#don't know what's going on with the indentation but I have no further patience to fix it

[pasdetrois]

Charlie Newton, Uncle Charlie's niece and namesake, is an odd candidate for Bluebeard's wife. For starters, she is, of course, a blood relation rather than a spouse. But the relationship between Uncle Charlie and Charlie is a complicated one. "We're not just uncle and niece," Charlie asserts. "It's something else. I know you." Charlie and her uncle are the first characters we meet in the film, both introduced through Peeping Tom shots in which the camera tracks from shots of their respective towns into their bedrooms to observe both, recumbent on their beds, meditating on the dead ends in which they find themselves. "This coupling of the two characters lying in beds separated by a continent is the most striking indication of the relationship that exists between them," one critic writes. "There is a sly hint that what Charlie and her uncle are thinking about while lying in bed is of the other in bed." In these paired scenes, there seems to be as much a touch of the morbid as of the erotic, for both characters are posed in such a way as to suggest a deathbed scene. With what appears to be telepathic precision, Charlie and her uncle simultaneously frame plans to telegraph the other with proposals for a family reunion.

If there is any doubt that the kinship between the two Charlies transcends blood ties, it is eliminated when the uncle takes his niece’s hand slips a ring on it. “Give me your hand, Charlie," he asks, and the profile of the two suggests a romantic engagement scene more than anything else. This symbolic marriage caps a scene that decisively takes us into the territory of the Bluebeard story. Charlie confides a powerful sense of kinship to her uncle at the same time that she asserts her knowledge of a secret in his past, an enigma that endows him with an aura of mystery. As her uncle's double, she not only feels confident that she can identify it, but also feels entitled to know it:

CHARLIE: I know you. I know that you don't tell people a lot of things I don't either. I have a feeling that inside you somewhere there's something nobody knows about. UNCLE CHARLIE: Something nobody knows... CHARLIE: Something secret and wonderful, and I'll find it out. UNCLE CHARLIE: Not good to find out too much. CHARLIE: But we're sort of like twins, don't you see. We have to know.

Maria Tatar, Secrets beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and His Wives

[animextears]

DRIP DRIP :|: Akaashi Keiji

akaashi keiji x reader : * :

warnings: 18+ only, smut, moody reader, oral, teasing

wc: 1.6k premise: does he have what it takes to make you feel better?

author notes: ty for your patience & waiting out the weekend for this, akaashi luvers!

You were definitely having a bad day and Akaashi Keiji knew it. He could tell by the way you walked into the room and how your lips do that thing whenever you're deep in thought. That thing which he secretly finds too cute, especially because it gives him an opportunity to try and kiss it right off of you.

He approaches you with care midway through your huff across the kitchen, "Hey. —Baby." stopping you by the waist, stern hands finding their way to a bit of bare skin under your shirt and lightly gripping around them, that somehow, even through your current headspace of disturbances has a way of slipping through the crack of your mood just enough to shoot a tiny amount of electricity straight to the clit. Even so, you brush it off with determination, you’re feeling too pissed off for that.

He tilts his head curiously and dips his knees a bit in order to get closer to your face. His sparkling oceanic eyes are greeting you with concern, passion, questioning and calm all at the same. God, you think, you don't know how he does that, but it's one of the things you adore so much about him. He can say a multitude of things through those profound peepers without saying much.

Akaashi points a finger to run it up the middle of your furrowed brow, pushing upward on the forehead, so as to lift up the expression and unfurrow it for you, "Aww, you ok?" he consoles.

Your exhale is an appreciative one, and you are very grateful that he cares, but you just can't seem to shake this feeling.

An equally sparkling smirk to match his eyes comes forth, "I think I could...make you feel...better?..."

You attempt a small smile, but from being so in your head with the irritating day you've had, you just don't believe anything would help right now.

"No, Keiji baby, thanks, it's fine. I think I just need to think for a bit maybe..." you turn around to the kitchen counter, reaching for a glass from the cabinet and fill it to the brim with water.

“I see.”

He doesn’t really.

And it becomes evident by the way he is moving in on your back with playful lust and a sigh, “Hmm, you sure?"

His arms wrap around you to the front, one hand delicately leafing at the hem of your shirt, when suddenly it traces up your bare rib cage underneath the fabric. He follows through by groping one of your soft tits, lacing your nipple between two of his long fingers, then pressing the space between them to squeeze in on the sensitive bud. Akaashi knows how to expertly massage at the buoyant heft within his handful, like he’s gone pro in the athletic field of tiddie-tossing.

When he sees a trickle of your pleasure break through, he entices you, "Oh...? How about if I add another...?"

As you take a sip of water, his other hand moves in on your other breast and when your mouth separates from the lip of the glass, you release a louder pant. "Mmm, I dunno, baby, you maybe don't seem so sure..."

Enclosing itself behind your body now is the feeling of very stiff, very large excitement pressing in between the line of your clothed bottom. Your eyes shut trying to keep composure because you aren't fully convinced yet that you'll be able to let go of your glowering attitude. But, once his hands are both artfully rubbing on you within your blouse while making an indentation of himself on your lower half, he's right about your uncertainty. Ten sweet fingertips sink deeper into the flesh on your chest as you puff out harder.

"Hm, babe? What was that? Can't hear you." A clink of a full glass taps the counter. Your grip on it tightens.

When your head drops forward, he knows you're done for now.

Fast as he can, Akaashi plunges a hand down into the wet depth of your pants, his chin now resting on your inner shoulder so that his lips are effervescent on your ear. He slides his middle finger up inside you and it's already so soaked he can barely contain his low and prompt reply, "Ohh fuck, precious..." expelling his gratification as he drives it deeper, getting you to finally whimper pitifully because you're still so goddamn upset, but smooth-talking, blue-eyes here has gotten your moody fortresses to fall. "Let me ask you again, angel, how would you like it if I add another-?" Your spine bends forward to respond before your brain can even catch up to formulate words of agreement and— He adds two, twisting in the index and ring fingers up to join the middle like it's a grinding dance party in your pussy. The inexplicable feeling of his fullness leaves you capsized. Suddenly, all your frustration about the day has completely escaped you now. -Wait- what was I even moping about?- His fingers curl in on that hypersensitive spot within and you are fully sopping.

When you start hitting your hips against the counter to get his fingers to dip in further, he slows for a second.

"Turn your head some and let me look at that cute little flustered face..." You look hazily into his alluring eyes, "...mmn, now that's better isn't it, my pretty pouty girl?"

"Mhmn, Keiji...-'t feels better..."

Even ASMR doesn't do justice to the way he whisperingly croons out, "So, does someone want a peck on the lips to feel better?"

When your head leans in to him give one, he quickly diverts his away and declares calmly,

"Not those ones."

You watch his eyes narrow, and with these words, he feels your body reflexively tense in anticipation and it's all the confirmation he needs.

Without waiting for a response he readily unhands himself from within you, so that in a blink of an eye, he's already undone the top button of your pants and the other has swiftly followed to unzip them. With a hard tug, he exposes your ass, releasing your drenched garments, so that the clothes and his knees both hit the floor simultaneously.

He is fierce, yet tender as he bites into the ripeness of your plump cheek. A groan erupts out of you.

Akaashi turns you around, hands sliding along the swivel of your hips. He leans in to hover his mouth just over your little, bare hump, breathing warmth over it as he looks up at you, you down at him.

"I asked you a question," hot, moist words deliberately hit only your clit. He seeks to edge you longer and its something you can hardly handle well. Concentrated heat beats at it again,

“Want me to kiss it? Make it all better?”

You are devastated, “P-please, Keiji,” casting him a sensual nod.

His eyes don’t leave yours as he reveals his tongue and solely places it flat and still on your bundle of nerves, building your arousal. Only after you reactively hitched your third rapid mini breath in a row that has your belly contracting from desire, does he finally close his eyes leaning into his own pleasure of your inviting flavor.

With his tongue, he creates a space in between your soft crease soaking it further with your juices. He motions keenly from the back to the front, then again, slowly to the hole, then quickly back to the tip. When you quiver, he snatches a thigh and hitches it over his shoulder burrowing his face more intensely onto you, shoving your pelvis into a half-way sit position on the chilly counter.

You cry out with soft squeals and your head falls back while clenching through his raven strands.

The sound of lush, compact, oral smacks hitting your eardrums are like a rush of music you didn't know you needed today. All of your skin is resounding in relaxation and applause. His face is so pretty as you watch him enjoy taking all of your troubles away with just the cushion of his drenched muscle. Akaashi is a true giver. A truly giving lover and a super giving man.

He forcefully sinks his tongue up your creamy slit, masterfully jerking it inward while also working his lips upward in a way that now makes your eyesight obscured to the room. You didn't even realize you still had a glass in your hand until your increased thrusts onto his mouth begins to spill water all over, slightly showering you and the crown of Akaashi's head. He barely notices, and you see him humorously smile from behind your cunt because he knows you're about to peak. You don't even want to take a second to stop and put it down because if you do, you might lose your rise to climax right now.

Your voice is a small stirring mewl, "Oh Keiji, oh god, baby- I’m- I’m gonna...gonna come—" He sucks deeply onto that frontal sweet spot, focusing in on it and rocking his lips forward and knows not to stop not stop not stop until after...

—Your body becomes lighting, bursting outward, high-pitched tones vocalize themselves out from your chest. The water from your lazy grasp is splashing everywhere and you can tell he is just loving all of it.

As you descend, he hugs around both of your thighs and gives the swollen lump between them one final faint kiss.

Now that you are both partially bathed, he takes a stand, and flicks an attractive hand through his damp hair to fix it.

He liberates the glass from your hand and takes a sip of the water that's barely there anymore and finishes it, then lightly slaps at your bare ass. He warmly winks, granting you a quick kiss with an armed grin behind it. Before coyly turning on his heel out the room to just leave you standing there gaping with your half-naked frame hanging off the counter, Akaashi proclaims,

"Well, love, that's certainly one way to wash away the pain."

‣ masterlist

[ecotone99]

[MF] Not Specified"Please Don't Touch The Art" — Published in the Spadina Literary Review

It would take me hours of slow wandering before I got anywhere, but I was not a man who moved quickly (or at all, as you’ll see) under the watchful eye of the public. As long as there was some forward movement, I’d find my way. And at exactly the moment I wanted to give up, at exactly the moment I realized I was lost, there it was. It was a thin three story condo, no more than a half meter across, its exterior a rotting black wood, couched between two monstrous high-rises. “Art Show” was painted across the door in white paint. As I took a step towards it, the door burst open. From its high steps came a rush of high-society, snub-nosed men and women, dressed in their evening’s best. They laughed as they smoked their cigarettes on long-tipped sticks, turning sideways to get through the skinny doorframe. They rushed past me, a dead fish floating in the water. Once the rush dissipated and my heart rate slowed, I took the first of three steps, then looked up. At the door was a man in a butler’s outfit, penguin tail and all, holding onto the door knob. I froze and looked up at him. “Welcome,” he said, looking past me. His eye sockets were filled with milky, pupil-less marbles. He stood back, holding his hand out to the hallway behind him. “After you,” he said. I peered in. The hallway was nothing more than a dark corridor, narrowing to a tiny door. “Sir?” the man said, raising an eyeless brow. At the time, I remember thinking I was standing at the precipice of another world, panic filling my being and bursting from my fingertips. If I had any time to decide, I may not have stepped forward, as I did, but the man began to close the door and I had no other choice. Once it was closed, the hallway went dark, except for the illumination spilling from the cracks of the miniature door. I walked a few feet before having to get on my hands and knees. I turned the tiny door handle and crawled through. On the other side was the pale wood walls of a sprawling, open gallery, washed in a clinical white light. Despite the previous high-society horde that escaped as I’d arrived, the room was still teeming with others, walking slowly and idly, from art piece to piece. I, not wanting to bring attention to myself, decided to blend in and do the same. Hands clasped behind my back, I walked through the gallery, passing by paintings of horse-headed men, a cigarette smoking starfish in bed with a six-slotted plastic pop ring, giants playing marbles with earth-like globes, an alternate historical timeline where Stalin and Hitler were lovers, and a sun with sunglasses titled “cool dude” before stopping at a small alcove, set off from the rest, with a single painting hidden away by the notched wall. It was a pastel painting of a young man, who stared back at me, as if I stumbled upon a mirror. He had the same blue eyes, dotted with grey, as if the artist went all sorts of Pollock across his pupils. Like me, he had the same shoulder length blonde hair, parted down the middle. The collar of the identical suit that my grandfather gave me when I turned 18, which I now wore, was jutting up from the bottom of the painting, barely perceptible, unless you knew what already lay beneath the visible universe of the painting. I scratched my chin in wonderment and half expected the painting to do the same. As I wondered where this mysterious work of art, this man-made mirror, could have originated, I felt someone watching over me, from above my shoulder. It was an old woman whom I could see in the reflection of the glass that covered my lost pastel twin. She wore her hair, like the thick spokes of a broom, proudly, in a high grey ponytail. Just then I noticed, not in the reflection, but in the pastel of the painting, a hand extending over my very likeness’s shoulder. At the same moment I could feel the heat of her body, the warmth of her soul, invading my space. I imagined her fingers extend towards me, as if she were poking through gelatin in the thick air. The veins of her hand were prominent blue tubes fighting their way to the surface, the blood cells alerted to the oxygen rich environment on the other side of her thin skin. It was an all you can eat buffet, they told one another—whispers from another land. That hand, and those fingers, full of rebellious blood, each individual cell wearing a shirt with Che Guevara’s face on it, stabbed a long cold finger into my shoulder. But she didn’t press once, or twice, or three times. No. She kept it there, palpating the skin, testing it for realness. “Hello? Boy? May I ask you a question?” Her voice was underweight and waning, barely making the gap from her mouth to my ear. In response I didn’t breathe and didn’t swallow. I became still, slowing my heartbeat, moving inwards into my self, hiding like a scared turtle from her touch. I would not give her my attention, but shift it and find myself in the peculiarities of the painting, as deep and mysterious as they were. I had a workman’s resolve and she would not break my gaze. “Do you hear me?” she said, burning a hole in the back of my head, still making small indents in the skin of my shoulder. Her voice, this time, was loud and insincere, as if she knew the internal trouble she was causing me, which only strengthened my resolve. I would be here for the long haul. “Boy? Are you listening?” she said, louder now, her voice jarring, cracking at the walls. The painting in front of me shook. “What is it?” a hoarse man’s voice, the sound of a smoker, said from out of view of the painting’s glass reflection. “This boy,” she said, still poking me in the shoulder. “He’s frozen stiff.” “Now isn’t that strange?” Who was this irritable addition, I thought, who dared taunt me in my alcove, who looked upon me with his judging gaze? “What an odd installation,” he added. I was no installation for their amusement. Sure, the hairs on my head showed no signs of wavering, but I would not be reduced to the level of installment. I had no maker, no artist, but my parents and theirs before me. “An installation?” the elder woman said, her voice wavering with doubt. “He’s not?” the only moving man in the scenario said. “I don’t—” she said, pressing harder into the meat of my shoulder. “I don’t know.” I could hear the man scratching a thumb against his chin, the soft rustling of hours old hair. “Looks like an installation to me.” “May be,” she said, turning her prodding into a pinch between her two dying fingers. “Hey James!” the man said, turning his head. “Did we see this one earlier?” Another man, this one’s voice squeaky and feminine, joined us three. “I don’t remember, Tomás.” He was a big man, in my mind, this James—husky and red-faced. “What’s the commotion?” a woman’s bodiless voice, much younger than the first, added. “We’re wondering,” Tomás, the first man, said, “is this a living person, frozen in spot, or an installation?” At that very moment, I could have broken them from their debate, but I couldn’t bare to turn and face their searching eyes, to move my lips in the presence of others. My only recourse, to save myself the embarrassment of being an oddity among men, a man not capable of speech, too nervous in public, anthrophobic, was stillness. I resolved to further freeze myself, to become a statue in their presence, and preserve my dignity. What would they have thought if I, a man-made sculpture back from the dead, were to turn around and say hello? They would not have allowed me to carry on as if I hadn’t lived my life, before that moment, as a statue. They would be forced to ask further, more prying questions. I would not allow this to occur. I would see it through to the end, as long as it took. And how long would it take, really? Once ‘the moving’ cleared out, I could make my way to the door. It would be a simple matter of patience. “Does it matter which it is, an installation or the living?” the young woman said. “Does it matter?” the elderly woman said, making various hems and haws of the question. “Artistically, you mean?” James said. “Sure,” the woman said. “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” they all said, taking a small step back in unison. “What are you four doing?” Another man’s voice added. At the time, I placed the accent from the Bronx. “We’re trying to figure out if this is an installation or a person,” the younger woman said. “You can’t be touching the art,” the newest moving man said, referring to the elderly woman, still palpating my increasingly sore shoulder. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry,” she said, continuing to jab. “I guess I, uh, just got lost in the expression of it all. It’s a really moving piece, you know.” “So it is an installation!” the original man, second to appear, said. “Of course it is,” said the man from the Bronx. He stepped behind me and pulled the woman’s hand from my shoulder. He was indeed a large man, taking over the full size of the reflection in the glass of the painting. He wore a white button up shirt, with ‘security’ written on the right breast pocket. “That settles it,” the old woman said. “A beautiful work,” the first man said. “I love it,” the younger woman said. “I’ll go get a rope,” the security guard added, as he turned and left. “It is, I believe,” the younger woman said, her voice full of self-aggrandizing arrogance. “A commentary on the contemporary milieu of lost youth.” “I think you’re quite right,” the man with the feminine voice said. “It’s a statement about one’s ability to look oneself in the eye and recognize the long years wasted on indulgent hedonism. Really powerful, if you ask me.” “I can certainly relate,” the elderly woman said, a tinge of distance in her voice. “Who was the artist?” “Unknown,” the guard said, returning with a rope. “Here’s the piece’s placard.” “The Boy. Artist: Unknown,” the younger woman read. “A perfectly apt name. Really true to form.” “I didn’t know this gallery had anything but paintings,” the first man said. “We don’t,” the guard said, clasping the rope over hooks on either side of the alcove. It would only be a few hours more, I thought at the time, where I would have to bear the brunt of their talks about which modern, postmodern, or post-postmodern movement I represented. Before long, the sun would fall, the room would empty, and I would have an opportunity to rouse my stiff body from its slumber. That would, however, not be the case. As he was leaving, I overheard the Bronx guard—or perhaps he was from Brooklyn, I’ve never been one for discerning accents, but it was all I had back then —punching in an alarm code, some sort of a motion sensor, which would spell my embarrassing doom. Imagine the press “Social Pariah Breaks Into Gallery, Pretends To Be Statue.” I would be the laughing stock of the city, a noncommittal cretin. No, the night was not my gambit. I would wait it out until a more opportune moment presented itself. The moment, I had lied to myself, could be morning, before anyone arrived. I would pretend to be a patron, slipped in unnoticed, as the doors opened. But word had gotten around town that “The Boy” was a sight to behold—more a medium for the message, than a message itself, I’m told. What you wanted to see within me, what artistic emotions you wished to spill out of your soul, I provided. I was a vessel of creation, moving self, no matter the circumstances. Albrecht Richter, the great art critic and writer, was the first through those doors that very next morning. I had not known it at the time, but now I respect the name, having become something of a knowledgeable historian of art, since my time interned in the gallery. He said little, though I heard him shuffling behind me, trying to find an appropriate angle to take me in, followed by many exasperated hmmmmmmmmms and the scratching of lead on paper. Segments of his review would later find my ears, through the mouths of my admirers, who chose to read his words out loud as they looked up and judged them for their accuracy. Here are a few of his quotes that, to this day, still stick with me: “You may agree and / or disagree with some of the things that have been heretofore said, but the subaqueous sexuality presented in the piece, the absence of all sexual binaries represented in all backsides, is conceptually seen through an internal critical crises of self.” “With regard to the issue of the content represented in the man represented in the painting represented in all of us, even you, dear reader, the disjunctive becomes conjunctive and we all gain a greater understanding of what it is to be in its purest form, without any utterance of incoherence.” “The optical suggestions of purity, which form along the lines of the rotting corpse in front of me, contextualized in the near death we all experience as we lay awake at night, gives us a humble reprieve from our own burdensome lives.” Or my personal favourite, “I know no horizon after this. It is the pinnacle of mankind.” Despite the elusiveness of his words—or perhaps because of it—men and women, children and babies, dogs and cats and their respective owners, spacemen and cowgirls, the purple and the pink, came from far and wide to lay their eyes upon “The Boy.” It gave me and my thirty-six short years on earth some modicum of meaning. I was, for a time, beyond my wildest imagination, famous. It sustained me for weeks, through some sort of attention-based photosynthesis, powering my self-made prison. Then, my singular movement gained momentum and it became bigger than just I in the alcove, the boy unknown. Imitations started popping up in other galleries, performance artists went days without moving, holding up paintings of their own likeness, plush toys were given out as gifts, postcards were sent to loved ones with my face on it. After a while, and, to be clear, not a long while at that, people became desensitized to the original. My little alcove was soon passed over by the patrons of the gallery and I began to collect dust under my nose and in my armpits and in the space between my thighs. It might as well have read “Nobody. Artist: Unknown” on my placard. At my end, when I had withered away to bones and dust, the older woman who had first discovered my artliness came by to see me. She commented flippantly and without attention how ‘smart’ it was to have ended this way and I’m likely to agree with her.

This story originally appeared in the April issue of the Spadina Literary Review: https://www.spadinaliteraryreview.com/SR30-Fic-07.html

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