Monmouth Evenings, Monmouth Nights

holy youth: uknown models for vogue it dec. 2018

I watched some Harry Potter movies recently, so….

So we have a lot of ‘Sirius is beautiful and my word does he know it, his hair is his favourite thing and he revels in the glory of his own splendour’.

But I’m just laughing at the idea of a completely oblivious Sirius who is too busy being hyperactive to ever pay any real attention to what he looks like in the mirror- I mean the boy brushes his teeth sat on the counter chatting rapid fire to the others (much to ‘Fuck Mornings, Fuck You, Fuck Everything’ Remus’s ire), or bouncing around the dorm flinging stuff in his bag. He doesn’t ever really brush his hair- there’s a charm to do that, and then he doesn’t actually have to watch what he’s doing because who has time to actually look at their hair? And it all gets in his fucking face anyway- he keeps it long partially because his mother claims it looks unruly and partially because he just can’t be fucked getting it cut, but one evening in the common room he’s tucking it behind his ears to do his Transfiguration for the 7th time in quarter of an hour and angrily says he’s just going to chop it all off, and there are literally about 15 people around the room (including Remus) who just go ‘NO!’ and then look really awkward but he can not cut it- just that casual elegant way it falls into his eyes and it’s all wavy and silky and so so so pretty, and Lily comes to the aid of Remus like ‘Well Muggle mythology says there was this lion called Sampson, and when they cut off his mane he lost his power. So you shouldn’t cut it off- it’s unlucky. Here, have a hairband.’ and he thinks it’s very odd behaviour but like Ok, fine, people are weird.

And he knows he’s charming because he charms people all the time, and he’s a massive flirt but that’s just because he likes people and it makes him happy to talk to people in a way that makes them feel good about themselves, and it makes him happy to see the smiles and bitten lips and slight flushes that say they’re flattered because it’s nice to make people feel good (except Snape, obviously), and if it means he can worm his way out of detention or get drinks for him and the lads at The Three Broomsticks then so much the better, but he just does not understand why not everyone finds it as easy as he does? Like he tells Peter to get the next round in, tells him what to say to Rosie to get her to forget they’re 16, and Pete comes back really dejected like ‘I said what you told me and it didn’t work’. And Sirius is really confused by this like ‘What, but you said the exact same thing I just said?’

And really why do girls giggle so much? Do they do that all the time? Why? At least Evans is normal, but some of the others actually freak him out a bit, and truth be told sometimes the blokes are no better. And it becomes a massive inside thing, especially amongst the Gryffindors, like ‘Someone should tell him he’s a fucking adonis.’ ‘What? No way! His ego’s just fine as is- don’t inflate it any more.’ ‘But he’s so pretty it’s just wrong for him not to realise.’ ‘No! If you tell him, maybe he’ll turn really picky…’ ‘You do realise he is so picky already that he has literally never had a girlfriend?’ ‘Oh come on, he’s been pining after Remus Lupin for years!’

And it’s just something that’s never really occurred to him- to be bothered about what he looks like. Maybe it’s so many years of an abusive home being looked at like he’s dirt, but he’s got a remarkable resistance and ignorance towards the way people look at him, good or bad. And it’s only really Remus who breaks past that. Because he’s got such eerily perceptive eyes, it’s just like he’s looking right into your soul, and it’s sort of uncomfortable and it makes his skin go all crawly but he loves it- it’s a sort of adrenaline rush to feel so totally exposed, and he feels like Remus likes what he sees when he looks at him like that. He feels valued and important and special, like the way it makes him smile to make other people feel, only so much more intense, and when, eventually, Remus is brushing that bloody fucking hair out of his eyes and down his cheek and says he’s beautiful, he feels like maybe he is. And it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the way he looks in the mirror.

We All Got That Friend Who Think They Can Outwit The Gods And Evade Their Fate

Imagine this: Ronan Lynch kisses with his eyes wide open because otherwise he is afraid he might be dreaming

It’s because they’re in his bed at Monmouth and he’s had this exact dream so many times. 

At the Barns it’s different. At St. Agnes it’s different. Hell, even naps in Cabeswater are different. Those are places he inhabits with wakefulness and awareness. The awareness that comes from being amplified by a place and feeling too big for your skin. 

But here he simply is. Here he is not a king or a god or a worshiper. Here he is a boy who dances with sleep, sometimes leading and sometimes following. Who knows the cracks on his ceiling like he knows the back roads of Henrietta. Who sometimes dreams of tangled sheets and tingling lips and the rush of blood to every point of contact. Who wakes up alone. 

Who just this evening had tangled sheets and tingling lips and the rush of blood to every point of contact and then passed into dreaming alone. Who woke up just now with sleep bleary eyes and a glow-in-the-dark clock (not a dream, a gag gift from Gansey) telling him that it’s just after 3:30 AM and Adam Parrish is still next to him. 

Here, amidst his haphazard collection of impossible things, an impossible boy. All those dreams and he had never once dared to hope…

But it has to be real, doesn’t it? That’s what waking up means, bringing yourself through to fruition, reborn every day with weight and want and need and. Being. Knowing. 

He knows. He thinks he knows. He traces his finger down the slope of Adam’s shoulder where the shine of pale skin in the light of the streetlamp bleeds into the shine of pale sheets. Dreams bleeding into reality. 

Hope is a form of dreaming, right?

Adam stirs and Ronan pulls his hand away. He doesn’t mean to wake him, would never mean to take him from sleep any more than he would mean to take him from anything else Adam finds important. 

Adam wakes anyway. He rolls onto his side so that he’s facing Ronan and looks at him with heavy lids. He yawns and stretches and settles again and reaches out to run his hand gently over Ronan’s head. The pleasant tug of his fingers against Ronan’s short short hairs is so satisfying. Adam’s hand comes to a rest against his cheek and Ronan tilts his head into it, body heavy with sleep but still drawn to Adam’s touch like Adam’s gravity and the earth’s gravity have equal weight. 

They don’t. The tug of Adam is so much stronger. 

“You’re awake,” Adam says, voice low. 

Ronan hums his reply.

“God,” Adam says. He takes a deep breath and then exhales, long and slow. “God, god.” And the word sounds different every time. 

God, the dark suits you.

God, I never knew there was touch like this.  

God, our bodies are a riot in the quiet night. 

Ronan agrees, but words are insufficient, so he kisses Adam instead. Because he wants to. Because he wants to prove that they’re real, that this moment is made of flesh and blood. 

Adam closes his eyes, already halfway back to sleep, but Ronan keeps his open and clings to this. 

Up close Adam’s freckles blur into one another. His eyelids twitch with the restless movement of his eyes beneath them. Ronan slides his hand around Adam’s lower back and pulls him closer. Adam’s eyelashes flutter, then still. They fan out large against the gentle slope of his cheek. 

He of impossible being. He of passionate boyhood. He of crackling magic straining against the frame of one of the people Ronan loves the most in the world. He, he, he. 

It was always going to be a he, Ronan knows now, but he feels lucky that it’s this he, that it’s him. That Adam wants him back. That he’s willing to tangle himself up in Ronan’s sheets and Ronan’s limbs. That he’ll give parts of himself to Ronan, parts he’d previously been holding so tightly.

So Ronan keeps his eyes open, watches for the threshold between asleep and awake, and makes sure to keep his promise to find Adam on either side of the divide. 

people who know gansey is going to die: me, you, gansey, adam, blue, the women of 300 fox way, millions of readers 

people who don’t know gansey is going to die: ronan

the fact that kevin and jean have so much riding on this interview & it’s so high-stress yet they’re both like “and in equally distressing news, Jeremy is applying to law school” is so funny

Persephone had it right. If you must go, might as well take all of spring with you—

Cathy Linh Che, from Split; “Letters to Doc” (via luthienne)

Neil: i'm fine

Everyone else: you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means

Your father teaches you how to be the first one to walk away. Leave, before they realize you were not worth staying for.

Bianca Phipps, "The Heartbreaker Poem"