#nork rvb

[rvb-relationship-royale]

RVB Romantic Relationship Royale- Round 3, Part 3, Poll 2

Which is the better romantic ship?

North/York, aka Nork

Tex/C.T., aka CTex

Voting ended onAug 8, 2023

[churbooseanon]

When North didn't meet their skype appointment, during one of the few times that York knew he not only would have down time but the connection to make a call back stateside, he almost panicked. Not once in his time deployed had North missed any chance to see him, not a single missed skype date, no delay in responses to emails, and physical letters came regular as clockwork. So, yeah, panic felt reasonable at the time. His buddies in the unit brushed it off, when hadn't one of them had the same thing happen?

'You don't understand,' York would insist when someone told him to buck up, 'nothing is more reliable than he is.'

Or

'We are going to make this distance thing work.'

Or

'What if he got hurt?'

Really when there was so much in the world to be bothered by, he had chosen this. Why, no one could really understand, but it was York's thing. He could focus on the fact that the man he loved hadn't contacted him, or he could think about how the route for the convoys were getting harder to defend, higher risk, less reasonable to any sane human being—and for the records COs were rarely reasonable.

Things didn't get any better when, two days later the expected email was only two brief sentences long.

Sorry, there is a family emergency. I'll contact when I can.

When he could was two weeks later while York was in the infirmary getting stitches put into his leg. Shrapnel from an IED that he was lucky didn't take his leg off left him bedridden for a brief time. His partner hadn't been so lucky. But someone thought of him and brought his mail right to his bed. Put the letter right in York's hands and pretended not to notice as York tore into it like it was his only hope in the world.

There was no comfort in the letter, not for either of them. The graduate degree that North had been pursuing had to be left behind due to a very abrupt change in status. His aunt, the last surviving adult member of their family other than the twins themselves, had died in a car accident, leaving behind her ten year old son, Theodore. She'd already been a single mother, and if someone didn't step up to do something, the child was going to be put into the system. So North had done the only thing that seemed  to make sense at the time: agreed to raise a child. He was going to be a father and that changed the whole intended course of their lives, now didn't it?

He remembered that when he got to the bottom of the lengthy letter that was mostly made up of North detailing plans on how they could make this work, how this didn't change things between them, and especially how they were going to be a good family, the medic came in. The man ran a a whole new battery of tests, because he said there was no way York wasn't bleeding somewhere else if he was that pale.

'You look like you've seen a ghost,' York remembered the man saying.

And now, years later and standing on a porch, he had to wonder if he looked as bad now as he had then. Because this time, he really had.

[rvb-relationship-royale]

RVB Romantic Relationship Royale- Round 4, Part 3, Poll 1

Which is the better romantic ship?

North/York/Wash, aka Norkington

North/York, aka Nork

Voting ended onAug 19, 2023

[rvb-relationship-royale]

RVB Romantic Relationship Royale- Round 1, Part 3, Poll 5

Which is the better romantic ship?

Locus/Siris

North/York, aka Nork

Voting ended onJul 12, 2023

[rvb-relationship-royale]

RVB Romantic Relationship Royale- Round 2, Part 3, Poll 3

Which is the better romantic ship?

North/York, aka Nork

Hargrove/Lifetime Prison Sentence

Voting ended onJul 26, 2023

[churbooseanon]

“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir.”

Thing is, he isn't really. Traffic was a bitch this morning, and that isn't exactly the easiest thing to handle when the only options he had were a cab, one of those rideshare apps, or his bicycle. Luckily this particular job had been one that wasn't too far away from the shop, so when the boss said go, York had loaded his tools up into the baskets he had rigged on either side of his seat, balanced the load, and pushed off. It was better exercise this way, plus he had found that even the most frustrated of people who had locked themselves out of car a or house b or god forbid suitcase c were more likely to go easy on him when he showed up on a bicycle.

They went even easier, and usually pretty quiet when they saw him take off his sunglasses.

It was something you got used to, York thought as he propped the bike up by the porch stairs and started to get his gear from the baskets. From what his boss had told him before sending him out with his kit, billing paperwork, and an order for what lunch to bring back when he was done, the man he was to meet had managed to lock himself out of his new house. New home owners were sometimes pretty bad about that. New keys didn't instantly go on a keyring, or maybe they got a separate keychain for the house keys and weren't used to picking it up on their way out. This one, his boss said, was going to be particularly picky, because apparently he'd been highly frantic on the phone about the fact that he had to get in the house, not for the house itself but because his car keys were also inside and he had to go pick his son up from school in the next hour.

Perhaps York should have taken a ride to get to the site, it would have gotten him here faster for the freaking homeowner, but really, he didn't feel like rushing. This place wasn't far and as it was getting later in the day his legs were aching from the number of jobs he'd already done. Sure, if it had been much farther away he would have found other transportation, but the guy's house was only a mile from the shop and just because he wasn't in the army reserves anymore didn't mean he shirked a workout. Even after all these years he was quite happy to give himself bursts of leg-day exercises just by biking. Which, in his personal opinion, was way better than things like squats.

But second guessing wouldn't get him anywhere, not with his arms loaded up. York shifted his grip on his toolbox and finally turned to walk up the stairs. And, of course, he froze halfway up them as his gaze followed the long pair of legs standing at the top of them. Up, up, up his gaze went over those jeans, over a strong looking polo shirt in an achingly familiar shade of purple, and up a long pale neck to meet a pair of icy blue eyes that didn't hold a scrap of warmth in them.

Only once before had he experienced eyes like those leaving him so shaken, so scared, so eager to run. They hadn't been this pair, but the twin to them. And, in his defense, she had been threatening to castrate him if he ever dared to break Nic's heart. For the first time that old threat seemed likely to be fulfilled.

“I'll say you have.”

His voice is sharp and biting as a cold snap, and the only warmth to him is the red rising into the tips of his ears that always used to happen when North got angry. Frankly, York couldn't blame him, not in the slightest. After all, he had completely disappeared out of the man's life, what was it, nine years ago? Well, when he considered it was approaching August once again he had to admit to himself that it was more like a full decade since he'd been face to face with the man. Take off three months and you had the last time he'd seen that face over skype. Another two weeks off and you'd get the moment that he'd decided maybe not skyping would be a better choice, even if he wasn't able to do it just yet.

“You... wouldn't hit a man who was half blind would you?”

The pain that bloomed in his cheek and a good eye told him just how wrong he was. It lasted only a moment, though, because there was also the fall, the sidewalk, and the darkness that resulted from the contact of head and ground.