Prompt-fill: What We Did On Our Holidays I
Aug. 7th, 2025 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tweagueSo I was having a particularly awful case of Blorbo Brain this morning, where I just wanted to write nonsense about My Fictional Guys; I'm already writing other stuff about them, but it's quite long and at present quite sad (stuck in the 'hurt' bit of the h/c dynamic for at least another 5000 words, I would guess) and I wanted something to satisfy the brain itch. So I went touting for prompts on the WEJverse Discord, and ysande was good enough to indulge me ^_^ She asked for 'basically every joyous coming of age summer story', and set off about three dozen different ficlet ideas; here's the first of them. It may eventually be the start of a longer story about this particular holiday, the first time Bertie goes to Lorrington, if other ideas spawn around the same time period; in my head it takes place the days before ysande's glorious prompt-fest fill where Gimlet gets sunburn because he's determined to do all the fun holiday things with Bertie, all at once, right now. Unbetaed and scruffy round the edges, but maybe it'll turn into something better later.
Bertie + Gimlet, school age, Gen, c.2k.
* * *
What We Did On Our Holidays I
“Bertie - Bertie, wake up.”
The words weren’t much more than a determined hiss, but the firm shake to his shoulder that accompanied them did the job as well as a shout. Bertie blinked his eyes open, a little groggily. There was a dim suspicion of grey half-light in the gap where the curtains weren’t quite drawn closed, but nothing more definite than that of dawn yet, so it must be frightfully early; and against that faintest hint of daylight, a vague shape that must be King.
“Whatever for?” he managed to croak.
“Come with me.”
“Not a chance,” he said, and attempted to burrow back down under the blankets; but King’s hand on his arm was entirely unyielding.
“Don’t be an ass Bertie. Get up, I want to show you something.”
And because it was King, and therefore a foregone conclusion; and because it was the first morning he had ever been there; and because of the faint note of excitement in King’s voice, and he had found that King’s excitement was something he somehow quite liked to share, he got up.
He had arrived late the previous evening, after a day of delayed trains and being constantly on the point of losing his luggage. It shouldn’t have been possible to take so long to get from Somerset to the borders of Dartmoor, yet there he was, Lorrington station in the midsummer twilight with the scent blowing thick off the tobacco flowers, and him almost the only one there to enjoy it. Then King had arrived, looking very pleased with himself high on an old pony trap, with the reins in his hands and an amused-looking groom taking his ease on the box seat at the back; and it had all started to feel a bit more like an adventure.
He was too old for adventures, of course. Seventeen-year-olds didn’t hold with such things. But driving through the gloom with the carriage lamp swinging beside him as King gave him chapter and verse on the stolid little pony’s virtues and foibles, and the first glow-worms emerged, and the nightjars shirred in the bushes - it felt a little like an adventure, all the same.
He’d been too late for dinner, King had informed him; he’d have a tray of supper sent up to his room. As soon as Bertie had been introduced to his father, of course.
It occurred to Bertie that he had somehow never given much thought to King’s parents; in some vague way he had assumed that he might have sprung into existence fully grown, and possibly armed, much in the manner of Athene. But at least he didn’t have time to work himself up about the encounter, because King led him straight from the hall into the study, and said, “Here’s Bertie Lissie, sir,” in a quiet, level voice, and there was a slim red-haired man looking up from a pile of papers, and freezing him where he stood with a pair of disconcertingly familiar blue eyes.
He was never quite sure, afterwards, what he had said; he only remembered the sensation of cold, like stepping into an ice-house.
“Mother’s already retired for the night,” said King, in a more normal voice, as afterwards he carried Bertie’s suitcase up the narrow, creaking stairs. The house, as they walked through it by lamp-light, seemed to be all in black and white, repeating patterns of black beams, black doors, black stairs, against the white of the walls; but every now and then the pattern would be broken by splashes of colour, walls painted with plants, animals, curlicues of vine and acanthus and stylised birds, old and stiff and strange. “You’ll meet her tomorrow, I expect. I’ll let you settle in this evening - since Father’s study is just at the bottom of the stairs he’s not fond of noise at this time of night. Bathroom’s here - “ as he indicated a door to the left, “and my room’s just across from yours.” He opened one of the many dark, nail-studded doors along the rambling length of the corridor, and went in, to put the lamp down on the bedside table and the case on an intricately-carved linen press at the foot of the four-poster bed.
“Aren’t I going to be in with you?” asked Bertie, a little taken aback.
King frowned. “There’s no need. We’ve got more rooms than we know what to do with.”
“Well, yes, I do quite see that, old thing - Chedcombe’s much the same,” Bertie conceded. “I just wasn’t quite expecting to be treated as a house guest - putting the housemaids to all the extra work, that sort of thing. I’m just as happy mucking in with you, really - “ And then, seeing the expression on King’s face, he hurried on, “though I do quite understand that an Englishman’s room is his castle, of course. Wouldn’t want to batter down the jolly old drawbridge for the world. And this room’s absolutely top-notch, don’t you know - I shall be half the night hunting for peas in the mattress, it looks like just the bed for it.”
King was still frowning. “If you won’t be comfortable in here - “
“It’s splendid, old boy,” said Bertie, putting all the conviction into the words that he could, because it was. “Fit for a king.”
“Was that a pun?” asked King, suspiciously.
Bertie sighed. “Not sure my brain’s working well enough for punning. It’s been an awfully long day.”
King nodded. “Of course. I’ll leave you to unpack. The girl will bring your supper soon.” He left the lamp where it was, and walked back to the open door, where he paused for a moment. “I hope you’ll be comfortable. I’m very pleased to have you here.”
Bertie smiled, and some part of himself that had felt unaccountably chilled since they had arrived in the great dark house seemed to warm a little. “I’m jolly pleased to be here too.”
Now, in the whisper of pre-dawn light, he pulled on yesterday’s shorts and shirt, slipped on his comfortable rubber-soled shoes, and crept out into the gloomy corridor outside his room. “Where on earth are we going at this hour?” Bertie whispered, his mind running on early-morning raids of the larder, of bird-nesting in the park, of taking out the horses King had spoken of so often for a gallop before the dew was off the grass -
“Don’t talk yet,” King replied, hardly more than a breath. “Here.”
Noiselessly, he opened the door opposite, and shut it noiselessly behind them again: a difficult operation with one of those great stiff iron latches, Bertie thought, and wondered how often he had practised. Then he crossed to the window, and pushed aside the heavy curtains just enough to give him access to the diamond-paned window. “How are you at climbing?” he asked, very softly, as he pushed it open.
Not as good as King, was the answer that rapidly became obvious. First a scramble up from an ancient oak chest through the narrow casement and out onto the leads, which here made a narrow flat pathway between the dormer windows and the low parapet that crowned the frontage, and through which a shallow gutter carried rainwater, in a way that Bertie vaguely thought must be desperately prone to leaks. That was easy enough, providing he didn’t look over the parapet too often, to see the yawning gulf from which he was separated only by a crenellation a foot or so high. The next stage - shinning up the leads themselves, up the reasonably gentle angle of the roof where it met a ridge of stones that offered a few finger-holds for support - was only a little more challenging; but the stage after that, where King slipped up and around a barley twist chimney-pot in a way that seemed little short of miraculous, began to test Bertie’s nerve. The air was cool and a little misty; the glazed surface of the chimney-pots very slightly slippery under his hands.
“I say, Lorry old thing, are you quite sure this is all right?” he called forward, a little plaintively. “I can hardly see a bally thing!”
“I’m sure,” King’s voice came floating back. “I’ve done it a hundred times. Just tread where I tread.”
“Not exactly the season for Good King Wenceslas,” Bertie muttered, more to himself than anyone else; but he fixed his eyes on King’s plimsolled feet up ahead, and followed.
Up and along the ridge, a foot on either side, slipping a little unnervingly; up a run of quoins, like a staircase, except a staircase where each tread was only a couple of inches deep; along a piece of moulded stone like a ledge, pressing himself to the wall, trying not to think of how easily stone this old could crumble, or the twenty foot drop to the roof below; and then -
“Nearly there now - just a few more yards. Right hand up and right a little more - there’s a gargoyle under the ivy, it’ll give you a better purchase - that’s it, you’ve got it. Then support your weight on it and bring your right foot across and up, there’s a decently thick branch there, just above your knee height - it’s enough to get your left hand up to the top here - “
- then King’s hand was clasping his wrist, for reassurance as much as steadiness, as he pulled himself up and over the edge and dropped down onto a flat roof, panting with exertion and adrenalin.
“Well done, I knew you could do it,” he heard King say, voice warm with approval. “We’re just in time too. Come and see.”
Slowly, he heaved himself up to his feet again, feeling very slightly shaky, and cautiously made his way across to where King was standing, hands resting against the the top course of masonry, leaning out over nothingness, with his face to the place where, far away to the east, the first ray of the sun had just shot skywards like a firework.
He came and stood next to him, and looked out.
Immediately below them, a tumble of rooftops, tile and lead and slate, different heights, different styles, dropping down around them like a Victorian lady’s skirts; beyond them, the formal gardens, the knots and geometric tangles of box hedges and gravel walks sharply visible; beyond that, the parkland, with great stands of trees, grass already browning in the summer heat, and a herd of deer at their morning forage; and beyond that, a great rolling sea of farmland, grassland, moor and heath, with the sun spilling over it and shreds of mist rising from the rivers. And everywhere the birds were singing.
“I try to come up here the morning after I get back from school,” said King, incongruously matter-of-fact. “Or town, or wherever else I’ve been. Providing the weather’s right for it, of course - not much point coming up if it’s tipping it down.”
“Not to mention that you’d probably break your neck trying,” Bertie murmured.
“I like how you can see everything from here,” King went on. “Look - that’s the river Taw, away there in the distance. It flows all the way up to the sea at Barnstaple. Though some of the other streams round here flow south into the Exe instead - we’re quite close to the watershed here.” And walking around each of the four sides of the tower in turn, he named to Bertie the rivers, the streams, the woods and copses and villages and meadows. “This is where you can see it best,” he finished, coming back to the point where they had begun, and turning to face Bertie for the first time. “Well - this is Lorrington, then,” he said.
There was an expression on his face that Bertie hadn’t seen there before: both complex and oddly open compared to his usually inscrutability. Something like shyness; something like belligerence; something like pride. As if he had wrapped the view up with a bow and handed it to him, and wasn’t sure if he’d regret the gesture.
Impulsively, as if he had been a much younger boy, as if they’d both still been in prep school and King had given him his finest marble, Bertie reached out, and took his hand, and squeezed it briefly before letting go. “Thanks,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “Thanks awfully for having me here, old thing.”
And King smiled: smiled quite brilliantly. “Thanks for coming. Should you like to look over the house today?”
ysande was good enough to indulge me ^_^ She asked for 'basically every joyous coming of age summer story', and set off about three dozen different ficlet ideas; here's the first of them. It may eventually be the start of a longer story about this particular holiday, the first time Bertie goes to Lorrington, if other ideas spawn around the same time period; in my head it takes place the days before ysande's glorious prompt-fest fill where Gimlet gets sunburn because he's determined to do all the fun holiday things with Bertie, all at once, right now. Unbetaed and scruffy round the edges, but maybe it'll turn into something better later.Bertie + Gimlet, school age, Gen, c.2k.
* * *
What We Did On Our Holidays I
“Bertie - Bertie, wake up.”
The words weren’t much more than a determined hiss, but the firm shake to his shoulder that accompanied them did the job as well as a shout. Bertie blinked his eyes open, a little groggily. There was a dim suspicion of grey half-light in the gap where the curtains weren’t quite drawn closed, but nothing more definite than that of dawn yet, so it must be frightfully early; and against that faintest hint of daylight, a vague shape that must be King.
“Whatever for?” he managed to croak.
“Come with me.”
“Not a chance,” he said, and attempted to burrow back down under the blankets; but King’s hand on his arm was entirely unyielding.
“Don’t be an ass Bertie. Get up, I want to show you something.”
And because it was King, and therefore a foregone conclusion; and because it was the first morning he had ever been there; and because of the faint note of excitement in King’s voice, and he had found that King’s excitement was something he somehow quite liked to share, he got up.
He had arrived late the previous evening, after a day of delayed trains and being constantly on the point of losing his luggage. It shouldn’t have been possible to take so long to get from Somerset to the borders of Dartmoor, yet there he was, Lorrington station in the midsummer twilight with the scent blowing thick off the tobacco flowers, and him almost the only one there to enjoy it. Then King had arrived, looking very pleased with himself high on an old pony trap, with the reins in his hands and an amused-looking groom taking his ease on the box seat at the back; and it had all started to feel a bit more like an adventure.
He was too old for adventures, of course. Seventeen-year-olds didn’t hold with such things. But driving through the gloom with the carriage lamp swinging beside him as King gave him chapter and verse on the stolid little pony’s virtues and foibles, and the first glow-worms emerged, and the nightjars shirred in the bushes - it felt a little like an adventure, all the same.
He’d been too late for dinner, King had informed him; he’d have a tray of supper sent up to his room. As soon as Bertie had been introduced to his father, of course.
It occurred to Bertie that he had somehow never given much thought to King’s parents; in some vague way he had assumed that he might have sprung into existence fully grown, and possibly armed, much in the manner of Athene. But at least he didn’t have time to work himself up about the encounter, because King led him straight from the hall into the study, and said, “Here’s Bertie Lissie, sir,” in a quiet, level voice, and there was a slim red-haired man looking up from a pile of papers, and freezing him where he stood with a pair of disconcertingly familiar blue eyes.
He was never quite sure, afterwards, what he had said; he only remembered the sensation of cold, like stepping into an ice-house.
“Mother’s already retired for the night,” said King, in a more normal voice, as afterwards he carried Bertie’s suitcase up the narrow, creaking stairs. The house, as they walked through it by lamp-light, seemed to be all in black and white, repeating patterns of black beams, black doors, black stairs, against the white of the walls; but every now and then the pattern would be broken by splashes of colour, walls painted with plants, animals, curlicues of vine and acanthus and stylised birds, old and stiff and strange. “You’ll meet her tomorrow, I expect. I’ll let you settle in this evening - since Father’s study is just at the bottom of the stairs he’s not fond of noise at this time of night. Bathroom’s here - “ as he indicated a door to the left, “and my room’s just across from yours.” He opened one of the many dark, nail-studded doors along the rambling length of the corridor, and went in, to put the lamp down on the bedside table and the case on an intricately-carved linen press at the foot of the four-poster bed.
“Aren’t I going to be in with you?” asked Bertie, a little taken aback.
King frowned. “There’s no need. We’ve got more rooms than we know what to do with.”
“Well, yes, I do quite see that, old thing - Chedcombe’s much the same,” Bertie conceded. “I just wasn’t quite expecting to be treated as a house guest - putting the housemaids to all the extra work, that sort of thing. I’m just as happy mucking in with you, really - “ And then, seeing the expression on King’s face, he hurried on, “though I do quite understand that an Englishman’s room is his castle, of course. Wouldn’t want to batter down the jolly old drawbridge for the world. And this room’s absolutely top-notch, don’t you know - I shall be half the night hunting for peas in the mattress, it looks like just the bed for it.”
King was still frowning. “If you won’t be comfortable in here - “
“It’s splendid, old boy,” said Bertie, putting all the conviction into the words that he could, because it was. “Fit for a king.”
“Was that a pun?” asked King, suspiciously.
Bertie sighed. “Not sure my brain’s working well enough for punning. It’s been an awfully long day.”
King nodded. “Of course. I’ll leave you to unpack. The girl will bring your supper soon.” He left the lamp where it was, and walked back to the open door, where he paused for a moment. “I hope you’ll be comfortable. I’m very pleased to have you here.”
Bertie smiled, and some part of himself that had felt unaccountably chilled since they had arrived in the great dark house seemed to warm a little. “I’m jolly pleased to be here too.”
Now, in the whisper of pre-dawn light, he pulled on yesterday’s shorts and shirt, slipped on his comfortable rubber-soled shoes, and crept out into the gloomy corridor outside his room. “Where on earth are we going at this hour?” Bertie whispered, his mind running on early-morning raids of the larder, of bird-nesting in the park, of taking out the horses King had spoken of so often for a gallop before the dew was off the grass -
“Don’t talk yet,” King replied, hardly more than a breath. “Here.”
Noiselessly, he opened the door opposite, and shut it noiselessly behind them again: a difficult operation with one of those great stiff iron latches, Bertie thought, and wondered how often he had practised. Then he crossed to the window, and pushed aside the heavy curtains just enough to give him access to the diamond-paned window. “How are you at climbing?” he asked, very softly, as he pushed it open.
Not as good as King, was the answer that rapidly became obvious. First a scramble up from an ancient oak chest through the narrow casement and out onto the leads, which here made a narrow flat pathway between the dormer windows and the low parapet that crowned the frontage, and through which a shallow gutter carried rainwater, in a way that Bertie vaguely thought must be desperately prone to leaks. That was easy enough, providing he didn’t look over the parapet too often, to see the yawning gulf from which he was separated only by a crenellation a foot or so high. The next stage - shinning up the leads themselves, up the reasonably gentle angle of the roof where it met a ridge of stones that offered a few finger-holds for support - was only a little more challenging; but the stage after that, where King slipped up and around a barley twist chimney-pot in a way that seemed little short of miraculous, began to test Bertie’s nerve. The air was cool and a little misty; the glazed surface of the chimney-pots very slightly slippery under his hands.
“I say, Lorry old thing, are you quite sure this is all right?” he called forward, a little plaintively. “I can hardly see a bally thing!”
“I’m sure,” King’s voice came floating back. “I’ve done it a hundred times. Just tread where I tread.”
“Not exactly the season for Good King Wenceslas,” Bertie muttered, more to himself than anyone else; but he fixed his eyes on King’s plimsolled feet up ahead, and followed.
Up and along the ridge, a foot on either side, slipping a little unnervingly; up a run of quoins, like a staircase, except a staircase where each tread was only a couple of inches deep; along a piece of moulded stone like a ledge, pressing himself to the wall, trying not to think of how easily stone this old could crumble, or the twenty foot drop to the roof below; and then -
“Nearly there now - just a few more yards. Right hand up and right a little more - there’s a gargoyle under the ivy, it’ll give you a better purchase - that’s it, you’ve got it. Then support your weight on it and bring your right foot across and up, there’s a decently thick branch there, just above your knee height - it’s enough to get your left hand up to the top here - “
- then King’s hand was clasping his wrist, for reassurance as much as steadiness, as he pulled himself up and over the edge and dropped down onto a flat roof, panting with exertion and adrenalin.
“Well done, I knew you could do it,” he heard King say, voice warm with approval. “We’re just in time too. Come and see.”
Slowly, he heaved himself up to his feet again, feeling very slightly shaky, and cautiously made his way across to where King was standing, hands resting against the the top course of masonry, leaning out over nothingness, with his face to the place where, far away to the east, the first ray of the sun had just shot skywards like a firework.
He came and stood next to him, and looked out.
Immediately below them, a tumble of rooftops, tile and lead and slate, different heights, different styles, dropping down around them like a Victorian lady’s skirts; beyond them, the formal gardens, the knots and geometric tangles of box hedges and gravel walks sharply visible; beyond that, the parkland, with great stands of trees, grass already browning in the summer heat, and a herd of deer at their morning forage; and beyond that, a great rolling sea of farmland, grassland, moor and heath, with the sun spilling over it and shreds of mist rising from the rivers. And everywhere the birds were singing.
“I try to come up here the morning after I get back from school,” said King, incongruously matter-of-fact. “Or town, or wherever else I’ve been. Providing the weather’s right for it, of course - not much point coming up if it’s tipping it down.”
“Not to mention that you’d probably break your neck trying,” Bertie murmured.
“I like how you can see everything from here,” King went on. “Look - that’s the river Taw, away there in the distance. It flows all the way up to the sea at Barnstaple. Though some of the other streams round here flow south into the Exe instead - we’re quite close to the watershed here.” And walking around each of the four sides of the tower in turn, he named to Bertie the rivers, the streams, the woods and copses and villages and meadows. “This is where you can see it best,” he finished, coming back to the point where they had begun, and turning to face Bertie for the first time. “Well - this is Lorrington, then,” he said.
There was an expression on his face that Bertie hadn’t seen there before: both complex and oddly open compared to his usually inscrutability. Something like shyness; something like belligerence; something like pride. As if he had wrapped the view up with a bow and handed it to him, and wasn’t sure if he’d regret the gesture.
Impulsively, as if he had been a much younger boy, as if they’d both still been in prep school and King had given him his finest marble, Bertie reached out, and took his hand, and squeezed it briefly before letting go. “Thanks,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “Thanks awfully for having me here, old thing.”
And King smiled: smiled quite brilliantly. “Thanks for coming. Should you like to look over the house today?”
no subject
Date: 2025-08-08 01:47 pm (UTC)And Gimlet, so proud of himself because he’s driving the buggy! The indulgent groom! Bertie’s disgruntlement at the trip turning into apprehension at the chill welcome of Lorrington Hall - the terrible and awful figure of Gimlet’s father, who just appears as this freezing void, and the complete careless absence of his mother.
And the adorably awkward little dance the two of them do around each other!! Gimlet so torn between worlds - the inexorable iron will of his father, and all the rules and requirements set by him, and Gimlet’s own indomitable will, where he wants, maybe more than anything he’s wanted so far, in a way he would be entirely unable to explain, for Bertie to be happy here, and not be repulsed or alienated by anything he finds. LOL at Bertie suggesting that he bunk in with Gimlet, and Gimlet being ‘Absolutely not.’ and Bertie backtracking gallantly because he’d do anything to avoid being rude, and the PUN!! I love them both entirely so much. Oh, and Gimlet so pleased and proud that Bertie can follow him on his rooftop climbing adventures!! Yet another sign that Bertie is a rare kindred spirit. And Bertie perfectly understanding just how much Gimlet is laying himself bare, and taking it as the gift that it is, and I love them SO much and would love to read endless stories of them and this magical summer, it makes me so happy and I’ve not been this delighted by something for ages!! <333
no subject
Date: 2025-08-09 10:13 pm (UTC)I love the idea of Bertie visiting Lorrington for the first time and a whole series of things about Gimlet just sort of - clicking into place. The way he fits into the slightly stifling quiet and order of the place, all the ways he finds to circumvent the rules, the way he's never going to be intimidated by anyone because they're not nearly as intimidating as his father: that it's always going to be the place that moulded him, and that he loves the best, and that he desperately wants to escape.
Gimlet’s own indomitable will, where he wants, maybe more than anything he’s wanted so far, in a way he would be entirely unable to explain, for Bertie to be happy here, and not be repulsed or alienated by anything he finds
Yessssssssss THIS, because Bertie and Bertie's approval has become so important to him over the year, in a way he's never had before; and so much of himself is bound up with Lorrington (his *name*, my god, I am developing such a complex about the overidentification that's been sort of foisted on him), he wants Bertie to see not just the ways it's shaped him, but the ways he's shaped it, in the private places he's made his own through his knowledge of them and access to them and use of them. Sharing them is such a huge thing for him. And Bertie recognising that so intensely and instinctively, because Chedcombe isn't quite the same for him but it's close enough for him to really understand <3 <3
I'm really enjoying starting to feel out a bit of their contrastingly difficult childhoods - Bertie's to me feels like it was characterised by his parents' absence and carelessness, his father mostly being frustrated by someone who was so completely different from him and alternately washing his hands of him and punishing him for it; while I feel that Gimlet's father was possibly a bit too focussed on him and his thoughts and behaviours, and Gimlet's difficulty is how to navigate the weight of his expectations and his disapproval, how you can possibly disagree with and assert yourself against someone who is so overbearingly *correct*, trying to find spaces and things that are his own. Poor babies, but also *so* much fun to write about.
Bertie suggesting that he bunk in with Gimlet, and Gimlet being ‘Absolutely not.'
lolololol, yeah I don't think that was ever on the cards 😂 I love them *so* much <3 <3 <3 absolute liabilities the pair of them.
Thanks once again for the prompts, so many fun things to play with <3 <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2025-08-10 07:13 am (UTC)And yes to your thoughts on Bertie’s father! I think he was a much blunter and heartier kind of man, likely not given too much to thought or introspection, very much acting on gut feel without ever realising that’s what he did, vacillating between bemused and frustrated and contemptuous whenever his path crosses with Bertie’s in any meaningful way, which, as you say, is likely designed by him (probably entirely unconsciously, but entirely purposefully all the same) to be as little as possible.
Just as well there’s fic to enable them to be thrown at each other!! <333
no subject
Date: 2025-08-10 09:42 am (UTC)I really need to work up some more headcanons on their respective mothers, and would love to hear yours! I feel like at the moment I think Bertie adored his mother when he was little, but was always very aware that she was in some respects rather fragile, and got into a pattern of desperately trying not to shock or upset her, which made his father's repeated gruff annoyance with him even harder to deal with, as he was worried about her reactions to the trouble he was in; he certainly couldn't rely on her to back him up or support or comfort him, at any rate not with any certainty.
I feel like Gimlet gets enough of those 'mothers always do' comments in canon to suggest (if one wished) that she was in some ways a much less complicated figure to him than his father - I think possibly she's very pragmatic about what she expects from life, that she lives a rather semi-detached existence from her husband and son - because Gimlet was part of the bargain she made on marriage, running the household and providing an heir in return for stability and social position, and so responsibility for Gimlet gets shunted over to his father and the estate. If Gimlet had been another sort of child perhaps she'd have felt more strongly about him, but he resembles his father so closely in so many ways, and is so difficult in ways of his own, that she doesn't feel very close to him; and he in return doesn't feel very close to her, especially as she tends to back his father without question. I don't really know who Gimlet *did* feel close to in childhood - perhaps no one. With Bertie I've sort of started accumulating a vague side-cast, like his paternal grandmother and his godfather, who were generally benevolently disposed towards him even if they weren't always present or willing to intervene to support him; with Gimlet, I really don't know.
argh got to take children to playground, back later!
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Date: 2025-08-10 11:36 am (UTC)So Bertie’s mother ranges between delightedly whimsical and frivolous and loving; and petty and hurting and demanding and sulky. And that makes it even harder for him, in a way - because he never knows how she’s going to be, and he loves her *so* deeply, and when she’s well and happy, he’s loved and cherished; but when she’s not, he’s entirely helpless and miserable. And because he never knows how she’ll be, he’s on eggshells the whole time, desperately trying not to upset her balance and tip her over into one of her spells, always squeezing himself into whatever shape he thinks might best please her and never knowing what will work, never asking for attention or comfort or anything at all for himself, really, because he could *manage* if she would just be well and happy. And the older he gets, the more unwell she gets, until there are many more bad days than good days, and the memories of being loved and cherished and *seen* date back from longer and longer ago, but even when she becomes so unwell she’s barely herself, and it makes her demanding and hurtful, there is always a tiny central part of him that’s desperately and childishly certain that one day she will get better and be able to be present for him, and to love him unconditionally and reliably, in that way he’s sure he remembers her doing once, when he was very, very small.
/misc headcanon
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Date: 2025-08-10 12:08 pm (UTC)If Bertie can’t rely on his mother to be a calm and steady loving presence in his life because she’s fragile and desperately unhappy herself (all headcanon, obvs), he also can’t rely on his father, who is quick tempered, or bad tempered, or both. I think his father is a man of who’s not had huge amounts of experience with the world other than his own, and doesn’t have the sensitivity or emotional intelligence to try to see things from anyone else’s perspective. He is very good at the things he’s interested in, but they tend to be quite practical, and niche, and rather devoid of intellectual or emotional challenges (eg prize bulls?). He’s also not good at dealing with frustrations and disappointments, and doesn’t really half the ability to self-reflect on why he’s bad tempered and frustrated. Chedcombe’s always been his priority and pride, and he doesn’t understand why he’s ended up with a wife who takes no interest or joy in it, and a son who (in his eyes, being only able to see the world from his personal lived experience) is weak, effeminate, and entirely lacking in all the skills that would make him a Man and a suitable heir. I think Bertie shares positive traits with his father (determination; a steadfast and undying loyalty to the rare few he sees as His People; the ability to endure), but they’re expressed so differently and at such different things that neither of the recognise the similarities in the other. And Bertie shares positive traits with his mother, too (whimsy, curiosity and genuine love for the world, kindness, a sense of compassion, and a real desire to look out for people, and to make their life brighter for having been in it) - but by the time he’s old enough to have developed into those traits, his father is so embittered by the relationship with his mother that can can only see the negative perspective of them: flightiness, weakness, irreverence, fragility, self-indulgence. I don’t think he ever knowingly sets out to be cruel to Bertie, because I don’t think he’s a cruel man, but he is entirely unable to understand Bertie, and what little he thinks he does understand, he’s frustrated and repulsed and disappointed by, and although he does do his best to be a good father, it’s so coloured by that view that their relationship varies from forced cordiality, to bitter disappointment (shame), to sullen resentment (despair), to provoked frustration (fear).
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Date: 2025-08-10 05:13 pm (UTC)Do you have any headcanons on physical appearance? I sort of assume Bertie got a lot of his looks from his father's side: I rather picture his father as being not unlike the Dukes of Denver, very English, tall and broad and blond and rather florrid, quite good looking when they're young but rather running to seed as they get older; that's where Bertie gets the height and the hair, though he's rather more on the beanpole side at least when he's young. His eyes I decided more or less arbitrarily he got from his grandmother ^_^ He doesn't resemble his mother at all, really, except possibly the slimness, but that looks rather different on six foot than it does on 5'3". The resemblance to his father possibly only makes things hard for everyone as he gets older, to his mother it's painful and to his father it seems somehow like mockery.
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Date: 2025-08-11 12:27 pm (UTC)In terms of looks, I agree with you completely! Very much taking after his father, and it’s hurtful for both parents. Although maybe also with a few subtle changes that make it rankle even more for his father. I do like the description of Bertie with an exceptionally thick head of hair, so he just has these lush golden locks as a kid, whereas his father’s family all have very thin hair that tends to balding at an early age. And skin that tans to golden, like his mother, instead of being florid and tending to redness. And yes, eyes from his paternal grandfather! <3
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Date: 2025-08-10 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-11 12:44 pm (UTC)I am so sad for tiny Bertie though, desperately trying to be enough and failing because it was never anything to do with him; and feeling entirely alone for most of his young life :( I think that type of general scenario is a fairly reasonable explanation of his adult character traits: of people pleasing, diffusing situations with deprecating humour, being used to just copping some pretty unfair criticism :(
(And then there’s Gimlet!! <333)
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Date: 2025-08-10 12:41 pm (UTC)I don’t think I’ve thought much about Gimlet’s mother, but your thoughts for her just make such perfect sense. I think he does have a more uncomplicated relationship with her than with his father, and I agree that, nevertheless, it’s not a particularly deep relationship either. The way he says ‘Mothers always do’ - seems to be without any kind of overtly negative baggage, but also there’s a faint dismissal there: that mothers exist to play a part and fill a role, and they probably haven’t got much conviction of their own behind what the lines they say, so best not to put too much stock in them. Contrast it with the reverence and deference with which Copper speaks of his own invalid mother - all the times he says if she could only see him now, what would she say, etc.
I’m amused by the idea (floated once in the discord channel, I think) that Gimlet’s mother is the Dowager Duchess of Lorrington (or title-appropriate equivalent) and that he’s entirely obedient to her - but I really can’t see it. I think he’s too self-contained and emotionally stunted to have a close relationship with his mother (even a close-but-fraught relationship).
I’m not sure he ever did have anyone he was close to, growing up - I think he’s naturally a rather solitary person because he’s too caught up in the world being the way *he* sees it, and he doesn’t have the patience or natural gentleness in wanting to or being able to accommodate the regular foibles of other people. And I think he’s so awed by his father that every other adult falls short, and so his view of them ranges from disdain to dismissal; and perhaps he’s also so entirely used to the complicated mix of emotions he has about his relationship with his father (respect and awe and shame and resentment and fear) that if he doesn’t feel the entire gamut and force of those emotions with another adult, he dismisses them out of hand as unworthy of his respect or admiration or time. And he’s such an odd and intense and unforgiving child that he doesn’t inspire any adults, or many children, to gravitate towards him and react warmly to him.
Which is not to say I think he was friendless - I think the children around him who were his peers respected him (for his talents and his family name) and never sought to exclude him from group activities - but they were always slightly wary of him, and he was content to engage to the extent that he wanted to with them, but he never felt like he yearned for their company or anything, because he never really felt like he was quite like the others (which was Entirely Ok by him).
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Date: 2025-08-10 05:31 pm (UTC)I’m not sure he ever did have anyone he was close to, growing up - I think he’s naturally a rather solitary person because he’s too caught up in the world being the way *he* sees it, and he doesn’t have the patience or natural gentleness in wanting to or being able to accommodate the regular foibles of other people.
Yes, that was very much the feeling I had too - he's so very self-contained and self-contented, it's difficult to imagine him really feeling the *lack* of affection or close relationships. I feel like there's a sort of cool humour in the way he talks about mothers that makes me wonder if that was the dominant way he and his own mother interacted - they got on (get on? No reason to believe she's not still alive, it's not like he'd tell us either way in canon) perfectly well, but it's very cool and distant: they amuse each other a little, but they don't expect much from each other.
I wonder if Gimlet spent a fair amount of time in his childhood with adults that he respected for their skills - gamekeepers, grooms, the steward, that sort of thing. Unlike Bertie, I don't really see Gimlet as gravitating to solitary play, even when he was tiny: he'd be more the solitary explorer or experimenter, practising and learning and discovering, terrifyingly self-directed, and sometimes grown-up assistance is useful for that. I don't imagine they became very fond of him though - he’s such an odd and intense and unforgiving child that he doesn’t inspire any adults, or many children, to gravitate towards him and react warmly to him - I have never agreed with anything more than this statement 😂 oh Gimlet.
he was content to engage to the extent that he wanted to with them, but he never felt like he yearned for their company or anything, because he never really felt like he was quite like the others (which was Entirely Ok by him)
AND THEN THERE'S BERTIE I am so obsessed with themmmmmm 😭😭
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Date: 2025-08-11 12:36 pm (UTC)And I could absolutely see Gimlet tagging along, demanding to be allowed to see, to try, to be taught. I don’t think he’d ask politely or be bashful, I think he’d order politely and be quite matter of fact about it, so all the staff know that he’s just one of the hazards of the job, but for all his strangeness and slightly demanding airs, he’s genuinely interested and quick to learn, and he’s polite if not likeable, so they all just accept him as part of their chores around the grounds.
And then there is Bertie, indeed!! <3333 (I am so obsessed with the both of them!! 😭)
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Date: 2025-08-10 07:21 am (UTC)Bertie suggesting that he bunk in with Gimlet, and Gimlet being ‘Absolutely not.'
lolololol, yeah I don't think that was ever on the cards
this scene has been going around in my head for days because I just needed them to be sleeping together and your comment made me pin it down
It had started raining some time in the night, and Bertie had been dimly, pleasantly aware of it. Soft rain against the shining windows of Gimlet’s suite at the Ritz, a carafe of very good port between them, and the electric heater warm at their feet. But by the time the time Bertie stretched, luxuriously, and stood, and drained the last of the glass in his hand - he looked outside and was dismayed to see the gentle rain had turned into relentless sleet and gusting winds, lashing the empty streets below with grim and icy vigour.
'Dashed unsporting of the weather,’ Bertie complained. ‘After such jolly night, as well. How’s a chap meant to get home in this?’
'I’ll have them ring for a cab,’ Gimlet said, rising as well. He looked, unexpectedly, as ready for bed as Bertie was.
'In this rain, at nearly two in the morning? I’d be home sooner if I walked,’ said Bertie, gloomily.
'Not without a fairly convicing drowned cat impersonation,’ Gimlet pointed out, to whom a drenching was acceptable if it was a bath, a swim, or in the pursuit of some greater purpose - walking home in the rain in a city in which taxi cabs existed not falling into any one of those categories.
Bertie looked sadly out the window at the driving rain, and at the clock again. ‘I say, Lorry, let me bunk here for the night, won’t you? It’s nearly morning as it is. I’m sure it’d amount to much the same thing if I waited here for a cab to arrive.’
Gimlet frowned. ‘I thought you were happy to walk.’
'I said no such thing,’ protested Bertie. ‘I just pointed out the flaw in your taxi cab plan. Be a sport - how many times have we shared a tent or a cabin or a bothy?’
'That’s not the same at all,’ Gimlet said at once.
'Near enough as to make no difference,’ Bertie pleaded. ‘I promise not to kick or take all the blankets or complain about you snoring.’
Gimlet fixed him with an intensely displeased eye.
'Not that you ever would,’ Bertie amended, hastily. ‘Just going through the things I give my solemn word not to do. Besides,’ he added plaintively, ‘could you really sleep soundly if you knew I was trudging all the way back to Mount Street in that Boreatic tempest?’
'Yes,’ said Gimlet icily, and Bertie believed him. Then Gimlet sighed, and relented. ‘Very well. I expect you won’t make a habit of it.’
'Not the sort of thing I’d ask of you except in the direst of emergencies,’ Bertie assured him, to a resultant unamused look. ‘Jolly grateful for your forbearance, old boy; the next time it’s someone’s turn to change a flat in the rain, I’ll do it with uncomplaining will.’
'Hm,’ was all of Gimlet’s response, in very clear tones that showed he did not, in any way, consider that to be an equal trade at all. Still, they got ready for the night in a familiar and practised rhythm, although Bertie’s usual routine did not typically finish in borrowed silk pyjamas, wrists and ankles sticking comically out from the perfectly tailored lengths. He had slept in much worse conditions, though, and so had Gimlet, both before the war, and after, and that was saying nothing of the war itself. Bertie snuggled in on the far edge of the bed, accommodating Gimlet’s clear preferences and already generous compromise, and yawned.
'G’night, Lorry,’ he murmured, and closed his eyes, and listened to the measured, even breathing of his friend beside him, and slept.
He half-woke in the darkness, although he couldn’t pinpoint what had woken him. Perhaps the lack of the steady and relaxed sounds of sleep that his subconscious had been using as a sort of metronome for dreaming; perhaps a sudden and startled movement from either one of them. But Gimlet had never been a restless sleeper in all the time that Bertie had known him, and he was very still now. Too still - none of the loose-limbed repose of easy sleep. Bertie drowsily stretched an arm across the careful distance left between them, and met a tense shoulder, and lay a reassuring hand on it. Breathed out, and breathed in, and went willingly back to sleep.
The next time - the next time, he didn’t even surface enough from dreams to count as half-awake, as though even his dream-self knew that some things did not belong in the waking world. He lay curled on his side, and there was the weight of a sleeping arm atop him, and the press of a warm figure behind him, not familiar, but not foreign, somewhat like catching a glimpse of oneself in a mirror, after weeks and months without having one. There was a face, pressed close against his shoulder blade, breath warm and even against his back, and Bertie relaxed entirely, and slept through until morning.
He had felt the gentle dip and spring of the bed as Gimlet had gotten up, of course, but he let it pass over him like the sounds of the street stirring below, like the sliver of daylight that peeked from the boundary between the heavy curtains. Evidence of the world waking around him, but with no call on him to do the same.
He waited until Gimlet reappeared, bathed and dressed and faintly scented of bergamot and sandalwood, before he stretched and rose for the day.
'I’m not surprised the Ritz is the favoured destination for the rich and famous, now that I know what their beds are like,’ Bertie told him appreciatively. ‘Not sure when I’ve had a better sleep. Although maybe part of it was being appropriately grateful of the shelter you gave me from the rain. I can see it’s properly cleared up now, so I can be safely out of your hair, old thing.’
'I suppose,’ said Gimlet, smiling and more relaxed than Bertie had seen him for some time, ‘there’s no harm in feeding and watering you as well.’
And that, Bertie thought happily, was a most satisfactory result.
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Date: 2025-08-10 02:04 pm (UTC)‘I promise not to kick or take all the blankets or complain about you snoring.’
Gimlet fixed him with an intensely displeased eye.
'Not that you ever would,’ Bertie amended, hastily.
and
'Besides,’ he added plaintively, ‘could you really sleep soundly if you knew I was trudging all the way back to Mount Street in that Boreatic tempest?’
'Yes,’ said Gimlet icily, and Bertie believed him.
- are both *so* beautiful, and YAY for Gimlet's snoring that he would absolutely flat refuse to believe in, even if anyone in his life plucked up the courage to tell him about it. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.
BUT THEN OF COURSE GIMLET GIVES IN because it's Bertie and they've danced this dance so many times before, Bertie the only person who's really found the magic formula for getting Gimlet to acknowledge the importance of things (people) beyond himself and his own comfort and preferences and world-view, and it's just a matter of *being Bertie*.
And then omg the whole rest of the ficlet: I just died, repeatedly and happily. Bertie trying his best to accomodate himself to Gimlet's stated wishes and keep his distance, comfortably fitting himself to the sound of his friend's breathing and the rhythm of his sleep; and so attuned to them that their disruption is enough to wake him when there's something wrong, and reaching out *just enough* that it's more than Gimlet asked for and more than he probably thought he wanted, but somehow it's *precisely* what he needs. I love love love that you don't tell us what's the problem with Gimlet - is it nightmares? Insomnia? Intrusive thoughts? Discomfort with the situation, discomfort with how he feels about it? Dunno, and nor does Bertie, but he does the only thing that Gimlet could comfortably accept - reaches out, just enough to show he's there, and goes to sleep again, reassured and reassuring and not infringing Gimlet's rather rigid boundaries.
AND THEN when he half wakes again and finds Gimlet pressed up against him - oh I love that paragraph *so much*, it's so beautifully written and thoughtful and gorgeous, dream-like and a little distant, but warm and physically comforting and comfortable and straight-forwardly loving, all those things they have trouble negotiating in their waking lives <3 <3 <3 <3 'as though even his dream-self knew that some things did not belong in the waking world... not familiar, but not foreign, somewhat like catching a glimpse of oneself in a mirror, after weeks and months without having one.' SO ENTIRELY DEAD.
And then Bertie allowing Gimlet to get up and wash and re-arm himself into his daytime self before showing he's awake 😭 he's such a dear and I love him so. And Gimlet happy and relaxed and rested, and the idea that whatever was wrong it's been wrong for a while but Bertie's presence helps to soothe it 😭 😭 I am a wreck, I need this infinitely. Thank you so muuuuuch <3 <3
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Date: 2025-08-11 12:52 pm (UTC)And Bertie knows just how much he can push, and would know exactly when to back off and accept that he’s going to walk home in the rain, if that’s necessary - but he knows that it won’t be, because he knows Gimlet!
And Gimlet here really is offering up a slice of his vulnerability to Bertie - whatever’s been troubling him (and I’m not quite sure what it is, either, only that sleep has been unusually difficult these last few weeks, and he’s not distressed by it, exactly, he’s entirely capable of compartmentalising it and trusting that it will sort itself out, but in the mean time he is tired, and more importantly he doesn’t want to embarrass himself or reveal too much to Bertie, and it takes a little time for him to decide that he’s willing to do that, because it’s Bertie who’s asking <333 (and the irony being that he absolutely wouldn’t be able to sleep if Bertie had to walk home in the rain)
I am just so unreasonably obsessed with them both!! 😭😭😭