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thisengland2008-08-01 12:39 am
angevin2.livejournal.com) wrote in thisengland2008-08-01 12:39 am
[FICATHON] Slovenly Unhandsome, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lite_bright
Title: Slovenly Unhandsome
Author:gileonnen
Play: Richard II and 1 Henry IV
Recipient:lite_bright
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Hotspur, Kate, Hal
Warnings: Historical AU
Rating: PG-13
Notes:lite_bright's prompt was enticingly nonspecific, so I took a few ideas from it (student AU, unpleasant Hal, Percy Sr.) and ran away laughing. Hope that works for the recipient!
Summary: War is Hell; reconstruction is purgatory. Hotspur recuperates from World War II.
After the war, Hotspur doesn't trot off to school like what mates he had could afford it--smacks to him of middle-class pretensions, and he's one to call a spade a spade. While everybody's lucky charm Prince Harry is nancing about in Cambridge or Oxford or wherever the fuck he went, Hotspur's helping to rebuild fucking Germany. Keeping the Ivans out of the English zone, because as the old sarge used to say, "Even if he's not a commie your typical Russian is a damn mean blighter, pertic'larly if he's got vodka in him." That was how he always said it: pertic'lar. There'd been a few green blokes who'd had their sarge impressions down to a science, back before they'd shipped out and got blown to hell.
That's the way it had been, even at the beginning. It was either crouch unarmed in the cellar and say your prayers, or crouch with your gun and your mates and say your prayers; there were thousands of men who shouldn't have been there, and Harry Percy had met hundreds of them. Could've listed off their names if he'd wanted to, because they'd been matey back in basic training, but he has never made a point of dwelling on the dead. When he dreams about them, they're never Tommy who'd never cleaned his teeth before, never Ned the fop with his hat cocked at the regulation angle. Easier if the fragments have no names.
Not like it would've been better sitting pretty on the old Percy family estate in Northumberland, watching the kids from the city come streaming in with tags on them and pale, soot-touched faces. A man couldn't breathe behind blackout cloth, with a dozen kiddies having the run of the place, and there was the prince coming by with his friends and his photographers to show the babes back in London what they were missing. Made Hotspur damned sick.
"Let him be, you goose," Kate had said, before he'd gone to war. "He brings up people's spirits."
"And drinks their whisky," he'd grumbled in reply. "What should I do, Kate? Let him loll on my mum's furniture and have his picture taken with the kiddies? Answer him nicely when he tries to talk about sport? The bastard thinks that he can just waltz in here with his pack of cronies and his eau de cologne--and the worst of it is, my dad's hospitable to him, all because he wants what he got promised after the run on London--!"
"We've all got to do our bit," she'd said, laughing. He'd thought of it later, freezing half to death in the Oflag--all got to do our bit. "Your bit must be putting up with the Prince of England."
He hadn't put up with it any longer when he heard how the prince'd raided an army convoy to get a load of 24-hour ration packs for the kiddies of England. Yessir, Prince Harry, everybody's lucky charm, regular Puck, him.
Didn't matter if it'd been a "raid" only in name, pictures taken in Robin Hood kit. Didn't matter that the army had handed over the damn rations; Hotspur had seen the propaganda posters. We are not so POOR, says the smug-looking sergeant as he hands Robin Hal a bag of gold, that we cannot help our POOREST. Damn poster had made him retch, and he'd joined up inside a week.
By now, Hotspur figures he has a better handle on how sergeants operate than the poncy-arse poster artists. He likes imagining the whole thing as grudging, grumbling, respectful and obedient only because that's what the sarge was trained to be. The head of the convoy was probably trained to cavil over hairs, and he'd have surrendered every ration pack dearly--he should have. Hotspur's seen the way the countryside got blown to hell in the Blitz; he's heard the stories about London. How everyone turned looter as soon as a fancy house got blown to hell. That does mean everyone, he's seen little kids sneaking out of the ruins of bedrooms with diamond rings in their fists--and the propaganda artists are going to try to foist off a little pale-cheeked waif as a savvy Whitechapel lad? It makes him laugh. London Endures!--but underground, on the misfortunes of others. Every kid with a bit of raisin chocolate from a ration pack means that there's a soldier who didn't get to eat.
Even during that week in London, the goddamn rogue prince was grinning at him from every poster and newspaper, just as though he'd decided to follow Hotspur south from Northumberland. If Hotspur had been the kind of man who stepped into cafes, he couldn't have stepped into one without seeing Hal's bloody smug face--the recruitment posters all had Hal kitted out with a gun and helmet, encouraging soldiers to Save England! even if Hal had said himself he'd never fired a gun in his entire life. "Not for me, hunting and soldiering," he'd said with a languid shrug. "Never even fired in that run on London." It had been a perfect day. The prince had been neatly dressed, grey jumper and pressed trousers, dark hair in that stupid bowl cut that made him look girlish and young. Damned stupid look for a hike, but the hike hadn't been either one's idea.
"You think much of the run on London?" Hotspur had asked, standing with his back to the sluggish water at the base of the valley. "Not much," Hal had answered flippantly, and Hotspur had wanted to grab him by his collar and shove him in the water--hold him there until he'd killed the bastard.
Seeing that smirk on the recruitment poster, Hotspur remembered the way they'd walked in lonely silence along the streambank. He still wishes he'd strangled Prince Hal in the water on that brilliantly sunny day.
London endured, a damn lot of soldiers starved, and the artists declared the war over. Treaties got drawn up by the kings and presidents and what-the-hell-ever Stalin was calling himself. People still get shot on the streets of Berlin, and if you're English you don't go into the Soviet zone in uniform even if you're having a bit of a parade. Kate writes every week, the way she did when he was trying to keep things from going to shit in Calais, only now he gets her letters. The superstitious types keep their wife's letters bundled up in the front pockets of their uniform, but Hotspur calls a spade a spade, and a bundle of letters isn't going to stop a bullet but might turn a chest wound septic. He's seen enough infected wounds for one lifetime, in the prison infirmary stained like a butcher's--bullet to the lungs would be better. Better drowning in blood than seeing your own flesh eat itself alive.
The word from England, Kate writes, is that old Henry's sick--like to die, which is pretty poor compensation for the fine job he did getting them through the war. Old Richard the appeaser would've bollocksed it up, handed Hitler England on a platter and then asked if he wanted Wales and Scotland for dessert. When Brienne, Valois, and Anjou had been sacrificed and Holland had fallen, no one had been surprised when Bolingbroke had called for revolution; a man had to stand for his old family holdings, and he wasn't the only lord with ties on the continent. Northumberland had followed him, old Henry Percy and young Henry Percy sending their family guard all the way to London by jeep. Felt damned medieval, deposing a king, but Hotspur could still remember the taste of fear in his mouth--his mates said it was like blood, or like metal, but it wasn't like anything else. Bolingbroke had said he wanted this bloodless, but when the king's guard had opened fire Hotspur hadn't even thought. Just like shooting grouse in August.
Even after that business, the army loved King Henry IV. He worked with Parliament; he got them money; he got things done. And all the while there was Prince Hal down with the common people, cheering them and feeding them and looting with them and seducing their women (and not just their women, if you can believe what people are saying). Forgetting about the run on London, or claiming to, comb in his pocket and trousers neatly pressed.
It would be too easy for Hotspur to be like him. Go back to England, make the right connections to prepare him for a career in the House of Lords. Learn to hobnob. Do what's expected. Or he could do like his mates and get a good education, maybe go into business for a lark. Not as though he needs the money, but Kate says that England's having a damned rough time of it, getting their industry back on the ground. Henry Percy, pillar of the community. Would be nice to give a few dozen poor saps a job.
He could take the prince of England walking in that quiet valley, by the still water, and ask him whether he thinks about the things they did in London.
Truth be told, though, he likes it here in Berlin. He's just Hotspur to the soldiers, mule-headed when he's got an idea in his head and hot-tempered when anyone tries to stop him. They make fun of his Northumberland accent--"Thought you lords were s'posed to sound posh!" they used to laugh--and his ginger hair. Everyone knows not to ask him about that time when the Germans held him, or to ask what they did to him in that camp that smelled of death and piss.
It's not that Berlin is better. It's that he never has to explain why it's bad.
Author:
gileonnenPlay: Richard II and 1 Henry IV
Recipient:
lite_brightCharacter(s)/Pairing(s): Hotspur, Kate, Hal
Warnings: Historical AU
Rating: PG-13
Notes:
lite_bright's prompt was enticingly nonspecific, so I took a few ideas from it (student AU, unpleasant Hal, Percy Sr.) and ran away laughing. Hope that works for the recipient!Summary: War is Hell; reconstruction is purgatory. Hotspur recuperates from World War II.
After the war, Hotspur doesn't trot off to school like what mates he had could afford it--smacks to him of middle-class pretensions, and he's one to call a spade a spade. While everybody's lucky charm Prince Harry is nancing about in Cambridge or Oxford or wherever the fuck he went, Hotspur's helping to rebuild fucking Germany. Keeping the Ivans out of the English zone, because as the old sarge used to say, "Even if he's not a commie your typical Russian is a damn mean blighter, pertic'larly if he's got vodka in him." That was how he always said it: pertic'lar. There'd been a few green blokes who'd had their sarge impressions down to a science, back before they'd shipped out and got blown to hell.
That's the way it had been, even at the beginning. It was either crouch unarmed in the cellar and say your prayers, or crouch with your gun and your mates and say your prayers; there were thousands of men who shouldn't have been there, and Harry Percy had met hundreds of them. Could've listed off their names if he'd wanted to, because they'd been matey back in basic training, but he has never made a point of dwelling on the dead. When he dreams about them, they're never Tommy who'd never cleaned his teeth before, never Ned the fop with his hat cocked at the regulation angle. Easier if the fragments have no names.
Not like it would've been better sitting pretty on the old Percy family estate in Northumberland, watching the kids from the city come streaming in with tags on them and pale, soot-touched faces. A man couldn't breathe behind blackout cloth, with a dozen kiddies having the run of the place, and there was the prince coming by with his friends and his photographers to show the babes back in London what they were missing. Made Hotspur damned sick.
"Let him be, you goose," Kate had said, before he'd gone to war. "He brings up people's spirits."
"And drinks their whisky," he'd grumbled in reply. "What should I do, Kate? Let him loll on my mum's furniture and have his picture taken with the kiddies? Answer him nicely when he tries to talk about sport? The bastard thinks that he can just waltz in here with his pack of cronies and his eau de cologne--and the worst of it is, my dad's hospitable to him, all because he wants what he got promised after the run on London--!"
"We've all got to do our bit," she'd said, laughing. He'd thought of it later, freezing half to death in the Oflag--all got to do our bit. "Your bit must be putting up with the Prince of England."
He hadn't put up with it any longer when he heard how the prince'd raided an army convoy to get a load of 24-hour ration packs for the kiddies of England. Yessir, Prince Harry, everybody's lucky charm, regular Puck, him.
Didn't matter if it'd been a "raid" only in name, pictures taken in Robin Hood kit. Didn't matter that the army had handed over the damn rations; Hotspur had seen the propaganda posters. We are not so POOR, says the smug-looking sergeant as he hands Robin Hal a bag of gold, that we cannot help our POOREST. Damn poster had made him retch, and he'd joined up inside a week.
By now, Hotspur figures he has a better handle on how sergeants operate than the poncy-arse poster artists. He likes imagining the whole thing as grudging, grumbling, respectful and obedient only because that's what the sarge was trained to be. The head of the convoy was probably trained to cavil over hairs, and he'd have surrendered every ration pack dearly--he should have. Hotspur's seen the way the countryside got blown to hell in the Blitz; he's heard the stories about London. How everyone turned looter as soon as a fancy house got blown to hell. That does mean everyone, he's seen little kids sneaking out of the ruins of bedrooms with diamond rings in their fists--and the propaganda artists are going to try to foist off a little pale-cheeked waif as a savvy Whitechapel lad? It makes him laugh. London Endures!--but underground, on the misfortunes of others. Every kid with a bit of raisin chocolate from a ration pack means that there's a soldier who didn't get to eat.
Even during that week in London, the goddamn rogue prince was grinning at him from every poster and newspaper, just as though he'd decided to follow Hotspur south from Northumberland. If Hotspur had been the kind of man who stepped into cafes, he couldn't have stepped into one without seeing Hal's bloody smug face--the recruitment posters all had Hal kitted out with a gun and helmet, encouraging soldiers to Save England! even if Hal had said himself he'd never fired a gun in his entire life. "Not for me, hunting and soldiering," he'd said with a languid shrug. "Never even fired in that run on London." It had been a perfect day. The prince had been neatly dressed, grey jumper and pressed trousers, dark hair in that stupid bowl cut that made him look girlish and young. Damned stupid look for a hike, but the hike hadn't been either one's idea.
"You think much of the run on London?" Hotspur had asked, standing with his back to the sluggish water at the base of the valley. "Not much," Hal had answered flippantly, and Hotspur had wanted to grab him by his collar and shove him in the water--hold him there until he'd killed the bastard.
Seeing that smirk on the recruitment poster, Hotspur remembered the way they'd walked in lonely silence along the streambank. He still wishes he'd strangled Prince Hal in the water on that brilliantly sunny day.
London endured, a damn lot of soldiers starved, and the artists declared the war over. Treaties got drawn up by the kings and presidents and what-the-hell-ever Stalin was calling himself. People still get shot on the streets of Berlin, and if you're English you don't go into the Soviet zone in uniform even if you're having a bit of a parade. Kate writes every week, the way she did when he was trying to keep things from going to shit in Calais, only now he gets her letters. The superstitious types keep their wife's letters bundled up in the front pockets of their uniform, but Hotspur calls a spade a spade, and a bundle of letters isn't going to stop a bullet but might turn a chest wound septic. He's seen enough infected wounds for one lifetime, in the prison infirmary stained like a butcher's--bullet to the lungs would be better. Better drowning in blood than seeing your own flesh eat itself alive.
The word from England, Kate writes, is that old Henry's sick--like to die, which is pretty poor compensation for the fine job he did getting them through the war. Old Richard the appeaser would've bollocksed it up, handed Hitler England on a platter and then asked if he wanted Wales and Scotland for dessert. When Brienne, Valois, and Anjou had been sacrificed and Holland had fallen, no one had been surprised when Bolingbroke had called for revolution; a man had to stand for his old family holdings, and he wasn't the only lord with ties on the continent. Northumberland had followed him, old Henry Percy and young Henry Percy sending their family guard all the way to London by jeep. Felt damned medieval, deposing a king, but Hotspur could still remember the taste of fear in his mouth--his mates said it was like blood, or like metal, but it wasn't like anything else. Bolingbroke had said he wanted this bloodless, but when the king's guard had opened fire Hotspur hadn't even thought. Just like shooting grouse in August.
Even after that business, the army loved King Henry IV. He worked with Parliament; he got them money; he got things done. And all the while there was Prince Hal down with the common people, cheering them and feeding them and looting with them and seducing their women (and not just their women, if you can believe what people are saying). Forgetting about the run on London, or claiming to, comb in his pocket and trousers neatly pressed.
It would be too easy for Hotspur to be like him. Go back to England, make the right connections to prepare him for a career in the House of Lords. Learn to hobnob. Do what's expected. Or he could do like his mates and get a good education, maybe go into business for a lark. Not as though he needs the money, but Kate says that England's having a damned rough time of it, getting their industry back on the ground. Henry Percy, pillar of the community. Would be nice to give a few dozen poor saps a job.
He could take the prince of England walking in that quiet valley, by the still water, and ask him whether he thinks about the things they did in London.
Truth be told, though, he likes it here in Berlin. He's just Hotspur to the soldiers, mule-headed when he's got an idea in his head and hot-tempered when anyone tries to stop him. They make fun of his Northumberland accent--"Thought you lords were s'posed to sound posh!" they used to laugh--and his ginger hair. Everyone knows not to ask him about that time when the Germans held him, or to ask what they did to him in that camp that smelled of death and piss.
It's not that Berlin is better. It's that he never has to explain why it's bad.
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(You know, Josephine Tey used Richard II as a vehicle for interwar pacifism in her play Richard of Bordeaux. It's not a very good play for reasons entirely unrelated to its politics and at least partly related to my having very firmly-established characterizations for everyone in it in my head already, but it is interesting.)
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OHMY.
SERIOUSLY, I AM FREAKING OUT WITH GLEE HERE. CAPSLOCKING, EVEN.
Okay, I can get myself under control. This is so, so, so unbelievably excellent and fabulous, and ohmy. I am angry at myself for not getting to see this sooner! (Was unexpectedly away, and oh, I was worried that I would miss this. But I did not!)
This is perfect! Not only in a control freak "yay, exactly what I wanted!" kind of way, but in every other way as well. The setting! I am not the only one enticed by these odd AU settings, hooray. I really like the way in which the time, setting, and so many things can be completely changed, but there are still solid constants to Hotspur, and his world. All the rhetoric in the original that seems so, well, weird, and mostly a cover for grabbing power rings true here, and I'm not sure if it's Hotspur's essential honesty, or the political climate, but it finally works, here.
Oh! Let me say a few more adulatory things. I adore the first line in a completely, uh, Platonic way. After the war, Hotspur doesn't trot off to school like what mates he had could afford it--smacks to him of middle-class pretensions, and he's one to call a spade a spade. Oh my. I've been thinking about first lines, and this one captures the tensions in the plot, and Hotspur, as well as presaging everything that is to come. The structure of it is lovely, as well; it's peculiar, but that would be how he thinks.
Easier if the fragments have no names. OH. I just re-read Pat Barker's Regeneration, and some of those scary combat sequences have just stuck with me. (As they are supposed to, I get it. Thanks for your useless platitudes, Barker. ANYWAY.) I think that this section, and indeed, so much of the story, reflects how much Hotspur has been shattered by the war, and the overwhelmingly impersonal nature of it all. Which, of course, I am realizing, is what would probably terrify Hotspur the most, the generalized and inescapable nature of modern combat. That is why he is so compelling, though; because that freaks everyone out, and he's not an outlier at all, in emotional ways, even as he's physically far braver than most. (Or all.)
Speaking of! Hal! I generally don't have much of an opinion, either way, but lately I've been wondering about how much of a jerk he actually is, and clearly, the answer is a REALLY BIG ONE. Hotspur had asked, standing with his back to the sluggish water at the base of the valley. "Not much," Hal had answered flippantly, and seriously, for real, I nearly died here. The mood is perfect, even in a few words, and Hal is exactly as he would have been, to Hotspur. That is, kind of a jerk, and not exactly sure where he stands with anyone, much less the Northumberlands.
Alright, this comment is not all about me, but I have a short thing to freak out with happiness at, and that is the appearance of Northumberland Senior and Kate. Terrific characters, and without nearly enough attention, and you have absolutely done them justice here.
(W)hen the king's guard had opened fire Hotspur hadn't even thought. Just like shooting grouse in August. GOOD HEAVENS, AUTHOR-PERSON. That is simply totally great, and I already know that it will stick in my head pretty much forever, because this AU did happen, and it did happen this way, and it is so perfect, I cannot even think anymore. I know this is getting awkwardly postmodern, but things should have happened this way (well, not that I would actually wish death on anyone, but) and if I want it hard enough, it will be true.
AND THE LAST TWO PARAGRAPHS. Everything is so wrong, but here, this is how things could have gone, and it's completely compelling, and quietly a disaster. Oh, Hotspur. Oh, entire world.
This is the most wonderful thing I could ask for ever, except I didn't really ask for it, and it is your beautiful brain, and intelligent mind, anonymous author-person, and okay, there is no good way to end that sentence. Wonderful and amazing, and I may have to pepper you with questions about this, and I am preemptively sorry for sounding like a creep in this, but oh, this is just so good. So very very good.
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And also I totally want more fic in this AU. As I said in my own comment. &hearts
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So glad you liked the first line; it was what got me constructing the story, everything else built from that little kernel of a student AU. I thought, Hotspur is a warrior, and not a scholar; if he's not going to be a student, then why not? What else is he doing with himself? When he thinks about the prospect, what does he think? It was a marvelous way to get straight into his head, without going for the more obvious angles like the PTSD or the experiences of the battlefield.
You read Pat Barker! And, yes, useless platitudes, but there's a core of something human and honest there--a desperate desire to live, coupled with a need to face death on one's own terms and make sense of it. But Hotspur doesn't think of it like that; doesn't turn his experience into stories about what dying means to the living, doesn't dwell on what it means that he saw horrible things and faced more or less constant terror. The horror gets put aside, leaving only the anger and the feeling of having been betrayed by someone.
I have always been of the opinion that Hal is a huge jerk, even/especially when he becomes Henry V. Writing this, though, I've had to wonder how much of being a jerk is (like with Hotspur) being unable to deal with the fact that actions and seemings have meanings as well as consequences. He's good with consequences; thinks dozens of moves ahead, like a chess-player. But to extend the metaphor, I think he's so obsessed with winning the chess game that he might never notice his opponent letting him win--never notice the meaning of the action. So when Hotspur asks him if he thinks about the run on London, what he's trying to do is reach out, see if they can make a careful and private meaning together. And Hal shuts him down, even more afraid than Hotspur that what they did might have changed them. Like how he tries to be the Eastcheap cad again after being England's hero, as though he can slip back into that old role after having publicly rejected it. As though people like Poins won't be hurt when he reneges on his declarations of affection. Writing this has just made me feel a little sorry for him.
I like writing about Northumberland Sr., and I wish I'd gotten to write more about him. He's an interesting character, and I think he'd end up rather neurotic--like a kid wanting to hang with the bad boys but afraid of being caught by his mum--if I wrote more of him. Ditto Kate, without the neurotic bit; I LOVE Kate. I don't see how anyone could not love Kate, but apparently there are Hotspur/Hal shippers who disagree.
I just--you think it did happen this way. That's the best thing ever. I am not going to be able to say anything coherent about that.
You don't sound like a creep. You've absolutely made my day. ^____^
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I think your version of the student AU (a silly prompt, to be sure) absolutely makes sense with Hotspur. So much of his character is developed based on battle and responses to combat, and while there are other strongly military characters in the plays, Hotspur is notable for the, ah, bluntness of that role, and how furiously he seems to hold to it. Which really makes sense with the PSTD aspect, then. There are lovely hints here about what Hotspur was before the war, and I think that's really telling. There was something else there, the something that intrigued Hal, but after the war, and in Hotspur's own narration (seriously, still !!! over that) he has been reshaped, and can never return to the model of young, handsome aristocracy. That all comes though in your writing, and I think it's a mark of how good this story is, that I'm still trying to articulate what I think of it. Well, beyond totally excellent.
The horror gets put aside, leaving only the anger and the feeling of having been betrayed by someone. This is really compelling, especially in the context of the coup and the enduring theme of bloody instruction. I would just like to join the chorus here, and say that this AU is so rich, and those few lines about the run on London hint at something so much morel and now, not only am I clamoring for more of this, but realizing how truly damaging that must have been. For not only are external forces antagonizing the nation and Hotspur, but there's a terrible internal struggle, and faced with that, Hotspur takes the only possible option, leaving altogether. (As I think about it more, there are basic war story commonalities, and one of them is an rift in the body politic and simultaneously, the personal body. So, any reflection on war faces a huge psychological disconnect.)
That was rather serious. Um, I think it is time to commiserate over Hal's canonical obnoxiousness. Hooray, though, I am not alone in this! Admittedly, Hal's contradictory behavior makes him very compelling, and in a tetrarchy full of interesting characters, one of the most enchanting. The idea that Hal and Hotspur are functioning on totally different levels in their conversation is very interesting, for lack of a better word. Hal wants people to like him, he doesn't obviously misstep often. Or, really, he never missteps in his own opinion, which is the one he values most; possibly the reason he is kind of a jerk, despite all populist leanings. Hotspur, in addition to his radically different evaluation and perception of the run and all of their other interactions, was less, and will never be as, devoted to the almost abstract search Hal has for power and some sort of nebulous good. I'm still parsing your comments about this, but their divergent approaches to meaning and action are very enlightening. Damn, now I am seriously thinking about Hal's personality. I feel sorry for him, too. I can only imagine what his version of these events might run to, in light of his attention to consequences, and yes, trying to anticipate everything, even when it's impossible, like in interpersonal relationships.
I am quite possibly, the only person who really does like Northumberland Sr., and his cameo appearance was fun, even. I'm not sure about his eventual role in this; he's so clearly mercurial and complex in RII, and later proves to be a tremendous liar, at the very least. There's probably no way to really write him and not go a little crazy, I imagine. And Kate! Sorry, I just really like Kate, and I have nothing clever to say about any of it. She's clever and excellent and, oh, a reflection of what everyone who isn't Hotspur thinks, which is a valuable viewpoint.
Seriously, people. There is a time-honored way of resolving these conflicts. It's called a threesome. I am a jerk, okay. But, really.
Yay! I have been run ragged from work all week, and was totally slow in responding to this, but I just love this story, and am somewhat incoherent at this point. Thank you so much. So much!
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require loads more researchbe fun!no subject
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Would you mind if I friended you? You're clearly a reader of excellent taste. ^_~
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