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yellowocaballero · 4 years ago

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Hunt!Tim: Five Times He Murdered Someone And One Time He Loved them <3

Just kidding. This is a fic set in my Roleswap AU, acting as a character study over the course of the series into...whatever the fuck was going on with that guy. I spent so much time and energy actually figuring out his arc and character that when I finished Solitaire I hadn’t said everything I wanted to say, so that’s why this exists. It’s...not funny at all. Tim takes himself far too seriously. I’m very sorry, there are almost no jokes in this. It just doesn’t work.

Content warning for story typical issues; but more explicit depiction of suicidal ideation, kidnapping and physical assault, just in general a very fucked up little dude, and gendered violence that is more explicitly discussed as a possible precursor to further violence. Rest under the cut.

“I’m going to fucking kill them!”

“Well,” Sasha said, tapping away relentlessly on her phone as she sat primly on his couch. During work hours she was always doing something mysterious on her laptop, and after work it was on her phone. She had once alluded to being the moderator of an improbable number of forums. She liked the power. “We could probably make that happen. It’s the Magnus Institute, it’s suspicious if nobody's dying. But four people at once may not be prudent.”

“I don’t care!” Tim yelled. He paced his living room in tight lines, turning sharply on his heel at the end of the room. It felt like he was bursting with pent-up energy and rage, sending his heartbeat thumping in his ears like a war drum. “They’re obstructing justice, withholding evidence from an investigation, probably acting as an accomplice -”

“I’m going to fucking kill them!”

Sasha’s head snapped up, eyes glinting at him behind the big glasses that she always hid behind. “So you do think they were involved in Gertrude’s death?”

“Who cares. They did something, they’re obviously guilty of whatever. Every one of them have rap sheets.” Everyone but that blonde woman, which seemed a little counter-intuitive. “We just have to find something.”

Sasha hesitated, just momentarily, and she carefully put her phone down. “You’re angry, Tim. It’s affecting your judgement. Remember when we talked about that? Deep breaths. Come on, in one and out two. ”

Tim grimaced, but Sasha was right. He stopped pacing, and at Sasha’s encouraging look he resentfully took a few deep breaths. It did make him feel better. His heart wasn’t thumping in his ears anymore. She was so good at calming him down. She was just so wonderful in every way.

Thinking about how great Sasha was effective in clearing his head, but it just highlighted how terrible those women were in comparison. No respect. It was disgusting.

“Thanks,” Tim said gruffly, eliciting a beautiful smile. He collapsed on the couch next to her, disgusted and frustrated. “We’re never going to solve this Robinson case so long as those women are in the way. I won’t tolerate any obstacles in getting justice.”

“I know, and that’s what’s brave about you,” Sasha soothed, clasping his shoulder gently. Her thumb worked into his shoulder, gentle and soothing. “But we have to do it quietly. We don’t just need them out of the way, we need information. I’ll work on the technological side. You can dig up an entire life online, trust me. But if they know any of the secrets about the Institute and the Archives, we have to press them. That’s your strength, Tim. You can get anything out of anyone, because you never give up.”

Tim turned his head and smiled weakly at her. “And your strength is that you’re always there for me.” Her eyebrow ticked, but Tim hardly noticed. “I’ll keep pressing. They can’t stonewall me forever. I have their boss’ address, I’ll just show up there.”

“He’s going to ask for a warrant -”

“Oh, who gives a shit, nobody cares.” Tim snorted. “He’s a pussy if he’s hiding behind those women, anyway.” At Sasha’s carefully arched eyebrow, Tim quickly added, “Coward, I meant coward.”

“So you do remember our conversation about being PC,” Sasha said, making Tim snort. Please. Those sensitivity training the department was always forcing on them was a joke. Tim laughed with the other guys about it afterwards. He didn’t know why Sasha was complaining; she laughed just as mockingly as the rest of them. But she just readjusted her glasses now, a sign she was a little nervous. “Tim, about what you said just before we left -”

“What about it?” Tim said sharply.

Sasha was silent for a minute, before adjusting her glasses again. “Nothing. Just - be careful, okay? People who get too close to the Magnus Institute end up dead.”

If only they would. But Tim grinned at her, bright and sharp, and Sasha hesitantly smiled back too. Tim’s conviction, his bravery, always seemed to make her feel better. Sasha thought too much. She rarely second guessed herself - that was why Tim liked her - but sometimes she just thought herself into twists. She needed someone like him to cut that Gordian Knot. “Don’t worry, Sash. The good guys always prevail.”

Tim would kill them. All he needed was a reason.

ii.

Tim had nightmares, now.

Not full ones. Strange, fragmented dreams that were quickly forgotten after he woke up. Most of the time. But not always. And they were so strangely vivid - as if he was really living that moment over and over again.

It was of that construction site. And of Danny, watching those murders and the corpses with a sick, fascinated smile. And of Tim, defenseless and powerless and trembling and weak, watching it all happen.

Sometimes there would be a man. Just once or twice. The man, who would always be wearing really stupid pyjamas that contrasted wildly with how attractive he was, would frown at Tim.

‘Hey’, Sims said, ‘aren’t you that prick?’.

And Tim would wake up, heart beating fast, thumping in his ears, afraid in exactly that same poisonous metallic way that he hadn’t felt since he was a child.

Tim was going to kill that monster.

****

On a Monday afternoon, Tim sat in the driver’s seat of his car, checking his gun.

Gun, check. Rope, check. Shovel, check. Lighter and gasoline, check. Axe with belt, check, just in case things went really south. Gag, check. Tim had no idea how many secret powers that thing had, he wasn’t taking any chances.

Monday was the only night that they all went home alone. It took two frustrating weeks of stake-outs to realize that. Since he had cornered that bitch Melanie she even walked home with Daisy, who apparently lived close by. It was worth it, though. She was finally feeding him useful information, even though Tim knew that she thought she was giving irrelevant information about what they really wanted. He gave most of it straight to Sasha, who was salivating over all of the puzzle pieces Melanie was casually dumping on them as if they were meaningless. Whatever. That was Sasha’s job.

She had been worried about him lately. Probably. Tim hadn’t really noticed. He was focused on the case. Tim was a perfectionist like that.

Finally, at 5:20, Tim saw the monster - Jon, whatever, he wasn’t scared of him - round the corner. He was a little hard to distinguish in the darkness, but that was why Tim had left the headlights on.

His heart was thumping, roaring in his ears. Tim was giddy with excitement and anticipation and thirst. Catching them wasn’t the best part, but this would feel so good. He had been vividly imagining the look of fear on the thing’s face for the past month, ever since he assaulted Tim. He just couldn’t decide how he wanted to kill him - he brought his nightstick just in case he wanted to bash his face in, but fire was practical and incredibly painful.

Showtime, Tim thought, as he opened his car door and stepped out. After Tim took care of this, he and Sasha would be safe. That was the important thing. He was protecting Sasha from that thing. That was why he did it, all of it.

Jon startled a little when he saw him, but his face was backlit from the headlights and his features were probably obscured. It wasn’t until Tim stepped forward, easily and casually, that Jon began the slight speedwalk of a pedestrian encountering a persistent panhandler on the street.

“Stop right there.”

Jon froze. Not as stupid as he looks, then. Still pretty stupid.

Tim walked forward until he was standing at Jon’s back, already silently drawing out his handcuffs with one hand.

“Detective Stoker,” Jon said, and Tim almost respected the way his voice didn’t shake. “I wish this was more of a surprise.”

Normally Tim appreciated a good intimidating monologue, but he could be more efficient right now. Besides, there was time for that later. Jon turned his head backwards slightly, trying to see his face - perfect - and Tim waited until he could see his expression before he jammed the barrel of his gun on Jon’s throat.

There it was. The expression that few people besides Tim had ever seen, that secret face of man that each person felt so few times in their lives if they felt it at all. The face of a man who knew he was about to die.

It was Tim’s little secret.

“Why -”

Tim bashed it over the head with the barrel of the gun, and it dropped on the gun like a lanky puppet with its strings cut. No use letting it finish a question.

Handcuffs, rope, trunk. Carefully just under the speed limit, barrelling out of London into the cold and emotionless woods. Turning on the stereo - some mindless Amy Winehouse song. Tim found himself whistling along with it, fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

It wasn’t that Tim liked killing people, or even things that looked and begged and cried like people. But it was just something you had to do. Tim shouldered that burden, so innocent people wouldn’t have to. As a police officer, he had sworn to be the wolf that protects the sheep. That was Tim - that loyal and heroic wolf.

The thrill was overwhelming. That was why people had sex in public - that excited thrill over possibly getting caught. Not that he would, and even if he did Tim basically had carte blanche to handle his cases how he wanted, but he could. His skin was prickling, his heartbeat thumping in his ears. Saliva was pooling in his mouth, which he wiped off with one hand. Adrenaline did weird things. When he looked at the rear mirror inside the car to check on Jo - the monster, he saw the light of the headlights glinting strangely against his eyes, but in another second it was gone.

Tim didn’t have a ‘spot’ because that was fucking idiotic, but all of his dumping places had basically the same characteristics. You had to drive a while to get something really private. It took an hour, but they got to Chiltern hills eventually, and Tim was forced to squint at Google Maps to find the GPS coordinates he had planned out. It felt a little ridiculous to use Google Maps to find a burial spot for somebody but - well, life was weird.

When he stopped, he carefully took out the gag, the axe, the shovel, his own hunting knife, and dumped them in the spot he had picked out. He held the gag and holstered the hunting knife before carefully popping open the trunk.

Jo - the monster was awake. Which was fortunate; there was no fight when they were unconscious. He stared up at Tim with big brown eyes, all innocent and pleading, and Tim rolled his eyes before bending down to securely jam the gag in his mouth before grabbing him by his tied hands and dragging him out. The thing made a bunch of sad noises, and from the sounds of it he had wrenched a shoulder, but that wouldn’t be an issue in a few minutes.

The thing’s legs had clearly fallen asleep, and he stumbled onto the ground the minute Tim let go of him. He kept his eyes on Tim almost frantically, as if he could brainwash him by his eyes alone - could he? Could he? His eyes were fucking freaky.

Jesus. What if he could. Fuck, Tim barely knew anything about his freaky powers. But if he could brainwash via eye contact, couldn’t he -

No. Tim shook himself. That was the fear talking. Which shouldn’t exist. The fear should be gone. He had the thing bound and gagged at his feet, terrified out of its life, he couldn’t possibly still be scared of it. Fucking stupid. He was just cautious. That was caution. Tim was a cautious person.

Time for his favorite part, then.

Tim grinned lazily down at the thing, letting his white teeth flash in the lit headlights of the car. He hadn’t been able to sleep last night, writing all of this out in his mind. “Not so great on the other side, huh?”

The monster’s eyes widened.

Tim dragged him away from the car, not bothering to be gentle. He kicked and pushed on the ground, and although he was bony as hell the guy was tall and desperate, and Tim was forced to kick him down on the ground and draw his gun. He hadn’t wanted to draw the gun - they never fought and kicked and snarled and bit with the gun - but he wasn’t taking any chances here.

“I want you to know,” Tim said, friendly and warm, “that I’m doing this because I made a promise. On my badge and on my life, I protect the innocent from predators. I defend society from threats. There’s a corruption in the world, a sick and rotting infection, and it’s my job to tear it out. But I get no joy from this, okay?” He didn’t know why it was important that the monster knew that. It wasn’t like he was going to hold a grudge. The monster tried to sit up, but Tim kicked him again until he hit the ground again. Tim hated how he was shorter than him when they both were standing. He wanted to look down on him for once.

The monster was always looking down on him. With his little girl gang and his bestest buddies. With that - that moral superiority. He thought he was so smart and popular. Just because he could rip someone’s deepest secrets out of someone, he thought he was better. Just because he knew Tim’s worst fear, he thought that he had power over Tim.

Nobody did. Nobody had power over Tim. Not anymore.

“But you,” Tim hissed, “you, out of everyone I’ve ever killed - I’m going to enjoy you. You’ve crept into the lives of all those humans. You even got fucking Sasha telling me you’re not all bad. Is that what you do? Convince everybody around you that you’re a good person, when you’re a piece of shit inside?” His hand was trembling on his gun - that wasn’t in the script. Why was that happening? “Well, guess what. No matter how great you think you are, you will always be a monster.”

The handle of Tim’s gun was coated in sweat, making his trembling hand slide. Why? The gasoline and lighter were standing by his feet, ready to burn the body. His heart was thumping in his chest, not from anticipation and thrill - why? Why? Why?

“Tim, no!”

Tim, so focused on what he was doing, jerked so hard he almost fired the gun. He whipped around to the source of the voice, and found to his shock a familiar car and a familiar woman standing by it, face set in a fierce determination.

It was Sasha. Somehow, the sight of her was deeply wrong to Tim. She shouldn’t be here. Sasha should never see this. She knew, she had helped - always the finger pointing in the direction to unleash Tim - but she shouldn’t see it. He knew it wasn’t real to her, what he did.

“Sash,” Tim said weakly, hand drooping.

Jon screamed from behind his gag. He might have been calling for help.

“Put the gun down,” Sasha said coldly. She was just dressed in jeans and a messy t-shirt, as if she had come here in a great hurry. How had she kno - okay, Sasha knew everything, it was no surprise.

“Why? Sasha, what are you doing here?” Tim cried, in genuine confusion. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that Jon is innocent of everything!” Sasha yelled, and Tim almost flinched back. “He didn’t kill Gertrude, he doesn’t know anything about what’s going on! Trust me, Jon and his team have nothing to do with any of this!”

“He’s a fucking demon, Sash,” Tim said incredulously. How could she take his side? How? “Don’t you remember what he did to me? How can you forgive that?”

“You’re not a saint either!” Sasha screamed - the first time Tim had ever heard her scream at him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. How had he lost control of the situation so badly? “If you kill him you will break his team.”

As if a single coworker nobody dying will upset anybody. “And how long until he attacks or kills his team?” Tim asked furiously. “They’re the biggest bitches I’ve ever met, but they’re human. Monsters hurt humans, Sasha. It’s in their nature. How long until he hurts someone else? How long until he hurts you?”

“If you kill him,” Sasha said, quiet and strangled and hurt, “I will never forgive you.”

Nobody had power over him - nobody, perhaps, save Sasha. She held his heart in his hands, ready at a moment’s cue to crush it or rip it out of him. He couldn’t bear her disapproving face, her quiet disappointment. If she didn’t love him, if she took that away - he wouldn’t have anything. Nothing would be left. He had to protect that love, protect her.

“Sasha,” Tim said weakly, “out of everybody, I thought you would understand.”

“I do. I’m the only one who will ever understand. That’s why you have to trust me.”

Maye that was the problem. Tim did. She was the only person he had ever trusted.

Tim flicked the safety, and dropped the gun.

Just to make himself feel better, he bent his leg back to kick Jon, but - but, for some reason, he didn’t. It just seemed so tiresome. What was the point? What was the point of any of this?

The point had always been to protect humans from the monsters. To protect Sasha. But Sasha didn’t want his help. What did he have now?

“Take him back to his house,” Tim said dully. He glared fiercely at Jon, whose face was falling in relief. “If you tell the police about this, nobody will believe you and nobody will care. If you tell anybody else about this, I’ll find you again and beat you half to death. Got it?”

Jon nodded fervently.

After that, it was all a blur. Sasha helped him up, took him to her car, and he saw her cut through his restraints once he was safely inside. Tim just gathered up his materials and dumped them in the trunk of his car, sliding into the driver’s seat and gunning the engine.

He drove home in a depressed haze, feeling worthless, feeling powerless, feeling exactly like Jon always made him feel.

His hands clenched on the steering wheel. If Jon didn’t know shit about what was going on - and Tim believed that, guy was fucking stupid - then who did? If Jon hadn’t turned into a monster on purpose, then who had turned him into a monster?

Elias Bouchard always gave Tim a bad feeling.

He’d collect some evidence. Give it a few weeks, then confront him. Bouchard would bend and crack. Then Tim would be free. Free of the Magnus Institute, free of how it made him feel.

He roared towards home, unsatisfied and angry, still afraid.

iii.

“Can you pass the rice?”

Tim silently passed Mom the bowl, staring intently at his own plate and silently shovelling potatoes in his mouth. Dad was doing his usual thing and just kind of squinting at his plate and chewing like a cow with cud. Danny was, from the outside, eating food like a normal person. Tim knew that he was vibrating with anticipation.

“So,” Mom continued, faux-brightly, “it’s been a while since you boys came home. Too good for your old folks, huh?”

The passive aggressive route - deal with the criticism, but if you bit back then it was ‘just a joke’. Favored tactic of Ha-eun Stoker.

“Sorry, Mom,” Danny said, one arm thrown over the back of his chair, utterly unrepentant, “work’s been hell lately. Big case came in, and if I want to be promoted to junior partner…”

Sure enough, Mom brightened right up. “Really! Tell us all about your case, Danny!”

Then they were off. Tim zoned out, blankly spooning gamja jorim into his mouth as Danny endlessly rattled off about his accomplishments and Mom cooed and aah’d relentlessly. Dad just chewed, occasionally grunting in satisfaction and approval.

Wow, the coveted paternal approval. Way to make them all jump through hoops for it. Tim rolled his eyes.

Unfortunately, he was caught. Mom turned her piercing gaze on him, smiling pleasantly with perfect teeth. Of course they were perfect; she had work done. All of the other women in the neighborhood do it, Tim, we should fit in. Oh, this necklace is just so in style, I saw Ms. Wallace down the street wearing it. Fucking lemming.

“What about you, Tim?” Mom asked. “How’s work going? Normally you’d be telling us all about your big arrests.”

Ah. The reason why Tim had done everything possible to avoid family dinner. They had this once a month, the only time they could all be assed to talk to each other, and Tim had jumped through hoops to try and escape.

Danny didn’t let him. This was way too entertaining to him.

He knew. Tim didn’t know how, but that was irrelevant. Danny always knew. He couldn’t lie and make up some case. Tim took a careful sip of his dak gomtang, stalling.

Finally, he said, “I took a new job, actually.”

Dad looked up from his plate. Mom’s jaw dropped.

“But you loved your job,” Mom said, for all appearances broken-hearted. “What happened?”

Danny leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head, grinning. “Yeah, brother. You loved that job, you’d never quit. What happened?”

“My work partner was caught and forced to sign an employment contract by a middle management stoner, blackmailing me into working with her so I wouldn’t get arrested by the police for my dozen murders.”

Everybody stared at him. Tim sipped some water.

“That isn’t very funny, Timothy,” Mom said.

God, these people were so serious. In the stupidest second of his entire stupid life, he missed the Archive team just a little bit. At least they had a sense of humor. He’d never known those bitches to take anything seriously. But even when they were literally engaging in cult-level shunning of him and Sasha, they were always together. What was with homos and that gay found family shit?

“Kidding. I don’t know, Mom, I was just going stir-crazy. Being a copper just felt like such a dead-end job.”

“But you said you were on track for Lieutenant,” Mom gasped. “How could you throw that away?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Danny said, shit-eating grin plastered on his face. “I don’t think Tim would quit his job voluntarily.”

Mom’s jaw dropped. “You were fired?”

Tim was too dead inside for this. “Sure. I’m a librarian now. It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” Mom positively screeched. “What am I supposed to tell Mrs. Walker now? That my son’s not on track to Lieutenant, that he was fired? I’ve never been so ashamed of you. You’re going to make me a laughingstock, Tim. In all my life, you’ve never once cared about how your actions affected me. Let me tell you right now that this is disgraceful. You’re a grown man, and you’re still acting like a child who blah blah blah. Tim’s a disappointment and we hate him blah blah. How could I have raised such a lazy yammer yammer yammer. I only pay attention to you when I’m yelling at you and I’m totally in the right because Rachel Granger said that yada yada -”

“Well, this was fun,” Tim said pleasantly, wiping his mouth with a napkin before balling it and tossing on the table. He put his chopsticks down and stood up, dusting off his hands. “Great to see all of you again, so much fun, but I have a cat to go iron.”

But Dad was staring at him, even when Mom was fuming in rage. In Korean, he said, “You’re disrespecting your mother, Ji-hoon.”

“For god’s sake, Richard, we speak English in this house. His name’s Timothy,” Mom snapped. Danny rolled his eyes.

“Why not?” Tim asked in Korean, just to piss off Mom. Basira would have sneered at her respectability politics. Melanie would have lost her temper an hour - no, thirty years ago. Why were they stronger than Tim? “You don’t respect her.”

Almost silently, Danny whistled.

“Timothy,” Mother started, scandalized, “listen to your -”

“Why? What can she say to me, besides the same shit I’ve been hearing my entire life? She’s not saying anything interesting.” Tim smiled brightly at his family, flashing all of his teeth. “You know what? In comparison with my life lately, you three are pretty fucking boring. Bye.”

That was when his mother burst into tears, and his father started yelling at him at the top of his voice and thumping the table until the dishes rattled, and when Danny started laughing. If they did anything else, if Dad was about to get out of his chair and smack him, if Mom was going to disown him, Tim didn’t wait around to see it. He grabbed his bomber jacket and stalked out the door, letting it fall behind him.

He breathed heavily on the pretty little sidewalk in front of their pretty little house. The pretty little roses in the pretty little garden bloomed perfectly, and their thorns were all cut off. Down the street pretty little houses made of ticky tacky loomed, and they were all within HOA compliance in their gated little community. Nobody in. Nobody out.

When he was fifteen, Tim hated it because his parents were always trying to impose normalacy on him and he had never fucking measured up. When he was a young adult, he had hated it because he had fancied himself a gritty, street-wise cop who grappled with the dregs of society and always came out victorious. The perfect little families here thought that their gates could protect them from the cold and hard outside world - but the monsters in the world lived and breeded in their backyards, and they were too busy trimming their lawns to notice.

He should go home. It was late, and he had his ridiculous, evil, gloriously imperfect job tomorrow. God, Melanie would hate this place. She would sneer at him for ever having lived here, chalking it up with his infinite list of sins. All you pigs are the same, she would nag, privileged and sheltered. Bitch. Why was she always right?

But Tim just couldn’t work up the energy to drive all the way home. His heart felt scooped out with a grapefruit spoon. Instead he stumbled into the little alley next to the house, where the garbage trucks and the alley cats roamed, and he collapsed into a little patch of scrubby grass. This had been his favorite place to sulk as a child. Or hide from Danny. Danny always found him, of course, but it was the principle of the matter -

“Man, I can’t believe I got that show for free. You should have charged, Ji-hoon.”

“Fuck off, Danny,” Tim said, tone dull with how rote the phrase was.

When he glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Danny was dappled in night. The only light was from the streetlights, and the lights of their porch. In the dim lighting, Danny was lit by a bright aura but his features were hidden in the dark. Like an angel, Danny shone, and like a devil, Tim hid in the shadows. Hidden in the corner, like a powerless child.

“It’s a compliment! Normally you’re the most boring, predictable bitch alive. Wind your key and watch you go. But not even I could have predicted the shit you pulled today. Fantastic.” Danny grinned, a slash of the mouth. “You’re dead disowned, buddy. You crossed a line. They’ll never forgive you.”

“Fuck off, Danny.”

“I’m looking forward to being an only child,” Danny mused. “Mom and Dad were always so obsessed with you, it’ll be nice to have them all to myself. When I make junior partner, do you think Dad will clap me on the back? Give me a hug?” He affected a sad look, pulling his face into a mockery of tragedy. “I’m really going to miss you. You always lowered the bar for me.”

“Fuck off, Danny.”

Apparently that was one ‘fuck off’ too many, because Danny kicked Tim in the ribs. He always knew exactly where to hit - right in an old scar in the ribs, a bullet wound that he had never told him about. Tim wheezed, but he didn’t move. No point.

In a brief, strange flash of memory, Tim remembered bending his knee back to kick Jon in the stomach. Jon hadn’t flinched. Had there been no point?

“I know you spent your entire sad little childhood thinking I ruined your life. That’s bullshit and you know it. You didn’t need anyone else to ruin your life, Timbo. You’ve always been good enough at that yourself.” He pulled a faux-surprised face. Every expression Danny ever had was fake. Everything was a mask, plastic and fake. “Even your relationships, right? How’s that Mexican bird you got following you around? She still refusing to fuck you? I should pick her up, I bet she’s real easy -”

Tim saw red.

It was easy, in the end. Maybe too easy. He leapt up, in one easy and smooth motion, and tackled Danny to the ground. Tim had always been bigger but Danny had always been stronger, no matter how long Tim spent at the gym, but that didn’t matter now. Tim was faintly aware he was snarling as Danny hit the ground hard, head bouncing on the grass.

There was no time for him to recover. Tim punched him in the face, keeping him down, before punching him again. He felt bone break under his fist. A nose.

He didn’t remember anything after that. Everything fuzzed out a little, trapped in the swirling of his rage and the thump of his heartbeat. It wasn’t Martin’s anger, it wasn’t Sasha’s cold chase. It was just hatred.

It wasn’t that - that thing inside Tim, the thing he had spent years denying. It was just Tim. Or maybe Tim was that thing, and that thing was Tim.

He was faintly aware that somebody was grabbing him by the elbows, pulling him off. There was screaming. Wailing. He couldn’t really tell. Tim was dizzy, hands wet and sticky. Someone was crying - the nauseatingly familiar sound of his mother sobbing.

Just boys roughhousing, Tim wanted to say. That was a good line, snappy and sarcastic. Just boys being boys, the same line he had heard time after time after time when Danny coated his entire torso in bruises. Monsters, acting like monsters. Men, doing what men always do.

Tim left the scene. He wouldn��t be back. Never return to the scene of the crime, ha ha ha. He wouldn’t be welcome back. It should have felt crushing, isolating, terrifying.

But instead, Tim just felt free. As if a crushing weight had fallen off his shoulders, and he no longer felt suffocated by endless picking and prodding and pushing. It...he didn’t feel scared.

Tim walked down the street, taking the long way home, whistling happily. He hated himself a little bit less than usual tonight. Things were looking up.

iv.

Tim stared at Melanie as she slept.

It wasn’t hard. They kept the lights on, although after a few days Melanie had started to use a sleeping mask. She had recovered from what happened fairly quickly. She still let him keep his arm on her.

It tingled, just a little, where it touched her. She was warm and soft, breathing softly in a gentle rise and fall of her chest. Her face was slack with sleep. No nightmares. Melanie only looked gentle when she was asleep: any other time, her face was screwed up in intent thought or a mean comment or an exaggerated face made behind someone’s back.

It was the first time Tim had slept in the same bed as a woman without sleeping with her. At Sasha’s, he always slept on the couch. It was a little weird. It was really weird. He kept on telling himself to pull away, to rebuild that bridge that had been so effortless with Sasha, to act normal and stop being desperate and needy.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Every time he let go of her, he was alone. No matter how many people surrounded them, no matter how big the room or busy the sprawling London streets, when she was out of the room it felt as if she would never come back.

He hated the way he felt. It was disgusting, crawling in his gut and heart like rot. He hated himself for feeling it, he hated the world for doing it to him, and he hated Melanie for making him feel this way.

He didn’t know love could be this painful.

***

Did he love her?

Tim was fairly sure he couldn’t love anybody. Whatever he felt for Sasha, it couldn’t be love. It could only be a selfish, disgusting poison. Or maybe he really did love her, and love really was poison - if it was the kind of love Tim felt for other people, if it was all he could give.

But Tim knew Sasha, down to her soul. He knew her dark secrets, every skeleton in her closet. He knew what she was running from, why she had landed in England and never left, why she felt just as passionately for Tim’s crusade for justice as he did.

Justice. What a joke.

But Melanie wasn’t like that. She was rough and bitchy and meddling and willfully idiotic, but if you scratched that surface she was perfect. Kind, understanding, forgiving, patient, supportive - the kind of girl Tim had always wanted. Not that Sasha hadn’t been - but Sasha was somebody he should probably stay away from, for her own good.

Melanie had saved him. Melanie was trying to fix him, and she wouldn’t stop until she did. She wouldn’t give up - she never gave up on anything or anyone. Even Tim. Maybe, if it was her, Tim could be fixed.

He squinted at her in the soft lights keeping away the dark lingering in the small windows. Did he want to kiss her? He should, right? Any emotion this strong, anything that made him feel so vulnerable and desperate and insane had to come with wanting to be with her. Not that she could ever like him that way back…

The idea was oddly nice. Men and women couldn’t be friends. But maybe Tim and Melanie could - Melanie, who would never love him in that way, freeing Tim of the obligation to reciprocate.

He settled a little bit more, tucking her a little bit closer under him until he could no longer see her face. The idea was heady - that she was letting him do that, that she could be open and vulnerable in front of him too. That Tim had never really protected anybody, that Melanie was the first person to ever protect him, and that maybe he could pay that back.

Maybe she could fix him. Give him love that was pure instead of corrupted; selfless instead of selfish. Tim needed her.

He tried not to hate it.

***

That night, Tim had a dream that he was fucking Melanie in his old bed in his old flat. Danny was there, somehow, constantly mocking Tim on how badly he was doing, and every time Tim would yell at him to get out he would just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh -

***

Melanie dragged him to work with her the next morning, as Tim chugged a shitton of coffee and considered braining himself with a hammer so he could forget the dream he had last night. He would literally prefer the construction site nightmares. He could barely meet her eyes, and lived in relentless paranoia that somehow she knew and was going to call him disgusting which would be fair and true and -

“Do you think the old man in Home Alone is a Jesus allegory?”

Tim blinked blearily at her, still chugging his coffee. They had gotten his car keys and car back from Sasha - she still had everything he ever owned, but he didn’t want to deal with that - but Melanie was driving, since Tim’s reaction time wasn’t that good anymore and he tended to zone out. They would take the tube and avoid London traffic except, well…

“I have no opinions on Home Alone,” Tim said blankly. He had been reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra on his phone. So far he had several points of disagreement, his largest was the man’s weird obsession with atheism. Granted, it was hard to be a nihilist and be religious, but Tim had insider information on the nature of the universe and he was working on a thesis - anyway. Anyway. “Why?”

“It’s a good movie, right? We should watch it for movie night tonight.”

“I thought you wanted to watch T2 today.”

“Aw, fuck, right.” Melanie slightly slapped the steering wheel. They didn’t move - traffic was really hell. “I am a slut for fictionalized violence. Isn’t Sarah Connor the most badass action hero ever?”

“She’s awesome,” Tim agreed warmly. “But Schwarzenneger in that movie is just peak. Have you ever seen Predator? It was his best role.”

Melanie snorted. “Predator was so boring. Just a lot of oiled up men flexing at each other.”

Typical. Tim rolled his eyes, propping an elbow below the window, but he found himself smiling anyway. “What do you want me to watch instead, Blue is the Warmest Color?”

“Laugh all you want, idiot. You’re getting the whole rota of required watching for gay people. First on the list is the Birdcage, then right after that Paris is Burning -”

Tim groaned theatrically, drowning her out, but all that did was hit him with the musk of his small, battered car. The smell of Melanie hit him like a truck - her Melon shampoo, her 24 hour deodorant, the dust of the Archives, something unique to her that he just couldn’t place.

To Tim’s horror, the scent pulled at that deep pit in his stomach. Don’t think about it. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t let them know - except for Sasha, who always knew. It made him want to do - stuff that he didn’t want to do. Not really. Tim didn’t want that. Whoever Tim was.

Counterintuitively, the hunger made it easier to keep that fake smile and forced manic energy when they got to the office. He wasn’t really up to it today - some days were easier than others - but that didn’t really matter when he had to aggressively convince everybody that he was fine. The alternative was everybody giving him sad and pitying looks, which was a thousand times worse than any infernal hell torture.

It wasn’t. But he still didn’t want to deal with it.

So he kicked the door open, yelled something meaningless about how the bitch was back, and let Basira ignore him and Martin roll his eyes and Sasha very pointedly ignore him. He noted that Daisy wasn’t in this morning - ever since their planning session, she had been dropping by more frequently to flirt obnoxiously with Basira, but she obviously couldn’t spend all of her time here if she wanted to keep up the pretense with Peter Lukas.

Which was...somewhat of a relief.

Tim collapsed in what used to be Daisy’s chair at her desk, which was for far more important reasons than just because he didn’t want to sit next to Sasha. The upside is that Melanie sat diagonal from him, across from Basira, who didn’t give a shit what he did if she wasn’t using him as a meaningless sounding board for her constant venting. It wasn’t all bad, if he didn’t look too hard at whatever the fuck Martin was doing at any given time.

So he swiveled in his chair as Melanie, Basira, and Sasha disappeared into the library. He stood up to go with her, but Melanie made a gesture that sent him sitting down again. Martin, who was writing something ornate in his journal, snickered.

Six months ago Tim would have snapped at him, but instead he just leaned back in his chair and squeezed his grip trainer. The grind never stopped. “Writing love poetry, buddy? In the Romantic tradition or the...fuck, I don’t know any other poets.”

Martin silently held up his journal. The only thing written was ‘murder kill murder’, repeatedly, up and down two pages.

Well. That was enough teasing Martin for one day. He really had no idea how Melanie was brave enough to get Martin to listen to listen to her - or, worse, why he did.

After an hour or so, spent reading Plato and disagreeing with a great deal, Jon slunk out of his office and blinked owlishly at both Tim and Martin, who had been politely minding their own business.

Tim realized - in the same way that, whenever he saw Jon, he was inescapably reminded that he knew what he looked like when he was about to die - that the room was filled with two guys who had tried repeatedly to kill him. Fuck, he was probably uncomfortable. Good job, Tim. Way to keep terrorizing people. But he really wasn’t capable of doing anything else, so it was hardly a surprise -

“Hullo, Martin. I’m picking up some food from the vending machine, do you want anything?”

Oh. They were going for ‘disturbingly banal’ today. Martin smiled shyly at Jon, who blushed in response. “Surprise me. Thanks, Jon.”

“Want any razor blades in the apples?”

“You know that’s a myth, Jon,” Martin said disapprovingly. Or maybe not.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You are the sexiest guy I’ve ever met,” Martin whispered.

Then Jon flushed, and leaned casually in what he probably thought was a hot pose and unfortunately totally was against Martin’s desk, and Tim was subjected to their absolutely fucking atrocious flirting for the next ten minutes. At that point, Tim found his breaking point and left the Archives, the terror of being in semi-public outweighed by the terror of Jonmartin. That was what Basira and Melanie kept calling it. He really didn’t know what that meant, but whatever.

But after fifteen minutes of standing in front of the vending machine himself, quietly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of choices and colors and flavors and sugar, he heard someone else approaching. He snapped his head to the left to see a gawky, hunched scarecrow slouch down the hall, raising a hand apologetically. That man put no effort into his appearance, how as he still that hot -

Maybe Jon and Martin were normal, Tim secretly wondered, and Tim just didn’t understand gay courting rituals. He had to find out, right? How do you flirt with guys? It wasn’t as if he could practice with the two guys in the office. Especially Martin. Tim had never really paid a lot of attention to him before he came back to life, writing him off as a beta male - which ended up being so hilariously incorrect it forced Tim to sit down and reconsider his entire framework of alpha and beta males. Melanie had given him a sticker.

“Uh. Hey.”

Tim stared at him blankly.

Jon rubbed the back of his neck. “How...are you?”

Tim blinked at him.

“Well. I would, er, enjoy using the vending machine.”

Oh. Obviously. Tim stepped aside, cheeks burning, and silently let Jon punch in the code for a Mars Bar (for Martin, probably) and a granola bar (because an alarm went off on his desk if he didn’t eat a snack at 3pm).

It wasn’t their first time being alone together since he came back, but as Tim had been more or less catatonic at that period in time he was inclined not to count that. Jon hadn’t seemed scared, anyway. Probably. Tim hadn’t paid much attention.

He should do this. He had to do it. It was all about making up for the shit he did, right? He had to face this. Then Jon would forgive him, not that he had to, and - and something vaguely good would happen. He would find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and the hunger would go away, and the intrusive thoughts would be all gone. Melanie would give him another sticker. Or something.

“You can go for it, you know.”

Jon whipped his head around, shocked at Tim addressing him directly for the first time in a very long time. “What?”

Idiot. If this guy had been in a single fight in his life, he’d eat his hat. From what Jon had seen of his childhood friend, Georgie’s girlfriend who he hated for absolutely no reason, she had probably defended him from every bully. It was almost cute.

“You can get a good one in,” Tim repeated slowly. He turned his cheek. “Promise I won’t punch back or anything.”

“I - do you mean punch you?” The Mars Bar rattled down the machine, dropping heavily into the tray. “Why would I do that?”

Jesus, the guy was thick. “Do you remember when I kidnapped and tried to kill you, or is that just me?”

Jon blinked owlishly at him. “Lots of people try to kill me.”

“Don’t you want to?” Tim cried, a little bit higher and a little bit louder than he intended. “Come on, as if you’ve never wanted to do it? Wouldn’t it help? You got in a week of being a passive aggressive asshole, that isn’t enough. It doesn’t make up for anything. This would.”

“How would that fix anything?”

Tim’s breath hitched. But Jon was just staring, as if he could see right through him. Maybe he could. “What?”

“How would hurting you make me feel better?” Jon repeated slowly. “It won’t change what happened. Punching you wouldn’t change what you did to me. All it would do is make you feel better, as if that fixes it. It doesn’t. Is that how you solve all of your problems? That explains a lot.”

His breath was coming faster, hitching again. He couldn’t control it. “I’m trying to do you a favor, asshole.”

“No, you’re trying to make yourself feel better.” Jon smiled politely and, before Tim could jerk away, clapped him on the shoulder. “I forgave you a long time ago. Not because of you. But I just didn’t want it hanging over me. I gave myself closure and moved on. Sometimes bad things happen to us, and we have to get up the next day and go to work anyway. My friends helped. My family did too. I’m sorry you don’t have that, Tim. You’ll get closure one day.” Jon looked thoughtful for a second. “I mean, getting closure about being almost killed one time must be a lot easier than dealing with the fact that you killed fifteen people in your life? Twice that supernatural people, I think. You know you’re technically a serial killer? I won’t judge, this is a safe space, but I thought you ought to know.”

Somehow, inanely, all Tim could think of to say was, “It’s not serial killing if it’s part of your job.”

“Which is why I’m sure you took that job,” Jon said brightly. “Let’s get back to the office before Martin decides to amuse himself.”

For a second, just for a second - or two, or ten, or a minute - Tim vividly imagined himself ripping Jon’s throat out. Killing him properly this time, putting that look on his face again. It had felt so good, and - and it had made him feel so bad, but that felt good too, and he still didn’t know why, and he wanted to eat Jon so bad. Jon, who was innocent in everything, gentle and kind. Nothing like Tim. That was why everybody liked Jon and hated Tim.

From what he had heard, while Tim was going insane hyperfixating on the chase a few years ago, the girls had spent ages talking Jon down from a breakdown and steering him away from the same path that Tim had barrelled down. Who had done that for him? Sasha made a big show of keeping his head level, but she had used him just as ruthlessly as he had used her. She never had an investment in keeping him sane; just functional.

If somebody had done that for him, would he still be cruel?

They went back to the office, and Tim pretending that the hunger swirling in his gut was just self-hatred. But, then again, they really were the same thing.

When Melanie came out of the library with Basira and Sasha on her heels, talking quietly about some new scheme they were cooking up, Tim found himself reaching out to her. Melanie smiled and squeezed his hand, before gently heckling his choice in literature.

Some stupid part of him - maybe even a large part - thought that once he was clasping Melanie’s hand again, the hunger would quiet down. It had protected him underground, it felt as if it should protect him in the world above.

But it didn’t, and it didn’t solve anything, and Tim tried not to think about the fact that he was slowly unwinding, and that he didn’t want to see what was inside him when everything that was Tim Stoker fell away.

***

A short yet tumultuous time later, Tim was called into Jon’s office.

He hadn’t wanted to come to work. But the alternative of stewing at home - Melanie’s flat - was much worse, and Basira had reported that too many skip days made them all way too sick. Might as well come in. Melanie had spent the night at Georgie’s - like she had the past two days, what a fucking coincidence - so he didn’t have to worry about that awkwardness.

After too long memorizing the face after too many sleepless nights, Tim could imagine it vividly. Soft, uncreased, innocent of how hard the world could be. Tim couldn’t bear it. He had to ruin it. He just couldn’t bear it.

He was the first one in the office, so it was easy to see the poisonous death glare Basira shot him when she walked in. So Melanie had told them - of course she fucking told them, she hadn’t done anything wrong, she wasn’t obliged to lie. Daisy was hot on her heels, and she actually properly snarled at him before Basira pulled her back while somehow giving the full impression that she wanted to do the same thing.

He should probably go hide in the library before Martin came in. He couldn’t decide whether or not this was worse than the shunning. The shunning had driven him absolutely crazy, but at least he hadn’t been legitimately afraid that Martin would stab him and that nobody would stop him.

There was the faint sound of raised voices in the cowpen. Tim knew that they were arguing about him. He already knew what they would decide - wait for Melanie’s verdict. But are you sure she isn’t too close to this? No, she knows the fucker better than anybody else, she would judge if they needed to do anything. What are we going to tell Sasha? The truth, fucking obviously.

Sasha. Tim wanted her to be surprised. He knew she wouldn’t be. That hurt more.

After what felt like an infinite amount of time but he knew was only a few hours, pouring over Sasha’s collection of Vast and Spiral Statements, he heard the library door open. It was Jon, standing at the threshold, and all Tim could think was - oh, man, here we go.

It was a regular walk of shame into Jon’s office, and he couldn’t miss the way everybody’s heads snapped to look at him. Sasha, just as he thought, looked resigned. Melanie was frowning.

Jon’s office was the same as ever, not that Jon went in too frequently. The only strange thing about it was that Jon locked the door behind him. Tim didn’t know what that boded, but it wasn’t good.

Well, might as well take control of the situation. He collapsed on the chair in front of his desk and propped his boots on Jon’s desk, wishing he had a drink to obnoxiously sip. “Is this the part where you threaten me?” He affected a fake baritone, somehow still not even hitting Jon’s register. “ ‘Touch her again and you’ll answer to me’. ‘Stay away from her or you’ll face the consequences’. Come on, I’ve read a thousand creeps the same riot act. Get it over with.”

Jon sat down heavily in his office chair. The office had chipped in to buy him a new one as a birthday gift, much more comfortable than the old one. But he was leaning forward now, arms folded on the desk.

“Would that make you feel better?”

Great, this again. “Yeah, it evokes the emotionally absent father I was raised with,” Tim snarked. “If you aren’t going to say it, what am I in here for?”

He was afraid to know what he was in here for. Melanie had told him that if he did it again, she’d sic Jon on him. And Tim knew what it looked like when Jon was sicced on someone. This wasn’t it.

“Tim,” Jon said seriously, and he was somehow kind about it. “You know what this looks like, right?”

Something ugly and ashamed twisted in Tim’s gut. He fought the urge to sink in his seat. “Yeah.”

“You know why we’re worried now.”

“Yeah, I know.” Tim looked fixedly at the wall, unwilling to meet Jon’s eyes. “I - I’m not going to do it again. I swear. And - and it wasn’t like that. I promise. I’m not - I’m not a creep, okay? Ask Sasha. I’ve never - I’ve killed people, but that’s not nearly as bad as - I’m not going to do it again. It was a mistake.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Tim’s head snapped back to Jon, and before he could think about it he found himself half-rising from the chair. Jon’s cold stare had him sitting back down again, but his heart was thumping a drum in his chest. “Then what do you want?” Tim just barely restrained himself from yelling, knowing that the girls were probably listening at the door anyway. “What can I do to convince you that’d rather chop off my own hand than hurt her?”

“You can give your permission to let me ask you some questions.”

Tim faltered. “What? Just questions?”

“Uh.” Jon waved his hand in a circle in the air, as if that meant anything. “You know. Questions. I haven’t really done it since - since I think I did it to you? But I think I can do it on command now. I don’t like to.” His eyes sharpened, and for a second Tim could have sworn that they glimmered. “But I can’t take a chance. Not on this.”

It was like he was falling again, through that infinite void that was the last taste of freedom he had thought he would ever have. It was like he was suffocating again, a mile of dirt piled on his chest, banging incessantly at the lid of the coffin. Nobody saved him, until she did. He was distantly aware that he was barely holding back hyperventilating, but all Tim could feel was dissociated horror.

“You - you can’t. Jon, I - I won’t do it again, you can’t.”

Jon’s mouth twisted into a frown. “I won’t if you give me a flat no. I don’t like doing it.” That was a lie and they both fucking knew it. “But if you don’t, we can’t trust you again. We’d convince Melanie to let you stay with Martin. We wouldn’t leave you in the same room together. You’re not stable, Tim. It’s obvious. We thought it was harmless - or, at least, the only person you were hurting was yourself - but it’s not anymore. We’re all scared. I don’t want to hurt you just because we’re scared, but Melanie is the only one here who couldn’t really defend herself if you decided to do anything else to her.” He grimaced slightly. “Not that she admits it. She always puts herself between us and any enemy. But we have to pay that back. I know you understand.”

He did.

Hate burned in his stomach. What a hypocrite. Giving all of that big talk about choice and options. He knew that there was no option, not if they were going to rip him apart from the one person who he felt safe with.

The one person who wasn’t safe with him.

Tim deserved this. Even if it had been his worst fear a year ago - well, Tim had experienced much worse than that since then.

When you did shit to other people, you make up for it. You make sure that you can’t hurt anybody else again. Jon was right - gestures didn’t mean anything. He had to commit. He had to improve, be better. Otherwise he’d be sent straight back down to that place when he died, and there would be no saving him.

“Yeah,” Tim said, mouth dry, “you can do it. But - but no personal questions this time, okay? Just stick to the subject.”

“They seem to always end up a bit personal,” Jon said apologetically, “but I’ll try.”

Deep within Jon, inside of the unassuming and kind and gentle man, the subject of Tim’s nightmares rose. His eyes flashed green, then shined with a bright and sickly radioactive green. His hair strained against its bun and fuzzed at the end, but it didn’t break free.

“What’s your name, Tim?”

The worst part about the compelling, Tim had decided long ago, was that you didn’t feel brainwashed.

You felt exactly as if you were talking normally, that there was nothing strange about Jon or you. His words didn’t ring with a mysterious power. If you had entered it thinking you were talking of your own volition, you probably wouldn’t notice. But if you knew what was happening, the curtain was lifted, and you were deathly aware of the way the words were ripped out of you with fishhooks. It left Tim gasping, straining for air.

“Timothy Ji-hoon Stoker,” Tim said, and it was almost as if he wanted to. “My dad just calls me Ji-hoon though. So do my grandparents. My last name’s made up as fuck - I think Mom just saw a book at the airport and picked it out from the cover. Kind of ironic, considering everything.”

“Oh, really? Daisy says that she got Tonner because her English wasn’t great and she misheard someone at the airport asking her for a tenner - right, right.” Jon coughed. Wait, was the reason why Daisy barely talked when he first met her was because her English was bad? “On topic. Tim, do you want to attack Melanie again?”

“Of course not,” Tim burst out, and these words, at least, came easy. “I love her. I hate hurting her, I hate how I’m constantly fucking up and doing it anyway. I’m just violent and I don’t know how not to be violent. It’s the only way I deal with things, being violent, and I know it’s eating me up inside but I just can’t stop it. But if there’s one person who can help me stop, it’s Melanie. She’s going to fix me, I know it.”

The words were unbelievably humiliating, the kind of thing that Tim had never wanted to admit, but Jon’s expression didn’t change. Tim wanted to look away, to pretend that this was just an internal narration and that he wasn’t telling this his fucking coworker, but he found himself incapable. Their gazes locked, and Tim couldn’t pull away.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I was scared, and I hate being scared so much. It’s what I always do, ever since I was a kid - I would get scared, and I would try to hurt something or someone about it. I did it to you, I was so scared of you that I obsessed about killing you and covered it up with some bullshit about justice or Sasha. It was just about me, it’s always been selfish. But - but- but -” The words were sticking in his throat, coagulating on the wound ripped open by Jon and his fishhooks. “But I hate her. I hate that I care, and I hate that I need her, and - and I don’t think I did it just because I was scared. I think I did it because I was scared, and I love her, and I hate her, and I’m beginning to think I have some kind of weird complex about women because of my mother’s overly dependent narcissistic personality and my father’s emotional detachment -”

“You just now figured that out?” Jon asked incredulously. “Sorry, you just now started realizing that your toxic masculinity controls your entire justification for your actions?”

“I’ve known for a while but I’ve been repressing it,” Tim said hurriedly, forced to answer that one despite Jon probably intending it as a rhetorical question.

Jon stared at him for a second silently, giving Tim time to catch his breath and try to control his breathing. He was one bad step away from a panic attack, and his hold was still clenched on this throat like a fist. Danny had done that to him one time, the son of a bitch, and he had never forgotten. Should he tell Jon that? Does he have to?

“Tim,” Jon said finally. He looked very uncomfortable, but also resolute. As if he didn’t want to ask, or maybe he just didn’t want to know, but he felt as if he had to. “Are you in love with Melanie?”

Tim opened his mouth to answer him, and found that he couldn’t.

The strange and evil magic didn’t like that. Whatever Tim wanted to say, if there was anything to say, it caught in his throat and made him gag. It choked him. He was well acquainted with the feeling, but it sent him into a panic anyway. His breath started shuddering and heaving, his vision swimming, and he kept on answering his mouth to answer because you have to answer but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, he didn’t know how -

“Forget it! Forget it, Tim, don’t worry about it! Tim, what’s your favorite color? Tim, your favorite color! Answer me!”

“Grey!” Tim cried out. “Grey, it’s grey!”

He didn’t so much stand up from his chair as fall out of it. He didn’t so much let himself sit on the ground as found himself incapable of moving. He just breathed, waiting and waiting to spit up dirt and grime and rocks, but nothing happened. It was just a panic attack, because his hell was within him, and there was no escape.

No escape. There was no escape. Not from what he’d done in his past, not from how badly he’d hurt Melanie and Sasha, not from how he would inevitably hurt them in the future.

You had to cut out the evil things in this world. One bad apple spoils the bunch. When criminals are left to run wild, they corrupt and destroy society. Evil had to be eliminated. Evil people shouldn’t exist.

Evil people shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t a new thought for him. Neither was the thought after that. It was a thought he’d had for a very long time - before he even met Melanie, before he even admitted it.

“Tim, are you alright? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

After a few heart-wrenching seconds, Tim found himself calming down enough to answer. “You meant to. You just didn’t want to. I made you do this.” One bad apple spoils the bunch. “Is - is that enough? I can answer more -”

“No, that’s enough,” Jon said quickly. “It’s - it’s not my place to pass judgement on you, Tim. And your, uh, disturbed thinking. Melanie - anyway, we’ll work on it.” He smiled weakly, placatingly. “I’ve been there. The others helped. If it wasn’t for them, I’d be - I don’t know where I’d be, but I’d be a lot worse off. We can help you too. If you let us. I know it’s scary, but it’s worth it. I promise.”

“Right,” Tim said. “Can I go now?”

When he left Jon’s office, everybody was at their desks. He knew what the guilty expressions when they all pretended they hadn’t been eavesdropping, but they weren’t wearing them now. Maybe everybody had grown up a bit recently.

Tim slunk into the library, and for good measure locked it behind him. He pulled out a thick stack of books, a teetering pile of Statements. He needed to research. There was a decision he had to make, and he needed as much proof as possible and a well-laid plan. It wasn’t quite a hunt, but it was close. It wasn’t quite the apocalypse, but it was his own.

But, of course, it was a lie. Tim had made his decision a few minutes ago. He had made it a long time ago. He kept making it, every time. Everything else was just justification.

It wouldn’t fix anything - but it’d make him feel better.

#my writing #the magnus archives #tma #tma fanfic #hunt!tim #timothy stoker #melanie king #sasha james #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #this one's a roughie try not to read it if you're in a bad place right now #danny stoker #also keep in mind that tim absolutely one of the most unreliable narrators ive ever written if not the most #it was incredibly fun #anyway enjoy

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wastelandcrown · 4 years ago

Text

one indescribable instant

Summary: Roman's companionship forces Logan to think about the idea of romance. He starts to enjoy the idea of romance more and more, but he can't stop thinking about whether or not love at first sight is real. Warnings: None (If you need me to add a warning, please tell me!) Notes: The fluffiest thing I've probably ever written. Title is referencing a song from the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Also not beta-d, we die like Roman Pairings: Platonic Logince, Intrulogical, Background Royality Word Count: 1620

Roman often describes fairy tale romances to Logan in ways that don’t make sense. These types of love-at-first-sight romances seem entirely improbable to Logan, but he imagines it would feel fairly nice the way Roman describes it.

‘It’s as if beautiful music soars behind you, filling you with such intense joy and passion that you can barely describe feelings soaring through your heart! And, of course, you have the person! You look upon them once and realize you’ll never need another person for the rest of your days!’

Logically, this makes no sense. Love at first sight, the way Roman describes it, doesn’t exist. You also need many people in your life. Is this partner a doctor of all medical sciences? A grocer? An accountant you may hire? It is impossible to fulfill everything one person may need. However, that doesn’t mean it sounds entirely terrible.

He’s never been a hopeless romantic, never even much of a romantic. The only thing that changed that was meeting Roman. Despite their fighting and differences, they became closer than anything within a matter of months. They were introduced through Patton, Logan’s childhood friend and Roman’s boyfriend, and Patton often joked about how Logan would end up replacing him some day. They both hated this joke, mostly because it was wildly inaccurate. Roman was so head over heels in love with Patton that he was scandalized at the idea of loving anyone else, and Logan is not romantically attracted to Roman at all. Sure, they spend a lot of time together, but Logan has never even been to his apartment! The effect Roman has on Logan is purely platonic, and highly emotional. He has made Logan rethink and reanalyze his feelings on most things, and he doesn’t often change his opinion, but he was swayed so heavily on one subject. Just one.

Love. Many a night, Roman has spent time curled up with him on his couch. Nothing playing on the TV, just sitting and pining. Fanciful ideas of romance and true love, wild journeys, ideas for romantic dates. A favourite of theirs is the prince and the gardener. Roman pictures himself as a prince, longing for Patton, the gardener for his palace. Logan imagines he works alongside Patton, befriending the prince, and eventually falling for one of his royal allies. He likes to add to the fantasies with little facts about their chosen era or scenario, which Roman always gasps at with the fervour that comes along with a new idea. Somehow they always make their way back to a royal ball.

‘And I’m there, everyone wants to dance with me, but I’m looking for my two special guests, and when I find you, Logan, I’ll introduce you to some royals because you want to talk about nerd things.’

‘I think I’d have my eye on one already, maybe a Count, or a Duke,’

‘Oh my god no, not a duke! My brother always pictures himself as a duke when we do this!’

This is the first time Logan has heard of him having a brother, but it’s not much of a surprise.

He doesn’t ask, but Roman tells anyway. His name is Remus, and because of their wildly different personalities, they made a mutual agreement not to talk about each other as brothers. Logan has heard some of his stories, however, because he’s been calling Remus his “roommate” and telling some quite wild stories about their adventures. He doesn’t really believe most of them, except for the time Remus filled their apartment with street cats. Patton, who has been over at his apartment and is allergic to cats, regaled the terrible story about wanting to pet the cats but being unable due to aforementioned allergies. Despite the cats, Patton seems to like Remus well enough.

‘So Roman told you! That’s great! What do I think about him? Well, he’s certainly different! But-I mean-It’s not bad different! Well...He’s-I think you have to meet him to really understand what I mean!’

Logan spends a week confused, and not wanting to push Roman’s buttons. Then he decides he has to push the buttons because he can’t bear not knowing.

Luckily, Roman calls him.

“Logan! You won’t believe my day today!” Roman starts with a comfortingly familiar dramatism.

He chuckles softly, smiling to himself, “I’m sure I will believe it, however perhaps you would prefer to tell me in person.”

“You read my mind! I’ll be right over!” He can nearly see the bouncy and excited look Roman has on, he knows him too well.

“Actually, I was wondering if I could come to your apartment?”

Roman pauses for a moment, “Sure, I’ll have to force Remus to get presentable though.”

Logan hears a loud “Hey!” then Roman signs off. He can be at Roman’s in twenty minutes on an average day. Today he stops at the bakery they like to get some pastries, just in case Roman needs a little longer to get everything presentable.

When Roman swings open the door he immediately takes Logan in for a big hug.

“We’re making milestones today! You’re coming to my house and meeting my brother, what a huge achievement!” He seems genuinely excited, so Logan only lovingly rolls his eyes.

With one large swoop of his arms, Roman has taken the box of pastries and put his other arm around his friend’s shoulders. He gives him a squeeze and pulls him into the house. It’s a little messy, but it has its charms. The living room has a lot of strange, and occasionally graphic, decor. The couches are brown and worn in, they look soft. Their kitchen and dining room are fairly bare, kept clean for cooking and eating. Roman shows him his room, which is as wildly colourful and eccentric as he imagined it would be. They’re in the hallway when the second bedroom door opens and Remus steps out.

“Presentable enough for you, your highness? Remus snarks at his brother.

Logan feels something in his chest move and then swing violently in a direction he never expected. Remus’ skin is pale, near white, stark and clean against the eggshell walls. His hair is messy and wet, evident that he just showered. His eyes are sharp and a little wild, a dark brown colour that Logan near instantly commits to memory. There are natural bags and discolouration all the way around his eyes, his teeth are strangely sharp when he grins at Roman, he’s got a quite terrible mustache that makes him look a little like a cartoonish villain. He’s in a tank top with the sides near cut out, black jeans, and socks with phallic objects. Just like Roman, he’s nearly a foot taller than him. Logan forgets how to breathe.

“Could do without the penis socks, but yes! This is who I needed you presentable for!”

Remus looks at him then, curiously. His gaze moves up and down slowly, a shiver runs down Logan’s spine.

“This is Logan?” Remus slyly smirks, “RoRo you didn’t tell me he was hot!”

The music Roman told him about swells in his mind. His entire body feels light and airy. It’s not exactly joy and passion but Logan is suddenly overcome with the urge to devote his life to this beautiful near-stranger. He can feel his cheeks go pink when Remus says he’s hot, and in all honesty he does not care. Embarrassment is the least of what he’s thinking about.

“Remus! He is my best friend and our guest! You cannot say that!” Roman looks over at Logan, opens his lips to apologize, then notices his nervous posture and blush.

Logan decides to speak, but makes the mistake of looking at Remus first, his words come out as mush, “I-No-No it’s-uh-It's quite alright. I didn’t mind.”

Roman blinks at Logan wildly. He’d never seen Logan be such a mess when speaking. He’s usually measured and clean! It dawns on him in an instant what’s going through Logan’s mind.

“Well! Nice to see you Remus!” Roman starts pushing Logan harshly towards his room, “Logan brought pastries! Eat up! Bye!”

When Roman slams the door he hears Remus call out, “I’m gonna order pizza for us in like thirty fucking minutes so you better be done girls talk by then or I’m getting anchovies and olives!”

Logan is being stared at like his head has cracked wide open, but his mind is in the figurative clouds.

“I know what you mean now.” Logan mutters, putting a hand over his cheek gently and pressing his back against the door to sigh gently.

“Logan what are you talking about!?” Roman whisper-shouts, but part of him already knows.

“The music. The feelings.” Logan continues, not even speaking to Roman, “Not needing another person for as long as you live.”

The joy floods him in an instant, “I felt it.”

Roman pulls him over to sit on his bed. Logan flops backwards into the red sheets and throws his arms over his face. He tries to conceal the smile on his lips, but he can’t. He can’t believe he ever doubted Roman on this. This. This magnificent feeling. Love at first sight hit him like a truck in one indescribable instant.

“You look happy,” Roman says softly, Logan nods slowly.

He mutters against his sleeve, “I apologize for doubting you.”

“I mean realistically, it’s not exactly love. More like a huge crush.” Roman flops down next to him.

And while yes, he knows that it’s probably just infatuation, he loves how he’s feeling. He doesn’t typically feel things this abrupt, the strong. He finds the whole situation a bit funny, but if the night goes well he might end up with a date.

#intrulogical #sanders sides #sanders side fic #ts logan #ts roman #ts remus #ts patton #background royality #this is silly fluff for no reason #please enjoy #im open for for criticism

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llycaons · 4 years ago

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finale!!!! quick thoughts. Heavy spoilers.

flint was near tears speaking about thomas this episode. it’s been what, 11 or 12 years? and there’s still that longing and grief (lwj parallels....gay people....)

freedom in the dark speech AND reunion scene made me tear up. toby stephens’s performance my GOD have we ever seen flint that happy or relived or grateful. the way they were just holding onto each other....flint’s hand cradling the back of thomas’s head, his face buried into his shoulder...true love, true love. husbands separated for such a long time...

i do wonder - did flint romanticize thomas a little in those intervening years? did thomas romanticize james? in a series with such complicated and fraught interpersonal relationships, thomas and james have barely any development and very little screentime. they’re. well they’re objectively boring. BUT I love them together, I think they were each other’s true loves, their depths of feelings were obvious, and they are like, a very profound and comfortable and tender couple in my mind.

and I can’t see james happy with anyone else (silverflint shippers, I see it but i don’t really get it, also im sorry)

silver repeating his a day/a month/a year speech to madi is one of the many parallels he draws between his explicitly romantic relationship with her and his intense and undefined partnership with flint

but the POINT of the finale to me is. it’s love. silver was supposed to kill flint. that’s the way the story was supposed to play out. EVERYONE told him to, he could have, he had ample reason and opportunity and aid and every time he could have, he put it off, and vice versa

because he genuinely cared about flint and loved him even! and finale interpretations that do not take that into account and say oh no silver killed/enslaved flint seem to me a wildly inaccurate reading of his character, someone who put so much effort into saving flint and making it so flint would choose to walk away? which he did in fact choose to do?

i know people hate silver (and I dont like him either) but flint ALSO ended up making the choice to live with his love instead of fighting a desperate and unwinnable war

i guess silver could have lied about thomas and still sent flint to that plantation but the idea that he wouldn’t fight to the death after having his war taken away from him AND having no thomas is too improbable to me

did they really stay in that fucking plantation? there’s not much support to the contrary, but god. that’s bleak, for thomas if not for flint. such an active mind, I’d hope this ‘humane’ plantation has like, books and shit. I like to think the place collapsed on itself or they stage an escape with everyone or something. but that defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? flint is not flint anymore, he’s not driven by that rage and grief and steely violence. he’s just old, and tired, and wants to live out his years with the man he loves

flint is odysseus, on a long journey to his spouse at home. and we are meant to know that he lives his later years with his loved ones, in peace, and passes naturally in the fullness of time (based on the book, that’s about 10 years postcanon)

so for me that means leaving that planation and establishing an inn under false names in savannah. but whatever people think happened, we are meant to know how james ended and it was not in violence and it was not on skeleton island and it was not in desperation or misery or despair

and this is JUST flinthamilton whew I want to talk about madi and anne tomorrow but I have to go to bed

#black sails lb #long post #i ache to think of them...husbands...

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 4 years ago

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book blogging #1: Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

by Olivia Judson, published 2002

Question: what do you think of when you think of books that are “fun” to read?

For me, a lot of speculative fiction comes to mind. Recent books that I found fun include Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente), The Beautiful Ones (Silvia Moreno-Garcia), and everything by Sarah Gailey that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Though I haven’t gotten ahold of it yet, I’m pretty sure Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) is going to be spectacularly fun as well.

These are books that aren’t necessarily my favorite stories of all time, but they have been some of my favorites to read. They’re all propelled by zany premises and whirlwind plots, enjoying themselves way too much for anyone to ever stop and worry about the parts that don’t make that much sense. When Sarah Gailey says “I have a crew committing a heist while riding hippopotamuses, do you want in?” I don’t ask questions. I just say yes and go along for the ride.

But there’s one major anomaly that always comes to mind when I think of books that I’ve had fun reading, and that’s David Sax’s The Tastemakers: Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue. It’s a 2014 work of nonfiction, and as the title suggests it’s an analysis of popular food trends and the forces that power them. The Tastemakers isn’t what this blog post is actually supposed to be about, so I won’t go into too many details, but suffice to say that I was engrossed despite the fact that I know pretty much nothing about the world of culinary trends or foodie fads - or cooking in general, if I’m being totally honest. But there’s something really delightful about learning things that are entirely outside your wheelhouse without having to worry about the material showing up on a test later.

Given that I’m posting this on a blog with relatively few followers and that this is a write-up of a very niche book that was published eighteen years ago and could not be further from trendy, I’m well aware that anyone reading this is probably already at least passing familiar with me and what I do, so you folks might be saying, “Hang on, Makenzie. Are you seriously trying to say that this is outside your wheelhouse? The title on your Tumblr has been “Ask The Sex Witch” since 2015. You’re a whole sex educator, for fuck’s sake!”

Well, yes and no. Judson is a real-deal evolutionary biologist and gets into some pretty serious science in this book, which is pretty wildly different from what I usually do. I talk to people about sorting out their likes and dislikes, their boundaries, their sense of personal sexual autonomy, and so on. Although I definitely advocate for introspection and self-examination, I rarely go looking for answers far beyond the individual level. Judson asks big biological questions to figure out how some truly peculiar-looking behavior evolves: Why is it worthwhile for some animals to fight to the death trying to fuck? What’s up with some species of insects eating their mates? And who, pray tell, is engaging in the noble art of penis-fencing? Clearly, this is a totally different ball game on many levels.

(Speaking of ball games, did you know that the male shiner perch’s testes completely shrivel up over the winter? That’s rough, buddy.)

Offering sex advice to humans is hard enough, but Judson - writing as chipper sex advice columnist Dr. Tatiana - easily offers education to an impressively vast variety of species. The framing device of the book is a charmingly weird one. Each segment opening Dear Prudence-style, with a short letter from an animal badly in need of advice. The first chapter, for instance, begins with a query written by a stick bug called Twiggy (aww) wondering how to get her boyfriend to stop having sex with her after ten continuous weeks of intercourse. (Answer: Girl, he’s not gonna. Apparently that’s how he stops any other stick bugs from getting it in.) For the final chapter Judson mixes it up by formatting a discussion about the pros and cons of asexual reproduction as a hectic daytime talk show, complete with microscopes to view the tiniest guests and seating that offers both saltwater and freshwater tanks for aquatic audience members to sit in, like something out of Zootopia.

(I haven’t seen Zootopia and the only thing I know about it for sure is that in one scene there’s a DILF-looking tiger, but I’m pretty confident in the assumption I’m making here.)

Judson does an admirable job of providing pretty comprehensible explanations for a lot of evolutionary science, and while I did have to power skim through a few segments that were really beyond my grasp, it did make a pretty lively read out of the biological pros and cons of producing sperm bigger than your own body. It’s not exactly a book that’s difficult to put down, but I had a perfectly pleasant time reading it in the moments between doing anything else - eating a meal, resting in bed, getting some sun in my backyard - and even learning a little while I did so. I fully intended to use Dr. Tatiana as a break between the two installments of N.K. Jemisin’s Dreamblood duology, and it has served that role magnificently.

Am I recommending this book to you? Not exactly, unless you’re extremely interested in evolutionary theories that are nearly two decades old or a science fiction writer looking to give your non-human characters some thoroughly non-human sexual habits. I’m not supremely interested in making recommendations with the blog in general, unless someone specifically asks for them; I’m hoping this will be more like writing up my personal thoughts about books and then hurling them into the virtual void like messages in bottles. If they wash up on your shore and you read them and come to the conclusion that this is something you, too, would like to read, that’s pretty rad. I love that for you! But it wasn’t necessarily my intent.

Strictly speaking, I didn’t even recommend this book to myself. In 2019 I tried to stay pretty intentional about my to-read list, really whittling it down to stuff that I actively wanted to engage with rather than anything that sounded vaguely not awful. I was hoping to keep that trend up in 2020, but like many other things that are much more serious, this whole pandemic situation has scuppered those plans a bit. I get most of my books by borrowing them from the public library where I work, and that’s been closed for nearly two months. Unlike many book bloggers I’ve observed I don’t keep a massive stack of unread books around at all times, so I’ve really been relying on the kindness of friends to keep me supplied in these trying times.

My friend Paige slipped me Dr. Tatiana’s (along with the aforementioned Dreamblood books and several volumes of Kurtis J. Weibe’s comic series Rat Queens) in exchange for some books I lent to her, because we all have to look out for each other in These Trying Times. I trusted her good taste, despite having no idea what the book was about and more than a few reservations.

At other times I think this book might have sailed right over my head - not to sneer at the so-called soft sciences, but there’s a reason I gave up on my childhood dream of marine biology and got a sociology degree instead - but right now, as I’m finally adjusting to the slower pace of life in quarantine and remembering how to focus, I’m finding that it fits my needs. It’s unlikely to live on as an all-time favorite, but it’s something to do and gives me an occasional excuse to gasp and tell my roommate something absolutely wild, like the fact that spiders have two penises and that the dual arachnodicks are located on their faces, on either side of their mouths.

My basic understanding of evolution is that change rarely happens based on logic or reason, but by finding something that works and then sticking to it, no matter how improbable it may seem. When male elephants get horny they apparently develop an insatiable bloodlust and piss so constantly their penises turn green (yikes!), which is definitely not the most practical way to do things, but evidently it’s been getting the job done. Getting through quarantine has been sort of like that, has it not? A lot of behavior that might not be the most intuitive but is somehow enabling ongoing survival, like occupying myself with books that I might not have given a second glance in the halcyon before times.

That’s totally the same thing, right?

Right.

A note about the appearance of this book:

I’ve been talking a fair amount lately about my dislike for what I see as pretty transparently romanticized materialism in a lot of book blogging spaces, with an emphasis placed on acquiring and showing off as many pristine books as possible. I don’t own this book, and it looks like ass. It looks like Paige stole it from a library in North Carolina, which would not be shocking. When I noticed the large brown stain in the corner I jokingly asked if she’d dropped it in coffee, and she unflinchingly confirmed that yes, she had.

#bookblr #in which makenzie is a book blogger until she forgets about it

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softkaimin · 5 years ago

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Fear Complex | p. 1

word count: 3,310

! trigger warning(s): self-harm, strangulation, near death, guilt tripping, mentions of suicide, pennywise is his own trigger warning

prologue

The screeching of the chairs against the linoleum floor and the indistinct chattering of your classmates mixed together like a raucous song. The passing comments of faux sympathy went in one and out the other as you stared at the graffitied top of your desk, the dirty brown wood casting the horrid memories of last week against it like some old projector screen.

“Earth to (Last/Name).” You snapped your gaze to the bespectacled girl that sat beside you, her eyes peeking over the rim of her glasses to observe you in your trance. “Gee, it only took me calling your name a million times to get your attention,” she huffed.

You cleared your throat and hurriedly wiped your desk with the sleeve of your jacket, sweeping your memories to the ground beneath you before anyone else could see them. You bit the broken skin on your bottom lip out of habit, meeting her worried eyes for only a second before the need to release your bottled emotions became too unbearable. You looked away and began to flip through the pages of your textbook to avoid meeting her judging gaze again.

“Sweetie, are you alright?”

No. That’s what you should’ve said, but you’d already convinced yourself that telling someone of the insanity you were experiencing wasn’t going to help you. It was a fact – at least in your mind – that nobody would believe you. That you would only be ridiculed and thrown into some insane asylum as a result. The thought alone of being seen as crazy was enough to convince you that it was better to suffer in silence.

So, you didn’t utter a word of it. Not to your aunt, who had saved you from that never-ending interrogation at the police station that night, or to your friends, who tried visiting you the week after only for you to turn them away at the door. You decided it was best to keep your madness to yourself.

“I’m fine.” The words felt as dry as they sounded, and you knew as soon as you said them that it was the most unconvincing lie you’d ever told.

“Fine? No sane person would be fine after witnessing a fucking murder.” Her tone was mocking but you knew she didn’t do it on purpose.

Luanna, your best friend for as long as you could remember, was fluent in the language of sarcasm and banter. Conversations with her were never what most people would call pleasurable, and they surely weren’t anyone’s first choice to pass the time. But the thing about Luanna was that she was truly dependable, never choosing your feelings over the truth. You could always count on her to tell you the truth, and whether it hurt your feelings was not her problem.

“Look, (Your/Name)…”

Shivers crawled up your spine when she uttered your name. She never called you by your first name, always your last, or sometimes even sweetie. But never your first. Only on rare occasions did she ever, and it always meant one thing: she was about to be brutally honest with you.

The air clogged your throat as you tried to brace yourself for whatever Luanna was about to toss at you, but luckily for you, the universe was just as unwilling to listen to one of Luanna’s lectures as you were.

The sudden eruption of shrill voices speaking at the same time interrupted your train of thought, and consequently Luanna’s too. The three girls that’d been huddled at the front of the room jumped to their feet, blocking the doorway as they ran to greet the boy who had just walked in. Your view of him was obscured at first, but the amount of comfort that his aura alone brought you told you exactly who he was.

You sat on your leg, craning your neck in search of those warm eyes amongst the heads of your classmates. You needed to meet them just once, just to feel the normalcy for your crumbling life once again. You needed to see them to assure you that this terror you were living with was only temporary.

But when you did, the fear that consumed you snared its claws deeper into your veins. You didn’t see peacefulness or normalcy. You didn’t see the gleam in his eyes, the one that always gave him away whenever he was excited. The gleam that had the power to make everyone around him happy. When you saw him, it was almost you were looking in the mirror, because what you saw was paralyzing fear. You saw dread and sadness and anger, all mixing together like an amalgamation of despair.

Kai! We’re so glad you’re back!

I wrote down all of Mrs. Beck’s notes for you, maybe we can go over them during lunch.

Come sit with us. We’ll help you catch up.

Kai had been trying to push his way past them to reach the empty seat in front of you, but the girls wouldn’t let him out of their grasp long enough to free himself. You were the only person who could understand what he was going through. You were the only person he wanted to talk to, the only person he thought of in days… but you weren’t even looking at him anymore. Instead, you were buried nose deep into your textbook. He swallowed the hurt of being ignored by you and allowed himself to be dragged into the cold and unfamiliar seat at the front of the classroom.

The room buzzed suddenly then filled with a high shriek as the school’s intercom system kicked in for the morning announcement. You could hear the quiet murmuring of your principal as she quickly gathered her notes, completely unaware that her morning aid student had already begun without her.

“Are we on, already? Oh… Gooood Morning, Derry High!” Her booming voice forced everyone out of their tiredness, their ears perking with attentiveness for only a second before they went back to the bobbing mess of sleepy students. “It is Monday, a fine day to begin the week. I hear our two beloved seniors have returned today, please give them a hand and let them know how much we’ve missed them.”

Your stomach lurched as half of the class turned to look at you, clapping half-heartedly, the other half choosing to clap for Kai. Some immediately retracted their attention, but the gaze of others lingered on you for a moment too long. Your thoughts felt like a malfunctioning carousel, flinging wildly improbable theories of why they were staring at you all over the place, each one more worrying than the last.

“In honor of them and the late Noah Rivers, let us please have a minute of silence.”

The silence settled in far too quickly for your liking, its cold fingers tapping the bare skin of your neck as it whispered the horrible retellings of that night. Your heart was accelerating alongside your mind, and your stomach heaving as though it was trying to rid itself of the anxiety that had begun to burrow inside you.

The silence stretched across the entire room, seeping into the hallways as everyone stopped in their tracks to remember the middle school student who had passed away last week. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep it together, and this minute of silence began to feel like an eternity.

You tried to focus your breathing, looking out into the yard toward the school monument sign. You hoped to replace the cruel voice of survivor’s guilt with images of whatever else you could occupy your mind with. The singing birds or the falling leaves or even the littered water bottle that rolled across the pavement with every slight breeze.

You looked away from the outside world, realizing that your wish to be in it only worsened your anxiety. Your eyes darted around the room, refusing to focus on something for longer than a millisecond.

You opted to close your eyes instead, but something caught your eye in the tall rectangular window of the classroom door.

It’s yellow eyes locked onto you, unmoving as they watched your every muscle fight the paralysis of fear. You could see its pointy discolored teeth that lined the inside of its mouth, the string of drool that told you it watered for a taste of you.

Your knee hit the desk as you scurried to your feet, barely managing to catch the chair that you knocked over. You could see Luanna talking to you, trying to make sense of what had set you off, but nothing she was saying was registering in your mind. Her voice was garbled and undecipherable, and you had become hyper focused on the glowering gaze of the clown that sat at the window.

Your principal’s voice reverberated against the classroom walls once again, and for a split second you felt the end of this nightmare approaching. The clown had gone in a blink, no longer creeping in the window, and the world felt like it was stabilizing for the time being. But for some peculiar reason, you couldn’t get your heart to do the same.

The shock wave of having seen the clown in front of so many people sent you spiraling toward the edge of a panic attack. You were hanging on the ledge, your fingers slipping the more you struggled to reassure yourself that it was gone.

Mrs. Beck, your homeroom teacher, started toward you, her polka dotted dress billowing behind her as she made her way to where you had cornered yourself in the back of the classroom. Luanna knelt beside you, the pad of her thumb gently wiping away the tears from your cheeks.

“Luanna, does everything seem to be alright with Ms. (Last/Name)?” Your teacher asked, her voice full of worry. You looked up at her, hoping to match the gentle face of your teacher to her sweet voice, but it was nothing like you remembered.

Her lips were contorted into a wet grimace, dry white paint cracking at the corners of her mouth as though she had tried to wipe off her makeup in a hurry. Her eyes were a nightmarish yellow and they were locked onto yours steadily. The scream in your throat tightened, pressing down on your lungs until you could no longer hold it and were gasping for breath.

And then she giggled. Not the kind that was lighthearted and vibrant, like the kind you would hear from a child, but the kind that was full of venom and hunger. It was a guttural sound, coming from deep with the depths of a dark and horrid place. A place that only someone – or something – truly evil could reach.

“Stoooop!” You wailed, pressing your palms against your ears to drown out the gross sound of your teacher’s voice. You knew it was in your head, you were certain of it, but still it felt so real. The real Mrs. Beck, not the possessed version that was tormenting your already broken self, tried to reach for you in an attempt to force you back into reality, but what you saw was an exposed alien-like hand with murder written all over it. You screamed, springing to your feet as you wasted no time dashing out of the room and into the girl’s bathroom across the hall.

You locked yourself in the middle stall, plopping yourself on the toilet seat as you plunged into a full-scale panic attack. Your eyes were shut tight, your breathing loud and hoarse as you repeatedly slammed your balled fist into the metal wall of the stall, every shooting pain that ran up your arm from the force of the strike creating a faint, sporadic light that lit the way out of your mind.

Bang.

You groaned in frustration at yourself, your knuckles cracking against the metal as you struck the door with as much force as you could muster.

Bang.

Your fist dented the metal of the stall, but you could clearly see the exit in your mind. Your sanity was so close.

Bang.

Blood ran down your fingers, staining your skin and consequently the stall door as well.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Pain was temporary, but fear? Well… no one ever managed to outlive fear.

The stall to your left suddenly slammed against the metal lock, shaking the entire stall structure violently. You gasped in alarm, the throbbing pain of your knuckles grounding you into reality as you wondered if another student had heard the insanity of your panic attack. You ran your finger across your mouth, shame setting in when you recalled the show that you had put on in front of the entire class.

The restroom was silent, save for your heavy breathing, and you decided to leave before anyone else could see the mess that was your current state. You reached for the lock, the coolness of the metal refreshing against your warm, almost scorching skin. Your fingers lingered for a second, and you wondered if it was a good idea to go back to class to gather your things. It was not. You weren’t sure if you were stable enough yet to face the judging gazes of your classmates. You let the idea die and undid the lock.

A pair of black tattered boots blocked the stall door from opening, and you felt your heart plummet into your stomach. You tried to back up, but by then it was too late.

You felt your throat suddenly constrict against a thick and rough cord, your body slamming against the stall wall as it pulled you toward your attacker. You clawed at the rope that tightened around your neck, the fibers digging into your skin and drawing blood. You were lifted off the ground and you kicked your legs, frantically searching for something to stand on. Your shoes slipped off the ceramic edges of the toilet, and your breath escaped in blubbering gasps.

You were running out of time quickly, running out of breath. Your legs became dead weight, your muscles too weak to lift your heavy limbs. Your vision was darkening, but you fought to keep your eyes open. May Noah Rivers rest in peace, but you were determined to not end up like him. Dead by a clown. Not you.

“Oh, what’s the matter Jelly Bean? Having trouble catching your breath?” Your blood ran ice cold at the familiarity of the voice. It was deep and hoarse, like that of a person who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, and their breath smelled of alcohol and… what was that? Sewage?

The stranger’s grip on the rope faltered for a second, long enough for you to manage to slip a finger behind it and allow yourself one full breath before it tightened again.

“W-who?” You managed weakly.

They hummed, and brought their face closer to you, just enough for you to see them from your peripheral vision. Your eyes stung from how far they had to reach for you to see them, but you caught a clear glimpse of them.

It was your dad… your dead dad.

“Jelly Bean, why did you let me die all alone?” The rope tightened further, causing you to make a gross nasally sound. You pushed your tongue against the roof of your mouth, the words you wanted to say escaping with every short breath you exhaled.

“I was so sure you’d go with me that day.” The rope tightened again. “You should have gone with me that day! Why did you let me die all alone?” Your dad’s voice was deepening into a harsh growl, deepening until it longer sounded like your dad, but like the clown that had been tormenting you.

It laughed maniacally, the bells on its clown suit jingling with every erratic movement it made. “You let him die, huh jelly bean? Oh… what kind of daughter does that?” It jeered, the vulgarity slipping off of his tongue in a way that made your skin crawl with disgust.

You shook your head, tears flooding the little vision you had left as the guilty feelings of that day, two years ago, came back like raging waters. Everyone told you it wasn’t your fault, but you could never fight the nagging feeling that it was. Your mind was clouded with what-if scenarios and you yourself had come to the conclusion that if you had gone on that car ride with your dad that day then maybe he wouldn’t have taken his own life.

And now those guilty feelings were going to be the death of you. Maybe this is what I deserve, you thought. Maybe this is what I get for choosing my friends over my dad.

You fell to the ground suddenly, your head banging against the closed stall door. You were surprised to find you were still conscious, and you took this as your opportunity to crawl out of the stall from underneath, screaming for help at the top of your lungs. You felt a pair of cold hands pull you all the way toward the large wooden door of the restroom, her small frame using all of its strength to help you to your feet while fending off the newly injured clown.

You stood, turning around to get a good look at the situation. There was a broken broomstick wedged between the ribs of the clown, and it had a scowl on its face, as though it was in pain. You didn’t know it could feel pain. Beverley Marsh, the girl who had saved you from death not even a second ago, tugged at your arm as she dashed toward the exit, you following closely behind her.

You never thought you’d find comfort in the nasty smell of hormonal teenagers that wafted through the main hallways of the school, but it felt like breathing fresh air when you made it out.

You crashed into someone as you passed the threshold of the restroom, their arms quickly engulfing you. You looked up to find Kai’s worried eyes frantically searching your face for any signs of injury, but it was full of grief. He sighed and pressed your head against his chest as he hugged you hard, thankful you were okay.

“God, are you ok?” He whispered.

You shook your head, tears staining his shirt as you sobbed. “I ca-I can’t breathe.”

Kai grabbed your hand and pulled you alongside him as he made his way outside. His fingers were intertwined with yours and he didn’t let go, not even when you stood on the concrete steps of the school, basking in the warmth of the sun. He watched you closely, wondering silently if you had gone through what he had in the past week.

The heat of the sun felt like soft kisses against your cold skin, drying your tears and encasing you in a protective blanket. You felt Kai inch closer to you, his fingers running up the back of your head as he planted a kiss on your forehead. Your breathing was ragged, the residual trauma still pestering you even after having made it out safely.

You wrapped your arm around his waist, your other hand still holding onto his, and you rested your head against him. “I’m so scared, Kai.” You whispered.

He swayed the two of you gently and whispered back: “Me too.” You swore if he kept it up, you would surely fall asleep where you stood, but he suddenly pulled away from you, meeting your confused gaze.

His face was serious. Concerned. Scared, which in hand scared you. You were unnerved to say the least, and you felt like you were on the verge of passing out. And in the most foreboding tone he told you: “I saw It too.”

#exo #exo reactions #exo scenarios #exo imagines #exo kai #kai #Kim Jongin #kai x reader #kai x you #it 2017 #it chapter two #pennywise #the losers club #beverly marsh #horror #exo horror

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cottonwoolsocks · 5 years ago

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Waterlogged

AO3 | Masterlist

@whumptober2019 - prompts: 14 (tear-stained), 22 (hallucination), alt 1 (“Wake up!”), alt 10 (nightmare), alt 12 (waterlogged), alt 13 (breathless)

Summary: Logan’s fear of the ocean manifests itself in a nightmare. Virgil is there to help.

Word Count: 2091

Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort

Characters: Logan, Virgil, mentions of other Sides.

Relationships: platonic analogical

Warnings: drowning, nightmare, claustrophobia (maybe), what exactly is at the bottom of the ocean.

If I need to tag anything else, let me know!

———

The water seemed to be rising from the very floor itself, soaking through the carpet and pooling around Logan’s feet. He cast around, expecting to see Remus grinning maniacally at him as he turned the taps on full, but not one of the others were in sight. He frowned.

And why was the water rising up the way…?

He moved towards the stairs, intent on heading up to locate one of the others and make sure nobody was accidentally sleeping in the bathtub again, but as his foot touched the bottom step a torrent of water practically knocked him off his feet, failing only as a result of Logan’s instinct to grab the handrail. His eyes flickered to the stairs and then back to the carpeted floor which was now all but obscured, analysing, hypothesising, gathering data. But none of it made sense.

There was no feasible way for the water to be rushing down in such a huge volume, much less rising from the floor. The only ones with the power to construct something as… improbable… as this, would be the twins.

And Roman would never, not when he knew Logan was down here, and especially not when a number of his sketchpads still lay sprawled around the living room, now gathering water.

But Remus? ...Remus would.

Logan sighed.

“Remus! It is in both your and my own best interests that you stop the flow of water.”

He would have said there was silence, but the roar of water now up to his ankles made it hard to even remember what silence sounded like—or didn't, he supposed, as silence was defined as the absence of sound. Momentarily closing his eyes in annoyance, he instead sank out, hoping to gain a little clarity in a more familiar—and quieter—environment.

And all of a sudden he couldn't breathe, water inside his mouth and his ears and his nose and splintering his vision.

He was back in the main room barely a second later, now completely soaked, and beginning to feel concerned. Had something gone wrong?

He took off his glasses and dried them off quickly, before trying to duck into Roman’s room to see if he could reverse this—but Roman’s door must have been locked, for he couldn't get in.

Remus’s was empty of Remus, but was full of water much like Logan’s own before, and Logan couldn't help the jolt of…something that went through his chest as he began to fear predict the worst. But he wasn't afraid. He couldn't feel fear. Fear was an emotion. He had not emotions. Of course.

Deceit’s was locked too, which didn't exactly surprise him, although it did perturbe him slightly. He was running out of people who'd be able to fix this.

Even Patton’s was locked, which was surprising, as Patton was always very clear that he would leave his room open as often as he was able in case anyone ever wanted to talk.

Virgil's room was the last he tried, already expecting it to be locked as it practically always was, so you can imagine his surprise when he found himself in the centre of the dimly-lit room. His confusion only heightened when he did not find himself completely submerged in water, nor even up to his knees, and when he squinted down to examine the floor and found dry carpet he was even a little suspicious.

No matter. He was here to check on Virgil, not analyse everything he saw when it didn't react as he expected it to.

“Virgil?” he called softly, treading gently towards the bed squashed into the corner and trying not to let his dripping clothes form too large of a puddle, eyeing the mound of blankets that may or may not be a figure.

The blankets suddenly sat bolt upright and Logan stopped in his tracks, frowning and wondering if he'd spooked the anxious side. “...Virgil?”

Two pinpricks of light appeared where eyes should be, and before Logan could react Virgil’s voice filled the room, loud and all-encompassing as it always was when he became anxious, except shriller, piercing, and unlike anything Logan had ever heard before.

“Wake up!” yelled the voice. “Logan! It's the bottom of the ocean!” it shrieked, growing more shrill and inhuman with every letter and Logan winced, pressing his palms into his ears in an attempt to block out the noise.

It only seemed to magnify it, sharp and penetrating as it continued to shriek, cries echoing around the room and seeming to bounce around Logan's very skull. “Wake up! Wake up!”

“Logan!” it cried, before the blankets began to sink, the sound of the voice reverberating around the room as echoes bounced off the walls, and it took Logan a moment to notice the sound of running water.

The blankets fell away entirely, now just a heap on the bed and Logan stepped forward, arm outstretched towards where Virgil had only just been, ears still ringing and the banshee cries playing over in his mind.

He realised with a start that the water was pooling from the blankets where Virgil had been situated, a gushing torrent that was slowly filling the room. Logan panicked, already knowing where this was headed and trying to sink out.

But he couldn't.

The water was up to his hips already, spilling over the top of the bedframe and soaking everything on it. He span towards the door, trying his best to wade through the water, but his steps were slow and the water was rising, only a matter of time before it overcame him.

The door didn't budge, and all Logan’s knowledge of physics was telling him of course it doesn't move, the pressure against the door is greater than that outside; you have to wait for the pressure to equalise before it can be opened. But the pressure wouldn't equalise, because the fact he couldn't open the door meant there was less water beyond the door, which meant there was no way the pressure would ever equalise because all the water was in here.

Abandoning the door handle, Logan instead began to beat against the door, hoping to create a hole to drain the water from.

But of course, Virgil’s door was made of iron, because of aesthetic of whatever it was Virgil claimed, and there was no way he was going to even make a dent in it, let alone a hole.

Logan's was somewhat aware that his breathing was worryingly high, but he didn't have time to think about that as the water surpassed his shoulders.

And there was nothing here that could help him, he realised in increasing distress, because the water was rising and it didn't look like it was going to slow down, and the only things that were floating were all too small to help him, and the two ways out of here were both blocked.

He tried to sink out again, trying every room in turn and even Thomas in the physical world, but none of them worked, each barred from him, and Logan was beginning to realise this wasn't a problem he could solve on his own.

“Roman?” he called to the room, hoping the creative side would hear him and perhaps come to his rescue; he would be the best option for helping in this situation anyway, Logan thought as he began to tread water.

“Remus?” he tried, any previous reluctance dissipating in the face of imminent drowning.

“De—” he began, but a thought suddenly struck him. If he called for one of the others and they did come, that would only mean they were stuck too. Which would certainly not be ideal. Logan wasn't even sure where any of them could be, as he had entered every room in the mindscape by this point and each one had been empty of the others, but they couldn't have just disappeared. That wasn't how this worked. That wasn't how any of this worked.

Logan was very glad Thomas had learned to swim as the ceiling came closer and closer, his head knocking against it with the rising water.

He braced himself and, taking a deep breath, dove downwards.

He tugged at the door handle, hoping beyond hope that maybe, just maybe, things would be different this time, but the iron remained steady, not even straining under the pull. He kicked towards the surface, breaking the top and almost hitting his face of the ceiling as he took a gulp of the two or three centimetres of air still left, and dwindling fast.

He dove down again, heading to the door in one last, desperate attempt, but instead of moving towards the door he was pulling away. Spinning around, he held a hand over his mouth to prevent gasping in surprise at the large whirlpool situated in the centre of the floor, grasping at him with water currents that steadily drew him nearer.

He tried to kick away from it, feet flailing wildly as he watched various CDs and notebooks disappear into the abyss, but no matter how strong of a swimmer he was the whirlpool was more powerful, and it was only seconds before he was inside the mouth. And then he was sinking down, down, down, spinning nauseatingly as small objects bounced against him. Somehow, his glasses remained—not that there was anything to see in the blackness anyway.

And then everything was calm. He had stopped moving.

He forced open his eyes, and looked around, only to see he was surrounded by water that only seemed to stretch on no matter which direction he faced. Alone.

He was in the ocean.

As soon as he processed this, he was suddenly very, very cold and everything went very, very dark.

He was acutely aware of his lungs screaming for oxygen, and he could feel the water pressure crushing him, liquid forcing itself down his throat and into his mouth and eyes and ears, and from somewhere in the inky depths below, something roared. He looked down, a shoal of fish flitting past as they moved to escape whatever was below, but Logan could only sit and watch.

A huge mouth appeared, wide open, hundreds of rows of teeth lining the maw, each the size of Logan’s torso as fish who were not fast enough were swallowed whole.

This was it.

Logan looked up, towards where he was sure the surface must lie, and praying that the others were safe, wherever they were.

He only wished he could have had one last look at the stars, as the teeth obscured his vision and his lungs gave out.

And suddenly he could breathe again, shooting upright and holding a hand to his chest to feel his rapidly beating heart. Still alive. Still alive.

“Logan!” said Virgil’s voice, and Logan almost cried out, sure this was all just a cruel repeat, and any second now he was going to be back in the water, unable to breathe, unable to cry out, with no idea if the others—

“Logan. It's Virgil. Take a breath. You had a nightmare. You're safe.”

“I— what?” Logan said, voice breaking. It made sense. It made sense, but, how had, how— Quietly, unsurely, he whispered, “it seemed so real.”

“I know,” said Virgil, perching on the edge of Logan’s bed. Logan was suddenly reminded that yes, of course Virgil knew, because he always knew whenever any of them had a nightmare. He was Anxiety, after all, and selfish as Logan felt for thinking it, he was glad Virgil had come. “Want a tissue, Teach?” Virgil added softly, offering one off-handedly before looking away to examine the ceiling.

Logan took it somewhat confusedly, before he realised with a start that his face was damp. He had been crying. Hurriedly, he dried his face, thankful that Virgil had chosen to look elsewhere whilst he sorted himself.

“I'm sorry,” he said after a moment, locating his glasses from the bedside table and feeling a sense of relief wash over him as the world became clearer. “That was uncharacteristically… emotional of me.”

Virgil seemed almost to laugh, a withheld smirk flashing across his features. “I know you have emotions, Logan, and that's okay; you don't need to hide them. Do you want to tell me about it?”

Taking a deep breath and lying back onto his pillow, Logan’s eyes drank in the stars and constellations in his ceiling, the night sky Roman had put into place for him twinkling comfortingly.

“Everything was flooding.”

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pentanguine · 4 years ago

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22) What is your sexual and romantic orientations? Are they affected by your gender?

Ah, the million dollar question.

Honestly, short answer, I have no idea. And maybe I’ll never have any idea! Maybe my sexuality and/or my understanding of it will shift every few years as I learn new words and ways of being, or as I have different life experiences. Maybe I’ll never settle down and “figure it out,” because there is no a priori sexuality living inside me like the solution to a puzzle, there’s just complex human feelings overlapping clumsily with a rigid society. Sexuality is totally made up, not because the feelings aren’t real but because the way we taxonomize those feelings is so particular to time and place, and I’m particularly bad at fitting into the structure of the time and place where I live! I’m attracted to people of many different genders, to different extents and in different ways across time, but mostly I seem to be into women, and I am not a woman or a man. This experience is well-nigh impossible to shoehorn into the schematic of modern Western sexual orientation.

I’ve had so many epiphanies about sexuality, and at the time, each one felt like a lightbulb going off and something finally settling inside me. But all of those experiences have shifted over time, and they’ll probably keep on shifting. First I thought I was bi, and then I realized that the thought of being a woman with a boyfriend made me feel bleak, so I jettisoned the idea of a boyfriend and called myself gay; then I realized that I was still attracted to men even if I didn’t want to date them and I read a lot of think-pieces on sexual fluidity; then I realized I was genderqueer and leaned way too hard into being a lesbian to justify my attraction to women (because if I wasn’t a lesbian, it would be Bad!); and then last year I decided I felt much more comfortable calling myself bi and just giving my sexuality the space to sprawl out and make itself at home, even if I do have a preference.

And my actual sexuality changes, too! The more I stop pressuring myself to be a neat little lesbian who was Born This Way, the more comfortable I feel acknowledging that my formative experiences with attraction in middle school involved guys, and not girls. It’s not just that I was oblivious (although I was also that), I was just into guys more often and more strongly, which is the same way I feel about women now. And yeah, it is really, really weird to have your sexuality do a 180 like that! It’s not like it happened overnight, but it does lead to this feeling of disjointedness with my past self, like I jumped through some kind of parallel universe portal and emerged in an alternate sexuality timeline. In retrospect, I guess the best way to describe what I was was a girlfag: I thought of myself as a girl, even if I wasn’t one, but I wanted other boys to think I was a boy, and I liked guys who were pretty and effeminate and possibly gay, because if they were gay that made them “better” to be attracted to. The first narrative for this is that I’m a straight girl who fetishizes gay men; the second narrative for this is that I’m a lesbian who has crushes on feminine, unattainable boys as a proxy for girls; the third narrative is that I’m trans and gay and so duh, I like queer guys.

[A Tangent]

Also, you know what, it’s very important to me to not be a lesbian. Because I’m not. We can’t all be lesbians! And that’s ok!

I am not a man and I am mostly attracted to women and I have a very complicated relationship with my infrequent attraction to men, but that does not inherently mean that I am a lesbian struggling with comp het. Maybe I really am a bi person with a preference. Maybe I really am a genderqueer person with no affiliation or alignment or whatever the fuck to womanhood. Maybe my interest in men is so complicated by my own transmasculine gender that I can’t really access it. Maybe my experiences don’t need to be twisted to fit a Good and Proper Lesbian Narrative wherein I realize that Men Are Bad and Women Are Good and I’m not really attracted to the Bad People, and I’m absolutely willing to reduce myself to being Basically A Good Person so that the Good and Loving Light of Lesbianism will shine down upon me.

Look, lesbians are great. Lesbian is a word with so much political power, so much potential for self-definition and self-realization, and so much more fluidity than people give it credit for. It’s a beautiful word and sometimes I wish I were a lesbian. But I’m not, because I choose not to be. I will be mistaken for a lesbian for the rest of my life. The specifics of my queerness will never be legible to other people, because people will see me at my most visibly queer and think “she is a lesbian,” and they will see me with my hypothetical girlfriend and think “those women are lesbians.” And so while lesbian is a word that could fit me under its umbrella if I so chose, I don’t so choose, because it’s not the most accurate or fulfilling word for my queerness, and I will be lesbian until proven otherwise for the rest of my life. And so, when given the chance amongst friends and fellow queers, I want to prove otherwise.

I’m also ace, which I see as the queer umbrella that covers all of my sexuality and gender under its scope. My feelings on how, exactly, I’m a-spec have shifted wildly between “gray-asexual,” “demisexual?,” and “totally ace” over the years, often multiple times within the same freaking week. Trying to pin down what sexual attraction even is when it’s something you rarely or never experience, and when it’s also something that you approach through a totally different lens than most people, is an exercise in futility. Words like “hot” or “turned on” or just “sex” don’t even make sense to me; I know broadly what other people mean when they say them, but when I try to find corollaries in my own experiences, I either come up empty-handed or with something that’s like a distorted reflection seen through fog.

I’m not aromantic, but the older I get the less I feel like romantic attraction applies to me, so at this point I’d consider myself sort of philosophically aromantic. I know I’m not actually aro, but the kind of attraction that I feel, while very normative (fluttering hearts; swooping stomachs; improbable daydreams; a desire to impress), also has nothing whatsoever to do with emotions or relationships. My body finds other people cute, and my brain tends to agree, but those feelings don’t lead to desire. They don’t go anywhere. Appreciating the experience of being attracted to someone almost never leads me to want anything from that attraction. I don’t know what that is (maybe it’s shyness or insecurity, or maybe it is some kind of queerness), but I do know that I don’t want to push through it and force myself to go through those rituals just because other people tell me I should want to.

I guess a lot of the disconnect for me comes from calling that type of physical attraction romantic, when for me it has nothing whatsoever to do with sweeping romantic emotions or intimate relationships. I’d be tempted to call the attraction aesthetic, except I think that’s what I feel for forests and my friend Jonesy’s fashion choices (visual appreciation with no real attraction), and I doubt it’s alterous attraction because the symptoms seem so commonplace and archetypical. So I assume I do feel what most people, bafflingly, call romantic attraction, and the romance part is just a miss for me because I’m delightfully perverse or something. I just don’t understand why “person I find attractive” and “person I want to be intimate partners with” and “person I want to have sex with” and “person I want to cohabit with” all has to be the same person. The whole narrative of romance just doesn’t make sense to me.

Good god, this got long.

To finally end up at the second part of the question: My genderqueerness is very closely intertwined with my sexuality, to the point where I wish we still had words like “invert” that combined the two and saw them as mutually constitutive rather than at constant odds with one another. Basically, I see myself as being fundamentally bi, but gay both ways: I’m similar-to-although-not-the-same-as women when I’m attracted to a woman, and similar-to-although-not-the-same-as men when I’m attracted to a man. (When I have a crush on a nonbinary person, I’m just really t4t.) At the moment, attraction to women is the most salient aspect of my sexuality, which is often fraught, because I’m a lot more adamant about Not Being a Woman than I am about not being a man. But I’m still gay for women, and I think I come from a long lineage of people with similar experiences (Vernon Lee, Radclyffe Hall, Leslie Feinberg, Rae Spoon, etc). Speaking of Rae Spoon, I think it’s very easy to assume that you’re not into men when you spend so much time being/trying not to be jealous of them. But I’ve learned that it’s possible for something to be both. Maybe when I love men hypothetically but find it difficult to translate into reality, that’s not because “ew, men bad,” that’s because “DANGER, gender bad.” Maybe (radically! shockingly!) I am actually bisexual and I have crushes on people of various different genders, and none of that negates my attraction to anyone else.

So in summary, I guess I’m just queer, with a side of bi (*gestures expansively*) and ace (*shrugs blankly*).

#i left asexuality out of the last part because i feel like i have a whole other post in me about the intersection of ace and gender shit #gqid asks #i'm sorry this is really very long #i've got to stop hitting the really meaty questions on sundays #when i can spend multiple self-indulgent hours just stewing over them #there's so much more ace stuff that i want to talk about but i don't know that i have all my thoughts in order #and some of the ace stuff would be tangential and also kind of tmi #my friends are recapping to me a livestream of a party in this homophobic horse game and i am so baffled and delighted #add it to the list of things that happened in november 2020

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mythicallore · 5 years ago

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Creature Feature: The Enfield Horror

the “Enfield Horror” (Illinois, USA) is one of the absolute strangest creatures ever to be chronicled in cryptozoological lore.

The bizarre string of events that would eventually stir the small Illinois town of Enfield into a frenzy of fear, began on the chilly night of April 25, 1973, when a young boy named Greg Garrett claimed to have been attacked by a truly bizarre beast while playing in his backyard.

The child described the being as having no less than three legs, grayish, slimy skin, short claws and reddish eyes. The creature apparently “stamped” on the boys feet with its own three — apparently clawed — foot-like appendages, tearing his tennis shoes to shreds. Greg, crying hysterically, wasted no time scurrying away from the fiend and back into the relative safety of his parent’s house.

Although young Greg’s encounter was technically the first on record, the one that brought this creature to notoriety came just a half hour later when the Garret’s neighbor, one Henry McDaniel and his family, had their own face-to-face encounter with this unbelievable entity.

At about 9:30 in the evening, the McDaniels returned home to find two of their children, Henry Jr. and Lil, in a terrified stupor. The children claimed that a “thing” had tried to break into the house through the door and a window mounted air conditioner, while their parents were gone. It was then that they all heard a “scratching” sound at the front door.

Assuming that it was some sort of stray animal, a skeptical Henry McDaniel cavalierly approached the door and yanked it open. What he saw before him would have shook even the most courageous man to the core.

There, standing on his stoop, was the same red-eyed monstrosity that had terrified his own children and assailed the Garret child less than an hour before. McDaniel backed away from the entity in horror, slammed the door, stumbled to nearby closet and retrieved a flashlight and his .22 pistol.

While his horrified family waited, Henry returned to the door and — with the conviction of a man dead set on defending his family and home — threw it back open, revealing that his first vision of this unbelievable beast had not been an hallucination. Later, McDaniel described the creature to the police:

“It had three legs on it, a short body, two little short arms coming out of its breast area and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four and a half feet tall and was grayish-colored… it was trying to get into the house!”

McDaniel’s opened fire of the creature, hitting it immediately, but instead of falling to the ground wounded or dead, the horrible thing merely “hissed like a wildcat” at the frightened homeowner. Henry, who had fired four shots at the thing, assured anyone who asked that he had not missed his quarry:

“When I fired that first shot, I know I hit it.”

Then, as unbelievable as it may seem, McDaniel claimed that the zoological oddity then tore off into the night, covering an area of approximately 50-feet in a series of just three astonishing leaps, before disappearing into the brush along the L&N railroad embankment in front of his house.

McDaniel’s promptly called the local authorities, but when Illinois state troopers who responded to the call arrived at the scene, the only evidence of the encounter that remained were a series of scratches in the siding of the McDaniel’s home and dog-like prints in the yard. What made the prints so unusual was the fact that they had six toe pads and, even more intriguingly, that they represented a three footed “animal,” with one track being slightly smaller than the others.

If McDaniel believed that his encounters with the unknown were a thing of the past, he would soon realize that he was sadly mistaken, when, on the eve of May 6, he was startled awake in the dead of the night by the howling of some neighborhood dogs. McDaniel’s pulled himself out of bed, once again claimed his firearm, and — with what must have been great trepidation — opened his front door.

This time his encounter with this creature would not be so intimate. He claims he watched the thing at some distance, languidly negotiating the trestles of the railroad tracks near his home:

“I saw something moving out on the railroad track and there it stood. I didn’t shoot at it or anything. It started on down the railroad track. It wasn’t in a hurry or anything.”

As is always the case with astounding events such as this, it wasn’t long before the press got wind of the weirdness and came out in full force, but it wasn’t until McDaniel’s second report that the media frenzy truly kicked into overdrive.

White County Sheriff, Roy Poshard Jr., was so perturbed by this sudden influx of press and curiosity seekers (not to mention the alarm that was settling in on the locals) he threatened to incarcerate McDaniel if he didn’t stop inciting panic by spreading his wildly terrifying tale.

To make matters worse, well armed posses of amateur “monster” hunters began patrolling the area near the L&N railroad track sightings. It was on one such expedition that five young men allegedly had a run in with a creature identical to the one that Garret and McDaniel encountered — with the notable addition being that they described the thing as being “hairy.”

Enfield Railroad

The men discovered the beast hiding in the underbrush and proceeded to open fire on it, but (much like in the McDaniel case) their bullets were unable to cause mortal injury and the monster bolted off at a speed that the eyewitnesses surmised was greatly in excess of any that a human being could achieve.

The final eyewitness to this improbable creature was Rick Rainbow, the news director of radio station WWKI in Kokomo, Indiana. He and three other unnamed individuals claimed to have seen a gray, stooping, 5-foot tall entity lurking outside an abandoned house not far from the Garret and McDaniel’s homes.

Although they did not have nearly as close (or for that matter as harrowing) an encounter as the previous sets of witnesses, Rainbow and his crew did manage to do one thing the others had not — tape record the monster’s disturbing scream.

It was then that noted cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman, arrived on the scene to investigate the eyewitnesses claims as well as the sound recording. Coleman also heard the haunting cry of the creature while searching an area where eyewitnesses claimed to have seen the thing:

“I traveled to Enfield, interviewed the witnesses, looked at the siding of the house the Enfield Monster had damaged, heard some strange screeching banshee-like sounds, and walked away bewildered.”

In the July, 1974 edition of Fate Magazine, Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark featured the Enfield Horror in an article entitled: “Swamp Slobs Invade Illinois.” Coleman even chronicled discussing this intriguing case with famed paranormal investigator as well as bestselling “The Mothman Prophecies” author John A. Keel, in his book: “Mothman and Other Curious Encounters”

“This reminds me of my exchange with Keel… in 1973, when we were discussing the new reports out of Illinois, from Enfield. On April 25, 1973, Mr. and Mrs. Henry McDaniel returned to their home and Henry had an encounter with a thing that looked like it had three legs, two pink eyes as big as flashlights, and short arms on a four-and-a-half-feet tall and grayish-colored body, along the L&N rail-road tracks, in front of his house.”

Years later, Coleman would contrast his Enfield investigation with another he conducted regarding a legendary creature that many assume was also from alien origin – a melon headed monster known as the dover demon:

“(The Enfield Horror) was my case investigation. It was much different than the Dover Demon, however, and was more like a combo phantom kangaroo, Devil Monkey, and Swamp Ape situation.”

Other investigators have suggested that the monster was associated with a spate of UFO sightings that allegedly plagued the region during the same period, and those with a more supernatural bent have asserted that this beast — with its tendencies to be aggressive toward humans and try to break into their homes — has all of the earmarks of a classic “demon” attack.

This would not be the first time that it has been suggested that there is an apparent E.T./occult connection. While the phenomenon are not directly related, the primary witness in the North Port Devil case, Michael Rowley, also claims that the creatures that have been skulking around the house he shares with his son in the west Florida community of North Port, are of both extra-terrestrial and demonic origin — making them, in effect, aliens from hell.

Enfield Poltergeist

It should also be noted that between the years of 1941 and 1942, in the sleepy village of Mt. Vernon (less than 40 miles away from Enfield) there was a similar spate of encounters involving an anomalous “leaping” beast that terrorized the local populace and was reputedly responsible for numerous animal deaths in the region. Eyewitnesses claimed that theMt. Vernon Monster was vaguely baboon-like (hence the Devil Monkey analogy) and able to leap 20 to 40-feet in a single bound.

Is it possible that the Enfield Horror, whatever it may be, is working on 30 year cycle? While there are no reputable accounts of the creature coming from the 21st century, one cannot entirely count out the possibility that the thing is a long slumbering anatomical oddity that rears its head every so often to feed on animals and terrify locals. Or, stranger yet, an E.T. that only stops by for a bite every so often when it’s in this neck of the galaxy!

Whatever this creature is or is not, it has not been reported in almost 40 years. That, however, does not mean that it’s not still lurking in the shadows of some old train yard, waiting to return to scratch on another door in the wee hours of the night.

#cryptid #the enfield horror #paranormal

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qhostqizmo · 4 years ago

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blurb beneath the cut

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She could hear approaching footsteps behind her, yet even that could not break her trance. Her gaze was locked on the horizon, bleeding out an inferno of colors with the setting sun. It was captivating; but her brain was screaming for her to turn around. Every instinct that helped her to survive this far in life was howling at her to face what came next. Her mind was tired, her body was tired, and she felt exhausted with just the idea of yet another fight. It had been some time…

The smell of roses and firs distracted her. Her pupils; thin slivers of black, expanded in fractions.

“Essätha?”

Rasping out a surprised exhale, she turned towards the call of her name. There was those unfathomably dark eyes she saw in all her dreams. Just a glance, and it was like a hundred years was wiped from their features. Relief. Sweet, sweet relief. The lines etching the man’s face in torment lessened to almost nothing, but the streaks of black beneath their eyes as though they hadn’t slept in days was still prevalent.

Fearfully, he stepped closer. Slow. Cautious. He seemed awestruck; as if believing the vision of her before him could not be real. Perhaps it was the blinding light of the sun, casting an ethereal halo around her frame.

Her surprise only deepened. It was really him?

“M’lord-”

Amon rushes towards the last few steps, almost tripping. Her entire body goes tense, half expecting him to collide with her, but he stops short. The distance between them is more then an arm’s length away.

“… You’re here?” she inquires, weary.

He is breathing hard. So much so, it’s alarming. She wonders if he will hyperventilate, and faint.

The last time she saw him was months ago. The thin veil of three planes seemed to be converging; crashing, collapsing into each other. There had been so much chaos; so much fighting. One moment she saw this nobleman, only meters from her, and the next thing she knew she had been grappled by something. As she’d struggled and screamed, it had been thrust backwards by the skirmish, and together they’d fallen into a new plane of existence.

The name of this place alluded her, but its residents were peaceful. There were no sources here on how to return to her own plane; even the most magical of beings and creatures here were clueless. No one she met knew battle, and were frightened by the cruelty of those who managed to fall, or escape, into their universe. Much of the evil forces were dwindled and eventually snuffed out by those of good heart like herself who ended up here, but with no enchantments, wizards, spellbooks, or sources to draw the energy from needed to even try opening a portal home, they were stuck.

The only thing that kept her going; that she kept fighting for, was the shred of faith that perhaps at least he was safe, and she prayed that he was happy.

So seeing this man, disheveled and alarmed and very much alive, was as much a jolt to her heart as it was frightening.

Finding his courage again, Lord Amon stepped closer. He reached out with trembling hands, and took hers in his. They were rougher then she remembered; his palms, his fingers. It sent goosebumps trailing down her arms as they gaped at eah other.

The shaking of his hands turned his entire body to shivers. He began to grin, slowly. A glistening of tears wet his eyes and made them appear glossy.

He is far more beautiful to look upon then even her most clear memories; far more regal. The shades of his hair are darker then she fears she’d ever recalled. Had she remembered wrong? All this time? He still smells like the untamed wilds of the woods though; with just the right hint of wild roses.

Essie’s breathing escalates a few notches too. The next words that spill out of her are accidently as she whispers in awe, “You came for me.”

Amon blinks slowly, absorbing her words; or perhaps briefly lost in the moment. She would understand if only she knew. The impact of hearing her voice after so long is like the plucking of heartstrings.

“M’lord Amon…?”

The tightness of his hands holding hers intensifies tenfold. He rasps for air a few times; gulps it down as deep in his chest as he can, and gruffly announces through a wavering tone of voice, “I’ve been looking for you, Essie. All this time, I never stopped. I’d search anywhere to find you, and to bring you home safe.”

His words wound as much as they stitch her broken pieces back together. She had began to give up hope, until only a fading twinkling star remained. It seemed so improbable; impossible, in fact. Surely she had told herself, the Master Arcanist could have saved her in days if only they could? And when they did not…

And with the magic here so limited; so rare and weak and unwilling to listen to the pleading of mortals or the call of the blood she used to be able to tune into inside her…

Yet here he was. Unfeasibly real.

Misty-eyed, tears swam in her vision. Essätha blinked them back, but some collected into pools of moisture at the corners of her eyes.

A flicker of concern returns to the nobleman’s face as she pulls a hand free from his. She hesitates; and reaches up to brush strands of hair out of his burning dark gaze.

He reaches for her in return, cradling her cheek in one hand. His touch is so familiar. Every part of her is instantly awakened; yearning for it, craving it. She tilts her head into his touch, grazing her lips against his rough palms.

Abruptly, he launches at her. The wind is knocked out of her lungs, and she is breathless and shocked to find Amon embracing her. Not embracing, clinging. He folds his arms around her as tightly as he can, digging his fingers into her shirt, and her skin. She feels crushed against him; solid and warm and steady. Each breath he takes is one of her own, or maybe that’s just her imagination.

“Essie, Essie, Essie,” he chants again and again; disbelief in his tone. She is still trying to recover from her alarm at the suddenness of his approach; wrapping her arms around him as he rests his head on top of hers. That doesn’t last, and soon he is resting his face to the side of hers. Then he moves again, his chin on her shoulder. Then his cheek. He nuzzles her; it is such a wildly open display of affection that her cheeks glow.

Essätha blinks. She blinks again. It becomes apparent to her that her face is wet.

He’d been looking for her still, all this time. He hadn’t given up on finding her, all this time.

Curling her fingers into his cloak, she buries her face into the large furry mantle and lets out a sound torn between a sob and a scream.

Pulling her head back, the Yuan-Ti catches Amon’s red-eyed gaze and the stains of tears on his face as well. He gapes at her; trying desperately to grasp for air.

She leans in and brushes her lips softly against his.

Grabbing her tighter; squeezing her so much she could hardly breath, he presses a delicate and chaste kiss in return to her lips. It is by far the most gentle of touches, especially compared to how he takes her breath away sealing her into his ribcage protectively.

Diving her fingers into his hair, she drags herself closer, daring to fuse with his chest as she steals another kiss as unbearably sweet and light as the last.

He is shaking harder as he pulls her off her feet, and spins her. She finds herself laughing past tears as he kisses her nose, and then drops her to kiss her cheeks. He pins her with one arm to push strands of ebony curls out of her face and kisses her again, and then strokes his thumb across her features, tingles dancing beneath her skin like fire where he touches as one leads into another, and another, and another.

“I’ve waited a lifetime to find you, Essie,” Amon choked, pressing his lips to the corner of her mouth. “I’d search a lifetime more. I’m never letting you go again, never.”

It is music to her ears. A whimper escapes her; her throat too closed from chest-shaking crying. It is like the first sunrise rather then a sunset; the first moment of solace she’d felt in what seems like eons.

“Oh m’lord Amon,” she murmurs between the brief merges of their mouths, “I’ve missed you. I finally feel like I’m home again. It feels like this endless nightmare is finally over. I love you. I love you with all that I have and all that is in me; I’ve never been happier to see anyone I’m so happy you’re okay. That’s what I really needed to know, was that you were okay.”

“I wasn’t. I didn’t have you.”

A muffled hiccup escaped her as Amon pressed another tender kiss to her lips.

“I’m never leaving your side again.”

“Promise?”

Her breath hitched, and she brushed her lips against his own.

“I promise.”

#qhost art #qhost story #OTP: Essamon #Essatha Meduza #Amon Illiad #softly written #miss them and their devotion to each other and sad vibe checks on each other

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oscopelabs · 5 years ago

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Telling Lies In America 1985-1995: The Joe Eszterhas Era by Jessica Kiang

“Written by Joe Eszterhas” is a phrase that has not had much of a workout on US cinema screens in over twenty years—and it’s arguable whether the 1997, 19-screen nationwide release of certifiable shitshow Burn Hollywood Burn: An Alan Smithee Film exactly qualifies as “a workout.” But for those of us who had the parental training wheels come off our theatrical filmgoing in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, there were few individuals more central to our cinematic coming-of-age. And with perhaps the sole exception of Shane Black, a different animal in any case, none of the others—the Spielbergs, Camerons, Tarantinos—were exclusively screenwriters. For over a decade, the Hungarian-born, Hollywood-minted superstar writer of Basic Instinct bestrode the adult-oriented commercial screenwriting mainstream like a smirking colossus in a tight dress wearing no underwear. And given that Hollywood is primarily how the USA, the most loudly, proudly self-created of nations, expresses itself to itself and to the rest of the world, by the man’s own bombastic standards it’s only a slight exaggeration to suggest that America, between the years of 1985 and 1995, was written by Joe Eszterhas.

But for all the dominance he exerted, the rules he rewrote and the sheer money he made, examining Eszterhas’ heyday today feels like an act of paleontology, even for those of us who lived through it. 1992 is not so very distant; in a variety of ways it is still with us. It was the year Quentin Tarantino, whose latest film is in theaters right now, broke out with his first, Reservoir Dogs. It was the year the current loathsome, racist, tinpot President of the United States made a cameo appearance in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, back when he was merely a loathsome, racist, tinpot property tycoon. It was the year that the number one box office spot was taken by Disney’s animated Aladdin, which felt close enough in time that the live-action remake which—and I’ve checked my notes on this, apparently was a thing that happened to us in 2019—felt entirely too soon.

But it was also the year of Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, the sine qua non of Eszterhas-penned films. And if Sharon Stone’s lascivious leg-cross (Verhoeven’s invention, incidentally, not Eszterhas’) provided posterity with the most iconic upskirt of a blonde in a white dress since Marilyn Monroe’s encounter with a subway grate, that is largely all that remains to us of it today. Well, that and the instantly forgotten sequel (sans Eszterhasian involvement) that already seemed wildly anachronistic in 2006. The original film, its writer, the erotic thriller genre it exemplified, the dunderheaded sexual politics it upheld while attempting to subvert, the whole idea of a mainstream screenwriter having a brand at all (even one as loosely defined as “writer of films you don’t tell your parents you snuck into”), all seem like ancient relics. These are the artifacts not only of a bygone age but of an extinct genus, a whole evolutionary branch that was nipped in the bud so comprehensively that even now scientists might argue over how closely the skeletons of certain bird species resemble the bones of Basic Instinct.

This containment, however, is what makes looking back at the Eszterhas era so fascinating. His brief Hollywood hegemony is a microcosmic event in cinematic history, one with a beginning, middle, and an end (barring some late-breaking epilogue, or a post fade-to-black pan down to an ice pick under the bed). And it didn’t start with his first produced screenplay, for the leaden Sylvester Stallone truckers-union drama F.I.S.T. (Norman Jewison, 1978), although the glimmer of future feats of financial alchemy was already present in the reported $400,000 he received for the novelization. Dawn really broke for Eszterhas, as it did for three of the only other people who could legitimately be termed his peers as purveyors of massively popular, high-concept, low-brow ‘80s sensationalism (producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, director Adrian Lyne), with 1983’s Flashdance.

It was an improbable success, less a film than an aerobics video occasionally interrupted by some awkward sassy banter and Jennifer Beals’ popping-flashbulb smile. Its vanishingly thin story, which Eszterhas co-wrote, is of an 18-year-old welder in a steel mill, who moonlights as an exotic dancer while aspiring to become a ballerina—a logline that sounds like a hoot of derision even as an unadorned description—and is full of Eszterhasian hallmarks. There’s the high degree of preposterousness. There’s the gym scene, during which the ladies of the cast grimace and lift weights in full makeup, and while here the frictionless unreality of Lyne’s TV-commerical aesthetic makes the sequence abstract, the peculiar faith in the erotic potential of a workout would recur in the squash sequence in Jagged Edge (Richard Marqund, 1985) and the ludicrous gym date in Sliver (Phillip Noyce, 1993).

And Flashdance also prefigures almost the entire Eszterhas oeuvre in being a story that centers on a woman’s experience and that laudably—if here laughably—positions her career ambitions as at least equal to her romantic aspirations in the mechanism of the plot. But, as elsewhere, it’s a view of women constructed by a proudly unreconstructed man, directed and photographed by men. (Eszterhas’ hard-drinking, womanizing, hellraising, Hunter S. Thompson-of-the-movies persona is enjoyably self-mythologized in his memoir Hollywood Animal.) If anything, what comes across most strongly in Eszterhas’ conception of a “strong woman” is his bafflement when tasked with imagining what such a woman might have going on inside her brain. His filmography may be full of female-fronted titles, and may contain the most famous mons venus in film history, but most of Eszterhas’ work could not be more male gaze-y f it were written from the point of view of an actual phallus, like the closing chapter of his 2000 book American Rhapsody, which is narrated by Bill Clinton's penis, Willard (I am not making this up).

This powerfully eroticized dissociation, this sexualized incomprehension of women as people with interior lives, is the animating idea behind the most Eszterhasian of Eszterhas scripts. But it’s a blank space in which directors, and especially actresses, could sometimes find room to create for themselves. Sharon Stone is genuinely, in-on-the-joke fantastic in Basic Instinct—who else could have delivered “What are you going to do, charge me with smoking?” as if it were an unreturnable Wildean riposte? Costa-Gavras’ Music Box (1989) is by some distance the sturdiest and least dated of Eszterhas movies, a lot due to its comparative sexlessness, but also because of a great, warm, real performance from an Oscar-nominated Jessica Lange. Debra Winger just about wins out in her more thankless role in Costa-Gavras’ first Eszterhas collaboration, Betrayed (1988). And Glenn Close imbues the heroine of the superior thriller Jagged Edge with such shrewdness that it’s almost a liability to the believability of the central deception.

But live by the sword, die by the sword, and when the director/actress combo fails to operate in similar sympathy we get Stone horribly miscast as a… sexy wallflower?… in Sliver, or Linda Fiorentino visibly flailing as a… downtrodden femme fatale?… in Jade, or poor Elizabeth Berkley thrashing wildly about in the neon-lit swimming pool of kitsch that is Showgirls. In these failures, the writer’s almost panicky vision of women as vast, dangerous cognitive black holes is best revealed. But then, mistrust of the opposite sex is only one aspect of the wider mystery that underpins even Eszterhas’ outlier titles: his entire output is preoccupied with how little any of us can ever know anyone.

In Eszterhas’ semi-autobiographical Telling Lies In America (Guy Ferland, 1997), a teenage Hungarian immigrant (Brad Renfro) is dazzled by Kevin Bacon's smooth-talking DJ, but blindly unable to work out if he is friend or fiend. Music Box details a lawyer’s dawning disillusionment over her adored father's murderous past—eerily mirroring Eszterhas’ discovery of his own father’s collaboration with the Hungarian Nazi regime. Betrayed has Winger’s FBI agent falling for Tom Berenger’s farmer only to discover he is, in fact, the neo-Nazi she insisted to her bosses he was not, in similar vein to Jagged Edge, in which Close’s lawyer discovers that the lover she successfully defended actually dunnit after all.

Oftentimes, the credulity-stretching ambivalence of these characters is all that powers the suspense, as in the is-she-gonna-kill-him-or-is-she-just-orgasming moments in Basic Instinct. In the misbegotten Nowhere to Run (Robert Harmon, 1993) Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a ruthless ex-con turned valiant protector, his blockish inertia apparently meant to signal that inner ambiguity. More often, it leads to final-act fake-out twists so unmoored to anything like recognizable motivation that they become weirdly weightless, as in Sliver when Stone’s Carly does not know if she’s killed the right man until the final four seconds of the film, and where, had the coin-flip gone the other way, it would still be equally (un)believable.

If it’s part of the egotistical remit of the writer to believe they have an insight into human psychology, it’s remarkable how much of Eszterhas’ oeuvre pivots around how fundamentally unknowable people are to one another. And while that schtick, by which you can’t tell if someone cares for you or is simply a talented sociopathic mimic, resonated briefly at the exact moment when the grasping, solipsistic ‘80s were segueing into the untrustworthy, PR-managed ‘90s, it proved not to have much long-game sustain. Critics had always been sniffy about Eszterhas, who clearly mopped up his tears with massive wads of 100 dollar bills. But when audiences started staying away, like in the Showgirls and Jade-blighted annus horribilis of 1995, the inflationary bubble that allowed Eszterhas to command millions for two-page outlines scribbled, one suspects, on the back of strip club napkins, abruptly burst. The idea of screenwriter-as-auteur, or rather as reliable bellwether of commercial success, proved a fallacy, an expensive experiment that began and ended with Joe Eszterhas, its earliest progenitor, luckiest beneficiary, and biggest casualty.

Glossy, vacuous, adult-themed thrillers were not the only thing going on in Hollywood, and Eszterhas was not the only big-name screenwriter. Shane Black, writer of Lethal Weapon, also commanded astronomical sums for his early ‘90s scripts, but the key difference is that Black wrote in the register of the franchise-able action-spectacular blockbuster that would eventually trounce all others as the Hollywood model for the future. Black has gone on to become part of the Marvel machine as a writer and director, while aside from one Hungarian-language period film, Children of Glory (Krisztina Goda, 2006), Eszterhas’ contribution to the pop cultural landscape post-2000 has been in the form of self-aggrandizing memoirs, or highly public fallings-out with celebrities, like Mel Gibson, of a similarly corked vintage.

The tastemaker point of view has historically been to consider Eszterhas among the worst things that ever happened to Hollywood—so much so that disdain-dripping sarcasm seems to be the fallback for critics summarizing his impact. But while no one is going to make the case for the man’s filmography as some sort of artistic landmark, the Eszterhas era did represent one of the last gasps of a Hollywood that believed, however misguidedly, in personality over product, when the idiosyncrasies, idiocies and ideologies of a single person—a writer at that—could, with studio backing and a 1,500 theater release strategy, influence the cinematic development of an entire generation. That might not have seemed like a good thing but retrospect, like cocaine, is a helluva drug and in 2019, with blandly anonymous, market-tested content churned out by mega-corporations bi-weekly to siphon your hard-earneds away, the kind of salacious tackiness Eszterhas represented feels oddly adorable, even quaint. Now that singular talents—even the obnoxious and objectionable ones—who could make decent returns on mid-budget, adult-oriented mainstream fare, have been steamrollered by infantilizing, monolithic billion-dollar mega-franchises, it’s hard not to be a little nostalgic for the vanished hiccup of time when Hollywood briefly uncrossed its legs for Joe Eszterhas, and Joe Eszterhas told us all what he saw.

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shepherds-of-haven · 5 years ago

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Maybe this is too complicated, BUT like hypothetical situation where the ROs are having their own Halloween heist. Who’s great, who’s terrible, who thinks they’ve won, who actually wins....? 👀 (biiiig B99 gal here)

Ooh okay so I’m going to speak in B99 terms...

Chase is Jake: he started the heist and he wins the first one, and is usually the one escalating the whole thing so everyone has to step up their game every year with increasingly convoluted plans! He’s very good and is tied for most won heists with Riel.

Trouble is Chase’s Boyle: he’s enthusiastic about the heist and great at helping Chase execute his wildly improbable plans, but he’s shit at planning things out on his own. So he always wins when on a team but always gets tricked when on his own.

Blade is Terry: he acts utterly disinterested in the heist, flatly insisting that he’s not playing and the whole thing is dumb, but this is just a long con to make everyone believe he’s not involved when he is. He wins one year due to his ruse, but every year after that he becomes so competitive and goes so hard in the paint (if you think Chase’s booby traps were dangerous...) that the gang starts insisting he has to participate with a handicap.

Shery is Amy: she wants to join in, but everyone mistreats her and is wildly suspicious of her working for the other team because of COURSE no one would suspect Shery, you think I would fall for that ploy?! So she’s sad and dejected because no one will let her be on their team, but PSYCH Shery is a goddamn MANIAC and she destroys them all in a vicious mind game and then blushes sweetly and goes, “Hooray, I won~” and everyone is just a little more scared of her after...

Riel is Holt: he gets way too intense, way too competitive, you wake up on the morning of the heist and he’s sitting in your room in the dark having already eaten your breakfast and then he just stands up and walks silently out, leaving you to contemplate your future... Out of all the gang he goes the hardest (even though he was initially skeptical of the whole thing) and he and Chase are tied for the most amount of wins!

Tallys is Hitchcock/Scully: she’s like LEAVE ME OUT OF IT and she genuinely means it. While everyone is doing the heist and getting themselves into increasingly inane situations, she’s sitting off to the side quietly enjoying a meatball sandwich

Red is just trying to keep everyone else under control: I guess in this situation he’d be like Kevin? I mean it seems fun but it always gets WAY out of hand and he’s just trying to keep everyone from killing each other or an innocent bystander... and he has to put up with the gloating and insanity even after the heist is over...

Ayla is Rosa: she’s competitive, but it brings her more joy to help an underdog like Shery or Trouble win. She’s not much of a planner, but she’s using her insane skills and athleticism to help bring her team to victory!

Lavinet is Gina: she’s out to prove that Norm ladies are powerful and just as capable of winning as anyone else! Sure, it looks like she just busted her mouth open and her teeth fell out, BUT IT’S ALL PART OF HER PLAN TO TEACH YOU A LESSON. After she wins she retires in order to go out on top instead of having to defend her title every year...

#Shepherds of Haven #b99 #Brooklyn 99 #Brooklyn 99 AU #halloween heist

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mizjoely · 6 years ago

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The Impossible

This is a follow-up to my story "The Unthinkable", which was written after Avengers: Infinity War. If you haven't seen Avengers: Endgame or aren't a Marvel fan, you might want to skip this one, as there are definitely spoilers. Rated T, with 100% Johntent. Many thanks to @mychakk for reading it over for me! Soon to be posted on ff. net and AO3, if anyone wants to kudos or review or comment.

John stumbles and catches himself on the edge of the chair. What the hell just happened? One minute he was handing Rosie to Sherlock and the next he's alone in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street.

No, not alone; he hears Rosie's soft snores coming from the portacrib settled between the end of the sofa and the messy desk. So whatever it was that just blacked his memory - if Sherlock's drugged him he swears he'll kick his arse from here to Sherrinford and back again - at least Rosie's fine.

He starts to move toward the crib, intent on making sure, absolutely sure, that she's fine (where is Sherlock, why did he leave them alone?) when a sound catches his attention. He turns toward the kitchen, and is startled to see Molly Hooper standing there, a sturdy cast-iron frying pan clutched tightly in her hands. "Hey Molly, when did you get here? Where's Sherlock?"

She opens and closes her mouth a few times, but seems unable to speak. He moves toward her, brow crinkled in worry, but a sound from the crib catches his attention; Rosie is fretting and he knows better than to assume she'll cry herself back to sleep. "Don't worry, Daddy's coming," he calls out and hurries over to pick her up.

That is, he starts to hurry over; a loud cry from Molly causes him to stop, to turn to face her again. She's charging toward him, the frying pan held high like a weapon. "Stay away from him!" she screams, and he stumbles back as she swings at him.

"Molly, what the hell-?!" John exclaims.

She swings at him again, missing by a good few inches, then jabs the pan at him, a wild, terrified look in her eyes. "I don't know who you are or what you're playing at, but this, this is sick, how could you - you get out of here, Sherlock is on his way home, he'll be here in minutes you twisted bastard-!"

John stares at her, bewildered, stunned by the unreasonableness of her reaction. Maybe he isn't the one who's been drugged, maybe she has? But Sherlock would never do that to her, Molly would kick him to the curb in no uncertain terms were he to try something so idiotic on her.

But he can't come up with any other explanation as she continues to stare wildly at him, keeping herself between him and the crib. "Molly, I just-" he tries, but she's having none of it.

"Get out of this flat," she hisses. "Get out now, before Sherlock gets here and breaks your neck for pulling such a heartless-do you really think you'll be able to fool him? You'd better start running and never stop if you want to live, you bastard!"

She's shaking, but he has no doubt that she'll use that frying pan on him should he try to get nearer to her. But Rosie's starting to cry in earnest now, and he has to try to figure out how to get his daughter away from the apparent madwoman standing in front of him.

The sound of feet pounding up the stairs distracts Molly; he makes a feint to her right and manages to shove her over, shouldering her so that she falls to the floor with a scream. He'll apologize to her later, once he figures out what the hell is going on but right now Rosie needs him.

"Hush Rosie, it's all right, Daddy's here," he says, but the words dry up in his throat as he stares down at the child sitting in the crib, staring up at him through (brown, not blue) eyes swimming with tears. The hair is a tangled mess of (dark brown, not blonde) curls, and the clothing...this isn't his daughter, it's a little boy of the right age and size but definitely not his Rosie.

The pounding footsteps have morphed into a shout. "Molly! Molly, you'll never believe-!"

He turns to face Sherlock, who skids to a stop as he enters the flat, his eyes shining with a strange, unsettling combination of hope and fear. In his arms is a little girl (blonde hair, blue eyes) possibly six or seven years old, her arms tight around his neck. She stares at him blankly (why does that hurt, he's never seen this little girl before) but squirms to be let down when she sees Molly struggling back up.

"Let me down Uncle Lock, Aunt Molly's hurt!" she demands.

Sherlock lets her down without once removing his gaze from John's puzzled, wary face. "It's true," he whispers, taking a step forward. "My god it's true."

He smiles, an open, dazzling smile like none John has ever seen on his lips before. His eyes - is Sherlock Holmes actually tearing up?

"Sherlock?" Molly's voice catches his attention; he tears his gaze away from John's with what seems to be a great deal of reluctance, then hurries over to help her to her feet. He then reaches into the crib and lifts the fretting toddler into his arms, and John's eyes widen as he sees the definite resemblance - somehow, impossibly, this little boy looks like a perfect blend of Sherlock and Molly.

"How-?" he starts to ask, beyond bewildered, but is stopped as Sherlock rushes forward and engulfs him in an enormous bear hug, still holding - his? - child.

He's talking, speaking rapidly, but the words make no sense to John. "It's true, Molly, it's true! I wouldn't have believed it but...Nasir's son just reappeared in front of him, at Speedy's, looking exactly the same as he did the day he vanished! And look outside - the trees, the people, Molly! They're back, they're all back!" He lets John go just enough to haul Molly into his embrace. "Even Mrs. Hudson," he whispers, tears still falling from his eyes. "She's making tea, Molly - tea! She has no idea - John," he interrupts himself, once again meeting his gaze. "John, what do you remember? Anything?"

"Uncle Lock." The small voice is firm. "You're not making sense. Why does this man look like my Daddy?"

"Because I am your Daddy." "Because he is your Daddy."

Both men speak at the same time, Sherlock joyfully, John with a growing, stunning sense of shock. Whatever remains, however improbable...this little girl is his Rosie, five years older than when he last saw her, just a few minutes ago. And the toddler is Sherlock and Molly's son and what the hell happened to cause this time shift?

"That's impossible," Molly whispers, but the suspicion and fear are gone, replaced by uncertainty. "Sherlock, it's impossible - isn't it?"

He shakes his head, still smiling so brilliantly it almost hurts. "They're back, Molly. They're all back."

He lets her and John go, gets down on one knee, still holding his son who has stuck a thumb in his mouth and is watching everything through solemn brown eyes. "Rosie, you know about the Vanished, and how your Daddy and your other godmother, Mrs. Hudson, were among them?" She nods. "Well, something happened and they've all been brought back. So yes, this is your Daddy, John Watson."

He gazes up, eyes positively shining. "He's back, they're all back."

Molly stifles a sob, gesturing for Sherlock to hand her their son. "Come on Johnny," she says as she cuddles him close. "Let's...let's get some...oh God, Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson! She doesn't know, we have to tell her…"

"She's making tea, she'll bring it up, we'll explain it to her and John at the same time," Sherlock assures her. He kisses her tenderly, puts an equally tender kiss on his son's forehead. Johnny, they named him after me? John thinks, feeling like he might just pass out if he doesn't sit down. Right. Now.

So he does, more or less collapsing onto the straight-backed chair behind him. He's staring at Rosie, can't take his eyes off her, and she's looking back at him with the same forthright, assessing gaze Mary used to have when she was puzzling something out.

"Hi Daddy, I'm glad you're not vanished any more," Rosie says, moving closer and leaning her head on his shoulder.

"So am I, Rosie, so am I," he whispers, leaning his head on top of hers as he waits for Mrs. Hudson and the answer to the myriad questions scrambling madly through his mind.

#dis is mine #sherlolly #avengers: endgame spoilers #mizjoely writes #mizjoely's fics #endgame spoilers #100% johntent

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wild-oats-and-cornflowers · 5 years ago

Text

Here is my barricade day 2019 contribution! Everyone else seems to have the Angst And Death angle covered, so I’m going a different way, and bring you 100% guaranteed sadness-free shippy fluff. You know, in case people need an emotional hanky or something :D

Title: Convergence

Summary, as posted on AO3:

“Ordinarily he enjoyed a good walk, but today he found himself wishing that Combeferre lived just a little closer to his own rooms. But cold weather or not, it had become something of a routine with the two of them to visit each other’s rooms on Saturday afternoons, to share books and dinner and conversation, and Combeferre had come to him last week, so it was only fair.

Prouvaire and Combeferre find that they've grown closer than they realized.”

Fic below the cut:

Chapter 1: Prouvaire (There will be a ch. 2, but I need to write it first)

Gray clouds scudded along overhead and a thin, cutting wind went skirling up the street, disturbing the light dusting of snow that lay scattered across the cobblestones. Jean Prouvaire shivered slightly as the breeze snaked a cold tendril down his collar, pulling his coat up more tightly around his neck. Ordinarily he enjoyed a good walk, but today he found himself wishing that Combeferre lived just a little closer to his own rooms. But cold weather or not, it had become something of a routine with the two of them to visit each other’s rooms on Saturday afternoons, to share books and dinner and conversation, and Combeferre had come to him last week, so it was only fair.

Combeferre greeted Prouvaire with a smile and an inquiry as to whether he had read the essay on freedom of the will that Combeferre had recommended last week. He had, and they wrangled pleasantly over the points raised by the article while Combeferre made soup and Prouvaire poked around among the rock and mineral specimens currently taking up much of the surface of Combeferre’s desk. The last time he had been there, the desktop had featured anatomical specimens instead. Although the stones he was now investigating offered significantly less invitation to contemplate the ineffable nature of human mortality, Prouvaire had to admit that they also offered significantly less insult to his nose.

The soup was finished, and they shared it, the conversation turning from philosophical questions to a discussion of the play Combeferre had attended two nights prior. Prouvaire, who had seen it three weeks previously and had been urging his friend to go ever since, was delighted to find several of his own opinions on the plot and acting shared, and almost as delighted to argue about the areas on which they differed.

“Oh!” Combeferre interrupted himself in the middle of explaining to a mildly indignant Prouvaire why he felt that the lead actress had not carried a particular scene as well as she could have done. “I forgot, I found that novel you were interested in. I hadn’t loaned it out after all; it had fallen behind the other books on the shelf.” He hopped up from the table and went over to one of the bookshelves. Prouvaire gathered the dishes and put them in the dishpan---“Thanks,” said Combeferre---took the novel, and sprawled inelegantly and happily on the divan, while Combeferre settled himself in the armchair set at right angles to it and opened a treatise on geology. They had developed a habit, at these times, of alternating reading with conversation. Prouvaire would have found this deeply irritating had anyone else tried it. To be spoken to, intruded on, while deep in a book, was one of his least favorite things. But all the summer and autumn and into the beginning of winter in which they now found themselves, he had gradually begun accepting it from Combeferre alone until now it bothered him not at all. It had long ceased to feel like an intrusion and had become a way in which Prouvaire felt that they communicated the closeness into which they had grown.

The chiming of the clock on the mantle, in a stretch of quiet, startled both of them. December brought the darkness early, and Combeferre had lit the lamp not long after they began to read. They had not noticed the progression of the hours. “Ten o’clock!” said Prouvaire in surprise. “I had not meant to stay so late.”

“These evenings always do go by too soon,” Combeferre said, smiling.

As Prouvaire collected his outerwear, Combeferre went to the window and pulled the curtains open. “Hmm,” he said, peering out into the darkness.

“Hmm?” Prouvaire was trying to remember where he had put his gloves.

“It looks a bit fierce outside.”

Prouvaire discovered the gloves in the pocket of his overcoat and extracted them triumphantly. “Is it snowing?” he said.

“Quite a lot, actually. Look.”

Prouvaire padded over and looked. The lamps were lit in the street below, but there was not much street to be seen. It was thickly covered and sparkling in the lamplight, and the air was filled with whirling whiteness. “Hmm,” Prouvaire said.

“My sentiments exactly.” Combeferre rubbed his chin. “It might be a good idea for you to stay the night here. It does not look very, ah, hospitable outside.” He returned to his chair and picked up his geology treatise again.

“I suppose you are right.” Prouvaire tossed his outer garments in the general direction of the trunk on which he had originally draped them. “Hopefully there will be less weather in the morning, and your bed was certainly big enough for two the last time I stayed over.” The last time he had stayed over, they had both been drinking, and Prouvaire, who tended to be a very affectionate drunk, had wakened the following morning to find himself practically on top of Combeferre, hugging his arm. He chuckled slightly at the memory and glanced over at Combeferre, expecting to find his amusement shared, but Combeferre was staring down at the book in his lap, looking, Prouvaire was surprised to note, vaguely uncomfortable. He made no reply, and after a moment Prouvaire went back to the divan and took up his novel again.

He made a few attempts to resume the intermittent conversation, but Combeferre responded to his sallies only in short phrases and kept his eyes fixed on the page in front of him. Combeferre seems to have grown a bit uneasy, Prouvaire thought. He will not look at me. Why? Aloud he asked, “Is everything all right?” Combeferre jumped slightly. “Yes,” he answered tardily, flushing. That is a lie, Prouvaire thought. But Combeferre never tells lies. He hesitated, then said “Forgive me, but you seem a bit tense. Are you certain it is not a problem for me to stay here tonight?”

“Of course it isn’t,” Combeferre answered. “Why would it be?” But his voice carried a standoffish note that troubled Prouvaire. “Well,” he said. “Only you are twitching a bit, and there is a certain tone in your voice. Have I done or said something to upset you?”

“It is nothing for you to worry about. Read your book.”

Prouvaire felt the sting of the brush-off as if Combeferre had lightly slapped him. Hurt, and wanting real reassurance, he pressed on, despite knowing underneath that it was unwise, “But if I---”

“Let it be,” Combeferre interrupted him brusquely, and his voice this time held a real edge.

A baffled soreness expanded in Prouvaire’s chest. He attempted to return to his novel, but he felt his face burning and knew he would not be able to focus on the story. Abruptly he sat up straight, slapping the covers loudly shut. He got up off the divan and stalked over to the door, where he sat down on the floor and grabbed his boots.

“What are you doing?” demanded Combeferre in a tone of mild alarm.

“I am very sorry,” Prouvaire said stiffly from the floor, “for having offended you, and if you do not wish to discuss it, you are within your rights not to do so, but as I do not wish to upset you any further, I am going home.” He yanked at a boot crossly.

“For heaven’s sake, Prouvaire. You cannot walk home in this weather.”

“I can do a great many things,” Prouvaire informed him, one boot off and one boot on, “and I do not require your permission for any of them. Anyway, there may be a fiacre or so that I can hire.”

“It is vanishingly unlikely that there will be such…” Combeferre began, then sighed. He rose and came a few paces towards Prouvaire, then stopped. “I assure you,” he said, “that you have done nothing wrong. It is only…something I was thinking of for a moment, that caused me to be sharp. I should not have snapped at you. I am sorry.”

Combeferre looked both anxious and genuinely penitent. Prouvaire felt all at once extraordinarily affectionate towards him, and also slightly embarrassed about his outburst. “Oh, well,” he mumbled, tugging at the heel of his boot. “If you are quite sure it’s all right?”

“Yes, quite. Please don’t go running out into the snow on my behalf.” The corner of Combeferre’s mouth quirked upwards slightly in a way Prouvaire had seen dozens of times but which he suddenly found extremely charming. He smiled fondly up at his friend and said, “Then I will sleep chez toi tonight after all.” Combeferre’s mouth un-quirked and a peculiar expression crossed his face. He nodded and turned hastily back towards his chair as Prouvaire rose from the floor.

Prouvaire re-ensconced himself on the divan, this time curled up into the corner near Combeferre’s chair. For some reason he could not articulate, he felt a desire to be physically near him. Sudden, impulsive desires to do arbitrary things were not an uncommon experience for Prouvaire, and he generally indulged them if they did not seem likely to cause trouble. He did not question this one any more than he usually did, merely accepted it. Soon he was lost in the pages of his novel again. The heroine was the most absurdly melodramatic fictional character Prouvaire had ever encountered, and her adventures wildly improbable. It was an enchanting tome, and it rendered him quite insensible to his surroundings until the heroine’s father said something that was so very Combeferre-esque that it propelled him back to reality.

Intending to read the passage aloud to Combeferre and demand of him, isn’t that exactly the kind of thing you always say, Prouvaire looked over at his friend. He was surprised to see that Combeferre had not apparently returned to the world of geology---the book lay open on his lap, but he was staring at the floor with a serious, pensive expression on his face. It may not be me, Prouvaire thought, but something truly is bothering him. Driven by another of those inarticulate impulses, he pulled himself up onto the arm of the divan on his elbow. He leaned towards Combeferre and said “Er…”

Combeferre started and turned towards him. “Yes?” he said, pushing his spectacles farther up the bridge of his nose.

“I, ah, I don’t mean to pry,” Prouvaire said diffidently, “and you don’t---I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that really is fine, it’s your business, but it is only, you know, you looked unhappy, so I thought, I don’t know, maybe, is there anything I can do? To help, or make you feel better---” He cut himself off there, knowing he was babbling. He felt his face grow warm as Combeferre’s assumed an expression he had not seen before, a curious softness of the eyes accompanied by a faint, gentle curving of the mouth. Suddenly abashed, Prouvaire dropped his head like a child. “Anyway,” he said.

Long, sturdy fingers gently tilted his chin back up, then retreated. Combeferre was regarding him thoughtfully, from a disconcertingly close vantage point. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then hesitated. “It’s nice to have you here,” he said finally. Prouvaire thought, I don’t know what you started out to say, but I’ll wager that wasn’t it.

“It’s nice to be here,” he replied anyway, feeling an obscure need to make conversation. “I like your rooms. I like ransacking your bookshelves and investigating your minerals and moths and such. And---” he felt his breath catch oddly. “I like the company I find here very much. Very much, actually.” He fought the urge to look away again.

Combeferre was looking pensive once more, but he did not appear unhappy. “Well,” he said slowly, “I am honored. Thank you.” He tilted his head a bit, as though Prouvaire were a curious specimen which he was examining. His hair fell softly over his forehead, shining in the lamplight. His eyes behind the lenses of his spectacles were large and luminous and solemn. Prouvaire thought, I could look at him like this forever. Without even thinking about it, he leaned forward and kissed him. For a moment, he thought that Combeferre would pull away, but then his hand came up to cradle the back of Prouvaire’s head as he leaned into the kiss.

They broke for air. Combeferre’s hand gently slid downwards to curl around the back of Prouvaire’s neck, eliciting a shiver from him. He smiled into Combeferre’s eyes and said, “Yes, very much.”

Combeferre dropped his head. His shoulders shook with quiet laughter. “You,” he said. “Me,” Prouvaire agreed happily.

Combeferre looked up again, laughter fading. He took his hand away and sat back in his chair, biting at his thumbnail absently. He said, “Jehan.” Prouvaire blinked. Combeferre was not generally given to the use of nicknames. “Have you thought about this, or are you just moving on impulse?”

Intellectually, Prouvaire supposed it was a fair question, given his tendency to spontaneity and the fact that this was all new ground. Nonetheless, it made him flinch. He said hesitantly, “I…I don’t know…it felt right, and I…” He cast about for the words to explain himself. “I think…I think I have wanted to do that for a long time. Only I didn’t know it, or didn’t understand it. It’s as if…as if something fell into its proper place…” He trailed off, frustrated at his inability to translate his own meaning properly. I am ordinarily very good at articulating myself, he thought, why do my faculties desert me.

Combeferre was frowning slightly; Prouvaire interpreted the expression as disapproval, and was taken aback by the stab of pain it generated. He felt hot tears rise in his eyes in response and curled in on himself a little, turning his face away from Combeferre and twisting his hands together in his lap. He heard Combeferre exhale sharply through his nose and push his chair back a bit, and then he was on the divan beside Prouvaire, laying a hand on his arm. “Jehan,” he said again, gently.

“I’m sorry,” Prouvaire muttered.

“No.” Combeferre embraced him, very carefully, and a little awkwardly. “No, Jehan, don’t…” He broke off and dropped a light kiss on Prouvaire’s temple. Prouvaire leaned his forehead into Combeferre’s shoulder. “Have you thought about this,” he whispered, “is that what you were thinking about earlier, that made you uneasy?”

“Well,” said Combeferre. He did not elaborate, but he tightened his hold on Prouvaire slightly.

Prouvaire took this for an affirmation. He felt an upwelling of tenderness in his soul, almost more than he could bear. Lightheaded with it, he wrapped his own arms around Combeferre’s waist and pressed his face into the soft fabric of his loosely tied cravat. He felt Combeferre bring one hand up to pet his hair, then push his collar down to stroke the back of his neck, feather-light. The sensation sent another shiver down Prouvaire’s spine and he turned his head slightly to press his lips against the side of Combeferre’s throat. He was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath, and, encouraged by this, pulled back a bit so that he could hook one arm around Combeferre’s neck and kiss his mouth again.

Combeferre matched his enthusiasm, pulling Prouvaire as close as he could; in fact, he pulled him in a little too tightly, causing Prouvaire to overbalance and knock Combeferre over onto his back, falling atop him in an ungraceful tangle. Both lay startled for a moment, then they began to laugh. Prouvaire’s left arm was pinned between Combeferre and the divan. They were pressed so tightly together that Prouvaire could feel Combeferre’s every breath, the shaking of his laughter, the hard edge of his hipbone under Prouvaire’s own. He swallowed and raised his free hand to softly run a single fingertip along the smooth curve of Combeferre’s cheekbone, to trace the delicate outline of his mouth. Combeferre looked up at him earnestly. He turned his head a little to kiss Prouvaire’s fingers, then smiled warmly at him. Prouvaire’s breath caught almost painfully in his throat. He thought, You are the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen or will see.

Later, they lay in bed together, Prouvaire’s head resting on Combeferre’s shoulder. Idly, he traced small circles on Combeferre’s arm with a fingertip, watching the shadow on the wall echo his movement. He wondered lazily whether such a state of perfect contentment could be considered an example of the sublime. There was nothing grand or crashing or dramatic about it, but his whole being seemed to be quietly vibrating with a subtle and pervasive joy that he could not recall ever experiencing before. His soul was brimming with Combeferre like a glass of water filled to the absolute edge, to the point where one more drop would send the rest pouring out in a torrent. Prouvaire let his hand rest on Combeferre’s bicep. He half-shut his eyes, breathing slowly to try and contain himself.

Combeferre, holding Prouvaire close, pressed his cheek against the top of his head. This was the last drop needed to cause an overflow. Prouvaire flopped over onto his stomach and furiously pressed his lips against Combeferre’s, burrowing one hand under his head and gripping his shoulder with the other. “You have entirely too much energy,” Combeferre informed him when they broke off. His eyes seemed wider than usual now that his spectacles lay on the table by the bed, rather than sitting on his nose. Probably they were having to work harder to see, Prouvaire thought. He rather liked the effect of surprised guilelessness it created. “I have precisely the necessary amount of energy, actually,” he said.

“Didn’t you burn any off just now?”

“No,” Prouvaire lied. He was rather tired now that he thought about it, but he didn’t want to go to sleep. He wanted to stay awake so he could look at and talk to and touch Combeferre.

Combeferre chuckled. “You,” he said fondly. Then, “Oh…it occurs to me. It’s rather a cold night---let me fetch a couple of nightshirts before…”

“No nightshirts,” Prouvaire stated firmly, depositing a kiss on Combeferre’s bare chest.

“You are impossible.” Combeferre pulled Prouvaire down next to him. “Lie quietly for a bit, won’t you? I’m tired, even if you are not.”

“Oh very well,” Prouvaire said, draping himself half over top of Combeferre and pressing his face into his shoulder. Combeferre turned his head and lightly kissed Prouvaire’s forehead.

“Good night,” he said.

Good, thought Prouvaire, beginning to relax into drowsiness, was not quite sufficient a descriptor. Marvelous might do better, or lovely, or enchanting, or…and before he could continue listing preferable adjectives, he was asleep.

#les mis #fan fiction #my fic #barricade day #no sads here #just fluff #combeferre #jean prouvaire #combeferre x prouvaire #it is SFW btw #s/o to the approximately 2 other people who ship this #les miserables

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