when i travel i like to take hilariously bad pictures of common tourist things, because anyone can take a nice picture of them, so i’d rather take a shitty one i can laugh at later
“There were additional matters to be attended to in Egypt,” is a brittle excuse, but one that slips from Jake’s lips and cracks upon the polished marble of the war room regardless.
“Matters,” Jane parrots. Her tongue clicks with doubt. She smiles. “Surely none that overtook the importance of your duties in Rome.”
“Surely not,” Jake replies. Quick, arguably too quick. Jane frowns.
“I know you’ve taken a shining to that queen—“
“Pharaoh,” Jake interrupts, firm and strong in a way he’s never been before his empress. He raises his chin. “He wishes to be treated as a man. As the great pharaohs before him.”
“…Right,” Jane says. “A grand pharaoh who invites all he deems indulgent into his bed.”
“I’m, that’s not,” Jake starts. “It’s important we secure our alliance with the south—“
“And I imagine you’ve more the procured yourself with the south, hm,” Jane spits. Stares. Jake feels small beneath her intense, warning, gaze. Then, she relaxes. Breathes out a sigh of exasperation. “You’re such a brilliant force on the battlefield, and yet one foreign dignitary invites you to their quarters and you crumble your defenses as if you’d never wished to lift a sword in the first place.”
“I,” Jake says. Then, unveils the truth hanging above the both of them, above the entirety of Rome and its nearest neighbors. “I love him.”
“You think you’re the first.”
“I intend to be the last.”
Jane laughs—harsh, but amused. She sighs, again. “Well then. I suppose we’ll see how such things unfold, hm?”
At the bar there is a man so far from you that you might as well be watching him through the frosted windowpanes outside. “At” is not an ample figure of placement—he’s on the bar, long legs falling over the edge of the counter, a long arm falling over the broad shoulders of a man twice his size. The other hand raises a glass of alcohol high above his head. It spills, sparkles, as it falls down upon the men swirling beneath him like a stormy ocean. The whole scene looks like a work of Renaissance art. Your own private chapel ceiling of muscles and heavensent jubilation gracing you in the depths of a particularly filthy mollyhouse.
The subject of the painting catches your eye. Dirk, they call him. They all know him. Distantly, you wonder if he’s a whore. At an even further distance, you wonder what a man like him would cost. This is a new world to you—your imagination sets the price of a man like him far beyond what your pockets can carry on an adventurous evening out. Far more than what even a queen could bargain.
He’s still looking at you. He smiles, like a hunter, like a man who knows a freshman to this world when he sees one.
You pull back. Feel your shoulderblades collide with a shoddily plastered wall. Your brain flickers with the dim candlelight. His breeches slide from the counter and a man helps set him down with an arm around his waist. They exchange a look, a laugh, and then he’s coming towards you. You, Jake English, fresh from your parent’s home and braving London with the spirit of a man suddenly-wilting.
“Love,” he calls you, and you almost lose your balance, palms pressed to the wall. “Oh, don’t startle like that. Can I get you a drink?”
DirkJake.... the Italian Renaissance.... or 1960's America lmao
(CW: stonewall & war mentions)
There are reports of riots in New York. Vile, demonized accounts of police assaults and street warfare. Broken bottles and fire. Thrown bricks. War.
You are not in New York. There is a piece of you that wishes you were there—a piece of you that wants to fight, and yell, and scream, and maybe throw a few bricks of your own. There is a fire in you that wants to go to war in New York. A fire that does not exist for the foreign land you will be shipped off to in a matter of months. Bile rises in your throat. Maybe you’re a traitor after all.
Jake’s head falls onto your shoulder. He’s not in New York, either. Or Vietnam. Or Woodstock. Or space. Or any of the other innumerable, groundbreaking events that seem to rock the world every other week. Jake’s whole body hums with the music he’s singing along to. You wonder if he spares a thought to any of them at all.
“Canada,” you tell him. You don’t finish your fragmented thought—you don’t elaborate of the weight of the suggestion.
But he looks up at you regardless, doe-eyed and knowing. You feel foolish. He knows more than you ever give him credit for.
He says, “of course I’ll go with you,” and gets up to change the record.
Waking up in the little wooden room above a spiritualist’s shop should come with more alarm than Shiro grants himself. Swindlers—Adam had called them. Swindlers each and every one of them. Conmen and women praying on the grief and desperation of vulnerable citizens, leeches siphoning from the hardworking folks of the world. Shiro scowls. If Adam was so worried about Shiro’s vulnerability he shouldn’t have died.
Shiro feels a swirl in his gut and he keels over, onto his side with one propped elbow, as a wave of nausea washes over him. He hasn’t slept with anyone since Adam was lost at sea, at least not until now, and the brunt of the sudden weight sends his mind spinning with…
“Don’t dwell in your guilt,” a voice calls from a little table in the corner. A slight figure with a robe falling down his shoulder and a breakfast plate before him. “It will consume you, Shiro.”
“Right,” Shiro says. “Thank you, Keith. I’ll keep that in mind the next time I sleep with the psychic who’s pledged to contact my—“ he falters. “Best friend.”
“Don’t mince words,” Keith says, from his little table and one-shouldered robe. “Your tongue will get stuck beneath the mallet.”
“Do you make it a habit to speak in ominous advice,” Shiro asks.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“If I’m still serving as your guide to the spirit realm.”
Shiro sits himself up in bed. His hands tug at the features of his face and up the crest of his hair. He pulls himself out of his own grip, as if cresting an unseen surface.
