#naps4bats

I need to think up a better name, BUT this is for the Vikings Winter Solstice Event and the premise is Emma overindulges on wine at a celebration and Canute catches her eating mince pies in the kitchen and they share them by candle light.

Sure!

This one doesn't have a real name yet (thus the boring title lol), and was meant to be a shorter, ficlet-length exploration of the idea of Emma's jealousy of Ælfgifu. This idea of jealousy came up in a conversation I had with @littlebirdola, and I thought it could be really interesting, particularly because Emma (at least as I envision her) would know rationally that her feelings were entirely unfounded, but still might not be able to quiet them. The snippet below is from the beginning of the story, but I still haven't quite figured out how to finish it (which is why it's still in the WIP pile). Hopefully an ending will reveal itself at some point, though!

Emma had never been a jealous woman. 

Her first husband had provoked many emotions—frustration, loneliness, indifference, rage—but never once had he driven her to jealousy. Perhaps it was because he had shown little interest in other women, although even if he had, Emma doubted she would have found it in herself to care. Æthelred’s spare hours were most often spent in the company of his many counselors: the Viking advisors like Sten and Olaf, the priests and the ealdormen, and then Godwin. What cause had she to be jealous of men like they, forced to scurry back and forth to maintain the king’s favor?

Emma may not have always had his ear, but she wore a crown and had borne him sons. Her position was assured. 

The same, of course, was true of her second husband: she was his anointed queen and, within a year of his return from Denmark, had given him a son. And unlike Æthelred, Canute sought her counsel, soliciting her advice on everything from the appointment of bishops to the administration of excises. More than that, he was devoted to her—and to their children. He was a king, his power absolute, but as far as she could tell, his eye had never strayed. 

Why, then, did she feel this way, jealousy eating at her like poison whenever she thought of his first wife?

Lol you zoned in on the right ones, I’m impressed. Exes Party is oneshot where Aethelflaed (Erik’s ex) invites him to attend a party at her place. There is Aldrik tension and Aldhelm being a smug asshole and Aethelflaed telling him he’s a smug asshole and Erik helping a drunk Edward who’s having an existential crisis on the bathroom floor and Aldhelm being impressed by that. I got to about 1.5k and stalled out, but I will post a snippet below the cut. 

AAE Uni is a concept I have done a TON of thinking about but next to no proper writing in the doc lol. This one did spiral into a multichap concept, so I guess I broke that rule I set out, oops. It’s a modern AU where Aethelflaed, Aldhelm, and Erik are all university professors. Aethelflaed and Erik are co-parenting Aelfwynn (who is a teenager in this AU), but have been broken up for a while, though there are definitely complicated feelings there (which Aethelflaed represses like a champ, naturally). And Aldhelm has been Aethelflaed’s coworker and close friend (or more?) for years, so when Erik takes a job at the same university they have to all figure out how to get along. Idk how it will end but it will be emotionally complicated and involves a lot of sexy paperwork and Erik being very attractive in fisherman sweaters and galoshes (he’s an oceanography and coastal ecology prof, ty Wren), and if this ever gets written, it’s because Wren co-writes it with me lol. 

AHHHHHH I truly love how much that stands out to you. Honestly, parsnips are extremely underrated and they deserve only the finest literary treatment (but I suppose a 90k canon divergent fic for a pair of Anglo-Saxon nerds no one has ever heard of will do for now).

the way you literally just read me to FILTH

I had a similar premise for a TLK fic that I never even talked about on here, I am the MOST predictable oh my GOD