The Relationship Meme

[dreamlocket]

☁ THE RELATIONSHIP MEME

Dramatic or cracky, there are options for everyone who has a sudden itching to play out some ships.

↘ Post your character below, listing their name and series in the subject.
↘ Others respond after going to random.org and entering 1-16 for a scene, reply back and have some fun!
↘ Roll as many times as you like! Play out as many scenarios as you want! Just enjoy the fluffy or angsty goodness.

● 01 I HAVE A CONFESSION | There's someone you really like and it's finally time to tell them! It can be spur of the moment or elaborately planned out.
● 02 START OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL | You've just got together and everything is great! You can't stop thinking about each other or keep your hands off your significant other. You want to spend all the time you can together, doing whatever!
● 03 CAN'T GET IT UP | It happens to everyone, honest! For whatever reason, you just haven't been able to perform or maybe you're just not interested in sex. Is it because things are dull? Is it because you're not attracted to your partner? Or have you just been too busy or stressed out?
● 04 SAW YOU LAST NIGHT | You think you saw your partner in the arms of another - was it an honest mistake or is something honestly going on here?
● 05 FIRST TIME | It's the first kiss or the first time making love with your partner and you're so nervous and awkward, you're sure you'll mess it up! Maybe you do, but that's okay... they like you, right?
● 06 ANNIVERSARY | Two week, two month, two year, or whatever number you decide, that's how long you've been together with your partner and you want to do something special to celebrate it!
● 07 WANT YOU BACK | You broke up, but it was a mistake. You need to correct it ASAP... will your lover take you back though?
● 08 JUST MARRIED | Just married! Is it the wedding night? The honeymoon? You decide!
● 09 BAD ROMANCE | You're no good for each other and you know it! Unfortunately, your relationship is so sizzling, you can't break it off and you don't even want to.
● 10 FIGHT | You're both in one of those moods where you just want to sit around fighting over every little thing... bills or money, friends, your partner staying out too late, or whatever you can think of!
● 11 LET'S MAKE UP | Of course making up is the best part though! Whatever it was is totally forgotten now.
● 12 HONEY, I'M... | You've been feeling a little funny for a bit, so you take a pregnancy test and... oh no! Or is it 'oh great!'? Time to tell your partner either way...
● 13 ABOUT LAST NIGHT | Time to face that one night stand...
● 14 CHEATER | You're not being cheated on! You're the other person meddling with someone's lover! But for whatever reason, you just can't say no even if you know you should...
● 15 OBJECTIONS | You're facing a lot of objections to your relationship and it's starting to put a strain on it. Why don't you sit down and discuss it, see if you can work it out?
● 16 HAVE TO LET YOU GO | You have to break up with your partner... not because you want to! But because you need to protect them... can you do it successfully? Will they find out? You decide!

Comments

[morethanhonour]

And yet, there was no happiness to be found. What could any of them do, when a man who thought himself untouchable stepped too far? When he threatened what one man held dearest in the world and was, no doubt, only a breath away from threatening the others he held as dangerous with similar action? Joseph had been certain. Pained but certain.

Miles had declared war, and they had struck back.

But now they were all adrift, lost in a sea of good intentions. For Joseph had been party to the murder of England's finest security officer, the future head of the agency itself. And Edward had facilitated his escape, taking with him a man who had betrayed France to serve England. Only to betray England now.

The humour is unwelcome, but the attempt is appreciated. Edward casts his gaze at the man. He swallows hard, every question burning in his eyes as he forces himself to stand. Have I killed us all? Did I do the right thing? Have I betrayed only my country or God as well? What will become of us? What will become of you? Have I hurt you, leaving you without any protection but my own? Only one word will come, though, uneasy and fractured as it is.

"Remy."

[viedemarin]

His face crumbles at the sight of him moving: living, breathing, standing there before him. What more could he ask for when he'd betrayed everything he'd fought to help create only days before?

"Yes?" He managed to speak without hesitance, though the trepidation was easy to discover in his body language. In the way his fingers jolted and stopped by his sides - it was so obvious that he wanted to comfort the man more than just as a fellow accomplice. As a friend, certainly. As a lover, well...it was not his place now to assume Edward would welcome him so readily as they had before. He may, now, be a reminder of what had been taken. Or given, depending on the point of view.

He wanted desperately to rest a hand on Edward at least, to do that little would be enough - or so he told himself.

But it would be by his leave, Remy would not do anything unless it was asked of him. Not while Edward was sounding so broken and wounded.

[morethanhonour]

"Why?"

Why tie your fate to mine? Have I not caused you enough trouble? Why join me now, when it means losing everything you have only just gotten for your pains? Why not save yourself and hand us over to the Admiralty to face what we deserve?

But it would be unfair to ask any such things of Remy. Of the man who has betrayed his country before. Who knows what it is to leave everything behind.

To show this main is selfishness, when Remy has borne the same burden. And Edward is ashamed of himself for it.

He swallows hard, trying to ignore the tightening in his chest, the ache he cannot make leave him. For he loves England. Above anything else, he has loved his country. Yet he could not stand for what Miles had done and had threatened to do. For friendship and for what was right, he had betrayed his home. And Remy had followed.

Why?

He expects no answer, for he never asked a proper question. He closes his eyes tight, ashamed of this weakness when Remy has always been so strong in the face of giving everything up. Now, he has made the same sacrifice, and he cannot hold himself with the same decorum.

He moves his hand on the desk, as if wanting to reach for the other man but not able to bring himself fully to it. So his fingers curl into his palm briefly then stretch slightly across the wood.

[viedemarin]

"Because I don't have anything else." Anyone else.

Whatever the Admiralty offered him would pale in comparison to the forever permanent ties to Edward he had now. Now he couldn't shift between anyone or anything. He had chosen his fate. It was too late to question why.

And yet, his mind supplied the answer just then when he spoke. He had no one else that he would do this for. He would go to hell - and perhaps that was where they were all headed - and back for this man, just like the rest of his crew would.

Remy would rather be with who he loved and have nothing than be safe without Edward. Because he loved him.

It was novel to put into actual words.

"You know that."

[morethanhonour]

"Please."

It hurt. It had been wonderful, once. Long ago. They had loved one another just as they did now, but the world had been kinder. Or it had seemed so. Two nations at peace, two captains able to talk in bed about the politics of their beloved lands.

And yet now... Now neither had a country and neither had a cause. They had each other and Joseph, and that was all they could claim.

Remy was here because he had nowhere else to go. Because he had betrayed his country after his country had betrayed him. And now Edward had taken the security he'd been offered. And Remy had followed because he had nowhere else to go.

Why don't you hate me?

His voice wouldn't hold. It cracked as he spoke, and it felt like his legs would give out beneath him.

"Please... don't stand so far away. Come closer. Please."

[viedemarin]

Without anything more said, Remy went easily to Edward's side and pulled him into a simple embrace. His arms went around Edward's shoulders easily and fingers threaded through hair as he did what he'd been longing to do.

"Don't make this your own burden, Edward." He remains strong, quietly so, but his voice is careful not to bend and crack. That was Edward's place just as it was Remy's to remind him that he didn't have to sink so deep in his own guilt and fear that he became something else entirely from what Remy knew him as.

But then he'd formed every opinion of Edward from a time when they were allowed to be happy. Had he ever thought that a different time would come?

"I'm here." It even sounded foolish to his own ears but it was the only consolation he could give. His own presence.

[morethanhonour]

The proud captain, holding the weight of the world on his shoulders even as it crumbled, collapsed at the merest touch from the other man. His legs buckled. He did not fall, but he moved to lean against the other man, clutching to him. He felt like a child, lost and frail. Not the man Remy had loved -- fearless and joyful.

He could offer this man nothing now. He was broken and trying to lead, presenting something to the crew that he could never be again. He was no captain. He was a traitor.

"Don't leave me." It's pathetic. Weak and needy and desperate as he clings to this man like a babe. "I don't have anything if I lose you." Even if Remy had no cause to stay. If he wanted nothing to do with a broken man. "Don't leave me."

[viedemarin]

"I won't, my dear." He whispered it into the empty space just behind his ear, finding it best if he didn't face the man he swore he would never leave just now. Not so that he could lie, but so he could avoid looking into what he knew was a broken man's eyes. It would be the end of him.

"Not even when the oceans dry." It was the sentimentalist in him that let him say such a ridiculous thing and think to live to tell the tale. But this would never see the light of day, they each had to have their own secrets with one another. This was just one of them. That in the privacy of closed rooms, they broke in each other's arms and pieced themselves back together the very same way. "I promise."

"Do you believe me?"

[morethanhonour]

"I have to. God knows I have to."

Because if he couldn't believe that vow, then everything in his life was pointless. Then he had nothing.

Tonight, he would fall apart. He would cling to this man and tremble and kiss him to try and draw some of his unwavering strength out to claim as his own. By tomorrow, the shattered pieces would be held together by some poor glue. His men might see the scars, but they would never guess at how bad the damage was and had been. Remy could know. Remy alone could see the depths to which he could sink.

Because he loved him.

As he held fast to the steady man before him, Edward tilted his head up and sought the Frenchman's lips.

[viedemarin]

His quest was over before it even began. Remy was there to hold him and to drain his troubles from him; he would press his fingers against the fissures forming in his beloved and hope that the pressure there would be motor enough for now. It would do until next time, or so he hoped.

The kiss was gentle as was everything now, but not in the handling of Edward. Remy knew it would drive him up the walls to be treated like something fragile when he already was so aware of it himself. That was the last thing he needed. So Remy pressed his lips to Edward's with reverence, like he was the only thing that mattered in that moment. It was simple but sweet and loving for a man who'd made a game out of taunting a young Englishman to bed with him.

It was hard to admit sometimes that he had fallen in love with Edward late into what was already a physical relationship; but he could make it so it did not matter. He could try.

"My dear Edward," he wished that this were a more potent cure for his worries but it would have to do.

[morethanhonour]

There was something bracing in this. It was sentimental and foolish to the extreme, but somehow he took heart in the kiss.

Hadn't this, really, been where they were all bound, anyway? A Republican who lost his country to an emperor and turned to a monarchy, an Englishman in love with a Frenchman and the spirit of the Republic, an English-French spy pushed further and further against what he believed in. They had cast their dice long ago. Perhaps it was, actually, good fortune that they had ended up together, rather than condemned to this fate they had been destined for apart. Here, at least, they could stand shoulder to shoulder.

His life in England was surely over. There would be no way to see Faith or his children again. What would she tell them? What would she be told? Would his father-in-law have any mercy in his explanation? But even now, his spirit had to rally. He could not entirely resign himself. This had been done by one member for someone else, for a man on shore. That would take craft and cunning... something all three of them could surely manage, especially when put to it together. For those two must not be apart forever. He had Remy here, he would not expect Joseph to never see Farley again.

With some revival of himself, he shifted, putting a gentle hand on Remy's cheek and kissing him with more spirit and less despair.