#i really had to make a post earlier about how optimistic i felt bout this team this year didn't i?

[cleoselene]

NOW HOLD THIS SHIT TOGETHER FOR THREE OUTS GUYS C'MON

[heungtanbts]

omg girl plz post your drafts on what you want to say to the boys!!

If you were able to sit and talk to each member what would you tell them? And yes. I am purposely asking this so you could get all sappy and die of the good feels 😊

this has been sitting in my drafts for a g e s now. i challenged myself to write only 7 sentences to each member, but still somehow managed to carried away with this. welp here goes nothing. aka warning, looong post ahead.

to namjoon:

you are a great leader because you are understanding, empathetic, a good listener, and truly caring of those that you lead, and please don’t letanyone, including yourself, ever make you think you’re not a worthy leader. you are the most beautiful man, namjoon; your heart is just so big, your thoughtsso deep and profound, you put others before yourself and think deeply about how your words, actions, and decisions will affect others. you are incrediblyhumble, so willing to reflect and admit your own mistakes, and are not afraid to apologize or come clean when it comes to it and the way you own up to your responsibilities is amazing. It must be so much pressure to have to say and do the right things all the time, especially with so many eyes watching andjudging, and yet you lead with such confidence and humility and i just don’t know if you really understand just how incredible you are. thank you for beingso real with us, for sharing your experiences and your heart with the world through your music just so one more person can relate, feel understood and findhealing, and for helping shape bangtan to become what it is today. you’re so down to earth, goofy, adorably clumsy, passionate about blue crabs, aneffortless fashion king, a lyrical genius and poet, charismatically captivating on stage, and like ARMY’s older reliable brother. thank you for teaching us to love ourselves, but don’t you ever forget that YOU ARE SO LOVED and that we will stand behind you no matter what because you are our one and only, precious kim namjoon.  

to jin: 

thank you for being the confident dorky older brother of bangtan that lights up any room and situation with his silly antics and contagious laughter. you may be giving jungkook a run for his money and title as bangtan’s maknae, but you are also so incredibly reliable, cool, calm and collected when necessary, and a true solid foundation for bangtan to be built upon. you’ve taught us all to throw away our insecurities and care for others opinions, and to just be ourselves. i know you go through a lot behind the scenes that no one sees, that you’re shyer than we think, more burdened than it seems, and notalways the happy, hilarious meme you most often portray yourself to be. and i just hope you know that your laughter, your antics, your love for the othermembers, and your decision to always see things on the bright side has truly brought so much joy and comfort for me and other ARMYs. you truly are mr.worldwide handsome, not just because of you literally are prince charming, but also because of how wonderful and genuine your heart is for others and for your fans. thank you for being yourself, keeping bts solid on their feet by being a firm foundation, shining in all your talents (you are so wonderful at singing,dancing, acting, variety, everything!!), and reminding us to live life optimistically and to enjoy it. 

to yoongi: 

thank you for choosing to sign with bighit and become a part of bts,even though you were so wrongly tricked by bang pd (ㅋㅋㅋ) because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here, spilling your blood, sweat, and tears into new songs and albums that aren’t just products, but that truly speak about you, your emotions, your experiences and your life. thank you for being so real with all of us and for not shying away from the issue of mental health, because i know that alone has brought many ARMYs so much comfort and hope. thank you for caring so deeply about all the members in your tsundere ways; they absolutely live to see you smile and make you laugh and i hope you know that (actually, we all do). you truly are the dad of bts, not in a bad way, but because you are so steady, you always provide for your members, quietly clean up after their messes without complaint, and care so personally about the growth and well-being of each member. i know you’ve lived a tough life, and you’ve been so open about your struggles while growing up and getting to this point, but i hope you feel that it was all worth it because now you connecting with the world in the universal language that is music and making history just by being yourself. never ever forget that you are so wonderful, your gummy smile and random bouts of hyperness are so endearing, your pure talent and ability to convey so much emotion into lyrics is inspiring, your rawness is so real and comforting, your ability to feel and care so deeply is inspiring, and you truly have changed all of our lives. please take care of yourself, don’t be too hard on yourself, make sure you eat and sleep enough, and know that we are going through this thing we can “life” with you, one day at a time.

to hoseok: 

to our sunshine, our angel and hope, the one with the most contagious laugh and brilliant smile, thank you for existing. i know there were days in the earlier times where people didn’t even recognize or think of you as a part of bts, and those times hurt, knowing that people looked down on you like that and i’m so sorry you had to go through that. but thank you for enduring it, staying true to yourself, never allowing it all to suffocate your wonderful laughter and light, and for loving ARMYs continuously through it all. you arebangtan’s strong pillar, hoseok-ah, you go through so much behind that beautiful smile of yours, endure so much, but never ever complain or show it. you are so strong, not because you hide your struggles, but because you choose to continue to smile, to work hard, to push through and focus on the light atthe end of the tunnel. you’ve always been goofy, but i don’t know if you realize just how much you make your members and us laugh, how much contagioushappiness you bring all of us, and how you can make someone’s day so effortlessly just by being yourself. and i hope you know that no matter how much you want to improve or do better, which is always a great thing, you are ALWAYS good enough because you are you, and you are so lovable and hardworking, and wesee your efforts and growth and appreciate you. thank you for keeping a sound and level head on for each of the members, for lovingly providing feedback andcorrections, and for working so hard for the greater good of the team and for the world. so just as you have taught us, just keep going, keep just being yourloving and talented self, keep showcasing that bright smile and melodious laughter, and remember always that you are worth it. 

to jimin: 

our chimmy, our golden hearted angel, thank you for being so gentle, genuine, loving and caring. you have also been through so much, from the early days when you felt insecure about your weight and image, to training so hard to improve your vocal and dance skills because you didn’t feel like you were enough, to ignoring all the negativity and even death threats from some horrible, horrible people. i’m so sorry such darkness like that exists in this world, but i hope you know that when we see you, all we see is a hardworking, talented, yet so kind hearted and wonderful person who wants to spread love and happiness to everyone. you have such an incredible ability to hold bts together like glue; your loving actions, genuine concern for all your members, and just your desire to want to be with your members all the time truly shows just how much you care. i love that over time, it seems as though you’ve come to love yourself more, for all your strengths and weaknesses, and i hope you never ever let that go because that’s what makes you, you - the you that we just want to hug and cuddle and love upon because you are just so precious! i hope you’ll love your body, eat enough, sleep enough, rest enough, and remind yourself that YOU are enough, and that you’ll continue to grow and flourish as a musician, a performer, and person. you are so beautiful inside and our, jimin-ah, and i hope you know that your heart of gold inspires people every day.

to taehyung:

precious taehyungie, so full of life, so mesmerized by the beauty of nature, completely unafraid of people’s opinions and a true form of radiating happiness. you are so gifted, not just in your superb acting, singing, and performance skills, but also in your ability to be the physical embodiment of a hug - warm, comforting, peaceful and utterly joy-inducing. you express beauty through fashion, your wonderful photography, your unique and adorable displays of affection, your sometimes jumbled but oh so heartfelt words, and through your love for us and your members. thank you for showing us just how important and beautiful family is – and not just related family, but your bangtan and ARMY family. you make us all smile, including your members, and i’m so glad you don’t seem to care enough about what the world thinks because the way you’re so unapologetically you is motivation enough for us to care less about what others think, and more about being ourselves and living life to its fullest. i know you’ve hit tough times, like almost not getting into bts, struggling with tough practices and fears of the future, losing loved ones along the way, and so many more i can only imagine, but the way you’ve still kept your head up with that contagious rectangular smile on your face shows how strong you are, and that itself is the push a lot of us need to keep fighting our own fights. please continue to be yourself to the fullest, to laugh lots and in turn, make your members laugh, to keep yourself healthy, to work hard and make wonderful songs and photos and other works of art, and chase after your dreams, because we will be with you, supporting you every step of the way.

to jungkook: 

to the boy who seems to have it all – talent in all kinds of realms, handsome looks, physical strength and stamina, burning passion, and on top of that, a heart of pure gold. i know you’re used to being called the golden maknae, but there are times i’m afraid you don’t believe it, not just because you’re humble and always see room for growth but also because you don’t realize just how wonderful you truly are. you are all of those things i mentioned earlier, but also so much more; just look at how you have come such a long way from the shy, scared, and less confident boy you were 6 years ago, like i hope you can see all that growth and progression and be proud of yourself. you are so beautifully unashamed of your emotions, you love your members and ARMY so much that it shows even just from the affection in your eyes and how big that bunny tooth smile gets. you are adored because you truly are golden, from head to toe, inside and out, from your musical and performance talents to the way you worry about your hyungs and want to help in whatever way you can, you are so chock full of love and ambition and bts is so lucky to have a maknae like you. as you continue to grow and struggle in this wicked and often unfair world, i hope you’ll continue to burn with ambition, strive after your goals, keep fueling that perseverance that is seriously so admirable, and, again, just keep being the goofy, adorable, hardworking maknae that you are for bangtan. no matter what or how many mistakes you make, or how inadequate you feel, or how frustrated you are with yourself or with life, just know that we, ARMY and your beloved brothers, are 100% by your side, always watching out for you, supporting you in everything you do, and loving you for who you are right now because you don’t need to impress us, we already love you for you.

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

9x17 “Mother’s Little Helper” // 9x18 “Meta Fiction” // 10x09 “The Things We Left Behind” // 13x09 “The Bad Place”

“On Scars and Trauma”: How Kaia loosely mirrors Dean’s MoC Struggle - Part I of II

“We all have our bad places, don’t we? The stuff we’re running from. The things that we try to blot out with drugs or drink. But we have to face it eventually, don’t we?“

- Therapist to Kaia in 13x09 “The Bad Place”

Trauma is the greek word for word for “wound/injury” and doesn’t that capture the essence perfectly? That a trauma is a never truly healing wound of the soul, an injury of the internal kind that in some cases leaves behind a physical scar. A scar that remains, a scars that never disappears and at best fades over time...

I have written a lot about scars, healing and trauma when it comes to Dean Winchester  over the past couple of years and especially so during Dean’s “MoC”-arc. While re-watching the latest episode again this morning without being too tired to keep my eyes open, there was a lot “hidden” within the episode that imo referred back to this difficult time in Dean’s life and how he never truly had the chance to heal from any of what have happened to him, but how all those traumas are still wounds that may not bleed anymore, but ar far from being scars that have faded into being a faint memory and not as visible any longer.

I have spoken a few times about how I always felt the mark removal “ripped” Dean of being able to heal ~naturally (I wrote a bout it last in this post not too long back, so in order to spare you from typing it all up agai, I’ll just leave a link to it here) and how in general the show has brought of course Dean’s multiple traumas back up here and there, but how ultimately the show never went as far as letting him truly heal. And this I found especially interesting to consider in relation to this episode, because I saw a lot of Dean’s struggle with the MoC in Kaia’s struggle against her “bad place”.

I think they paralleled and with that very subtlety addressed Dean’s own struggle very well with Kaia’s story. Starting with the general alignment of Kaia’s supposed “drug problem” as her way of trying to cope with what was happening to her. It aligns rather neatly not only just to Dean’s “way of dealing” as he earlier this season mockingly summed up with “bullets, bacon and a lot of booze”, which was his m.o. after returning from Hell or after they lost Cas in S7 or the beginnng of S13 where Dean has been shown to be absolutely at the end of his rope (and really, they may have gotten Cas back, but that doesn’t make Dean magically better) but also in how Dean’s MoC predicament has always been framed in relation to drug metaphors and drug addiction and how Dean - much like Kaia, who wakes up bloody - at some point was unable to know what’s real and what’s dream as was highlighted in 10x09 “The Things We Left Behind”.

In fact, even Kaia showing the scars from her dreamwalking on her right arm and not wanting to show or talk about them when her therapists urges her to open up (which Dean only does very rarely as well, but which would be vital for his healing process) as she overdosed immediately made me think back to the moment in S9 where Cas uncovers the mark on Dean’s arm and we have the O.D. flickering right behind Dean foreshadowing what dark, bad places Dean would go further down that season. Most importantly however, what to me makes a direct connection between Kaia’s and Dean’s stories is the fact how their situation is treated as either a “gift” by those who want to use their power or as a “curse”, which is rather how they see it themselves.

In that regard, I’d also like to mention how very much Jack’s description of “needing a seer”, because he could only “feel around” in the darkness, but not see and therefore chose Derek to help him, because “he could see what he saw”, because imo it echoes these words spoken by Crowley rather ominously and perfectly

and even more so also further opens up a direct line to Amara even, who was sort of operating through Dean as the mark, she “saw through Dean”, which brings me to the scene in which Kaia loses it and faces up to the hooded figure in the bad place - I assume it is her alter ego/her shadow self as Kaia was introduced as a hooded figure herself in the therapy scene - which takes over and channels her and actually saves her (also a direct callback to Charlie and Dark!Charlie imo, which was THE mirror to Dean in S10) by blasting the angels away. And that is also something we have seen with the mark - as well as Amara (she will always partially remain an embodiment of Dean’s own dark side that was externalized, but that he never had the chance to reintegrate into himself to become whole again) - both saved Dean in times of great danger.

Keeping all this in mind and how Dean’s own trauma and bad place with the MoC was followed and brought back up again throughout the episode, the moment in which Dean snaps when Kaia is not willing to co-operate and actually pulls a gun on her (I still find it OOC even though I can see how and what the show was implying with Dean acting that way in that moment) and yells at her with his eyes hard, fits in perfectly with how short tempered Dean got when he bore the mark. So to me looking at the scene in that light, Kaia’s story culminated here with Dean’s own by almost bringing Dean back to that “dark place” - which is btw a vital line from S10 when Dean talks to Cole. He talks about “dark places”, which also echoes the “bad place” in this week’s episode too - by making Dean appear as “on edge” as he was at times while bearing the mark. The important thing however is - and which was one more sign of many showcasing Dean’s emotional maturity and self-awareness is his apology to her later in the episode.

All that being said, if I had the faith in the current set of writers and showrunners as I had in Carver I’d be optimistic that all of this would lead somewhere and would foreshadow a re-examination of the MoC as one of the many traumas Dean suffered to finally help him and let him heal, because to me it seems what may be vital for Kaia - facing up to her “mirror/dark self” in the bad place - is just as vital for Dean. The MoC struggle however wasn’t the only thing addressed and explored in relation to Dean’s traumas, there was another huge aspect explored, but more on that in the second part. :)

[sorrydearie]

Glimpses (3/3)

Summary: Lizzy is slowly coming to terms with her growing feelings for Reddington. - Read on ao3 / tumblr

--

It’s a quiet evening - no blacklister, no national security threat; and if she closes her eyes Liz can almost pretend that she’s just another normal person enjoying a lazy Sunday in. It’s a welcome change from chasing criminals because as much as she likes the satisfaction of going to bed knowing that she has saved lives, Liz enjoys this just as much - listening to the quiet pitter-patter of rain against the windows while she’s safe and warm inside, tucked cozily into the corner of her couch with a cup of hot chocolate numbing her fingers.

A few days ago Red had waltzed into her kitchen, confidently proclaiming that making a good cup of cocoa was a lost art (one which he excelled in, of course. One didn’t take a class with a French cuisine chef just to come out of it making a “watered-down brew that would rival that abhorrent stuff they tried to pass as chocolate in the Armenian prison Dembe and I once got stuck in on our way to-”). He also took the liberty to stock her embarrassingly bare cupboards with dozens of sweet syrups and gourmet chocolate sprinkles imported from Holland.

Red has taken up what Liz mentally refers to as ‘his’ side of the couch, legs leisurely stretched out on the floor in front of him, his head angled slightly towards her so that he could ask her opinion whenever one of the trivial tidbits on TV peaks his interest.

They’re watching a documentary on ship restoration which caught her eye when she was looking for some background noise to accompany the long-suffering sighs aimed at her late-night paperwork the other day. Mostly because it looked like something Red would enjoy, which apparently is enough of a reason to scramble for the remote control and hit the record button on her DVR.

Still, she finds it surprisingly interesting.

(Although she isn’t above admitting that most of her enjoyment of the program is derived from watching Red’s obvious enthusiasm. Liz is quiet fond of the way his eyes light up in child-like wonder as if he’d love to set out and try it himself - buy a rusty, old, water-worn vessel and fix it all up again.)

Liz gives a content sigh, feels a bit like a cat lazing around in the afternoon sun as she snuggles further into the couch’s cushions.

Closing her eyes, Liz thinks that she had better be careful. She was quickly getting used to this, used to having him around, used to sharing these small moments of intimacy with him - just the two of them tugged away in a safe and quiet corner of the world. It was positively domestic - which is utterly ridiculous, of course. Because he is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and she is a rookie FBI agent, and that should be enough for anyone to know that they don’t do normal or ordinary or domestic.

Still, she likes these moments more than she’d have thought. Which is why she needs to be extra careful not to slip up and do something stupid.

(Like skipping over that line they once drew oh-so carefully into the sand).

--

The Hart of Dixie soundtrack is blasting through the speakers of her phone while Liz is busy washing her new favorite blouse - the one Red brought her from his latest trip to Lisbon (the one which curiously, heartwarmingly matches the tie he got for himself on that very same trip).

Liz isn’t too find of washing things by hand; she’s always afraid of accidentally messing up halfway through and ending up with a shrunk, puppet-sized version of her clothes. She could probably just ask Red to take her things to his usual drycleaner, but she doesn’t want to be a bother.

Plus the repetitive motions - hypnotic and soothing as they are - give her some time to think. About what she’ll make for dinner, and about whether she should take the trash out now or wait until tomorrow morning. About when she’d have to renew her gym membership again, about whether she should get her hair cut professionally or invest in a pair of scissors and do it herself instead. About how handsome Red had looked in that beige suit he had worn the other day.

(One of these is not like the other.)

Liz groans in annoyance at herself.

Lately, she finds that she’s been getting incredibly sappy. She tries hard to remember if she has ever felt this way about Tom (or about any of her previous boyfriends for that matter), but she really can’t remember a time when a single glance at Tom’s socked feet sent her heart racing (- which, of course, is an absolutely ridiculous and truly pathetic reaction to have, no matter to whom the feet in question belong).

It’s just that with Red everything seems so significant; every little moment is infinitely precious to her. She wants to treasure every glance, every smile, because with him every little habit tugs at her heartstrings: The way he flicks his tongue against the inside of his cheek in thought. The way he chuckles (deep and throaty, slightly breathless) whenever she manages to catch him off guard. The way he can effortlessly wait for 20 years to open a bottle of Cheval Blanc, but has absolutely no patience for smartphones or tablets. The way his lips fit around a cigar - slowly, gently, sensuously.

Sometimes she wonders, too. About the things she doesn’t know (yet - the romantic in her adds optimistically). Wonders how the nape of his neck would feel under her exploring fingers, wonders if he’d tilt his head to the left or the right when being kissed. Wonders if he’d gasp or moan or whimper if she fitted her body snugly against his and nipped at the round little scar on his neck - her mark on his skin.

With another exasperated groan Liz drowns the blouse and decides to take a cold shower. Maybe that’ll help to clear her head.

--

When she was in college Liz spent a good deal of her spring break holidays looking after people’s apartments. It was easy money - watering plants, feeding birds or turtles or even the occasional pet amphibian. She had always liked to make a game out of guessing the homeowner’s personality traits based on their interior decor.

Still, usually these homes had come with an intact heater. One that didn’t require a dent-worthy kick just to get started.

“So did you teach Modesty to jump against it whenever she’s feeling cold, or what?”

Liz throws an annoyed glance at the rusty old control panel. If she had known that the heating system in Red’s apartment essentially looked like the set of a post-apocalyptic global warming film she wouldn’t have bothered asking if she could stay over. She might have just as well stayed at her own place instead - broken heater and all.

There’s a long-suffering sigh from the other side of the phone, and Liz can practically see Red scratching his sideburn in thought.

“Have you tried the outlet on the right-hand side? The one with the two markers on it?”

Liz rolls her eyes - more at her own naiveté than at Red’s unhelpfulness. Because whatever made her think that Red - the man who showed up in a three-piece suit to help her paint her kitchen, the man who squinted at the IKEA instruction manual until she couldn’t take it anymore and asked Dembe to assemble her new bedframe instead, the man who had handpicked goons especially for repairing broken dishwashers - why the hell did Liz think that he’d possibly be any help with this?

While Red is still rambling on - trying to remember what did the trick the last time (“a bottle of scotch and the truly delightful company of one Lucy Melbrook” - her lips twitch in barely-concealed distaste), Liz steers determinedly towards Red’s bedroom.

Modesty is still sitting on the couch right where Liz left her earlier, her slow-blinking eyes fixed on the latest episode of Jessica Jones playing on TV. “Don’t eat my ice cream,” Liz mouths accusingly at the cat before ducking into Red’s bedroom.

In a matter of seconds she’s rifling through his closet, fingers brushing against the soft suits and crisp shirts. The smell of fresh laundry mixed with the lingering traces of Red’s cologne tugs at her heart and makes her want to climb into the closet like a child searching for a safe haven during a violent rainstorm.

“Did you get it?”

“Hmm?” Balancing up onto her tiptoes, Liz tugs at one of the neatly folded sweaters lying on a shelf just above her head. Its material feels wonderfully warm and soft; and wow, what a pity, Liz thinks, that Red’ll never see it again because from today on this sweater will come and live with her.

“Oh yeah, sure. It’s working now.” She lies and - momentarily putting the phone aside - quickly slips her freezing arms into the sweater.

On the other side of the line Red is switching topics again, audibly content with the knowledge that she is safe and warm.

--

Things are quickly spiraling out of control, Liz thinks as she takes a tentative sip of her drink.

Red is hovering around her like a fretting mother hen, the dark look in his eyes clearly betraying his worry. Earlier, he actually pressed a glass of brandy into her hand as if she were some Victorian romance heroine suffering from bouts of hysteria. He even offered to have Dembe run down to the local pharmacy to fetch some vitamins for her.

All because she fainted.

At least that’s what he thinks and Liz’d be damned to correct him. She’d rather have him think that she’s stressed out from catching blacklisters than see the embarrassed discomfort she’s guaranteed to find on his face if he should ever find out that she had merely stumbled over her own two left feet in an attempt to kiss him.

Well, no. That isn’t quite right either. Because saying that she had tried to kiss him would imply an active role on her part, as if she had made a conscious decision to do so when in fact it was more of a passive thing; an automatic turn on her heels to press a quick peck goodbye to the corner of his mouth as if that were a completely normal thing between them.

Her saving grace was that he had turned away the exact moment her brain had caught up with her body, causing her to stumble into him in a flurry of limbs and erratic heartbeats (also, there might or might not have been a humiliating shriek on her part).

Red caught her, of course. If she closes her eyes she can still feel his strong hands grasping at her arms and back, pulling her flush against him (and wow, maybe that whole damsel in distress metaphor wasn’t so far off after all).

Liz steals a look at Red from the corner of her eye. Right now he’s probably trying to come up with a non-offending way to offer her a vacation; Liz can practically hear him wondering if it would be too forward of him to suggest flying her out to some exclusive spa in Luxembourg (fun fact: she isn’t so sure that she’d tell him no).

All the while, she’s sturdily keeping her face turned away from him. Have him think that she’s embarrassed about this whole thing, alright.

But it had felt so right. Completely natural. As if kissing him hello and goodbye and something in-between was an integral part of their relationship, like feeling the warmth of his hand on the crook of her elbow whenever they walk side by side, or the way her eyes tend to drift to his lips whenever he launches into one of his maritime-themed parables.

Liz sighs in resignation and takes another sip of her brandy.

Oh well. Maybe someday.

--

Sleep comes easier now.

Her once so frequently fraught nightmares starring murderous husbands and the paralyzing panic attacks she encountered during her time on the run from the FBI are slowly ebbing away. She barely wakes up covered in sweat anymore, even manages to keep her eyes closed when she hears the ancient floorboards in her new home creak and groan at night.

The dog helps, too.

Liz is so glad that Red took her to that shelter. She hadn’t realized just how much she missed Hudson (missed having someone who didn’t judge her for eating ice cream for breakfast, who was happy to see her no matter how messed up her makeup and hair was after a full 11 hours out in the field) until this one started wagging its tail at her, happily jumping up and down whenever she returned home from work.

And it’s so nice to have some of that old routine back, too: Getting up at 6 am for an early morning jog around the park, relaxing at a café during lunch break, the dog resting comfortably at her feet, or taking late afternoon walks around the patch of forest down the street.

Sometimes Red joins them.

He’s quiet taken with Kansas (and oh, there’s a story, too. About how Red had laughed at her and admitted to always having wondered whether she had named Hudson after the river or the Sherlock Holmes character), and Liz isn’t shy to admit that his obvious love for Kansas had factored largely into her decision to pick this particular puppy from the joyfully-barking lot.

“Shinrin yoku,” Red breathes after a while. “It’s a word the Japanese have for moments like this; strolls through the woods where you soak up the sun falling in through the leaves. I find them incredibly memorable, don’t you?”

Liz tears her eyes away from Kansas who is bounding animatedly through the bushes, most likely chasing an imaginary mouse or squirrel or bird.

Red’s eyes are closed, and for a moment the sight of him - the cool winter light flickering in mosaic patterns across his face - takes her breath away. Liz feels her fingers twitch with the urge to reach out to him, to tug him closer, to let her fingers trace over the light falling onto his face.

With effort, Liz turns away. Shrugs her shoulders.

“Not too many leafs around though.”

Red opens one eye, briefly looks at her before closing it again and heaving a sigh as if put-out.

“I see poetry is lost on you.”

She huffs in indignation, but takes a step closer anyway. When he starts to move again - further down into the depth of the woods, the branches overhead casting their shadows in an artful crisscross pattern onto the wistful expression on his face - Liz gives a contented sigh and slips her arm through his.

--

It’s Thursday evening which means that it’s video game night at Aram’s.

Liz doesn’t know how he did it, but somehow Aram has managed to receive an advanced copy or some highly anticipated video game (Liz secretly suspects that he’s used his FBI credentials to get his hands on it, made up some excuse about needing the game for national security reasons), so now she’s giggling uncontrollably while her avatar is chasing zombies around an alpine holiday resort.

Sometimes Liz thinks about asking Aram to invite Red over, too. She thinks he’d enjoy it - not the actual games (she’s quite certain that he’d be terrible at those, if she’d ever get him to play, that is) but rather the quiet comforts of spending an evening among friends (real ones who didn’t try to shoot him as soon as he turned his back on them). The only thing stopping her from asking is that it would probably make Aram uncomfortable to hang out with Red; Liz can just imagine him fidgeting on the couch next to Red, always sneaking glances at Red’s glass to anticipate when he’d need another refill of his drink.

(Still, she’d love to one day persuade Red to race her in a round of Mario Kart, thinks it’d be so much fun to watch him laugh and snicker as he leaned this way and that, shoulders bumping against hers with every turn.)

Although he’s certainly warming up to modern technology, Liz thinks as she smiles fondly down at the phone in her lap.

Lately, Red’s made a habit of texting her. They’re mostly quick messages (always perfectly worded, no misspellings or cute emoji, but rather matter-of-fact instead) letting her know that he’s leaving for Brussels or Stockholm or Milan, asking her if she needed a ride to work, or - on more than one occasion - offering up sarcastic remarks about Ressler’s downrightalarming inabilities as an agent of the US government (or as a human being, if you’d rather interpret the frequent comparisons to mindless robots this way).

Right now, her phone’s screen is lighting up to display a short but endlessly sweet Sleep well, along with a promise to have Dembe arrange a meeting with her as soon as they are back in the country.

With a smile on her face that is just this side of besotted Liz puts the phone away and focuses back on the game, all the while feeling a tingling sensation inside her chest at the thought that he is thinking about her even though he is currently halfway around the world.

--

Liz’s least favorite subject in school had always been English. No matter how much she had tried, somehow she had never been able to grasp the concept of rhetorical devices - the similes and metaphors and anaphora (the trying smile of her homeroom teacher still haunted her to this day). She still remembers sitting down with Sam in the evenings, sapping distractedly at a glass of grape juice while he tried to explain to her the subtle nuances of literary irony.

Now, looking at Red, she thinks that she finally understands.

When he had asked her to their latest meeting point, Liz hadn’t been able to suppress the laughter that had bubbled up inside of her, because really? The International Spy Museum?

He doesn’t seem to mind though. Just chuckles self-consciously at himself, and Liz wonders if he even cares about how ridiculous he looks striding through an exhibit dedicated to suave film noire spies and larger-than-life double agents in his black coat and leather gloves (and yes, the fedora - of course).

Liz keeps her eyes glued onto him as he looks at a set of ancient television screens playing scenes from various le Carré movies. There’s this look of childlike awe plastered onto his face, and Liz can’t quite keep her lips from twitching in fond amusement whenever he discovers a new piece that peaks his interest (something newer, something shinier yet).

She doesn’t mind seeing the exhibit even though she’d rather look at modern art than black and white photographs of gentleman gangsters (she’s got her own to look at whenever she wants anyway). But still, she feels incredibly pleased that he has asked her to accompany him. She’s always eager to learn something new about him - things he’s interested in, things he’s passionate about.

Liz secretly suspects that he doesn’t care too much about this blacklister, that maybe all he cared about was finding a reason to ask her to the museum. Which is completely ridiculous of course, because she hopes that by now he knows that she would have tagged along without an imminent threat of national security being dangled in front of her like a carrot on a stick.

Suddenly, a group of tourists clatters past them right and left, and Liz can feel Red step into her personal space to avoid losing her among the throng of animatedly chattering Europeans.

Liz - suddenly finding herself eye to eye with the violet swirls of his Paisley tie (the one he got from his trip to Lisbon, Liz notes smugly) - tilts her face up to offer him a shy smile that is half annoyance at the sudden lack of privacy and half amusement at the absurdity of the whole situation.

He doesn’t return it though; merely keeps his eyes trained on her, a bit pensively, before slowly cocking his head to the side. For a second Liz thinks that she could probably never grow tired of looking at him - of simply standing still in the rapidly revolving world just to take in his face - the sharp cheekbones, the sweet upturn of his nose, the miniscule wrinkles around his eyes - so unbelievably full of joy and laughter for someone who has undergone so many hardships.

After just a moment, her breath hitches in her throat as she feels his hand slowly move from its resting place against the small of her back. She tries hard not to shudder as she feels it brush along her hip, his fingers burning a trail through the thin fabric of her blouse, and Liz swallows hard at the tingling sensation, can feel it deep inside her belly - a burning, hot desire to grasp his lapels and pull him impossibly close.

But then his hand gently, tenderly clasps her own in his, and Liz is left with nothing but lightheadedness at the sweetness of it all (at the sweetness of him).

Smiling shakily, she gives his hand a squeeze, even as she mentally cherishes this moment: the feel of his hand, the warmth of his skin against her own, the texture of his slightly rough, gun-trigger calloused thumb as it brushes shyly over her knuckles.

It’s all a bit too much and yet not nearly enough.

Slowly, the tourists move on, fluttering past them once again to look at a set of black and white photographs taken during the Cold War in East Berlin in one of the adjoining rooms. Their chatter gradually dies away and leaves them in a contemplative silence.

For a split second Liz is afraid that he’ll let go now, move away from her as if nothing had happened, launching into one of his stories to shatter the remnants of their intimacy like a hammer thrown into a glass window. But to her surprise, he stays close, doesn’t let go of her hand as he gently tugs her towards a set of coal sketches in the corner of the room which he “can’t wait to show you, Lizzy! They are truly marvelous!”

As he shares his thoughts on the drawings with her, Liz repeatedly finds her attention drifting to his thumb which continues its absentminded brushing over the back of her hand, and Liz can’t help but grin uncontrollably as she leans a bit closer into his side.

When she looks up at him a moment later her smitten smile is mirrored on his face.

--

Inwardly swearing to herself to never wear shoes again, Liz sighs in delight as she slips out of her heels and props her aching feet (sans murderous high heels) on the coffee table. As much as she adores the thrill of going undercover with Red she could really do without the shoes.

She nips at her glass of Merlot, her eyes never leaving Red’s form as he snoops through her things. There’s this look of utter fascination on his face which she finds absolutely endearing, as if he’s looking at Van Gogh’s sunflowers instead of her assorted trinkets.

“You don’t mind, do you, Lizzy?” He asks absently as he moves on to her book collection, and for a moment Liz allows herself to wonder if he’s surprised by what he finds there.

She doesn’t read much, doesn’t find the time for it between chasing criminals and attending high-end functions in painful shoes. But when she does get around to it it’s usually non-fiction (the ones which are both interesting small-talk material for undercover missions and just boring enough to make her fall asleep in no time after a long day at work) or ( - her recent favorite) - absurdly predictable dime store crime novels.

Liz shrugs. “Well, you let me go through your things, so I guess it’s only fair. Plus, you don’t honestly think I believe that this is the first time you’ve gone through my stuff.”

“Oh, that’s not fair, Lizzy!” He gives a disappointed click of his tongue, and Liz rolls her eyes at his exaggerated (and completely unfounded) display of hurt. “There are a lot of your things I haven’t gotten a chance to see yet. Like your photo albums or your old college yearbooks.”

He pauses for a beat. “Or your underwear drawer.”

Liz snorts in amusement and tries hard to keep the laughter from spilling out of her.

“Keep dreaming, Reddington.”

--

#68 comes with a truly ridiculous nickname (“The Phantom”; and you know you’ve chosen the wrong moniker if even the Concierge of Crime can’t keep a straight face when saying your name) and an even more outrageous background of crime (a graphic novel-worthy origins arc if there ever was one).

They are at Red’s latest safe house. The whole interior is very modern, very simplistic. It’s a bit bare for her taste, and if the barely concealed look of annoyance which appears on his face whenever he accidentally bumps into the oversized lamp looming large in the very center of the living room is anything to go by, Red isn’t too fond of the apartment either.

His things are easy to discern against the cold art deco backdrop. There’s a single record (Miles Davis) leaning against a set of silver picture frames filled with stock photo images of artificially smiling families; and the stack of international newspapers (English, Russian, French; all heavily dog-eared) on the coffee table does surely not belong to the same person who has gone through the neatly organized arrangement of arthouse+Architecture brochures lying abandoned on the far corner of the couch.

Lying spread-eagled among the papers is an edition of Rushdie’s Midnight's Children, its cover still new and shiny, and Liz feels her heart flop around in her chest as she remembers having fleetingly mentioned that it was her favorite only a few days ago.

She wonders if that’s why he bought it. Of maybe he had simply thought that it sounded interesting and worth checking out. Or maybe just wanted to see what kind of stories she liked (so he could pick his anecdotes accordingly). Or maybe he wanted to read it so he’d be able to discuss it with her, something along the lines of ‘Oh, speaking of #13 and his irksome penchant for setting fire to church buildings - what did you think about Rushdie’s use of religious imagery?’.

Whatever his reason, Liz doesn’t care. Because the only thing that matters is what she’ll take away from this (and this is what she chooses: Red reading her favorite book simply because he cares about her.)

There are footsteps behind her, and when Liz turns towards him it’s with a blinding smile on her face.

--

Liz feels like dozing, and if the band stays true to their apparent penchant for slow-paced songs she’ll be asleep in a matter of minutes.

They are at some cozy little vineyard restaurant somewhere in Calabria, Italy. The food is great, the wine is wonderful, and surprisingly enough the company is getting along for once. For some reason Red is on his best behavior and even Ressler manages to bite down on his usual hostility towards his self-proclaimed nemesis.

Maybe it’s the school-trip feeling of chasing a blacklister abroad, or maybe it’s simply the lovely atmosphere - romantic live music, the stars glowing brightly above their heads, the crispy evening breeze ruffling their hair…

Liz steals a glance at Red from the corner of her eye. He’s sitting right next to her, politely listening to Aram’s ramblings about some new online game or other (Liz is convinced that Red doesn’t even understand half of it; as far as she knows he has never even played a single game of Snake on that ancient flip phone of his). His thigh is brushing against hers whenever he leans forward to take a sip of his beer, and Liz is thankful for the extra warmth his body exudes.

There’s a woolen blanket draped over their laps. Earlier, Liz had used it as an excuse to scoot up closer to him when she had noticed that he had barely been covered due to some misguided attempt to let her have most of it. Idiot.

In order to keep herself from falling asleep Liz lets her fingers play absentmindedly with the paper wrap on her beer. It’s some local brew, dark and woodsy - if there’s even such a thing. She has never been good at actually tasting alcohol; she had always been more of the throw-back-your-head-and-down-it-all kind of girl.

She yawns, her eyelids heavy. Maybe she should just excuse herself and head to bed. The pastoral four-poster bed in her hotel room (an upgrade from their FBI-sanctioned 3-star motel - courtesy of their favorite criminal) looked simply divine, and Liz can’t wait to throw herself onto it and never move again.

She’s just about to get up when all of a sudden she’s wide awake again. Because beneath the blanket Red’s fingers have brushed against her thigh.

It’s just a quick, fleeting touch of the tip of his fingers against the bare skin where her dress has ridden up, and yet it has practically set her nerve endings aflame. His cool fingers felt so good against her summer-heated skin, and for a split second Liz can’t help but imagine what it would feel like if he’d keep going, if he’d let his fingers trace up the inside of her thigh and slip beneath the flimsy fabric of her dress…

Liz doesn’t think it was intended though, cannot quite imagine that he’d be daring enough to want to rest his hand on her knee or thigh. But after just another moment his intention becomes clear as his hand finds hers under the blanket, his fingers slowly slanting over hers.

It feels so wonderful that Liz can feel her heart burst. She wants to cry, wants to laugh, wants to turn towards him and beam at him. The only thing stopping her is Ressler and Aram and Samar sitting right there with them, and while Samar probably wouldn’t even bat an eye, Liz is sure that Ressler would make a scene.

Careful not to give anything away, Liz turns to look at Red’s face. He isn’t looking at her, instead he’s nodding at something Ressler said, the perfect picture of an engaged listener. Liz knows better though, is quite certain that in his mind he’s thinking about her because all the while his thumb keeps brushing soothing patterns over the back of her hand.

And it’s so sweet, so endearing, that suddenly Liz is finding it difficult to breathe.

--

Hours later, he’s walking her to her room.

He’s staying at a safe house just out of town;  at some cozy, little apartment filled with Greek figurines (she’s badgered Dembe into showing her some pictures of the place), so this must be a huge inconvenience for him. He could have just left with Dembe right away, she wouldn’t have minded. Still she’s grateful for this, grateful for the few extra minutes his lingering affords her with him.

But just the same, something feels off about him.

For one, there’s none of his usual flair - the confidence, the infuriating smugness, the nonchalant devil-may-care attitude he usually dons on like a second skin - it’s all gone. Instead he seems smaller somehow. Almost nervous. All the signs are there anyway - the uneasy huff of laughter, the biting of the inside of his cheek, and - yes, there it is, the constant drumming of his fingers against his thigh, the brim of his fedora squished against the soft wool of his suit pants.

He looks as if he’s working himself up to say something important, and Liz wonders if this is it. If they’re finally crossing that one line that’s still left in the sand, a glaring bright red reminder of what cannot be.

Within seconds, her heart is racing painfully inside her rip cage, drum-drum-drumming away to her frantic thoughts (about when she had last applied lip balm, about if her perfume was still smelling fresh and flower-y, about whether she should rest her hands on his shoulders or against his chest when he finally moved in-).

But all of a sudden Red seems to snap out of it, merely nods at her and palms his fedora back onto his head. And before she can make sense of what just happened between them (or rather: what hadn’t happened between them) he’s turning to leave. It’s just that Liz isn’t quite ready to let him just yet. Not now that they’re halfway there, not now that her treacherous brain has dangled taunting images and daydreams of what could be in front of her.

“Red - Raymond. Wait!”

He turns to face her once more and Liz has barely enough time to register the surprised look on his face before she’s closing the distance between them.

(And oh - oh!)

His lips feel absolutely wonderful - so soft, so warm against hers that she has to bite back a moan.

Red has gone completely still though, and Liz thinks that she must’ve caught him by surprise because wasn’t this the logical culmination of all that has passed between them in the last few months? Of all the stolen glances and loving touches, all the fond smiles and little gestures, all the glimpses of what could be if they’d only be brave enough to try?

And suddenly she’s scared out of her mind - scared that with just one kiss she has ruined everything, that she’ll drive him away, that he’ll never look her in the eye again. Feeling desperate now, Liz brings her hand up to rest over his heart. It’s racing erratically beneath her fingers, and Liz is glad for it, glad to feel that this is as real to him as it is to her.

And then he’s kissing her back - finally.

Liz can barely keep herself from breaking away and squealing in delight. Her whole body is brimming with excitement; she feels like a kid on Christmas morning, only that this is better because she is pretty sure that this isn’t just a one-time-only- but rather a forever kind of kiss - fumbling fingers and squished noses and breathless sighs.

When they part Red is beaming at her. Warmly. Brightly.

[lavieenprose]

When the loss of romantic love no longer breaks your heart, life finds another way

Last week I heard from a friend who’s heartbroken. The details of her particular situation are incidental; it’s always the same story. As it happens, she’s much younger than I am, but I knew better than to tell her any of the perfectly true things — that she was a brilliant, beautiful young woman and would, without doubt, fall in love again, with someone more deserving of her, that this would pass, that she’d be happy again — that would’ve been of no use to her. I didn’t want to condescend to her as though she were some silly little girl head over heels with hormones, and also didn’t want to sound like some desiccated old person who’s forgotten what it’s like to be in love.

I myself am not unfamiliar with the etiology of heartbreak. Let’s not dwell on this: I’ve written about it at length elsewhere, and it’s frankly embarrassing. A typical scenario involved me curled up on the bathroom floor weeping piteously into a smelly old towel. (“Weeping into the towel” became verbal shorthand for the whole ordeal, one that I’m afraid got wearisomely familiar to my closest friends.) The particular strain of love my young friend was suffering — unrequited, or unavailable — is one of which I made rather a vocation for a couple of decades. In my own experience, a recurring attraction to people who are unavailable usually means you’re not ready to fall in love with someone who is. Some form of love that’s impeded or incomplete (illicit, unilateral, long-distance, epistolary) may be all you can take — or, more importantly, give — at that point in your life. It may be, despite your protestations, what you really want. My friend Margot likes to ask, of people in such situations: “If you weren’t thinking about [x person] all the time, what would you be thinking about instead?” — because the answer is usually what you’re trying to avoid by burying yourself alive in your romantic/sexual obsession.

It’s been over a decade since that last happened to me. I hesitate even to write those words, like a superstitious pitcher afraid to break a streak. My loves used to be operatic; my heartbreaks, Toscan; and my jealousy not just Othelloan but Medean — the kind where you send someone a poisoned dress, murder your own children, and drive off in a chariot drawn by dragons. But my last bout of insane jealousy and rage, which commandeered my brain like a parasite for the better part of a year and had to be extinguished with vipassana meditation, seems to have burned out the circuit in my head. Since then I’ve had whole relationships in which my partner and I saw each other only on weekends, I didn’t know or ask what she did during the week, and the question of whom else she might be sleeping with didn’t seem like any of my business.

Having had so many inconvenient, and frequently disastrous, crushes eventually affords you enough experience, enough of an emotional buffer, that you can learn to recognize them in the early stages and let them discreetly wither instead of cultivating them. If you’re lucky, eventually you get tired of your own pathology, exhausted by all the energy it takes to fall deliriously in love and get horribly heartbroken again and again. Like an addict driven into recovery, you get sick of the endless vacillation between euphoria and agony. In Seymour: An Introduction, Buddy Glass (Salinger’s alter ego) writes: “I can’t be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.” Ideally, you learn to love in less volatile, precarious ways.

Though even this explanation gives me too much credit: mostly it’s just a matter of deranging chemicals gradually ebbing from my brain. (I tell my girlfriend that I only became datable within the last five years. I think she thinks I’m joking.) But my young friend is still at an age when love really is the most important thing in life — evolutionarily speaking, finding a mate is the most important mission of youth, besides survival — so it’s only natural that she’s deep in the summer storms of endorphins. It’d be facile for me to give her my dumb adult reassurances now that I’m no longer susceptible to those debilitating bouts of infatuation and heartbreak. Equanimity is a virtue of age, not youth. Youth’s virtue is passion — even my students’ angst and ennui are more intensely felt than my own dull depression and boredom.

But I mostly refrained from giving wise older-person advice because I don’t believe there is some state of wisdom we slowly mature toward and eventually attain. (When would that even be — the moment when our personalities are complete and our understanding at its peak? Sometime, presumably, between infantile and senile incontinence.) The problems I had at age seven were no less serious than the ones I have now — they were more serious, in fact, since my current problems do not include any likelihood of being sat on and having my hair pulled. Every age has its own truths, particular to the needs of that phase of life: childhood truths and teenage truths, young-adult and middle-aged ones, and, if we live long enough to learn them, the unwelcome truths of old age. They tend to arrive in the form of retrospect: you really get good at being a kid around age 11 or 12, on the idyllic eve of destruction; you finally feel like you might be getting the hang of adulthood right around the time you’re diagnosed with something that’s not going to go away. An optimistic projection would be that, on our deathbeds, maybe we’ll finally have figured out what life was all about.

These truths also don’t seem to be transferable, at least not backward. When I was a college freshman, we would mock upperclassmen who didn’t go out and get black-out drunk every night — we were never gonna turn into boring old stay-at-home 22-year-olds! There would have been no way for those sagacious juniors to explain to us why they no longer wanted to get drunk nightly, anymore than parents can explain to the childless why all the forfeitures they’ve chosen are worth it. If you were to ask me whether it makes me sad that I haven’t been heartbroken in over a decade (but no one ever asks questions like that), I’d say it makes me a little sad that it doesn’t make me sad. It’d be like missing going out and chugging Jägermeister on a Tuesday. I just don’t want my head to feel like that, ever again.

The other night I was talking with a friend about how relieved we both were to have outgrown the hopeless crushes, doomed affairs, and obliterating heartbreaks of our younger years. We’re no longer capable of hurling ourselves as heedlessly into love as we did back then; we instinctively hedge our affections, the same way you learn, if you survive your teens, not to drive 120 miles an hour on twisty backroads with the headlights off. Later, over a second or maybe third round, we segued into more somber and mature problems: the unbearable sadness of watching the slow dissolution of our parents’ personalities — their forgetfulness, hallucinations, delusions. As an adult, you try to meet this with as much equanimity, compassion, and humor as you can, but some little-kid part of you is enraged at seeing them so diminished, and panicked at being abandoned. After a glum pause, my friend said: “Remember those heartbreaks we said we were lucky to have left behind…?” You could almost hear the whanh-wah-whaaahh — that trombone mock-lament at the end of the sitcom as our heroes realize that the joke, once again, is on them. Punchline being, life’s just one goddamn heartbreak after another.

It’s a truism, post-Freud, that heartbreak feels so eviscerating — regardless of which incidental jerk or wacko it happens to attach to — because it’s really an abreaction, a reenactment of much earlier, more primal losses we’ve forgotten: Oedipal triangles and abandonments, bad breakups with your first loves, whom you never really got over. But causality is only one-way in human perception: you could also interpret them not as repressed memories but premonitions; distant, preliminary shivers of the arctic desolation that awaits us at the other end of life.

Anyway, soon enough I’ll be weeping as I eat this essay, sneering through my tears back at past me, Mr. Smart Guy, who postured as wise and imagined himself past silly afflictions of youth like love and sorrow. I’m about to discover what heartbreak at 52 feels like. The details are incidental; it’s always the same story. This one feels a little like death: I’ve always known it was coming, intellectually; I just didn’t think it would be yet. Now it’s looming like a meteor or tsunami, too late to outrun. Hopefully it won’t be as crippling an experience as it was in my twenties (though the adolescent fear that No One Will Ever Love You Again has a new shadow of plausibility the older you get). Maybe it’ll be like the difference between Tosca or Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique — wrenching, histrionic — and something more like Beethoven’s Cavatina, or Mahler’s Ninth — an exquisite melancholy. Probably it’ll just suck. But I don’t really know, any more than I can know what it’s like to see people who aren’t there, or confuse dreams with memories, or forget your children’s names. But I guess we’ll find out.