#but i feel like the susan thing was resolved too quickly. and his relationship with mac has gone. underaddressed. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

buckysgrace · 11 months

Text

Thirty One

“Kim,” Her mother’s voice and the sound of her pushing her door open drew Kim and Billy apart. He took the towel from her, pretending to hold it up against his nose as he winced from the contact. They sat far apart from each other, even though they hadn’t been doing anything wrong, “Oh, Billy. Let me see your nose.” Susan frowned as her gaze landed between the two of them, fixating on his bleeding nose. Billy looked at her awkwardly, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do.

“It’s alright,” He responded, pulling away from her like he was a scared animal and she was his prey. Her fingers lingered in the air for a second before she tried again, “Really, I’ve had worse.” He tried to convince her but she stood her ground as she approached him again, tilting his head back so she could look at his nose. Kim thought it was odd that she seemed to actually be concerned that Billy was hurt.

“Y’know, I used to work at the hospital. Like actually on the floor and doing the important stuff,” Her mom mumbled as she cupped his face in her hands and inspected his nose. Billy looked like he was close to pushing her away as he glanced towards Kim, his eyes alarmed like he was being pulled into a trap. She knew his dislike of being touched and couldn’t imagine how it felt at the moment with someone who ignored him most of the time, “It’s not broken, you’re lucky. Just keep the pressure there and -”

“I know what to do,” Billy had had enough as he pulled away from her, his eyes cutting into the older woman, “It’s not the first time it’s happened. I know how to handle it myself.” His voice was harsh and Susan got the point as she took a step back away from him. Kim watched, wondering why her mom cared so much now.

“He should be lucky?” Kim found herself saying, looking at her mom in disbelief, “Neil just punched him in the face.” Kim was astounded that her mom would even suggest that he got off easily. Susan sighed deeply, looking as if she was about to argue when Billy answered.

“Don’t talk about him. He’s my dad, you don’t know him. Just drop it.” Kim turned to him stunned, feeling her cheeks redden and her anger fade. She felt like she had a reason to be upset but she quieted herself. She thought of all the times she had defended her father during his mess ups. She was sure Billy thought that Neil was all he had. There was still blood running from his nose but not as much as previous. She turned back to her mom.

“Things got out of hand. I know, I know,” Susan looked at Kim quickly before she could speak over her, “He’s sorry though. I just talked to him. Let’s just- start over. Everything that just happened was in the past. Billy, why don’t you go get cleaned up and Kim you can put your pretty flowers in a vase. Okay? Everyone just needs to breathe, everything is fine.” Susan forced a smile as she looked between the two teenagers. Kim could sense her resolve breaking and felt a pang of guilt towards her mother. She had fallen into bad relationship after bad relationship. She couldn’t afford to care for the two girls on her own anymore and now here she was, stuck in some strange town with a man who beat his son. She was trying to hold the image of them being perfect together but it was diminishing more and more. Kim wondered how her mother got to this point. What she was like when she was Kim’s age, what her dreams were. It made her sad to think that she could end up in the very same position one day.

“Sure,” Billy exhaled like he wasn’t bothered by it. Kim was sure that he wasn’t. He was so used to being treated a certain way, how could he understand that this wasn’t fair? She didn’t want to go and sit near Neil knowing that he would never apologize. She was too bitter for that. Anytime her father ever raised his voice at them he always apologized. He never made them feel less then, “I’ll be back.” He stood without looking at Kim but she couldn’t help her wandering eyes as he left. She looked back, surprised to see her moms stern face.

“What the hell was that?” Her voice was a lot angrier than she had ever heard it before. Susan had always been the one to have to get onto them, as their father refused, but she had never sounded so brash before. Kim blinked at her.

“What?” Kim asked honestly, not understanding why her mother was getting so angry with her. She didn’t know what she had done wrong.

“Why was he in here?” Susan looked over her shoulder to make sure the door was shut as she stared down at the younger redhead. Kim felt her eyebrows furrowing and a pit of worry growing inside of her stomach and spreading into her chest.

“He needed help with his nosebleed,” Kim started to explain as she held up the pink first aid kit. Susan rolled her eyes and pinched her temple as she sighed frustrated. Kim frowned, shaking the box as she spoke up again, “I was thanking him too. He took the blame for something he didn’t even do. He got punched because of me, the least I could do was help.” She didn’t think she was in the wrong but her mom was treating her in that way.

“He’s trouble. You don’t understand half of what he’s done. Just please,” Her mom took Kim’s hands in hers and squeezed, “Don’t fall under his bad influence. I don’t want to see you going down the wrong path.” Kim was stunned as she stared up into mirroring hazel eyes.

“What are you talking about?” She assumed she was speaking of California but she never had the privilege of finding out the gritty details. She assumed moving this far away was just Neil’s way of isolating them, “You act like I’ve done something wrong. I was just helping him.” She stared up at her mother, remembering how often she would tell them all to stick together. She was confusing her so much.

“It’s not my place to say. I know you wouldn’t do anything bad with him, you’re so much smarter than that. I just don’t want you to get mixed up with him or his crowd. Especially if his friend is interested in you. I wouldn’t have brought you out there had I known.” Her mother was trying to explain everything at once and it was just leaving Kim even more conflicted. She didn’t understand how Billy still came out to be the bad guy after everything that had just happened. She felt like screaming that she was dumb enough to fall into Billy’s snare. She had done so much with him that she was sure she would give her mother nightmares. She inhaled deeply, holding the air in her lungs as she tried to sort her thoughts.

“I’ll be out for dinner in a minute.” She said finally as she pulled her hands away from her mother’s. Susan gave her a pitiful look and Kim really did feel guilty about how unfair her situation was. It wasn’t an excuse, however, her mom should’ve never married Neil. As soon as she knew who he was she should’ve been running in the opposite direction. Susan turned softly, giving her one last sad look over her shoulder before she was leaving her room. Kim felt herself collapse on her pillows, pulling the stuffed cow to her chest as she held it tightly and thought of Billy. She wondered how long he had begged for another adult to come into his life and pull him away from Neil. Everyone had failed him.

She lingered in the mirror as she tried to compose herself. She messed with her hair softly, before she wiped at her cheeks. She didn’t want Neil to have the satisfaction that he had upset her. She thought of Billy suddenly, thinking of how defensive he had grown over his father. She didn’t understand it. She walked out of her room quietly, heading back towards the kitchen.

Billy was setting the table. He had changed his shirt into a blue button up and even though his nose was red and swollen, he was acting like everything was fine. He glanced up at her, but quickly looked away as he continued to make the table. Kim wished he would look at her for a little bit longer.

“There you are,” Susan smiled and placed a gentle kiss on her daughter’s cheek. Kim looked at her unsure, “Can you just pass out some water? I think water will be better than soda tonight.” Kim nodded and began to pull out cups to fill with ice and water. It felt weird, trying to pretend like everything was normal.

It was quiet as they prepared for dinner. She was actually surprised that the food actually smelled nice. She couldn’t tell if it was her doing or if her mom had followed the directions that closely. She began to put the cups down on the table, glancing up as Billy worked. He was trying hard not to look at her and she was wondering if she had overstepped his boundaries.

“It looks good.” Neil’s gruff voice sent shivers up her back. She paused her movements, meeting his sharp eyes as she looked up. He was staring at her intensely, like he was waiting for her to do the wrong thing. She gulped hard as she looked back at the table and wished he would stop staring at her.

“Susan did really well this time,” It was weird having Billy be the one to keep the peace, “I mean she always does well. It just looks really good this time.” He added quickly. Kim watched as his eyes kept darting away from his father. It seemed like Neil was the only one he struggled to keep eye contact with.

“She did,” Neil’s eyes kept lingering on Kim, even as she walked away and went to help her mom bring the salad and pasta over. She could feel her hands trembling, unsure of what she did wrong as he continued to stare harshly at her, “It’s a shame Kim was too busy to help her.” Kim gulped hard when she was brought back into the conversation. She wasn’t sure what she should say or do. She looked to her mom for help.

“Oh, she helps enough,” Susan’s smile was stiff as she placed the hot pan of pasta down, “Okay, let’s get settled in.” She was doing her best to keep any meltdowns from happening as everyone slowly sat down. Kim was surprised that Billy sat next to her, expecting him to give her the cold shoulder. Maybe he was worried about Neil finding out.

“It’s really good, mom.” Max was the first one to speak after everyone quietly made their plates. Kim held onto her fork and stared at the small serving in front of her. She felt like she had a rock sitting in her stomach that was preventing her from taking a bite. She fiddled with her food, too worried that she would throw it up if she ate. She looked up, suddenly aware of the hot eyes on the side of her face.

Neil was glaring at her, his jaw clenched tightly as he watched her. She felt her hand trembling as she slowly placed a small bite in her mouth and chewed it slowly. It tasted like nothing to her. She wasn’t sure why the idea of her having a guy interested in her bothered him so much. He knew she would be eighteen soon. It wasn’t like he actually ever meant any of his complaints towards Billy and all of the girls he brought home.

It was like someone had hit a light switch. One second Neil was fine and the next he was on his feet in a storm of rage as he gripped the table and flipped it completely over. Billy’s arm crossed in front of her waist, pushing her back far enough so the leg of the table didn’t smack her in the face. She was still stunned, turning to the older man as he began to scream in such a rage that his face was turning red. Remnants of glass and food scattered at their feet as Billy moved his hand away from her and she could feel him sensing the blow that was to come.

The slap that Neil delivered echoed hard and loud in the room and bounced off of the bare walls. There was stunned silence for a moment as Susan turned her head, holding her red cheek in her hand as she looked up at her husband with tears in her eyes. All hell broke loose after that. Max must’ve been to her breaking point because she was up to her feet in a flash, her small fists banging into Neil’s chest. Kim didn’t even think as she took a hold of the small girl, pulling her back so quickly that they both fell onto the mess of ceramic and food. Kim winced at the stabbing feeling in her hand but ignored it as the smaller girl wiggled in her arms, screaming profanities at the older man.

“Calm down,” Billy reasoned to his father as he held Neil’s fist in his hand and his forearm pressed against his fathers chest to keep him from charging forward, “You don’t want this. “ He urged, trying to calm the older man. His tone was firm and stern. Kim could feel the panic growing inside of her as she rocked the younger girl and planned on the best way to whisk her away if Neil barreled past Bily.

Kim could feel the ice in her veins as she watched Neil’s angry form turn to Billy. She thought about how he had threatened him earlier if Billy were to touch him again. He took both of his strong hands and wrapped them around his son's shoulders before shoving him back. There were no words and he didn’t look back as he stormed away, knocking over items and colliding his fists with whatever objects lay in his wake.

Max sniffled in Kim’s arms, shuffling her way out slowly as she crawled towards Susan, “Mom,” Her voice was broken and shaky as she spoke, “Mommy are you okay?” Susan nodded, taking in a shaky breath as the tears tumbled down her cheeks. Kim was forced to sit and watch, unable to move as she stared at the large red mark on her cheek. She wondered if this was the first time or if it had been happening before. Billy crouched down in front of Kim, looking at her unsure as he took her hand in his gently. She glanced at him, sensing a calmness flooding over him as he turned her palm up as the blood dripped through her fingers and onto the floor. She stared at the piece of blue ceramic that poked out of her skin.

“Are you okay?” He spoke in a hushed manner, his fingers wrapping around the piece as he gently nudged it out. She winced, looking at the large gash on her palm. She nodded quickly, trying to process what had just happened.

“I’m okay,” She tried to reassure him. He stood again, heading to the kitchen as he dampened a paper towel. Kim looked towards her mom who had Max wrapped up in her arms, pulling her close to her chest. She swallowed a lump in her chest, “Mom, are you okay?” She finally found the courage to speak to her. Susan turned her sad eyes towards her oldest daughter, her good cheek resting on top of Max’s fiery red hair.

“I’m sorry,” Her mom breathed out through tears. They all winced at the same time, hearing loud wrecking noises coming from the master bedroom. There had been bad fights before, Kim could remember. Neil would punch walls and throw around objects. He would take his anger out on Billy, but she had never seen him ever hit or show any amount of hatred towards her mother before, “Oh my, it’s such a mess.” Kim wasn’t sure if she was talking about the literal mess or the scramble that was their family at the moment.

Billy came back to her, gently dabbing the blood up around the gash on her palm. Kim looked away from it, trying not to feel sick as the stinging shot up her arm. She was still bleeding a lot and didn’t want to focus on that. Her mom left Max, bending on the floor as she began to swoop up the mess of ceramic and food.

“Susan,” Billy’s voice was so gentle and soft that it made the older woman freeze, “I’ll get it. Max, can you get some ice for her face? It’ll help keep any bruising or any swelling down.” Susan’s mouth opened and then closed again as she stared at the boy. Billy completely ignored looking at her, instead he focused on cleaning Kim’s hand. Max crossed the mess gently and Kim could see her cheeks were red from crying.

“It’s okay,” Kim watched him, thinking about how only an hour ago she was dabbing the blood from his nose, “That’s a lot of blood.” She said suddenly, feeling a bit sick as she stared at her hand. Billy looked up at her, his blue eyes locking in on her panicked expression. There was a reason she never considered working in the medical field.

“It’s going to be fine, you won’t need any stitches,” Billy smiled up at her, relaxing her nerves as Max crossed back through the kitchen and handed her mother a baggy full of ice, “It should stop bleeding soon.” He mumbled as he turned her hand over, inspecting the other side as he held the towel towards her gash. She felt a million different thoughts racing in her brain as she was fairly convinced it was too late and she would be losing her hand entirely. Billy seemed to notice as he ran his fingernails over her skin softly to relax her. She wondered if he wanted to hold her hand as badly as she wanted to hold his.

“I think we should go to a motel tonight,” Susan spoke up. Kim turned to face her mother, watching as she held the ice against her cheek and rocked Max at the same time. She was surprised she was suggesting to get away from Neil at all. She wondered if this was finally the turning point for her mom, “Just until he cools down.” Max was sniffling against her chest and Kim nodded, not sure what else she could say to the conversation.

Billy didn’t look up as he spoke, “I can get your clothes from Neil’s room,” He continued to clean Kim’s hand gently and she was sure she had never felt him touch her so soft before, “I’ll give him a few minutes to cool down.” Billy placed a bandaid over her hand before beginning to wrap it in gauge. She wondered if he had ever considered being a doctor with the way he handled blood so easily. She was sure, like earlier, this was nothing new to him.

“Thank you,” Her moms voice was ragged as she spoke up again, watching the two teens intensely. Kim was too occupied with Billy’s hand movements to notice, “Girls, you should go pack a bag. Just for the night, we’ll come back in the morning.”

“Come with me,” Max pleaded as she held onto her mom’s shirt. Kim felt a pang of guilt as she watched the two interact. She didn’t think it was fair for Max to have experienced so much and to be so young, “Please.” Susan turned to Kim, watching her with a peculiar look for a moment before she nodded and went with Max.

“Will I lose my hand, doctor?” Kim felt herself trying to lighten the mood as Billy finished wrapping her hand. It was secured nicely but it still throbbed and she did partially wonder if she was still going to die from an infection. He snorted, then glanced over his shoulder before helping her stand.

“Are you okay?” He asked, looking at her worried. She nodded her head quickly, trying not to linger in his concerned eyes. She didn’t want him to worry about her. He seemed to accept her nod as an answer, “Go get your back real quick while I pack one for your mom.” Kim hesitated as she watched him.

“What if he hurts you?” She sounded like a scared child as she watched him. She knew Neil was able to do far worse than a bloody nose. Billy looked away from her.

“He won’t, not this time. Just please, go pack your bag.” He didn’t let her argue anymore as he stepped away from her. She felt a stinging in her heart that she tried to ignore as she walked towards her room. She didn’t know what she would do if Billy got hurt again. She didn’t want to see him all bruised and bloody anymore.

She grabbed a duffel bag from her closet and tossed her pajamas inside and an extra pair of clothes. She threw in a bottle of lotion, her makeup remover and some deodorant. She raced back to the bathroom and grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste then grabbed a box of pads to be safe. She lingered by the bathroom door, hoping to see Billy but he hadn’t come out from Neil’s room yet. It was too quiet.

She tried not to think about it as she finished packing her bag. Her fingers lingered for a minute when she looked at the stuffed cow laying neatly on her pillows. She bit her lip hard before shoving it deep in her bag. Just in case.

“Are you almost ready?” Her mom peeked inside her room just as Kim finished zipping the bag up. She nodded, placing it over her shoulder and wincing as she gripped the strap too hard. She followed the other girls towards the door and waited for Billy to appear again. He must’ve given her mom her bag when she was busy.

“Can we go?” Max sounded a bit scared as her eyes lingered on the master bedroom door. Kim shifted on her feet, feeling a bit better when Billy appeared from his room unscathed. She searched his face, making sure there were no marks or bruises that she missed. Susan nodded.

“Let’s go,” She guided Max towards the door, opening it and letting the younger girl go first, “Kim, come on.” Her mother urged as she glanced away from her. Kim nodded, looking at Billy’s empty hands.

“Where’s your bag?” Kim asked as her mother and Max headed out the door. Billy shuffled on his feet, his hands dried with blood as he peered up at her with electric eyes. He waited until the other two girls were out of earshot before he spoke up.

“I don’t think I was invited.” He said slowly, pretending to check the bandage on her hand. She looked at him surprised. Regardless if her mom had meant for him to come or not, he was coming.

“You were, this is me inviting you right now. Go get your bag,” She told him, more forceful than she had ever spoken towards him before. He exhaled softly as he looked at her, she could feel the burning rising in her chest, “Billy, go get your bag.” She told him harshly, feeling her voice burning from the tears that were forming. He took another step forward.

“He’s my dad. I can’t just leave him like you guys can.” He was speaking softly, like he was trying to reason with her. She stared up at him, horrified by what he was saying.

“Yes you can, he punched you. You can come with us. With me,” She searched his expression for any change of his features, any hint that he had reconsidered, “Please.” She felt as if her throat was on fire from how badly she wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair that he felt like he had to stay here with Neil and pick up the mess his father had made. It wasn’t fair that his mom had made him feel unwelcome. Nothing about this was fair.

He cupped her face gently, wiping away the tears that had betrayed her as his thumbs massaged her soft skin. She stared up at him hopeful, wishing he knew just how much he meant to her. She was terrified to leave him alone, terrified that something else would happen to him.

He didn’t say anything as he bent forward and caressed his lips with hers, barely touching her at all. Her cheeks were wet as she pushed up against him, her arms snaking around his shoulders as she pushed her lips on his and held onto him tightly. She inhaled him like he was the only air she would need as she pushed all of her thoughts and feelings into her kiss. For once, she didn’t care if anyone was to see them. She didn’t want to leave him behind. She wanted to stay with him. She was desperate as she pulled him towards her as he melted against her lips, holding her gently like she might break.

He pulled away, his forehead resting against hers as he stared down at her plump lips, “You need to go.” He mumbled softly, his hands pushing through her red hair. She thought about crying even more, wondering if that would convince him to go with her.

“Not without you,” She pleaded, staring up at him. He traced his thumb over her skin gently, wiping away her tears with his rough hands. She was determined that they stick together, “I’ll stay with you.” She added hastily. He sighed and shook his head.

“I need to be with my dad in the same way you need to be with your mom and sister right now. You know the number, you can call and I swear I’ll answer. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?” She felt defeated as her breath became shaky and her lips curled into a frown as the bubble of tears rushed inside of her chest, “Please don’t cry. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you first thing in the morning, okay?” He looked desperate to make her see his side but she just couldn’t understand his reasoning. After all Neil had done and Billy was still willing to stay and make things right with his dad. She nodded sadly, placing her hands on top of his as he held her face gently.

“Promise me you’ll be okay?” She asked him, not caring about what her mother thought about the moment. Susan could think that he was a bad influence as much as she wanted, only Kim knew the truth. She’d defend him for as long as he needed someone to defend him. He hesitated as he watched her before he slowly nodded.

“I’m a lot tougher than I look,” He tried to crack a smile but was unable to. She wondered if he was just as scared as she was, “Go, before your mom comes looking for you. Please.” She nodded stiffly, too afraid to answer in case she cried again. Her hand was throbbing from how tightly she was holding onto him. She didn’t want to lose him but she knew there was no point in fighting. He had already made up his mind and was forcing her to accept it.

She pushed against him again, placing a long soft kiss against his lips as she felt her words failing her. She didn’t know why she was acting like it was the end of the world. A few months ago she would’ve felt bad, but she would’ve moved on. She wasn’t sure why she was letting this bother her so much. He pulled away first again, a small smile painted on his lips and she knew her time had run out. She nodded, picking up her duffel bag again as she looked back at him.

“I’ll see you in the morning.” She whispered out hoarsely. He nodded, sticking his hands in his pockets as he watched her. She wondered what he thought of her right now. If he thought she was attached before she was certain he was thinking that now. She turned quickly and headed out the back door before her mom came up to fetch her. She made haste down the steps, her hand stinging as she held onto the strap of her duffel bag over her shoulder. She stepped forward, looking at how Susan was pleading with a crying Max. Kim opened the door and was surrounded by her sobs.

“We can’t leave him. We can’t!” Max bawled like she was a small toddler again. Kim quickly turned to face her, understanding why she was so upset.

“He said he can’t go anyways,” She tried to reassure her younger sister as she faced her. Max’s eyes were so red and puffy she was surprised they weren’t drying out from the cold air blowing on her face. Susan sighed from the front seat and Kim ignored her, “He said he has to stay. I tried to get him to come, okay?” Max collapsed on her lap in a mess of tears and snot as Kim gently caressed her red hair back. Susan began to drive away from their house. Kim never thought she would miss it as she did right now. She wanted to cry like Max was but she feared what her mother would say.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Susan spoke up after a few minutes of driving in tense silence, the only sound filling the car was Max’s ragged sobs, “We’ve been through worse. We have each other and that’s all that matters.” Kim wanted to add that Billy had been through a lot worse as well she had left him behind. She didn’t care what he had done in California to make her mother so fearful of him. He was still a kid, he still needed someone to look after her.

Kim didn’t say anything as she looked out the window and played with Max’s tangly hair. They had been in a lot worse before, like when they had lost the house and Susan’s drinking problem took a turn for the worse. That was right before she had met Neil, they spent nights alternating between sleeping on the couches of her coworkers and in her car. Neil was supposed to change everything. Perhaps, he had. Kim was unsure if it was for the better, however.

She wondered what worse things Billy had faced, other than his dads beatings. Neil was well off, there was no denying that. She only wondered if he was similar to her. That he would prefer living in unknown places rather than be forced to be near his dad.

She thought of how they would play this off to the neighbors. Everyone liked to snoop in a small town like this. She was sure someone had seen them leaving or heard something. Her mother had always been good about dismissing drama. She could easily brush the situation under the rug, Kim was sure of it. She wanted so desperately for her mother to stay away from Neil, but at the same time she didn’t want her to. Kim was well aware that Neil would take all of his anger out on Billy. She didn’t want that to happen, she didn’t want to be separated from him.

“Okay,” Kim looked up as her mom pulled into a motel. It didn’t look as nice as the one Billy had taken her to but she figured it would be more expensive for her mom anyways. Max sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes. Kim felt so bad for her younger sister. She wished she didn’t have to experience any of this. She deserved to have an easy life, “It’ll work, won’t it?” Kim stared at the red mark on her moms face as she turned to look at them. Both of her daughters nodded stiffly. It was better than dealing with Neil all night longer.

Kim’s thoughts turned sad again as she thought about Billy and how he was stuck at the house with his dad. She thought about calling him as soon as they got inside but was worried her mom might mention something. She was afraid of creating a bigger mess as their family seemed to be falling apart around them.

“I’ll go get us a room, really quick.” Susan locked the car doors behind them as they made their way inside. Kim felt herself wincing as her hand continued to sting. She didn’t think to pack any medicine with her, she was hoping she’d be able to sleep the throbbing pain away. She glanced around the empty motel room, glancing over to watch her mom talk to the lady at the front desk. She was sure they all looked a mess. Her mother seemed to be thinking the same thing as she kept messing with her hair.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Max asked suddenly. Kim gulped all of her fears down as she stared at the younger girl. Max had such a hopeful look in her eyes that Kim couldn’t find it in herself to break. She knew that Billy wouldn’t want her to do that either. He was more than adamant that he would be fine.

“Yes,” She breathed her lie out hard, “He’ll take care of himself. We’ll see him again in the morning.” Kim fought everything in her to give her little sister a smile. She wished she was able to convince herself of the same lie. Max nodded slowly, seemingly believing her.

“Is your hand okay?” Kim looked down at where it was bandaged and nodded. It hurt a lot but she wasn’t going to say anything. Not even to her mother. She didn’t want any of them to be worrying about her at the moment when there was so much else going on.

“Yeah, maybe I’ll have a cool scar afterwards.” Kim grinned, trying to get the younger girl to smile but failing. Max looked like she was deep in thought as she glanced towards their mother who was busy counting out the cash for how much it would cost to stay the night.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten so mad.” Max’s voice was timid and full of sorrow. Kim frowned, not liking how she was blaming herself. She couldn’t control what Neil did.

“Don’t be sorry. You were brave, there’s no shame in that. He shouldn’t have done any of that. He shouldn’t be hitting anyone.” Kim told her, almost sternly as Max looked up at her again. Their conversation went quiet as their mother finally joined them.

“Ready?” Susan looked stressed as she began to walk forward, reaching a hand out to hold onto Max’s small hand. Kim followed shortly behind, watching the wallpaper disappear into different colors until they finally reached their room. Her body felt so tired and exhausted but her mind was awake and alert. Susan unlocked the door, pushing it open.

“Well, it’ll be like a big girl slumber party,” Her mother tried to make light of the situation as they stumbled into the room. It was in worse condition than the one Billy had taken her to. The blue walls had almost faded to white and it smelt similar to the way her grandmother's house did when she would watch them when they were young. The lamp in the corner of the room kept flickering as it exposed the one King sized bed. Kim knew it would be plenty for the three of them. She tried not to think about how it would’ve fit four of them perfectly, “I’m going to wash up.” Her mom set her bag on the end of the bed before quickly walking towards the bathroom. Max looked to her older sister with a heartbroken expression.

“Are you okay?” Kim finally asked her, sitting on the edge of the bed so she could be at her sister’s height. Max’s face immediately fell into a frown and tears began to cascade down her cheeks as she cried again. Kim took Max’s hands away from her face and held them tightly, squeezing to support her younger sister, “Mom’s right. Everything is going to be fine.”

“I miss daddy.” Kim felt her heart breaking for the small girl in front of her. She took a deep breath to fight back her own tears as she nodded. Kim felt similar to how her younger sister did at the moment. What she wouldn’t do to curl up in one of her dads suffocating hugs. He hadn’t called since she had sent the money, she didn’t even know if he had got it. She wondered if he cared about them at all or if he was too lost in his own addiction to care at the moment.

“I do too,” Kim licked her bottom lip, trying to focus on anything but the tears swelling inside of her chest again. This had been a rotten night, “But we still have each other. That’s what matters. You’re my baby sister, I’ll always take care of you.” Kim promised as she squeezed Max’s hands softly. It had been a long time since she had seen her this vulnerable.

“I wanted to run away,” Max spoke up, looking at Kim with tear stained eyes, “When we first moved here. I wanted to run away and be with him so badly. Part of me still does.” Kim blinked away her own tears as she nodded in understanding. She couldn’t blame her for wanting to leave, she had wanted the same for a long time now.

“Maybe this will be the change we need. You have so many friends here now, we can get mom the support,” Kim tried to persuade the younger girl. She had no idea if that was what would actually happen. She could hope, but her mom was hard to read at times, “You know I’m always here if you want to talk.”

“I hate talking about my feelings,” Max grumbled, reminding Kim of Billy, “We shouldn’t have left without him.” Kim nodded hesitantly. She agreed, but she didn’t know how much of that statement her mom would agree with.. The bathroom door opened again and Susan stepped out changed, both of her cheeks reddened and tear stained. No matter how mad or upset Kim was at her for leaving, there was not a comparable feeling to seeing your mother cry. It left a hole inside of her heart.

“I know, but he wouldn’t come with us,” Kim tried to explain to the younger girl, “I tried so hard but he wouldn’t listen. He said he needed to be there for Neil.” Kim tried not to make a face and acted as if she understood the other boy. Max’s eyebrows furrowed together.

“Steve said you wouldn’t call Billy your brother,” Max accused her, her blue eyes shooting into her, “Why? Did you actually tell him to come with us?” Kim gaped at her for a moment, unsure of how to approach the subject.

“That’s not what I meant by it and yes I did try to make him come with us,” Kim pleaded the younger girl to listen as she squeezed her hands again. Kim tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her palm every time she flexed her hand, “He’s more like a friend to me than anything. We just don’t relate as siblings. Does that make sense?” Kim did her best to explain herself without giving anything away. She didn’t want to traumatize the younger girl. Max nodded slowly, looking like she accepted the answer as she reached forward and tumbled into her older sister’s arms. Kim hugged her back, knowing how hard Max tried to put on a tough exterior.

“You girls should get ready for bed, I think we all need a long rest.” Susan nodded, looking at where their hands were interlocked. Max pulled away first, grabbing her pajamas from her bag as she lingered near their mother. Kim did the same, wondering if she should say anything to her mom. She didn’t think she deserved to get hit and only hoped this would keep her far away from Neil. They could survive on their own, like she said, they had faced worse. Kim’s only concern was Billy.

Max was still standing close to Susan as Kim made her way to the bathroom. She thought after everything that had happened that she would be sick. She looked in the mirror, noticing her red cheeks and puffy eyes. Apparently none of them were very good at keeping themselves together. She undressed into her nightgown but her fingertips lingered on the bruises Billy had left on her. She wasn’t sure why she was so afraid that she wouldn’t see him again. It was as if this was a dream and when she woke up he would be gone forever. Just a fragment of her memory.

She scrubbed at her teeth, willing herself for some sort of normalcy as she tried not to think about Billy too hard. She didn’t know what she would do with herself if he was gone forever. Even now, she could feel the line that connected them. It was like he was here with her, even though he wasn’t.

Max had already changed when she came back into the room, the lights were dim as she made her way to the side of the bed by the window. Max’s small body was curled up to her mother’s, like she was afraid to let her go. Kim understood. It was hard to look at her mom after everything that happened. For some reason, she felt as if she was partially responsible. She knew that it was irrational. She couldn’t control that Tommy had come to see her. Not that it was even Tommy’s fault, it was Neil’s anger issues that landed them in this position.

Kim clambered in next to Max as she pulled the scratchy sheets up over her body. She felt so alone at the moment, even with her mom and sister laying next to her. She thought that something was missing. She blamed it on her anxiety. She was convinced she was overthinking the situation with Billy. He had lived on his own with Neil for sixteen years. She was sure he’d be able to handle one night alone with him.

“Kimberly,” Her mom spoke up softly and she turned, seeing the younger redhead was fast asleep with her head on Susan’s chest. She looked at her mother, concerned at how red her face still was, “I need to ask you something.” She felt her eyebrows furrowing as she looked at her confused. She wasn’t sure what sort of answers she could help her mom with. She had always been treated like a little adult with her mother. She would have Kim pick up the slack that her father failed to do and would ask her advice on the guys she was seeing. Kim was certain she knew all of her mother’s secrets.

“What is it?” Kim looked at her confused, sitting up a bit to look at the older woman better. The same hazel eyes stared back at her and Kim suspected she would begin to ask her what she thought about moving again. She figured this would be it, she was finally going to leave Neil. She started to worry about Billy again, knowing he wouldn’t come with them.

“Is there something going on with you and Billy?” Kim felt her whole world stop. She felt similar to how she did earlier as fear raced through her and dug its nails into her skin. Her veins turned into an icy river as she exhaled, willing her heart to start again as her mother stared at her expectantly, “And please don’t lie to me. I won’t judge, I just want to know the truth.”

The truth? The truth was it was so much more complicated than anything that she could tell her mother. To Kim, it didn’t matter how much her mom told her she wouldn’t judge her. Despite everything that had just happened, she didn’t trust her. She had witnessed how hard it could be to stand up to your abuser, much less leave them. She didn’t want to say anything and then have her mom turn around and tell Neil, just for the blame and anger to fall back to Billy. She hated how cruel her thoughts were but she knew there was truth to it. She wouldn’t let Billy take the fall for this. Not this time.

“No, God no,” Kim put on a good act as she tried to look as disgusted as she could, “He’s- you and Neil are married. It’s not like that. I just don’t have many friends and he listens surprisingly well.” She kept her hands glued to the bed, unmoving as she wouldn’t give herself away by fidgeting. She watched her mother relax a bit, nodding as she accepted the answer. Kim was thankful. She wasn’t sure what she would do if her mom still suspected something between the two of them. She knew then, that if this was to continue, that they had to be more careful. No more sex in places where people could easily walk in. Her mother was watching them and would continue to do so. She was sure of it.

“I’m sorry, I just saw the way he was cleaning you up earlier and I guess I let my fears get the best of me,” Her mom sighed, “Love is hopeless. Trust me, you think you find someone good and this happens.” Susan motioned towards her reddened cheek. Kim faltered for a moment, as her mothers words were not something that she wanted to hear and accept. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life alone, she wanted to fall in love and have someone love her in the same way.

“Right, it’s hopeless.” Kim repeated. She had always dreamed of having her knight in shining armor whisk her away. She guessed it was just hopeful thinking as she laid near her mom and thought of all the bad men she had been with before. Kim wondered if she had her same rotten luck. She didn’t want to end up in a similar situation. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to love someone and have someone love her in the same way.

“What I said earlier,” Susan spoke again, appearing more exhausted as she looked towards the young girl, “Stay away from, Billy. I know what you said, but I still don’t trust him. He’d only use you for one thing.” Kim stared at her, wondering if she knew more than what she did. If her mother did, she didn’t say anything else as she closed her eyes while resting against Max’s head. Kim bit her lip so hard she thought she would draw blood. She didn’t think it was fair to say Billy wouldn’t stick around when he was the one who volunteered to stay with his abusive father.

Kim waited until her mother fell asleep before she reached the inside of her duffel bag. She had so desperately wanted to call and hear Billy’s voice but now she was afraid to do so. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep without knowing that he was alright. She pulled out the stuffed cow she had buried deep inside of it. She laid back against the pillows, clutching it towards her chest as she tried to convince herself that he was okay. She didn’t want to call in case Neil answered, but she wanted to make sure he was okay. If she closed her eyes hard enough she could still smell him, could still feel him lingering against her skin. She faced the window, clutching the cow in her chest and willed this to be some sick dream.

#billy hargrove #billy hargrove smut #billy hargrove x oc #billy hargrove stepcest #tw stepcest #tw pseudocest #billy hargrove x original character #Cruel Summer

54 notes · View notes

franvanmoron · 3 years

Text

Chapters: 9/?

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)

Relationship: Susan Grimshaw/Dutch van der Linde

Summary:

Following the massacre in Blackwater and amidst a snowstorm, Dutch van der Linde and Susan Grimshaw mysteriously vanish. The pair appear in New York City (2009) and set out to find their way back to 1899. Quite literally out of time in this strange century, the twosome find comfort in each other, rekindling their flame along the way.

**Note: explicit themes begin in chapter 5.

Chapter 1: The Fall

Blackwater.

That place--that bloodbath--that failure left a foul taste in Dutch van der Linde's mouth.

Micah Bell had instigated and encouraged robbing the boat that was full of bank notes; $150,000 to be exact. The plan had been perfect. It was supposed to be easy.

The Van der Linde gang had gotten admission to the money reasonably straightforwardly.

Conversely, the Pinkerton Detective Agency and the Blackwater Police Department showed up too fast. A violent gunfight ensued. The gang was overwhelmed; John Marston, Mac and Davey Callander, and Jenny Kirk had all been shot.

Where the hell was Sean?

Ultimately, it was an unwinnable situation.

Desperate times required desperate measures...

Van der Linde had to do something to ensure that some of them survived.

Ultimately, Dutch murdered a young woman and stashed the money in the city of Blackwater. Then, the gang fled north into a vicious snowstorm through the mountains of Ambarino. The frantic rush of escaping certain death and capture in Blackwater matured into an eerie silence that settled amongst the surviving gang members as they continued on.

As the caravan pushed through the freezing whiteout, Jenny Kirk had succumbed to her wounds.

The Van der Linde gang's streak of tragic luck was sustained when a wagon’s wheel broke off with a loud crack of wood and rolled away...

The blizzard made it difficult to see a foot in front of their faces. Without hesitation, the gang’s arbiter climbed down and went in search of the wheel.

Wanting to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, their leader followed as he knew Davey would not last much longer in this cold, but if they could just get him inside and warm soon rather than later, he might recover. He told himself that, but he knew better. Still, he needed to get his remaining folks out of the harsh cold or more of them would perish.

That wouldn't do.

Miss Grimshaw crept down to lower area in the road and called out. “I think I see it.”

Dutch cursed and held out his arm in front of his face while he trudged through the snow after Miss Grimshaw. As he pushed onward, the snow and icy wind continued to whip at his exposed flesh. The harsh blizzard made it nearly impossible for him to see let alone walk. He hoped that they might find the stray wagon wheel quickly and continue on.

“Susan!” Dutch shouted to her. “Any luck?”

Slowly, Dutch kept walking further into the storm. He bundled his hands over his mouth trying to warm them, but had little to no luck. Then, he tilted the brim of his hat down in an attempt to keep the snow out of his eyes and face.

What a mess this was...

Miss Grimshaw took each step with a careful precision, avoiding any ice patches the best she could. She’d encountered worse storms, but never under such dire circumstances.

“Over here! I think it’s jus’ ahead of me.”

Miss Grimshaw blindly reached forward to try and feel for the wheel. When her hand connected with nothing, she rewrapped her arms around herself and searched with her foot. After another step forward, she tried again.

“I thought it went this way but--well, I can’t see a damn thing!”

Her lantern hung loosely from one hand, but it did nothing to improve her vision.

Dutch let out a sigh as he found his way to her. He was beginning to worry about the people back in the caravan, freezing to death. They needed resolve this before it was too late.

“We need to hurry up and find this goddamn wheel, otherwise..." He hesitated. He didn’t even want those thoughts to cross his mind. The gang couldn’t afford to lose anyone else. Especially, not now.

Dutch went further ahead into the blizzard before spotting something that looked round. It could be the missing wheel, but it could be anything else.

Miss Grimshaw slowly made her way towards the sound of Dutch’s voice, holding up her lamp in a last ditch effort to see.

“Let’s worry about that wheel. It’s all we can control at the moment.”

She believed that focusing on what could go wrong would make things go wrong.

Not expecting him to be that close, Miss Grimshaw startled when she reached Dutch. She continued her previous methods of searching until her foot dislodged a rock. Pebbles rolled and clattered, falling from the cliff's edge.

Miss Grimshaw took a quick step back.

The woman’s boot connected with ice.

She’d desperately grasped at Dutch’s arm for stability, but by then she’d already fallen too far and only pulled him along.

Dutch was astonished when he suddenly felt himself lurch forward and off the dark cliff face. A small sound slipped from his lips as he felt the tug of Miss Grimshaw’s grip on his arm, pulling him with her into the dark depths below.

In an immediate moment, Dutch took it upon himself to reposition the woman in his arms on top of his torso so she may be spared any long lasting injuries from the harsh fall. Dutch’s mind was racing. Visions of the gang, and what would happen to Susan and himself when they hit the ground flashed before his eyes.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t wound and mangle their bodies. Perhaps, they would be fortunate enough to die from impact.

Wind and snow rushed around the pair as they continued to fall.

Dutch screwed his eyes shut and held Miss Grimshaw tightly to him.

Falling felt like an eternity.

Eternity felt like the end.

#rdr2 #susan grimshaw #reddead2 #reddeadcommunity #rdr2 fandom #rdr #susan #dutch van der linde #vandershaw #I don’t know how to break #I’m in pain from this poor formatting

7 notes · View notes

mst3kproject · 4 years

Photo

The Strange World of Planet X

The Strange World of Planet X, also known as Cosmic Monsters, was released on a double bill with The Crawling Eye and stars Forrest Tucker of the same. It’s got a giant spider and a deep-voiced 50’s narrator droning about the terrors of the atomic age, in a film so dry all my plants shriveled up and my contact lenses adhered to my eyeballs.

Mad Dr. Laird, with the help of his assistants Gil and Michele, is baking things in intense magnetic fields in order to rearrange the molecules and turn metal into putty – the general idea is that someday this will allow them to melt enemy planes right out from under their pilots. Would that melt the pilots, too? Gross. At the same time and perhaps related, flying saucers are being sighted over Britain and a mysterious man named Mr. Smith is wandering around in the woods and getting worryingly chummy with local children. After a lot of standing around and talking, Smith reveals that he is from outer space and has come to warn us that Laird’s magnetic fields are tearing apart the Earth’s ionosphere, letting in cosmic rays that will mutate humans into murderers and insects into giants!

Since my last ETNW was fairly well-paced and entertaining, the law of averages tells us that this one’s gonna be a real turd, and sure enough… remember all my griping about how Radar Secret Service was literally unwatchable, as in I could not force myself to keep looking at it? The Strange World of Planet X is like that but with a British accent. Most of it is just ugly gray people in ugly gray rooms, droning on about whatever at far greater length than necessary. Everybody sounds like they’re reading their lines off cue cards, the photography was awful to begin with and the degraded print makes it really hard to tell what the hell is going on. Fuck this movie.

The film’s general insufferability is made all the worse because normally giant bug movies are among my favourite types of crappy old sci fi. What could possibly be more fun than giant grasshoppers crawling all over postcards of Chicago? If the bug bits were fun, that would go a long way towards saving this one, but of course, they’re terrible. It’s mostly too dark to even see the giant insects, and when we do see them, they’re nothing but close-ups of live (and sometimes dead) roaches and grasshoppers. Only a couple of shots even attempt to composite them in with live actors and those are so dark and blurry that it frankly wasn’t worth the effort.

The other main ‘effect’ in the movie is a couple of flying saucers. These are unidentifiable white blobs when far away, and ridiculous tinfoil models dangling from strings up close. The pie pans in Plan 9 from Outer Space are worse… but not by much.

What should be the most exciting part of the film is the battle in the woods between the soldiers and the giant bugs, but it’s mishandled in the same sort of way as the supposedly climactic fight in Invasion of the Neptune Men. There’s no narrative or any characters we care about – just soldiers running around shooting at things. Where are they? How close are they to the town? Are there civilians in peril? We don’t know. To be effective on screen, a battle needs a story. The battle in Army of Darkness is about the need to protect the Necronomicon. We can see the Deadites getting closer to the tower, as Ash pulls out more and more ridiculous secret weapons to keep them back. The Strange World of Planet X is just random people and bugs, not even in the same shot.

There is some half-decent magnetosphere science in the movie, I guess. The Earth’s magnetic field does protect us from the harsh radiation of outer space, although all the most harmful components of that come from the sun rather than from further afield, and such radiation can damage DNA. This is why the ozone layer was such a big deal in the 80’s. This space radiation is much more likely to give bugs cancer than to make them grow huge, but in a movie I can handle that. The really weird thing here is that, because they say it screens out the heaviest of the cosmic rays, they call the ionosphere the ‘heavyside layer’. I would not have thought it possible that Cats could make less sense and yet here we are.

If you want some proper Crap Movie Science, there’s their explanation of how the monsters grew so big – mutations for size were able to pile up quickly because insects breed fast and therefore evolve fast. I guess this makes more sense than individuals growing out of control as a result of whatever… but they appear to have applied it to a whole range of creatures regardless of their actual life cycles. Some insects do breed quickly, but quite a few of them have specific seasons and conditions for it. This feels like a nitpick, though… I mean, by watching a giant bug movie I’ve already accepted that they can become huge so I should probably just shut up.

As an interesting note, Smith mentions that on his home planet there are giant dragonflies. He doesn’t say how giant, though he implies they’re big enough to ride on. Firstly, man, I wanna ride a giant dragonfly! Second, this tells us that Smith’s home planet has more oxygen in its atmosphere than Earth, because the reason insects can’t get bigger than they do is because they don’t actively breathe, but have to let oxygen diffuse into their tissues on its own (this is why there were six foot millipedes during the Carboniferous era — more oxygen in the air). The writers, sadly, do not seem to have known or cared about this, since Smith himself shows no signs of having to adjust to our atmosphere. Missed opportunity there.

Since this is me, of course I’m gonna talk about how the movie treats women. Click the back button now. There are several female characters in The Strange World of Planet X, and while they're pretty bland they do manage to have conversations with each other about things besides men, and the honest impression I get is that the writers are trying really hard not to be assholes. The first woman we meet is Michele, who has been assigned as Dr. Laird’s new computer operator after the previous one was electrocuted in a lab accident. When he learns that the replacement is a woman, Laird complains about it loudly, protesting that ‘this is skilled work!’, and Gil gripes that female scientists are dour and unattractive. Michele, of course, proves them both wrong – she is both brilliant and pretty, the latter mostly so that she can be Gil’s love interest but also at least in part to shatter the stereotype. It's thanks to movies like this setting the precedent that modern films are up to their eyeballs in hot but useless science women… but like I said, they tried.

The script is actually at great pains to emphasize that Michele is intelligent, educated, and the equal of any of the men, at least where science is concerned. Unfortunately, its way of going about it is to have them praise her for every little thing she says and does, to the point where it starts to sound awfully patronizing. They call her ‘clever girl’ like she’s six years old and it frequently comes across as their complimenting her intelligence in order to deflect when she asks awkward questions.

Naturally there’s a love triangle in this movie. It appears only to be immediately and peacefully resolved, and Gil’s rival for Michele’s affections is dead shortly thereafter. Why fucking bother?

A tad better-treated is Jane, the little girl fascinated by arthropods (she describes them as ‘bugs’, saying all insects are bugs, but not all bugs are insects. While entomologically incorrect, this same definition of bug was used by David Attenborough in Micro Monsters, so I’m okay with it). One of the reasons I think the writers were earnestly trying to be feminist is because they place a girl in this role rather than a boy. Susan Redway isn’t any better than any of the other actors, but the character was definitely written by somebody who knew what appeals to children. I love the bit where Jane promises to show her new teacher her favourite type of beetle, delightedly informing her, “they’re horrid-looking!”

The teacher, Miss Forsyth, is another attempt to buck a stereotype. Jane complains that she hated her previous teacher, who was appalled by her interest in crawly things. Miss Forsythe makes a good first impression by encouraging her instead. Again, this feels like the writers really were trying. They want to say that the right thing to do here is to support Jane’s interests and ambitions, and someday perhaps she’ll be a talented entomologist, just as Michele is a computer whiz.

From a twenty-first century point of view, this makes for an odd contrast with one of the other notable features of how women are portrayed in this movie – they don’t come alone. Adult women in The Strange World of Planet X must have a male partner, and if they don’t start out with one they will be assigned one! Michele pairs up with Gil, and Miss Forsythe accepts a date with the man who saved her from one of the mutants. This second budding relationship has no effect on the story and indeed is never referenced again, it’s just there. All the other women we meet are either dating or married… although now that I think of it this may be less sexist than it is a way to make a point of Dr. Laird’s single-minded obsession with his work. Everybody else, even scientists, has time to be a human being – but not him.

I should also discuss one more interesting tidbit offered by Smith. He says his people have been watching humanity and studying us basically since we invented ourselves, and they have never interfered before now. Why now? Out of ‘enlightened self-interest’, he says – this is the closest humans have yet come to destroying ourselves, but it’s also the closest we’ve come to being a threat to our extraterrestrial observers. One of Dr. Laird’s experiments, intended to destroy enemy planes, brought down a flying saucer instead! The fact that Smith is willing to admit this suggests that he is extremely confident about the aliens’ ability to strike back if humanity should decided to start shooting down saucers on purpose. The finale then bears this out… although it also left me thinking that the film could have ended very differently if only hacking had been a thing in the fifties!

So yet another instance of good ideas, unexplored and badly executed. Also yet another black and white movie… what is that, six in a row? Yikes. See you in ten days, when I promise I will have something for you in colour. It’ll be like slogging through the beginning of Season Eight and then finally arriving at The Giant Spider Invasion!

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the strange world of planet x #cosmic monsters #fuck this movie #50s #tw: spiders #giant arthropod hours

27 notes · View notes

arecomicsevengood · 4 years

Text

More Quarantine Movies

Going to put up this log of what I’ve seen now, as some of the stuff I liked the most is leaving The Criterion Channel at the end of the month. I really don’t know if anyone gets anything out of these posts, these are mostly synopses and they’re maybe spoiler-heavy. Let me give you the gist of it now: Otto Preminger’s a really good filmmaker whose movies are really interesting, Jean Arthur’s a great actress who enlivens everything and is also in a bunch of good-to-great movies. Also, I didn’t write about it but I rewatched Death Race 2000, that movie rules, feels relevant to today’s politics, and is leaving Criterion Channel at the end of the month.

The Pawnbroker (1964) dir. Sidney Lumet

Based on novel by Edward Lewis Wallant, whose The Tenants Of Moonbloom was reprinted by NYRB Classics with a Dave Eggers intro. Also some of the earliest nudity in a mainstream American film. About the misanthropy of a holocaust survivor, living in New York City, and interacting with black people who vaguely feel like racist caricatures, in part because it’s a movie about a misanthrope told from his perspective. A ton of movies about race from this era feel dated, this feels legitimately edgy, which is a term that gets thrown around somewhat ironically now or viewed as a pejorative, like something trying to offend, this does feel like a genuine attempt to be honest and push things forward (I really was not expecting that nudity) but also doesn’t feel totally successful, definitely not particularly enjoyable.

Shockproof (1949) dir. Douglas Sirk

I haven’t seen Sirk’s later melodramas, this one intrigued me in part because the screenplay was written by Samuel Fuller, and it’s sort of a pulpy noir thing. A woman, fresh out of jail, ends up living with her parole officer who is trying to keep her on the straight and narrow and away from her criminal ex, but they end up falling in love. There’s a thing where the male lead’s younger brother talks about how the lady is beautiful that I sort of wish wasn’t in there, feels creepy to me. There’s a bit of a shift in the narrative with the third act, where the lovers end up on the run, the once-upstanding man now a criminal on account of love, but they are having the endurance of their love tested by circumstance, is one of those things where a story which felt somewhat unique over the course of its telling shifts into something more recognizable.

…And The Pursuit Of Happiness (1986) dir Louis Malle

I have watched most of Louis Malle’s feature films at this point, I believe, and had a vague curiosity about what his documentaries were like. This one, made shortly after he’d moved to the U.S. and married Candice Bergen (something that comes up in Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens, in that some prostitutes read aloud from a fashion magazine that discusses it) he made a film talking to various recent immigrants. He covers a lot of ground, covering people working as doctors, large communities living in housing projects and causing racial tension with black neighbors (who both resent the smell of the food they cook but also suspect they don’t know their rights as the property developers plan to evict everyone and have the projects demolished). By and large everyone spoke to believes in the notion of the American dream of working hard to get ahead. Malle also speaks to anti-immigration think tank people and border patrols. Nothing too surprising but a lot of ground gets covered in a short amount of time. If I didn’t learn anything I at least admired that it felt non-didactic. Anything with more of a point of view or an argument would probably be disingenuous were it to present itself as enlightening.

The Baron Of Arizona (1950) dir. Samuel Fuller

Based on a true story, although with fictionalized elements, about a dude (played by Vincent Price) who becomes a master forger to falsify land grants and claim the entire state of Arizona as his own. Not a great movie, though that’s an interesting story. I bet I could guess what elements were made up for the sake of making a movie out of it, it has this tension of being interesting and unbelievable (although unbelievable by way of rote moviemaking formula), but also the story takes place over an extended period of time and so has some of the structureless feeling of a biopic.

House On Haunted Hill (1959) dir. William Castle

I’m going to confuse this with The Haunting Of Hill House for my entire life, that’s just the way it is. This stars Vincent Price, who’s always great, doing the famous premise where a group of people meet up to spend the night at a haunted house to win money. Vincent Price has a contentious relationship with his wife, who’s openly contemptuous of him and wants his money. There’s a moment where everyone at the house party is given a gun, each in a coffin. There’s a few “twists” all sort of being of the “there was a rational, non-ghost reason for everything” although any of them individually sort of strain the limits of credulity as something that works as a hoax. Vincent Price is basically not the villain, so much as his wife is, although he’s such a ham that loves being creepy that this again strains credibility in that the conclusion of the movie plays against the style with which the previous action has been presented. An enjoyable viewing experience.

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) dir. Joseph Lewis

This one’s about a woman, looking for work, who falls into a scheme that kidnaps her and puts her up in a mansion, where she’s kept drugged and basically is told to assume the identity of a woman who was killed. I found this one pretty nerve-wracking, as it’s pretty nightmarish, basically about psychological torture. I found this one under Criterion Channel’s Columbia Noir collection, but before these films were considered noir, they were thought of as melodramas, but it’s also sort of a horror film about being gaslighted. There’s a part where they remove a stairwell and try to trick her into falling down? What’s funny is that one of the things that sort of separates this from horror is how quickly it resolves, whereas later work would I think give the audience the satisfaction of seeing the villain be punished in some way, the ending that just goes “then everything worked out alright” ends up making the structure feel more like the whole movie’s reason for being is just to see the protagonist suffer.

God Told Me To (1976) dir. Larry Cohen

Did I write about this already? I watched that a few months ago. Pretty wild basis in seventies grit about people going crazy, committing murders, then goes to a weird/confusing place involving some sort of holy entity in human form, the police procedural aspect butting up against this strangeness which doesn’t feel entirely thought through, and is in fact sort of incoherent, makes for a movie that is, in fact, still pretty good and worth watching although a bit tedious by the end.

Zombi Child (2019) dir. Bertrand Bonello

This I guess just came out in America this year, to the extent that anything came out this year, in theaters, it coming to streaming is basically its release. The zombies in this are of the old-school voodoo sense, taken seriously as a system of belief juxtaposed against French colonialism, as a Haitian teen feels at odds with her circle of friends, flashbacks to Haiti occur. When you watch a bunch of older movies new movies just seem to be not as good. Bonello’s not a bad filmmaker though, he’s able to capture a sort of sensual aspect of particular moments and moods, just not in a way where they then coalesce into a narrative of shifting emotion.

Anatomy Of A Murder (1959) dir. Otto Preminger

This movie is close to three hours long. It has a Law And Order procedural quality, taking up much of its second half with a courtroom drama, where Jimmy Stewart does a proto-Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer routine. He’s protecting a man accused of murdering the woman who raped his wife. The subject was surely shocking for its time. It becomes pretty clear, extremely quickly that the husband is an abusive piece of shit, but the main thrust of the narrative is still tasked with following the lawyer trying to get him off. Lee Remick, from Experiment In Terror plays the beautiful and doomed wife, who flirts with Jimmy Stewart. Some of these interactions feel weird from a modern perspective, because Stewart’s reaction is like “Yes, you’re a beautiful woman and any red-blooded American male would enjoy looking at you, but it is my duty as a lawyer to paternalistically insist you cover up!” Preminger is sort of known for pushing the envelope, and this one has a lot more talking about sperm and Lee Remick’s vagina than you’d expect. One of the things that’s meant to be a “quirky character detail” is that Jimmy Stewart is into jazz- The score, by Duke Ellington, is great, but there’s also a pretty corny cameo by Duke Ellington where Jimmy Stewart sits in with him, a second pair of hands on the piano. Still, I guess it’s better that he physically appears in the movie than there just being a scene where it implies Duke’s music is played by Jimmy Stewart, as the music is way too good to just be a lawyer’s quirky hobby. George C Scott, from Hardcore, plays the legal expert on the other side. After being pretty long, there is this sort of abrupt, (although well-foreshadowed) downbeat ending, where the jealous and abusive husband flees town to avoid paying his lawyer and to go somewhere quiet he can beat his wife to death, but said ending is played for this “you can’t win them all I guess, shame about the lower classes” quality from Stewart, who is dead broke all movie but seems like he just enjoyed being able to do work for once, even if it’s for a total shitbag. Good movie! Feels thorny and interesting.

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) dir. Otto Preminger

This is even better. Great Saul Bass credits sequence too. A psychological thriller where the disappearance of a child gives way to the police not being able to confirm the child is real, and doubting the mother’s sanity, becoming pretty nightmarish, dreamy, and exhilarating by turns. Gets to a place of “huh, I wonder what is going on” and then when that finally resolves there’s a pretty extended sequence of silent escaping/hiding, which is, one of those things that films do really well and is super-satisfying. It plays out amidst this background filled with interesting supporting characters, who all, for the first half of the movie, feel like moving parts in this somewhat inscrutable narrative machine.

The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) dir. Otto Preminger

This one I don’t like. Stars Frank Sinatra, who I find annoying, as a recovering heroin addict who relapses again. While I normally like the sort of scenery-chewing supporting cast that shows up in Preminger things, I really didn’t Sinatra’s nerdy best friend, or his wife with Munchausen’s syndrome. While with the other Preminger movies there’s this feeling of a slow reveal of what the plot is with this one I feel like as soon as you know that Sinatra is out of rehab (which you learn pretty quickly) you can guess the movie will be about how he relapses and then tries to get sober for real.

The Human Factor (1979) dir. Otto Preminger

Preminger’s final movie, based on a Graham Greene novel, featuring Iman making her film debut. Movie is mostly about intelligence agencies seeking out the mole in their mist, with intentions to kill whoever it is once they’re certain. It stars Richard Attenborough, as the source of the leaks. Halfway through the story becomes interspersed with flashbacks about Attenborough and Iman’s romance upon meeting in Africa. Continues the habit of ending on a moment that maybe feels like it should be expanded upon or made more resonant.

Bonjour Tristesse (1958) dir. Otto Preminger

This stars Jean Seberg as a teenager being raised by a single father, David Niven, who’s kind of a cad/ladies man who’s very permissive with his daughter, who seems likely to grow up rich and spoiled and find another rich man to take care of her. Deborah Kerr plays the woman who Niven ends up falling in love for real with, and the conflict is then between this woman taking on a maternal role and a daughter who is resentful of this. Deborah Kerr is in Black Narcissus, a movie I love, and here she comes off as smart, the voice of reason. Seberg destroys her father’s relationship by taking advantage of his sort of innate desire to flirt and be liked by women, driving Kerr to commit suicide, and the whole film is then told in flashback by Jean Seberg a year later, as she flirts with boys but has a great sadness and emotional distance about her, which is both inherited and self-inflicted. I’m partly just writing these plot summaries as my way of remembering what these movies are about, but this one is nice because I get to account for complicated characters who are both pretty eminently understandable. I keep getting hung up on the fact that movies today now have a much dumber idea of what a female character is. Maybe it’s something as basic as the fact that, as people read less, it’s rarer for literary novels to be adapted? As I talk in terms of “less good roles for women nowadays,” which is a cliche, it’s obvious enough that bad roles for men follow, as everyone is only as good or interesting as who they’re playing off of.

It’s also funny to think, in this era of “comic book movies,” that very few artists can make a character come to life with body language and facial expression the way an actor can. “Literary” cartoonists like Dan Clowes or Tomine play into the mask quality drawing creates, generating inscrutability as part of their effect. Many of the biggest names in “noir” comics are removed from the melodrama elements of actor’s performance in favor of an aesthetic based on paperback covers, which makes for something far less lively. Meanwhile, Blutch is an amazing artist who would probably do a great job telling lively character studies in a genre form, but he’s way more preoccupied with these Godard-style interrogations of film’s cultural meaning.

Separate Tables (1958) dir. Delbert Mann

From the same year as Bonjour Tristesse, and also featuring David Niven and Deborah Kerr. Deborah Kerr’s good in this- while she is sort of uptight in a maternal way in Bonjour Tristesse, here she’s sort of crippled by repression her mother imposes on her. It’s a totally different character, but she remains defined by various manifestations of repressed energy; I would say she’s most known for playing a nun in Black Narcissus. She’s again opposite Niven in a sort of romantic context, though Niven’s character is meant to be a neurotic freak and he’s not really convincing in that capacity. I couldn’t really work out what the deal is with Niven’s character, he gets arrested in a theater, seemingly because he takes his dick out to show women? Or that’s how I interpreted what was being discussed, but he’s mostly defended by everyone except this lady you’re supposed to hate for how domineering and judgmental she is so maybe it’s something less bad. I honestly couldn’t figure it out because it seemed like the thing I was guessing they couldn’t talk about. This movie also features Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth as a couple that broke up once before and are reuniting now. This movie is pretty dull in a way I didn’t know whether to attribute to it being British or it being based on a play, as it feels extremely both.

Seance On A Wet Afternoon (1964) dir. Bryan Forbes

This one’s British too, and features the quality I recognize from British television, where the stars are not attractive, which always feels surprising. This one’s got a pretty great title, and a great premise. This woman, a professional psychic, convinces her husband to kidnap a child so she can comfort the parents and get publicity. The cinematography’s great. I got pretty nervous watching this, I think I am feeling more sensitive to movies as of late, way more willing to find things upsetting and nerve-wracking than usual. I can partly attribute this to the feeling of taking something in from a different cultural context, that leaves me unsure what to expect, but it’s also true that nowadays I sort of constantly have this feeling of “I don’t know how bad things are going to get” about the world in general, and it makes sense that I would apply that to films.

Only Angels Have Wings (1939) dir. Howard Hawks

Jean Arthur’s amazing in this - saw her the first time in The Devil And Miss Jones and then there’s this whole Criterion Channel featurette video running through what her whole deal is: This vulnerability/innocence crossed with an attempted toughness that really is very charming. Here she plays an entertainer just stopping briefly in town who gets hit on by some pilots, and develops feelings of impossible love for a man (played by Cary Grant) whose insistent toughness and refusal to show fear (despite having a dangerous job, of a pilot, that makes everyone who cares about him fall to pieces with nervousness). It’s this very universal type of entertainment, where there’s all these special effects shots of planes flying and a drama of men being men that’s nonetheless anchored by this love story, carried by the fact that Jean Arthur is very real and complex. She’s also a legit comedic actress, which I think makes her feel richer and more watchable than someone without a sense of humor would be. Rita Hayworth plays Grant’s ex, a woman who couldn’t take his daredevil ways but is now married to another pilot who has to do dangerous flights essentially to make up for an act of cowardice that got someone else killed. She’s got her own charisma obviously (and Cary Grant’s equally solid, in this sort of old-Hollywood glamor way) but Jean Arthur feels very alive in a way that carries the movie.

The Talk Of The Town (1942) dir. George Stevens

This one also stars Jean Arthur opposite Cary Grant, but it’s less interesting, partly because of a domestic setting and some stale-seeming comedy. Cary Grant plays Lionel Dilg, (great name!) who breaks out of prison and hides out in Jean Arthur’s attic, with a hobbled ankle, while a preeminent legal scholar moves in. There’s a love triangle between the three of them, and a friendship between the escapee and the scholar. Grant’s been unfairly framed for arson for political reasons by his boss for pointing out the factory where he works is a death trap. The people of the town are easily turned against this sort of leftist agitator by a last and biased judge. Insanely enough, there’s a movie called “The Whole Town’s Talking” also starring Jean Arthur but it has no relation to this one.

The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936) dir. Stephen Roberts

Upon realizing that many of these Jean Arthur movies were leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month, I started taking more in. This is a murder mystery, with screwball comedy accents, and again I’d say it’s really good, although the “comedy” premise wherein a woman sort of plows through the life of a man with no real respect for personal boundaries is the sort of thing that works in a movie even though it seems totally nightmarish when looked at from a certain angle. She writes mysteries, he’s a doctor, people are getting murdered. He is played by William Powell, from The Thin Man movies, which maybe these resemble. I guess the bickering couple that solves mysteries is a trope but it’s one that I don’t think has had any currency in popular culture since Moonlighting, which was in my lifetime but before I would have had any awareness of it. (I would probably enjoy it up until the point where I got bored of the formula.) I thought this was great and would make a good double feature with L’Assassin Habite au 21.

History Is Made At Night, 1937, dir. Frank Borzage

This has Jean Arthur in it too, but the reason I became aware of it was Matt Zoller Seitz tweeting about it. Partly this is because the description on the Criterion site is so bare-bones it barely seems like anything, but it turns out this is because the plot is completely insane and has a ton of twists and to talk about them very quickly veers into spoiler territory. It is, in brief, a love story. The first totally insane in it is the handsome male lead does the “drawing a ventriloquist puppet on his hand” thing and the woman’s totally on board. An element that doesn’t spoil the plot, but does seem somewhat incongruent with the tone, is there’s a French chef character for a comic relief. It’s really good. I’m pointing out the lightest element but the story’s villain is believably sociopathic.

Secrets (1933) dir Frank Borzage

Not nearly as cool or good. While History Is Made At Night feels like a cohesive story that’s just pretty crazy, this one feels divided into acts that have nothing in common with each other. First act is romance, between a rich man’s daughter and his banker. They run away together. I’m basically unsure of when this movie takes place timewise, the rich lady is wearing massive layered gowns I know would’ve been out of fashion by 1933. The second act is a western where they make a home together and have to fight off bandits! But the action is shot in a a pretty disinterested manner. Third act, I’m pretty on edge and bored, but the banker is now the governor of California and is having an affair with another woman, and they’re at a party together, and then the ending feels epilogue style as they’re both old as hell and they have fully-grown children and they’re talking about how they’re taking their leave of the kids to discuss their secrets. Female lead is Mary Pickford in her final film role. I guess this is a remake of a silent film, which was itself based on a play. Yeah this movie sucks basically.

Bitter Moon (1992) dir. Roman Polanski

Sure, I’ll watch a sex criminal’s erotic thriller that’s way too long. Hugh Grant is a married guy on a boat who has a French dude talk about all the sex he and his wife have because he knows Hugh Grant wants to fuck his hot wife. Said wife is played by Emmanuelle Seigner, Roman Polanski’s actual wife since 1989. This is a bad movie by pretty much any metric. It kinda feels like the social function of erotic thrillers is not to be a more socially-acceptable form of pornography, but rather to be pervy enough to remind the audience why you shouldn’t talk about sex publicly and have that be your whole thing. The French, of course, misunderstand this.

The Burglar (1957) dir. Paul Wendkos

Another noir, written by David Goodis. This one is a little formulaic, in terms of what you think of crime movies as being “about.” A burglar, who learned the trade from his adopted father, works with that man’s daughter to commit heists. His gang doesn’t like her. Once the two of them are separated, a corrupt cop seeking to steal a burgled necklace for himself tries to pursue a relationship with her as a means to an end, while a woman allied with him works on the burglar. A drive to New Jersey gets stopped by cops, violence quickly escalates to make the situation more dire. Members of the gang die. Not a bad movie but by no means essential.

My Brother’s Wedding (1983) dir. Charles Burnett

Criterion Channel removed the paywall for a bunch of Black-made independent films, this is one of them, Burnett’s follow-up to Killer Of Sheep. Seemingly starring non-professional actors, it’s about the conflict a guy feels as his brother is planning to get married to a rich woman he resents, and the loyalty he feels to a guy who just got out of prison who everybody hates. The main character is a good dude who wants to help out this pretty dangerous friend the best he can. The film captures his pride and resentment.

Dial M For Murder (1954) dir. Alfred Hitchcock

A few iconic-seeming shots of Grace Kelly in the role of a Hitchcock blonde, i.e. her standing at a phone while someone looms behind her about to choke her, and later standing traumatized. Suffers a bit from clearly being based on a play, with a ton of dialogue, particularly in the second act. The first act is able to provide this very particular type of satisfaction, where someone outlines a “perfect crime” in dialogue and then we see it play out and it falls apart and happens completely differently. It’s funny the criminal gives themselves away due to mistaking one key for another, because this sort of structure really does feel like a key fitting into a lock, things perfectly designed for one another, parceled out at the right time.

2 notes · View notes

heytherehowdyworld · 5 years

Text

D’you Promise? Pt 2

Disclaimer: A tired writing frenzy later, and this is what ensued during it. Again, please do Suggest and Comment, so I can have some coffee and contemplate (and cry).

ST3 setting, and I don’t really know if this counts as angst yet. I might do another part to just finish it off nicely, what with Billy’s end state. If you haven’t read Part 1, do that first.

Edit: I figured it out!

Warnings: Language (and I don’t mean English), ST3 spoilers, bad writing, over-use of commas, etcetera

It was nearing the fourth of July, and Billy had been AWOL for a few days. He hadn’t been going to the pool, and rumour had it that he was dating fellow lifeguard Heather Whatever-her-last-name-was. Since you and Billy had kept your relationship private for the most part, the rumours were no surprise. You hadn’t thought they meant anything, until you knew they did.

You were driving past a quiet neighbourhood, rocking out to some new Queen tracks when you spotted them. Or more precisely, him. There he was, sitting at a table eating dinner with parents. He had never agreed to meet your parents for the simple reason that ‘he was not a meet-the-parents kind of guy’, yet there he was. Then a girl, about the same age as you, came into the room and sat beside him. With a quick kiss right on the smacker, you knew that she was no family member. Deciding that a confrontation was not what he needed at that moment, you resolved that you would visit him another day and question him.

Unfortunately, you never got the chance. Billy was away when you went to see him the next day and the day after, and Mr. Hargrove blamed you both times. Slut-shamed and disgraced, you turned to walk away. Only to bump into Billy on your way to your car. With a cordial “hey,” and a quickly falling easy grin, Billy stood right in front of you.

“Where have you been, Billy? I’ve looked for you everywhere, and then I saw you at some other girl’s house, and then she kissed you, and I wanted to talk to you about her, about it, but I couldn’t find you, then Mr. Hargrove called me a slut and - Billy? Are you even listening?” Throughout your lengthy confession, Billy’s eyes had changed multiple times. Where once a fire would have burned at the reveal that you had been disgraced, now a lulled spark all but shone.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, chances are you’re drunk and have me confused with someone, ‘cause I’ve never seen you in my life. Since you’re so interested, you bitch, I’ve been busy, alright? Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can’t do? I don’t care if you saw me, I was with my girlfriend, alright? I was having dinner with her parents, okay Mom? So fuck off.”

His words stung, to say the least. Who were you? Nobody, apparently. He had gotten mad before, and you had caught him with girls before when he was angry at you, but there had never been anything like this. Usualy, when you found him, or he found you, he apologized profusely. You did too, for making him feel like he couldn’t come to you. You apologized for his upbringing, and then Billy would interrupt and tell you to stop, that none of it was your fault. This - the whole situation was different now. And it wasn’t just about the whole “meeting the parents” thing. He had never dismissed you like that, ever. Even when he screwed up, big time, he was there to plead with you in his own way. There was always a sorry kiss and hands asking for forgiveness when he came to apologise. And soon enough, both of you were laughing, teasing, playing.

But now… You had to try again. Talk to him, find out what was going on. You would have gone to see Robin Buckley, your best friend ‘once upon a time’, but you two hadn’t spoken since you and Billy had started dating. Steve Harrington had changed for the better recently, but you two had never been close. Tommy and Carol were dumbasses of the highest order, and cared for nothing other than their on-again-off-again relationship, and all the benefits included. Nancy Wheeler, the girl who used to date Steve, was a prissy princess who you would never associate yourself with. And although most people had grown to accept Nancy’s new fling, Jonathan Byers, you weren’t so dazzled by him. Other than them, you knew no one well enough to tell them what was going on with Billy. No one except Maxine Hargrove, Billy’s younger sister.

A few days later, you were at that dreaded door again, ringing the doorbell.

“Hello again, Mr. Hargrove, is Max in? I’d like to talk to her about some school work.” Once more you found yourself pleading your case in front of the man with a fuse shorter than a stick of dynamite.

“Dunno where Max is. Hasn’t been home in a while. Before you ask where that whore Billy is, I don’t know either.” The raw spite and hate in his voice sent chills down your spine. You knew he hated the kids, both of them, but if you could just talk to Susan and explain, she would listen or try to help.

“Thank you Mr. Hargrove, is Susan home? I need to talk to her about something important.” If you knew Mr. Hargrove, and you did, he was going to pester you about what this “important thing” was until you told him.

“It’s Mrs. Hargrove to you, whatever your name is again, and she isn’t home right now. What do you even want to talk to her about? I’ll take a message, and decide if it’s actually important.” There was no hope now of getting help easily, so you had to look for Max. And Billy.

A few days later, you sat in the cinema, alone. Currently, you were working up the courage to talk to Robin, who was sitting a few aisles in front of you, because you had had no luck in finding Max. When you saw Robin duck into ‘Back to the Future’ alongside Steve Harrington, Dustin Henderson, and some other young girl, you had followed. Your idea had been to stop her when she was coming out of the cinema, and tell her what was going on with you and Billy. Now, you weren’t so sure that she would want to hear. She was giggling at something Steve had said, and he was gesturing wildly at something on the screen.

You followed the crowd of people exiting the cinema, and tried to catch up to Steve, Robin, Dustin and the girl. They were, for some reason, breaking away from the crowd and being chased by a large group of men.

“Robin!” You called, trying to get her to notice you.

“Robin!”

“Y/N?” Steve sounded surprised, and you noticed bruises bursting out over his face. His cheek was covered in cuts, and blood was smeared on his uniform.

“Steve? What happ-“ The question was cut short by a bullet whizzing past you. You jumped, and slid down the escalator behind Dustin. Running towards Robin, you all but screamed “what is going on?”. She, in turn, exchanged a look with Steve and Dustin while the five of you ducked behind a counter.

Silence ensued. A clock ticked, and footsteps echoed. You tried to hold your breath, and a quick burst of Russian startled you. Russians in Starcourt? Robin grabbed your hand, and you looked at her to check if she was alright. She was terrified. Her eyes were open wide, and she was quaking. You had no doubt that she had gone through more in the past few hours than you had gone through in your life. Wanting to comfort her, you squeezed her hand and rubbed circles on the back of it with your thumb.

The Russians came closer and closer, their footsteps growing louder. Footsteps suddenly stopping, one of the men suddenly came flying over the counter. Peeking over the top, you saw Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, Will Byers, Jonathan Byers, Nancy Wheeler, another unknown girl, and, speaking of the devil, Max Hargrove.

“Max?”

“Y/N?”

“El?” Before the girl, who you assumed was El, could answer, she fainted.

A few minutes later, everyone was gathered around her, and Mike was waking her up. Due to the fact that there was something moving within El’s leg, Jonathan had decided to get it out. This included heating up a knife and shitty plastic gloves.

It was obvious that she was in pain, and Jonathan’s hand inside her leg didn’t help.

“Look at me, El,” you said, using the name everyone called her by, “Hold my hand, alright? Squeeze it as hard as you need to, okay? I got you.” And she did. Grasping your hand in a bone-crunching hold, she let out a scream.

“I’ll do it myself.” You had to admire her resolve. El was, seemingly with her mind, pulling out a blob of flesh. Bits of bone sticking out of it, the thing somehow screeched loudly. El flung it across the floor and it began to skitter away. Only to be crushed beneath the clunking boot of Chief Jim Hopper.

“Chief Hopper?” Instead of answering you, he rushed over to El. You took that as your cue to go over to Robin, who was busy talking to Steve.

“Hey Robin, what’s going on? Why did a girl with telekinesis bust up some Commies? Why the hell did some… thing come out of her damn leg? What is going on?” The young girl who, up until this point, had been talking to Lucas sidled up to you.

“I’m Erica,” she said, “I’ll explain.” And she did. She told you everything Dustin had told her. You learned about El, and what had gone on when Will Byers disappeared. She told you about Halloween and the outage at the Laboratory in the forest. Then, she told you about the Russians who, apparently, were running Starcourt. At this point, Lucas jumped in to say that Billy was possessed by the Mind Flayer. Billy had created an army of ‘Flayed’ who had somehow created this meaty version of the not-defeated Mind Flayer.

“Shit, dude. All this happened, and the town has no idea. Holy shit, dude. Holy shit.”

“So, Y/N, what are you doing here?” It was an innocent question, but it reminded you of all that had happened with Billy. You had been told the truth, though, so you figured your truth was what they deserved as well.

When you had finished telling them all that the past few days had encompassed for you, Nancy gave you a brief hug. The hug was an unexpected courtesy, mostly because you and Nancy had never been friends. You now regretted ever calling her a prissy. princess, and decided she was actually kind of badass. You realized then that things had changed, and now you knew about this gigantic government cover-up.

“So. What do we do now?”

A rough plan had spawned from ideas being thrown around, and it was decided that everyone was to split up. There would be three groups, The Scoops Troop, Griswold’s Family, and Eagle’s Nest. You were placed in Griswold’s Family, since Max knew you the best, as of recent times.

While rushing to the car, your group had found Billy revving his engine. He was perfectly positioned to drive right into your groups’ get-away car, essentially trapping you in the mall.

“Can I go talk to Billy, maybe I can reason with him. Or, I don’t know, calm him down?” At that, Max and Mike exchanged a look. Lucas had told you about what happened to Billy, but your insolent stubbornness told you that you could change him. You were dead sure, and still hurt that Billy left with some lifeguard.

“There’s nothing you can do, he’s different. I - I tried to talk to him, I really did Y/N. Nothing worked. I - I’m sorry.” Max truly did look sorry, and Mike had a sympathetic glint in his eye. Just as you were about to console Max, as you were sure she was sad as well, Nancy interrupted.

“Look!” A shattering of glass and an ear-splitting growl signalled the arrival of the Mind Flayer, in the flesh. Running away and hiding beneath a bar with Mike, El and Max, you waited until it turned away and told them to run to ’The Gap’. Quickly following them, you accidentally knocked over a clothing rack. This alerted the monster of your presence in the shop, and it turned all of its attention to the El, you, Mike, and Max.

A sharp pop sounded outside the shop, and the four of you took the opportunity to run away, without questioning what it was. Up stairs, down stairs, and out the door, all of you ran. After a loud crash, Billy began to chase El, and she limped away as quickly as she could. You ran through an open gate, into what looked to be a delivery port. At the last second, you turned and slammed the button that would close the gate. Billy, however, caught the damned gate before it closed fully, and forced it open.

“Billy! Stop! Don’t do this, please?” Turning to the kids, you told them to run. Grabbing Mike by the arm before he turned away completely, you told him to look after El and Max.

“And Mike, watch yourself, okay? I’m going to try and slow Billy down, but if push comes to shove, get yourselves out of here. You hear me? If you can save Billy, do that. He loves Max, though he mightn’t admit it. I don’t care if I survive, and neither should you. Billy and Max need to get out of here, they can do better. They have to. With or without me.” Mike nodded his understanding. Loosening your grip on his arm, he turned and ran towards where Max was supporting a still-limping El.

You now faced Billy completely. There was pure anger written all over him, from his brisk gait all to the lines on his face. You knew there was no stopping him, in this rage. When he used to get like this, way before you became… involved, there was no way to calm him down. Except…

“Hey, Bill, I want you to understand that though the touch of your hand makes my pulse react, it’s only the thrill of a boy meeting a girl. It’s opposites attract, physical, logical, ignore that it means any more than that. What did love have to do with it? It’s only a second-hand emotion, so what’s it got to do with us, Billy?” It was one of your favourite songs, and with your constant play of it, Billy had come to love it too. It grew to become an anthem of his before you two got into a relationship. And afterwards, it was quick to calm him down if he got mad. It was now your only hope, and you were wishing on every star that it would help you break through to Billy, even now.

“It may seem that I’m acting confused when you’re close to me. If I tend to look dazed, I’ve read it someplace, I’ve got cause to be. But, Billy, There’s a name for it, a phrase that fits, and for whatever reason you, you, do it for me. But what’s love got to do with it?” Blinking back tears, your throat began to close up. He hadn’t changed in terms of his demeanour, but something in his eye flickered softly.

“I was taking on a new direction, but I have to say. Billy, Billy, I’ve -“ Tears were flowing freely now, and your throat constricted painfully at the hope that each word would get through to him. That he would sing too. That he would hear you, really hear you.

Instead of hearing you, he pinned you roughly against a wall by your wrists. The sharp concrete dug into your back and arms, but you sung on.

“I’ve been thinking about my own protection. It scares me to feel this way, but what’s love got to do with it?” This line, it was Billy’s favourite. As you began singing again, you slowly lost hope of him ever snapping out of this possession. You sang on.

“What’s love but a second emotion, a sweet old-fashioned notion? Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?” His gruff voice interrupted you. Prayers answered, you looked up to smile through the painful tears trailing down your cheeks. He was back, at least for the time being. He quickly let go of your wrists, and they dropped to your sides like boulders.

PS: So, obviously, I’m not done yet. But I’m tired, so I’ll finish and write s’more another day.

#billy hargove x reader #billy hargrove #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove x you #billy hargrove x y/n #billy hargrove fanfiction #billy hargrove fanfic #billy hargrove #stranger things 3 #stranger things 2 #stranger things #dacre montgomery

74 notes · View notes

insanityclause · 5 years

Link

What most struck me about this production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, is how much it reminded me of another star-powered Pinter production that grazed Broadway in 2015–Old Times. The staging and direction of both productions were frigid, spare, with Lazy Susan-style rotating floor pieces on which the actors stood or sat or lounged, tensely, always poised and statuesque, often to great visual effect—three attractive actors each, as well-dressed and brooding as if they were models on an editorial fashion shoot.

What I remember most about the 2015 Pinter production is not the specifics of the content of the show itself (though I recall generally enjoying it), but this aesthetic, linked to the theme, of course—circuity and the particular trap of time—but so prominent that it overwrote the rest; my remembrance was so marked by the poses, the lights, the tone, and the distances between the actors onstage.

Similarly, when the lights come up on the current Betrayal, directed by Jamie Lloyd, the three characters of the play’s love triangle are stiffly posed together. One may think of chess pieces set on a board, and such a likeness is fitting—Pinter’s plays are ones of deception, manipulation, and calculated maneuvers. The set feels chilly, impersonal, bare. Slate-like panels frame the space, creating the sensation of things being hemmed in. The lighting, too, is aggressively icy, like the fluorescents in an office.

Jerry (Charlie Cox) and Emma (Zawe Ashton) sit side by side, talking in folding chairs as Robert (Tom Hiddleston) lurks in the background, removed, drink in hand. Emma and Jerry, it’s quickly revealed, have previously had an affair, though it’s over now, and Emma and Robert’s marriage has come to an end. They talk about their jobs, their families, and sprinkled in are a few references to things from their past that we’ll find out more about later: a trip to Italy, a playful moment with Emma’s daughter, lunchtime liaisons in a shared flat. It’s all on the table (atop a Venetian tablecloth, one could say, as such a fabric is referenced more than once) from the start, so the discovery lies not in the act itself but in the evolution of it, the resolve of it, the talk of and around it, which, more than the infidelity itself, encompasses the truest representation of betrayal.

In one exquisitely done scene, by far the best of the production, the back wall of the stage comes forward, clipping the open area from a yawn to a short breath of space, where Robert and Emma sit together while on vacation in Italy. The light has a yellow tint, and though there is no excess furniture (the same two chairs from the beginning appear again), and the tabula-rasa-style set is as unyieldingly clinical and anonymous as before, Robert and Emma move with an ease that implies familiarity, even when it’s invisible to our eyes, and the warmer lighting and smaller space draws us into the intimacy. Robert, having discovered that Jerry has sent Emma a letter, double-talks his way around asking her whether she’s sleeping with his best friend.

Hiddleston, temporarily hanging up his cape and horns from his role as the beloved mischief-maker of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to make his Broadway debut, is devastatingly matter of fact in his demeanor, his Robert steadily circling closer and closer to confirming the thing he already knows to be true as the conversation goes on. He nudges Emma, trying to gauge her reaction, but the exchange feels more masochistic on his part, a long, slow act of self-harm that Hiddleston allows Robert sink into with depressing resignation. Ashton, too, delivers her best in the scene, her face, elsewhere deceptively easy and bright, gradually crumbling and contorting as the conversation goes on. It’s like watching a home fall apart, in real time.

All the while, Jerry slumps against a wall in the dark, off to the side. Later, Robert sits directly next to Jerry as the latter meets with Emma for another indiscretion. Robert knows about the affair, and though the character is physically present onstage, he is silent, not actually present in the setting or the action of the scene. Still, he’s intrusive, like a spectre, a grim Dickensian Ghost of Marriage Present. It’s an artful choice on Lloyd’s part, which directs attention to the importance of proximities in the production, allowing each scene to maintain the tension of the trio and continue to hint at the consequences of a transgression that keeps happening.

The production in many ways literalizes the unpacking of the relationship that the text performs. In the haunting presence of the characters—whoever the third wheel happens to be in any given scene—is well done, but at other times the production just tips over the line into over kneading its themes. It eases us into the past, opens up so that we learn the characters personally, firsthand, as we witness them backwards in time. The problem is that whereas we’re meant to begin at the end with just a sketch of the situation and then gradually swallow the full context, missing in the early scenes is the sense that that same context—that history of the characters—is fully accessible to the production itself, even if it’s not yet accessible to us as we’re starting out on this backwards journey.

Part of the issue comes back to the audaciously stripped-down aesthetic and direction, which untether the play from time or setting (though both are clearly referenced—just not seen). This places the onus on the actors to recreate what we’re missing through the meat of their performances. Hiddleston’s Robert fits well into the cool distance that the play creates, occasionally showing his bite, and Cox’s Jerry (also known for his jaunts in the world of Marvel—albeit the grittier, Netflix-owned parts, in the criminal underground of Hell’s Kitchen in Daredevil) has an easy good-guy charm. Cox really digs his feet into the play’s comic moments, surprisingly, filling the space with jokes, and he works well opposite Hiddleston in their exchanges, but he sometimes goes a bit too big, hitting and holding the comic beats to a hammy fermata. But it’s Ashton who’s least served by the production’s combination of style and space; her Emma is remarkably aloof and remote, and the production only emphasizes her character’s emotional distance, so that her underlying feelings—a cocktail of wishfulness and sorrow and anger, one imagines—are so masked that they make the rendering feel undeveloped at times. Unfortunately, she and Cox also lack chemistry, and despite Lloyd’s attempts to spark electricity in the spaces between them—scenes where they touch, or, more often, don’t touch—it often feels like dead air.

But ultimately these are small qualms, minute, inconsistent injuries, in the grand sense of the thing—the thing being a production that succeeds in matching the thoughtfulness, in attention and execution, of Pinter’s text. In art there are incongruities that blunder or bore, but in this Betrayal, for example, the distinct takes on the characters, though they don’t always mesh, are nonetheless engaging, creating their own interesting kind of dissonance among them, even in times when one could imagine them as figures in each their own separate plays, of different tones and temperaments. More often than not, the production delivers what one would hope to receive on a night out to see a talented cast of actors in a well-known play by one of theater’s talented, oft-celebrated playwrights. Somehow, it manages to make betrayal stylish and simple and complex and familiar and detached and funny and tragic. It makes betrayal a pleasure to behold.

19 notes · View notes

hamilton-one-shots · 5 years

Note

So... could you maybe do some summary about your Hamilton highschool fanfic. I mean you have 104 chapters and I'm a little late and maybeeeee too lazy to read all of them :')

No problem! It’ll be a pretty long summary, though

Yeah, I got it to just under 1,200 words

Also, I’m moving blogs, which all of no people may have noticed, but I’ll probably make a separate post about that

So, Alexander moved to a new school because he has intermittent explosive disorder (which is never explicitly said, but is very heavily implied) and the first thing he sees is John spray painting the side of the school. He tries to fight him for no reason, John refuses and leaves when Alexander ruins his painting. In class, Alexander pisses Thomas off and the only thing that stopped that one-sided fight after class was John. Alexander is intrigued. The next day, Alex sees John drawing his sister and asks why he’s so emotional about it and John tells him that it’s because his dad kicked him out because what is a Hamilton fanfic without John’s dad being a homophobic jerk? Anyways, they become a thing and Alex tries to get better - ie: actually take his antidepressants and eat something more than once in a while - because John, the first person not to treat him like anything less because of his shortness and issues, is his reason not to. He even shows John the pet rat he secretly has. Meanwhile, Laf and Herc are enjoying their own new relationship, but TJeffs keeps harassing Laf. He’s actually a big problem and is also on Alexander’s case once he realizes that Laf can and will kick his ass. Despite the good mental progress he’d been making, Alexander begins acting like before because of the stress and even snaps at John, which just bounces off of him, but Alexander still feels shitty about it. TJeffs corners Alex and tells him that they’ve both kissed John, which leads John to admit that they were, in fact, in a relationship the year before until Thomas tried to take things further than John wanted. He wasn’t particularly forceful, but because of some past trauma, John thought it was and broke things off without explaining why. Then there’s a lot of angst as Laf’s cat accidentally kills Alex’s rat, which gives TJeffs the perfect opportunity to get Alex with his guard down and make him slip up, Alex blames the death on Laf, and there’s a, uncomfortable talk about John’s terrible past year that he kept hidden from everyone but Alex. Before that talk, though, TJeffs blackmails Alexander into almost going home with him, but that’s resolved with basically seconds to spare. TJeffs is also causing Laf and Herc more grief because he’s in Heathers as JD with Laf as Veronica. TJeffs talks to John in class after Alex panics and tells the teachers everything between him and TJ and he admits that he’s only doing everything to get John back, but John hates him now, so there’s that, but he also figures that things would be easier with him trying to make TJeffs leave them alone instead of Alex, so he does and almost gives up a kiss when Alex finds them and tries to fight TJeff, which is, again, extremely one sided, and John finally steps up and beats the shit out of him (more like scares him, but he does break his nose) which is a thing I forgot to mention he can do. There’s a bit of fluff as TJeff finally backs down as a villain and Alex meets John’s adorable siblings, but then TJeffs’ friend, John Jay, goes rogue and does some shit, but it’s okay because it’s quickly resolved for now. There’s a little more fluff with a Lams date and the Hamilsquad hangs out, then Monday comes and John’s sis Mary goes to their school, missing her brother, he takes her home, turns out, their dad is home early, he beats the crap out of John, John goes home, Alex finds out and, too angry to think, leaves John alone, which triggers a panic attack. He accidentally texts TJeffs who yeets himself to the apartment and helps John feel better while subtly (subtly being the key word, no more evil Thomas) trying to show him how Alex is bad (not that he’d be better, just that Alex is bad). Alex tells the whole world what happened between John and his dad, John is extremely upset because he didn’t tell because he didn’t want to get his siblings separated since they already lost their mom and John, they get into big fight, but quickly make up because this was based off an rp, not everything makes sense. Meanwhile, and I should’ve put this way earlier, Alex and local nerd Aaron Burr are working on an art program for the school, Alex introduces Aaron to Theodosia, a great artist with a terrible boyfriend, and Aaron manages to get her boyfriend arrested, which he deserves greatly. Aaron, Theo, and her friends, Martha and Frances, bring about fluff and joy with help from Lafayette, who gets along very well with the girls. Then more fluff (yes, I can cause more than pain) as Alex and Thomas meet at John’s apartment - neutral ground - to work on the dance while John is on babysitting duty with Maria Reynold’s daughter, Susan, and Thomas’s little sister, Lucy. Later, John and Alex do the do and it makes Alex secure enough in their relationship to see how much John still cares for Thomas and they become a poly relationship. Blah, blah, fluff, blah. blah, Thaurens date, blah, blah, everyone gets ready for the dance, Laf is Cinderella and John is Belle, both matching with their date/dates. Then John Jay comes back with a vengeance, he drugs John and brings James Reynolds, fresh out of the prison sentence that John sent him to, to hurt John, but Thomas stops it and takes John to the hospital. Alex is upset, ultimately because John only wanted Thomas there, not Alex, and when John gets out, lets his jealousy really show and runs off because he realizes it was a mistake. Martha W uses extreme mom powers to give him the strength to apologize and talk to John. Thomas is pissed because he had to wait a whole year to even talk to John again after what was, from his pov, a pretty small thing with no explanation, but Alexander gets the royal treatment after running away twice from John after John said not to do that because he needs him there. But he is mature enough to get over it. There’s a lot more fluff, they put on the Heathers show, and there’s a huge opportunity for John in S. Carolina, where he was raised, at an art show over Spring Break. He goes with both boyfriends, gets closure over his mom’s death, and runs into an old friend for a teary reunion. They get back, Charles Lee, Alexander’s worst past bully, shows up at school and actually attacks Laf because Laf feels that Lee’s attacks are too childish to fight against and he doesn’t want his friends to fight for him because of his own mainly untouched so far issues, while John will actually kill him if he lays a hand on Alexander. Eventually, though, Laf does fight back with John’s help, not that he needed it, John straight up sent Lee to the hospital. That’s where we stopped and I’m not sure if I want a new, more permanent villain or keep it going in this style, hopping from problem to problem, but if anyone has an opinion, let me know

7 notes · View notes

raywritesthings · 5 years

Text

Can’t Bear To Lose 4/?

My Writing Fandom: Doctor Who Characters: Donna Noble, Tenth Doctor Pairing: Doctor/Donna Summary: The DoctorDonna supposedly thinks of things the Doctor never would. Why not a way to fix the metacrisis? *Update can also be read on my AO3*

They’d been to ten planets already, and so far there was no sign. What if she was back on planet number three and had simply arrived the day after they’d left? What if the rocket had malfunctioned? What if she didn’t know how to fly it properly? She could be adrift out there in space and they might never find her until it was too late.

The Doctor’s mind was beginning to chase itself in circles with these questions. He’d thought everything would be alright once they went back to Messaline, yet now all he felt was a fresh wave of guilt and self-loathing.

He had abandoned his daughter. Yes, he’d thought Jenny was dead, but if he’d been able to bring himself to remain for the funeral he would have been quickly disabused of that notion. His policy of not looking back had cost him dearly this time.

He’d been squinting at the scanner readings for the last two hours, trying to pick out the most logical path Jenny could have taken to not have ended up in any of the places they’d yet to take. His eyes were growing irritated from staring at the screen so long and kept trying to close. Or maybe it was just that they needed a break in general...

A hand landed on his arm and he jerked back upright, eyelids blinking rapidly. “What? What’s happened?”

“Nothing. You just fell asleep standing up.”

One of the downsides to Donna suddenly being immortal. She was starting not to sleep as much as she used to, and she was there to see him fight against his own exhaustion.

“Spaceman, you need to rest.”

“I’ll rest once we’ve found her,” he said, shrugging off the hand Donna had moved up to his shoulder.

She frowned. “We don’t know how long that’s gonna take. And I know you’re running on fumes and out of ideas. The best thing you can do for Jenny right now is to rest up and attack it from a new angle in the morning.”

In the very depths of his mind, the Doctor knew Donna was making perfect sense; she always did. And perhaps he might have listened to her in any other circumstance.

But he shook his head. “And what if overnight the worst happens?”

Donna perches a hand on her hip. “You’re just assuming the worst.”

“I’m not,” he insisted, but he knew that alone wouldn’t be enough. Donna wasn’t the type to let these sorts of things go without explanation. Not that he’d expect her to. “You have to understand. This was exactly what I was afraid of, Donna.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you convinced me to accept Jenny. I didn’t want to because, well, partly my own stubbornness. I know that. But also—” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I was never a good father. Before.”

She was silent.

“I loved them, but I suppose I loved the traveling more. Or I wanted it more because I couldn’t have it and have a family,” he confessed. “I was dissatisfied on Gallifrey. And I left them. All of them — well, all except Susan. But even her I left behind eventually. Just like I left Jenny.”

“But that’s not the same,” she said. “You didn’t mean to leave her. We didn’t know she could come back. Martha thought—”

He looked back at her. “Martha was working with what she knew, but I should’ve known better. I let her convince me it was over because maybe I wanted it to be. So I didn’t have to wait and find out how I’d fail later.”

Donna’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t.”

He fell silent.

“I know you feel you’re destined to repeat past mistakes, but isn’t the point of living to nine-hundred-whatever that you learn from those mistakes and move on? It’s not enough to have regrets, Doctor. You’ve got to act on that change you want to see,” Donna said, her tone gentler by the end. “And that starts with taking care of yourself so you can look for Jenny properly instead of staggering about half-dead on your feet.”

The Doctor’s shoulders slumped. “Alright, Madame, you’ve made your point.”

“Good.” She reached down and took his hand, tugging him towards the corridor.

“Er, where are we going?”

“To bed.”

His eyebrows rose high enough it ought to have hurt. “Er, Donna—”

“Oh, not like that, you prawn. Not yet, anyway,” she muttered, and the back of her neck had gone a bright red. She chanced a look at him over her shoulder. “But I doubt you’ll do it on your own, so that’s the way it’s got to be.”

The Doctor harrumphed to himself. “So sorry to inconvenience you.”

Her lips quirked. “You’re grumpy. Sleep will do you some good.”

She led them into her room and directed him onto the bed where she left him for a while as she changed in the bathroom. He barely got a look at Donna’s nightclothes, for she scurried under the covers and turned the lights off almost immediately after emerging from the en suite.

There was a pause as they both considered what to do now, and it occurred to the Doctor that he’d never shared a bed with Donna before.

“Donna, if this is too — I mean I’d rather you not be uncomfortable for my sake.”

She found him in the dark and wrapped her arms around him in a determined sort of way. “I invited you, Time Boy. Wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want you here.”

He hadn’t been paying too much attention to Donna’s wants the last few days, he realized with regret.

“I’m sorry if I’ve put our, um, relationship on hold somewhat.”

He felt her hands rub up and down his back, which was both unfamiliar and nice.

“Nothing to apologize for. I’m worried about her, too.”

He risked ducking down to press a kiss to the top of her head, letting his face linger there in her hair a moment or two.

“I’ll make it up to both of you,” he promised. “Soon as Jenny’s found.”

With that, he allowed himself to relax in Donna’s arms, which turned out to be far easier than he might have believed.

—-

The next day found them at much the same routine as before. They’d stopped on a smaller planet she’d scarcely had time to hear the name of before Spaceman was leading them around asking the locals if they’d seen someone like Jenny.

“She would have come in on a rocket. A kind of ship. Do you know—?”

“No ships have come in. But there was, out in the grove, something came down.”

“A ship?” Asked Donna. “Has anyone arrived in town since?”

That got a shake of the head. “Nothing comes out of there.”

“Well, we will,” the Doctor decided. He turned tail and Donna was left to give a rushed goodbye before hurrying after him.

“Do you think it’s her?”

“I hope so. If not, someone’s out there and probably needs help.”

“Right,” Donna agreed.

They left the town and entered the tougher terrain of the grove. Well, grove was putting it nicely. Sharp looking bushes that rose up to the knees at the shortest stretched out as far as the horizon. She was glad she’d opted for jeans and long sleeves, that was for certain!

“Looks a bit rough,” she remarked as they exchanged a look. “Still.”

Spaceman nodded. “Still.”

With that, they plunged forward. It was just as prickly and unpleasant as she’d been expecting, but Donna resolved to keep her complaints to herself for once. If it was Jenny out there, she could brave a little discomfort.

“You know, it’s good she didn’t change.”

The Doctor glanced back at her. “How do you mean?”

“I mean cos if she’d changed we could walk right past her and never know.”

“Well, she’d know us. Do you really not like the idea of changing?”

“Well, you don’t seem to,” she retorted. “But don’t get all nervous. I’m not about to up and leave you. I’ve already put up with Victorian you.”

“That wasn’t even me.”

“Yeah, well the point is,” Donna huffed as she swung her leg over a particularly high bush. Her hand was caught by the Doctor, who’d reached out to keep her steady as she worked her way across. “You can change fifty times over and I’m not leaving.”

“No, I can’t.”

“What?”

“I’ve only got one more regeneration left,” he stated, perfectly calm.

“What, there’s a limit?” She demanded.

“Twelve times, yeah.”

Donna let go of his hand and stopped walking. “And how long does one usually last?”

“Oh, it varies. Time Lord bodies age much slower than humans, for one thing. And if you avoid accidents — in my first body I nearly made it to five-hundred alone.”

“Yeah, and what about the last body?” She asked, feeling rather sure she wouldn’t like the answer.

“Well...not nearly so long,” he admitted.

“Right.” Donna paused, then started walking again. “And poor Jenny’s already lost one. We ought to find her sooner than later so you can explain all this to her.”

The Doctor hummed an agreement and was on the move again as well. She let him go, not really wanting him to notice her troubled expression.

She’d assumed, this whole immortality bit, that he’d be there. But now he was telling her there was a limit, and a fast-approaching one by the sounds of it. Donna wasn’t prepared to imagine a forever that didn’t have him in it.

She wasn’t sure how long they walked on in silence. The Doctor was keeping just a few steps ahead of her, though he kept slowing and then starting back up again. Donna had to wonder how much good that rest the previous night had done him. She’d rather be curled up and bed with him at the moment regardless.

She was pulled from that more pleasant recollection as the Doctor abruptly shucked his overcoat and dropped it onto a bush before marching onward.

“Oi! This isn’t the TARDIS. You can’t just toss things to the side and expect them to be in your closet the next day.” She waded over to the right and scooped the coat up, careful not to poke herself with the brambles that clung to it.

“Keeps getting caught,” the Doctor called back in explanation. “And it’s too hot besides.”

She could agree with that. Her bangs were sticking to her forehead with sweat, but Donna plowed on ahead to keep up.

It wasn’t so hard as usual. What was unusual was him admitting at all that he was uncomfortable. Did he just feel less pressure to seem invulnerable now that she wasn’t the same, fragile human she once was? Or was something more going on.

Donna jogged a few paces to come up to his side. “Doctor, what do you think they meant back there, that nothing comes out of here?”

“Doesn’t matter.” His eyes were fixed dead ahead. “Nearly there.”

She followed his gaze and saw one end of a familiar looking ship rising up from the branches in the distance. “It’s the rocket. Oh, that’s got to be her!”

Her heart suddenly felt much lighter, and she stomped over the next few thickets, uncaring of the scratches they managed to leave on her hands — but she faltered at the sound of something falling over behind her.

Donna whirled around just as the Doctor landed hard in some bushes, sprawled on his side.

“Doctor!”

“Got to...keep…” he mumbled as his eyes slipped shut. Donna looked about in a panic — had some unseen foe attacked them? — and her eyes caught a flash of green and blonde.

“Jenny!”

The girl they’d been searching for was lying not five feet from her, prone and unconscious like her father. It looked as though she, too, had been trying to make her way through the thick growth covering the landscape.

The plants...had that warning been about them? She turned her hands over, examining the scratches, but couldn’t tell anything about them that might make them more dangerous. Either way, she clearly hadn’t been effected, which meant it was up to her to get them out of this mess.

Donna looked between the two fallen Time Lords. What did she do?

#ten x donna #doctor x donna #donna noble #tenth doctor #doctor who #the doctor #my writing

5 notes · View notes