortification, those shameful moments coming back to you as flashes behind your eyelids. He had been far too powerful, too intense to refuse. In your weakness, you’d allowed him liberties that made guilt settle like weight on your chest every time your mother bragged about your modesty to other mammas.

“That was my mistake, Ransom. I’m supposed to marry a man of impeccable standing, someone who holds everyone’s good opinion. After Anika gets herself a man, it’ll be me, and my mother would never marry me off to a rake like you.”

His chest expanded in indignation under your hands, and he held you steady as he ground himself against you. Anger, jealousy, and sheer disbelief at your words was evident in his glare, and you shivered in fear as his lips skimmed over your jaw.

“You will marry me, mamma or no mamma. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to make you mine.” He promised, eyes glinting in warning. “What’s that saying? A reformed rake makes the best husband, ain’t it?”

“You’re not reformed.” You countered, captive in his hold. A part of you that you refused to acknowledge didn’t want to leave at all.

“That’s true.” Ransom said, smirking. “I am a rake, its time I play to my reputation.”

He kissed you hard, his tongue pushing past your lips without preamble. You couldn’t help moaning into his mouth, your fingers clutching his collar for dear life, knees threatening to collapse as he kissed you like a man starved. You knew he had a talented tongue by his charming words, but there was more to it than merely speaking. He discovered you, explored you like an untouched cave and brought you back to life.

Nobody could make you feel like he did. You had no patience for conceited, blustering men, but Ransom was more than that. He was a force that overpowered your life like winds did to fallen leaves. He carried you with himself, unrelenting, persistent. He was passionate and hungry, he was obsessed. After the first time he had kissed you in the park, he promised he wouldn’t kiss anyone again. He promised he’d make you his, and that if any man tried to claim what belonged to him, it would end in a duel.

In his kiss, you felt his possessiveness. You felt his raw power and lust that had led you to sin on more than one occasion. Saying no to him was difficult, mainly because you were most yourself when with him. He gave you wings unknowingly. He gave you the freedom to rebel unknowingly. To him, it was your claiming. But hadn’t you claimed him too in one kiss? Hadn’t you transformed the rake into a marriageable sort in one kiss?

“Ransom, we can’t.” You breathed against his lips, both your mouths swollen and glistening.

“Yes we can. We will.”

His hand ventured south of your neck, dipping into your neckline and brushing against the plump swell of your breast. You sputtered, not knowing if you were urging him or objecting. He pressed you hard into the wall, trailing his lips from your neck to your chest, sucking and nibbling with utmost patience and care. You whimpered at his assault, soft mewls spilling from your mouth and you rested your head back, unable to control the heat that simmered in your core.

“There is no power in the world that can stop me from making you my wife.” He said, looking right into your eyes as he sharply pulled and tore a rip into your bodice. You screeched, thumping your fists against his chest before he gathered them in one arm and held them above your head. “This is just a preview of what will happen between us when you take my ring and name.”

Pushing away the limp fabric from your breast, his mouth enveloped your nipple in one fell swoop. You cried out in pleasure, his warmth spreading into your own body and you feared you’d burn. A fire was simmering between your legs, wet and wanting, chanting his name. His teeth gently grazed your nipple, causing you to whimper, a sound he captured in his mouth.

“Look at me.” He ordered, and you opened your eyes without having realized they were closed. The blue in his had never been darker, almost black like the night sky that swallowed down everything in its path.

“Please don’t.” You begged. “I have sisters whose reputation are tied with mine. You’ll ruin us all.”

Ransom smiled, and you gulped because he looked almost tender. As his fingers trailed down your front to gather the layers of skirt above your knees, he bumped his nose in yours. “Never. I am a Thrombey-Drysdale. I’ll take you, and I’ll save your family. Everything I own is yours.”

The look in his eyes was such that you didn’t protest as he traced your thighs, approaching the apex. He didn’t look away as he reached your moist core, nor when he found your sensitive nub and ran circles around it with his fingers. You moaned, biting your lip to stifle your voice as his breathing picked up. Your scent filled the small niche you were in, his chest digging into yours, hand buried between your legs.

A strangled cry did escape when you felt him at your weeping entrance, threatening to breach the untouched walls of your virtue. You shook your head, asking him not to cross the boundary that will change everything between you.

“Come on, just a little taste.” He urged, pressing inside with one finger. He delved in slowly, his intrusion felt against the spongy walls of your sex and you trembled. You were panting you realized, hips gyrating almost subconsciously to mirror his movements.

“Ransom” You moaned, pushing forward. You had to do something, anything. You felt about ready to combust.

“I know. I know. Look at me and remember the pleasure I can give you. Remember the love I will shower on you.”

Another finger joined the first, stretching you until it burnt. You held onto his arms, breath coming in sharp intervals as he moved in and out, the obscene sounds of your essence mixing in with your laboured breathing.

“Do you feel the fire my darling?” Ransom asked, and you nodded. He rested his forehead on yours, forcing you to meet his eyes as he sped up, the heel of his hand digging into your nub. “Look into my eyes and let go. Come, now.”

Your back arched and your pressed forward into his body, quacking in pleasure as sensations that had no name wrecked your whole body. Your teeth sank into his neck to hold in your scream, whole body vibrating and undulating in ecstasy. You remained like this until you caught your breath, sweat gathering above your lips and brow. He looked ravenously at you. He looked in awe too.

Raising his hand, he showed you his fingers soaked in your wetness and slowly he brought them to his mouth and sucked. You gulped, suddenly feeling empty as Ransom closed his eyes in the relish of your taste. When he finally looked at you again, you knew you were lost. The wolf had had his taste of blood. There was no escaping.

He kissed you slow and soft, sharing your taste with you and pulling you closer into him. It didn’t seem like he would part. For all you knew, the world had burnt away leaving only this niche in the wall intact, two people who were just learning to explore each other the only ones alive.

“Do you know, or should I say?” He asked, and you sucked in a breath. Who would have thought this day would come?

“Say it.” You answered. You knew, oh yes. But you needed to hear. You needed to watch those beautiful lips curve around words that bound you to him in something far more potent than marriage.

“I love you.” He said, sincerely, truly and with no hesitation. He loved you. Lord Hugh Ransom Drysdale loved you. Your eyes glistened with unshed tears and you stood on your toes to brush a kiss against his lips.

“I love you, Your Lordship.”

His arms came around you so strong that they felt like chains. You stayed in his embrace, disheveled and disoriented. You never expected your evening would have ended like this.

“Remember my love, then. And forgive me.” Ransom said. Before you could ask him what he meant, he threw apart the curtains that contained your sin and bared you to the world. The first person gasped aloud, and then ten more. You stood paralyzed, holding a hand against your chest to conceal the peeking flesh behind.

Ransom stood before you, nonchalant. Whispers flew around, taking the form of a vicious wind that swept across the ballroom until your mother was running towards you, scandalized. She took one look at you and staggered back, falling behind on the people who rushed forward to help.

“You – no. It couldn’t be.” She sobbed, holding a hand to her heart as if asking it to stay inside. You couldn’t say anything, shame written on every part of you. Ransom cleared his throat before looking at you softly, uncaring of others who gossiped when his lips pressed on your forehead.

“I plan to do right by Miss Y/N.” He announced, removing his coat and draping it around you. Pulling you out from the alcove, he put an arm around you and tugged you at his side. He glanced at you mother who was on the verge of fainting, a small tilt to his lips. “Madam, with your blessings, I would like to wed your daughter and make her an honest woman.”

You hid your face into his chest, not bothering to see your mother’s response. He had compromised you. He had ruined you. Ransom Drysdale didn’t take a no, and he fought hard for what he wanted.

“I hate you.” You whispered, heartbroken. Had he waited, you’d have said yes yourself. Ransom read the question in your gaze and stroked the curve of your cheek.

“I have done my waiting. No more of it. You’re mine now.”

#siris5ksoftdarkchallenge #soft!dark ransom drysdale x reader #dark!ransom x reader #ransom drysdale x reader #soft!dark ransom drysdale #ransom x reader #ransom thrombey x reader #ransom drysdale

1K notes · View notes

heloisedaphnebrightmore · 3 years

Text

Deception [Benedict Bridgerton x Reader]

Title: Deception Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x Female!Reader Word count: 4.5k Published: 21 March 2021 Author: Heloise Daphne Brightmore Summary: Violet's constant search for a wife for her second eldest son has become too much for Benedict. The only escape he sees is to ask you to pretend to be courting each other. But how long will it work for with your feelings eating you up from the inside. Bingo: [x] This is part of my Make me feel Bingo Card by @girl-next-door-writes

Square filled: Fake dating

Bridgerton Masterlist | Masterlists

Make me feel Bingo Masterlist

If you enjoy my stories, please consider donating and supporting me on Ko-fi. Of course, it’s completely your choice, I will continue updating for free anyway :) Thank you <3

Benedict Bridgerton was a very capable man. He had a tremendous amount of talent in capturing the real beauty of the world in his drawings. He was confident, but still genuinely kind and caring for his loved ones. He also had a rather playful side to him, a somewhat child-like behaviour, one that the ton would not have appreciated in their society, but Benedict had the privilege to show his real personality to those who loved him, ones that never judged him for who he was.

However, there was one person he felt utterly useless around. When it came to you, he turned into an adorable mess, a clumsy one at that, even stuttering on occasions. Should you have known the reason for his unusual behaviour, it would have brought a rather large smile to your face, but Benedict dared not to reveal his feelings for you.

For someone who has been friends for so long, you both seemed to have found it hard to show your true feelings for one another, as though both of you were clueless. For Benedict it seemed you only spared as much attention to him as a friend would, whilst you thought he was merely looking out for you as a brother figure.

You sat in the ballroom, watching as he grimaced at his mother, who might have slightly forced her second oldest child to dance with one of the many stunning unwed ladies. The one he was forced to dance with however seemed to enjoy Benedict's company. He didn't talk, nor did he look at the woman, still she shined brighter than a diamond in his arms, proud to be so close to such a fine man.

Heaving a heavy sigh, you watched as he held his hand firmly on her back, leading her around the dance floor, making her giggle by just being close to her. Your heart ached at the thought of ever having to give up on him, at the thought of seeing him with another, someone he would choose to love, ignoring to see your longing gazes forgotten on him. How could he have seen, he never dared to look when he felt your eyes on him, nor did you dared to look when he forgot his on you.

Standing up from your chair, you walked towards the terrace, needing fresh air, trying to clear your thoughts as the slightly cool, windy weather stroked your cheeks. You knew you shouldn't have thought of him romantically, but you would have been a fool not to notice the handsome and caring man he has grown into. Watching Lady Bridgerton trying to find a wife to her son hurt both emotionally and physically and you couldn't wait for the season to end, to leave the balls and play-pretend behind you, running away from the inevitable.

"Help me!" you heard his desperate voice, but before you could have turned around, you felt his hand lock around your wrist, gently, but in a haste, dragging you after himself.

"Benedict, what are you doing?" you asked in confusion, trying to understand his chaotic behaviour as he pulled you along, passing corridors by corridors in the gigantic mansion.

"My mother," he sighed as he stopped his steps, breathing heavily. "My mother is becoming—" you waited for him to continue, but he seemed to have been stuck in his thoughts.

"Are you alright?" you asked, frowning at his frozen state, as though he couldn't find the words and his thoughts overruled his actions. You watched his hunched back as he fought to get enough air in his lungs, his eyes focused on a certain point on the marble flooring, completely out of the present. "Benedict!" you called him again, this time firmly, attempting to catch his attention.

"I know it!" he exclaimed, making you jump slightly at his unexpected enthusiasm as a rather wide smile spread across his face.

"What do you know exactly?" you inquired.

"It might sound foolish at first and I do not blame you if you think I have lost my mind, but I need your help," he explained, leaving you even more curious.

"What would I need to help you with?" you asked furrowing at the man as if he has forgotten to include you in his grand idea.

"My mother has been adamant in finding me a wife and there is only so much I can do to prevent her from continuing her crusade. I know I shouldn't ask you such a thing, but I can't possibly think of anyone else who I trust enough," he continued in a secretive manner.

"Benedict, you must be clearer. I don't understand what you wish for me to do," you attempted to push him to finally reveal his idea.

"I need my mother to stop searching for a wife and the only way I can do that is if I already found someone I am interested in," he started. "That is where I would need your help, if you agreed. Should you agree to pretend I am courting you, my mother would surely stop this nonsense and leave me alone," for a mere second you felt overwhelmed by the hope of his interest in you, but that was only until your brain processed his words. "Pretend" being the main focus of your attention, shattering the small shimmering light of hope within you.

You took a shaky breath, trying to compose yourself, attempting to hide your disappointment. "Surely you didn't think this through. Your mother isn't a fool, she would see through us immediately. You can't possibly think it's a good idea," you tried to reason with him, but instead of thinking it through again, he quickly shook his head.

"But it is. Think about it. You have said so yourself, you don't want to marry just yet and nor do I. It would be the perfect option for both of us, solving our issues," he added enthusiastically as if his idea was anything, but brilliant. He could clearly see the weary expression across your face as he stepped closer and reached for your hands, engulfing them in his large and warm palms. "We would only have to pretend for a short while, I promise," he tried to reassure you. Whilst you knew it was a foolish idea, the thought of being able to stay close to him even if for a short period of time, seemed to cloud your better judgement.

"For how long?" you asked looking up at him as a mischievous grin spread across his dashingly handsome face. One that you adored so much. "I wouldn't want to be a spinster, Benedict," you sighed heavily.

"I would never let that happen," he shook his head quickly, his previously playful smile long gone from his face. "Let us do it for a few weeks and we will see how my mother reacts. I'm sure if we work well together, you might even catch the attention of some very noble men too," he winked jokingly, trying to lift your dull mood.

You haven't had much time to contemplate, maybe a few seconds until you ran through all the options you have been provided with, which was basically none. You heaved a heavy sigh and shook your head, offering a sceptical look to Benedict. "Fine," you said, earning a surprised expression from him, your answer shocking him for a second, before he wrapped his arms around your waist and lifted you up, twirling you around happily.

"You are my saviour," he chuckled as he hinted a small kiss on your forehead, stopping himself as he realised what he had done. "I apologise, I didn't mean to—"

"I understand. You are simply happy I have agreed to such a scandalous idea," you rolled your eyes, but you couldn't hide the happiness you felt. Even if for a short while, Benedict was to belong to you, and it meant more than you could have possibly expressed. You knew you couldn't have him forever but having him for a couple of weeks made you feel like the happiest person alive.

"I owe you! I didn't think you would agree," he grinned happily, a childish warmness radiating from his stance as though he had won a grand prize.

"I still don't understand why I did. Surely, I'm a fool," you added quickly with a silent chuckle.

"We both are," he replied as he started leading you back to the ballroom with your arm linked around his. His gaze focused on the way ahead, but your eyes were rather resting on his attractive features. He was a stunning man, and you were sure if he had turned to look at you, he would have seen the amount of love you were harbouring for him. But as many times before, no one of you has ever turned.

Weeks passed by and if anyone, Violet Bridgerton was the happiest person to see Benedict growing closer to the woman, you, she had envisioned beside her second eldest son. She has made it very clear that a wedding should soon be happening, wanting nothing but a little baby in her arms. You never wanted to crash her dreams but hearing her talking about a future between you and Benedict was beyond painful. The thought of you waking up beside Benedict, his arm resting across your waist, his neck hidden in the crook of your neck, his breath tickling your skin made your heart ache, knowing it was impossible.

You stood in Somerset House, one arm hooked around Benedict's as he watched the paintings, his face focused on one particular art with dark colours and shadings, slightly depressing as if the artist tried to capture a horrible emotion. Art was always something that you found beautiful, but never really understood. When Benedict talked about the meaning behind each piece with a childish happiness across his face, it made you feel content. Although you didn't understand much of what he was saying, the adorable expression he wore was worth each and every moment you spent listening to him.

Looking at his handsome features as they relaxed into a content smile, made you mirror his expression. You couldn't look at him and not smile. As though his mere presence made you feel at ease.

"I feel your eyes on me," he chuckled with a mischievous smile, knowing that you have indeed been staring at him for the longest time.

"I'm sorry," you quickly turned away, feeling your cheeks and ears heat up in embarrassment. "I couldn't stop watching you. You were really focused on that painting and it seemed as though you were here physically, but not mentally. You unintentionally make this face when you enjoy a painting," you smiled shyly.

"A face?" he furrowed, not knowing of his own reaction.

"Yes, as if you were completely captured by the painting. You have a certain content smile across your face and even forget to blink at times," you giggled, placing your hand in front of your mouth, remembering his facial expression.

"Don't hide your smile," he said as he reached for your wrist and gently wrapped his fingers around your arm, pulling your hand away from your lips. "You are even more beautiful when you smile," for a second his words made you hope, as though he meant more than he let on. His eyes seemed as if they could see through you, reading each and every single thought that crossed your mind. For the shortest of time, it felt your feelings weren't as unrequited as you thought. However, you quickly had to remind yourself that your imagination was playing a painful game with you, one that would surely end in a heartbreak.

You quickly turned away, trying to shake those foolish thoughts away, before you decided to dwell on them any longer. Clearing your thoughts, you turned back to him with a phony smile across your face, biting your bottom lip to calm yourself. But his deep frown left you confused. "Are you okay?" you questioned as he tilted his head as if he was studying your face.

"You were biting your lips again," he replied. "You do that when you are nervous or feeling uncomfortable," he added, stunning you. Biting your lips was indeed a nervous habit of yours, one that you couldn't stop as it made you feel slightly at ease when you felt as if even your own thoughts betrayed you. You never thought Benedict even realised those irrelevant, minor details.

"I'm fine, Benedict," you tried to reassure him with a smile that you wore confidently but could not fool Benedict.

"Should you feel the need to talk, I'm here," he said, drawing tiny circles on the back of your arm that he was still securely holding onto, reassuring you that he was by your side whenever you were in need of him.

As happy as it made you, you couldn't shake the feeling of disappointment as you thought about the heartbreak when he would finally want to end your foolish little game and find himself a wife that he could cherish forever, leaving you with the most horrible heartache one could cause.

You knew it was inevitable, you knew it would kill you, but you loved Benedict and you would have never forced him to stay beside you for any longer than he wanted to. You were ready to give him up, to be happy even if with someone else. The thought of letting him go hurt, but you weren't sure of your own strength either. Thinking about how long you could stay beside him pretending to be a mere friend left you with just as much pain, if not more. But you were ready to sacrifice your own happiness even if to be able to spend one more second with him.

Days passed by since your slightly awkward encounter in Somerset House. You have pretended to be a couple so in love that you couldn't possibly stay away from each other. Lady Whistledown didn't miss to write a paragraph or two about the two of you, already planning your wedding, one that you found slightly excessive, but dared not to mention to keep your act believable.

As much as you enjoyed the first few weeks of your play-pretend, it was hard to keep it up for long. You loved every minute you spent with Benedict, but the longer you were beside him, the more pain you felt. You wished to make him happy, to continue your act, but you also knew that it wasn't forever, and that tiny little thought suffocated you.

You sat on a bench in the park, right after promenading with Benedict. He joined his brothers whilst your maid brought you a glass of water to refresh yourself. You watched as Benedict laughed with his brothers, a wide, adorable and carefree smile sat across his face. Weeks ago, you would have smiled at his happiness, but then and there, sitting on the bench, watching his happy form, you felt miserable. Each time you looked at him, your stomach jumped nervously, your breath caught in your lungs as he touched your arm. These tiny little details meant nothing to him, but for you they meant the world. He couldn't have known the effects his advances left on you, he couldn't have predicted to hurt you unintentionally, but in the end, he unknowingly caused you pain.

Standing up from the bench, you started walking towards the Bridgerton brothers. Heaving a heavy sight, you lifted your arm and tapped Benedict's shoulder lightly, trying to catch his attention. He turned around with a wide smile, looking at you curiously. However, your face must have forgotten to oblige as his smile quickly disappeared and concern took over him.

"Are you alright?" he asked as he nodded to his brothers and reached for your hand, placing it on his arm, leading you away from his family.

"I must talk to you," you started, your voice unusually grim.

"Go ahead. You are worrying me," he added impatiently. Trying to collect your thoughts, you stopped, halting the man beside you whose worried eyes didn't seem to want to leave you for a mere second. "Talk to me," he attempted to reassure you.

"I am really sorry, but I can't possibly do this anymore," your words earned a confused frown from Benedict, before he finally understood what you meant. "I know I promised to help you and I wish I could have done it longer, but I honestly can't do this anymore," you added as you fought against your tears, trying to keep them in place for as long as you could. You couldn't let yourself cry in front of so many people, you couldn't let that happen. Benedict straightened himself in front of you, trying to hide your face from the curious eyes.

"I understand. I am sorry for forcing you to do this. I never thought it could be this hard on you. I would never hurt you, you know that, right?" he asked, trying to contain himself from wrapping his arms around you, fidgeting with his hands beside his thighs.

"I know and you didn't hurt me, it's not your fault. It has just become rather difficult recently and I don't think I'm capable of pretending anymore," you tried to reassure him, making him feel less guilty. "I'm still your friend and I will always be your friend," you added with a phoney smile. Your own words were a lie. You didn't know how long you could pretend to be his friend, but you knew he needed to hear that, he needed not to blame himself. "I will be going home now, but surely I will see you later," you smiled up at him as you curtsied and nodded towards your maid, ready to head home, completely oblivious to the pained gaze he was watching your slowly disappearing form with.

Whilst you sat in your carriage, letting your tears finally run down your cheeks, leaning on your maid's shoulder, Benedict stood confused between Colin and Anthony, his eyes fixed on the ground, his thoughts filled with you only.

"Brother?" Colin called for him with concern in his eyes. It was unusual to see his brother unresponsive, without a playful smile. "Are you alright?" he asked, earning a frown from Benedict.

"I shouldn't have dragged her into this," he replied, but his words were directed more to himself than his brothers.

"What do you mean?" Anthony asked, seemingly more interested in their conversation.

"It was all a lie," Benedict replied, his gaze still fixed on the carefully cut grass.

"What was a lie?" the eldest Bridgerton brother asked again.

"All along we were pretending to be courting, so mother would stop trying to force me to marry," he scoffed, finally understanding the weight of his idea. "She said she can't do this anymore. That it was too painful to bear," he shook his head, guilt overcoming him.

"You really are a fool," Anthony replied with a sceptical look across his face, earning a confused look from both Colin and Benedict.

"How do you mean? Is it because we have been pretending?" Benedict questioned his brother. "I know it was foolish, but she agreed, I didn't know it would be particularly hard on her," he added with a deep frown.

"Brother, can you not see the way she looks at you? Always trying to make you feel happy, bringing a smile to your face even when she, herself is struggling to do so? Are you really that blind?" Anthony raised a questioning brow, as though he couldn't believe how oblivious his brother was towards your feelings.

"Should I understand?" he asked tilting his head innocently, searching for the right explanation. "We have been friends from a very young age, I am certain we have always tried to make each other smile in a difficult situation," he added, earning an eye roll from the eldest Bridgerton brother, ignoring his manners.

"When you said you were courting her, I thought you finally realised that you weren't the only one with feelings beyond friendship. However, after hearing about this foolish idea of yours, forcing a lady to pretend to love you, when in fact she has feelings for you is beyond stupid, brother, and I'm quite disappointed in you for not realising it yourself," he shook his head disapprovingly.

"Are you telling me she has feelings for me?" Benedict asked in disbelief, his brother's words lighting a weak hope within him.

"Indeed, took you long enough to understand," he scoffed.

"I have to talk to her," Benedict added quickly, heading towards the carriages in haste, carefully planning all he needed to tell you.

The ride didn't take long, 20 minutes at most, before he stood in front of your house, his hands shaking slightly, nervousness running through his whole being. Knocking on the door, a maid opened it for him, asking him to wait to announce his arrival to you.

You laid on your bed, cheeks swollen from crying, bottom lip red as a result of the constant biting of your nervous state. A knock on your door brought you out of your misery as your maid walked into the room.

"Mr. Bridgerton is here to see you," she said with a saddened tone, knowing of the arrangement between the two of you. Your eyes widened in surprise, you weren't ready to see him, especially not in your current, heartbroken state. "Would you like me to ask him to leave?" she questioned, looking at the panicked expression across your face.

"No, it's fine. Please take him to the drawing room," you instructed her and headed to the bathroom to make yourself presentable. Your eyes were bloodshot, your face was slightly swollen, and your clothes were beyond wrinkled. Attempting to straighten your dress, you stroked the material over and over again, but it didn't seem to work, nor did the cold water you washed your face with to remove the evidence of your miserable state. At last, you gave up and walked to the drawing room, knowing you wouldn't be able to do anything else with your appearance.

"We have just parted, Benedict," you said to the man as you stepped inside the room and took a seat across the sofa he occupied.

"I needed to see you," he replied, standing up from his place and taking a seat beside you. "I—, I talked to my brothers after you left," he started, stammering over his words, something he only did in his nervous state. "I am a fool and there is no excuse for that. I can't possibly imagine how hard it must have been for you to pretend—"

"I have told you already, I am completely fine," you tried to reassure him with a faux smile, one that this time Benedict didn't believe to be genuine.

"But are you?" he asked, earning a confused frown from you. "Do you know why I thought this foolish idea to be brilliant in the first place?" he raised a questioning brow, but instead of replying you shook your head. "I wanted to be closer to you. I merely thought it would be my chance to spend more time with you. Surely, I had no intention to marry anyone, and I wished my mother to stop, but my primary concern was you. I wanted to be near you at all times, but I couldn't possibly tell you how I felt, knowing you would only reject me," you couldn't control the surprise sitting across your face, your lips parted in shock, his words seemingly part of your most precious dreams. It seemed surreal.

"You are confusing me, Benedict," you spoke up, trying not to hope once again to then fall painfully.

"I'm saying I love you. I have loved you for so long, I can't remember when it started. I never imagined my feelings could be returned and I turned to foolish ideas to be beside you. I needed my brothers to open my eyes and scold me for being childish, for making me hope that I might have your heart even if only half as much as you have mine," he reached for you hand, gently squeezing it in his hold, reassuring you that he meant every single word of his.

"I love you," you blurted out, astonished by his speech, your own words surprising you.

"You do?" he asked, afraid to believe the words he has longed to hear from you.

"I do," you nodded, this time with more confidence, earning a wholehearted smile from Benedict as he leaned closer and wrapped his arms around you, embracing you in his arms.

"I made you cry, didn't I?" he asked as he pulled away slightly, enough for him to be able to look in your eyes as he placed his hands on your cheeks.

"It wasn't you. I was emotional, because I wasn't sure how long I would be able to stay beside you as a friend before it became too much to handle," you giggled awkwardly, feeling as if you have said too much.

"It was still my fault. I didn't consider your feelings," he shook his head, disapproving of his own actions. The tip of his thumb gently brushed across your bottom lip, leaving you with a ticklish feeling. "Have you been biting your lips again?" he asked as his eyes focused on your mouth. His attentiveness, his attention to detail and his closeness made you swallow nervously.

"I might have," you whispered, not daring to raise your voice any louder. Feeling his breath on your lips, the proximity between your faces, his warm palms on your cheeks made you feel intoxicated.

"You shouldn't do that. From now on talk to me when something bothers you," he spoke in a low tone, his voice soothing, making you feel safe. "You are doing it again," he chuckled, his eyes completely captured by the way your teeth bit on your lip, but this time it wasn't nervousness, but excitement. His closeness affected every tiny part of your body. "It really makes me want to kiss you," he breathed, completely mesmerised by your lips, as if an invisible force was pulling him towards you. You felt your heart beating at a dangerous pace, almost as if threatening to escape your chest and you could swear Benedict heard it just as well.

"Hmm," you hummed in a reply, incapable of creating a coherent sentence, before closing the gap between the two of you, a certain confidence rush taking over your actions. Instead of the surprised reaction you expected from Benedict, a playful chuckle left his lungs.

"Impatient, it seems," he added, before he returned your kiss, pulling you closer to himself, enjoying the feeling of your body in his embrace. He has imagined over and over again how it could feel to kiss you, to hold you, but none of those made-up scenarios could ever compete against the reality and the content it filled him with. "I wish to genuinely court you this time," he added as he pulled away from you.

"I very much hope so," you giggled happily, earning a playful eye roll from Benedict, before he captured your lips once again, wrapping his arms around you securely.

Notes: If you enjoyed reading this little piece, please don’t forget to leave a like, comment and/or reblog. Your opinion matters and gives us motivation. Thank you ^^

If you enjoy my stories, please consider donating and supporting me on Ko-fi. Of course, it’s completely your choice, I will continue updating for free anyway :) Thank you <3

Taglist: (If you would like to be tagged on my Bridgerton fics, feel free to let me know ^^)

@shelby-love @breadqueen95 @nuttytani-reblogs @aspiringsloth20 @marvel-ousnesss @msmarvelouswinchester @venusflwer

#bridgerton #Benedict Bridgerton #benedict bridgerton x reader #bridgerton x reader #girl next door's make me feel bingo #Girl Next Door’s Make Me Feel Bingo #benedict bridgerton x reader one shot #benedict bridgerton x reader imagine

812 notes · View notes