#chekhov's sex toy
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Chekhov's sex toys
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spoiler 😌
It's In the Cards doesn't feature Chekhov's gun, but it does feature Chekhov's sex toy
Send me a “spoiler!” and I’ll post a vague spoiler from something I’m writing!
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The Fiancé: Chapter Four
Characters: Steve Rogers x Female Plus-Size Reader
Rating: The whole series will be E, 18+ ONLY
Summary: A lie about your best friend at a Christmas party spirals into world news, but a previously unknown threat leaves you having to now live the lie of Steve Rogers being your fiancé.
Originally based on the prompt ‘Character A’s ex will be at the Christmas Party A is attending. Character B poses as A’s fiancé,’ by @alloftheprompts.
A/N: The whole series will include swearing, alcohol, threat, violence, apartment sharing, protected sex, and more tags to be added!
The Fiancé Masterlist
All Works Masterlist
Read on AO3
Please don’t copy or steal my work, and please don’t post it on any other sites; credit does not count.
Can I Tell You Confidentially, Ain’t You Sweet
MONDAY
“This is a fucking nightmare,” Steve mutters, leaning against the wall and looking out of the window, Sam the other side.
Staring down at the seemingly growing crowd, his agitation is growing with it, but all he can think about is how you must be feeling.
He’d nearly hurled his phone into the God damn Reflecting Pool when Fury had told him.
“Now, hang on a second, what?”
“This is a great opportunity to find out who these guys are and stop them, Steve.”
He’d scoffed, a hand on his hip as he’d paced. “So we’re putting a civilian’s life in danger, my civilian friend’s life in danger, who not only has absolutely no training in any kind of operation but is also just an innocent human being?”
A sigh had come through the line. “Steve... What these groups are talking about doing is getting worse, and they’re recruiting, not just people to assassinate you but for other operations as well around the world.”
His jaw had moved as he’d stopped, staring into the water. “There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t.”
“Nick, I can’t see—”
“This isn’t a request, Steve, it’s an order.”
So here he is, a soldier with his orders, putting his friend’s life on the line for his own... And even though they’d appeared to give you one, you hadn’t really had much of a choice.
He hates it. But... as Nat had said, you couldn’t be safer. Part of him was actually relieved that you would now officially be under the watchful eye of SHIELD and the best agents he’d ever known, especially after the letter he’d received.
Sam shifts, mirroring Steve with his folded arms. “Yeah, you’re not wrong,” he murmurs. Shaking his head, he looks to him. “Only for six days, man. Just keep tellin’ yourself that, six days.”
Steve releases a breath, a muscle in his jaw moving. “Yeah, ‘cause nothing goes to shit in six days, huh.”
—
“I’m coming over the moment work finishes, if I can get out of the damn building.”
You lick your lips, balancing your phone between your shoulder and your ear as you carry a box to your bedroom door.
“Uh, actually, Bridge’, I’m packing right now.”
“You’re packing? Oh my God, please don’t tell me you’re eloping, I want to be there!”
“No, no, we’re just moving in together.”
Just.
“Oh my God, your place or his?”
“Uh... a new place.” You lift a suitcase onto your bed, unzipping it.
“Where?”
“I’m not sure, actually, Steve’s chosen a place.” You move to your wardrobe, stare at it for a second and then grab an armful of clothes and turn, dropping them onto your bed.
“Ugh, it’s like he’s gifting you an apartment, that’s amazing. Oh, Y/N...” You pause your half-hearted folding of a sweater at Bridget’s sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Licking your lips, you place the sweater in the suitcase. “Well, we’re... we’re such good friends that we wanted to keep it a secret, just in case it didn’t work out so it wouldn’t be weird with our friends or for anyone. And, you know... the whole world seems to think it can be involved, as we’d, uhm, as we’d expected.“
You hear them hiss. “I know, I can’t believe what some people are writing, it’s such trash.”
“Yeah.” You haven’t dared to check the notifications that have been making your phone buzz, even as you’ve been speaking to Bridget, and their angry tone doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence.
As you fold another sweater, you hear the clicking of a computer mouse on the other end, and then Bridget gasping. “Oh my God, is the ring really from Tiffany’s?!”
“Uh...” You glance at the ring on your fourth left finger. The ring Nat had removed from a box she’d taken out of her coat pocket and unceremoniously handed to you, telling you to put it on. You have absolutely no idea where it’s from. Does SHIELD just have a storeroom full of these? Does Nat? “... I don’t actually know, Bridge’, but, you know me, I’m not really bothered by that kind of stuff.”
“Oh, I know. Is it new? Old? What does it look like?”
You continue to stare at the alien object. “It’s... silver. And new. Got a diamond in the middle, three smaller ones either side, going down the band.”
“Ugh, simple and elegant, love it. Can you send me a picture?”
“As soon as I’m done packing.”
“Good. And let me know where you’re moving to, please! I want to drop by unexpectedly every day.”
“Oh, I will as soon as I know.” Having finished folding, you zip the suitcase up and place a hand on it, exhaling a short breath.
There’s a small pause.
“Are you okay, babe?”
“Yeah, I just...” You rub your forehead before making yourself smile even though they can’t see it. “... This is just all happening so fast and it’s a lot, truthfully.”
“Oh, I bet. You know we all love and support you here, right?”
That makes your smile soften. “Yeah, I know.”
“And you’re still okay for drinks with me and Doll’ on Wednesday, right?”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely.”
I fucking hope it’s okay, I know I’m gonna need those drinks and giggles.
“Good, we’ll blow off some steam then.”
Hauling the suitcase off the bed, your eyes dart to the door as someone knocks on it.
“Come in,” you say, raising your voice slightly.
It opens and Sam appears, smiling. “Hey, you ready?”
“Just about.” You pass the suitcase to him, him lifting it like it weighs nothing, and the expected sharp inhale comes from the other end of the line.
“Is Sam there?” Bridget whispers.
Your lips twitching, you nod as you say, “Yeah, Bridge’, Sam’s here.”
The man of the moment pauses, looking back at you as his lips lift higher. “You’re talkin’ to Bridge’?”
“Yep.” You have to control your smile.
“How, uh, how’re they doin’?”
“How are you doing, Bridge’?” you ask, raising your eyebrows slightly as you hear them clear their throat.
“Uh, tell him I’m fine, thank you... And that I would like to have a secret engagement with him,” they finish in the quietest of whispers that has your lips twitching again.
“They say they’re fine, thank you.”
Sam nods, pauses for another moment before he moves to turn again.
“Oh, hey,” you say, a wholesomely sneaky idea coming to you. “Sam, why don’t I give you Bridget’s number, then you two can plan the respective bachelor and bachelorette parties together?”
Bridget’s almost squeal of an inhale gives you their answer as Sam looks at you and grins. “Yeah, sure. I’d like that.”
“Oke doke, I’ll give it to you in a bit.” You smirk to yourself as Sam heads into the hallway.
There’s half a second before Bridget launches into a speech. “Oh my God, I love you so damn much, I’m gonna throw you the best damn party ever, I’ll get you whatever you want, whoever you want...”
Okay, maybe I can joke about with this situation now... Just with myself.
—
It takes you twenty-five minutes to pack. You haven’t packed much, only what you need for the week, and any food that will be going out of date soon, and it isn’t like you are actually moving out, so... the essentials it had been. Like you’re going on holiday. A bizarre, unwanted holiday. Nat has assured you there’s towels, cutlery, glasses, bedsheets, etc, all at the new place, you just need your clothes, toiletries, laptop, phone and anything else you might want to entertain yourself, her words. The last part had made you think of the box you keep under your bed, an array of toys you’ve accrued over the years inside.
... I mean... This is going to be a very stressful week... I’ll take just one... The silent, water-proof one.
That had disappeared into your backpack after you’d, quickly as you could, fumbled with the box and pulled it out and your toy cleaning wipes, sweating slightly as you’d heard the three of them moving around outside your door.
I will not humiliate myself further this week, no thank you.
Well, Nat would probably just nod in approval, Sam would probably actually do the same or just not even react, but Steve... There’s some things that you didn’t talk about, no matter how close you are.
Pulling your coat back on and the bag, hoping Nat doesn’t want to rifle through it this time, you step out of your bedroom, closing the door.
“So, what now?” you ask as they turn to you, Steve carrying your suitcase, Sam holding two boxes in his arms, Nat typing on her phone.
She slips it into her pocket and clasps her hands together as she speaks, “We leave, quickly and safely as possible. Sam and Steve are gonna take your things and Steve’s and head down to the parking garage, Sam’s got his car there, and they’ll come a little behind us. You and I are gonna head out the front, draw some of the crowd away and head to the new place.”
“Right.” You can’t work out if this is nice or not, having someone else take over and make all the decisions. At any other time, you’d be railing and demanding an input, but with this situation...
Carry on, Nat.
“All right, let’s go,” she says, as if having heard your thoughts, and moves to the door, peering through the peep-hole, checking the hallway, before she opens it.
“See you later, Y/N,” Sam says with that lovely warm smile of his as he heads out and, actually, between remembering the people who are now going to be looking after you and having decisions taken away from you, you’re starting to relax a little.
You meet Steve’s gaze and smile as he raises his eyebrows a little. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at home, then,” he says, a smile pulling at his own lips.
“Yeah, I’ll put the kettle on,” you reply, making his smile widen a little more.
“I look forward to it.”
You watch him as he heads out and into his own apartment, Sam having already opened the door. As he closes it, Nat steps out into the hallway, gesturing for you to follow, and you obey. Pulling your door shut, you lock it and turn to her, your keys disappearing into your coat pocket and you zip it closed.
As you both head down the hall, she pulls her phone out and starts typing again, her thumbs moving rapidly. You press the button to herald the elevator, and grip the straps of your bag, staring at the closed outer doors.
You try not to think about anything in particular, but you’re definitely feeling a lot more mellow.
Just six days, I can do that. Six days is fine, it’ll fly by. I just won’t watch the news, stay off of social media as much as possible and keep my head down with whatever Nat plans for us to do. Steve’ll want that, too, it’ll be fine.
Cheered by your new resolve, you breathe a little easier as the elevator arrives and you step in after the doors open. Nat presses the button for the ground floor as she steps in and glances at the ceiling corners, probably looking for bugging devices.
Pushing her phone into her pocket as the elevator begins to descend, she leans against the back wall, folding her arms and looking at you.
“We’ve got a couple of agents in the crowd and in the building along the street, so don’t worry, we’ve got eyes from every angle.”
“Okay,” you answer, having to stop yourself from saying ‘thank you’ because you know she’ll just smirk and arch an eyebrow.
She pulls the sunglasses down from her head to settle over her eyes once more and you raise your eyebrows.
“... Can I ask, what’s with the glasses?”
“They scan people’s faces, log and check them on a database we have.”
“Oh.”
Oh. Facial recognition.
That unsettles you a bit.
Licking your lips, you look back at the doors. “Where is the new place?” you ask after a moment.
“Other side of town.”
She doesn’t elaborate. You don’t know why you even bothered asking.
The elevator slows and she straightens, glancing at you. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” you murmur, clinging onto the calmness you’d felt only minutes before.
The doors open and you both step out. Aaron is stood close to the door, his hands on his belt, frowning, and there’s another guard with him, one you recognise as usually taking the night shift. Aaron must have called him... and as your eyes dart to the windows, you can see why. The faint, jolly music is still playing and it’s a bizarre juxtaposition to the muffled shouting and screaming from outside because the crowed have spotted you now. People are trying to peer through the floor-to-ceiling windows, craning their necks and shoving each other out of the way to get a better look at you, filming on their phones and trying to take pictures.
Aaron turns to you and gives you a small smile as you approach, Nat a step ahead.
“How’re we looking?” she asks him and from his blinking and surprised expression, you guess he isn’t one of the eyes she was talking about.
“Uh, well, no-one’s tried to get in, yet. Someone seemed as if they were about to follow someone who lives here in, but other’s started yelling at them that we could then call the police, so, seems like they’re seasoned.” He glances at you, giving you another smile.
You return it because, God, he’s probably not trained for this, and he’s such a nice guy.
“All right, well, they should go soon once they realise Steve and Y/N are moving.”
“You’re leaving?” He looks rather crestfallen as he meets your gaze again, and you don’t quite know what to do, but it’s left to you to say something because Nat’s moved off to the other guard.
Lying to him almost feels as bad as having to lie to your friends. He’s been working here for quite a few months now and he’s always ready to have a goofy laugh with you, especially when you come back from after-work drinks. It was always nice, too, to come back from a shitty day and see him, smiling and asking you how your day was.
“Well, tomorrow’s a new day,” he’d always say back, to the point where you both just ended up saying it together.
Do you just say bye? Do you give him your number, or promise to add him on Instagram or Facebook?
Yes, please.
Yeah, all right, you have a tiny bit of a crush on him, but it’s fine and you won’t ever act on it, so it’s fine.
“Yeah, sorry,” you say to him, offering a slightly sheepish smile.
Why am I apologising.
He smiles quickly, a beam that you’d come to enjoy seeing. “Well, I wish you luck with your new life, you two always seemed happy together, I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out.” He laughs and you make yourself join in.
Oh, it’s because it’s not truuueee...
“Thank you, Aaron, I appreciate that.” You pause for a second before continuing as you don’t know what else to say, “I’ll see you around.”
He nods. “Yeah, we follow each other on Instagram, so...”
“Do we?” Oh God, that’s embarrassing, as is the tone of surprise you hadn’t quite managed to stop. It’s like you’ve forgotten about him or don’t care, oh my God...
“Yeah, we...” He pauses to let out a chuckle. “You just took my phone that one time, when you came back from a friend’s birthday party, and followed yourself on my account, then promised you’d follow me which you did, so...”
Dolly’s birthday party. Tequila shots.
“Oh, right, yes, sorry, I remember.” Your face feels too warm. “Well, I’ll make sure to say hello.”
“I’d like that.” He smiles and takes a breath before clearing his throat “Goodbye, then, good luck with everything.”
“Thank you,” you answer, but he’s already turning and moving back towards the other guard, Nat giving him a brief smile as they pass each other and she returns to you.
Arching an eyebrow at you, a smirk hints at the corners of her mouth.
“Already initiating an affair?” she murmurs as she places a hand above your backpack, gently guiding you towards the door.
“Shut up,” you mutter, very much aware of how warm your face still is.
Her mood shifts the moment you’re in front of the door, the other guard gripping the handle, ready to open it.
“Okay, just keep moving towards the car, all right, don’t worry if you feel me pushing you, just keep your feet moving, and look straight ahead.”
“Okay,” you whisper, and from the corner of your eye you see her nod.
The guard opens the door and steps out, pushing people back, and then you’re out and through the door.
The moment you feel the cold air touch your skin, it’s pandemonium. People scream, cameras flash, and questions are yelled at you, so many you can’t even make them out properly. You keep your feet moving but your eyes are darting all over, trying to take it all in, there’s so many people. Your anxiety comes flooding back as the guard and Aaron try their best to keep people back and Nat keeps pushing you forward, silent. You just can’t believe they’re all here, in the freezing cold, just to see you.
Well, not just you.
“He’s not here! He’s not with her!” you hear a man shout next to you, making you flinch.
Suddenly, your hands are on Nat’s Corvette and you’re fumbling for the handle. Finding it and tugging it open, Aaron has to really push against a group beside you to allow you space to open it and so you can get in. With your bag still on your back, you slide into the seat and call a “Thank you!” to Aaron. He doesn’t get a chance to turn and acknowledge it as Nat closes the door and the group surges slightly, trying to press against the car. Keeping your eyes down, you lean forward to slide your backpack off and drop it between your feet.
Your hands shake slightly as you buckle your seatbelt, so you clasp them together in your lap once you’re done. It takes Nat a few more moments than last time to get round to her side, but then she’s there, swiftly getting in. Slamming the door shut, she secures her seatbelt and turns the engine on, the sound of it, luckily, making people step back.
Within moments, she’s pulling you both away and down the street. Staring through the wing mirror on your side, you’re grateful for the first time for her speed, knowing by the time the group scatters and gets into their cars or news vans that you’ll be blocks away.
Closing your eyes, you try and cheer yourself.
The hard part’s over. That’s it. You did it.
—
The hard part is definitely over.
This is the fanciest fucking place I’ve ever seen in my life.
You don’t think your mouth’s closed once from the moment you stepped into the building let alone your new penthouse.
It’s huge. All open-plan and white or stripped wood furniture, lush, thick, beige carpeting throughout, except in the kitchen where it’s polished stone, and the bathrooms where it’s white tile with thin flashes of gold. The dining room is decorated to a show-room standard, with a long, glass table and white cushioned chairs, cutlery set out waiting to be used. The living room, with its two ridiculously comfy beige couches, darker than the carpet, with terracotta blankets draped over them, a huge TV, brick fireplace, and intricately carved coffee table, meets the floor-to-ceiling windows and a glass door that opens out onto a balcony and a view of the city. A swinging chair and four, regular, but as equally comfy-looking, chairs are on it with a stone table, and to the right there’s a pool and more couches and a firepit. To the right of the living room area, behind a door, is a gym room, complete with, what you assume is state-of-the-art, equipment. The kitchen is to die for with its black marble counters and island, accompanied by stools to sit at, and the huge silver fridge and the white beech-wood cabinets and the bedrooms...
There’s two, one’s going to be yours, the other’s Steve’s. You very much agreed with Nat when she said, as you were the first here, that you get first pick but, truthfully, you’d have been over the moon with either of them. The one you have chosen, though, is the first one you come to after walking up the stairs. The king-sized bed is the most comfortable thing you’ve ever lain on, and the grey and white striped duvet and sheets are so soft. The wardrobe is a walk-in, you have your own en-suite, featuring a clawfoot bath, a huge shower and an ornate sink, and the windows in the bedroom are also floor-to-ceiling, the view gorgeous.
Maybe this will feel like a holiday, maybe this won’t be so bad after all, oh my God, even the toilet paper is the softest thing I’ve ever felt, I never want to leave...
As you finally pull yourself out of the room, you lean against the landing railing, gazing down at the open-plan floor below. It looks even more gorgeous from up here, perfect, coordinated, a dream.
Nat stands by the balcony door, talking to someone on her phone, and as you practically float down the stairs, she brings it to an end and hangs up, pushing it into her jeans pocket as a smile begins to form.
“So, everything is satisfactory for you, ma’am?”
“Oh, Nat, this is beyond anything I could have ever imagined.” Crossing the room, you sit on one of the couches, leaning back and looking at her. “How did you find this place?”
She folds her arms, leaning against the window. “We keep a few places on hold, just in case.”
Your head tilts forward, your eyes widening. “This place is a safe-house?!”
Her lips twitch. “Not anymore. Clint’ll be pissed.”
Before you can respond, the front door opens and you both turn, watching Steve and Sam enter. Sam lets out a whistle as he walks down the short hallway, his eyes wide. “Oh my God, can I move in?”
Grinning because this feels good, this feels nice to find it exciting rather than terrifying, you raise your eyebrows. “Hey, I wouldn’t mind, there’s probably room for ten people here.”
“Yeah, Sam snores, so I don’t think so,” Steve quips as he passes the other man, setting the three suitcases, one of them yours, he’d been carrying down by the kitchen archway. He seems just as impressed, though, if a bit more quietly so, his eyes roaming the interior. They arrive at you.
“You happy with it?” he asks, and it makes your chest ache with how sincerely he says it.
“Are you kidding me?” You maintain your grin, wanting to keep the tone light. “I can probably sleep in the wardrobe I have up there and there’s a pool outside.”
“It’s winter, Y/N,” Sam says, but he’s craning his neck to peer outside as he puts your two boxes on the kitchen island.
“It’s heated,” Nat says casually, making you and Sam gasp quietly.
I’m never leaving.
“Right,” Nat continues, moving away from the window as Sam takes her place, her arms still folded. “There’s food in the fridge and cupboards, plenty of towels in the downstairs bathroom cupboards, there’s a washing machine and tumble dryer in there, too, and I’m gonna advise you to not order take-out this week for safety purposes.”
If that’s the sacrifice I have to make to live here then fine.
“Steve, come with me, I’ll show you how the machines work, Sam you take Y/N’s things upstairs and help her unpack.”
“I know how a washing machine works, Nat,” Steve sighs even as he follows after her.
“Oh, not this one, trust me.”
Your gaze darting to meet Sam’s, you both grin.
“Please show me this wardrobe, I’m dyin’ to see it.”
Rising off the couch, you gesture towards the stairs with a flourish of your arm. “This way, then, please, sir.”
Striding across the floor, he grabs your suitcase in one hand and manages to carry both boxes in his other arm before turning to you. “Take me there, ma’am.”
You feel like a giddy child as you both head up the stairs, nearly running.
Nat shakes her head as they listen to you both and she meets Steve’s gaze, her lips twitching. He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
Even though she knows you nor Sam will be able to hear her in the bathroom she and Steve are stood in, she still softens her voice. “You okay, old man?”
A corner of his mouth lifts a little higher than the other. “Yeah. It’s just gonna take some getting used to.”
“I know,” she murmurs, leaning against the washing machine, instructions forgotten, and she knows not needed. “I know this isn’t exactly how we planned on locating these guys but we couldn’t let this opportunity go—”
“I know, I know,” he sighs, a note of exasperation to it. “Fury said the same thing.”
She looks at him, the tightness in his jaw, despite how relaxed he appears. “She’s going to be safe,” she says gently after a few moments. “I know I don’t have to remind you, but we’re doing this for her, too.”
That makes him stiffen slightly, but she knows he needs an objective for this, something to fight for, something personal, his own life not being enough. He nods after a short pause, then his eyes meet hers and he gives an easy smile.
“You gonna show me how to use this thing or what, huh?”
—
You wish Nat and Sam could’ve stayed longer. Could’ve helped you both settle in, maybe even shown you how to operate the TV, even though you knew... Could’ve stayed longer because they helped to keep the excitement up.
The moment the door closed after they’d said their goodbyes, barely an hour after they’d arrive, said adamantly to call if either of you needed anything, and that the building was already being watched by agents, silence descended.
You’d both been stood by the front door to bid farewell, Steve holding it open, and you’d watched them cross the small circular foyer to the elevator that only someone with a passkey could get into and come to this floor with. You, Steve, Nat and Sam were the only people to have one. As the latter two disappeared, the elevator doors closing and Steve closed your own door and the silence came, you just looked at each other. You couldn’t think what to say, not quite in the mood to crack a joke, some of your energy having left you. Steve had appeared to feel the same way, his hands sliding into his pockets as he gave a light smile.
As the silence went on a second too long, you had returned his smile, though wider, and made some excuse about having promised to video call Dolly and Bridget to show them the place. He’d just nodded and joked about keeping out of the way.
You hate this. Hate that there’s some kind of... disconnect between you two now, though, you hope, you’re the only one to feel it. You don’t want to become awkward strangers to each other, you don’t want to feel uncomfortable and embarrassed every time you want to speak to him because how the hell are you going to get through the week? Or beyond it? You know it’s all your own doing, your own insecurities and embarrassment holding you back, but you just need... a few minutes to adjust.
The video call with your friends doesn’t exactly help. They’d gasped and squealed at everything you’d showed them, so delighted and excited for their friend, and you don’t know where you’d found the energy from to be ‘on’, to be at their level, and the level of an excited, engaged woman. You had quickly excused yourself after half an hour, though, saying you and Steve still have some things to unpack.
You hate lying to them. You hate it so much.
You'd felt tears pricking at your eyes as you’d waved goodbye, catching their blown kisses like you usually would but unable to return them with quite the same goofiness. If they’d have asked, you just would have said you were tired, which wouldn’t have been a complete lie.
When you end the call and drop your phone onto your bed, you close your eyes, wiping at them after a moment to eradicate any stray tears.
Six days. Just six days. And it’s to help save your best friend’s life.
Changing into a sweater and pyjamas trousers, you leave your room, your phone held in one hand. A quick glance around as you descend the stairs shows no sign of Steve, but as you reach the bottom you hear sounds of a machine in the gym room despite the door being closed. You leave him to it, knowing he’s probably got his own adjustments to reckon with.
Despite his status, he’s still a private guy, and he probably hates the limelight now being shone on him once more.
There comes the guilt again, gnawing at you from the inside, and swiftly comes the challenge that without your lie you wouldn’t be able to help SHIELD find whoever wants to hurt him... Then comes the sadness, anger and helplessness.
You sit on the nearest couch, grabbing the remote, and turn the TV on. The channel you’re on is showing an advert, so you skip through until you land on a talk show. You pause for a moment, before lowering the remote.
“... also have a statement from June & Mayflower Publishing,” a woman is saying, text appearing on the screen beside her.
You don’t bother to listen properly or read it. Nat had called Yvette while you’d been packing, and she and her assistant Alice had drafted a statement saying the whole company was delighted. She’d sent it to you while Nat had been driving you here to read beforehand but you’d just replied to the email saying it was fine, you trusted her.
You tune back in when a man speaks, and a weird feeling rises in your chest as a picture of you and Steve, from probably only a few months after you’d moved to D.C, walking in a park and smiling, pops up on the screen.
“Y/N has actually been sighted with Steve before, they’ve actually been neighbours for three years, isn’t that romantic?”
“Awh, so cute!” the woman says, beaming.
“I know, right? People were asking if something was going on, we were desperate to know if our boy in red, white and blue had finally found the one again, but after months of quiet speculation we all knew they were just good friends.”
You wouldn’t have exactly called it quiet. You can still remember the shock and surprise of leaving your building and someone coming up to you to ask questions about you and Steve every other day, but it had soon faded, and had been nothing compared to what you’d experienced today.
“Now what we’re all desperate to know is is it going to be a winter wedding?”
“Yeeesss,” the woman says, clapping her hands together. “Now, some of us may think that that’s unusual but they are becoming more popular, and if the wedding of the century is going to a winter one, then, well, cancel Christmas, wedding planners, you’ve got work to do!”
As they laugh, you cringe, playing with the sleeve of your sweater. Unused to wearing a ring the size of the engagement one, it keeps catching on it.
“Now, we have Chrisse Christianson on the line from Chrisse’s Boutique, the store that specialises in all things weddings right here in New York, hi, Chrisse, have you been contacted by the couple?”
“Hi, guys! No, I haven’t been contacted yet,” she laughs, the trilling sound echoing across the studio, “but as Steve is from here we’re hoping they decide to shop local, and—”
As the gym room door opens, with lightening speed you change the channel, landing on a documentary of some kind.
Clearing your throat and lifting your head, you smile at him as he steps out... and you can’t stop your gaze from travelling him. His shirt is sticking to his skin with sweat, beads of it trailing down his neck and temple. His muscles somehow look bigger, straining under the sleeves of the shirt. You swiftly lift your eyes as you catch yourself, and his warm smile is what sets off the fluttering in your chest.
“Hey,” he greets, closing the door.
“Hi,” you manage to say nonchalantly.
Glancing at the TV screen, he then looks back to you. “Dolly and Bridge’ okay?”
“Yeah.” You fold your arms as you smile a touch wryly. “Can’t tell if they’re more excited about the engagement or the apartment.”
He chuckles, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. You have to stop yourself from watching his muscles flex. “Well, they’re only human.”
Your smile softens as you exhale a laugh. As he crosses behind the couch to the stairs, your eyes return to the TV, but you hear him pause on the bottom step.
“Hey, after I shower I’ll cook us something to eat, okay?”
You look to him, your smile returning as you nod. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”
He nods and ascends the stairs, and you make yourself look back at the screen.
Well, there you go, you’ve spoken and it wasn’t awkward. Hey, you’d even laughed. That was good, fine. It would just be a little weird adjusting, that was all.
You focus on the documentary, which you realise is about birds. You focus very hard on it.
—
Cutlery quietly clinks against plates, the only sound that fills the air of the penthouse. Usually when you both cook together one of you will put music on, more often than not the playlist you’ve curated together over the years that holds a charmingly eclectic mix of music ranging from the 20s to now. Today, though, neither of you felt much like listening to any.
You’d just stayed on the couch, anyway, when he’d reappeared, showered and dressed, and cooked, almost frozen to the spot and staring at the TV screen. It was nice to drift away for half an hour or so, be distracted by something. He’d gently called you when the pasta dish was ready, and you’d both decided to sit at the island, something too unspokenly formal about the dining table.
And so silence has fallen.
Steve watches you as you both eat quietly, your head slightly lowered. The only thing you’d said was how good it tasted after your first mouthful, and he’d thanked you. You haven’t said another word since. He himself is slightly slumped in his chair, his shoulders down, his arm resting on his thigh, back a little curved. You’d laughed the first time you’d seen him with such an unsuperhero-y posture, fully relaxed. He’d just smiled, and you’d realised over the years that that was how Steve Rogers sat and how he always had, even pre-serum, almost like his body was curving in, protecting himself.
Your fork lowering onto your plate pulls him from his thoughts, his eyes focusing back on you. Running a hand down his mouth, he clears his throat.
“How are you doing?” he asks quietly.
You just look at your plate for a moment as you push it away, your hands clasping together in its place. You’d known this was coming the whole time you’d been eating, before even. Taking a breath and exhaling it, you swallow before you finally look at him. His features don’t change, just watching you.
“Steve, I’m so sorry, about all of this,” you say, your voice just as quiet as his. “For what I said at the party, all of this, I just...”
“Why?” he asks when you don’t carry on.
You raise your eyebrows slightly, a faint expression of surprise. “I used you. I used you to get back at someone who doesn’t matter, and I hate that I did that, I hate it. It’s what everyone else does to you, they use your status and the symbol of Captain America, they take advantage of it, I’ve seen people do it, they pretend they’re your friend just to get something, and I never wanted to be the person that did that, I’m so sorry, I’m your friend because I like you, not because I want to look important or have some kind of status, but that’s what I wanted in that moment, I wanted him to look at me and think I was important and he’d missed out, and I could do better than him and now I’ve just thrown that all away, I’m a hypocrite and I’m so sorry.” You stop abruptly and inhale a slightly broken breath.
He didn’t interrupt you as you got it all out to him, finally, his expression didn’t change, he just sat quietly and listened, knowing the thoughts have probably been rolling around in your mind incessantly. His features soften now, though.
“Y/N...” he says after a moment, “... It was a bit of fun.” You just look at him, your lips slightly parted. “Sure, it’s spiralled, and here we are, having to pick out cake decorations...” He trails off with a smile as you exhale a laugh, your own smile finally breaking out across your features. When he continues, he’s still smiling but his tone is sincere. “I know the kind of person you are, Y/N. I know when I’m being used, despite how old I am I’ve still got all my marbles, but it was just some fun, and I was glad to do it for you, he seemed like an ass.”
Your smile has lingered, your shoulders relaxing in relief as you inhale a breath. “Yeah, he was.” Shaking your head, you look at him. “God, you’re just...”
He arches an eyebrow, his head tilting. “What?”
Your smile widens. “Incredible, Steve Rogers.”
He chuckles, his hand falling into his lap. “You are, too. And Y/N, you are important—”
“I know, I know,” you say quickly, feeling your face warm. You can’t bear to hear one of his pep-talks now, it’ll just make you feel like even more of a child for having done what you did.
Mercifully, he takes the hint and leans his elbow on the island, his fingers brushing over his lips. There’s a small pause before he speaks again.
“Look, I’m not the best at all this undercover stuff, I’m quite bad at it actually, I’m surprised Nat hasn’t entertained you with the tales, but I think having to do it with you will make it a little easier.”
Your gaze lifts to him, the heat lingering on your skin, and you smile softly. “Well, thank you. You, too.”
You want to cry. You have some kind of emotional release from the day, but you know that would just make him feel guilty.
You attempt to lighten the tone again, raising your eyes to take in the penthouse once more. “So why don’t you live in a place like this?”
“What do you mean?”
You shrug. “Your apartment’s the same size as mine, but you probably have ten times what I do. Don’t give me that look,” you swiftly continue, the corners of your mouth lifting, “They published it, and I couldn’t help but accidentally read it, and I’m just saying, why do we split the bill.”
He arches an eyebrow, a smile threatening. “Because you insist.”
“Well...” You scoff, raising your eyebrows. “I’m gonna stop insisting.”
He chuckles and shrugs, his hands clasping in his lap. “I like my place. And where could I find a better neighbour, huh?”
“Oh, well...” You shrug a shoulder as you smile faux-demurely, shaking your head. “You couldn’t, so, good.”
“I know, I know, God’s gift,” he concedes with raised eyebrows, his smile betraying his tone. Moving off the stool, he takes your plate and his and heads to the sink, placing them in and turning the tap on, letting the water run over them.
Placing your arms on the island, you exhale a long breath. “So... How are you gonna spend your first afternoon here in paradise?”
The corners of his mouth lift as he turns the tap off and leans against the counter beside him, his hands in his pockets. “Think I’m gonna give Buck a call, and Nat, see what’s goin’ on. You?”
You wrinkle your nose, shrugging. “I don’t think I’m technically not working just yet, so, I’ve got a few things I want to take care of and send to Yvette, then...” You shrug again. “... The shower in my room looks great, actually, so I might spend about three hours in there.”
“Yeah, mine was life-changing, so...” He smiles as you laugh, sliding off of your stool.
“Oh, good, maybe I’ll spend four hours in there, then.” Tugging your sleeves over your hands, you grab your phone and return his smile. “All right, I guess I’ll see you in a bit, then.”
“Yeah. Don’t work too hard.”
“Oh, I’ll try.”
And there it is again, that weird, unfamiliar awkwardness returns, not too overt, but definitely there. As you climb the stairs, you once again hope he doesn’t feel it, but, you are relieved that you got out what had been rattling around in your mind since the morning. Relieved that he was so understanding, too, but when is he not? That’s what you lo— admire about him so much. Empathy is seemingly a rare trait these days so it’s nice to be reminded that people do have it. And, oh, you’d had a normal conversation. You almost laugh at the boost it’s given you.
You push him, the day, everything out of your mind, though, as you enter your room and close the door. Taking your laptop from your backpack, you turn it on and sit back against the luxurious cushions on the bed, closing your eyes for a few moments to get your brain into work-mode.
This will distract you for a good few hours, be something that you can handle and focus on.
Opening your eyes, you sign into your laptop and straighten your back.
Oke doke... Hello, my actual life.
—
You manage to waste more than a good few hours sending emails, receiving them, taking calls, approving events and posts, planning out the next few months of what you want to get done and make public. You ignore the emails that have ‘CONGRATULATIONS!!!’ in the subject line, hoping people will just think you’re too busy being desperately in love to reply to all the well-wishers. It’s almost bliss, to lose yourself in your work and think of nothing else, even though you do have to block a few numbers from tabloids every half an hour or so.
As darkness falls, though, and everyone else ends their working day, you force yourself to send your last email, to Yvette, explaining, as Nat had asked you to, that you would be taking the week off. Yvette already knows, of course, but Nat had requested you to do it just in case someone hacked into your emails, or the company’s. Shutting your laptop down and closing it, your gaze drifts to the window. The sky is an inky black, and the bedside lamp you’d turned on an hour or so before illuminates the room in a warm, gentle glow.
Moving off the bed with a slight, stiff, wince, you pull the curtains closed, and take a moment to let your thumbs caress the silver, velvety material.
Ugh, just perfect.
Blowing out a breath, you turn back to the room.
What now?
...
Time for that shower, I think.
You take another moment to once more take in the beauty of your bathroom, before you open the shower door and stare at the buttons because it has buttons and not knobs and taps like you’re used to. Thankfully, they’re easy to understand and in seconds a warm stream of beautifully pressured water is pouring down onto the floor.
You dart back into the bedroom to grab your phone, wanting to play some music, and as you wander back into the bathroom, you unlock it. As you search for your desired playlist, an Instagram notification suddenly appears at the top of the screen. It’s a message—
You pause.
A message from Aaron.
You feel your face heating up, and it’s not from the steam of the shower, as you tap on it to open the app and read it quickly.
Hey, I hope you’re settling in okay, and your new door guys aren’t as funny as I am.
You smile, quite touched by the sweetness of it. Your thumbs start to move before you can stop them.
Hi, thank you so much! It’s all fine here, and no, they certainly aren’t, so you can rest easy.
Feeling faintly like a giddy teenager as you quickly close the app in case he comes online and sees you’re active, (and oh my God, did I reply too quickly?), you start your playlist and place your phone by the sink. After undressing, leaving your clothes in a pile on the floor, and spending a moment considering if you should remove the ring in case you damage it but deciding to leave it on, you step into the shower and are unable to stop a soft groan as the warm water washes over you.
This is so much better than the water in our building... then again, it’s not hard to beat it.
You take your time to shower, washing every inch of your skin with the new bottle of body-wash that was already in there and smells divine. When you finally turn the water off and step out, you pull a cream, fluffy towel from the nearby rack and it rivals the bed in softness. After patting yourself dry and moisturising with the new pot of cream that was in one of the cabinets under the sink, and comes from that fancy shop you and Dolly go into every month for samples, you wrap the towel around yourself, take your phone and head into the bedroom.
Checking for notification as you sit on the bed, you find Aaron has answered.
Oh, good, to both of those. My reputation remains intact.
Your teeth graze over your lower lip as you reply.
Absolutely, I’ll let them know here that they seriously need to do better.
Being on the app reminds you to make your account private as, oh, boy, strangers commenting on every single photo you’ve ever posted is overwhelming. You’re about to exit out of the app when you decide to have a look at Aaron’s profile. It’s a standard grid, photos of him at bars or parties, by the looks of it, selfies, photos of him at the gym...
Wow... His uniform kinda hides those muscles.
Stop it.
Locking your phone, you lie back on the bed, not quite ready to change just yet.
God, that was a good shower.
Wonder if Steve’s shower was really good. If the water pressure was good like mine, not if he had a nice time, if he just really enjoyed it as much as he said he did.
You stare at the ceiling, swallowing lightly.
Your eyes drift to your backpack on the floor.
Where your toy calls quietly to you.
... This would help the unwinding to continue.
Moving off the bed, you reach inside your backpack and grab the toy, pulling it out of its drawstring bag.
It’s one of your favourites; smooth, rose-gold silicone, medium length, a ribbed shaft, silent, different speeds and patterns, water-proof, you can use it anywhere, anytime, and do whatever you want with it.
Lying back again, you shift into a more comfortable position and close your eyes, your thumb finding the familiar button to set the vibration at the first, low speed.
You think about what you usually do when you can’t be bothered to look a stimulus up online; a faceless mouth on your neck, on your breasts, licking and sucking at your nipples, on your thighs, hands pulling them apart, gliding down to your wet pussy lips, caressing and stroking.
A rush of breath escapes you as you glide the head of the vibrator up and down your cunt, your hips jerking slightly at the initial contact. You’re wet already, and you hum gently as you stop at your clit, leaving the vibrator there.
Your free hand tugs the towel open so you can reach your breasts, your fingers going between your nipples and, tugging and pinching them along with your fantasy. You increase the speed by one as you start to lose yourself in the pleasure thrumming throughout your body.
... And you can’t stop yourself from not thinking about it anymore.
You picture Steve in the shower.
You’ve thought of him a couple of times before while masturbating, accidentally. Like when you've been drunk he’s just slipped into your mind... or just at the last second when you're coming his face has appeared in your mind and his name from your lips. You just can’t help it.
The faceless mouth and hands become his as you rock your hips, quiet moans sounding from your throat. He whispers your name into your ear, telling you how good you feel, how wet you are, what a good girl you are, how he can’t wait to sink his cock into yo—
Two gentle knocks sound on your bedroom door.
“Y/N?”
Your eyes snapping open, you stare at the door.
Steve.
Oh my God, it’s like I summoned him.
“... Yeah?” You try to sound as nonchalant as possible, your voice just a touch higher than normal.
“Can I come in?”
“Uh...” You’re off the bed in seconds, the towel falling to the floor as you thrust the vibrator behind one of the many pillows and clear your throat, “... Hang on, two seconds...”
You can’t answer the door to him in just a towel, you can’t, where—
You find the robe you’d spotted earlier, still hanging on the back of the bathroom door and grab it, pulling it on and tying the cord tight.
God, that’s soft...
Clearing your throat again, you take a breath and open the door, smiling widely as your eyes fall on him.
“Hey, sorry, I just had a shower.”
He takes an almost involuntary step back, his back straightening. “Oh, sorry—”
“No, no, it’s fine.” You’re still smiling, and he’s returning it, albeit a bit softer and less forced, his eyes on yours.
“Right, I was wondering if you wanted to watch a movie? I can make some dinner for us while you change?”
He’s just so fucking nice, how can I think such filthy things...
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
“All right, I think it’s your turn to pick the movie.”
“All right, I’ll get thinking.”
I hope I don’t sound as manic as I feel.
You watch him descend the stairs for a moment before you close the door and lean against it, closing your eyes.
Oh, God...
It’s good actually, that he turned up, you shouldn’t be thinking about him, it’s wrong, he’s your friend—
Stop. Just stop thinking about it.
Opening your eyes, you exhale a long breath and move towards your new wardrobe, finding your pyjamas.
Right, now to just get through the evening without any awkwardness... and the rest of the week.
Okay.
Right.
Fine.
Perfectly easy.
—
Comments, reblogs make my day in a way I can’t describe.
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Tagged: @herb-welch, @jobean12-blog, @gifsbysimplysonia, @multireality, @saltyspiceduh, @sergeantangel, @sarcasm-is-my-native-tounge, @lex-is-up-all-night-to-get-bucky, @dispatchvampire, @superapplepie, @rynabarnesrogers-reading, @im-not-great-at-making-up-names, @imaginedreamwrite, @thesefleshfailures, @mrsbarnes32557038, @tellthemall-i-saidhi, @tacohead13, @opalsandlace, @notsomellowmushroom, @river-soul
#steve rogers x reader#steve rogers#captain america#steve rogers x plus size reader#chekhov's sex toy#my writing#flamehairedwritings#marvel fanfiction
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So in Case History, is the farmer's vibrator ever going to come back into play? (See what I did there?) Also what are Harvey's thoughts on it?
Good pun, good pun. But yes, Chekhov's vibrator. I’ve got a fair few ideas of how that could factor in, I just hadn’t worked out which one I want to go with first. I’ve got at least two points that happen in the week leading up to Spirit’s Eve that I want to cover (specifically Shane’s therapy session and the birth control follow up), and there’s a possibility that one of the possible instances might make it into that little montage. Our resident Crazy Kids are going to be relegated once again to the occasional 10-minute coffee break makeout and quite a few late night phone calls and are gonna get super pent up.
Also, despite his slightly goofy reaction to finding the thing (don’t sneak up on the man with sex toys, he startles easily) he’s really got no qualms about the vibrator. Harvey may be insecure, but he’s not the type to feel threatened by motorized plastic and silicone. He’s definitely not forgotten about it either, and has a few Thoughts and Ideas about future implementation (including but not limited to hoping for a show of his own).
#sdv: case history#sdv harvey#stardew valley#citrus variations#also at this rate there may end up being a web shopping chapter#for Reasons#I'm not saying Harvey's getting a strap for Winter Star#but he's definitely not allowed to open his present at the feast#also thank you for the ask#Anonymous
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full text: 2019 Telegraph piece
check out the pictures here from @ralph-n-fiennes
the article by Hermione Eyre (official link - registration required for a free trial)
Ralph Fiennes does Ralph Fiennes so well. During our interview he delivers everything one might hope for: sensitive introspection, charm, pathos, a touch of mystery and even a (partial) defence of late Soviet Russia. ‘A lot of people didn’t experience it as repressive…’
This in the context of the stunning new film he has directed, called The White Crow, about the defection of Rudolf Nureyev from the Soviet Union in 1961. Oh, and he also impersonates a horse for me. Beautiful whinny. Sensitive nostrils.
‘It’s how I feel as the house lights go down and I can feel the expectation from the audience. You can see it in horses before a race.’
As we begin, in a Shoreditch loft studio not far from his home, he seems professorial, in a woolly cardigan, neatly arranging his spectacles, notebook and copy of the latest London Review of Books. When he is ready he gives me that trademark encouraging smile – half little boy, half crocodile.
Career-wise, he has it all. Family life, not so much. His greatest luxury? ‘My independence. I lead quite a solitary life.’ When I ask him if he’s a good uncle to his siblings’ progeny – Mercy, Titan and Hero, to name a few – he says flatly, ‘I could be better.’
His sister, the film-maker Sophie Fiennes, says her son Horace, now eight, really enjoyed the sword fighting in his Richard III, which is, if you think about it, a good outcome for a small boy going to see his uncle play Richard III.
His presence is a mark of quality in a film. Both the Bond and Harry Potter franchises, where he plays M and Voldemort respectively, brought him in for gravitas. Since Rada, he has run the gamut of Shakespeare, from Romeo in 1986 to his award-winning Antony & Cleopatra last year at the National, opposite Sophie Okonedo.
‘She was spectacular. I miss Antony. I found him very moving in his brokenness; his masculinity falling away and him trying to cling on to it. He’s male and middle-aged, and he keeps saying, “I’ve still got it, haven’t I? Haven’t I?”’
Does he recognise that? ‘I am 56 and I try to stay fitter’ – he does cardio and morning yoga – ‘but I can feel myself getting… old. Little shifts of energy and ambition, little impulses. You get tired more, you want to take it easy more.’ Then summoning mercurial energy in that actorly way, he explodes, ‘But I can feel myself fighting that, like, “I’m not gonna let go! Come on, come on. Yeah!” There are plenty of virile 56-year-old men.’
When I ask if he’s got a motorbike yet, like Ralph Richardson, he isn’t impressed. ‘No, my brother Joseph rides a motorbike. He can do fast cars and handle boats.’ Joseph, now 48, will for ever be the young Bard wooing Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, just as Ralph single-handedly made Herodotus hot, that spring of 1997 when we all went to see The English Patient and wept.
Antony gives everything up for sex. ‘Yes, he does, that’s a very real erotic connection, and it’s very emasculating for him.’ Does sex make the world go round? ‘Erm, sex produces more human beings, mostly.’ Nice deflection.
Fiennes married Alex Kingston, his great love from Rada, in 1993. Their marriage ended when he left her in 1995 for the actor who was playing Gertrude to his Hamlet, Francesca Annis, 17 years older than him. Although the relationship broke down in early 2006 amid reports of his alleged infidelity, they still talk, have a deep, mutual professional respect and go to each other’s first nights.
Kingston has since gone on to have a daughter, Salome, with her second husband and Annis already had three children; Fiennes has never wanted his own family. ‘Never say never,’ he demurs. ‘But I don’t feel that’s imminent at all. I love the family and community of plays or the cast and crew of a film.’
He recollects his lines from Man and Superman, the Bernard Shaw play, ‘where Jack Tanner [whom he played] rather brilliantly pours scorn on the idea of happiness: “No family, no marriage, spread your seed, but no marriage!” I love the mischief in that.’
He says, ‘I am the eldest of six,’ as if it explains everything. The Fiennes children were born within seven years. Martha and Sophie make films; Magnus is a composer; Joseph is an actor and his twin Jacob is a gamekeeper in Norfolk. Their foster brother, Michael, now an archaeologist, came to live with them when he was 11, Ralph was two and their mother Jini was only 24.
‘My wonderful parents [Mark Fiennes, a farmer, and Jini Lash, a writer] were pressured by tough financial situations and a very erratic income,’ says Fiennes quietly. ‘They were extraordinarily courageous in giving us love and a sense of home, but also a feeling, early on, of what it is to be a burden on your parents – somewhere I think that’s affected my choices.’
‘We experienced family life with bells on,’ says sister Sophie, who’s currently working on a new series of the brilliant Pervert’s Guide to… documentaries with philosopher Slavoj Zižek. ‘You have lived that and you don’t need to replicate it.’ She remembers that as a child Ralph ‘really liked getting away from us all and being alone’.
He adored his Pollock’s toy theatre and insisted his siblings formed an audience, ‘furious’ if they didn’t comply. He set up footlights in matchboxes. ‘It was magical, very Fanny and Alexander,’ says Sophie, referencing the Bergman paean to childhood.
Ralph always had ‘a love of practical jokes’, she remembers. When they lived by the sea, on the Sheep’s Head peninsula in Ireland, he stood on a rock at high tide and pretended to be drowning.
‘Gave our mother a fit.’ He also called their neighbour to say his wife had been changing a light bulb and was now hanging from the ceiling, twitching. ‘It was April Fool’s. Our neighbour was furious.’
As a young man Fiennes became, after Schindler’s List, the intellectual’s pin-up. Is ageing harder when you’ve been a heart-throb? ‘Look, there’s lots of heart-throbs out there. You see it in younger actors who are having their moment, there’s a new one and they’re written up, how beautiful they are… You see the waves and the breaks, that person had that moment, or that opportunity. There are a handful of actors and directors who stay [the course], but mostly it’s ups and downs.’ In other words, the challenge is to convert being a heart-throb into something more meaningful and lasting.
Such as directing. He directed himself in 2011’s Bafta-nominated Coriolanus with Vanessa Redgrave as his mother Volumnia; in 2013 he directed and appeared as a passion-struck Dickens opposite Felicity Jones in The Invisible Woman.
His latest is The White Crow, based on Julie Kavanagh’s biography of Nureyev. He spent months touring Russian ballet schools before finding Oleg Ivenko, a young unknown from the Tatar State Ballet company, who is devastatingly good as the dancer. Fiennes plays his mentor Pushkin.
I didn’t really want to be in it,’ he says. ‘But I felt this creeping pressure and although I had a cast of wonderful Russian actors and dancers, the Russian producer said to me, “If you want Russian investment then we need Western names, why aren’t you in it?”’
He will dig deep to make the films he wants to make: has he put his own money in? ‘I have done, yes.’ Would you again? ‘No! I’ve had to put money into all the films I’ve made. They don’t sparkle with commercial appeal.’ Did the money come back? ‘No.’ Harry Potter helps? ‘Definitely. I don’t regret doing it. I have the resources and I believe in the project. You get one life, so f— it.’
The script of The White Crow is by David Hare, who questions the view of Nureyev’s defection as a ‘leap to freedom’, showing instead a certain nostalgia for the Nikita Khrushchev era.
Hare and Fiennes spoke to friends of Nureyev from 1950s Leningrad, twin dancers Leonid and Liuba Romankov, now in their 80s, who appear in a lunch party scene alongside actors playing their younger selves. ‘Liuba said, “I felt free, I felt happy inside myself at that time.” Nureyev was so nurtured and nourished by the dance school.’
The film doesn’t have anything to say about the propaganda and food shortages. ‘If you say I should have laid out a history lesson of the regime, I say no, I think that would have been heavy-handed. I think an audience is smart. You see the ideological pressure of the regime and the constant surveillance Nureyev was under.’
Do you feel the Soviet approach to the arts got something right? ‘I do, because that was, as I understand it, the philosophy of “we’re all a group”, though of course the individual is stifled. I’ve always been moved by what I feel to be the dedication of the Russian arts ethos, the discipline, the intense seriousness with which people take it.’
His love of Russia began in his early 20s, with him performing Chekhov and reading Dostoyevsky; he is now fluent in Russian, has ‘a lingering fantasy of buying a flat in St Petersburg’ and has been presented to Putin. ‘At the St Petersburg International Cultural Forum, which they hold every year. He was very quiet and listening.’
This was before the Salisbury poisoning. Does Fiennes believe Russia was responsible? Briskly, ‘Yes, yes. It seems to me like it was. Clearly there are problematic things with the current regime to our eyes and I do feel it’s been a tricky time since Salisbury, and that’s a shame and sad.’ Oddly enough he knows the town well, having been to Bishop Wordsworth’s grammar school.
‘I had a mostly happy time there. It was an extraordinarily shocking, cack-handed event, unacceptable and wrong in every way. And in reaction the Brits have made things harder with visas and it becomes tit for tat, and the Russians have closed down the British Council, which was a wonderful enabler of cultural interaction. I don’t know if the British Council is a cover for espionage, maybe it is…’ Bond bells are ringing. But you’re M, you must know! He replies, curtly, ‘But I’m not M, am I?’
We return to the topic of growing older. ‘There are pluses to ageing, you know? You can let go of some shit. The competition falls away. You can see the cycles of your own mistakes, hopefully you’re learning… All the things that have caused you upset: I hurt that person, I got a bad review. You start to feel: did that really matter? The things you were so concerned about just drift away on the current of life. And your idealism is tempered and your vanity gets knocked…’
He brings up, as an example, the 2002 film he made with Jennifer Lopez called Maid in Manhattan, a comedy fairy tale in which he plays a US senatorial candidate who falls for his chambermaid. ‘I saw in the newspaper they had J Lo’s most successful films and’ – big smile – ‘Maid in Manhattan was there, and it came quite near the top’ – bigger smile – ‘and then I read: “Let down by the fact that Ralph Fiennes seems like a serial killer.” Ha ha ha! I had to laugh.
’Cos my vanity scrolled it and then… bam!’ He gives a proper belly laugh. Didn’t he get together with J Lo while they were filming? ‘No. No. I was set up by her manager and the producer. So a picture was taken of us saying goodnight after dinner and sold to the New York Post. It was a decoy, to take the focus away from the fact that she was going out with Ben Affleck.’ You didn’t mind? ‘I did, actually. I thought it was really crap.’ He shrugs, smiles. The things fame brings.
‘I give my agent all these neurotic phone calls, asking about reviews, who said this, who said that, but then, glass of wine, laugh it off.’
I feel I’ve had a flash of the blazing, naughty, fun side of Fiennes; we have known it’s there ever since we saw his suavely clownish Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and his irrepressible Harry in A Bigger Splash (complete with gyrating dance routine). There is a fun side to him, then? He smiles enigmatically as we say goodbye. ‘You won’t ever see that in an interview situation.’
#ralph fiennes#mixed feelings#appreciate his insight and humility#still feel like he struggles with interviews sometimes#or depending on the writer he's shown in an odd light#the 2016 gentleman journal's interview is probably still my favorite#the telegraph#fulltext
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I sold my soul and signed up for the Glasgow Times for this article and I regret nothing, lol.
Highlights:
* James is a “left-handed only child”
* “A huge Star Wars fan, McArdle lobbied hard to get into” The Force Awakens
* James saying he read James 1 and “opened the window fully” oh my god I cannot
* James supporting #Indyref, you beautiful socialist <3
* “McArdle is single-minded, singular — but not unpleasantly so.” OH REALLY.
On a short break from the National Theatre’s Platonov, in which he plays the title role, James McArdle toys with a copper ring on his finger. “That’s my wedding ring,” he nods. Hold on, you’re married? “No, it’s Platonov’s!” says the 27-year-old, appalled. “God, no, no. No, no. But look how green it’s left me,” he says in a Glaswegian burr, observing the residue on his hand. “Cheap.”
Common sense should have told me this was Platonov’s ring: McArdle is still in costume for this early Chekhov piece, written when the good doctor was about 20. He also wears a linen smock, linen trousers and stomping knee-high boots; his hair is vigorously decoiffed and, théâtre oblige, he has on a sizeable amount of eyeliner. It’s a suitable guise for one of Chekhov’s roughest and readiest creations. Originally, he was the hero of a billowing seven-hour piece, never performed in the writer’s lifetime, but now, here, he’s the star of a streamlined version by David Hare. Along with Hare’s tinkerings with Ivanov and The Seagull, it is part of a Young Chekhov trilogy that won raves in Chichester last autumn and has now been imported, wholesale, to the South Bank.
It’s Platonov who wears a wedding ring, then, but only nominally, as the action revolves around this dissolute, disillusioned schoolteacher and his antics with various women on the estate next door. It requires an actor of particular power to spin all these plates, to seduce and appal us nonstop, and that man is McArdle, whose rather everyday features belie a charisma most pretty-boy actors can only dream of. (His performance won him the Sunday Times/National Theatre Charleson award last month.)
It is a breakout role, or, rather, a further one after he impressed in the West End hit Chariots of Fire and as James I of Scotland in Rona Munro’s James Plays. Platonov, this “young man’s play”, as he calls it, taps into something deep. “I read it, and I just related to him very much,” he says with an awkward smile. “I felt very close to the part... I say that as though it’s something to be proud of!”
Yes, I say, recalling the four women he snogs in the show, how do you relate to him? He snickers. “Various characteristics.” Any in particular? “Ah, you know...” He laughs, then regroups. “Any young man gets to a certain age in his life when he looks around and thinks, have I done what I set out to do?”
Platonov is 27, like McArdle. That’s apt. “Yes, but people think I’m older.” Why is that? “I don’t know. My maturity or my haggard face. One or the other. Jonathan Kent [his director] says I’m the oldest person he’s ever met.” Are you a mature person, then? “I don’t think so. If you mean boring, no.” How about a wise head on young shoulders? He nods his head sagely. “Aye, too wise, too wise. It’s exhausting, you know.”
In Ivanov, McArdle plays the moralising doctor, Lvov. (The three shows are played in rep by a fine company.) It’s a very different role from Platonov, and testament to his range. There is a bit of Lvov in him too, he insists — “I can get on my high horse and be priggish” — but Platonov is the star role. You could almost sell it, following in the line of the Young Vic’s Three Sisters and the Almeida’s Vanya, as part of a general debunking of genteel Chekhov, of that kind of production where people sit around primly and moan in RP. Indeed, the icing on the cake is McArdle’s Glaswegian accent.
“A girl in the cast’s posh friend said, ‘Oh goodness, and is that to show the class difference?’” he recalls. “And I was, like, well, I’m actually doing a posher Glaswegian as Platonov, but I know you wouldn’t really understand what a posher Glaswegian accent is versus a normal Glaswegian accent. I was also, like, you’re aware they’re Russian, aren’t you?”
You may have gathered by now that McArdle is single-minded, singular — but not unpleasantly so. Rather, he is, as he sums it up, “a left-handed only child”, and this somehow explains a great deal. When he was nine, producers came into his school looking to cast actors for a children’s TV production, Stacey Stone. “I think they were just looking for the most obnoxious wee boy they could find,” he laughs.
After that, he only ever wanted to act — apart from wanting to be a vet, or a pilot, or prime minister. (It would be First Minister now.) Actually, it’s quite clear they never stood a chance. He had no background in the arts at all, but his parents were always supportive. “My dad said, ‘Carol, we are going to see everything he is in — even if it is shite.’”
His mates from back home are equally encouraging, though one gig really stood out — McArdle’s appearance in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where he played Niv Lek, a Resistance fighter.
You had one line of dialogue? “I had three, goddammit!” A huge Star Wars fan, McArdle lobbied hard to get into the movie, not caring about being a glorified extra. His friends shared his enthusiasm, going to see it five times. McArdle says he was “mortified”, but not as mortified as when they all came to Edinburgh to see him play James I.
In this vicious slab of medieval history, McArdle’s king has an awkward sex scene. “I could hear my mate — he’s got this really squawkish, high-pitched laugh, and as soon as I took my trousers down, I could just hear it. But you know, it’s so nice.”
James I was, he says, a defining role for him. He cancelled a recall for a role in the film Suffragrette to prepare for the audition, he wanted it so badly. “I will never forget, when I read it, I opened the window fully, I had the doors open and I just lay there, because I was, like, I have to get this part, I have to get it.” Why? It’s just a great play, but also, he says he had never heard “our voice, our Scottish voice, captured in a nonpatronising, universal way before”.
The National Theatre of Scotland performed the play during and after the Scottish referendum, and it was “like doing different plays”. When I ask if he would welcome a second referendum, he winces, but says quietly that he would, and that he would vote to leave the Union. But it would only be to have the majority of Scottish views upheld, he insists, as opposed to any kind of nationalism.
“I find patriotism a little foolish, to be honest. I never say I’m proud to be Scottish. I say I’m lucky to be Scottish, because I think it’s quite foolish to be proud of something that is chance.”
Not that he doesn’t love being Scottish; he’s just not quite sure what it entails. “I always get” — he puts on a posh accent — “‘Oh, you’re sooo Scottish!’ I don’t know what it means.” Nevertheless, he also knows that national traits are potent, not least when tackling Chekhov. “Being Glaswegian feels more Russian than being English.”
He stands out in theatreland, though, and he knows it. There is much angst now about acting being a posh kids’ profession: has he felt like a fish out of water? He shrugs, saying it’s all “fashion”; and, although he insists we shouldn’t care, and says it’s “boring”, he then roils around the topic for about 10 minutes. What bothers him is people attending to trends and celebrity and fame, when the only real thing is to do good work.
“Yes, I do think they’ve been favoured,” he says of all those nice young Etonians, “but, actually, I think they’ve been favoured throughout all of time, and will be favoured throughout all of time. And I think, well, I have to carve my own path around that — and I am up for that fight. You know, I’ll come back and back into the room!
I don’t care, I’m not gonna let posh boys stop me!” As though it even needed saying.
The Young Chekhov trilogy is in rep at the National Theatre, London SE1, until Oct 8
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List of Tropes for Lucifer Advent
Updated Trope List Here!
Christmas Tropes
The Anti-Grinch, An Asskicking Christmas, Away in a Manger, Bad Santa, Chekhov's Gift, Christmas Carolers, Christmas Every Day, Christmas in July, Christmas Miracle, Convenience Store Gift Shopping, Crappy Holidays, Dreaming of a White Christmas, Everyone Hates Fruit Cakes, Gift-Giving Gaffe, "Gift of the Magi" Plot, The Grinch, Homemade Sweater from Hell, It's a Wonderful Plot, The Krampus, Let There Be Snow, Merry Christmas in Gotham, Peking Duck Christmas, Present Peeking, Red/Green Contrast, Santa Ambiguity, Santabomination, Santa Claus, Secret Santa, Sexy Santa Dress, Snowlems, Subbing for Santa, True Meaning of Christmas, Twisted Christmas, Under the Mistletoe, Yet Another Christmas Carol.
Ships
Lucifer/Castiel, Lucifer/Dean, Lucifer/Sam, Lucifer/Meg, Lucifer/Meg, Lucifer/Alistair, Lucifer/Azazel, Lucifer/Kelly, Lucifer/Crowley, Lucifer/Roweena, Lucifer/God, Lucifer/Amara, Lucifer/Anael, Lucifer/Michael, Lucifer/Anna, Lucifer/Your Choice, Lucifer/Mary, Lucifer/Lillith, Lucifer/ Ruby, Lucifer/Gabriel, Threesome, Foursome.
Normal Tropes
AU, Bed Sharing, Body Swap, Case Fic, Courting, Dark fic, Domestic, Drunken Confessions, Dystopia, Fake Relationship, First Time, Fuck or Fie, Gender Swap, Interrogation, Marriage of Convenience, Medical, Murder Husbands, Opposites Attract, Overprotective Partners, Priests, Shifters, Soul Bonding, Broken Bond Recovery, Love at first Sight, Nesting, Pinning, Young Ones, Soulmates.
Kinks
BDSM, Breath Play, Breeding Kink, Impact, Cockwarming, Daddy/Mommy, Dom/Sub, Claiming, Claim Fuck, Heat/Rut, Marking, ABO, Incest, Double Penetration, Edging, Toys, Fuck or Die, Oral Sex, Sex Pollen, Prostitution, Sloppy Seconds.
Lucifer Prompts
Little Brother, Big Brother, Favored Son, King of Hell, Wings, True Form, PTSD, Fallen, Heaven, Hell, Eden, The Nothing, Feral, Grace, Season Five, Vessel, Nick!Lucifer, Castiel!Lucifer, Sam!Lucifer, Sarah!Lucifer, Hallucifer, Season 11, Season 12, Season 13, Season 14, Daddy Lucifer, AU!Lucifer, Vince!Lucifer, Archbishop!Lucifer, President!Lucifer, Rock Star!Lucifer, Serpent!Lucifer.
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Songs to Survive the Summer by Robert Hass
These are the dog days,
unvaried
except by accident,
mist rising from soaked lawns,
gone world, everything
rises and dissolves in air,
whatever it is would
clear the air
dissolves in air and the knot
of days unties
invisibly like a shoelace.
The gray-eyed child
who said to my child: “Let’s play
in my yard. It’ OK,
my mother’s dead.”
*
Under the loquat tree.
It’s almost a song,
the echo of a song:
on the bat’s back I fly
merrily toward summer
or at high noon
in the outfield clover
guzzling Orange Crush,
time endless, examining
a wooden coin I’d carried
all through summer
without knowing it.
The coin was grandpa’s joke,
carved from live oak,
Indian side and buffalo side.
His eyes lustered with a mirth
so deep and rich he never
laughed, as if it were a cosmic
secret that we shared.
I never understood; it married
in my mind with summer. Don’t
take any wooden nickels,
kid, and gave me one
under the loquat tree.
*
The squalor of mind
is formlessness,
informis,
the Romans said of ugliness,
it has no form,
a man’s misery, bleached skies,
the war between desire
and dailiness. I thought
this morning of Wallace Stevens
walking equably to work
and of a morning two Julys ago
on Chestnut Ridge, wandering
down the hill when one
rusty elm leaf, earth-
skin peeling, wafted
by me on the wind.
My body groaned toward fall
and preternaturally
a heron lifted from the pond.
I even thought I heard
the ruffle of the wings
three hundred yards below me
rising from the reeds.
Death is the mother of beauty
and that clean-shaven man
smelling of lotion,
lint-free, walking
toward his work, a
pure exclusive music
in his mind.
*
The mother of the neighbor
child was thirty-one,
died, at Sunday breakfast,
of a swelling in the throat.
On a toy loom
she taught my daughter
how to weave. My daughter
was her friend
and now she cannot sleep
for nighttime sirens,
sure that every wail
is someone dead.
Should I whisper in her ear,
death is the mother
of beauty? Wooden
nickels, kid? It’s all in
shapeliness, give your
fears a shape?
*
In fact, we hide together
in her books.
Prairie farms, the heron
knows the way, old
country songs, herbal magic,
recipes for soup,
tales of spindly orphan
girls who find
the golden key, the
darkness at the center
of the leafy wood.
And when she finally sleeps
I try out Chekhov’s
tenderness to see
what it can save.
*
Maryushka the beekeeper’s
widow,
though three years mad,
writes daily letters
to her son. Semyon tran-
scribes them. The pages
are smudged by his hands,
stained with
the dregs of tea:
“My dearest Vanushka,
Sofia Agrippina’s ill
again. The master
asks for you. Wood
is dear. The cold
is early. Poor
Sofia Agrippina!
The foreign doctor
gave her salts
but Semyon says her icon
candle guttered
St. John’s eve. I am afraid,
Vanya. When she’s ill,
the master likes to have
your sister flogged.
She means no harm.
The rye is gray
this time of year.
When it is bad, Vanya,
I go into the night
and the night eats me.”
*
The haiku comes
in threes
with the virtues of brevity:
What a strange thing!
To be alive
beneath plum blossoms.
The black-headed
Steller’s jay is squawking
in our plum.
Thief! Thief!
A hard, indifferent bird,
he’d snatch your life.
*
The love of books
is for children
who glimpse in them
a life to come, but
I have come
to that life and
feel uneasy
with the love of books.
This is my life,
time islanded
in poems of dwindled time.
There is no other world.
*
But I have seen it twice.
In the Palo Alto marsh
sea bird rose is early light
and took me with them.
Another time, dreaming,
river birds lifted me,
swans, small angelic terns,
and an old woman in a shawl
dying by a dying lake
whose life raised men
from the dead
in another country.
*
Thick nights, and nothing
lets us rest. In the heat
of mid-July our lust
is nothing. We swell
and thicken. Slippery,
purgatorial, our sexes
will not give us up.
Exhausted after hours
and not undone,
we crave cold marrow
from the tiny bones that
moonlight scatters
on our skin. Always
morning arrives,
the stunned days,
faceless, droning
in the juice of rotten quince,
the flies, the heat.
*
Tears, silence.
The edified generations
eat me, Maryushka.
I tell them
pain is form and
almost persuade
myself. They are not
listening. Why
should they? Who
cannot save me any more
than I, weeping
over Great Russian Short
Stories in summer,
under the fattened figs,
saved you. Besides
it is winter there.
They are trying out
a new recipe for onion soup.
*
Use a heavy-bottomed
three- or four-quart pan.
Thinly slice six large
yellow onions and sauté
in olive oil and butter
until limp. Pour in
beef broth. Simmer
thirty minutes,
add red port and bake
for half an hour. Then
sprinkle half a cup
of diced Gruyère and cover
with an even layer
of toasted bread and
shredded Samsoe. Dribble
melted butter on the top
and bake until the cheese
has bubbled gold.
Surround yourself with friends.
Huddle in a warm place.
Ladle. Eat.
*
Weave and cry.
Child, every other siren
is a death;
the rest are for speeding.
Look how comically the jay’s
black head emerges
from a swath of copper leaves.
Half the terror
is the fact that,
in our time, speed saves us,
a whine we’ve traded
for the hopeless patience
of the village bell
which tolled in threes:
weave and cry and weave.
*
Wilhelm Steller, form’s
hero, made
a healing broth.
He sailed with Bering
and the crew despised him,
a mean impatient man
born low enough
to hate the lower class.
For two years
he’d connived to join
the expedition and put
his name to all the beasts
and flowers of the north.
Now Bering sick,
the crew half-mad with scurvy,
no one would let him
go ashore. Panic,
the maps were useless,
the summer weather almost gone.
He said, there are herbs
that can cure you,
I can save you all, He didn’t
give a damn about them
and they knew it. For two years
he’d prepared. Bering listened.
Asleep in his bunk, he’s
seen death writing in the log.
On the island while
the sailors searched for water
Steller gathered herbs
and looking up
he saw the blue, black-crested
bird, shrilling in a pine.
His mind flipped to
Berlin, the library, a glimpse
he’d had at Audubon,
a blue-gray crested bird
exactly like the one
that squawked at him, a
Carolina jay, unlike
any European bird; he knew
then where they were,
America, we’re saved.
No one believed him or,
sick for home, he didn’t care
what wilderness
it was. They set sail
west. Bering died.
Steller’s jay, by which
I found Alaska.
He wrote it in his book.
*
Saved no one. Still,
walking in the redwoods
I hear the cry
thief, thief and
think of Wilhelm Steller;
in my dream we
are all saved. Camping
on a clement shore
in early fall, a strange land.
We feast most delicately.
The swans are stuffed with grapes,
the turkey with walnut
and chestnut and wild plum.
The river is our music: unalaska
(to make bread from acorns
we leach the tannic acid out–
this music, child,
and more, much more!)
*
When I was just
your age, the war was over
and we moved.
An Okie family lived
next door to our new
country house. That summer
Quincy Phipps was saved.
The next his house became
an unofficial Pentecostal church.
Summer nights: hidden
in the garden I ate figs,
watched where the knobby limbs
rose up and flicked
against the windows where
they were. O Je-sus.
Kissed and put to bed,
I slipped from the window
to the eaves and nestled
by the loquat tree.
The fruit was yellow-brown
in daylight; under the moon
pale clusters hung
like other moons, O
Je-sus, and I picked them;
the fat juices
dribbling down my chin,
I sucked and listened.
Men groaned. The women
sobbed and moaned, a
long unsteady belly-deep
bewildering sound, half
pleasure and half pain
that ended sometimes
in a croon, a broken song:
O Je-sus,
Je-sus.
*
That is what I have
to give you, child, stories,
songs, loquat seeds,
curiously shaped; they
are the frailest stay against
our fears. Death
in the sweetness, in the bitter
and the sour, death
in the salt, your tears,
this summer ripe and overripe.
It is a taste in the mouth,
child. We are the song
death takes its own time
singing. It calls us
as I call you child
to calm myself. It is every
thing touched casually,
lovers, the images
of saviors, books, the coin
I carried in my pocket
till it shone, it is
all things lustered
by the steady thoughtlessness
of human use.
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OLD QUEER CINEMA - My Review of THE TRIGGER (2 1/2 Stars)
What an exciting time we had in the 90s when it came to the emergence of what was called “The New Queer Cinema”. Films such as Todd Haynes’ Poison, Gregg Araki’s The Living End, Ana Kokkinos’ Head On, or the late great and dearly missed Richard Glatzer’s debut with Grief, to name a few, had a scrappy, DIY feel yet with a confident point of view. These films had dark edges and felt entirely devoid of the fluffy “gays are the world’s party clowns” vibe, and I loved them for that.
Christopher Bradley, making his feature writing/directing debut with The Trigger (love the dime store novel poster), knows a thing or two about that era, having starred in the seminal Leather Jacket Love Story back in 1998. His film takes us back to that era with the story of a two-weeks sober young hustler trying to build a new life for himself after getting sprung from prison and encountering a nonstop barrage of obstacles. Slade Pearce plays Erik, a smudgy-eyed nineteen year old twink who, when we first meet him, hitches a ride from a driver who wants to pay him for sex. Instead of following through, he robs the guy of his cash, belongings and Chekhov’s gun. Eventually, Erik makes it back to his small Arizona town, desperate for a place to stay, a job, and to rekindle his romance with Heather (Julia Ann Severance), his ex-girlfriend. As simple as that may sound, Erik just can’t catch a break. His former pimp, Dolores (Robyne Richards) won’t help him and her drug-dealer partner Bennie (Joe Ricci) suspects Erik got an early parole by ratting him out to the police. Then there’s Tommy (Daniel Kapinga), one of Erik’s johns, who carries a torch for the young man. Tommy thinks Erik will fall in love with him if he sets him up with a job and an apartment. What could go wrong?
With this film, Bradley has not chosen to take the easy way out, first by featuring a main character who constantly lies to everyone and can barely muster to turn on the charm when needed. Pearce has some chilling moments when trying to crack a smile or pretend he’s into Tommy. He’s not unsympathetic, as anyone who tries to turn things around for themselves can’t help but feel relatable, but he’s also not oozing the type of charisma you would see in lighter versions of this tale. Bradley wants us to know the vicious cycle of post-incarceration makes it nearly impossible to walk a straight and narrow path. It’s no wonder Erik quickly falls back into old habits.
Now don’t get me wrong, The Trigger is far from perfect. Obviously made on a shoestring budget, it clearly lacks the big toys like cranes and dollies which would have given the film a less stodgy presentation. It’s not a glossy story, however, so I went with its clunky tone and sometimes awkward time jumps. Furthermore, the script feels loaded with too many on-the-nose conversations when visually showing us these dynamics would have sufficed. Also, what is it with all of the flip phones and land lines? Is this story set during the age of New Queer Cinema, or did I miss something?
Tommy’s actions makes him into perhaps the most naive yet creepy gay guy I’ve seen onscreen in ages, but guys like him exist and Bradley seems unafraid to present him. Moreover, Kapinga manages to make us believe in his romantic yet misguided fantasies. As a story, we pretty much watch Erik flit from one house to another, getting in over his head with each trip. Luckily, all of the pieces do fit together, including a mysterious flashback which may hold the key to Erik’s many faults. Bradley puts a new wrinkle on an age-old redemption story with its unexpected conclusion.
Although some of the performances play out more one-note than necessary, the two main women, Richards and Severance, bring compelling, conflicting emotions to the table. Severance in particular walks a nice tightrope between sullen and sweet, drawing my attention to her with every scene. When I look back on the indie queer films from 20-30 years ago, many had similar issues of unpolished performances and bizarre blocking. In retrospect, it may have been part of their appeal. If you’ve already burned through every VHS copy of those New Queer Cinema titles, then stream The Trigger for an antidote to the shiny, happy gay movies flooding your LGBT-queue (see what I did there?).
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Queen of The F*cking Dramaturgy: MarysiaTrembecka @ Edfringe 2017
Queen of the F*cking World – Marysia Trembecka
Never be a Princess – be the Queen
Don’t ever be a princess – be queen of your own f*cking world. Join Marysia Trembecka and her wild bass guitar on an audience-empowering ride through the ups and downs of sexual politics and power.
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Rocking the audience through the show is a fiery exotic dancer who reveals the story of her work, life and lovers – and why she has the words “Queen of the Fucking World” emblazoned on her dressing room door.
What was the inspiration for this performance?
The character ‘turned up’ whilst I was devising my previous Singing Psychic show into a full hour piece in 2014. I had spent so long putting off fully realising my Singing Psychic character that I knew I had to focus on getting that done, rather than trying to develop two completely different characters and shows.
However the reaction of my fellow improvisers, who were also developing their own work, to this Queen character who popped up for a second .. to the point of being asked about her 2 years later when I bumped into one of them at Edinburgh Fringe 2016.
All it was a pose, leg on chair looking seductive but the words she was saying – (perceptive and mocking) was diametrically opposed to what her body was saying (selling a fantasy of a woman).
Also years previously I had toyed with the idea of making a show about women and their femininity, what it is to be a woman, how we are critiscised and judged for using our beauty and our sexuality. Having been a bond dealer in the City, to becoming an actress who is often type cast as yummy mummies or crazy strong women – when I play a crazy yummy mummy the film always wins awards, a cabaret artiste and indeed a model, I have always been aware of the seeming pull/push of using ones femininity and sexuality as a woman, how it is a line that we must change depending on the career we are in.
Hence in 2016, after I felt the Singing Psychic was established (4 & 5 star reviews, a Best Show, Funny Women 2016 nomination and European gigs including the official Brit Awards After Party at the 02, I started pulling the strands together.
I did an 8 min showing at a workshop in October 2016 and realising I needed to do a huge amount of research and interviews to fully look at the subject. Depending on ones life experience, marital status, sexuality, economic wealth, education, background: female power is seen as being many things , for some to overuse ones sexuality is seen as ‘wrong’, for others it is the only choice to feeding your children.
Hence I decided to apply to the Arts Council for funding for the first time, which I received, to include a small research portion so I could interview people from the English Collective of Prostitutes, to the Consultant Gynaecologist who has set up the only sexual health clinic in Scotland that caters largely for sex workers (50% of the clinics clients are Romanian)
Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?
I believe it can be a more direct connected way of discussing things than watching TV as a passive half interested viewer, tapping on your smart phone at the same time. Live performance, human to human always creates a relationship and it is in that relationship, uncomfortable, confrontational or comic, that discussion for both performer and audience to grow. Being fed even a balanced documentary or discussion watched via a monitor is never the same as feeling the energy live in the room, with the opportunity for feedback and q&a’s.
Given my cabaret and solo theatre viewpoint that the audience should be a living partaking piece of the work, I feel that this discussive energy is even more enhanced. In every show I create I expect to be changed by the audience every night, by their reactions and energy. I also pursue this interaction deliberately by having audience interaction embedded within the show.
This is true of this new Queen show, getting the audience involved and also having a couple questions I ask them via paper at the beginning of the show, and that I look through live on stage.
How did you become interested in making performance?
I have always written songs, words, characters and told stories. I am an ex bond dealer and have to leave the City as my creativity felt under-utilised, even though talking of the various new economic data or politicians comments as to their impact on FX or bond prices feels as much story telling as anything I now do in a wig!
I am a ‘straight’ actress as well and love telling other stories on film or theatre, but I need to tell my own stories. I started by making cabaret shows, with linking stories between the songs. Each show I have made has become more ambitious in range of medium, subject matter and my reach which in turn has given me the fire to then make more ambitious stuff.
For example I made over 140 videos as The Singing Psychic , including a 21 episode webseries of the pros and cons of the EU Referendum in June 16, doing all the research myself using my banking background. This led me to then feel I was equipped and able to do the research and pull together the relevant strands to make Queen.
Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?
It all comes from character, listening to the character and the characters around them in their life. I do not feel that I write the characters, more that they come through me. So I play physically, and vocally, improvise in character. For example I was improvising in the character of the Queen’s dresser Marta, in her voice and she said ‘She even has Queen Of The F*cking World on her dressing room door in neon’, hence giving me the title of the show.
Does the show fit with your usual productions?
No. I have never done interviews with various people on their viewpoints and points of specialist knowledge.
From ballet dancers, choreographers, women in industry to strippers, sex workers and actresses they all gave me a piece of a puzzle I then had to choose to build it together and allow the knowledge to inform my character. I also did a huge amount of historical research on women in history such as Emma Hamilton, Lord Nelson’s love of his life to London in Roman times and women as seen through Shakespeare and Chekhov’s eyes.
Feedback was asked for as well unusually from the two showings which was invaluable as to what people wanted more of as well as what was confusing.
I also chose to use my bass guitar, writing original songs as needed such as a Queen Of The F*cking World song which someone asked for. I also used some songs that seemed to have almost been written for the show from my earlier live album IF YOU CANT MAKE LOVE MAKE COFFEE which seemed to reflect Queen’s journey.
I first worked with solo theatre director, Colin Watkeys (Ken Campbell and Claire Dowie) to look at the narrative arc of the work in my Singing Psychic show, and have used him again to help me shape the narrative.
I have also consulted with Phil Ryan, the brilliant singer/songwriter on using my bass with a Roland synth to develop a soundscape as I play.
Mary Hammond, formerly the head of the Royal Academy of Music Musical Theatre MA, who has given me singing lessons over the years, has also been brought in to consult on using the voice as an instrument to further the story.
What do you hope the audience will experience?
My story on modern sexual politics from a historical perspective hopefully will give some new information and education. I certainly have learnt a huge amount from the research and interviews, and realised where I have been judgemental in some areas of my life.
When you talk to a sex worker or a woman having to go on the game to pay for her disabled son’s required care because of benefit cuts, it can open your eyes to what else is going on around. Looking at how erotic dance has gone from being sacred to the profane and how sexual mores have been set has opened my eyes and hopefully my audiences to look at the topics in a new light.
It is also meant to be super entertaining and inspirational. The core message ‘Don’t be a princess, you gotta be a queen’ is what I want people to leave with singing, seeing how to strengthen that sense of self responsibility in their children and in the way modern rhetoric is used.
What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audiences experiences?
I am focusing on the narrative strand, is there a story here? Can they follow it? Does it make sense? Do the audience hear what I think I am saying?
I also have two bits of audience interaction, as it is something I love, so that is less of a strategy and more of a MARYSIA TREMBECKA show experience.
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On advice I have added a guitar synth, more tech than I have ever used in a show to make my bass guitar sound different through the show. A bass guitar and a female voice are rarely heard on their own so filling the sound is something I have had to look at.
Trembecka, a former city bond dealer and now actress, draws on a deep well of personal experience in her exploration of the challenges faced by women and the LGBT community in today’s world, and what it takes to rise to the top.
And her conclusion is: “All through history we have been judged by who we choose to sleep with. And the judgements are often made by a certain privileged selection of men who say one thing and do another. It’s time for that to stop.
“The message is simple, whatever your gender or sexuality, never be a princess – unleash your inner queen. I’m encouraging everyone to be queen of their own fucking world, because queens don’t need a prince to rescue them, they can do it themselves.”
Trembecka’s show has been developed with Arts Council funding which has allowed her to interview and learn from a cross section of women including sex workers, strippers and others at the sharp end of 21st century gender politics.
Premiering as part of the PBH Free Fringe, it’s a fierce, dark one-woman theatre-cum-cabaret performance that embraces everything from Shakespeare and Chekhov to RuPaul. There’s also humour, audience interaction and even a smattering of Burns’ bawdry in there too.
It’s also informed by Trembecka’s research into the experiences of women from the past and from literature, including Lady Macbeth.
This new show comes from a consummate entertainer whose Singing Psychic was a hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, toured Europe, earned five-star reviews and a Best Show Funny Women 2016 nomination, as well as featuring at the Brit Awards official after-party.
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