#might go on ao3 at some point once i've tidied it up

[once-in-a-blue-moon-rising]

So, I'm really enjoying my Hannibal obsession, but a big downside is that it makes it really hard to sleep. Tonight, I couldn't stop shaking, so instead of disturbing my partner, I got up and wrote down the story in my head.

Warnings: violence, mentions of death/murder, nudity, implied sex, extremely inappropriate psychiatrist-patient relationships

(PS. I am only on episode 2.1, so no spoilers past that point please and thank you)

They were close. Close enough for Hannibal to taste the trepidation on Will’s skin, to see the flutter of his pulse in his throat. To watch as he leaned even closer, head tilting to the side.

Their foreheads touched.

‘I’m not Alana Bloom, Will’, Hannibal said. His palm was resting on Will’s cheek, the hairs from Will’s beard prickling his skin.

‘I know who you are’, Will replied. He didn’t try to move closer, nor did he pull back.

‘And do you know who you are?’

‘Yes.’

A hair’s breadth closer, lips slightly parted. The tip of Will’s nose rested warm and soft against Hannibal’s cheek. He could smell him – his skin, his toothpaste, his excitement, shot through with fear. Hannibal swallowed, and chose his next words carefully.

‘Then why?’

‘Why?’ Will asked. One of his hands moved to cup Hannibal’s cheek too, and where he’d expected a tremor, there was steadiness. He listened to Will take a breath. ‘Why do I want to kissyou, if I don’t think you’re Dr Bloom?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because you’re very kissable.’

Hannibal drew back, a little flicker of annoyance sparking at the edge of his subconscious. He resented the conflation, even though he had invited it.

‘Don’t lie to me, Will’, he said, and when he tried to pull his head back further, Will’s fingers tightened, getting a grip on the hair at the base of his skull. ‘And don’t insult me.’

Another tightening of those fingers and Hannibal, intrigued, let himself be caught. He let Will rest their foreheads back together, slot their noses into place; let his mouth hover, millimetres away from Will’s. He could feel his beard again – this time not only in his palm, but against his lips.

Will was silent for so long that anyone with less knowledge of Will’s psychology might have thought the question ignored, forgotten. The room around them billowed silence, and Hannibal focused on the rhythm of Will’s breathing, and the ticking of his own watch.

‘It’s the only thing I can think to do’, Will said, eventually, and the desperation in his voice was so affecting that Hannibal allowed him a momentary lapse of control, let Will capture his top lip between his own. ‘The only possible way I can –’

‘Possess me? Consume me?’

Another moment, another taste – teeth and tongues and discordant, beautiful chaos, the tang of blood on his lips.

‘My psychiatrist believes I’m obsessed with you’, Hannibal said, drawing back, this time resisting Will’s efforts to keep him close. Will was breathing hard, and the fear which had coloured his scent before had vanished. His mouth was red, and his tongue darted out to taste the blood on his lower lip.

‘What does my psychiatrist think?’

‘I think you’re fascinated by me, certainly. You’re attracted to me despite knowing that you shouldn’t be. Some might say that constituted obsession.’

Will climbed fully into Hannibal’s chair now, crowding him, made bold by the previous successful experiments. And Hannibal had no reason to deny him, not when he could sink his teeth into him, taste him without extinguishing him. He could feel Will’s blood pounding, put his fingers up against the hollow of his throat and his tongue on his collarbone, and feel him arch and whine, just barely, the first flicker of a plead.

‘Tell me what you want’, he heard himself say. If Will had wanted to devour him piece by living piece, he would have agreed, lain unprotesting on his own examining couch, watching those two hands stain red.

Will was dazed, but he heard, processing the words as Hannibal bit down on the lobe of his ear.

‘I want you to show me’, he said. ‘How you’d do it.’

‘How I’d kill you?’

Will clambered off the chair and, panting, offered his hand. Hannibal took it, and stood.

‘You’re not the only one who gets curious’, Will murmured.

His eyes were bright and his hands were steady, unknotting Hannibal’s tie, assaulting the buttons on his waistcoat. He was being aggressive, but not enough to damage the garments. A familiar flare of excitement, tinged with something rarer, flashed through him. He pressed a hand against his trouser pocket, feeling for a handle.

‘You’re an interesting prospect’, Hannibal told him, backing him slowly towards the back wall of the office. Will’s hands stilled. ‘I don’t need to work to get close to you. That makes things considerably easier.’

Will’s back hit the wall, and Hannibal, heart thundering now, advanced until they were almost pressed together.

‘Strangulation is a particularly effective way of rendering a person unconscious’, he said, his left hand moving to press against Will’s windpipe – not hard enough, not really, but enough to make him gasp, to make a fresh flicker of fear kindle in his eyes.

‘And what about –’

‘I’ve already disarmed you’, Hannibal said, the gun from Will’s holster already in his hand, now dropped and kicked out of harm’s way. ‘You, unfortunately, cannot say the same.’

A flash of silver and Will’s right hand was pinned to the wall by the cuff of his shirtsleeve and the knife. Hannibal had his left securely contained in his own right hand, and he increased the pressure on Will’s throat, just a fraction. Will groaned, and that same thrill flared.

‘I assume in reality’, Will said, struggling to speak. ‘In reality that knife goes through my palm.’

‘Naturally.’

‘And then?’

Hannibal released him.

‘You pass out. I carry you downstairs and take you home.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t keep good knives at the office.’

Will smiled weakly, and Hannibal let him reorient himself, stowed the folding knife back in his pocket, and straightened his waistcoat as best he could. The tie, it seemed, had been discarded over the back of the chair, and he was curious enough as to where this was going not to fetch it immediately.

‘Do you want to know the rest?’

Will nodded.

‘I’ll spare you the journey, but you wake up, undressed, tethered to my worktop.’

He watched Will finger the bottom edge of his shirt and, understanding without needing to be asked, took two steps back into his space and undid every button, eyes locked on Will’s, not moving his gaze to push both shirt and jacket to the floor, nor to turn his hands to the buttons of his trousers.

‘Hannibal, I –’

‘I know.’

He hoisted Will, completely nude, into his arms, and laid him out on his couch. He could see the rhythm of his heart faintly against his ribs, saw him shiver even as his skin flushed and eyes darkened.

He ran a single finger from throat to sternum, to navel, finally allowing himself to look, to feast upon Will Graham, to contemplate him as the work of art he should, rightfully, have become shortly after they met. He was far too alluring, far too dangerous, and now, far too beautiful. Hannibal swallowed.

‘I never settled on a final decision’, he said, allowing Will a moment of eye contact. ‘Perhaps that’s why you’re still alive.’

‘No it’s not.’

Hannibal smiled quietly, turning his gaze back to Will’s flesh.

‘Perhaps not. Dismemberment always appealed, although I’d have needed to take you somewhere more isolated for that. The neighbours, you know.’

Heartrate increasing again, he took one of Will’s hands in his own, and ran his lips and nose up from wrist to shoulder, following the veins.

‘Open heart surgery would have posed similar problems’, he said, and now he pressed his cheek to Will’s chest, kneeling beside the couch, Will’s fingers curling into his hair. ‘But I think my favourite option – the most poetic – was drowning.’

Will laughed – or rather, he huffed out a breath of air that Hannibal felt against his scalp, and he watched his stomach rise and fall with it.

‘Don’t tell me’, he said, and Hannibal shifted his head so that he could look into Will’s face as he formulated his assumption. ‘The blood of all my supposed victims?’

Hannibal blinked. Then, slowly, he climbed onto the couch, pinning Will in place, letting the feeling of an impending kill vibrate through him, even as the only resistance Will offered was to arch into his body and stare, defiant.

‘No’, he said. ‘Mine.’

[damienthepious]

did you know that it's a full moon tonight? because that fact has shaped ALL my writing progress today.

i fucking hate this new editor by the way. i can BARELY fucking post fic at all anymore and it's fucking banishing me to the phantom zone. go read my fic on ao3 instead im begging you.

raised by wolves

[ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationships: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Sir Damien, Lord Arum, The Keep

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Lizard Kissin' Tuesday, Established Relationship, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Werewolf!Rilla specifically, Secrets, (look i think rilla deserves to have some angsst explored for once), (uhhhh god there have GOT to be more tags uhh. i don't know i'll add more later), (In later chapters there will be), Implied/Referenced Harm to Children, Implied/Referenced Violence, Mild Injury

Summary: Rilla is keeping secrets.

Notes: This didn't exist this morning and now i've got a new fucking multichapter to worry about jesus fuck. hopefully (LMAO) this one won't actually be that long? if it goes according to.. plan???? yeah. right. fine. okayfine.

~

Rilla has always liked straight lines. Consistent rules. Categories, into which data points will neatly fall.

This might, possibly, have something to do with all the categories she falls between the cracks of, herself. Or maybe she was always going to be like this. Who knows? She doesn't exactly have a control group to check with. Life doesn't work like that; neat and tidy like her experiments. Life is messy. Her life, in particular, is messy. But, hey, at least it's messy mostly on a predictable cycle. Mostly.

Rilla packs her usual bag, false bottom carefully in place with her new tinctures alongside the old standbys. She pulls her hair out of her face and into a braid, and picks her way down to the greenhouse to say her goodbyes.

A newer wrinkle in the routine: saying her see-you-in-a-couple-days, I-promise-I'll-be-safe, try-to-remember-that-I-love-yous in the Keep, now, and not in her own hut. Saying them to Arum, too.

Arum hasn't questioned her absences, yet, because she goes off on her own all the time anyway, and because he never really seems to question her about leaving the Keep. She can tell that he doesn't want to remind her of being kept here, and... that isn't necessary, really, but it's sweet, in a way.

He and Damien can keep each other company while she's gone, too. Which is nice. Damien doesn't have to be quite so lonely when she's gone, anymore (and Arum doesn't have to be lonely at all, if she can help it).

She kisses Damien deep, distracted by the way his skin smells, this close to the moon, and when she pulls back Arum nuzzles his snout into her neck in a way that makes her want to growl, though she manages to suppress the urge into just a shudder as she wraps an arm around him and squeezes. No time for fun, just now, unfortunately. She kisses Arum's cheek, light and sweet to make him scowl, and then she peels herself away with a casual wave.

The Keep's portal drops her in the front room of her hut, receding back into the wide planter to the left of the hearth with a gentle farewell warble from the Keep (or at least... what she assumes is a gentle farewell warble), and Rilla grabs another one or two things to stuff into her pack before she steps out of the hut, locks up, and marches into the jungle.

Damien thinks that her monthly disappearances have to do with harvesting rare medicinal plants with very particular blooming cycles, which is... partly true. There are flowers and herbs to be harvested during the day, when she can. She doesn't like being less than honest with Damien, but she's been less than honest with every single person she's ever known since her parents were Exiled. And- it's a medical condition. Sort of. She's allowed to keep a medical condition private if she wants to.

Arum...

Arum complicates things. He's good at that.

Arum complicates her excuses for not telling Damien, specifically. Because if Damien can, in fact, put aside his animosities and find room in his heart for a monster...

(Maybe she could have told him ages ago.)

(Or maybe not. Maybe it would have been too much, before. Maybe he would have been terrified. Maybe he would have felt betrayed. Maybe he would have told the Crown. Maybe he would have-)

No one knows about the second hut, the same way no one knows about her condition. Though... "hut" is generous. Her home is a hut, cozy and carefully cluttered and warm and welcoming. This building is more of a shack, really. It's a fair hike from the hut, but she can get there before dusk with time to spare, which is pretty much the point. Technically speaking, she could just overnight here and then come back home during the day, if she really pushed it, but that would be a lot harder to explain than just saying that she needs to travel to a distant grove for botanical purposes.

It looks abandoned and ramshackle, but the door and the lock are sturdy, and Rilla has the key.

Sturdy, reinforced walls, a wooden locking bar to make certain that nothing gets in and out, no windows. Bare floors, excepting a chair and a desk in one corner for a little bit of reading or writing during the day, and a chest to keep her things in. Mostly open space, where Rilla spreads out the blankets she brought, right in front of the metal hoops for the chains.

She cut her timing a little close today, mostly because she wanted to actually enjoy her morning with Damien and Arum. She sighs, stretches, and unpacks her extra clothes into the chest so she can get to the false bottom of her pack and pull out her medicine.

First night. She'll go with her standby tincture, this time. She has a new experimental blend she wants to try, but she'd rather save it for tomorrow, the full moon, and see how it affects her on the day that hits her with the most severe symptoms. This one, she at least knows that it'll keep her mostly placid.

She sighs, uncorks the vial and slams it back like a shot, wrinkling her nose at the taste.

The medicine makes her memory a bit... muddy? But even before she developed this particular treatment regimen, she couldn't remember much about what happened, what she would do on the nights immediately surrounding the full moon.

She does know that she hates it here. Hates the chains, hates the wood against her claws, hates the drowsiness from the medicine. Hates being alone.

She packs her kit back up. She undresses to her underclothes, then stows her dress and shoes and the tinctures into the chest before she closes it with a click.

She goes to sit on the blankets on the floor, then, fixing the harness around her neck and chest and adjusting it to the marked positions. Rilla has been alone in one way or another since her parents left, she reminds herself as she settles in to wait, her skin already prickling and her eyes adjusting far too quickly to the dark.

The wolf will just have to cope.

[harrietvane]

do you mind talking about why you dislike Love Actually and Richard Curtis's romcoms? I've seen you mention it in some of your tags and I'd love to hear your thoughts :)

Long post, so scroll now, ye who care not.

OK, so like better voices than mine have articulated Why Love Actually Sucks Balls, but you were kind enough to ask for my view, so strap in I’m gonna talk about Jane Eyre, and the 1990’s Fran Drescher sitcom The Nanny also. It’s coming up on western civilisations’ holiday season, so why not, it’s a good time to tell this movie to choke, because it’s about to be repeatedly thrust upon us once again. (Disclaimer: I acknowledge Richard Curtis is responsible for Blackadder and Vicar of Dibley, so whatever else, we’re still cool on that basis. But I have spite and to spare, so there’s plenty to go around).

My main beef is actually the context. Technically, if all of the below bullshit was in an offbeat movie from any other movie market (I’m thinking maybe a French, or Spanish movie from the 90′s boom, Almodovar style?), the focus would probably be a black humour take on ‘Lord What Fools These Mortals Be!’, sort of look at the inherent ridiculousness of mankind, and how we get in our own way, blah blah, might have been cute. I’d buy that. This movie? A british movie for the american market? It’s sold with a big holiday sticker on it saying ‘ROMANCE’, and specifically ‘ADORABLE ASPIRATIONAL ROMANCE THAT YOU SHOULD ADORE AND ASPIRE TO’. Also the context *inside* the movie itself (through a narration voiceover no less) is that all of these narratives is somehow proof that ‘Love, Actually is all around’, and specifically in a good, wholesome, happy way, overall at least. These stories are redeeming, even if they’re not all happy, they’re Good™ or whatever. The context outside the movie is the same: british TV advertising, hard copy packaging, holiday specials, outdoor gala screenings: they all say over and over: THIS IS SQUISHY HOT PINK NEON LOVE, wholesome, healing, and healthy. You should want this, aspire to this, think this is the cat’s pyjamas! It’s a wide and varied look at the beautiful power of love from all angles, comic, tragic, the lot. 

Is it fuck. The ‘positive’ romance stories range from Stage-5 Creeper to Crotch Puppet Afterthought, the ‘melancholy’, thwarted romance stories seem to say ‘if you’re a woman who’s not readily/immediately bangable to your allocated straight dude, romance is over for you I’m afraid’. Let’s recap, shall we:

Much has already been said about Andrew Lincoln’s character BLANTANTLY SHARKING ON HIS BEST MATE’S WIFE being uhhh, less than fresh. I don’t even feel like I need to justify this one, it’s so over-the-top. The main point is that movie itself maintains this as a tragic, swoony, thwarted, heart-string-tugging missed connection, rather than The Worst Friend Ever (meaning: it assumes we’ll be 100% onboard with Keira Knightley skipping secretly away from Chiwetel Eijiofor to grant his best mate one treasured kiss, as opposed to saying ‘what the FUCK Mark, why are you telling me this, this is super inappropriate?? and my only wedding video is just you zooming in on my face? Pls get help’.

We all love National Treasure Colin Firth and all, but like is Love, Actually fixating on a woman who literally can’t speak to you? Has said nothing understandable to you? About whose own life you’ve never yet, and could never have asked about? Whose main interactions with you have been to wordlessly clean your room, bring you food, and tidy it away after? Your ideal woman, who you meet immediately following a break up, is one who silently meets all your domestic needs, while making zero emotional or intellectual demands on you whatsoever? WOW, SHOCKER. (Oh but it’s cute or whatever, they have him propose, and there’s a mix up when her sister appears, but she’s Ugly™, so it’s funny that the sister is not getting romance. I mean, how could she, an uggo?? Classic joke. Good times.)

The Prime Minster and his tea lady: more on Curtis’ Domestic Servitude Kink below, whoo boy.

Laura Linney would really really like to sleep with Rodrigo Santoro, and god bless her who wouldn’t, but she is tragically unable to, because she has family commitments as being the sister – not even fulltime carer, just RELATED TO -  a brother living with disability. Sorry folks, romance is OFF THE CARDS, FOREVER for Laura here. How can she??? That’s the nature of love, actually. Can you have sex right now this moment? No? Whelp, sorry, thanks for playing, back to the Tragic Assisted Living facility for you. Gosh it’s unfortunate that’s a truth universally acknowledged that any whiff of disability = no romance for you ever. (Don’t start me on 4 Weddings* [edit: *it’s totally Notting Hill, not 4 Weddings, thank] and how that husband is like The Best because he continues to love his wife even though her legs don’t work. What a champ, honestly, do they have an award for that?) I have to stop now before I get sarcasm poisoning, but my eyes will continue to roll.

How could I say anything bad about the Liam Neeson widower and his adorable lovestruck son storyine? Lol, I’m gonna. Have you seen the Buffy episode The Zeppo? Xander is convinced the only way girls (as a concept, not in the specific) will like him enough to sleep with him is if he has A Thing. The Thing is posited as ‘being cool’ by having an object or skill that alone will be the magic bullet to romance. Musical instrument prowess is considered, and he ends up just getting a car to be his Thing. This just seems like a redux of that logic. This kid could get some genuine direction from the movie to get to know this girl, learn her interests and share his, see if she likes him as a person by being A PERSON, but the narrative just backs away from that and eventually DOES just say ‘play the drums in the show, she’ll like you’ and that’s …it. But it’s cool, teenagers don’t learn key interpersonal dynamics at this age or anything, she kisses him for some reason, whatever. (Bonus points for gifting his dad with a literal supermodel as a punchline, after making that an actual joke earlier about the shallow nature of attraction, and love is about filling a one-sided need.)

I could go on, but I have very little to say about Freeman falling for a girl whose tits he’s been holding for a week, the no-homo pop star Nighy plot, or the guy that goes and has sex in Wisconsin with Bond Girls, and can’t be bothered, which leads me to…

Richard Curtis’ Domestic Servitude Kink. Must I kinkshame Richard Curtis in his own home?? Nope, I’m kinkshaming him AT WORK in his narratives, surrounded by his nubile, pliant, adorable female employee characters. Oh Mr Curtis, I seem to have dropped a pencil!

OK, so like a M/F Domestic Servitude romance is an extremely old trope, and extremely common, and I’m not here to tear that up, because done well it’s amazing, lot of petrol in that King Cophetua narrative tank. I’m a fan. The most famous in-context historical example being Jane Eyre, for instance: he’s her boss, she’s his paid subordinate, they’re both 100% aware of that. It’s a great way to explore the real-life class and power dynamics of these 2 train wrecks of human beings, and they vomit their ridiculous drama llama feelings all over a 600 page novel. Super fun, they’re both awful humans, I love them. Mid-century you might have The Sound of Music, and in more modern times you get 1990s sitcom The Nanny, both extremely well-developed romances involving paid employees, and part of their value is that the shows KNOW THIS. They’re aware it’s the basis for their dynamic, that they have to directly play with that, and develop beyond to go anywhere. Watching Fran Fine in her runway-fresh Moschino minidresses jump on Maxwell Sheffield’s desk for the 800th time making him super uncomfortable (and not a little turned on) is always such a treat. It’s right out there on the label. The problem with Love, Actually, is Curtis doesn’t want to admit that naughty secretary seems to be a cornerstone of what gets him going, romantic-stylez. 

One (1) time in the movie would be ‘sure, why not’. Literally the highest political office in the land, making overtures to the woman who brings him tea, i guess might be a bit off, but let’s say it’s done well, and maybe Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon’s charisma gets us over the line (his behaviour is cute because her last man didn’t like her body, but the prime minister DOES like her body! so it’s cute!). Whatever, seen worse. Two (2) times however is making a point, and Colin Firth is driving his silent portuguese maid home - not a french maid but so close! - and deciding he’d like her to bring him tea and clean his toilet for as long as they both shall live, and that also seems to be her greatest joy. Ah, l’amour. OK, I guess you like the thing, everyone has a thing, but at least you’re done now. Wait, you mean there’s a third (3rd) one? Everyone’s Fave Alan Rickman drives the plot of his own marriage’s tragic romance because he’s having stiffening feelings about his own Naughty Secretary halloween costume, after all. All the beautiful speeches about Joni Mitchell give Thompson some nice things to do, but it still assumes the Nature of Romance is to want to plough the help. A man can’t help it! It’s how romantic attraction works! Once would be whatever. Three times and there’s a tag on Ao3 for that, so please just scratch that itch and stop selling it to me in a heartwarming christmas movie as the Universal Nature Of Romance, so varied, so vast, the full spectrum! Just 2 hours to tell a story: but 3 whole narratives and 7 actors devoted to the variants on the naughty maid story. My point is be upfront about it and I’d be all for it - pretend it’s not A Thing You’re Doing and my creep-meter goes ping. Steven Shainberg’s ‘Secretary’ has a scene where the boss literally puts a saddle on his employee, and I find it to be one of the most genuinely moving romances I’ve ever seen. Love Actually makes me feel like Curtis is sending me a ‘u up?’ late night text about his secretary fantasy.

Anyway, I fucking hate this film, and not necessarily because of the content, but because of the context. The movie tells me to love it as aspirational romance. My culture tells me to love it as aspirational romance. Everyone tells me to love it as a varied and full exploration of reasons to get up in the morning, because it’s an aspirational romance. It makes me want to claw my own face off.