If you see this, post the last three lines you’ve written.
Some way to stop seeing bowler hats or glowing cigarette butts from the corners of his eye. Sometimes he swore he could smell them, unwashed bodies muted with mud, a godawful stench really, but his godawful stench. His men.
“And he did indeed look very fine. You’re still better.” He rocked up onto his toes and kissed Bucky’s cheek. “Go tell ‘em Mister Stark approves and appreciates the rush job.”
Thankfully, Pepper simply laughed instead of taking offense. “Good heavens, your mother is almost as bad as mine! I didn’t even know she read the New York papers until she called and asked me all about you after the gala. Next thing I know she’s going to be unearthing the hope chest she started for me when I was sixteen.”
“Jus’ go to the tenth floor,” he said, he said, slurring a little; vodka always went to his head, along with whiskey, tequila, and scopolamine. “I can get you the right sort of gun.”
“These are special, aren’t they?“
Steve raised his eyes to meet Buck’s, then, and he held Buck’s gaze for a long, still moment before he nodded and turned away. He carefully laid the two pennies in the exact center of the big table, side by side, two bright glints in that dark expanse.
“Yes, Master,” Harold says. “Forgive me, Master.”
He lets John take some of his weight, walking down from the stage. A bittersweet feeling: trust John doesn’t deserve.There’s a wry expression on Arthur’s face as he watches the two of them leave, Merlin hanging on Cenred’s arm. He hates himself for putting Merlin in this position.
Unbeknownst to him, someone else is also watching them leave from across the room, and the smile playing on her lips signals doom.
“There is no such thing as dignity in death. Their brains have stopped functioning, everything they are, were or ever could’ve been is already gone, all that’s left is a rotting pile of meat.”
He gave his sister a disturbed look and watched her cringe, aware of her own morbidity.
“Sorry, that was… insensitive.”
Nothing about him particularly was in disarray, but he felt rumpled. The stain on his shirt, garishly red under the fluorescent lights, had already set but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
There were more difficult things to deal with now.“You are not among the plethora of the faceless. I know you may not have wished it, and perhaps I am partially to blame for the circumstance, but your involvement with the auxilia has undoubtedly caused many to notice you as an individual. All it takes is a particular person recognizing you as a man with an identity and your value alters its state.”
More vultures moved in, and a flock of gulls gusted away with the wind. In the corner of Will’s eye they appeared a great winged cloud, flapping and calling to each other. The stranger closed his sketchpad and stood, his feet meeting sand as he walked away.
Dessert was passion fruit mousse and chocolate ganache tarts, served with a selection of cheeses and sweet wines. It was well past midnight, and when he was accosted by the ruckus of guests falling, uproariously, into the swimming pool fully clothed, Will Graham decided abruptly that he had had enough.
He showed himself to the kitchens.
Thomas touches the tips of his fingers to his jaw, just beneath his ear. The barely-there contact sends a stubborn shiver of yearning through his chest. “We have never been able to keep each other safe,” Thomas says quietly.
Micheletto’s gaze flicked down to follow the path of Cesare’s hand, then looked back to his eyes, patient.
Cesare pressed his lips together, considering. He needed…he didn’t know what he needed.
“What would you ask of me, my lord?” Micheletto asked quietly.
