#frank stringfellow

[callmebrycelee]

happy (belated) 37th birthday jack falahee

[fericita-s]

An Ostentation of Peacocks

For Mercy Street Advent: Silver and AU, A Discovery of Witches day.  Thank you for the prompt @jomiddlemarch​ and for also confirming that peacocks do actually figure into this story.

[broadwaybaggins]

"I'm calling in that favor you owe me. Actually, I'm calling in all the favors you owe me," she said. First line fanfic

"I'm calling in that favor you owe me. Actually, I'm calling in all the favors you owe me," she said.

“I owe you favors already? That doesn’t sound like me.” Emma grinned at Mary as she rifled through her dufflebag, searching for the contraband candy and other assorted junk food that she had stashed there. Lights’ out for the campers had been thirty minutes ago, and the counselors were meeting up to “unwind” after the long day--which meant drinking, s’mores making, and other such shenanigans.

“I’m serious, Emma. Oh, hey, Cheeto me.” Mary caught the bag of Cheetos that Emma tossed her way and opened it in one practiced motion. “I need to know everything you can tell me about that Jed Foster.”

“Ah. Trouble in the health lodge?”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Only if you call him second-guessing every single decision I made trouble. He even asked me if I was sure I wanted to use that brand of calamine lotion on Hattie’s mosquito bites.”

“I’m sorry, I should have warned you about him. He’s a bit...prickly.”

“That’s the understatement of the year. You know what he told me? ‘I know more about these things than you.’ As if we’re not both pre-med and there’s really that many ways to treat a damn mosquito bite. What is his problem?”

Emma shrugged, opening up a bag of Sun Chips. “He usually works here with his girlfriend, but she got a fancy internship in LA instead this year. Didn’t even talk to him about it, so I guess he’s pretty pissed. He shouldn’t take it out on you, though, that’s not cool.”

Mary sighed, running a hand through her bobbed hair. “It’s not. At least he’s decent with the kids. That’s about the only thing that kept me from trying to beat him to death with an Ace bandage.”

“He’s nice once you get to know him, I promise. It just...takes a while.”

Mary considered her thoughtfully. “Samuel said the same thing. I guess that’s as good an endorsement as any.”

“Laaaaaaaaaaaay-deeeeeeeeeeees!” a new voice sang, and Emma watched as Anne Hastings strode into view. She had a tote bag emblazoned with various logos for Broadway shows slung over her shoulder, and from inside it Emma could hear bottles clinking. “I hereby declare this party started.” She took one strap of the bag off her shoulder and began to rifle through it. “What’s your poison? I’ve got wine coolers, Fireball, a little bit of peach schnapps--”

Mary made a face. “Got anything good in there?”

Anne fixed Mary with a withering look. “Excuse me, baroness, but some of us actually have to rely on our paltry counselor’s salary! I was a bit limited in my selections at the local excuse for a liquor store!”

“It’s okay, Anne. I’m sure the others will have something else if Mary prefers,” Emma said quickly, wanting to avoid an argument. She had seen the way Mary had bristled at Anne’s baroness comment, and how Anne’s eyes were glinting with annoyance. “Frank usually brings some Bud Light or something. It’s all good.”

“Fine,” Mary said after a second. Anne responded by reaching for a wine cooler out of her bag and taking a swig. “Come on, girls,” she said, linking arms with Emma and leaving Mary to bring up the rear. “The fire waits for no woman.”

They quickly made their way to the firepit where the other counselors were gathering. They walked quickly and quietly, not necessarily because they were afraid of being caught--the only real danger was if they woke up Mrs. Brannan, whose tiny cabin was right next to the dining hall--but because the act of sneaking around made everything seem so much more fun and exciting.

They were among the last to arrive. Samuel and Charlotte were there, sitting close together, Sam’s guitar propped against the log next to them. Emma saw Alice wearing tiny cutoffs and what was perhaps the tiniest bikini top known to man. Emma wasn’t sure how she wasn’t freezing her buns off. Anne immediately abandoned them when she spotted Byron, launching herself at him as if he were a soldier returning from war that she hadn’t seen in years. 

“How long has that been a thing?” Mary asked as she watched Byron shove his tongue down Anne’s throat. She turned away and reached for one of the Bud Lights that Emma had mentioned. She popped the top and took a sip, grimacing. “Beer is gross.”

“And yet we drink it.”

The arrival of Jed Foster caused both girls to turn towards him. He, too, was clutching a can of Bud that was currently sweating into his palm. A guitar was slung over his shoulder like a backpack. “Hey, Jed,” Emma said kindly.

“My dear Miss Green. How is life in the art barn?”

“Oh, you know how it is.” 

His eyes flickered over to Mary almost nervously. “Mary.”

“Jed.” She nodded at his guitar. “You play?”

“When the moment calls for it,” he said coolly.

All right, this was interesting. Despite her earlier animosity, Emma could see clear interest in Mary’s eyes as she gazed at Jed. Anne would say that Mary had a lady-boner for him, and Emma wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong.

“I’m gonna...get a drink,” she mumbled, leaving the two to work through their mutual sexual tension in their own time. She turned and almost immediately collided with a warm body that smelled of campfire and pine. She knew because her nose collided with his shirt.

“Woah!” Emma felt hands on her upper arms--she’d worn a tank top and was already starting to feel chilly, but the contact caused warmth to go straight through her--to steady her. “My bad. Sorry, Emma.”

“Henry!” There he was, wearing the same outfit as earlier when they’d been in the loft together, but now his sleeves were rolled up a little and he was barefoot. There was a band-aid on his thumb that hadn’t been there earlier. “What happened to you?”

Henry shrugged. “Little disagreement with a bee. Jed and Mary fixed me up. Can I get you a drink? We have quite a selection. Beer, or beer. Or...” he grinned and held up another six-pack, already half gone. “Beer!”

“Anne brought some stuff, but I think she’s...busy.”

“That’s one word for it. Has she worked here long?”

“Yeah, this is her...” Emma tried to think. It was a little hard to focus when he was looking at her like that, the firelight shining on his face. “Fourth summer? Fifth summer? I can’t remember. Fourth, I think. She started when she was like seventeen.”

“What’s the deal with the accent?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Like, is it an act, or...”

Emma laughed. “I can see why you’d think so, but it’s actually real. She’s English. Or half English, at least. I can’t remember which parent.”

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!”

Henry winced as Byron’s voice rang out through the camp. He had climbed up onto a stump just outside of the circle of logs around the fire and held one of Anne’s bottles high above his head. “Isn’t he worried about waking the kids?”

“Byron doesn’t worry about anything.”

“Your attention please!” Byron bellowed. “Counselors of our beloved Camp Green Wood! Another summer has begun! Another summer of camraderie, friendship, and shenanigans--”

“Get to the fuckin’ point, Hale!” Frank called out, his arm slung over Alice’s shoulder. His words caused a ripple of laughter around the circle.

“Come on, let’s sit down. He does this every year and we need to be sitting for it, it’s a whole thing,” Emma leaned up to whisper in Henry’s ear. They made their way to the circle and sat down on the only remaining empty log, between Mary and Jed and Sam and Charlotte. It was a bit crowded by this point, so Emma ended up with her entire side pressed up against Henry. She said a silent prayer of thanks that she’d stolen a bottle of Alice’s signature Georgia Peach body spray.

Byron put a dramatic finger to his lips. In case the message wasn’t abundantly clear, Anne’s loud “Shhhhhhhhh!”, followed by “Shut the fuck up, Stringfellow!” brought about the desired dramatic silence.

Byron hopped off the stump, still brandishing the bottle. “I hereby declare the summer officially....” he paused for effect. “Started!”

He smashed the bottle against the stump like he was christening a yacht. It exploded, and the assembled counselors let out appreciative claps and cheers that almost drowned out Anne’s screech of “I didn’t put the tarp down! You said you’d let me put the tarp down! YOU ARE CLEANING UP EVERY BIT OF THAT BROKEN GLASS, BYRON HALE!”

“He does that every year?” Henry asked, his expression unreadable.

“Every year. And every year he forget to do it in a way that doesn’t release broken glass everywhere. You can set your watch by it.”

“This place is crazy,” Henry remarked, but he didn’t sound scared off by this fact. Someone was passing around a bag of marshmallows, and Henry took two and handed one over to Emma.

“What kind of marshmallow toaster are you?” he asked. “Let it get nice and golden, or put it straight in the fire?”

Charlotte handed Emma one of the marshmallow skewers, and Emma answered by sticking it right into the center of the flames. Henry looked aghast.

“No!” he cried. “No, no, wrong! You’ve got to do it slowly, gently...”

“It’s no use, Rev,” Charlotte said, nudging Emma with her shoulder. “I’ve tried to talk her out of it so many times. Our Emma just lives for chaos.”

Emma retrieved her burning marshmallow and quickly blew out the remaining flames, leaving it charred just the way she liked it. “You’re both wrong. This is the only way to do it.”

Sam had been strumming his guitar gently, tuning it as Jed worked on his. Mary perched nearby, eating a s’more and pretending she wasn’t watching. Sam gave one final strum and looked up. “All right! Any requests?”

“You promised me some Sheryl Crow,” Charlotte reminded him.

“Later, Char. You don’t start a set with Sheryl Crow.” Jed’s face implied that such a thing was ludicrous. Emma wondered how much trouble she’d be in if she throw her flip-flop at him.

Perry, one of the junior counselors, had been creeping their way. He tapped Sam on the shoulder and whispered in his ear.

“Huh? Oh, sure, why not.” Sam conferred with Jed for a moment before counting them off. “Okay, one-two-three-four.”

“When I wake up, oh I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who wakes up next to you!”

The song was met with a mix of groans and cheers. Henry looked up from assembling his s’more with precision and laughed. “This is definitely gonna be an interesting summer.”

Emma grinned and hoped she wasn’t imagining the way he seemed to lean closer to her as he said it.

[jomiddlemarch]

A Mansion House Murder

Chapter 14

“What a pity,” Eliza said, sipping the overly dainty cut-glass cup of punch Byron had offered her with a flourish, as if to make up for the parsimonious serving. It was also missing any spirits, but her reticule was too small to contain even a petite flask.

“I could top it off with some whiskey,” her husband offered. “It won’t be cold though.”

“You’re very dear, but that’s not what I meant,” Eliza replied. The dancers whirled around the room, keeping pace with the musicians. They were a rather sedate group, but the violins were in tune and the bass kept good time. The room was filled with light; Alice Squivers must have bought all the tapers in Alexandria and the golden light was gentle, flattering, but it could not conceal everything. Jedediah’s brow was furrowed and Mary Foster was thoughtful, waltzing slowly, more graceless than if she had been clumsy before her illness. Dr. Diggs was tired and his wife was frustrated and Byron had the abstracted look she knew too well, for all that he was smiling at her. Eliza smiled back, as charmingly as she could, achieving her desired response.

“Mrs. Stringfellow. She’s in a white muslin so old and limp I don’t suppose you could even use it for bandages. And after I gave her the scarlet organza! It was so striking with her complexion, even without jewels,” Eliza said.

“She couldn’t hold a candle to you, my love,” Byron said gallantly. “Little Miss Green that was—I remember she once nearly eviscerated a solider with her hoops. Foster would never let her hear the end of it. He always fancied himself quite the wit.”

“I wonder,” Eliza said, ignoring his comments about Jedediah. Emma Stringfellow would have caught every eye in the ballroom in that red silk gown and that would have been worth something to a former belle, something precious. What had it been worth to refrain? Was the dress still laid in its box or had the younger woman even kept it? If her bitter-eyed husband had seen her in it, would he have smiled or snarled? Had Emma decided it was wiser to see what the dressmaker would give her for it in greenbacks? A ballgown could be worn to a ball; cash traveled.

“If it’s a mystery you mean to solve, I’m sure you will, Eliza,” Byron said.

“Must we solve the mystery?” Charlotte muttered, her foot tapping to the music. She would have liked to dance but not in this company. And not when Samuel looked so fatigued. He was persistent and she was determined; it was not the same thing.

“Are we to forget we saw his dead body? It would make a neat solution, I suppose; no corpse, then no murder, no crime, no criminal. Old Silas Bullen not even a victim, just a memory that lasted a little too long,” Samuel said. Charlotte shrugged, recognizing Samuel’s tone. He could turn poetical like this. If he hadn’t loved or needed medicine so much, he would have made a fine preacher.

“I don’t see why it falls to you. Now there’s no body to examine, why should you be any better at investigating? Let old Pegleg sort through it,” Charlotte said. “He’s the eighth wonder of the world to hear him speak of himself.”

“Byron Hale won’t figure it out, not in a thousand Sundays, even if he had both his eyes to see with,” Sam said. There was suddenly laughter and it wasn’t Charlotte, but Mrs. Morris, who’d sidled closer to them without their notice, an impressive feat given the dramatic dimensions of her bustle.

“Quick off the mark as ever!” Anne cried out. If they hadn’t been at the reception, she suspected the woman would have clapped Samuel on the shoulder. “Mary’s likely to though, with a little more time and a little more information. She’s got that look about her, you remember?”

“Wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove?” Sam said, getting a smile from both women.

“Bridget Brannan always said Mary had a touch of the Sight,” Anne remarked. “Maybe in a place like this, haunted by so many dead boys, that’s what it’ll take. Seeing as how you men have managed to misplace the corpse.”

“It was Reverend Hopkins tasked with keeping watch,” Charlotte said sharply.

“Keeping vigil, more like. Have you seen him squint and rub at his eyes?” Anne said.

“There’s been plenty to trouble a man’s vision here, more for a man of God than most,” Sam said.

“Specially one with his regrets. What he did here and what he left undone,” Anne said. “Will that orchestra ever leave off with mazurkas? I’ve a mind to say something.”

*

“The man was undone. Entirely. It almost roused pity in me,” Jed said. “He must have been half-mad during the War—if he hadn’t tried to kill you, I might have been more inclined to intercede for him.” They had agreed to forgo any discussion of Silas Bullen’s missing body at the reception, though neither had it far from their thoughts.

“You’re certain it was Major McBurney you saw at the asylum?” Mary asked. They had retired from the dancing, Jed quite insistent that she rest and be plied with cakes and punch. The chair he’d found for her wasn’t very comfortable, but she was able to sit and he pitched his voice so that she could hear him quite clearly. He looked quite well in his frock coat and remarkably subdued waistcoat. His sartorial restraint was notable, but he’d made it clear it was to focus the guests’ collective gaze on “my beautiful wife.” Despite what it meant about her vanity, she’d basked in his pride and hadn’t fussed when he’d stolen a kiss. He’d taken great care, after all, not to disarrange the ringlets draped over her shoulder.

“His deranged shouting about, and I quote, ‘a damn Yankee Baroness,’ was fairly convincing. And he still wore his uniform, tattered though it was,” Jed said.

“How sad to be so lost. The War wounded so many, so variably,” Mary said.

“Byron spoke with the staff, made some arrangements for better treatment, a room with windows, walks on the grounds with a companion. It was a relief, frankly, to be speaking of the proper treatment of the insane, after that carriage ride,” Jed said.

“I shall be very interested to hear Emma’s recounting of it,” Mary said, waving the other woman over. “I’m sure a cup of punch would be most refreshing for her and no one will have thought to offer her one.”

“You wish to hear what she has to say without me present. I see right through you, Molly,” he replied.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments,” Mary countered and Jed gave a very brief, very correct bow and walked over to the table with the punchbowl. Emma came to occupy the spot beside Mary, everything about her appearance suggesting sadly faded glory except for her blue eyes and the flowers in her hair.

“Good evening, Emma! Jedediah maintains your carriage ride today was a foretaste of Hell, complete with brimstone, but I am well-familiar with his tendency toward exaggeration,” Mary said with a smile, hoping to coax one in return.

“It was a trifle awkward, but then Dr. Hale began to explain the history of his lost eye and that occupied us until we arrived at the dressmaker’s,” Emma said. “It was a particularly vivid tale.”

“I shall have to ask Jedediah to tell me about that—”

“Oh, there you are, Emma! I hardly noticed you in that dress. I can’t say it does much for your complexion,” Alice interrupted, flicking her fan open and shut. Her eyes gleamed and her diamond ear-bobs swung as merrily as their ample carats allowed; she seemed to think her arrival needed no introduction. Her husband stood beside her, taller and more grim-faced than Mary had remembered him.

“Mrs. Foster, Mrs. Stringfellow, good evening,” he said.

“You needn’t call Emma ‘Mrs. Stringfellow,’ Percival dear. She’s my sister,” Alice scolded. Jed was approaching, his hands full, but one glance told Mary he’d taken it all in. Her gaze rested on her husband as Alice sniped happily at her sister; afterwards, they would all admit to being distracted from what should have held their attention, Frank Stringfellow advancing towards them most purposefully, his face pale, his jaw clenched. He paused in front of Mary for the briefest of moments, like a knight seeking his queen’s favor, then lurched forward, his dark eyes roving.

“You bitch!” he spat out as he collapsed, coughing a great gout of blood all over Mary’s bodice and skirt, his head in her lap as if he were a child wishing to be comforted. Amid the tumult, the crash of the glasses Jed dropped as he called out “Mary!” and Alice’s startled arpeggio shriek, Anne’s ringing “Bloody hell!” and the last trailed notes of the violins, Emma’s voice was almost a whisper and yet shockingly audible to everyone around her.

“He’s been stabbed. In the back.”

The walnut hilt of the knife was barely visible against Frank’s black coat, thrust so deep it could not have missed his heart. He was dead.

[tortoisesshells]

For the character ask, your choice between these two fine bachelors: Jimmy Green or Frank Stringfellow. You're welcome ;)

SAGIOW.

they’re terrible, they’re awful, I love hating them, so you get both.

1. Love-to-Hate, although in different proportions. Frank Stringfellow is mostly just straight-up-hate; I don’t like Jimmy “Drunk Little Shit Loser” Green & think he’s horrible, but I just like having him around.

2.Do you know how long I started and squinted at this question?!

 I guess I ... ah, I’m fond? of Jimmy’s penchant for being a smartass in the face of repeated and inevitable failure. He’s a terrible person with bad politics, but “and I’m in here, fightin’ ‘em for time in the water closet” is perhaps my favorite line from the show. And I think Frank’s commitment to killing Bullen is really admirable, even if he fails. twice.

3. I’m weirdly attached to Alice and Frank’s Great Escape and Rustication with Quakers, in part because it’s the one time Frank isn’t blindly, terrifyingly sure of himself (even if his first instinct is Murder? Murder!). He’s still not sorry about anything, but ... I guess it’s a start? there was an attempt? As for Jimmy, it’s definitely the scene where he and Mr. Green are burying Captain Tallboots in the warehouse.

4. Frank improvises pretty solidly, I’ll give him points for that. (”Benjamin Franklin”, oh my god.) And, like his sister, Jimmy has a spiffy wardrobe. I’d steal his neckties. I think that’s the nicest thing I can say about him.

5. I think I knew I was going to love-hate or just hate them from the get-go, but special shout-out to Jimmy’s introduction, pointedly sitting down after Alice and Emma complain that at least Frank and Tom are out there standing up for something. What A Shit. 

6. Failure.

send me a character and i’ll ramble about them!

[noahwhyle]

[jackson-falahee]

Frank Stringfellow in “One Equal Temper” (2x03)

[avatars-by-cece]

Jack Falahee x9, like or reblog if you use.