#my personal favourite is when sudden strong emotions/thoughts are transmitted

[dragons-in-spaceee]

Okay pls I need opinions on what ghost drifting is like - are fully formed thoughts shared? Sentences? Images? Just flashes of abstract ideas or emotions? Can it be controlled? Are only strong thoughts and feelings transmitted? Or does it occur randomly? I’ve read many versions in fics but I need Thoughts on this

[acidblackpirate]

A Bad Commencement 6 (~ final)

Hyde switched off the light and turned to his side.

It was a weird feeling, lying in the dark with another person so close to himself. He could sense the warmth of his body, hear his soft breathing, and could make out yasu's face in the light falling in from the window. The night outside never really got dark, Hyde thought, there was always a little bit of light left. He wondered if that meant something.

Yasu had stayed for the entire day.

They had cooked together and then put on a movie. Afterwards they had skipped through the TV program lazily and yasu had laughed at the worst kind of comedy shows. His laughter sounded lovely.

They had not talked a lot, though. Not about personal things at least. They had talked about what shows they liked and about their favourite musicians. Not about work or their past or the people they had left behind over the years. They had not talked about any of the things that made them sad.

Yasu had offered to stay the night himself.

Now he was in bed next to him, dressed in one of Hyde's pyjamas, and returning his gaze with eyes that looked even darker in the dim light.

Hyde had had sex in this bed before, but he had always slept in it alone.

In the silence of the sheets it felt like he was letting yasu in on a personal space he had never shared before. He was showing him something that no one else had seen so far.

In spite of the dimness he could see yasu licking his lips now and heard the soft, wet smack it caused.

Hyde hadn't touched him since morning.

The breath he took in sounded louder in the quiet room than it would have during the day.

It was difficult for him to keep his hands off yasu, because his mere presence seemed to get him excited. Since their very first meeting it had been like that, but it was exactly this which had caused them such a bad start. They should have talked more to begin with. If yasu had talked about his band – if Hyde had stopped to listen – he would have known who he was and asked him out for dinner instead of trying to trick him. They would have met and talked, and maybe he wouldn't have felt angry, and maybe he wouldn't have felt sad, and maybe he wouldn't have felt so lonely.

Carefully he extended his hand, running it over yasu's waist. With his fingers he drew small circles on the fabric of his pyjamas, going down and leaving the same invisible traces on his thigh. He was taking his time, making the touch feel playful instead of sexual.

“Is that okay?”, he asked quietly.

“It's been a long time, since...”

Yasu's voice broke off as he swallowed.

“Since the last time I did this.”

“For me, too”, Hyde whispered back.

He hadn't been gentle with anyone in a long time. He hadn't touched anyone just to know their body in a long time. He hadn't wanted to fall asleep next to someone afterwards in a long time.

Hesitantly he leaned in to kiss yasu.

Their lips met quietly and yasu's mouth felt very warm. He tasted clean like toothpaste and water on a stormy day. As he kept kissing him he felt the corner of his lips curl upwards into a hidden smile, that could not be seen but only tasted.

He pulled back a little, not sure how things should go on without rushing them.

“Hideto”, yasu murmured against his cheek and Hyde's stomach took a weird little leap.

He had not felt like this since he was a boy. Young, in love for the first time, and still so confused. He remembered all those summers of insecurity, the first guy he had liked, and the first time he had kissed a man, how nervous he had been and how excited. He had not felt like this since when he was still Hideto.

With a pleased sigh he sat up and pulled his shirt over his head, then he rolled over, getting on top of yasu. He wanted to give him the chance to explore his body, wanted to touch every bit of him in return.

Obviously yasu felt the same, because he reached up immediately, running his hands over Hyde's back and then down his sides. His fingers crawled up his chest against, lingering here and there as if feeling for uneven skin, the shape of his rips underneath or trying to sense his heartbeat.

The touch felt warm and tickling on his body and Hyde wished he could just melt into the sensation. He hadn't noticed how much he had craved a gentle touch.

Both of them hadn't been good with words to begin with. Their relationship had been very physical from their first meeting onwards, because they couldn't transmit their feelings properly. Pain had been used for pain, and right now a touch seemed the only way to tell him what the day had meant to him. It had been a good day.

Carefully he bend down to kiss yasu once more.

His lips parted welcoming for him, his hands still fluttering across his chest like curious birds.

This time it was Hyde smiling into the kiss.

He had his elbows propped up to each side of yasu's head and he was cupping his face protectively with his hands, running his thumbs across his temples in small strokes.

The younger vocalist looked up to him, his face all shadows and curves – his strong cheekbones, his full lips, the round shape of his nose.

He returned his gaze openly and Hyde could see something behind his eyes that he hadn't really noticed before. Yasu wasn't just like the man he was now, the one he wanted to mistreat and punish for his own mistakes. In his happy smiles and hopeful moments he was also like the boy Hyde used to be, the one who wasn't broken yet. And he wanted to be gentle with that boy, wanted to protect those parts of yasu that were still intact.

��I want to sleep with you”, Hyde confessed quietly.

And he meant everything by that. He meant sex, and he meant cuddling afterwards, and he meant falling asleep next to each other, and waking up to see yasu's face.

“Normally I'm more of the >chain me up and make me die< type, but this actually feels nice, too”, yasu grinned cheekily, with a hint of cynicism in his voice.

“I have no intention of killing you”, Hyde returned, surprised himself by how light he could still sound. “But I still keep chains in my bedside table just in case, so you better don't snore.”

Yasu's body vibrated underneath him with a low chuckle and his smile flashed on. Even in the dark it was so bright it stung somewhere in Hyde's chest. For a moment he looked so breathtaking that he just wanted to freeze that expression on his face, because he knew that it would fade away in a few seconds. His flash-light smile never lasted long.

Out of sudden affection he placed a kiss on the top of his nose and pulled back again.

This time yasu's smile lasted a little while longer.

Sitting up Hyde brushed over the hemline of the shirt yasu was wearing, pushing it up slowly, all the way up across his chest. Then he bend forward again, kissing his collarbone and down his chest. At the height of his nipples he paused, covering the left one with his lips, sucking lightly and feeling it turn harder under his tongue.

Yasu's chest heaved with a grave breath underneath him, and his hands reached up to run through Hyde's hair. But he wasn't grabbing the strands, was not pulling or guiding, just gentle and begging for affection.

Hyde went down further, kissing his way down to his bellybutton, circling it with his tongue, and then continuing to caress his abdomen with his mouth until yasu sucked in his breath shakily.

His skin was almost tasteless but warm and he hooked his fingers under the waistline of his pants, pulling them down without haste. He slipped them over his angles, taking hold of yasu's knee to lift his leg. Still hungry he placed kisses on the inside of his thigh, rubbing his nose against the sensitive flesh. He wanted to inhale him, wanted to lick something of the essence that was all yasu off his body.

Teasingly he ran his thumb along the downside of yasu's hard dick, sensing the shivers he caused him and hearing his quiet moan.

“Can I put it in?”, he exhaled into the dark. “I've been a little rough on you this morning, so we can switch, if you want to.”

He felt yasu's fumbling hands on his shoulders, his arms, pulling him back up.

He slid in between his legs, feeling caged in by warmth and body heat.

“No, I love to feel you inside”, yasu whispered back and Hyde felt an almost painful throbbing down his own pants.

Yasu sounded so sexy when he spoke softly, and when he didn't sound sad.

“But please be gentle anyway”, he added.

Hyde pulled back from his embrace a little, stripping off the last of his clothing and reaching out to the table next to his bed, where he had put back the lube. He fumbled for it, the dimness making it impossible to see anything that wasn't up close. But finally he sensed it anyway and managed to lube up his fingers, before settling back between yasu's legs.

His hand went down the back of his thighs, his slippery fingertips rubbing against his entrance. He could tell that the rim felt a bit swollen still, but his first finger went in easily thanks to the lube. With a very slow pace he started fingering him, adding a second one soon as he slid in and out.

Yasu was pressing up his hips against him, moaning into the sheets. Hyde felt like night time muffled his sounds, or maybe it was just the fact that they weren't meant for him. It was the sound of a raw emotion that just didn't care who was listening.

After a while he retreated and leaned down to yasu.

He was propped up on his arms, yasu's legs still closing around him.

The other vocalist did not protest as he brought himself into position, yasu's voice in the quiet room making him impatient and filling him up with the need to get even closer to him.

Very carefully he guided his dick while he slipped into him, entering him centimetre by centimetre, enjoying the heat that was squeezing him so tightly.

His own pleased moan mixed with yasu's and slowly he started moving his hips.

He wasn't really thrusting into him, it was just an intimate sliding in and out and the entangling of breaths. The sensation was not hot and violent, but warm and floating.

Underneath he felt yasu shiver and tremble as he hit his sweet spot, his body instinctively pressing closer against him.

“Do you feel good?”, Hyde mumbled breathlessly.

“Yes, so good, you make me feel so good”, yasu returned, trembling once again.

He had his face turned to his side, his lips exhaling the words into the pillows like a secret confession.

Still moving against him Hyde used his right hand to cup yasu's cheek and turn his head lightly.

He was meeting with a little resistance as if yasu felt uncomfortable looking at him directly. So far they had always tried to not see each other desperately.

“Yasunori, look at me”, Hyde whispered and now yasu did turn his face.

They were so close to each other that their foreheads were almost touching and for a moment Hyde almost got lost in his dark, brown eyes.

He pushed his hips forward again and yasu gasped for air.

Hyde watched him closely, his full lips that stood slightly apart and were trembling almost unnoticeable. The lines of his face and strands of hair falling into it. The dark eyes that shone somehow wet and were searching his gaze now without being shy.

And he fell in love with yasu.

Not in a romantic way, and not in a way that had anything to do with his personality, neither his smile nor his sadness. Maybe that would come later on. He fell in love with his expressions like one fell in love with a beautiful sunset or the swishing sound of the sea.

Yasu's hand slid down in the space between their bodies now, but Hyde let go of his cheek and caught his wrist, putting it back onto the blankets gently.

“Hush, let me take care of you”, he winked, sounding a little hoarse already.

While he kept up the motions of his hips, he reached down himself, closing his hand around yasu's erection. It felt hot and pulsing in his grip and twitched a little as he started stroking him.

The moans of the other vocalist grew even louder and his eyelids began to flutter shut now and then, but every few seconds he still met Hyde's gaze. He even reached up now, wrapping his arms around him as well as his legs, his fingers digging into the skin of his back without hurting him. He was just holding on to him, looking up into his face to let him know he was with him.

Hyde felt the heat of yasu's inside, felt the gliding strokes as he moved in and out, but his focus was on his face, the way he squeezed his eyes when he moaned and the lines showing around his mouth when his lips went wide with pleasure.

For a moment he knew that they were doing this together, and he wasn't just having sex, he was having sex with another person, and just for a little while he did not feel lonely at all.

The thought made him clench yasu's dick a little tighter and he heard his surprised outcry, felt him spill his cum into his hand hotly.

His body trembled and his fingers dug into Hyde's back more violently, and he threw back his head and closed his eyes and for a few gasps his voice went really loud and he clenched down on him so tightly.

Hyde wanted to pull back, but it was too late, and relief washed over him and waves of white heat ran through his body as orgasm hit him only blinks after yasu came.

Breathing heavily he rolled to his side, lying on his back and staring into the dark of the room while trying to calm down.

“I'm sorry”, he apologized honestly.

He could still sense yasu's heat resonating next to him and the usual disgust and wish to get away he normally felt after sex hadn't set in yet. He thought it was nice to feel someone else trying to catch their breath next to him and to sense his skin where their arms brushed against each other.

“It's okay. I mean, we both have regular health test and stuff, right?”, yasu soothed him, but it wasn't quite what Hyde had meant.

Leaving his sperm inside of him felt too intimate too soon. The warm and sticky sensation would probably stay with him for a while, and he wondered if it made yasu feel dirty.

“I meant...”, he started, but yasu cut him short.

“I know, but it's okay, really.”

For a moment they were both very quiet.

Hyde waited for the sad melody to start playing in his head again and for the loneliness to come and find him. But the warm feeling inside his chest stayed and the intense stare of yasu's eyes still lingered on his soul like a fingerprint. Just for a few more minutes he might still feel close to him.

“What now?”, he asked the question he hadn't been sure of if he would dare to speak it.

Not answering immediately yasu grabbed for the blanket and pulled it up across their bodies. Then he nudged Hyde to roll to his side and he wrapped his arm around him from behind.

Hyde hadn't expected to feel so small in his embrace, but he did. He had thought that it was him who wanted to protect the boy inside of yasu, but now he realized that the other one maybe wanted to save him as well. So far he had been sure he was beyond saving already, but suddenly yasu's arms made him doubt it.

“Are we dating now? Or will you leave tomorrow and both of us will be too proud to call?”, he wanted to know.

The thought that it might just be over like it had been over before made him sad. It had been different this time. But maybe it was only a difference born from the sentiment of a single day.

And dating yasu might be even more scary. Being tender was so damn hard. Sitting in the bathtub with him and saying things out loud he had never told anyone was so damn hard. Letting your guard down was frightening, and although he was still feeling peaceful and content right now he could already sense it at the back of his throat. The darkness was stirring, telling him to run, putting hurtful words at the tip of his tongue. Pretending that it had meant nothing was alluring, pretending that he wasn't weak.

“We will wake up together”, yasu said matter-of-factly.

“That's pretty obvious”, Hyde gritted his teeth, almost angry at yasu for not sharing his worries.

Angry again, always angry.

Was yasu really this cold that he didn't think about it at all? Was Hyde really so stupid to believe they had an understanding now just because of eye-contact during sex?

“We will wake up next to each other”, yasu confirmed. “And none of us will get up, put on clothes and steal out of the room before the other one is awake. We will look into each others face in the morning and we won't make up excuses why I have to leave immediately. We will have breakfast together and chat before I go. We will not run.”

And Hyde understood what he meant by it.

Waking up together did not sound like much, but it was actually a tough challenge already. They would have to be brave, although both of them were not. Because the loneliness would not vanish overnight. Hyde could already feel it in his bones again, now that the afterglow started to fade. There would be short and painful talks, there would be hard and angry sex, and there would be tender and hesitant embraces. But they had to take it step by step. There was light and there was darkness, and to find a balance wouldn't be simple.

Waking up together was very easy and it was very hard. But nonetheless is was the best commencement they had had so far.

[arisefairsun]

Can you talk about the pros and the cons of Olivia Hussey's Juliet? She is my favourite Juliet, but I would like to see a more critical review of her portrayal for once!

Ah! I’m really happy that you asked this because I’m hopelessly in love with Franco Zeffirelli’s movie and I could talk about Olivia Hussey’s acting all day long.

The first thing I would like to remark is the context in which the movie was made. In many ways, it is a mirror of the youth movements of the 60s, and the trope of idealism versus violence, dreaming versus fighting, is one of the main characteristics of the movie.The fights are really violent (the opening brawl, for instance, was filmed in a more aggressive way than usual, as it fatally has Capulets and Montagues murdering each other and women screaming with their children in their arms), and it presents Romeo and Juliet’s love as an innocent, harmless force as opposed to the cultural violence that surrounds them. Olivia Hussey underscored how excellently the movie had harmonized with the ideals of her generation. And, indeed, you could say it is an ode to sexual freedom, peace, and the power of youth. You can see that in the way Zeffirelli filmed the bedroom scene, with Juliet lying naked after consummating a marriage she arranged herself.

Zeffirelli seemed to be particularly interested in her character:

The central idea is that of a puppeteer, Destiny, who handles all the characters. They are all puppets on a stage and no one is fully responsible. The whole tragedy is permeated with the idea of fate. There is nothing to do. Juliet is the only valuable opposition to it. 

So he decided to exploit the transgression of Juliet’s acts, and I will always be grateful to him for giving us such a powerful, intrepid Juliet. He was also one of the first directors to cast teenagers to play the lovers. Precisely, physically speaking I consider Olivia to be really suitable for the role. The innocence and tenderness of childhood she conveys wonderfully, but once she gets to express herself you find that her eyes denote such intelligence, her voice such fortitude, that you couldn’t possibly dismiss her as a dumb kid. (To be honest, I can’t fathom how it is possible to distort the play to the point that people think the word “dumb” befits Juliet and Romeo.) She transmits so much expressiveness with those piercing, inquisitive eyes and her loud, firm voice. See how monotonous she sounds when she lies to the Nurse, but how fierce her voice is during the “O bid me leap…” speech in the cell. She is a Juliet that does something else apart from blushing and smiling tenderly—she is also restless, frustrated, even rude in some parts. She doesn’t limit herself to simply reciting her lines in a monotonous tone, but rather she inserts so much depth and energy in every single word that she succeeds in constructing a complex Juliet—Olivia handled the duality of her character really well. Sometimes she cries fearfully on the floor as she implores her parents to listen to her and sometimes she contemptuously yells at her mother that she won’t marry Paris “by Saint Peter’s Church and Peter too.”

To me, Olivia portrayed Juliet as a young girl who is too alive to contain herself—as if the world weren’t big enough for her. One of the things that amazes me about her acting is the way she uses her body to transmit her indefatigable energy. She shows a great command of herself. For instance, I noticed that she spends a huge amount of time running. We find her running the first time we see her, she leaves the scene running after her conversation with her mother, she arrives at the ball running, she comes in and out of her balcony running repeatedly, she arrives in the church running again, and hurriedly crosses herself before running again toward Romeo with her arms wide open. I could go on. (But interestingly, during Paris and Friar Lawrence’s brief conversation in the cell, she comes in running as well, but once she spots Paris she stops suddenly and starts walking instead, as if she were attempting to behave more correctly, faking to be a more restrained and therefore acceptable woman. She does this as well when she runs to her mother’s bedroom and stops abruptly before Lady Capulet can see her.) With this restlessness and her resolute nature, she transgresses the tediousness of her society—she is simply too in love with life itself to confine herself to inaction. It makes perfect sense to hear her describe herself as “a boundless sea” when you hear her exhilarated laughter. 

And then she denotes so much determination and self-condifence. Olivia takes advantage of every single line to portray Juliet as an independent, strong-minded young girl. “But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true / Than those that have more cunning to be strange.” She sounds so angry when she says that. More than swearing her love to Romeo, she looks like she is threatening him not to fool her. (He actually even nods nervously there and it’s hilarious.) And her face is priceless when he tries to swear his love by the moon. She tells him off. She is so resolute and skeptical throughout the whole balcony scene, it’s wonderful. I invite you to watch that scene again, paying attention to her facial expressions.

Another scene I think is worth commenting is 2.5, when the Nurse delivers Romeo’s news to her. I like to compare her acting here with that of other actresses playing Juliet. In this scene, her impatience is usually portrayed more like an inoffensive, sweet frustration. She is still adorable even when she is irritated. However, Olivia’s Juliet does not even try to palliate her impatience. When she goes down the stairs and notices that the Nurse is not yet come, she boldly places her needlework on the table as she goes on ranting about how disgusted she is by old people. When the Nurse finally arrives with Peter, Juliet basically puts her hands on her waist impatiently and kicks him out after giving him a quite exasperated look. She then even takes away an apple that the Nurse was holding in her teeth and clenches her fists. But when she finally gets her Nurse to tell her what she wants, she euphorically bursts into laughter and thus leaves the scene running enthusiastically. I find this much more entertaining than, say, Rebecca Saire’s acting, who was only slightly impatient in comparison with Olivia’s liveliness.

The movie is replete with moments like that. I still can’t get over the way she looks at her own cousin when she turns around (screencaps here), or the fact that she doesn’t even look at Paris when he kisses her hand and says farewell before leaving the ball. Moreover, the camera tends to focus on her emotions. The first kiss is filmed in a way that only allows you to contemplate Juliet’s face and all the different emotions she goes through. There is that long kissing sequence in the balcony scene where you can only see her face as well. And in the last scene, the first hint that she is still alive comes from her hand. The camera focuses entirely on it as she begins to move her fingers slowly, but all of a sudden she clenches her fist with strength and resolution. The camera then follows her hand as it reaches her face, and those wide, alert eyes open again. Those are just a few examples, but the movie is full of close-ups of her intelligent eyes.

The main flaw of Olivia’s Juliet, however, is the same flaw of the whole movie: too many lines were cut out (more than half of the play!). Certainly they skipped some of her wittiest moments, such as the part where she deceives her mother, or the “gallop apace” speech, in which she so explicitly poeticizes sex. Although its absence is partly compensated, in my opinion, by the more than evident sexual agency she shows throughout the movie. She actively looks for Romeo at the ball, and even when he touches her hand for the first time, the camera shoots her eyes closing in ecstasy. She grabs his shoulders in their second kiss, and even holds his face in her hands and kisses him as he stays still in the balcony scene.

Another thing I dislike is her reaction to Tybalt’s death. The way she criticizes Romeo is wonderfully acted again—really vigorous and enraged. But it stops there. The last thing she says is, “But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?” In the play she goes on trying to find out what must have really happened between Romeo and Tybalt, and she comes to her own conclusions. However, in the movie, we just see her bash Romeo and then we don’t see her again until the next morning, when she is happily sleeping by his side. It sort of weakens the character, because Juliet doesn’t forgive him entirely until she decides it couldn’t had been his fault.

And, of course, there is the potion speech missing. It is actually the soliloquy she chose for her audition, but Zeffirelli decided to cut it out because he feared it would alter the balance between Romeo and Juliet in terms of their importance to the plot: “If she does this potion speech, she’ll get all the attention. The film won’t be Romeo and Juliet—it will be ‘Did you see Olivia Hussey in that scene?”

But I think Olivia’s Juliet is excellently paired up with Leonard’s Romeo—the angriest Juliet comes with the softest Romeo. It is as though Thought and Dream intertwined. While Juliet speaks with a very potent, determined voice, Leonard’s Romeo has more of a whispering, soft tone. (We literally see him sighing with his eyes closed against some pretty flowers.) This duality of their personalities is tangible in the very way they are introduced in the movie. Romeo’s entrance is accompanied by a dreamy, tender song as he appears smiling at a flower that he is holding in his hands; Juliet, on the contrary, shows up running while a much more energetic song is playing (from around 1:03 on). It goes on like that for the rest of the movie and it culminates with their last words. Romeo raises the venom with tears streaming down his face as he slowly whispers, “here’s to my love”. (It! Breaks! My! Heart!) Juliet, however, roars her last words, and even half smiles at the dagger for a moment as she commands it to “rust” in her.

So what I love about her is her strength and her ability to denote so much expressiveness with her body. If only I could watch her perform all the missing lines. She did so much with the little she was given, it’s wonderful. We need more Juliets like this—Juliets who express themselves so freely and fearlessly.