#early updates because next chapter was a two parter anyway

[hermiola]

New chapter earlier than Friday, because I keep writing (just finished chapter 8) and I just want to share 💜

Take a Little Love From Me (WIP) - Chapter 3: The Ritz - Part Two

Chapter: 3/10 (16k words) Rating: M Tags: Human AU, Pretty Woman (1990) AU, Sex Worker Crowley, Businessman Aziraphale, First Meetings, Idiots in Love (as usual), Sex Worker Inadvertently Seduced by Oblivious Businessman, Mutual Pining, (Eventual) Non-Explicit Sex, Lots of Banter, Terrible Opinions, The Fine Art of Not Thinking About The Important Stuff. No Age-Gap

(Updates every Friday.)

The night goes on. Aziraphale receives a phone call, Anthony tries to make it better. In the morning, they come to a new Arrangement.

How ludicrous it was, to believe that Aziraphale had any warmth to give. He was used to feel almost unsubstantial, more of a concept than an actual person. Most of the time he didn’t mind it that much. He genuinely liked his solitude, his books, and the tranquillity of his house in the South Downs. But every once in a while that feeling of tenuousness became so big, so terrifying, that he barely felt like a real person anymore, someone made of flesh and bone rather than an unnamed, detached entity watching life happen to other people.

You can read it over at AO3:

[dreadnought-dear-captain]

You Asked, I Told and Update

CW: Spoilers for Baghdad Waltz up to chapter 36 and some non-graphic discussion of childhood sexual abuse 

Hello!!!

Wow, I am so, so sorry for falling off the grid like that. I thought I was going to have WAY more time in October/November to work on the fic and work on fandom stuff in general, but my professional life threw me a huge right hook and I got completely sidetracked for weeks. So I’m off schedule a bit, in terms of having the next chapter. I’m sorry for the delay. 

I’m done with the full draft of Chapter 37 (about 23k - “short” but emotionally very dense) and am working through final revisions now. However, I also had to do an extensive amount of 9/11-related research for it, and part of that research has been reviewing oral histories of New Yorkers from the day of the attacks, and I came to the shocking realization that much of the prologue is historically inaccurate. Moreover, it’s shamefully inconsistent with the way that New Yorkers would respond to such an event. I’m embarrassed by how shoddy of a job I did with it.

Thus, I’m also going to be rewriting the prologue and including more accurate details, both historically and in terms of character dynamics. I mean, there’s no way Bucky could even live in Brooklyn and be a first responder at Ground Zero! All the bridges and tunnels were shut down. Shame on me. There will be ripple effects throughout the entire fic. Sigh. This is just round one of the massive amount of revisions I will be doing to the early chapters of the fic, which I wrote years ago now. I was going to wait to post both at the same time, but I don’t want to make you wait that long. I’ll just give you a notification when I finish the prologue revisions, and it’ll be like a little bonus chapter.

Anyway, here are some asks! Starting with a two-parter

First, thank you for the kind words. I’m glad you’re finding this fic moving. It’s definitely an emotional rollercoaster for these characters, and my hope (I guess?) is to have that be a parallel process for the readers. I think you hit the nail on the head that this relationship is exhausting. And you’re also right that not everyone would have the perseverance to keep coming back to it. It would be so much easier to amputate, pack up and go home. But once these characters get back into each other’s orbit, it’s very challenging for them to not keep crashing back into each other. It’s partially because they just love each other so much, but it’s also because they have an unhealthy relationship dynamic that sets them up for these toxic cycles. This will become especially apparent in the next chapter. They love each other, yes, but they also use each other to fill the gaping holes and insecurities they have within themselves. And they’re horrible communicators to boot. It’s a perfect storm. But at least they are going to try out some of this therapy crap maybe…?? We’ll see!

Along a similar line…

Thank you so much. That is so lovely of you to say, and I’m happy that I have your trust with this story. That said, I don’t know if it’s weakness if you’re not willing to run yourself through a miserable gauntlet of suffering the way Steve and Bucky are doing in this story. Would we call Rikki weak for drawing a boundary and stepping away from Bucky when his alcoholism was destroying their family? Some people used other words, but I’m not sure if weakness is the thing that might make someone walk away from a relationship like this. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you should keep slamming your face against the same wall until you’re black and blue. This is a highly dysfunctional couple, and these men have serious issues they are grappling with personally that make them ripe for this kind of relationship. Bucky is an open wound, crippled with shame, desperate to do anything to feel better. Steve has deep attachment injuries from his chronically ill mother and deadbeat dad, as well as major control issues, and he wants to latch on and fix and make right, and if he manages every variable just right, he really thinks he can do it. And then throw in a fuckton of PTSD and TBI and alcoholism and physical injuries on top of it. So no, I wouldn’t rush to judge yourself for not envisioning yourself gutting it out in this grim scenario. 

But I also think we can identify with at least one of these characters, and we can root for people who want to overcome the shit that life has thrown at them to be with the person they love. Because they really do love each other. There’s just so much noise that it’s hard to tease out the signal sometimes. 

Good call on Bucky being a notoriously unreliable narrator, and he’s someone who is likely to underreport his suffering. Aside from his war-related injuries and his psychological struggles, Bucky’s most symptomatic issues are his GI problems. He has both peptic and esophageal ulcers, which are slightly different creatures. Peptic (stomach) ulcers, in Bucky’s case, have been caused by H. pylori and exacerbated by smoking and drinking. The esophageal ulcer was most likely caused by an excess of stomach acid due to gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and, once again, exacerbated by drinking. Both of these have led to nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite, and weight loss. They have really emerged since Bucky got out of the military and pursued drinking with renewed vigor. Though he wouldn’t know it at the time because he doesn’t keep up with these things, his GERD is very possibly linked to acute, high dose exposure to the exceedingly toxic “dust” from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. It’s one of the most widespread chronic health ailments of those exposed, aside from lower respiratory problems.

And now for some heavy-ass questions from licketysplittt — see CW above.

Yes, I am going to talk more about the context of Bucky’s abuse for sure, so I won’t go into the depths here. But I will say now that you are absolutely right that he has complex feelings for his abuser. I think it would have been easy to write him as just being unidimensionally angry or ashamed, but I know that’s not the experience of everyone who has experienced sexual abuse. This is especially the case if the person who commits the abuse it is a family member or caretaker or friend or trusted religious figure or someone who’s not just a “stranger in the bushes” type. I wanted to try to capture that experience in this fic. Bucky has also been multiply victimized by multiple people over the course of his life, which adds to this complexity and creates an internal narrative for him. Like what does it mean that this keeps happening to him? This is also not an uncommon experience for people who have been abused as children. And there’s also the added piece of this that Bucky’s gay, right? So he’s got this very, very young sexuality that’s on the verge of blooming (your Disney sexuality perhaps, sitting close, holding hands, etc) and this older male is making sexual advances toward him, and so he might ask if this person “saw” something in him aside from his social isolation that made him choose him. These are certainly questions he’s tortured himself over. I will get more into all of this, I promise. 

Winnie and George undoubtedly knew that their kid wasn’t a very popular one. But perhaps they always knew that he was a kid who wasn’t destined to have many friends because he’s “sensitive” or however they would characterize him (I’m sure they had different ways of viewing him). And I think it’s important to take into account the type of household that Bucky was in and the way he would shape his behavior. George was this total wildcard — “Best Dad in the World” most days but a screaming, violent tyrant at these odd, unpredictable times that were fucking terrifying for everyone in his path. This is a house where it’s best just to shut up and create as few problems as you can, because you don’t want to be the one that dad is gonna flip his shit at. And so everyone is walking on eggshells and Bucky is going to get very good at lying about how bad things are. And oh! Jamie finally has a friend, how wonderful. There will be more details in upcoming chapters about how this all transpires, but I think the dynamics at home made it possible for a lot of this to happen. And you’re right that these were not the most skillful parents, and their marriage was very strained and stressful for everyone. And these fictional assholes also frustrate me! The emotional content can be hard to write. It’s one reason these past few chapters have taken me soooooo painfully long. 

Great questions! You are all so thoughtful and kind. Sorry again for getting so terribly sidetracked. I am going to keep plugging away at the chapter and at comments and asks. I’m optimistic that I will have the next chapter for you within the next two weeks. I am pleased with this chapter and hope you’ll like it. Thank you for being so patient!!!