#he will remain your self-hating ambiguous childhood friend

[yinyuedijun]

being very brave right now and admitting that this caleb plotline made me realise that I could so easily take bluebird down an insane pseudocest route

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Treat Your S(h)elf: A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945 by Ernst Jünger (2019)

Keeping a journal: The short entries are often as dry as instant tea. Writing them down is like pouring hot water over them to release their aroma.

- Ernst Jünger,  A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945 (2019)

Paris is very much my home these days and so I enjoy reading about the history of this beautiful city. It is difficult to live in Paris today and conjure up much sense of the city in the early 1940s. It is indeed, as it is called throughout the world, the City of Light. But back in 1940 when France fell and Paris occupied until its liberation on 24 August 1944, it was a city in darkness. Like so much else that happened in France during World War II, the Nazi occupation of Paris was something entirely more complex and ambiguous than has generally been understood.

We tend to think of those four years as difficult but minimally destructive by comparison with the hell the Nazis wreaked elsewhere in the country. But as recent historians have shown the Nazi occupation was a terrible time for Paris, not just because the Nazis were there but because Paris itself was complicit in its own humiliation. As the historian Ronald Risbottom has shown in his compelling book, ‘When Paris went Dark’, “Even today, the French endeavour both to remember and to find ways to forget their country’s trials during World War II; their ambivalence stems from the cunning and original arrangement they devised with the Nazis, which was approved by Hitler and assented to by Philipe Petain, the recently appointed head of the Third Republic, that had ended the Battle of France in June of 1940. This treaty - known by all as the Armistice - had entangled France and the French in a web of cooperation, resistance, accommodation, and, later, of defensiveness, forgetfulness, and guilt from which they are still trying to escape.”

It is almost certainly a unique event in human history, one in which a ruthless and unscrupulous invader occupied a city known for its sophistication and liberality, declining to destroy it or even to exact physical damage on more than a minority of its citizens yet leaving it in a state of “embarrassment, self-abasement, guilt and a felt loss of masculine superiority that would mark the years of the Occupation. To this day, more than one visitor or foreigners living in Paris are struck by how sensitive Paris and Parisians remain about the role of the city and its citizens in its most humiliating moment of the twentieth century.

Indeed bringing up the subject with French friends, my French partner’s family, or even relatives (by marriage - such as a French aunt married to my Norwegian uncle or the French partners of my cousins here in France) is like walking on egg shells. It brings up too many distant ghosts for many families. Nearly every household has a story. It can be one of resistance or one of collaboration or (more likely) one of passive indifference and acceptance.

And yet I remain fascinated and intrigued partly because of historical interest and partly out of curiosity about the human condition under stress. In Britain - despite the trauma of daily bombardment from German bombers - the country was never invaded. And so whilst war brings out the best and worst in people, it was altogether a different experience to the one experienced by mainland European countries. I don’t think we British truly have understood of life was really like under occupation and the choices people are willingly or not made just to survive the war.

The history of Paris from 1940 to 1944 gives the lie to the old childhood taunt: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. The Germans for the most part spared Parisians sticks and stones (except, of course, Parisians who were Jewish), but the “names” they inflicted in the form of truncated freedoms, greatly reduced food and supplies, an unceasing fear of the unexpected and calamitous, and the simple fact of their inescapable, looming presence did deep damage of a different kind. It traumatised the city and its inhabitants in ways very little understood by others, especially Britain.

The carefully curated image of French resistance against the Nazis has been asked to serve critical functions in that nation’s collective memory. The manufactured myth served to postpone for a quarter of a century deeper analyses of how easily France had been beaten and how feckless had been the nation’s reaction to German authority, especially between 1940 and 1943. And yet the myth of a universal resistance was important to France’s idea of itself as a beacon for human liberty. It was also badly needed as an example of the courage one needed in the face of monstrous political ideologies.

There remained the ethical questions that would haunt France for decades: Which actions, exactly, constitute collaboration and which constitute resistance? It is still asking these questions over 70 years later. But behind such question lies a deeper and more haunting question of moral culpability that many are quick to throw responsibility - along with their own shame of inaction - onto others but not look inwards at their own guilt and passivity.

But what about the occupiers? What did they feel? Were the German Wehrmacht during the day simply tourists sitting in cafes, dining on gourmand food, buying silk stockings and the latest fashions for their wives back home and by night drinking and debauching on the cultural and seedy delights of Paris?

Moral culpability is a question that Ernst Jünger, the celebrated German author, never asks himself of his time as a German officer in Paris. But culpability is a question that looms large after reading the war journals of Ernst Jünger from 1941-1945, now published by Columbia University Press as A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945. It should have been re-titled as a ‘A German writer pre-occupied by Parisian night life and his navel’.

Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) was what is sometimes called a “controversial” figure. A First World War hero who was wounded seven times, he was undoubtedly uncommonly brave. He also insisted that those who were less brave should play their part, forcing retreating soldiers to join his unit at gunpoint. His 1920 book Storm of Steel (In Stahlgewittern), recounting his war experiences and portraying war in a heroic light, made him famous. In the 1920s he became involved in anti-democratic right-wing groups like the paramilitary Freikorps and wrote for a number of nationalist journals. He remained aloof from the Nazis, however, and, while he boasted that he “hated democracy like the plague”, was more of a nationalist than a racist. 

Jünger spent much of the Second as an officer stationed in Paris, where these war journals are an almost daily record of the views and impressions of a well-read literary figure, entomologist, and cultural critic, now available for the first time in English translation in A German Officer in Occupied Paris. Posted in white-collar positions in Paris with the German military during the 1940-1944 occupation.

Nazi Germany produced two wartime diaries of equal literary and historical significance but written from the most different perspectives conceivable: Victor Klemperer and Ernst Jünger. Victor Klemperer wrote furtively, in daily dread of transport to an extermination camp, a fate he was spared by the firebombing of Dresden. Ernst Jünger, by contrast, had what was once called a “good war.” As a bestselling German author, he drew cushy occupation duty in Paris, where he could hobnob with famous artists and writers, prowl antiquarian bookstores, and forage for the rare beetles he collected. Yet Klemperer and Jünger both found themselves anxiously sifting propaganda and hearsay to learn the truth about distant events on which their lives hung.

For English-speaking readers who do not know his work, A German Officer in Occupied Paris shows the many sides of this complex, elusive writer.

In the judicious and helpful foreword by San Francisco-based historian Elliot Neaman, who says. “Like a God in France, Jünger operated on the edge of politics in Paris, rather like a butterfly fluttering among the resistors and collaborators. He didn’t trust the generals, who had taken a personal oath to Hitler, to be able to carry out a coup.”

Jünger had visited the city prior to the war, was fluent in French, and now had the contacts and the time to become even more familiar with the French capital. During his stay in Paris he met painters such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso as well as literary figures including Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Jean Cocteau, all of whom figure in his Journals, which reflect a view of Paris that had become a tourism mecca during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

To Jünger, Paris was “a capital, symbol and fortress of an ancient tradition of heightened life and unifying ideas, which nations especially lack nowadays” (30 May 1941). After wandering around the Place du Tertre, near the Sacré Cœur Cathedral in the Montmartre section of Paris, he wrote: “The city has become my second spiritual home and represents more and more strongly the essence of what I love and cherish about ancient culture” (18 September 1942). At the same time, Jünger was aware of the “shafts of glaring looks” with which he was sometimes viewed by locals as he wandered in uniform through the city’s streets and byways (18 August 1942, 89, and 29 September 1943).

A German Officer in Occupied Paris is divided into four parts: the “First Paris Journal,” his writings from 1941 through October 1942; “Notes from the Caucasus,” continuing his account through February 1943; the “Second Paris Journal,” covering the period from his return to Paris through the liberation of France in the late summer of 1944; and finally the “Kirchhorst Diaries,” his account of having been placed in charge of the local militia [Volkssturm] and his reflections on the bombings and imminent defeat of Germany.

The “First Paris Journal” reflects the comings and goings of a German officer and writer happy to rediscover Paris at a time when it seemed clear that Germany had won the war and would dominate France and perhaps Europe indefinitely. Closer physically to the fighting following his transfer to the East in October 1942, Jünger devoted greater attention to the fighting and the raw nature of the German-Soviet struggle in “Notes from the Caucasus.”

By the time he returned to Paris and began his “Second Paris Journal” in February 1943, the Germans had been defeated at Stalingrad and it had become increasingly evident that a titanic struggle loomed and that the Germans might well lose the war.

The final section, the “Kirchhorst Diaries,” is set against the backdrop of the Allied invasion of Germany, accompanied by intense bombing and the destruction of German cities and homes including Jünger’s own, and the seemingly countless numbers of civilian refugees seeking shelter and food. Through it all, Jünger continues his reading, including that of the Bible, his book collecting, and visits to antiquarian booksellers when possible, and his chats with various literary figures in Paris and, at times, in Germany.

Much of the material in the Journals is introspective, with Jünger addressing his innermost thoughts and dreams. Snakes also appear with some frequency in the Journals, for example, in the entry of 13 July 1943, where during a restless night because of air raid sirens in Paris, he recalls having dreamt of dark black snakes devouring more brightly colored ones. In the Journal entry, he linked snakes back to primal forces incarnating life and death, and good and evil. This connection, he noted, was the reason people fear the sight of a snake, “almost stronger than the sight of sexual organs, with which there is also a connection” (13 July 1943). Following a conversation with the “Doctoresse,” the name that Jünger used for Sophie Ravoux, with whom he was intimate and had an affair in Paris, he described his own manner of thinking as “atomistically by osmosis and filtration of the smallest particles of thoughts.” His thought process, he explained, ran not according to principles of cause and effect but rather at the “level” of the vowels of a sentence, on the molecular level; “This explains why I know people who couldn’t help becoming my friends, even through dreams” (22 January 1944). Addressing Eros and sexual organs, Jünger added that he wished to study the connections between language and physique. Colours also had spiritual values, “Just as green and red are part of white, higher entities are polarised in intellectual couples—as is the universe into blue and red”.

Jünger’s position as an army captain gave him a panorama of the war that left no room for heroes. Violence became a grim leveller that made ideologies interchangeable. Germans on the eastern front were reading On the Marble Cliffs as a condemnation of Soviet Russia rather than of Nazi Germany. Hitler had unleashed a dehumanising force on the world, one that made Russians, Germans, the French Resistance and Allied pilots all look the same, locked in an escalating cycle of cruelty. Jünger witnessed Allied planes strafing screaming children in the streets, releasing bombs timed to explode while presents were handed out on Christmas Eve. Accounts drifted in of Parisian friends, who had once tried to transcend national boundaries with him through measured discussion in the salons, being harassed as collaborators. His summary of this second war could have been a reverse of the first: ‘Inactivity brings men together, whereas battle separates them.’

The picture of Jünger’s political views that emerges in his Journals, however, is a highly chivalric and military elitist one in which a small number of bold idealists, for lack of a better term, struggle against demos and technocracy, democracy and technicians, who are destroying the soul of an older European society. Writing while back home in Kirchhorst on 6 November 1944, following the expulsion of the Germans from France and walking around viewing the destruction wrought by the Allied bombs in Germany, he observed: “As I walked, I thought about the cursory style of contemporary thinkers, the way they pronounce judgment on ideas and symbols that people have been working on and creating for millennia. In so doing they are unaware of their own place in the universe, and of that little bit of destructive work allocated to them by the world spirit.”

He went on to criticise “the old liberals, Dadaists, and free-thinkers, as they begin to moralise at the end of a life devoted to the destruction of the old guard and the undermining of order.” Jünger then referred to Dostoevsky’s novel The Demons, in which the sons of Stepan Trofimovich “are encouraged to scorn anything that had formerly been considered fundamental.” Having destroyed their father, these “young conservatives,” now sensing “the new elemental power” of “the demos,” are then dragged to their deaths. In the ensuing chaos, “only the nihilist retains his fearsome power.” Jünger mentions Hindenburg, and the destruction of the conservatives by the Nazis is clearly implied (6 November 1944).

In August 1943, he described his political views as a combination of Guelph (relating to the medieval supporters of the Pope against the Holy Roman Emperor), Prussian, Gross-Deutscher (in support of a Greater Germany including Austria), European, and citizen of the world “all at once.” As he put it, “My political core is like a clock with cog wheels that work against each other.” However, he added: “Yet, when I look at the face of the clock, I could imagine a noon when all these identities coincide” (1 August 1943).

While violence raged all around, Jünger continued his secret diary, for publication after the war. This ended for him when American tanks rumbled through his village in April 1945, Jünger proclaiming that the deeper the fall, the greater the ensuing rise. Jünger survived investigation in the immediate postwar period and went on to become a grand old man of German literature, with a considerable following at home and abroad. A year before his death he was – as the phrase goes – received into the Catholic church. Having lived through a violent century he expired in his bed in his 103rd year.

The war journals is a highly nuanced, albeit self-made, picture of a human being in the middle of World War II, who is a flirtatious fascist, yet who apparently seems to care for other human beings, regardless of their so-called social strata or race. Take for example this entry dated Paris, 28 July 1942, “The unfortunate pharmacist on the corner: his wife has been deported. Such benign individuals would not think of defending themselves, except with reasons. Even when they kill themselves, they are not choosing the lot of the free who have retreated into their last bastions, rather they seek the night as frightened children seek their mothers. It is appalling how blind even young people have become to the sufferings of the vulnerable; they have simply lost any feeling for it. They have become too weak for the chivalrous life. They have even lost the simple decency that prevents us from injuring the weak. The opposite is true: they take pride in it.”

Having said that, I found some of the contents repugnant as Jünger, a devout entomologist, easily writes about finding a new insect while fires are burning all around Paris in 1943. Indeed Jünger paints himself as the detached botanist-scholar, determined to survive and help the world recover in peacetime. For him, the best way to avoid being sucked into the vortex of violence was to disconnect from emotion and group mentalities: to feel nothing and be on no one’s side, only bearing witness. A detached eye in the storm.

His journal is a hedonistic carousel, as he frequented theatres, literary salons and Left bank bookstalls along the Seine, as well as having a meeting of artistic minds with Picasso, Braque and Cocteau. It’s possible to make your way through this collection and have a grand ole time, enjoying the moments when Jünger encounters celebrities like Picasso, or when Monet’s daughter-in-law gives him the key to the gardens at Giverny for his own private tour, or when he describes another gourmet meal with the well-heeled of Parisian society: “The salad was served on silver, the ice cream on a heavy gold service that had belonged to Sarah Bernhardt.” Jünger relishes his name-dropping and his contacts with the upper crust. He sees himself as one of the Übermenschen: “In this country the superior man lives like Odysseus, taunted by worthless usurpers in his own palace.”

The author himself gets lost in the fog of mystic self regard as all artistic writers are prone to do and confesses that in an entry labeled 26 Aug 1942: “At times I have difficulty distinguishing between my conscious and unconscious existence. I mean between that part of my life that has been knit together by dreams and the other.”

To read the diary in chronological order is to realise that Jünger’s submersion in art and literature was his way of preserving his humanity while serving the machinery of a lethally violent state. One way of doing this was through a voracious program of reading, chiefly literature and history, often reading two or three books at once. One is not surprised at the German and French reading but at the abundance of English writers, whom he read in the original—Melville, Joyce, Poe, Conrad, Kipling, Thomas Wolfe, Thornton Wilder, the Brontës, ad infinitum. The range is also remarkable. Jünger pivots from the 1772 fantasy Diable amoureux to a biography of the painter Turner to Crime and Punishment. And throughout the entire diary, one finds him reading the Bible, cover to cover, which he began shortly after his posting to Paris.

Over and over again I had to remind myself this is a diary. Diaries by definition have one eye on self serving posterity.  

So it’s not surprising that Jünger would tweak reality to create this image of poetic detachment. With his constant  stories of indulgence in Paris, the reader might assume he had no job while he was  there. In fact he was censoring letters and newspapers, a cog in the Nazi machine he so despised. He omits anything that would make him appear a villain. An ongoing extramarital affair in Paris is barely hinted at. But neither does he try to look a hero, omitting how he passed on to Jews information of upcoming deportations, buying them time to escape.

Should he have continued to enjoy his life as a flâneur for so long? He had solid proof of what was going on, debriefed as he was on the mass shootings and death camps on the eastern front. Throughout his career he had railed against inertia, lauding men of action who sacrificed themselves for a just cause. And then such a cause presented itself. Jünger’s colleagues in Paris were involved in the Stauffenberg plot of 1944, and asked for his help. He was one of the most influential conservative voices in Germany at the time, one of the few that Hitler’s followers might have taken seriously. Yet he refused to commit himself during the chaos. Instead, Jünger waited for evil to destroy itself: a fireman who fought the blaze by waiting for the building to burn down. As usual, he inhabited a grey area.

Jünger remains a problematic figure of controversy, perhaps even emblematic of the aged old question how does one respond to brutish evil? There are no easy answers. Addressing the French who collaborated with Germany during the war Robert Paxton, a well regarded historian of Vichy France wrote, “Even Frenchmen of the best intentions, faced with the harsh alternative of doing one’s job, whose risks were moral and abstract, or practicing civil disobedience, whose risks were material and immediate, went on doing the job. The same may be said of the German occupiers. Many of them were “good Germans,” men of cultivation, confident that their country’s success outweighed a few moral blemishes, dutifully fulfilling some minor blameless function in a regime whose cumulative effect was brutish.”

Was Jünger one of those they called a ‘good German’? Eating sole and duck  at the famous Tour d’Argent restaurant, while gazing down at the hungry civilians in the buildings below was the choice Jünger made. In his 4 Just 1942 diary entry he wrote, “upon the grey sea of roofs at their feet, beneath which the starving eke out their living. In times like this - eating well and much - brings a feeling of power”.

We are always told to speak truth to power. Before we can speak one must think. But thinking truth to power is never enough in itself unless one acts out truth to power. Words without action is nothing. So the question one has to ask even as one reads from the detached safety of distance and time: how would one act in his shoes or indeed a Frenchman’s shoes?

More than anything, the diary raises, for me at least, the question of moral culpability. It’s impossible to tell what Jünger was really thinking, and so perhaps one tantalising aspect of these war journals is psychological more than anything else. All this stuff is swirling around his life but we hear about the harmless social fluff for the most part. For example, he notes “In Charleville, I was a witness at a military tribunal. I used the opportunity to buy books, like novels by Gide and various works by Rimbaud.” I wanted to hear about the tribunal, but alas, it vanished into Jünger’s damn book buying.

And yet if you judge Jünger by his diary entries alone then it would be very easy to find him guilty. But diaries conceal as much as they reveal. For all the criticism that Jünger has served up a self-serving exculpatory diary, the truth is that he leaves his most selfless acts unmentioned. It is known that he gave advance warning to Jews facing deportation: The writer Joseph Breitbach was one, as he subsequently confirmed, and Walter Benjamin was possibly another.

None of this, for obvious reason, could be committed to paper, nor could the names of Adolf Hitler or any of his henchmen. Instead, their appearances are marked by Jünger’s felicitous code names. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi chief propagandist, is “Grandgoschier,” a character from Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel meaning “Big Throat.” SS Chief Heinrich Himmler is “Schinderhannes,” the name of a notorious German highwayman but also a pun on horse knacker. And Hermann Goering is simply “Head Forester,” citing the most fatuous of his many official titles.

Jünger thought a great deal about the mystic and symbolic power of sounds, and he reserved his most apposite pseudonym for Hitler, “Kniébolo,” a name that is at once menacing and absurd. It suggests a kneeling demon (Diabolos), a leitmotif of the diary as Jünger became ever more convinced of Hitler’s essentially Satanic character- in the literal biblical sense.

So grey areas get more grey when we either try to step back and be detached to render a verdict on Jünger or if we step into his shoes to get inside his head. This is the limitation of a secret and coded diary, no matter how scrupulously written and how fascinating they are to read. Diaries are written for oneself or an imagined other; they play on the satisfactions of monologue. Letters are shaped by the contingencies of distance and time between writer and recipient; they become over time scattered in various places and must be "collected" to form a single body of writing.

Diaries are shaped by moments of inspiration but also by habit; they are woven together by a single voice and usually are contained between covers. Diarists play with the tension between concealing and revealing, between "telling all" and speaking obliquely or keeping silent. Like letter writing, diarists inscribe the risks and pleasures of expression and trust. The diary is an uncertain genre uneasily balanced between literary and historic writing. The diary belongs to the woman where history and literature overlap. So it’s easy to conclude that we will always have ambiguity and tension between these two polar opposites.

After 1945, Jünger again withdrew into private life, but continued to publish. Seclusion encouraged attention. His reputation grew. Scholarly editions appeared. In three last decades, doubters aside, he enjoyed growing recognition, travelled the world, deepened his knowledge of nature and voiced concern about human damage to the planet. Jünger poured out books late into his nineties. By then he had swept Germany’s top literary prizes and been visited in his Swabian retreat by the statesmen of Europe, including Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand.

Jünger’s experience of life did little to dent his loathing of liberalism and democracy. On a country walk along a bomb-pitted road near his home late in 1944, Jünger indulges a moment of conservative relish, telling himself that it is liberals who are to blame for all that has befallen. How wonderful it is, he writes sarcastically, “to watch the drama of the old liberals, Dadaists and freethinkers, as they begin to moralise at the end of a life devoted completely to the destruction of the old guard and the undermining of order”. “Blame the liberals!” was the reactionary’s charge at birth (there is a profound difference between true conservatism and the extreme reactionary). It hobbled the Weimar Republic and bedevils politics today. Politically, he had learnt nothing. Today Western Europe society is eating itself inwards through the corrosive influence of the woke-ness of cultural Marxism and the conservative now finds himself/herself in the sweetly ironic position of defending the tenets of true liberalism.

For English-speaking readers who do not know his work, A German Officer in Occupied Paris shows the many sides of this complex, elusive writer. These diaries are invaluable about the man and his times. Jünger is nowadays probably less read than read about. So these war journals are to be welcomed and to be read with great interest. 

For some these journal entries alone will still provide material to debate the moral choices made - and evaded - by Jünger. To critics, Jünger participated too much and judged too little. To defenders, he was indeed on the hard right, but no fascist and, besides, his prose was what mattered, not his politics. Not to pity Jünger’s personal travails would be defective. Not to respond to his prose would be deaf. But all of us can ponder Jean Cocteau’s final verdict, who liked Jünger and considered him a friend but whose aloofness troubled him: “Some people had dirty hands, some had clean hands, but Jünger had no hands.” Jünger may have washed his hands of his time in Paris but the hand of history forever tapping on his shoulder is less forgiving.

[singingunderthecurtain]

Equivocal - III [FINAL]

Author: @loeyeolty​ AU: Non-Idol Genre: Angst Pairing: Suho x Reader Trigger Warning: Cheating, Mentions of Smut in Future Chapters Word Count: 2,349

Plot: Equivocate - the use of ambiguous language so as to conceal the truth.

“Hey, are you okay?” A bespectacled passerby pulls you to the side of the road, while the driver of the car that almost ran you over keeps screaming profanities as they pass by.

“Go easy, miss. You almost got hit by the car.”

Your face was flushed, desperate for help, “Please help me. Robbers got into my car,”

From your viewpoint, Jongdae had already taken off his white t-shirt, throwing it onto the dashboard, before taking over the fucking skank.

“Oh shit. Let me borrow your keys,” he presses a certain button which triggers the alarm in your car.

The sound of the wailing sirens startled the impudent fucking couple, Jongdae rushes out immediately in his half-naked state. Soojin hurriedly opens the side of the door, exposing her breasts onto the street.

The man behind you claps in laughter, “should we call 119?”

“No need, thank you, mister. What’s your name, by the way?”

“I’m Junmyeon. We are both wearing pink. Chanyeol’s wedding? See you...” The man walks away towards the wedding area.

You followed the mysterious guy who helped you, he sits in the farthest corner of the reception.

He looks at you above his glasses, pouring red wine. “Bride’s side, her longtime childhood sweetheart.”

He explains himself, pausing, waiting for an explanation from you.

“Groom’s side. My now ex-boyfriend is a friend of the groom.” You put much emphasis on the now.

“I’m no stranger to the situation. I actually caught the bride and her soon-to-be groom, fucking, in my car. Welcome to the dark side, honey.” He downs his whole glass of wine.

“Really?” You were flabbergasted with how much this man was relatable.

“Not really. We did not even break up, we simply lost touch. Now she’s getting married. I just said what I thought happened to you. It wasn’t a robbery, right?”

“You’re smart.” You took the bottle of wine and chugged directly from it. But Mr. Junmyeon takes it out of your hands.

“Please just let me be!” You pleaded.

“No. If you can, talk to your boyfriend right now.” He points at the now fully clothed Jongdae, standing by the door. A disheveled Hyojin runs after him, barefoot with both stilettos on hand.

“I don’t think I can!”

“You know why I’m here in the wedding?”

“Because you like pain? A masochist?” Come to think of it, why would he want to watch his ex’s wedding?

“Because I did not have any closure. At least now I know, she’s really not the one for me. Now go! Set things straight, and then I’ll give you wine.”

Is this stranger really bribing you with… Alcohol?

With a brave front, you approached Jongdae.

“Oh baby,” he smoothens the creases on his coat, “the car had problems. I’m glad Hyojin was able to help–”

“Stop lying to me. Jongdae, I know you have been fucking this… This… This thing!!!” you glared at Hyojin from head to toe, as she was still fixing her bra.

“No, baby, what gives?”

Hyojin discretely tries to walk away, but you grab her arm.

“Tell me, Hyojin...”

“He didn’t tell me he had a girlfriend!” Hyojin hisses at Jongdae.

“To be fair, I should be out of this situation. Jongdae, you lied to me!” Hyojin wiggles herself out of your control and starts ushering more wedding guests.

Jongdae refuses to meet your eyes, he fumbles at the hem of his suit in anxious guilt.

“You aren’t even sorry?”

He remains silent.

“I hate myself, Y/N. I hate myself.”

“That’s your excuse?”

He looks away.

“She was the one who started it,” his voice cracks, without a hint of guilt, “I told her to stay away but...”

“But?”

“Can we put these behind, and start over? I need you, Y/N.” the nerve of Jongdae to grab your hands and place them on his chest, where that woman’s hand have been.

His eyes were sincere, and slowly you were falling to his charms again.

“I learned, after today, that you are the only one for me…”

You roll your eyes.

“So how did it go?” Junmyeon stands up, as you walked back to him.

“He seemed sorry. People make mistakes so...”

“Well, between you and me… I’m so stupid, going to this wedding hoping that once she sees my face, she’ll change her mind.”

Although Junmyeon helped you, you laughed deep inside at the pathetic state he was in.

For them, they lost contact, and proximity is love. As for yourself, it seems that Jongdae has learned his lesson, he chose to stick with you. Right? Right?!?!

—  —  —  —  —  

You didn’t have the heart to kick him out, not until after he made you your fave breakfast: sausage and scrambled eggs.

Not until after he started bringing you to and from work again.

Jongdae was back.

He was always home.

He was always horny.

He was almost…

Too fishy.

Perhaps it’s the lack of trust from his Hyojin incident, but you never really felt comfortable with him afterward.

Whenever Jongdae would go out, you felt like he would leave you forever, to fuck another random girl on the streets.

You loved him, but you were left miserable to your own devices.

It was your birth month, and while rage cleaning the apartment, you stumbled upon two musical tickets on his desk.

You loved musicals. It was your secret joy but you never get to watch them since Jongdae prefers sexual activities rather than romantic dates.

Nanta, May 19, 8pm. You giddily memorized the details on the ticket and made a  mental reminder to yourself to act surprised once he whips them out.

That night, you felt like giving him an extra hug, cuddling him under the sheets.

“Jongdae, have I ever told you I like musicals?”

“Not really,” his reply was lackluster, sounding bored.

“Would you watch a musical with me, or should I tag a gal friend along instead? I really want to watch Nanta.” You weren’t even subtle.

“Hmm..” and he doses off.

The audacity.

May 19 came. Your birthday. No surprises. Just “Hey I need to go to Chanyeol’s, his wife is giving birth so...”

“Are you live streaming her birth? The hell why you need to be there?”

“No, but we give bro-ral support.”

Not believing Jongdae, you rush to the same hospital where apparently Chanyeol would be expecting his child. True enough, the front desk directs you to the 7th floor.

“Congratulations Chanyeol, but are you sure Jongdae didn’t pass by?”

“Yeah, he didn’t. Didn’t you come together?”

Deja vu hits you.

The three of you were alone in the hospital room, Chanyeol, his wife and you,

It would be awkward to stay any longer.

As soon as you were about to leave them, the door swings open. A familiar faced, bespectacled man, in a white coat, enters.

“Hi, I’m going to check on the mother–”

“Junmyeon?!”

“Oh… Hi!” He waves back at you. But he does not seem to recall your name. Then again you never introduced yourself to him back then, did you?

You waited for him outside the room, grabbing onto his arm as soon as he got out. “Doctor Junmyeon?”

“Yes, Miss. Who stole your car again this time?”

“You never told me you were a doctor. Your ex’s doctor, to boot.”

“I am very professional.”

“I should have listened to you, doctor.”

—  —  —  —  —

“Now he’s probably watching Nanta with some scum of the earth,” you wept. Junmyeon massages the sides of his temples, sighing.

“Why aren’t you saying anything, Doctor?”

“It’s because I’m stupid too. Can you believe I delivered my ex’s child?”

“We’re both stupid, aren’t we?”

You weren’t expecting this but, “Let’s be stupid together?” ended up the two of you grabbing drinks in some shady bar in the Rodeo drive

Spilling sorrows, him making jokes ‘The only time I saw her pussy was when she fucking gave birth to another man’s child.’, which you find inexplicably hysterical.

“What? I’m an ob-gyn, I see lots of pussies all the time, whether I like it or not?”

“Jongdae is not even an ob-gyn yet he sees lots of pussies too, whether I like it or not.” You jokingly self-depreciated your own situation.

Junmyeon turns quiet after all the pussy talk. “Well, we should probably get going. I had fun, Y/N. Take care going home.”

You could not explain how rejected you felt when he abruptly wanted to cut short your drinking session. Were you boring him out? Were you making him awkward? He walks you to your car as the driver you hired waits, his body hanging onto your passenger door.

As soon as you climbed into the passenger’s seat.

Without his glasses, Dr. Junmyeon actually looks cute. He’s too pretty for your type, though.

“Text me when you get home. Be safe.”

By some weird motion, he moves in and kisses your cheek.

“Junmyeon,” you were taken aback by the abruptness of his actions, and so was he.

“I’m closing the door!” He slams it immediately and walks away.

—  —  —  —  —

Your head swirled in confusion from what just happened. Jongdae had not returned home yet, but he managed to text you “Hey her labor is taking long. Will stay here overnight.” Which you immediately categorized as bullshit, because you went there. He was not there.

As for Junmyeon, why did he kiss you?

You texted Junmyeon.

You: sorry late text. I got home a while ago, took a shower, now I’m off to sleep. Tnx for 2night.

Junmyeon: I needed you tonight.

Junmyeon: No… Fuck.

Junmyeon: I mean I needed someone to talk to tonight, coz you know, ex-issues

Junmyeon: so thank you too

You: actually, I needed you too tonight.

You: I mean, I needed someone to talk to tonight, coz you know, asshole Jongdae issues

Junmyeon: Guess we do need each other then...

—  —  —  —  —

The next day, you get another text from Dr. Junmyeon

Junmyeon: come to my office, quick.

You: why?

Jm: I can’t really tell why it's complicated. Please wait outside my office in an hour.

JM: oh if anyone asks why you’re in my clinic, just say you have an appointment

You: Doctor, this isn’t a surprise checkup, is it? :P

Junmyeon didn’t reply. How awkward, your joke was unanswered. But seriously, you were on all levels of confused. He’s not gonna ask you to spread your legs, just because he’s a doctor right? Not that you mind at all... He’s cute after all. But you like, rough-looking men, Y/N. Like Jongdae. Rough men who give you a hard time. Junmyeon is too clean cut for you.

Nevertheless, the irony of it all, you chose a sunflower, sleeveless printed dress which flowed beautifully down your ankles. This isn’t a date. You kept reminding yourself.

You: Hey, I’m here.

You text him promptly upon arriving outside his office. His assistant, who introduced himself as Baekhyun, leads you to sit on the benches.

JM: Yes, I’ll be out in a second.

The moment the doors swung, your heart pitter-pattered. What’s wrong with you, Y/N? You expecting the same bespectacled man in his white coat, but instead.

It’s Jongdae.

Hand in hand.

With Hyojin.

“Jongdae!!!” You screamed at the top of your lungs. The two of them froze on the spot, Hyojin flinging away Jongdae’s grasp, holding onto her prominent tummy instead.

“Baby, What are you doing here?” Jongdae’s face panicked for a second but immediately reverted back to a relaxed stance. He’s so fucking good at lying you wanted to punch him right then and there.

“No. What are you TWO doing here?”

“I went to visit Chanyeol, then I bumped into Hyojin. What a coincidence right?”

“I thought you changed Jongdae,” hot tears rolled down your eyes, your chest twisted in knots in imploding pain.

“Babe I–” Jongdae runs after you, as you ran away from him.

Words could not find you now, all you wanted was to run away, forget this ever happened.

Jongdae keeps calling your name, his voice was still audible down the hall.

You felt his hand on your shoulder, forcing you to turn around.

He said your name, out of breath. You could not even bring yourself to open your eyes to his face. His stupid lying face.

He said your name again as he shook you with both hands, to which you played dead.

“Jongdae, we have nothing to discuss. I fucking hate you. You betrayed me.”

“It’s me.”

You peered open your eyes and found Junmyeon, inches away from you, the look of worry written all over his face.

“I’m sorry you had to see all of this. I was just planning on telling you but they went ahead of me–”

Someone screamed your name, looking to your right, Jongdae was catching his breath, panting to your side. Jongdae’s eyes slide to the doctor who was taking a protective position on you, with his hands on your shoulder. “Dr. Junmyeon? Y/N, who is this man to you?!” he judges Junmyeon from head to toe, brows furrowed.

“It’s none of your business, asshole.” You nodded at Junmyeon, taking his hand, walking away.

—  —  —  —  —

“Are you sure you are ready to throw away all of this?” Junmyeon stares at the trash bag, waiting by the door.

“Yup. Actually, I have always had my reservations against him. After finding out he cheated before. Believe it or not, I was sure this day was to happen.” You wiped stray tears down your cheek. As much as you tried to mentally cheer yourself up, it still hurt.

“Thanks for helping me clear out the trash, Junmyeon.”

“But I still haven’t cleared out the trash in my own flat.” He chuckles at the irony of things. “Well, I better get going, it’s getting late… So...”

With both hands on his cheeks, you gave him a kiss. Junmyeon slowly re-opens his eyes, a smile creeping up on his face.

“It’s late. You can stay here, you know.”

—END—

Aikie Masterlist | Michiko Masterlist | FIC RECS | FIC REC SIDEBLOG

[watchingcutscene]

If He Jumped Off a Cliff

Pairing: (Angst!) Iwaizumi Hajime x Reader

Fandom: Haikyuu!!

Word count: 1000+

Notes at the end

---

They met through the sheer inelegance of Hajime rushing into the wrong lecture hall for the wrong class on the first day of their third year. He scrambled to the nearest empty seat, and as he did, there was almost an audible sound as relief settled over his form. She stole a glance at him, slightly bewildered.

It wasn’t until half way through the lecture did she feel a renewed sense of unease in the chair next to her. This time, she tilted her head to look, only to find that he was looking right back at her.

Are you okay? She asked in a slightly defensive tone.

Um. He cleared his throat, then paused. She frowned deeper with impatience. Hajime scratched the back of his head, embarrassed. He cleared his throat again and whispered: what class is this supposed to be?

It was Early Modern Art.

He was in accounting.

The next week, he showed up again, and again the week after that. Despite having the seating of the whole classroom to his disposal, he inveterately chose the one next to her. Likely just out of habit.

His persistence in not dropping out of the class that he had mistakenly registered in did little in helping him pass. What was even the difference between modern and contemporary art? How the hell do you meet a 15 page requirement for a paper about a single artwork?

His struggle was met by her altruism. Not a single one of his papers went on without her proofreading. To express his gratitude, he devoted to her his heart and soul and all the years left of his youth.

Until they were 25 and he was a certified accountant working a 9 to 5 and she had a master’s degree in art history.

Hajime had spent nearly two years working at an accounting firm. To say that it was a 9 to 5 was really just a lie because overtime was so frequent it wasn’t really overtime anymore. It was just time, spent at the office. Today was one of the rare occasions when he looked up at the clock having finished with one clients’ accounts, and it was actually 5pm. He could actually catch the ride home on the inhumanely compact subways during rush hour, and actually have dinner at dinner time. Just before he reached up to loosen his tie though, he hesitated.

Yesterday, she told him she got a grant for research in Europe.

Hajime sat back in his office chair and haphazardly began organizing his desk. Pens put back into pencil holders, papers neatly stacked into one pile.

She was at first excited. Jumping up and down in fact. But as she was half way through explaining what this research opportunity meant, her features began to drop with her tone as she came to the realization herself.

Hajime never cleaned his desk. Europe was literally half way across the world.

He ended up wandering aimlessly in the downtown streets for an hour before boarding the train home. They didn’t talk about Europe that night. Or the one after. When the topic was finally brought up nearly a week later, it was she who said: maybe I shouldn’t go after all. It’s just so far. I’m sure I can find something domestic.

As much as this was the answer he wanted to hear, witnessing it come out of her mouth angered him for some unfathomable reason. He immediately became defensive: if you’re doing this for me, don’t. Go to Europe if you want to. It’s a good opportunity.

Her eyes grew wide. She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again, sort of like a fish. After a few seconds of silent contemplation, she decided to be angry too.

We’re supposed to talk through this and work it out, she said, you could at least pretend to care!

Hajime took a deep breath. He was consciously aware of how much of a dick he was being, but his consciousness also couldn’t bother to stop itself. He turned his face away from her, looking around the room searching for his phone for no reason at all. He didn’t even have the guts to be a dick to her face. He responded in a lower voice: it’s your life, I can’t stop you or make decisions for you.

She stomped towards him, forcing Hajime to meet her gaze’s intensity, and said: I thought this was about us!

He didn’t respond.

Say something Hajime! What’s wrong with you? If you think Europe is far, and you don’t want to do long distance or quit your job, I literally just offered to stay. Why can’t we work this out?

Europe isn’t the problem, he finally said, his tone flat but far from impassive.

Then what is?

The problemis what happens after Europe? You travel, explore, and conquer. You tell me you want to live in Berlin, or Shanghai, or New York, or all of the above. I sit at a desk and type up numbers all day, and despite how taxing that is, I’m content with spending the rest of my life this way.

She paused, words stuck in her windpipe. Then, in a smaller voice, murmured: what do you mean?

He also paused. Then shrugged. Then said that he didn’t know. Then went to bed. At 8pm.

After a week of being trapped in his mind and raging silence, Hajime decided to be a little less of a coward. He sat her down with some tea he made as an apology for being a dick and to bribe her into listening. The only thing was, when she was ready to listen, he realized he didn’t know what to say. He cleared his throat a couple times as she watched, then he said the only thing he could think of.  

Hey, he said, voice a little rough and a little coarse, maybe you were meant to be the queen of the universe. Maybe I was never meant to contain you.

There was a long silence. His sudden declaration was perhaps too poetic for a mediocre Tuesday evening.

But I don’t want to be, she whispered, finally. I don’t need to be a queen. I can be whatever you need me to be. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.

He gave her a long, sincere look. One that made her heart fumble and quicken. Then, he frowned and his gaze become a tad bit more harsh as he tried to toughen up. One of them had to do this, and he loved her enough or too much to let that person be her.

When he spoke, his calloused tone tried but failed to conceal all the nights he stayed awake poring over her, wondering what in the world he could do to stop the traveling of light, to stop her from forging on ahead.

Oh how he tried to sound cold when he said: but if I jumped off a cliff, would you?

In order to impede the travelling of light, he needed to become a black hole.

Of course she knew he was deliberately trying to hurt her, so she could turn away crying rather than yearning, and despise him rather than miss him. But those words still pierced her with a reckoning. He was right. Of course he was. At this point, he was still kinder and wiser than her.

The truth was, they were both tired. But they were both afraid to think it and speak it.

Is this a break up? She said, expression aloof.

He looked up at her sitting in their kitchen highchair, and cleared his throat again.

Her stiff shoulders relaxed. Are you sad Hajime? Or are you just relieved?

This time, he smiled. A smile like a cloudy night of a full moon. Graceful, but with a clandestine sadness.

This question was what kept him awake at night. He had prepared a mental script for the answer.

You will be the person I think about when I’m 45 and I wake up in the middle of the night, beside my wife, whom I have probably not had sex with for at least 2 years. I will replay my life up until that point in my head. Engagement, marriage, the first child, the second, every birthday, every anniversary, and I will realize that I am so desperately regretting and hoping that the person lying beside me that night in this imaginary future, is you, and had been you all along. But the only way I will be able to fall back asleep is when I come to the conclusion and solace that it could never have been you.

You are a beautiful star. An asteroid. You come, you crash into me, make a mess of me, but I am not enough to disturb you in your course. You will keep going. I wish I had the balls to stop you, but I don’t want to live the rest of my life knowing that I foiled your brilliance. I guess I am relieved. You were made for greater things than I.

Don’t jump off the cliff with me.

*

She didn’t. She moved to Berlin. Then Shanghai. Then New York. After that, he stopped keeping track.

Yesterday was his 27th birthday. He woke up from a deep sleep in the middle of the night completely disoriented. He frantically looked around the room, for a second, mistaking the women that was his fiancée sleeping next to him as the girl who left to conquer the world.

---

You know that cliché/trope in almost every manga/anime romance where the guy leaves the girl either for a) a female childhood friend who suddenly appears and needs his help and companionship or b) some journey of self-discovery, and for some absurd reason the girl remains blindly loyal and rejects all advancements from other guys (who are actually there for her and care for her) and ultimately waits for the return of her SENPAI? Yeah. I hate that trope. So here’s a story in reverse, about a girl who learns to let nothing tie down her ambitions.

This isn’t even about girls actually. Just go out there and conquer the world and take shit from no one. That’s the mood.

Also tried out a little Cormac McCarthy with the lack of quotation marks. Hope the ambiguity contributed to the story rather than ruined it.

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, HONEY! You’ve been accepted for the role of PARIS with a faceclaim change to Luke Pasqualino. Admin Jen: I had high expectations for Priam as he’s such a nuanced, multi-faceted character but you exceeded them by leaps and bounds, Honey! You captured all the concepts that I was hoping to see someone explore and unravel such as his identity, search for purpose and moral ambiguity and you added all these little details that built off of that but also made the characterization wholly yours. My favorite one was the detail regarding his knack for fixing up cars and the backstory you built off of that in terms of his family’s corporation. I can honestly keep going for hours because there was just too much to love about your app. It’s left me absolutely thrilled to see how you’ll develop him on the dash! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Honey

Age | 22

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Activity Level | I’m a final year college student who’s doing a short film as my final project, which might take up some time. But I’m taking less classes this semester so that kind of evens out the workload a little. I’d place my activity level at about a 6 (maybe even 7 if I’m feeling particularly inspired) out of 10.

Timezone | GMT +8

Current/Past RP Accounts | apcstasies.tumblr.com

In Character

Character | PARIS ; Priam Taravella (FC: Luke Pasqualino)

What drew you to this character?

The fact that everything about Priam is manufactured, a carefully curated collection of personality traits and mannerisms that he can turn on and off at will whenever it suits his purpose. By all intents and purposes – be it business or personal – Priam is a self-made man. But even though his perfectly-crafted veneer is his greatest strength, paradoxically, it is also his biggest weakness. There is a void inside him, a hollow point that eats away at him. It is a slow decay, but it consumes nonetheless. Personally, I feel that this emptiness he feels is a lack of human connection, and for all his ambition and apparent desire to rise to power, what he truly seeks is a sense of belonging. Priam wants so badly to be seen, but ironically the way he makes himself visible is by putting on a mask.

I feel like he probably struggles a lot with his upbringing and his resentment towards his parents. On the one hand, he’s very aware that as far as childhoods go, his isn’t terrible. He grew up extremely privileged and never wanted for anything (besides his parents’ affection, but that’s besides the point). Sure, it sucked that his parents were distant and that he’s had all these expectations placed on his shoulders from such a young age, but Priam is very aware of the fact that there are many people who would give anything to trade lives with him. He was deeply unhappy with his life growing up, and when he was younger he had been more inclined to complain about how much he hated his life, as children are wont to do, but then everyone around him constantly reminded him how lucky he was and so he learned to bury his discontentment. He carried his unhappiness inside him like a cancer, letting it fester until he was sick with it.

I also find his potential struggles with self-identity to be a compelling part of his character. At what point does the mask become the man? When does the line between the part he plays and his true self start to blur? Does he ever catch himself in the middle of a moment and think–– am I still pretending, or is this truly the man that I have become?

+ Bonus: I just find it amusing that he’s named Priam.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character?

TENDER LIKE A BRUISE

Love is an abstract concept that Priam can’t quite grasp and it shows. Still, there is a part of Priam that believes in love. Perhaps it is because he’s never had it that he wants it this badly, or perhaps it is the way he’s heard Julianna speak of love. Romantics talk about all-encompassing love, the kind of love that consumes you until you can think of nothing else except your dearly beloved and being with them. Priam is no stranger to being consumed, except it is poison that fills his veins and a monster within that eats at him inside out. As a teen, he’d thought that he could fill the void inside of him with love, only he never quite understood what love meant. He’d confused love with lust and, sleeping with girls, and boys, and girls and boys, but even if it kept the hunger at bay for a little while, the emptiness alwayscrept back in. Whether Priam realises it or not, he wants Juliana to be the one who might finally be able to carve a home in his ribs. Maybe they’re not in love, but when he’s with her, something in his chest settles, and maybe, maybe, maybe, that will be enough.

WE MUST BE KILLERS

Priam’s never had much of an appetite for violence, but if there’s anything he’s learned from his parents, it’s that the means are always justified by the ends. And if that’s the case, then what’s a little bit of spilt blood in the grand scheme of things? But just because he can understand the necessity for violence doesn’t mean he’s any more willing to be an active participant. He’s a hypocrite and a coward; he may not ever be the one pulling the trigger, but he is the one who looks away and lets it happen. It makes the ugly parts of the job easier to stomach, soothes his conscience some. But things are changing, tensions are rising, to remain passive is to bare your neck your enemy and pray they won’t tear your throat out. Priam is a survivor, and if it comes down to killing someone or being killed, he knows which side of the line he wants to fall on. He’s a liar, he’s manipulative, he’s ruthless –– he’s never been a killer, but perhaps it’s time to change that.

SHIFTING IN THE LIGHT

Despite being neck-deep in the corruption of Verona, he likes to think that he has some morals, or at least a sort of ethical code that he follows. People like him are the worst, criminals who refuse to acknowledge themselves as such. For Priam, part of the reason is pride, but fear is a factor as well, even if he won’t admit it. He had been the one to go to Cosimo, and the man has always treated him as something of a son, but sometimes he does wonder if he’s sold his soul to the devil and it’s days like those that he can’t bear to look himself in the eyes. But Priam can’t run from the person he’s become forever. One day he’s going to look in the mirror and not recognise himself, and he’ll wonder if maybe the mask is stuck, or if he’s just become the mask. He’s grown into a man, hardly recognisable as the little boy he used to be, and only time will tell whether that’s a good or bad change.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character?

Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve killed off one of my characters : )))

(That means yes, please feel free to kill Priam.)

In Depth

In-Character Interview:

• What is your favourite place in Verona?

“My favourite place?” Priam echoes. The slight twist of his lips hints at amusement, but it is the sort of indulgent humour one might direct at a particularly precocious two-year-old. It’s an expression that borders on condescension, but the reporter is either oblivious to it or doesn’t much care, continuing to watch him with expectant eyes. Over the years Priam has found that people are usually too enamoured by his pretty face to really notice the ugly parts of him that lurk underneath the surface, and it feels like a challenge, almost –– sometimes he toes the line just to see how much he can get away with by virtue of being young and beautiful.

“You’re standing in it,” he finally answers, the words accompanied by a vague sweeping gesture of his hand, inviting the reporter to take a proper look at the garage they’re currently in. This is the first time anyone other than him has been in there, and a part of Priam tingles with the wrongness of a stranger in a space that had before this been only for him. Still, it’s a small sacrifice he has to make. People love to be reminded that the rich are regular people with regular hobbies behind the glamour of wealth, and if Priam throws them a bone now, it’ll keep them from digger further into other truths he’d rather not divulge. “I apologise for the mess, by the way,” he adds, allowing a sheepishness he doesn’t actually feel to seep into his voice, “I probably should have cleaned up a little, but it slipped my mind. Don’t usually let people in here, y’know?” Hook, line, and sinker, Priam thinks, watching the man flush slightly at the implication that he’s the exception.

• What does your typical day look like?

“A lot of paperwork,” he answers with a laugh, and then, “No, really. I left Taravella Corporation because I got tired of sitting around in an office all day. Albeit it was a very nice office, but I’ve always been more of a hands-on kind of guy.” He pauses to pick up a wrench from his worktable, pretending not to notice the double entendre, or the way the reporter’s gaze catches on his fingers as they wrap around the shaft of the wrench.

“I traded aerospace for automotive, thinking with a smaller company I’d get to be more involved with the actual manufacturing process, but I still spend most of my day signing papers.” He looks up from the car then, sharing a wry smile with the reporter before adding, almost cheekily, “Except now I get to do it in a smaller office.” Despite the reporter being the only other person in the room, Priam lowers his voice anyway, letting the reduced volume provide the illusion of candour. “Some might say it’s a downgrade, but it’s nice to have a space that finally feels like it’s mine. It sounds silly, but back at T-Corp, I always felt like I was just messing around in my old man’s chair.”

“Anyway,” he says, talking normally once more, “After work I like to grab some drinks with my friends, maybe dinner with my fiancée if I end early enough. I’m really not all that different from other guys in their twenties.” If other guys his age routinely met up with members of one of Verona’s most well-known mobs, of course, but he decides to leave that last bit off the record.

• What has been your biggest mistake thus far?

“I accidentally wore mismatched socks to work once,” he deadpans, and then more seriously, “I suppose it depends on how one defines ‘mistake’, but to me, a mistake is something you wish you could undo.” He ducks under the open hood even as he continues to talk despite previously having made it a point to make eye contact whenever he answered a question, knowing that the reporter will interpret it as him feeling more comfortable being honest when he’s not actually looking at the person he’s talking to.

“For a while, I had wondered if leaving the family business had been a mistake,” he admits, sounding genuine even as he lies through his teeth. Priam had never been more sure of anything, determined to forge his own path to the top without the burden of his family’s legacy weighing him down. “But that worked out pretty well for me, I’d say, so no regrets there.”

• What has been the most difficult task asked of you?

“Picture this––” he starts, “You’re five years old and your father brings you to work.” It’s perhaps his earliest memory of his father. Before that, the man had been a mere spectre in Priam’s life, the bogeyman that his nannies had used to keep him in line. Your father wouldn’t want you to use that word, or keep your voice down, your father’s resting in his office. That day at Taravella Corporation’s main office had been the first time they’d spent more than half an hour in the same room. Back then, Priam had thought it had been some sort of a father-son bonding experience, but he knows better now.

“He showed me around, brought me to all the different departments before he took me to his personal office. There, he said to me: this will all be yours someday.” On some nights, he can still hear his father’s voice, still remembers grappling with the realisation that he’s not so much a son as he is the heir to an empire he never asked for. It’s not a happy memory, but he recounts the tale with a carefully calculated smile that’s just this side of sheepish and a half-shrug, proud and self-deprecating all at once, “That’s quite a lot to ask of a young boy, don’t you think?”

• What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?

War. It’s such an ugly word, but there’s hardly any point debating the reporter’s choice of words when it’s the truth. Priam is under no illusions –– while the interview might have been disguised as a spread on one of Verona’s most successful young entrepreneurs, this one question is the true crux of it all. But he wouldn’t be such an invaluable piece on the Capulets’ chessboard if he hadn’t been well-versed in the art of lies and half-truths, and that ability is sure to serve him well now.

“If you think that I have anything profound to say just because I’m engaged to Juliana, then I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” He places his wrench back down, walking away from the open hood of the car to lean against the passenger side door instead, allowing the reporter an unobstructed view of him. His stance is carefully neutral, arms at his side, nothing in his posture to suggest that he has anything to hide. “I’m a businessman, I make and sell cars,” he starts, but knows that there’s no way he can get away with not commenting on the issue at all. “That being said, my family has always been close to the Capulets, so. Whatever Cosimo and Juliana are doing, I trust that they’re doing the right thing.”

“Speaking of my fiancée––” Priam straightens up suddenly, his tone returning to it’s earlier light-heartedness as his lips pull into a grin. “I’m supposed to meet her for lunch today, and I should probably wash off all this grease before I do that. I assume we’re done here?” It’s phrased as a question, but combined with the slight raise of a single eyebrow, it’s clear that it’s a dismissal more than anything else. The reporter’s smart enough to catch on, nodding in agreement as he thanks Priam for his time.

Extras:

Taravella Corporation is an aerospace engineering company, mostly dealing with the manufacturing of commercial planes, but they have the occasional military contract as well as an R&D department that’s looking into space travel

After leaving T-Corp, Priam went and set up Argentum, an automotive engineering company that produces some of the most innovative luxury cars in the world

In his youth, Priam had a brief stint with street racing. It had been an attempt to distract himself from the gnawing emptiness inside of him, and for a while it worked. Now, occasionally he’ll drive over the speed limit, but he’s not nearly as reckless anymore

Really good at poker but we’ll probably never actually get to see this in a thread (besides maybe a passing mention) because I have no idea how to play poker despite having been taught multiple times

Sexy and he knows it !

I wish I could end this app on a more coherent and/or profound note but it’s 4 in the morning and I just want to write a fake ass hoe whose entire existence can be boiled down to: was unloved as a child and now has no idea how basic human emotions work

He tries though, really