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juniorgman187 · 4 years ago

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Be Forever Young (Reid Fluff Fic)

Summary: After Penelope’s resignation from the BAU, she attempts to set up her tech protégé, Reader, with Reader’s intellectual match yet much older counterpart - Dr. Spencer Reid.

A/N: The POV switches between Reader and Spencer, just use context clues to detect who the narrator is. Pairing: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid Content Warning: 21 year age gap, headcannon proposal Playlist: Cloud 9 by Beach Bunny Word Count: 6.1k

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Prologue

Events like these weren’t exceedingly rare. They weren’t anything like Halley’s Comet, by any means, where it only happens once in your lifetime - if you’re lucky. But they weren’t exactly sunrises - something that you can count on occurring every day without fail.

The best celestial phenomenon I could compare it to are blue moons. Rare enough to still have an element of surprise when they came, but not so rare that I should never expect them.

These ‘blue moons’ are actually the events in which I meet an intellectual match.

It’s not too often that I find a mind quite like mine, so you’ll forgive me for the reaction it elicits to watch them transcend the physical level and connect with me on the psychological one. There’s only been a handful of people who’ve ever had the exact standard of aptitude to be permissible into this metaphysical world with me, but now - there’s a handful and one.

The newest addition to the list is her.

_ _ _

Getting a word in edgewise when it comes to a conversation with Penelope Garcia is nearly impossible. Getting a word in edgewise when it comes to a conversation with Penelope Garcia about Dr. Spencer Reid is impossible.

I couldn’t tell you when the first time she brought him up was, but I could probably tell you just how many times since then she’s mentioned him.

A trillion. At least.

For months on end, he was the only thing she would talk to me about. Morning, noon, and night. Every single day she’d gush about him with the same unrelenting zeal as she had the day before and the day before that. It was both scary and impressive how she never seemed to run out of good things to say about him.

“You would just die for his apartment. It’s got this super chic dark academia thingy going on. You’d be really into that,” she would say. Or something to that effect. I was never really listening.

Not that I wasn’t interested in learning about Dr. Reid - I was very interested in him.

As a superior.

I first learned of him when he taught my Psych 101 class. Freshman year me was simply enthralled with him as a speaker, probably due to the charm of his awkward humor. I found it eerily relatable and touching, in a way. That was probably my favorite class, minus the assholes who made it less than enjoyable at times. (That’s a story for later).

The next interaction I had with him happened not even a year later when he came back after temporarily teaching to sit in on a philosophy class. Even though he was only auditing the lecture, whereas I was enrolled in the course, he ended up sitting in the seat right beside me. Had he not been gifted with an eidetic memory - a fact I found out during one of my obsessive research sessions - I doubt he would’ve even remembered sitting next to me.

Our shared field of work helped to bring us back together repeatedly throughout college. I would run into him at seminars, workshops, once even at a library where we were both looking for the same book.

But for the most part, our relationship was parasocial. It largely consisted of me learning from him at a distance. I would use his brilliant research to support my own assignments, read the books he recommended, audit the classes he would teach.

Rather than accurately interpreting my very limited, very professional connection to Dr. Reid, Penelope was deliberately using it as ammunition for her arsenal of reasons why I should consider dating him.

“You guys are basically already friends, and nothing is cuter than the friends-to-lovers trope!” Now that she actually did say, and the only reason I remember it verbatim was it was so outrageous I couldn’t not remember it.

And probably because she just said it to me right now.

“We’re not friends! We’re ... acquaintances. Colleagues, if you will.” My attempts to gain distance from Penelope and this topic of conversation were crashing and burning. The more I tried to walk away from her, the faster she would chase me. It was inconceivable how she managed to do that and continue to pelt me with her perky persistence.

“Even better! You know I’m no stranger to workplace romances.”

That I did. One Derek Morgan or one Luke Alvez ring a bell?

“Dr. Reid and I don’t work together,” I reminded her, if only to burst her bubble of insanity.

“Exactly my point! If you two don’t work together, then there’s nothing keeping you apart.”

I was stopped dead in my tracks, almost causing Penelope to trip since she was right on my heels.

“Nothing? Really? Try 21 years.”

That surely kept us apart.

Our age gap was one of those glaring disparities Penelope couldn’t wave away with her magic wand. Frankly, it wasn’t an age gap so much as it was an age Grand Canyon. He was a whole person of legal drinking age older than me!

Hell - our age gap itself was older than me!

Maybe there weren’t any contracts or agreements or supervisors to keep us apart, but there was still one significant thing doing that.

Time. Arguably the most important thing you needed to get right for a relationship to work.

If there were any chance that he and I were good together, that was squandered by our divergence in age.

Right person, wrong time ... but wrong time by more than two decades.

I could see the smallest fragment of hope wither away in Garcia’s eyes, and it actually hurt to have known that I caused that. Her voice was more solemn when she said, “You don’t have to date him, I just want you to go on a date. Get to know each other better. Who knows? You might finally graduate from colleagues to BFF’s.”

Not that I was seriously considering the possibility of growing closer to Dr. Reid, but there was one question lingering in my mind.

“Does he even want to go on this date? Have you asked him how he feels about it?”

Part of why I was wondering was on the off chance that she’d tell me he had the same objections towards this that I did, which would be good news for me since it would mark my reluctance as a sound judgment. If there was anyone whose opinion was worth something, it was his, right? After all, he was the provable genius in the same compromising position as me.

“Trust me, he’s been dying to do this.” In spite of her preface to trust her, I didn’t. I couldn’t be sure if she was suggesting that he’d been dying to go on a date with me or if he’d been dying to go on a date in general.

No offense to him, but I guessed it was the latter, and if that was the case, he was only being a team player because she hadn’t told him it was me she was setting him up with. Already suspecting that I’d probe further to navigate through her vagueness, she cut in with one last Hail Mary. “One date! That’s all!”

Whether you believe me or not, 100% the only reason why I said what I said next was to put an end to this madness. “Fine. I’ll go.”

Maybe 99.99%.

_ _ _

I never knew how I could lose so much time. Sure, if anyone asked, I could probably account for everything I’d done in my day, second by second. But still, there was this cloudiness, a fog, inhabiting my brain, casting this haze on whatever else dwelled in my mind, too.

I couldn’t focus on anything for more than 4 seconds at a time, and while that wasn’t incredibly concerning for the average human, it was disconcerting for me.

What was going on?

What is going on?

“What’s going on?”

Suddenly, a hand began to wave in front of my face. “Yoo-hoo? Anybody in there?” JJ wondered aloud, causing me to realize it was her voice that asked the question from before.

“Yeah, sorry,” I shook my head to regain some clarity, but that did me no good. My foggy brain still remained. It goes without saying my words were worth nothing as well. JJ saw right through me in a way that never failed to scare me shitless. I could never conjure up a lie good enough to follow that look she’d give me. So I settled for the truth. The question that cast the haziness in my brain to begin with.

“What do you think about me dating again?”

If I thought that first look was bad, then the one she was giving me now was something of a nightmare. At least with the first, I knew what she was thinking. With this one, I hadn’t a clue.

To relieve us from some of the insufferable silence, I found myself speaking again in my defense. “Garcia mentioned something earlier about setting me up with someone and it got me thinking.”

Thinking about Max that is.

Being my most recent girlfriend, it made sense why she was freshest in my mind. That being said, we’ve been broken up for 14 months, which in any other context would seem like more than enough time to start dating again, but therein lies the catch.

We didn’t just break up. She said “no” when I asked her to marry me, which, if you ask me, is one hell of a way to break up.

So from that perspective, it obviously begs the question: is 14 months too fast to move on from something like that?

JJ sharply inhaled. “Well, are you ready to start dating again?”

I still didn’t have an answer for that myself. “I don’t know. There isn’t exactly a rulebook on how long you have to wait until it’s socially acceptable-”

“Lemme stop you right there, Spence,” She placed her hand on top of mine. “You can’t just do whatever statistics or studies or science say is right all the time. You not only need to be more in tune with your own needs but accepting of them, too. Screw what anyone else has to say about you dating again - including Socrates, including Einstein, including Aristotle ... including me. Do whatever you think is acceptable by your standards - not society’s. Do what you wanna do and I’ll support that.”

There was something special about having JJ’s approval. It was like getting permission to be excited, something I didn’t know I needed or wanted.

“I’m ready.”

Born ready, as Penelope herself would say.

_ _ _

I was starting to get suspicious that maybe I had an invisible string attached to me and on the other end of that string was Penelope. It was the only explanation as to how she managed to trail behind me at an isochronal pace. Perfectly equidistant, perfectly equal intervals of time. Must’ve been some form of magic that she was able to synchronize that connection for as long as she did as we pranced around the office, basically chasing me.

“Okay, I know the date isn’t until Saturday, but I really think we need to amp up your wardrobe choices ... like stat.”

Hearing that I was seeing my superior still didn’t settle well with me. I don’t think I could ever get used to the thought.

I should’ve been offended at her suggestion to change my clothing taste as it implied my stylistic choices weren’t up to par, but a part of me, a very small part of me, knew she was right. And just because I wasn’t keen on the idea of going on a date with Spencer didn’t mean I didn’t want to look nice for him for it.

“I’m assuming you’ve got some ideas in mind,” I said in a teasing voice, knowing that’s precisely why she brought it up.

“See! You are a genius! Exactly why you and Spencer are meant to be together!” Her exclamation was just as loud as it was outlandish.

“Alright, calm down sparky,” I shot a warning look. “It’s just one date - we’re not soulmates.”

Then, talking in the quietest voice I didn’t think Penelope was capable of speaking with, she said, “Not yet.”

I knew the minute I showed even the littlest bit of interest in Penelope’s fashion guidance, I’d end up draped in ruffles, sequins, glitter, tulle, rhinestones, or all of the above. Nothing again Penelope’s personal style - it’s just not mine.

I was scared to ask, but I had to know. “So what were you thinking?”

Before my very eyes, Penelope’s constantly-there smile transformed, something akin to the mischievous grin of the Cheshire Cat. “I was thinking …”

In a Mary Poppins-esque fashion, Penelope produced a dress that in no feasible reality should have been able to fit within that little Hello Kitty side bag.

I suppose it must’ve been absolutely backbreaking for Penelope to refrain from choosing a multicolor or at least pattern-riddled dress, so as compensation for the fact that it was only one singular color throughout, it had to be a bold one.

Red.

“Not too shabby, right?” Her eyebrows jumped on her forehead, knowing she’d made a good choice.

And a part of me actually died saying this, but it was pretty perfect.

_ _ _

My life didn’t flash before my eyes, per se, the moment I finally arrived at the delicatessen. It was more like a very specific, singular memory had flashed before my eyes.

That story for later? This is the one.

Psych 101 was my best class in Freshman year ... by a long shot. Come rain, wind, or snow, I was always excited to go. It was a standout course on its own, but not because it was terribly spectacular or the most fascinating subject in the world, but more so because of how it changed my own person. It challenged me, like all worthwhile things do.

There were more judgmental meatheads - boys, if you will - than not, who would jump down my throat for being a smart ass or a teacher’s pet if I so much as answered one of Dr. Reid’s questions. Par for the course, really.

As a result, I had a proclivity to avoid raising my hand. It wasn’t that I was hyper-fixated on managing my reputation, just that participating wasn’t worth the eventual harassment from my dimwitted classmates.

Nonetheless, one day, I felt compelled to answer Dr. Reid when he asked what our thoughts were about the sampled, pretense manifesto.

No one else was jumping at the chance to speak, perhaps they were just as cowardly as I was, and it was clear that he was going to stand there waiting until someone finally would. The silence was painfully awkward for everyone and so I felt obligated, as a student who was actually enrolled in the class for credit and not just to audit like 90% of the other girls here, to break it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, my hand hesitantly inched up into the air until it floated just high enough above the student in front of me’s head. As soon as I knew he saw it, I let it plunge straight back down.

“Yes, Ms. (y/l/n)?”

I could already feel the dirty looks and snide comments coming before I even said a word.

“I know we’re all collectively referring to this unsub as a man, and while that might just be a general assumption or Freudian slip perhaps ... I think the language is steeped in betrayal and contempt. And it would be ignorant not to notice how it reads more like the wrath of a woman scorned than your typical jilted male lover.”

“Lover?” Someone two rows back snickered quietly, clearly to mock my choice of words. I didn’t even have to look to know it was Brad who had said that. Nevertheless, Dr. Reid was impressed with my answer. His lips curved into the faintest smile as he nodded his head. If he had heard the commentary of one Brad Sterling, he made no visceral reaction to it.

With an extended hand, palm facing up, he gestured for me to, “Please. Stand up.”

I fumbled my way up and out of my seat to possibly delay the shit I’d get for this mere action.

“That, ladies and gentleman, is what it looks like to have courage,” He underlined his words with a grand flourish of his hand in my direction. “Putting yourself on the line even in the event you’ll be mocked and ridiculed or deemed wrong. That’s something you’ll need if you are seriously considering being part of the BAU, or the FBI at any capacity.”

My face was flushed from the acclaim he was showering me with. Suddenly, I was glad I volunteered.

Taking me completely by surprise, Dr. Reid wasn’t done yet.

“So, Mr. Sterling,” He began, directly calling out the boy in the back who without a doubt made the remark. I wouldn’t have had any reason to believe he heard it since his attention never diverted away from me long enough to catch the comment, much less the culprit. I wonder if he’d heard all the times Brad made jokes at my expense. Was he finally at his wits end with the sarcasm? “Make fun all you want, but might I suggest that if you like a girl, you do the opposite of that.”

His sickly sweet drawl was followed by a short wink at me as if to say ‘I have your back’, and I was lucky to have already been in the process of sitting back down because my knees would’ve given out underneath me from the sheer exhilaration of his praise.

The thought never once crossed my mind that Brad was so fixated on me because he had a crush, but it all made sense once it did. And if I didn’t know any better, Dr. Reid only humiliated him and brought it up because the realization dawned on him, too.

Was it possible that Dr. Reid was ... jealous?

In the spirit of complete transparency, that suspicion may have lit the tiniest wildfire imaginable in my chest. A wildfire that, even now, has yet to extinguish. Perhaps that little flame is the 0.01% of the reason I said yes. I could only imagine what kind of omnipotence it would soon gain if this date went well.

If he could light such an enduring kindle with simple praise, think about what would happen if he smiled at me. If he laughed at my jokes. If he held my hand.

If he kissed me.

Dr. Reid’s validation would be something I actively sought from all walks of life, I knew that much. What I didn’t know was how far that desire would take me.

I would have never guessed it would lead me here.

Standing in front of a fancy restaurant in a pretty red dress with the tenuous hope that the professor inside might just like it so much that he’ll end up liking the girl wearing it, too.

_ _ _

No matter how many times I adjusted the bouquet of poppies, they sat perpetually crooked on the table. Much like the dark gray tie around my neck that tightened around my throat with every passing second. I had to keep messing with it to loosen the noose-like grip it had on me. Who knew if it actually was becoming more restricting or it was the flourishing bundle of nerves in my stomach that made it harder to breathe.

I was never very good at lying in wait patiently. Especially if I was expecting something. Now that I was expecting someone? I could say with perfect clarity - I was not good at waiting.

I don’t wanna seem the way I do

Every time the door opened, my eyes flashed to it instantaneously. And every time it wasn’t her, a little part of me was disappointed. It was still too early to say for certain that she was standing me up, but my mind was doing what it did best. It wandered. There was nothing else to do after all.

Except maybe adjust those blood orange poppies one more time.

I’d picked them out specifically because Penelope slipped in a not-so-subtle comment about her dress being “a perfect match to the color of papaverales” - her words exactly. I thought if she went through that much trouble to find a color coordinated plant and say the scientific name for me to decode, it was worth picking up a bouquet of them on the way.

It was only the most ironic occurrence in the world that when I went to rearrange them one last time, I devoted my full attention to the action, missing the very moment I was on the lookout for the past hour and a half.

I didn’t even see her until the red poppies camouflaged into the identically colored setting of her dress.

Then there she was.

All the disappointment in the world was worth that first time I saw her with fresh eyes.

I was dumbstruck for a moment, long enough that it warranted an apology for not standing up sooner.

“(Y/n)! Hi!” I accidentally squealed. I couldn’t control myself, let alone control the pitch of my voice apparently.

I could see, in her, youthful naivete where, in others, I saw their age. She paradoxically had not aged a minute, and yet a new womanhood was piercing through her ultimately adolescent appearance.

“Hi, Dr. Reid,” She said through a laugh and a smile, shaking my hand politely and professionally. She was greeting me like I was still her professor and she’d just happen to run into me on an errand. Next, she’d be attempting small-talk for as long as it took for me to let her go.

Unfortunately for her, I had no plans for that.

But I’m confident when I’m with you

“Please, it’s just Spencer,” I reminded her, hoping to break down that governing image of me she surely maintained.

“Spencer,” She tried again; doing it more to be obedient to my instruction than to satisfy her own desire. It sounded so unnatural to her, just as it did to me. I found it adorable, actually. It seemed like she was breaking this unspoken, and very much illusionary rule to say my first name. “It’s nice to see you again,” She added after I pulled out her chair for her.

“Is it?” I asked when I rounded the table to get to my seat. “I get the feeling you’re a little disappointed.” The only reason I pointed it out was that it was true, not just that I’d observed the notion grow more poignant in her face for the past minute.

“Not at all,” She shook her head, which luckily for me, drew a line of congruence between her body language and verbal language. At least, she was being truthful. “It’s just that I’m sort of embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?” I repeated in astonishment, unable to cultivate a list of reasons that would justify her feeling that way. I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d done to provoke that emotion, and it nearly broke me to consider her internal being substantiating it.

“Embarrassed isn’t the right word, but I can’t find a more accurate one for what I’m feeling,” She shied away from my eyes when she lowered her head as she spoke.

“You could try to explain it to me?” I offered gently. It took an overwhelming amount of self-restraint to not offer my hand with it. It would’ve been so easy to slide my hand across the threshold to enter her territory of the table, but who knows if doing so would just make her that much more uncomfortable.

“Well for one thing, I don't really go on dates,” From this alone, I could already relate to her enough to laugh at the fact. “Don’t laugh at me! You know how dangerous first dates can be,” She swatted her hand in my direction to chastise me.

“I do! I do! I think it’s really good that you’re protecting yourself to the point of avoiding dates,” I was teasing the implication that she wasn’t asked to go on very many, which was thankfully delivered well enough to make her laugh again.

“Hey! Many people have wanted to go on dates with me, thank you very much. You included.”

“Me included.” I nodded in approval. We sat in a short period of silence while we exchanged one soulful glance, borne from the insinuation of what I just said.

“And for another ... I respect you too much as a figure of authority to see you in that way.”

_ _ _

“In what way?”

Rather than tossing me a lifeline, he was feeding me to the sharks. Forcing me to dive into the deep end. He wanted to see me struggle to stay afloat in the sea of his sticky toffee eyes. He knew I'd get suspended in them when he gave me that look. How much I’d be willing to get lost in them just so I could wander in the depths of his honeyed orbs for a little bit longer.

That look ...

“You don’t find it weird?” This was the most honesty I could’ve demonstrated.

“Find what weird?” For someone with such a high IQ, you’d think he’d be quicker on his feet.

“This! You - me. On a date!” I gestured to the space between us. “You’re ... well frankly, Spencer, you’re old enough to be my father.”

“Does that make you uncomfortable?” He genuinely cared about the answer.

“Only in theory. Not in actual life,” was the most precise response I could give.

“So what is making you uncomfortable?” Again, I could tell my answer mattered to him.

“You were my professor once, and now I’m just supposed to go on a date with you and see you as my equal when I’ve spent the entire time I’ve known you, putting you on a pedestal? Do you know how much pressure that puts on me? To be perfect?”

“Who says you have to be perfect? Who says you’re aren’t already?”

That one caught me off guard. I had to gulp down the lump of shock.

“You think I’m perfect?”

“That, or you’re pretty close to it.”

Lately all I feel is bad and bruised

I could’ve smiled, I could’ve thanked him, I could’ve fallen at his feet and thrown my dignity down there along with it, but I just laughed. I laughed.

“That’s ridiculous! You barely know me.”

“You’re wrong,” He simply replied with a firm shake of his head and a cavalier sip at his drink. It showed just how confident he was in his answer. How cocky he was.

“How am I wrong?”

He cleared his throat as though he were preparing to deliver the world’s greatest speech. Then, he leaned forward, motioning with his fingers for me to do the same.

“If I’m remembering correctly, which you know I am, you were the student who had the gall to raise your hand and correct me on my gender identification of the unsub, right?”

The second the sentimental thought, ‘aww he remembered’, came into my head, it was soon followed by, of course, he did, idiot. Eidetic memory, remember?

Tired of tripping on my shoes

“What does that have to do with me being perfect? Or so you claim?”

He was piercing deep into my eyes now, his gaze overwhelming my senses and sending shockwaves akin to the feeling of butterflies everywhere … and I mean everywhere.

“Bravery is the audacity to be unhindered by failures, and to walk with freedom, strength, and hope, in the face of things unknown.”

I recognized the quote as one of Morgan Harper Nichols, but the words went right to my chest like they were his own.

That damn wildfire just got a whole lot bigger.

“I’ve always thought about how if I could be unfazed by failure or even just the prospect of it, if I could just be strong enough or have enough hope to face what I couldn’t predict, I’d be set. I’d be golden,” He paused. “I’d be perfect ... but you? You, little one, have already got that figured out. So whether that means you’re perfect on your own because of your bravery or you're a perfect match for someone fainthearted like me, is up for you to decide. Whichever interpretation of being perfect you choose would be correct, but you should know - I meant both either way.”

But when he loves me I feel like I’m floating

When he calls me pretty, I feel like somebody

Even when we fade eventually to nothing

You will always be my favorite form of loving

“Do you want to get out of here?” He asked when he finally refound his voice.

“Since the minute I walked in.” I replied after refinding mine.

_ _ _

“You always take girls to your apartment on the first date, Doctor?” Asking this in the name of taking a jab at him was the most clever way I could think to conceal my underlying motive of trying to gauge how giddy I could let myself feel about the fact that he’d taken me to his ‘super chic dark academia’ themed residence - Penelope’s words, remember?

“Well, in my abundant dating history,” He sarcastically began, “I can’t say I ever have, no. You’d be the first.”

That shot another quick bolt of lightning to the wildfire in my heart that I’m ashamed to admit made the heat reinvigorate. The flame must’ve been too much for my chest to contain so it had to relocate to my face, where my cheeks were left to burn under his gaze and thanks to his admission.

I was the first.

He must’ve seen the glint localizing on my countenance and decided to speak on it. “Why does that amuse you?”

“I don’t know,” I dumbly but truthfully replied. He didn’t need any more information to get his answer, though. Because even if I didn’t know what amused me about being his first, I never denied that it did, and that was more than enough confirmation for him.

“You promise to be here when I come back?” He wagged a cautionary finger at me like it might persuade me to stay and hold me accountable if I didn’t.

Spencer needed to go into his room to collect an item that ‘shall not be named’ but was apparently essential for our super secret plans tonight (secret to even me) and he was leaving me in the living room while he did so. I guess being the initial girl he took home on a first date was okay, but being the initial girl he took into his bedroom on a first date was crossing a line.

That was alright with me, though. I was in this for the long haul.

“I promise I pose no flight risk, Your Honor,” I taunted with a coy tone. “But I can’t promise I won’t snoop around some.” Hey, at least I was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Snoop around all you want,” He laughed ruefully, demonstrating an openness I quite envied and admired. “You’ll probably learn a lot about me that way. And you won’t even have to talk to me to do that!” I knew he was only saying that out of self-deprecating tendencies he harbored, but I couldn’t help feeling that a small part of him actually believed that I wasn’t interested in talking to him.

“Spencer, you know I do like talking to you right?” I caught him just before he ran into his room. Already halfway in the door, I could still catch the megawatt smile on his face.

“So stay then,” His smile grew impossibly bigger. “We can talk all you want when I get back.”

The door closed, and then suddenly reopened to let just his face through, a face that said, ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

After a few minutes of loudly sorting through his room, I heard the sanctimonious cry of victory. “Found it!”

I could hear the little pad of his feet and he happily trotted out of the room. “Ta-da! My stargazing kit.” He said it as though he were introducing the basket he was holding to me, and me to it. Like it was a real person he wanted me to know. I almost felt obliged to say, ‘Hi stargazing kit! It’s so nice to meet you. I’m (y/n)!’

“Let’s go,” He smiled, reaching for my hand.

I unabashedly took it, because although it meant that I was truly leaving his apartment, I had a very strong feeling that I would be back here again one day.

_ _ _

We were lying there on this big quilted comforter that was stashed away in that stargazing kit of his, staring up at the sky, drunk on the sound of our occasional fits of laughter.

“It’s Earth Day, you know that?” I wondered aloud in a state of complete euphoria.

“I actually did,” He said through a sheepish laugh, almost as if he was admitting the knowledge of it against his own will to protect my fragility.

From out of nowhere, there was a small tug on the skirt of my dress. I looked down to find Spencer’s hand there, playing with the fabric until it lay perfectly on my leg.

I coughed to possibly relieve the tension brewing in my loins. “So then you know the Lyrid meteor shower is tonight,” I moved the tiniest bit closer to lean into his touch.

“At exactly 4:33 a.m,” He moved too.

“Is that why you brought me here? To watch the shooting stars? To make a wish?” I thought for a second that I would appear exceedingly childish - more so than I already did being 21 years his junior. But he didn’t judge me at all for the kid-like notion of making a wish on a shooting star or the implication that I still believed in those things.

In fact, I piqued his curiosity, telling by the way he moved only his head to the side to watch my reaction. “Say I did. What would you wish for?”

In the throws of dreamy elation, I softly murmured the only honest answer. “To be older. But not the unfulfilling 9 to 5, loveless marriage, ‘I do my taxes for fun’ older. I want to be old in the ways that the stars and the sky are old. I want to be infinite.”

“...To be infinite.” He whispered my wish back, sounding sort of in awe of me.

Just then, the overhead horizon grew larger. With no buildings or people to block the view, it was just us, the stars, and the sky. I could actually feel that I was lying on a planet. It was so wide. So infinite.

“Can I hold your hand?” I asked softly, in a manner so vulnerable it scared me.

Without any words or hesitation, he put my hand in his.

“The universe seems so big right now. I just needed something to hold onto.” I explained quietly, practically with the hopes that he wouldn’t hear me. But he heard.

“I’m here.”

We didn’t know what was ahead of us then. We were just two people, looking up at the sky on a cold February night. We weren’t divided by power, or age, or space. We were ourselves and no one else.

My eyes fluttered shut again and a smile stretched across my face. “Stargazing was a good idea.”

The world and the sky and the stars and I - we were all infinite. I couldn’t have felt bigger in my own body. In the best way possible, I was taking up so much space. I was occupying the earth. I was made up of matter. I mattered.

Just as I began to open my eyes, I caught a glimpse of a fading shooting star. Though I had wished to be older, I still felt like a child. Then it hit me. I didn’t feel older because I wasn’t older.

I was infinite.

Yes, I was a child, but not in the pinch your cheeks, bottles and pacifiers, babyish way. I was a child in the ‘you have a life full of possibilities ahead of you’ way.

You are young. He tells me with his eyes. And that is a good thing. Be forever young.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

If you’re on this taglist, I strongly suggest commenting, reblogging, or liking!

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complete taglist: @muffin-cup @s1utformgg @no-alarms-no-surprises-silence @jemimah-b99 @justanothetfangirl @kylab @rainsong01 @calm-and-doctor @inkstainedwritergirl @rexorangecouny @ashwarren32 @carooliina @fortheloveofcriminalminds @watermelongubler @obsessedmaggiemay @k-k0129 @aperrywilliams @eevee0722 @spencersmagic @spencerreid-mgg @half-blood-dork @goldeng1rl8 @just-a-bunch-of-fandoms @random-human-person @masumiyetimziyanoldu @dreamer-writer-fangirl @kalamitykait @jinxy175 @apolloroid @spenxerslut @you-sunshine

#spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #juniorgman187 #be forever young

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior 4/23/21: MORTAL KOMBAT, DEMON SLAYER, TOGETHER TOGETHER, STREET GANG, SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS

Ugh. Trying to maintain this column as a weekly entity during the final few weeks of the longest Oscar season ever has been really hard, and I’m not sure that will change once the Oscars are over either, because I look at the number of movies being released both theatrically and streaming over the next few weeks, and it makes my head hurt. Sorry for the kvetching, it just is what it is.

There are two big theatrical releases this weekend, Warner Bros’ MORTAL KOMBAT and DEMON SLAYER THE MOVIE: MUGEN TRAIN from FUNImation Entertainment, both which have already been released internationally. I also probably won’t be able to watch or review either before this column gets posted.

Mortal Kombat seems like the easiest sell being that it’s based on the popular Midway Games video game franchise introduced in the early ‘90s that led to a series of films, books, comics and you name it. It was a very popular fighting game that had over a dozen iterations including one in which MK characters fought against DC superheroes.

The very first Mortal Kombat movies opened in 1995, right amidst MK-mania, and it was directed by one Paul W.S. Anderson, his very first movie in a long line of video game-related movies, including a number of Resident Evil and the recent Monster Hunter. There are a lot of people who love those games, and yes, even people who love that and other movies, but to others, who may have been too old to get into the games when they came out, the whole thing about different fighters fighting each other just looks kind of studio. Even though I’m interested to see what producer James Wan brings to this reboot, I just don’t have much interest otherwise.

Unfortunately, and this is pretty daunting, Warner Bros. wasn’t sending out screeners to critics until Wednesday with a review embargo for Thursday night at 7pm, which is never a good sign, and yet, it continues Warner Bros. continuing the trend of being one of the only studios that screeners EVERY movie to film critics rather than just making them pay to see it on Thursday night or Friday. I hope to watch it and maybe add something Thursday night, time-permitting. Not sure you heard but the Oscars are Sunday.

As far as box office, Mortal Kombat opens on Friday but also premieres on HBO Max, and I’m not sure there will be as much urge to see MK on the largest screen possible, as there was with Godzilla vs. Kong. Because of that, I think the cap for this one over the three-day weekend is about $10 million but not much more and probably more frontloaded to Friday than we’ve seen in some time.

Mini-Review: As you can imagine from my statement above, I don’t hold the Mortal Kombat games or other iterations in any particular high esteem, so I’m basically jumping into this movie, directed by Simon McQuoid, just as a movie and not necessarily as a video game movie.

It starts off promising enough like a samurai movie with a flashback where we watch Hiroyuki Sanada’s hero sees his wife and son be killed by Joe Taslim’s character that will later become Sub-Zero. The general principle seems to be that there’s a world where people from other worlds fight each other to gain complete control. The hero is Lewis Tan’s MMA fighter Cole Young, presumably a popular character from the game? He is also soon attacked by Sub-Zero presumably because he’s marked with a dragon tattoo that deems him a champion of these fights, but he needs to find someone named Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) to help him get to the “Mortal Kombat.” At the same time, he meets the movie’s most entertaining character, Kane,

played by Australian actor Josh Lawson, mainly because he swears constantly and cracks wise -- he’s a bit like Wolverine, actually, and he’s actually the best part of the movie.

Otherwise, everyone and everything is always so deadly serious that everyone else we meet just doesn’t have much impact, because frankly, none of these names or characters mean jack shit to me. Sure, some of them sound vaguely familiar but I was more interested in the great Asian actors who turn up including Tadanobu Asano’s Lord Raiden, who is gonna claim Earth if its champions lose at Mortal Kombat. And Sub-Zero basically just shows up and tries to kill everyone.

As with far too many action movies, the action itself is great, the writing and acting not so much.

As it goes along, things become more epic and fantasy-driven but that also makes the dialogue seem even worse. Similarly, the fight choreography is pretty great, but the movie still leans way too heavily on visual FX to keep it more interesting for anyone not too interested in MMA… like myself. When all else fails, they can show off Sub-Zero’s cool ice powers every chance possible as well as the other’s powers, but some of them (like Lord Raiden) just made me think of this as a rip-off of the great Big Trouble in Little China.

The thing is I’m not a fan of the video game nor of MMA, so Mortal Kombat really doesn’t have much to offer me. The whole thing just seems very silly, just like almost everything from the ‘90s. (How’s THAT for a bad take?)

That said, I thought the final battle was great, and I enjoyed some of the gorier aspects of the fights, too, and it all leads to my favorite part, which is the three-way fight between Cole, Sub-Zero, and… actually I’m not sure if it’s a spoiler or not, but it’s a pretty cool fight that almost makes up for some of the dumber characters introduced earlier on. (LIke that guy with four arms. I know he’s a character in the games, but I didn’t even care enough to look up his name.)

It’s perfectly fine that they decided to go Rated R with the movie since most of the nostalgia for this movie and franchise will be towards older guys, but at times, the CG blood is so hinky it feels like the decision to go R-rated was made well after it was filmed.

Even though I went in with the lowest of expectations, I still found most of Mortal Kombat kinda trite and boring, maybe something I’d appreciate more as a teenager but not so much as a grown adult. But what do you expect for a movie based on a video game that’s just a bunch of “cool fights”?

Rating: 5.5/10

And yet, Demon Slayer could be the surprise breakout of the weekend, considering the theatrical success FUNimation has had with theatrical releases of the My Hero Academia movies into theaters in 2018 and 2020, and the hugely successful Dragon Ball Super: Brolly, which grossed $31 million domestically after a surprise $20.2 million in its first five days in roughly 1,200 movies. In fact, it made $7 million its opening Wednesday in January 2019, and FUNimation is hoping that Demon Slayer will have a similar success by opening it for a single day (Thursday) in IMAX theaters before Mortal Kombat takes over on Friday.

Demon Slayer has already grossed $383.7 million internationally compared to Mortal Kombat’s $10.7 million, and you cannot ignore the huge popularity that anime has seen over the past few decades. In fact, a bunch of screenings for Demon Slayer in NYC have already sold out, although you have to bear in mind that these are 25% capacity theaters. Even so, I still think this can make $4 to 5 million on Thursday and another $7 to 8 million over the weekend, depending on the number of theaters. Yes, it will be quite frontloaded, and I’m not sure what the cap is on theaters and how that will affect how it does over the weekend, but expect a big Thursday and a more moderate weekend but one that might give both Mortal Kombat and Godzilla vs. Kong a run for the top of the box office.

Also hitting theaters before streaming on Netflix (on April 30) is THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES, the new animated movie produced by Chris Miller and Philip Lord, following their Oscar win for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s a little weird to open a new animated movies, presumably in select theaters, when such a hugely anticipated animated movie like Demon Slayer is opening, but Netflix won’t

The movie itself is directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe, and it involves a family named the Mitchells, whose eldest daughter Katie (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) is leaving home for college, so her father (voiced by Danny McBride) decides that he’s going to drive her there and use it as the chance for a cross-country family trip. Meanwhile, it’s set up how the world becomes overrun with robots when a tech giant creates a new personal assistant.

I wasn’t sure whether I’d like this even though I’m generally a fan of all of Lord/Miller’s animated movies including both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies. It took me a little time to get into the family and the general premise. In some ways it reminded me of Edgar Wright’s The World’s End where it’s trying to merge these two disparate genres, but when they actually merge, it just doesn’t work as well as it may have seemed on paper. That worry is soon expunged, because Rianda finds ways to integrate the two ideas over time.

On the trip, the Mitchells run into their perfect family neighbors, the Poseys -- voiced by Krissy Teigen, John Legend and Charlyne Yi -- and you’d think they might be a bigger part of the movie then they actually are. I’m not sure I would have liked doing the family-vs.-family thing so soon after last year’s Croods movie, but I did love the dynamics of the Mitchells being a very relatable imperfect family with Danny McBride being particularly great voicing the family patriarch. It even has a really touching Pixar’s Up moment of Katie’s father watching old home movies of them together when she was younger.

In general, the filmmakers have assembled a pretty amazing voice cast that includes Conan O’Brien, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett. Actually the weirdest voice choice is Katie’s younger brother Aaron, voiced by Rianda himself, and it sounds like a strange older man trying to be a kid, so it doesn’t work as well as others.

What I genuinely liked about Mitchells vs. the Machines is that it doesn’t go out of its way to talk down to overly sensitive kiddies or skimp on the action while also including elements that parents will enjoy as well, and to me, that’s the ideal of a family film.

While some might feel that The Mitchells vs. the Machines is fairly standard animated fare, it ends up being a fun cross between National Lampoon’s Vacation (cleaned up for the kiddies) with Will Smith’s I, Robot, actually, and yet, it somehow does work. It’s a shame that it’s really not getting a theatrical release except to be awards-eligible.

Next, we have two really great movies I saw at Sundance this year and really enjoyed immensely…

So as I mentioned, I first saw Nikole Beckwith’s TOGETHER TOGETHER (Bleecker Street), starring Ed Helms and Patti Harrison, at Sundance, and it was one of my favorite movies there with Helms playing a middle-aged single guy named Matt, who hires the much-younger Anna (Harrison) to be his surrogate, because he wants a baby. It’s a tough relationship thrown together due to each of their respective necessities.

Part of what drives the movie is how different Matt and Anna are, him being quite inappropriate with his suggestions and requests but not really having a working knowledge of female anatomy, pregnancy, delivery etc, but being really eager to raise a child and having the money that Anna clearly does not.

While I was familiar with Helms from The Office, The Hangover, etc. I really didn’t know Patti Harrison at all. Apparently, she’s a stand-up comic who hasn’t done a ton of acting, comedic or otherwise. That’s pretty amazing when you watch this movie and see her dry sardonic wit playing well against Helms’ generally lovable doofus. What I also didn’t realize and frankly, I don’t really see this as something even worth mentioning, is that she’s a trans woman playing a clearly CIS part, and she kills it. I certainly wouldn’t have known nor did it really affect my enjoyment of the movie, yet it still seems like such a brave statement on the part of the director and Harrison herself. The thing is that Harrison isn't just a terrific actress in her own right, but she brings out aspects of Helms that I never thought I would ever possibly see. (If it isn't obvious, I'm not the biggest fan of Helms.)

The movie has a great sense of humor, as it gets the most out of this awkward duo and then throws so many great supporting actors into the cast around them that it’s almost impossible not to enjoy the laughs. There’s the testy Sonogram tech, played by Sufe Bradshaw from Veep, who tries to maintain her composure and bite her tongue, but you can tell she’s having none of it. Others who show up, including Tig Notero, Norah Dunn and Fred Melamed. Just when you least expect it, Anna Conkle from Pen15, shows up as one of those delivery gurus that make the two of them feel even more awkward.

What’s nice is that this never turns into the typical meet cute rom-com that some might be expecting, as Beckwith’s film is more about friendship and companionship and being there for another, and the lack of that romantic spark even as chemistry develops between them is what makes this film so enjoyably unique. Beckwith’s sense of humor combined with her dynamic duo stars makes Together Together the best comedy about pregnancy probably since Knocked Up.

Another great Sundance movie and actually one of my two favorite recent documentaries AND one of the best movies I’ve seen this year is… you know what? I haven’t done this for a while so this is this week’s “CHOSEN ONE”!! (Fanfare)

(Photo courtesy: Robert Fuhring/Courtesy Sesame Workshop)

Marilyn (Mad Hot Ballroom) Agrilo’s STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET (Screen Media/HBO Documentaries) is a fantastic doc about the long-running and popular PBS kids show that’s every bit as good as Morgan Neville’s Mr. Rogers doc, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Which was robbed of an Oscar nomination a few years back.

Let me make something clear on the day I’m writing this, April 21, 2021, that this is my favorite movie of the year, the only one I’ve already given a 10/10, and the end of the year might come around, and I have a feeling it will still be my #1.

You see, I was raised a Sesame Street kid. It’s not like I didn’t read or play outside or not get the attention of my parents or family, but there was so much of my happy, young life that I could attribute to my time watching Sesame Street, and when you watch Marily Agrilo’s amazing doc, it all comes rushing back. There is stuff in this movie that I haven’t seen in maybe 50 years but that I clearly remember laughing at, and there’s stuff that got into the mind of a young Ed that influenced my love of humor and music and just outright insanity. Sure, I loved The Muppet Show, too, but it was a different experience, so to watch a movie about the show with all sorts of stuff I had never seen or knew, that’s what makes Street Gang such a brilliant documentary, and easily one of the best we’ll see this year. Of that I have no doubt.

From the very origins of the show with Joan Cooney developing a show that will be entertaining and educational to the kids being plopped down in front of the TV in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so they can learn something, it’s just 1:46 of straight-up wonderment.

Besides getting to see a lot of the beloved actors/characters from the show and many of the surviving players like Carol Spinney aka Big Bird/Oscar, you can see how this show tried to create something that wasn’t just constantly advertising to young minds.

More than anything, the show is a love letter to the bromance between Jim Henson and Frank Oz, and you get to see so many of their bits and outtakes that make their Muppets like Burt and Ernie and Grover and, of course, Kermit, so beloved by kids that even cynical adults like myself would revert childhood just thinking about them. Then on top of that there’s the wonderful music and songs of Christopher Cerf and Joe Raposo and others, songs that would permeate the mainstream populace and be remembered for decades.

The movie is just a tribute to the joy of childhood and learning to love and sing and dance and just have fun and not worry about the world. I’m not sure if kids these days have anything like that.

It also gets quite sad, and I’m not embarrassed to say that in the sequence that covers the death of Mr. Hooper, I was outright bawling, and a few minutes later, when Jim Henson dies in 1990, I completely lost it. That’s how much this show meant to me and to so many people over the decades, and Brava to Ms. Agrilo for creating just the perfect document to everything that Sesame Street brought to so many people’s lives. This is easily the best documentary this year, and woe be to any Academy that doesn’t remember it at year’s end.

The other fantastic doc out this week, though I actually got to see it last year, is Lisa Rovner’s SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS (Metrograph Pictures), which will play at the Metrograph, both on demand and part of its Digital Live Screenings (available to join for just $5 a month!). This is an endlessly fascinating doc that looks at the women of electronic music and the early days of synthesizers and synthesis and some of the female pioneers. It’s narrated by Laurie Anderson, which couldn’t be the more perfect combination.

The movie covers the likes of Suzanne Cianni; Forbidden Planet composers Louis and Bebe Barron, who created the first all-electronic score for that movie; the amazing Wendy Carlos, who electronically scored one of my favorite movies of all time, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange; Delia Derbyshire, who was also the subject of Caroline Catz’s short, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes, which tragically, I missed when it premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in March. Derbyshire was also famous for creating the iconic theme to “Doctor Who” while working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the '60s. Others who appear in the movie, either via archival footage or more recent interviews are Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Spiegel, who I was less familiar with.

The point is that as someone who was a fantastic for electronic music and synthesizers from a very early age and for someone who feels he’s very familiar with all angles of music, I learned a lot from watching Rovner’s film, and I enjoyed it just as much a second time, because the footage assembled proves what amazing work these women were doing and rarely if ever getting the credit for what they brought to electronic music, something that still resonates with the kids today who love things like EDM.

An endlessly fascinating film with so much great music and footage, Sisters with Transistors can be watched exclusively through the Metrograph’s Live Screening series, so don’t miss it!

Hitting Shudder this week is Chris Baugh’s BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL (Shudder), which I didn’t get a chance to watch before writing this week’s column, but Shudder in general has been knocking it out of the park with the amazing horror movies it’s been releasing on a weekly basis. This one involves a quarelling father and son on a road who must survive the night when they awaken an ancient Irish vampire.

Also hitting theaters and streamers and digital this week:

THE MARIJUANA CONSPIRACY (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

MY WONDERFUL WANDA (Zeitgeist Films)

WET SEASON (Strand Releasing)

CRESTONE (Utopia)

VANQUISH (Lionsgate)

BLOODTHIRSTY (Brainstorm)

SASQUATCH (Hulu)

SHADOW AND BONE (Netflix)

And that wraps up this week. Next week? No idea… I know there’s stuff coming out but I probably won’t think about it until after THE OSCARS!!!! On Sunday.

#movies #mortalkombat #demonslayer #weekendwarrior #reviews #sisters with transistors #togethertogether #mitchellsvsmachines #streaming

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checkurselfb4umachuwreckurself · 7 years ago

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Candle, Midnight and Moon for Yuri x Yuzu?

“How am I being the suspicious one?” Yuzu asked Yuuri, who was a few paces ahead of her. “You’re the one dressed as Ebenezer Scrooge!”

Yuuri turned around, giving her a condescending finger wag with the hand not holding the candelabrum. “It’s your voice.” He hissed. “Too loud, even with the face mask on.” He frowned. “And it’s not cosplay. This black cloak helped me catch R- I mean... it’s waterproof.”

The two kept creeping through the darkened hallways. “Okay, but like, is the candle necessary?” She asked, much quieter this time, holding her finger in front of her lips.

“Thank you.” He whispered, and Yuzu nodded. “Now, all the lights are all controlled by the main. They have been disabled for 11pm bed checks, since no one should be out this late.” Yuzu shot a confused look. “Except… us?”

The pair kept walking, until Yuzu stopped, passing by a familiar bulletin board. “Wait, are we going to atrium? At midnight?” She tapped the half legible sign that said “Flower Of The Moon” with the time ripped off.

Yuuri turned shoulder and nodded. “Wait, are you disappointed?”

Yuzu shook her head. “No, I just… wish you told me?” She continued walking to catch up to him. “As apposed to you shaking me awake at 11:30 saying “quick, get up, put on this cloak”… Plus, isn’t this breaking the rules?”

Yuuri shrugged. “I’ll be sure to give you a 48 “chicken out" waiting period next time.” He gave a fanged grin, blew out the candle, grabbed her hand and off they ran.

“So the flower only blooms at midnight, Ran-san.” One of the students said nearing the switch of the day. Yuzu still wasn’t used to being called “Ran” but at least it was an okay name.

The greenhouse was dark, only illuminated by the full moon. Apparently Yuuri’s club hosted “Full Moon Bloom” parties every month, but the last few had either been cloudy or rainy and the flower didn’t bloom. Yuuri say next to Yuzu. “She hadn’t been a part of my club, but she loved coming to the moon parties.”

Yuzu quickly recognized his vagueness. “You mean… Serena?”

“Yup,” he nodded, “she always liked the moon.” He looked down. “She threatened to destroy the flower when I finally found her. I was so paralyzed that I couldn’t do a thing.” He leaned onto his hand. “I gave up hunting her. The flower meant so much to this club.”

Yuzu looked interested. “How long has the flower been here?”

One of the members piped up first. “It’s been here 5 years!”

“Yuuri-sama was the one who first planted it!”

“It was the first thing planted on Academia soil!”

Yuuri hushed them waving his hands. “No gushing over me when Ran-chan is here.” A single “aww” feel from the crowd. From Yuzu. He shot her a glare, but noticed she was looking at the flower, not him.

The white and soft yellow petals of the flower opened, making an almost humming sound. Smaller similar flowers made it look as if they were dancing in a harmony. Yuuri and Yuzu leaned onto each other, watching the courtship, not even noticing their touch.

#anon you are a REAL enabler for this #I don't know how to continue making Yuuri mean so he's just making annoying comments a lot #also he uses ''chan'' despite being the same age so he's kinda insulting her #Snarky Arc V #anonymous #Vinchecks #YXE Project

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latestnews2018-blog · 6 years ago

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In 'Three Identical Strangers,' A Saga About Triplets Grows More Twisted By The Minute

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/in-three-identical-strangers-a-saga-about-triplets-grows-more-twisted-by-the-minute/

In 'Three Identical Strangers,' A Saga About Triplets Grows More Twisted By The Minute

Editor’s note: “Three Identical Strangers” is best experienced without any prior knowledge of its subjects’ story. But the documentary chronicles a nearly 40-year-old media phenomenon, so we’re going to discuss it in detail. If you want to avoid “spoilers,” you should see the film before reading this.

About 20 minutes into “Three Identical Strangers,” you might ask yourself where this documentary could possibly be headed. Shocked by the saga’s immediate crescendo, you’ll ask yourself the same question 20 minutes later, and again 20 minutes after that, and probably a few more times throughout the remainder of its 96-minute runtime.

There’s no soft build here. The movie opens in medias res, as pure happenstance reunites the titular 19-year-old identical triplets for the first time since they were separated at birth and adopted by three different families. Two of the brothers (Eddy Galland and Robert Shafran) connected after classmates mistook one for the other at a small New York community college that they both attended; the third (David Kellman) saw the news of their reunion in the New York Post, recognizing his own face twice over and subsequently tracking them down.

Born on Long Island in 1961, none knew the others existed until this seemingly blissful, life-altering discovery flowered in tandem with their nascent adulthood. “It was a miracle,” Kellman’s aunt by adoption tells the camera, recalling the first time all three were in the same room.

“Once we got together, there was a joy that I had never experienced in my life, and it lasted a really long time,” Shafran says.

Their reunion became a mini-phenomenon in the media throughout the 1980s, most notably with a “Phil Donahue Show” episode that juxtaposed the brothers’ uncanny alikeness ― similar interests, indistinguishable mannerisms ― with the fact that they were raised in different households and different cities. At its core, this was the perennial nature-versus-nurture debate, illuminated. Pulitzer-winning journalist Lawrence Wright revisited the matter as part of his 1999 book Twins: And What They Tell Us About Who We Are, by which point certain damning details about the triplets’ separation had emerged.

ANGELA WEISS via Getty Images

David Kellman, Robert Shafran and director Tim Wardle at the Sundance premiere of “Three Identical Strangers.”

But, even with all the national attention, it wasn’t the full story. It wasn’t even the beginning. In fact, to this day, Tim Wardle, the British documentarian who directed “Three Identical Strangers,” is still wrestling with unanswered questions and shadowy enigmas about what really happened to the three brothers who’d unknowingly spent their childhoods apart.

Wardle came across this human-interest oddity about five years ago. His colleague Grace Hughes-Hallett had turned to Wright’s book for research while developing her own documentary about adoption. There, she learned the cursory details of the triplets’ estrangement: They were part of an experimental, unpublished study run by Peter Neubauer, a Freudian psychoanalyst who became a leading figure of child research in the 1950s and ’60s, right as psychology was proliferating in American academia. At the time, work that would today be deemed ethically dubious wasn’t uncommon; think of the Milgram obedience experiments or the Stanford prison experiment.

After other adoption agencies refused him, Neubauer partnered with the since-shuttered Louise Wise Services, an elite Jewish facility interested in exploring the behaviors of siblings separated at birth, to kickstart his study. In other words, according to the documentary, the organization effectively allowed Neubauer to turn the triplets into lab rats and conceal it for what would have been their entire lives.

“I’m not prone to hyperbole, but I was like, this is the single best story I’ve ever heard,” Wardle explained in an interview with HuffPost earlier this month.

By “best,” he also means the worst.

Right away, Wardle knew he had a movie on his hands. “To have even 50 or 60 percent of the story is easily enough for a film on its own,” he said. “Anything else was going to be a bonus.” But, in contacting the brothers and unearthing whatever details they could corral about the study, Wardle and his production team found themselves facing an increasingly cloudy quagmire.

Who exactly had bankrolled the shady enterprise? Wardle said the financial “spider web” was impossible to piece together entirely, but we know that Manhattan’s Child Development Center, which merged with the government-supported Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, was the primary benefactor. The National Institute of Mental Health contributed funds, as was reported in the ’90s.

How was the study conducted? Researchers from Louise Wise would visit the children’s respective homes once a week to administer tests and record video footage. The adoptive families were told this was part of a normal practice meant to observe the agency’s fostered clients. The brothers, too, have vague recollections of the house calls; as youngsters, they were uncertain of the visitations’ purpose.

Why hadn’t the boys’ adoptive parents been informed they were triplets? The agency, in coordination with the Child Development Center, decided its endeavor was ethical as long as the boys didn’t know one another existed. That meant the adults raising them couldn’t know either. But from the beginning, there were signs that something was awry. The babies would bang their heads against the walls of their cribs, for example, which Kellman attributes to “separation anxiety.”

How many siblings did Louise Wise separate in the name of research? Five pairs of twins, in addition to Galland, Shafran and Kellman.

Is everyone who was taken from his or her sibling now aware? No.

Is there any chance the study yielded fruitful commentary about nature versus nurture? Maybe. The children were placed in homes of varying economic stability, raised with contrasting parenting tactics and sensitivities.

Neon

Eddy Galland, David Kellman and Robert Shafran, not long after they first met.

Louise Wise Services sealed the contents of the study at the Yale University Library until 2066. That way, its subjects wouldn’t realize they’d become flesh-and-blood experiments. Accordingly, we can’t know whether it effectively proved that the fate of identical siblings raised in different environments would turn out to be, well, identical. We do know, however, that as soon as the brothers learned of their circumstances, their sunny reunion grayed. Mental-health concerns surfaced. In 1995, Galland killed himself.

Wardle, who had previously made vérité-style television docs in the United Kingdom, spent four years gaining the brothers’ trust and securing funding for a feature-length project that would chronicle the untold side of their story. But for every mystery he solved, another arose — and they weren’t easy to decode. By now, few people involved with the experiment are still living, including Neubauer, whose reputation remained in good standing before his death in 2008.

The central lingering mystery concerns what appears to be multiple cover-up attempts exacted by the responsible agencies. For example, Wardle gleaned that three major television networks ― two in the ’80s, one in the ’90s ― tried to make documentaries about the brothers and the corresponding experiment. Wardle said he came across minutes from a Louise Wise meeting in which top brass insisted they would “shut down” these productions. “We have contacts there. We can kill this,” they apparently said of the networks.

Sure enough, all three networks nixed their specials before completion, including one apparently involving a Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter, according to Wardle. He declined to identify the networks, as he was told “in confidence,” but at least one of the projects is public knowledge: A Newsday story from 1997 says “production started on a documentary about their lives, but it was never completed.”

That turn of events aligns with Wright’s summation of Louise Wise: It was run by “powerful people” from New York’s upper crust who were capable of steering the media off their trail, as they did by sealing the study’s results. After a protracted effort, the brothers have since been granted access to a heavily redacted photocopy that Wardle said is “hard to make sense of.” It’s done little to ameliorate the emotional obstacles they’ve faced since ascertaining the truth behind their predicament.

Of course, Louise Wise isn’t the only entity that has raised suspicions. The Jewish Board apparently declined to participate in “Three Identical Strangers,” interacting with Wardle and his team only through a crisis-management PR firm. Since the film premiered to rave reactions at Sundance in January, Wardle said the brothers received a conciliatory letter from Jewish Board leaders saying they “had the pleasure of watching your documentary” in the “comfort[s]” of their own homes.

How anyone from the organization received a private screener of “Strangers” remains unclear. Wardle said he didn’t even have a screener at the time.

When asked to comment on these specifics, a representative for the Jewish Board sent HuffPost the following statement: “We do not endorse the Neubauer study, and we deeply regret that it took place. We recognize the great courage of the individuals who participated in the film, and we are appreciative that this film has created an opportunity for a public discourse about the study.”

Meanwhile, a representative for CNN Films, which co-financed the movie with the UK’s Channel 4, declined to say whether the company gave anyone from the Jewish Board private access. Neon, which is distributing the film in theaters June 29, also declined to comment on the record. The National Institute of Mental Health did not respond to our request for comment.

Furthermore, throughout the process, Wardle said, he located a few folks with ties to the study who initially agreed to talk. But when his team contacted these individuals a second time, they would “never, ever respond again,” as if they’d been silenced.

Even if a dark cloud still loiters over the backstory, “Three Identical Strangers” proves a captivating watch, both as a portrait of people who never consented to being guinea pigs and as a fair-minded examination of research meant to yield groundbreaking revelations fundamental to the essence of family psychology. (Anyone who watched “Wild Wild Country” will see shades of Ma Anand Sheela in Natasha Josefowitz, Neubauer’s articulate research assistant who appears halfway into “Strangers” and unapologetically tries to justify the study’s intentions.)

Wardle said the two living brothers, who were paid for their life rights, were emotional the first time they saw the film, which manages not to sensationalize their story for the sake of drama. ”You delivered what you said you were going to deliver,” they apparently told the director. “They were very emotional about that. And I realized they’d been let down a lot in their lives.”

Since Sundance, filmmakers have pursued rights to the tale for a dramatic feature, as if this whole saga weren’t already stranger than fiction. Maybe others will be able to piece together the minutiae that Wardle and his team have not.

For now, he said, “it is still so opaque.”

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