Court of Cards First Draft, Part Ten

You know what I haven’t posted in a while? BODICERIPPING DRAGONFUCK in which no bodices are ripped nor dragons fucked. You’ll probably want to read the rest of it if you’re planning on reading this~ Anyway let’s learn more about cultural differences and some backstory on Marianne I guess because HAHA SHOW DON’T TELL WHAT’S THAT

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“Do I really need to keep my hands over my face?” Benedict asked even as he stopped doing so. The moment his eyes rose to meet hers the question was answered, as she turned into a bowstring, all tense and withdrawn.

“You don’t have to,” she conceded in that quiet, breathy way she had that made him want to kiss her. He still couldn’t figure out if she was doing that on purpose; the alternative was that being terrified made her more attractive, and that had implications he did not dare to contemplate. Bad Benedict, he scolded himself, very, very bad.

“Here,” he suggested, turning to straddle the bench so that his back was turned to her, “does that help? Let me know in advance if you use this opportunity to flee, so that I don’t just sit here talking to nothing.” His heart almost stopped when she giggled, a tiny and impossibly happy sound.

“This is all very silly,” she admitted contritely, but she already sounded more confident. Perhaps it was the eyes? Benedict had been told that even other Hearts sometimes found them off-putting.

“If it makes you happy, Marianne, I shall make as much of an ass of myself as is necessary,” he proclaimed grandiosely, and for a moment it occurred to him that this might be true.

“Stewart called you the Ass of Hearts.”

“He would. I’ll have you know he stole that line from me, before you go admiring his abilities as a wordsmith.”

“He seemed nice,” she ventured.

“Please,” he entreated, “do whatever you like but I beg of you not to go swooning over his artistic temperament and fragility. Anything but that.”

“I can see the family resemblance.”

“I wish,” Benedict mourned, not sure why he was admitting this except that it might make him less terrifying to her. “It takes a good deal of hard work and dedication and a team of skilled artisans to make me this pretty. Stewart stumbles out of bed in half-torn trousers and a sunbeam lands on him out of nowhere, a flock of songbirds appearing to drop rose petals from the sky while they sing his praises. Perhaps a baby deer jumps in his window to butt its head against his hand, and he pats it absentmindedly.”

“That is plainly absurd.”

“Yes. Yes he is.”  There was a brief moment of silence between them, and Benedict wondered if she was watching him while he couldn’t see. The thought made him sit up a bit straighter and try to widen out his shoulders a tad. He hadn’t bothered thinking about what his back would look like when he’d gotten dressed this morning, and that had obviously been his first mistake. “What’s your family like?” he asked abruptly, diverting the subject away from his myriad of insecurities.

“You’ve met my family,” Marianne pointed out uncertainly, and he smiled despite himself.

“I’ve only met up to the Three – the King and Queen but briefly, Briana extensively, Alphonse and Gaston more than is healthy, and I think Leon punched me once. Why isn’t Leon here, in fact?”

“Oh, Leon,” and Benedict could hear in her voice the sound of her eyes rolling, “he’s only a Two but you’d think he was Ace with the way he martyrs himself. My Lord and Lady told him he was being left behind to learn a lesson about responsibility, as punishment for breaking the arm of the Head of the Hunt-”

“Alaric?” Benedict interjected.

“You know Alaric?”

“I knew Alaric. In a sense. Briana gave me a black eye for it, and I think that might be why Leon punched me. Never knew he was so protective of his sister.”

“He isn’t,” Marianne snickered, “Leon is the only one that hasn’t figured out he’s madly in love with Alaric.”

“… that explains some things.”

“Yes. So in the best interests of Leon, as well as anyone who might otherwise get stuck with that great big sourpuss, my Lord and Lady left him behind to mind the Court and hopefully realize his error.”

“It can’t take that long,” Benedict pointed out teasingly, “since Leon already broke one of Alaric’s bones. That is part of the courtship between Club males, is it not?”

“You should know very well that it’s not,” Marianne huffed, and Benedict imagined that she was furrowing her brow in annoyance in the manner he’d come to recognize. “Leon believes in the letter of the law – thus why he is a great big sourpuss – whereas Alaric believes in the spirit of the law and occasionally no law at all.”

“I’m afraid these intricacies went straight over my head during my stay. I must be worse at politics than I thought.”

“Not really. For the majority of your visit, the two were out hunting. At any rate, by the time the Shuffle is over, Leon ought to have come to his senses and they’ll be busy wrestling in an entirely different context.”

“I’d think he’d have realized it sooner, if all he needed was to be left alone with the fellow for a while.”

“Not entirely alone. He’ll have an aunt and uncle helpfully pushing them together whenever possible, and if nothing else he will give in just to put a stop to their gleeful meddling.” Marianne’s tone had a hint of resignation, as if she were the one on the receiving end of such interference. It did not take much effort to put two and two together.

“Your mother and father?” Benedict ventured, and he heard her shift uncomfortably.

“Yes, well. As I said, they’d no need to be here.”

“I’m afraid I never met the…” He trailed off as he realized he did not even know if Marianne was an only child.

“Annabelle the Six and Maurice the Seven,” she recited mechanically. No older siblings, then.

“Yes, I think I might have heard their names once or twice. Anne and Maury, usually?”

“… yes.” It took a moment to realize the source of her hesitation.

“… Maury-Anne.”

“Yes.”

“Why.”

“I had heard that originally they were going to name me for whichever parent I most resembled. It took enough time for a child to take that they did not anticipate getting a second, so I imagine they put a good deal of thought into naming their only progeny. It would have been difficult to come up with an alternative when things turned out… as they did.”

“Stop that,” Benedict scolded, wanting immediately to put a stop to the determined apathy in her voice. “You needn’t make it sound as though you were some great disappointment simply for being short.”

“Because I was thought to be the cause of mother’s illness,” Marianne clarified, in a tone that conveyed how little she thought of his opinion on this subject, “it was hoped that her bedridden state would not lead to any weakening on my part. The hope – indeed, the assumption – was that I was so very strong from conception that I was simply overpowering my mother from within.”

“If the Six and Seven had truly thought so little of you, they’d not have kept you.”

“In this instance it was not their opinion that mattered, as I was inexplicably blessed.”

This statement was made with no acknowledgement of its extraordinary nature, and so it took Benedict a moment to realize what she meant. The only response he could then think of was, “I did not know they had phoenixes in the South.” There was a pregnant pause, and it occurred to Benedict that it was quite ignorant to think that only Hearts could achieve greatness.

“I was wrong. You are worse at politics than I thought. How is it even possible that a future King, who has spent time abroad, is unaware that only Hearts become phoenixes?”

“My focus tended to be on concerns of a more practical nature,” he deflected loftily, hoping he did not sound as silly as he felt.

“Ancestral signs are not practical?” Marianne persisted, and he was glad she could not see that he was pouting. A man had to keep some dignity about him. “You graced the Court of Clubs with your presence for a year, and you never thought to visit the library?”

“I had things to do.”

“Things, or people?” Benedict’s indignation was disarmed immediately by her mischievous tone, and he smiled despite himself.

“Both. Let’s get back to the fact that you are apparently blessed by your ancestors, who are not phoenixes.”

“When Hearts achieve greatness they burn up and become phoenixes, Diamonds disappear into the trees and become megatherium, Spades throw themselves at the sky and are made dragons, and Clubs leave for the final hunt and become mammoths.”

“So you were blessed by a mammoth.”

“Mammoths travel in herds. But yes, on the night of my birth I was blessed by the appearance of my maternal great-grandmother.” Marianne’s tone was so matter-of-fact, and yet Benedict was sure that she was mocking him somehow.

“I am doing my best to be respectful, but I am not clear on how your mother recognized a mammoth to be her grandmother.”

“She knocked down the wall of the ballroom and pulled down the chandelier. Queen Lorelei hated that chandelier. I suppose when one becomes a mammoth, one stops caring about how long it took one’s husband to collect all those antlers.”

“I openly admit now to my cultural ignorance,” Benedict said slowly, “but I do recall my history. Is Queen Lorelei not the one who killed her husband?”

“Yes, but that’s unrelated to the chandelier,” Marianne assured him, though that didn’t actually assure him at all. “Actually, I suppose it could be a little related, since that would explain why she never had it taken down when she was human. It might have seemed unsporting.”

“So your parents were certain that your great-grandmother’s renovations indicated approval rather than indictment?” While Benedict was undeniably interested in the mariticidal tendencies of Clubs, he thought it best to keep the conversation focused on things he could not discover later with independent research.

“If she wanted to warn them, she’d have destroyed the nursery.”

“A practical enough distinction.”

“I imagine you have a similar story, as you’re meant to be blessed yourself,” Marianne pointed out shyly, and Benedict could not help frowning. The subtext here seemed to be I am not actually special or interesting, and he disapproved of that notion.

“Not really,” he admitted flippantly. “No one’s actually seen a phoenix in years. Everyone assumes I’m blessed because I look so… as I do. I thought I saw a phoenix once when I was ten, but it turned out someone on the castle wall set his hat on fire and tossed it down. An impressionable young Ace sees fire shooting past his window, assumptions are made.” Benedict gave a nonchalant shrug, hoping that Marianne would at least be amused by his younger self’s enthusiasm.

“You’ve never even seen a phoenix?” Whatever he’d expected, it had not been her incredulous disappointment, and he felt himself getting defensive about something he’d only moments ago been ambivalent towards.

“It’s not as though you’ve actually seen a mammoth,” he pointed out, and there was a long silence before he continued, “Mammoths aren’t that common. Briana would have bragged about it if they were, and the ignorance I displayed today would have been corrected long ago.”

“They’re not that common,” Marianne admitted quietly, and he wanted desperately to turn around and see what was written on her face in that moment. “I only saw them by accident. They were on their way to bless someone else, I think. They weren’t for me, anyway.” She sounded fairly ashamed, and Benedict wondered if seeing someone else’s mammoth was like reading someone else’s mail.

“Marianne,” he said finally, “I would like very much to turn around so that I can see you. Would that be acceptable, or would you stop talking to me?”

“… I think I might like that.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, so quiet he could barely hear her over the sound of his own pulse, he’d turned around with astonishing speed. He chose to believe it was surprise rather than intimidation that lead to her recoiling when he did so.

Benedict could not recall the last time he’d wanted so badly to kiss someone. How could she possibly have room for a mind that clever with eyes that big? Some of that inky black hair had fallen in front of her face, and despite his previous determination not to make her uncomfortable, he could not help reaching out to brush it aside. She seemed frozen again – did she think he was a dragon? – and he found himself gently running his fingers along her jawline, taking her dainty chin in his fingers and tipping her face towards his. Marianne bit her lower lip again, and he decided that this was a habit designed deliberately to drive him mad. She just looked so damnably… vulnerable.

“I am aware that I might be pressing my luck,” he ventured, hoping that his attempts to keep his voice even were successful, “but I don’t suppose you would also like it if I held you, for a moment?” He could not determine from Marianne’s expression whether she was considering matters, or if she had simply turned to stone. The only indication came when she lowered her eyes away from his, inched closer to him on the bench, and headbutted him gently in the cravat. Her hands were balled into fists in her lap, and the whole scene was so endearingly earnest Benedict hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with himself. Neither did she, apparently.

“I was sneaking out to go sledding,” she mumbled into his chest, and he was confused before realizing she was talking about her stolen mammoths. With a smile he wrapped his arms around her, resisting the temptation to pull her tight against him, and when a pleased hum escaped her he could not imagine a more perfect sound.

“Isn’t sneaking meant to be cowardly?” he teased gently, and he thought he heard her ‘harrumph’ quietly in response.

“It’s contextual. At any rate, the sneaking was forced by circumstances. I am not, strictly speaking, allowed to sled.”

“… you don’t mean that you went alone.”

“The generally accepted meaning of ‘not allowed’ is ‘stopped from doing so by others’,” Marianne pointed out loftily.

“Sledding is done in pairs for a reason, little Club,” Benedict chided, holding her just the slightest bit closer at the thought of her tiny self sprawled at the foot of the slopes.

“I was fourteen and I knew what I was doing. You may feel free at any point to stop behaving as though I am some manner of fragile buffoon.” Marianne’s indignation made it clear that he’d planted his foot firmly in his mouth once more, and he trailed his fingertips down her spine in what he hoped was a soothing gesture.

“It is not just fragile buffoons that meet their end that way, little one. But yes, that is irrelevant to the story, of which I would like to hear more. Where were you sledding that had mammoths roaming about?”

“I was at the top of the Shard when I saw them–”

“No you were not. That is not a slope, that is a cliff. A cliff made of ice. Ice, and the bodies of the foolish dead, and the frozen tears of everyone who ever loved them. Why would you be anywhere near the Shard?”

Marianne gave him an exasperated sigh, butting her forehead against Benedict’s sternum as punishment for his abject horror. “Stop being melodramatic and don’t interrupt, or I’m going back to the picnic. It’s been my favorite slope since I was ten, as the rest are dreadfully dull in comparison. That the Shard is the tallest is the only reason I saw them – that, and the ribbons in the sky. I don’t think they saw me, or even noticed my presence. At that distance, in the direction they were going… they can’t have been intended for me. But I wanted so desperately to see them. It seemed as though I ought, as they’d validated my birth when I myself could not. So I decided to slide down the wrong side of the ice, back the way I’d come.

“It wasn’t meant for sledding–” – None of the Shard was, Benedict could not help thinking – “so it was fairly rough, but… it got me so close. I could see their eyes, and their hair looked coarse, and they were just so big. Everything about them was big. Big, slow, noisy, smelly, utterly magnificent things. I don’t know about phoenixes or dragons or megatherium, but mammoths are still animals at the heart of things. I suppose that had never really occurred to me, that they would be so real and have such weight to them. That they would still be Clubs. I was hiding in the snow for hours before they had gone far enough for me to head back, and by the time I made it home the rest of the Court was waking up. I had to climb into a window and tell Leon I had fallen down a flight of stairs. I spent the rest of the week confined to my room and my cousins sent me a variety of furry dead animals that had been stuffed with more fur.”

They were silent for a long moment, at least in part because of Benedict’s fear that speaking might qualify as an interruption. When he could no longer bear the silence, he decided on the relatively neutral, “I have never actually ridden a sled.”

“Whyever not?”

“It seemed completely terrifying, and you have done nothing to disabuse me of this notion. I do not find being terrified to be an enjoyable experience, overall.” Marianne’s response to this was a nervous giggle that spoke volumes, and when he bent his head to see the face hiding in his neckcloth, he saw that she was blushing.

That’s one mystery solved.

13 hours ago  /  0 notes

Internet Flirting Sucks

It’s not like flirting in real life, where people will flirt just for the sake of it, with everyone and everything just because why not. Flirting on the internet is usually just the preliminaries to seeing someone naked, and if they don’t get naked fast enough you get bored and wander off and find someone else to flirt with.

Man, I don’t need to see your dick! This is the internet! There are plenty of dicks! If I wanted to see a dick, there are millions of them available to ogle at my leisure! I do not need to go through the trouble of finding a dude who will talk to me in a manner I find pleasing if I want to see a dick.

I can’t GIS flirtatious commentary. RedTube won’t say the right things at the right time to make me all giggly and silly. Flirting is fun all on its own! Especially on the internet, where I do not turn into a crimson turtle who loses control of her fingers and vocal cords.

There are all sorts of places a person can go online if they want some mutual junksharing, but there aren’t really a lot of options for people who just want to flirt. And that blows.

I just want to tell a dude he’s handsome without him showing me his dick. I want to tell a lady she’s pretty without her thinking I want to see her tits. I don’t want coy innuendos to end with an abrupt request for me to take my shirt off.

I am polyflirtatious and I demand a harem of clever people to sate my lust for witty repartee.

13 hours ago  /  0 notes

I was trying to figure out how to record my webcam with VLC, and it went sort of black so I figured it was going to spend a minute trying to figure out what it was doing and I went back to browsing in the meantime

but then it turned out it was recording and I was like “oh goody a recording of me staring blankly at the screen like o_o”

^{(click the stupid gif or open it in a new tab if it doesn’t play, idkwtf tumblr)}

THIS WAS THIRTY FUCKING SECONDS AM I ALWAYS THIS FUCKING TWITCHY

what the hell am I doing with my mouth and my face and I just

why didn’t any of you tell me about my weird fucking face

2 days ago  /  0 notes

Perspectives

Okay I think the problem here is that you’re looking at things the wrong way. I mean, sure, you could look it as insomnia. But it’s not like I do nothing all night! I cook ahead for the day, I bake bread, I do the dishes, I clean the kitchen, I do the laundry. When you think about it, the effect on you is that you wake up in the morning to a clean house and clean clothes and food.

I’m not an insomniac; I’m a fucking house-elf.

So from now on I’m going to expect a lot more gratefulness and bowls of milk, and a lot less “I miss you” and “we never talk anymore” and “maybe we should try leaving the house”.

2 days ago  /  0 notes

Why I Don’t Make Video Games

(aside from the obvious part where I have no skills I guess)

So I’m watching a dude play Prototype 2 and I’m sort of disappointed that the “relive the victim’s memories” thing only happens when the memories are relevant to the plot. I was kind of hoping that whenever you ate random people you’d get memories of mundane shit from their lives to discourage being a psycho. Eat a dude, oh man this sandwich is fucking good with this cranberry mustard, eat someone else, fuck I never should have eaten that thing now John is calling and if I answer the phone he’ll hear.

At which point I had the idea for a standard rampaging psychopath game where the main character is aware that he is being controlled by an outside force, and he doesn’t like it.  Running down the street, “Where are you taking me?” Get hit by a car, “AGH GOD WHY MY LIFE IS PAIN.” Kill an innocent bystander for funsies, “OH MY GOD I’M SO SORRY I SWEAR THIS ISN’T ME THIS ISN’T ME OH GOD PLEASE STOP”

Molydeux has probably already had this idea but who cares it’s hilarious

5 days ago  /  1 note