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chaseestein-archive-blog · 7 years

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the six stages of falling in love

relationship: jim kirk x reader word count: 2.3k warnings: none tagging: @lancestellations @lesbianrosalie @alexsunmners @pizzaplanethq @enterprisewriting a/n: this is based off of this poem

❤️commission me❤️

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The first time he sees you, you’re talking with a few cadets, and he watches diligently. Jim smiles at the way you wave your hand wildly, touching your friends on their shoulders and laugh heartily. (He wishes he could hear it.) With a drink in your hand and a smile playing at your lips which quickly vanishes when you raise the glass to your lips and look down at your drink in disappointment. He doesn’t listen to Bones, he can’t as he watches you move towards the bar from his spot at a high table. Your head is high and weaving through the crowd of drunken cadets that celebrate the beginning of the short two-week break for the holidays and the end of the midterms for most.

You glance to him, locking eyes for just a moment, seeing the flash of blue and blond of the man staring at you and he seems familiar, but all cadets in passing look the same to you in the matching red uniforms. So, you move on, not willing to waste your time staring at a man when you could be doing more with your time, like getting blackout drunk and regretting it in the morning.

“Jim, you look like a fish outta water.”

He turns to face Leonard, lips pressed into an unamused smile. “You can be a real ass, you know that?”

“Says the man who’s been ignoring me because of some pretty thing across the bar caught your eye.”

Jim clicks his tongue, “What makes you think,” he cranes his neck, looking for you in the crowd, “I was staring at someone.”

When he finds that you’ve disappeared amongst the drunk cadets, he feels himself deflate, wanting to get another glance at you, if only for just another moment. But you’re gone, lost in the sea of red and rowdy dancers.

Leonard shrugs and brings the shot glass to his lips and throws his head back. The sound of the glass hitting the wood table brings Jim back with a startle, “I know your tells, Jim, you’re an open book.”

“I think,” he says, picking up the glass and finishes of his whiskey, feeling the slight burn that it leaves in its wake down the back of his throat, something that he desperately needs to ground him back down. “It’s time I go.”

“It’s only ten.”

“And I’m tired, Bones.”

It’s not quite a lie, because he is tired, he truly is. It’s been a very long year, it’s the first time he’s felt in his place, somewhere he is being challenged and his potential being realized by others instead of being brushed off.

When he goes to lie down that night, fingers interlocked and behind his head, all he can see is you, the moment when you held eye contact with him for just that split second, his mind running wild with the memory.

ii.

He doesn’t know why you’re so hesitant in your affections toward him, it’s not like there’s rules. Well, there are, but that doesn’t mean that he cares- he’s never really cared for rules, that’s just part of who he is. This is the U.S.S Enterprise, the best ship in all of Starfleet, and you don’t earn that title by following the rules.

You still scan the room, looking for anything, any sign of another person, even as he says that it’s okay, that the coast is clear. Nobody’s watching and nobody really cares. There’s more scandalous affairs aboard the Enterprise than you and him. But you follow the rules- most of them anyway, the important ones- and it’s hard for you to break one of the upmost rules- one that has been outdated and nearly tossed out the window of most starships. You’re still so careful even when there is no need for it.

Jim doesn’t mind.

He takes them as they come, welcoming each hesitant kiss and touch with a smile and open arms.

Try as hard as he may to convince you that everything is okay, you still need to look, waiting to be caught by someone. Some days, he’s sure that it’s not the crew that you’re looking for when he goes to hold your hand.

“I think I love you,” you whisper, taking his hand in yours, doing your usual glance around the room. The tension in your shoulders slowly melt away when you’re sure that it’s only you and him in the small recreation room, “You don’t have to say it back but, I think that I really love you.”

He watches you, drinks you in like you’re his entire world- you might as well be- and the smile that has left him in a state of euphoria so many times, makes its way to your lips, and dear God, he thinks that smile could light up the entire galaxy.

Jim has spent his fair share of hours, lying in bed and trying to really get a grip on what he feels for you. It’s something that he’s never experienced. Sure, he’s had girlfriends when he was younger, but he’s never felt this towards any of those girls. This is new. A new kind of love. He’s felt platonic and familial love but never romantic love. So maybe this could be the real thing.

He hopes it is. He wants it to be.

iii.

He shifts you in his arms and when he looks down at you and that’s when he realizes how small you look against him. He has hardly ever seen you so shaken, so broken and defeated while you grasp at his shirt, the fabric soaked with tears. Jim tries to comfort you, holding you as tightly as he can, murmuring sweet nothings and reassurances that everything is okay, that everything is fine.

Jim has admired you for so long for carrying this weight on your shoulders, always pushing him to open up to you and talk about everything, but you never doing the same when he tried to. If he was even lucky enough to get you talk to him, it was never as deep as he’d go with you. There was always something holding you back and he wonders if someone did this to you, to make you feel like you couldn’t talk about what you felt or if it was just you.

But that doesn’t matter right now, all he can focus on is you in his arms, not what someone might have done to you.

You still won’t tell him what has you so upset, or maybe you just can’t. He couldn’t get a word out of you and there’s no doubt that you would even be able to so in this state. He waits patiently, trying his hardest to get you to calm down. His fingers dig into the top of your arms, pulling you closer and pressing a kiss to your forehead.

“Starlight, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”

He hopes that you will take those words to heart, but it’s a longshot, he knows that. You’re crying, and with how upset you are, it won’t be solved with a few words. Jim does his best, even if it might not be enough.

“But you won’t always. You died, you asshole! I saw you with- with a sheet over your head.”

He taps his fingers against your shoulder and looks down at you. He can’t quite look you in the eyes, maybe it’s the guilt. He’s the one that caused this, the red eyes and tear stained cheeks, labored breathing and shaking chest.

“Hey, baby,” he coos, pushing back the feeling of guilt, and brings his hands up to your face, cupping your cheeks and smiles at you, trying to reassure you, “I’m not gonna leave. I’ll always be here. I promise you that.”

You sit up and press your forehead to his, sniffling and trying to calm your breathing. Your hands cover his, hands shaking a bit over his own, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, James.”

iv.

There’s a two-week period for the crew to finally rest after a little over a year in space. Two weeks to rest while the ship is docked in Yorktown for minor repairs and restocking of supplies. It isn’t long in the big picture but for now, it will do. It will do just plenty.

Two weeks at peace, no interruptions, no meeting, no life or death situations, just rest. He usually goes stir-crazy when docked for more than a few days, the thrill of being out in space and discovering new planets calling to him, but being confined with you in the tiny, assigned living space keeps him still and comfortable.

Never in his wildest dreams could he imagine this; a relationship, steady and full of understanding and support. You knew of his ambition and his yearning to lead this life. “Adventure flows through you, James Tiberius Kirk, it’s written in your DNA,” you’d said to him, your head on his chest and fingers dancing along his skin, each touch igniting flames beneath his skin, the heat following the pads of your fingers, “I’ll be with you, no matter what.”

You trace the veins on his arms, from the inside of his elbow down to the tips of his fingers and back up. And when he watched you, something settled in the pit of his stomach that made him smile. Contentedness is something of a luxury in his job and it’s an odd feeling to experience.

He traces over the path that you had painted just the other night on his arm, wishing nothing more than for you to have stayed this last night with him instead of in your own room. You claimed you wouldn’t get any sleep if you stayed with him, giggling like mad when he wrapped his arms around your waist, peppering soft kisses along the column of your neck and up to your temple.

And you were right, pulling away with a smile and grabbing hold of his hands, he would have kept you up all night.

His memories of you is more than enough for him. He’ll see you in the morning; he can wait just a little longer.

There’s a lull in between shifts, where it seems like there’s no one on the Enterprise at all. People are either in their cabins, exhausted from their shifts, or they’re already at their stations. That lull, it doesn’t last long, but you revel in that small amount of time, that quick five minutes alone with him that isn’t in an examination room or his quarters.

You’ve become bolder, having been made more comfortable with the Enterprise and its crew, giving up that little piece of control. He likes to think that he’s a good influence, Leonard thinks otherwise. Especially when he caught the two of you in a very compromising position in an empty exam room. He said he wouldn’t ever be able to unsee it and hit the contraband whiskey hidden in one of his desk drawers.

He feels like he’s on another plane of existence with your hands on his hips and lips attached to his neck. Your hands grasp at his shirt, pushing it up and up and hands tucked beneath the fabric, trailing up and down his sides, scratching down lightly with your nails and making him shiver. You love that, he can tell. He can tell by the way you smile against his neck, how your breathing picks up a little and that you kiss harder, sucking and biting and he’s sure he’s never going to heaven with what goes through his mind and how desperately he fucking wants you.

He’d never expect this from you.

And fuck, when you pull away with a smirk, hands still caught beneath his shirt, right over his chest and push him back. He stumbles in surprise and his knees hit the back of the examination table.

You push him down on the bed with a finger to his sternum. The paper on the bed crackles beneath him when he lies down and he stares at you, eyes wide and expectant when you manage to pull yourself onto his lap.

He’s always been a bit dangerous, hell, he loved that but you, you’re something else right now. You’ll only pull yourself back in when this is done.

His lips burn when you drag your own over his and glide up across his cheek to the shell of his ear. His hands skim over your back and down to your thighs, trying to push the blue dress over your ass.

Over the whispers that you say in his ears, promising what exactly you will do to him and how you’ll do it, neither of you hear the whoosh of the door opening.

“God fucking dammit, Jim!”

vi.

He doesn’t think there is any better feeling than this, nothing could probably ever compare. Not the moment he was made captain, but that could be a very close second.

This has to be a sin because it sure as hell feels like one. Your lips move slowly over his neck, nipping at the skin there, all thoughts and cares thrown out the window as soon as you had pushed him down on the bed, hovering over him, bodies just barely touching.

Cheeks red and uneven breathing, a warmth that consumes him, it’s all welcomed if the cause of it is how you kiss his neck.

Every move is calculated. He knows it in the way you smirk against him, each touch of your hands on him moving confidently and gentle scrapes of your nails across his skin.

He brushes your hair back when you pull back to catch your breath. Jim’s never seen such a beautiful sight in his life. He wouldn’t trade this moment for the world and he tries his hardest to burn this into his memory. Your swollen lips and how your hair brushes against your shoulders, how the low lighting of the room reflects of your skin, making you glow, that a halo almost appears around your figure and he’s sure that you must be some kind of angel.

“I love you, Starlight.”

“I know you do.”

#jim kirk x reader #jim kirk imagine #star trek imagine #jim kirk #my writing #star trek #captain kirk x reader #captain kirk imagine

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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years

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Bright Wall/Dark Room July 2018: A Room with a View

We are pleased to offer an excerpt from the latest edition of the online magazine, Bright Wall/Dark Room. The theme for our July issue is "Heat," and in addition to Fran Hoepfner's piece below about "A Room with a View," they also have new essays on "Miami Blues," "The Lost City of Z," "Thelma & Louise," "Kiss Me Deadly," "Rebecca," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Fahrenheit 451," "Jezebel," "Rango," Oliver Stone, and a piece exploring how heat functions in the screen adaptations of Tennessee Williams' plays.

You can read previous excerpts from the magazine by clicking here. To subscribe to Bright Wall/Dark Room, or purchase a copy of their current issue, click here.

Summer is restless and stupid and hot. I have written about this before (and before that) and I’ll write about it again. The season itself is bad, I think, and yet, year after year, I cannot help but set wildly high expectations for myself. I’ll go to the beach every weekend. I’ll run 10 miles. I’ll shave my head. I’ll have a passionate, short-lived affair with someone I’ll never see again. What do I expect? It’s always the same, and it’s always lackluster. I get sunburned, I get sick of running, I’m growing out my hair. An old girlfriend peels herself away from me—this is before I got my AC unit and we stuck to each other if we embraced for even a second—“We should really make a summer bucket list,” she suggests. I can’t even make that happen. Anyway: I’m really making the most of my July so far, can’t you tell?

This summer, I’ve already turned down minor league baseball games and park outings and even just going for a walk around the block, in favor of lying on my stomach and curating my FilmStruck watchlist. OK, fine, I’ll stop bragging. What I will say is that I added A Room With a View to my watchlist because I thought, “Is this The Age Of Innocence?” And you know those memes that are like, “EXPECTATIONS VS. REALITY”? One is me running 10 miles; one is me sleeping all hours of the day. One is The Age Of Innocence; one is A Room With a View. The answer, of course, is that it was not The Age Of Innocence. It was A Room With a View. Insert meme here.

ii.

So if A Room With a View is not The Age Of Innocence—and for what it’s worth, when you’re expecting a Scorsese and wind up with an Ivory, that might be one of the only expectation vs. reality situations in which you’re not settling—I will tell you what it is: A 1985 period drama directed by James Ivory, based on a novel of the same name by E. M. Forster. “Ivory?” you might ask, “as in Merchant and?” to which I would say, yes, of course. And maybe, if you are between the ages of 19-22, you might instead ask, “Ivory? As in the guy who wore a Timothée Chalamet dress shirt to the Oscars this year? The screenwriter of Call Me By Your Name?” To which I would say, yes, it’s the same guy. The script, in turn, was written by longtime Merchant/Ivory collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who captures, in Helena Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch, the elegant moodiness and confusion that is often part of being a young woman. Lucy has come to Florence with her cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith), whose first line in the film notably summarizes my entire summer thus far: “This is not at all what we were led to expect.”

iii.

This summer hasn’t even had the decency to have consistently good weather. Rain one day, hot rain the next day; 90 degrees and sweltering the day after, only to be followed by a dip in temperature so baffling I find myself wearing a jacket to take out the trash. I can’t predict it. I can’t control it. So you see, another thing about curating my FilmStruck watchlist: it is perhaps the only thing I have in my life right now that gives me any remote sense of stability. I put what I want on there, and no one can say or do otherwise.

In the past month of my life, I have moved not once but twice, quit my job, endured a breakup, and watched a half-dozen friends move to the opposite side of the country. This is fine; I am fine. I mean, there are 28 films on my watchlist and I occasionally spiral, unsure of what to watch, shut off my laptop in a fit of indecision and stare at the ceiling until 3 in the morning, but again, I am fine. Today, rain; tomorrow, sun. The day after, who has any idea? I brazenly entered my late 20s earlier in the year with the confidence of, I don’t know, two women looking to enjoy a nice vacation to Florence and, say it with me now: “This is not at all what we were led to expect.”

iv.

Charlotte, and in turn Lucy, are not talking about my wayward late 20s, though; they are discussing their room in an Italian pensione (fake word) in Florence. It was meant to have a view, you see. (A room with a—you get it.) A view of the Arno, a river I know about mainly from the daily crossword. But they don’t have a view. Charlotte audibly complains about this at dinner that night, well within earshot of the pensione’s other inhabitants: Eleanor Lavish (Judi Dench), a bawdy female novelist (literally can you imagine); the kind, gossipy spinsters, the Misses Alans (Fabia Drake and Joan Henley); the amiable Reverend Mr. Beebe (Simon Callow—ICONIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!); and the Emersons, an oddball father (Denholm Elliott) and his brooding but hot as hell son, George (Julian Sands).

And here’s where the magic happens: the Emerson boys have a view, and they’re willing to give it up to Charlotte and Lucy––free of charge. What they wanted (which was not what they got) could be what they get, if only they accept a gracious favor. Charlotte, obviously, says no.

Though Charlotte’s reasons to refuse can easily be traced to a British rigidity, there’s an emotional self-punishment here that feels recognizable. When someone does a good thing because you’ve more or less asked for it, it feels correct to say no. To stay the course, keep carrying the burden, and so on and so forth. The face reddens, the jaw clenches. “Women like looking at a view,” Mr. Emerson generalizes, in a way that both offends and humors me, “Men don’t.” To accept feels wrong, it feels like stepping outside of oneself and bridging a gap. Charlotte does not want something owed to two men she has never met. Later, after the dinner, the Reverend Mr. Beebe and Lucy convince her she ought to accept. It’s what they all want, as indelicate as it is. A Miss Alan says: “But things that are indelicate can sometimes be beautiful.” Touché.

Lucy and George make out in a field of barley. This is scandalous, insane, beautiful.

vi.

If there’s one thing that rarely lives up to expectations, it’s the comfort of returning home after a vacation. For Lucy, going home is a punishment. There is no relief in the distance between her and Charlotte, or her and George, for that matter. Not only is it summer in England, the heat pooling in the crevasses of their long-sleeved linen clothing, but at home, there is Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis).

Cecil is a nightmare. He’s the worst possible amalgamation of what every person who describes themselves as a nerd on dating apps is like in real life: loud, boastful, pretentious, chaste, rude, and stuffy. He doesn’t like being outside. He hoards Lucy like a possession to be trotted out. He loves to read aloud from a book, the Victorian era version of making someone watch an eight-minute long video. He has never had fun and he’s not interested in the idea of it whatsoever. At one point, he mentions the concept of a joke, and I know he’s never even heard one before.

Cecil is reality to a tee. Nothing you want but everything you deserve. I hate him. He’s my favorite character. In keeping with this month’s theme, it’s funny to think I thought A Room With a View would be a traditional period piece, when in actuality it’s a very dressed up jocks vs. nerds narrative. The more you know, etc.

Because summer is hell, and hell is always finding new ways of making itself worse, Cecil does the worst possible thing imaginable: he invites the Emerson father and son to stay in a home for lease in their village. Why the fuck does he do this? According to Cecil, as a prank (Author’s note: this is not a prank). On who? Uh, the landlord? Rich people should not be allowed to ever think they are funny. This is borderline life-ruining for Lucy, who was hoping she could use the time at home to get over her crush. No such luck! For now she is home for the summer with both a fiancé and a crush and a wayward younger brother, and everyone looking to her to do the right thing. Whatever the hell that’s supposed to be.

Vii.

My worst opinion on A Room With a View is that I wondered for many weeks after seeing it if Helena Bonham Carter was miscast. It’s strange to watch her at only 19, when she has occupied a certain witchy middle age for the entire time I’ve known her on screen. Lucy, to me, was so passive and formal and rigid. “Don’t you know Helena Bonham Carter is a total freak?” I wanted to ask. (Again: “This is not at all what we were led to expect.”) It wasn’t until I started my rewatch that I finally got it. There is a moment in which Lucy excuses herself after an odd conversation with Mr. Emerson, saying Charlotte will want her back. “Poor girl,” he notes. She takes offense. “Poor girl? I think of myself as a very fortunate girl. I’m thoroughly happy and having a splendid time,” she tells him. I’m thoroughly happy, she says, no trace of a smile on her face, and having a splendid time, she adds, every muscle frozen into the utmost perfect posture.

This was not, in my assumption, a passive and formal and rigid girl; this was a weirdo trapped in the social norms of turn of the century England. “Mother doesn’t like me playing Beethoven—she says I’m always peevish afterwards,” Lucy tells Mr. Beebe at one point. Has a more goth sentence ever been uttered? In a documentary produced 30 years after the film’s release, Bonham Carter herself says she imagines she got the part because she came in looking so disinterested, slumped over, and moody. Lucy Honeychurch is a young woman burdened by the rigorous expectations thrust upon her from every side. She ought to marry Cecil. She ought to stay at home. She ought not to travel alone or live in London or be by herself or anything that exerts any type of independent thought. No wonder she’s in a bad fucking mood all the time! Maybe that’s why the Emersons seem so appealing. They answer to no one.

In an act of desperation, she lies. (When a description of a book or a movie tells you it is about repression in society, that is code for lying.) Even in the opening moments, the milliseconds before “This is not at all what we were led to expect,” Lucy opens and closes her mouth. She wants to say something. She wants to express her disappointment. But she shuts it before Charlotte says something. There isn’t supposed to be anything wrong. Everything is precisely as it’s meant to be, even if it’s a lie.

viii.

I did not expect there would be an extended scene of full frontal male nudity but what can you do!

On a warm summer’s afternoon, George, Mr. Beebe, and Lucy’s brother Freddy (Rupert Graves—a crush!) go for a naked swim in what the Honeychurch siblings refer to as their sacred pond. The scene is miraculous: playful and happy and free. It’s everything Lucy isn’t. Earlier in the film, she mentions to Cecil that she used to swim there until she was caught.

I don’t want to go so far as to say that it’s the act of stumbling upon these naked men running around with their flaccid dicks that breaks Lucy, jumpstarting what is essentially a nervous breakdown causing her to lie to everyone she knows including herself about what she wants to do with herself and her life and her engagement and whatever the fuck George wants, but…it certainly doesn’t help.

ix.

Summers end. Heat abides. “Is it even the longest day yet?” is asked quietly on an outing to the beach. No, but it comes quicker than you realize and then it’s cold before you know it. Maybe it’s the not knowing about the weather that’s the only constant we have right now (extremely right now). As the days get darker and colder and windier, Lucy goes to see Mr. Emerson and speaks, almost plainly, about how abominable George has behaved towards her.

“He only tried when he should not have tried,” Mr. Emerson says, sympathetically. George’s sin was acting in his self-interest, and what he believed (correctly) to be the self-interest of Lucy. Isn’t it stupid, doing what you want sometimes? In spite of everything else, including the whole world? Feels like the most summer action you could take. Mr. Emerson goes one step further, and he breaks the news to Lucy: he and George are leaving and heading back to London. And it is only when faced with something truly unexpected—a surprise, a change, an abrupt action for which she is the direct catalyst—that Lucy cries. It’s the storm at the end of a hot summer day. These are not delicate, poised tears streaming one by one down the side of her face. They are heavy, hurtful sobs. She can’t control it. She’s free.

Because none of it is fair. The summer is long and awful. Unfair. She can’t love who she wants to love. Unfair. She’s forced to love someone she can’t stand. Unfair. She has to wear, like, a long-sleeved dress in the summertime! UNFAIR! Summer ought to stand for a specific type of freedom—emotional, physical, let those bellies hang out, etc.—and yet it’s unnaturally burdensome. It’s repressive. It forces us back within ourselves, questioning and nervous and moody as all fuck. And so, to cry—to full-on heave, honestly, at this particular misery, both an over- and an underreaction—is quite possibly the most liberating thing Lucy can do. This is the sacred pond, renewing and refreshing and horrible, baptizing her in something new.

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