the roof perch at cemetery house

In Memoriam rambles -> Epiphany on ao3

[theroofperch]

hayes has never seen ellwood's scar

[theroofperch]

I always wondered how gaunt and ellwood could have gotten to brazil and still not truly known how the other felt...

but looking at this again, the keats is something of a red herring. what gaunt is doing is admitting his love as best he can - later he says it's illegal for him to confess directly as they are in public. even whispered, he can't risk it, and i think that part of him refuses to: he is an english gentleman, and longs to live in accordance with society's rules. it just sucks that the rules themselves are rubbish (this is why he still longs for an ideal version of england and germany when in brazil - he sees it as possible that they could live happily. its also shown in the exchange with hayes in hospital about how england is changing. 'not fast enough', says hayes, and he and gaunt are united in their longing for a better england).

but ellwood does not see this exchange in the train station before he leaves for france as anything more than gaunt coming out of the closet. he's admitting he wasn't playing or passing the time, because he's an invert. he has feelings for men. whether these are romantic for ellwood specifically is perhaps something ellwood cannot allow himself to contemplate, considering where he's about to go. he's already heartbroken about the damage done while he thought gaunt dead.

so really, cyril is a huge catalyst in more ways than one here...

roseveare tries to force a sort of confession, by framing them leaving for brazil together as reflective of his marriage to lillian. unless his is a lavender marriage (always rooting for aldworth x roseveare) or he is a bisexual king (seems likely actually), then roseveare is comparing himself and his wife to gaunt and ellwood, and everyone in that tea shop knows it....

but of course they fudge. so ellwood's invitation to brazil instead becomes two friends with benefits who now know they are both queer, leaving to go to a country where they will be safe. important in and of itself... community et al... but it also makes the entire summer at thornycroft into 'just two friends distracting themselves from the war', a sort of bleaker version of Divisional Rest if you will, where the sex is now angry and remedial rather than celebratory and relaxed.

but it then leaves them floundering for two years while the War takes itself out to the trash, and then they arrive in Brazil like 'lol this house is nice lets room together' when actually they're both mentally nesting already. finally, ellwood pushes things by asking when gaunt will call him sidney, which opens a door floodgate. but it is a long rocky road of self-doubt: they need the actual time to pass, time heals all, and shows them that they really are committed to each other. finally, after gaunt officially (and using words when he so often doesn't) admits that he loves ellwood specifically and will stay with him forever, only then does ellwood truly believe that gaunt loves him, and in so doing, accept that he is worthy of that love.

[theroofperch]

Hayes pov fic is here lol

[theroofperch]

Gaunt saying 'this means I'm keeping you' is probably one of the most possessive things he's ever done. Even though it's based in loyalty, devotion and commitment, to ellwood's mind, it's a claiming because not only does he not think gaunt is that bothered about wanting him now that he's damaged, but he's always been so used to thinking gaunt forgets about him when he's not there. Gaunt called him a cad once, which ellwood probably took to heart as proof that gaunt sees him as expendable or just another silly, pretty fly-by-night boy

gaunt stayed at thornycroft for weeks that summer but ellwood was too torn up to see things clearly, and the war going on and on fried their brains. but then in brazil gaunt is just next to him on the boat silently as they pull into the harbour. he's got loads of luggage and ellwood is thinking. then they stay in a hotel for a bit while they search for a house with roseveare's uncle. then they buy a house. then they move all their stuff in. then gaunt is just there every day and every night, and they're sleeping in the same bed and sleeping together, but he still can't look at him so he just drinks and chats about lighthearted things and gossips and complains, which is easy for them both to do. and ellwood is angry and spiky but gaunt is still there, even though its christmas back home, he's just sitting on the verandah cool as a cucumber looking as masked as ever. ellwood has the actual mask but gaunt has never needed one. thats just his face.

then ellwood finds out his mother dies and has an outburst, and before he knows it gaunt is cradling his face and calling him sidney. he had to ask, but that wasn't unexpected. gaunt is hardly forthcoming, even now. ellwood just lost his mother but he's gained gaunt, in some way, because he's calling him sidney, not once but a million times, and he's just said he's keeping ellwood. this means i'm keeping you. as though he'd thought about it before. as though ellwood's name is some kind of key, some kind of bomb that detonates when used wrongly. and that night they go to the embassy dinner and ellwood can't think straight or eat or even talk to people normally because on the other side of the room gaunt is staring at him intensely, and there's a thread of some kind between them that is pulling more tautly than its ever pulled before.

(they barely made it to the embassy dinner tbh)

[theroofperch]

the more hayes fic i write the more i realise that ‘that dont impress me much’ by shania is his song when it comes to giving henry advice about ellwood

he’s like just send him a mixtape with this. Hayes is only 27 hes not even that old and he is absolutely a shania millennial. He grew up at the turn of the century after all, what could be more millennial than that

(ellwood hears ‘dont get me wrong i think youre all right’ and runs with it)

[theroofperch]

Hayes pov fic is en route lol

[theroofperch]

shall we speak about how the couplet from sonnet 20 ellwood writes on gaunt's wall is both a dick joke (prick'd thee out instead of picked thee out) and him saying the ladies can have his body but he want to have his emotional devotion? ellwood being a sappy/filthy loverboy PEAK

[soup-charades]

even more insanely lover-boy behavior considering ellwood was, um, particularly fond of gaunt’s prick lmao 😭 and he still thought ‘FUCKING FINE, whatever. They can have you carnally, but i get you’

[theroofperch]

these lines are rotating around my mind like theyre in a microwave too! i have so much to say about the sexual desire in this book but don't want to rant and rave like a madman so i just put it all in my fics lol (and occasional posts because i too am so into the sonnets i mean we all knew shakespeare was a manwhore poet but theyre soooo good)

prick'd thee out... there's even more layers to the dick joke because pricking something out makes sense even without being a pun on 'picked thee out', it could literally just mean 'nature equipped you with a prick' as in 'kitted thee out with a prick' lmao

also the rest of the sonnet (if we're to assume he would have written the whole thing if he hadn't reined himself in at least a little) ... where ellwood is basically saying gaunt is even more beautiful than any woman because he doesn't need makeup/effects to beautify himself, which tells you both something about ellwood's view on beauty AND that he might think gaunt behaves the way he does intentionally rather than because he's insecure, he thinks gaunt is confident and chooses to be stoic?!?!?!

and then the lines about how both men and women look up to him?? as in, Gaunt is a paragon of ideal manhood? get this boy a chaise longue because he is about to swoon for real

(it's also always been funny to me how ellwood becomes angry with how in love he is, not sad or forlorn, which you'd expect from a romantic poet. like, bro is straight raging with it lmao)

[theroofperch]

shall we speak about how the couplet from sonnet 20 ellwood writes on gaunt's wall is both a dick joke (prick'd thee out instead of picked thee out) and him saying the ladies can have his body but he want to have his emotional devotion? ellwood being a sappy/filthy loverboy PEAK

[theroofperch]

gaunt not telling ellwood he had spanish flu is INSANITY

imagine someone thinks you died and they lost you forever, then you come back like the second coming of christ

and then you potentially die again and think 'you know what, they don't need a chance to say goodbye or even know this'

henry is lucky sidney's anger is less predictable now because he might not have been the only one without an eye

that edwardian emotional repression habit dies very very hard

(i also love thinking about what ellwood might have done if he'd known. this man would be on the first boat back to england and screw all that I Hate England mumbo jumbo. although he would probably find a way to make it england's fault. call it English Flu if you will. gaunt is too sick to roll his eyes and that infuriates him but his lungs hurt too much to do anything about it. but he's doing it in spirit - - -

ellwood arrives and sits at his bedside like gaunt was at his. he's in his home in london so ellwood doesnt have to worry as much about someone seeing him take henry's hand. gaunt is terrified ellwood will get sick because he's more vulnerable since his eye injury. ellwood then has to leave before he wants to because otherwise the gaunt's will figure it out / he's illegally deserted the army to see henry)

[theroofperch]

thinking about gaunt's idealised longing for england at the end of the novel, and how his idea of 'home' would always have been skewed due to being raised at boarding school, whether or not he left for brazil.

i wonder what their life on wiltshire country lanes, as gaunt wishes for, would have been like, had it been possible. a smallholding somewhere in the country, perhaps, a grand estate that wasn't so grand people would come looking and nosing around their business. or would ellwood be expected to run thornycroft after his mother died? gaunt living there with him, even as bachelors, might be suspicious, but perhaps their privilege and money could manage that. what a nervy life, always looking over your shoulder, but perhaps gaunt's love for thornycroft could have made everything bearable.

[theroofperch]

a moment of silence for west's collarbone, which gaunt broke because west was trying to steal his mattress while he slept

("i deserved that" said West probably)

[samo-lyuba]

This book ruined me. 10/10.

[theroofperch]

it's like he's swimming in the ocean of his mind, an afternoon at thornycroft getting lost in tennyson. but he's also underwater here, with all these reeds, and its suffocating, because gaunt is dead - - - but its also just dirt and air, that strange paradox of being trapped in trenches under a wide open sky, the war will never end, so he takes some time in the reserve field to just read like he'd once done as a young boy. he needs his poetry, now more than ever.

[theroofperch]

this line makes me wonder if hayes 'hated' ellwood mostly because he thought he was a cad...!

ellwood makes a joke about women after returning from 24 hours lost in no man's land. and while hayes could be laughing out of the sheer relief of getting him back, and recognise the irony of the joke, gaunt's perspective of ellwood was likely he most influential thing regarding his impression of ellwood. he'd heard about ellwood for months before meeting him, likely thinking him idealistic, naive, poetic, obnoxiously misguided about what hayes would consider reality. "gaunt thought your letters were charming even when they were cruel". even gaunt was happy to acknowledge ellwood's flaws in david's presence.

so when they meet and don't get along, i wonder if it's mainly because hayes knows how much ellwood means to gaunt, even as a friend, while ellwood is just this fickle, easygoing young man who doesn't really care about anyone, - just as maud thought, and just as gaunt himself thinks throughout the book!! hayes has a family, he's sensible with money and savvy about how the world works, he's respectful, and here comes ellwood, not only rich and a bit obnoxious but a fucking playboy who is toying with his new friend and comrade Henry's heart, whether thats as a soulmate or friend or lover (hayes been knew). Henry's a diamond geezer, not like many of the other officers hayes has met, and he's woefully gone for this utter cad who does not seem to understand just how special gaunt is. what an idiot >:(

then gaunt dies and hayes is left with said idiot, and he's going to be thinking about him in the context of gaunt for the rest of his life. he sees how cut up ellwood is after gaunt's death, but also how he swoops towards watts and other handsome young officers, and this is not how hayes deals with grief at all - he's too similar to gaunt. more likely to go off alone, or play a game of footie with the lads, so ellwood, even in his grief, still seems like this player who has the world at his feet and doesn't even realise how lucky he is/was.

i wonder what hayes thought at the end of everything, when gaunt and ellwood turned up at his wedding, clearly together, gaunt at peace in a way he hadn't seen. good on you, lad, he probably thought. he better treat you right, and if he doesn't, he'll get a stern letter from me via international airmail.

[soup-charades]

Hayes and Ellwood’s relationship really makes so much sense when one sees is through the lens of one own’s friendships. Like imagine this friend of yours tells you about this man he’s seeing, giggling while they text back and forth, and then you finally meet the guy and he is rich-private-school-occasionally-an-asshole FuckBoy McSlut. Of course you’d be like ??? dump his ass???

[theroofperch]

right?? and then hayes tells gaunt to give ellwood the 'its not you it's me' talk with a side helping of 'i dont want to risk our friendship for anything'

gaunt has never heard these cliches before so he's like :O :O what a great thing to say i'd never thought of that, i didn't know you were allowed to talk about your feelings

hayes is like . . .

[theroofperch]

this line makes me wonder if hayes 'hated' ellwood mostly because he thought he was a cad...!

ellwood makes a joke about women after returning from 24 hours lost in no man's land. and while hayes could be laughing out of the sheer relief of getting him back, and recognise the irony of the joke, gaunt's perspective was likely the most influential thing regarding his impression of ellwood. he'd heard about ellwood for months before meeting him, likely thinking him idealistic, naive, poetic, obnoxiously misguided about what hayes would consider reality. "gaunt thought your letters were charming even when they were cruel". even gaunt was happy to acknowledge ellwood's flaws in david's presence.

so when they meet and don't get along, i wonder if it's mainly because hayes knows how much ellwood means to gaunt, even as a friend, while ellwood is just this fickle, easygoing young man who doesn't really care about anyone - just as maud thought, and just as gaunt himself thinks throughout the book!! hayes has a family, he's sensible with money and savvy about how the world works, he's respectful, and here comes ellwood, not only rich and a bit obnoxious but a fucking playboy who is toying with his new friend and comrade Henry's heart, whether thats as a soulmate or friend or lover (hayes been knew). Henry's a diamond geezer, not like many of the other officers hayes has met, and he's woefully gone for this utter cad who does not seem to understand just how special gaunt is. what an idiot >:(

then gaunt dies and hayes is left with said idiot, and he's going to be thinking about him in the context of gaunt for the rest of his life. he sees how cut up ellwood is after gaunt's death, but also how he swoops towards watts and other handsome young officers, and this is not how hayes deals with grief at all - he's too similar to gaunt. more likely to go off alone, or play a game of footie with the lads, so ellwood, even in his grief, still seems like this player who has the world at his feet and doesn't even realise how lucky he is/was.

i wonder what hayes thought at the end of everything, when gaunt and ellwood turned up at his wedding, clearly together, gaunt at peace in a way he hadn't seen. good on you, lad, he probably thought. he better treat you right, and if he doesn't, he'll get a stern letter from me via international airmail.

[theroofperch]

i'd write these anyway if i was desperate to, but would anyone be interested in short fics from hayes' or roseveare's pov? like the night hayes thought ellwood was dead, or roseveare meeting gaunt and ellwood at preshute when gaunt is back from the dead/figuring out the brazil escape for them...?

all canon compliant moments ofc. the fics focusing on minor characters aren't very popular in fandom it seems but at the same time we all love hayes lol

asking the crowd for feedback!

.

yes i'd read fics about my boy david hayes! the man the myth the legend etc etc

i'd read fics about roseveare the beautiful tragic bastard

i'd read about both!

i prefer gaunt and elly-centric, like the book

i'd read about any character tbh just give me more in memoriam

i'm not sure but just want to click a button

i want gideon devi fics, you didnt ask about this but GIDEON

Voting ended onJul 15

[theroofperch]

wondering whether hayes knew gaunt had a sister, because he comes up with gauntette quick as lightning as if the only way there could be a girl version of gaunt would be if gaunt essentially transformed into a female smurf overnight. this man couldnt have known gaunt had a twin sister that ellwood was basically betrothed to for goodness sake

gaunt probably thought there was enough dugout drama with him and ellwood already, he wasn't bringing a sister into the mix knowing he'd spend every waking moment explaining this upper class backstory to hayes, who would definitely want the tea

(he always wants the tea except when ellwood is pouring it)

[theroofperch]

post war henry is the type of guy to cry at weddings #toMe

post war henry absolutely cries at so many things including weddings

but whose are they going to?

also, soft post-prison gaunt in general is so special... he was so ready to meet a similarly soft ellwood and get things going finally, and then he got back to england :(