#this entire scene was like watching a session of couples counseling

[ingravinoveritas]

“Who’s the big spoon?”

#michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #david tennant #soft scottish hipster gigolo #staged #or 'Brokeback Mount Him' which is what I am referring to Staged as from here on out #staged 3 #when i tell you that i screamed #i mean at least they're admitting it now #saying the quiet parts OUT LOUD #subtext that is rapidly becoming a text #this entire scene was like watching a session of couples counseling #also do we realize that them answering the big spoon question #heavily implies that they have in fact spooned with each other #i'm just saying #tell me again that they're not a couple #amazing #ineffable lovers #gifs by me

[fioseablogs]

Review of series: WEDNESDAY 

This OTT series is an old comic book which was created as a series in 2022. Starring Jenna Ortega as the main lead as Wednesday. She belongs to the Addams family with some magical powers. Her character and looks reflected as a superbly unengaged goth girl. The first scene shows her as rough and rude. The girl who has no feelings and mercy. She doesn’t even blink her eyes often and it’s rare. In the first scene she will be thrown out of her school filing a case on putting piranhas in pool and killed two boys. But she did it for her brother the guys bullied him for having one testicle. It is awkward but the portrays like that. It is not advised to be watched by kids. 

The next scene is about her parents forced and convinced her to join a school named Nevermore academy which is actually meant for students like her with magical powers and different behaviors. She always thinks that her mom forces her to be like her she acts like she doesn’t like her parents. Her parents were shown as so romantic couples. She gets a friend in school named Enid. She actually doesn’t keep friends and no one like to be her friend because of her careless and rude behavior. Enid becomes her roommate. she is a werewolf but she never transformed. She plays as a caring friend who always be by Wednesday side and never leave her at any cause. The school principal will always keep a eye on her. The school is filled with vampires, werewolf, magicians, gorgons, sirens(led by the meanest girl Bianca.) She also offers tips for navigating her new school and introductions to some of the characters that will become central to the mysteries Wednesday will soon find herself investigating . These include: a number of killings in the local town of Jericho and surrounding woodland by what the police are finding it increasingly hard to deny must be a monster ; possible attempts on Wednesday’s own life; the suggestion that her father Gomez ( Luis Guzmán ) committed murder himself in his youth; and whatever Wednesday’s visions – seemingly fragments of the future – are trying to tell her. Oh, and what of the sketches inside the books in the secret basement that seem to show the future? And student artist Xavier ( Percy Hynes White), who can make his pictures come alive? And, don’t tell me there’s nothing more to Dr Kinbott ( Riki Lindhome ), the therapist in charge of Wednesday’s court- mandated counselling sessions , than meets the eye.

There are also teenage crushes , relationships , a prom , secret societies and other “ normie ” stuff to negotiate. But, creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar also gave us Smallville, and know how to handle multiple plotlines crisscrossing the real and supernatural worlds. Plus, the show’s main director is Tim Burton, who knows a bit about this kind of thing too – and gives the whole thing 

It loses something by not setting Wednesday against normality, as the films did, and by having a more crack opening version of the Addams clan. The love and unity of the family against the world was always one of the great pleasures, in whatever incarnation you met them. But it has enough wit, charm and propulsive energy for that not to matter as much as it might have.. One last point. Another great strength of the films was that the Addams parents ( Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia ) were still hot for each other and each as  attractive as the other. It was such a refreshing change from the standard “ comic ” arrangement whereby a great beauty is in that all to an unregenerate school love . In this pairing , we have regressed entirely. In every scene involving the new Morticia and Gomez , at the last the one scene I loved is Wednesday hug back Enid atlast scene which become so emotional and the bond between eachother.

[honey-hippie-harper]

Warm

MY. SON. LOOK AT MY SOOOOOOON AFSGHJAFGSHJAFSGHJKA

WELL, MY DAUGHTER AFGSHSFGSHJ

@nodrianbcyes HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SWEET DAUGHTER OF MINE AFGSHJASFGSHJK

Geez. You’re a year older :’)))) <3. I hope that, despite the world it’s still going to shit, you have a nice birthday surrounded by your loved ones :’) <3 <3 <3 Thanks for being such a great friend and for having such a great sense of humor acvsbnayjk yo mean a lot, and I hope you know that :’) I wish you the best of birthdays, and remember to eat lots of cake (AND SEND PICTURES OF THE CAKE AHSFSGHJA).

Here’s a little Ruby thing <3

TW: BLOOD

Warm

Warm.

The sensation of blood could be described as warm.

For Ruby, the bigger the wound was, the warmer the blood, until it was boiling hot. It flowed out of you and made you feel like all your limbs were on fire, leaving a trace characterized by the strange, yet distinguishable smell of steel.

The saddest part of it all, was that it was a part of her.

It had become a part of her.

Lucky were the ones who had been born with it.

The others…others like her, had to watch it happen, and then live with it.

It’s not that she wasn’t proud of being a prodigy, or a Renegade, for that matter. The Renegades, especially Blacklight, whose powers he hadn’t been born with, made special emphasis on how important it was to embrace one’s prodigy persona. Perhaps a couple of counseling sessions for prodigies with acquired powers instead of birth powers before allowing them to become a Renegade would’ve been useful, but the majority of them seemed to be doing just fine.

Being a Renegade gave you a sense of importance, which, Ruby sometimes supposed, was similar to the one the Anarchists must’ve felt when Ace Anarchy appeared and decided he would be the one to change everything.

There was a huge difference between the Renegades and the Anarchists, though, for the Renegades, although not perfect, hadn’t become as corrupted as the Anarchists, and they had also managed to overcome the economic crisis they had left behind.

The Renegades often made you feel secure in your own skin, no matter where your powers had come from, and one of their main objective was creating a society where prodigies and non-prodigies could coexist, without putting the other down to defend their own cause.

Despite their flaws, Ruby considered them to be a great organization, and she was proud of being a Renegade.

And, more than that, she was also glad she had managed to get something so fulfilling, exciting and important out something that had been so horrible and gruesome.

“Sometimes you can find light in the darkest things.” Blacklight used to say.

She knew it was only because he like to involve the concept of dark and light in every single one of his speeches, but that specific phrase had been stuck in her head for the longest time, and it refused to go away.

She had found light in the darkest thing that had ever happened to her.

But that didn’t mean she had forgotten the darkness, and how it came in the shape of knives, with the taste of metal and the boiling sensation of blood covering her entire body like a huge blanket, only to be replaced with the itchiness of something solid growing from the fresh wounds.

The memories were rarely there during the daytime, because she had better things to think about.

However, the nighttime was a different story, because in the night everything was more silent and Ruby was calm. Inert. And overall vulnerable, which she wasn’t the biggest fan of.

There were better days than others, and she rarely ever knew she was having a bad day until she saw scary faces in her dreams, holding sharp things and screaming the most soulless words she had ever had the pleasure to hear at her, a tiny dot staring at them from the floor.

It always started with the men, and it usually ended with the rubies. When she was lucky, it ended with the sensation of swallowing a pill, but a hundred times more unpleasant.

That day, she happened to be lucky.

“Hey…hey…” There was a hand shaking her whole body, taking her by the shoulder. “…Ruby?”

Her body bounced upwards upon the falling feeling people sometimes got in their sleep. There was a strong smell of metal and steel, and it broke through her nostrils, invading her entire system. She was used to the smell, but it still made her very nauseous after waking up from a nightmare.

A nightmare. Yes.

That’s all it had been.

A nightmare.

Trying to steady her breath and focus her vision, she found Nova’s eyes staring back at her.

That night, they were standing guard in the old theatre, for no specific reason other than it was going through some renovations. For some time now, it had been used to present low-budgeted musicals or plays, but, legend had it, after the job was done, it would be turned into a party salon, because, after all, it had been used as a party salon during the Age of Anarchy anyway.

They weren’t the only patrol there, either, because it was a big building and they were in charge to prevent or stop break-ins. All of them, however, were scattered through the floors. The floors where they would spend the night were supposed be sorted randomly, but Adrian was given the chance to choose. Hence, they were now in the third floor, in a room that had once been used as a dressing room.

The junk food’s remains were all around them, and, with the nightlight they had brought with them, Ruby could see the rest of the team, very comfortable in their sleeping bags.

Oscar was the closest to her, lying on his side, facing the opposite direction Ruby was. His head was resting on his arm, and his cane was next to him, close to his backpack.

Danna was drooling on Adrian. They both were out of their sleeping bags, and he was laying on his stomach, while she was using his back as her pillow.

Nova, naturally, hadn’t brought a sleeping bag with her, because she didn’t need it, and over the few months they had been around her, something Ruby noticed (although she didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t want to be rude) was that, besides being practical, she didn’t own many things, and she always declined the invitations to go out to eat with them. At first, she didn’t pay much attention to it, because she started acting the most distant after she shot the Detonator in self-defense, but then, even after she looked way less shocked, it didn’t seem like her attitude had changed all that much. She still didn’t appear to own many things, and she always wore the same three or four shirts when she wasn’t wearing her uniform.

One could only hope that, with the paycheck they received from the Renegades’ part, her situation would get better eventually, but, as for now, Ruby highly doubted she even owned a sleeping bag. After all, a sleeping bag wasn’t exactly a top priority item for a prodigy whose power happened to be not having the physical necessity to sleep.

Snapping back into reality once again, Ruby realized she was still here.

Deep down, she was disappointed this wasn’t Oscar, and, when she realized that, she felt guilty. Hence, trying to smile, she said, in a hoarse voice:

“Hi.” Then, Ruby gulped. “…I had a bad dream.”

Nova blinked and nodded, as if agreeing with that statement.

Another thing she had noticed about Nova, was that she always seemed to be emotionless. She rarely took the time to consider whether the thing she was planning to say would offend or hurt anyone’s feelings. She just phrased her sentences in her mind, and then they came out from her mouth like word vomit. She was straight up, and sometimes she said mean or self-deprecating things in a tone so flat, dull and nonchalantly it send shivers down Ruby’s spine. She wasn’t exactly a warm person, while Ruby considered herself to be one, and that’s why, at first, it had been kind of weird to have her around.

Not that she were complaining.

Adrian always said, ever since they became a team, that it was important to have balance. You couldn’t have a team full of people who had the personality of a cinnamon roll, just like you couldn’t have a team full of people who had the personality of an icicle (that’s why everybody hated Team Frostbite so much).

He seemed to like Nova very much.

As in, like-like.

There was a huge difference in the way he liked Danna or Oscar or herself, and the way he liked Nova, which reminded her of the way in which she liked Oscar.

Maybe that’s why she found herself to be kind of disappointed when she saw Nova instead of Oscar.

“You’re bleeding.”

The first thing that popped up in her mind was “Yes, I’m always bleeding”, until she realized that Nova was way too clever to make such an obvious statement. She had to mean something else.

Once she looked around, Ruby’s attention reached her bandages, and also her sleeping bag.

She was covered in blood.

Her forever open wounds were itching as the dense, crimson liquid gushed out of them, though the hemorrhage was starting to settle down already.

Ruby had been stabbed four times. Two in her right arm, one in the chest, and one in the stomach. Ever since the incident, the wounds hadn’t stopped bleeding, so they always had to be wrapped up in bandages. Nevertheless, every now and then, a trigger appeared, and that made altered everything.

Her power was embarrassing and complicated sometimes.

Nova, from her part, didn’t seem to be judging her, nor did she seem to be disgusted by the scene right there, in front of her.

Nova wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that Ruby had been made fun of because of it before, especially when they attended camps or when, for some special circumstances, they had to spend entire nights in the Headquarters. Her team always managed to defend her, and she knew how to defend herself, but that didn’t change the fact there were some things she had had to gone through, because of something that hadn’t, nor would it ever be her fault.

It wasn’t her fault she smelled like blood (It was logical. She was always bleeding), just like it wasn’t her fault she sometimes bled more than the usual.

Nova’s presence made her feel unprotected, and Ruby shrunk, trying to hide herself beneath her sleeping bag, but in the end that only made her feel more ashamed, because the sleeping bag was bloody as well.

She had bled through all of her bandages, through her clothes, and the blood had then reached the fabric of the sleeping bag.

Ruby looked like a crime scene, and for once she noticed there was something different in Nova’s eyes.

They were not as cold.

A little sympathetic, even.

“Do you have any extra bandages with you?”

It then occurred to Ruby that, perhaps, Nova hadn’t come here to laugh, or make comments that came off as lowkey out of place. She had heard all sorts of comments in regards to the issue. She had been asked if she was having an extra heavy period, or if bleeding like this was the equivalent of peeing herself in the middle of the night. Nova wasn’t saying any of those things.

She pretty much was just…there.

Gulping, Ruby lifted her hand up a little, pointing at her backpack, which was next to Adrian’s.

Trying to make as little sound as possible, Nova crawled and reached for it, hanging it from her shoulders, before getting on her feet and offering a hand to Ruby, in order to help her do the same.

Before doing anything, Ruby wrapped herself in her extra blanket, and she didn’t even had to ask where they were going, because she already knew.

The restroom didn’t have showers, but at least it looked relatively clean.

Once they were inside, Nova held the backpack towards her, and Ruby opened it, only to be greeted by her extra change of clothes, which she would have to wear, and her kit.

Normally, she would’ve removed the bandages and clean them herself, but they were too sticky, and she didn’t even know where to start.

When she noticed that, for some reason, Nova proceeded to try to help. Paying little attention to the fact her fingers were a little red by the end, she removed the bandage from her arm, and then helped her clean it with a wet cloth, no signs of disgust to the sight of the open, swollen, bleeding wound. She passed the cloth through it a couple of times, and then wrapped some new bandages around it.

After that, she gave her some privacy to finish the job, and once she was out of the restroom, Ruby cleaned the wounds in her chest and stomach, wrapping new bandages around it.

She put on her extra change of clothes, and came out of the restroom.

-.-

When they came back to the dressing room, Ruby realized her sleeping bag still looked like a crime scene, and if there was one thing she didn’t have, that something was an extra sleeping bag.

She didn’t want to sleep on her own blood, either, so she just grimaced, and then went to sit next to Nova, who was by the window.

She asked no questions, because she never did, especially when she felt that something was none of her business.

Nova was staring at the moon, and her scarred eyebrow was arched. That, Ruby did try to ask why, but maybe, just like the way her wounds worked were none of Nova’s business, the way she was staring at the moon was none of Ruby’s business.

But they were right there, sitting next to the other, while the rest of the team slept behind them, and while the city slept beneath them.

Then, Ruby wondered why was it that she didn’t sleep.

But it occurred to her that, once again, it was none of her business.

Maybe one day, but not today.

They were not that deep.

“Where do you think prodigies come from?” Asked Nova, out of nowhere, avoiding eye contact. “The moon or the stars?”

If she wanted to be brutally honest, she hadn’t seen that coming.

Nova was more of a science person, rather than someone who believed in myths like those.

Good thing Ruby wasn’t exactly a science person herself, and she had been through her myth and legend-obsessed phase.

“Well, most people believe we come from the stars.”

“That’s true.” Nova nodded. “I believe we come from the stars, too.”

For some reason, Ruby didn’t know how to respond to that, so she just stared.

The moon was still there, along with the stars, which looked like freckles.

One time, Oscar had compared her freckles to them.

“It’s a nice concept.” Ruby shrugged. “Stars are beautiful.”

“They are. Until they explode.” Nova scoffed, ruffling her own hair, carelessly. “They are my favorite part of the night.”

“…And you spend too much time awake.”

“…Exactly.”

Then, they didn’t say anything else, but once they were quiet enough, Ruby sighed, and just like she used to do with Danna sometimes, she slowly got into a laying position, resting her head on Nova’s lap.

For a second, she felt Nova’s apparently touch starved body become tense, hard as a rock, but then she took a deep breath and tried to relax her muscles.

She didn’t pull away.

On the contrary, Nova slowly lowered her hand, and placed it on Ruby’s arm, rhythmically tapping on her skin. It wasn’t an aggressive gesture. It was rather stealthy, to the point she could barely feel it.

Some minutes after that…seconds, she dared to say, Ruby fell into a deep, deep sleep, from which she didn’t wake up until the next day.

Fortunately, this time, it was a dreamless sleep.

#renegades trilogy #marissa meyer #dawnie writes #reneweys birthday saga #ruby tucker #red assassin #nova artino #nightmare #nova mclain #insomnia #TW: BLOOD

[aberstudiostorm]

The counsellor - making of

Behind the scenes!

Solomon (wrier/actor) -  Within our film ‘The Counsellor’, I took on the role as both writer and actor. Taking inspirations from The Office (2005-2013), I decided to explore the idea of British Social realism in a similar way that both the British and American versions of The Office exhibit storytelling through the form of interview.  This includes the camera being on an individual who maybe answers question (whether those questions are asked on or off screen) or explain about certain aspects of their life/ situation that drives the plot of the story. From this, I came up with the initial idea to introduce the idea of an interview with two friends that had fallen out about something. This idea developed into a counsellor asking two siblings about an incident that had happened between them, yet with the instigation of the counsellor actually making the issue worse between the two people. I wrote this into the script, introducing suspense by carefully constructing the language and dialogue between the characters and the counsellor to make it hard for the audience to know whose point of view to believe. This enabled the exaggeration of the aspect of the film that emphasises that it is the councillor who is not being helpful and is, if anything, just antagonizing the situation further. I think this made the film both tense and also entertaining as it was something the audience had to work out as the film went on and left it down to the individuals.

Hollie (cinematographer) – This week I was the cinematographer, I found the brief for this film incredibly difficult, this is due to the fact that British Social Realism (BSR) can be really tough to get right. As a group we decided to base our film around the theme of abuse and in particular about a counsellor who interferes. In this case we chose to base it around a situation that has occurred between two siblings. Due to this topic being quite heavy and gritty, I knew we had to get the shots right or there was the possibility of the film not working out how we would want it to.  

With regards to the types of shots we wanted to use, I decided to keep it fairly simple and mainly used medium close ups and a couple of close ups here and there to show the nervousness and various emotions we wanted the characters to amplify and get across in our film. As a group we took inspiration from the television series ‘The Office’.  From ‘The Office’ It was shots like the one below that I took inspiration from.

Below is part of the shot list I made. This particular part was for the first scene and so was very important in setting the mood and tone for the rest of the film.  

Overall, I think this week’s film turned out really well, despite my worries about the topic. The footage that my group took looked phenomenal and worked so well. I think having a well written script helped us a lot too this week, along with the strong edit from Tom.

Sabine (director) - This week's theme was British social realism, which focuses on realistic, relatable characters and moments, it explores themes like poverty, abuse, domesticity, marginalization. We wanted to do something similar to The Office (2005-2013) – a documentary/interview style film. Humour was something that had to be taken out of the equation as we didn't want it to appear like we were mocking the serious theme of domestic abuse and provocative counsellors. Since we were filming in different locations, the film had to be in black & white to make it seem like everyone was in the same counsellor's office. The set design and shot structure was rather simple, so a storyboard was not needed and we could film using just Hollie's shot list and Sol's script. The unease and uncomfortable atmosphere is something that we had to convey and, after a feedback session, we decided that that could be done in editing by using silent pauses after sentences. Tom did a great job at putting across the uncomfortable feelings of characters in the edit. Although the film was supposed to be around 2 minutes, it wanted to be longer – the final edit ended up being almost 4 minutes, but it was needed to tell the entire story and not lose the emotion and unease.

Maja (producer) -  This week I took the role of producer and actress.  The challenge with the film was to create the impression of family therapy, without actually being together in the same room. Tom pre-recorded a voice over and then Sol and I recorded our parts reacting to it as if we were on an actual session. Because of the 3 step recording, we had to plan everything so that we have enough time for possible mistakes and corrections. Despite the tight schedule we managed to do all the recording according to plan within 3 days, allowing Tom to edit for a longer amount of time which resulted in a well-put film, he did a good job. I think that after all we managed to pull it off to create a strong impact of the serious matter being family abuse.

Tom (editor) -  This week I had the chance to develop my editing skills again. However, I was also the voice over for the counsellor. My first idea was that I wanted to get the voice over and the film to look like I was there and be believable. I attempted by recording it first and adding it later. I found the outcome not to be as fluid as I wanted, so reviewed it and attempted again by watching everyone’s footage and using that to record. This made it more realistic. As a group we all made the decision for the film to be in black and white, and we felt this made the film feel more like a counsel session. Evoking the sense of a counselling session being simple truth or lie. I finished the first edit, and it was over five minutes long and I knew I had a challenge. So, I reviewed the edit again and picked the parts that worked well with the mood we had created. We aimed to make Sol’s character be portrayed as if he was lying, and the counsellor look like he was stirring the pot with Maja’s character to feel helpless and isolated. I think we really brought this to film, and it worked well. The only issue with the film was the time length being over three minutes. Despite this, overall, I was happy with what we had created. Maja and Sol’s acting was excellent, and I was happy with this. I think if the acting was less believable, the film would not have achieved the same mood. The script was also strong, and that really helped in the filming.  

#the counsellor

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #6- Rung Has a Friggin’ Day

It’s time for therapy.

Finally.

It turns out that Ratchet didn’t forget about Fortress Maximus’ acts of extreme violence in all the chaos that was last issue, and requested that Fort Max get set up with some mandatory counseling. Of course, because it’s been about a week in Fort Max-time since Garrus 9 went down, he’s not exactly thrilled to talk about what happened. And who can blame him? Garrus 9 sucked big time for everyone involved, even Overlord.

Fort Max claims to not remember what happened- he’s lying, and we’re treated to a flashback that sort of justifies his fib- and Rung suggests they get Chromedome involved, which seems perhaps a bit unethical? To just rip traumatic memories that may or may not be repressed out of a guy’s head? Like, I’m not super well-versed in psychiatry, but that seems a little off.

Rung, in an attempt to make Fort Max feel a little safer, tells him that Overlord- though he doesn’t say his name, because triggering Fort Max could literally get people killed- was neutralized about as efficiently as possible for their species.

I can’t believe Cybertron has a better veteran healthcare system than the United States.

Enough of Fortress Maximus’ impending implosion, it’s time for bar shenanigans!

Over at Swerve’s, Trailbreaker is proving to be completely incapable of keeping his drink in his glass, as Chromedome participates in a game where he has to guess who’s transforming into their alt-mode, based purely on the sound. He gets it in one, and everyone loses their shit. Chromedome, never one to hype himself, takes the opportunity to instead build Rewind up, because he just loves him that much.

Fortress Maximus gets brought up, and while Trailbreaker thinks the guy’s a little overrated, the others have heard about what happened on Delphi, and proceed to learn the wrong lesson from the whole thing. Tailgate enters the scene, after a rousing study session with everyone’s favorite giant neurotic.

Tailgate, you fool! It’ll be another 41 issues before Cyclonus is ready to even acknowledge his feelings!

It’s good to know that Tailgate doesn’t hold any grudges over the info dump Rewind gave him the other day. Also, that table looks like a nightmare to clean.

Ultra Magnus walks in, looking about as cheery as he possibly can considering who he is, promptly arrests Swerve for running the bar without taking bureaucracy into account, and whisks the little jabber jaw away in handcuffs, practically carrying him off by the scruff like a kitten.

Fort Max enters the room, having decided to grab a drink after the ordeal that is mandatory therapy.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a day on the Lost Light without something going just a little screwy.

This is a typical Wednesday for Pipes.

Fort Max proceeds to wreck several robots, seemingly at random, though he somehow manages to not actually kill any of them. Intentional or not? We still have several pages of this issue to get through, hold your horses! All will be revealed in time.

Which brings us to now. Fort Max has locked himself in Rung’s office, alongside Rung and the poor sap who was unlucky enough to have had an appointment when the big guy showed up. Rodimus and Drift are trying to figure out just what the hell to do with this current situation. Magnus enters, having just set Swerve up with his punishment, and berates Rodimus for letting Fort Max run around with a gun, as if 90% of the crew doesn’t also have massive weapons literally built into their bodies.

Blaster gets a video feed from one of the surveillance cameras going, and we get a good look at just how fucked this whole thing has become, because as it turns out, Rung’s appointment for this time slot was none other than Whirl, instigator extraordinaire, and being stabbed by some ship piping has done absolutely nothing to slow his suicidal roll.

That gun is positively ridiculous. Where were you even KEEPING that thing, Max?

It only takes a couple of face-mashings with the barrel of the BFG to get Whirl to back off, accomplishing what Rung simply cannot, because Whirl doesn’t play by the rules of anyone who values their life in any capacity. You’d think it’d take more than that to shut him up, but Whirl’s head is made of plot, so it’s a bit delicate.

Rung spots the camera, and decides to make himself useful by providing audio to this whole debacle, by way of his microphone thumb.

Now, a hostage situation just isn’t complete without some sort of demand in exchange for the safety of said hostages, and Fort Max has quite the doozy for Rodimus: he wants to go back to Cybertron, so he can confront Prowl on the slow response to the hell that was Garrus 9. Max was trapped there for over three years before the Wreckers came along, and it’s still pretty fresh for him because of the coma letting him skip a lot of time he could have spent healing.

Pro-tip: when handling a hostage situation, don’t get into a screaming match with the dude who’s about to shoot the only mental health specialist your race has ever managed to produce. Blaster gets it.

Rung is many things, but is no actor, as is made apparent by him holding his microphone thumb-bound hand in the most fucking conspicuous way possible. Fort Max notices- because how could he not?- and relieves Rung of this terrible burden.

Rung is really regretting not minoring in theatre right about now.

Hours later in the medibay, First Aid is proving to have gone mad with power, as he maintains some dangerously high snark levels while keeping the victims of Fort Max’s spree stable. Ratchet, whose hands are still Pharma-blue, is starting to piece together the reasoning behind who got shot.

That’s right, Fort Max was embarrassed that he showed up with the same color paint as all these guys, and tried to kill them to keep his fashion faux pas to a minimum.

Back in Rung’s office, Whirl’s dropped all pretense due to sheer boredom, and straight-up asks Fort Max to just get it over with and shoot them both. Having his thumb ripped off has made Rung a bit snippy, and he snaps at Whirl for the quip, before Max decides that he’s actually rather interested in just what Whirl’s appointment was going to cover. Rung tries to stymie this line of questioning, but he really ought to know not to get in the way of the plot progression at this point.

Whirl does decide to spill his beans, if only after Rung gets the obscenely large barrel of Max’s obscenely large gun pressed to one whole side of his face.

It turns out Whirl has depths to him, or at least he did, once upon a time. Before he got booted out of the Wreckers, before he was even in the Wreckers, he created as opposed to destroyed. More specifically, he was a watchmaker, good enough to find an audience in the time of Functionist Cybertron. Now, because he’s a helicopter, the guys up top weren’t too jazzed about Whirl not doing what he’d “been born to do,” on top of not giving them any of his sweet watch money, and decided to start fucking up his life to get him back in line. They started with tearing his shop to the ground.

But we’ll get to what the hell empurata is in a few issues.

Also, while Whirl’s been sharing his backstory, Rung managed to grab his model ship from off the floor.

I’m not sure how he managed to get ahold of his model without making a giant clumsy scene either, considering that’s his thumbless hand.

Rung, because he’s a clever man, is staring super hard at the camera and making kind of a weird face as he taps on the little windows of his model ship, signaling to Rodimus and crew to see what they can do with the windows outside of his office. He’s got three real big ones that let you see out- or in- the whole room. Rodimus makes a call, and we get a proper understanding of what Chromedome meant when he said Rewind was outside.

No kidding.

Rewind and Swerve are on rivet replacement duty, using rivet guns nearly as big as they are. Swerve’s passing the time idly chatting, because that’s his whole deal.

Knowing Swerve, that’s probably a joke, but given what we learn a few issues after this, on how exactly Cybertron handles those who don’t fall in line, I can’t help but wonder…

Okay, we know why Swerve’s out here, but what’s Rewind’s deal?

You remember those data discs Red Alert mentioned last issue, the ones Rewind was begging Chromedome to help him find? The ones he got from Swindle at the start of the series? Yeah, turns out those were chock-full of video footage of people dying.

Rodimus didn’t like the fact that Rewind had brought snuff films onto the Lost Light, and now here he is. We don’t get an explanation as to why he wanted the films in the first place, though he does integrate that it isn’t a pleasurable thing to watch. Rodimus calls, interrupting the conversation, and asks Rewind to take a walk.

Returning to the office, we find that Whirl’s really pouring it out now, giving us his whole life story.

Rung’s reaction here is equal parts sweet and sad. It’s like he’s never had a fucking friend in his entire life. Rung seems terribly lonely.

We also get the answer as to what exactly Whirl did to get kicked out of the Wreckers- he tried to mercy-kill Springer. After the events of Last Stand, Fort Max wasn’t the only one in a coma, and Whirl saw the writing on the wall in terms of Springer’s chances of recovery. He tried to put the guy out of his misery, but was caught and kicked to the curb before that could happen.

And that’s about where he stops. You know, if it weren’t for the whole “being held at gunpoint” thing, this would have been an amazing therapy session! Whirl really opened himself up today, I’m proud of him.

Fort Max realizes that the ship hasn’t turned around to head back to Cybertron, and that’s about the point where he decides it’s time to make good on his threat. Whirl volunteers as tribute, as Swerve and Rewind peek through the window, ready to enact the next phase of Rodimus’ plan.

Rung tries to deescalate, with Whirl reescalating in equal measures, because he is actively and violently suicidal at this point, bringing us to a standstill in negotiations as Ratchet finally gets ahold of Rodimus to tell him something very important.

Ratchet’s sussed out the central pin in this pegboard of PTSD, and it’s Overlord. Every guy Fort Max put in the ICU looked at least somewhat like that lippy bastard. Rung comes to a similar conclusion on his end, claiming that Fort Max is acting out because he went through hell at Overlord’s hand, and wants payback.

Outside the office, Rewind is lining up to shoot Fort Max with his rivet gun, though he has his reservations.

It’s a special kind of love that makes you want your husband to support you through sniping a guy five times bigger than you.

Rewind’s lining up the shot, when Fort Max moves behind a pillar. Time for Plan B.

Rodimus, you can’t just SAY that to him, he’s a married man.

Whirl’s egging Fort Max on, his eye flaring out in a way that one might consider to be crying, though if you asked him he’d absolutely deny it. Then Garrus 9 pays everyone a little visit, by way of Rewind’s camera projecting on the wall. This freezes Fort Max in his tracks, because of course it would. That shit’s terrifying. He breaks down, falling to the floor in a heap.

I suppose this is one way to handle a hostage situation. Rodimus, not wanting to take any chances, orders Swerve to take the shot anyway.

Safe to say, Swerve wasn’t top of his class at the military academy.

As Fort Max mourns the loss of Rung, Whirl yanks that pipe that’s been stabbed into his belly for the last several hours out, and returns the favor, getting Max right in the chest.

Shit.

All those fucking therapy appointments are going to have to be rescheduled. There are over 200 robots on this ship.

I sure hope Rung had a secretary to handle all that.

Later on, after the messy stuff’s been dealt with, Rodimus and Drift have a chat about Red Alert, and how he’s developing a potential to be a liability. As they talk, Red Alert is shown to be ripping the drill arm off that guy who got eaten by the quantum engine and using it to dig into the floor where he heard that super-slow voice. What does he find? I hope it’s treasure!

...That’s not treasure.

Hey, Rung?

Rung?

Buddy, I think someone might’ve been fibbing when they said that.

Nobody tell Fort Max about this.

#transformers #jro #mtmte #issue 6 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing

[obsessedwithbbandsuju]

I’m With You

Son Taeyeon was torn between her anger and her heartache. He never showed it all to her. Never admitted that his pain ran deep to this extent. Taeyeon admitted that it might seem insensitive, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t feeling angry. Maybe a better girlfriend would only feel sympathy and concern. Maybe she should feel only sympathy and concern. Maybe that was the right thing to do, but Taeyeon couldn’t help how she felt. 

Pairing: Park Jungsoo (Leeteuk)/Son Taeyeon

Warnings: A little bit of teasing, slight dom/sub undertones, pregnancy risk kink (kind of?), spanking, the tiniest bit of degradation, and emotional intimacy kink (is that even a thing?)

_____

eonni: a term used by a female to refer to another female, older than her, that she is close to

oppa: a term used by a female to refer to a male, older than her, that she is close to

kimbap: a Korean dish made from cooked rice and other ingredients that are rolled in kim—dried sheets of nori seaweed—and served in bite-sized slices

danpatbbang: Korean red-bean-paste bun

samanco: a Korean frozen treat consisting of vanilla ice cream and a thin layer of sweet red bean paste, wrapped inside a fish-shaped wafer shell

Son Taeyeon was torn between her anger and her heartache.  

He never showed it all to her. Never admitted that his pain ran deep to this extent. Taeyeon admitted that it might seem insensitive, but she'd be lying if she said she wasn't feeling angry. Maybe a better girlfriend would only feel sympathy and concern. Maybe she should feel only sympathy and concern. Maybe that was the right thing to do, but Taeyeon couldn’t help how she felt.

After Soojin-eonni had left, she’d busied herself watching the latest episode of Super TV as it aired; it was only right, after all, as both a fan of Super Junior and Leeteuk-oppa’s girlfriend, there was no way she was going to miss it. She’d enjoyed every episode, but this current one in particular she had found particularly interesting (and amusing). Seeing Heechul-oppa and Leeteuk-oppa being so awkward while alone together was definitely a worthwhile entertainment, especially because she had experienced firsthand how different their personalities were. Taeyeon knew they both loved each other, but their styles in themselves were so opposite that it was a little hard to be in the same room as them without the other members.

It was all good fun until Leeteuk-oppa had gone into Dr. Doo Eunmi’s office for his one-on-one consultation session. Heechul-oppa’s had been funny – a given, really, considering his natural personality – and Taeyeon had leaned forward on her couch in anticipation, expecting another good laugh from her boyfriend. Leeteuk-oppa was funny too, she knew better than anyone else. His humor never failed to delight her. And most of the time, she thought fondly, he doesn’t even try.

Leeteuk-oppa had bowed to the doctor, smiling all the way and flashing that dimple that she loved so much. He’d taken a seat in front of her, where Heechul-oppa had previously been sitting, hands folded politely over his lap. Taeyeon could tell, despite his courtesy, that he felt nervous. Furrowing her eyebrows, she wondered why. Her boyfriend had been on plenty of broadcasts; she had never seen him this tense. Did he not like how personal the moment was?

Her brief concern was mitigated by Heechul-oppa on the screen, now listening in to the session as Leeteuk-oppa had been listening into his. He’d commented that the entire situation seemed like marriage counseling for them, a couple married for fourteen years, and Taeyeon had laughed, because he wasn’t wrong. Heechul-oppa and Leeteuk-oppa really did seem like a married couple sometimes.

She watched as the scene cut back to Leeteuk-oppa and his session. Leeteuk-oppa was telling the doctor that truthfully, he didn’t really feel the need to go as far as counseling, and Taeyeon agreed. Awkward as things might be between Leeteuk-oppa and Heechul-oppa, she knew how much they treasured each other. The counseling was just good fun and something interesting and intimate for the viewers.

The screen them switched back to Leeteuk-oppa’s later interview, talking about how he was once told that an entertainer needed to always be cheerful and happy, no matter how hard they felt that their life was, because that was the role of an entertainer. To entertain people. And now, Leeteuk-oppa said, now that he was in a situation that forced him to act more like the human being, Park Jungsoo, not the idol and celebrity Leeteuk, he had felt out of his element, uncomfortable and unsure.

His words had struck a chord all too clear with Taeyeon, frankly, chasing away her earlier mirth. She understood exactly what Teukkie-oppa meant. As an idol too, debuting in 2006, just a few months into fourteen years old, Taeyeon knew just too well how judgmental the media could be, how hard to please and how vicious when given the slightest opportunity. Public figures were criticized mercilessly for even the smallest, most trivial slip in demeanor, and the result was a façade that they always wore in front of cameras. They always took care to smile, always took care to act cheery and bright and charming, because they were absolutely ripped apart if they didn’t. Wearing that kind of mask for so long . . . it had a way of changing people until they weren’t quite sure who they were supposed to be anymore. Taeyeon was no exception. She loved her job and would always feel nothing but gratitude and love for the fans that had enabled her to be where she was, and she wouldn’t trade it for anything, but the negative aspects of the showbiz had impacted her heavily. She knew that her boyfriend was the same. She was sure that all idols had struggled with the feeling, that loss of identity.

Feeling more serious at the turn of thoughts, she continued watching as Leeteuk-oppa explained that as soon as Heechul-oppa had entered the office, he’d begun wondering how he could pass by the counseling session and show less of himself. Although his attitude was calm, Taeyeon couldn’t help feeling sad at his words. It was almost like some part of Leeteuk-oppa was afraid to reveal who he really was.

Her gaze was fixed intently on the screen as her boyfriend began to speak again. “These days, I’ve been tired because . . .” He trailed off, his expression almost nostalgic. “I just . . .”

Taeyeon felt her heart drop a little. He looked almost uncertain to her, could he be fishing for words?

But . . . why? She’d hardly ever seen her boyfriend rendered speechless, especially in television. He was a natural entertainer, humorous and charming and witty. It might be a little difficult to voice some of his troubles, but the tenuous, shaky air about him gave Taeyeon the horrible impression that it was so much more than just that. He looked like if he were a vase, he would be fracturing right at the moment from some heavy, unseen weight.

She’d never seen him like this, except when concerning his family, and she was sure he wouldn’t even begin talking about that here.

The thoughtful and mirthless smile seemed to transform her boyfriend’s entire visage, like it was ripping away the mask the Leeteuk and revealing Park Jungsoo for everyone to see. He bent over, hiding his face from the camera and the doctor, with a desperate and almost incoherent, “A moment, please”. He was trying hard to keep his tone light, but the distress in his voice was too painfully obvious, and Taeyeon’s heart fell to somewhere beneath the soles of her feet. What had gotten him so emotional so quickly? Especially someone like Leeteuk-oppa, who tended to hide his truly serious sentiments, and was actually good at it?

Leeteuk-oppa sat up, his gaze fixed on the ceiling and avoiding the doctor’s eyes. Taeyeon would have guessed that he was feeling embarrassed if not for the fact that she was so utterly confused at his sudden and steady rush of sadness. For just a second, he looked like he was fighting to control himself, to keep his composure.

“For several reasons . . .” Leeteuk-oppa tried again, but again he trailed off, and suddenly, he was dabbing at his eyes, and Taeyeon realized he was really, truly, crying.

She watched the rest of the episode in a dazed stupor, unable to get over the fact that Leeteuk-oppa had been going through such a hard time. She was his girlfriend of four years, his close friend of seven years. And he’d never said a word about her to this. He’d never admitted to her that he was struggling so much, that he felt that as the leader of Super Junior, he couldn’t complain, couldn’t show weakness, had to pretend to be strong even when he wasn’t. And because of that, he was alone and stressed, with absolutely nothing and no one to lean on for comfort.

And Taeyeon hadn’t known. Anything. At all.

Teukkie-oppa had definitely showed strong emotion with her before. The problem wasn’t that he shut her out completely, because he didn’t. He was very open with his thoughts and feelings when he thought the situation was appropriate, as it was with her – his girlfriend.

Or so Taeyeon thought, but now . . . she wasn’t sure. Such a significant issue, something that was bothering him so much for so long, and he hadn’t told her about it. In fact, when she’d asked him recently, just a week ago, if he ever felt stressed, admitting that she did several times, he had laughed it off. “You know me, Taeyeon,” he’d said with a laugh – a goddamned laugh. “I’m a workaholic, work is the best thing I can do for myself.”

Except on Super TV, he’d said that work was becoming hard for him. He’d lied to her.

He hadn’t trusted her enough to confide in her.

Feeling her ire rise at the realization, Taeyeon stood. Unlike most other people, her anger wasn’t usually fiery and destructive and flaring. It was cold, gradual, and almost stony, and she felt it stirring now in the pit of her stomach; that hard, stern, grim feeling slowly making itself known, lodging itself somewhere inside her.

Just as well. She and Teukkie-oppa had planned to meet at his house today and spend a few weeks there together. They liked to switch, sometimes staying in his house and sometimes in hers, and very rarely did they live apart. Taeyeon had only been staying at her apartment for two days to clean it before dust started to accumulate; she was headed back to her boyfriend’s house tonight, for who knew how long.

Convenient.

And she was not going to let Jungsoo-oppa get away with not being honest with her, even if she had to wring an explanation from him.

Taeyeon wondered for a second if her reaction was too much, too angry. Shouldn’t her instinct be to comfort her boyfriend in his distress, not scold him?

Then she realized that she wanted to embrace him and tell him that she would always be here for him just as much as she wanted to berate him for his lying to her. The fact somehow heightened her irritation. She should be angry, she decided. She had the right to be. She’d never held anything back from Leeteuk-oppa, and she had thought he did the same for her, but it looked like she was the only one between them.

If he felt that he couldn’t confide everything to her . . . Taeyeon paused at the thought. It would hurt, she realized. She would be upset, and it would hurt. But she knew she would have accepted it, eventually. People changed, after all, and she knew too well that opening up to others was difficult, even when they were your friends.

No. That wasn’t what was the problem.

What really angered her was the fact that he wasn’t forthcoming with her, when she’d always been forthcoming with him.

If he really feels that he can’t be open with me, all he had to do was tell me, she seethed. It’s so easy. He shouldn’t have just . . . lied.

Her phone vibrated on the stand next to her, startling Taeyeon out of her unpleasant thoughts. She pressed the power button and her lock screen flared to life in front of her. It was a picture that had been taken in 2009, when Taeyeon and her groupmates had first had the pleasure of meeting the Super Junior members. Her group and the active members of SuJu had all taken a commemorative photograph together, and Taeyeon, a professional fangirl, had made it her lock screen.

Said photograph usually made her smile, but at the moment, she couldn’t help it when her eyes briefly settled on SuJu’s angelic leader, smiling up at her from the screen. Her brows plunged with annoyance, and she tore her gaze away to focus instead on the text message notification.

It was from Jungsoo-oppa.

‘Taeyeon, do you think you could come over a little bit earlier?’

Under normal circumstances, Taeyeon would have beamed. As close as they were, Jungsoo-oppa still made her heart flutter at times. It was something about him, from his caring nature to his gentle demeanor to his very kind, very loving heart, that she found incredibly attractive and unique to only him.

But at the moment, she was more than a little bit pissed off, and the only facial expression she could summon was a wry twist of her lips that was something between a grim smile and an outright grimace.

Going over to his house a little earlier doesn’t seem so bad, she thought. It gives me more time to talk this out with this bastard.

Grabbing a piece of bread to eat before leaving, and sinking her teeth into it, leaving it dangling in the air with only her mouth to hold it in place, Taeyeon texted back.

‘That’s fine Oppa. I’m done packing, I’ll be there in thirty minutes’

To chew your ass out.

The reply was immediate; clearly, her boyfriend was holding the phone like she was, staring at the screen and waiting for a response.

‘Thanks Taeyeon. You’re always so good to me. I love you, see you soon’

I love you.

Taeyeon cursed when she felt her heart pounding as she processed the message. I love you. It was a text – just a text – but she could practically hear Jungsoo-oppa’s voice whispering to her. She could see, clear as day, the way he’d flash at her that angelic smile and the skin of his cheek would pucker, revealing that adorable dimple. The way he’d brush their noses together and look at her with those awestricken eyes, like he couldn’t believe she was actually there. The way he liked to pull her flush against him as they snuggled together, molding their bodies into one, his arms wrapped around her waist and his fingers tracing soft, loving circles over the skin of her palm. All those cliché stories about fireworks exploding in one’s stomach, the stories that had made Taeyeon scoff before she met Jungsoo-oppa, were true after all. If you had the right person, those fireworks went off all the time.

She’d parted on good terms with all her past significant others, but none of them held a candle to her current boyfriend. She loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone, and that was why the situation made her so angry.

Nevertheless, she texted back:

‘I love you too <3’

She couldn’t deny that she did. Even the fact that she was angry at him was only because she loved him. Dammit.

With those unpleasant thoughts in mind, she finished shoving a few sweaters and jeans into her suitcase and made sure that everything was in order, double checking the faucets, the plugs, and the lights. Once she was sure that nothing would go up in flames during her absence, Taeyeon grabbed her suitcase and left the house.

The bus ride over to the area of the Han River, next to which Jungsoo-oppa’s apartment was located, was filled with tension. At least, that was what Taeyeon felt. She couldn’t stop thinking of ways she would approach the topic; she didn’t want to appear to aggressive. She understood that Jungsoo-oppa was busy, and as pleasant as he might be on television, she knew he could be ill-tempered like any other human being. But every time she imagined trying to bring up the issue calmly, she always ended up losing her temper.

Taeyeon sighed, giving up and staring blankly out the window as the cars passed by. I’ll just go with the flow, I suppose. She had always had a fair bit of spontaneity to her, and in her experience, it didn’t go away even when it came to her relationships. She couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I guess the outcome of my talk with Oppa will answer that.

~

She rang the doorbell, and the door was open in less than five seconds. She did have a spare key that he’d given her, as he had a spare key she’d given him, but she usually just liked the feeling of her boyfriend opening his door to let her into his living space, and although she was still seething, Taeyeon’s habits died hard, it seemed.

Seeing Jungsoo-oppa’s face peering out from inside his apartment, Taeyeon couldn’t decide if it abated or fed her anger. Maybe both, and that wasn’t even logically possible.

Her first instinct was to hug him, and when his words to the doctor – “I think I just felt so lonely” – flashed through her mind again, that desire doubled. It was so strong that as she stepped into the apartment and took off her shoes, she could practically feel some invisible, magnetic pull tugging insistently at her, and it was dragging her toward her boyfriend. She all but teetered on her toes from the effort it took not to throw herself into his arms.

Luckily, the scampering of paws stole her attention from Jungsoo-oppa, and Taeyeon squatted to scoop Shimkoong into her arms, cooing as the small dog licked her all over her face, occasionally expressing her excitement in loud, sharp barks. Taeyeon had to laugh as she pressed a kiss to the dog’s nose, fondness rushing over her and momentarily sweeping away her dissatisfaction at the man standing at her shoulder. She pointedly ignored him.

Teukkie-oppa really didn’t seem to mind; the security that came with being in a long-term relationship, past the point of needless worrying about the other person’s every action. He just gave her that angelic smile and pressed a kiss to her cheek before taking her suitcase. “Go on and get comfortable, Taeyeon-ah,” he said. “I’ll unpack your stuff. I already know where you like your things to go anyway.” Another smile, and he was off, lugging her suitcase behind him.

Damn him, Taeyeon thought. It was simultaneously easier and harder to keep up her ire at her boyfriend with his sweet yet careless display of affection. As Leeteuk-oppa walked away down the hall, her suitcase in his hands, Taeyeon felt her heart clench tightly with both affection and resentment.

She loved him so much, she really did. She loved how casually considerate he was, like unpacking everything for her while she relaxed, kicked her feet back, and slacked off was no big deal. Like it was only a natural thing to do. And his lips against her cheek felt so natural, so right. He’d done it hundreds of times before in their four years of dating, and how he always succeeded at thrilling her so much with just a peck on the cheek eluded Taeyeon’s knowledge still.

On the other hand, she was angry. How was it that he had been acting so nonchalant for so long? Super TV aired after it was filmed, which meant Teukkie-oppa had been acting like he was fine around her for at least weeks, and, much more likely from his breakdown, years. How could he be so relaxed and informal while being untruthful with her?

Suddenly, she was more than pissed. Well, she had been more than pissed since watching the broadcast, but now she was furious. Letting Shimkoong down so the dog could scamper off, Taeyeon marched down the hall to Teukkie-oppa’s bedroom, where they slept together while staying at his house. He had already unzipped the suitcase and was starting to organize her clothes. As Taeyeon burst in, Teukkie-oppa was gingerly folding a sweater that she had shoved in as last resort.

Upon her sudden appearance, he looked up, tutting playfully. “Taeyeon, I keep telling you that you have to fold your clothes properly so they don’t get wrinkles.” He gestured to the sweater he had finished folding and placed on his lap, neat and tidy. “See, this is already getting. . .”

It must have been that moment that he fully comprehended that she was actually glaring at him. Concern pooled in his eyes like water into a bowl, pure and clear, and Taeyeon might have teared up feeling the depth of his worry for her if she weren’t absolutely ready to explode at him.

“Are you okay?” Teukkie-oppa asked, standing up and approaching her, folded sweater still in his hands. His face was so full of unadulterated worry . . . and, she noticed, was looking slightly blurry, as if someone had covered her eyes with a thin, transparent film.

Oh.

Taeyeon realized she really was tearing up a little, which shocked her because they weren’t tears of affection at her boyfriend’s sweetness, they were tears of frustration. She wasn’t the type of person to cry when she got angry, never had been, but she had heard somewhere that tears could be the body’s reaction to too much of something. In Taeyeon’s current case, she suspected it was too much fury. She felt like she had too many things to say, and even a million mouths wouldn’t be enough to say all of it. Words jumped from her throat to her tongue to back down her throat, this way and that until she wasn’t even sure what she was trying to tell him anymore. “You should have told me if you weren’t going to open up to me in the first place.” “Was that some sort of show for the broadcast?” “Do you really feel that lonely? You can’t talk to me? You had to go as far as to lie about it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Fuck. Of all things, that? It was vague, it was confusing, it was stupid. But it was too late to take it back.

Her boyfriend stared at her, having lessened the distance between them to about a half a meter. He was much taller than her, the crown of her head just reaching the bottom of his nose, Taeyeon noted randomly, and not for the first time. She really wished her brain could lay off with reporting to her the most irrelevant of intel at the most ridiculous of times.

“What do you mean? Taeyeon, you look distressed,” Teukkie-oppa noted, studying her face and the tears in her eyes with mild alarm. “Did something happen?”

She was glaring at him, and although it seemed like he didn’t notice, Taeyeon knew at this point that he just wasn’t acknowledging it, focusing instead on the cause of her distress. On his worrying for her distress. Just another way that Jungsoo-oppa was so kind, so considerate, so loving. He was a natural sweetheart, had always been.

He was almost perfect, really. Taeyeon hated it. Hated him.

“You know exactly what I mean,” she said coldly, ignoring his other question. “You were having a hard time. You were going through so much and didn’t say a word to me.”

She meant to stop it there, but once she began, it was as if a dam had broken. Her words were spilling out, and Taeyeon didn’t have the kind of frame of mind to stop them anymore. She felt betrayed. Four years of dating, sure, but more importantly, eight years of friendship. When Taeyeon considered someone a truly close friend, there was really nothing she would hide from them, because she loved and trusted her friends enough to confide her personal matters.

The sometimes-unfortunate side of that was, she expected the same in return. And when that trust was betrayed, like her boyfriend had betrayed it, her ire was swift to come and hard to abate.

“I’m your girlfriend, but more importantly, I’m your friend. I’ve been your friend for years now. I’m supposed to be here for you, just like you’re always here for me. How am I going to do that when you aren’t truthful when we’re together?” Her voice was relatively quiet, as it almost always was when she talked to other people, but her tone reminded herself of jagged, broken glass. She didn’t think it had fully dawned on her just how hurt she felt until she was in front of him and verbalizing, giving him a piece of her mind. Entirely caught up in her anger, Taeyeon couldn’t even be bothered to gauge her boyfriend’s reaction; she was too busy going off.

“You didn’t tell me how stressed and lonely even work was making you feel. I seem to recall you telling me just last week that it was the best thing you could do for yourself.” She stopped to take a breath, and suddenly, she felt bone-tired. Why? Just . . . why did he have to do that? “Why did you lie?” she asked, her voice softer but no less frustrated.

It was obvious that Jungsoo-oppa knew exactly what she was talking about from the way that his gaze fell to the ground. His chest rose and fell slowly as he drew in a deep breath, the way he did when he was either calming himself down or preparing himself for an argument. Although he wasn’t looking at her, Taeyeon got the feeling that he was struggling with something, and it cooled her resentment. Her temperature dropped slightly and she no longer felt the overpowering urge to shout at him, but she was still angry.

But when Jungsoo-oppa gave his reply, looking up to meet her accusing gaze with an unreadable, almost hard expression in his eyes, her outrage sparked to life again.

“I didn’t want you to know.”

“Obviously,” she hissed. What kind of response was that? “But what I want to know is why not? No, it’s more like –why couldn’t you just tell me that you wouldn’t open up to me fully? I would have understood, oppa.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. His voice was cold, and he stood stone-still in front of her, still holding her folded sweater in front of him. “But there was no need for you to hear about my problems. You’re only twenty-five, Taeyeon.”

She stared at him. That was what this was all about? Sure, their kind of relationship wasn’t exactly common, a ten-year age gap existing between the two of them, but she had asked and Jungsoo-oppa had assured her that he wouldn’t treat her like a child because of it. All of the Super Junior members, whom Taeyeon was acquainted to or even close with, were in their thirties, but she had never felt intimidated for being younger, nor did she feel like the age gap made them difficult to understand or relate to. They always said it was because she was just as much an adult, enough to be comfortable with them, though Taeyeon was of the opinion that they were all just human. Age was just a number, and someone being ten years older than you didn’t make them some alien species.

She had many friends that were a fair bit older than her, and no one treated her like a helpless child because of it. And now Jungsoo-oppa was contradicting everything he’d told her before – that he was grateful for her maturity because he honestly got tired of acting like a mother to all the other members sometimes, that he was so lucky to have met a woman like her who could listen to and understand his troubles – and now he was saying he hadn’t told her because she was “only twenty-five”?

“Bullshit,” Taeyeon said softly. “You’re telling me that you kept this from me because you think I’m too young to deal with it? After all your big words about how thankful you are that you can confide everything to me?” She raised her hand, gripping the material of the sleeve of his loose gray sweater in her fingers, squeezing hard in an attempt to contain her surging fury at the ridiculousness of his logic. “Do you really think I’m going to take that?”

Leeteuk-oppa moved so fast that her eyes couldn’t follow him. One minute, she was clutching the sleeve of his sweater, and the next minute, he’d yanked his arm away, leaving her fingers curled around nothing but empty air. It took Taeyeon a second to realize he was glaring at her, resentment burning in his eyes.

“I just – I’m just tired. I’m just tired, Taeyeon. I’m exhausted of all this stress, all this faking of my confidence, all this bullshit. I don’t need you involved in my problems.” He raked a hand viciously through his dyed brown hair, his volume increasing by the second. “Is that so hard for you to understand and leave me alone? Is it too much to ask that you stop sticking your nose in my business and give me some goddamned privacy? Fuck!” He threw her sweater across the room in one furious motion and shoved past her, storming out of the room and slamming the door behind him with a resounding bang. Then the sound of his footsteps storming down the hall echoed through the apartment.

He’s probably irritating all the neighbors, Taeyeon thought faintly as she stared at the wall, so shocked that she didn’t even feel surprised, if that was possible. She just felt numb, Leeteuk-oppa’s sudden outburst completely rendering her immobile and unsure of how to react. He’d never just . . . exploded like that before.

He’d never said that he wanted her to “stop sticking her nose in his business”.

Did he really . . . did her concern for him really annoy him that much?

Almost absentmindedly, Taeyeon shook her head, trying to clear the muddle of disbelief that was fogging her brain, but regardless of what she did, she couldn’t erase his voice from her mind.

“Is it too much to ask that you stop sticking your nose in my business and give me some goddamned privacy?”

She took a deep breath and pulled herself out of her trance, looking around blankly to see her sweater in a crumpled heap on the ground. She knelt to pick it up, brushed the wrinkles out of it, and re-folded it, as Leeteuk-oppa had done so gingerly just minutes before.

(There was a dreadful pang in her stomach. She ignored it.)

Still not quite sure what to make of the whole situation, Taeyeon knelt by her unzipped suitcase and started to pull the rest of the clothes out, throwing them carelessly into her boyfriend’s closet. It wasn’t until she was more than halfway through that she realized that Leeteuk-oppa had really exploded at her. It was far from the first time she had seen him angry or upset, but it was the first time he’d lost his temper so utterly, going as far as shouting and throwing things and storming out of rooms.

And it was the first time he’d said something so hurtful to her.

“Is it too much to ask that you stop sticking your nose in my business and give me some goddamned privacy?”

Fine.

Fine. She took a deep breath. Fine. If he really wanted to be like that, if he really wanted to be angry at her for being concerned about him, then two could play the game.

~

Things were painfully awkward from then on. Taeyeon stayed cooped up in Leeteuk-oppa’s room, sitting on his chair and jotting down more lyrics for the song she was working on. She never left it, since thankfully there was an adjoining bathroom, but outside, she could hear her boyfriend. It sounded like he was making something, presumably for dinner, and occasionally, he seemed to be cooing at Shimkoong. Despite it all, Taeyeon caught herself about to smile. Leeteuk-oppa was always the cutest when it came to his dog; he had so much tenderness to offer. He always had.

She pressed her lips harshly together to keep them from curling upwards, focusing once again on her lyrics. She had scribbled down another two verses when her stomach growled.

Glancing at her phone, Taeyeon saw that it was nearly six o’clock; around the time that she usually ate. Leeteuk-oppa had promised to prepare something big for dinner tonight, since they hadn’t seen each other in about two weeks, too busy with their respective schedules, but she really didn’t think that was relevant anymore. From the sounds of his cooking, it didn’t seem like he was making a big meal, anyway.

Ignoring the iron mallet banging about in her gut at the thought of the discord between them, Taeyeon decided she would have to eat out for today. She grabbed her purse, which she had set on Leeteuk-oppa’s bed earlier, made sure her wallet was inside, and opened the room door.

Her boyfriend didn’t look up at she walked by him, heading for the front door, and she refused to look at him too. They ignored each other, both too prideful to let it show that their argument was hurting them, although they both knew it was true.

Forgoing any mode of transportation and deciding to just walk to the convenience store near Leeteuk-oppa’s house, where they often went together to buy food, Taeyeon breathed the cool, crisp air of the night into her lungs, wishing she didn’t have to wear the face mask to conceal her identity.

The walk was therapeutic and gave her the chance to clear her head, which she made full use of. Taeyeon couldn’t deny that she was still pissed by how Jungsoo-oppa had snapped, by what he’d said. He rarely lost his temper like that, and it had never been directed at her. Especially not something so scathing, so cruel.

“Is it too much to ask that you stop sticking your nose in my business and give me some goddamned privacy?”

Was that it? That was what angered him so much? He was tired of her apparently being nosy? He wanted her to mind her own business? A lump clogged Taeyeon’s throat at the thought.

They were friends, weren’t they? They were in a romantic relationship, weren’t they? So how could he expect her to just not worry about his problems?

She remembered the several times over the years that she had confided her worries to him; worries about her upcoming works, worries about her group’s future, worries about her friends, confessions about her depression and what fueled it. He’d been so caring, so sweet, so comforting, listening diligent to everything she had to say and offering solace and advice. All those times, had he only been pretending to be concerned? Could he not really care less after all? Had her openness really been irritating to him, all that time? When she was telling him her vulnerabilities, her insecurities, had he only been annoyed?

The thought was not a pleasant one, and not one that Taeyeon cared to contemplate much longer. She violently thrust it from her mind, leaving to crash to the ground and shatter to bits that scattered all over the pavement, rolling into the sewer, being grinded under the heels of others. He couldn’t have just been annoyed with her for all those years. No. No. It was an idea that was too heartbreaking and too utterly insulting for her to stomach.

She opened the door of the convenience store, feeling bone-tired and forty years older than her actual age. Thankfully, no one looked her way or noticed who she was.

Wondering if she should stock up in case the argument with her boyfriend dragged out, Taeyeon grabbed a shopping basket from the stack at the front of the store. She made her way up and down the aisles, picking up two packs of kimbap, a box of danpatbbang, a pack of dumplings, and two packs of samanco, her favorite type of ice cream. Regardless of how angry he was, she knew Jungsoo-oppa wouldn’t go as far as kicking her out. That would be admitting that their disagreement had affected him, and he always had too much pride to do that. And Taeyeon wouldn’t be seeing herself out either. That meant the same thing, and she, too, intended to save face.

Paying for her items and leaving the store with the shopping bag in hand, Taeyeon found herself wondering, against her will, how long their argument would drag on. Frankly, Teuk-oppa was not often the person to instigate making up after a fight. More often than not, it was Taeyeon who had to approach him.

Should she do that this time? She loved him; she wasn’t sure she could ever stop loving him, having come so far. It bothered her so much, in all honesty, when they were in the middle of a disagreement so serious. She hadn’t wanted to argue. She just wanted to talk it out with him and reach some sort of consensus. Maybe she could do that? Maybe they could try?

“Is it too much to ask that you stop sticking your nose in my business and give me some goddamned privacy?”

Taeyeon stiffened. All at once, her concerns came flooding back to her, impossible to breach and impossible to disregard. Did Jungsoo-oppa really wish she wouldn’t confide in him so much? Did he really see her concern as that much of a nuisance? Did he really see her as that much of a nuisance?

She stopped, staring in front of her at the apartment complex that was soaring into the sky. Suddenly, it seemed so hostile, so unwelcoming. Why would she go back there? She would only be returning to the man she loved, the man who apparently saw what she had perceived as the emotional intimacy of their relationship as nothing but an irritation. She’d wanted to protect her pride, pretend like everything was fine and that she wasn’t affected at all by their argument, but the thought of staying in the same place with Jungsoo-oppa right now seemed too unbearable. She couldn’t stomach it. The ice cream would melt, but she couldn’t care less.

Her decision made, Taeyeon spun on her heel and hurried away.

~

She didn’t come back into the apartment until it was 11:34 P.M., having eaten one pack of kimbap on the park bench, taken a walk around said park, going to the library, and writing more lyrics until the building closed, then walking around the park some more, stalling. Assuming Jungsoo-oppa was asleep and by extension, that she was taking the couch, Taeyeon reached his door and unlocked it with her spare key, trying to be quiet. The grocery bag dangled from her arm.

Opening the door and peering inside, she saw, with surprise, that the lights were still on. Jungsoo-oppa, in his never-ending meticulousness, always made sure to turn off all lights before going to sleep, which could only mean that he wasn’t in bed yet. But wasn’t he tired from all his schedules? Although she was still angry at him, and now, more than that, unsure about such an important aspect of their relationship, Taeyeon still felt a flash of concern. Leeteuk-oppa needed rest. He had a precious few days off and she wasn’t going to let him squander them.

Slipping inside and closing and locking the door behind her, Taeyeon peeked around the apartment. Everything was silent – even Shimkoong must be sleeping. Had Leeteuk-oppa fallen asleep accidentally, perhaps? Gingerly placing the groceries on the counter, she crept down the hall to his room and cracked the door open.

The space was somewhat dim, with only the lamp on Leeteuk-oppa’s desk casting substantial light across the room. Still, it was more than enough for Taeyeon to make out her boyfriend sitting on the bed, looking forlorn. His head was bowed, making his gaze fall probably somewhere on the floor between his knees, and his hands were slumped listlessly on his thighs. He was still wearing the sweater, T-shirt, and jeans that he had been in when she left the apartment.

Was he dozing off? If he fell asleep like that, he would most certainly be having neck pains tomorrow morning.

“Oppa?” Taeyeon called softly.

He raised his head and glanced at her. As their eyes met, he was on his feet in an instant, but he didn’t look angry. He looked relieved. “Taeyeon.” His voice rasped, like he hadn’t used it in a long time.

Taeyeon slid carefully in through the small gap she had made and closed the door softly behind her. They needed to talk. She needed to clarify what he’d really meant. If he truly saw her concern as annoying, then she . . . she wasn’t sure what she would do. Accept it? End their relationship? How could she stay with him knowing that he found hearing her concerns irritating and pointless? But how could she just end it? She loved him so, so much, and the thought of cutting things between them . . . it hurt more than she’d like to admit. It hurt too much.

But she didn’t want to be someone who clung pathetically to a man who didn’t love her as much as she did him. She deserved better than that.

Taeyeon approached her boyfriend until they were roughly half a meter apart. Jungsoo-oppa said nothing – he just stared at her. Was that really relief in his eyes; was the light tricking her, or her own wishful thinking?

“Oppa,” she said, “We need to talk.”

The flash of panic in his gaze was too vivid, too stark, to crisp and clear, to be a trick of the light, Taeyeon thought. That was all she had time to think before Jungsoo-oppa hugged her. The only word to describe his movements was desperate. His arms were desperate as they pulled her into his embrace, his fingers were desperate as they clutched at her back, and his entire demeanor screamed desperation as he buried his face in the crook of her neck.

Taeyeon didn’t move, too shocked at the sudden change. It was Jungsoo-oppa who spoke first.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. No, it almost sounded like a whimper, also, filled with desperation. “I’m sorry. I love you. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Unsure of what to do, Taeyeon raised her arms and wrapped them around him, rubbing his back in soothing strokes. Rarely was Jungsoo-oppa this clingy, this fervent, but when he was, he required attention and love. And as upset as she still was at him, she was more than willing to give it.

“It’s okay,” she murmured. “I’m here, oppa. It’s alright.”

They stayed like that for a few minutes before her boyfriend slowly released her. Taeyeon attempted a sympathetic smile and took his hand in her own, sitting on the mattress and tugging gently so Jungsoo-oppa followed suit.

“I don’t know what came over me,” Jungsoo-oppa whispered as he sat. “I was just . . . today was exhausting, and I . . . I lost my temper.” He looked at her, meeting her eyes, and she could see the genuine apology in his gaze. He looked fragile, tremulous. Almost scared. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean any of it.”

It dawned on Taeyeon just then what all this meant, why her boyfriend had been clinging to her like his heart would stop if he let up for even a second: she had been gone for too long. He probably thought that she had ditched him in her anger, and that he’d really screwed up. That he’d really, truly upset her this time, maybe irrevocably. There was a pang in her chest, and suddenly, her anger could wait.

“It’s okay,” she assured him, taking his face in her hands, running her thumbs under his eyes. He was so handsome. He looked so afraid, so sorry. Her heart constricted.

“It’s okay,” Taeyeon repeated, again and again until some of the shame in Jungsoo-oppa’s eyes had abated. Only then did she drop her hands from his face, but she didn’t let them completely leave him. Instead, she clasped his hands in her own, trying to reassure him as she repeated, “We need to talk.”

Jungsoo-oppa swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right, Taeyeon. I mean . . . you were right to be angry. I . . .” He looked down at their joined hands and idly traced small, sweet circles over the skin of her palm with his thumb. “I’ve been lying to you. About work.” He looked back up at her, clearly hesitant.

“. . . I don’t even know when it began, but one day I realized . . . I was just tired. I thought I loved my job so much, and I do, but I was tired. Once I realized that, everything . . . it was all harder. I didn’t want to let anyone know, because I didn’t want anyone to worry. I’m the leader; I can’t make the other members share my burdens just because I can’t bear them. They already have plenty of their own.”

“And me?” Taeyeon asked softly. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?” She wasn’t angry anymore, but she wanted to hear his reasons.

Jungsoo-oppa lowered his head again, as if in shame. His voice was small when he finally said, “I didn’t want you to think I was weak.” He glanced at her, and she saw that his eyes were teary. “I thought if I said anything to you, you would think that I was being stupid – that I couldn’t even handle my own career. That I was laughable. It’s a job I chose, and I shouldn’t be feeling like this. It is stupid, I know, but . . . I was so lonely, and I wanted to tell you, but I just – ” His voice broke, and he let out a sob that yanked Taeyeon’s heartstrings painfully. Seeing him like this . . . she could feel tears gathering in her own eyes, too.

“Sorry,” Jungsoo-oppa whispered, wiping his eyes quickly. “I’m sorry, Taeyeon. You didn’t need to see this. I shouldn’t – ”

“Listen,” Taeyeon ordered, and though she didn’t sound at all authoritative because she was on the verge of tears too, she was going to give him a piece of her mind.

“You’re ridiculous. Do you really think you’re weak just because you feel stressed and overwhelmed like any other human being?” She wiped furiously at her eyes, but it was no use; she really was beginning to cry. “Do you really think it makes you laughable to have vulnerabilities and open up about them? I’m here for you. I’m with you, oppa – I’ll always be with you. Don’t you dare think otherwise.”

The tears were streaming down her cheeks now, but she could see and hear that Jungsoo-oppa was crying, too. With nothing left to say, Taeyeon opened her arms, and he sank into her embrace, his face buried in her neck and his head tucked under her chin. Taeyeon could feel his body shaking with the force of his sobs – or was that her? Or both of them?

“I love you,” she whispered. “That won’t ever change, especially not because of this.”

He didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to; the way he relaxed in her arms, unraveling and letting himself be at his most vulnerable in front of her, was more than enough response for her to know that he understood.

~

They lay cuddled in the bed facing each other, Taeyeon’s face pressed snugly against Jungsoo-oppa’s chest. His arms were wrapped securely around her waist, and one of her hands was in his hair, idly toying with the dark brown locks. God, she thought as he rubbed her back in a soothing fashion, I love you.

“I love you,” Jungsoo-oppa murmured. She felt his lips press against the crown of her head. Suddenly craving his lips against hers – they hadn’t actually kissed the entire time she’d gotten to his apartment – Taeyeon tilted her chin upward and pressed her lips to his.

She meant it to be just a sweet, chaste kiss, to reassure herself and reassure him that everything was fine now, that everything was good now, but Jungsoo-oppa cupped a hand against the nape of her neck, brushing away strands of her hair, and deepened the kiss, turning it from just a press of lips to a slotting of his mouth against hers. He was almost insistent as his teeth closed gently around her lower lip, and suddenly, Taeyeon felt heat pool in her stomach. Involuntarily, she let out a breathy gasp.

She felt his tongue slide across the seam of her lips, his request obvious. Her temperature rising by the second and her veins thrumming in excitement, Taeyeon had no reason to refuse, and every reason to accept. She parted her lips to give him entry and felt the hot, wet muscle of his tongue sweep the inside of her mouth. No crevice was left untouched, and Taeyeon moaned, fisting her hands in Jungsoo-oppa’s shirt.

He broke the kiss but remained so close that their noses were practically touching. Taeyeon could feel his breath fanning against her face, and she pressed her thighs lightly together in an effort to quench the rising heat between them. “Oppa,” she whispered, her mind fogging over with desire.

The word seemed to set something off inside of him. With a soft, throaty moan, Jungsoo-oppa maneuvered himself onto his back, and his arms wrapped around her waist meant that in doing so, he pulled Taeyeon up on top of him. She found her hands pressed against his chest, her legs open on either side of his waist, and her core . . . it had made contact with that through their clothes, that organ that was still soft but that she could feel beginning to harden. Taeyeon couldn’t help herself – she let out a full moan this time.

Looking down, she saw that Jungsoo-oppa’s eyes were half-lidded, pupils blown wide. “Taeyeon.” His voice sounded half-murmur, half-groan, and Taeyeon’s eyes involuntarily widened as he bucked slightly against her.

Wanting more, she leaned down and captured his lips. They parted almost instantaneously, like he had been waiting for this moment, and his hands snaked upward to land on her waist before the soft tug on fabric let Taeyeon know that he had fisted his fingers in the hem of her sweater. She broke their kiss to look him in the eyes, and his stare was questioning. May I?

Wordlessly, Taeyeon lifted her arms above her head, and getting the hint, Jungsoo-oppa sat up so that they were both upright, although her legs were still wrapped around his waist. He pulled her sweater up and over, exposing the simple white tank-top that she was wearing underneath.

Not intending to be the only one in a state of undress, Taeyeon pulled at his sweater too, and Jungsoo-oppa repeated her motions to help her slide it off of him as well. As she gingerly peeled the fabric from his body, an idea sprang to life in Taeyeon’s mind, and she had to suppress an anticipating smile. She dropped the sweater, wrapped her fingers around the hem of his shirt, and pulled upward, watching with rapture as each inch of skin was exposed to her eyes. Almost in a trance, she ran her fingers over the smooth flesh of his stomach. Against her, she could feel Jungsoo-oppa shiver.

That area between her thighs was all but throbbing now, but with her legs wrapped around Jungsoo-oppa’s waist, Taeyeon couldn’t press them together to relieve the sensation. Instead, she found herself grinding her clothed core against Jungsoo-oppa’s covered cock, gasping. As she rolled her hips gently into him, Jungsoo-oppa’s eyelids pressed together, his lips parting slightly. A groan escaped him, and Taeyeon could feel him hardening further. The knowledge that she was the one eliciting this reaction from him made her bite her lip in an attempt to control herself.

Feebly clinging to the remnants of her composure, Taeyeon couldn’t contain the demanding nature of her body language as she pulled at Jungsoo-oppa’s shirt, her desires obvious. He submitted without resistance, and she could feel his eyes burning into her as she removed the article of clothing.

Feeling almost pinned under Taeyeon’s intent stare, Leeteuk swallowed. Her gaze was hungry as it raked over his body, like she wanted to take all of him into herself and keep him there forever. Hazily, he thought that that wouldn’t be so bad, not at all. That if she wanted him to, he would willingly give himself to her without a moment’s hesitation.

Taeyeon met his gaze only briefly, taking note of his wide eyes, his lust-blown pupils, before her focus shifted lower; over his defined chest to the muscles rippling in his arms to his flat, packed stomach. Unconsciously, her tongue darted out, dragging over her bottom lip as she briefly let her eyes feast.

Tossing Jungsoo-oppa’s shirt somewhere off to the side, she placed her hands on his chest and gently pushed him down so he was laying on his back, his head on the pillow. Jungsoo-oppa followed her non-verbal commands, but she could feel his fingers tightening around her waist. His gaze still drank her in like she was his last drop of water in the midst of a desert, but she could see curiosity there too now.

Taeyeon lovingly, slowly, pulled Jungsoo-oppa’s hands from around her hips and lay them on the mattress. Never breaking eye contact with him, she crept down his body until her face hovered above the waistband of his jeans.

Realization flared. Jungsoo’s lips parted as another whimper escaped – Taeyeon’s intentions were obvious, and they had blood rushing to his cock just thinking about them. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to ignore the sensation of his hardening, trying to resist the urge to buck his hips and plead for her to hurry.

His body jerked as something too warm and too broad to be fingers closed over the zipper of his jeans. Cracking his eyelids open, he was met with a sight that had his head snapping back against the pillow and a desperate moan falling from his lips: Taeyeon, staring up at him salaciously, her full lips taking the zipper into her mouth and pulling it down. He closed his eyes for the thousandth time, but he couldn’t rid his mind of that dirty image, already fully ingrained into his memory.

The tent in his pants was unmistakable and rising. Taeyeon smirked, wrapping her fingers around the waistband of his pants. Probably realizing what she was trying to do, Jungsoo-oppa stirred and raised himself to his elbows. “Let me,” he said, considerate as usual, but his voice was thick and his gaze was clouded over with lust.

Taeyeon stopped him gently. “No, oppa.” Her voice was firm. “Tonight is all for you.”

Jungsoo could practically feel the endorphins secreted into his bloodstream and pumping through his system at her words. She loved him – she loved him, she wanted to satisfy him, she wanted to make him feel good, and no drug could be more addicting than that knowledge. He groaned, falling back onto the mattress. “Don’t just say things like that, Taeyeon.”

Her only response was a hum before she pulled, tugging his jeans down. Jungsoo dragged in a breath as he felt the waistband of his pants brush over his cock, but he managed not to make any more sound. Trying desperately to remain still and quiet, he fisted his hands in the bedsheet as Taeyeon tugged his jeans down over his thighs, then his knees, then his feet. There was a soft rustle of fabric as she dropped the article of clothing onto the ground in front of the bed. He heard her inhale slowly and looked up at her to find her staring at the mortifyingly obvious tent pressing up against the skin-tight fabric of his boxers. (And he was certain that there was a wet spot from his pre-cum.) A part of him expected her to tease, but she didn’t say anything. Somehow, that made him more on edge.

And it felt euphoric.

Jungsoo shuddered lightly as he felt Taeyeon’s fingers around the fabric of his underwear, peeling it off. He sighed with relief at the release of pressure as his cock was freed from the constraints of the material.

Taeyeon stared down at her boyfriend, drinking in the sight of him in all his glory. He looked ethereal and inhuman; his head thrown back in the pillow, his long neck arching beautifully, to his muscled shoulders, long and strong arms, his rippling abdominals, and his toned legs. But what most drew her eye at the moment was the deep V of his hips tapering down to his cock, the tip glistening with gathering wetness.

He was well on his way to being fully hard, she noted appreciatively.

Jungsoo-oppa had stored pent-up tension inside him for several days on end by now, and it was Taeyeon’s intention to make sure he was fully relieved of it by the end of their activities. Locking her eyes on his face, she wrapped her fingers around the base of his cock. The organ was warm and instantly hardened further at her touch. His lips parted in a silent groan, his eyes squeezed shut as he basked in the sensation of her hand on him. And when she swiped her thumb over the head, his hips bucked. “Taeyeon.” His voice was breathless, almost strangled, and all but moaning.

“You can’t get so excited yet, oppa.” Taeyeon was practically purring, like a satisfied cat that had gotten exactly what she wanted – which, Jungsoo thought, gritting his teeth – she probably had. Gazing up at her through strained eyes, it wasn’t until that moment that it dawned on him that he was completely naked, on full display for her gaze, and she was still clothed, still in a tank top, a bra, jeans, and underwear. Jungsoo growled, low and soft. He wanted to rip her clothes off and drink in the sight of her body like she was with him, hold her down and push his cock inside her, slowly and sensually so she felt every –

She moved back up and stole his attention again, flattening her hands gingerly on his chest, supporting most of her weight on her legs placed on either side of his waist. Even through her clothes, Jungsoo could feel heat radiating from her core, searing and impossible to ignore. Desperate, his cock pulsing, he rolled his hips upward in an attempt to make contact, but she let out a disapproving tsk-tsk and moved away, removing her right leg from its perch and putting it next to her left so that she was no longer straddling him.

“Oppa.” Her voice was chiding, casual and innocent, like she wasn’t in the middle of teasing him to the brink of his sanity. A guttural moan escaped Jungsoo as she chastised, “If you won’t control yourself, I’ll stop.” She stroked his head softly, long, slender fingers sifting through his hair. The soothing sensation of petting on his scalp was a sharp contrast to the throbbing in his cock, and Jungsoo was sure that if she didn’t relieve him soon, he’d be in pain from being so hard.

“I won’t indulge a spoiled brat,” Taeyeon continued. “Understand?” Almost idly, she traced an index finger down the length of his cock and, powerless to resist, Jungsoo hissed out in agreement. He didn’t think he could speak for the arousal overflowing in his stomach, between his legs, engulfing his entire body, but Taeyeon wasn’t satisfied. Her finger came to rest on the very head of his cock, directly on the slit. “Pardon?”

The groan that fell from his lips sounded desperate, even to himself. “Yes.”

“Good boy.” The words had Jungsoo’s toes curling, his fingers gripping at the bedsheets, almost in agony. Fuck. It wasn’t often that he was submissive in bed, but somehow Taeyeon had caught on quickly just how it made him feel when he was. She shifted on the mattress, and Jungsoo heard the rustle of fabric again. He peered through his lashes to see Taeyeon pulling off her jeans and panties, both at the same time. His gaze fell to her center, hidden in shadow.

Her lower half now naked, Taeyeon placed her right leg back into its previous position on the side of his waist so she was again hovering over him. Even without touching, Jungsoo could tell that she was absolutely soaked.

The touch of her damp folds against the tip of his cock almost felt like an electric shock, as sensitive as she had made him. Jungsoo gasped, his hands instinctively gripping Taeyeon’s waist, but she wasn’t finished. She dragged herself backward a few centimeters, resulting in the top half of the head of his cock tracing the slit of her core, her juices gathering on his tip. A whimper tumbled past Jungsoo’s lips.

“Are you liking that?” Taeyeon’s voice was low, sultry, and fucking addictive, and Jungsoo couldn’t do anything in reply except tighten his grip on her hips, frantic and needy.

“Do you want more?”

“Yes,” he groaned. “Yes.” He was so hard, so desperate, that he was sure he would lose his mind if she didn’t lower herself onto him. Barely managing to focus on her face, Jungsoo found it all too easy to resort to begging when her sweet core was so close, so warm and so inviting. “Please, Taeyeon. More. I need . . . I need it . . .”

“Need more what? I can’t give you anything if I don’t understand what you mean, oppa.”

How could she keep her voice so casual while she was all but flashing her entrance in front of him? Jungsoo tried to reply, to say something, but somehow, the need to have her had become so great that he couldn’t find a way to express it in words.

At his silence, Taeyeon sighed disappointedly and pulled his hands from her waist. Jungsoo’s eyes popped open in shock at her sudden coldness; she couldn’t be –

She is, he realized when she began to shift away from him, reaching for her jeans and panties in a crumpled heap of fabric at the corner of the bed.

“No,” he gasped. “No, wait. Wait a minute.”

He really did sound needy, frantic, pitiful. The knowledge that he had even reached this state of desperation – it might sound strange, but tonight, it aroused Jungsoo even more.

So he gripped her hips before she could move off of him. Taeyeon’s eyes, which had been directed toward her clothes, returned to him, but she didn’t look surprised at all. It was obvious that she knew he would hold on to her, do anything to keep her from stopping. And really, Jungsoo didn’t care. He was past the point of worrying about keeping his pride intact.

“Let me fuck you,” he moaned desperately. Her gaze was unreadable as she looked down at him, and the coldness in her eyes juxtaposed with the blazing heat of her body, it somehow egged him on. “Oh, God, please, just let me fuck you. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t – ”

She lowered herself onto him, guiding his cock into her depths, and Jungsoo threw his head back into the pillow as he felt her warm, wet walls settling around the throbbing organ, taking him in like a second layer of skin. She felt so good, so tight and inviting and soft, and he was half afraid that he would come even before she started moving.

Taeyeon rolled her hips, and Jungsoo dug his nails into the delicate flesh under his hands, all sense of his dignity lost and no longer mattering. Groans fell from his lips as she fucked herself on his cock, her insides molding deliciously around him, hot, slick, silky soft. She felt so good. Too good.

A moan from Taeyeon had Jungsoo peering up at her, wanting to catch a glimpse of her in the midst of her pleasure – wanting to see the ecstasy that he was giving to her. The sight his eyes fell upon was lovely, ethereal. Taeyeon’s face was flushed, her long, dark hair spilling around her cheeks and down her pale neck and shoulders. Her full lips were parted in a blissful gasp, her eyes closed as if drowning herself in sensation. A strap of her white tank top had fallen down her shoulder, revealing just the tiniest hint of her bra to his eyes.

Practically on instinct, Jungsoo slipped his hands under the flimsy material of her tank top, his fingers creeping over the warm, smooth flesh of her stomach. She was damp with sweat, he realized; they were both damp with sweat, and the thought egged him on. Reaching her chest, Jungsoo hooked his fingers over the material of her bra and pulled it down, watching as her breasts plumped forward against the thin fabric of her shirt.

Without hesitation, he took her breasts in his hands and kneaded them, swiping his thumbs over her rapidly hardening nipples. He just had time to think that the gasp Taeyeon let out at that was like music to his ears before his attention was stolen by the slight twist of her hips. His vision seemed to go out of focus as he moaned at the sudden and intense burst of pleasure.

Unable to control himself any longer despite his earlier resolution to remain still, Jungsoo bucked his hips upward, meeting Taeyeon’s motions halfway. She was already so wet, and he slid out of and thrust back into her easily, the end of his cock pressed against something velvety deep inside her. The result was a burst of satisfaction that had white flaring behind his eyelids. Above him, Taeyeon moaned, and with some degree of smugness, Jungsoo could feel her beginning to tremble against him. Her movements were becoming less calculated and more frantic, aimed at chasing after her completion rather than keeping him in line, and the thought that it was him that was slowly cracking her composure, it sent electric bolts through his veins.

Jungsoo pounded into her harder, hands coming back up to cup her breasts. His fingers circled, touched, and flicked her nipples through the fabric of her shirt, and every whine, every gasp, every sound that his motions elicited from her spurred him onward.

Through his foggy haze of arousal, looking up at Taeyeon as she rode him, her head thrown back and her thighs flexing around him and her mouth gasping for air, it struck Jungsoo again just how sublime she looked. She was ethereal – easily the most beautiful creature that he had ever laid eyes on, and she was willingly giving herself to him, willingly taking him into her folds.

Groaning, his cock swelling, Jungsoo thrust his hips upward, aiming for that spot again while his right hand left Taeyeon’s breast and descended between her legs to thumb her soaked clit.

She leaned, or more aptly, fell, forward towards him so their noses were nearly touching, and Jungsoo could feel her tightening around him as her climax grew ever closer. Encouraged by her raw, primal reaction and wanting fiercely to see her find her end, he maneuvered his hand so he could roll her swollen nub between his thumb and forefinger gently.

Taeyeon all but devoured his lips with her own, her nails digging into the skin of his shoulders as she shook and moaned through their kiss. Jungsoo noticed the tensing of her muscles, the trembling of her body, the intensity of her cries of pleasure, and knew what was coming a second before it happened.

But fuck, did it feel good anyway when it did. Her walls contracted around him almost violently, milking him for all he was worth, and Jungsoo had to break their kiss for the rapturous surge that told him that his orgasm was just barely hovering out of his reach. As Taeyeon rode out her climax, he continued to thrust frantically into her, his entire being focused on reaching that high point that would bring him soaring to heaven, filling her –

Taeyeon reconnected their lips softly, stroking his sweat-damp hair from his face with deft, delicate fingers. Her voice was gentle, but somehow through the roaring in his ears, Jungsoo heard her with perfect clarity as she whispered those three words.

“Come for me.”

Helpless to do anything but obey, Jungsoo felt his entire body shuddering beneath her warm, reassuring weight as he found his completion, spilling inside Taeyeon’s searing heat. The cry of bliss that ripped through the night air was desperate and satisfied and pleading all at once, and it wasn’t until he began to come down from his high, trembling and clinging to Taeyeon for dear life, that Jungsoo realized it was his own wail of pleasure that had permeated his hearing.

They remained still for a moment as they caught their breath, their panting loud and clear against the renewed peace of the late hour. Her breathing still heavy, Taeyeon shifted off of Jungsoo-oppa. She sighed a little at the loss of him inside her, but overall, her body was tingling with the pleasant aftershocks of orgasm, the area between her thighs was wet and warm with both their essence, and she felt more than satisfied.

Glancing down at her boyfriend, she couldn’t help but smile; his eyes had fluttered closed, traces of the blissed-out expression from his orgasm still noticeable on his angelic visage. Burrowing next to him and pulling the blanket over their naked bodies, Taeyeon propped herself onto her elbows and ran her index finger idly over the seam of his lips, still swollen from their earlier kiss. At her touch, Jungsoo-oppa opened his eyes, his expression soft.

“I love you.” He still sounded the slightest bit breathless, but nothing could possibly have been more sincere, she was sure. She felt affection swell in her chest as he turned on his side towards her and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead. Taeyeon hummed, appreciating the sensation of his soft lips against her skin. “I love you too.” I mean it. She didn’t know how she could express the complete honesty of her words – she didn’t know what she could do to make him understand just how much he meant to her. ‘I love you’ was such a common phrase, and before Jungsoo-oppa, it had never been one that elicited any sort of appropriately moving feelings in her. With him, though, she understood just how special ‘I love you’ could be – and yet, it still didn’t feel like enough to let him know the depth of her feelings toward him.

Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, Taeyeon saw that it was nearly 12:30 in the morning. There was no time to replace the sheets, but she could at least try to prevent them from getting too dirty. Squishing Jungsoo-oppa’s face gently between her hands, she kissed the tip of his nose, more for her own pleasure than as any display of affection. It just satisfied her to be able to do these little things with him. “I’m going to take a shower. You can come if you want, to save time.”

He smiled sheepishly and swiped a hand across his forehead, still glistening with sweat from their bedroom activities. “Now that you mention it, that would be prudent,” he admitted, reaching up and brushing a strand of her hair away from her eyes.

Taeyeon slid out of the bed, her eyes on Jungsoo-oppa’s closet into which she had carelessly thrown her clothes earlier. A T-shirt and shorts should be good enough to change into for bed, she thought as her two feet touched down on the floor, wincing a little bit to feel some of the essence that Jungsoo-oppa had emptied inside her earlier sliding down her naked thighs. They’d have to do some cleaning tomorrow, she was sure.

“Taeyeon.”

That was Jungsoo-oppa. She stopped and glanced back at him to see that he had sat up in the bed and was looking at her. But he wasn’t meeting her eyes. He wasn’t even looking over her body, clothed only in a flimsy tank top and nothing else, with that glazed look of wonder that she often saw on his face. No, he was staring straight at the place between her legs, where his seed was dripping from inside her, and his dark brown eyes looked almost black. She couldn’t tell if it was lust or just a trick of the light, but then he suddenly stood in all his unclothed glory, grabbing her forearm insistently, although nowhere enough to hurt.

The change in demeanor, from tender and almost awed to assertive and firm, would have had Taeyeon reeling in surprise when they first began to engage in the more physical aspects of a romantic relationship, but by now, she was used to it.

No, it was more than that; if she was going to reveal a secret guilty pleasure, it made her temperature spike sharply, seeing the sudden and overwhelming hunger in Jungsoo-oppa’s eyes as he pulled her back onto the bed with him. Heat stirred in her core again.

It was belied by his polite demeanor and his easy humor in public eye, but truthfully, Jungsoo-oppa was quite the freak.

He maneuvered them so that he was sitting on the bed and she was straddling him. Taeyeon could feel his cock, pressed lightly against her thigh and stomach, starting to harden once more as he unabashedly stared between her legs. She was caught between surprise at how blatant he was being and a strange sense of bashfulness under his intense gaze.

He leaned forward, his forehead settling into the crook between her neck and shoulder, his breath fanning against her collarbone. The guttural moan that fell from his lips and the further hardening of his organ had Taeyeon snaking her hands around his neck and whimpering lightly. She had only orgasmed minutes ago, but her core was already pulsing with desire again.

“God,” Jungsoo-oppa all but snarled, his tongue darting out to lap at the delicate skin at the base of her throat before sinking his teeth in, enough to make her jolt deliciously but not enough to draw any blood. “You look so beautiful with my cum dripping out of you.”

The tender compliment at the beginning of his sentence didn’t match the crude words at the end, but she found that it was part of his appeal at the moment, and the loving, almost reverent manner of his thumb pressing gently around her left nipple through the material of her shirt, had Taeyeon gasping. She wanted him inside her. Again. Whimpering, she rolled her hips against his and was rewarded with a hiss from her boyfriend as the tip of his cock made the barest contact with her folds.

Jungsoo-oppa pulled his face away from her neck, looking at her with searing eyes. Taeyeon gasped in shock at his zeal as he practically tore off her tank top and bra before she had time to react, his gaze devouring the sight of her. She noticed his tongue swiping across his bottom lip as he studied her naked body, and the desire that pulsed through her veins at the sight had her digging her fingers into his skin. She bucked against Jungsoo-oppa, trying to relieve the pulsing between her legs, but his hand coming down harshly on her rear end stopped her short. Stinging pain swelled against her skin, throbbing and hot, but it only added to her lust. She whimpered, wanting nothing more than to soothe her desperation, but his warning was more than clear. Don’t.

So she obeyed, no matter how much her body was screaming at her to do otherwise.

That didn’t stop her from pleading, though. “Oppa,” Taeyeon whined. “Please.”

“Please what?” Jungsoo-oppa’s voice was nothing if not casual, but Taeyeon realized what he was going for anyway. Her eyes widened.

“I can’t give you anything if I don’t understand what you mean, baby,” Jungsoo-oppa purred, repeating her earlier phrase when she was teasing him, word for word. And if she was being honest, Taeyeon loved it. She loved being on top of him, riding his cock, teasing him and making him moan desperately, but she also loved it when he was assertive like this, turning her behavior back onto her and reducing her to the moaning mess.

Her insides throbbed, begging her to do something, anything, but Taeyeon didn’t dare move her hips for the possibility of what Jungsoo-oppa might do next if she disobeyed his order. Instead, she merely fought to keep herself still as he trailed his fingers almost thoughtfully along her inner thigh, closer and closer to her core. His thumb against her clit had her gasping and burying her face in the crook of his neck.

“Oh God,” she whispered. “Oh God, oppa, please.” She was repeating the word ‘please’ like a mantra, but that was the only word that could accurately convey how she felt at the moment. Please. Please.

Jungsoo-oppa stroked her hair softly, a tender look in his eyes. “On your hands and knees, baby.”

Wordlessly, already knowing how this game worked, Taeyeon practically scrambled to obey, climbing off of her boyfriend’s lap and settling on all fours on the mattress. All sense of shame was gone, completely engulfed by her need to feel him inside her. Her heart was pounding along with the insistent throbbing at her core, impossible to ignore, and her mind was thrumming with the possibilities as she felt the mattress shift with Jungsoo-oppa’s movement. He was innovative and experimental; he always had so many great ideas, so many ways to work her up. Would he –

Her mind went blank as he nudged her legs wider apart to settle between them and she felt the very tip of his cock against her soaked folds. She twitched, wanting nothing more than for him to press forward into her, wanting nothing more than to shift backwards into him so he was inside her, but she didn’t dare. Behind, Jungsoo-oppa groaned, hands coming around to grip her waist tightly. She could feel the heat of his body against the back of her thighs.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “You’re absolutely soaked already. Do you want me inside you that badly?”

Taeyeon couldn’t respond. Too swept up in the sensations raging through her body, the endorphins pumping through her blood, she dug her fingers into the bedsheet as Jungsoo-oppa traced a finger up her slit, just barely brushing against her swollen, throbbing nub. She whimpered, her wetness amplifying the intensity of the momentary pleasure that laced through her body like an electric shock. “Oppa,” she whined. “I need you.”

He chuckled, but the sound was hoarse and throaty with desire, and Taeyeon was reminded that he was probably as desperate to be inside her as she was to have him inside her and just controlling himself for the sake of their show.

It was all a delicious game, one she loved to play.

“You have me,” Jungsoo-oppa said, his voice husky as he lovingly tracing a warm hand over her spine. “Now and forever. I’ll never leave your side.”

His feigning ignorance was maddening enough, but somehow, the fact that his words were so sweet and caring in this situation made Taeyeon even more desperate. She moaned, wriggling her hips in an attempt to ease the aching desire between her legs. It didn’t work. “Not like that,” she hissed, the sharpness of her voice rising with her frustration. “Inside me. I need you inside me, now.”

Of course he wasn’t going to give her anything with her demanding outburst, but Taeyeon couldn’t help herself in that moment. She didn’t care, couldn’t care how he reacted just then, her rationale completely overcome by a haze of need, lust, and hormones. Now that she had exploded once and released some tension, though, Taeyeon felt the barest hint of delicious trepidation creep into her. Jungsoo-oppa wouldn’t let that burst go without conseque –

His force of his thrust jerked her body forward, and Taeyeon shrieked in both surprise and pleasure, completely and utterly caught off guard by the move. She couldn’t stop to evaluate it, though, not when Jungsoo-oppa’s hips pulled back and snapped forward again, driving him into her. His cock into her dripping channel. With a high-pitched cry, she fell onto her elbows, raising her rear end higher into the air to grant him a better angle. His pace swiftly increased until he was pounding absolutely ruthlessly, slamming in and out of her and rocking her body with each movement.

“Like this? Is this what you wanted, baby?” Jungsoo-oppa cooed between his harsh thrusts. “To be bent over and fucked until you can’t speak?” A particularly forceful snap of his hips had Taeyeon moaning, her toes curling as she buried her face in her hands in an attempt to smother the cries being ripped from her. Behind, Jungsoo-oppa groaned as he pulled out and buried his cock inside her again in one swift, practiced movement. His tip pressed against that spot deep inside her, and Taeyeon saw stars. She cried out, barely aware of what was happening around her, the world narrowing entirely down to no one but herself and Jungsoo-oppa, his cock thrusting rhythmically in and out of her. The pleasure was a force as unstoppable as gravity, ripping through her body and completely dashing any logic.

The sensation of a hand in her hair, gently sifting through strands of her hair and stroking her scalp, made Taeyeon start. It was a pleasing feeling, no doubt, but a kind of pleasing that was so completely different from the kind that his hips and his cock were eliciting. The contrast was so stark and sharp that it confused her, forcing her brain to focus on both kinds at the same time. It was a combination that was overwhelming and just toeing the line of being too much.

“You look so needy and desperate for my cock,” Jungsoo-oppa breathed, his voice rough and guttural, throaty with pleasure and with the physical exertion of their current activity. “Such a little slut.”

Taeyeon moaned. That was all she could do, moan, as his length pumped in and out of her, filling, stretching, driving her to the edge of insanity. The sound of skin slapping against skin only faintly registered in her mind as she whimpered into the mattress, still not over her shock at the force with which Jungsoo-oppa was thrusting into her. She dimly, faintly thought that for someone who’d looked so tired and wan not even an hour ago, he was absolutely vigorous. Then even that notion was gone, replaced by white nothingness as he reached forward and under and swiped his index finger harshly over her right nipple in perfect time with a particularly well-placed snap of his hips.

Taeyeon heard herself shriek.

“You scream like you want the whole world to know what we’re up to,” Jungsoo-oppa commented breathily, in between heavy panting. His fingers traced up and down her sides as he thrusted sharply, sending currents of satisfaction through her veins. “Is that what you want? For everyone to know how well I fuck you?”

The question was likely rhetorical, but Taeyeon shook her head anyway – as much as she could through the cloud of pleasure fogging her brain. Some days the answer might have been yes, but today she wanted the privacy, the intimacy, of having Jungsoo-oppa all to herself. That didn’t entail other people knowing about their bedroom activities, no matter how much she believed (and was secretly proud) that he was the most thorough, most satisfying lover she had ever had.

“No?” Jungsoo-oppa questioned, and then his hand came down hard on her rear, as sharp as an electric shock. Taeyeon sunk her teeth into the skin of her hand, fisted on the mattress, as stinging pain laced over her flesh, swelling and throbbing deliciously and complementing Jungsoo-oppa’s thrusts beautifully.

“Then what do you want, baby?” he purred.

Suddenly, right then and there, bent over on the bed and being mercilessly pounded into the sheets, Taeyeon saw an entire future, and entire lifetime, stretch out before her eyes. Walking out in public together, being able to appear on TV shows without denying and laughing off any rumors about them. Two rings. A banquet hall, a groom suit, a wedding dress. Jungsoo-oppa standing in front of her, taking her hands, kissing her. A shared home with a beautiful view of the sunrise and sunset. Waking up every day to the sight of Jungsoo-oppa, asleep next to her. Two children, a girl with Jungsoo-oppa’s eyes and her nose, and a boy with her mouth and Jungsoo-oppa’s sleekly angular features.

“You,” Taeyeon gasped. “I want you.”

His hips stuttered. All movement stilled, and she whined in protest at the absence of his heaviness within her, but Jungsoo-oppa didn’t seem to notice. “Say that again,” he whispered.

“I want you.”

A raw moan fell from his lips, hot and frantic, needy and desperate. Pressing a kiss to her shoulder, he hooked an arm around her waist, turning her over onto her back and pushing her onto the bed. His gaze was a tangled, heated mix of lust and wonder, like he was seeing her underneath him again for the first time.

Suddenly overwhelmed with a powerful, consuming wave of affection, Taeyeon looped her arms around his neck and pulled him down into an insistent kiss. He more than returned her ardor, lips against lips, tongue against tongue, and as they kissed, he gently pushed her legs apart, positioned himself between them and thrusting into her once more; deep and rough, forceful and demanding. Taeyeon threw back her head, moaning aloud, and Jungsoo-oppa focused on her neck and jawline, kissing, nipping, and sucking, his hips still rolling diligently the entire time.

“Oppa,” she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut as tears filled them from the depth with which he penetrated her. Her body was rocking, swept up in the force with which he made love to her, and it was all she could do to wrap her legs around him, pushing him deeper inside, angling him perfectly so that each deep, rough thrust connected to that spot inside her that had her crying into the night.

“Look at me, baby,” Jungsoo-oppa demanded, his fingers sweeping across her forehead, gently brushing stray locks of her hair behind her ears. Doing as she was told, Taeyeon fought against instinct and forced her eyes open. The sight that greeted her was incredibly attractive. His eyes were half-lidded in bliss yet seeing only her, strands of hair damp with sweat plastered around his forehead, his lips parted in a silent moan. His gaze never left hers, even as his right hand maneuvered gingerly between their bodies and his fingers pressed, rolled, and fondled her clit. The pad of his thumb ran over the throbbing nub gently.

Her release crashed over her in mind-shattering waves, and, powerless to resist, Taeyeon clung to Jungsoo-oppa for dear life, burying her face in the crook of his neck to muffle her cry. Despite the overload of sensation arcing through her nerves like electricity, she heard his desperate groan as her walls clenched around him, his hips still rocking against hers as he chased his own high. Wanting to help, she waited, whimpering and gasping, for her orgasm to subside, before purposely tightening her inner muscles and squeezing down on his twitching cock.

And that was all it took. Crying out into the night, Jungsoo-oppa came explosively inside her, his face twisting with the intensity of his pleasure. Taeyeon couldn’t help marveling at what a beautiful sight it was. Rolling her hips to encourage him, she stroked his scalp, cooing into his ear as he came and reveling in the way that he shuddered at her touch.

His seed filled her, coating her insides and making her tremble, and as crude as such a thing might sound, in that moment, it was beautiful.

He collapsed on top of her, the previously taut muscles in his body going lax, and for a few seconds the only sound that could be heard was their panting as they caught their breath. Then Jungsoo-oppa moved, pressing his lips to the side of her neck in a gesture of affection. With a smile, Taeyeon playfully nipped his earlobe in response. She unwrapped her legs from around his waist, letting them rest limply on the bed, sapped of all her energy.

Jungsoo-oppa rolled off her and onto the mattress at her side, close enough for their shoulders to be pressed against each other’s. For her part, Taeyeon remained immobile for a minute, taking a second to be grateful for the fact that their earlier argument hadn’t ended badly – it’s ending was quite wonderful, actually, if the warm stickiness between her thighs and the satisfying tingling in her body were any indication.

Smiling at the thought, she sat up and pulled the blankets crumpled at the corner of the bed over both of them before settling down into the mattress, facing Jungsoo-oppa. It was only as she stilled, having found a comfortable position, that she saw that he was gazing at her. His expression was almost awed.

“Why the stare?” she asked, curious to know why he was looking at her so reverently. It wasn’t a stare that he hadn’t directed at her before, but, she realized, it was her first time asking him directly.

Jungsoo-oppa started as if brought out of a trance. He blinked once, then twice, before his eyes focused on her. A soft smile lit up his face, making him look twice as angelic. “It’s just,” he said, wrapping an arm around the small of her back and pulling her close so that their bodies slotted together, “sometimes I have trouble processing it.”

“Processing what?”

“That you’re . . . you. That you’re here with me.”

Feeling her heart squirm, Taeyeon cupped his face in her hand, running her thumbs across the soft skin under his right eye. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” she assured him.

“Really?” His voice was small, uncertain, hopeful. It made her want to cry, but she wasn’t going to ruin this moment.

“Really.” Taeyeon scooted closer so their noses were nearly touching. “I’ve never been surer of anything.”

She went to pull her hand away, but Jungsoo-oppa caught it in his much larger one. Squeezing slightly, he brought the hand to his mouth and began to press gentle, open-mouthed kisses to her fingers. Taeyeon watched him, her chest feeling tight and painful, but somehow, it wasn’t at all in a bad way. It was more like her love for him was overflowing, too much and too potent to be trapped inside just one body.

Really, she had never loved anyone as much as she loved him.

Jungsoo-oppa finished peppering her hand with kisses, but instead of releasing her, he intertwined their fingers and clutching fiercely as if he never intended to let go.

“I love you,” he said. It was quiet, almost a murmur, but the fervor behind those words could have lit up the entire world. “It’s such a commonly used phrase, but I do. I love you.” He kissed her on the lips, chaste and sweet and tender. “And I’m sorry. I’ll be better. I’ll be a better man to you, Taeyeon. I promise.”

“Don’t try to be perfect,” Taeyeon murmured, leaning into him and closing her eyes in contentment. “We’re both human; we’ll have disagreements. But let’s not let those disagreements damage us. Okay?”

For a moment there was silence except for the sound of their soft breaths. Curious, Taeyeon couldn’t wait more than a few seconds before opening her eyes, wondering why he wasn’t responding. When she saw why, the earlier wetness that had been drying from around her eyelashes began to dampen again.

Tears were trickling silently down Jungsoo-oppa’s face, trailing over his nose, his mouth, his cheekbones. He was staring at her like she was the only thing that had ever existed in the universe – the only thing that would ever exist in the universe. “Okay,” he repeated, his voice whispery and broken.  

Forcing herself to smile, Taeyeon leaned in and kissed him softly again. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her against him, and it reminded her a little bit of a child in need of comfort.

Taeyeon blinked back her tears. If that was the case, she would be more than happy to be there to give him that comfort, forever. Burying her head underneath his chin, she closed her eyes, and for one of the few times in her life, her mind wasn’t racing. It was emptied, completely stagnant, and completely content. For some time, a time she didn’t bother trying to keep track of, the two of them just lay there silently, basking in the comfort of each other.

At last Taeyeon stirred, gently loosening Jungsoo-oppa’s arms and sitting up. “Alright,” she said with a smile, “I need to shower. And I think you definitely want to join me.”

Jungsoo-oppa sat as well, swiping a hand through his ruffled hair. He looked better; his eyes were brighter, the lines of tension had completely vanished from his face, and his posture and body language were relaxed and satisfied. Good, Taeyeon thought fondly. He more than deserved some rest.

He smiled tenderly at her, flashing that famous dimple, and as usual, her heart melted.

“You’re right.”

#super junior smut #super junior scenarios #leeteuk scenarios #leeteuk smut #leeteuk #super junior #my writing

[mkraj98]

Blog #5: Review of Shakespeare’s Play As You Like It

           In my professional opinion, I believe that this production did stay true to the main plot and was absolutely successful with entertaining me and keeping my attention; however, there was a kiss that did not line up with the text, the wardrobe was extremely odd and contrasting, and the actors portrayal was different than I expected. I will first start with the aspect of the play that was not in Shakespeare’s original written piece. During, what I think, was Rosalind and Orlando’s second counseling session, the actors kissed each other when Rosalind was still dressed as Ganymede (a male). I have two things to say about this: 1) as an audience member, I saw not an inch of chemistry between them so the kissed seem forced and insincere and 2) this brings up a new homoerotic undertone that was not included in the text. The actors that played Rosalind and Orlando did not even seemed like they liked each other, let alone started to fall in love with each other. They seemed liked roommates that were acquaintances but still had to live together and talk because they can’t afford a place by themselves. Orlando barley looked into Rosalind’s eyes and even the way he spoke the poems he wrote about her he did not truly seem in love. That kiss was totally unexpected and like I said brings up another layer of queer theory. Orlando made his move on the male that Rosalind was disguised as, Ganymede, but it was not mentioned in the play. Orlando expressed homosexual feelings towards another male in the play, but it was not even hinted upon the text. He sort of just dismissed the kiss like he was acting like he was really kissing the true Rosalind, but based on the way he talked to her and his body language with her around, he clearly did not feel the same way to Rosalind as he did to Ganymede. Also, at the end their excessive kissing did not appear sincere, but just kept going for the time they needed to. It was just awkward to watch. Also, when Orlando discovered that Ganymede was truly Rosalind, it he did not see surprised or disappointed, but just content that he was getting married. I believe that this play was hinting at the fact that Orlando could have been bisexual, because he was okay with kissing Ganymede, but also content with marrying Rosalind.

           Moving on to the second aspect of this play that I found interesting enough to review, the costumes were not at all what I imagined. Right from the opening scene, Rosalind appeared wearing a black conservative dress with a fanny pack, while Celia wore a shorter, flowy florescent pink dress. I can understand if the production wanted to put Rosalind in a black dress to show her mourning of her father’s banishment, but why use such a huge contrast in costumes? In the text, it seemed like Celia and Rosalind were the same person with the same personality, but in the play it seemed like they were separated and not as close. The text made Celia appear like she was in love with Rosalind and did everything she could to keep her away from a guy, but in the production, it appeared like Celia was more of a spectator watching her cousin fall in love. Celia pulled Rosalind away from a conversation with Orlando in the production, yes, but it was not that desperate or urgent as in the text. In the text, she was actively pulling Rosalind away from conversations and talking about how close they were. In this play, the actor that played Celia just made it all a joke and funny, and even sat in the audience to watch and laugh at Rosalind. Once again, it seemed like the emotion and chemistry with the actors was not present. The directors got rid on this homosexual undertone, but added the kiss with Orlando and a male (as Orlando believed).

           Finally, my biggest interest in any play the idea of a female playing a male role, or a male playing a female role. In this play, Jaques was portrayed by an older female and Silvius by a younger female. Jaques as a female did not change the overall feeling of his character, because he had his own plot and story… and all she had to do was be melancholy. However, it was interesting to me how the production did not change Jaques into a more feminine character than Silvius, who was renamed Silvia. Not sure the reason behind that, but changing the character of Silvius to a female changed the entire jumbled situation and made it not make sense. Silvia wanted to marry Phoebe, but Phoebe wanted to marry Ganymede (Rosalind); however, in the play once Phoebe discovered that Ganymede was a female she decided to just marry Silvius. In this production, Phoebe found out that Ganymede was a female, but still married a female. So instead of turning to Silvius/Silvia because Ganymede was a female, she turned to her/him in the play because Rosalind was already taken. I understand that they did not want to end the play with four heterosexual couples because of the changing times, but I do not believe that was the best couple to accomplish this with. Perhaps Touchtone and Audrey would have been a better idea, so that the whole idea situation between Phoebe, Silvius/Silvia, and Ganymede/Rosalind was clearly like the true text Shakespeare wrote.

           My final review would be an 8/10 because the production did stay true to the main storyline and added some modern flares like the disco ball, the audience participation, and attempted to include a homosexual couple. On the other hand the production could have worked harder to stay true to the characters’ emotional output, the characters’ homosexual undertones, and did not further complicate an already confusing situation. But all and all, yes 8/10…. Also, keep in mind this is my first Shakespeare play ever seen live, so my standards might not be as high as those that have seen many, many of his plays performed.

[mimi-love-4ever]

Training

SasuSaku Month 2018 - Day 15: Training Rating: T A/N: This is a continuation of Day 8 (Flowers). Couldn’t resist. ;) Thank you for reading and I hope you like it! 

Day 8 (Flowers)

Day 14 (Wait For Me)

It had been a week since Tsunade had finally allowed Sakura to come back to work, having extended her leave for a couple more days. Thanks to Sasuke and his ever observant eyes watching her every wince of discomfort and small lack of appetite. She would have been upset if this had been any other situation, but she used her new free time to spend time with Sasuke and even the other boys. However, for some reason, Sakura started having bouts of insomnia and the little she did manage to sleep was plagued with nightmares. She was no stranger to nightmares. She had been in a war and seen countless of people die, some right under her hands, but after seeking a couple of counseling sessions she was able to cope with the horrors she saw. The last time she had a full-fledged nightmare was about a year ago, so when another one invaded her dreams, she was not prepared for it. The only thing she was thankful for was that Sasuke had not been around to hear her scream or see her rocking on her bed trying to forget the images.

Working long, and sometimes tedious, hours was a blessing in disguise for Sakura. Most of the time they left her so exhausted that she had no room to think or dream. She’d come home late at night, check on Sasuke - he’d moved back in with her - in the guest room and faceplant her bed. It wasn’t perfect, or entirely healthy, but it was a system that kept her moving forward. That is, until it didn’t work anymore.

After the fourth consecutive night of nightmares and insomnia, she’d had enough. She threw the sweat covered sheets away from her angrily and got dressed in a pair of leggings then threw on a light sweater over her tank top. She snatched a pack of kunai to wrap around her leg and an old pair of sneakers from her closet, and headed towards her window. Knowing full well she was sneaking out like a rebellious teenager - from her own apartment - as to not rouse Sasuke’s suspicion, made her feel the tiniest bit of guilt, but she wanted to be alone. Although she and Sasuke had grown impossibly close ever since he came back, there was still that fear that she’d do something that would somehow make him realize she was still that weak girl from all those years ago.

Once Sakura slipped outside quietly, she took to the roofs and ran to one of the far training grounds on the Northside of Konoha enclosed by a multitude of trees. It was secluded and gave her the privacy she wanted, not to mention the wooden posts placed strategically in various areas that offered her a source to vent her frustrations on. She sighed heavily, glanced at the waning moon wistfully, and began jogging around the field to warm-up. She ran mindlessly for a couple of laps before zeroing in on the wooden posts and hitting them in sequence. The harsh texture of the wood rubbed against her bare skin painfully since she didn’t have her gloves with her, but the sensations were welcomed. They distracted her.

Again and again she aimed her fists at the posts, each hit landing harder than the next. It was impossible to tell how long she kept at it, for her mind had finally wandered away from what kept her up at night, until one particular blow stung much more deeply than the rest. Sakura’s eyes refocused on the scene in front of her and winced as she looked at her bruised and bloody knuckles. Her heartbeat drummed quick against her chest and her breathing was labored. A small bead of sweat ran down her neck, letting her know just how hard she had been training. Not entirely satisfied, but in no mood to cause any real damage to herself, Sakura sat down on the grass and let herself fall on her back as she tried to calm down. The wind blew mercifully through the trees and the grounds, cooling the perspiration on her flushed skin.

“Stop being weak, Haruno,” she whispered to herself gazing at the stars. “They’re just nightmares, nothing more.”

She couldn’t help but wonder how Sasuke coped with his nightmares. She wouldn’t pretend that she hadn’t heard him once or twice, muttering countless I’m sorry’s and names of people long since passed, in his sleep when she’s gotten home from work. His episodes never lasted as long as hers and she wondered if he found a way to deal, or if he simply grew used to them, which was a really sad thought.

“I’ll need to inform Tsunade if you keep talking to yourself like that.”

Sakura shot up from the ground with a startled squeak and faced the direction where the voice had come from. Standing against the trunk of a tree, looking as calm as ever, was her dark-haired companion. His cool midnight orbs locked on her anxious jade eyes with such intensity, she felt a shiver run down her spine and all the way down to her toes. He was in nothing but sweatpants and a black t-shirt. The disarray of his hair was enough to suggest he had been sleeping not long ago.

“S-Sasuke,” she managed to say after a few moments of composing herself. “What are you doing here?”

He ignored her question, keeping her rooted to her spot with only his stare. “Midnight training?”

“Eh, yeah, something like that,” Sakura finally managed to answer.

“Hn.” Sasuke pushed away from the trunk, never breaking eye contact, and approached her slowly.

Sakura stayed rooted to her spot, watching his every step as he came closer to her. For a second she felt like her anxiety shot through the roof, but as he stopped right in front of her, a strange sense of serenity settled over her. Sasuke grabbed one of her still bleeding hands and frowned, inspecting the wounds.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Sakura,” he murmured softly as he started wiping away the blood with his shirt. A tight knot formed in her throat at the concern she could see shining in his eyes. She shook her head in response, finally breaking eye contact. “I see… How about a spar, then?”

“What?”

Sasuke smirked. “Spar with me, Sa-ku-ra.”

All thoughts flew out the window at the sight of his smirk, which seemed way more sensual than Sakura cared to admit. But she still enjoyed it.

“Fine, Sa-su-ke.”

She tugged her hand away from his and healed the wounds, threads of excitement filling her at the prospect of some training alone with her dear Sasuke. They both stepped closer to the middle of the training ground.

“Nothing fancy, just the basics,” Sasuke stated, sensing her low chakra levels.

He moved first without waiting for confirmation and went on the offensive. Just like when they trained together all those weeks ago, he tested her reflexes and defensive stances to get a better read of her fighting style. And just like before, her forms were powerful and well-developed. She had been the Godaime’s apprentice after all.

They circled each other, throwing a kick or punch here and there, testingly. Though they both kept their expressions neutral, as to not give anything away, on the inside they both felt an inescapable connection pulling them closer and closer until they had no choice but to collide. Sasuke felt a wave of desire burn through his being as he regarded the pink-haired kunoichi. The air crackled with electricity around them.

Sakura shot forward and engaged him in a series of well-aimed punches that would have knocked him out for sure if he let one land. The tables turned as he went on the defensive and Sakura wasted no time in keeping up. All the frustrations she had been keeping in burst forward and fueled her attacks, increasing in speed and voracity. It was enough to awaken his sharingan to keep him from falling under her attacks.

They spared against one another until they both collapsed on the ground, exhaustion weighing down their limbs. Sakura pulled Sasuke down to lay on his back next to her to regain their breathing. A calm silence settled between the two for a while as they stared up at the sky.

“Nightmares, right?” Sasuke spoke up after a while.

She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t lie to him. “Yes.”

“Does it happen often?” He asked.

“Not for a while now, honestly,” she replied, shrugging. “After the war, it happened every night, but I’ve learned to cope with the things I’ve seen. I guess it just never really goes away and sometimes I don’t have the ability to deal with them.”

“I’ve learned that sometimes it’s not about dealing with them,” Sasuke said turning his head to face her. Sakura turned to look at him too, curiously.

He raised his hand from the grass and caressed her cheek tenderly. The unexpected action caused a blush to tint her cheeks. He couldn’t help but smile slightly.

“Sometimes, you have to replace those nightmares with something else. Something more valuable…” Sasuke trailed off in a whisper, leaning towards her slowly.

Their lips met in the middle. A thousand butterflies exploded in her stomach and her heart sped up like a hummingbird’s wings as it filled up with her love for him. Her body moved on its own, scooting closer to him until there was no space in between them. Neither complained, reveling in the warmth of their bodies combined. Sasuke slid his hand from her cheek down to her smooth neck and further down to her waist. Sakura gasped into his mouth as he tentatively squeezed the small amount of flesh that been exposed with her sweater riding up. She felt her body come alive with his touch, and may the stars fall from the night sky and the sun dry up, she never wanted him to stop.

#ssm18 #ssm18d15 #sasusakumonth2018 #sasusakufanfic #prosasusaku

[shiroatlas]

Take A Break

Summary:  I was missing two scenes in season 7 so I took them and wrote them into one. Shiro thinking about Adam and visiting Keith at the hospital. Relationship: Shiro/Keith (can be read as platonic), talks about Shiro/Adam Word count: 1.1k Basically just a post season 7 drabble.  Read on AO3

What Shiro feels isn't quite emptiness. It's too present for that. It comes close, though. It's a numbness that somehow expands in his chest every time he tries to take a breath.

 This was easier to deal with right after the attack. Commands had to be given, there was so much work to do. After the speech, though…

 Nothing.

 People tell him to get some rest and take a break. They don't really know how hard those things are for him. When the days end and everything goes quiet. That's when his thoughts start to circle. For a long time now, he's been dealing with this by himself and it's probably what makes him realize more than anything that they're back on Earth.

 There are debriefs and counselling sessions, trauma intervention, psych evaluations. Every possible safety net for soldiers like him. The terms feel familiar and fitting. PTSD and survivor's guilt neatly packed into his little kit of traumata.

 But even though rationally Shiro can categorize and even digest these feelings, he can't really move past them, except when he's in the middle of a mission or piloting a ship. It becomes harder every day to just be himself.

 When he's not forced to function, he doesn't function at all.

 He tries to breathe again and the constriction in his chest is still present. Shiro lets out a quiet sigh and presses his knuckles against his sternum, pressing against this knot he's well aware he's only making up. He just can't stay here any longer.

 After slipping into his clothes, he rushes out of his room. He wanders for a while before he gives into the urge and heads to the hospital. It's officially past visiting hours, but not by much and the hospital personnel isn't very eager to push for rules when it comes to the people who saved their planet. Shiro still thanks them with a soft smile and a nod before he knocks gently on Keith's door. He only enters when he's asked to come in. Once he closes the door behind him and stands in the middle of the room, Shiro isn't entirely sure why he came here.

 "I… Am I bothering you?" he asks, suddenly nervous because he doesn't have an explanation why he came.

 "Not at all," Keith says and looks at him with curiosity. They know each other too well by now. Keith knows that something is off.

 Shiro tries to dissolve the awkwardness with a small smile and he sits down in one of the chairs next to Keith's bed. They haven't seen each other in almost a week. Shiro visited the paladins a couple of times, making sure they were all doing okay. But they were usually surrounded by friends and family and he didn't want to intrude.

 "You look better," he says now, taking in Keith's face. There are still a few cuts and bruises and the bandage around his head. But he doesn't look so fragile anymore.

 "I'm feeling better," Keith replies, still this questioning look on his face.

 "That's good."

 Shiro drops his gaze and stares at his own feet for a few moments. There is silence for a while until Keith breaks it. "Are you okay, Shiro?"

 It's so hard to answer that question. "I think so."

 "I missed you, you know?" There's no accusation in Keith's voice. But there is something. It makes Shiro look up.

 "I'm sorry," Shiro says. I thought you wanted to be with your mom.

 "I did," Keith admits and he pushes himself up so he's sitting up a little straighter. "But I was worried about you."

 "Worried?" Shiro asks, raising his eyebrows. "Why would you be worried about me?"

 "Because you weren't here. And I knew from the others that you weren't with them either. So I didn't know…" Keith stops short for a moment, dropping his gaze before he looks back up when he sorted through the words he's trying to say. "I don't like it when you're alone."

 It hits him hard. Because that's the core of it all, isn't it? Everyone coming home to their families and loved ones. All of them welcomed with open arms,  embraced.

 One again, they're quiet, but this time it's Shiro who breaks the silence. He doesn't even know where it's coming from. "It's ironic. And somehow typical for us. That he broke up with me because he didn't want me to risk my life. He told me that he wouldn't be waiting for me and I believed him when I left. But I still… I thought I could at least see him again. Reconcile. And I didn't think we'd get back together, but I wanted to tell him that I made it… I've never thought about the possibility that he wouldn't."

 Keith doesn't say anything immediately and Shiro is grateful. He didn't come for Keith to tell him that he's sorry even when there's no one to blame.

 "This will always hurt," Keith finally says. "I know that. But I think after everything – he would have been glad to see you again."

 Shiro has been thinking about what he would have wanted from Adam. At first he thought it was forgiveness, but that's not it. And maybe Keith has found his answer. Maybe he just wanted someone to be glad he made it home.

 "Thank you," he says. "That means a lot."

 It really does. Even when it makes Shiro feel even more out of touch with the rest of this whole planet. There is no place for him here. And somehow he thinks that had he been part of Voltron, he would have woken up in a hospital bed alone.

 The thought alone makes him feel bad. That he envies the people he cares about more than anything their families and loved ones. He stands up, ready to tell Keith that he wouldn't keep putting this on his plate when Keith looks up at him and swallows. "I'm glad you're home, Shiro. I'm glad we're back here together."

 Shiro exhales. Something is happening between them in this moment. It's like everything they've been through together culminates in this feeling that lingers between them. "I'm glad we're back here together too, Keith."

 "I'll get out of here tomorrow," Keith says and Shiro can tell he's trying to make his tone a little lighter. "How about we watch a movie and just hang out? We can order pizza. I'd die for pizza."

 The smile comes easy. "Sounds like a plan."

 Keith smiles and Shiro nods.

 Relax.

 Take a break.

 For the first time Shiro thinks he might have an idea how that works.

#voltron #vld s7 spoilers #shiro #sheith #shadam #missing scene #mine #my muse was yelling #I don't know #I just wanted this #maybe it's been done already

[lord-radish]

I'm collecting posts I made about the redhead girl stuff from last year for my counselling sessions, and it's been really eye opening for a couple reasons.

First, reliving the build-up has been really funny, because I see myself making assurances that I'm gonna be okay and I think to myself "this stupid motherfucker has no goddamn idea what's about to happen to him lmao". It's like schadenfreude, but for myself.

Second, before all of that stuff went down, I was already in a really shitty headspace. Like I had just been sick and isolated from my friends for weeks, I realised that I didn't like or trust my best friend and I was dealing with a lot of baggage regarding sobriety.

I was having dreams about breaking my sobriety, like weird, detailed, body horror dreams about scratching my arm and smelling blue vein cheese because all the veins in my arm turned blue. Or one where I had a tube in my arm that could shoot fire if I tipped alcohol in it, but I just splashed cider on my arm to no avail. It also came days after I broke my sobriety to try and cope with my mental health issues - I was already a massive wreck in so many respects, which no-one else knew about.

Like the most validating thing about revisiting it is that while the event itself and the fallout was incredibly distressing, I was already reaching a kind of emotional fever pitch. It was kind of like getting kicked in the stomach while I was down for the count. And this entire time, I know that my position on all of it has been very self-centred and I've understood that my former friends aren't bad people and that they were considering my feelings y'know. But 25 year old me was having the worst time of his life even before everything truly went sour, and I didn't remember that to this extent.

At the end of the day, it was an incredibly painful period of my life and I won't ever be going back to them, for right or wrong. But because of how big of a deal it ended up being to me, I can look back and laugh at how much I was struggling before the other shoe fully dropped, because this motherfucker has no goddamn idea about what's about to happen and that's hilarious. It's like watching that scene with the giant hand from Jackass 2, and they got Ehren to carry in a tray of soup.

#cw: body horror #cw: alcoholism

[woefullyunprepared]

The Doctor

I re-watched this episode recently. It’s episode 2.05 and written by A & E. I’m starting to realize I need to re-watch much of season 2 in hopes of gaining some understanding of the story, but for now, here are some thoughts.

First, it has to be said that Regina looks fantastic in this episode. In Storybrooke, she’s just … umph, in boots, a skirt, and the straining button of everlasting promise. She looks great as young queen Regina too.

It opens with Emma and crew entering the ransacked village where they find the only survivor - Hook, hiding under a pile of bodies. So Emma and Hook’s first meeting was not a meet cute. Everything about their relationship is just a bit off really - like a true love couple … but not. And this first meeting reflects that - Emma sees Hook as a fraud and a coward. We’ve seen other couples, Snow & Charming, Dorothy & Red, and even Emma & Regina in what could definitely be called a meet cute, but not Emma & Hook. It’s a shame that PR and viewers with a lot of internalized misogyny have made this relationship so popular, solely because they’re attractive, because it’s really overwhelmed the story and turned viewers off from looking deeper.

Regina visits Archie because she’s trying to stop using magic. Back in season 2 it did seem like the show was treating magic as an addiction, and it’s shown in this episode. It doesn’t seem like that “magic as addiction” idea continued through the seasons, although Rumple in season 7 did stop using the dagger for Belle’s sake.

During this scene with Archie, the gold ring with a green stone, which Regina seemed to sport on either hand in the early seasons and which looked remarkably like Snow’s engagement ring, is clearly seen on the ring finger of Regina’s left hand. Regina is also sporting the blouse that Emma borrowed. Honestly, the whole scene could play as a married woman in counseling to treat an addiction and heal her marriage and estranged family.

During their session, Archie notes that Regina couldn’t let go of Daniel, and tells her that if she can’t let go of the past it will continue to haunt her. Regina’s inability to let go is the catalyst for the 1st curse and the whole show, but we also know who else can’t let go - Emma. In Firebird 5.20 Cleo Fox tells Emma she’s holding on too tight; and of course the whole Dark Hook and Underworld arcs were driven by her inability to let go. It’s interesting that an episode dealing with Regina’s inability to let go is the episode in which Emma meets Hook. Hook = addiction, obsession?

I generally believe there’s a kind of framing “reality” layer to this story, similar to Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. So this would mean Henry going to Boston to find Emma, Emma meeting Regina, Emma crashing her car - are “real” in a sense, possibly along with various “real world” flashbacks. But … I’m now wondering if there’s ever any “reality” to anything we’ve seen. This is a fairy tale after all. The story is told in metaphors (and heavy mining of movie and TV tropes) and defines its own reality. Did Emma “really” meet Henry in Boston and crash her car while leaving town, plunging her into a coma and dream-like state?  Or is that too just another layer whose “truthiness” must be determined?

Is Regina’s backstory, not only the fairytale aspect, entirely Emma’s imagination? Is the Regina we see, unable to let go of the past, all Emma’s own story? Is Emma not able to let go of the past because of unresolved trauma, or because she’s dying and doesn’t want to let go of life?  (I wrote a post a few days ago where I wondered whether Emma is not just in a coma but dying.)

This episode is about Dr. Whale/Frankenstein, the mad scientist who wants to re-animate the dead. They make great use of the whole Mad Scientist trope throughout the episode, especially at the end. The phrase “The Doctor” could of course easily be the real world bleeding through if Emma’s in a coma. And re-animating the dead reminds me of organ donation - both for the donor, who will live on in a sense via her organs, and for the recipient, who gets a second chance at life.  Which side does Emma fall on - donor or recipient?

We even see Whale wandering through town with his severed arm on ice in a cooler.   Shouldn’t it say “human organ for transplant” on the other side?

In the FTL flashback Frankenstein is recruited, via Jefferson and Rumple, to re-animate Daniel, but fails. The failure was intentional, and Rumple tells Jefferson that he’s made his monster. He destroys Regina’s hopes for the resurrection of Daniel and a future together, and sends her on her dark path.

In Storybrooke, Whale does succeed in re-animating Daniel.  There’s a really fun scene shot in a B-horror movie style with flickering lights, where Regina finds Whale’s lab in disarray, and Whale missing an arm. I wish I could find a gif or video, it really is a nice homage to this trope.

This is more blood than we usually see … real world bleeding through again?

The re-animated Daniel, now a “monster”, begs Regina to let him go. “Just stop the pain.  Let me go.” and urges her to love again.  And Regina does let him go. Something Emma was unable to do with Hook in season 5.  

It’s the image of Daniel in his glass coffin, with his hands in the “mudra meditation position”, which prompted this re-watch.

This meditation position, called dhyana, is used “to bring you into deeper, more profound concentration. This gesture can also help bring you tranquility and inner peace.” Given the themes of this episode, this is really interesting. I even now wonder if Daniel was “real” in any way or completely symbolic. Does he represent Emma, lying in a coma, near death? If so, is it Emma whom Regina must let go of?

#ouat #2.05 #ouat speculation #operationout #swanqueen

[27dragons]

@tisfan wasn’t feeling inspired by this prompt, but I had an idea, so I stole the prompt and ran away with it, giggling madly. You can read it here or on AO3.

Prompt: I saw that you avcepted prompts and i had one in mind for winteriron. Person A and a group of friends own a haunted house.Person A works as one of the scarers.Person B comes to visit haunted house for fun. Person B hands up punching Person A when they make them jumpscare too hard. -- from @giftedofthealfheimr​ 

“This year’s haunted house is going to be the best ever,” Tony enthused.

Rhodey finished nailing a support beam into place as if he were entirely oblivious to Tony’s quivering excitement, the bastard. Finally, he turned to Tony with an ill-concealed smirk. “Is it?”

“It is,” Tony said. “Ask me why.”

Rhodey’s eyes narrowed, and Tony tried to project innocent delight. It wasn’t something he was very good at, but Rhodey was a sure thing, anyway, so he didn’t try very hard. Finally, Rhodey sighed. “Why is it going to be the best, Tones?”

“Oh, dear, you shouldn’t have done that,” said a hollow, ghostly voice.

Rhodey jumped and looked up at the speaker over his head. “What the hell--”

“Hell, indeed,” the voice said, and chuckled wickedly.

“Okay, now that’s just creepy,” Rhodey said, taking a not-so-surreptitious step back. “But you know, Tones, we’ve tried having tailored ghost voices in rooms before, but it doesn’t work that well once everything’s dark and the usual spooky soundtrack is playing. It’s hard to discern--”

Tony waved it away. “This isn’t a voice actor,” he explained. “Rhodey, meet Just Another Vanishing Insane Spectre, or JARVIS.”

“Tony. Did you make an AI specifically to scare people? Seriously?”

“Actually,” Tony said, “I made him to keep watch. Remember last year, we had that one kid who fainted and nobody noticed for like fifteen minutes? He could’ve really gotten hurt if he’d fallen wrong! JARVIS will watch for people who get too freaked out and dispatch one of the staff to rescue them. He can monitor breathing and heart rate, core temperature, pupil dilation, all kinds of things!”

Rhodey eyed him suspiciously. “Is that right?”

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Rhodes,” JARVIS put in politely, without any echo or reverb on the voicebox this time.

“...Okay,” Rhodey said. “So what’s with the spooking?”

“Well, haunted houses are supposed to be a little scary,” Tony said. “JARVIS has a range to work with -- if someone gets over a certain threshold, he’ll call for rescue. But if they’re under a certain threshold, he’ll up the ante for them. I’m trying to figure out how he can alert the actors in each scene for performance levels as a group comes in, you know, or who the jumpscare guys should target.”

“You’ve put entirely too much thought into this already,” Rhodey said. “When did you start working on this?”

“September third,” Tony said.

“Of last year,” JARVIS not-so-helpfully supplied.

“Okay,” said Rhodey. “We’ll give it a try for the first few dry-runs, anyway, see how it goes.”

[Mobile readers, mind the break, or skip over to AO3 to finish reading!]

“C’mon, Rogers, what are you, chicken?”

Steve had pulled to a stop as soon as he’d realized their destination. “No,” he said, staring at the house at the end of the block. “I’m just not sure you know what you’re doing. We should start with something a little less--”

“Give it a rest, wouldja, Stevie?” Bucky whined. “I’m sick of letting the damn brain goolies run my life. I can handle a damn haunted house.”

“Buck, this is literally the scariest haunted house on the campus-- no, in the whole state.” There was a sign on the lawn proclaiming exactly that, with a quote attributed to a local paper.

“The engineering department,” Bucky scoffed. “I’m sure it will be technically amazing, but it’s not like they really know what they’re doing. I skipped the theater department’s house.”

“Which took second place,” Steve pointed out, “to, yes, the engineering department. Because the theater people have stagecraft and great actors, but the engineers have Tony Stark.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “I’m going in the house, Steve. Are you coming with me, or not?”

“Fine,” Steve said, groaning. “Someone has to keep your traumatized ass out of trouble.”

Bucky resumed walking. Six months, he’d been back. Six months with only one arm and nothing to do but skulk around Steve’s place and do fucking PT and go to fucking counseling sessions and fucking occupational therapy. Six months of having to learn how to do shit with only one hand, six months of “working through the anger,” six months of the goddamn nightmares.

He wanted to do this. He wanted to do it because he’d always loved haunted houses as a kid, because he knew the blood and gore would look fake (he knew what real gore looked like now) and because he wanted to be scared and know there wasn’t actually a threat.

The good kind of scared. Not the split-second I’m going to die scared he’d felt when he saw the explosion begin to blossom, or the horrible and unending I’m never going to be normal again scared he’d endured for those weeks in the hospital. Just... startled, and then laugh it off.

The line for the haunted house stretched all the way down the block, though it moved at a decent clip. They saw more than a few groups of students leaving the house, still chattering excitedly about their favorite parts. None of them seemed traumatized.

“Last chance to back out,” Steve said as they approached the ticket booth that had been set up by the front door.

“Fuck you,” Bucky said, and stepped up to the window. A sign on the booth said that proceeds from the haunted house were going to sponsor the students’ trip to Washington for a Battle Bots tournament in November, and everything after that was going to several local charities. The Battle Bots line had been crossed out and someone had written in, Achievement unlocked! Bucky handed over his five bucks and grinned toothily at Steve. “Come on, Steve, do it for the kids.” He tapped the name of the children’s hospital on the list of charities. Steve was a sucker for kids.

Steve rolled his eyes, but turned over his five bucks as well.

They walked into the house, and a pleasant zing of excitement and nerves ran down Bucky’s spine. He could totally do this.

The first couple of rooms were impressively built but basically warm-up rooms -- spooky but static scenes with eerie music and a slightly crackly soundtrack. Bucky leaned over the ropes to look at all the fine details that had been put in, and found himself chortling at the underlying signs that the place was a student house -- graffiti on the walls, suspicious stains that weren’t fake blood, a pizza box that someone had shoved under a couch.

There was a jumpscare from a guy in a vampire costume on the way to the third room that made Bucky’s heart lurch. The way Steve laughed nervously made him think Steve wasn’t unaffected, either.

The third room was the first live scene -- a pretty redhead being menacingly seduced by a guy dressed like a devil. It was creepy, but not especially scary. Especially not when Bucky caught sight of the devil’s perfect bubble butt. “That is not the kind of thrill I was expecting,” he muttered under his breath.

He might have said that a little louder than he meant to -- Steve didn’t seem to have caught it, but the devil suddenly broke the fourth wall to look straight at him. The devil’s eyes caught the mood lighting and seemed to glow in the dim room as he gave Bucky a seductive smirk. It seemed like exactly the wrong thing to do -- but then Bucky realized that the girl had slumped to the floor, eyes staring sightlessly, and suddenly Bucky was trapped between fear and wanting, and his heart was pounding in the best kind of way.

That little spike of adrenaline seemed to carry perfectly through the next several rooms -- a chainsaw murderer standing over dismembered and gory bodies who suddenly turned to swing the saw at them; an impressively-engineered convocation of mostly transparent ghosts; and a howling and slavering werewolf that tipped its head and then lunged at them just when Bucky had started to catch his breath again.

That was the secret, he thought giddily -- not the technical execution, though that was excellent. But someone had done an amazing job of engineering the timing and rhythm of the scariest scenes and jump scares.

There was a long, winding passage in complete darkness, then, only their hands on the painted foam walls to guide them. The weirdling music and spooky noises from the first couple of rooms was playing here, and that faint scratching sound suddenly seemed ominous rather than amateur. Was it Bucky’s imagination, or was the passage getting narrower?

It was.

He and Steve had to go one by one, and then they had to turn sideways, and then squeeze into the foam until it was pressing against them, and there was plenty of air but Bucky was gasping anyway.

“I see a light,” Steve called back to him, and Bucky nearly groaned aloud in relief. He pushed through the foam, following Steve, and they found themselves in a blacklit room, fluorescent shapes darting around wildly. Okay. Okay, this wasn’t so bad--

And that was when the disembodied voice started talking to them.

The hottie was definitely not dating the blond bombshell he’d come in with, Tony surmised, because not once had they reached for each other’s hands, or hugged, or shown any affection aside from the occasional friendly punch in the arm. That was good. Tony wasn’t enough of a dick to hit on a guy who was already dating someone.

Tony made JARVIS keep him updated on the hottie’s progress through the house and willed the clock to move a little faster -- it was only minutes until his break, and if he moved fast, he’d be able to catch up with the hottie and flirt him into a date before he had to go take over random jumpscare duty from Bruce. Finally, Clint and Natasha came into the Seductive Devil Room to relieve Tony and Pepper. (Natasha made an even better Seductive Devil than Tony, though Clint rather oversold his Innocent Victim schtick.)

“I’ll catch up with you later,” he told Pepper.

She kissed his cheek. “Have fun,” she said, and made her way down the hall toward the secret door that led to the kitchen.

Tony dashed through the main house, knowing JARVIS would tell the other performers that it was just him and not to bother. Though Rhodey, in the Werewolf Room, still growled at him. Tony grinned and flashed a thumbs-up before slipping into the Narrowing Hallway and jogging along, one hand trailing on the wall. JARVIS didn’t bother pushing the walls together for him, though as he got closer to the Whispering Room, the voice in his earbud said, “Sir, I might suggest--”

Tony didn’t pay any attention to JARVIS’ suggestion, whatever it was, because there was the Whispering Room, and there was the hottie, still with his friend.

Seductive devil, he reminded himself. He slipped up behind them. “Welcome to my lair...”

The hottie whirled around and Tony’s world exploded in light and pain.

“Oh shit!” Bucky gasped. His heart was still pounding, his breath whistling in his lungs, but he’d--

It was the devil, the cute devil with the great ass, was on the floor, hands clasped over his face where Bucky had punched him, oh shit.

“Oh my god, shit, I’m so sorry,” Bucky said uselessly.

Steve was on his knees, urging the devil to roll over, to let Steve look at it. When had the normal lights come on? The weird noises had stopped, too, and--

The werewolf ran into the room, closely followed by Frankenstein’s monster. “Tony!” the werewolf barked, diving for the devil. Jesus, how had they gotten the word so fast?

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Frankenstein’s monster eyed Bucky, then took him gently by the arm and pulled him a few steps away. “Hey, look at me,” the monster said. “Are you okay?”

Bucky had a hard time dragging his gaze from the devil -- Tony? -- but when he did, he found that the monster had hazel eyes and a forehead crinkled with worry under the makeup. “I’m... I was...”

“Yeah, you were at the top of an adrenaline spike,” the monster said. “He added to your stress level at exactly the wrong instant, it sounds like. Are you okay now?”

“I... think so,” Bucky managed. He looked past the monster at Tony again. “Is he okay?”

Tony was sitting up now, the werewolf hovering protectively over him. Steve got up and went to the entryway -- which looked like a normal hall now, and not the foam hell Bucky’d had to squeeze through earlier -- to meet a woman dressed like a vampire, who handed over a cold pack.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” the monster said. “Come on, let’s get you somewhere a little calmer until you’re ready to head out.” He tugged gently at Bucky’s arm. Bucky didn’t resist -- being kicked out was the least he could expect after attacking a cast member; he’d be lucky if they didn’t sue him for it.

They hadn’t gone three steps when Steve appeared. “Are you kicking us out?” he asked, right on the verge of belligerent.

“Stevie,” Bucky said. “Don’t.”

“Not at all,” said the monster. “I am getting you off the main floor, though, so we can resume operation.” He pushed aside a curtain and opened the door that was behind it. “In here.”

“Here” appeared to be a dorm room, unmade bunked beds against one wall and a pair of desks opposite them, piled high with books and laptops. A drafting table stood in one corner, a half-finished technical schematic taped in place. The monster pulled out a desk chair and swiveled it toward Bucky. “Here, have a seat. Catch your breath. When you’re ready, you can--”

“Bruce!” The door burst open to reveal the devil. Tony. He was still holding the ice pack over his face, but the other eye was wide and frantic. “What did you-- Oh, you’re still here, good!” He traded a few words with the monster, who shrugged and left. Tony turned back to Steve and Bucky. “I wanted to apologize.”

Bucky blinked. “What’re you apologizing for? I’m the one who hauled off and decked you.”

“Sure, but I should’ve known better, JARVIS tried to tell me you weren’t up for any more, and I didn’t listen.”

“No one could’ve known,” Bucky argued. “I didn’t even realize how on-edge I was until it happened.”

“I knew,” Steve put in, and prudently stepped back before Bucky could kick him. “You’ve been on edge for months, Buck. I told you a haunted house was a bad idea.”

Bucky groaned and put his face in his hands. “It was fine until...”

“Until I burst in and dropped that last straw on the camel’s back, huh?” Tony guessed. “Come on, let me make it up to you. Coffee?”

“Nah, I’m not s’posed to drink coffee anymore; the caffeine--” Steve kicked the chair Bucky was sitting in.

Bucky glared at him. “What? That’s what the doc said!” Steve raised an eyebrow and tipped his head toward Tony pointedly.

Tony, who behind the devilish makeup, was really cute. And had a hopeful look on his face.

Oh.

Coffee.

“I, uh, I mean, they’ve got hot chocolate and tea, too, though, right?” Bucky recovered lamely. Steve rolled his eyes, but forbore kicking the chair again.

Tony beamed. Huh, that fussy little goatee looked real. Bucky wondered if he’d grown it specially for the haunted house or if he always wore facial hair. It looked good on him, or would once the red facepaint had been cleaned off. Tony fished a phone out of his back pocket. “Let me just...”

Bucky fumbled out his own phone and they traded information. Maybe after they had coffee, Tony would let Bucky offer his own apology, in the form of dinner.

One Year Later

Jim Rhodes pulled his lip back in a convincing snarl, and Bucky made an effort to dodge, to run-- but it was too late; the werewolf had leapt on him and was enthusiastically gnawing at his shoulder.

Bucky wailed and thrashed to disguise him unhooking his prosthetic and puncturing the little bag of fake blood hiding at the top of it. One good yank, and a roll, and--

The trio of friends watching the tableaux screamed as Bucky’s arm came free, “ripped” off by the werewolf’s brute strength and razor-like teeth.

Bucky kept thrashing so they wouldn’t get a good look at his stump until the light went out to encourage the group to move along to the next room. As soon as they were gone, Bucky pulled off the top layer of the protective cloth and threw it into the trashcan disguised as a tree stump, and fitted another prepared cap over the end of his arm.

While he did that, Rhodes kicked the fallen leaves over the fake bloodstain to hide it and scrambled back into the shadows from whence he’d pounce.

Steve was in the kitchen; he didn’t like being “on stage”, but he had a real knack for gloriously gruesome makeup that looked distressingly real in the blacklights and strobes in the main part of the house. He was the one who’d come up with the quick-change caps for Bucky’s prosthetic to make it look like a real, bleeding arm when it “fell” off.

“Ten second warning,” JARVIS said into Bucky’s earpiece, and he jammed his hunter’s hat onto his head and snatched up the fake rifle, trying to suppress his grin. Working the haunted house was tough, but so much fun.

Of course, it would be even more fun after the house had closed for the night, when Bucky could hunt down his devilishly handsome boyfriend. After hours of being gnawed on by a werewolf, Bucky was looking forward to getting his mouth on Tony.

The End

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#tony stark #bucky barnes #buckytony #winteriron #halloween #haunted house #rhodey #steve rogers #JARVIS #pepper potts #bruce banner

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY Max Dire is a Los Angeles detective who is feeling the strain that his profession entails when his wife of two years, Liza, accuses him of bringing his work home and leaves him to ponder her future, while his partner, Jim Sheldon, commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. Realizing that Max is experiencing problems, Adam Garou, a high-ranking officer distinguished by his success in reducing crime in other big cities, invites Max to join him at his apartment for a weekly meeting with other police officers who are experiencing difficulties. Adam advises Max that since he is a good detective and he should try to solve his problems rather than quitting the force.

Although Max is skeptical as to whether he will derive any benefit from the meeting, as he and his wife had already attended counselling sessions without success, he reluctantly attends the meeting where he meets other police officers such as Casey Spencer and Ramon Perez. Everyone who Max meets at the meeting praises the impact that Garou’s influence has had on their fortunes. Max soon realizes that the activities of the group also entail embarking on vigilante missions to clean the streets of criminals.

Max initially tells Garou that he is not interested in joining the group, but agrees to accompany them to a party where criminals are exchanging weapons. Before gate crashing the party, Max notices that each of the group members injects themselves with a strange chemical, which he learns has been produced by Garou. After they have injected this chemical, Garou and his team become more powerful and seemingly impervious to injury. The next day Max attempts to advise his incredulous boss of the strange goings on, but to no avail.

He visits Casey Spencer who tries to persuade him to inject himself with the chemical. When he refuses, she shoots him. As Max lies dying on the floor, she injects him with the chemical and he is instantly healed. They sleep with each other and, afterwards, injecting themselves and raid a criminal lair after. As Max and Casey easy dispatch the criminals, they sprout long claws from their knuckles, and grow sharp teeth. One of the criminals escapes and informs his crime boss what he saw. He is given instructions to deal with Garou.

Garou learns of Casey’s sexual encounter with Max and angrily advises her that he is ‘top dog’ before raping her. Afterwards, Garou and his group, including Max, gather together for another night of attacking the criminals. After injecting themselves with Garou’s chemical, the officers enter a vehicle to depart. The vehicle explodes as the key is turned in the ignition. As the remnants of the vehicle burn, the criminal who had been instructed to kill Garou is horrified to see that all of the officers have survived and that they are in their monster-like state. The dead bodies of the criminal and his associates are dropped from a helicopter through the glass ceiling of the crime boss’ home.

The same night, Max meets a deformed ex-police officer in a holding cell. He tells Max that he knows Garou and they used to work together. Garou has worked in numerous cities, and after the streets are cleaned of crime, all of the officers who work with him were killed (though he had escaped). He also explained that his deformity was caused by overuse of the chemical. Garou kills the officer to silence him and Max covers for him, but his suspicions are aroused and he begins to conduct some research into Garou.

After making a startling discovery, he sneaks into Garou’s apartment and finds Garou extracting the chemical from his own brain with a syringe. Max advises Garou that he realizes that he is a werewolf. Conflict ensues and although Max and Casey escape from Garou’s apartment, the latter is fatally injured. The next day Garou prepares to complete his final operation and Max resolves to stop him. After Garou has killed all of the criminals, including the aforementioned crime boss, Max shoots him with a silver bullet and Garou falls to the ground. Thinking that Garou is dead, Max turns away. However, Garou, who informed Max previously that a full eclipse protects him from everything (including silver), reappears behind him. A full eclipse had passed overhead as these events took place. He then turns into an extremely large werewolf, losing his human form entirely.

Max flees as the other members of Garou’s group are killed. Garou tries to kill Max, but the latter injects Garou with a solution of silver nitrate. As the eclipse is over, this kills Garou. Before he dies Garou returns to his human form and tells Max that if he lies in his blood he can take his power. In the finale, Max is shown to have moved to Denver with his wife Anna and their relationship seems to have improved. She is shown cutting her finger with a knife as she is chopping up food. Max licks her finger and then leaves to undertake some paperwork. She notices that her cut heals immediately and stares after Max bewildered. Meanwhile, Max is shown looking up on a computer the dates of coming eclipses in different American cities.

DEVELOPMENT/PRODUCTION The project was initially titled The Pack, after the name of a special unit of the LAPD that utilizes a secret new drug to help them combat crime. On the LA street location, director Anthony Hickox calls quickly for another take before the smoke disappears and the sun rises to ruin the shot. The FX crew relights the flames around the van and fans blow smoke across the scene. swirling it around the six actors who make up the Pack. “Action! One. two, three, monsters!” Hickox calls in his polite English accent. Slowly. the half-dozen transformed werewolves rise from the ground, move through the smoke and stand together. united in power.

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The story was born when writer Richard Christian Matheson was approached by a friend. Michael Reaves, to co-script a werewolf/cop movie. Matheson, who has written for over 30 TV shows including Amazing Stories and Tales from the

Crypt, wasn’t sure he was interested in working in this subgenre. As he explains further. “I’ve never been a fan of werewolf movies. As soon as they transform, they seem kind of benign to me. They don’t seem so eerie. and they lose all the facial detail that can be most frightening in a monster. I wanted to make sure that when they transformed. they did not look like wolves. I felt that would diminish the effect.

“If the script was going to be about werewolves. I also wanted it to be about addiction and overcoming the controlling influence of the lunar cycles,” he continues. “With that in mind, we set about putting the story together.

You know what, I love horror more than anything, but after making five of them, it was like, I wanna blow some shit up. Full Eclipse came along, which was a Richard Matheson script, who’s a horror writer generally and it was just such a great, for me, it had everything I wanted to do.HBO put six million dollars on that budget, which is why I could do all that shit. I love Full Eclipse because I got to do horror and these great action scenes, John Woo action scenes. Also, I was watching all these action movies thinking it must be so much fun to get to do that. – Anthony Hickox (Director)

Matheson is vehement when he describes how he visualized the creatures. “They weren’t going to be covered with hair and they weren’t going to be fully transformed.” he says, “They were going to be, in essence. stuck at the halfway point. because that’s the most frightening thing to me.

“Full Eclipse is not really a werewolf movie,” he insists. “It’s almost about the id coming under a sort of preternatural influence. It’s about addiction, and the ghastly transformational tendency of drugs. Like those guys who take STP and lift a car up, or can take a couple of rounds from a police revolver and keep coming at you.”

It didn’t take Matheson long to place the screenplay with Home Box Office. The writer has an uncanny ability to sell spec scripts, and to date has sold nine to various studios. The next step was finding the right director, and the production soon chose Hickox. He had his own opinions as to the important elements of the script and how the Pack should look, right down to their futuristic outfits and weapons. Luckily, the director and writers shared the same vision.

“I’m a huge comics fan: I read a lot of Marvel Comics, so I had a look I wanted.” Hickox explains. “Superheroes gone wrong. the whole Marvel mutant thing. I’ve always liked that concept; people with superpowers were a heavy influence. I’m quite sure I can’t buy the rights to the X-Men, so this allowed me to do my own version.”

Classic movies also played a part in Hickox’s conception. “I wanted the wolves to look like the first actor Henry Hulll who played one in Werewolf of London (1935),” he says. “We were going for a cross between him and Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf. There’s a great moment where he turns from the jail cell window, and that’s kind of how I hope our werewolves are going to look. But I also wanted this to be different, especially with the two stages. There’s a first stage the Pack goes through, where they become superhuman and look like the true werewolves as the legends describe them-half man and hall wolf. Then there’s the stage where they become full wolves at the end.

“We really tried to let the actor shine through.” says the director of this approach. “It’s funny how each

face takes on a different character. We didn’t want them to just be covered in makeup. We really built on their foreheads, cheeks and necks. I also love their weapon claws, and the fact that they actually bleed when the claws come out of their fingers, which I think would happen if you were transforming.”

Bringing these ideas to screen life was a big jump, which is why veteran Tony Gardner, head of Alterian Studios was hired to create Full Eclipse’s special FX makeup. Gardner, in his quiet, professional way is a problem solver and a master artist. Not only did Alterian design the transformation makeup, as well as a terrifying 12-foot wolf for the final fight scene, but they developed the futuristic combat gear, helmets and even the insignias and logos for the Pack members.

We have a stage one look, which is just additive makeup and dentures. Gardner explains. “Stage two is where we get into appliances that go down from the forehead almost to the outer corners of the eyes. We’ve got this weird, funky appliance that goes from the tip of the nose to the lip line, just to connect the two in a more animalistic way. We’ve also got upper and lower teeth. Bruce Payne is the only person who enters stage three. That’s a big appliance makeup which goes from his collarbone over his head and covers him entirely, with big fake ears and hair and stuff like that. It’s a much larger cranium, and you see a lot more skull structure.

“We change them gradually to reveal them more and more as werewolves.” Gardner continues. “Different people are taken to different degrees. The only one you’ll see transform completely is Bruce’s character, who turns into an 11- or 12-foot wolf with fur over his entire body. It’s a big monster.”

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Yet even great makeup concepts wouldn’t mean much without the right actors in the parts. For the role of daredevil Pack officer Casey, Hickox brought in his old friend, British actress Patsy Kensit. Well known for her starring turn as Mel Gibson’s stunning South African girlfriend in Lethal Weapon 2, Kensit is also a major horror movie fan. The concept of becoming a werewolf appealed to her, despite the four hour-plus makeup process.

“I loved that,” she says. “I’ve I never done anything like it before. Garrett Immel, who works with Tony, was kind of my key person. They were fantastic. They’re so into it: they’re really great people and so talented. What they can do with just a bit of shading and some prosthetics is incredible.

Kensit not only enjoyed the special FX side of the shoot, but was enthusiastic about everything she was required to do, from a sexy love scene with Van Peebles to a midnight swim in the Pacific ocean. The love scene, naturally, was a great deal easier and more fun. “Anthony originally wanted something that involved a lot of nudity, and I wasn’t prepared to do that,” she explains. “Now it’s very erotic, but it leaves a lot to the imagination. Anthony’s got a great mind. So he shot it beautifully, and it’s pretty steamy.”

The venture into the Pacific ocean was anything but steamy, as Kensit recalls. “When Mario and I went into the water, it was freezing cold. I had kind of a half wetsuit under my dress. so it wasn’t as bad, but Mario had nothing. We were both covered in sand burns afterwards, and it was a really mucky part of the ocean. It was the most horrific. freezing cold night of my life, with the waves crashing over me. Apparently it looks great, and that’s always worth it. That was really the hardest part of the movie, but it was a great experience. It’s something I’m glad I explored as an actress.”

Kensit wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the opportunity to play a werewolf. Van Peebles also found the concept attractive, and is eager to discuss what he calls “man’s fascination with his animal nature, or his animal side. We’ve always been curious about our evolution from beasts, and our connection to them. I always wanted to play a werewolf or a vampire, or something of that nature. It’s very cathartic to be these different people. see what they feel and let that part of you go. It’s healthy to do this.”

Van Peebles didn’t mind the heavy makeup either, and in fact was intrigued by the whole process. Hickox saw a preview for Posse, which Van Peebles both directed and starred in. and immediately decided he was the right man for the part. The actor gives Hickox points for his progressive views on casting. “It was very forward-thinking on Anthony’s part.” he states. “Because it wasn’t written for someone black, or green or blue. And Patsy as the leading lady-it’s very avant-garde in that it doesn’t pander to typical views.”

If Full Eclipse’s hero is atypical. then its villain breaks just as many molds and stereotypes. Captain Garou is one of the most compelling bad guys since Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Both Matheson and Hickox were concerned that without the right performance, Garou could turn into just another melodramatic villain. And, as Matheson explains, that wasn’t what either of them had in mind. “Garou didn’t want to be a monster.” the writer says. “He wanted to join the human community and make it better-to evolve and protect it. He was also learning to master his lycanthropic curse. Most monsters have a sort of grudge against humanity, but I don’t think Garou does: he simply dislikes crime. That makes him interesting. and Bruce really brings all of those nuances out. He’s a wonderful actor and a very bright man.”

Those levels of the character were exactly what interested Payne. While he worked to prepare for the action sequences speaking to friends in Delta Force and members of the Los Angeles SWAT team who were working with the film company-it was the psychological factors that Payne was more concerned with.

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“We’re all looking for something quicker, faster and easier that gives us a shorter feeling of contentment.” he says. “I found a lot of undercurrent issues within this character of a police officer who really feels he’s a shining knight. He’s developed this serum which is really part of his own body. This bad guy thinks he’s the good guy: he believes he’s on a good quest.”

To give the character of Garou even more depth and poignancy. Hickox decided to make some slight changes to the final transformation scene. The sequence involves Max and Garou having a terrible fight, in which Garou changes completely into the huge, towering wolf and almost tears the young cop apart. But in the end, when good naturally triumphs. Garou reverts to his true form: a very old man. The full makeup change wasn’t decided upon until the last moment, and therefore presented the film’s biggest challenge for both the special FX team and Payne.

“When you have a two-day warning, it’s impossible to create that prosthetic stuff.” the actor elaborates. “Fortunately, Tony is a very clever and energetic young man with a lot of good ideas. The man who actually did the hands-on application and coloring of the makeup was an old friend of mine named Mike Smithson. whom I had the great pleasure of working with on Switch. He’s a true talent, and he basically pulled together some of his own pieces, from his own face. They tried to match them and enhance a very old, elegant face as best they could. We put on a small. old forehead piece, but it wasn’t built for me, so he had to cut it and shape it, which is incredibly difficult. Actually, it’s a taboo thing. You don’t cut a prosthetic. because as soon as you do. the thin edge suddenly isn’t there and you have a ledge. In prosthetic terms, that ledge is the equivalent of missing a floor in a parking structure as you’re building it, so hiding it requires incredible tenacity.

Anthony Hickox was finishing Full Eclipse. This is another project where I focused writing around a rhythm section – hammond, guitar, bass and drums. For the action cues, many of Billy Ward’s performances were on midi pads, so that I could take his recordings and associate the information with other sounds – such as pitched slate tiles and other found sounds.  All in all, we had a lot of fun on this one, and I heard that Jim Kerr, who was married to Patsy Kensit at the time, liked my end credit theme when he heard it at the cast screening! – Gary Chang (Score Composer)

CAST/CREW Directed Anthony Hickox

Written Richard Christian Matheson Michael Reaves

Mario Van Peebles as Max Dire Patsy Kensit as Casey Spencer Bruce Payne as Adam Garou Anthony John Denison as Jim Sheldon Jason Beghe as Doug Crane Paula Marshall as Liza John Verea as Ramon Perez Dean Norris as Fleming Willie C. Carpenter as Ron Edmunds Victoria Rowell as Anna Dire Scott Paulin as Teague Mel Winkler as Stratton Joseph Culp as Detective Tom Davies

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY my-blog-of-interviews halloweenlove Fangoria#129

Full Eclipse (1993) Retrospective SUMMARY Max Dire is a Los Angeles detective who is feeling the strain that his profession entails when his wife of two years, Liza, accuses him of bringing his work home and leaves him to ponder her future, while his partner, Jim Sheldon, commits suicide by shooting himself in the head.

#90sMovies #AnthonyHickox #TV MOVIES

[thekintsugikids]

ok so i KNOW this is dumb but i need to rant.

so i watched the new riverdale (which is probably more than enough of a reason for any of you to not read this and trust me—i understand). and ho. ly. shit. i have genuinely NEVER been so mad at a tv show in my whole fucking life.

i’ll admit here and now that i still watch riverdale, because i am unwaveringly stubborn and i’m seeing this shit show through to the end. so things that seem, from a surface level, pretty genuine, anger me more than they should because i know the context of this bullshit. which means that, if you’re reading this, you’ll have to hear all of that shit so i can fully explain my anger.

so the episode is like. almost entirely based around the high school’s guidance counselor (who everyone is conveniently going to for therapy, even a character who goes to another school, but i can’t even be mad at riverdale for using a shitty mcguffin like that. it should be expected) where all the kids talk about their fucked up lives. that’s cool, i can accept that. riverdale does some dumb shit, but if they’d just done a psychological deep dive into their characters after all the trauma they’ve been through over the course of two and a half years? sure. I’ll bite. but this is riverdale, a show that somehow seems to be written by teenage interns who have never written a script in their life and 40-somethings who have never met real teens in their lives, so that’s not what we got. no, what we did get was this shitty school counselor listening to the characters unload genuine emotional trauma about their parents, and hear the counselor basically say, “they’re just trying to protect you.”

now allow me to explain why that is absolute fucking bullshit.

Betty’s mom forced herself into her daughter’s counseling session, because Alice ran to the high school guidance counselor to ask how she should deal with her daughter being sexually actively—which already, big fucking yikes. after a couple of minutes of back and forth about how Betty is being denied by her dream college because she’s having sex and irresponsibly disregarding her future in doing so (which again, huge red flag but let’s put that on the back burner for like two seconds). the counselor decides that they should do a joint session to work some shit out. ok. fine. whatever. moving on.

Betty says her mom lying to her whole life impacted her negatively. which yeah, that actually makes sense. in less than two years her mother went undercover with the fbi and joined a cult, without telling her own child that she at least didn’t believe in what the cult preached, gave away all the money she had saved for college to said cult, and was working with her half brother who Betty believed was dead (this is riverdale it’s a lot to unpack and i don’t blame you if you stop here bc ive been watching this show since 2017 and im still confused when i read that). she also had Betty’s sister committed to the sisters of quiet mercy, which is basically a disciplinary school for literally anything and everything under the sun (pregnant teenagers, mentally ill children, and conversion therapy are a few things we’ve seen it used for), and didn’t tell Betty that her sister was there, or that she was pregnant. her parents let her believe that her sister was a drug addict in rehab, because that was better than anyone knowing their daughter was pregnant, and then ofc that Alice reads her diary because she refuses to let her daughter have any semblance of privacy. keep in mind, this whole episode started with Alice opening Betty’s mail, seeing that she didn’t get accepted to Yale, and telling her that she searched her room to see “what could be distracting her from her future” (and then gets mad at her for having birth control). her mother says, “I just wanted to protect you.” okay, fine. whatever, that’s total bullshit, but fine.

but then!!! she has a breakdown about how she wants Betty to be better and she’s scared of her growing up and she just wants her to be safe which. ok. ok. ok. shut up. she’s said this EVERY. SEASON. OF THE SHOW. how many times can she say the exact same thing and never learn from it? but Betty isn’t having that shit, she’s been dealing w this shit for so long and she’s done, right? she’s growing up, and her mom would have to be incredibly naive to think that she could just stop that, especially when they are living w her bf’s family. like yeah, they live together. they share a room. they’re teenagers, they’re gonna have sex. who. fucking. cares. her mom then tells Betty that it’s because she’s her favorite child, which........Yikes. and the scene ends.

the weird thing is like.....we’re meant to sympathize with Alice??? after everything she has done—much of which i didn’t touch on—because.............Betty’s her favorite child?????? that’s???????? SUPPOSED TO JUSTIFY THE THINGS SHE DOES?????????? no no no NO what the fuck is THAT manipulative bullshit?? what the fuck. i can’t even think of anything else to say about that, what the actual fuck.

but the real kicker ooooooooh bitch. it’s the end of the episode, with Jughead. many other things happen between the Betty’s session and Jughead’s, but they don’t necessarily fit into what I’m trying to say so I won’t be talking about it. but holy shit the things she said to Jughead? for context, Jughead’s father is an abusive piece of shit. he has gotten violent with his own son, threatened him, abandoned him for his gang when the rest of their family moved out of state to get away from him (Jughead’s dad), and he is an alcoholic who did things like getting drunk at Jughead’s 15th birthday party, and that’s just the cliff notes version. basically he’s a grade-a abusive asshole, which is a field i am well-versed in.

FP, Jughead’s father, says that his father was an abusive drunk, so obvs the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. one of the the biggest issues with this show, though, is that they refuse to acknowledge that FP himself is abusive. like, even writers of the show have said that he is not abusive, even saying that viewers were ignorant to believe that he is (and as someone with an abusive father, first of all, fuck you). and Jughead is on a mission this entire season to prove that his grandfather was some great writer or whatever and his work was stolen from him.

now, how exactly does any of that relate to the discussion at hand?, you might be asking. well he’s at riverdale high to get his transcripts or whatever bc he’s at a new school and they’re all assholes (no, im not going into further explanation of that because there is way too much to unpack). so he’s w the guidance counselor, they talk about it and she has the fucking gall to say, “but think about how your father must feel about all of this???” which, okay, i see where she might be coming from. FP was abused by his dad. but Jughead is also abused by FP, so why the fuck should he worry about whether or not he’s hurting his father? FP irreparably damaged Jughead—I promise you all that being homeless, being hit and threatened by your father, being abandoned by your entire family? that’s not shit you can repair. you don’t just fix that shit. that stays with you.

the counselor tells Jughead that he should be proud of the man his father worked to become (like he isn’t still horrible to Jughead????? for example, forcing him to go to a school that he does not want to go to because it makes their family look better??? ok), she says FP is just supporting his son. and the real kicker—she says, “and you repay him by going on this quest to prove that the man that caused him immeasurable pain is some kind of wronged hero? how do you think that makes him feel?” (that is the quote verbatim, by the way. that is what she says so Jughead)

like FP has earned something from Jughead. like Jughead is in the wrong for not wanting his name to be seen as a joke. no, this is how you repay him for everything he did for you. FP abused his son. it’s literally that fucking simple. and Jughead didn’t even want to talk to this lady, she forced him into the conversation while he waited for fucking transcripts so he could apply to colleges. and we, the audience, are supposed to be on the counselor’s side. we’re supposed to say “yeah Jughead, look at everything your dad has done for you! he loves you!!”

Jughead even says it himself. “My poor dad. I’m so selfish.” like his dad deserves his respect. like he earned Jughead’s respect. like FP deserves a single goddamn thing from his son.

keep in mind, this is a show that’s biggest demographic is people under 20 and they are basically telling their audience that their parent’s abuse is just because they’re “protective” or because they’re “trying to help them.” guess what, that’s not fucking true. if your parent, or ANYONE, is abusing you, it is because they are fucked up. it is not because they love you, it’s not because they “want what’s best for you.” and how dare anyone, let alone fucking Riverdale, try to tell me that it is. no, as someone with an abusive father, i fucking promise you, this shit is not out of love. abuse is not love. and fuck Riverdale for trying to tell me that it is.

#i put the whole thing in a read more link bc it includes personal shit that i dont want a bunch of ppl to just like. see. #and it focuses HEAVILY on the topic of abuse so pls do not read it if that makes you uncomfortable #also its v long #like. very. very long. #so if literally no one reads it thats fine #it probably doesnt make a whole lot of sense but i just kind of needed to unload my thoughts because i am so genuinely upset #k anyway bye #also please #don't reblog #for the love of god please dont or i will delete the whole goddamn thing

[marginalgloss]

sax and violins

I was a great fan of The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton when I read it a couple of years ago. It briefly became one of those books about which I would enthuse to anyone I came across, so it was probably only a matter of time before I picked up the first novel by the same author, The Rehearsal. While it shares some of the keen ambition with the other book, the two could not be more different. This is a novel so entirely out of step with most trends in modern fiction that I was constantly surprised to be reading it at all. 

At first it reads like two books within a single volume. The first is presented as a series of encounters between a saxophone teacher (unnamed) and her young female students, and occasionally their parents. The second follows a young man who decides to join a drama college after leaving school. For a while, it seems like these have little to do with one another. Even the style is different: the saxophone teacher’s dialogues play out like strange little therapy sessions, with little in the way of music except for in the curious strains of the deliberately implausible conversations. This, from the very first page, gives a taste of what is to come:

‘The clarinet is tadpole to the sax, can you see that? The clarinet is a black and silver sperm, and if you love this sperm very much it will one day grow into a saxophone.’

‘…At present your daughter is simply too young. Let me put it this way: a film of soured breast-milk clutches at your daughter like a shroud…Do you hear me, with your mouth like a thin scarlet thread and your deflated bosom and your stale mustard blouse?’

I wonder how many readers sent the book spiralling across at the room at this point. At times the saxophone teacher’s segments reminded me of outlying mid-century modernists like Henry Green, or even B. S. Johnson; there’s something of Djuna Barnes or early Jean Rhys in that willingness to put a definite voice to the unsayable. And like those writers, there’s a certain sense of someone showing off here too. The saxophone teacher seems to sit in judgement above all the others in this book — an exemplar of creative mastery, her students little half-developed underlings scampering at her feet. She gets all the best lines.

But the whole book isn’t like this. The other side of things follows Stanley, our aspiring actor. Stanley is a simple, gentle soul. For the most part his sequences are delivered in a more straightforward realistic style. Except that there’s something a little creepy about the drama school where he finds himself almost by accident. The professors are known only by their titles (the Head of Acting, the Head of Movement); they are arch, sinister figures, keen to shatter the delicate illusions of their undergraduates. They come across like characters from Pinter: hard and threatening, with a messy sort of vulnerability beneath; each carrying a past full of forsaken ideals and forgotten romance. They inflict sadistic exercises on their students: first, crowd into a small space in the floor, too small for you all to fit; now try to push out the others without fighting. At one point Stanley is motivated to complain to a tutor when he witnesses an especially brutal scene, apparently straight out of the playbook of Antonin Artaud. He does not receive a great deal of sympathy from the Head of Movement:  

‘…I’m trying to make a point. I’m just trying to point out that if a person is standing onstage in front of an auditorium full of people then “real” is a useless word. “Real” describes nothing on stage. The stage only cares whether something looks real. If it looks real, then whether it is real or not is immaterial. It doesn’t matter. That’s the heart of it.’ ‘You’re angry because they betrayed you…They lured you into feeling something truthful and real, and then they destroyed it in front of you.’

There’s something tautologous, something self-justifying about the Head of Movement’s explanation. It happened this way because it this is what we permit on our stage. Theatre is the art of trying to make you feel; if you felt something it was a success, even if you were tricked into it. Moral norms don’t come into it, he’s saying. This is supposed to be especially unconvincing in the context of what comes next.

It turns out that the sister of Isobel, one of the sax teacher’s students, has been having an affair with a teacher. The ensuing scandal forces her and many of her schoolmates into a sort of enforced period of counselling. But she, and many of her schoolmates, find something intriguing about the thing between Victoria and Mr Saladin. The mystery of it is summed up when Julia, one of the other girls, directly confronts their counsellor about it:

‘The fact that Victoria was underage and virginal or whatever wasn’t exciting because he could exercise more power over her…It was exciting because he stood so much more if anyone found out…He wouldn’t just lose her. He would lose everything.’

There’s an attempt here at reconfiguring the power dynamic away from the model of predator and prey and towards something more mutual, less obviously threatening. But it’s also less about the relationship itself and more about what other (young) people make of it. Victoria and Saladin themselves are distant figures here — they barely feature. There are rough parallels to be drawn between the intensity of Stanley’s reaction to the violence onstage and the feelings toward that couple. We see things that provoke something in us we don’t understand, and that society would condemn unequivocally; but they are compelling, despite all that. All of this leads towards some unsettling suggestions. In a way it’s a wonder that this book seems to have slipped beneath the radar of many readers; I could easily see a British tabloid decrying it as a defence of child abuse. 

The two parts of the book eventually intersect. The drama students put on a play based on the real-life affair between student and teacher. This is supposed to be a sort of climax, but I’m not entirely sure this part of the book quite works. The play itself is only seen in glimpses; much like the rest of the book, it offers little in the way of dramatic catharsis. Texturally, there is little difference between it and the eloquent, precise little speeches that all the characters deliver from time to time. Here’s Julia summarising what she believes her cohort have learned from their counselling:

‘We learned that everything in the world divides in two; good and evil, male and female, truth and falsehood, child and adult, pleasure and pain. We learned that the counsellor possessed a map, a map that would make everything make sense. A key. Like in a theatre programme where you have the actors’ names on one side and the list of characters on the other — some neat division that divides the illusive from the real. We learned that there is a distinction — that there is always a distinction — between the performance and the performer, the reality and the lie. We learned that there is no middle ground…Only those who watch, and those who suffer being watched.’

‘But the counsellor lied…You lied. You lied about the pain of it, the unsimple mess of it, immeasurably more thorny and wretched and raw than you could ever remember, with the gauze veil of every year that passes settling over your eyes, thicker and thicker until even your own childhood dissolves into the mist.’

This is very fine. It’s somehow both ironic and entirely earnest. Both parts are essentially correct: the world has these boundaries, and they mean something. They mean a great deal to a great many people. But they also have very little to do with the rich and unsimple mess of life and the way it is lived.

#books #eleanor catton #the rehearsal

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hey sorry do you know any ‘being a couple for a case’ fic ? Thank you'

I CERTAINLY DO. It’s one of my favourite tropes of ALL TIME. Like, I reread these fics ALL THE TIME. I am just SO SAD that there’s no long-fic really strictly from Sherlock’s POV. Like I would LOVE for a fic where we see Sherlock’s thought processes about trying to get John to be his date / partner / whatever. 

FAKE RELATIONSHIP 

ANYWAY. I added a few onto this list here, but here’s a full list of the ones in my bookmarks.

Wars We Fought, Things We’re Not by blueink3 (M | 55,126 w.) - Five months after John’s world has fallen apart, Mycroft sends the consulting detective and his doctor on a case that neither is prepared for. [[**FAVE. You have to check this one out!**]]

I can’t pretend by Salambo06 (E | 7,692 w.) - They had arrived more than a hour ago, and the moment they had walked inside the hotel reception, John had understood why Sherlock hadn’t wanted to come. Two men, posh suits and expensive watches on their wrists, had come to greet them with sharp remarks and badly hidden mockery, and John had seen red. Sherlock hadn’t said anything, mostly ignoring the two men entirely, and without thinking twice about it, John had slid an arm around Sherlock’s waist and introduced himself as his husband. [[AHHH so much pining John, I love it. Sherlock is so good to him!!]]

A Hundred Thousand Ways to Say the Name John by Jberry (E | 16,825 w.) John Watson and Sherlock Holmes must solve a case on a cruise ship. To get close to the crew and passengers, they must get married for the case on the Baetica. However, their relationship hits rocky seas both due to the case and internal conflicts. Part 1 of Baetica [[FAVE!!! MUST READ!!]]

Twelfth Night by yourdykeinshiningarmor (E | 15,139 w.) - John is invited to his aunt’s Twelfth Night ball. Sherlock offers to attend with him as a friendly face among strangers, but John’s family force him to address his true feelings for Sherlock. [[this one is cute]]

Till Death Do Us Part by prettysailorsoldier (M | 15,390 w.) - When Sherlock links a recent spree of murder-suicides to a psychologist who specializes in marriage counselling, there’s really only one thing to do: Go undercover as a couple in hopes of drawing the killer out. Faking a relationship seems easy enough, but things take a turn when their real issues start to creep into the sessions, and, all the while, a killer is watching, waiting in the shadows for their chance to strike. Part 12 of 25 Days of Johnlock [[OH GOD this one is lovely. Lots of pain but happy ending]]

That Partitioning of the Things of Youth by wearitcounts (Sher_locked_up) (E | 35,353 w.) - Victor Trevor is in town, and nobody’s happy. [[I really like this one. Jealous John AND Sherlock and lots of Angst]].

What I Hide By My Language, My Body Utters by PixChuu22 (M | 9,047 w.) - Based on a prompt from Tumblr user thetwogaydetectives - “fake relationship that ends up being so real, they finally realize they are in love.” (I like this one. They end up together because of a case).

The Case of the Made-Up Case by DoubleNegative (T | 2,394) - Sherlock takes John to a club. For a “case.” Yes, John, a case. Part 1 of The (Secret) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [[CUTE!]]

The Newlywed Game: Johnlock Edition by patternofdefiance (E | 9,020) - John and Sherlock pretend to be married in order to be contestants in a Newlywed Game. Of course it’s for a case. Of course it doesn’t stay that way. Part 8 of I Blame Tumblr [[LOVE THIS ONE. It’s so cute!]]

A Case of Identity by jkay1980 (T | 91,009 w.)John and Sherlock have succeeded in rebuilding their friendship after Sherlock’s fake suicide, but an unusual case puts their relationship to the test. They pretend to be engaged and attend a marriage counseling workshop. Under the pretext of the case, Sherlock turns out to be a master of seduction, and John finally learns he might like Sherlock more than he thought. Slowly, John discovers that he loves Sherlock not only in a friendly, brotherly way, but both men have to fight their own demons before they can think of taking their relationship to a new level… [[I love this fic. It’s a really great long-fic!]]

A Bit of Indulgence by beltainefaerie (NR | 3,364 w.) -  A case leads John and Sherlock to fake being boyfriends and John runs into an old acquaintance. [[This one is so domestic and cute GUH I love it.]]

The Norwood Love Builders by flawedamythyst (T | 47,798 w.) - Sherlock and John go undercover to solve the murder of Joanna Oldacre, but things are complicated by the many feelings John has been repressing in the wake of Sherlock’s faked death and return. [[OMG this is like my FAVOURITE fic in this genre ever. It’s SO good and well characterized]].

Hitting the Water at Sixty Miles an Hour by what_alchemy (E | 30,568 w.) “You love your mother, Sherlock?”John watched the muscles in Sherlock’s jaw jump. He nodded in one sharp jerk.“Then we’re going to her party and making her happy.” John let out a resigned sigh. “As a ruddy couple, you bastard.”

Once More, With Feeling by cellard00rs (T | 21,178 w.) - To put off his meddlesome, matchmaking mother, John convinces Sherlock to play the role of his significant other. Unparalleled awkwardness ensues. [[nice amount of fluff and pining!]]

Hope Springs Eternal by QuinnAnderson (T | 4,054 w.) - John Watson and Sherlock Holmes go on holiday, and Sherlock has romance on the brain. [[Another cute one!]]

Five Times They Kissed for a Case, and One Time They Kissed for Real by fleetwood_mouse (M | 32,406) - A stolen ring! An artful blogger! And many more adventures for your enjoyment.

Disguises are always a self-portrait by yellowteapots (NR | 6,223 w.) - They were headed to a Pride Fest for a case-triple suicide/murder- which, of course mean they had to pretend to be couple. John had a suspicion Mycroft took a fairly sadistic glee in booking them a (single king-sized bed) room at the most romantic B&B in town. (I LOVE THIS ONE SO MUCH)

A Silver Sixpence by doodle (E | 16,400 w. LIVEJOURNAL) - John and Sherlock have to get married for a case, and learn some things about each other. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this story, though its only fault is that it’s on LiveJournal… (PITA to read on mobile)

AMNESIA:

Here are a couple where either John or Sherlock have amnesia and they think that they are each other’s husband or partner.

Among the Secret Things by Kate_Lear (E | 26,073 w.) - Sherlock would be the last person to describe himself as given to flights of fancy, but at the look on Lestrade’s face he could swear that something inside him curls up and dies. Part 1 of Among the Secret Things

What Meets the Eye by worldaccordingtofangirls (M | 8,251 w.) Amnesia is just another case to solve. Piece together unfamiliar faces, reconstruct the old identity, the lost reality. A challenge that Sherlock could even enjoy. He can read people like books. The man with the silver hair is his boss. The tottering old woman, his landlady. The girl with the worried look in her eyes…infatuated. And as for John Watson? His husband. Obviously.

“FOR A CASE” TROPE

So these aren’t necessarily relationships, or weren’t tagged as such, but contains some other “for a case” fics!

Midnight Blue Serenity by BeautifulFiction (E | 151,907w.) - When Sherlock infiltrates a club in order to track down a serial killer, his altered appearance is enough to make John question his assumption that Sherlock is beyond his reach. However, is he the only one who appreciates his flatmate’s charms, or is Sherlock at risk of becoming the next victim? [[THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVE FICS OF ALL TIME. tw for gore-ish type things near the end.]]

It Isn’t Strange Until You Think About It by ivyblossom (T | 4,596 w.) - John tells the truth about how it happened. For some reason, “it’s for a case” always seems to do the trick.

The Case of the Vanishing Pants by SwissMiss (E | 44,025 w.) - Five times John and Sherlock lost their pants for a case. [[there are some angsty bits in this, but I did giggle at a few scenes]]

OTHER SORT-OF RELATED FICS:

Here are a few that aren’t REALLY “for a case” but they end up together or the Johnlock is strong in it because of cases or because of situations.

Rescue by missilemuse (T | 2,574 w.) - If this was the way Sherlock Holmes loved, it was no wonder why he had avoided the damned emotion for over half of his life. Part 6 of Reichenbach To Return [[this isn’t really Johnlock, but it is… it’s non-ad10ck ad10ck. You have to read it to understand. It’s SO good and painful, trust me. Sherlock!Whump and pining]].

Five Times John Noticed But Didn’t Really by ScandalousMinds (T| 6,383 w.) 5 times John (thought) he noticed something peculiar about his and Sherlock’s relationship but really missed the obvious.

A Need To Know Basis by mattsloved1 (K+| 964 w., FFNet) - As the cab door shut firmly, the DI had yelled out they were to make an appearance at Scotland Yard the next day. It was while John watched London pass by that it happened. (short and sweet!! I love it!!)

Hallowed Eve by EventHorizon (T | 14,750 w.) - It probably wasn’t the smartest idea to let Sherlock choose the costumes for Halloween, but John never considered himself the smartest man in the room, anyway. (It’s a couple’s costume thing!)

Equine Arse Anonymity by Kayjaykayme (E | 3,834 w.) - Sherlock needs to speak with suspects at a fancy dress ball. He chooses a couple’s costume for himself and John. It is logical, practical and well thought out. John doesn’t agree and exacts sweet revenge.

Maybe This Christmas by feverishsea for leopardwrites (T | 6,021 w.) Anthea has given up her life, her own desires, even her name in service of something greater than herself. But that doesn’t mean she can’t see when someone else wants something – even if she doesn’t happen to care overmuch for that person. And it doesn’t mean she isn’t willing to help. (Anthea gets the boys together)

You Can Imagine the Christmas Dinners by ardenteurophile  (T | 23,584 w.) Sherlock takes John along for Christmas dinner with Mycroft and Mummy (And “Anthea”, too). Over the course of the evening, John realises that everyone in the room - apart from him - seems to think that he and Sherlock are a couple. Part 2 of Xmas Dinners Verse (I LOVE THIS ONE)

The Sexual Awakening of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson by suitesamba (M | 24,579 w.) Sherlock owes Mycroft a favor. Mycroft calls in that favor by offering Sherlock’s consulting services in a charity auction. Sherlock and John soon find themselves at the country manor of Mrs. Ives-Patton Smarmington III - not very coincidentally a long-time friend of Sherlock’s mother - where they are reluctant participants in her Murder Mystery Weekend. It’s a play within a play for Sherlock and John, and their roles for the weekend event bleed over into their real lives, waking the sleeping dragons within. Or In which John learns that Sherlock owing Mycroft a favor is very suspect, and Sherlock has a very bad idea.

Hope those satisfy! Alex also has a list that has some ACD Holmes on the list too!

#johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #for a case trope #i love this trope so much #Anonymous #happy valentine's day