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#Katherine Murphy
nova-loon-ohsis · 2 years
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"You’re a beautiful combination of stardust and ocean waves, you are human and it’s okay to mess up."
- Katherine Murphy
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kazoosandfannypacks · 2 months
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My favorite genre of musical theatre songs is "Girl Has A Hobby." They never had a bad run! "Watch What Happens?" BANGER! "I Know It's Today?" BANGER! "I Love Play Reharsal?" BANGER! "Hiding In Your Hands?" WE WERE ROBBED!
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darkles--sparkles · 8 months
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When Kitty Oppenheimer said:
"You don't get to commit a sin, and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consequences."
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lovingmusicalmen · 1 year
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Requests are Open!!
So... it's been ages since I've posted on here, but I've finally got some actual time and I've just gotten back into the musical... fandom? I guess? Idk what to call it lmao
But I recently saw West Endsies, which made me fall in love with Newsies all over again, which led to me falling back into the rabbit hole of musical fandoms! So I'm going to be deleting all the old requests I have (unless I'm particularly inspired for one in particular), and opening requests for new characters and the same old ones!
It's going to be for short little blurbs, based off of a prompt list (linked here (credit to: @mangocherri))
Here are the characters I will write for (if you want to request for someone else not listed, feel free to - but also please also put who you wouldn't mind me writing for, if I don't feel comfortable writing for your preferred character (if that even made sense lmao)) - I've put a * next to my favourite characters to write for!
Platonic requests and ones not from the prompt list are also welcome and encouraged!
Newsies
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Jack Kelly
Crutchie *
Racetrack *
Davey Jacobs
Spot Conlon
Katherine Plumber
Mike Faist
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Riff * (also willing to write for other Jets/Sharks)
Dodge Mason
Connor Murphy
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gabibookworm · 1 year
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This cover’s just been revealed for this YA mermaid anthology! It collects 14 stories by diverse authors with stories such as a Vietnamese mermaid caught between two worlds, a boy pining for the merboy who saved him, and a siren who falls for Poseidon’s son. It comes out September 26, 2023 so be sure to preorder or request it at your local library!
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stardustviolet · 9 months
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Actors/Actresses who play different characters phenomenally: Seth Gabel Dane Dehaan Saoirse Ronan Tatiana Maslany Katherine Mcnamara Cillian Murphy Evan Rachel Wood Zooey Deschanel Joseph Gordon-Levitt Bill Skarsgard Matt Barr Sebastian Stan Chris Evans Timothee Chalamet Zendaya Dylan Arnold Austin Butler Viola Davis Nicholas Hoult VIctoria Pedretti Toni Collette Anna Torv Oliver Coopersmith Aleyse Shannon Margot Robbie Finn Cole Scott Speedman Anya Taylor-Joy America Ferrera Jake Mcdorman Andrew Lee Potts John Harlan Kim Olivia Cooke Timothy Olyphant Meryl Streep Devon Bostick
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the-dust-jacket · 8 months
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It's too hot out and most of Tumblr is already in "how long til October" mode, but Summer can be spooky season too!
Empty Smiles by Katherine Arden: middle grade horror, fourth in chilling and intensely atmospheric Small Spaces quartet.
The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst: creepy and suspenseful YA wilderness survival story about three girls who arrive at an off-the-grid summer camp only to find no one left alive -- except whatever is hunting them.
The Devouring Wolf, by Natalie C. Parker: coming-of-age adventure featuring terrifying legends come to life, friends, foes, and queer werewolf kids.
The Honeys, by Ryan La Sala: sun-drenched summer horror set at the elite, bucolic Aspen Summer Conservancy Academy, where Mars knows he'll never fit in -- but which may explain his sister's death. Psychological suspense, toxic traditions, complex friendships, bees.
Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby: lyrical and haunting combination of science and myth, magic and realism, beauty and rage. In a town where people sometimes slip through the gaps, no one asks too many questions when Roza disappears. Nobody except Finn, who knows she was taken -- but who can't describe the man who took her. And there are more bees.
Camp Sylvania by Julie Murphy: body shaming isn't the only horror awaiting Maggie Hagen at summer "fat camp." Spooky, hilarious, heartfelt middle grade.
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paigemarie007 · 2 years
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Whenever I add a new favorite character to my list knowing that they are probably going to end up with severe trauma or already have trauma yet to be revealed....
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denimbex1986 · 8 months
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'AFTER THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED its first successful test of an atomic weapon on July 16, 1945, enabling, less than a month later, the expeditious slaughter of an estimated one hundred forty thousand Japanese people in Hiroshima and seventy thousand in Nagasaki, most of them civilians, recollections of those present at the test site on a remote desert plain in New Mexico suggest that Robert Oppenheimer, the charismatic director of the secret laboratory responsible for designing the bomb, may have been at a loss for words. “It worked,” is all Oppenheimer’s brother Frank remembers the theoretical physicist mustered in the moments after the culmination of a four-years-long, $2.2 billion campaign involving the labor of some one hundred thirty thousand people to construct a weapon capable of killing just as many.
Later, in a 1948 cover story for Time magazine, Oppenheimer had the chance to insert something a bit more literary into the historical record, telling his interviewer that a line from the Bhagavad Gita flashed through his consciousness at the moment of the blast: “Now I am become death, the shatterer of worlds,” which he amended in a 1965 NBC television documentary, relying on his own translation of the Sanskrit text, to “destroyer of worlds,” which has a more apocalyptic ring to it.
In Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, our hero-physicist, played by Cillian Murphy, first utters the line while he’s balls-deep in a troubled communist named Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). It’s one of several instances of speculation, if not outright historical infidelity, in Nolan’s transfiguration of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin into an operatic tragedy-cum-thriller for the big screen. This is a summer blockbuster, after all, and if we’re going to have three hours of chalkboard equations and security clearance hearings, we’re going to need to see the father of the atomic bomb fuck.
To tell the story of “the most important person who ever lived,” Nolan, who must have fancied himself uniquely qualified for the job, concocts an elaborate structure, switching between a “subjective” color and an “objective” black and white as he pinballs across three decades of the twentieth century, introducing us along the way to a cast of physicists, communists, communist physicists, presidents, professors, bureaucrats, spies, lovers, generals, colonels, congressmen, and war planners, all of it framed by the 1954 security clearance hearing that resulted in Oppenheimer’s expulsion from the establishment on spurious charges, and the 1959 congressional confirmation hearing of the film’s villain, Lewis Strauss, played by a Robert Downey Jr. (clearly thrilled to have been cut loose from the Marvel Cinematic Universe), who orchestrated the campaign against Oppenheimer five years earlier, in part because Oppenheimer embarrassed him one time before Congress but also because Strauss had a propensity to conclude that anyone who repeatedly disagreed with him, as Oppenheimer did, was a traitor. It’s a lot.
Somehow it works, sustaining tension through what is, increasingly, a rarity: a movie that’s mostly people talking in rooms. But as the laws of physics and Hollywood require, the complexity of plot is met with an equal and opposite force: thematic simplicity. This is a tragedy, we are repeatedly told, that turns on a Great Man’s blindness, to the exclusion of much else. “How could a man who saw so much be so blind?” Strauss asks early on to drive home the point.
Our blue-eyed sad boy emerges into the atomic age, repentant, bent on preventing the annihilation of the human race.
To get at the answer, there’s a lot of ground to cover. And so, at a frenetic clip, we follow Oppenheimer through his school days at Cambridge (where he leaves a poisoned apple on the desk of his tutor, a worn-out bit of symbolism Nolan, thankfully, does little with) and later at the University of Göttingen (where a montage of Oppenheimer staring intently at a Picasso painting, reading T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” and dropping the needle on Stravinsky helpfully telegraphs to the unconvinced that we’re dealing with a sensitive genius) before he’s appointed, at the age of twenty-five, to an assistant professor of physics post at Berkeley, a campus awash in gin and radicals. There, he meets and falls in love with Tatlock, who tries to dye his wool red but settles for pink while alternating between accepting and spurning his advances. Soon he meets Katherine “Kitty” Puening, a thrice-married booze hound and former communist played with wild-eyed mettle by Emily Blunt, with whom he has a child and marries but not before Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch split the atom offstage in Berlin, proving the feasibility of the atomic bomb, which becomes a real cause for concern when Hitler invades Poland the following year. Oppenheimer gets pulled into the top-secret Manhattan Project by General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, less of a distended thumb than the real man but still well-played), who installs him as the director of what would become the Los Alamos laboratory over the protestations of numerous pinko-fearing officials.
By the late spring of 1945, Oppenheimer and a small town’s worth of physicists are nearing completion of their little “gadget,” which the United States, having missed the chance to nuke the Nazis, plans to use against Japan—but also to, as the real Groves put it as early as 1944, “subdue the Russians.” The Japanese government was grasping about for acceptable terms of surrender, which select portions of the U.S. military apparatus knew but ignored and later downplayed in favor of framing the matter as a choice between launching a protracted land invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American lives and dropping two weapons of mass destruction. Nolan doesn’t wade too far into the nitty-gritty here, though we do get to watch the meeting in which Secretary of War Henry Stimson graciously strikes Kyoto off the list of possible targets because he had a great time there on his honeymoon.
To the consternation of those who perceive representation to be the chief measure of a film’s merit, Nolan pointedly declines to depict the actual bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; instead, we watch as Oppenheimer becomes so overwhelmed with guilt while giving a speech to a violently enthusiastic crowd at Los Alamos that he hallucinates stepping on the incinerated corpse of a Japanese civilian. (Nolan apparently penned the screenplay in the first-person, presumably because he feels a degree of affinity with his protagonist.)
And thus our blue-eyed sad boy emerges into the atomic age, repentant, bent on preventing the annihilation of the human race. The real Oppenheimer never publicly apologized for his role in the bombings, but in the immediate aftermath of the war, he did try—and fail—to make headway on the international regulation of atomic weapons while wringing his hands about how physicists had “known sin” and issuing warnings to the public about the dangers of a nuclear arms race. For the sake of time, Nolan emphasizes Oppenheimer’s role, as the chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission, in formally advising the government against pursuing a crash program to develop a “super,” or hydrogen, bomb in 1949. At the time, the H-bomb was thought to be technically unfeasible, but even if it could be developed it might by dint of its awesome destructive power become “a weapon of genocide.” It seemed to make more sense to put American resources toward building conventional nuclear weapons, perhaps “tactical” nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield, as the real Oppenheimer advocated less than a year into the Korean War. This was a strategic pivot from his 1946 stance that nuclear bombs of any size were “a supreme expression of the concept of total war,” though perhaps not as extreme as his consideration of “preventive war” against the Soviet Union in 1952, an idea he had scorned a mere three years earlier. The evolution, which is to say general tack to the right, of Oppenheimer’s thinking didn’t much matter to those in power, who could not forgive him for declining to offer a full-throated endorsement of developing bombs hundreds of times more powerful than the ones dropped on Japan. In their view, this was evidence of communist sympathy, perhaps treason.
Oppenheimer’s contradictions and occasionally elastic thinking are downplayed; Nolan needs to keep his protagonist’s postwar moral compass obdurately fixed for dramatic import as we near the final showdown: the 1954 security clearance hearing, covertly orchestrated by Strauss, then chairman of the AEC, in the wake of a list of charges against Oppenheimer claiming that, in addition to obstructing the development of the hydrogen bomb, the erstwhile fellow traveler was “more probably than not . . . an agent of the Soviet Union,” as William L. Borden, the staff director for the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, put it after poring over Oppenheimer’s FBI file, by then over seven thousand pages long. Oppenheimer’s numerous enemies wished to, as Edward Teller put it, see him “defrock[ed] in his own church,” and this was their chance. The hearing, convened in an anonymous D.C. conference room in April and calling numerous prominent physicists and officials as witnesses, would thus determine if a man prone to dissent ought to have his top-secret “Q” clearance renewed, even though Oppenheimer was, by that time, only acting as an occasional consultant to the GAC he once chaired. At the height of McCarthyism, dissent had become confused with disloyalty, and Oppenheimer would, after spending some twenty-seven hours in the witness chair, become its most prominent victim.
For a film to play in thirty-six thousand theaters opening weekend in this country, it needs more than Florence Pugh’s tits.
Oppenheimer was assured the transcript of the proceeding would never be made public, but Strauss (who got his comeuppance five years later when Congress declined to confirm his appointment to Eisenhower’s cabinet) saw to it that the government printing office published it promptly, all three thousand typewritten pages of it. The media was quick to recognize that the father of the atomic bomb had been martyred in an “Aristotelian drama,” “Shakespearean in richness and variety,” with “Eric Ambler allusions to espionage,” a “plot more intricate than Gone With the Wind” with “half again as many characters as War and Peace,” much of which could also be said of Nolan’s film, which finds screen time for former Nickelodeon stars and also Rami Malek, who cannot act.
Nolan, too, recognizes the Shakespearean qualities of the hearing and quotes liberally from the best parts, already helpfully curated in American Prometheus. Though, again, we are not shown the points where Oppenheimer declines to adopt, unequivocally, the “moral” position Nolan wishes to ascribe to him—in fact, he preferred to “leave the word ‘moral’ out of” the discussion of the hydrogen bomb, though he nevertheless “had qualms about [it].” The hydrogen bomb was a “dreadful weapon,” but it was also “from a technical point of view . . . a sweet and lovely and beautiful job.” As for the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, he “set forth arguments against dropping it,” but “did not endorse them.” Which is not to say that Oppenheimer was a moral relativist, adopting and abandoning positions exclusively for the sake of personal advantage. He wasn’t and he didn’t, though he was certainly more complex, more frustratingly human, than his IMAX representation.
Don’t get me wrong; Oppenheimer is a superb achievement and will be appropriately showered with astronomical box office returns, critical praise, and awards (Oscars most likely for both Murphy and Downey Jr.), but despite Nolan’s nerdishly painstaking attention to detail (we learn, for instance, Oppenheimer sometimes dipped his martini glasses in lime juice and honey), he shows little interest in offering up anything that might complicate the audience’s notion of Oppenheimer as a Great Man of History guided by idealism, blinded by naivete, and doomed by his temerity to stand astride the arms race, yelling stop.
I’ve long thought the tragedy of Oppenheimer’s life would best be suited to the stage, and I’m not the first: in 1964, three years before Oppenheimer died of throat cancer, the German playwright and psychiatrist Heinar Kipphardt, blustering about Hegel’s advice to lay bare the “core and significance” of historical events by freeing them from “adventitious contingencies and irrelevant accessories,” adapted the 1954 hearing into a tediously didactic two-act play. At the start of each scene, various themes and guiding questions are projected onto a scrim: “IS THERE SUCH A THING AS HUNDRED-PER-CENT SECURITY?” “LOYALTY TO A GOVERNMENT. LOYALTY TO MANKIND.” At the end, characters approach the footlights to browbeat the audience with a pedantic soliloquy, including Roger Robb, the hearing’s prosecutor, who wonders, “Do we dissect the smile of a sphinx with butchers’ knives? When the security of the free world depends on it, we must.”
The worst comes from the Oppenheimer character himself, who, after being served the verdict that spelled the end of his formal access to the beltway barbarians, steps forward to bemoan that, “We have been doing the work of the Devil, and now we must return to our real tasks.” The real Oppenheimer—who later clarified that when he claimed physicists had “known sin,” he actually meant the sin of pride—never went this far. So it’s no surprise he hated the concluding monologue and the play’s general allergy to ambiguity so much that he threatened legal action against its author, though he eventually agreed to sit through a production in France, which he liked a bit because it relied more heavily on the official transcripts, though he still felt Kipphardt had “turned the whole damn farce into a tragedy.”
There can be few direct comparisons between a spartan stage play penned by a psychiatrist incapable of originality and a $100 million thriller written by an accomplished egomaniac, but they do share something in how they approach their protagonist, sanding off his ambiguities and contradictions so as to present a tragic figure haunted by what he’s wrought. Perhaps Nolan can’t be entirely blamed: for a film to play in thirty-six thousand theaters opening weekend in this country, it needs more than Florence Pugh’s tits; it must be obvious, possessed of a storybook sense of morality, expurgated of any evidence that J. Robert Oppenheimer was, though certainly distressed by the implications of nuclear weapons, not above pragmatic concessions he thought might help him retain the beltway power and influence he won after snatching fire from the gods and handing it to man.
His was a strategic error not uncommon to well-intentioned Washington insiders: the naive belief that, through a careful balancing act of dissent, strategic ambivalence, and acquiescence, one can use power to enact more positive change from within than without—a form of blindness, surely. Oppenheimer was a man who appeared to want it both ways: to play the part of the somber public intellectual as well as the consummate insider. That was his undoing, the true crux of the man’s tragedy. There is not much room for such everyday failings here, even in 70mm.'
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murkyhazed · 8 months
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apologies for having to be really annoying but i need to post my tags again since it looks like they'll save? but if they disappear in an hour i'll just die then
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cinemedios · 8 months
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¿Quién es quién en 'Oppenheimer'?
🍿 ¡Dale un vistazo a esta guía de personajes y datos curiosos que preparamos para que sepas quién es quién en 'Oppenheimer'! "Cillian Murphy interpretando a Oppenheimer era la pieza central de la película. Pero sabía que iba a necesitar a su alrededor un ensamble extraordinario, grandes actores que pudieran desafiarlo e impulsarlo". - Christopher Nolan. 🎬
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kp777 · 1 year
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pinklemonslices · 1 year
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what are your dream roles for musicals????
here are mine :0
Zoe Murphy (Dear Evan Hansen)
Chloe Valentine (Be More Chill)
Katherine Howard (SIX)
Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg (Ride The Cyclone)
Veronica Sawyer (Heathers)
Trina (Falsettos)
Jane Doe/Penny Lamb (Ride The Cyclone)
Christine Canigula (Be More Chill)
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perfettamentechic · 1 month
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23 febbraio … ricordiamo …
23 febbraio … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic
2023: Grazia Migneco, attrice e doppiatrice italiana. Figlia del pittore Giuseppe Migneco, studia recitazione presso il Piccolo Teatro di Milano e inizia a recitare con importanti compagnie teatrali. Dopo circa venti anni di lontananza dalle scene nel 1978 è tornata a recitare. Molti la ricordano nei telefilm Arriva Cristina; Cristina; Cri Cri; Cristina, l’Europa siamo noi, tutti con…
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weirdworldofwinnie · 7 months
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Oasis in a Desperate Land of Dark Desire - Part One: Arrival
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer x Female Wife Reader, NSFW 18+ only
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Summary: You are married to the man in charge of the Manhattan Project himself, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, and it's your first day (and night) at Los Alamos where tension and unspoken worry is getting high, but he finds time to show you how love can be an oasis in what seems like a rather barren land.
Word Count: ~7, 213
Warnings: Age gap (reader is mid-20s and he is almost 40, and they have been married for a couple years), period stereotypical gender roles (maybe sexism?), unprotected + oral sex, mention of miscarriage, and strong hints at infidelity
Disclaimer: Obviously NOT completely historically or scientifically accurate to real life and is inspired by the film with Cillian Murphy's portrayal of Oppenheimer. There are definitely mentions of Katherine and Jean Tatlock as lovers in this, but he does not have any children with Kitty and is not physically with either of them presently. I also want to clarify that this (while researched) is still just my interpretation with AU elements added in, and it isn't supposed to be in total support and reflection of the real man's life/personality. Scroll away and DNI if you are uncomfortable or take issue with this story; it is primarily for entertainment purposes only and it is just fantasy/fiction!
April 1943
The ride en route to the secluded destination christened as "Los Alamos" was long, hot, and bumpy through the New Mexico desert on a single primitive dirt road with the sun beating down on the windshield, glaring into your eyes and reflecting off the expensive dainty golden watch wrapped around your wrist that had been last year's anniversary present, and the jostling motion of the car made your breasts jiggle up and down slightly, reminding you that you'd been in such a hurry to leave with Robert this morning you'd regrettably forgone putting on a bra. He glanced over to you now, his porkpie hat shadowing the serious and contemplative expression that he had been wearing as a regular look for weeks now... Finally this plan was coming to fruition, but at what cost? It was the government's money and the scientists who were on the line. Robert let you know more details than most out of his non-physics inner circle because he trusted you to keep your lips sealed, but he never gave specifics about what exactly the coined Manhattan Project, or Project Y, was for in terms of a mission yet because it was national security level secret, however it didn't take a genius to figure out it was incredibly important and the development of something dangerous... Too dangerous to keep in a campus laboratory at Berkeley.
As the car approached the main gate and passed by the checkpoint, you realized just now fairly remote this barbed-wire location was and it made a small sinkhole crater in your stomach. But Robert knew this land from his youth and you partly did too, for he owned ranchland here and you both had spent many hours in the last couple years roaming on horseback and on foot into the twilight hours of the day, feeling the chill of the evening breeze and the rustle of shrubbery as the sun dipped down below the horizon and plum light bathed the landscape, bouncing off the backdrop of mountains and reaching deep into the canyons. You recalled fondly one time in particular during the early stages of being courted by him... It was technically only the second date and he had mistakenly trusted you with a horse, even though you were hardly an experienced rider, and of course it had gone ballistic and attempted to buck you off as you held on for dear life to the stiff dark brown leather saddle.
"Woah... Woah! Easy, easy," Robert had called out, grabbing a hold of the bridle and patting the stallion on the neck as you gasped and he kicked his hooves, thrashing the dirt and missing Robert's cowboy boots by inches.
"This one can be a bit rowdy, sometimes the wild never quite gets bred out, and he's not used to you," he explained simply over your panicked cries as he kept patting and verbally calming the animal down.
"But what did I do wrong? I swear, he dislikes me tremendously!" you exclaimed in shock and Robert only shook his head.
"Then he has very poor taste in women if he rejects you," he had joked and you went sliding off the horse's back to where Robert caught you, easing you to the ground gently.
"Are you alright?" he asked, eyes alight with a mischievous concern, but you merely brushed your pants off and smoothed your blouse, shaking the experience off.
"Of course I am. Now are we riding or not?"
He smiled at your confidence, but had hoisted you up onto his horse instead, straddling you from behind so you were facing front and clutching onto the reins. His arms loped around your waist and the horse began to trot, bouncing both you and him in a steady up and down motion, and you flicked the reins, causing the horse to take off into the expansive landscape and Robert let out a joyous whoop as the pace transitioned into a gregarious cantering gallop and the wind whipped your hair around like a battered Old Glory flag in a storm.
"This is too fast!" you had yelled out, but he only laughed, tightening his hold into a squeeze around you and spoke into your ear with a low murmur which instinctively made the goosebumps flare up on your neck.
"I wouldn't let you go even if that horse went mad and flew us off the ground over into a ravine to our deaths."
A little more than six months later after that frivolous adventure, he had dropped to his knee in that very desert and proposed to you, a diamond engagement ring encased in a black box in his palms and you were startled, taken aback at the promptness and faintly aware he was actively seeing at least one other woman at the time, but he had claimed he called it off with her a week ago.
You had cautiously accepted, knowing he was far from a wholesome man, but he was certainly one in a billion and you had unapologetically been with him ever since, even though some friends and extended relatives had openly judged, thinking you were only climbing up a social status ladder by doing so, and a couple of your more left-leaning girlfriends thought you were foolish to already settle for a man at your young age, but you truly loved him. Romance was rather odd; so rushed it could be and yet you felt comfortable around him as if you had known each other for life; soulmates, perhaps, if there ever was such a notion.
The wedding ceremony had been lavish enough to make you feel special, but it had been a more low-key event with only a small group of the closest friends and family in attendance, for he did not want much pomp and circumstance and you had spent the honeymoon at his secluded New Mexico ranch property, bizarrely a sort of prelude to where you both were ending up now. The phone hadn't stopped ringing for the past few weeks and since this work was taking up presidency, it was truth to be told that you hadn't really had time for each other and had been distant these past couple months as he diverted all his focus and intellect to the government and you hoped that after all this preparation, everything would settle somewhat now that he was at the ground level site. You felt trepidation but also excitement because this venture felt relevant and Robert was in his element with the company of like minded individuals all working towards a common goal. His vocation in teaching what he already knew of upper level physics had been boring him lately and he had told you multiple times he was haunted by the pressing need to be essential to the war effort outside of the confines of a classroom; he and his students had to make a real impact and change to the world, to this damned war. And if Robert wasn't the most ambitious, motivated, self-driven intelligent human being you'd ever met, then you'd be stumped to know who was right for the job; he could be dangerously dogged and was as loyal to this country as roots were to their corresponding corn stalks.
And now, starting today, he was the one man scientific director, a ruler really, of this militarized oasis in the middle of, well, nowhere.
Fractions of the place were still in progress, as evident by the trucks and the hammering with the occasional man lumbering past hauling construction boards on his shoulders. The Oppenheimers were still early in arrival, but everyone else on the project was supposed to be settled in by the end of the week. The house you and your husband were to live at was much better off than the cookie-cutter houses hastily put up suburban style along the man-made streets and it was tucked furthest away from the epicenter of town; a large spacious log and stone cabin (that had been formerly a boys' school) ranch style home surrounded by pine trees and shrubs along with a decent yard with that seemed ripe for cultivating a garden, and yet the home was modest and not overly luxurious; this was no vacation.
"The kitchen isn't finished?" you asked in surprise at once upon entry inside and Robert sighed, knowing you how much you had a penchant for cooking and he also knew that hosting gatherings here was going to be essential.
"I'll make sure they get it complete by the end of the week," he assured, resting a hand on the small of your back as you dropped down the luggage on the floor.
"Well, it is rather nice otherwise," you admitted, turning to him and smiling, but he couldn't quite return the gesture.
"Robert, what's the matter?" You reached to cup his cheek and he leaned into your touch before lifting up his own hand and placing it atop the one plastered to his face.
"I'm frankly worried how this is all going to work, how soon we can accomplish what we need to do. The death toll in Germany grows by the day, it may already be too late and..."
You placed a hand to his lips, shushing him with sadness.
"Please, shh, I'll have none of that talk when we just arrived in our new house. We are here now and that is the most important first step that matters towards any kind of accomplishment to your saving the world from this hellish war."
"I need to go do some oversight on the operations in town and at the laboratory," he announced abruptly, stepping back from your touch and picking up his briefcase as you nodded, moving with him to the front door.
"I'll see you tonight then. I think I'll make deviled chicken with a creamy coleslaw."
"I'm sure it will be delicious." He gave a tight smile and it was a somewhat ironic statement coming from the man who ate less than a thousand calories a day. That was one frustrating aspect about him that you had discovered when you had moved in with him back in California and realized he never had regular meals, and lately drinks and cigarettes were his main fuel. You hoped one of these days your passion for food would finally rub off on his aversion, but it probably wouldn't happen here with the increased supply rationing.
He disappeared out the door with his hat and you stood for awhile, taking in this new environment inside the main part of the house with its interesting architecture of high beamed ceilings and picture windows that allowed ample amounts of natural light at almost all hours. You spent most of the day unpacking and organizing, briefly going out to greet and visit with the other wives of top scientists, some you already knew, but others you had not met until today and you noticed that one of those you weren't familiar with was visibly pregnant... She was even younger than you and seeing her led you to wonder how quickly this little manufactured desert town was going to see a population boom in the next few years. Robert had brought up the concept of having children with you on more than one occasion, since you had already gone through one miscarriage (only in your first trimester and you never knew the sex of it, the doctor told you it could have been worse if you had carried to full term and lost the infant at birth, but it was still a gutting loss... Although you knew Robert was privately relieved, especially now since his work would likely leave no room in his heart to father an innocent, demanding child and all the burden would go to you alone) and there was the fact of possible infertility. The hardship of procreation probably ran in the family... Your mother had also miscarried, then had your premature brother who caught polio at two years old and perished weeks later, and then she herself had died during your own childbirth, leaving your father devastated and alone to care for you. You had a complicated, strained relationship early on with him and you wondered perhaps Freud was loosely right about the Oedipus complex since you always had such strong attractions to older men... but at least your father always tried to give you the best possible life he had with his wealth, which led you to moving out from your childhood home in New York across the country to pursue attending college in California in the field of psychology and medicine. You had been in the process of getting a degree in nursing, at least until Robert altered your life by his own ambitions and you had been forced to drop your studies temporarily to move out here with him, but you planned to be studying some by correspondence if the government allowed and also to be able to help out in the small hospital on site for an occupation.
To trim the excess fat off a long story short, it had been a bizarre fluke that you met and promptly fell in love with Robert... you were introduced on campus by friends who also knew Jean Tatlock, a budding psychiatrist and proudly Communist, and he had happened to take a bright shine to you. You considered him unattainable at first, a very well respected brilliant physics teacher with more life experience than you could have dreamed of... He was otherworldly at times, yet found grounding earth in your presence, but it would mystify you what exactly he found so desirable in you. You were as lovely as any other woman your age and smart, but you never thought of yourself as outstandingly intelligent when compared to the people he taught in academia, and not absolutely drop dead gorgeous in terms of prize worthy beauty. Perhaps the attraction, like Robert's scientific passion, was on a molecular scale and only bonded by invisible atoms making the illusion of being a solid relationship. Maybe it was as basic as the fact that you two were mutually compatible with each other and respectable of any differences, unlike his other fiery messy relationships with Jean and Katherine. Would you having a baby split that all apart? Personally, you weren't sure you were ready for any offspring yet and to be thrown into motherhood when you were still navigating having a successful marriage and you highly doubted "The Hill" (as the residents here were calling it) would be a healthy environment for children to thrive in, despite the efforts for a school and daycare, seeing that there were armed uniforms milling about all hours of the day and silent stress was already pervasive in every look, cough, and casual conversation you noticed through passing by. And it was only day one of, as Robert predicated, two to three years of hard work swathed in isolated secrecy.
As daylight began to fade fast and inevitably hand itself over to the darkness, you went back to the house to fry up the chicken. The stove was effective, although one burner seemed a little on the fritz, but half of the cabinetry was unfinished and the counter space was minimal.
Laying out the cream-colored napkins and the finest china you had brought packed securely in a box, you delicately set the table. Despite not having a birth mother to guide you through womanhood, you took to home keeping fairly well and religiously read the magazines, believing being married to an upper class man meant all these details and roles. But privately you also felt the crushing pressure and caught yourself wondering if you were immature to be in this mold. Robert never told you otherwise though and he would theoretically be the last man to stamp out a woman's sense of inner individuality, but you couldn't ignore the fact you, while willingly, still had to sideline your educational and career priorities to come support and live here with your husband. But it didn't matter too much, for you knew in your heart you could follow this man to the ends of the earth if you so desired.
For good ambient measure, you lit two pillar candles in the center of the tablecloth and just as you laid the food on a plate, you heard the front door crack open and the soft clomping of shoes.
Robert would never be the 'Honey, I'm home!' type of husband, yet he always managed to make an entrance regardless, especially now. His slender frame leaned into the doorway, hands crumpling his hat in front of his crotch and the candlelight flashed harrowing ghoulish shadows across his sharp cheekbones and dull pinkish lips.
"Well, what do you think?" you proposed, gesturing to the table spread when he didn't speak. He only gazed at your feminine features, his eyes full of desire that wasn't for the dinner you made, and when his mouth finally parted, he spoke in a husky voice, slowly coming closer and abandoning his hat to a chair, closing in on you.
"I'm sure it is very palatable, but I fear my hunger cannot be fulfilled by only earthly consumption," he confessed, ducking to kiss your cheek and moving his hands up to your neck, caressing your nape and moving his mouth to your lips, but you gently pushed him away, pressing into the fabric of his gray suit jacket.
"We should wait until after dinner," you told him earnestly, knowing what he wanted instead.
"Dessert, then?" he murmured, coming close again despite your light physical resistance and thumbing your bottom lip. You smiled and his arm snaked under your skirt and between your thighs, hand crawling upward to your panties and you breathed in, changing your mind.
"Maybe I can wait to eat after all."
His breath caught, a single finger inches from hitting your covered vaginal area, before he removed his teasing hand and pulled back, gripping your shoulders with conviction.
"Eat. You deserve it and you worked hard on preparing it, I can observe."
He bent down, gentlemanly drawing out a chair for you to sit down in, which you did, letting his hands linger at the neckline of your blouse before he walked around to the other side of the small round table and took a seat, rummaging out a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and striking it up with his lighter, the smoke wafting in wispy trails around his head. You took a careful first bite, relishing in the flavor and spices (paprika in particular) as he sat there across from you, relaxing back in his chair and taking a drag on the cigarette, puffing out a sigh. You smirked, swallowing a forkful as he kept his gaze steady on you.
"You're making me self conscious, just sitting there surveying my appetite," you told him and he grinned, fiddling with the cigarette.
"I enjoy watching you eat. You are the very essence of life I see lacking in so much of this world."
You blushed in the warm glow of the candlelight, remaining humble.
"That is quite a compliment I don't know if I'm quite worthy of."
"You are, no jury would contradict me." He nodded sincerely as he smoked and you ate in silence for a few minutes before he then finally gave his cigarette a rest and poked at his food, politely taking a few bites of hot chicken and chewing at a snail's pace.
"How did today go?" you tentatively asked, finishing off your own chicken and moving to the rich, crunchy coleslaw.
"We will be making progress. Although I will always say, that General Groves is the most obstinate man with the exact deposition one would expect from a bulldog," he answered with a touch of bitter amusement.
"Should you be saying that? They're... not listening, are they?" you asked in a hushed paranoid voice, glancing around the room and knowing that the phone lines were tapped for sure, but you weren't certain they would go as far to place bugging devices hidden in the house.
"Relax, I could say much worse," Robert admitted nonchalantly with a harmless shrug and you allowed yourself a chuckle, mentally picturing a bulldog in a General's uniform. You took a bite of cabbage, changing the conversation to your side of social contacts in this limited town.
"I met with our neighbors and the other ladies today. They seem cordial and we have already exchanged pleasantries and plans for a party next weekend. I also offered to babysit one mother's two rambunctious little boys and spoke to the doctor at the medical facility about assistance there."
Robert nodded, gesturing with his empty fork.
"Keeping busy I see, but I'll have to arrange to let you in the office sometime instead of spending your days cooped up here and at the neighbors. I missed you and your insight already today."
"But you know I am not privy to everything you and your scientists are doing here..." you started to protest before he cut you off.
"I'm well aware, but I doubt a visit to my own office will cause a security uproar. You are my wife, Y/N. The reason most of the scientists came to Los Alamos in the first place was not solely the work, but because they could bring their wives, their families. We do our best work with moral and... sexual support." He raised his eyebrows and you felt a tingle run through you, a yearning for exactly what he was suggesting, but you had to finish the meal first.
Once you cleared most of your plate, he surprised you by taking the dishes and quickly rinsing the plates in the sink before making and pouring out his signature martinis. You knew Robert must be silently stressed however, for he only took one sip of his drink before he moved outside under the roof awning with his tobacco pipe, settling down on a folding chair and gazing out at the landscape and listening to the low mumble of military personnel mingling about on patrol as though this were a prison (which it was).
You joined him with a cigarette a few minutes later (you had never smoked a single cigarette until you married Robert and unconsciously adopted the habit, but you weren't much of a smoker when it made you cough, yet you kind of enjoyed the nicotine having that convenient effect of temporarily soothing your nerves) and positioned yourself down next to him, letting the cigarette dangle from your lips while folding your hands neatly on your knees.
His eyelids were appearing heavy and his head drooped, chin tucking down. You gave him a bumping nudge and he looked over at you, teeth clamped down on his pipe.
"Tired?" you wondered and he gave a noncommittal grunt, fixing his eyes back straight ahead. You noticed how still he was - calm - and it was a welcome change from the past few weeks where he had been wound up, constantly on the phone at one point or another and gone for many hours in meetings. But now that nearly everyone was all here, it was almost too tranquil... giving the illusion of calm before potential chaos.
"Oppie!" a young man's voice suddenly called out and he came jogging into view on the rock slabbed pathway, halting slightly when he saw you.
"Oh, good evening Ma'am," he greeted courteously with a squinted smile. You smiled in turn, nodding, and he focused to Robert, who gave a tilt of his pipe in acknowledgement and stood up stiffly.
"Any news I should know about, Feynman?"
The man paused, glancing to you warily.
"Is it about the nature of our work?" Robert asked sharply and Feynman shook his head.
"No, sir, it is not pertaining to that."
"Well, whatever it is you can say in front of my wife and I then."
"It's just a communicative matter. There was a phone call from a young woman asking for you earlier that was flagged in the office for personal matters concerning security. Groves is in a fit and I was to inform you tomorrow, but I thought I'd give fair warning and-"
"Then I will address it tomorrow," Robert interrupted and without further word, took your arm and marched you back inside the house. You shook off his touch and shut the door hard, spinning to address him.
"What the hell was that about?"
He closed his eyes and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing his forehead while exhaling.
"There are intimate ghosts that continue to haunt me," he answered cryptically, taking refuge in the lounge and sipping his martini, but you had a hunch however who was the "ghost" because you knew her and you pointed a finger sternly at him.
"This is about Jean, isn't it? How does she even know to contact this location? And I thought you were all done with her, as you are with that Katherine!"
"I am, I swear to it. But she is different than any other woman I have been with before you, though. She can be... unstable and she may need to hear from me."
"She just wants your sex, that's all!"
"It's more complicated than that."
"You had nights with her while you were having nights with me during courting, I heard about it from our friends. It was still the sex that was the driving factor that she desired from you."
He looked down, unable to deny that entirely and you backed away, shaking your head.
"I can't believe this, the first day here and you can't shake those Communist ties trailing us."
"May I remind you that you considered fully joining once upon a time in the not so distant past? We met at such a social function, remember?"
You bit your lip and refused to meet his wide eyes staring a hole into you, for this was very well true.
"I did, but I overcame it. It's ridiculous to devote one's energy to an ideology and not to concrete, practical solutions. I was never devoted and absolutely do not consider myself a member. I never was."
This made Robert scowl, setting his glass down with a clink.
"It is my opinion that you should be free to choose your dogmas, if you want any at all that is. Belief is voluntary, but it shouldn't be a crime; we all deserve our wiggle room."
"Is that what she told you too?"
He licked his lips, stepping close so you were involuntarily arrested by his blue eyes boring into yours and his hand slid up your arm, finding your shoulder and the bra strap peeking out from the neckline of the blouse.
"I see you put one on," he muttered and you blinked, almost forgetting about that little detail and refusing to be seduced by his perceptivity.
"Yes, I did. My breasts are still sore from that uncomfortable car ride."
"It's a shame they are so contained now," he whispered, beginning to undo the buttons on the blouse and push his fingers into the crevice between your breasts, but you weren't quite having it after the unresolved discussion and the way he had been moments before.
"We are going to do this now? After what I just accused? And besides, I thought you were too preoccupied and planning to sit out there half the night smoking away by your lonesome while I go to bed."
"You make nights worth bearing awake, especially tonight." He shifted, groping at your breasts and you stumbled back into the wall, breathing in shallow gasps. He put a finger to his lips conspiratorially and hugged your body with his own, speaking discreetly.
"We should be quiet to not disturb any nearby neighbors."
"They can't hear us and besides, I'm sick of piping down," you whined, remembering the date nights out in the desert where he'd lay out a picnic blanket and fuck you right then and there with the horses grazing several feet away and the canopy of stars winking overhead. You'd make as much noise as merited, probably confusing the yipping coyotes far off in the distance.
"I think we can try to control our auditory impulses for one night," Robert whispered, hands going to your waist and tugging at your skirt.
"The bedroom," you gasped, rushing away from him and down the narrow hallway, twisting around as he chased you with a huff.
"Where is it?" you asked anxiously, opening a couple doors and unfamiliar to this section of the house in the minimal lighting, when he suddenly pushed you from behind into an empty room with a single large king bed.
"Only the best for us," he told you and you fell forwards onto it, kicking your heels off and quickly flipping around to your back as he loosened his tie, casting it off to the floor and unbuttoning his white shirt as you sat up, reaching needily for his belt buckle and he leaned over onto you now shirtless and when he met your lips in a frantic kiss, you then noticed the prudent stench of sweat on his skin that was disrupting his usual familiar smoky flavor mixed with cologne and aftershave.
"Wait," you ordered, pressing a hand up on his collarbone.
"What is it?" he implored worriedly, searching your expression for the solution.
"Bath, you should bathe. It's been a few days and this heat isn't helping. Hasn't anyone told you that you reek like a dog?"
He groaned mournfully, leaning back and unfastening the belt, tossing it to the floor with a clunk of metal.
"You won't let me have you until I do?" he asked sadly, but you had an idea.
"What if I join you?"
His eyes sparked at this notion and you moved off the bed, finding the bathroom across the hall. This house was one of only a few equipped with tubs instead of showers; they didn't call this street "Bathtub Row" for nothing.
Robert finished undressing in front of you, tugging down his trousers and boxers, springing forth an already ready penis.
"You're going to make me work for it tonight, aren't you?" he asked as he stepped into the large basin, turning on the faucet and letting out a gasp when a strong stream of water blasted onto his bare feet.
"J-Jesus Christ, it's freezing!" he exclaimed loudly with a sputter and frantically slamming a hand on the knob as you laughed from your spot by the sink, taking out your earrings and slipping off your small wristwatch.
"Get in, I was warned about the water supply around here possibly being fickle, even for us," he commanded as you finagled your skirt and blouse off with your bra and panties discarded to the bathroom floor before taking a leg over the tub and stepping in to sit down across from him, letting the tub fill up one third of the way as a sitz bath before awkwardly reaching around him to grab the bar of ivory soap from the dish and began to rub into his back with it.
"I should've put in a request for an even larger bath," he complained as you scrunched up your legs against his and scrubbed dutifully into the folds of his skin.
"It'll do fine, darling."
He took the soap and you both took turns lathering each other up, making frothy circles with the creamy soap and rinsing, the water streaming down into the tub again, flooding both yours and his soapy complexion, washing it all off down the drain before having it fill up again, this time three quarters of the way. The water now pleasantly lukewarm, Robert contorted his body to submerge his head under the waterline and he came up with a loud splash, his wiry dark hair flattening to a wet mess on his forehead as your own dampened and you watched the droplets of water collect on his somewhat pallid skin. He scooted closer, entangling legs, and couldn't resist a quick dart of a finger down to your vagina and you whimpered as he touched your clitoris, inserting into you and making you arch your back and buck your hips when he inserted another finger, exploring around your wet velvety walls.
"God, Robert..." you moaned, digging your nails into the grooves of his skin and up to his head, feeling the cropped soaked scalp and neck. He suddenly lightly shoved you against the side of the tub, pressing his mouth to yours and naturally winding his tongue in, kissing you passionately until the water temperature grew too cold and you shivered, glued to his body and burying your face into his wet shoulder.
"That was merely the first act, sweetheart," he whispered and you smiled, leaning back a few inches so he could get up and step out onto the bath mat, taking your hand as he did so to pull you up and guide you out. Robert grabbed a large towel from the rack and wound it around the both of you, letting his genitals press up against yours and you both stood there for a while, listening to the steady drip-drop-drip-drop-drip-drop of falling water to the flooring.
"I'm surprised you've held off this long," you murmured, feeling his rising erection in between your thighs.
"I truly can't wait any longer," he admitted urgently and the towel dropped with a flump to the floor, and with bodies still slick with water, you and him exited the bathroom to fumble to the bedroom and the blue light from the window illuminated the sheets, the ideal love making spot. He let you collapse on your back and easily came down on top, gripping the back of your neck and already plunging in to align, but you squirmed in dissatisfaction.
"So soon?" you whined, wanting to play with and taste him first, but he was antsy to get to the pinnacle.
"Your virtuous patience should be framed and put on the walls of this house, along with your divine beauty," he whispered, head moving down to your breasts and you dug your fingers into his bare back, running along the bones of his more pronounced spine.
"C'mon, Oppie, let's do this the fun way... Give it to me," you begged and he cringed slightly, but rolled over onto his side and you immediately found his stiff penis with your hands, clenching around it firmly and stroking. He moaned softly and it flexed in your grasp... He could be a decent size when engaged, which was impressive for his underweight body.
"But don't you dare let me go without seeding you inside," he warned as though you had all the control.
"That's the plan."
Wordlessly, you positioned yourself down to the head of his cock and licked off his pre-cum, the recognizable taste milky on your tongue and you sucked, bringing it halfway in and fondling his balls lovingly in the meantime. He was breathing heavily and you didn't linger long at his member however because you could tell he was getting very close and neither you nor him wanted him to release anywhere other than the intended internal target. Pulling out and licking your lips, you repositioned your body on top of his and sank down flat to his chest, and he thrusted his hips up to meet you, heaving in with a grunt. You winced at the initial entry; you were always so sensitive down there (especially since the miscarriage), and he steadily kept at it, probing in further without being too rough.
"Fuck..." you breathed with a cry and he came forward to smooch your cheek as you mounted your hands on his shoulders and he pumped in and out, shaking the entire bed.
"That's exactly what I'm doing, my love," he breathed, keeping an intense gaze trained on you.
"Robert..." you groaned, letting him push as far as he could go until the pleasure was overloading and you felt his hot wet spurt of cum hit, eliciting a long moan from him, his slender frame shuddering beneath you. He closed his eyes and you kept a firm clench around his shaft, not ready to have him pull out yet. Gasping, you began rocking back and forth with ecstasy, your insides stretched to their limit and he seemed to know you were struggling to hold him.
"I'm coming out," he muttered and gently pulled back wetly so he wasn't balls deep in you anymore and then you repositioned to lightly ride him, which was your favorite position, and you bounced up and down on his upright full cock, orgasming a few more times as he watched your euphoria in rapture, so proud he alone could make you like this over and over until you were out of air and exhausted, collapsing to the side of the bed and feeling the sheets very damp with bodily juices.
Robert spooned you from behind, arms draped over to dangle his fingers on your swollen nipples and you matched his breathing in rhythm. Every time was somehow better than the last... Sex with him was as natural as breathing and you appreciated the consistent chemistry that you worried would have faded after a couple years of marriage due to what you'd heard about stress and boredom destroying a couple's sex drive, but Robert was not a boring person in the least sense of the term.
"We should do this every night," you offered hopefully and he chuckled.
"And make me the most lucky, tired man in this whole community? I'd be up for that, although it'll be a wonder if I get any work done at all when I've got this memory lingering with me tomorrow," he replied and you heard the smile in his tone, but with it came the bitter resurgence of the likely phone call from another woman that was bile in the back of your throat and even though he supposedly broke it off with her before you got married, you knew he had stayed in contact and you couldn't help but wonder how he fucked her and if it was comparable to what you and him had with each other, since she seemed to want him so badly. That wasn't to mention "Kitty" who he had insisted on still being "friends" with. A bit depressed and irritated, you pushed away his hands off your breasts and turned back over to face him in the dimness that made even those prominent blue colored eyes of his too muddled to see into.
"How did you become the most desired physicist to women in the whole country?" you asked softly.
"Good genes?" he guessed in amusement and you shook your head, not requiring a punchline.
"You're known to be a womanizer, neurotic, eccentric, a tad arrogant, and yet everybody seems to want you, including me as your own wife. Tell me, why did the universe give you such magnetized gifts?"
He gave a subtle lift of his shoulders with a small lazy smile as you laid your head on the pillow, fending off fatigue.
"Why was Aphrodite the one chosen to be blessed with such beauty and fertility? Why are we the way that we are? There are some matters of the human being to be unfounded in the definitive and everything is relative." He sat up with his back against the headboard and proceeded to light another cigarette and you sleepily watched the hazy smoke drift off above the bed towards the ceiling. He sighed, setting it to rest in the ashtray on the nightstand and wrap his lean arm around your body, drawing you close into his side.
"You are my goddess, Y/N. You are the only woman I want to return home too, always. Don't you know that?" he murmured into your hair and you vaguely nodded.
"I do, but I also know you're not always the most faithful man."
He lifted his hand and touched his ring finger to yours, matching the simple gold bands you both shared as two united.
"I married you out of good faith and the vows we pledged might have well been written in stone in the language of the gods along on the pulmonary arteries flowing as though a river into my heart," he told you with no trace of doubt, but you knew the whole story that didn't need flourishing.
"Only because the two other women fell through on commitment - although tonight I suspect they both presumably still want you - and one was already hitched, so she was having an affair by being with you and wouldn't divorce unless you happened to get her pregnant. I just happened to be the most available, the convenient bride with no attached strings, even though everyone said it was abnormally soon and I am too young," you recounted bitterly and he frowned, tilting your chin upward.
"Is that how you see it? I have never fallen for someone as fast and as hard as I did for you. I still feel the way I did when I laid a glimpse on you at Mary Ellen Washburn's party."
You smiled despite yourself and he bent to kiss the top of your head as you snuggled into his chest, absentmindedly fondling his moist cock with your fingers.
"I do love you beyond comprehension, Y/N," he whispered and you glanced up, meeting his look.
"I do too and I want to believe I always will, until the end of our existence. I am not those other women and I do not want to become so."
A solemn seriousness grew over him and he closed his eyes as you felt tears suddenly spike and an unexplainable terrible sense of dread came over you.
"Promise me one thing, Robert." You paused, taking a deep breath.
"Promise me that whatever happens to us in this world, in this setting, that you will always find a way home and whatever we face, we face together."
He gave a single nod, but you sensed reluctance in the way a muscle in his jaw made a minor spasm.
"I will always do my best."
"Alright," you resigned and he sighed, relaxing back and settling down into the sheets, further roping his arms around you and you burrowed your face into his chest, feeling his light hair follicles tickle your forehead. Tomorrow - and the future for that matter - was uncertain, but at least tonight was building up to a promise of solid sureness, a safeness, bonding those atoms of love again.
Love, or the feeling of it, was a lot like quantum mechanics; essentially invisible to the naked eye and complicated, but the one difference was that it was unmeasurable. No amount of numbers or equations could add up the real affection you felt for your husband, even when the waters became too choppy to be comfortable and it was far from perfect. You just had to cement the fact that you were Mrs. Oppenheimer and that wasn't going to change anytime soon, any disruptive external factors be absolutely damned to hell.
Thanks for reading, expect a little drama for chapter 2... And I do not have a full outline to every part of this fic, so please be patient as I find spare time to work on it and upload. I always appreciate any likes, reblogs, and feedback ❤️
*If anyone would be interested in being tagged, drop a comment and I'll make a tag list for the next part!*
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queenshelby · 7 months
Text
Chemical Reactions (P. 17)
Pairing: Cillian Murphy as J Robert Oppenheimer x Student Reader
Warning: Age-Gap, Infidelity, Smut
Words: 1,566
Note: The fic is spoiler free and my own fantasy and imagination. It is not historically and scientifically accurate.
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As you left the doctor's office, the walls seemed to close in around you. The secrets you carried were becoming heavier by the second, threatening to suffocate your very existence.
With a deep breath, you made your way to Robert’s office again, determined to confront Robert about the situation. He had to know what lay ahead, hearing it from you rather than the doctor and this, itself made you worry.
Arriving at the outside of the small building, the secrecy that had shrouded your affair began to dissipate with every step closer to the door and since Robert saw you walking towards the building which once used to be a school, a gleam of curiosity became visible to you in his eyes.
“What did the doctor say?” was the first thing he asked after his office door closed behind you, and you mustered the strength to meet his gaze.
You gestured for him to sit, and with a heavy heart, you sat opposite him, fumbling with your trembling hands.
"The doctor suspects I might be pregnant, Robert," you told him as shock rippled across his face, his eyes widening in disbelief. "Pregnant? But...how is that possible?” he asked, causing you to laugh and cry simultaneously.
“Are you really asking me that?” you asked with tears welling in your eyes, and Robert leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper.
"I never expected... I mean, I always knew the possibility was there, but..." he stammered before asking you about your plans for the future. "What do you want to do?" he asked, and, of course, this was a fair question for him to ask.
You sighed, your heart heavy with the weight of the decision. "Robert, as much as I love you, I can't jeopardise my dreams for this child. I can't have a baby. Not now, not like this. Not here and not while you are married to another woman," you told him, and his eyes searched yours, filled with a mix of pain and understanding.
“I can leave Katherine,” he told you, and tears cascaded down your cheeks as you spoke the words you never thought you would utter.
“And then I become just like her?” you gasped. “Married to you because you took pity on me, and it was the right thing to do because you knocked me up?” you asked, and, at that moment, you saw the flicker of devastation in his eyes, a pang of guilt striking your heart. But you couldn't let it deter you. This was your choice, your life, and you had to be true to yourself.
“It would not be like that, Y/N. I already told you that I love you,” Robert said before telling you again that his feelings for you were much more potent than those he had ever harboured for his wife.
“I want to have a career, Robert,” you told him, crying.
“And you can have a career. We will make it work. Despite this, abortion is illegal. It is a dangerous procedure so I won’t allow it,” Robert then said, snapping at you, his voice laced with pain.
“It’s not your choice to make, Robert. It’s mine. It’s my body,” you told him, and he reflected on the time Kitty told him that she was pregnant, not wanting an abortion at her age after he had suggested it.
“No, it’s my choice too. You are carrying my child, which, by this point in time, may already have a heartbeat,” Robert told you, and, with that, the room fell into silence, broken only by the heavy weight of the decision that hung between you. The once-bright future of your affair seemed to dim, swallowed by the harsh reality of the choices you had to make.
The room span as his words sank in, the anguish of the decision tearing at your heart. Should you sacrifice your career and the child's chance at a stable family?
"Robert, it's not that simple," you managed to say, your voice trembling. "This baby is not something I was prepared for. It could change everything,” you told him as his eyes never left yours, filled with a steadfast resolve.
"And I'm willing to risk everything for you and our child, if you will have me,” Robert told you as emotions surged within you, a whirlwind of joy and uncertainty. The allure of a life with Robert pulled at your heart, yet the fear of losing yourself and your dreams reigned heavy.
"I need time to think," you whispered, your voice cracking with emotion. "This decision is not one I can make lightly," you told Robert, and Robert nodded, his gaze filled with understanding.
"Take all the time you need, my love,” he told you, and with a heavy heart, you left Robert's office, the weight of your decision hanging over you like a shadow for days until you saw him in his office again, telling him that you needed to talk.
By that point, you had your pregnancy confirmed via the necessary tests and concluded that you would keep Robert’s child provided that he leaves his wife for you, following the conclusion of the project which you both considered to be most important.
“I would have done that anyway, and you know that. But, considering the circumstances, waiting until we have the gadget may not be an option. If the doctor is right in his assumption and you are indeed pregnant, then you will show soon, and there are rumours about us already. Kitty knows about us, and she will not take kindly to the news of your pregnancy,” Robert explained shortly after you informed him of your decision.
“So, what will you do?” you asked him worryingly as he caressed your face gently, but he did not have an answer.
“That I do not know yet. But what I know is that I want to be a part of our child’s life, so I will have to figure something out,” Robert told you reassuringly before making the somewhat harsh decision to pull you of the plutonium research team.
“Robert, no!” you told him angrily and again, he cupped your face, this time using both of his hands.
“You know very well that this is a necessary precaution. I will put you on design. You will work with me and Hans Bethe. This way, I can keep an eye on you,” Robert said, his piercing blue eyes searching for your agreeance.
“Fine,” you eventually gave up, knowing yourself that he was right and, in the end, you also knew that this was a stepping stone for you. You were part of the inner circle now and this was something exciting for you.
***
Your excitement, however, was short-lived when, at around 10 o’clock that evening, Kitty Oppenheimer made her way to your lodging and stormed into your room, her eyes burning with anger. You immediately felt a gust of tension fill the air as if the atmosphere was holding its breath.
She clenched her trembling fists, her voice dripping with venom. "I know about the pregnancy. Robert did not tell me, but his secretary did. She’s got good ears,” she hissed, her words laced with accusation.
You froze, feeling a mixture of fear and defiance coursing through your veins. You knew instantly that secrets had a way of escaping, and this one had just blown wide open.
Kitty's gaze burned into you, challenging you to deny her claims. But there was no denying it, not when the evidence was growing inside you.
Slowly, she reached into her bag, her hand emerging with a small container. Without a word, she placed it on the table and pushed it towards you.
"These will make the problem go away," Kitty said, her voice dripping with disdain. "Take them, or I'll make sure your career here is over before it even started,” she threatened you.
The weight of her words hit you like a ton of bricks. You had worked so hard to prove yourself in the scientific community, and now it was all at risk.
You glanced at the tablets, a surge of conflicting emotions swelling within you. But deep down, you knew you couldn't sacrifice the life growing inside you.
Taking a deep breath, you summoned the strength to look Kitty in the eye, your voice trembling yet steady. "Screw you, Kitty”, you spat and Kitty's eyes narrowed as she absorbed your defiant stance, her anger only growing.
"You have no idea what you're getting yourself into," she spat, her voice shaking with suppressed rage.
Then, Kitty's face twisted with a mixture of anger and disbelief. "Robert would not want this," she shouted, her voice echoing through the room. "He would want you to get rid of it!"
"I doubt that, Kitty," you countered, your voice cracking as you fought back tears. "He understands the significance of this life, of our love, and he wants to leave you. He told me so yourself," you told her in anguish, which is when Kitty's fist slammed down on the table, causing the small vial of tablets to topple and roll away.
“You are nothing but a whore, and I will ensure that, come next week, you will disappear from Los Alamos and our lives,” Kitty spat before you watched her retreating figure, a mixture of relief and sadness swirling within you. The road ahead would not be easy, but neither of you were willing to back down.
As the door closed behind her, you slumped into your chair, the weight of the world pressing down upon you. This was only the beginning of a tumultuous journey that would test your strength and resilience.
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