#molly does fic

[overelegantstranger]

birditude answered your question “jsmn prompt me?”

would you be able to do something with mr alessandro simonelli? if not i totally understand!

Of course! Here you are:

December 20th, 1811

 Having just ten days prior narrowly escaped death while endeavouring to protect a lady I had no desire to render my previous efforts worthless and die for having endeavoured to protect five young ladies. I was at a loss for what to do, however. I had had no time to properly learn the trick of riding earthly horses, and any other form of escape would either be too slow or would attract too much attention.

I stepped out into my mediocre and scrubby garden to think, hoping that the sharp temperatures and fearsome wind would shake loose some great plan to save me from most certain evisceration and a painful, ignoble death. But though I spent as long in the garden as I could bear to – it was far colder than I had supposed, and the snow was doing great damage to my shoes – the only plan I could set upon was the honourable one. I returned to my parlour and sketched out a will, should I be unable to talk my way off the gallows, and then set out for Upperstone House.

It turned out that my morbidity was unnecessary, for by some extraordinary stroke of luck I succeeded in talking my way out of certain death – I dug into my memory and dredged from it the story of my countryman, Mister Gilbert Norrell, and told Mrs Gathercole and her sister-in-law that my actions had been no less than his had been on the day that he rescued Miss Wintertowne – now the wife of a cousin of my closest school-friend, I was sure to add – from beyond the door of death. This they rather hesitantly believed. I said that I could prove it – they bade me do so – I left.

Halfway along the path leading from Upperstone House to the Rectory, which meandered through what I presume in finer months to be excellent pastureland, was that particular chestnut horse I had expected never to be presented with again. He was standing facing me, peculiar intelligence in its eyes. I had no desire to reacquaint myself with anything to do with my cousin John Hollyshoes and indeed for a moment I expected him to appear in spite of my having seen him dead and rapidly cooling, and so attempted to push on, averting my eyes and stepping off the path so as to walk past the four-legged obstacle.

Pandemonium stepped sideways and was again in front of me. I stepped back onto the path. Pandemonium did likewise. I stepped to the other side of the path. Again I was thwarted. We continued in this farce for a solid few minutes, upon which time the horse shoved me in the chest. More stubborn a creature was never known in England, and after a small hesitation I relented and found myself on his back in a trice.

“I have a defence to deliver,” I said, in an aggrieved tone, and the horse seemed to shrug. He led me to my own front gate, deposited me inside it, and gave me a most insolent look.

I took the hint and quickly wrote the letter I was to send with my journal, wrapped both in paper, and walked back out to the gate. Pandemonium still stood on the other side, and I resigned myself to the knowledge that I would be riding back to Upperstone House.

This time, Pandemonium carried me through town – if Allhope could deserve the word - and I found myself the object of many bemused stares. I lifted my hat to them all, very slightly, and I saw some of my parishioners moving on with a little laughter.

Pandemonium whinnied in return, as if laughing himself, and I scowled. Still, I am not so stupid as to aggravate a horse by whose grace I am riding with some degree of dignity, and so I did nothing. We slowed as we approached the gate of Upperstone House, and following some instinct I realised I was supposed to deliver my defence from here. I had two options; I chose the lesser and threw my parcel over the gate.

“Pandemonium?” I asked, and he somehow turned to look at me. It denied all laws of anatomy, but I ignored this. Of all laws I had seen denied these past months, anatomy was the least.

After a pause, during which a long and twisted smirk crossed my face, I spoke again.

“I think I have an estate to claim.”

This seemed to meet with his approval, for suddenly we were galloping away from Allhope so fast that light itself could not catch us, and I had the sense that hundreds of worlds were opening before me. But I trusted to Pandemonium, and on we ran.

[overelegantstranger]

Call It Off by Tegan and Sara for Rincewind/Twoflower or Things Happen by Dawes for Childermass/Norrell or P.T.L by Relient K for Joan/Brightwind?

I promise I will do the other two but I wanted to post this while I’m still not particularly self conscious.

Um. I guess I should explain that this is an american-cop-show au. Ridiculous Joanwind, written at well-gone midnight, be aware. Also, longer than a drabble. 2.6 drabbles.

He doesn’t intend any of it. He doesn’t even intend to goout. But he doesn’t really care by this point if he turns up hungover on hisfirst day. It’s the last place they could think to send him, the end of theline – he’s stuck there, bad first impression or no. And so he goes out.

She –

She’s sitting by the bar and she looks so very much like shedoesn’t want to be there that he buys her a drink out of some vague sense ofcomradeship. She takes one look at the cocktail the bartender brings her, rollsher eyes. He doesn’t catch what she said, not over the distance and the music,but the bartender brings her a whiskey and she keeps eyecontact with him whileshe knocks it straight back.

-

He goes over to her during the next song; he’d not evenadmit to himself that he had to get up the nerve. He drinks the cocktail sheleft, and she laughs in the most unamused way he’s ever heard.

He spends most of the next song looking at her, until sheturns and raises an eyebrow.

What, she asks,voice flat.

He hits her with his worst pick up line and she laughs again,half mocking, half genuine.

Has that ever workedfor you?

I don’t know, has it?

Every amusement drops from her face and she spends a longmoment just looking at him, an expression on her face that he can’t place.

Yeah, she sayseventually, Yeah, alright.

[overelegantstranger]

childermass + depeche mode's "broken"?

oh! Depeche Mode! You realise I will have Personal Jesus in my head for a fortnight now? I’m listening to it (Broken) now and aaahh my ex-music-blogger senses are tingling but I won’t clog people’s dashes so I’ll stick that all in the tags

*deep breath* sorry I’ve been listening to BBC 6Music all day and I’m made hyper by music.

He should walk away.

He longs to not know what he’d be missing and he longs forhome and sometimes at night he curls up on his bed and longs to feel his mother’shands in his hair, wishes he could remember her voice more clearly than hedoes. But most of all he longs to go back, to make it so he never took Norrellto London, to make it so he could have been content with what he had, to makeit so he inherited everything of his mother’s but her sense that there was alwayssomething more.

[overelegantstranger]

teeny joanwind thing

I found this in my drafts and I like it so there.

I blame people for this. They know who they are.

She wishes she could forget him. It isn’t as if he was the love of her life, or any such tripe. No.

But he was gentle when she needed gentleness, and jagged when she needed jaggedness, and kind when she never expected it. He was sharp and angry and hurt, just like she was, had an emptiness in him just like she did.

And perhaps she doesn’t miss his kiss, his touch, as much as she misses his warmth, and perhaps she doesn’t miss his voice as much as she misses the way he would hide smiles behind teacups or books in the midst of one of their quieter quarrels. Perhaps she feels his absence less at night and more in the morning, when she wakes up expecting the slow, tired blinking of his eyes and the mess of his hair.

They are small things to miss, she thinks. But for all their smallness they prove so terribly hard to forget.

[overelegantstranger]

some other that I swore I'd never touch

so i started this forever and a day ago but i bring fic! Not Childerrell, neither, nor Joanwind!

Approx 800 words, Childermass/Arabella, G-ish, implied Childermass/Norrell, Norrell/Strange, and of course Arabella/Strange. Also, set somewhere in the future post this fic. Possible sequels to follow but don’t hold your breath, you know what I’m like. Title from Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues by Meursault which is such a Childermass song it hurts me.

The first time, it is a few months after the return; she is not quite used to Hurtfew yet, not quite used to Yorkshire, not quite used to the man her husband has become - she loves him, and he her, just as strongly and just as deeply as they ever did, but in the interim they have changed, and both their hearts have opened out.

And here she stands, in a small, whitewashed room tucked up under the eaves, where, if she gave a single damn for propriety she absolutely should not be. Because John Childermass is standing a few paces from her in his shirtsleeves, and she cannot pull her eyes from him.

He looks so much smaller, like this. His cuffs are looser than they should be, his shoulders not as broad as they seem under his greatcoat, and the tie on his waistcoat is pulled so tight she’s surprised the fabric does not ripple over his ribcage.

He is staring at her. He has not stopped staring since he turned and found her there on his threshold.

“Mrs Strange?”

She opens her mouth to reply - to say his name in return, to ask him to call her Arabella, to ask him why he has hidden himself up here all day, to ask him why he flushes when she catches him staring, she doesn’t actually know.

“Did you draw this?” she asks, eventually, showing him the piece of paper she had found that morning, tucked into her book; on it, a pencil sketch of her, lightly coloured with chalk.

He blinks, pulls his eyes away from her to glance at it. “I - I apologise, Mrs Strange, it was - far too forward of me, I-;”

“That is not what I meant,” she says, and takes a step closer.

He looks as if he is about to say something else, but stays quiet instead, dropping his gaze to the floor.

“I think it beautiful.”

He closes his eyes, looks to be struggling to hold down the rising blush. “You are very kind, Mrs Strange, but I know it for a substandard piece of work, I should not have-;”

“John,” she interrupts, and his eyes snap open in shock.

“Mrs Strange-;”

“Arabella.”

She has been walking slowly forwards with each word and she stands only a foot from him now, close enough to hear him breathe, to see the thin silvery scar on his cheek. Close enough to reach up and run her fingers lightly along it, close enough to hear his ragged sigh as she does.

He starts to say her name, gets barely past the ‘m’ when she shushes him.

“Arabella,” she says, again.

“Arabella,” he whispers, hardly audible.

“There,” she says, and smiles before clenching his lapel in one hand and tugging him down.

He does not kiss like she expected. He is gentle, so extraordinarily gentle, his hands coming up to cradle her face, pressing forward the barest fraction - it is odd, welcome certainly but odd. She had always seen in him a wildness, and she had, in some quiet, fanciful corner of her mind, expected his kiss - for she had imagined it rather more often than perhaps she ought - to be as rough and as wild as the moors he came from. But he is not like that at all. His hands are work-rough but he touches her as if he fears she is not quite there, kisses her not like a man drowning but as if he is terrified to breathe.

She tightens her grip on his waistcoat and pulls him in closer against her, feeling the warmth of his chest through the fabric of his shirt, and she was right, he is far too thin but then his hands are in her hair and she forgets to think.

After a moment he steps back, blinking, his hands falling to clasp her elbows and his mouth kiss-bitten, cheeks red, eyes wide, as if shocked. Surely he hadn’t simply expected her to see the drawing and put it aside, never to consider it again?

“Mr Strange-;” he starts.

“You know my husband and I have never been conventional,” she says, with a slight hint of reproof.

“I meant-;” he breaks off again, still looking entirely lost.

It hits her then and she curses herself that she had not thought of it before. “I do not require you to get along,” she says, “No more than Gilbert asks of the two of you. Less, perhaps. He told me, you see, his version of what happened between you. Which knowing Jonathan may be very different from yours, but no. I do not ask you to bury the trouble between you.”

He steps towards her, then, raising one hand to trace the curve of her jaw before bending down and pressing his lips to hers, so gently.

“Thank you,” he whispers when he pulls back, “Arabella.”

[overelegantstranger]

if anyone it would be you

@bookhobbit requested 6, Kissing in a non-sexual context from this prompt set, and oh my god i wrote fluff what is going on.

Somewhat different to my usual Childerrell in that they’re both happy, demisexual. Title is from Road to the Hill by Ewert and the Two Dragons.

Approx 550 words, fluffy negotiation-y goodness. T to be safe.

How they got here, Childermass has no idea, but they are standing here in Childermass’s room with nothing but the candlelight and the darkness and the wind battling with the window frame and he is almost scared to ask what’s going on. Why Norrell has chosen now to stand so close that Childermass can feel his breath, why Norrell has one hand on his chest and why he has not moved away.

Norrell is staring at him as if he has never seen him before.

Then Norrell pauses, looks away but stays close, his warm, small hand light on Childermass's chest. There is a tension between them that he doesn't know quite what to do with, half-formed and delicate. He realises with a start that his hands are shaking, poised barely an inch from Norrell’s waist; but he cannot quite make them move that slightest bit. His breath seems trapped in his lungs, or the perhaps it is the room that is airless, or perhaps both, and then Norrell’s hand tightens in his waistcoat and Norrell’s eyes flick up to his, wide and dark.

“John-;” he starts, and Childermass can’t take it another second, his hands finally landing on Norrell’s waist and bending to kiss him, finally, after so damn long.

It is light, for all that. For the waiting and the tension and the ache of it, the kiss is gentle, calm, even as they cling to each other. Norrell’s other hand slips around his shoulders, clenching in the fabric of his waistcoat and pulling them closer together. Then, suddenly - and Childermass is not quite certain if Norrell had just lost his balance a little and had to come down off his toes or if Norrell is just pretending so - Norrell pulls back. His hand slides off Childermass’s shoulder, but reluctantly, smoothing across the front of Childermass’s shoulder down to his chest and stopping over the place his heart still pounds.

“Sir?” Childermass asks, hating how fragile his voice sounds even in its roughness.

Norrell swallows, blinks.

Cold dread seizes at him but Childermass pushes the words out anyway. “I apologise, I should not-;”

“No,” Norrell whispers, “It is not that.”

Relief then, as fast and all-encompassing as the dread. “Then what-;”

“It is the, the what-comes-after. I am sorry, John, but I must-;”

“Must what?”

Norrell blushes, a deep flush that doesn’t look at all fetching, and yet Childermass finds it endearing anyway.

“I…,” he starts, frowning slightly as he apparently tries to organise his thoughts, “The act is-; it is not something that...appeals to me particularly. In fact quite the reverse. I know that it is - important, and it is not that I lack the,” he clears his throat, “The desire, it is just that I - the physicality of it is…” he trails off.

“And are you happy with that?” Childermass asks, voice gentle, “You do not wish to to become comfortable with-;”

Norrell shakes his head minutely.

“Then it is not important. I personally do not care enough for the act to insist that you change. Nor indeed should anyone who cared for you insist that.”

Norrell blinks at him. “I would not have you - feeling aggrieved that-;”

“I would not,” he says, reaching up to cup Norrell’s cheek and run his thumb along Norrell’s cheekbone.

“Thank you,” Norrell whispers, and Childermass bends his head to kiss him, gently, in reassurance.

[overelegantstranger]

some great thing to which I am a mystery

Ponder/Rincewind, for @bookhobbit (prompt 11 from this list). Title is from Don’t Let Me Bring You Down by Laura Marling.

“You don’t have to keep from saying it just for my benefit,” Rincewind says that night, looking out of the window rather than turning to look at Ponder as he got ready for bed.

“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Ponder says, his voice muffled by the nightshirt he’s pulling over his head.

Rincewind looks at Ponder’s reflection and sighs in irritation. “I wish you’d use the buttons, you’ll pop them all like that. And anyway - I’m not sure you could make me uncomfortable,” he pauses, “At least not in the way you mean.”

Ponder stops and looks at him, a soft look on his face. “Rincewind-”

Rincewind clears his throat and steps away from the window, keeping his back to Ponder and busying himself with tidying up the day’s detritus - various books, machine parts, exam papers, half a jar of apricot jam, etc, etc, rather than turning and facing him.

“Anyway, yes, I just wanted you to know that.”

Ponder took half a step forward and then thought better of it, sitting down on their bed instead and watching him fuss about. “You could have left that until the morning,” he says, and Rincewind shakes his head.

“You know I wouldn’t settle otherwise-;”

“I know you’re trying to avoid me.”

“Ponder-;”

“I won’t say it if you don’t want me to.”

“I just said you could.”

“That’s not the issue. If you think I expect you to say it back, I don’t.”

“I do,” he whispers, and Ponder frowns. Rincewind reluctantly finishes tidying and shrugs his dressing gown off, folding it over the bedstead and finally looking up at him, “Because I do-” he coughs, blushing a bit and his eyes flicking away, “I just - I don’t think I can say it.”

“Alright,” Ponder whispers, “Then nor will I. You know I do, but until you’re comfortable - properly comfortable - I won’t say it.”

“Alright,” Rincewind says, in exactly the same whisper, and Ponder cannot help smiling.

Rincewind smiles back.

[overelegantstranger]

now the story’s changed

Stephen/Vinculus, for @bookhobbit (prompt ten from this list). Presumes more happened between Stephen and Vinculus in chapter 47 than Clarke let on.Title from Pictures by Ewert and the Two Dragons.

1816.

He had never considered that this would be enough. Vinculus does not often touch him, preferring instead to just be near him, to sit or talk or sleep - not that Stephen sleeps so much any more - and he is surprised, really, by how much it means to him.

It is not friendship he feels towards this ragged, half-lost man (Stephen scolds himself for thinking it, but Vinculus rather reminds him of the countless unread books on Sir Walter’s shelves - mournful, waiting, resigned). He’s not even sure he likes Vinculus, most days. He certainly does not love him. At least, not the way he had loved Mrs Brandy - for he had loved her, he had; he would have married her, he thought, if things had gone differently. He had heard a few months ago from a friend of a friend that she had married a young soldier, the second-youngest son of a rich clergyman or somesuch, and felt a pang of grief for the may-have-been.

But there was no use in dwelling, and he had Vinculus now, in some way, some quiet aching way. He still does not know how to phrase it, what to call this tiny, fragile thing they have. It is hardly anything and yet-;

And yet he gets the feeling that it is huge, for both of them, in this quiet space before the end.