#but to me the metaphor is what holds the story together.
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therealslimshakespeare · 23 hours ago
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Kiss it Off Me 💋
A Dear John Installment || John “Bucky” Egan Fanfiction
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Summary: Julie Jean is in England for once -and for once, Bucky Egan is too
Warnings: 18+ one long smutty fluff fest
Please note and thank and give a round of applause to my baby and my dear friend and my brilliant co-author Bri! She first requested this series and concept and has become the engine driving this story and the one who infuses it with so much heart. I literally couldn’t have written it without her. This segment is fully co-authored. Love you baby and this was a joy to work on together 💋
Additional thanks: to all of you who waited ages for this to finally lurch its way to competition. Thank you for both your patience and your continued interest. Also to my bestest gal pals Ashley and Christi- to the latter, did you ever think our midnight screaming about Bucky Egan fogging up a phone booth would actually make it in print? What a wild night, what a happy fever dream.
“Bucky, John, JOHN, MAJOR, JOHN EGAN SLOW DOWN!!!”
Distantly, through a ear ringing fog he could hear them calling his name, there were quite a lot of them and many didn’t really know him, not well, and even those he cared for -Buck and Harry and Ev and Jack- their greetings had turned desperate and they called his name in a effort to stall, not welcome.
But holy shit, she was in England, and he was in England, and fucking fate thought it was real cute to yank the string once more and he wasn’t going to play nice anymore. He was gonna show fate where it could shove its little game of marionettes.
He was gonna keep Julie Jean on the damn ground if he had to climb on the wing of her soon departing jet to do it.
And to do that, to get there in time to do it, he needed to kindly disregard the flock of squawking pals behind him.
“John if you go now you’ll only miss her!” Gale’s rising voice warned, beginning to try to physically restrain his friend’s headlong rampage towards the nearest jeep.
“That one’s low on gas.” Ev helped the cause laconically from the back.
“I’m not just sitting here while she goes-“ Egan informed them without a hitch in his stride.
“Let us send a telegram!” Crosby begged, “She told us to alert her, to call or to wire, anything if you were to come back. Going now you’ll just miss her! Sir, sir please! If I get to her a-a-and you’re on the road w-w-what will I-I-I say?”
“Yeah,” Gale agreed, “gonna make us tell her you’re alive but we don’t have you ‘cause you’re broke down on some backroad in East fuckin’ Anglia because you couldn’t wait to call?”
“Yeah, think of it Bucky,” Demarco came in to aid his copilot, “it’s sweet but, it’ll suck if she makes it.”
“How’d you let her go?” John suddenly railed at Buck who took it like his decent, patient self in the face of a half starved, lovelorn maniac he was glad to find alive again, who’d only just touched down on English soil half an hour ago and was taking news of his girl being here and then being gone pretty well, all Buckyisms considered, “How could you, when she was here! HERE, Buck! How-“
“She said she hadta go, John, and after everything she did for us, for all of us-“ Gale sighed, “I wasn’t about to ask her for longer. She was in trouble as is, seems, with her mother.”
That seemed to frazzle Bucky worse, even if it shut him up for five seconds of wordless scoffing before, “Trouble? She’s in trouble, yeah, yeah, wanna know what kinda trouble her mother is? Shitty Fucks!!!” he roared at the sky and it was ferocious and crass enough to scare of some of the gathered newbies.
Croz exchanged a glance with a hunger carved Brady, “Shitty Fucks” he repeated, “-that’s a new one.”
Captain Brady nodded solemnly. “Makes one wonder if it’s metaphorical or literal.”
Croz processed this gravely.
“Like is it -a shit lay? or shitty lay, ya know?”
“Gentleman?” Gale turned to them for backup with blatant and frigid exasperation.
“Major,” Crosby addressed Egan as pacifying as possible, “let me send that cable, hold tight sir, hold tight -”
John didn’t recall much between that and Red Bowman coming down from the old familiar tower, holding a transcript. A “welcome back major” and a “says she’s comin” sent Bucky’s motor into a higher state of being, one thrumming with useless anticipation and bizark energy.
“From Heathrow. That’ll be a couple hours.” Ev cautioned as he started striding towards god know’s where. His bunk was likely long gone. The one he’d written so many letters from. The one across from Brady’s. The one they said she’d laid in when she first got here. Julie. In his bunk. Without him.
Gale overtook him, stood in front of his trajectory down one muddy lane very like the next; Thorpe Abbots was heart achingly familiar and foreign all at once.
“Ya look like shit.” Gale informed, eyes kind and smile less tired than he’d seen it in ages and John tried not to take that to heart, in fact it was easy, he had far more than his feelings to worry about right now. “And Miss Lana likes her men clean. First thing she did with me was feed me and dunk me. You’ve been in a stalag for two years, you’re gonna need every single one of those hours it takes for her to get here to make yourself presentable.”
“Need a shave to spare her the beard burn.” Benny remarked.
“One to talk, Demarco.”
“I’m not the one vowin’ to do all sorts of sordid shit to tender female flesh.”
“Bet you would if you could.”
“Who says I can’t? Huh? Who says I can’t?”
They got to the showers somehow. Someone found a spare change of class A’s. Maybe they were Jack Kidd’s. They looked like they would fit, maybe a tad tight but Bucky had lost weight and the height was right, trousers hit the top of his boots when he held them up.
“Get in, Bucky.” Buck told him from under his own tepid spray; it felt like heaven after the Stalag’s frigid blasts and the complete lack of even a rag and pale in Mooseburg.
He was gonna see her. In a few hours he was gonna see Julie Jean. In the flesh. And after the past year and a half, having nothing but photographs to trace over - sweet photographs with the teasing posture of her mouth-watering curves, the arch of her lower back, but not being enough to sate his need for the real thing.
How many times had Bucky held her photo besides a newspaper clipping to clock the differences? The vulnerability of her eyes, the loose sway in her shoulders, the lack of any rogue or lipstick to match because she never needed any of the Hollywood facade with him. The missing pieces of clothing because she wanted him to see her. The natural curls of her hair falling down her back. How many times had he held a photograph to his face and taken a deep inhale - sure he could smell her Chanel 5 and cherry blossom and something innately Julie Jean and nothing Lana Tierney.
Buck stood beside him in the shower and held the razor to his jaw, scoffing every few seconds when Bucky couldn’t help a nervous twitch from racking his body. He knew he was liberated but he didn’t feel any different from when he was stuck in the Stalag.
Bucky felt trapped and useless, unable to chase after his girl once more and miles away still. He wondered if Julie Jean had felt abandoned by him like she did everyone else in her life. If she’d thought his promise to her had been broken because Gale had returned home first. Did she understand that Bucky had stayed behind because he needed Buck to be alive and safe first and foremost? Would she fault him for that, or would she still hold to what she wrote years ago, saying his dedication to the men, to the cause, to what had to be done was his most attractive trait. Even more attractive than his shoulders, she had said, but perhaps less arousing.
“It’s real, John.” Gale’s voice matches the soothing scratch of the razor against his skin, going through the motions of a wedding morning without the promise of a bride. “Her feelings for you, whatever was written in the letters between you two - it’s all real.”
And Bucky had wished upon a shooting star in Germany and hoped and prayed to a God his mama pleaded to every night and morning but to hear it from Gale Cleven’s lips leaves him with no doubt.
Because Gale would never steer him down a path of pain or delusion. Because Gale Cleven, mighty and loyal and aloof as he may be, wouldn’t waste his time on something that he deemed to be unworthy or a waste of time. The same way he didn’t take any swigs of alcohol or puffs of smoke. The same way in which he never lingered in bed at the camp and made every moment count for their boys.
“What’d she say?” He asks, and he doesn’t even care that he sounds like the gossip session his fifteen year old sister has - or had, she’d be older now - and he doesn’t care that Gale’s gonna make fun of him for it sooner than later.
But because Buck is anything but a mean bastard he retains any teasing comments or laughs and says, “Told me she didn’t want to tell me anything that she didn’t get to tell you first.” He meets Bucky’s eyes for a moment, for two, and in them is reflected the sharing of warmth in a bunk and the playing of pretend for both their sanity. The remembrance of when Buck admitted to proposing to Marge and Bucky confessed he’d dropped the love bomb on Julie in his last letter. “When I, uh - ” he coughs, as whatever he wants to say is hard to get out and lodged in his throat. “When I told ‘em, her and Marge, how you let me go first and there’d been gunshots and I wasn’t sure if you were hit,” the blue in his eyes became mirrors of guilt, “she said something funny. Said me and her - we’d somehow know if you weren’t okay. We’d feel it.”
And Buck was never one for spiritual beliefs but he was a pilot through and through and although many would probably call Julie wacky, Buck would consider her to be a good partner to have up there with that intuition of hers. The girl had a radar and it radiated Bucky Egan. If Buck ever lost Bucky he only needed to follow Julie Jean.
“All done, Major.” He claps Bucky on the shoulder, having spent his most precise devotion on evening up that mustache, “Let’s get you out of the shower before you become all wrinkly like a prune.”
It’s only when he’s dried off his curls and he’s got a towel wrapped around his waist and Buck’s got one foot out the showers that Bucky calls him back.
“I’d do it the same all over again, Buck. Wouldn’t change a damn thing.”
“Even though your girl would still be here if you’d have saved yourself?”
Bucky shrugs, “My girl’s on her way back, Buck. And because of you I don’t gotta worry whether it’s real - I just gotta go work on my big move.”
His big move was gut impulse when, standing in new duds, shiny boots, starched crush cap, glinting oak clusters, with brushed back curls and a trimmed mustache, he saw a Rolls Royce careen through the flimsy barrier gate of the base after a barked clarification from the chauffeur. John Egan saw her coming, it had to be her, and he went a’runnin’ towards her. There was a small throng already getting in their way, servicemen trying to stop the trespassing vehicle and civilians clamoring to see the starlet back, all gathering around as the sexy black car careened past them before screeching to a well considered stop, still yards from Egan’s sprinting figure.
The door opened without the aid of outsiders, a shiny glint of bottle blonde barely shone above the top of the ajar door, face obscured by the top of the tinted window, then it was slammed shut and a diminutive figure, top heavy and bundled with tiny little legs that seemed to wobble upon their foundation of sky high heels, wheeled ‘round to face him -it tripped him up worse than a roadblock.
At his back John sensed more than saw or felt Buck directing, not himself but others, the boys he guessed, the crowd maybe, he didn’t care. There was a ring of others around them but that’s just what they were, others, about as real or important as the ropes around the ring when two boxers collide. No one was between them and she was bundled in his jacket and she was blonde and her legs were tiny and her ankles spindly for such balance and she looked like a woman who was crying or had been and Julie was panting with an open garnet red mouth and eyes so young and wild and wanting that there wasn’t anyone else there.
Just Julie Jean finally come, just like she said she would. And Bucky sure hoped he wasn’t dead right now, he had so many living promises to make up to her. If he could just touch her -his hand twitched at his side and he heard himself grunt, like a racehorse straining at the bit, like some unknown thing was stalling him.
She swam closer, the clip clop of her heels on shitty pock marked pavement the only thing he could hear besides the wild racket of his heart, crowd noise and the hum of engines he knew should be present weren’t even audible. If those footsteps had clopped along the floors of somewhere as unlikely as Stalag Luft III, he’d have known her, without ever meeting her he knew her. He felt close to staggering, it was mercy his feet knew his heart well enough, it brought them closer. Still a few paces away from each other, she’d have to stagger too if they wanted to touch.
Her young sweet face, the one she had shown him alone, it was plain to see here and now as a catalog of betrayals and hopes flitted across its schooled mask, breaking apart the starlet and letting out the heartsick girl. A loud pop jarred them both, a camera going off. A brief flinch. The rest of the world would see this face too, now. It only broke the facade further. Her lips moved wordlessly once, twice before her throat buzzed to life and the warmest voice Bucky had ever known spoke:
“You kept your promise.”
John Egan was alive, brazenly so, still wearing marks along his face of a grapple or ten with death, darling creased face with its prominent cheekbones sallow and looking deprived of any nourishment apart from stubborn hope. But he was alive, he’d promised he’d stay alive for her, try his damndest and here he was, looking at her like she was the reason, half reverence, half accusation. He was alive, this first promise ever made to her that had been kept.
Could he even comprehend what it meant to her? What he meant to her by consequence? He had kept his promise to her and he was so very alive, an absolute mountain of a man, taller than she had ever imagined, and she had imagined him larger than life, built him up to impossible proportions, saddled his shoulders with impossible expectations and he swore he was man enough. She didn’t know they made men like that but it had been nice imagining him being so. He was every inch what he’d reported, soul and body, if anything he had shorted himself and Julie felt her chest growing tight enough to burst as he stood there, surrounded by his friends and her hangers on, a step or two and they’d be proof of life to each other. But he stood and she wondered if he knew she didn’t care, if he didn’t care she didn’t care anymore: the whole world could know it, hear of it, see it in newsprint
—She loved him.
He had said he loved her first. She saw his hand shake by his side.
“You kept your promise.”
Bucky Egan wasn’t likely to forget the way Julie Jean had reprimanded him for his false politeness in his second letter, how she had been the only woman he’d ever known who asked for honesty and meant it, called it honesty when he’d been so used to being told he was only good at vulgarity, at talking shit, running his mouth, saying the things a grown man should know better than to admit he felt. She had called it honesty.
She’d want him to be honest now. That thought, a conviction more than anything, filled his body with power again, his heart kicking up with resolve instead of terror. Gale said she loved him, or likely did, and John had long ago known he’d never have love for anyone the way he did for her. What was the meaning of being here on this spinning globe after all the reasons he shouldn’t be if not to act on it?
He thought of a disapproving mother, a spineless fiancé, and angry producers and the demanding public — all things his girl had to bear alone because he’d been busy doing his bit. Hurt confessions written on crinkled paper where tear tracks lay, sealed inside an envelope that she sent his way with the press of her gorgeous lips every time no matter what she was enduring, crossed his mind. Never once had she asked for anything besides his honesty and him and he vowed in that moment to never put anything before her again — no, he had kept his promise because he had a vision in mind already: Julie Jean with his ring on her finger, his babies in her belly, and glowing with the love he would devote to her.
Julie thought he looked big from afar, up close and in sudden motion he was like a pillar that could float, some strange grace tempering the bulk of him as he rushed her, not a stagger or a stroll, he marched right up to close the final distance and his hands were expectantly reached out to claim her so that when he was to her, they had her right away, grasped her around the waist, impossibly large and impossibly warm, they lifted her up, right beneath the ribs to get her on some level playing field and then, then she felt him kiss her.
He smelled of aftershave and tasted of bubblegum, and once she’d knocked off his cap with a hand needy to cup his head, she felt the tacky traces of pomade and smelt a heady tang of what had to be sweat. She’d never been kissed by so manly a man in all her days of being smooched, and she thought she’d been smooched before but if that’s what all that playacting of her previous life had been, she needed a new word for the way his lips molded to her own, vigorous, joyous, sure as anything, and somehow possessive like she’d never known. Like he was claiming something promised, not conquered. It felt like a kiss she’d been told to film, but never knew how to make real. The scritch of his mustache was real. The burn of her lungs as a firm hand to the back of her neck stole all her air -that was real. The implacable forearm barring her little self to his body, keeping her aloft and snug, that was real.
Bucky Egan was real and that made Julie Jean sure that she was, too.
Miss Lana Turner of Hollywood fame and canteen acclaim weighs next to nothing in Bucky’s arms; it allows him to keep her up with one alone while sparing a hand to rustle under golden curls and bring her forcefully close. He finds no resistance, his issued cover flies off the back of his head and she is carding through his neatly styled hair with crimson talons and he feels like moaning into her mouth right then and there at how sharp and tangible and real it is. She is tiny and she is feral and she is wearing his jacket and she’s the one who wrote him back.
“I love you.” he reminds her desperately instead of breathing when they break apart, a fraction of an instant to stare cross eyed at the closeness of the other before colliding again.
Her hands are soft and small on his cheeks, her thumbs swiping away what might be an errant tear and: “I love you, John Egan.” Julie swears in turn and his world falls into place, peaceful and right and wrapped up in five feet of wickedly tailored rayon and his flight jacket. He went in again and her tongue met his this time, unreservedly; and this was all he wanted to do for eternity.
But then there was, “uhem, Major,” and it was Crosby tapping Bucky’s left shoulder that allowed them a reprieve for some air, even as Julie continued peppering light presses of her lips to the line of Bucky’s jaw and any part of his face she could reach. “Sir, meet Spangles Egan.”
A white fluffy shape, reminiscent of a muff or a stole, was shoved into the crook of his elbow, now holding Julie with one arm and using the lower curve of her pert backside as leverage for sturdiness, and a bunny with a light pink nose in his other.
“Egan, huh?” He turns to Julie.
“The adoption papers aren’t finished yet but Croz took it upon himself to rush the process.”
Crosby beams. “Ain’t he perfect Major?”*
Bucky had gone down having left his heart behind in a letter written to Julie, sick at the thought that he had built most of it in his head, only to come back and see she had made a family for him to return to. His friends and their bunny and all that was left was taking her to his Mama.
“Yeah he is, Croz,” he agrees, accepting the peck that a lovesick Julie Jean gives and only pulling away because he feels scuffing at his ankles. Meatball howls, low, and Bucky raises the arm holding Spangles higher. “Don’t think Meatball’s a fan.”
“Help Bucky out, Croz,” Brady speaks up, “he can’t stand there holding his girl and their bunny and fending Meatball off forever.”
“Who says I can’t? Who says?” And Brady disguises an eye roll at the similarities between all the boys on base. From beside him, Benny bumps his shoulder with a laugh.
As Crosby nears once more, Bucky does find the arm holding Julie tightening to keep her closer to him and extending Spangles back. Paranoid with the thought of her being taken — like if Crosby would opt to take her from his hands to hold instead.
The boys all release a knowing laugh and it finally spurs Buck into action, the handful of cameras that had followed Julie back to base continuing to snap but at least they were so busy trying to eavesdrop and shove their microphones closer that they hadn’t spoken up to ruin the moment.
“How about we take this somewhere more private?” he suggests and Julie can feel with the precision of radar the hovering agreement of Herb somewhere near Major Cleven’s side.
“Yeah let’s.” Herb agrees vocally, and from the elevated height of John Egan’s gently jostling arm as he moves them on, Julie blows kisses to the scarecrow boys who look as underfed as they are happy to be back, and in their midst is Marge, with two local kids who’ve both confiscated one of her smooth hands to hold in Buck’s absence.
On the walk back to -to somewhere, Julie doesn’t know where they’re headed, she relishes the feeling of being a bobbing little weightless cork in his embrace and the feeling of his large hand cupping the ticklish flesh of her under thigh, when she glances back to tease or encourage him, she finds pale blue eyes already locked on her and it makes her belly flip.
“You might trip.” she titters in warning.
John just kisses his teeth playfully and shrugs his eyebrows, she wasn’t sure that was something a person could do until him, but that’s what he does before his low voice rumbles out, cushioned by soft discretion for those nearby, “I ain’t gonna trip.”
There’s nothing salacious about that sentence but his surety and his rebuttal makes her thrum and maybe he sees the way her eyes start glowing because he gives her a dark little smile to match that looks exactly like his letters sounded and she attacks his neck and ears with kisses for lack of a better thing to do as he keeps walking and walking. “I love these so much.” she complains, nibbling at the prominent ridge up top until she hears him laugh, delight that swings incredulous when he realizes she’s in earnest and she likes the damn things that’ve always stuck out too much, being too big for his own damn head. “Where are you taking me, Major Egan.” she asks.
“Gonna take you to my favorite joint, Miss Turner,” he returns, accepting each peck she gifts him between every word. “I’d find it hard to believe these boys did it justice without me here to liven them up.” Bucky doesn’t need to look over to know Buck and Kidd are rolling their eyes.
It’s on the tip of her tongue to protest and let him know she didn’t go anywhere without him there because it would have hurt too much, but someone else speaks first.
“You and Julie must have the same mind, Bucky. she chose to not visit any place you frequented without you here.” Crosby’s walking in pace beside them, cap in his hand, and he chuckles. “Must’ve known we’d be missing you too much to enjoy it truly.”
Bucky’s head swivels in disbelief, wide eyes jumping from where Crosby trails beside them at a demure two paces on the cobbled street to Buck a few feet ahead, who nods in confirmation. Bucky’s eyes return to Julie Jean, sheepish and pink in the face. Her eyes are watery again but still bright and full of light, she finds the hurt of missing him returning as she remembers every time she denied visiting the base again or the pub nearby. He’s going to need to keep squeezing her for that horrible lonely feeling to dim in the slightest, it was too strong to be transient even in his hold.
“It wouldn’t have been right without you.” She’s still bobbing in his arms as he continues taking careful steps. She strokes his cheekbone, trails down and thumbs his mustache. “Didn’t want any of it without you.” She’s whispering now to keep the words secret between them.
Love and devotion pour into her confession making Bucky feel more special than he ever has in his life. She had chosen him since the first letter and had been more loyal than he ever thought anyone capable as she continued choosing him, choosing to believe in his luck and chances to stay alive, a devout belief for him to return home and give her everything he ever wrote and promised. A home, a life, happily ever after.
Bucky has no words. He puckers his lips for another taste of her and this time he has to stop walking to ensure he won’t drop her, finding no resistance or hesitance as she immediately allows his tongue to slide besides her. He was an ocean away still but her mouth meeting his felt like home, warm and loving, a big smile threatening to break both their faces at being together.
His boys whistle and holler again, stopping and creating a crowd once more to join their bubble of happiness. At this rate Bucky thinks the five minutes to the bar was going to be closer to thirty.
He steals one more kiss before pulling back to look at her. He jostles her into one arm only once more to push a stray hair behind her ear, allowing his thumb to trace a blushing cheek.
“Then let’s make sure we do it right, huh?”*
The Kings Head is the quintessential English pub, and Julie finds a gasping commendation of it leave her instantly on sight of it; from its squatty white washed and gabled exterior, with flower boxes and lounging hound on the threshold, to its dark and pungent interior, homey and oak, yeast and hearth soot filling the air, hazy evening light filtering through a thousand dust motes and the rest of their illumination is provided by bare bulbs only recently freed from the shackles of black out curtains. The ceiling is so quaint and low that Major Egan adopts an almost constant stoop upon entering and he deposits her on her feet lest she bonk her head amongst the rafters; it’s gratifying the way he sets her down and frees her to shake hands with the barman and his son and Bucky’s friend -the best dart thrower he knows- and all of it without his own hands leaving her waist a single time.
Julie thinks so long as he keeps touching her, holding her to earth she can keep functioning enough not to ruin it, embarrass him, make someone feel awkward about it all. “My girl Julie Jean” he tells them all, she’s been much talked of and not her movies, the recruits know her otherwise but she’s merely Bucky’s girl to most of the elderly locals gathered round the bar when he plops her on his knee up on a stool, and Julie ponders living in this tucked away little world where she’s never anything special but by association with John Egan.
“Yeah, yeah, Donald, the usual!” Bucky is ordering with gusto that’s properly out of place at dinner time and with cheeks as sallow as his are, but it livens everyone else up and many of his recently returned boys dare the same, ordering gin and ciders and whiskeys like they never left. Martini’s not being in the menuc Julie graciously settles for a rum and coke and sips it while Bucky’s large hand engulfs her glass and they remain that way, staring and silly until she runs out of breath and must let the straw go from between her lips.
It’s a bit like watching dominos fall as the freshly liberated boys throw down their shots, smack their lips with appreciation, slam their glasses down before suddenly going green and very worried. Demarco is the first to bolt, Brady after him and Julie isn’t sure which one is in it for companionship and which for necessity.
“You be careful with that.” Gale murmurs on the other side of Egan and his second shot, “Don’t follow those fools out the door.”
Bucky doesn’t vomit, and he doesn’t intend to get plastered while on his first date with his dream girl, but two shots used to be an easy chaser and he isn’t worried. As is, after feeling the second he doesn’t vomit but he does feel the rush to his head of being distinctly buzzed. After two shots. Well shit, that’s what going teetotaler does to a body’s capacity for a good time. There’s a distinctly new and frankly sickening after effect of the world spinning around too, and that he could do without and he shuts his eyes closed for a minute to regroup. It lends to the heightened sensation of feeling, and what he feels is Julie’s lap beneath his palms, her hair at his cheek, the jostle of her arm as she grabs her drink from the bar, the weight of her on his thigh.
She’s actually real. And he’s a sicker man than he thought. He has to manage this for her, somehow.
“Baby drink a little of this.” There’s a straw poking his lips and when he opens his eyes Julie is tending to him with rum and coke on his tongue, “Little sugar crash, huh?” Her hands are in his hair and he feels like unraveling on this very stool.
The sugar does help, or maybe it’s her doting and Bucky is sure he’s got the dopiest grin on his face when he sways near and pops the straw out just in time to lock lips again. They taste like sweetness together and he licks eagerly into her mouth again, chasing that taste, his hands squeezing at her waist and he can tell she likes that, she shudders and her tongue lolls when he does. The barman is not so enthused: to his credit he gives them a good half a minute before letting out an “oi, more o’tha’ and I’ll be givin ye the keys to yer auld room upstairs and requestin’ ye tae make use o’it.”
Out of desire to indeed do the hangout justice, celebrate their liberation, wait for the mince pies to cool for dinner and avoid being perceived as disgustingly ravenous for each other’s flesh alone, Bucky and Julie abscond further into the pub and take up their places by the dart board- where, to everyone’s delight, it is discovered Miss Tierney has never played.
“Stand like this, baby cakes.” Bucky happily instructs her and his hands move her about like they would his own little doll and a recently recovered Brady and Demarco trade looks that say all too much, enough for Crosby to grin with them in a way Brady didn’t remember him grinning when he last saw him. Knowingly. He’s holding the damn little bunny to his chest again and Brady wonders if he’s ever going to give it back to Lana; Herb being very glad to be free of its keeping as he chats over a pint with one of the farmers.
“Ya know it ain’t yours.” Brady feels compelled to remind, feeling faintly sick still and very drunk despite puking it back up.
Crosby just keeps stroking its blue satin collar. “Someone has to see to him when Bucky and Bucky’s girl go at it later on.”
“If I remember straight, Buck had said that was Marge’s sole job.” Demarco muses, eyes a million miles away and light slightly agape, the cider hit him too before it came back up. “To tend the bunny.”
“The bunny is named Spangles and Marge is no longer a fit companion for him.” Crosby declared and nodded at some scene behind the two men. They wheeled around and when they’re spotting vision cleared, they observed Gale and Marge playing at checkers in one of the booths but the game seemed very secondary to the way they were staring at each other, hands in slow motion and lips parted heavy and freshly licked.
“I gotta get me a woman.” Demarco realized and ordered himself and Brady and Crosby another pint.
As the night waxed on, Bucky found himself and Julie as alone as they’d been all night, a paltry sort of privacy mostly gained by placing his shoulders between the ongoing dart game and the sultry dancing behind him and the small little lady tucked into his side, legs over his and her warm hip half in his lap. There’s nothing but her warm face and his jacket and her halo of hair against the paneling of the pub booth and it's intimate suddenly, like he’s not felt all night. It hits him like a wave, the want and the love. Judging by her darkening eyes, she feels the same.
“Buck, he mentioned some trouble,” Bucky broaches the topic, voice gone gravelly and low for her ears only, his hand rising and gently tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear, “trouble with your mother?”
It feels odd to say these things aloud, subjects they’ve written each other about a million times and yet saying them, she feels half stranger, half twin, like he should know this entirely and yet -and yet.
Julie’s laugh is short and weak, seemingly too overcome by his nearness, the timbre of his voice, the undivided attention. “Well- well yes she, she was in a state. And now that I’ve not arrived I-“ Julie imagines her mother is in more than a state, indeed a rage seems most likely. She wants to shudder but he’s too warm to allow the gooseflesh to form, she hopes he’ll never let go, he’ll never let her shudder again.
“She’ll have quite the morning with those pictures served alongside her danish and coffee.” Bucky remarks in wry conversation and Julie smiles, watery, unsure where he’s going with this.
“I imagine she will.”
His face sharpens, attentive, commanding and she feels her heart quicken even as the hand on her waist keeps on its loving palming of her flesh, “You alright with that? With what she’ll think?”
She can’t imagine he doesn’t know yet- “I don’t care, Bucky, I really don’t care what, what anyone really, what anyone thinks but you.” she whispers.
Bucky merely nods his head nearer, warm and generous lips pressing to her brow and she feels a thrill at the fatherly caress, down to her very toes, she’s never been sat in a lap and asked about her future. “Don’t need to care what I think right now, Julie Jean,” he gently steers her, “just need to know what ya want, sweet girl.”
She pulls her head away to look him dead in the eye, this man who clawed out of a grave to be here for her, the answer is the same, “You Bucky.” she swears, “That’s all I want, you’re all I’ll ever want.” she’s never been so sure of anything in her life. She delivers her line with more conviction than any script, she means it this time, she can see forever spanning forever ahead and it’s him, it’s just him and she is going to have it.
She loses sight of him again and his mouth claims her, promising and rewarding and she moans into it, yearning too long deferred and the run and the late evening and the talks of forever making her desperate for some consummation to it all. He must feel it too, his kiss is not for the public and her moan makes his hand spasm on her waist, greedy and lewd. He pulls away with a hoarse gasp that is anything but restrained.
“You can have me.” he grants Julie the keys to the kingdom, and only the tiniest edge of caution remains, “But if we’re gonna give ourselves, we need to do it proper.” he tells her softly and wedding bands and sleepy priests and a midnight wedding dances in her mind and her head thuds in mild shock, “You need to cut that lilly livered coward of a fiancé off before I so much as get a finger up your sweet self, you hear me?”
In a daze Julie hears him, and like a child salivating for the proffered candy, she nods, frantic and wanton, she’d do anything to have any part of him tucked inside her. “I’d forgotten him.” she admits sheepishly and he barks out a laugh at that.
“I haven’t.” he replies and something about the gruff jealousy of that sentiment makes her heart soar.
She cranes her neck for a clock.
“Whatcha lookin’ for shorty?”
“The time.”
Bucky flashes his wrist watch toward the light in a move so elegant and well practiced that even that simple gesture is utterly erotic in her mind. The hands of the watch swim in front of her. “Quarter to three.” he pronounces.
That means it’s horribly late here. Lust and sleep deprivation make for strange incentives. “That means it’s morning in New York.” she realizes and Bucky's surprised face is utterly gratifying, “I can catch him before he goes out.”
Her man grins at her with a wild look in his sharp blue eyes, like he’s starting to believe this isn’t at all in theory, he looks mildly crazed and she wants him to take it out on her body. “You could.” he agrees.
“Is there a phone booth nearby?” She asks, loathe to make the call here with all the eavesdroppers and hooting friends, lovely as they are.
“Half a mile.” Bucky informs and he’s already scotting them both out of the booth, “I’ve got a bike. You can ride. Handlebars.”
Julie’s never been more excited to slink out of a party in all her life, she’s never been more excited for a date to pick her up as she is when Bucky and his bicycle that she has no reason to think is indeed his, serves as her noble carriage as he pedals them along the muddy lane in the pitch black of a early summers morning to the tiny, golden beacon of a telephone box.
The war is close to over, she realizes, as the booth’s happy bulb glows unabashed ahead of them in the inky countryside. The war is over and the lights are back on.
Bucky props the bike against the booth, lone wire sentinel on the destroyed landscape and there's a barrenness to these flatlands that give Julie Jean the creeps, like wandering out into the Oklahoma flatness as a child. Brings with it the fear of falling off the edge of the world.
Bucky opens the red and glass paned door for her, ever the gentleman, his expression one so serious she realizes he really needs this.
Julie tugs John into the tiny red phone booth by his tie. It must be done and his presence gives her determination. He’s a warm, solid, looming presence behind her, heating her up as she keeps her truthful cruelty terse and cold.
She dials the number, she endures the switchboard, she cajoles Vincent’s valet to interrupt his breakfast. She tells the man who’s hurt her it’s quite over. Utterly over.
It’s over. She’s cruel about it.
Exactly like Vincent is, exactly like he deserves. Now she knows what warmth is, she cannot possibly go back. She simply tells him it’s over, and when he asks why she says it once again and hangs up on his rebuttal of ownership.
She wonders if Egan has even fully heard what she’s said, she thinks he might think poorly of her if he did but he doesn’t seem to be aware at all. When she hangs up the receiver and turns round to him in the small space, his eyes have gone dark and the most alarming concentration paints his face.
There is a crackle between them that has nothing to do with the fuzzy phone line or the patter of falling rain on the glass panes around them, no lightning in the sky but her finger tips buzz and like magnets; they meet each other. A brutal, awful, needy kiss. Smashing their faces together without much finesse but pouring out an admittance of so much need it’s quite painful. She can feel Bucky tugging at her hair and forcing her face closer when his nose is already shoving aside her own and his lips are working desperately against hers and oh -he’s got such fire in him! He’s thrumming around her and she can hear herself squeaking like a choir girl at the way he helps himself to her body like he saw through her timidity all along, knows she is only shy to take what she wants. She hardly recognizes the crazed creature that meets him at every step with hunger and provocation, when his tongue gently dabs at her lip she swallows him whole, when his hand strays from her waist to her breast she finds herself expanding a breath to fully fill his palm, begging him to take take take.
“I want you so bad.” he hisses like he’s angry at her for being so intoxicating, for robbing him of the ability to breathe. Egan shakes her as he says it, jolts of her neck that fling her hair back with each jerk and her mouth goes dry at his brute strength just barely restrained.
“You’ve waited this long, can’t you be good?”she teases him only to provoke in hopes of being repaid with another snarl and a bonk of her head against the glass as he kisses her again.
Devours more like. She’s not sure why she teased, her nylons are soaked and her own kisses suggest how dire it’s all become for her, having him so near and potent. It’s only she’s not at all sure what she meant by it, what could possibly be finished in this open space. It’s a little fishbowl and the stormy night gives all the ambience to lull her into imagining it’s private but god knows what’s in the jet black night, looking on at the spectacle of the looming Major and his little floozy smashing faces and gripping shirts. She’d let him take her in a hedge at this rate, just not under the bare bulb hanging above them.
But oh, he looks so beautiful in this light.
And if ever anyone spelled need, in its rawest, basest, most flatteringly primal way, it’s John Egan pressing her to the red paned glass of a rural phone booth, an oddly calming smirk on his face and an unarguable thigh beginning to wedge its way between her legs. There could be anyone out there but somehow that doesn’t seem important anymore, not like his large hands do, tenderly cupping her cheeks. Or his belly pressing into hers with his next kiss, the way his lips have grown more insistent while regaining some measured dominance. She finds herself rocking against his strong leg without even thinking, following the instincts his passion raises in her.
She doesn’t know when she grabbed back ahold of his collar. Did she ever let go? She doesn’t know but she fists it all the same, dragging him down to her height as she pants and mewls into his mouth, heels slipping on the rough floor, grit sounding loudly at each scuff.
It’s flattering really, how pathetically wanton she has become under some heavy petting and deep kisses. His suspicions of being wanted are more than confirmed -it’s still a little astounding coming from an Angel like her, wanting a rake like him. But she’s a warm blooded girl with lush tits that seem to expand with each tortured gasp and her little clamshell that’s making a wet spot on his slacks. It’s not the rain, can’t be, there’s no leak.
“I’ll show you good, sweetheart.” He threatens in retaliation for her tease, tweaking a nipple through the soft rayon of her dress, hand wedged beneath her/his jacket once again.
“Don’t, don’t be awful, I can’t breathe.” she begs and he draws away from her lush lips in mild concern.
She splays her hands against his chest to keep them apart as she gulps in air, not phased by the way his hands are groping her. He watches her squint her eyes up at the bulb above them before she shakes her head as if to clear it. When her eyes drift back to his they are startlingly clear and terribly dark. “I’ve got to get out of these nylons.” she whines and suddenly she is reaching under her swishy rayon skirt and yanking at the clips and the hosiery.
His gentlemanly instincts kick in a beat late yet still he offers his hand to balance her -only late due to the prospect of her bare and the possibly imagined musk thats suddenly pervading the air as she shimmies them down her thighs and wobbles on one heel, and then the other, before pulling the nylons out like squid legs between her own. He can see her fingers flutter to drop them.
A tragedy waiting to happen. He’s dreamed about using those for all sorts of-. “No!”
She startles and he hastily snatches them from her pretty hand before she can discard them on the dirty floor. He leans against her before bringing them to his face, closing his eyes and breathing deep. She sounds like a wounded cat and it makes him smirk, some wet smear catching his upper lip and he dares stick out his tongue, dabbing at the traces of her excitement caught in his mustache.
“Your belt.” she doesn’t ask him, she informs, and her hands have gone to his buckle, undoing the flat metal with more ease than he’d like, it nearly makes him jealous of who she’s perfected the movement on, only it’s him she’s pantsing right now and he’s not sure he’s even got condoms with him. He swings the panty hose round his neck and does his best to assist. “I-I-need, I need-“ she’s angrily begging as she wrestles the material down and exposes the pristine white of his briefs and sturdy pale flesh bracketing them. She swings a leg back over his own and suddenly the sweet flowy little skirt is bunched up and Bucky registers a warm, wet quim sliding against his thigh. “I need-this.” she sounds satisfied and begins a grind in earnest, his muscles dragging against her and the tickle of leg hair making her jerk.
“Filthy, you’re goddamn filthy.” he praises, voice gone to hell and raspy as anything. He squeezes her jaw so tight she winces and kisses her again, egging her on with harsh grips on her waist and sweet nips to her lips. “You gonna get off like this? Hmm? Like an alley cat? Rubbin’ on the first fella who bought you a drink over the channel?”
Her look is venomous and she releases her grip on his shoulder to squeeze his face in return. “I just canned my fiancé for you.” she tries to put every bit of what this means into words for him, to remind him how very much even this depravity means to her. “You.” she slurs as a flash of anger crosses his face at the rebuttal, at being made to be serious, even as his grip on her is deathly possessive. “I’m getting off on you, Major.” she leans her head back against the glass and shuts her eyes, the better to concentrate on the thick feel of him against her and the ragged sound of his own breathing. “Please cooperate.” she sighs, lips tugging up in a smirk, already anticipating the temper she’s stoked.
“Call me Bucky.” he asks, a little desperate but he’d never admit that.
“You’re lucky I’m so close, Bucky.” she warns.
“Then let me in you.” he cajoles and she can hear his own smirk in his tone, hot and breathy against her ear.
“No, no this will do just fine.” she gasps, almost there as it is, “Besides, I don’t trust you not to blow.”
“I-don’t have condoms.” he admits, eyes glued to the wet streak visible on his upper thigh every time she slides towards his knee.
“I know.” she laughs, merry and wise.
“How?” he’s outraged but he’s laughing, and her eyes are happy little slits when she opens them to watch him smile.
“I saw you patting your pockets, the minute you saw me across the way at the pub.”
“Well, well that was -shit.” he concedes after a minute of open mouthed deliberation on his next lie but it falls short, her heavy breathing and pinched brows suggesting a crisis at hand. “Lemme rub you though it.“ he begs, wheedling in a strangely attractive way for a grown man and his fingers are dancing over her hips.
“No, this, this is doing it just fine. You just -just be, be all big and strong for me.” She pants, her eyes rolling about the closer she gets and he buries his face into her throat, licking and nibbling at her jaw, letting her rake her nails down his neck as fire shoots along his spine and lodges in an ever growing ache between his legs. He might be dribbling himself at this rate, her breathy mewls so near and her desperation so satisfyingly resonate with his own. “Bucky!” she searches for him desperately as she nears and he pulls his head up from her shoulder and finds a face, one that’s been like a beacon to him this whole long war, staring up at him in adoration as she shakes apart in his arms.
“Tell me some of those nice things again, please Bucky.” she begs him and she can see him wet his lips, his forehead pressed hers, their movements becoming in tandem. “Some of those nice things you used to write me.”
What he’d write to her, before she met him and learned he was about as dangerously volatile as a lit fuse and every bit as addictive as danger.
“Nice things?” he ponders, grinning smile flashing white in the dull light, “Like- what a doll you are? How I’ve spent every night for two years pretending you're mine?”
“Yes, yes.” she chants and he doesn’t know if it’s from the nearness of her climax or in reaction to his words. Maybe it’s all the same for girls, if he was inside her he could no doubt feel the reaction each little praise had on her fiery hole. They were marvels that way.
“And your prissy fiancé’s a fuckin’ idiot under-appreciatin’ you like he does-“ it’s from the heart but he seems to have misfired, she shakes her head and moans,
“No, don’t bring him up right now. Not now.”
Bucky digs his forehead against hers, belligerent of the order, “I think I should talk about him,” he decides, “so I’m gonna. He’s a goddamn pansy if he can’t even get himself a real war job then cuts yours down. He should shut up or man up. Bet he whines about everything you do, doesn’t he?”
“I- mayb- oh, oh gosh!” the rock of his body against hers, wipes her mind of anything except his own brand of niceness, that happens to be tearing down her old beau and cranking his thigh between her legs.
“Bet he was always complainin’,” Bucky surmises she’s close by the gasping, wordless flutter of her eyes, “stupid sunnuvabitch, anybody who’s got you oughta be proud as anythin.”
“You proud of me?” she chokes out, begging for it and she watches as his caddish grin melts into some recognition of her need and he peppers her face with little pecks before taking an earlobe between his teeth, schmoozing her with,
“Course I’m proud of you.” his voice is husky and low this statement is followed by a nip of his sharp teeth, “You know I think you’re the swellest dame that ever walked the earth and all my friends know I think so, too.” he bites his own lip as her movements become frantic and the heat they’ve built up between them has the place steaming, his hair gone jet black and her nose shiny, “I’m proud of all the work you do, all the money you’ve raised and for cannin’ that useless sunnuvabitch and I’m proud of you for havin’ such pretty yams -a bold choice, ya know that, don’t ya Jeanie? Bold choice to carry around knockers this size, can’t order these up and plan on being’ discreet all your life. No sir. You like that? Huh? Yeah? Mm, well I like most how you ain’t ashamed to ride a leg when you need it. And I bet you need it, stupid whiny fucker probably got cramp every time, right as it got good, didn’t he?”
“Oh god Bucky, oh god.” she never expected the spewing of compliments and insults and such prejudiced loyalty to herself to send her flying but it did, his jumbled, idiotic stream of love flying out of his panting mouth the same way it flew from his pen. “Oh God, Bucky!”
She’s not sure she’s ever felt this much want in her life. Satisfaction rips through her white hot to the very tips of her ears and soles of her feet and all the while it’s not enough. His hands are clasping her own and she white knuckles her grip on them. She chomps at his kisses angrily, wanting to eat him alive and thank him all at once. It doesn’t seem to end, the buzzing shocks and he seems to sense it too, how she’s too chicken to make herself mad with the pleasure. She feels Egan’s hands disentangle and descend on her hips, engulfing them in his large palms, fingers dug into her backside, forcefully jerking her against him, his leg moving in an angry tandem until she’s writhing from the overwhelming feel of it.
The phone booth creaks from the force of something besides the gale outside and the horribleness of their animalistic indulgence only makes her clench harder and grin wider at his own ravenous face.
“Bucky!”
Bucky looks down at her with the face of a man well satisfied with himself and utterly enamored with her, “That’s it, scream it, scream my name, sweetheart. This ride ain’t slowin’ till you do.”
“Bucky! Bucky! Bucky!”
At her screams, Egan honest to god laughs, loud and merciless, the laugh of a man who knows how to wring the best out of life. “You don’t want me to use my hands?” he taunts through gritted teeth, “Ok then. Don’t need ‘em. Look at you.”
“Johnny!” once more and the one his mama gave him, higher in pitch and she’s not sure when she stopped being in charge of this endeavor and instead became his little ragdoll.
“That an sos?” he chuckles.
“Yes, gosh yes, I can’t anymore! Don’t make me anymore!”
“Alright, alright, shhh, shh, that’s a good girl, shh.”
He ruffles her hair at the nape of her neck like he’s calming a puppy and, face planted into his chest as she is, shaking and quaking at the residual aftershocks, she doesn’t even think to take offense. He’s warm and solid and loving and she sags against him, the mess she made of his bare thigh not yet cooling.
Finally it lessens, the madness calms only to be filled by heavy intent. And still, Bucky delights in her pleasure and despite the way he handled her to get her over the finish line, his hand is nothing but tender as it pushes her hair out of her eyes and his nose nuzzles her own as she pants the stars out of her vision.
“How’s that feel, huh?”
“Good,” she sighs, hopelessly fond, “just like you promised.”
“Good? Good? Good my ass, you're crosseyed and my leg’s soaked.” he goads her and she’d smack him for being so insufferably arrogant but he’s turned her limbs to putty and after what he’d been through he deserved to be smug after a job well done.
“Did you mean it?” she asks instead, green eyes looking like fragile little ponds apiece, one word of his, no, a lack of word, an expression, a micro expression and they become a whirlpool, tears spilling over and years worth of longing returned to sender.
He takes pains to tuck a falling strand behind her ear, those starched victory rolls of hers beginning to flag, his thumb lingering, caressing her cheek once the job is done. “Every word.” he swears with quiet vehemence and can feel the answering sag of relief from the woman in his arms, “From the very start. Every word.”
“Knew it.” she sighs in relief, a smug look of joy taking the place of wariness and she gloats in his love, a drunken, pacified little thing as she clasps his own face again and kisses him soundly. “I knew you were a good man.” she mumbles into his plush mouth, hands yanking on ebony hair, misted and curling from the drizzle outside. Could he be any more delectable? His hands were large as paws around her waist and the scorching weight of them makes her dizzy with speculation. “Told all my friends you were worth every sleepless night.”
“Can’t believe you cared that much.” he moans in appreciation, the horrid years of incarnation no less dull a memory for all the grand to-do’s and peacetime jubilance of the present. The war was almost over but he wasn’t sure he’d get a full night’s unhaunted sleep for the next decade.
“I’ve never cared about anybody the way I care for you.” Jeanie looks at him then, as earnest as Buck in her devotion and John swallows hard, something alarmingly wet and stinging beginning to collect in his eyes and if he were a crying man he’d very much fear they were tears. “Silly man, couldn’t you tell?” she whispers mournfully.
“I-I guess I hoped.” he acknowledged, biting his savagely until the mist clears from his vision, he cleared his throat loudly to begin afresh, making a racket in the small space and it’s pattering curtain of rain, “But it was just that -a hope.”
“Mmm.” she understands, cocking her head to the side before gently circling one of his wrists with her hand and slowly bringing it off her waist and higher, to the plush swell of those assists that began it all. “Do these feel like hope?” she asks, smile broadening as the hip pressed against him feels a jerk in the inseam of his trousers at the contact.
“Feel like heaven, more like.” he grunts, eyes squinted in a vain attempt to recall the trajectory of the conversation.
“But not ephemeral, intangible, hope?” she presses.
His hand squeezes her just shy of painful and he smirks at her gasp, “I think I’ve got to test ‘em to make sure they stand up, don’t vanish on me, but yeah, I’m inclined to agree, they’re pretty tangible.”
“I’ll give you tangible, Major.” she’s suddenly determined, a foreign and entirely odd desire rising in her as she gives him one last parting kiss and slides to her knees in front of him. Pebbles and grit dig into her poor kneecaps and the squalid little floor provides hardly enough room for this, but the look on his face! Oh it was worth every little discomfort as her hand travels up his inner thigh, bare and sticky from her wantonness earlier, and palms over the large swell of him in the hammock of his white briefs.
“Oh Jeanie,” he breaths as if he couldn’t credit his eyes, “you don’t have to, you really don’t!”
“I want to.” she is surprised to hear herself say it, but here was no movie producer or oil heir or hotel owner, it was just a young man who had gone through hell and back for her and thought himself well repaid by her kisses sent over the phone and a racy photograph or three. She wanted to thank him and she wanted to wipe that ever so maddening smirk off John Egan’s face. So far just being at eye level with his crotch had achieved the latter. “I want to -to suck you.”
-To suck you off.
She couldn’t say the whole of it, and she trailed off on the end of her aborted sentence as it was, yet the sentiment came through as did the darling innocence still lingering under years of man-eating under the pimpish guidance of Metro Goldwyn Meyer.
“Well, ok.” John decides after shaking his head, like trying to make the words rattle a little clearer in his ears. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Good.” he admits his doubt of walking back the surge of flaming hot need that’s coursing beneath his collar at the sight of her so willing, so fresh, so bundled in his jacket. Ruby red lips blurred by his kisses and the tip of a pink tongue too near to where he’s close to taking matters in his own rough palm. “But stand up a minute, sweetheart.” he tugs her to her feet and it’s a sign of her trust in him that she’s only puzzled and hasn’t stopped grinning all the while.
“What’ve you got planned?” Her voice is hushed as he begins to unbutton his jacket, the cloth falling apart at his chest with each buttonhole slipped, dark shirt and tan tie coming into view and a chest so broad she could float on it at sea.
“Something for yer knees, m’lady.” he jokes with crinkled eyes and the sweetest smile as he squats and lays his jacket on the filthy little square that serves as a floor in this phone booth. “There.” he sniffs, satisfied with his preliminary courtesy and Jeanie just about bursts at the gesture.
“You’re too good to be true, Johnny Egan.” she moans into another kiss she forces on him as he laughs off her praise.
“I can be quite awful if you’ll let me.” he warns, “Ask Buck. Or make me wait any longer for that promised blowjo-“
“Shh, Shh!” she blushes at the threatened vulgarity and slips to her knees as if the act is somehow more elevated than any talk of it.
“There you go.” he pats the top of her shiny hair affectionately as she takes her place kneeling again, her hands tiny and delicate against his strong thighs, enjoying the flex of them beneath her palms as she slides them higher and slips a finger into his waistband.
He’s riled and ready when she lets him out of his constraint, flushed and glistening in the dull light of the single bare bulb, much like his bitten lips above her. Daunted and hungry all at once she finds herself falling back on old Mister Selznick’s corny script language, laughing lightly as she watches the hefty length of him bob against the beautiful plane of his lower belly. “Well, I see the little Major is at attention.”
He snorts above her, heartily amused but he pushes her face away briefly just as she begins to pucker her lips, nothing strong, just a firm little press against her forehead with his fingers.
“Just a minute now,” he stalls her, sounding almost pleading except for the explanatory tone he uses as he flicks the dangling curls at her neck back over her shoulder, out of harm’s way, “if I’m gonna get blown by The Lana Tierney, I wanna do it right. Call me picky, just wanna do it perfect, like -perfect like you.”
“Well,” she smiles indulgently up at him without a clue as to what he means, “show me then. Have at it Major, I’m down here for you, after all.”
“Yeah, yeah you are, aren’t ya?” he marvels, cocky and awed all at once and then she watches him heave in a breath and widen his stance with a calculated shuffle of his feet and his pulled down slacks. It makes her blush furiously to realize he’s getting himself a braced, strong stance so he can move his hips freely. “There we go.” he sounds pleased as he leans over her, his strong arm flung out to brace himself on the glass wall opposite, looming over her like a deity sheltering her under his shadow.
Jeanie wonders what it looks like from the pitch black of outside, this tiny, foggy, glowing haven in the storm with her worshipful pose and his imposing figure inching nearer and nearer until she can duck her chin just that little bit and press her lips to the salty head of him.
John’s loud groan fogs up the glass he has his forehead pressed to and he swallows hard at the initial feel of her timidly breaking her jaw wide apart to fit him further, more, he feeds it into her mouth with one hand at the curly thatched base, down, almost halfway, red painted nails digging into his hip and making him twitch on her tongue. “Yes, yes, hell yes.” it feels so good it breaks his heart and Bucky feels sweat roll down his temple as his blood pounds and his brain begins to fuzz. The fingers of his left hand twitch uselessly at his side before gently resting on her shoulder, squeezing in rhythm as she chokes herself in her eagerness to please. “Shh, shh, it’s perfect, you’re perfect.” he calms her with a voice shot to hell and dipping a full octave below that of the man who’d kissed her knuckles in greeting earlier that evening.
Jeanie wishes she had more expertise, some ability to dislocate her lower jaw from her palette and take him down all the way but she hopes he’ll give her time to learn.
In a hotel room. In the back seat of her car at the drive in theater. On the bench of the gazebo at the Nantucket country club. A million and one places she wants to learn him.
That’s for the future.
For now she loosens her desperate grip on his flexing hips to work the length of him with her hands, that part she can’t lathe with her tongue. That’s a lot of it, she realizes with some discouragement and not a little admiration. He goes on for ages, large enough around it takes both her hands to surround him and it’s a long slide root to tip, the feeling of a large ridge protecting the underside and its vital vein making her thumbs glide along it like a track, tacky and wet from her spit and his dripping excitement. She works what she cannot suck and she can hear him gasp above her in appreciation as he finally gets the friction he needs.
“Julie, oh Julie baby!” he praises so loudly she finds herself aflame at the idea of them being overheard on this quiet country lane.
She peers up at him as he stares her down with brilliant white teeth gritted in delight, his dark hair tumbling in a sweaty cascade of curls into his sharp eyes, his cheeks painted in a high blush as his arousal stampedes away from him. She can’t seem to go fast enough with her mouth too wide, her tongue hampered by the sheer impossible weight of him, the stretch of her lips that gives little room for finesse, and so his hips begin to buck and chase her suction without thought. She ends up sputtering at one disjointed thrust as she goes to breathe.
She pulls off him with an obscene pop and with lips shiny and a chin slick she gives him the sweetest smile he thinks he’s ever seen. “John, don’t hold back.” she gives him permission with hands folded in her lap and her face tilted back for his use.
She can see the relief clear on his face, his thanks too. “I’m close.” he assures and she shrugs, not caring except to make him happy, she hopes it ruins her. His roguish face quickly morphs to a look of faux sympathy followed by a smirk that suggests she should run for her life. Too late, the thrill of his shuffling near again seizes her as he gently cups both her ears, getting himself a nice little swirl of her hair over each of his palms. Her pretty stage-perfect hair is destroyed and when he slides in, deep enough for a flash of panic to widen her big blue eyes, he gives her a quirk of his eyebrow which says all that needs to be said -you did offer, Jeanie.
Frantically she nods in agreement, feeling filthy and wanted as he uses his grip on her hair to pull her back down on him and back to the tip and down and back, a horrible, debauched chorus of wet, slurping, groaning pleasure steaming up the quaint little booth. “Angel face.” Bucky grunts down to her, his thumbs leaving her temples to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes to the hollow of her powdered cheekbones.
When he lets go it’s a combination of rigidity and fluidity, he shakes out a leg like he’s bracing for a punch and slaps repeatedly at the glass by his head, rattling it and cursing as molten pleasure overtakes, a fistful of her hair in his other hand as a lifetime of desire melts out of him and into her warm mouth.
There’s so much of it. She wonders in a breathless, half gagged malaise if it’s a war’s worth of desire flooding her tongue and mouth and down her throat as plentiful as the drinks earlier tonight. When he sees her swallow him without protest his face crumples in the soft afterglow of release and he grinds his hips a last few times, puffy cockhead raking along her palette, grief stricken by how utterly she accepts it. His breathing sounds ragged as a beast, and for those few quiet moments before he regains himself, and after he has spent his ferocity down her throat, Julie basks in her softening mouthful and the heave of his belly above her and the height of his shoulders far ahead of her and the face that’s looking down on her with such adoration as the fog clears that she realizes she never has seen it before in a man after they’ve used her up.
Bucky is more enamored after he’s surrendered his potency to her tongue. Even when the lust clears he is blatantly, unashamedly, gloriously in love. It twitches on her tongue and it floods her nostrils and it scratches her scalp and it beams down at her with watering blue eyes.
She’s never been looked at like this before, not after the sex, not ever, she doesn’t think.
She will wait until he pulls out. She will make him understand this is all she wants to do, as long as they both live, she wants to make him love her. She wants to love on him.
Slightly softened, his girth grants her enough room to finally wiggle her tongue against him, playfully swiping along the thinning underside and he grunts, sensitive and amused. With a grin on his face Bucky takes the hand once snarled in her hair and strokes her still hollowed cheek, petting its calloused way down to her lax lips, the corners of which are collecting with sticky, pink tinged spunk from his release and the residue of her lipstick. He collects all around the ring of it, swiping and nudging his fingers alongside his cock into her mouth, making her suck to bring it further in, and he has to fight to stay on top of the sensitivity that brings him, she can tell, but he seems adamant in keeping himself in the warm haven of her mouth and she copes with his fingers and the salty tang of what he collects and pushes in to be properly discarded into her belly, along with the rest.
No one has ever played with her this long, after the fact. She thinks she might drip all her primarily female organs straight to the floor with wanting him like this. And then Bucky has the sweet gall to say, “What happens next, sweet thing, requires a bed and a half a dozen pillows.”
It takes them a full ten minutes to leave the phone booth, giggling and clutching and kissing, they do their best to straighten each other out but it’s quite useless and when Bucky tells her there’s no other place for a man to know his woman properly except back upstairs at the pub, she gives a hopeless little giggle, pure girlish nervousness coursing through her at the realization she looks quite loved up and will have to wade through all her new friends on her journey upstairs to be further used up.
With love. Suddenly the concept is utterly delightful.
For once the walk of shame excites her. And the throb between her legs and the incessant need to touch him always and the hot smothering heat of his jacket still around her prompts her acquiescence as Bucky lifts her once more into his handlebars and takes off into the chilly night. He stops halfway back, a sudden breaking and a dissatisfied grunt, it almost pitches her headlong into the mud.
“You’re too far away.” he’s reaching forward and patting her hips, making her hop off, backing her round the handle bars, patting his own thighs. “C’mere doll, c’mere, we’ll just have ya close and you’ll hang on.”
It’s everything she was feeling too. It’s terribly precarious and if he were a smaller man it mightn’t work, but that’s the thing -he isn’t. He’s Bucky and all the things that wouldn’t work otherwise, wouldn’t please and wouldn’t captivate her, now do. And so she slings her arms around his neck, spreads her legs achingly wide to anchor around his waist and lays her head on his shoulder so he still has a view of the road. He’s got the smell of her perfumed hair and his stinking sheepskin in his nose as he shoves off the pavement and pushes down again on the pedals. The bike only wobbles a little with its new uneven load but he rights it easy as flying, and she can feel his legs working strong and forceful beneath her own and it’s thrilling, as thrilling as the feeling of his sweaty neck against her lips.
“There we go.” he proclaims it good, once they’ve got the wheels going again, and Julie Jean is drowsy with the safety of his decisions being her own wants.
The atmosphere inside the pub upon their return had only gotten thicker, hazier, chummier; haggard ex-jail birds and fresh flyboys fall over their tables and games and catch themselves on each other’s shoulders like the distinction between the two groups wasn’t a matter worthy of throwing punches just a few hours ago. They’ve got a song going, Bucky doesn’t recall Brady ever playing the piano before but he is now, and it’s passably the best sounding thing amongst the accompanying raucous of all occupants trying out the lyrics to Anything Goes. Gale and Marge aren’t to be found, and Bucky would pursue that very intriguing development if he hadn’t better things to do, tucked into his side, tiny white palm clutched in his, stockings with their soaked gusset in his pocket.
“Donald, I’m gonna need that key, after all.” Bucky leans over the bar and tries his best at a discreet stage whisper over the caterwauling songbirds. Julie shrinks so far behind him her forehead is buried in the sleeve of his jacket, a pressure to the back of his arm, just above his elbow. Like a bunny hiding their face and trusting it’ll make the rest of themselves invisible. She deserves the Ritz and a secret tunnel to get her there but this is all they’ve got. At least everyone didn’t notice when they came back in.
Donald is strangely respectful when he hands over the little golden key and it’s familiar, thick oaken fob. No wink and no rabald comment, Bucky wonders if the camp has made him so obviously pathetic that even moments before getting laid he is still an object of pity. The way Donald’s eyes skitter to the young darling behind Bucky, a respectful little nod of acknowledgement to her, dissuades him.
“Night Major, night miss.”
“Good night Donald.” Julie warbles soft as anything while Bucky tugs her gently towards the stairs.
They have to hedge around the outskirts of the partners gathered in their path. Bucky turns Doug’s shoulder with a gentle hand to get past a table and there ended all their peace, when Doug’s drunken eyes beheld who had returned he vocalized his joy loud and ecstatic. His rambunctious response bringing the attention of all the young soldier boys as they parade their Major and his gal.
Bucky feels Julie’s hold on his arm tighten, the sleeve of his jacket being pulled down. He’s afraid for a moment that the sentimentality of his boys will have her convincing him to stay down here with them — despite the fact that he’s been stuck in a worn down shit hell hole with half these boys for over a year and the tip of his cock weeps with the need of Julie’s tender flesh and warmth. But when he looks down her eyes have grown dark, impatient, and she rubs her thighs together, the only tell tale sign of her desire, urging him to get them out of there.
“Alright, boys,” he adds bass to his voice, the way he would from the cockpit leading a mission or telling them to quiet down when the Colonel was speaking. Julie shivers beside him and he knows their clock is ticking. “Gotta excuse your Major tonight, gonna get my girl somewhere warm and comfortable.”
There’s more whistling and cheers to follow, hands clapping him on his back and shoulder and he moves Julie Jean to walk in front of him and finish leading the way. Suggestive comments and shrewd gesticulation are sent his way and Bucky’s only happy Julie Jean walks ahead and doesn’t look back, unaware of the actions of his boys. If she’d see she would get flush faced and shy and Bucky doesn’t want to take the time to reprimand or punch one of the men for making her uncomfortable.
“Oi, Bucky!” It’s Blakley running to catch up with him again, hand in the air and Bucky extends his own to accept the slap from his friend. “That's all I could scrounge up for you on such short notice. Make it worth it.” And then with a wink he backs off, joining the rest of the boys at the bar.
When Bucky looks down there’s a gold tin foil package in his palm. He coughs, smiles, sliding it into his pocket. Bucky turns back to Julie who waits patiently, squeezing at her tiny waist to slightly lift her from the ground in his sudden haste.
Julie giggles, having only been in his presence for a couple of hours but she’s spent more time in his arms and his embrace than she had on the ground and she loved every second of it. “I love you,” she reminds, because she can and he’s in front of her and not an ocean away. There’s a tug on her heartstrings, her body, mind, and soul used to missing him and uttering the words into empty rooms.
This time Bucky is there and he is quick to respond, “And I love you, doll,” with a kiss to seal his oath.
They finally get inside, tripping over one another’s feet as they refuse to disentangle their limbs. Julie only had two glasses of rum and coke but he’s ninety percent sure she’s drunk on the essence of him. A lightweight when it comes to true love. She can still taste him in her mouth, salty and musky, no sweetness, but it’s delicious and she’s thirsty for more. She wants to see more of the lipstick stains she left on his cock. Wants to see him naked like she promised herself a million times, so that when she tries again, she can watch every little movement he makes.
“You promised me I could try again,” she whines into his mouth, “I can try until I can take all of you in my mouth,” and she’s swiping her tongue against his, licking stripes into his open mouth and a wet saliva string connects the two of them even when she leans away to talk.
And John’s never been so hard in his life, never had an innocent yet sexy gal like Jean Julie Jean be so nasty and so innocent at the same time. Wanting to practice gulping on big cocks and massaging balls when every man in her life before has only used her as disposable.
“They were so big,” she’s still trying to get words in between his kisses, “dark and hanging -“ foggy, he realizes she’s describing his ball sack, or what she was able to make out in the dark of the phone booth.
John shudders, trying to imagine a world where golden haired angels wax poetic about ballsacks the way he does on her tits. I mean, he’s justified- look at them! Actually, that’s an idea, he should ask if he can look at them. Fucking finally.
“Wanna see you.” he mumbles into her mouth, a clack of teeth as they time it wrong, it doesn’t matter, every point of contact makes his body thrum. He runs his hands along her sides, along the sweet cello curve of hips and waist and tits, squeezing emphatically at the fleshy swells that make a good showing in filling his giant palms.
Julie giggles, “I was thinking the same. About you.”
“Agh, nothin’ to see with me.” he dissuades, pulling away far enough to note the sheen of sweat that has broken the barrier of her immaculate powder, rose gold blush in the dim light of the humble room.
She seems to notice the place at the same time, attentive eyes scan and flit, arms still interlocked with his own and he prefers to stare at the sweeping dance of coal dark lashes as she surveys the place than look around at a stuffy old room he’s a little ashamed to admit he’s crashed in one too many nights black out drunk and wishing the old hound that always came in under the sheet at three am was her.
“It’s so quaint.” she murmurs, like someone who doesn’t get laid out in scratchy sheets and lumpy mattresses very often. It fits, he hasn’t got anything to offer besides this anyway, at home or here.
Quaint. God, how long will quaint be enough?
“Bucky?” she asks. The lashes are lifted, fanned out beneath tiny arched brows, spider fringe to guileless baby blues.
Releasing his lip from between his lip he lets out a small scoff that sounds more winded than he hoped. “Hey shorty.” he should take her to bed, he should kiss her again, he should tell her every dream he’s ever had is in his arms and he doesn’t know what do with that, can’t kiss without keeping his eyes open to watch the next shoe drop, save them from it crushing in their skulls.
“I’m -I find I’m a bit -nervous.” she whispers.
Fuck, this is why they work, and with her blushing, looking up at him so hopeful it’s enough for him to close his eyes and let this work. “Was thinkin’ the same.” he rasps, admittance that sinks soothing into her timid heart.
Julie lets out another giggle that John is starting to learn hides the same feeling his scoffs do. “Isn’t that silly of us?”
“Mhmm.” He agrees, fingers trailing to brush her hair back.
“Guess it’s just- just we’ve built this up and all and-“
“It’s gonna be.” he tells her firmly, hands and voice and heart, “Everything we’ve dreamt of. Gonna be that and more. Cause it’s us. S’finally us. Just us..”
“Yeah?” she begs.
Bucky smashes his lips tight and determined. “Yeah.”
Their lips lock again, going somewhere this time, headed towards the cliff, arm in arm, necks craned to get there first. It’s close to flying, it’s such a thrill. He drags his hand up her ribs and to her shoulder, snaking under the stifling weight of his jacket still encompassing her little frame. Bucky’s got a glint in his eye as he takes in the top of her breasts that are so generously popping out of her dress. Thanking God for whoever took her measurements and decided to always go smaller in the brassiere area. He can’t help it when he leans down and sucks on the top of what part of her port breast is available. He reaches to drop the shoulders of the jacket off her again when she finally seems to sober up, lips pouty and eyes hazy, taking in how she’s stained his face and his mustache is glistening with their mixed saliva.
His hand lifts under the collar, lifting, shirking it off her neck, one sleeve down her arm, aiming to get it off her and her dress after and her garters and her-
Julie snatches the jacket back onto her shoulder.
Blink and its back on.
Like Bucky hadn’t just slipped it off very intentionally. No, it’s back on alright and she clutches it instead of him suddenly, chest heaving and eyes a little too wide.
“Baby doll?” he asks, at a loss but feeling wrong.
“This, this is-“ she whispers, vacant and vague and her eyes are scanning the room unseeing, “this jacket is, it’s very special to me, it stays, it belongs to a man who loves me and it- it stays. I won’t take it off. He loves me and it’s all I’ve got -I won’t. Won’t take it off.”
Bucky blinks, grit and film in his bleary eyes adding an exhausted filter to this duty consecutive breakdown of the night. Goddamn it; -about breaks his heart to think his old ratty sheepskin was all she had. “You’ve got me now.” he clasps her cheeks, careful but warm and solid and alive; her eyes focus. “Real deal, I’m here, baby. Better than any jacket, warmer at least.” he cracks a smile and her own wavers into being.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah baby?”
“You’re gonna make love to me?”
“That’s the idea, sugar.”
“Ok.” Julie takes a bracing breath and lets her arms fall, lifts a shoulder and allows one heavy, leather sleeve to slip down. Her heart melts when Bucky helps it fall with a cautious finger, the backs of his roughened knuckles sanding against the ivory her arm as he drags it to her wrist and off, his eyes locked on her own. He has the tenderest expression crinkling around his eyes and it keeps her panic at bay as the other arm slips out and the heavy fall of the jacket gets caught by his deft hand.
John tosses the precious garment on the bed. “You’d like it with ya, maybe?” he offers and she nods violently, eager to smell it and him while at their pleasure.
“Might get messy.” his grin is primal, wolfish.
She presses her lips to his again, hand anchored on his bent neck, “I want it too.” she nibbles along his jaw, “I want it to smell like you. I’ve rubbed myself on it, must’ve been a hundred times. I want it to smell like both of us.”
“Goddamn.” he articulates in appreciation, “Goddamn! Filthy, my baby is filthy.”
His cock aches with need at the imagery fo her pretty pink oussy rubbing itself raw on his sheepskin, it’s pressing against his skivvies, trousers tight and making him uncomfortable but first Bucky’s aware it won’t be right until he is sure Julie has gotten it into her pretty little head that his jacket wasn’t something she had to cling onto anymore. It would be hers for as long as she wanted, forever if she so wished — but he’d be damned if he bed her and continued to let his woman think every single line he had written in every letter had been anything but the truth. She had asked for his honesty and he had taken it seriously, jotting down every thought to send to her no matter how filthy or grand anyone thought it to be.
Bucky takes her small hand in his, noting another size difference between them as her entire hand fits in his palm, his fingers outstretched to cover her tiny fists. He untucks his shirt, the buttons having been ripped open courtesy of his ravenous woman.
“Gimme this,” he grunts, opening her fist to press her palm flat against his chest. Over his heart. A tear falls and Julie lets it, the strong thump of his heart in tandem with the beat of hers. Reminding her that he was real, he was alive, he was breathing. “I’m real, Julie Jean. You got me now, baby, it’s all fucking yours.”
Somehow, John Egan was hers. Life was giving her something good, something pure that loved her for who she truly was, that fought to keep her safe and survived hell to get to her. Millions had posters with her face taped on their walls, waited outside her home and studio for photos, but only one person in the whole world had told her he loves her and meant it.
Bucky’s skin is burning underneath her hand, slick with sweat, and she lets her hand tighten against wiry, chest hairs that clump together against his heat and perspiration.
“I love you,” she swears, words venomous with her truth and passion. “I’ll die if you ever even think of leaving me, John Egan. Or I might just kill you if you attempt it.”
The smile that threatens to split his face is blinding in the dark of their room but Julie vows in that moment to make him smile like that every day. And if being smothered to death with threats from love was what it took, well then good thing Julie had a few more roaming around in her head.
Bucky has no business ripping the buttons off the only dress Julie Jean had up here in this room, but that was tomorrow's problem and he trusts Marge for that. By the way Julie Jean moans at this disrespect for her tailoring -he’d say they’re tracking.
“Off, off, off!” her breathy command is as dainty and insistent as silver bells, little hands tugging open his slacks and pawing off his shirt while forgetting the tie until it half strangles him. “Off, I need you.” she pants.
He throws her to the bed. No great distance, but from the height of his arms it makes her bounce and the creamy jiggle of skin as she lands makes his masculine brain sizzle from the sight. It’s obscene and it’s holy and she is his and he lays himself atop her like he needs to make her a part of him.
Julie spreads her legs to accommodate him and finds it unnecessarily thrilling how wide she must stretch just to cradle his hips, John is broad in every way, and laying on top of her the disparity in size between them is only magnified, and she feels a girlish thrill at how helpless she is. How much of a man is now wanting her, spread on top of her, nestled where she’s most needy and vulnerable. She wonders if he can feel the dribbling mess between her spread thighs. She tilts her hips to chase his own and he groans, loud and appreciative. It sends gooseflesh down her arms. The heat of her jacket is under her arms, soft shearling and a stray zipper digging into her back.
She is surrounded by Bucky. And no one can take this away.
And he is staring down at her, her face and her breasts, what’s started it all. He lets a noise out, in the back of his throat, caught in his lungs, like he got punched, but it's such a monumental moment for him.
“Christ! These.” he grunts as he mouths at her breast, kneading and abusing with his huge hand the one he is not suckling. “Can’t even fit one in m’mouth.” he tries anyway, most valiantly, Julie thinks. Sloppy and worshipful. Just like she imagined when he wrote about them. She feels herself tingle and clench, every nerve alight. The room smells of his sweat and his saliva is coating her boob and his mustache tickles against her skin and he’s a furnace against her and already a soreness is setting in the spread of her hips —
“Bucky I’m almost-“it seems absurd as soon as she voices it but she’s sure of it, she has gone demented with sensation and heat and the earthy smell of him all around, his finger on her ripe nipple and his mouth clamped like a babe at the tit and the sweat of his hair sliding through her fingers “-almost…there.” she melts with it, a coil that’s been alive all evening, that wound tighter in the phone booth even when the pleasure snaps, it melts and pools now and she gasps out her breathless delight.
And Bucky continues on as is, speeding the pad of his pointer finger against the bud of her hard nipple, allowing his teeth to pinch the one in his mouth and suddenly Julie finds her hole clenching around nothing, legs spasming but pinned by the weight of him on top of her. She sighs, content.
That was new. So is his sharp grin when he pulls away to stare up at her, chin pillowed by her glistening breast, his calloused hand snaking down her belly to explore the mess he coaxed into being.
His touch makes her jolt, even though the others pad of his finger swiping through her is a slimed, easy glide. One of his fingers is enough to span the entire breadth of her inner petals. If her poor pussy wasn’t so flutteringly distressed by its current emptiness, Julie might dread the burn of those large digits plunging in. As is, she nods eagerly, “Please, please I’m going mad up here.” she tells him and doesn’t miss the roguish look of satisfaction that flashes across his face.
There is enough of him -everywhere- that she is gifted a kiss on the mouth the same time that she feels his finger circle her pearl, slow and lazy. The combination feels so right, the care and the savoring, the way he licks all the way to her molars while his finger swirls down the slope of her entrance, roughened finger tips sending sparks along her spine.
“I love you.” he tells her again, because he can.
She tightens her fingers around a fistful of curly black hair, longish and sweaty, utterly real: because she can. “I love you.”
Everything is that. Each kiss, each nuzzle and clasping of flesh. He breaches her mid giggle, for even their laughs say the same: I love you, I love you, I’ve loved you so long let me love you.
Bucky bites his lip as he gently sounds her cunt with a single finger, palm upwards, callous tickling inside like he’s searching for the root of her desire along the silky walls. Julie can feel when she clenches around ole thick knuckle.
“Can barely fit a finger in here, Shorty,” Bucky teases her, gravely cautionary yet not meaning it
one bit, “and you’re begging for my whole cock?”
“Yes!” Julie Jean begs back without pause and it makes Bucky’s heart flip again, its been doing that all night but then again, she doesn’t stop wanting him, “You can teach me. You can stretch me please. Johnny- I’ve waited so long.”
Bucky slips his second finger in there, obligingly, and tries to scissor her, an attempt to stretch her out until Jeanie is clamping her thighs together and trapping his arm -he finally finds it, that spongy spot inside her that has her going pale white and screaming, “YES YES — oh Jo-Johnny YES!”
Lovingly cruel he fits a third finger in there right before she comes, “Give it to me, Jeanie, give me all of it.”
Her thighs release his forearm but his torture isn’t over, a raspy groan shaking her belly as he writhes his way down her belly until his face is in between her thighs where he slurps at her like he’s still got that straw of hers he carries around on his tongue.
“I can’t - Johnny please - SWEET MAN HAVE MERCY ON ME - oh - oh, oh, OH!.” the sounds of her ecstasy and the feeling her hands clawing at his shoulders spur him on, drunk off the feline smell of her, the slippery wet feel of her on his cheeks and chin, tongue dipping into the honeywell- nothing could be further from that vile camp and its harsh starkness of human flesh. Here is humanity in all its warm, wet vibrancy, buzzing and twitching beneath him. This he’s good at, he knows, learned it a long time ago and something clicked, the enjoyment of giving and having to hide it as taking somewhere along the way, so that nobody would guess what a goddamn wretch he was for some praise.
The kind that spills from Julie’s lips like it’s the only song she ever wants to sing again, only tune she’s got left.
He feels her pushing at his shoulder to get away but he’s got an iron tight grip around her hips, while Julie knows she's trapped his head between her spanking thighs until she can hear ringing in her ears and sees spots as he sucks on her clit through the orgasm. When she comes to, he’s pressing kisses to her belly, her breasts, her face, smeared with the taste and smell of her but she welcomes them nonetheless.
“Now can I have you? Please.” she is pleased with herself for managing to remain polite despite her jittery quakes and the terrible craving she feels remaining.
And he laughs, Bucky laughs, because she’s still asking for cock, after all that. She’s still asking.
With a mustache sopping wet and teeth that sparkle like a wolf’s, he kisses her, splat on the mouth, smile to smile.
“You’re sticky.” she giggles, breathless
“That’s you, Jeanie.”
She licks his chin because she suspects he’ll like it, being met with unabashed enjoyment of the dirty communion they’re sharing. She was right,it gets him going, something frantic creeping back into his worshipful enjoyment. He tries to get up to get that condom that’s somewhere in his slacks but she refuses to let him get off of her, holding his weight down on top even though he’s twice her size; not that he’s trying to fight her off.
“I- goddamn, i- baby- i, need-“ he gets between bitten lips and clacks of teeth, “need to grab the condom, Shorty.”
Those are the magic words that allow her to release him but not before she says “hurry make it quick!” in so breathless a way he halfway thinks of trusting his rather shit pull out game than chance leaving her bosom. But Ev Blakley didn’t give up his pro-kit for such negligence, so -Bucky tumbles out of bed like a lumbering god out of his element of white crisp sheets and Julie lays back biting her thumb, enjoying the chance to watch him in the lamplight. She watches him as he quickly searches for his slacks, broad white back bending over, large thighs with their shadow of hair stippling, the soft swell of his thigh creases and the dark cleft of his backside where hair grows and spreads to the barely discernible outline of his sack hanging between. He’s shaking out the drab olive; a tiny little plop sounds in the quiet room. He picks it up.
Foil packet between his teeth, Bucky turns back to her, tosses the pants once more, they litter some new space on the floor, and Julie’s heart bounds in her throat at the look of him. This, watching this, watching him, this is what she promised herself. But she never got it quite right, he wasn’t so big in her dreams, not so pale either, with ribs as defined as hia sinews, bruise mottled clavicles and a Lowe belly that has a slight dome. His glittering eyes, those she imagined though, in fevered dreams about actually being wanted by somebody good and brave and willing to give this whole business of loving a real try.
She watches him slip on the condom, enjoying the way his magenta-angry and bulging veined cock is smothered by the thin, clear rubber. It looks painful as she watches him slither it on. Bucky makes sure to pump himself a few times, kneeling in front of her spread legs, grin in place and she mewls, hand coming to her clit as it pulses between her lips with a heartbeat of its own.
“Ready, dearest?” John asks, forehead pressed to hers, a hand beside her cheek and another between her thighs, holding the massive, blunt tip of him to her aching core.
It makes her eyes water: the reference to their many letters and she pulls him down to kiss at him in response, the head at her entrance has her tensing, feeling thick and fat compared to her small hole. He is going to destroy her, change her utterly, there’s only the Lana Turner of before and this Julie Jean after. This is Bucky’s effect, this is Bucky’s creation, this happy, trembling, heartbrokenly happy girl tensing at an act she’s done a hundred times before.
“It’s us,” he whispers lovingly, “relax.” He presses a kiss to the side of her head as he traces the skin of her hip, “You’re in charge here.*
Julie knows if it hurts he’ll stop but she doesn’t want him to, that’s the catch, so she gives him a daring little look, “I want all of you.” because she’s determined, legs locking around his hips to cage him in. “You won’t deny me, will you, Johnny?”
As for Bucky, he’s so fucking in love as he looks in her eyes, “Never, Jeanie. Whatever you want, it's yours.” as he slides another inch in, a groan escaping from deep in his chest while her legs twitch around him “Every part of me is yours, dearest, even the fucked up parts that i don’t want you to see.”
At his confession, she relaxes enough that he’s able to slide more than half of his cock inside her before her body’s tightening and locking him out. Her mouth holds in that sexy shape of an ‘o’ he imagined a million times as she lets out a silent gasp at the intrusion, stopping right before his hips meet the cradle of her thighs, the base of him thick and pulsing with the threat of finality.
Her sounds of joy grow from gasps to genuine little cries, the shock of his size untenable despite the gentleness with which he introduced it.
“-and if this is all you can take, Jeanie,” he declares, sliding an inch out only to slide it back in, like all her panicked thoughts have been a conversation they’ve been sharing all this time, “if this is all, then we can make it work, baby. it’ll be enough.”
He kisses away the tears that are escaping down her cheeks but she still shakes her head, “No, John. I want all of you.”
Yet Bucky is aware of their size difference and even though he wants more than anything to give her whatever she wants, he’d never hurt her. So he refuses her this for now, refuses to move his hips, nuzzling his nose along her tear stained cheeks and pecking at her still parted, mewling lips -as if opening up there will help her down there, it makes him smile. Like showing a baby to how open their mouth for a bite. He runs his obviously along her dampened hairline, platinum strands fanned out in a golden halo. She leans her face into his touch, her belly heaving beneath his in a desperate struggle still, her lips pressing to his wrist.
“I missed you every fucking second,” he’s says into her temple, “every minute of every day was hell without you, Jeanie. And I fought it, I survived, for you - all of it so my dreams with you can come true. I love you. I love you so goddamn much. You’re it for me.”
All his sweet talking has her becoming pliant and relaxed under him until, suddenly, he’s plunged all the way in deep. Her eyes spring wide and her hand flies to her throat, sure she can feel the tip of him there. “oh - OH JO- it hurts, oh yes, oh god, john, john, oh-oh, goodness sweet man -YOU’VE BROKEN ME!”
Bucky’s tender heart lurches in worry at his reckless instinct to thrust, to go far, too far, all the way, as she pushes back against his shoulder in primal defense from the pain. But Julie refuses to unlock her legs or let go of the grip she has on his hair, shaking uncontrollably and stuttering over her screams, like his cock takes up too much space for her to get in a breath.
“Baby, babydoll shh, shh s’alright, it's alright.” He tries to soothe but he isn’t even sure she can hear or see him, her face turned into his wrist by her head, her grip on his neck turning his own into her shoulder.
“Don’t leave me,” she says instead, “don’t leave me, don’t move, don’t leave me.” she repeats as she clutches at him, pain and pleasure mixing like they never have before, he stays still as she shakes and comes apart for an estimated three minutes on his part. Pilot to the last, one eye on the gauge while the rest is pure gut instinct of performance. He feels it though, when suddenly her hips open and she’s releasing a large sigh like her body has finally accepted the intrusion. He lifts his head and her eyes are clear and bright, looking up at him, “Don’t you dare slip out,” she warns with an irrepressible grin, “We’ve worked too hard to lose our progress.”
His Julie Jean is a trooper, a damn brave soldier if he’s ever seen one, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles at her, so in love he thinks it’s gonna burst out his chest. The things this woman wouldn’t do for him are nonexistent it appears.
Bucky guffaws, loud in his relief, “You’re so drippin’ wet, I’m liable to slide out with any movement.” he returns, not exactly joking
“Nuhuh, I’ll die.” she warns him again, “Don’t move.” and he kisses her, just to show her he’s teasing and because he can.
“This’ll do, Shorty.” he promises, and there’s no sliding out as he thrusts his hips deeper into her, humping Julie into the mattress to get his friction. “This’ll do for me.”
“Always?” she begs.
“Always.”
“Always.”
“Yeah.”
He humps her like she’s a part of the mattress, the motion nothing like the mechanical, horizontal slide of anatomies she’s used to. Instead she feels him buried somewhere further than her womb while each flix of his solid hips stretches down where she’s most feminine and torn apart to accommodate his manhood. She can feel his coarse pubic hairs against her clit, becoming sticky with the mix of them, her hole becoming fiery with excitement.
“You’re are a dream, John Egan, you are unreal.” she fears she's slurring, eyes rolling back and sensation becoming preeminent, “I’m so lucky. The luckiest woman alive, I'm sure. Oh, I’ve waited my whole life for you, John. You’re perfect. You love me perfectly.”
He keeps it up for a couple more minutes, grunting, muttering how good she is and how brave and that they’ve broken her in. But throughout Julie remains aware it isn’t enough for him, can’t be with such little friction, that he’s gonna need to actually move to get what he needs and be able to come, but he’s a sweet man and he can see she’s in pain and he wouldn’t ever hurt her. She knows that. Not even if she asked. She knows she has to take it into her own hands. She grasps his hip and slightly pushes him away. Then she pulls, the message clear: deeper. Go deeper.
“No,” Bucky is emphatic, “Not if it’s gonna hurt you.”
“It won’t!” It’s an asinine thing to promise with the way she can barely cope with his mild shifts inside her. But she knows she’s got to play this up if she wants to get her way. She pinches a nipple, watches as his eyes fall to it, and uses her free hand to guide his face there. If he’s focused on his precious knockers he won’t focus on her face and the winces she is sure she won’t be able to hide.
Like she assumed, Bucky takes her nipple in between his teeth, humming and creating a vibration she feels right to her core, “Oh John, you’re so wonderful to me.” she tells him and means it, trying to focus on the pleasure his sucking is bringing and not the pain as he slides out “We were made for each other. I'm sure of it. it has to work the way God intended.” and then he’s pushing back in and she’s gasping, loudly, pushing his face deeper into her breast so he stays lost in his pleasure.
“Yes, right there,” she moans, even as tears slip out the side of her eye, this part she is well practiced in, the repetition of a gasping: “more, more please … keep going please, ah, please more!”
The pain is stronger than the pleasure but she doesn’t want him to stop, she wants him to find his release, wants to keep feeling him spread out on top of her, sweat dripping on her, thighs burning from the width of his lower back. He's been so generous with her the entire night, she wants to feel his body shudder inside hers. But Bucky is no blind fool, he isn’t a stupid man, and she never thought him so, so when he pulls away from her breast with a knowing look, eyes accusatory as he takes in her tear stained cheeks, she knows she’s met her match, and failed him all at once.
His voice is terribly low, raspy in a way that shakes her somewhere molten in her belly when he speaks up, “This ain’t good for me if you aren’t creaming around me, Jean.” he tells her, fully sitting back on his haunches while reaching for a pillow and using one arm to lift her and stuff it underneath her. “You want all of me? That's fine but we’ll find our pleasure together.”
The pillow beneath her helps, the angle elevating slightly where it feels more pleasurable than it had before, he teases her hole before reentry. Slow, purposeful. The weight of his heavy cockhead against the easy glide her pussy allows him. She’s so wet that the sounds of him wiggling himself against her sweetness are similar to those of kids jumping in rain puddles. The grin on his face is akin to it as well. He continues at it until she thinks he will go mad, and when he does, every slide deeper skims along a million happy nerves and she forgets the painful bump when he knocks on some inner wall deep inside, as far as he can go, sounding her shallows. “Yeah?” he asks, taking in the way her brow smooths her belly softens from its braced rigidness.
Julie just about beams up at him, stretching beneath him like a well pleased cat, coloring over the notion he has more experience than her. “Oh!-my man works wonders - yes, yes, miracles. Lord Johnny- oh you’re an angel! -a gift! oh! yes right there! yes!”
She meets his thrusts with abandon that can only signify a genuine enjoyment and he feels that at last he’s free to grab at the headboard and pound into her because he knows she’s no longer faking it. Her legs kick up to rest against his chest, sparkly done toes barely reaching his shoulders and he takes it upon himself to take one into his mouth. Sucking on the fat little pad as her mouth goes slack and her eyes roll dangerously. He can see the ripple his cock makes under the pale skin of her naval, it drives him insane to see his intrusion from the outside. The way his rhythm makes her flesh jiggle obscenely and her ever adored breasts go round and round in a hypnotic swirl of feminine allure punctuated by pinpoint dots of pebbled cherry nipples. His orgasm feels like it’s building behind his eyes and at the base of his neck as much as it is at his spine and in his sack.
He powers though the first time she clenches around his cock in a death grip while shrieking his name to the heavens, he does so by biting his cheek so hard he tastes blood. It’s worth it for her shocked terror as he doesn’t stop, pummeling and bully another peak out of her poor pussy by sheer size and will power, finesse gone as his malnourished hulk of a body remembers some nostalgic pride in this pursuit, in making a girl lose her goddamn mind from being throughly and properly fucked.
By the third he loses his own faculties, she is clawing at his back and digging her nails into his ass and her breasts are knocking his chin and he’s got to glaze those things one day but for now he simply feels too much. Feels the tacky softness in the cradle of her thighs, the knuckle of her toe on his tongue, the feel of her tit in his palm, the way her vagina hasn’t stopped milking him for minutes in her state of overstimulated state. It’s all these things but more so the promise of collapsing on a soft pair of homemade jugs that undoes him; he shudders and lurches, driving in harder than he should but he can’t help it, he jams himself deep and squeezes every muscle that can possibly force out another drop of ejaculate- and lets go. Spilling into the condom and feeling the warmth of her plush walls milking him dry.
When he collapses, there is a lush pair beneath his sweaty cheek and the beat of a faithful heart beneath, jackrabbiting in time with his own as she catches her breath from the best damn love making she’s ever known. It’s Julie, and he clings to her after, feeling himself shake apart in something close to weeping but without the tears.
Oddly, he somehow feels his body more in this moment of shaking lethargy than he did during the sex, each muscle tremoring and his heartbeat resounding places it shouldn’t and he knows for certain it wasn’t the drink, as his mind runs a rapid catalogue of his ailments and their possible causes -that is not impaired. Instead he is left with the crude likelihood of his body giving out, not enough food, not enough medicine, bones not put back right, emotions on fucking lockdown, last reserves of grit used up on that march. Now he can’t fuck his girl without shaking like he’s got some real special sorta weakness afterwards.
The only comfort is: he can feel Julie’s thigh still jumping beneath his hip, a mimicry of his shaken self.
Julie Jean can feel the shift. When the ear ringing daydream slowly ebbs into sticky bodies and labored breaths, boneless, sated flesh melded to each other, and for once there is no disgust or yearning for more to be found in her heart. This too, is perfect, just like the feeling of him striking deep inside and fast as violence at the end, just like the feel of his ass clenching beneath her ankle, just like the tickle of his mustache to her cheek as he buzzed her ear with the most gratifying groan she had ever heard. She finds herself wanting this part to last, too. And it does, he goes from boneless climax to shuddering atop her and she finds herself rubbing his broad, slick back on instinct. Like she would any creature needing her comforting, his jacket a soggy softness behind her and his weight a blanket atop. She pets him like she would Spangles, and the thought makes her smile.
“Shh sweet man, you’re alright. We’re going to patch you up just fine.” she whispers, and feels something suspiciously like tears or drool hit her collarbone, “A regimen of eggs and bacon and copious love making. We’ll have to crack a window, this room traps the smell like a cork. That’s the prescription. Doctors orders, don’t even try to wheedle your way out of it.” When she can feel his laugh vibrate her belly where his chest is pressed, she knows she’s winning against whatever dark place he’d gone. It makes her feel triumphant and giddy and- needed, really.
Which is a thrill: being needed after sex. Usually it’s a bundling up and out the door after her hole served its use. Usually it’s a tossed wet cloth if she’s lucky or a reminder that she’s welcome to the guest bed. But her hole has been utilized, has been ripped open and milked every drop her man had to offer her even if spilled into a condom and still he lays over her, face in her tits, and a hold that says he wishes they never have to let go.
Julie tightens her legs around Bucky, freeing her toe from his hold and wiggling it in amusement over his having put it in his mouth. It didn't seem strange at the time, but then again, none of Bucky’s expressions of desire ever did. And that’s why she knew they belonged together. “You’re going to be cooperative, yes?” she probes, a little breathless from his weight and her exertions but managing to poke at his ticklish side.
John for his part does his best to pull his act together. He never meant to lay the full weight of himself over Julie’s petite frame but it’s as if his bones have given in on him this time with his elbows refusing to bend, hips refusing to thrust, nerves that won’t stop their fucking shaking.
He shakes the way he did in the stalag, on that sorry excuse of a mattress with a thin blanket and an even thinner pillow. That one night it was negative degrees; the chattering of all their teeth keeping them up for the whole night until finally Bucky had had enough, ordering the men to heap together in groups of three or even four to increase body temperature. Gale and Bucky forcing a stubborn John Brady in between them because he was a hell of a pilot and a tough son of a bitch but a scrawny one at that.
Bucky thinks of letters he wrote to the luscious gal beneath him, with her glorious blondeness and her lush lips and perky tits now soft beneath his cheek, allowing him the privacy as he sniffles in between them. Thrown back to conversations with Buck, when Bucky had been aware he would never be who he was again and who he was now would be no use to any woman, let alone one as marvelous as Julie Jean who continued to believe the Major John Egan who wrote her existed somewhere in the skeletal remains of what the war had spit back.
“Useless,” is what he mutters into her heated skin instead, his eyes tracing the splotches on her chest. A year ago he would have made sure she was quivering beneath him, legs spasming around his hips and although Julie’s hole was pulsing around him still in aftershocks and every once in a while he felt her clit pulse against his pelvis, he was the one being wrapped around and held to her chest like a mother holding a newborn to her tit. “W‘kind of man am I if I can’t even be well enough to give my woman a good pounding?” He continues on, losing himself in the comparison he continues to draw in between the promises he made in the letters and his actions of the night.
Julie tightens her hold on him, pressing his face further into her bosom in the process and causing one of his nostrils to slide deeper, cutting off air supply but feeling confounded that Bucky thought she hadn’t been absolutely loved on, devoured, and destroyed in the best way under his touch tonight.
“ … will be of no fucking use to you, Jean. No fucking better than that coward of a fiancee you just cut off - ” she means to interject somewhere, to stop this farce and show him how wrong he is about himself but Julie’s been in the pit of these demons before. Knows the beliefs flow deeper than the words of anyone else and she feels her eyes burn as she withholds her tears, remembering how many nights she spent uttering words on how she would be no good, never enough for the likes of a man as brilliant and wonderful as John Egan. Only for him to be here now, his breath hot against her skin, tears drying on her breasts, and his shakes jolting her thinking those same thoughts about himself.
She’s never been more certain he is the one. Has never craved so deeply in her heart than in this moment to have Bucky’s love forever, to be held by him until God deems it to be time for her last breath.
She’s never prayed that she could outlive him before but she does now because she is certain she will never be able to live without him.
John Clarence Egan is her mind, her breath, her soul: for now and all eternity she will be of his belonging.
“To have these gems here, fuck Julie - these,” he runs his tongue alongside the swell of her breast, grunting as he dives his face between them. “ ‘kind of man am I, huh, to not be sliding in between this sweet pair right now? What’d I write to them huh? What did I promise them I’d do?” His hips thrust now but it’s weak and Julie thinks it involuntary but still it works in drawing a whimper from her.
“They’re yours sweet man,” she releases a watery laugh, a tear running down her cheek in protest at being withheld for so long. “Your knockers now, baby. They ain’t going anywhere.”
“They’re so fucking good to me. Been so good for me,” his desire is earnest now, awakening, she feels the swelling and hardening of him inside her. It’s still no easy feat for her body to adjust to the size of him hard again, her thighs spasming around him once more.
“Johnnnn,” she whines, can’t help herself, her body trying to mold itself to adjust to his large self inside her. “Yes, oh - fuck, yes.”
“I can’t, I can’t,” he warns, humping down into the mattress again but with no real tenacity, his body protesting against any and all of it even as his cock pulses and weeps for friction inside its safe, warm new home. “We’ve got tomorrow. We’ve got forever,” he complains, hips twitching even as his mind protests. He’s got to get up and get rid of the condom, he’s got to clean them up and make sure Julie Jean still has mobility but his mind and body protest action even as his penis betrays them and begs for more.
John curses, a fist coming down on the mattress.
“It’s okay, darling,” she consoles, a hand petting his hair back, “it’s - oh - we can rest now, baby.”
“Fuck,” he roars, feeling no more found than he was lost minutes ago. Desire heats his underbelly, hungry, but there’s no will he can find to chase it.
Julie’s at war herself, attempting to calm him even as she flutters and tightens around him. Her body not used to the size or girth but recognizing the love entering inside.
“We got so much time now, Bucky. So much to do.” Her mind races with ideas on how to relax him as he shakes on top of her, hands clenching her waist as his body refuses his need to take, take, take her. “Tell me about your mama, baby, and your sisters. Tell me what it’s going to be like when I meet them.”
“Don’t. Don’t talk about them right now,” he warns, a sweaty, spasming mess on top of this beautiful, voluptuous girl who’s naked beneath him. With the jiggliest, softest pair he’s ever encountered pillowed beneath his head, the tightest hole fluttering around him and the prettiest whimpers filling his ears even as she tries to calm him. “Fuck, they’re gonna love you Julie Jean. Gonna see the way I worship you and thank you for bringing me home to them.”
She moans loudly, unable to help herself with the love and desire he showers her with. At a war between his body and mind because he can’t fathom not taking her, fresh out a prison camp and winning a war.
“I’m going to take you home to them, John. Going to go with you so we can make a home,” she bites her lip as he gives an unexpected hump, knowing her desire only fuels him, “but first, we have much work to do, my darling man. I’m gonna fill your stomach with only the best East Anglia has to offer, even if that means I got to ship it in,” she remembers their letters now, how he’d bow to her wishes and preen at her demands, always in charge but never any less eager to please her. Always willing to give her anything she asked for because that was the man he was and continued to be. “Going to force you to sleep for a month straight and only wake you for meal times and your favorite pastime.“
He moans again, mind straight to the gutter.
“Baseball. Isn’t that right?” She playfully hums, scratching her nails against his clammy skin.
Bucky folds like a kid, lurching and showing his face; which was smiling if beet red, much to her relief. “Course, ma’am.” he tries on a show of respect while still balls deep inside her with an erect penis and a gumming condom he really oughta dispose of. “Orders are orders.”
That made Julie Jean tingle in happiness. “And we both agreed that I’m the boss here. So my orders go.” She phased it like a question and Bucky bit his lip in renewed arousal, concession apparent in his general expression but rebellion brewing in his sharp eyes.
“Sure. You’re the boss then, shorty.” he agreed, dragging a finger along her neck, gentle and contemplative before his eyes flicked up, mirthful and wicked, “But I’m your daddy.”
Julie let out a gasping cry, shock and reprimand on her face and he didn’t need telling why, he felt when her little pussy spasmed around him, as shocking to her as it was to him. “Bucky!” she squealed, winded, “You can’t just- just go saying stuff like that I-i oh, dash it, now I’m horny again. Move please, baby move in me, this is your fault!”
Bucky cackled at her petulant little wiggle beneath him. “Baby I only got the one.” he referred to the condom, propping up to pull out and do some tidying of the scene.
“And yet you got me flustered. Now you won’t fix me. How’s that for taking orders?”
Bucky froze and stared down at her arch expression, her face more Lana at the moment than Julie with her playacting displeasure, but damn if it didn’t get him going all the same. “I- sure doll. Whatever you say doll.” he muttered, “What about-“
“We appreciate your conscientiousness, Major Egan,” she raised one hand to her face and began inspecting her nails, a tactic of dismissiveness he knew, and yet it had his cock swelling back up like it was half its length and belonging to a far healthier man, “and we recommend you continue it. We only need a little maintenance, please be so good as to dispose of that horrid little rubber and wipe yourself and come back. I said I only needed a little movement,” her grin broke wider, “and when that’s satisfactorily met, you can put it between these to finish-“ Julie pressed her milk white tits together and every connection in John’s brain fried and fizzled for a brief moment before reconnecting and he bounced out of the bed to set in action her game plan.
He yanked the condom off, more forcefully than his smarts might suggest -what with the way it snapped on his sensitive and hardening shaft and flung spunk along the wall above the waste basket. The stalag-man in him forgot to care for poor Donald and his housekeeper and ran instead to the small sink in the corner of the room by the closeted privy and grabbed at the hand towel and wet it before scrubbing himself vigorously like his spattered seed was a rash of fire ants. The rough treatment made him hiss but did nothing to dissuade his filling member and when he turned and stalked back towards the bed, it was with a face so darkened and determined that Julie felt a quake of desirable fear shoot through her.
It was magnified when he stopped at the end of the bed and instead of climbing atop her again, reached out and grabbed at her ankle instead, yanking her down the expanse of sheets until her legs dangled off the mattress and their hips collided. He was so tall above her like this, even with their most private places aligned and she shuddered as she realized she’d actually asked for him to take her again after such rough usage and such a desperate first attempt to even get him inside. They’d have to keep at it, keep her open and work to make her used to him. She supposed frequency was key and spread her legs again in defiance of the scared little voice that told her riding telephone poles wasn’t a pastime to over indulge in on the first night.
Damn fear. She spread her legs. Damn fear and damn all thought entirely, when he fucked back into her in practiced, measured pumps that sank him deeper each time and rubbed at the need that had built so suddenly at his words earlier. “You sounded- you sounded like your letters.” she tried to gasp out an explanation as Bucky put his standing leverage into his thrusts and smiled down at her from his height, hair hanging over his forehead, lookin’ like a dreamy novel cover.
“Ya sounded like yours.” he rasped back, the proof of it drilling her into the bed right now as he plunged again and again into her clenching belly and tugged apart her abused little hole.
When she came it was sudden and hard, and lest he torture he through it to another like last time, and lest he forget himself and let himself go inside her, she shoved him back with a foot to his sternum when the satisfaction had been fully wrung out, and this time he staggered back agreeably.
“Now for your reward.” she recalled as Bucky stood there, breathing raggedly himself and with his massive cock drooping in a bobbing wave, untended and without a haven, too heavy to curve up to his belly when standing. God it was impressive looking there in its lonesome glory, as impressive as the owner of the tool looked lost and dazed like a boy who needed to be led back home.
At the sight of her tits pressed together he seemed to recall himself. His face lit up and his eyes regained their sharp intelligence and he took a step forward before pausing and wheeling back to the sink. “Washcloth.” he explained, he hadn’t any intention or anticipation of being able to get back up to clean them both after this round. His body felt like it was operating on borrowed time as is. “Scootch up for daddy.” he tugged gently at her wrist until she was back in her proper spot in the center of the bed. “That’s it, that’s my good lil girl.” he murmured before carefully climbing over her, like a beast from the fairytale where to cherish his beauty in this way, all lumbering tenderness and brute strength restrained for her sake.
John’s thick thighs bracketed either side of her tiny rib cage, the ghost of his weight felt along her sternum as he kept himself off her, the burning heat emitting from the most sheltered place of his body.
“That’s it dearest, push ‘em together, nice and tight f’me. Goddamn, that’s it, baby, jus’like that. Uhuh.”
She had wanted to give him this since he wanted it so dearly, and asked for it so worshipfully, and came up with an entire darling acronym for the act, but she hadn’t expected to enjoy it so much. The crowded, loomed over, helpless little joy of Bucky Egan crouched above her heart, gripping the throbbing base of his cock and poking his length through the tunnel of her breasts.
That she hadn’t anticipated. It made her moan as loudly as he did at the first give of her butter-soft flesh.
When he pushed out the other side of her little tunnel, his goey plum tip tapped her chin and she giggled in delight, feeling the cool wake of his sputter on her chin when he withdrew, then thrust back and there it was again- a tap to her chin. She was ready on the third thrust, when his leaking tip breached through the other side, she dipped her chin and stuck her tongue out, getting a good lick at the salty precum that gushed from his deep slit.
She had been ready but Bucky had not, he had stared at this dream scene when he first slid between them, but then the sight combined with the sensation grew too strong and he threw his head back, eyes screwed shut and lungs close to collapsing, so that he no warning when he felt her clever tongue dip into his sensitive slit and lap at his oozing tip.
It undid him, quicker than even he expected and with a hoarse cry that mingled praise and apology for what was about to occur, Bucky painted her pretty face in ropes of sticky hot ejacuculate, the last reserve of his body, looking like ticker tape streamers of celebration, landing in shiny streaks across her nose and eyes, scrunched in celebratory delight. The puff of pleased shock her shiny lips let out was the final pop of merrymaking, chased by the visual of her eyes tight shut to keep out his salty spend but her wild tongue chased the dripping mess running down on her cheeks, eager for a final taste of him. He wanted to laugh at the thought that she was chasing the last bitter, year old stores of a ill fed prisoner, that he’d have better and sweeter and more fitting cream to give in the morning. But for now…
Welcome Fucking Back, Bucky Egan.
He collapsed to the side and smacked at the bedside table in a blind grab until he found the washcloth, rolling over on his belly and hissing as he did so at the scratch of sheets against his raw cock. “C’mere, lemme clean up my baby doll. Hell Julie, that was-“ he didn’t have words for it, she deserved them but he didn’t, not really. “-have to write you about it sometime.” he realized and she giggled, eyes opening as he wiped away his sticky glaze, and when he did, they met his: blue and dazzling and trusting that he would.
“I’m going to hold you to that, Johnny Egan.” she murmured. “But you won’t need postage. You’ll be right in the other room.”
Bucky squeezed her cheeks together emphatically in one hand, pressing his lips to hers as their worn out bodies fitted together like puzzle pieces in the churned sheets, “No postage,” he agreed soberly, his nose still brushing hers, “cause I’ll write it on your thighs.”
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rearranging-deck-chairs · 21 days ago
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#but also it turned out#agatha and rio DID have a cottage together#something must have driven agatha from the cottage#to have her running#and not having a home with nicky#which could have helped his health more
yeah because i think because the tragedy is also that she loves death. nicky isnt doomed in some magical way, made of death so unable to live. or maybe also that, who knows, but i think nicky is doomed first and foremost bc agatha loves death.
i think she must have been on the run because she made it that way. bc she antagonised people into coming after her. bc she killed a coven or a dozen. bc she killed magically or mundanely. agatha isnt trying to build a healthy life, for her or him. agatha isnt trying to be Better in any way you want to define that. she wont let herself grow beyond the trauma that has defined her up to that point. and after nickys death she wont let herself grow beyond that trauma either. shes knowingly destructive and she isnt trying to change that.
if agatha is desolate and without community it's because she has made it that way. directly or indirectly, on purpose or bc she was forced, those things kinda blur together. at the end of the day she let it be that way. nicky lived and died because agatha loves death.
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She is my scar.
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legionofpotatoes · 2 years ago
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can't believe I just spent three hours watching a movie about masculine anxiety in the nuclear family model, told through cartoon alien tribes wearing Mãori tattoos
#I dont know man I just dont vibe with these films. they're so weird to me for some reason#it's the mix of heavyhanded metaphorizing from a convoluted white savior pov with just the most uninteresting possible stories told within#and what beefs me the most is how good the cinematic grammar and dramatic sense is. like the execution is so good#not just technically (which was also great) but also on the storytelling ABCs level. pretty close to perfect#the structural edit wonked it a bit and dialogue wasn't always up to snuff#but generally speaking storycraft was firing on all cylinders yet telling the most uninteresting possible story imaginable. weird movies#both of them honestly. just weird#can't gel with them at all. and I NEVER forgive these insane runtimes either#I am heretically opposed to 3hr slogs. especially for something as simple as this. i hate doing mental structural re-edits while watching#but with movies like this it is impossible not to. just weird man#and the whole environmentalist angle is like fine whatever but the aboriginal aliens are such a clunky plot device#very very weird and sketchy and the optics are just all over. not for me to semiotically call this out i guess but leaves a very strange#taste nevertheless#and again technically it's just an utter magic trick and almost transcendent at times. but that is all momentsry candy without#meaningful story holding it together. just a guy being a dad except they're cartoons in space and also indigenous and super heteronormative#so fucking weird. and man you could feel james horner's absence so keenly#no longer a musical rhythm guiding the edit. other way around now. always a loss when this happens imo#it just felt like such an american dad family dynamics in this opposing context of an alien tribe#they were five minutes away from having back of the van arguments. all the 'bros' were insufferable#and dont get me started on the fucking sequelbaiting. sigourney weaver and the general and the weird dreadlocks guy all were#essentially just setting up sequel hooks and that was so grating in a movie already so long. eugh#anyway that was my review thanks for reading#text
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cinnamorollcrybaby · 1 month ago
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i am living for some angst 👀
especially some satoru angst
Hold me. Console me.
Tags: Satoru x fem!Reader, angst, hurt/comfort, depictions of poor mental health, depiction of a panic attack, Satoru’s a little bit of an asshole here.
An: Same… same. Before you read this and blame me for how fucked this story is, know that one of my moots (cough. cough. @theuniversesnepobaby cough.) was sending me sad angsty edits last night. this is partially her fault too.
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Satoru was normally a very doting and attentive boyfriend. He’s the type to beg to be in your presence. He’d kill to feel your touch against his skin. “Casual” isn’t a word in his dictionary. When he loves, he loves loudly.
So when he got quiet with his love, your body started to fill with a sense of dread. Cold and bitter feelings crawled their way between you two. No longer did you two laugh until you were out of breath and red in the face. No longer did he surprise you with gifts or try to scare you when you’re unaware of his presence.
His strong arms hadn’t wrapped around you in so long. The ruthless chill of being utterly alone plagued you, while Satoru seemed fine. He was even taking on extra hours at his job. So many nights he didn’t come back until nearly midnight.
How could he not see what’s happening? How could he not notice how much you’re drowning?
“I’m going out.” His words are flat with no care put into them. He’s telling you because he feels as if it’s obligatory — not because he doesn’t want you to worry.
“Where are you going?” So many times have you tried to reach out. It was as if you two were passing back and forth a candle of your relationship. You had ignited the flame and passed it to him so many times, but each time, he snuffs it out without a second thought — leaving you in the dark. Maybe one more time, you metaphorically light the candle in hopes to kinder your relationship…
“Out.” Flame snuffed.
“Oh.” He’s done it so many times, but it hurts just as bad each and every time. Being single wouldn’t hurt this bad. At least you wouldn’t be getting rejected by your own boyfriend on a daily basis.
“See ya.” He doesn’t even give you a second glance as he grabs his coat and saunters out the door. Another night spent alone. Another night filled with a barely eaten tv dinner and a shitty reality tv show droning on in the back while you doomscroll on your phone.
You two use to watch these reality tv shows together and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Satoru would hold you so close to his body, and he’d whine anytime you tried to adjust. When was the last time that happened? You never suspected the end of affectionate gestures would come while you two were still in a relationship.
You check Geto’s story on instagram. Sometimes, you’d catch small glimpses of Satoru in the back. Sometimes they were at a cafe or an arcade together. Tonight, it seemed as though Suguru was at very packed party scene.
You hold your breath in your lungs as you rewatch the story again and again — searching for a white head of hair. Your boyfriend makes it too easy for you to stalk him. Though, it feels like a fitting punishment for the turmoil he’s put you through.
No Satoru in sight. You sigh quietly before you check Shoko’s story. It was less likely that Satoru would be captured there, but he has made his appearances in the past. It seemed like tonight Shoko wasn’t present at whatever rager Suguru was at. She posted a picture of her beautifully written notes. She must be studying.
Nanami never posts on his story, so you don’t even bother going to check his barren profile. Haibara never features Satoru in his stories, so you skip his as well. This leaves you with one last option.
Your hand is a little shaky as you click on Utahime’s story. You don’t know when it started, but your cheeks and ears were wet with tears already. Your body had some sort of sick sixth sense for knowing when something was wrong, and something was terribly wrong.
You had always had your little insecurities about Utahime ever since Satoru indulged that he had a small crush on her back in high school. Of course, these were just fleeting thoughts. Up until recently, you knew with full confidence that you had Satoru’s heart. He wouldn’t stray from you. 
You didn’t have that same confidence anymore. Satoru had withdrawn, and it seemed as if he took his heart with him.
You hate being right. You wish you were wrong sometimes. On Utahime’s story, she’s seemingly at the same party that Suguru’s at. Her story is littered with pictures of her with other girls that you don’t recognize, videos of the loud music and people dancing in a crowd, and there’s just one last video on her story that makes your heart sink to your stomach.
Your boyfriend’s pretty blue eyes illuminated by the flash from her back camera. He smiled and laughed as Utahime filmed him. His face was littered with wine red lipstick kiss marks. Utahime had a grab on your boyfriend’s collar, obviously trying to hold his drunk self still while she filmed his crime.
It felt like a punch straight to your gut. You couldn’t even think straight, but you knew you needed to keep this evidence in case she deletes it. Your fingers shakily screenshot the story, logging the picture of Satoru covered in someone else’s affections.
He was out there feeling an overwhelming sense of happiness, receiving kisses from another, dancing to his heart’s content, and enjoying his life while you were sat at home weeping over the loss of your boyfriend.
The tv dinner, now cold and stale, was thrown into the garbage, and whatever little bit you had eaten came up soon after.
The picture was seared into your memory. You didn’t have to look at it to know every minor detail. The way his white hair was messy. His glasses were pulled down ever so slightly to reveal his devastatingly beautiful eyes. His coat hung on his shoulders while his muscular neck peaked out from his shirt.
Every time you closed your eyes, you thought about how many kiss marks he had on his face. How many times had he allowed himself to cheat on you? Was this the first time? Had it gone farther than this? Was it Utahime or some other girl?
You cried yourself to sleep, knowing that Satoru wouldn’t even come home to try to console you.
The next morning, you were disappointed as soon as you woke up. You wished sleep would’ve taken your body and whisked it away far, far from here. Instead, you’re still in your bed, sleeping on a pillow that was stained from your mascara.
If you could, you’d rot in bed all day and try to forget the godforsaken video you saw last night, but you had to make a trip to the restroom.
Forcing your weak body out of bed, you let out a small pained moan. You haven’t eaten a proper meal in so long, and you threw up whatever you did eat yesterday. Your appetite was completely diminished. Satoru use to say that food tasted better when it was shared. He always shared his meals with you, unbeknownst to him, helping you maintain a good schedule for eating.
Your apartment was too bright when you stepped out of the bathroom, and it smelled too much of food. The sizzling on the stove finally caught your drowsy attention.
The man of the hour, Satoru, was at your stove, shirtless and cooking something. Sleeping pants casually hung around his hips, and the dimples at the bottom of his back were so graciously being shown off. Did someone else know about those two little dimples? Even though back was facing you, you could already picture his face, littered with those stupid kiss marks.
Making a b-line for the bathroom, Satoru doesn’t even get the chance to greet you. Your hands were cold and clammy as your body uncontrollably heaved over the toilet. You had nothing left to give, but Satoru was taking everything from you.
Hot tears burned your cheeks as they slipped down your face. You didn’t want to do this. You wished you would’ve never saw that fucking video last night. You should’ve given yourself plausible deniability, but now, you had to face the music.
You slowly returned back to the kitchen after trying your best to clean yourself up. Your eyes focused on Satoru. He was finishing up cooking bacon when his eyes finally met yours and drove daggers through your heart.
“Good morning, sweetness. Something wrong?” He asks with so much care in his tone. You fantasize about hitting him — just once. How dare he suddenly care when you have to check out?
You don’t even know what to say to him. Like, yes, something is clearly fucking wrong, Satoru. I’m dating an unfaithful jerk.
“What are you doing here?” You ask bluntly, wiping your face of the remnants of tears and makeup that had stained your skin. He shouldn’t be allowed to see how badly he hurt you.
“I… live here?” He responds in a questioning tone, furrowing his white eyebrows as he studies your face. “Are you okay?” If only he had asked that question weeks ago, then maybe you two wouldn’t be in this mess today.
“No, and you don’t live here anymore.” You snap, causing him to slightly flinch back — not out of fear but out of surprise. He’s never seen you like this before.
“What do you mean, sweetness? I-“
“Cut the shit, Gojo. Don’t act stupid with me. It’s unbecoming.” You interrupt him completely, not wanting to hear him try to act innocent when you have all the proof you need on your phone.
“Woah. I don’t know what’s wrong, but I don’t really appreciate the insult and the use of my government name. I genuinely have no idea of what you’re talking about.” His voice is firm, laced with sternness, so you can see that he’s not playing around with you.
You take a deep breath until your lungs burn. You want to scream at him, chase him out of the house, and light his shit on fire. Instead, you silently go to retrieve your phone. Pulling up the picture of him with kiss marks all over his face, you shove the screen in his direction.
Gojo takes a few seconds to take in the photo, and he lets his shoulders drop. “This is what you’re mad over, sweetness?” He asks in a much more calm tone, looking up at you with almost puppy dog eyes.
“Don’t call me that.” You snap while swiping your phone back from his hands. “I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you, but we’re fucking done.”
“You seriously believe that I would cheat on you?” He asks in that stupid arrogant tone of his, completely ignoring your blunt rejection.
“Why else would your high school crush post a picture of you with kiss marks all over your face!? You look so fucking dumb and in love. I fucking-“ Your throat chokes up as if your body was trying to stop you from saying something you didn’t mean. The words “I fucking hate you” die right there on your lips. Tears fall down your cheeks, and you place your palms over your eyes to hide yourself from his impregnable gaze.
“This, again?” He asks in a frustrated tone before letting out an exasperated sigh, He turns the stove off - abandoning his food before walking over to you. He bends his knees a bit to get on your level. “Look at me.” He demands before his hands go to pull yours away from your eyes.
“Don’t fucking touch me.” You cry out, jerking back away from his presence. Your breath speeds up. The oxygen isn’t having enough time to enter your bloodstream. Your body is vibrating, forcing the air quickly from your lungs. Everything is moving so fast and why the fuck is he so close to you-? He’s suffocating. Fuck, catch your breath. Whyhim?Whyyou?Why?Why?Whatdidyoudotodeservethis???
A gush of air is blown harshly onto your face, and you can feel the bitter cold feeling of something touching your skin. Your eyes see Satoru’s hand holding an ice cube, guiding it along your warm skin on your arm. Your body is so hot that it’s melting faster than he’s moving it.
“Breathe. Match my movements.” Satoru guides in a calm yet steady tone. Your eyes find the way his chest is slowly rising and falling with each breath. You want to tell him to go play in traffic. You don’t need him to ground you. You don’t need him to do anything for you. You don’t need him.
Still, your body matches his slowly. Your breath becomes more stable, and you can feel your heart starting to settle into a more natural rhythm. Your bleary eyes meet his empathetic ones. It’s been so long since your last panic attack, but he remembers just how to calm you down.
It only makes it all hurt so much worse.
“It’s almost over. You’re doing a good job.” He takes his chances at encouraging you. It feels so sickening, more tears flee your eyes. Where had your boyfriend been, and why is he only just now back after he did the unthinkable?
“Sing with me.” It’s an odd request, but it’s something he found that grounds you better than most grounding techniques. Saying repeatable phrases in melodic tone is comforting for your mind.
“No.”
“Come on… Just one time. Your favorite.” He tries again. Metaphorically, lighting the candle and passing it back to you.
You shake your head in response. Flame snuffed. How can you sing with him after what he did to you?
“Come on, don't leave me it can't be that easy, babe” He starts with such a soft angelic voice. You fold in on yourself unable to keep the sob from escaping your throat. What method of torture is this??
“If you believe me I guess I'll get on a plane. Fly to your city excited to see your face.” He continues, lighting that same candle. It’s so small, barely there anymore from how many times you two have tried to relight it.
“Hold me, console me and then I leave without a trace.” The ice cube has completely melted, and his hand is resting on your arm. He slowly guides you to his chest, and you indulge in his warm embrace for just one last time.
“Come on, don't leave me it can't be that easy, babe.” His chin rests on top of your head. You’ve always fit so well in his arms. He’d always tell you that whatever higher power is out there made you specifically with him in mind.
“If you believe me I guess I'll get on a plane. Fly to your city excited to see your face.” His skin is so warm against yours, and your tears are sticking to your chest.
“Hold me, console me and then I leave without a trace.” You finally indulge him, softly joining in on his singing. His body slowly starts to guide you two into a soft subtle sway.
“Come on, don't leave me it can't be that easy, babe.” It’s not that easy. This fucking hurts so bad. Why would your soulmate do this to you?
“If you believe me I guess I'll get on a plane. Fly to your city excited to see your face.” You feel so pathetic — seeking out comfort from the one who hurt you this bad. If your friend could see you right now, she’d slap some sense into you.
“Hold me, console me and then I leave without a trace.”
You’re sniffling softly into his chest, and his hand carefully pets your hair. “Those kiss marks weren’t from Utahime.” He explains in a soft tone. “We were filming a TikTok. The punchline of the joke was that Suguru and Haibara were the ones who kissed all over my face.”
You look up at him with an unsure look on your face, not understanding what he meant. Satoru carefully picks your phone up, and he clicks on Haibara’s Instagram story from last night.
Sure enough, Haibara posted a TikTok of him, Suguru, Satoru, and Utahime. The camera points at Satoru, showing the kiss marks on his face, and the sound plays. “Bro, what happened to your face? Did you do that?” The camera then pans to Utahime to which she mouths the words, “I did not do that.” The camera then pans to Haibara with smeared wine red lipstick on his lips who says, “Then, who did?” The camera is then panned towards Suguru. He also had wine red lipstick smeared on his lips. “Yeah, who?” The two boys start laughing along with Satoru, and the video cuts.
It only comforts your weary heart slightly.
“It was just a stupid TikTok… I should’ve consulted you or warned you… done anything to respect you.”
“This doesn’t take back how awfully cold you’ve been over the last few weeks…” You sniffle out quietly, and Satoru nods his head knowingly.
“I know, sweetness.. I know. I’ve been terrible.” His arms squeeze you a bit tighter — frightened that he was so close to loosing you, still scared of losing you.
“That’s not an apology… or even a reason.” You try to squirm from his grip, but Satoru holds you tighter.
“I’m so fucking sorry, sweetness.” He breathes out a shaky breath, and you realize the shakiness in his voice. Glancing up at him, you feel yourself clam up with the sight of tears in his eyes. Christ, his eyes are somehow even more blue when he cries. “Shit got crazy at work then-“
“You still had time to party it up with your friends. You left me without even telling me you love me.” You finally break away from his grasp. The cheating accusation was only the surface of the main problem.
“You know I love you…” His voice is small, and he wipes his eyes of the tears that are threatening to spill.
“Do I know that?”
“Don’t… don’t say that.. I love you more than life itself.” His shaky hands go to reach for you again, but you move back away from him.
“You’re only doing this because I’m leaving you. If I hadn’t mentioned it, you’d probably still be half assed ignoring me.” You stare at him, and your eyes start to water for the nth time today.
“That’s not…” Satoru bites his tongue, and he runs a hand through his messy white hair. “I came home this morning… saw the uneaten tv dinner in the trash… Your reality tv show was still playing in the background, and I saw how you fell asleep with your makeup messed up… I realized then how much I neglected you… I planned a full day for us to enjoy each other’s presence… Please, don’t leave me for this. I can fix this.”
“How did it feel to look at me everyday when I tried so fucking hard to reach you?”
“It killed me.” He breathes out, and he tries to reach for you again. “Please, I missed you so much. Work was just so fucking much, and I don’t know why I took that out on you.”
You stare at him, and you shake your head silently. “You should go, Gojo..” Your voice cracked as it physically pained you to tell him to leave. Your body craves him more than anything else in the world right now.
“No, please, princess. Don’t do this… I can fix this. I’ll do whatever it takes… just don’t leave me…” Satoru’s on his knees, literally begging you not to leave him. Tears are falling down his cheeks as he bows his head to you.
It’s humiliating, but he’s so humiliatingly in love with you. He’s so dead serious. He’d do anything for you to stay with him.
“Toru..”
“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I-I don’t know why I did it. I just pulled away from you, and I don’t know how it happened. You’re the best damn thing that’s ever happened t-to me. Please. I can’t function without you.”
You stare at your boyfriend with concern as his head literally touches the floor beneath him. You don’t even know what to say to him. The thought of leaving him hurts so fucking bad. It steals the breath from your lungs.
“Please don’t leave me… puh…. please stay with me.” He’s groveling at your feet, unable to stop the tears that escape his eyes. The thought of living in a world where you aren’t his girlfriend… he wouldn’t. He’d be a shell of who he once was. He’s nothing without you.
You slowly sit on the floor in front of him, and your hands stroke his soft hair gently. Satoru’s breath slows as he finally gets a grip on his emotions. He realizes just how pathetic he looks. He slowly leans up, and he looks at you. Both of you looked like complete messes, and it was all his fault.
“I don’t deserve you,” He murmurs quietly. “but please, I can make this better… I love you so much, sweetness… I wouldn’t dream of ever cheating on you.”
“I don’t forgive you.” Your voice is barely a whisper. The metaphorical flame is so small and shaky, but if you two both shield it from the wind, it’ll be able to grow once more. “You have a lot to prove me, Toru.”
“I’ll spend every waking minute of my life fixing this. I promise you, sweets.”
and he did. Satoru went back to loving you loudly. He didn’t merely shield the flame from being blown out, he fanned it himself so it grew in intensity. He was back to doting on you constantly, and he did frequent check-ins to make sure you weren’t feeling neglected. He took frequent vacations from work with you. He usually took you two out on holidays to wherever your heart desired, but sometimes you two would use his vacation time to just lounge around the house and enjoy each other’s presence.
Your confidence slowly returned to you over time. It wasn’t easy by any means. It took many nights of Satoru’s consistent reassurance and overwhelming love and support for you to slowly start feeling comfortable in your relationship with him.
He put in the work, nourished your flame, and he never made you feel guilty for having a second thought because when he loves, he loves deeply. Casual is not his strong suit.
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philip-the-nickel · 1 year ago
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Marketing did Elemental DIRTY
Just saw the movie, it was well worth the watch. The trailer made the movie look like some half assed race metaphor Zootopia ripoff with a canned, rehashed love story you've seen a million times.
Let me be clear, Elemental was none of the things the trailer made you believe it was.
First things first, The Romance:
There's a reason aro/ace people are flocking to this movie. The main couple falls in love without having to rely on any passionate kisses or hand holding; they fall for each other based on who they are, their personalities, their interests, their appreciation of the other's uniqueness. The central hand holding comes at a point in the movie well after the two are established as a couple, and have gone on many dates together. This movie makes their characters fall in love over mutual appreciation, not physical chemistry, and its such a genuine, sweet, wholesome romance to see play out
On top of that, this movie goes into a lot of aspects of immigrant life and the expectations that come with being a first born in a new country. The romance does not shy away from this or sweep it under the rug. The romance blossoms as the two learn more about each other, and come to understand and respect those differences.
Second, the movie isn't about romance, its about being an immigrant.
I came into this movie expecting zootopia 2: now with elements, and what I got was a heart-wrenching look into the life of a first generation child in a new land, born to immigrant parents. The movie absolutely does NOT sugar coat things, showing not only an ellis island moment of having your name changed, but also a number of topics ranging from having to navigate in a city made for people who are nothing like you, being denied housing, micro-aggressions, and straight up being denied entry to public places based on who you are.
The true heart of this movie is about the child of immigrants realizing the life she wants for herself, struggling with disappointing people who gave up everything they had so they could give you a better life, repaying that sacrifice and what a burden it feels like, and somehow facing the truth of who and what is staring back at you from the mirror.
Third, and lastly, the movie is absolutely beautiful
The trailers did this movie dirty. You never saw the refracting lights from firelight streaming through water, you didn't see the glassblowing, or how the fire dies down to barely a wisp when Ember is sad to burning like a wildfire when she's angry. You didn't see the scene underwater with the tree and |Spoilers|, you didn't see the world building or the character design that went into the background characters. This movie is absolutely beautiful, and uses light as both a visual treat and a metaphor for the movie's themes. Its absolutely gorgeous.
So, if you're wondering whether to skip this movie or watch it, I'm telling you now: ignore the trailers and go see this in theaters.
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teambyler · 3 months ago
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YES Mike eating fruit on pizza was a gay metaphor
I saw a comment saying that Bylers are delusional for finding gay subtext in the "fruit on pizza" scene. We're "overanalyzing" things, they say!
Thing is, that's not the only gay metaphor WITH FOOD that is in Stranger Things. Remember this?
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Any LGBT+ person has to react to this the way I did: haha that's a gay joke! "You can't have two of the same thing together"!
And then Robin gave her the jar of jelly, which gave it new meaning:
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Vickie was just rambling about her ex-boyfriend and holding 2 slices that were incompatible. But Vickie is compatible with ROBIN. It doesn't matter that she's also a girl, you see! Giving her the jelly and their unspoken shared look and understanding is THE moment they realize their attraction is mutual.
And they made these points about Rovickie with food. (Also see another easter egg where they used food to associate Will with Mike.)
And then Vickie's immediate next line: "I don't know what's wrong with me." She talks about her mouth moving faster than her brain, but the GAY subtext is here also. Something "wrong" about her = being gay = feeling "like a mistake." This is Vickie telling Robin "I'm kind of odd / gay, you know..."
The Stranger Things writers KNOW about gay subtext. So when Mike calls FRUIT (a derogatory term for gay men) on pizza "blasphemous" and comically is made to eat it, AND he says afterward "No, you're right. It's good"? ...
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... we're just supposed to IGNORE that????? Just accept it? And if it's not that, then what was the point of the scene?
It is frankly, a pretty BLATANT hint that Mike is QUEER.
And he loves Will. This isn't some unrequited love story -- the writers know the proper way to handle that which is to resolve it quickly... they did that with Dustin's hopes for Max being introduced AND resolved within the space of a season. (Same with Steve liking Robin.) Meanwhile, Will's love for Mike has been built over FOUR seasons, and everything remains unresolved between them, the Painting Lie being one of the most important things. (Will coming out to Mike being the other.)
-teambyler
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linkspooky · 5 months ago
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JASON TODD VS. DABI: WHY NOT ME?
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"You haven't been here long but you've seen him, right? The batman. The batman. He lives in darkness, to find the helpless and bring them into the light. So I have to wonder...why couldn't he do it for me?" The Boy Wonder: Issue #2
This is the story of the boy who didn't get saved. The story of a boy who really ought to have been saved. Of course, every victim deserves to be saved, but this boy was the son of a superhero. Can a hero who saves everyone, but fails to save his own son really be called a hero? As for the son, how does it feel to watch his father save complete strangers but let him fall to the wayside?
Jason Todd and Dabi are two characters with similar backstories and motives (so similar it's possible Dabi is outright based on Jason Todd) which are worthy of comparison. These are two tragic arcs which explore the conflict between a hero's responsibility to act as a father, and their responsibility to save people. As I said they are tragic because in both cases the hero fails, as a father, and a hero. However, I'm comparing the two because Jason Todd's story is a well written tragedy, and Toya's story is not.
If you were to write a story of my life, it would surely be a tragedy.
Aristotle's Poetics is the first attempt to define what Tragedy is, not as a story where sad things happen but a specific story structure. He outlines not only what makes tragedy, tragedy, but also what makes a good tragedy.
The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colours, laid on confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus Tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to the action.
I use this quote because the painting metaphor is a great way of explaining what I'm getting at, you can have a painting with the most wonderful colors, you can have a story with really good ideas like the Todoroki family plotline but if you don't use those colors correctly all you're going to end up with is a bad painting.
In poetics Aristotle clearly defines a tight well-structured plot as the first priority for effective tragedy, character as second.
Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long
To make sure you understand, it's vital in tragedy for all the pieces to fit together. Tragedy is a specific story format. Good tragedy uses the parts of a story well, but bad tragedy is sloppy and poorly put together. In tragedy, the whole has to be greater than the sum of its parts. The Todoroki Family are all good characters out of context, but the story could have enhanced their characters but detracted from them due to how poorly it is told. The fact that a lot of MHA fans are in love with the Todoroki family out of the context of the story, but also have constant complaints for how Horikoshi handles their plotlines is, in my opinion, very telling.
What Aristotle goes on to posit is the best tragedies do not come about by accident, but rather by the direct actions of the characters.
But again, Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect. The tragic wonder will thee be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design. 
Therefore Tragedies require consequentialism, like Newton's Third Law, every action will have an equal and opposite reaction. To simplify a good tragedy arises from the consequences of the character's actions (or inaction). The most basic form is that the hero of the story will have a tragic flaw that they fail to improve upon in time and then leads to their destruction. In essence, tragedy is where the hero fails. Not only does the hero fail, but the hero loses, and that irreversible loss is what defines tragedy. Medea slays her own children, Oedipus rips his own eyes off and deserts his kingdom, Creon Antigone is buried alive and Creon's son, her fiancee, commits suicide.
These events share two things in common, they are irreversible (hence why they feel like good endings), and two they evoke catharsis. Aristotle defines the goal of tragedy to evoke terror and pity. We feel alongside these heroes, Medea was abandoned by the husband Jason who she left her home and slaughtered her own brother for, Oedipus did all of his crimes unwittingly and is a victim of fate, Antigone was doing the right thing by burying her brother so his soul could pass on to the afterlife.
There's all different sorts of tragedies, Hamliet explores more here. I'd say UTRH and Hellish Todoroki Family are tragedies centered around grief.
Tragedy works on extreme emotions, and extreme hard-hitting consequences to the hero's failures. The worst thing a tragedy can be is boring.
The Tragic Hero
Now that I'm done lecturing you let's actually talk about both My Hero Academia and Batman like I promised. Both of these stories don't actually feature the central victim as their protagonist, and that is a feature not a flaw.
Rather, the story we are being told is that of a tragic hero, failing to save a tragic victim because of their own personal flaws.
These flaws are called (hamartia) or "error in judgement". A hero, being called a hero of a story is often unaware of his flaws which is central to what makes them unable to fix those flaws in time. That flaw can later lead to a moral failing, such as Othello's jealousy, initially jealousy is an understandable emotion, but then it leads to him trusting Iago over his own wife and killing his wife in a rage.
Most importantly, the hero’s suffering and its far-reaching reverberations are far out of proportion to his flaw.
Let's begin with talking of the heroes and their flaws, Batman and Endeavor. My main reason for comparing these two is in these specific stories they have the same flaw, inability to move past their personal guilt towards their son, and the same conflict the duty of a father versus the duty of a hero.
However, Batman functions as a tragic hero, and Enji does not. The summary of their conflict is right here in these two panels.
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A parent is required to place their children above everything else, because they are the ones responsible for bringing that child into the world. Bruce Wayne made the decision to adopt Jason. Enji made the decision to have children, however with Enji you have the added insidious motivation of he only wanted to make designer babies and just didn't care for the ones who didn't turn out right.
Bruce attempts to do both, to act as a father for Jason and also a crime fighter as batman but he can't do both. This comes to a head in Death of the Family when Jason is having serious trouble because of his lack of a strong parental figure, and Bruce knowing that Jason is in trouble chooses still to go off and fight crime instead of staying with him. The choice to place crimefighting over the child they chose to take responsibility for has the unintended consequence of getting that child killed.
Whereas Enji makes the same choice over and over again, ignoring Toya's clear troubles at the fact his father no longer spends time with him and choosing to run away to the world of heroes because he doesn't want to face the fact that his actions are severely hurting his son. Bruce's motivations are more sympathetic admittedly he wasn't actively practicing eugenics, but the choice is the same and the consequences are the same.
Both Bruce and Enji are forced to bear witness to the deaths of their children when they are not there, specifically because they made a choice to be a hero instead of staying by their child's side. A situation directly caused by their choice to be a hero over a father, and a situation that would have been avoided if they had stayed with their child in their time of need. Jason runs off when Batman tells him to stay and gets kidnapped by the Joker, if Enji had been on Sekoto peak that day Toya would never have accidentally lost control of his fire.
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This is just the backstory however, the main event that kickstart this plot is the unexpected return from the dead of both Jason and Dabi. Each story follows the same plot beats. A new villain appears to challenge Endeavor / Batman. The villain reveals themselves as their dead son. Both Endeavor / Batman are given a chance to try reaching out to their sons, but they choose not to.
Then even though they are given a second chance with a miracle of a dead son coming back to them, they choose the exact same thing they chose before, being a hero and because of that the tragedy repeats itself. For both of them they are unable to save their son again, and the son goes through a second death. History repeats itself, the lesson isn't learned.
Their fatal flaw is their guilt. This is a story about grief and mourning after all, a son who is died, buried, but never grieved properly, never mourned, an open wound on the father suddenly coming back. The inability of each to process their grief blinds them from seeing the fact the son has come back, and they have a second chance.
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Toya has internalized he is a failure, because Enji literally called him that. Jason believes that Batman thinks he is a failure. In both cases the father is the one who failed, Bruce at least acknowledges this but cannot communicate it in any way shape or form.
This guilt and responsibility both Enji and Bruce feel causes them to self-sabotage. They no longer have the confidence they are in the right (they no longer feel like heroes because they have failed to be heroes to their own son).
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You can also add the layer of complication that since both men chose to be heroes in the past, they do not know how to handle the situation as a father now that they're being challenged to step up as one. Unfortunately, they are not the fathers that stepped up.
The reason their grief becomes a flaw is because they put their grief over their victims. . Each man is aware too much of their own failure, and while they should feel guilty they make the classic mistake of placing their own guilt over the feelings of the victim. The guilt they feel for causing the death and the genuine grief of losing a son is given priority over Jason and Dabi who you know... actually died.
An overwhelming grief and guilt is understandable because grief is a messy and human emotion, losing a child is an unimaginable tragedy that should never be inflicted on anyone.
Yet at the same time both Dabi and Jason are grieving to. This paradox that Batman only thinks of his own grief at losing a son and never stops to think about how Jason must feel leads to one of the best lines in Under the Red Hood.
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"The father had lost a son, and now the son had lost a father."
Batman's guilt is so strong over being the cause of Jason's suffering, that the suffering of the victim himself is ignored. To be fair to My Hero Academia, the Todorokis say a similar line to Enji.
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However, this is where I begin to get into the difference between ideas and execution. Tragedies are stories of actions and logical consequences, every action has an equal and opposite reaction in Under the Red Hood. Batman is punished for the choices he makes, the choices he doesn't make, and the choices he fails to make in time.
The Todoroki plotline features almost none of its character making any choices of substance, and because of that the plotline says the right things over and over again, but it all comes off as tell don't show.
I'm going to quote @codenamesazanka's post right here a couple of times because they describe the complete failure of the Todoroki plotline to show us a reason why we should be feeling things for the characters artfully.
We've heard Enji say this before - I'm sorry, I intend to atone. It's indeed the right thing to say, it's exactly what he should be saying and acting. Natsuo is declaring no contact - That's fine, I'm sorry, I accept this as part of my atonement and will continue. Touya calls him a coward - That's fine, I'm sorry, I accept this as part of my atonement and will continue. The public hates him - That's fine, I'm sorry, I accept this as part of my atonement and will continue. But you can only hear this so many times before you want to snap and beat the character, the story, the writing over the head with Enji's wheelchair. Why is that? He's behaving exactly as he should, and yet...
The reason why it fails to evoke strong feelings is because of what we'd called "narrative dissonance." The actions of Bruce and Enji are the same, they both neglect to do anything, make any real attempts to reach out to their victims because they're paralyzed by guilt.
However, we are told that they have entirely different arcs. Bruce's arc is a tragic fall. He's failing as a hero. While we are being told that Enji is experiencing an arc of atonement. Enji is supposed to be improving himself, and Bruce is supposed to be experiencing negative character development but they both do the exact same thing in story. Bruce neglects Jason, we are told by the story, by the characters in the story that Bruce is failing Jason. Enji does nothing in time to actually atone for Toya or try to help him, yet, we are told again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again that Enji is atoning with nothing substantive to show us this is the case.
To show what I meant instead of telling this scene is in chapter 252.
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This scene is the ending point in chapter in chapter #426.
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It's just him repeating the exact same sentiment and yet in a more than 150+ chapter gap, Enji never made any action to show he was now placing his family first. Enji didn't say anything to Dabi when he revealed himself as Toya. Enji didn't look for Toya in the months before the final war arc. Enji literally appeared on live TV in a broadcast that Toya was watching and said the very selfish "Watch Me" atone for the crime of creating Toya instead of literally talking about Toya or too Toya. Well, that would have rocked the boat too much... THAT IS LITERALLY THE POINT. Enji had to somehow break from tradition or make some significant sacrifice onscreen to his social standing to show that he's willing to put his family first. Enji decides to go along with Hawks decision to not face Toya head on, making the decision to be the hero for the final time which directly causes Toya to get up after Shoto brings him down non-lethally and make one last attempt to suicide bomb for his father's inaction.
Bruce does nothing for a long time in Under the Red Hood. He ignores his initial instinct that Jason came back and instead makes a long investigation on whether or not someone can come back from the dead in order to distract himself. When Jason takes the mask off, Batman already knew but was pretending otherwise because he didn't want to face the reality.
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Even when Jason takes his mask off, Bruce still takes on the "I need to investigate this" angle even though Jason calls him out that deep down he already knows it's the truth. This of course foreshadows Bruce's underlying flaw, he doesn't want to face Jason head on because he feels too much grief about what happened to Jason and his guilt is more important than Jason's own grief. Just as the father has lost the son, the son has lost the father.
What follows is several chapters of Batman fighting crime as usual and making no attempts to directly search for Jason. They cross paths a few times but when they do Bruce doesn't follow. In fact, Bruce only shows up when Jason sends Bruce a sample of the joker's hair and Bruce knows that the Joker has kidnapped him out of Arkham. Bruce almost lets Jason get killed by Black Mask because he doesn't know whether to stop Jason or save him yet again, and then they have their final showdown where Jason has kidnapped the joker to demand Bruce kill him, and Bruce finally attempts to talk him down.
Out of context it sounds like I'm describing the same plotline, to the point where if you haven't read either, it looks like I'm complaining baselessly. Why is one hero doing nothing until it's too late good, and the other bad? The difference is of course context, or rather framing. Bruce's actions are called out by the people around him (Dick, Jason, Alfred) as him handling the situation wrong. Whereas both Enji's internal monologue and other characters say that he is doing his best to atone for his actions and deserves a chance, but the events we are shown in story are the exact opposite.
Here's another example to SHOW my point. Here's Dabi with my special, hardcover edition of under the Red Hood.
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I reread the entirety of the fourteen chapter plotline and the majority of internal narrations come from characters outside of Bruce observing his behavior and commenting on how differently he's acting. Jason's backstory for instance is told by Alfred, not Bruce. Dick Grayson the first Robin comments on Batman's odd behavior. The rest are the third person narrator. Bruce has four instances of internal monologues spanning a few pages each in a 378 page story. (Alfred has the most internal monologues and he's presented as a more trustworthy unbiased narrator than Bruce, to get us to question Bruce's actions).
"Information travels on many routes, sometimes it comes predictably like the tides. You just need to know where to stand and meet it. Other times it's elusive and you have to root through the garbage to find it. In the last few years I've come to rely on Barbara Gordon, Oracle, we all did. Utilizing every form of surveillance equipment she has been the eyes and ear [...] but those days are over. I can't rely on anyone anymore. [...] and tonight it's also about the company I keep. It's different with him [night wing] out here. I think about when he was younger, when I was younger, it was different, simpler and I miss it. I miss those days, for that it's hard to be around him.
This first internal monologue is a case of unreliable narrator, because as soon as finishing it Dick Grayson / Nightwing shows up, offers Batman his help and while Bruce at first refuses it the two of them are forced to work together to fight Amazo. What does this show us? Bruce is not alone, but Bruce actively acts like he's alone ignoring the feelings of the other people around him. It exhibits a flaw of Bruce and the bad headspace he is in mentally (if I remember correctly Stephanie Brown recently died in the comics while this storyline was being published. It establishes Bruce's improper coping mechanism with grief, and how he is going about it the incorrect way.
Bruce says I work alone, and then Bruce says it's easier working with Dick, I miss it, but I can't go back to those days. It's bruce's contradictory thinking patterns in the same chapter that stop him. it's bruce's fault he cannot connect to Dick, and he is actively mourning the past because his relationship with Dick has changed.
Now the final part of the monologue in that chapter.
He's quick. Not just fast, agile. He's not thinking about his next move, he's just making it. He's been trained well. And there's something about him. Something familiar. There was something interesting about before he cut the line, before it had been taught. That had to have been practiced. Either that or just plain dumb luck. No it's not luck.
This is the first hint that Bruce already suspects it's Jason from early on but is in denial about it. This unreliable narrator trope also gives an agency to Bruce's decision, he is actively choosing to ignore the possibility that it's Jason because it doesn't want it to be.
Whereas, a lot of Endeavor's plot takes away any agency from him. For example, he doesn't even know that Dabi is Toya, because if he had the sneaking suspicion and ignored it like Batman did that might have made him look bad. We can't have the main character in a tragedy looking bad now can we?
The second monologue is more denial.
That device is from Kord industries. I should know. Ordered it special from them. How can he have it? No more dead ends. No more questions. No more guessing. Tonight I find out what is passing for the truth.
Reading between the lines this is outright confirmation Batman already knows.
The third is a brief reflection in his feelings for Jason.
The armor has to be light enough to fit but strong enough to protect. But sometimes a great many times, it's not strong enough. It wans't strong enough for Barbara who has to fight from her chair. It wasn't strong enough for Stephanie, other dear soldier enough dear grave. And it wasn't enough for Jason. Willful Jason. Who ignored the danger. Who spat at risk. Who was never frightened enough. I've always wondered... always... was he scared at the end? Was he praying I'd come save him? And in those last moments when he knew that I wouldn't. Did he hate me for it?
This monologue directly shows without stating it outright, Bruce is prioritizing his feelings of grief and failure mixing them in with his genuine grief over the loss of a son. it's selfish of him, but grief is a selfish emotion.
Here's the thing Bruce is allowed to be selfish and to not have the correct reaction to his grief, because the whole story is centered on Bruce being unable to get his shit together in time, and this picture into his emotions is an explanation as to why. Bruce is afraid of being hated by Jason. Jason of course has every right to hate him for failing as a father, but still I think not wanting to be hated to a person you loved so much and feel genuinely sorry over what you let happen to them is an understandable reaction.
Meanwhile we have Enji saying repeatedly all the right things in his monologue, the selfless, I don't need to be forgiven, it's okay if they hate me, I just need to atone but he never actually does anything. There's no explanation for why he isn't doing anything either, so that narrative dissonance. We're shown why Bruce doesn't act in time, he's internally a mess to be frank. We are not shown why Enji doesn't act in time because his internal monologue tells us again and again he's committed to atoning and he understands what the right thing to do is.
As Codenamesanzanka says:
Enji is still saying all the right things, but the story isn't giving him the opportunity to actually do the right things. To have his new actions matter. I have no doubt about his sincerity in his mantra, but without the 'show', it's hollow. Similarly, "Let's talk" is actually kinda bullshit too, because it's so vague. This is less about Enji, and more about the writing, how it set up this scene. "Let's talk" or "I want to talk" or any of that variation is repeated 6 times, without anything more or specific added.
There's an excess of repetition of Enji saying he wants to atone, he's ready to atone, without any of that materializing in the story.
As @class1akids says in this reaction post:
It also feels also super-hollow to say he's sheltering the family from the fallout, after they've just talked about how Fuyumi lost her job (and got a new one through the connections she herself built). How is he going to do that?
The fourth because I don't want to write it down, it's just Batman monologueing on how his partnership with Jason is still good and explaining the technical details of his fight with count Vertigo. It's in chapter 10 if you must look it up.
So four monologues total. Two monologues establish indirectly that Batman knows that Red Hood is Jason and doesn't want to face him. The third monologue establishes why he doesn't want to face him, he's afraid of being hated. The monologue is in line with Bruce's actions in the story, Bruce investigates several ways of reviving from the dead instead of looking for Jason.
The character's reactions around Bruce are also talking about how he's not acting like himself. Especially Alfred's who speaks of Bruce's indecision, on whether to put a stop to or save Jason.
"It is curious. He is lost in thought. It is not like him to spend vast stretches of time immobile, where his mind is gripped in the solitary process of deduction. This is quite different. He is hesitating. At a loss for what to do. I believe it is about Jason. And whether or not to stop him or save him."
This is illustrated in two scenes later where Jason spends a long time simply watching when Jason is fighting enemies, first in a fight against Captain Nazi, and second Black Mask. Jason even gives a direct callout of that behavior.
Jason: What the hell took you so long? Couldn't decide if you wanted to let me live. Batman: Shut up and fight.
Observed by Alfred Bruce is completely stalling and can't choose, observed by Jason Bruce can't decide whether to let Jason live or not. Bruce hesitates twice. We know why. We see it in action. It's called out as flawed behavior.
Now let's cover all the tell that don't show that is Endeavor's many monologues.
Pro Hero Arc:
I have to safeguard the future for them. That's the job for whoever's on top. What about the lives I cut short? Just demanding forgiveness isn't enough, it's too late for that. At this point I need to atone there's no other route.
Hellish Todoroki Family 1:
I'm trying to make ammends going forward. It might be too late. but I fall asleep every night thinking about it. Lately it's been the same dream. The wife and the kids looking happy at the dinner table. But I'm never there with them. It might be too late but I fall asleep every night thinking about what I can do for my family. I wish you could be here too, Toya. It's always the same dream. My whole family's there but not me. If I really care how they feel [I'll remain here].
I'm not going to read 200 chapters so I'm just going to ballpark it based on memory. Here we go.
Dabi's Dance:
My eldest, Toya didn't harbor frost within him. He didn't have a way to overcome the inescapable downside of overheating but I nevertheless sought to raise the boy as a hero. [...] Because Toya had more potential than me I placed my ambitions on his shoulders. I thought it could be you. You could have been the one to reach my eternal goal. My frustration... My envy... The ugliness in my heart... you could have been the one to smash it all to dust.
Plot twist this is the only monologue I like. It's different from all the others, and it's the only one where Enji is being emotionally honest. He put the emotional burden of his own emotional insecurities on an eight year old child, and expected to live vicariously through him and when Toya failed to live up to those expectations he just abandoned him. It alligns what we have been shown so far, Enji is not acting like a reptentant man here who realizes the harm he's done to Toya and only thinks of Toya as an extension of himself and his own regrets.
The Fight Against AFO:
My mistakes took the form as Toya leading to many stolen futures. The past never dies. Rage, resentment and even penace wound together toward the future. And the future is a path for the young. A path with so many branching choices. That's why I must win this. [I'll keep paying my penance. I'll win today and keep my eyes on Toya.]
When Enji decides to double Suicide with Toya:
I take full responsibility. I swore to bear the burden and live my life atoning for it all. However, you've been watching me all this time. While I couldn't be there to watch you. You were someone I especially needed to do right by. No I can't let you meet your end alone, but I won't let anyone else get caught up in our tragedy.
Hellish Todoroki Family Final:
I came to talk about what's to come. I'm retiring as a hero. That was my initial plan even before the war started, but now I can't even walk on my own. The hero endeavor burned to death. Your flames were really stronger than mine. [...] You're right. You know everything about me, Toya. After all you were always watching me. And you wanted me to do the same for you, but I didn't. Not matter what anyone says your heat does come from my hellflame. From now on I'll come everyday, so let's talk. It's too late now, so let's talk. [...] You're free to hate me. Anything is fine really, so throw it all at me.
This one is spoken dialogue but it's still a four-page long monologue. Every one of Enji's monologues with one exceptionsays the same thing: I'm sorry, I'll spend the rest of my life atoning for my actions.
We're repeatedly told Enji is atoning but he acts like Batman. Then, his actions should be framed as Batman, not atoning but avoiding any responsibility.
As observed by Class1akids when we were discussing the update:
Everyone else faces an uphill struggle with their lives, but we should all feel sorry for Enji atoning and being in hell. I hate Hori's compulsion to over-write his abusers and over-explain their atonement. He does this with Bakugou too but with Enji it's more irritating. It was so much more enjoyable when he just wrote the thing but didn't point at them and say -> look, they are atoning. Aren't they soooo cool??
Enji's internal monologues and the other characters frame him as some sort of martyr, while on the other hand it's clear by both Batman's actions and Alfred's observations he's not acting like his usual self. In fact, this is an interpretation of Under the Red Hood that I love from the writers of the video game Arkham Knight that does a less tragic retelling of Under the Red Hood:
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Batman doesn't fight victims. He saves them.
Therefore if Batman is fighting Jason, a victim, he's not acting like Batman. I'm also fine with Arkham Knight being an Under the Red Hood retelling because it's a different story. Comics do this all the time, different universe versions, popular storylines adapted into different mediums. It also works as a commentary on the original story, by showing what Batman could have done to lead to a more positive outcome it makes Batman's choices in Under the Red Hood worse and more tragic because he could have saved Jason, there was still a chance.
So here we have two flawed tragic heroes who are meant to be both pitied and condemned for their actions. One of them is all pity with no condemnation. The other is both pity and condemnation, Batman is grieving, but also he's failing his responsibility towards Jason. Therefore one protagonist works, the other fails utterly.
I'm not saying abusers don't deserve redemption. I'm not saying Enji should have died in order to atone. I'm not saying that the underlying problem with the arc is that they decided to make Enji sympathetic and a focus of the arc. The most important problem is the breaking of one of the fundamental rules of storytelling: Show, Don't Tell.
The Tragic Villain
Not only does The Hellish Todoroki Family plotline fail to make Enji a compelling protagonist, it also fails it's biggest victim. Now, these are both stories that end with the hero failing to save their victim. So if both of these stories have the same ending, why am I saying it failed Dabi, but not Jason?
Well, let me explain.
Dabi and Jason are both villains turned victims. The stories themselves are about this ambiguity. How much should the be held responsible for their own choices? If they are actively harming innocent people, then shouldn't they be stopped? Should they be automatically be forgiven just because of the pain and grief they've suffered, even if they've been causing it to others?
Both characters are also reflective of their fathers because they are too being selfish in their grief, they want their grief acknowledged and so are violently lashing out.
Jason and Dabi both make plays at being vigilantes at first, Dabi wants to inherit Stains will, and Jason Todd wants to be a better bat-man by taking control of the drug trade in Gotham and cutting crime down by executing gang heads. However, neither of them are being honest with this and it's shown through their actions, both of them abandon their original plans.
In the final showdown all Toya cares about is facing Enji on the battlefield, and when he's on the brink of death his mind erodes to the point where all he can do is scream for Enji's attention while his flames get hotter and hotter.
Let's take about Jason first and how his narrative treats him a whole lot better and more sympathetically, with more humanity than Batman. Jason is still held responsible for his choices, he is criticized by Bruce for murdering gang leaders and passing it off as justice. He's also blatantly shown to be a hypocrite. My favorite scene from Red Hood: Lost Days, the official UTRH prequel.
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"I want to kill the joker in a cool way. Just sniping the Joker from a rooftop isn't dramatic enough for me."
This scene, and the final scene of UTRH underlines Jason isn't executing criminals because he believes it's the right thing to do, or because of his stated motivation that killing the joker would prevent more future victims.
Instead his every action is to set up a scenario where he makes a selfish demand of Bruce. He wants Bruce to prove to him that he would choose him over being a hero, by setting up his final scenario. Him, the Joker, and Batman. Jason will shoot the Joker. Bruce has a gun. He can either choose to let Jason kill the Joker, or kill Jason to stop him, either way it makes it clear what Bruce's priorities are.
The underlying reason for this is similiar to Bruce. Just like Bruce, Jason is deeply afraid that Batman doesn't love him. That he thinks of him as a failure. (This is Toya's main reason too).
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He also interprets Bruce's failure to avenge him to mean that Bruce didn't even care enough to mourn him. If Bruce loved him enough, he'd choose him over the joker, but he's so afraid that Bruce doesn't love him enough that he's going to force Bruce to choose.
Along the way he's also going to behead several crimelords in order to put an exclamation point on that point.
The way Jason completely unravels in the confrontation shows this insecurity, he begins with monologueing about how batman should totally kill people, until his fear that he wasn't important enough, and his grief at losing his father is revealed.
Batman: I know I failed you, but I tried to save you. I'm trying to save you now. Jason: Is that what what you think this is about? Your letting me die. I don't know what clouds your judgement worse, your guilt or your antiquated sense of morality. Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me. Jason: But why on god's green earth is he still alive? Ignoring what he's done in the past. Blindly, stupidly disregarding the whole graveyards he's filled with people. The friend's he's killed. I thought killing me - that I'd be the last person you ever let him hurt. Jason: If it had been you that he beat to a bloody mess. If it had been you he left in agony. If he had taken you from this world. I would have done nothing but search the planet for this pathetic pile of evil, this death worshipping garbage, and sent him off to hell.
Direct statement, it's irresponsible of Bruce to let Joker live after killing Jason and should have put him down to prevent future victims. Reading between the lines, Batman not taking revenge for Jason is a sign that he didn't love him enough, Jason loves Batman more because he would have taken revenge.
As the confrontation continues and Jason's mental spiral worsens, to the point where he can't keep up his pretense of self-righteousness.
Jason: I'm not talking about killing cobblepot, or scarecrow, or riddled, or dent. Jason: I'm talking about him. Just him. And doing it because...he took me away from you.
The father had lost the son, and now the son had lost the father.
Jason's revenge is just a cover, for his grief at losing Bruce. I think this also shows a really positive aspect of Jason's character to humanize him instead of condemning him for his actions to ignore or even justify the suffering he endured: Jason really loves Bruce.
I mean how meaningful is the statement: "Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me."
Bruce has been afraid to hear the whole time that Jason hates him, that he won't forgive him, but Jason loves him deeply. In fact his love is almost equal to his rage because Jason is a deeply emotional person, and these little details make him human and not just like a plot obstacle that Bruce has to face. A metaphor for his past failures.
Dabi is drawn as a crying boy who wants comfort, Jason is shown to be a crying boy who wants comfort through both dialogue and action without us directly needing to be told. It's a heartbreaking line and doing it because he took me away from you and it lands perfectly because the narrative wants us to just look at Jason's grief. It doesn't add an asterisk* even though he was in pain, he's done unforgivable things that can't be justified to undercut Jason's suffering.
In fact that might be another underlying problem with The Hellish Todoroki Family, the narrative tries too hard to make you feel a certain way instead of just presenting things as they are to make you come to your own conclusion. UTRH doesn't support Jason's revenge based serial killing of villains. It doesn't say he's justified to cut off the heads of mobsters. However, it doesn't excessively state "Well, I'm really sorry what happened to you but what you've done can't be forgiven" so we don't have to challenge ourselves to feel too much empathy for Jason's suffering.
Meanwhile even when Toya tries to express his rightful anger and grief, we're always met with someone shutting him down and saying well yeah, but you're wrong, involving innocent people is unforgivable.
As said by @stillness-in-green in the replies to this post:
I think so much harm (in-universe, but the state of the Twitter fandom makes me think the messages are pretty toxic irl, too) comes out of portraying the Heroes as needing to weigh in on the *morality* of the Villains' actions before they gauge "saving" them, when that is not a thing that glorified cops have any business thinking they have the right to do. Demanding repentance before the rehab is so bizarre.
You can say someone's actions are wrong without using it as a factor to consider whether or not their suffering as a human being should be acknowledged, and like I said there's multiple instances of people just yelling at Toya how immoral he is instead of addressing the elephant in the room.
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You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong.
(Okay, I understand that some people have interpreted this as a show of Honnae and Tatamae, the Todoroki's who are a very repressed household are finally talking about their feelings even if those feelings are selfish and ugly).
(I'm not criticizing Shoto for saying that the people he killed were his own choice necessarily, Shoto is a character who's actions need to be read more deeply than his words he was dedicated to bringing Dabi down without him burning himself any further start to finished. My criticism lies in the fact that Hori uses Shoto as a mouth piece because he thinks we need to be reminded that murder is bad).
However, even acknowledging that time and place man, time and place. They couldn't have done that in the aftermath, when Toya isn't burning to death?
Hey buddy, you're being selfish.
Toya: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'M MELTING, I'M MELTING.
This is I feel the underlying problem with the way the arc is written, not because the Todorokis are a very traditional Japanese family and there are cultural reasons they express their emotions differently, I'll give a caveat to that it's a nuance I might not understand.
However, I am arguing the actual problem is tell don't show. Horikoshi thinks that we as an audience need to be told multiple times that murder is bad, and we cannot be trusted to interpret that on our own.
Under the Red Hood shows both sides of Batman and Jason's debate, and let's us just come to the conclusion that Jason is in the wrong because revenge isn't justice. Horikoshi reaches no shit sherlock levels of telling us that we're not supposed to approve of Dabi's murders.
it's also a matter of giving Dabi narrative space to express his feelings, like every time Dabi tries to talk he is continually shut down (Shoto does engage Dabi talk to him and listen to why he didn't come back though I'll give him that) and it seems to be to push forward this weird idea that you shouldn't sympathize with the pain Dabi has endured or the ways he's dehumanized unless he does something to prove he deserves to be treated like a human being first.
Jason gets to monologue and make an entire argument, and his argument also shows the depths of his love for Bruce and what a deeply feeling person he is, and how those feelings being hurt and twisted could logically lead to his lashing out.
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Compare this to Dabi who doesn't get a final monologue, but is instead reduced to a completely mindless state where he just cries out for his dad's attention. He doesn't get to make his argument.
Jason and Dabi both choose to blow themselves up, but Jason gets enough character agency to show this is a deliberate choice he's making even if it's the wrong one. He retains his character agency and ability to make decisions until the end of the narrative.
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Jason's also you know physically crying. The end result of the narrative is about wrong choices that both Bruce and Jason make together, and then suffer the consequences together. Bruce watches the same failure play out again and he isn't able to save Jason, Jason doesn't get what he wants, he doesn't get revenge and he doesn't get to reunite with his father. It's tragic for both of them, and brought about by decisions both of them made.
Whereas yes Dabi makes a lot of bad decisions leading up to the last war arc, but in the end his final fate is up to a choice Enji made to not face Toya in the final battle.
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However, while the final consequence of the battle is brought about more by Enji's decisions than Toya's, it's Toya who endures all the suffering and punishment. It's Toya who is in an iron coffin, and doomed to slowly and agonizingly die with all of his skin burnt off unable to move. Toya doesn't even get agency after the arc is over. Enji still has a wheelchair, Enji can still move around, Enji's still fucking rich, he's not in prison for his actions, he as Rei wheeling him around.
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Toya's agency and choices are all taken from him, presumably to serve the plot purpose of making Enji save him to finish off his arc, and then ENJI DOESN'T EVEN SAVE HIM.
Also I think it's important to mention, Bruce's tragic ending is brought about by him attempting to save both, trying to save the joker and Jason with the same action. Whereas Enji's tragic ending is brought about by Enji NOT LIFTING A FUCKING FINGER TO HELP. Yet, it's Dabi who has the lion's share of suffering, and is sentenced to this horrific state of being skinless in an iron coffin and only being able to be awake a few minutes a day with no choice but to waste away.
Bruce is also immediately called out for his actions, by the Joker of all people, you handled this all wrong, it's your fault. Bruce is right to not kill the joker, killing the Joker would not have solved any of Jason's problems, but the fact that he put off facing Jason for so long, and his inability to communicate that he loves Jason is what leads to Jason thinking that the only way to prove Bruce loves him is to force him to choose. It's because Bruce has utterly failed to show him in any other way that he is loved.
Joker: Oh my god, I love it! You manage to find a way to win, and everyone still loses. I'm going to be the one who gets what he wants tonight, badda bing, badda boom."
I'd also like to add that a lot of agency in Enji's actions are taken away too, to make him look more blameless. It's not Enji's fault that he didn't say anything to Dabi during Dabi's dance, he passed out because he had a punctured lung. It's not Enji's fault that he spent a month protecting Deku instead of searching for Toya, he had to protect innocent people. It's not Enji's fault that he didn't go immediately to face Toya in the final war arc Hawks told him not to.
It's not Enji's fault that he made Shoto and Toya fight like Pokemon instead of cleaning up his own mess, and also he feels really sorry for it and as soon as he's done punching the bad guy he'll look after Toya he promises.
Enji does get called out for this behavior but it falls flat because it only comes from the villain AFO, and Toya himself. As I stated above too, the ending is more influenced by Enji's actions not Toya's (because Toya's agency is stripped away until he's mindless) but Toya is the one who has to die while Enji gets to live and atone.
That is the real sticking point for The Hellish Todoroki Family, the way it ends.
Themes Are For Eight Graders
The underlying problem with the whole arc and why The Hellish Todoroki Family fails as a tragedy, is because it wasn't written to be a tragedy.
The above quote is from an interview with the writers of the widely hated Game of Thrones Season 8, which took a sudden tragic turn for Dany's character, gave her an incredibly dehumanizing ending of being put down like a rabid dog by her own lover, an ending that was neither foreshadowed nor did it match with anything written before.
In this meta here by @hamliet it goes far more into depth that Game of Thrones isn't a tragedy, but a piece of Romantic fiction (not a love story, Romanticism is a genre of big emotions, the beauty of life, larger than life ideas hence why it fits well with fantasy genre, it can be sad but it doesn't follow tragic structure).
Dany is a romantic heroine, a deconstruction of the idea of the classic warrior princess trope, and you know a colonizer, but she's not meant to be written as an inherently bad person. There are people who say that Dany was going to die in the original books. I'm one of those people. Me. However, context and framing matters, Dany for all her colonizing ways does genuinely want to do the right thing, so it's likely she'd die a heroic death as a reflection of her selfless intentions (and intentions do matter for fictional characters) whereas in the show she's put down as a villain.
Now watch me I'm going to coin a term for future literary critics to use: Narrative Gaslighting.
Narrative gaslighting is different then Show Don't Tell, where an author has just failed to properly show what they're trying to tell you in the story. Narrative Gaslighting is when a narrative deliberately tries to mislead you, straight up lies to you, or just insists things that did not happen totally happened guys. Much like real gaslighting, Narrative Gaslighting makes you feel stupid for interpreting things a certain way and insists you were wrong all along.
Narrative gaslighting is when Tyrian gives a speech that everyone should have suspected Dany when she burned slavers alive that she was secretly evil and would one day turn on them.
Like, no.
Dany is flawed because she is a foreigner, interfering with the politics of a different country that she does not understand in order to gain enough resources and men to return to her home country and invade that country to exercise her right as a Targeryn to uphold the divine right of kings.
Game of Thrones doesn't mention any of that shit that's in alignment with the previous actions in the story, it's just insisting the very ableist notion that Dany was insane all along and her violence towards other people is the result of her mental illness.
(Also before anyone says, so if she's a colonizer than how can she have good intentions, everyone is Bad in Game of Thrones, they're all waging war to vie for a throne, monarchy is bad guys. IDK how to tell you that Game of Thrones has gray on gray on gray on gray morality).
(Also this aside ties into the hangup of MHA and most popular fandom culture on Twitter, that Dany's moral failings somehow disqualify her from her humanity. In spite of the fact that on top of all of that she's a rape victim, and like, Dany's only on that continent in the first place because she was sold as a bride.)
But here's the same weird subtext that Horikoshi's writing of Dabi. The fact that Dabi was continually victimized and denied human dignity does not need to be addressed, because he did the bad things and didn't atone properly enough for it first.
In essence this random post on the gunnerkrigg court forums I found on the same day the chapter came out, displaying apollo's gift of prophecy.
"When someone is persecuted, it's important to inform everyone about their flaws. That way you don't have to feel anything about all the times that they were denied human dignity."
So, Dany is not written as a tragic hero but a romantic one, we as an audience are both meant to acknowledge her flaws and sympathize with her, not demonize her in an ableist way for being insane, and even if Dany is meant to die the tragic way she dies does not match up with all of the narrative foreshadowing that was built before that.
Like, for instance a lot of POC after the show ended kept telling everyone that Dany's actions in a foreign country were seriously problematic, and not only did the audience not listen but the showwiters didn't acknowledge it with the same subtlety as the books. So those people especially were able to pick up Dany's character flaws, and when the show finally acknowledged them it's not even in the way that critiques of the show were pointing out Dany's flaws it was just "she was insane all along." Not like taking time to go "no matter what the intention, interfering with the politics of a foreign country is wrong."
The problem with the Todoroki arc is essentially the same, down to the ableism (because outsiders continually call Dabi either a maniac or insane Demon without even giving credence to his grievances about hero society he's just reduced to an insane fringe element of society, and Dabi himself is reduced to a completely mindless, childish, insane screaming state where he can't make active decisions).
The Todoroki Arc is not set up to us as a tragic one. The ending is pretty clearly telegraphed to the whole audience. People are not wrong for thinking that Toya's ending would be either rehabilitation like Rei with the eventual hope of being welcomed home, or some kind of house arrest where he still gets to be with his family.
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Everyone happy at the Dinner table and Enji not sitting with them.
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"I wish you could be here, Toya."
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"We all have to go stop, Toya."
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"In that case, I'll make him sit down for a bowl with me."
Even Shoto's efforts to take down Toya non-lethally are rendered completely pointless, because Toya gets back up again and then burns himself alive (completely by his own choice so no one has to feel bad that they failed).
The story sets up the expectation that Toya is going to be brought home and sit down for a meal with his family. Then it makes you feel stupid for going in an entirely different direction. It was always going to end this way didn't you know The Todorokis are a tragedy?
Well, I just spent a very long section of this thesis statement illustrating that if it's supposed to be a tragedy, then it's still not written well.
It's a written as a romantic story of a family healing, and the villain getting saved, only for the villain not to be saved and the story to just keep on going like not getting saved isn't a huge failure. This is something that should permanently destroy the main characters, that they got the chance to repeat Sekoto peak and be there this time and they all utterly failed. I feel bad for Shoto most of all because he did everything right, and he still loses his brother, but does the story show that?
The problem is the story is blatantly lying to you about the fact that Toya was somehow saved, even though he LITERALLY LOOKS LIKE HELLRAISER. To quote Codenamesanzanka again:
But I feel the story couldn't give us that because it will remind the reader and everyone just how much Touya will be missing. In-story, talking any more will overburden Touya's heart - and how apt is that metaphor? So let's talk about how we'll talk, but that's all that's allowed here for this scene. Else we'll see how unfair it is that Touya has to be confined to this room, he isn't with his family and they have to come to this prison just to tell him about their day, and soon he will be gone. Details make it real, and it would've exposed the lie that Touya was saved in an actual way. The story knows it too - "this extra time Shouto gave us." This is all 'extra', and not the core. [...] If the story was sincere that this is a case of "it's simply too late" - as it should be!!! imo, to really drive in the clear point that they failed, they did not get the save they wanted, because that's the truth - the tone of the chapter isn't tragic enough for that. The tone is going for 'Making Peace With This'. We've skipped the stages of grief and all we have is acceptance. The characters have accepted this, and so must the readers as well.
Therefore it's narrative gaslighting, the story is making us doubt our perceptions and trying instead to manipulate us to feel a certain way. We don't have to question the unfairness of Toya's fate, because look at all the people he's hurt, and look how Enji is atoning and taking responsibility.
The story builds up the idea that Enji will choose Toya. That he will choose being a father over being a hero. Enji doesn't do that, and it's Toya who suffers the horrific, painful consequences while Enji gets off mostly scott free. Mind you it's also ableist to suggest that being in a wheelchair is some sort of life-ending consequence like he's fine. The story even goes out of its way to say how avoidable this ending could have been if Enji or Rei or someone lifted a single finger to give Toya the acknowledgement he wanted, and then gives it a "Too little, Too Late" conclusion but doesn't acknowledge that this is where it's ending and instead tells us that Enji has successfully atoned.
"Everyone's watching me. So this is what it's like. If it was such a simple thing, then why not sooner?"
If it was going to turn out this way Toya should have just died here, not because death would somehow be a mercy compared to life in prison, but because the Todoroki Family doesn't deserve to get to pat themselves on the back. If they let Sekoto Peak happen a second time, then they should have to deal with the consequences of that.
It would be consistent is my point. This is written as a "Too Little, Too Late" kind of ending, but we don't get the emotional response from the Todorokis that they've let Toya die a second time.
On the other hand, UTRH has the exact same tragic ending but it doesn't make me angry because it's honest about it. The Todorokis let Sekoto peak happen a second time. Batman let Death in the Family happen a second time, but look at how even the narration and comic panels of the story acknowledge it.
"Fate is a funny thing. It swells up like a raging current and we are forced to travel. It provides us no exit. No deviation. It drops us in a bottomless ocean and compels us. We either swim, or drown, and sometimes as we struggle against the tide, a great truth arises."
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One ends with Enji meaninglessly stating that he'll spend the rest of his life atoning for Toya and watching over him (which I guess will be like two months tops) for the fifth time. The other ends with Batman being lectured by the Joker of all people of how he chose wrong and being forced to watch once again as a warehouse blows up, and he's completely helpless to save Jason.
UTRH ends with the message that Batman sucks, Enji's atonement arc ends with Natsuo calling him cool for atoning and UTRH makes me like Batman way more as a character. Whereas at this point I feel nothing from the Todoroki Family, except for a disgust for the way that Toya not only has to die, but has to die a slow, gruesome death while the rest of his family walks away with the small comfort of "oh at least we'll get to say what we need to say before Toya passes."
Especially with the fact that Toya's greatest fear was that when he died, he died meaninglessly because his family never grieved him and all moved on with their life. I guess we don't have to analyze how gross the underlying message that criminals don't deserve to be sympathized with because themes are for eighth graders.
EPILOGUE
The post is finished but apparently everyone expects me to cover every single possible angle even in posts this long.
You didn't address the cultural aspect. Under the Red Hood is a western story, and Todoroki Family is based on eastern concepts.
The post isn't about that. The post is long enough I can't cover every single topic. Here's someone who covered that topic thoroughly. This one discusses more about the nuances of collectivism.
Also, since the Todoroki Family obviously copied Under the Red Hood's homework, it warrants a comparison. Especially since it seems to critically misunderstand what made the original work.
Which is a valid form of Literary Criticism, as Ursula K Le Guinn once said:
 It doesn’t occur to the novice that a genre is a genre because it has a field and focus of its own; its appropriate and particular tools, rules, and techniques for handling the material; its traditions; and its experienced, appreciative readers—that it is, in fact, a literature. Ignoring all this, our novice is just about to reinvent the wheel, the space ship, the space alien, and the mad scientist, with cries of innocent wonder. The cries will not be echoed by the readers. Readers familiar with that genre have met the space ship, the alien, and the mad scientist before. They know more about them than the writer does.
The Todorkis aren't all to blame for Toya. Natsu, Fuyumi and Shoto are innocent:
You're right. It's just easier to refer them as the Todorokis then specifying "Enji and Rei" each time.
You didn't mention Shoto once in this post:
I have no cricism for Shoto's role in all this. In fact I think he's the best written part. I praise it here.
Shoto is a good boy, and he deserved to spend more time with his brother. The fact he won't be able to sit down and have dinner of him, is the greatest tragedy of them all.
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sp0o0kylights · 1 year ago
Text
Indie horror filmmaker Eddie Munson, high off his first big (underground but notable) success, knows the movers and shakers of the film world have their eyes on him. 
They're just waiting to see if he was a one hit wonder before they open all the doors he's been trying to kick down. 
His next upcoming film is his chance, his shot at finally making it. Of being like Rob Zombie and the other creators he looks up to that masterfully blended metal and horror. 
This is his golden ticket. 
The project starts off smooth. His last success has greased the wheels, and things fall into place faster than ever before. 
He's got the best idea for this insane haunted house story, a true "mazes in mazes" type of deal with a queer twist. A real look at how a place can haunt a person just as easily as a ghost can.
 Everything's going swimmingly--until one of his leads drops out the day they're due to start shooting.
No call no show's, and later, Eddie will find out the guy got a last second call back to be a contestant on one of those Love Island bullshit romance gigs (and laugh his ass off when the main love interest takes one look at Billy Hargrove and goes on a five minute rant about ugly mullets on national television) but right now? 
He's fucked. 
He's called in every favor he has for this film. Maxed out every credit card he owns, tapped every contact, got on his hands and knees and begged his rising star journalist best bud to help him market it. (Which Nancy agreed too, for way less cash than she should have.) 
 Eddie can't get anyone on the phone, much less find a replacement actor and the amazing place they rented, that is so dark and wonderfully eerie, is booked out the rest of the year as an AirBnB. 
If he doesn't film now, he loses it all.
Cue the other lead, unknown theater actor Steve Harrington, watching his hair pulling, tire kicking, 'cursing and hopping while holding a toe' mental breakdown and asks why Eddie himself doesn't act in it. 
"Just go full Kevin Smith man. Act and direct." He says, with an easy grin. 
Jeff, Eddie's tried and true videographer, trades glances with Gareth and Grant (Eddie's long used special effects and makeup team, who double for about twelve other jobs because they're also his best friends and they're all in this together, make or break.)
"We don't really have a lot of other options." Gareth hedges. "You're already using me and Grant as background characters." 
Eddie, hands fluttering around his face as though trying to wave away this entire situation, squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a pained hiss. 
"Fine, fine!" He announces with the air of a man running towards a fire. "Fuck it, this is our one shot and so help me I will be shooting it!" 
Steve politely hides a laugh with a cough. 
"Chuckle all you want big boy, I'm going to tragically romance you so hard people will forget both of our characters actually live." Eddie snarls.
Steve, the handsome bastard, just winks.  "Looking forward to it." 
Eddie blushes, but hides it with a surge of frantic energy, conveyed by lots of yelling and moving and getting the ball rolling. 
Two days later, Steve would give the performance of a lifetime down on his knees, covered in a literal pound of fake gore, booty shorts and nothing else as he sobbed about how a lover could become a home. His hands clawed at Eddie's jeans before resting a tear stained face on a slim leg as he bent his body towards Eddie like it hurt to be away from him. 
Eddie would later receive equal praise in his own acting during the scene, with the world and every reporter in it asking how he conveyed an otherworldly panic so beautifully throughout Steve's performance. What was he thinking, to evoke those expressions on his face? 
The way his own pale hand, unmarred by blood and acting as a metaphor for the plot, would come to stroke Steve's cheeks.
Eventually he'd come up with a smooth polished answer that cheekily pleased his audience, but nothing would ever come close to the truth. 
("Eddie I've known you since grade school." Jeff said that night, a scant few hours after they'd wrapped. "You can act man, but not like that." 
Eddie made a wild "shut up" gesture, looking frantically over his shoulder before admitting; "You saw how close his face was to the prince of darkness!? I was seconds away from popping a boner next to his lips, in front of the 4K camera!” 
Eddie bounced into Jeff’s face so he could hiss: “He fucking had his chin on my thigh, Jeff, and I am only a man. A mere mortal!" 
"So we're gonna unpack all of that later." Jeff said finally, when he'd managed to get his mouth working and Eddie back out of his personal space. "But dude, we've talked about you calling your dick the prince of darkness." 
Eddie flipped him off.) 
One year later and critics named Corroded the best horror film of the year, praising the camera work, practical effects, and how there wasn't a soul alive who was surprised to hear Eddie and Steve were dating after their explosive on screen chemistry.
No one ever quite understood the prince of darkness jokes or why Steve mentioning it made Eddie blush, but that was a secret to find out later. 
Today on WIP’s I have no intention of writing, indie horror movie AU!
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vesppperoro · 7 months ago
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hii uhh, i had a little idea that id like to share if thats ok, it might be quite triggering tho so be warned ‼️
a sinner demon reader thats based on a teddy bear, because theyre too soft and mushy personality-wise, and they ended up in hell due to being suicidal. like their whole body is covered in stitches thats supposed to be a metaphor for sh scars
do whatever u want with that info, u can even ignore it if u like, have a nice day ❤️
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Hazbin Hotel Cast with a Teddy Bear!Sinner Reader
Includes: Charlie, Vaggie, Angel Dust, Husk, Niffty, Sir. Pentious, Cherri Bomb, Alastor.
A/N: this is such an interesting idea! I’m going based on my own experiences as someone like this, along with research. I appreciate you for trusting me with this <3 I definitely WILL make a p2!! Might write for this sinner more tbh I loved writing them!! I thought you meant a child and I wrote that I’m so sorry 😭
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Charlie Morningstar
She truly didn’t understand why you were in hell.
You are such a sweetheart! She adores you.
When you showed up to the hotel one day, without clothes and covered in stitches, she was immediately worried.
She took you in and washed you up as best as she could.
You were like a child! Why were you even here?
She was happy that you wanted to be redeemed, however.
She became a mother figure to you.
You go to her when you’re sad and you hug her frequently.
She traces your scars sometimes and you two share a silent moment together.
A silent moment of understanding.
She loves picking you up and holding you!
She hugs you like you’re an actual teddy bear.
She’s the one you go to for emotional things.
She’s good at comforting you. She somehow knows what you wanna hear at all times.
Vaggie
She became a secondary mother figure to you.
She was Charlie’s girlfriend, so of course she was.
She understood your situation and was pissed heaven casted a sweetie like you because of your lowest point.
She’s the more levelheaded one.
She’s the one who gives you advice and stuff like that. While Charlie is the more emotionally supportive one, Vaggie is the more mature and steady one.
She also traces your scars. Even if you don’t like them, she tells you you’re beautiful no matter what.
When you told her more of your story, she almost cried.
A child feeling this way broke her to pieces. Especially since you were so soft.
Other than the sad stuff, she loves cuddling you.
You, her, and Charlie sometimes have cuddle sessions with you in the middle because you’re so warm + soft + squishy.
She would kill anyone for you. You’re just so adorable!
She tries to teach you to fight but gives up when you don’t want to hurt anyone.
Angel Dust
Honestly, he saw himself in you.
A lost, scared, and lonely child. You didn’t know the cruelties of the world, aside from those cruelties in your mind.
He tries his best to comfort you. He’s not the best with words, but he’s always there for you.
He calls you sugar bear! He loves you to death.
He would go to the ends of hell for you.
He treats you like he wished to be when he was the same way.
You two share a lot of similarities, so you bond well.
He nearly cried when you told him your stitches were scars from sh.
He embraces you any time he can.
He tries to be the parental figure he needed so you can have a better life, somewhere no one would judge you.
Husk
He’s stubborn, like a dad. He acts like one too.
A hardheaded, yet sweet dad.
He’s like the father you never had. Or did have. Whichever.
He’s the bartender, so he knew how to comfort.
But when you told him your story, he almost broke.
You two definitely sing some sort of song together. Maybe Angel or Vaggie joins.
He cuddles you and hides you with his wings.
If you give him baby doe eyes, he might just take you on a flight.
Husk is SUPER protective over you. He’s very similar to Vaggie in a way when it comes to protection.
He gives you good advice but he still hides behind his tough guy exterior.
He doesn’t understand why you’re down here, even if you tell him. You’re so sweet!
Either way, he adores you.
He loves patting your head and messing with your fuzzy ears.
Might even boop your nose once or twice.
Late night talks.
He probably talked you down from trying to commit again.
Niffty
Another tiny person! Yay!
You’re not a bad boy. She may be a psycho, but she would never call you bad.
Actually, she did once and felt bad once you cried.
She likes to hang out with you since you’re both tiny!
She cuddles and hugs you like you’re her stuffed animal.
Bug killers! Even if you don’t wanna kill bugs, she’s dragging you along anyways.
She tries to hide her needle from you since Husk told her what your stitches meant.
Alastor has to babysit both of you basically.
You and her do almost everything together! You’re best friends!
She sneaks into the kitchen and grabs you both snacks so you can watch a movie.
She makes you sleep in her bed sometimes so she can cuddle you.
Sir. Pentious
He’s a dad. Or, he was.
He treats you like he wishes he treated his son before he passed.
He acts like your father. An awkward father, but he still tries.
He also protects you.
Expect him to curl his tail around you and cuddle you when you’re sad.
He literally cried when you told him your story.
He tells you anytime he can that it’s not your fault. Your stitches are still beautiful.
Best girl dad ever.
Buys you anything he wants, even if he’s broke. (Except sharp things)
He teaches you some things about inventing!
You made him a little metal flower and he was so overjoyed. He took it with him everywhere.
He still remembers you, even if he’s in Heaven now.
Cherri Bomb
Chaotic auntie energy.
She would do ANYTHING for you.
She picks you up and places you on her hip like a baby.
She loves your ears! She also adores how sweet you are.
She wouldn’t admit it, but you’re the cutest thing she’s ever seen.
Even if you tell her your story, she wouldn’t see you differently. You’re a child, a child who went through so much.
Hangouts with her and Angel are a MUST.
They try to avoid doing the normal around you and focus on fun time.
She took you with her when she had a territorial fight one time and you almost cried.
She felt so bad that she bought you anything you wanted for a week.
She did anything you wanted to do, even if Husk or someone else said no to you.
Basically, if you wanted something, you went to her.
Alastor
He’s not one to like kids, really.
He was, however, kinder to you.
He did anything to protect you.
He was like your insane uncle.
He was the one who taught you how to use your abilities. Maybe to help you, or to manipulate you when you grow.
He made you jambalaya once and it became your favorite dish to share with him!
He introduced you to radio and he was happy that you loved it.
He started bringing you to his studio whenever he did a radio show.
He took you to an overlord meeting once. That’s how you met Rosie.
He pats your head like a dog lol.
Don’t expect him to be emotionally available. But he will be there to have fun sometimes.
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pinacoladamatata · 23 days ago
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transcribing some codex letters.... Spoilers, obviously.
all the letters i've found from Felassan (not counting the ones that actually save in the codex, these are the ones found around the crossroads.) bc i want the text easy to copy for reasons
An Unknown Artifact
What are the Crossroads doing? "The spirits of the Crossroads do as they must, Felassan. As do we all." Thank you, Solas. That's incredibly useful. Really helps your old friend pull together a rebellion against the Evanuris. -Felassan
The Blighted Tree
This is a holy place. The tree draws strength from the earth, just as the first elves did. Some younger elves grow trees in the cities to honor their ancestors. Roots have a tendency to dig down and gnarl up, then twist around things they aren't supposed to, though. Hoping that metaphor doesn't stick. -Felassan
The Cathedral of roots
When we first started, this was a safe place for spirits who joined our cause to find peace from the stress of battle. Now… I don't know. Not a lot of spirits use it any longer. Have they grown stronger, or has the fight against the Evanuris made demons of us all? -Felassan
Mirrors upon Mirrors
This place is amazing. June's normal eluvians function with twinned lyrium fragments. One always leads to another. Solas somehow talked the crossroads into making Fade-eluvians that override them. His own network to run our rebellion. Provided you ignore all the old stories about holding mirror up to mirrors and getting caught in the infinite reflections. -Felassan
A refuge for Mythal
Solas always thought Mythal would join us eventually, that she was better than the rest of the Evanuris. He made this place so she'd be comfortable here once she joined the rebellion. Now it's too late. Solas has sealed this place off out of grief. He won't let me in. I'm sorry, my friend. There was something left for the war to take from you after all. -Felassan
Calm before the storm
I come here sometimes when I need to be myself. Not Solas's friend Felassan. Not the slow arrow of the rebellion. Just me. He hasn't been right since what happened with Mythal. He's planning something with the dagger. And if it were a good idea, he'd have told me. Damn it, Solas. I'm with you as long as we're protecting the innocent from the powerful, but you make it hard sometimes. -Felassan
The Empty Forest
This place used to be full of spirits who flocked to Solas's cause. When his ritual went wrong- when everything went wrong- he vanished, and the spirits stopped coming. Where are you, my friend? You stopped the Evanuris, but broke the world. Please tell me you didn't leave me to fix all this alone. -Felassan
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syzthefrizz · 6 months ago
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Tips for writing dream sequences (from someone who has really vivid, weird dreams on a frequent basis)
My biggest pet peeve with fictional dream sequences is that they make too much sense!! They're too relevant! There's not enough random crazy stuff! That's not always unrealistic per se, but you are missing out on some of the fun ways you can reveal information about your character's mindset, fears, struggles, and future.
Most of my dreams have a goal or objective driving the plot, and it's usually urgent. Ex. "escape the huge storm on the horizon", "find a place to sleep for the night in an unfamiliar town", "find a bathroom". This is especially true of stress dreams.
Everything going on in the dream makes perfect sense to you during the dream. It doesn't feel like reality per se, but you think it is. You're living in a house full of vampires that could eat you at any moment? Seems legit.
Emotions and situations from the dreamer's life can/will find their way into dreams, with varying levels of subtlety. The dream could be about the stressful event itself, or it could be some sort of exaggerated metaphor. Ex. I was worried about whether I was a competent CS major while I was still trying to find a summer job/internship, and I was worried about what my professors must think of me. Such a good student on paper, still without summer plans. I dreamed that I ran into my professors all having lunch together at a restaurant (during a dream with a completely different storyline), and I was wearing my pajamas. They judged me.
Certain things are very hard to do in dreams. This could vary from person to person. For me, it's always driving (the brakes never work right), flying (I can't stay off the ground for very long), and running (it's like trying to run through waist-deep water).
People with PTSD may dream about the traumatic event happening differently than it actually happened. (Take this one with a grain of salt - I don't suffer from PTSD, I just research it sometimes so my blorbos can suffer accurately).
You can have a string of loosely connected or disconnected dream sequences back to back, each with an entirely different plot, setting, etc.
People can have reoccurring themes or plotlines in their dreams, which are often connected to their lives/psyche somehow. I frequently dream about running away from tornadoes and being in situations where there's some catastrophe coming but I'm the only one who understands that there's a problem and nobody will listen to me.
It's common for me to have a dream setting that I KNOW is someplace I'm familiar with, but it doesn't actually look like that place at all. Ex. "I dreamed that we were at my house, but it didn't look like my house..."
Dreams can end in cliffhangers. Sometimes I wake up right before I'm about to eat something delicious.
Sometimes people have dreams about doing things that they would never, ever do in real life, and they wake up feeling disgusted. This is Not a manifestation of their secret desires (*glares at Freud*).
Images are the most memorable parts of dreams. I forget the specific plot points, but I can still picture dozens of liminal spaces my brain has created, even years after I dreamed about it.
Dreams will fade from memory very quickly unless the dream had a strong impression on you, you write details about it down or you tell someone about it before you forget.
If you realize you're dreaming during your dream, sometimes you can control the dream going forward. This is called lucid dreaming. I've done it accidentally a couple times, and it's really hard to "hold on" to the dream and control it. I usually wake up soon after starting. With practice, you can get better at it.
Sometimes a normal/good dream can turn into a nightmare, and vice versa. Most of my dreams aren't really good or bad, they're something in between.
Your subconscious brain is CRAZY intuitive. We can argue over the existence of prophetic dreams (I've heard so many crazy stories), but at the end of the day, your subconscious brain knows things that you don't consciously know. If your character is in love with someone, their subconscious brain will know even if the character doesn't. Relationship problems? Deepest darkest fears and insecurities? Your brain knows. A dream predicted the downfall of my first relationship eight months before it happened, down to the reason why we failed. You can absolutely foreshadow this way. A character might subconsciously know what the consequences of their or other people's actions will be, understand things about the situation they're in, know things about the people they're interacting with, and more, despite their conscious realizations.
There are plenty of ways to make a dream sequence relevant to your story, but don't forget to add in some fun, random details. Character A is secretly in love with Character B? Have Character A dream about Character B confessing feelings to them while in a Vine Nostalgia themed restaurant over a plate of mac-n-cheese. The details are the fun part, and you can get as weird as you want. I once ran into my aunt in a dream, and she was wearing a backpack with a bunch of (fake?) hands sticking out of it, making a fan that rose above her back behind her head like some sort of peacock feather costume piece. I was so freaked out that I woke up. I dare you to get weirder than that.
Not everyone's brain works the same way. I have vivid, random, detailed, memorable dreams on a frequent basis. When I describe them to people they often ask "what were you on?". My roommate only remembers her dreams when they're nightmares. I have some friends who say they don't dream. Other friends have really boring, mundane dreams about their normal lives. Some people have weird dreams but only once in a blue moon. It's a good idea to decide off the bat what kinds of dreams your character has, and how often they remember them.
That's it for now, but I might make a part two if I think of more things to add. Feel free to reblog with your own personal dream expertise!
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blusocket · 7 months ago
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I've seen some people express some confusion about what Fortnight is about, why it opens the album, what's happening in the video, etc, so here's my attempt at an analysis. For the most part I'll be referring to the characters in the video with the names of the people playing them (Taylor and Post) but at times I'm going to be making direct reference to the events of Taylor's personal life and referring to the muses by their names (Joe and Matty) for the sake of clarity and simplicity.
The song itself uses the suburbia conceit as an extended metaphor for the beginning of her relationship with Matty (he's the neighbor she runs away to Florida with, Joe is the cheating husband.) For more eloquent and detailed thoughts on the narrative of the song you can check out Jaime @cages-boxes-hunters-foxes's post here.
The video is really dense, and I'm not 100% confident in every aspect of my interpretation, but I feel pretty sure that it's making extensive use of visual metaphor in order to tell roughly the same story as the song, just in a different setting. To start, Taylor wakes up chained to a bed in a white dress.
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To me this suggests that she's been driven mad by being left at the altar, and is now trapped, surveilled and controlled, in a type of asylum. This represents the end of her relationship with Joe--waiting for a marriage that never came, feeling trapped, mentally unwell etc.
She then takes 'forget him' pills which reveal Post's tattoos on her face when she looks in the mirror.
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This represents Matty (the "miracle move-on drug") and shows that he made a mark on her while she was still in the asylum--that is, still in her relationship with Joe. Additionally, in the wide shot where we see the mirror, its size and shape are very reminiscent of a one-way mirror, often seen in interrogation rooms and psychological experiments, further reinforcing the idea that Taylor is imprisoned here.
She then is able to go to the typewriter room and do her work, creating art about how she's feeling, shown by her repeatedly typing "I love you, it's ruining my life" on the typewriter. She's still in pain and feeling trapped. While there, she encounters Post and they create art together, which creates beauty and color in her life. The blue and gold obviously reference her writing about Joe, but the fact that her work is gold and Post's is blue may be a deliberate choice to draw parallels between Matty and Joe, as she does on numerous songs throughout TTPD.
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The next scene, where Taylor's hair is down and she and Post are wearing the same black coat and pants, takes place inside her head (symbolized by the shape of the papers they're laying on.) She is dreaming about them being free and creating art together, represented by the papers surrounding them and book she's holding, which has the word "us" written on the cover. She's writing their story before it's begun.
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She then reaches for his hand in her fantasy, accepting and asking for this relationship
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Then we see that she's being studied and experimented on--the results of the lie detector test read "I love you, it's ruining my life." Her pain is an object of fascination.
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Interestingly, Post is part of the group experimenting on her, but when the experiments begin to cause her pain, he liberates her.
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This inspires Taylor to destroy the place where she's been trapped, which we see through her opening the filing cabinets that cover the walls and destroying the mirror. I also find the shot of her standing still while papers burn around her interesting and significant; I interpret this as Taylor destroying her own work about Joe. By choosing to leave, she is metaphorically burning--rejecting--the story she wrote about them.
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Finally, Taylor and Post enter the dangerous outside world together; the rain echoes the lyric "I chose this cyclone with you" on the album's title track. While I do feel the meaning of Post being in the phone booth is somewhat ambiguous, the framing and the accompanying lyric--"I've been calling ya but you won't pick up" suggest that he's attempting to communicate with her but can't reach her. They are free of her prison, but still separated.
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Then, he hangs up the phone and reaches for her hand, and she takes it. The final shot of the video is a close up on their linked hands, presenting us with a cautiously optimistic ending--they are lost and vulnerable in the middle of a storm, but they have each other.
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I feel this is a somewhat less sinister, for lack of a better word, portrayal of the start of Matty and Taylor's relationship than is suggested elsewhere on the record, though I believe Post's character being part of the group experimenting on her is significant and the editing creates some ambiguity about exactly when and why she decides to break free. But I hope this clarifies how the video sets up the beginning of this story, the fallout of which is then chronicled over the course of the rest of TTPD.
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writingwithfolklore · 10 months ago
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Specificity, Voice and Backstory
                Today we're talking about character voice, backstory, and writing with specificity. I’ve talked about all these elements separately, but combined these three are the most important elements of your description. Why? Because describing something is the best place to learn not only what the character is experiencing, but more about them and their backstory.
                We do that through drawing comparisons not to abstract ideas, but to specific moments the character has witnessed. Okay, consider these two examples:
The room smelled of warm spices and herbs like a fancy restaurant kitchen.
Vs.
The room smelled like the thyme and basil that clung to my mother's hair when she had finished making dinner, kneeling to hug me after I came in from school.
                They convey the same information, but we learn so much more about the character in the second example.
                In my Differentiating between Perspectives post, I talked more about attitude in character voice. What your character compares things to is a great tell for voice. Here’s the example from that post:
                “The bar was filled to the brim with sweaty drunks falling over each other, barely cognizant of the drinks they were spilling--much less so the people around them.”
                Versus
                “Upbeat dance music filled the bar. A crowd had formed in the middle of the floor, people cheering and dancing together like the rest of the world hardly mattered.”
                Right?
                Check out the full post here:
                So when you’re describing something and reaching for a metaphor or something to liken it to, try to make it personal, in the character’s voice, and specific. We can learn a whole lot more that way.
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atopvisenyashill · 1 month ago
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king bran
so i’ve lined up my theory on how bran will be king in harrenhal but i was a little lax on details about king bran foreshadowing. there’s the “bran in harrenhal” stuff i’ve outlined which includes-
bran’s connection to the weirwoods & the magical connection the isle of faces has
the whent connection
bran being a metaphorical heir to robb by ruling over the lands robb was born, fought, and died in
the importance of harrenhal as a symbol of both the wasteful excess and hope for the future
but why king bran specifically? well…
ATTEMPTED SLAYING BY THE KINGSLAYER
for one thing, bran is our introduction to the entire series (barring the prologue, rip to 3 icons). he introduces us to the brutality of this world, to the themes of justice, kingship, leadership, to the Others, and to magic. that very important lesson about how the person to pass judgement must swing the sword, and must be sure that the life they're taking is one that deserves to be taken? That comes to us not through Jon, or even Arya, but Bran:
Yet our way is the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.
That last sentence in particular is a belief that really sticks in all the kids heads as they go about their journeys, and it is through Bran that we learn it.
But in his second chapter, Bran also introduces us to jaime, cersei, and the main plot twist of the first book which kick starts the war of five kings. before he's pushed from the tower, this is all we know about Jaime-
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He’s blonde, he’s named Jaime, and he killed the king.
Then the first thing he does is attempt to slay Bran.
AEGON VI AND THE PISSWATER PRINCE
What’s most interesting to me regarding King Bran foreshadowing is that the story of how Bran survives the sack of Winterfell is very similar to Varys & Illyrio’s story of the pisswater prince. Here is Tyrion’s summary of it-
"And when the pisswater prince was safely dead, the eunuch smuggled you across the narrow sea to his fat friend the cheesemonger, who hid you on a poleboat and found an exile lord willing to call himself your father. It does make for a splendid story, and the singers will make much of your escape once you take the Iron Throne…
and some reminders about Bran, helpfully color coded-
It was not Bran we killed. It was not Rickon. They were only miller's sons, from the mill by the Acorn Water. "I had to have two heads, else they would have mocked me… laughed at me..."
Three times he had sworn to keep the secret; once to Bran himself, once to that strange boy Jojen Reed, and last of all to Coldhands. "The world believes the boy is dead," his rescuer had said as they parted. "Let his bones lie undisturbed. We want no seekers coming after us. Swear it, Samwell of the Night's Watch. Swear it for the life you owe me."
“Hodor must stay with Bran, to be his legs," the wildling woman said briskly. "I will take Rickon with me." “We'll go with Bran," said Jojen Reed. "Aye, I thought you might," said Osha.
Another interesting thing about Bran, the Reeds, and Aegon VI here-
“He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire."
I swear it by earth and water," said the boy in green. "I swear it by bronze and iron," his sister said. "We swear it by ice and fire," they finished together.
BRAN, THE REEDS, AND THE FISHER KING
Now first of all, quick rundown with more color coding. The Fisher King is a character in Arthurian legend, involved in a story with Perceval and the Holy Grail (so you know we’re already cooking here bc Holy Grail stories are baller). The Fisher King is the last in a long line of kings tasked with guarding the Holy Grail. He is injured at some point, usually in the groin, and is rendered barren by the wound, and his land is a barren wasteland where nothing will grow because he is connected to the land. Only when a prophesied hero comes seeking him will the Fisher King be healed. Perceval, of course, comes seeking him, heals him, and gets the Holy Grail.
Now some of the beats of that story should sound familiar-
Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and some said the Wall. Bran knew the story, but it had never been his favorite. Maybe one of the other Brandons had liked that story. Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if he were her Brandon, the baby she had nursed all those years ago, and sometimes she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by the Mad King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long, Mother had told him once, that all the Brandon Starks had become one person in her head.
He was going to be a knight," Arya was saying now. "A knight of the Kingsguard. Can he still be a knight?" "No," Ned said. He saw no use in lying to her. "Yet someday he may be the lord of a great holdfast and sit on the king's council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset Sea, or enter your mother's Faith and become the High Septon." But he will never run beside his wolf again, he thought with a sadness too deep for words, or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his arms.
The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I'm not dead either.
What was he now? Only Bran the broken boy, Brandon of House Stark, prince of a lost kingdom, lord of a burned castle, heir to ruins. He had thought the three-eyed crow would be a sorcerer, a wise old wizard who could fix his legs, but that was some stupid child's dream, he realized now. 
No," said the pale lord. "That is beyond my powers." Bran's eyes filled with tears. We came such a long way. The chamber echoed to the sound of the black river. "You will never walk again, Bran," the pale lips promised, "but you will fly."
Now what’s interesting is in twoiaf we learn about some ancient rulers called the Fisher Queens-
From such we know of the Fisher Queens, who ruled the lands adjoining the Silver Sea—the great inland sea at the heart of the grasslands—from a floating palace that made its way endlessly around its shores.
The Fisher Queens were wise and benevolent and favored of the gods, we are told, and kings and lords and wise men sought the floating palace for their counsel.
And what do you know look at who Bran is traveling with-
“My father taught me. We have no knights at Greywater. No master-at-arms, and no maester.” “Who keeps your ravens?” She smiled. “Ravens can’t find Greywater Watch, no more than our enemies can.” “Why not?” “Because it moves,” she told him.
Jojen Reed was thirteen, only four years older than Bran. Jojen wasn't much bigger either, no more than two inches or maybe three, but he had a solemn way of talking that made him seem older and wiser than he really was. At Winterfell, Old Nan had dubbed him "little grandfather."
When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood.
I like to say this about Theon, when he sees Bran's face in the weirwood and thinks, "The old gods, he thought. They know me. They know my name." that this is partially true - Theon is beloved by the gods but what he doesn't realize is that the old god he is beloved by is in fact Bran Stark. When the old gods weep for Theon and Jeyne, it is Bran weeping for them! So similarly, the way the Fisher Queens in their moving castle were thought to be beloved by the gods the Reeds in their floating castle are beloved by the gods because they are beloved by Bran. This reinforces Bran's connection to the Fisher King imo - just as the old greenseers and singers/cotf are quite literally connected to the land because they have become part of the the weirwood hivemind, Bran has this same connection to the land.
AND what’s more is that the Fisher King story is likely to trace itself back to a Welsh story, of a magical King who gives his sister's hand away, only to learn that she is being mistreated, and musters a host to go save her. During a battle, the King is mortally wounded by an injury in his foot, and as he dies he tells his men to cut off his head and take it to London so he can protect their people from invasion, and for several years after he "dies" his head continues speaking. If that also sounds familair, do you want to know what that man’s name was?
Bran the Blessed.
MELISANDRE'S VISION
Now staying in the realm of magic, we also have this very interesting passage from Melisandre, emphasis mine-
Show me Stannis, Lord, she prayed. Show me your king, your instrument. Visions danced before her, gold and scarlet, flickering, forming and melting and dissolving into one another, shapes strange and terrifying and seductive. She saw the eyeless faces again, staring out at her from sockets weeping blood. Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths. Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turned to mist, bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing. Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky. A face took shape within the hearth. Stannis? she thought, for just a moment … but no, these were not his features. A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames. He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled.
THE REGENCY OF AEGON III
So warning this is part parallelism and part prediction
The Dance of the Dragons was done, and the melancholy reign of King Aegon III Targaryen had begun.
As he was still but ten years of age, the new king’s first act was to name the men who would protect and defend him, and rule for him until he came of age.
This was a council of which Septon Eustace heartily approved, “six strong men and one wise woman, seven to rule us here on earth as the Seven Above rule all men from their heaven.” Mushroom was less impressed. “Seven regents were six too many,” he said. “Pity our poor king.” Despite the fool’s misgivings, most observers seemed to feel that the reign of King Aegon III had begun on a hopeful note.
So many lords, both great and small, had perished during the Dance of the Dragons that the Citadel rightly names this time the Winter of the Widows. Never before or since in the history of the Seven Kingdoms have so many women wielded so much power, ruling in the place of their slain husbands, brothers, and fathers, for sons in swaddling clothes or still on the teat.
The smallfolk of the Seven Kingdoms speak of King Aegon III Targaryen as Aegon the Unlucky, Aegon the Unhappy, and (most often) the Dragonbane, when they remember him at all. All these names are apt. Grand Maester Munkun, who served him for a good part of his reign, calls him the Broken King, which fits him even better. Of all the men ever to sit the Iron Throne, he remains perhaps the most enigmatic: a shadowy monarch who said little and did less, and lived a life steeped in grief and melancholy.
There is also a big focus on the “tax policies” aspect of the story through these two child rulers. Much of Aegon’s regency centers around him butting heads with his guardians while Bran’s ACOK arc sees him as the ruling Stark in Winterfell and learning how to lead with mentors in Maester Luwin & Ser Rodrik Cassell. EYE also think it’s interesting how both Aegon & Bran get some focus on having a lil gaggle of companions around. Aegon has Gaemon, Jaehaera, Viserys, Daenaera, and Larra Rogare, while Bran has the Big Walder, Little Walder, Rickon, Jojen, and Meera. They both feel like very similar groups of kids that are thrown together & running amok with adult supervision that is more lax/not coming from their parents.
There's also just like, a lot of parallels between Baela, Rhaena, Jacaerys, and Aegon with Arya, Sansa, Jon Snow, and Bran. There are several good breakdowns of the Sansa/Arya parallels as well as the Jace/Jon Snow ones, so I won't dig into that here, but I think when you put all this together what you have between Bran and Aegon III is-
Two boy kings who will have a long regency
Both orphaned due to a brutal succession war
Both referred to as "broken" - aegon by munkin, and bran referring to himself
Younger - but not the youngest - brother coming into his seat after his older brother is killed
Both have names that are important in their families & frequently re-used - and in fact both share a name with their uncle
A very rare "winter of widows" where most of the houses are ruled by women due to all the men being dead and their heirs being babies is coming up in the main series
This anti parallel of Aegon being a very melancholy person & Bran being known to be “quick to laugh and easy to love.”
As for his relationships, we have-
His bastard born brother With Some Secret Paternity Going On, who is likely not going to be in the running for King at the end of the war (hopefully um, Jon Snow actually lives unlike poor Jacaerys)
His oldest brother dying at 16 during the war
One sister who is more adventurous and "tomboy"ish, who is associated with ships and travel
Another sister who is more ladylike, who has a largely political arc in the Vale
Both sisters are likely to take leading roles as political players in the aftermath of the war - I do suspect we will get some sort of “Hour of the Wolf” parallels here, just before or after Bran is crowned
SOME CHOICE QUOTES TO LEAVE OFF ON
Bran could perch for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well. It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb would never know. - Bran II, AGOT
Ahead he glimpsed a pale white trunk that could only be a weirwood, crowned with a head of dark red leaves. - Jon VII, ADWD
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tenjikufag · 7 months ago
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Hello!! Hi I really love your stories. Uhm if I can ask, can you do a fluff of Dr ratio from honkai star rail x male reader. Once again I love your stories and creativity. <3<3<3
Let’s look at the stars.
Dr. Ratio x male reader
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- Fluff, no warnings
-note, I apologize for ooc content (I’m not all too familiar with this character.)
“-immense pressures and temperatures in the star's core squeeze the nuclei of hydrogen atoms together to form helium, a process called nuclear fusion…”
Late nights spent listening to your partners current interest were quite common, you loved to hear him speak with such enthusiasm.. he was in his element and you couldn’t be more happy to be the person he chooses, time and time again, to share it with.
This time, his current studying led him to the stars. Many dumb them down to dead balls of gas, but to him they were so much more. Even if he wasn’t all that big on sentimental things, something about the stars only showing their bright beauty after dying- it moved him in a way.
The two of you laid under the stars, only giving him hums in response to assure him that you were listening. Not that you could ever get a word in, he kept explaining his findings and moving his hands outwards to point to the many constellations, the pathways, which stars had names and what they meant..
“Did you know stars don’t actually twinkle? The proper phrase for it would be scintillate, which only happens when they find themselves among the horizon..”
“Then where do you think the phrase came from?”
Glancing over at him, his lip curled into a smile at the question.. he didn’t have an answer for that, it was more of a metaphorical phrase and the ties to such a phrase would be as endless as a black hole. So, he only smiled and half-heartedly brushed off not knowing such an answer.
“Oh? The doctor doesn’t have an answer?”
The male chuckled, turning his head to look at you with a soft smile.
“Hm, although I know you ask in jest..”
You watched as he sat up, moving to hover his head just above yours.
“Let me conduct a.. study if you will..”
The love in his eyes reflected your own. Nodding, you let him instruct you.
Grabbing your hand, he held it firmly in his own and pressed it into his chest. He then instructed you to close your eyes and timed you to keep them shut for a few seconds.
“Now open..”
You felt his breathe on your lips, noses almost touching but he kept a strong gaze into your pupils.. he watched as they dilated and how they..
Twinkled.
Satisfied, he laughed to himself
“Just as I thought..”
He moved to straddle your waist, now holding both of your hands and again dipped down to closely watch your eyes and how the stars reflected in your irises.
“The term "twinkling stars" is derived from the Old English word "twincan," which means "to twinkle or blink.”
Sitting up, he found himself staring back up at the sky to observe the stars align and glancing down back to your eyes to see how the light refracted..
“This term was likely used to describe the flickering or shimmering appearance of stars in the night sky, which is caused by the Earth's atmosphere…”
Your body followed his, chests pressed against one another and arms now wrapped around his slim waist.
“Is that actually true? Or are you simply making things up again?”
He laughed, clasping your face in his hands in delight.
“It’s true dear, don’t think I didn’t account for such a question from you. I’m honestly.. quite flattered you’d think I could lie to you about such an intimate thing..”
Intimate?
“I see those gears turning, Y/n. Stars are seen as signs of affection by many people, looking up to see the same stars their loved ones are seeing or maybe even looking for their lover among them..”
His smile faltered, the gaze he held no longer as strong. You felt his lips plant themselves on you. Smiling into the kiss, he pushed you back to lay on the plush grass beneath you- hands moving to hold your neck and caress his fingers along your jaw. When he pulled away, an uncharacteristic bashful blush covered his cheeks..
“Even though my study was fruitful, and I quite enjoyed it..”
Lips met yours again, but for a small loving peck
“I must say.. I enjoy studying these ‘twinkling’ stars in your eyes much more..”
He left one more chaste kiss on your lips before sliding off of you, returning to his spot beside you.
The man would learn everything through you if he could, but to use his studying to show his adoration to you was something he’d never thought would be possible- it never crossed his mind before you came into his life.
He’d study a million stars if he got to see them in your eyes.
I really hope this was okay, and not too ooc- thank you for the request!
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crumbledcastle28 · 2 years ago
Text
Din Djarin: Bright and Shiny
Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!reader (she/her)
Excerpt: “Do you like It?” he whispered, and you swore you were dreaming. You had pictured him like this so many times—so many times—but it was real. This was fucking real and you were fucking on fire.”
“Yes,” you said, breathily. “I do.”
You were locked on his helmet so badly that you didn’t see his right hand creeping up to frame your face with it. Holding your cheeks between his thumb and the rest of his fingers, forcing you to focus on his face.
“What do you like about it?”
Warnings: smut smut smut and more smut (me writing a dom man?), with softness at the end. The Crest is aliveee. Grogu isn’t here yet.
A/N: Happy Dincember everyone, aka my absolute favorite tumblr tradition. To all the authors updating prompts every day…are you Gods?
If you’d like to leave a like, comment, ask, or reblog, it would be very appreciated <3
Pedro Masterlist
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There was no bigger hypocrite in the galaxy than the infamous Mandalorian.
Blood-crusted beskar coated the majority of his body every time he placed his feet on solid ground—every time— in addition to the metaphorical armor that was his demeanor. Solid, unbreakable, stern, terrifying.
It was not until you had spent a few months as his “partner” at the Guild, thus living together on his quickly crumbling Razor Crest, that you were met with his true doctrine of hypocrisy.
It was as if every time he elected to remove a piece of his armor for you, he knocked down one of his walls. First was the night he removed the small shoulder and shin pieces, the same night he elected to crack his first joke. Next was the dark-browned chest, sharing with you that he was a foundling in his Covert. Then the belt, covered in more weapons and weight than you had ever seen, and he told the story of his first kill. Then the wrists, along with the story of his toughest kill. The one that haunted him as he attempted to fall asleep at night. Then his gloves, with the story of the first woman he had ever fell in love with.
“You remind me of her,” he had said to you, “except you have actually stayed.” He had said the last part quickly before immediately exiting the pit to hide in his “room” for a few hours.
You remained in your copilot seat, staring off into the stars of hyperspace, unable to think at all.
Slowly—very slowly— the Mandalorian had revealed more and more of his true self to you. The one who would sneakily hum around the Crest, make sure to turn your heated blanket on early on cold nights, and always—always—avoid spiced food like the plague.
“It upsets my stomach,” he had defended, and you scoffed in return.
After such long travel-times on jobs, you would get so used to the softness of his true personality that when he would have to put his armor back on—literally and figuratively— you almost felt like you were looking and speaking to a different person.
The heat in your lower stomach felt that way too.
It flared when he was soft, but the switch from the man you knew to the Mandalorian always reminded you both of when you first met him and what he was truly capable of.
Plus, seeing the width of his shoulders accentuated by the most expensive and impenetrable metal known to man was not bad either.
You had been sitting at the usual meeting spot with Greef, ready to discuss the dozen pucks already sitting in front of you. You were still due for a new job after the boat-load of beskar given to you for the little green baby— which definitely was not still on your conscious— and Mando was running a bit late due to the crafting of his new armor. You waited anxiously to see the results.
“I have never held this much in my own hands before,” he had said to you, and you beamed up at him as he spoke. “This will likely be enough for an entirely new set.”
You had no idea how right he was.
You sat at the booth with Greef, making pleasant enough conversation, but mostly daydreaming of what Mando was seeing, feeling, touching. The pleasure to watch his own armor be crafted by hand, you could not even imagine what that would be like.
You took a sip of your drink—one that Greef had been so gracious to buy for you—and let it burn as you set it down on the sticky wooden table. As soon as the glass touched the wood, the entire cantina silenced, and all eyes went to the entrance. Your eyes followed the crowd’s, unable to see for certain what everyone was looking at.
It only took a few seconds for you to realize that the “what” was actually a “who,” and that “who” was the kindest man you had ever known wrapped in wealth, power, and impenetrability.
It was a good thing you had set your drink down, because it would have dropped to the floor, shattering into millions of pieces, because he was the sexist thing you had ever laid your eyes on.
This was the Mandalorian.
You thought his previous armor was intimidating—small shoulder pieces, a wide chest piece, and even wider thigh pieces. He was both a distraction to you and a threat to everyone else in that armor.
But now, now he fully covered, head to toe, in shimmering silver. His waist the tiniest you had seen it, with his shoulders as wide as they had ever looked. Almost the entirety of his legs were covered now, and even his helmet gleamed and glistened in the light. He walked straighter, stood taller, and stepped slower. Like he was enjoying this.
He had never looked more lethal, and with all of the eyes on him, his own were on you.
You stared back at him as he made his way, mouth slightly parted, and legs squeezing tighter and tighter together with each step he took. The typical slight steam in your stomach at the sight of him was now boiling hot, running through the blood in your body faster than you could process. The lack of blood flow to your brain caused it to wipe itself clean and focus solely on the warrior in front of you. Your hands began to shake and your mouth parched.
You were speechless. A deadly bounty hunter stunned speechless.
He said nothing as he scooched his way into the booth, and you remained looking at him even when his body was turned towards Greef.
“I want my next job,” he said.
Greef said something, something witty, but you didn’t hear it. Couldn’t hear it.
“I want my next job,” Mando repeated. Amban rifle in his lap, leaning slightly forward.
Holy fuck the heat in you.
He grabbed a puck and began walking out, turning back to signal you to follow. You stood slowly, thanked Greef, and exited the Cantina, eyes locked on the expanse of his back the entire walk to the Crest.
~*~
It wasn’t two seconds after Mando put the security lock on the Crest that he had you cornered with his words.
“Is something the matter?” he asked, taking a step closer to you. You were both in the cock pit, ready to take off, and you were standing in front of the controls.
“No,” you said, meeting his gaze as fiercely as you could. Your hands were glued to your sides and your fists squeezed so hard they stung.
“Okay,” he said, so fucking softly it hurt you. He was still making his way closer to you, forcing you to look up.
“Okay,” you responded, and you thought that was it. He would back off.
But your fucking eyes betrayed you, darting down to the expanse of his body, and he laughed.
“Do you like It?” he whispered, and you swore you were dreaming. You had pictured him like this so many times—so many times—but it was real. This was fucking real and you were fucking on fire.
“Yes,” you said, breathily. “I do.”
You were locked on his helmet so badly that you didn’t see his right hand creeping up to frame your face with it. Holding your cheeks between his thumb and the rest of his fingers, forcing you to focus on his face.
“What do you like about it?”
You could barely breathe enough to respond. Your throat instantly dried, and every word of any language was lifted from you.
“I—I like—” you started, swallowing “—I like the chest.”
“The chest,” he said, bringing your hand up to the cold metal. “What about it?”
You traced your fingers down it, still forced to look up at him by his leather glove. “I like how wide it makes you. How powerful.”
He stood there in silence before asking, “what else?”
“The legs,” you whispered. “I really like the legs.”
He nearly growled. “Why Y/N? Tell me.”
Your name on his lips at this stage of the game was too much.
“It makes them look big. Strong,” you said, heart in your throat. “I like that.”
He softened his grip on your face and moved his hand to the back of your neck. “I know you do.” He then tapped twice on his helmet. “Heat signature.”
Your face fell and paled.
How long had he—
“I’ve known since the first day I met you,” he said, massaging your neck. “Just never knew how to bring it up.”
“Why now?” you whispered, voice deep from the pleasure of his fingers.
“Because this is the strongest it’s ever been for you,” he replied. “And for me. Seeing you watching me like that…”
He brought his hand back to frame your face.
“…I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than you in that moment.”
He started pulling you forward by your face.
“And now i have you, don’t I?”
Yes he did, so much of you, parts of you you didn’t even know about before him.
“Yes.”
He let go of you and sat in the pilot’s seat, spreading his legs.
“So ruin me, Y/N. Ruin this bright and shiny armor.”
You practically jumped on him.
You immediately mounted him, wrapping your hands around his shoulders, and felt all around the metal. Your breaths fogged up his helmet as you did, practically moaning at the chance to finally feel the expanse of his body. He kept his hands firmly on your hips, watching your face as you panted and whined in his.
After a few moments he picked you up and sat you on his right thigh.
“Go on.”
You immediately rolled your hips, fully moaning at the feeling, and rolled them faster and faster and deeper and deeper.
Your head began tipping back as the metal ground against your clit perfectly, but Mando pulled your face forward to rest your forehead on his.
“Mando—”
“It’s Din,” he said firmly, squeezing your hips enough to bruise. “Say it.”
You rolled your hips over and over, desperation dripping off your voice. “Din.”
It was then that he released a moan, ripped your pants and underwear off of you, and took control of your hips on his thigh. He placed you down just right and tears coated your eyes, sweat poured from your pours, and with one inch of incline from his leg, you shattered.
Your forehead fell against his, panting and whining “Din” over and over again as he kept you moving on him through your orgasm. You felt yourself drip down onto the floor and run down his legs, and your eyes rolled at the thought.
You held onto the fabric around his neck for dear life, gathering as much breath as you could, and Din just let you.
It was then that he started to feel you up.
He moved from your hips to your bare thighs, back up to your clothed breasts, then to your face to brush back your hair, and finally back down to your thighs. He gathered your drip from his thigh onto his leather glove. He brought it underneath his helmet, and your mouth dropped open.
He sucked it slowly, not making any noise except a slight groan. “I knew I was right.”
You swallowed, still panting in both exhaustion and shock. “Right?”
“I knew every part of you was perfect.”
Your eyes fluttered closed, and you smiled nice and wide. You had a feeling he was smiling too.
It was this sense of elation and euphoria that gave you the freedom not to think before sliding your hand over his hardened bulge and raising your eyebrows in question.
He chuckled, which somehow melted you more than anything he had done previously.
“Not right now,” he said sweetly, and pulled you into his chest. You cozied up into him before he slowly lifted you, allowing you to wrap your legs around his waist. “I don’t think I’d last two seconds.”
You smiled, humming. “Okay Din.”
His body tensed a bit when you said that, and you wondered if you crossed some sort of boundary, but he continued on his way to his bed. He set you in It, wrapping you in his sheets, and grabbing a towel to clean you off. You got a good show of yourself stained and running all over his thigh and nearly jumped on him again.
“Like I said,” he countered, likely picking up on the change in your temperature, “I wouldn’t last two seconds.”
You nodded with a smile and he took the towel to the laundry room before returning to you, sitting on the side of the bed.
“Get some rest,” he said. “We have a job to do in the morning.”
He stood, making his way back to the cockpit, but you called out to him.
“Mando, wait,” you said, and he froze before slowly turning back around. “Are we okay? Was that…okay?”
He paused, leaning himself into the doorway, sighing as always, and said, “Y/N, I wouldn’t trade the world for the last hour I’ve had with you.”
You enjoyed this forward, talkative Din much more than you anticipated to.
“And call me Din,” he said. “Please.”
He then left you, starting up the Crest to make its way to hyperspace, and you drifted slowly into sleep, still on a high. You finally fell asleep to the feeling of a warm body wrapping itself around you, and a deep voice whispering in your ear, “We’re okay, Y/N. We’re okay.”
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