bakerstreet | Unresolved tensions

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Unresolved tensions

will they, won't they?

Oh my god, there is nothing more frustrating than when you want to kiss someone and press them against a wall, but for some reason, you can’t—or when you see two people who are obviously in love and you want to shove them into a room already. What is preventing you two from getting together? Can anyone end this?

directions

1. Comment with your character, series, preferences, etc. in the subject.
2. Roll a number between 1-15 for a prompt.
3. Reply to others and play the scenario out!
4. JUST GET A ROOM ALREADY. OMG.

prompts

1. BOSS ✖ A romance with a higher up or your boss is taboo for many good reasons, but you’re finding yourself falling in love with them anyways. Will others approve? Will one of you have to quit your job to not get the other into trouble?

2. JUST FRIENDS ✖ Talk about one of the biggest roadblocks to love ever! You want to kiss them, but you don’t want to ruin your current relationship. What are you going to do? Will you get the guts to confess and hope for the best?

3. GOALS ✖ You want to tear down a building to build an apartment complex, they want to make it a historical landmark. Opposing dreams and goals are huge roadblocks, especially if you happen to want to ‘sleep with the enemy’… literally.

4. TEAMMATES ✖ You work well together, you can depend on them no matter what, and you get along outside of the office or game. What you feel is just that happy camaraderie, not any mushy feelings of love or romantic affection! Is it?

5. DENIAL ✖ No, no way. You do not love that other person. They are stupid or just too prideful or you’re not interested in them at all. Ha, admit it, you totally are. Now go over there and admit your feelings before everyone around you goes insane.

6. COWORKERS ✖ Oh, this is awful. You really, really like your coworker, but there is a no dating policy, or they don’t date coworkers under any circumstances. Dare you make a move after hours or in the break room? It could be worse; you could have the hots for your boss.

7. POLITICS ✖ Clashing beliefs and heated debates always gets the blood pumping, and even though you have sworn to defeat them and get your bill pushed through, their eyes make your heart jump and makes you reconsider your ideals… Can you find a compromise or let bygones be bygones?

8. TAKEN ✖ Oh god. How can you confess to someone who is already taken? Why are you even feeling like this? You must never let them know. Ignore everyone who is encouraging you to take a leap of faith anyways. They are taken and that is that.

9. SOCIAL CLASS ✖ She is a princess, you are a stable boy, he is a rich lord, you are the scullery maid… Money is an important factor to any relationship, and sometimes, it can be one of the barriers. But how long are you going to let positions and titles keep you apart?

10. PRIDE ✖ You? Be in love with someone like that? Ha! No way. You are far above them, and you deserve only the best love. But… what if they are the best love and you just don’t realize it yet?

11. FAMILY FEUD ✖ One of the most famous of all the situations, for some reason, your families are fighting and as much as you like the other person, you can’t betray your family this way. But is there a good reason for the feud? Or a misunderstanding? Will true love conquer all without the abundance of death?

12. OBLIVIOUS ✖ This is the most frustrating one ever. It’s not that they hate each other or someone else is making a barrier, it’s just that they you have no idea how good of a couple you would make or how you always flirt with each other. Will one of you realize it, or does someone need to give you a push?

13. DUTY ✖ Bound by honor and loyalty, you can never cross the line that divides you and your love, be it that you swore to protect them or they serve you. Or will you? How will others react to this? Might it be considered forbidden?

14. FRIEND-ZONED ✖ Oh no, it's not what you think. You see, your best friend likes the person you like, and they are trying to go on a date with them (or get into their bed). But you can't let either of them know, because that is not what good friends do. But what do you do if your mutual crush is interested in you anyways?

15. WILDCARD ✖ Is there something we missed? Is there another scenario you want to play out, or would you like to roll the dice again? Go for it!

(credit to

allmymemes)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ would you be interested in a Corrino handmaid/gift from Farad'n to Ghani? ]

[ Absolutely! ]

The imperial capital of Arrakeen held many secrets. Most of these, Phedre had discovered within a week of her arrival. It was in her nature to be inquisitive and, with the Lady Ghanima showing little interest in her company following their introduction, she had precious little else to do.

Yet a month had passed since then and what Phedre did not yet know was therefore deemed unimportant. She knew, for instance, that the emperor was rarely in the palace and frequently upon the sands. She also knew that Lord Farad'n wanted to know what might please the emperor's sister-wife, for in doing so he supposed to woo her. She held the answers to some of his questions, for she observed the empress when she was not satisfying her concubine's restless urges in the bedchamber. But Phedre could not say where the Lady Ghanima disappeared off to when she wished to be alone. Not until one day when she decided to follow her through the warren of palace corridors.

A lonely handmaid that stuck out like a sore thumb among a cadre of Fremen women who attended the empress was not likely to be conspicuous for long. To wit, Phedre did not skulk or cower. She walked boldly, a respectable distance away yet close enough not to lose her quarry. Until, of course, she did.

She could taste humidity in the air and the faint scent of flowers. From beyond a broad doorway came the sound of rushing water. Intrigued, she stepped through it and found herself surrounded in the lush greenery of an indoor garden. She might have been in the jungle forests of Kaitain. She half expected to hear birds cawing from the treetops.

Instead, she found herself startling at a sound behind her and turning nearly into the wickedly sharp point of a crysknife.

Ghanima did not doubt that her new handmaiden was a woman of surpassing skill and wit, but the gift of her services felt more like Farad'n pleasing himself than anything else. His wish to be closer to her was genuine, but giving himself another pair of eyes to watch her with had not endeared the young-yet-ancient empress to him. Quite the opposite.

Still, she was glad that he had someone so amply capable of distracting him in the bedchamber, since she herself only intended to visit it in order to provide the Atreides line with heirs. He was not a bad man, it was good if he could find pleasure and perhaps some measure of happiness in this situation.

At least someone should be allowed to have that.

While Phedre watched Ghanima, she was observed in turn, and Ghani was keenly aware of what the woman did and did not learn about her. There was little reason for a confrontation, in fact it was preferable to know who was watching her, and why.

This day, however, Ghanima allowed herself the luxury of setting a boundary.

It would have been more clever, perhaps, to let Phedre watch her. To let her believe that she was seeing a private, unguarded moment and let her take whatever conclusions she derived from it to Farad'n .

Put simply: She wasn't in the mood.

So, silent as a shadow she waited for Phedre to enter the garden, her body eerily precise in its movement as she lifted the knife to rest its point at the hollow of the handmaiden's throat once they were facing one another.

"A useful lesson to take with you to my concubine: Intruding when I wish to be alone is not how one pleases me."

Phedre's breath snagged in her throat. The tip of the crysknife had not yet bitten into skin or she would be feeling the effects of the poison with which the sandworm fang blade was coated. This reprieve was a sign that the empress did not want her dead - yet.

"A lesson indeed," Phedre managed, once she had somewhat recovered her wits. "But I will, with your leave, refrain from sharing it with the prince. As long as he sends me to offer my company, he does not come himself."

If the past month was any guide, Farad'n's bed was not a province Lady Ghanima wished to conquer with any great expediency. Phedre could aid her in maintaining that distance and please herself by doing so.

She tilted her chin up, offering her throat in penance if this was a mistaken assumption.

"You have my leave."

It is a well-made point, after all.

Much like the one resting just barely against Phedre's skin. Ghanima drags it upward along the smooth column of her throat, silently letting her know that she is well aware of the allure it holds for her. I see you, the knife says, as well as the spice-blue eyes of the empress.

"What are you doing here, Phedre?"

"Serving at the pleasure of my empress," Phedre replied, careful not to breathe too deeply or speak too loudly lest the crysknife turn threat into injury. Although on that score, Phedre was less afraid than she had been a moment prior.

Lady Ghanima had stopped to converse. No Fremen, no Atreides who wished their enemy dead would stoop to toying with their prey.

Unless that dreaded Harkonnen blood would out.

"In truth, I am a spy. Before the prince secured my services, I served his mother... But I was once, for a brief time, handmaiden to his aunt." Your stepmother.

Of the princess Irulan, little was known these days among the remnants of House Corrino; she had fallen from their grasp and into the lap of the Atreides. Yet Phedre had heard through the grapevine that she had been instrumental in raising Paul Muad'dib's children. How she was their fiercest protector.

Citing her name was a gamble. Phredre hoped it was one that communicated to Ghanima her true colors: those of an ally, an acolyte, if only the empress would have her.

Phedre is quite right in her assessment of how much danger she is in, and once her message has been conveyed, Ghanima returns her knife to its sheath.

It flies in the face of tradition, of course, to allow a sacred blade to be seen by an offworlder and leave her alive.

Times have changed, though Ghanima can feel the outrage of generations roiling within her all the same.

Other voices caution her not to trust someone who has already shifted her allegiance so many times.

"How long before someone else's pleasure becomes a better option?"

"Fleeting pleasures do not sustain one for very long," Phedre replied, a shoulder lifting elegantly even as her gaze followed the descent of the crysknife and its disappearance into the sheath.

Relief was a dangerous emotion to surrender oneself to in the presence of a dangerous companion.

Fortunately, Phedre was well accustomed to living dangerously.

"I may inform on you or I may inform to you, Empress. I believe I would enjoy the latter better than the former... Though I am grateful your family tolerates our Corrino propensity toward espionage as well as you do. Our water would have long been given to the sands were it otherwise."

Not every Corrino bothered to acquaint themselves with the traditions of Arrakis; Phedre had done so out of boredom at first and now craved to know more to satisfy her boundless curiosity. She did not dare presume the Lady Ghanima would enjoy instructing her, however... but one could hope.

Ghanima answered with a shrug of her own.

"If you know who is watching, you can control what they see."

Espionage was expected and inevitable. Better to leave agents known to you in place, and feed them what you wanted your enemies to think.

"And Farad'n means well."

"I am relieved you think so, my lady." Otherwise, it might be the prince at the end of the empress's crysknife and that would not sit well with his relatives who, if not able to do much to upset the established order, could still cause havoc upon Phedre's own life.

"May I ask... what is this place?" Phedre looked about at the vast planters and curving branches, the glut of greenery that surrounded them. "I have not seen it before."

"A remnant of the palace as it was when my grandparents came here."

These days the royal palace was many times larger, growing in ostentatious splendour at the same rate as the city around it, and the empire it was the center of.

Ghanima turned to stroll further in amongst the greenery, confident in her ability to halt any attempt from Phedre to hurt her, should such a thing occur, and also certain that the handmaiden would follow.

"To have so much water to waste on a garden... it was a display of shocking wealth. On my grandmother's initiative it was turned into a public space for a time under my family's rule, but as I'm sure you know, greenery is becoming less and less of a spectacle here on Arrakis."

"I have noticed this," Phedre confirmed, falling into step with the empress but keeping a respectful distance. She did not wish to provoke or miss this rare opportunity: to be close to Lady Ghanima without having to attend her concubine. "But I am of Kaitain, my lady. I find the green familiar, unexceptional... it cannot be so for the people or Arrakis."

For her, she meant, as there could be no doubt that Ghanima, like her twin brother, belonged to this place. Their spice-blue eyes revealed their origins. Their ease with Fremen weapons, and culture, and their reverence for the desert: all of these things made of Ghanima a rare prize for House Corrino. More fool them to have ever tried to snatch it from Atreides hands.

"What do you make of it?" Phedre asked, glancing sideways at her companion. "Do you share the dream of a lush, verdant Arrakis?" The popular wisdom was that the emperor would see this done, but for every common belief there were detractors.

"I am a desert creature," Ghanima responded, hearing her mother's voice coming out of her own mouth. Not in the way it did when she and Leto played their dangerous impersonation game as children, but as any daughter might when a beloved parent has unconsciously passed some of their mannerisms on.

She reaches out to gently trace the edge of a leaf with a fingertip, lost in thought.

"But we are not building a world for ourselves here, but for all mankind."