Beauty and the Bees

A moment from episode 1 of Tide And Bone that rattled around in my brain for a while. 🤔

Would you light my Molotov cocktail for me if my hand turned into an insect-like claw, making it impossible for me to strike a match? Would you do that for me, if I asked? Would you look deep into my eyes and know that despite everything I am still entirely yours? Would this be your way of silently acknowleding that you never stopped being mine either? Would you let yourself mourn what could have been, just for a moment? Would you light my Molotov cocktail for me?

Noshir calling Elsie Rajan's "first love" I've fallen and I can't get up

But why is it you? Still not over that original trailer's just, slow more slight side tilt of familiarity as Elsie notices at last that Rajan is looking at her and MEANING oh gosh, the vibes are sooooo good.

may i propose Beautiful and the Bee-st for a rajan/elsie ship name

is this the point where i admit i'm writing it? because i think, with several thousand words now, i have to admit i'm writing it

The room had long since gotten dark around him as he sat staring into the fire, brandy still in his hand. The scarlet he had dropped into it had curled like a drop of blood, twisting like smoke until it had faded into the deep auburn of the drink. Oblivion beckoned invitingly. It would be so easy to give into it, to drown decades of sorrow. But he didn’t want to forget. Not today. A locust crept closer and closer to the fire. He felt when it died, when the heat eclipsed all. From his study, he heard the front door open quietly. He closed his eyes for a moment in regret. Elsie. He had forgotten to tell her… forgotten to make up some lie about why, today of all days, she should leave him to his own devices… “Raj?” she called softly across the dark and empty (too empty, so empty, just him now, the only one left) house. He couldn’t reply but she found him easily enough. The door wasn’t closed and the only light came from his fire. He knew the moment she spotted him; the sharp intake of breath gave her away before her steps did. Elsie knelt at his side, taking the cup from loosening fingers. She sniffed delicately, her lips pursing. He braced himself for yet another fight about what he did to himself when she wasn’t looking but she only set it aside, the glass clinking when it hit paraquet floor. “Are you alright?” she murmured, taking his empty hand in hers. He looked down at her earnest, worried face and attempted a smile. “Little bird,” he said, voice rusty with disuse. “My darling. The only life left in this graveyard of a home.” That only seemed to upset her more. Firelight played over her face, casting long shadows over skin that seemed to grow paler by the day. She likely thought he hadn’t noticed. “What happened?” she asked, clutching his hand tighter. “Please talk to me.” Perhaps it was the way she begged that loosened his control. Perhaps it was the day or the drink or the drug. Perhaps it was the buzzing under his skin. Perhaps it was the misery that had dogged his steps for so long now. “It’s my birthday,” he told her with false levity. “Our birthday.”

Rajan's a loner. And yet there are two people he said he'll give his everything to keep safe. Elsie and Oscar.

And I just don't think I'll ever recover from that.

me updating the raj/elsie tag on ao3 multiple times a day like “🥺🥺🥺 has anyone made food? 🤲🏻”

16 of the 100 ways for Rajan and Elsie

Elsie shouldered open the door, trying to contain her coughing. She wanted to burry herself in the bathroom until it passed, as she did every time this happened, but instead was greeted by the smell of old books and sweet honey behind her. Rajan. If she wasn’t embarrassed before, her face flushed pink, and not just from the coughing this time.

It was the smell of several long nights tucked in corners, in rooms in his many houses nobody else knew about but those two. It was the smell of comfort after she lost a patient, curlled in his arms until she stopped sobbing. At some point recently, she had stopped sobbing. Once or twice, she would let a tear fall, but more often than not, her tears were quiet, contained, and non-existant. They existed in the tiny box in the back of her head that contained other things, things she couldn’t focus on right now, things that surely, if she let out, would ruin her in every way possible. Things that would ruin her in all the best ways. 

God, how she wanted Rajan to ruin her in all the best ways. In a way, she had ruined him. She had broken him when nobody else would, she had torn down his walls and then was the one to build them right back up. She had had him, in all the ways a person could be had, and then left him when things got  hard. Now, like so many nights, he was outside her door. 

“Do you need anything, Little Bird?” He asked. God, that voice. The low rumble accompanied by a small hum. Her favourite sound. It took everything in her to not turn and bury her face in his chest.

However.

Tomorrow was never guaranteed, and Elsie didn’t have everything in her right now. All her rash sense and the idea of belonging with someone, to someone, them knowing her- All the desire came flooding back in two short seconds and she turned and did it anyway. 

The second she did, she realised he was in a nightshirt. God, he still smelt like him. It was a ridiculous thing to appreciate someone's scent. It was like appreciating the way they looked, though. Elsie never really tired of it. His arms came up to wrap around her waist and hold her as she half-coughed, half-sobbed, into his chest. His hive? She didn’t know (or care). He hummed to her. An old song he used to do when they were still together. It was so, so damning and too damn comforting to be worth any of the damnation that came with it. His hand in her hair, her face in his chest. This was all so oddly familiar in the best-worst way possible. 

“Did I wake you?” She asked. 

“It’s ok,” It wasn’t a no, and it wasn’t a yes, but it was a reassurance, “I couldn’t sleep anyway.” Her hands ran down along his body and found his own, taking it in hers. 

“Go back to bed.” She begged. Eventually, she looked him in the eye. One of his eyes no longer existed, replaced instead by a hive, and the other one, the other one was, well, beautiful. It was the eye she remembered from days long past. Knowing that he was so damn pretty and she was so…Undeserving of attention from a man like him almost made the pain worse. Her next breath was a howl, her next words a whistle. She could feel the beast wiring inside her. A new kind of feeling. A beg. “At least come back with me, if that helps.” She looked at him, eyes wide and empty. Hopeless and hopeful. Everything and nothing. When he used his one eye to blink, it was slow. Methodical. 

“Of course.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ if anyone wants to play the game is send me a candela duo/trio/group (platonic or romantic) and a number from this list and I'll write it!

Please let them rest in the finale please please please

It's apparent that Rajan and Elsie were in a romantic relationship that ended sometime prior to the formation of the Circle of Tide and Bone, and that they both still care deeply for each other despite the end of their relationship, so I put it to Tumblr:

Raj referring to Elsie as his queen. Raj and Elsie both being bugs to some degree, both carrying some of The Maw. Insect colonies having a queen. Elsie's bug being specifically a mantis, a bug known for females eating their mates.

Elsie is Rajan's queen. She is his one true love, yes, but it's more than that. She is his queen in the human sense of devotion, boundless respect, adoration. And she is his queen in the insect way. Rajan would follow wherever Elsie would lead and never question it, trusting her lead so completely. Rajan would give his life a hundred times over for Elsie's.

And that's why he has the audacity to ask her "not to sacrifice herself so willingly" because she is his queen and that's his job.

Aabria calling Rajan "gaslamp Mr. Darcy" just walloped me over the head with "oh okay, this is why I love them so much"

*dusts off tumblr* L I S T E N

Fuckin hell, first post in a WHILE.

Anyway so y’all can enjoy the playlist of pain that I have made of Elsie and Rajan because I’m absolutely emotionally dead from Thursday.