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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (released in the United States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) is a 2001 fantasy film directed by Chris Columbus and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.[5] It is based on J. K. Rowling's 1997 novel of the same name. The film is the first instalment of the Harry Potter film series and was written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman. Its story follows Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as he discovers that he is a famous wizard and begins his education. The film stars Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, with Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger.

Warner Bros. bought the film rights to the book in 1999 for a reported £1 million ($1.65 million in 1999). Production began in the United Kingdom in 2000, with Chris Columbus being chosen to create the film from a short list of directors that included Steven Spielberg and Rob Reiner. Rowling insisted that the entire cast be British and Irish, and the film was shot at Leavesden Film Studios and historic buildings around the United Kingdom.

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The film was released to cinemas in the United Kingdom and United States on 16 November 2001. It became a critical and commercial success, grossing $975.8 million at the box office worldwide. The highest-grossing film of 2001, it is the 47th highest-grossing of all-time (2nd at the time of its release; behind Titanic) and the second most successful instalment of the Harry Potter series behind Deathly Hallows – Part 2. The film was nominated for many awards, including Academy Awards for Best Original Score, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. It was followed by seven sequels, beginning with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002 and ending with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011, nearly ten years after the first film's release.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 3.1 Development 3.2 Casting 3.3 Filming 3.4 Design and special effects 3.5 Music 4 Differences from the book 5 Distribution 5.1 Marketing 5.2 Home media 6 Reception 6.1 Box office 6.2 Critical response 6.3 Accolades 7 See also 8 References 9 External links Plot One night, Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall, professors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, along with the school's groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid, deliver a recently orphaned infant named Harry Potter to his only remaining relatives, the Dursleys. Ten years later, Harry has been battling a disjointed life with the Dursleys. After inadvertently causing an accident during a family trip to the zoo, Harry begins receiving unsolicited letters by owls. After the Dursleys escape to an island to avoid more letters, Hagrid re-appears and informs Harry that he is actually a wizard and has been accepted into Hogwarts against the Dursleys' wishes. After taking Harry to Diagon Alley to buy his supplies for Hogwarts and a pet owl named Hedwig as a birthday present, Hagrid informs him of his past: Harry's parents James and Lily Potter met their demise via a Killing Curse at the hands of the malevolent and all-powerful wizard: Lord Voldemort. Harry, the only survivor in the chaos, thus becomes well-known in the wizarding world as "The Boy Who Lived".

Harry is then taken to King's Cross station to board a train to Hogwarts, where he meets three other students: Ron Weasley, whom he quickly befriends; Hermione Granger, an intelligent witch born to Muggle parents; and Draco Malfoy, a boy from a wealthy wizarding family, with whom he immediately clashes. After arriving at school the students assemble in the Great Hall, where all the first-years are sorted by the Sorting Hat among four houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Although the Sorting Hat considers putting Harry in Slytherin with Draco, he is placed into Gryffindor alongside Ron and Hermione.

At Hogwarts, Harry begins learning magic spells and discovers more about his past and parents. After recovering the Remembrall of Gryffindor student Neville Longbottom, Harry is recruited for Gryffindor's Quidditch team as a Seeker, an extremely rare feat for first-year students. On their way to the dorms one night the stair cases change paths leading Harry, Ron, and Hermione to the forbidden floor of Hogwarts. The three discover a giant three-headed dog named Fluffy in a restricted area of the school. Ron then insults Hermione after being embarrassed by her in a charms lesson, causing Hermione to lock herself in the girls' bathroom. She is attacked by a marauding troll, but Harry and Ron save her, befriending her in the process.

The children later find out Fluffy is guarding the Philosopher's Stone, an object that has the power to turn any metal into gold and produce a potion that grants immortality. Harry suspects that Potions teacher and head of Slytherin House Severus Snape is trying to obtain the stone in order to return Voldemort to physical form. Hagrid accidentally reveals to the trio that Fluffy will fall asleep if played music. Harry, Ron, and Hermione decide that night to try and find the stone before Snape. They discover an already asleep Fluffy and face a series of safeguards including a deadly plant known as Devil's Snare, a room filled with aggressive flying keys that bruise Harry, and a dangerous life-sized game of chess that almost kills Ron.

After getting past the tasks, Harry discovers that it was Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Quirinus Quirrell who was trying to claim the stone: Snape had actually been protecting Harry all along. Quirrell removes his turban and reveals a weak Voldemort living on the back of his head. Through an enchantment placed by Dumbledore, Harry finds the stone in his possession. Voldemort attempts to bargain the stone from Harry in exchange for reviving his parents, but Harry refuses. Quirrell attempts to kill Harry in response; however, he is instead killed after Harry ends up burning his skin, reducing Quirrell to dust and causing Voldemort's soul to rise from his ashes. Harry is knocked unconscious in the process.

Harry recovers in the school hospital with Dumbledore at his side. Dumbledore explains that the stone has been destroyed and that Ron and Hermione are safe. Dumbledore also reveals how Harry was able to defeat Quirrell: When Harry's mother died to save him, her death gave Harry a love-based protection against Voldemort. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are rewarded with house points for their heroic performances, tying them for first place with Slytherin. Dumbledore then awards ten points to Neville for attempting to stop the trio, granting Gryffindor the House Cup. Harry returns home for the summer, happy to finally have a real home in Hogwarts.

Cast Further information: List of Harry Potter cast members Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, an 11-year-old orphan raised by his unwelcoming aunt and uncle, who learns of his own fame as a wizard known to have survived his parents' murder at the hands of the psychopathic dark wizard Lord Voldemort as an infant when he is accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Columbus had wanted Radcliffe for the role since he saw him in the BBC's production of David Copperfield, before the open casting sessions had taken place, but had been told by casting director Susan Figgis that Radcliffe's protective parents would not allow their son to take the part.[6] Columbus explained that his persistence in giving Radcliffe the role was responsible for Figgis' resignation.[6] Radcliffe was asked to audition in 2000, when Heyman and Kloves met him and his parents at a production of Stones in His Pockets in London.[7] Heyman and Columbus successfully managed to convince Radcliffe's parents that their son would be protected from media intrusion, and they agreed to let him play Harry.[6] Rowling approved of Radcliffe's casting, stating that "having seen [his] screen test I don't think Chris Columbus could have found a better Harry."[8] Radcliffe was reportedly paid £1 million for the film, although he felt the fee was "not that important".[9] William Moseley, who was later cast as Peter Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia series, also auditioned for the role.[10] Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, Harry's best friend at Hogwarts. A fan of the series, Grint decided he would be perfect for the part "because [he has] ginger hair".[9] Having seen a Newsround report about the open casting he sent in a video of himself rapping about how he wished to receive the part. His attempt was successful as the casting team asked for a meeting with him.[9] Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, Harry's other best friend and the trio's brains. Watson's Oxford theatre teacher passed her name on to the casting agents and she had to do over five interviews before she got the part.[11] Watson took her audition seriously, but "never really thought [she] had any chance of getting the role."[9] The producers were impressed by Watson's self-confidence and she outperformed the thousands of other girls who had applied.[12] John Cleese as Nearly Headless Nick, the ghost of Hogwarts' Gryffindor House. Robbie Coltrane as Rubeus Hagrid, a half-giant and Hogwarts' Groundskeeper. Coltrane was one of the two actors Rowling wanted most, along with Smith as McGonagall.[13][14] Coltrane, who was already a fan of the books, prepared for the role by discussing Hagrid's past and future with Rowling.[6][15] According to Figgis, Robin Williams was interested in participating in the film, but was turned down for the Hagrid role because of the "strictly British and Irish only" rule which Columbus was determined to maintain.[13][16] Warwick Davis as Filius Flitwick, the Charms Master and head of Hogwarts' Ravenclaw House. Davis also plays two other roles in the film: the Goblin Head Teller at Gringotts, and dubs the voice of Griphook, who is embodied by Verne Troyer. Richard Griffiths as Vernon Dursley, Harry's Muggle uncle. Ian McNeice was considered for the role of Vernon.[17] Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts' Headmaster and one of the most famous and powerful wizards of all time. Harris initially rejected the role, only to reverse his decision after his granddaughter stated she would never speak to him again if he did not take it.[18] Ian Hart as Quirinus Quirrell, the slightly nervous Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts, and also Lord Voldemort's voice. David Thewlis auditioned for the part; he would later be cast as Remus Lupin in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.[19] John Hurt as Mr. Ollivander, the owner of Ollivanders, a highly regarded wandmaker. Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, the Potions Master and head of Hogwarts' Slytherin House. Tim Roth was the original choice for the role, but he turned it down for Planet of the Apes.[20] Fiona Shaw as Petunia Dursley, Harry's Muggle aunt. Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall, the Deputy Headmistress, head of Gryffindor and transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts. Smith was one of the two actors Rowling wanted most, along with Coltrane as Hagrid.[14] Julie Walters as Molly Weasley, Ron's caring mother. She shows Harry how to get to Platform 9 3⁄4. Before Walters was cast, American actress Rosie O'Donnell held talks with Columbus about playing Mrs. Weasley.[21] Production Development In 1997, producer David Heyman searched for a children's book that could be adapted into a well-received film.[6] He had planned to produce Diana Wynne Jones' novel The Ogre Downstairs, but his plans fell through. His staff at Heyday Films then suggested Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which his assistant believed was "a cool idea."[6] Heyman pitched the idea to Warner Bros.[6] and in 1999, Rowling sold the company the rights to the first four Harry Potter books for a reported £1 million (US$1,982,900).[22] A demand Rowling made was for Heyman to keep the cast strictly British, and not to cast foreign actors unless absolutely necessary, nonetheless allowing for the inclusion of Irish actors such as Richard Harris as Dumbledore, and for casting of French and Eastern European actors in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where characters from the book are specified as such.[23] Rowling was hesitant to sell the rights because she "didn't want to give them control over the rest of the story" by selling the rights to the characters, which would have enabled Warner Bros. to make non-author-written sequels.[24]

Although Steven Spielberg initially negotiated to direct the film, he declined the offer.[25] Spielberg reportedly wanted the adaptation to be an animated film, with American actor Haley Joel Osment to provide Harry Potter's voice,[26] or a film that incorporated elements from subsequent books as well.[6] Spielberg contended that, in his opinion, it was like "shooting ducks in a barrel. It's just a slam dunk. It's just like withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal bank accounts. There's no challenge."[27] Rowling maintains that she had no role in choosing directors for the films and that "[a]nyone who thinks I could (or would) have 'veto-ed' [ sic ] him [Spielberg] needs their Quick-Quotes Quill serviced."[28] Heyman recalled that Spielberg decided to direct A.I. Artificial Intelligence instead.[6]

After Spielberg left, talks began with other directors, including: Chris Columbus, Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Demme, Mike Newell, Alan Parker, Wolfgang Petersen, Rob Reiner, Ivan Reitman, Tim Robbins, Brad Silberling, M. Night Shyamalan and Peter Weir.[6][29][30] Petersen and Reiner both pulled out of the running in March 2000,[31] and the choice was narrowed down to Silberling, Columbus, Parker and Gilliam.[32] Rowling's first choice director was Terry Gilliam,[33] but Warner Bros. chose Columbus, citing his work on other family films such as Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire as influences for their decision.[34] Columbus pitched his vision of the film for two hours, stating that he wanted the Muggle scenes "to be bleak and dreary" but those set in the wizarding world "to be steeped in color, mood, and detail." He took inspiration from David Lean's adaptations of Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), wishing to use "that sort of darkness, that sort of edge, that quality to the cinematography," while being further inspired by the colour designs from Oliver! (1968) and The Godfather (1972).[6]

"Harry Potter is the kind of timeless literary achievement that comes around once in a lifetime. Since the books have generated such a passionate following across the world, it was important to us to find a director that has an affinity for both children and magic. I can't think of anyone more ideally suited for this job than Chris." — Lorenzo di Bonaventura[34] Steve Kloves was selected to write the screenplay. He described adapting the book as "tough", as it did not "lend itself to adaptation as well as the next two books."[35] Kloves often received synopses of books proposed as film adaptations from Warner Bros., which he "almost never read",[6] but Harry Potter jumped out at him.[6] He went out and bought the book, and became an instant fan of the series.[35] When speaking to Warner Bros., he stated that the film had to be British, and had to be true to the characters.[35] Kloves was nervous when he first met Rowling as he did not want her to think he was going to "[destroy] her baby."[6] Rowling admitted that she "was really ready to hate this Steve Kloves," but recalled her initial meeting with him: "The first time I met him, he said to me, 'You know who my favourite character is?' And I thought, You're gonna say Ron. I know you're gonna say Ron. But he said 'Hermione.' And I just kind of melted."[6] Rowling received a large amount of creative control, an arrangement that Columbus did not mind.

Warner Bros. had initially planned to release the film over 4 July 2001 weekend, making for such a short production window that several proposed directors pulled themselves out of the running. Due to time constraints, the date was put back to 16 November 2001.[36]

Casting Rowling insisted that the cast be kept British.[23] Susie Figgis was appointed as casting director, working with both Columbus and Rowling in auditioning the lead roles of Harry, Ron and Hermione.[37] Open casting calls were held for the main three roles,[38] with only British children being considered.[39] The principal auditions took place in three parts, with those auditioning having to read a page from the novel, then to improvise a scene of the students' arrival at Hogwarts, and finally to read several pages from the script in front of Columbus.[39] Scenes from Columbus' script for the 1985 film Young Sherlock Holmes were also used in auditions.[40] On 11 July 2000, Figgis left the production, complaining that Columbus did not consider any of the thousands of children they had auditioned "worthy".[40] On 8 August 2000, the virtually unknown Daniel Radcliffe and newcomers Rupert Grint and Emma Watson were selected to play Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, respectively.[41]

Filming A large castle, with a ditch and trees in front of it. Alnwick Castle was used as a principal filming location for Hogwarts. Two British film industry officials requested that the film be shot in the United Kingdom, offering their assistance in securing filming locations, the use of Leavesden Film Studios, as well as changing the UK's child labour laws (adding a small number of working hours per week and making the timing of on-set classes more flexible).[6] Warner Bros. accepted their proposal. Filming began on 29 September 2000 at Leavesden Film Studios and concluded on 23 March 2001,[42] with final work being done in July.[29][43] Principal photography took place on 2 October 2000 at North Yorkshire's Goathland railway station.[44] Canterbury Cathedral and Scotland's Inverailort Castle were both touted as possible locations for Hogwarts; Canterbury rejected Warner Bros. proposal due to concerns about the film's "pagan" theme.[45][46] Alnwick Castle and Gloucester Cathedral were eventually selected as the principal locations for Hogwarts,[6] with some scenes also being filmed at Harrow School.[47] Other Hogwarts scenes were filmed in Durham Cathedral over a two-week period;[48] these included shots of the corridors and some classroom scenes.[49] Oxford University's Divinity School served as the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, and Duke Humfrey's Library, part of the Bodleian, was used as the Hogwarts Library.[50] Filming for Privet Drive took place on Picket Post Close in Bracknell, Berkshire.[48] Filming in the street took two days instead of the planned single day, so payments to the street's residents were correspondingly increased.[48] For all the subsequent film's scenes set in Privet Drive, filming took place on a constructed set in Leavesden Film Studios, which proved to have been cheaper than filming on location.[51] London's Australia House was selected as the location for Gringotts Wizarding Bank,[6] while Christ Church, Oxford was the location for the Hogwarts trophy room.[52] London Zoo was used as the location for the scene in which Harry accidentally sets a snake on Dudley,[52] with King's Cross Station also being used as the book specifies.[53]

A building painted blue, with a sign reading "The Glass House". An advertisement on glasses is affixed on the door. The store in London used as the exterior of The Leaky Cauldron. Because the American title was different, all scenes that mention the philosopher's stone by name had to be re-shot, once with the actors saying "philosopher's" and once with "sorcerer's".[29] The children filmed for four hours and then did three hours of schoolwork. They developed a liking for fake facial injuries from the makeup staff. Radcliffe was initially meant to wear green contact lenses as his eyes are blue, and not green like Harry's, but the lenses gave Radcliffe extreme irritation. Upon consultation with Rowling, it was agreed that Harry could have blue eyes.[54]

Design and special effects Judianna Makovsky designed the costumes. She re-designed the Quidditch robes, having initially planned to use those shown on the cover of the American book, but deemed them "a mess." Instead, she dressed the Quidditch players in "preppie sweaters, 19th century fencing breeches and arm guards."[55] Production designer Stuart Craig built the sets at Leavesden Studios, including Hogwarts Great Hall, basing it on many English cathedrals. Although originally asked to use an existing old street to film the Diagon Alley scenes, Craig decided to build his own set, comprising Tudor, Georgian and Queen Anne architecture.[55]

Columbus originally planned to use both animatronics and CGI animation to create the magical creatures, including Fluffy.[37] Nick Dudman, who worked on Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, was given the task of creating the needed prosthetics, with Jim Henson's Creature Shop providing creature effects.[56] John Coppinger stated that the magical creatures that needed to be created had to be designed multiple times.[57] The film features nearly 600 special effects shots, involving numerous companies. Industrial Light & Magic created Lord Voldemort's face on the back of Quirrell, Rhythm & Hues animated Norbert (Hagrid's baby dragon); and Sony Pictures Imageworks produced the Quidditch scenes.[6]

Music

John Williams Main article: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (soundtrack) John Williams was selected to compose the score.[58] Williams composed the score at his homes in Los Angeles and Tanglewood before recording it in London in September 2001. One of the main themes is entitled "Hedwig's Theme"; Williams retained it for his finished score as "everyone seemed to like it" and therefore it was a recurring theme throughout the series.[59]

Differences from the book Columbus repeatedly checked with Rowling to make sure he was getting minor details correct.[56] Kloves described the film as being "really faithful" to the book. He added dialogue, of which Rowling approved. One of the lines originally included had to be removed after Rowling told him that it would directly contradict an event in the then-unreleased fifth Harry Potter novel Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.[60]

Several minor characters have been removed from the film version, most prominent among them the spectral History of Magic teacher, Professor Binns, and Peeves the poltergeist. The book's first chapter is from the viewpoint of Vernon and Petunia Dursley the day before they are given Harry to look after, highlighting how non-magical people react to magic. The film removes this, beginning with Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Hagrid leaving Harry with the Dursleys (although McGonagall tells Dumbledore how she had been watching the Dursleys all day). Harry's less than pleasant times at Mrs. Figg's are cut from the film while the boa constrictor from Brazil in the zoo becomes a Burmese Python in the film. Some conflicts, such as Harry and Draco's encounter with each other in Madam Malkin's robe shop and midnight duel, are not in the film. Some of Nicolas Flamel's role is changed or cut altogether. Norbert is mentioned to have been taken away by Dumbledore in the film; whilst the book sees Harry and Hermione have to take him by hand to Charlie Weasley's friends. Rowling described the scene as "the one part of the book that she felt [could easily] be changed".[55] As a result, the reason for the detention in the Forbidden Forest was changed: In the novel, Harry and Hermione are put in detention for being caught by Filch when leaving the Astronomy Tower after hours, Neville and Malfoy are given detention when caught in the corridor by Professor McGonagall. In the film, Harry, Hermione and Ron receive detention after Malfoy catches them in Hagrid's hut after hours (Malfoy however, is given detention for being out of bed after hours). Firenze the centaur, who is described in the book as being palomino with light blonde hair, is shown to be dark in the film.[61] The Quidditch pitch is altered from a traditional stadium to an open field circled by spectator towers.[55]

The timeline in the book is not enforced in the film e.g. Harry arrived at the Dursleys in 1981 according to the date revealed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. However, on the film set for 4 Privet Drive, Dudley's certificates from primary school bear the year 2001,[62][63] implying it is set ten years later. Trains bearing the livery of GNER, who operated intercity services on the East Coast Main Line from 1996 to 2007, are seen at Kings Cross station.

Distribution Marketing The first teaser poster was released on 1 December 2000.[64] The first teaser trailer was released via satellite on 2 March 2001 and debuted in cinemas with the release of See Spot Run.[65] The soundtrack was released on 30 October 2001 in a CD format. A video game based on the film was released on 15 November 2001 by Electronic Arts for several consoles.[59] A port for the game, for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox was released in 2003.[66] Mattel won the rights to produce toys based on the film, to be sold exclusively through Warner Brothers' stores.[67] Hasbro also produced products, including confectionery products based on those from the series.[68] Warner Bros. signed a deal worth US$150 million with Coca-Cola to promote the film,[53] although some pindened the deal at $40 million-$50 million worldwide for the movie.[69] Lego produced a series of sets based on buildings and scenes from the film, as well as a Lego Creator video game.[70]

Home media Warner Bros. first released the film on VHS and DVD on 11 May 2002 in the UK[71][72] and 28 May 2002 in the US.[73][74][75] The VHS and DVD (The Special Edition) was re-released in 7 May 2004[76] An Ultimate Edition was later released exclusively in the US that included a Blu-ray and DVD. The release contains an extended version of the film, with many of the deleted scenes edited back in; additionally, the set includes the existing special features disc, Radcliffe's, Grint's, and Watson's first screen tests, a feature-length special Creating the World of Harry Potter Part 1: The Magic Begins, and a 48-page hardcover booklet.[77] The extended version has a running time of about 159 minutes, which has previously been shown during certain television airings.[78] Between May and June 2002, the film sold 10 million copies, almost 60% of which were DVD sales.[79]

Reception Box office The film had its world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on 4 November 2001, with the cinema arranged to resemble Hogwarts School.[80] The film was greatly received at the box office. In the United States, it made $32.3 million on its opening day, breaking the single day record previously held by Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. On the second day of release, the film's gross increased to $33.5 million, breaking the record for biggest single day again. In total, it made $90.3 million during its first weekend, breaking the record for highest-opening weekend of all time that was previously held by The Lost World: Jurassic Park.[81] It held the record until the following May when Spider-Man made $114.8 million in its opening weekend.[82] The film held onto the No. 1 spot at the box-office for three consecutive weekends.[83][84] The film also had the highest grossing 5-day (Wednesday-Sunday) Thanksgiving weekend record of $82.4 million, holding the title for twelve years until both The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen surpassed it with $110.1 million and $94 million respectively.[85] Similar results were achieved across the world. In the United Kingdom, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone broke the record for the highest-opening weekend ever, both including and excluding previews, making £16.3 million with and £9.8 million without previews.[86] The film went on to make £66.1 million in the UK alone, making it the country's second highest-grossing film of all-time (after Titanic), until it was surpassed by Mamma Mia!.[87]

In total, the film earned $974.8 million at the worldwide box office, $317.6 million of that in the US and $657.2 million elsewhere,[5] which made it the second highest-grossing film in history at the time,[88] as well as the year's highest-grossing film.[89] As of 2018, it is the unadjusted 47th highest-grossing film of all-time and the second highest-grossing Harry Potter film to date[90] after Deathly Hallows – Part 2, which grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.[91] Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 55.9 million tickets in the US.[92]

Critical response On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 81% based on 198 reviews, with an average rating of 7.06/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone adapts its source material faithfully while condensing the novel's overstuffed narrative into an involving – and often downright exciting – big-screen magical caper."[93] On Metacritic the film has a score of 64 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[94] On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[95]

Roger Ebert called Philosopher's Stone "a classic," giving the film four out of four stars, and particularly praising the Quidditch scenes' visual effects.[96] Praise was echoed by both The Telegraph and Empire reviewers, with Alan Morrison of the latter naming it the film's "stand-out sequence".[97][98] Brian Linder of IGN.com also gave the film a positive review, but concluded that it "isn't perfect, but for me it's a nice supplement to a book series that I love".[99] Although criticising the final half-hour, Jeanne Aufmuth of Palo Alto Online stated that the film would "enchant even the most cynical of moviegoers."[100] USA Today reviewer Claudia Puig gave the film three out of four stars, especially praising the set design and Robbie Coltrane's portrayal of Hagrid, but criticised John Williams' score and concluded "ultimately many of the book's readers may wish for a more magical incarnation."[101] The sets, design, cinematography, effects and principal cast were all given praise from Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter, although he deemed John Williams' score "a great clanging, banging music box that simply will not shut up."[102] Todd McCarthy of Variety compared the film positively with Gone with the Wind and put "The script is faithful, the actors are just right, the sets, costumes, makeup and effects match and sometimes exceed anything one could imagine."[103] Jonathan Foreman of the New York Post recalled that the film was "remarkably faithful," to its literary counterpart as well as a "consistently entertaining if overlong adaptation."[104]

Richard Corliss of Time magazine, considered the film a "by the numbers adaptation," criticising the pace and the "charisma-free" lead actors.[105] CNN's Paul Tatara found that Columbus and Kloves "are so careful to avoid offending anyone by excising a passage from the book, the so-called narrative is more like a jamboree inside Rowling's head."[106] Nathaniel Rogers of The Film Experience gave the film a negative review and wrote: "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone is as bland as movies can get."[107] Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine wished that the film had been directed by Tim Burton, finding the cinematography "bland and muggy," and the majority of the film a "solidly dull celebration of dribbling goo."[108] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times was highly negative about the film, saying "[the film] is like a theme park that's a few years past its prime; the rides clatter and groan with metal fatigue every time they take a curve." He also said it suffered from "a lack of imagination" and wooden characters, adding, "The Sorting Hat has more personality than anything else in the movie."[109]

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)

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Snap Decision

(A chance meeting with a stranger at a bar helps you recover from a bad breakup.)

Warnings: 11000+ words of mostly sex stuff. Bad ex boyfriends. People doing inadvisable things. Listen up kids: in real life you should be more cautious about who you let take naked pictures of you! Lots and lots of sex. If you’ve read my stuff before, you know the drill.

You thought it would be fun to work in sales after you graduated from university; you would travel around the country, meeting new people, holding meetings in fancy high rise office buildings in big cities, wining and dining clients at gourmet restaurants while you closed deals and made boatloads of money. The reality was that you were selling industrial wastewater management systems, making a moderate income, while traveling four days a week to factories and chemical refineries in some of the least glamorous locations on earth. You didn’t mind the work itself, but the evenings alone in small town hotel rooms were dull and disheartening, so you would frequently head out to a local movie theater or neighborhood bar to distract yourself from the loneliness on the road.

It was pouring down rain outside and you decide to run to the closest place you could find to grab a drink, rather than risk driving around and getting lost. That’s how you found yourself sitting alone at the bar of the Applebee’s restaurant that was adjacent to your hotel, sipping on something called a Blue Hawaiian, in a town you couldn’t even remember the name of.

Unruly children sat with their families having dinner in the nearby booths, while innocuously bland pop songs played overhead. You took one sip of the cloyingly sweet blue cocktail in front of you and immediately regretted your decision to come here tonight. Given the lousy week you had experienced, you would have been better off drinking cheap whiskey at a dive bar filled with unapologetic alcoholics. Here, the family friendly atmosphere mixed with the empty promises of a fruity cocktail that was designed to trick you into thinking you were on a tropical island vacation instead of in your real life. Your real crappy life.

You had totally blown the sale today. The clients had a million questions about the technical specifications of the products you were trying to sell, but you kept tripping over your words and making yourself sound like an idiot. You blamed your poor work performance on lack of sleep. And you blamed the lack of sleep on your boyfriend, David. Actually, he was your ex-boyfriend now. After more than a year together, you dumped him for cheating on you.

He claimed he was faithful, but you were certain he was lying. He never picked up his phone when you called him from out on the road. He would eventually call you back, but his stories about where he was and what he was doing always sounded a little off. The final blow came when your friend Stephanie told you she saw him going into a movie theater with another girl. David claimed Stephanie was mistaken and that you were just paranoid and jealous for no reason. You wanted to believe him, but deep down you were sure that Stephanie was right. All the unresolved questions you had about what David was doing while you were working could easily be answered if he had been cheating on you. David cried when you told him it was over, he begged you to reconsider, but you were resolute and just walked away.

That had been a week ago, and every day since then, you questioned whether or not you made the right decision. You had no hard proof that he had been unfaithful. Sure, Stephanie said she saw him, but she only saw from a distance. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe it was just someone who looked like David.

“Is this seat taken?”

You were too preoccupied with your phone to look up at the man who was asking to sit next to you. Shaking your head, you motioned vaguely for him to sit while your other hand swiped through photos of you and David in happier times. You reached for your drink and were surprised to see the glass was already empty. “Can I get another one of these?” you asked the bartender.

“Be careful with those drinks. They are stronger than they look. They taste like candy, but they’ll really knock you on your ass,” said the stranger sitting next to you. “Last time I was in town, one of my colleagues had three of those things and I had to carry her back to the hotel afterwards.”

“I think you can trust that you won’t be carrying me anywhere, so don’t worry.” You turned to look at your nosy neighbor; he looked back at you with a wide toothy grin.

“I’m Jimin,” he held out his hand in greeting. “You’re staying at the hotel next door, right? I’m pretty sure I saw you in the lobby earlier today.”

You tentatively shook his hand and introduced yourself. “Yeah, I’m staying at the hotel tonight. I leave town tomorrow.” You hoped that you would be able to cut this short so you could go back to wallowing in your misery without further interruption.

“Are you here on business?” Jimin took a swig of the beer he was drinking and leaned with one elbow against the bar as he looked in your direction.

“Yeah.” You kept your answer brief to try to discourage excess conversation.

“Me too,” he replied. “I work for an institutional kitchen supply company. The local school district here is a client. So is the county jail the next town over. I try to make it down here at least once a quarter, if not more often.”

“Sounds glamorous.” You couldn’t resist the snarky response, but you began to feel bad about your rudeness almost immediately after the words left your mouth.

“It pays the bills.” Jimin seemed unphased by you. “What are you doing in these parts?”

“I had a sales call at the chemical refinery in town.”

“What do you sell?”

“Industrial Wastewater Management Systems.”

“Yeah. That doesn’t sound any more glamorous than me selling to prison cafeterias.” Jimin winked at you when he said it, making it clear that he was in good spirits. “I was thinking about ordering some snacks to go with the drinks. You hungry at all? I’m buying.”

You started to wonder if his motives for sitting next to you were about more than just making friendly conversation with a stranger. “No thanks. I’m not hungry.”

“Well, at least let me pick up the tab for your drinks.” Jimin leaned in closer to speak. “A pretty girl like yourself shouldn’t ever have to pay her own bar bill.”

And there it was… his real reason for approaching you in the first place. You were used to being approached by other traveling salesmen while you were on the road. It seemed like most of them were always looking for someone to spend the night with in their hotels. You had come to view these kinds of flirtations as an occupational hazard and typically shut people down by telling them you had a boyfriend. Unfortunately, that statement was no longer true.

“I’m sorry if this comes across as rude or something,” you took a big gulp of your drink before continuing, “I’m just not in the mood tonight for a lot of chit chat. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”

“Fair enough.” Jimin leaned back on his stool and threw his hands up in defeat. “I’ll back off, but if you want to talk about whatever it is on your mind, I’m all ears. I mean, I’m just sitting here anyway.”

“It’s just my boyfriend. I mean, my ex-boyfriend. I broke up with him this week and I’m thinking that I might have been too hasty.” You weren’t sure why you decided to share this information with a perfect stranger. Maybe it was the alcohol speaking. Maybe it just felt good to speak your thoughts out loud for once.

“Why’d you break up with him in the first place?” Jimin looked at you inquisitively.

“I convinced myself that he was cheating on me. But he said he wasn’t and it’s not like I had any solid proof. All I ever really had was a feeling that things weren’t right and it was hard to get hold of him while I’m out on the road. I think I over reacted.” The more you thought about it, the more you thought you should just go back to the hotel and call David and ask him for forgiveness.

“Hmmmm…” Jimin narrowed his eyes as he gathered his thoughts. “Can I provide you some unsolicited advice? I’ve had my fair share of experience with cheating and if you have that gut feeling that someone is screwing around on you, there is a 99% chance that you are right. Those feelings don’t just pop up out of nowhere. Based on my own experience, I say go with your gut.”

You wanted to tell Jimin that his experience didn’t mean that you would suffer the same fate. Maybe you would be that 1% of the population whose gut instinct was wrong and you would be the exception to the rule. But instead, you just shrugged your shoulders and said, “I don’t know. Maybe,” and you went back to scrolling through your phone, leaving Jimin to drink his beer in silence.

While you considered whether you should reach out to David tonight or in the morning, you decided to check his social media and see if there was any indication of how he was feeling. You had kept firm and not checked any of his accounts since the break-up, but now you wondered, is he sad? Depressed? Angry? You felt bad for breaking his heart and felt some trepidation as you checked.

What you saw shocked you. Photo after photo of David on Facebook, out drinking and partying with his friends. A photo of him with his boys standing in front of a local strip club was captioned “Freedom!” The date it was posted was the same night you had split up. Among the comments, one from his best friend stood out to you

Finally! You’ve been talking about cutting her loose forever

He had been talking about leaving you before you left him. He had apparently been talking about it… forever

You flipped over to Snapchat to see what, if anything, he had posted there. You were shocked to see photos from this evening. David getting drunk with his friends. David doing shots at the bar. David with his arm around some girl. David kissing the same girl. And then the final kicker… David with his arm around the girl, his hand sliding down her shirt to grab her boob, with the caption: Traded in the old girlfriend for an upgrade!

An upgrade.

He’s out there telling the world that he ditched you so he could date this… this… tramp? He’s telling everyone that she’s better than you? You gripped the phone so tightly in your hand that your knuckles started to turn white. You could feel yourself start to shake with anger. How dare he! How dare that motherfucker act like this!

“She’s pretty in a trashy kind of way. But I wouldn’t call her an upgrade.” Jimin was looking over your shoulder at the picture on your phone.

“Do you mind?!” You snapped at him, pulling the phone closer to you. You quickly took a screenshot of the offending photo before slamming the phone face down on the bar.

“You probably shouldn’t have done that. He’s going to know you are checking up on him. You’re playing right into his hand.”

“What are you talking about? What hand? I don’t care that he knows I took the screenshot.”

“He’s trying to make you jealous and it’s working.”

“Bullshit. He’s clearly not thinking about me at all.” You waved Jimin away as if he was talking nonsense.

“Nope. You’re wrong about that. He’s obsessed with you.”

“You have no idea what you are talking about. I’ve spent, what? Maybe all of 10 minutes talking to you tonight? You don’t know shit about my situation.”

Jimin just shook his head and took another sip of his beer. “That’s the guy you dumped right? The one you thought was cheating on you? I know guys like that. They are all the same. They fuck around and start to feel invincible. They think that just because they haven’t been caught yet, that they won’t ever get caught. Guys like that actually think that they are smarter than you, they are better than you, that you need them more than they need you. But then they get found out and their fragile little egos crack… so the focus turns to building that ego back up by doing things to make you jealous. That’s why your fuckhead ex posted that shit. He wanted you to find it. He wants you to feel pain and humiliation. He wants to transfer all his feelings of inferiority to you. And once he knows you’ve been looking at what he is up to, he’s going to think his plan is working.”

Everything Jimin was saying made sense. David didn’t feel any remorse for cheating on you, and he felt no regret in losing you, but he did feel entitled to try to hurt you. You closed your eyes as you felt the anger start to swell inside you. “I can’t believe I wasted a whole year with such an asshole,” you said through clenched teeth.

“It happens. It’s not your fault. Cheaters can be very charming and persuasive.”

While you were still trying to process what was going on, you received a message from David. You choked and sputtered at what you saw. He had sent you another photo of himself and the girl. This one lewder and more pointed than what he had posted previously. David had pulled down the girl’s top, exposing her left breast, and his mouth was firmly attached to her nipple. The text that immediately followed said: I noticed you were checking up on me. See anything interesting?

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!” you shouted out loud, to no one in particular, causing the bartender to shoot you a dirty look.

Jimin again looked over your shoulder to see the picture. “Mmmm… I told you he was doing this to get your attention. He’s doubling down on the jealousy tactics.”

“You know, I could really do without the ‘I-told-you-so’ comments, especially from a total stranger.” You glared at Jimin.

“Wow. I thought we were bonding over here. My mistake,” he replied, feigning disappointment.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do with myself. I was feeling all sad about the breakup earlier tonight and now all I want to do is kick him in the balls. How dare he do this to me?! Is it wrong that all I can think about right now is how I want to make him pay for this?”

“How, exactly, would you like to make him pay?” Jimin raised an eyebrow at you.

“I...I would…” you struggled to come up with a good idea. “I don’t know. They always say living well is the best revenge. But that takes a lifetime and I’d like to find a way to really stick it to him right now.”

“So why don’t you beat him at his own game tonight? He’s not the only one with a camera who can take pictures showing that life is good right now.”

“I’m getting drunk by myself at an Applebee’s in the middle of nowhere. That’s hardly the good life.”

“Hello? You aren’t alone right now.” Jimin pointed dramatically at his own face. “You want to get under his skin? Show him that you are with another man right now. I promise that will piss him off like you won’t believe.”

For the first time since you started chatting, you paused to take a long look at Jimin and really see him. He looked to be about your age, well dressed, good looking face with a nice body. David would hate him. “I’m not sure,” you replied. “You think me taking a few selfies with you is really going to piss him off that much?”

Jimin turned his barstool to face you full on, he locked eyes with you and picked up his bottle of beer to take a long drink before speaking. “It depends on what you are willing to do in those selfies.” He broke into a wide grin, as if to soften the implication of his words, but Jimin continued staring directly into your eyes to make sure you knew he was not joking.

“I’m not sure I understand what you have in mind.” Those words were a lie, you knew exactly what he was saying.

“I mean you need to show him that he’s not the only one getting some action tonight. You want to really punch him in the gut, metaphorically speaking?” Jimin leaned in towards you, his face mere inches away. “Send him a photo of some other guy balls deep inside you. I guarantee that will hit him where it really hurts.”

Jimin’s words were crude and inappropriate, but you couldn’t help but feel intrigued by the idea. “Some other guy?” you feigned ignorance. “Exactly who would some other guy be?”

“A woman as attractive as you could have her pick of men. All I’m saying is that if you picked me, I would make sure you had a good time while getting your revenge.” He continued looking directly at you, his eyes unwavering as he spoke. “We’re both grown ups here. You know full well that the whole reason I sat down next to you tonight is because I’m attracted to you and I was hoping that I might convince you to make my night a little less lonely. You clearly have some baggage you need to get rid of and I’ve got no problem helping you with that. Trust me when I say, I’m down for whatever you want to do.”

Nothing he said truly surprised you, you weren’t naive. But hearing Jimin say it so bluntly made your heart beat a little faster and your mouth go dry. You reached for you drink, only to be disappointed that it was once again empty and unable to remember drinking it so quickly. You held up your glass and motioned to the bartender to bring you another.

“You really should try switching to water right about now. Those things you are drinking are poison,” Jimin advised you.

“Who are you to tell me what I should be drinking?” Your voice dripped with annoyance.

“I’m the guy who just told you he wants to get naked with you tonight and I can’t do that in good conscience if you are sloppy drunk when you finally say yes to my proposition.”

You shook your head and turned your stool back towards the counter, unable to continuing looking Jimin in the eye; his assertiveness was having a greater effect on you than you thought was reasonable. He really was very attractive, but sex seemed out of the question. “What makes you think that I’ll say yes? You are a stranger to me. I don’t sleep with strangers. I don’t even know your last name. You could be a serial killer for all I know.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card, handing it over to you. You took the beige card in your hand and ran your finger across the front as you read it.

Jimin Park

Sales and Service Manager

Ace Commercial Kitchens.

“I’m not a serial killer, but if you are worried about it, take a picture of the card and send it to a friend for safe keeping or something. If you end up dead or missing, they’ll know to come looking for me.”

You were increasingly tempted. Jimin was handsome and confident. And the photos from David and his new girl only increased the temptation to be with another man as quickly as possible, but something was still holding you back. “I’m sorry. This just doesn’t sound like a smart idea.”

Jimin smiled and nodded. “I never claimed it was a smart idea. Just a mutually satisfying idea.”

Just as the bartender set your third cocktail of the evening in front of you, you got a message notification on your phone. David had sent you another message, this one was a video. You hesitated to press play, thinking that no good could come of it. But your curiosity got the better of you.

The video was poorly lit, but you could see enough to know that David and his new girl were back at his apartment, sitting on his bed. The same bed in which you had spent so many nights with him. The two of them were kissing, slobbering over each other’s mouths. David pointed the camera downward so you could see the new girl had slipped her hand under his pants and was at work fondling him. He pulled the camera back up to their faces and he spoke to the girl, “Hey babe, you got anything you would like to say to my ex?”

The girl looked up and cast a sinister smile, her voice sounded tinny coming through the speakers of you phone as she spoke directly to you. “Thank you for finally getting out of my way. I hated sharing him, but I always new that he’d eventually make the right decision and come to the woman who could actually satisfy him.” She giggled before disappearing out of the frame.

David threw his head back and exclaimed, “Shit that feels good, babe!” He let the hand holding the phone drop to his side, giving you a brief glimpse of the new girl’s head lodged between David’s legs before the video ended completely.

You continued staring at your phone even as the screen went dark. You tried to make sense of the thoughts swirling through your mind. Up until a week ago, David was your boyfriend, your lover, the man you trusted more than any other… well, maybe that last part wasn’t entirely true. The doubts about him and his trustworthiness had been creeping in for the last few months. Still, you never imagined that he was someone who would be so petty and vengeful; his actions were outrageous. You would have expected to feel jealous or distraught over the video you had just watched, but instead all you felt was anger. Anger that David had managed to fool you into believing that he was a decent human being. Anger that you had wasted your time on someone so low. Anger that David and his human trash heap of a new girlfriend thought they were winning over you in this imaginary competition they had created. They were back home feeling smug and superior. You couldn’t let that stand.

You looked at Jimin’s business card clenched tightly in your hand and then you turned to look at Jimin, who was casually sipping his beer and looking right back at you. “Did you see this?” you asked, holding up your phone towards him.

“Part of it.” Jimin took a final swig of his beer, emptying the bottle, and set it down on the bar. “I saw enough to know your ex is a next level prick.” You watched as he licked his lips, and took note of how full and soft they looked -- he seemed to be growing more attractive by the second. Jimin raised his hand to grab the attention of the bartender. “Can I get the check? For both of us?” He motioned towards you as he addressed the bartender.

“I didn’t say I was leaving,” you informed him.

“You don’t have to leave, but I’m headed back to the hotel. I already told you that a woman as attractive as you shouldn’t ever have to pay for her own drinks. Besides, given how rough of a night you had, the least I could do is pick up your bar tab.” As Jimin signed off on the bill, he grabbed a napkin, wrote the number “301” on it and handed it to you. “You can do what you want, but my offer still stands. That’s my room number. Feel free to drop by later if you change your mind.”

You took the napkin and stared at it for a moment before crumpling it up and tossing it down on the bar. “That won’t be necessary,” you told him. “I’m coming with you.”

A tiny voice in a distant corner of your brain was yelling at you that this was a stupid idea. It told you that good girls don’t behave this way, that revenge sex was petty and beneath you, that you should let karma take its course and that justice would prevail in the end. But when Jimin placed his hand on the small of your back to lead you out of the restaurant, you felt a nervous excitement. You had been a good girl your whole life, and you had nothing to show for it -- so fuck waiting for karma to reward you and punish David. Tonight you would be taking matters in your own hands.

It was still raining outside, so Jimin took off his jacket and held it over your head to keep your hair dry as the two of you ran across the parking lot to the hotel. The gentlemanly gesture made your heart flutter just a little. David would have just admonished you for not having the foresight to bring a jacket or umbrella of your own.

The rain quickly soaked through Jimin’s white dress shirt, leaving it slightly transparent and clinging tightly to his chest. You couldn’t help but take notice of his muscular form, the shirt leaving little to the imagination. Jimin caught you staring at his body and you started blushing almost immediately. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

Jimin laughed out loud as he wrapped his arm around your waist and pulled you in closer to him. “You’re cute. I don’t mind you staring. In fact, I’ve been doing a fair bit of staring at you also.” He let his eyes drop to your chest, while his hands slid lower and rested at the curve of your buttocks. The sexual tension was palpable and you couldn’t resist leaning in for a kiss. You lips brushed against his for the first time, they felt pillowy soft just as you had imagined. The ding of the arriving elevator startled you and you broke the kiss suddenly. Jimin, pulled you back into his embrace, lifting you up from the ground and carrying you into the elevator, diving hungrily in for another kiss as he pressed you against the paneled walls. Any hint of softness had disappeared as his mouth collided against yours, your tongues tangling, his teeth scraping against your bottom lip. You could feel the dampness of his rain soaked body seeping into you and his fingers dug into the flesh of your backside. His mouth dropped to your neck, sucking and nibbling on the tender flesh, hitting you in exactly the right spot and causing you moan involuntarily. You could feel Jimin’s lips pull into a smile and he whispered in your ear, “I promise you that this isn’t the last time you’ll make that noise tonight.”

When the elevator arrived on the third floor, Jimin grabbed you by the hand and led you to his room. While he fumbled for the key, you could feel your nervousness creeping in. What if you woke up tomorrow and regretted this? What if Jimin found you to be disappointing in bed? You had been in a rush this morning and only shaved your legs up to the knee -- how hairy had you left your thighs? You couldn’t remember. Are you really going to take photos and send them to David? He’s just going to show the pictures of you and your hairy gorilla thighs to his friends so they can all have a laugh at your expense.

Jimin threw the door open and wrapped an arm around your waist to usher you inside. You resisted slightly and you could see the look of confusion on his face. “I’m not sure I should be doing this,” you told him.

“Why not? You seemed into it just a moment ago. What happened?”

You hesitated before finally confessing. “I only shaved half my legs.”

Jimin burst out laughing. “That’s what has you worried? I didn’t shave my legs at all, so we’re even.” He placed his hand on the back of your head, attempting to pull you in for another kiss.

“I’m worried if we do the photo thing, I’m not going to look all that sexy and David and that bitch are just going to feel even more full of themselves. I don’t want to end up humiliated at the end of this.”

Jimin’s face softened and he stroked your cheek with his thumb. “I won’t let that happen.”

“Why should I trust you? I only just met you. And when tonight is done, I won’t ever see you again.”

Slowly nodding his head, Jimin cupped your face in his hands and looked you directly in the eye. “I’m going to be brutally honest with you. I am a vain and shallow man. I fuck around a decent amount when I’m on the road and I take great pride in my ability to score the hottest chicks anywhere and I never settle for second best. When I saw you, I wanted nothing more than to get in your pants. That girl that your ex is with? I saw those pics. She’s got nothing on you.” Jimin let his hands slowly fall from your face to your shoulders and he spun you around until you could see yourself in the full length mirror. “Do you really not see how sexy you are? Because I can’t see anything but that.”

Jimin snaked his hand around your waist and pulled you so your hips fell flush against him and you could feel the firmness of his body against you. “Look at yourself,” Jimin commanded you. You gazed at your reflection, the indirect light from the lamps cast an appealing shadow across your bodies, the top three buttons on your shirt had come undone during your make out session in the elevator and your cleavage was clearly visible. Jimin’s wet hair fell across his eyes, giving him a mysterious look as he leaned down and caught your earlobe between his teeth before he let his lips rest against your ear as he spoke softly, “I’ll work extra hard to make sure tonight is worth your while.”

You said nothing as you leaned back against his chest, letting him support the weight of your body as you instinctively rotated your hips against the front of his trousers. Jimin sighed at the sensation and returned to nibbling on your ear and slowly let his hand creep upward from your waist until he had your left breast in his grip, his fingers digging into the mound of flesh, pulling your shirt so tight that the remaining buttons threatened to burst. You watched the scene play out in the mirror and had to admit that it did look pretty sexy. Without giving it much of a thought, you pulled out your phone before tossing your purse to the floor and took aim at your reflection. You sent the resulting photo to David without comment.

“Good girl,” Jimin locked eyes with you in the mirror’s reflection. You watched as he slowly unbuttoned your shirt, the fabric fell open to reveal a very sensible beige bra which provided excellent support and minimal sex appeal. Still, your practical attire looked positively indecent with Jimin’s hands groping you. His fingers hooked under the edges of your bra, pulling the fabric down until your areolas became clearly visible. “Mmmmmmmm. I can’t believe how much I lucked out tonight.” He dipped his fingers further into the cups, pulling them down even further until your nipples were exposed and he could gently pinch the hardening nubs. You pushed your backside further into his crotch and heard his breath hitch in response.

Jimin pushed you forward and pulled your blouse from your shoulders and let it fall to the floor. He followed up by quickly unbuttoning the first few buttons on his own shirt, but quickly grew frustrated by how long it was taking him to undress and pulled the shirt off over his head and tossed it on top your own. You stepped to the side a little bit so you could have a better view of Jimin’s naked torso in the mirror. He looked even better than you thought he would, every muscle clearly defined like a sculpture. You couldn’t help yourself and raised your phone to take another photo, but did not send it to David. You wanted to keep this one for yourself as a momento.

Reaching around to the clasp on your skirt, Jimin asked, “May I?” You nodded your head in assent and he slowly undid the hook and lowered the zipper. As the skirt fell to you feet, you remembered the plain cotton panties you were wearing instead of one of the many lace thongs you owned but had left at home. Jimin didn’t seem to mind as he enveloped your body in his own, his arms reaching down to the thighs you had been so worried about a short while ago. Jimin let out a low growl as his fingers dug into your skin and he dragged them up the length of your thighs until he reached the waistband of your panties. He traced the edges as if he wanted to slip his fingers underneath but instead he pulled his hands back up to your shoulders and spun you around to face him, diving in for another kiss -- this one even lustier than the one you shared in the elevator.

You were lost in the kiss when your concentration was broken by the ding of your phone. Jimin just smiled and said, “I guess he got your message.”

“I guess he did.” When you looked at the phone, though, you were stunned to see a selfie of David fucking his new girlfriend doggy style, he had held the camera up high in order to get a view of himself thrusting into that bitch as she was on all fours with David’s stupid face still in the frame, a big cheesy grin spread across his lips and his fist held high, giving you a thumbs-up like some immature fuckboy. It was tacky and gross and it pissed you off even more. “He looks too preoccupied to be bothered by the photo I sent him.”

Jimin took the phone from your hand and looked at the picture. “Seriously, what did you ever see in this guy? You are so far out of his league. Hell, this chick isn’t half as good looking as you and even she is too good for his scrawny ass.” You smiled inwardly at the compliment. “Fuck this guy.” Jimin fiddled with your phone in his right hand while he pulled his own phone out of his pocket with his left hand.

You knew you should be upset by what was going on, but instead you were distracted by Jimin’s bare chest, his well defined shoulders, the smoothness of his skin, the veins in his forearms as he gripped the two phones in his hands… “What are you doing?” you asked.

Jimin just smiled and handed your phone back to you before he returned to kissing you, first on your lips, then on your neck, then dipping lower to your collar bones, and finally bending to reach your breasts. His right hand undid the clasp of your bra and slid the straps from off your shoulders. Silently, you watched him as he took a nipple between his lips, softly sucking on it and eliciting an unexpect purr from you. You were so focused on the feeling that you didn’t notice Jimin raise his phone in his left hand until you heard the snap of the camera. “You want to see before I send it to him?” he asked you while showing you his phone -- he had sent himself David’s number so he could communicate with him directly. The photograph was a close up of his lips attached to your nipple, neither of your faces clearly visible. It mimicked the photo you received earlier from David, but it looked more erotic and artistic; it made you feel sexy. Jimin paused for your reaction, but when you said nothing, he sent a message to David, simply saying “Delicious”, and followed it with the photo he had just taken.

“Why are you doing this?” you questioned Jimin.

“I already told you that I’m vain and shallow. Not only do I want to fuck you because you are hot, I want all the other men to fucking eat their hearts out because I’m winning. I don’t know your dickhead ex, but it doesn’t matter. I want him to know that I’m the alpha and he’s a fucking loser.”

You hated to admit it, but you wanted that too. “It won’t work, he’s busy getting it on with what’s-her-name.”

“Trust me. I doubt that guy has enough stamina to last more than 3 minutes once he starts fucking. But even if he managed to still be going at it, once he realizes that a better man than him is with the girl he really wants… his dick will shrivel up immediately.” You rolled your eyes, but you secretly hoped he was right.

Jimin’s phone dinged and he held it up for you to see the incoming message.

Loser (10:07PM): Who the fuck are u

Jimin quickly typed a response.

Jimin (10:08PM): I’m the guy reminding your girl what it’s like to be with a real man.

Loser (10:08PM): Fuck you!

“Do you hear that?” Jimin held his hand to his ear in an exaggerated fashion. “That’s the sound of his dick going limp.” You couldn’t help but giggle as Jimin wrapped his arms around you and lifted you up off the floor to carry you to the bed. “Now, let me show you what a real man’s dick looks like.”

He tossed you unceremoniously on the bed where you bounced against the mattress. You started to sit up but could hardly get yourself propped up on your arms before Jimin threw himself on top of you, his legs straddling your own, his hands grabbing your wrists and pulling them over your head where he held them tightly in place while he started kissing you again. His actions were feverish, his breath hot against your neck as he moved down your body, you could feel his bare chest pressed against you and his belt buckle digging into your thigh as he laid on top of you. The weight of his body pressed you further into the softness of the bed, restricting your movements as his tongue drew a line from your neck to your nipples. Eventually, he moved further down to your ribcage, sucking at biting at the skin, his arms no longer able to keep a tight grip on your wrists, he let go and dragged his fingers down the length of your arms and down your sides until he reached your hips where you could feel his grip tighten and his fingers digging into you. It felt just right.

Your fingers tangled themselves in Jimin’s hair, you held lightly onto his head making sure not to restrict his movement but wanting to feel more engaged in what he was doing to you and where he was going. Jimin slowly moved further southward, his teeth deliberately scraping against your skin as he moved down. When he arrived at the waistband of your panties, Jimin paused and raised his eyes to look up at you, the fire evident in his eyes. When he lowered himself again, he buried his face against the white cotton fabric and inhaled deeply, his nose lodged against your clit. He took his finger and traced the edges of your panties until he finally slipped one finger under the elastic of the leg hole and very slowly pulled it to the side, exposing your sex to his eyes for the first time. You raised your head to see Jimin just staring at your slit, he was motionless and expressionless as he looked at you and you could feel butterflies in your stomach as you waited for Jimin to say something… anything.

Instead of speaking, Jimin let out a small gasp of air as he used his fingers to pry your pussy lips apart and inspect you more closely. You weren’t used to this level of attention. Just as you started to get uncomfortable with Jimin’s stares, he lowered his mouth against you and planted kisses against your pussy lips, starting from the bottom and working his way up to your clit. He slid his tongue inside you and licked you with long, full strokes. Your head fell backwards and you closed your eyes as you lost yourself in the feeling. David would have been half way through his obligatory 3 to 5 minutes of rapid fire tongue flicking by now -- oral sex was something he did somewhat begrudgingly in order to get you slightly warmed up for the “main event”, as he liked to call it. But Jimin took his time ministering to your sex, he seemed in no particular rush to get through it and you allowed yourself to relax and enjoy it.

The click of the phone caused you to open your eyes. Jimin was holding his phone up and photographing himself as he was eating you out. He gave your pussy a few last licks before replacing his tongue with his fingers, drawing circles around your clit, as he climbed up next to you with his phone in his hand. “Which one do you want to send to him?”

He handed the phone to you and you scrolled through 3 different photos Jimin had taken of himself between your legs. One photo was of the back of his head, your thighs visible on either side. That seemed chaste relative to the next photo which was a side shot, his profile visible, your mons in view, his mouth open but the tongue hidden as it dipped into your folds and out of view of the camera. But the final photo was a close up, only Jimin’s mouth and nose could be seen in the frame, his tongue extended, clearly and visibly pressed against your clit as he spread your lips wide with his fingers. Your most private places were laid bare in the photo as if you were a porn star. You had never seen your own clit up close like that and it surprised and fascinated you. The photo was obscene and you couldn’t help feel a strange sense of pride seeing yourself that way. “This one,” you told Jimin as you handed the phone back to him.

“That one was my favorite, too.” Jimin sent the photo off without a message as he alternated between toying with your clit and inserting his fingers into you and crooking them to massage your g spot. You felt like a spring being tightly wound and ready to burst free at any moment, your body starting to twist and your hips lifting automatically to push into him further.

Jimin watched your face with a smirk; he liked seeing you falling apart. You reached up and wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down into another kiss; this time you could taste yourself on his lips. “I want to see you cum,” he told you.

Your orgasm was so close, only seconds away but you grabbed onto his wrist and forced him to stop. “I want to cum for you so bad. I really do. But not yet. When I cum, I want it to be with your cock deep inside me.”

“Fuck. I’m liking you better and better.” Jimin pulled his hands out from your panties and made a show of licking his fingers clean. “Tasty,” he said with a wink.

You scrambled to your knees and placed your hands against Jimin’s bare chest, his body was warm and smooth as you pushed him down against the bed and climbed on top of him, your legs astride of his body as you sat on his legs. So far you had let Jimin take the lead and you wanted to show him that you could do more than lay there. He was truly a beautiful specimen of a man, you thought as you looked down at him from your perch on his lap; you scraped your fingernails against his skin, scratching faint lines down from his pecs to his navel before you bent forward to place your mouth against his nipples, licking the tiny pert nub on the left before moving to the one on the right. Jimin sighed and narrowed his eyes, watching the movement of your tongue against his skin. David always complained of being too ticklish if you tried to touch his nipples or run your fingers over his chest, so you had to be cautious with how you touched him. But Jimin actually seemed to be enjoying your explorations of his body. “Is this okay?” you asked him.

“It’s better than just okay.”

You took your time traversing the expanse of his chest with your hands and mouth, listening carefully to Jimin’s breathy sighs for hints of what he enjoyed most. Light touches dancing across the skin or claws out raising a small red welt on his rib cage? Sloppy wet trails as your tongue traced the outline of his abdominal muscles or bite marks left on his shoulders? Near as you could tell, Jimin enjoyed everything.

Sitting up, you looked into his eyes as you repositioned yourself directly over the the bulge in his trousers and moved your hips in small circles as the outline of his cock pressed against your pussy. Jimin sat up slightly to watch you more closely, “Goddamn, that feels good.” His praise gave you confidence. “You have gorgeous tits. Won’t you play with them for me?”

Normally, such a request would make you shy, but tonight was different. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the anger at David, maybe it was knowing that when tonight was over you would likely never see Jimin again, but your normal inhibitions were rapidly disappearing. “Like this?” you asked him as you dampened your finger in your mouth and then circled your nipples before pinching them and pulling them for his amusement.

“Mmm-hmmm”, Jimin put his hands behind his head and relaxed while he enjoyed your act of seduction.

“Is there anything else you would like me to do for you?” You punctuated the question by grinding extra hard and extra slowly against his straining cock.

“I could use a little help getting these pants off,” he wiggled his eyebrows at you and you immediately lifted yourself up enough that you could reach down between his legs and squeeze his manhood, eliciting an outright moan from Jimin. His reaction made you smile and you busied yourself with undoing his belt, when you heard a series of dings -- 4 in a row indicating a fresh batch of messages coming in on the phone. “Sounds like your loser ex saw the last photo I sent him.” Jimin glanced at his phone lying next to him and there was no message notification.

“It must be my phone.” You reached for your phone that had fallen on the floor next to the bed, but Jimin blocked you.

“I think you were busy doing something else,” he said while pointing towards his crotch. “Why don’t you let me take care of any messages?”

Part of you wondered why you found it so appealing that Jimin was willing to take control of the situation for the night. He was confident, bordering on cocky. David had been like that too, but in David’s case, his confidence was a cover up for lack of ability. So far, Jimin had him beat. You let Jimin take your phone while you returned your attention to getting his pants off.

“Do you want to hear what he had to… o-oh fffuck yeah!” You slipped your hand down Jimin’s pants and gripped his penis firmly in your hand, immediately distracting him.

Oh fuck yeah, indeed, you thought. You pulled his dick free from the confines of his trousers and were pleasantly surprised by what you saw. He was rock hard, the head of his cock was already red and swollen with desire. He felt heavy in your hand and much thicker than you would have imagined. This was another way Jimin had David beat. You wrapped your fist around him and slowly stroked him as you grew even more excited about what the evening promised. “Were you saying something?”

“I was asking if… um…” Jimin swallowed hard and tried to remain composed, “... do you want to hear what he had to say?”

“I don’t know. Do I?” you asked coyly.

“Probably not. It’s just a bunch of name calling and a dick pic. He misspelled the word whore. This boy is coming unhinged.”

“Good.” The idea of David falling apart after all he had done to you made you a little happier. “So what do I need to do to make you come a little unhinged right about now?” You licked his cock from the base to the tip and waited.

“Do some more of that and I’m pretty sure you’ll get to see me as a grunting mess.” That was all you needed to hear. You wrapped your lips around the tip of his cock and started sucking. “Yeah, like that. Just...like...that.” Jimin’s words of encouragement were breathy and unstable. David was usually quiet and still when you used to blow him - he said he liked it and would become frustrated if you stopped, but it was hard to stay motivated when you didn’t get any feedback. It was a lot more fun sucking the dick of a man who showed some appreciation for your hard work.

Your hand continued pumping Jimin while you raised your head slightly, letting his cock pop free from your mouth. “You said he sent a dick pic? Maybe we should return the favor?”

“I like the way you think.” Jimin held up the phone and took several close ups of your hand clasping his dick. He picked one he liked and read aloud as he typed in his message. “She has her hands full right now so can’t respond. But thanks for the dick pic - I always enjoy a good laugh.” Jimin held up the phone for you to see, “Okay?”

“It’s perfect.”

You plunged your head back down on Jimin’s cock, eliciting a cry of “Holy shit!” from him. You sealed your lips around him and bobbed your head, taking as much of him in your mouth as you could without gagging.

“So what’s it like sucking my dick compared to that dumbass you used to date?”

You stopped what you were doing just long enough to answer the question. “It’s more difficult but way more fun.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

It amused you that someone as brash as Jimin was asking for compliments, but you figured he deserved it. You stroked his cock, slick with your saliva, as you answered. “You’re bigger than him, so it’s more difficult to fit you in my mouth, but it’s totally worth the effort since you are pretty hot.”

“Hotter than your ex?”

“Fuck yeah.” You turned your head to look at him with that last response and saw him holding the phone up. “Oh my god, are you filming this?”

“Damn right I am.” He lowered the phone and reached out to stroke your face. “I need a record of how lucky I got tonight.” You leaned your head into his hand, enjoying the small act of tenderness. “Also, I think there’s someone else who needs to hear what you just said.”

Maybe it was distasteful for you to take so much pleasure in imagining how upset David would be when he saw the video, but you couldn’t make yourself care. “Go ahead,” you answered while lowering your head to suck on Jimin’s balls while you continued ministering to his sex with your hand.

“Fuck! You are making it hard to type.”

“Mmmmmmm,” is all you could say with your mouth full of testicles. This was something you had wanted to do with David, but he always objected, claiming it made him too nervous to have his balls so close to someone’s teeth. The more you thought of it, David really was not that much fun in bed and you wondered why you had spent so much time with him.

“Turn around.” Jimin set his phone to the side and sat up to pull your legs towards his head. “Don’t stop what you’re doing, but I want to taste you while you do it.” You pulled off your panties, spun around and straddled his face, lowering yourself carefully, but Jimin pulled you down hard onto his mouth, opening wide to cover as much of your pussy as possible. You returned to sucking his dick as you fondled his balls in your hands. You knew Jimin must be enjoying what you were doing since he had a hard time maintaining his rhythm while he swirled his tongue around your clit. He slipped a finger inside you, carefully sliding it in and out. “You are so wet right now.”

The feeling of his finger only served to tease you. You wanted more -- you wanted to be filled completely. “What does a girl have to do to get fucked around here?”

“All you have to do is ask.” Jimin wrapped his arms around your waist and flipped you over so your back was against the mattress. He kicked off what was left of his pants throwing them on the floor. He leaned in to kiss you deeply as he reached across you to the nightstand and pulled a condom out of box resting there.

His cock was distended and leaking precum as he rolled the condom down his length, his hands trembling slightly, belying his excitement. You had to admit that you were also excited. It had been more than a year since you had fucked someone other than David and you were looking forward to replacing those memories with new ones.

Jimin climbed over you and brushed your hair from your face so he could see you better, he opened his mouth to speak and, almost as if on cue, a series of rapid fire meeting notifications went off.

You turned your head to where the phones were lying on the mattress and Jimin placed his hand on the back of your head and guided you to turn back and look at him. “Forget him for one moment. Just for right now, let’s focus on something other than him.” You nodded in agreement. “Good girl. Just keep your eyes on me for now. I want to see your face.” He reached down to grab himself and carefully line up the head of his cock with your hole; he let it rest there for a moment as he stroked your hair and then very slowly he pushed inside you.

Your mouth fell open and your eyes fluttered at the feeling of being filled up. Jimin was careful and cautious as he entered you, resting for a moment once he bottomed out and then very slowly pulling back out until on the tip of his cock remained inside you. He repeated this action several times until you started lifting your hips to push back against him, trying to get him to pick up the pace.

“More, please,” you whispered.

“What was that?” Jimin asked.

“More. I need more. I need you to fuck me harder, faster. I need more, please,” you begged him.

Jimin was very happy to oblige, thrusting into you with increasing tempo and force, causing your breasts to jiggle uncontrollably. You grabbed onto them to hold them still, but Jimin swatted your hands away. “Please don’t. I love watching your tits bounce. It’s fucking amazing.”

Something about the way his hips snapped and the angle of his thrusts was hitting all the right spots. You arched your back and moaned, distracting Jimin enough for his movements to stutter momentarily. The idea that you could cause this self proclaimed ladies man to lose his concentration for even a second felt strangely empowering. Deep in your heart you knew that Jimin was a fuckboy, he basically confessed as much earlier in the evening. Normally you tried to avoid guys like that like the plague, but now you were wondering if you shouldn’t be more open minded in the future. You had thought you were being picky when you elected to date David and look where that got you.

Out of nowhere, you heard a familiar tune playing in the background, only to belatedly realize that it was your phone ringing. Someone was calling you. Jimin’s eyes shot to the phones and shook his head. “Ignore it. It’s him.”

Taking a call from David was the last thing on your mind right now. Instead you propped yourself up slightly to try to see Jimin’s cock slipping into your pussy. You enjoyed the sight of dick, shiny and slick with your juices, as he pulled out of you and then watching it disappear from sight as you felt him push back inside and against your g-spot. If he kept this up much longer, he would be making short work of you.

You tried to stay focused on the feeling, but your phone kept ringing… and ringing… and ringing. It was obvious that David was dialing you over and over again, refusing to stop until you picked up. Jimin must have been getting annoyed by the repeating ring tone, because he reached over you to grab the phone and answered it, all while still deeply embedded in you.

Jimin swiped to answer and held the phone in his hand while yelling into the mic, “Dude! Get some fucking manners! We are busy right now! Whatever it is that you have to say can wait!” He threw the phone face down on the mattress next to you and immediately went back to fucking you; his frustration with the phone call made evident by the way he was aggressively pounding into you -- an result that you welcomed.

You could hear a tinny muffled sound coming from the phone. Jimin had not bothered to hang up before he through the phone down, leaving David on the other end of the line, yelling to no one. A thought crossed your mind and you looked up at Jimin and made a request. “Talk dirty to me.”

“Yeah, you like that?” he asked you and you nodded vigorously. “God you are such a filthy one, aren’t you. You acted like you were all prim and proper when I sat next you at the bar, but deep down you wanted my cock all along, didn’t you?”

“I did,” you replied as you moved your hand down to where your phone lay and flipped it over. You could vaguely hear David still talking to himself.

Jimin caught on quickly and he let out a low groan. “Goddamit, you really are amazing.” He smiled at you and pulled your legs up to throw them over his shoulders, allowing him a deeper angle to penetrate you. The change made you moan involuntarily. “That’s right baby, moan for me. Tell me how much you like my cock.”

“Shit! I can’t believe how good this feels. I’d forgotten how good sex can be when I’m with someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“I told you I’d take care of you. A high class piece of ass like yourself deserves a high class fucking. No more slumming it, okay? Only grade A cock in this cunt from now on.” He thrust extra deep with his last statement.

“Jesus! I am so close right now, you have no idea.”

“Let go, baby. I want to feel you cum. I want to feel that sweet pussy of yours pulsating around my dick. I bet you look so pretty when you are screaming in ecstasy.” Jimin brushed his thumb against your clit as he fucked you and you let out a yelp and a giggle at the unexpected jolt of pleasure running up your spine. “That’s right, baby. Make some noise for me. Let me hear you.”

The phone had gone silent and you wondered if David had hung up. It didn’t matter, you decided. You really were close to cumming and that was really the only thing that mattered to you in that moment. Jimin kept strumming your clit with his thumb as he continued thrusting into you as deep as he could get. You could feel that familiar build up, a tightening in your body until you knew you were right at the edge. “Faster, please! Faster!” Jimin braced himself against the bed and did as he was told, driving himself into you full speed, the exertion showing on his face as beads of sweat formed. He was panting and getting red in the face and you wondered how close he was to his own orgasm and you wondered what he would look like when he came. That thought combined with Jimin’s skill tipped you into your orgasm, your body writhing and keening while you moaned loudly and uncontrolled. Every muscle felt like it was spasming as wave after wave of pleasure washed over you. This was the feeling you had been missing for the last year. As your orgasm slowly subsided, you could feel your body vibrating in a state of bliss that you had been without for too long.

Any thought that David had hung up the phone was dismissed since you could now clearly hear his tiny voice coming through the speaker, screaming at you that you were a “fucking bitch” and “nothing but worthless slut”. You watched as Jimin’s brow furrowed, his eyes closed, and his thrusts were now matched with his grunts. This was a man close to his own release.

Without giving it much thought, you spoke to Jimin, your voice loud and clear. “I want you to cum on my face.”

Jimin’s eyes shot open and you swore you could see him shudder as if a chill had run up his spine. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious.”

David let out a unintelligible scream on the phone, letting you know that he had heard every word. Over your time together, there was one thing that David had begged you to let him do and you had refused him every time -- he wanted to cum on your face. You had found his porn stash once and it was filled with naked girls on their knees, semen splashed across their cheeks, dripping from their hair, coating their eyelids. This was his fantasy and you had told him it was nasty and disrespectful. But right now there was nothing you wanted more than to have Jimin do that to you while David listened to it happening.

Jimin wasted no time, pulling out of you and whipping off the condom. He crawled up over you and stroked himself over your face, his hand was a blur of motion. “Come on, Jimin,” you spurred him on. “Unload right on me. I want you to paint my face with your cum.” You cupped his scrotum to help him along, which seemed to work.

Jimin let out a long, loud moan; his body hunched over and his face contorted. You closed your eyes in anticipation and felt the first stream fall across your forehead and then another splashed diagonally across your face, some of it falling on your eye. More still fell on your lips and cheeks. When it was done, Jimin rubbed his cock over your face, spreading his seed around like he was icing a cake, before he pressed against your lips and asked you to lick him clean.

You scraped the cum from you eyes and looked up at him. You had always thought this was a filthy thing to do to someone, but oddly enough, you felt sexy and a little wild. You may have made the request to piss David off, but in the end, you were left with the feeling that maybe you should be more adventuresome and push your boundaries even further. You could still hear David on the phone; it sounded like he was rambling and you weren’t sure what he was saying. You certainly didn’t want to put the phone to your ear to listen to him. Instead, you hung up on him and then went into your contacts to erase his number completely before turning off your phone for the night.

Jimin lay next to you, panting and trying to calm himself. After a moment of silence, he pushed himself up from the bed and walked to the bathroom to get a wet washcloth. When he came back, he sat on the edge of the bed and carefully cleaned your face. “I heard semen is actually good for your skin.”

“You think that’s true?”

“Who knows.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, don’t take this the wrong way… but I have fucked a lot of girls. I mean… a whole lot.”

“Okay?” You weren’t sure where this was going.

“I know that the only reason you hooked up with me tonight was because you wanted to get back at your ex, and I’m fine with that. I mean, everyone has reasons for what they do. But tonight… that was probably one of the top 10 sexual experiences I’ve had.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Maybe even top 5.”

“Thank you?” You weren’t sure if you should feel flattered or not.

“I’m just saying, if you have that in you for a one-night-stand with a guy you only just met, then I can only imagine what you are capable of with a guy you really care for and trust. So that David jerk is probably the biggest moron on the planet for fucking that up. And whatever guy you end up with next is going to be one lucky bastard.”

The sentiment was sweet and you couldn’t help but kiss Jimin’s cheek. “Thank you for saying that. I needed to hear that and I’m glad that you were the guy to catch me on the rebound.” You stood up from the bed and looked around the room. “I guess I should be going, as soon as I find my clothes.”

“Or…” Jimin held on to your hand and pulled you back towards him. “You could spend the night here so we could have a second round in the morning. I know I’m never going to see you again after you fly back home, and I’d be doing you a disservice as your official rebound guy if I didn’t do something to make sure you are fully recovered from your broken heart before I send you back out into the world to meet an actual decent man.”

You just smiled and laid down next to him. “One more round in the morning isn’t such a bad idea. I think I’d like to solidify my position in your top 5 before I leave for good.”

#bts fanfic #jimin fanfic #bts smut #jimin smut #park jimin smut

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daysswithyou · 7 years

Text

Slowly, Quietly, Falling

Characters: DAY6 Jae x OC

Genre: 50% fluff, 29% slice of life, 10% romance, 10% humour (or so I hope), 1% angst

Words: 4.1k

Description: roommate!jae AU

---

The first thing you noticed was the shoes. There was not a single pair that was matched – the most intriguing one had to be the pair of flip flops, one black and one white.

This shoe size is really big; it’s almost twice of mine.

Closely the door silently behind you, you observed the space quietly. To your left, there was a kitchen with an island counter top. It looked clean, but you suspect it’s because nothing ever been done in that space. The space right in front of you was the living room and by a corner of the wall, you found an electric and acoustic guitar, the earth tones of both complementing one another. Down the hallway on your right, you found two rooms on the left, the first was occupied and the second was not, automatically making that your room. The space was clean and cosy; just like how you liked it. You decided that the first order of matters would be to unpack. Heading to the bathroom with your toiletries in hand, you found male cleaning products lining the entire place from shampoos to shaving cream.

Calm down Y/N, don’t be silly. You can’t possibly be rooming with a male. Maybe she just has a preference for male products? Anything’s possible right?

And yes indeed, anything was possible.

Before you could do anything else, a voice came from behind you.

“Excuse me, who are you?”

“Hi, I’m – ”

You didn’t manage to complete your sentence, simply because your suspicions have been confirmed.

You were staring back at a topless male with a sleepy look on his face that suggested you were conversing with someone that was not fully functional yet. Reality had just slapped you in the face. Your roommate was really going to be a male. That was when you let a scream tear from your throat and all hell had broken loose.

After much screaming back and forth, here you were seated on the couch in the living room with said male sitting on the floor in front of you with some clothes on. Even then, he was almost at your eye level.

He's so ridiculously tall it's unfair.

After an intense staring game, he finally broke the silence.

"I'm Jae what's good?" He then stuck out his hand, which you took.

"Y/N"

"So tell me what you're doing in my apartment again?"

"You mean OUR apartment. As I have so kindly mentioned 10 times before, I am your new roommate."

He then let out a scoff, which you took to great offense.

"I must be dreaming." Jae then closed his eyes, pinched his arms before opening his eyes again.

"Surprise Jae! I'm not gone yet and you're not dreaming."

You then crossed your arms as you watched him groan.

"There must be some mistake!"

"I would like to think so too, but unfortunately no."

"I'm going to be stuck with you? Lord have mercy."

"I think I should be the one saying that. Let's just strike a deal ok? It's really simple: just keep this place liveable and I'll leave you alone. Deal?"

"Deal."

But of course, you can't trust the devil when you make a deal with him.

Jae was an absolute pain to live with. It was almost as if he made it his personal life goal to make your life a living nightmare. There was not a single day when you could be spared from his teasing or torture.

“Jae, where's the coffee sachets?”

"On the top shelf."

“Goddamnit.”

"Good luck reaching it shortie."

“Stop walking around the apartment topless!”

“Why? Can’t deal with a little hotness sweetie?”

“Don’t make me stab you with my fork.”

“Feisty~” He then threw you a wink, causing you to lose all your appetite.

“You used all my soap.”

“Of course I did, they smelled so good.”

“I just bought this huge bottle last week and it’s all gone now!”

“That cannot be helped; taller people naturally have bigger bodies that require more soap. Besides, sharing is caring.”

“What is that sack that you’re wearing? You look like a grandma from the 50s!”

“It’s just an oversized shirt! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM WITH IT?”

“CASTLE ON THE HILL!” Shouts of pop lyrics would be followed by the aggressive strumming of Jae’s guitar next door, causing you to slam your pillow over your ears in a futile attempt to block out his singing. It was taking you all your willpower to not go over and strangle him.

No matter what you did, Jae would always have a sarcastic, unsolicited comment hanging on his lips to be hurtled at you later. He was out for blood and you were wearing thin.

Today had been a terrible day. First of all, your alarm didn’t go off, causing you to be late for your lecture. By the time you got there, it was over, causing you to get an earful from your lecturer. In the next class, you found out that you got a failing grade on an important assessment for the most ridiculous reason: your lecturer didn’t like what you had written. You were, of course, frustrated but you knew better than to argue with her. You had also gotten a call from your mother saying that your grandfather had a really bad fall and was now in the hospital. And for the last cherry on top, someone had to spill coffee over your new white shirt. The series of misfortune that continuously wrecked your day finally spilled out and you had spent a good half an hour stuck in the washroom trying to wash off the stains before breaking down into tears.

Why do I always have such bad luck? First I get a shitty roommate and then now I also have to deal with this nonsense!

Another half an hour was then spent crying. By the time you were done, you dragged your tired body back to the apartment, praying with all your might that Jae would not be there so that you could be spared. Of course, no such luck. He was sitting on the couch strumming his guitar when he caught sight of you, launching into another verbal assault.

“Gosh you look horrible, like some ugly fish.”

And, that was the end of your fuse.

“Yea I get it Jae, I GET IT! I’m ugly, short, incompetent! I am a mixture of all these undesirable things in the world… but I…” By now you were choking on your words from all the tears threatening to spill over and behind that blurry screen you could see Jae’s shocked face; he had finally realised the severity of the situation. The last part of your sentence came out as a whisper, your vulnerability showing through the crack.

“But I don’t need to be reminded of it daily, it hurts, it really hurts”

Turning around, you slammed the door on your way out and for the rest of the night, you spent it at a 24 hour café where Brian had found you.

“Oh Y/N? What are you doing here so late at night?”

Sweet Brian. You knew him from business lessons and he was an absolute joy to be around. Both of you had quickly became friends and you also found out that he was the bassist for the band DAY6 which Jae was also a part of.

“Hi Brian. I’m working on some urgent assignment.”

“Is Jae being too noisy again?”

“No, I just wanted a new place to work on things to think better.”

“Ah~ We’re actually having a gig at Evening Luna tomorrow, do you want to come and hear us play? He’s actually a pretty decent guy when he plays the guitar; I don’t know why he’s such a prick to you.”

I would love to hear you guys play but I don’t want to face Jae so soon…

“I can’t… I’m really sorry Brian.”

“Oh… it’s alright then, there’s always another time! Also, are you ok? Did Jae upset you very badly?”

“It’s... I had a really terrible day. Both academic and family problems are coming at me from both sides and I just need some time away from that apartment and our school grounds in general. But, I’ll be fine I guarantee.”

“Ok, I respect your space. Well, you have my number; call me if you ever need someone to talk to. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

You waved as he left the café, wondering why Jae can’t be half as nice as Brian is.

The next day before the gig, Brian confronted Jae about you.

“What did you do to Y/N Jae? She looked really miserable last night you know?”

“I didn’t do anything to her!”

“Well then, I guess she finally snapped. I don’t know what you’ve been doing to her, but I don’t think she deserves that sort of treatment from you. You should apologise if you know you’ve done something wrong.”

That night, Jae left you your favourite strawberry cheesecake in the fridge (courtesy to Brian) with a note saying “I’m sorry – Jae” attached to it.

The next day, the cake was gone and so was the note, and Jae knew he had been forgiven.

Since then, your relationship with Jae has significantly improved. He stopped annoying you and sometimes you’ll have breakfast together. It was during these moments where you began to unravel the real Jae; the one that had brilliant thoughts to share and a cute infectious laugh. The first time you asked him to play a song for you, he seemed rather unwilling but after much spurring from you, he had finally agreed.

“What song do you want me to play?”

“Better Man.”

“Why do you want to hear that song?”

“Just because… it’s something coming from you, it’s your own story. I want to hear that.”

“Ok then. Be honoured because I’m playing this for the first time live, and it’s for you only.”

“Ok Jae.”

Testing out the strings first, he then started singing and you watched him with a smile of your face. He does this thing where he enters this special zone when he’s performing and you like watching him when he does it. He becomes a different man entirely – a little softer around the edges and his voice seems so much more soulful as compared to his peals of laughter.

“Stop staring at me and focus on the song instead Y/N.”

“I like watching you sing, it’s really nice… and thank you Jae.”

Jae’s singing would soon become the remedy for your sadness or stress. It had gotten to a point where you didn’t even have to ask; the moment he saw your deflated shoulders, he would play till he saw a smile on your face. Dropping by on their band practises became common too and you’ve never missed a single gig of theirs. Once, on his birthday, you were challenged to make a board for him to show your support for him. Jae was sure that you were never going to do that but you really did and as embarrassing as it was, Jae was smiling a little wider throughout that night as they rocked out at the gig. Taking a little tour around the city on foot with him later, he’d let his true feelings show.

“I didn’t actually think you’ll do it.”

“Why would I not? Besides, it was a challenge and I’m never one to lose.”

“But seriously though, thank you for doing it.”

“You’re welcome roommie.”

“Tonight’s a good night isn’t it?”

“Hmmm?”

“The gig. The ice cream we’re having now. Me and you talking normally without trying to kill one another. This is all a nice change.”

“It is. Let’s keep it up?” You held out your fist and he gladly fistbumped you. Under the cool summer night, Jae finally saw the beauty behind you.

Was it just his imagination, or does his heart speed up a little whenever he sees you now?

“Jae? What are you doing here?”

“Hi Y/N.”

His voice came out as a croak and the next second he was a coughing mess.

“Looks like someone is not going to be singing anytime soon~”

“Shut up, you’re not making me feel better.”

“Just kidding, do you need anything?”

“Maybe some hot water.”

“Coming right up!”

For the entire weekend, Jae was stuck in bed with a fever, leaving you to upkeep the entire apartment on top of rushing out assignments. You were worried about both and you kept muttering under your breath about deadlines. You rushed around the house so much that it was making Jae dizzy and finally on Sunday evening, he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Y/N stop worrying! Not doing the laundry today wouldn’t matter.”

“Ok…and erm…what are you doing?”

In his hazy mind that was still clouded by the medication, he didn’t understand the purpose of your question until he realised what he was doing. His arm was wrapped around your shoulder and his head was directly beside yours as he pulled you into his chest to restrain your arms. He was, essentially, backhugging you.

“Oh I’m sorry… ahem…”

“It’s ok…”

“I’ll go back to my room.”

“Ok.”

He then made a dash for his room as you turned as red as a tomato.

Winter break came by but neither of you were going home. So this holiday, it was just you and Jae. Everything was going fine until the heating went off in your apartment.

“Work.You.Cranky.Machine!” With every word, you slammed your palm onto the heater. It whirred for a little while before sending a puff of dust into your face, as though it was mocking you.

“Just leave it Y/N, it’s not going to work.”

“Can’t we call services?”

“Not gonna happen, you require school approval but the student services centre is closed on weekends.”

“Great, now we will freeze to death over the next 2 days with this thick snow falling outside.”

“We won’t, relax. Let’s just bundle up more.”

Bundling up that night like he said, you snuggled into the warm duvets until you felt your bed dip beside you. Turning around, you found that a certain someone had gotten into bed with you.

“Jae what are you doing?”

“Getting more heat.”

“What?”

“Look Y/N, it’s cold, really cold. I don’t think I can sleep without any extra warmth. Let’s just share the bed to keep warm for tonight ok? I’ll put a pillow between the both of us for your protection.”

A pillow was then wedged between the both of you and with your backs facing one another, you drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, for some odd reason, the pillow was gone and when Jae woke up, he was facing you instead. The first thing that came to his mind was:

Wow she’s really adorable when she sleeps. And she frowns even in her sleep? Cute.

Jae watched for a few moments in silence at how you’ve squeezed your eyes shut and the way lines formed on your forehead before he smoothed his thumb over the lines and your eyes. Responding to his touches, you relaxed your facial features in your sleep and he chucked a little at your reaction. In the spur of the moment, he leaned forward to kiss your temple and when he pulled back, he found that you were now wide awake.

“Morning.”

“Morning Jae.”

By now, he was furiously wishing that you hadn’t noticed what he had done but it was too late, you were well aware of it even though you didn’t voice it out.

“I’m going to wash up first so that we don’t have to argue over the washroom later.” Throwing the covers over yourself, you bolted from your room and for the rest of the day, you tried to expel conspiracy theories of what his actions meant from your head. You were sure he didn’t see you in that way.

Things returned to normal the next few days with the heater finally working again and both of you were thinking about what to do for Christmas when you pitched your idea to him.

“Hey, ever been to an orphanage before?”

“Nope. Why’d do you ask?”

“I volunteer at one regularly and we could go down on Christmas Day to do something for the kids. You know, since we’ve got nothing to do on that day either. You can bring your guitar and play for the kids, I’m sure they’ll love it.”

“I’m in, let’s get it!”

That Christmas night, both of you spent time interacting with the kids and all of them immediately fell for Jae. They were all ears when he started playing and when he was done playing; they all erupted into cheers and called for an encore, which he gladly gave. For the next 2 hours, he had a karaoke session with the kids and even you sang during the last 30 minutes. Your initial fears of him not liking the kids were immediately dispelled when you saw how gentle he was with them.

One particular incident stood out to you. 2 year old Ella had crept up on Jae and began pulling on Jae’s face to vie for his attention. You were about to run over to pull her off him when he beat you to it. From a few feet away, you could see him gently picking her up with a smile on his face and when she began to make bubbly faces at him, he returned the favour by pulling silly faces and tickling her by her sides. The sight was shocking to you nonetheless. She was notorious for having a temper: she wouldn’t let anyone else hold her except you and some other staff members. The fact that she readily went up to Jae for his affection left you staring at the sight in awe and the beams shining off Jae’s face really made your heart swell. He was putting in so much effort to make the kids happy and you were genuinely touched.

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For making the kids happy. I haven’t seen them so happy in the long time and I think the credit has to go to you.”

“Nah the kids were the real gems. Bring me over more next time; I’ll love to see them again.”

“Sure thing.”

Smiling, you began to think about what a great dad he would make.

I just found another reason to love this man; I’m sinking deeper and deeper, Lord help…

Jae wasn’t looking for trouble at all, trouble found him instead. Over the past few months, he had become fiercely protective of you anything or anyone else that said otherwise didn’t sit well with him. So of course, when he heard someone making rude comments about you, it got him all riled up.

“What did you say about her?”

“You have a problem with it Jae?”

“Yea I have a big problem with it, lay off her.”

“How about you mind your own business instead?” That’s when the first punch landed on his stomach and all hell broke loose.

“Y/N! Help me out here!” The frantic tone in Brian’s voice caused you to rush out of your room and the sight of all of them bruised and battered made you gasp. Jae was looking the worst with blood seeping out of little cuts in his face and hands.

“What happened?”

“He got into a fight with someone then the punches began to fly.”

“Getting into a fight? He’ll never do that unless he’s been provoked.”

“Yea he was. Someone made some rude comment about you and then he just got so mad.”

“Why would he do that?”

“You can interrogate him when he’s conscious. I think I better get some ice on my cheek before it swells more.”

“Thank you for bringing him back.”

“Don’t worry; we’re not going to let him die.”

With that, the other four left the apartment, leaving you to deal with Jae.

“Jae can you hear me?”

“Yea.”

“Where are you hurt that I can’t see?”

“My stomach.”

“Ok, can you get out of that shirt on your own? I’ll go get the first aid kit.”

By the time you came back, Jae was leaning back against the sofa topless, revealing the huge ugly bruise on the left side of his stomach. Standing on the ground between his legs, you began to clean his facial wounds.

“You idiot, why did you get into a fight?”

“Do you want to know why?” He was now staring at you with a giddy smile on his face, the alcohol making its appearance.

“I know why you idiot, because of me. I’m asking you why you couldn’t have just walked away; you didn’t have to fight them.”

“Can I ask you a question Y/N?”

“Go ahead.”

“Have you ever seen a man that didn’t protect the girl he loves?”

“No.”

“Then there’s your answer. I love you Y/N, that’s why I fought for you.” Your hands stilled in their ministrations, your ears not believing what they were hearing.

“What?”

“I said I love you Y/N.”

“You’re drunk Jae, you don’t understand what you’re saying now.”

“I’m not.”

“Just hold still and let me finish this ok?”

“Ok.” True to his word, he lay still as you picked up from where you left off, trying to forget what he just said to you and ignoring the close proximity between you and him. You then sent him off to bed as you entered a sleepless night, his words playing over, and over, and over again in your mind.

When you woke up the next morning, you were surprised that he was up. He was leaning against the counter sipping on some coffee when you saw him.

“Oh you’re awake. I thought you’d be resting.”

“The ache woke me up.”

“We’ve got some painkillers.”

“I already took them.”

“Ok.” You then walked around the entire kitchen making your own cup of coffee, refusing to look at him and trying not to squirm under his watchful eye. Cup in hand, you were about to make your way to your room before his words stopped you.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said those words to you last night.”

“I…I didn’t think you’d remember.” You absent-mindedly stirred your coffee as you looked him in the eye properly. When you didn’t see that glint of mischief, you knew he was being real.

“I do remember Y/N, and I did mean what I said.” Crossing the space between the both of you, he removed the cup from your hands before replacing the warmth of the coffee with his own hands.

“Over time you had silently crept into my heart and before I knew it you were already living there. Being mean to you before was me trying to block out my feelings for you but ultimately it didn’t work. I might have been drunk last night, sure, but I clearly remember looking up into your face as you patched me up when I said those words. In case you still don’t believe me I’ll say it one more time: I love you Y/N, I really do.”

Very slowly, he brought his lips down to meet yours and that’s when you closed your eyes and surrendered your heart to him. Apart from the coolness of the stainless steel fridge on your back, all you could register was the feeling of his lips on yours. They were soft, sweet and perfect for you. Everything was going fine until you placed a hand on his face.

“Ouch Y/N! That was a bruise!” Even though he was in pain, he was still laughing and that’s when you laughed along with him.

“I’m so sorry Jae oh my – ”

Catching you off guard, he gave you a quick peck on your lips before pulling back.

“Thank goodness my lips aren’t bruised, if not I won’t be able to kiss you even if I wanted to.”

“Stop it geez!”

“What? Am I not allowed to kiss my girl?”

“Excuse me Mister; I’m sure I haven’t said yes yet.”

“Judging by the way you were so hungry for my lips just now, I’d take that as a yes.”

“Just shut up and kiss me already.”

Bringing his lips to yours once again, both of you indulged in the moment. Just you and him, raw and in love with one another.

#day6writersnet #day6 writings #day6 scenarios #day6 imagines #jae #jae park #day6 jae #park jaehyung #jae scenario #jae imagines

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vmfx · 3 years

Text

#1 ANSWER.

It was my first week into my new job that I meet Barney. It didn’t take long for me to realize how much of a low-art asshole he was. One thing they didn’t tell me about being hired to work in this place was to not be myself or have dissenting views.

Only a couple of weeks went by and I started to see how bullish and intrusive Barney was. Ordinary conversations became interrogations. Barney became easily fascinated when he asked me about myself, my point of view, or what my stance was on certain people or subjects. So fascinated that it got annoying real quick. For instance, my co-workers were talking about this since long-forgotten reality show The Jersey Shore. As usual, I could care less about pointless things. I was minding my own business doing my job until I was caught in his crossfire.

“So, tell me. What do you think about Snooki?”

“No thanks.”

“What?You’re kidding me. Tell me you wouldn’t want a piece of Snooki.”

“No.”

“What?! You’re serious!”

“No. I don’t care for her.”

“C’mon! You’re serious, right? Everyone thinks Snooki is hot! You don’t think Snooki is hot?”

“I don’t.”

“So…you’re saying that you don’t find Snooki hot.”

“No.”

“C’mon. What are you? A homo?”

Let’s take the time and run through this. Barney asked me a question and I gave him an answer. Simple as that. He wasn’t happy with my answer because he expected me to say what he wanted to hear. I shattered his expectations. Instead of letting it be, he kept on persisting me for re-assurance because his small implosive mind couldn’t take it. He also assumed to speak for everyone that some non-factor was hot, confusing opinion with fact. When I ultimately refused to give in, he insults me. As the old saying goes, ‘the television is always right’.

Because of this, Barney the One-Trick Pony™ constantly (and falsely) accused me of being gay. He went as far as trying to set me up with one of his lady friends. He even went further in lecturing me on why I needed to be married and why I should carry on the family name.

That was my mistake. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I leave myself open to this and Barney turns into this Long Island ‘muthuh’ who endlessly criticizes others because they don’t live up to their standards. But he was no normal muthuh, he was a six-foot-three 350-pound 45-year old has-been who lived alone, had no girlfriend, and was very much into queer jokes, six-packs of beer, and phone sex which he openly disclosed to me while I was having lunch.

Perhaps if I criticized Barney on wearing an old, faded, crackling football jersey because they’re pathetic legendary losers who consistently fail to make the playoffs, he would be greatly offended. But I don’t do that to people. Unlike him, I have some sort of respect for others. I also can’t imagine if I called him out on his low-brow world of 1-900 numbers, bathroom stall writing, and online porn; because no one should ever put another person’s manhood in question of someone who watches sports, guns down a twelve pack, and relies on cheap obvious women. God forbid.

**********

Another Sunday, another weekend to disrupt my life and throw away beautiful blue skies, green grass, and white clouds to go to work; to deal with the curious public and an even more curious group of co-workers. When I mean curious, I mean ‘violating my privacy to the point it’s disgusting’ curious.

As usual, anything and everything about everyone working behind the counter is mined, revealed, sensationalized, and talked about for weeks if not months at a time. Whereas cameras are everywhere where I work; their plastic domes, tinted lenses sophistication, and inability to talk have absolutely no effect. But human nature is so cunning and so complex that my co-workers are an even bigger threat. They do everything they can to make other certain co-workers uneasy and destroy whatever sense of boundaries, privacy, space, or etiquette they were supposed to have all for a laugh or two. Our. God. Given. Right.

Elvis, who is best friends with Barney, is one of the most insipid, obnoxious, and mentally bankrupt individuals I have ever met. He always seems to strike up random conversations with me at the worst possible moment, which is usually when I’m working. If it’s not about something I’ve gotten over or experienced days, weeks, or months ago, it’s always the same stale repetitive boring questions. “So, how’s your dad? Is he still staying home? Still watching Maury? Does he go out? What does he eat? Do you guys go out? Where do you go? Do you have fun with your dad?”

Sometimes as I’m having lunch alone in the break room in complete silence, he would sit down with me, uninvited of course, and start asking me those rapid-fire series of pointless questions that are below me because I moved on from that game decades ago. “So what’s in today’s paper? What happened? Anything good? What’s this headline say? Hey, would you fuck Amana Bynes? You wouldn’t? Why not? Are you OK? Why are you feeling annoyed?”

This is pretty much the level of stupidity I endure every day working with Elvis. As if I don’t get enough unwanted unsolicited dumbstruck comments and unneeded questions from customers, I end up having Elvis’s display of genius come to me. It’s very hard to avoid. We’re only a few feet from each other at all times but somehow dumb is so generous where I live that there’s always more to go around and share. It wasn’t until very recently that a red card was pulled right in front of my face that made me dismiss him and write him off totally.

One Friday morning before work, I took Cath- to a salon to go get her cut for her sister Cheree’s graduation in Pennsylvania. My assistant manager Alphonso gave me a very rare Saturday off. It would have been ideal for both Cath- and I to get together for Saturday but it wasn’t possible because that was Cheree’s graduation day. Take one in the loss column. The following busy Sunday at work, Elvis once again pitches for conversation towards me.

“So, uh, how was work yesterday?”

“I didn’t work yesterday. I was off.”

“Oh, really? Off on a Saturday?! How did you end up getting off on a Saturday?”

“I don’t know. Alfonso just scheduled me off for Saturday, I guess?”

“Really?”

“…yeah.”

“So what did you do on your Saturday off?”

“Well, nothing really. I just went to the gym then stayed home for the rest of the day to relax.

“Wow, you went to the gym and that’s it?”

“Yeah, it was miserable out. Then again, all that didn’t matter as my friend was in PA for a graduation.”

“Was your friend a guy or a girl?”

“…it didn’t matter. Nothing really happened that day.”

“Was your friend a guy or a girl?”

“Why are you asking me this again? Why does it matter who I hang out with?”

“Was your friend a guy or a girl?”

I shook my head at Elvis, exhaled, and walked away from him. Next week we will play this game again, but for now I just saved myself from another round on endless embarrassment and unwanted humiliation.

That is why I can no longer talk to people anymore. It mattered so much to this fucking stumble. Elvis was looking to once again take something personal of mine and turn it into a front-page headline for the entire department to throw around, make fun of, and blow up as the workplace news story of the week. Because we’re so needy for excitement and self-gratification that we have to know every little thing that goes on in other people’s personal lives, in this case for my co-workers to use it against me.

This seriously took off on me. Our own mini-NSA-in-training Elvis was really that fascinated as to what gender my friend was. That meant so much to him. He really wanted to get off on the fact that I spent time with a female since the only things that take up real estate in his mind are getting plastered on weekends and “hot girls”, according to him. OK, so what else does he want to know? Did I sleep with her last night? What was she wearing? Was she a Ginger or an Asian? What positions did we do? How long did it last? What exact words did she scream out? Was it good? And did I kiss her goodnight, make her breakfast, or just get dressed and run out of her house? Do I get $100 for every correct answer?

How would Elvis like it if I would stop his world every five minutes to ask about his everyday mundane life of nothing? Would he appreciate it if I would distract him endlessly with pointless questions and ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers? Would it annoy him to no end if I intruded into his personal life only to ridicule it along with all of the other co-workers around? Should I ask him about the photos his friends took when they drew cocks on his head while he was plastered drunk at a party? Or when was the last time he touched a girl or when had any female gave him eye contact? I wouldn’t think so, either.

**********

Questions. I gave up on them. I no longer have the time, care, or patience to tend or answer them anymore. I don’t deserve to stand in one place with my life being put under a microscope as undeserving people around me are dying to know a lot of things about me that will never pertain or affect them.

I mind my own business doing what I need to do for the day. I only focus on the bigger, more important things at stake. They stand there and start asking me questions about my personal life as it is so special or urgent. It’s not, really. It’s just a little different than others. What could I tell them? They feel unusual enough to stop at every answer and act like they’re so surprised. Really, what is such a big deal about the mundane things in my life that catch them off-guard? Obviously they’re un-accepting and shallow-minded, the blinders they wear have not been widened.

I had gotten tiresome of their interview sessions. I stay away and I do, but only for a while. I have been told to ignore them, to not answer them. I do take the advice but these downturns push harder. They ask and ask and ask and persist to no end until I give up and hopelessly answer because I know they will never stop if I don’t. Somehow my answers complicate things even more for them so the hits just keep on going. It’s a lose-lose situation.

The difference between me and them is that I understand and they don’t. I respect people for who they are because I understand. I have it all figured out so I don’t need to ask any further. Barney and Elvis’s child-like fascination with my life want me to “get with the program” because they don’t get it the first time. Conversations aren’t worth having with certain masturbatory people when they clutch and pull themselves over the answers they are given.

I’m not a celebrity and I never asked to be one. I never asked for them to make me special. I never asked for a circus surrounding my life and I never asked to be put on the hot seat. I don’t need them questioning every move I make in my life when there are better things during the day I need to focus on. I don’t have to answer to anyone if I don’t want to. I don’t need to pay attention to the feeble-minded and uneducated to constantly disrupt my day and waste my time. I have way more important things to worry about other than to satisfy simple minds who can’t figure it out and worry about things that have nothing to do with them. They truly don’t deserve the attention, therefore they will be forgotten about.

#VMFX #writing #personal #oops #WTF #privacy #Long Island

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barisifictionarchive · 7 years

Text

First Kiss

Hello Carisi by TiredBisexual

(1022|Teen|Complete)

Sonny had confessed his feelings for Rafael fearing he wouldnt see him again.

How will Sonny react when he finds out Rafael is coming back to SVU?

A Walk Through The Park by captainbarisi

(1184|Not Rated|Complete)

Detective Carisi and ADA Barba had been on a few unofficial 'dates'. This is how their first kiss happened.

Come a Little Bit Closer by irisirene

(1363|Teen|Complete)

He wasn’t even sure how they’d gotten here, in all honesty, the last several minutes had been a blur, Sonny’s lips and his long, lean, form distracting Barba from analyzing the situation too clearly, a fog of affectionate lust clouding his brain in the most delicious way. One moment, they’d been doing their usual thing, bickering good-naturedly over one of SVU’s most recent cases, and the next, Rafael was being pulled up out of his chair by his lapels and kissed within an inch of his life.

With You by asmodesgold

(1376|General|Complete)

Barba psychoanalyzes Sonny's reaction to the West Virginia incident in exchange for coffee.

The Story of You and I by AwkwardBabyGiraffe

(1401|Teen|WIP)

A collection of one shots surrounding A.D.A. Rafael Barba and Detective Sonny Carisi.

Firsts by Special_Gays_Unit

(1460|Teen|Complete)

Sonny was the eager one, the instigator of all their first's.

We Belong by asmodesgold

(1490|General|Complete)

Rafael accidentally runs into Carisi and ends up entangled in something potentially dangerous.

Figure It's the Love That Keeps You Warm by chocobo_lolz

(1546|General|Complete)

No one else Rafael's ever met has managed to simultaneously be this forward while also leaving no true indication towards their motive or intentions. Because wrangling one’s way into someone else’s kitchen and cooking a romantic dinner for two would, no doubt, be an obvious sign of interest if anyone other than Sonny Carisi were to do it.

A Story With No End by notmyyacht

(1630|General|Complete)

With every ending, there is a beginning.

I Need You by TiredBisexual

(1724|Teen|Complete)

Imagine if Barba was there to help Sonny through his niece's trial.

Friday night by glass_curtain

(1920|Teen|Complete)

What Carisi thinks is a good idea on a Friday night. Or probably a very, very bad idea that hasn't been really thought through. Good thing Barba always seems to be a step ahead.

You call that discreet? by iliveinthemoon

(2087|Not Rated|Complete)

Liv hosts an Easter gathering. Barba can't really do discreet but is Carisi really that oblivious?

keeping the time of day by alwaysbuddy

(2219|Teen|Complete)

Barba appears through the doorway to the squad-room, and stops right before he can take another step, glancing up at the ceiling.

“Really,” he says flatly, raising an eyebrow, “charmed mistletoe.”

Breathe by Astronaut_Milky

(2225|Teen|Complete)

Barba's there, in the flesh, in a perfectly tailored suit, with two canvas bags and two coffees in his hands. His eyes are traveling fast over Sonny's body, his face. Maybe it is real. Maybe Sonny is alive.

Beautiful Stranger by ChameleonCircuit

(2544|General|Complete)

He watched the way the man smirked, the way he turned his body in tune with Sonny’s, one hand on his hip and the other holding a tumbler of scotch. His eyes raked over the man before him, hoping he was being discreet. This was a man designed to wear a tuxedo -- it seemed to fit his body perfectly, emphasizing all his best features. Suddenly, he felt like even more of a fraud. He fiddled with the seam inside his pockets, willing himself to look casual, comfortable.

Evident by unadrift

(2616|Teen|Complete)

"Well," Rita says and crosses her legs. "It seems your SVU detective and wannabe-attorney will live in infamy. His tendency to force unsolicited legal advice on people more knowledgeable on the subject has become a bit of a running gag in our circles."

Open Your Eyes, Sonny by AwkwardBabyGiraffe

(2732|Teen|Complete)

Sonny Carisi's life can be summed up in three words:

Open your eyes.

Unseen by tobeconspicuous

(3074|Teen|Complete)

Realization dawned, and a feeling of relief followed by utter terror washed over Sonny. He looked at Carmen, who had clearly come to the same conclusion, her eyes wide in complete shock.

Barba was the last to realize. “I can’t-- oh.”

Oh indeed. It appeared that Sonny Carisi was Rafael Barba’s soulmate.

Something's Got A Hold On Me by surrenderdammit

(3734|Teen|Complete)

Sometimes Sunny suspects Barba does this to her on purpose. Other times, Sunny would rather remain blind to the possibility that Barba knows exactly the effect she has on Sunny, because that means acknowledging that she does have an effect on her and then Sunny has to think about what that effect is and why it’s there and---

It’s just better not to think too hard about it.

One Little Chance by Power-Bottom-Barba (Cap_Against_The_Clap), Robin Hood (kjack89)

(3838|Explicit|Complete)

Sonny glanced around the table set up in Amanda’s spare bedroom, his eyebrows slightly raised. “Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea, given, you know, Amanda’s history?” “Oh please,” Amanda scoffed, dealing the cards. “We’re not even betting anything. This is just a friendly game of poker between colleagues to pass time on New Year’s Eve.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Of course, you’re welcome to go watch Ryan Seacrest on TV in the living room if this is a little too adult for you to handle.” “Yeah Carisi,” Olivia said with an easy grin, looking more relaxed than she’d seemed in recent weeks, in no small part because Jesse and Noah were having a sleepover at her place with Lucy, and she was getting regular text updates. “We’re all just having fun.” Rafael made a small noise of disagreement as he glanced at his cards. “Speak for yourselves,” he said, taking a sip of scotch. “Even if the stakes are nonexistent, I still play to win.” Or, a poker game on New Year's Eve ups the ante for Sonny and Rafael.

If You Say So by Astronaut_Milky

(3969|Not Rated|Complete)

He leaned casually against the counter, giving Rafael a quick moment to appreciate his long form. “Just because it's the holidays, doesn't mean everything has to be sweet.”

The much younger man smiled, and Rafael's knees went weak once again.

“I don't know about that. There's something to be said for enjoying the sweet stuff.”

Five times Sonny and Rafael weren't a couple on Christmas Eve, and one time they were

Worth It by findafight

(4011|General|Complete)

Sonny’s cheeks are tinged a pretty pink, Rafael thinks it's very cute, and he must have a lot of painkillers in his system and be very much in love to think like that, but he finds he doesn’t mind much.“Uh. Yeah. Do you want some water?” Rafael shakes his head a little, there’s an IV in his arm, and he drank some the doctor gave him. He really only wants to talk to Sonny.

Sonny nods and takes a hand through his hair, messing it up more, looking ruffled in a way that makes his chest tighten with affection. He must really love this man if ruffled hair and a Staten Island accent make him feel like this. He wonders how long they’ve been together.

Or, Rafael loses four years worth of memories and assumes he and Sonny are dating, because he knows he loves him in his gut. Or his heart. Or something. Except...they aren't together. Yet.

food of love, play on by ships_to_sail

(4501|Mature|Complete)

Sonny groaned. He'd promised to perform a song of her choosing in apology for forgetting to get her a gift - “in fairness, my voice should be the only gift you really need, Rollins” had earned him a solid punch to the arm - and she'd been wilfully obstinate in giving him any hints about what song she'd picked. He grabbed his glass, God he really hoped it was his glass, and drained it, standing up slowly and giving his head a moment to steady before he offered her a small salute.

“Your wish is my command, birthday girl,” and he pressed a smacking kiss on her cheek as he made his way towards the stage.

The Time Traveler's Husband by LittleBlueBook

(4902|Teen|Complete)

“It’s like gravity,” Sonny explained. “Big events pull you in.”

Rafael’s smile turned cocky.

“Am I a big event?”

“It appears so.”

Wedding Plans by Kaye_21

(4982|Not Rated|Complete)

Barba's ex is getting married, and he needs a date for the wedding.

Sonny agrees to help. For a price.

They both get more than they bargained for.

Once More, With Feeling by HoopyFrood

(5437|General|Complete)

Sonny wouldn’t call himself a theatre aficionado by any stretch of the imagination. He enjoys musicals in the same way he does baseball or cheesy B movies. But somewhere along the line theatre became his sanctuary in a way his other interests never did. A safe place. Something just for him that was untouched by distraught young women thinking they’d done wrong and angry young men thinking they hadn’t.

Formidable Love by Astronaut_Milky

(5798|Not Rated|Complete)

His whole body felt electric, on fire, yet calm. As if this whole situation was the most natural, destined thing to ever occur. A thought shot through his head.

Was it possible?

Smile More by LikeABrokenClock

(5958|Not Rated|Complete)

There's a million things Rafael Barba hasn't done, one of which is take Sonny Carisi on a date. (Just you wait.)

Call Me Carisi by Kaye_21

(6527|Not Rated|Complete)

“This is going to sound crazy, Sonny, but did you ever have a moustache?”

(Or, Rafael hits his head, and Sonny helps him remember.)

Adventures at the Opera by Kaye_21

(6567|Not Rated|Complete)

Carisi needs a favor.

Rafael is too curious for his own good.

Also, there are bow ties.

Decades by jamesgatz1925

(7525|General|Complete)

Rafael and Sonny as teens in different decades.

Collateral Comfort by Kaye_21

(8642|Not Rated|Complete)

Sonny is a little too affected by the events of 'Townhouse Incident'. By Liv, being in danger. Barba notices. Barba tries to cheer Sonny up, first with his mouth and then with an invitation to stay the night.

Sonny does not sleep on the couch.

And They Called it Puppy Love... by ElwritesFanworks

(9532|Mature|Complete)

The year is 1960. Sonny Carisi is seventeen, and possibly falling in love.

See Me by Astronaut_Milky

(10152|Not Rated|Complete)

Sonny slowly looks over his shoulder.

The last figure.

He knows who it is before reaching him.

His back is turned, but Sonny would always recognise those suits, that… body.

He reaches a hand out, desperate for contact.

As he places it tentatively on his shoulder, the figure turns to him.

White Liars by keraunoscopia, tobeconspicuous

(11802|Explicit|Complete)

“Shit, Gina’s walking towards us.”

Rafael took a step back and smirked. “So am I your boyfriend?”

“She has a smile on her face,” the detective's tone grew panicked.

Rafael couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Time to make a choice, Carisi.”

A Nice Young Man by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)

(12767|General|Complete)

After the events of episode 16.16 (Barba's grandmother passes) and 16.7 (Sonny's brother-in-law is assaulted by his female parole officer), Carisi reaches out to Barba because that's just his way. Barba is a bit confused about what to do about it all.

In This Light by Astronaut_Milky

(16168|Mature|Complete)

The model before him was absolutely stunning. He had worked with models in the past, and beauty was obviously a requirement for the job, but this was on another level. His twinkling blue eyes were absolutely captivating, even as they watched Rafael with youthful amusement that left him feeling exposed.

Good Morning by Kaye_21

(21587|Not Rated|Complete)

Rafael wakes up. Carisi is smirking. Something is off.

Slow Burn by Linde

(28629|Explicit|Complete)

Kind of a Stream of Consciousness of Rafael of what could happen after he left. It starts off on the first night of May... Let's see where it goes.

Sex, Scotch & Sonny

#barisi #themed list #first kiss #Less than 5k #Less than 10k #10k to 25k #25k to 50k

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littlecheetah · 7 years

Text

Casco Viejo, Panama City

Panama City Landing in a new city is always an overwhelming experience for me. I'm usually super excited, a little bit anxious and always have my guard up. If you felt my heartbeat while I spoke to any customs agent (US included) you would think I was presenting a fake passport and had a suitcase full of cocaine in tow. I hope to one day casually breeze thru but sticking with tradition, I stuttered as the customs agent asked about my length of stay and reason for visiting and had to wipe my hands on my pants twice before she could properly scan my fingerprints. Did I mention I actually opted to speak Spanish during this... why, Brianna, why?? Fast forward thru customs and it is always the same on the other side of the door, "Taxi, taxi! Where you going mamí?" Sick of being ripped off on every first taxi ride from the airport, I've developed my own new tactic. Walk through the line of heckling drivers, ask how much a few times to get an idea of price and then negotiate with the quiet driver at the end of the line. I guess I'll never know if I'm still getting ripped off, but I feel more accomplished after a bit of haggling. Entering Panama City was like driving thru New York's skyscrapers with Atlantic City's neon signage. Amazed by how incredibly big and built up the city was, we realized it reminded us much of a Northeastern City, but actually seemed significantly larger than Philly! As we drove thru, our cab driver pointed out the tallest, the most expensive and the newest buildings all the while racing thru traffic like he was losing in a game of Mario Kart. We arrived to our hostel in Casco Viejo, the historic district of Panama City, just in time for 50 cent beers. We checked in, dropped out bags, claimed our top bunks and headed to the bar. Conversation flowed nicely and we met a kid named Max from England. Max was headed to meet his friend from home who casually dropped everything 15 months ago to sail from the UK to the Caribbean and hasn't looked back ... Ummmm, Max, can I meet your friend?!? It wasn't until about ten minutes till 11 that we met the true gem of the hostel, Dude. Dude, a resident of Panama City for the past 15 years, was the social director of our hostel Luna's Castle. Dude approached our table to inform us of the free shot all guests are supposed to receive at 11pm. He also let us in on the secret that no one knew because he forgot to tell anyone... Can't say we were shocked, but his secret was safe with us. Fast forward thru shots, 2 hours of Dude's life stories and one classic quote that just made me want to wake up everyday, "You've got 17 more years until you realize you're just living." Alright, that's enough. Good night, Dude. We woke up in the morning eager to explore. Amanda made our first of what would be many pancake breakfasts, we grabbed a map and set out. Instantly drenched in sweat, we wandered up and down streets, stopping to take pictures, look at statues and read plaques. We were pretty consumed with checking out buildings, talking and laughing about God knows what when a stranger approached us. This stranger quickly became known as Lou, our unsolicited tour guide. Contrary to our feelings, Lou was SO excited that two foreigners were walking into his ghetto- crossing a street that would have gotten us in loads of trouble five years ago. (Where are we and where the hell is that map we grabbed earlier??) Taking in our surroundings aside from the flower boxes and balconies for the first time apparently, we turned around and started heading back to where we came from, Lou in tow. He walked with us for a few blocks and while he imparted quite a bit of knowledge about the history of Panama City on us, we knew it was only a matter of time before he asked us for money. Cue segment on gentrification and there it was. We finally got away from Lou, don't worry we will run into him two more times before we leave town, and went to lunch. We opted for an authentic restaurant called, "Restaurant Johnathan." For $6 we enjoyed two plates of shrimp, vegetables and fried rice under Chinese lanterns. Maybe Lou wasn't making up the stuff about the Chinese immigrating to Panama in 1854? The afternoon was quickly slipping away from us as we sat in the park and watched the filming of a Panamanian commercial about snow cones. We realized it was time to grab our bags and head to the airport. Hailing a cab was no problem and we jumped in with no regard to rush hour traffic. The ten minute ride turned into twenty and it wasn't until we cruised under the archway that read "Albrook Mall," that I realized we had a major miscommunication on our hands.... Who the hell names the airport and the mall the same name?!? "OH NO," I said and quickly explained to the driver that we needed to go to the airport and actually our flight was in just 45 minutes. I can't say he was pleased by our mistake but it was evident by the weaving and shoulder driving that he wanted to be a hero. "Thank you so much, hope we don't see you soon!" we yelled, while running into the airport, checking in with just minutes to spare. On the other side one man show they call security, we waited until the women yelled, "Bocas Del Toro!" We were finally en route to the islands!

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ignis-scientia-estrogen-brigade · 7 years

Link

Hoo boy, these chapters get keep getting longer and longer. I need an editor pls send help

Up until now, I would’ve said you didn’t need any prior knowledge of my pre-Road Trip fics to follow along with the plot, but this chapter in particular heavily references the lore I’ve established in my other stories (the skull necklace, the spectacles-pried-clean-off-his-face incident, etc). As a side note, the word ‘Neminis’ is Latin for ‘nobody’; although I couldn’t get around not naming the sister, I thought it’d be a fun nod to the redhead’s anonymity in previous works.

If you haven’t read any of my other fics, you could probably get away with skipping this chapter altogether; the next (and last!) chapter will be the smutfest you’ve all been hoping for!

(SFW; Click on the link above or the cut below for the full text of Chapter 4.)

It took two weeks of dedicated searching, but the shortlist of women living in Lestallum that matched the criteria of the individual Ignis was hoping to find proved to be mercifully brief. According to the census records and telephone books Ophelia had combed through during her lunch hours, forty-seven Altissian merchants had established permanent residency in Cleigne in the last twenty years, but only a dozen of them had married native-born Lucians; of those twelve couples, five were deceased, four had returned to the island archipelago of Accordo, which left three possible leads to explore.

The first couple the strategist had tried ringing up on the phone ended with him spending almost an hour discussing his Elegant Orange Cake recipe with a very kind but very hard of hearing old woman, who had evidently mistaken the Date Of Birth line on the most recent census for the last four digits of her citizenship identification number, resulting in a fifty-year discrepancy on her paperwork. He didn’t even bother dialing up the second couple, since Ophelia had pointed out to him that their wedding announcement clipping she’d found in the digital archives of the local newspaper had been dated for only six months prior. The third couple, unfortunately, no longer appeared to have a working landline, but the home address listed for one Mr. and Mrs. Neminis had remained active and unchanged for the last thirteen years.

Which is why it took yet another week for Ignis to drum up enough courage to follow through with the whole dreaded ordeal, because the very last thing he wanted to do was make an unsolicited house call that might’ve devolved into him sobbing in a puddle of his own snot and tears on the floor of some stranger’s kitchen. It’s only when his coworker-turned-personal psychiatrist jokingly threatens to slip salt into his morning Ebony rather than sugar for each day he chooses to postpone the inevitable that he finally resolves to put an end to his waffling, but strictly under the agreement that she help him navigate the unfamiliar path to house located just beyond where Randolph hammered out his eccentric weapons.

So help him she does, just as she’d helped him come to the grudging conclusion that some closure was better than none, and he listens to the sound of Ophelia scolding children who are playing precariously close to the main thoroughfare as he follows her up the city’s northernmost hillside. She had even gone so far as to cajole Mr. Tostwell with her usual charm into letting them close up the grill early, so that they might make it to their destination before the sun went down that evening; there was never really a good time to tackle these sorts of things, but Ignis didn’t want to risk dropping an emotional bombshell on Mrs. Neminis in addition to interrupting her supper.

Try as he might to suppress his anxiety, the strategist’s heart is nearly in his throat by the time they reach the front doorsteps of the address in question; he knew this bloody endeavor of his was likelier than not to fail—the odds of the stars aligning and this truly being the immediate relative of his former protégé were mind-bogglingly steep—but the keen intuition that had served him well in the past is causing the hairs on the back of his neck to tingle, and something in his gut is telling him to prepare himself for what lay just beyond the threshold.

Before his trembling fingers can ring the doorbell, however, Ophelia touches her hand to his elbow and speaks in a low voice. “Would you like me to wait outside? I recognize this has the potential to be a rather intimate conversation.”

“That’s not necessary,” he says, masking his unease with a cheeky grin. “Who will help stabilize my severed spine if my knees decided to collapse out from under me?”

He then swallows his reticence and presses the buzzer, listening intently for anything—a clanking pipe, a running faucet, a squeaky floorboard—that might indicate signs of habitation within the home. His heart pounds harder inside his ribcage with each passing second, until his ears prick at the sound of light footsteps padding through the foyer from the other side of the door.

A loud creak follows. “May I help you?”

The strategist’s occluded eye widens as the voice greeting him from inside the doorway slowly registers in his mind; the logical half of his brain understood that similar vocal patterns were relatively common among closely related kin, but the other half nearly short circuits under the strain of not quite comprehending the fact that he wasn’t actually talking to her.

“Are you Mrs. Neminis?” he asks.

“I am.”

He’d rehearsed his side of the conversation more times than was probably necessary—something to the effect of ‘I do so hate to be a bother, but it has come to my attention that you may be privy to a tidbit of sensitive information I’ve sought after for quite some time now’ had been rattling around inside his head for several days—but all traces of rationale suddenly escape him, and he blurts out his next words without nary a second thought. “I think knew your sister.”

A long pause. “My sister?”

He can barely hear Mrs. Neminis over the sound of his own pulse screaming in his ears. “I’m not entirely sure if I’ve run into a dead end here, but I have reason to believe you might be related to a young woman who worked as part of a security retinue in Insomnia some years ago.”

Her footsteps shift ominously against the hardwood floor of the landing. “Who are you, exactly?”

He hesitates, until he feels Ophelia’s hand brush against his shoulder. “Go on, Ignis,” she says. “She can’t very well help you without giving her the whole picture.”

“Right.” He clears his throat in an attempt to dislodge the frog that has mysteriously taken up residency there. “I’m a former strategist and advisor to Lucian royal family. I was also employed as a dagger and lance specialist at the Citadel before the crown city fell.”

Nothing but empty silence emanates from the threshold for several agonizing heartbeats; before he can apologize profusely for the unwanted intrusion and make a beeline for the city’s central plaza, however, he hears the sound of the door creaking on its hinges and widening further. “Won’t you two come inside? I think I need to sit down for a moment.”

The strategist’s legs remain frozen in place; he generally disliked entering other peoples’ homes, since he didn’t particularly enjoy the experience of bumbling around unfamiliar layouts like a behemoth in a porcelain wares shop. But his knees finally yield when Ophelia grips him gently by the elbow, and he trails closely behind her as they pass through a series of hallways leading to what he presumes is a living room.

“I’m sorry for dropping in on you like this unexpectedly,” he says as Ophelia guides him to sit in a nearby chair. “I tried calling ahead of time, but it seems your phone number listed in the local directory is no longer working.”

“My husband had it disconnected a few years ago,” Mrs. Neminis replies, her voice so eerily similar to that of her sister’s that it leaves the strategist wondering whether they might have been twins. “It was getting to be prohibitively expensive, what with power at such a premium during the long night.”

“Is your husband also home?” Ophelia asks. “We’d been on the lookout for an Altissian merchant residing in these parts, which is how we found you.”

“Regrettably, no. Former merchant, I should add—he gave up the trade to focus on ferrying refugees back to Accordo, which is where he’s headed at the moment. If I were to guess, he’s probably floating somewhere near Angelguard right about now.”

The strategist nods solemnly. “An admirable effort, to be sure.”

He then listens as Mrs. Neminis settles into a seat a few feet to his left. “So—my sister,” she begins. “She’d been interested in the pike from a young age, which is why she ultimately made the move to Insomnia. Is that how you came to know her?”

“Correct. She was an early pupil of mine, and show great promise with the halbert. If I recall, she climbed the ranks faster than anyone else in her hiring pool.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Scientia.”

“Scientia,” she echos, her voice suddenly sounding miles away. “You were one of the Crownsguard who served the last king of Lucis. I remember reading about your name in the papers—this country owes you a great deal of gratitude. You have my thanks.”

His cheeks warm slightly, and he wipes a clammy hand on one thigh. “Think nothing of it.”

A lull descends on the three figures sitting in the living room; Ignis ruminates on the thoughts that are clouding his mind, pondering how best to broach the subject of his wayward protégé’s whereabouts, until Mrs. Neminis seemingly recognizes the question hovering on the tip of his tongue and does the difficult work for him.

“I presume you’re not here to tell me you’ve miraculously heard word from her,” she says quietly.

A cascade of numbness washes over him like a rising tide. “I was actually hoping you might have.”

“Hope—such a strange concept, when you really think about it.” He hears Mrs. Neminis shift against the cushions of her seat, and a long sigh escapes her. “One never quite realizes how much hope they are able to cling to until they’ve gone and lost nearly all of it.”

But then he does begin to feel something, like a scalpel being inserted just under the collarbone with such surgical precision that the pain isn’t obvious until after the sharp blade has already punctured the walls of the heart. “Indeed,” he says, his voice utterly deflated.

“Did you know her very well?”

The strategist narrows his clouded eye, recalling to mind memories of the men and the women he had entangled himself with over the years, before they had all become entirely irrelevant in her shadow. “I did,” he replies softly. “We were quite close at one point.”

“It’s good to hear she had at least one trusted confidant at the Citadel. I know she was feeling rather despondent right after she got there, since our parents had pelted her with guilt for leaving in the first place. I’m sure the only reason they forgave her is because I ran off with a sailor I barely knew and took the heat off of her.”

He snaps out of his reverie long enough to glance up at her. “Are they still alive? Your parents, that is.”

“They’re not, sadly, although they lived longer than anyone probably expected them to. Sometimes I think the only thing that kept them going was the hope that she might walk through their front door one day.” Another shift against the cushions; another long sigh. “I was told a starscourge infection had devastated their town and wiped out all but a few people living there, but the more likely reality was that they simply died of a broken heart.”

Ignis hears his companion stirring on the seat to his right. “I’m terribly sorry,” Ophelia says. “So many have lost so much in the tragedy. My thoughts are with you.”

He then listens as Mrs. Neminis taps her fingers along the arm of her chair absentmindedly. “It’s hardly polite to speak ill of the dead,” she murmurs, “but I often wondered if my parents would’ve held out the same kind of hope for me, had our roles been reversed. My sister was the one with the red hair, but I was more of the surly stepchild, as it were.”

The strategist’s eyebrows furrow behind his visor. “Did you break contact with her after you moved to Lestallum?”

“Not at all. We might’ve had our own petty sibling rivalry, but I was always happy to receive letters from her once she took up office in Crown City. Reading her rant about the neverending stream of arrogant men who tried courting her was always good for a laugh.”

“She was quite the charming talent—everyone who met her was immediately captivated by her.” He allows himself to indulge in a small smile, but his grin quickly fades. “The world is undoubtably a little dimmer without her in it.”

Mrs. Neminis’ fingers have evidently moved on from their tapping, and Ignis picks up on the sound of her plucking at a loose cushion thread. “You know, between you and me, I think she was always destined to die young. A flame that burns twice as hot only burns half as long, as they say.”

“She… certainly left her mark on those closest to her.”

“I mean, really—can you imagine what she would’ve been like at twenty-five, or even thirty? She would’ve made a terrible mother, if she’d carried an infant around even half as roughly as she did her beloved pike.”

The imaginary scalpel in his heart twists further still. “I’m not so sure about that. She could be rather accommodating when called upon, at least in my experience with her.”

“Would you happen to have any personal anecdotes of her you’d be willing to share? After all, there’s no better way of honoring the dead than by keeping their memory alive.”

His hand moves to his visor, if only to mask the sudden dampness plaguing his eyelids. “Well,” he says, “she was smart as a whip, and a quick learner. She managed to pry my spectacles clean off my face once using nothing but her lance and a well-placed foot to the hilt.”

Mrs. Neminis laughs beside him. “That sounds like something she would’ve done. I know she had used her steel-toed boots to ward off more than one overly ambitious suitor in the past.”

“This was back when my eyesight was only marginally better than it is now, mind you, so I probably shouldn’t be giving her too much credit.”

Her chuckles continue for several moments before eventually fading into silence. “Thank you for that. It truly warms my heart to know she was remember so fondly.”

“I can only hope she was happy. In the end, at least.”

But the somberness in his tone doesn’t quite match the cadence of Mrs. Neminis’. “I don’t see why she wasn’t,” she replies merrily. “The last letter I received was her droning on and on about a man she had apparently fallen head over heels for, although she refused to tell me his name no matter how hard I pressed her.”

The wincing in his heart eases a tad, and a weak smile touches his lips. “You don’t say? How curious.”

“You know how silly young women can be—they positively love their secrets. Although I suppose if one has to meet the Draconian prematurely, taking their leave on a high note is the way to go.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Silence befalls the living room once more, and Ignis rakes a hand through his hair as he heaves a sigh. He then hears the sound of Mrs. Neminis leaning forward in her seat, followed by the sensation of her fingers pressing gently against his forearm.

“I know this wasn’t the outcome you were hoping for,” she says. “I’m left with quite a few unanswered prayers of my own.”

He covers her hand with his own and offers her a placid expression. “It’s all right. I’ve certainly unearthed more than I was realistically expecting to find.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“I just—”

His voice wavers, but for once in his life, the strategist doesn’t shy away from his own vulnerability, or attempt to hide his despair behind an aloof facade. “I just want to let it be said that she was dearly loved by those she chose to share herself with. As long as there’s someone out there who knows that, it’s enough.”

“I have a confession to make.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t particularly care for the taste of coffee.”

The strategist frowns. “Then why on Eos are we paying good money to sit here and choke down bitter Coeurl excrement?”

Ophelia’s melodious laughs ring out beside him. “Because it’s not polite to look a gift Chocobo in the mouth, especially when you’re the one who offered to buy.”

They were, in fact, sitting on a bench overlooking Taelpar Crag just a few hundred paces away from the Coernix Station; not wanting to stay in Mrs. Neminis’ hair for too long, and not wanting to immediately bolt home to wallow in pity, Ignis had proposed stopping by the same coffee kiosk as before to grab a quick cup in an effort to take his mind off what had transpired inside the house on the hill.

Her giggles subside and she resumes a measured tone. “I hope you don’t feel like I coerced you into doing anything you didn’t want to do. I know this was rather difficult for you.”

He can feel the chain of his necklace encircling his throat, but it no longer threatens to strangle him like a hangman’s noose; rather, the skull pendant seems almost to have increased in lightness, the weight of the pewter pressing against his collarbone more comforting and less suffocating than before.

“On the contrary,” he says. “It’s something I should’ve done of my own volition a long time ago. You were simply the spur I needed to get on with it.”

“Are you going to be all right? You don’t have to lie just to put my mind at ease.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage somehow.” He reaches out a hand and pats what he hopes is her knee. “Thank you for the kindness you’ve shown toward me. You do quite the honor to your namesake.”

“My namesake?”

“Ophelia—it means ‘to help’, does it not?”

“Oh. Right.” He hears her lean back against the bench, the scuffling of her feet echoing against the concrete balcony as she rests one knee over the other. “I’m happy I was able to be of service, if only just a little. Perhaps I’ll find a way to apply that helpfulness to my own life one of these days.”

His features furrow into puzzlement. “Are you in need of help yourself?”

She grows silent for a time, and it’s only when he begins to wonder whether he’d made himself audible enough that she stirs beside him again. “It just feels like something’s missing—I thought quitting my job at the power plant to become a baker would’ve been enough to make me happy, but I’m not feeling as fulfilled as I would’ve hoped. Like I traded the risk of radiation exposure for yet another contamination, by way of flour.”

“Work is generally a means to an end, at least for most people. Do you have any friends to keep you occupied?”

“I do, but they’ve all started families and moved on with their lives. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in the same rut I was in when my parents died, and it’s left me feeling rather alone.” His ears prick as she turns in her seat to face him. “Have you ever worried what it would be like to reach the end of you life, only to realize you never shared it with anyone else?”

“Truth be told, I didn’t even think I was going to make it this far.” He grimaces as he stares blankly into his coffee, then empties the stale liquid off the end of the bench before crumpling the paper cup into a waxy ball. “But I gave up hope a long time ago that I might meet someone who’d be charitable enough to embrace the complications of being with me. Seems rather unfair to subject a partner to a lifetime of my disability, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say that’s not really your decision to make for other people.”

“Come now, no one would willingly put up with my idiosyncrasies. The prospect of having to herd me around like a senile cat alone would make them want to positively tear their hair out.”

“I would.”

He looks over at Ophelia then, straining desperately to make out any recognizable glimpse of human features. But not even the aura of calmness and tranquility he can sense emanating from her is enough to agitate the damaged nerves in his right eye, so he resorts to doing exactly the same thing he’d admonished her for weeks prior and inches a little closer to her side of the bench.

“At the risk of coming across as a lecher,” he says carefully, “may I touch your face?”

The strategist might not have known what she looked like, but the grin in her voice is unmissable. “What happened to not being the touchy-feely sort?”

“Be that as it may, this is the only way I can ‘see’ anyone, so to speak.”

Rather than responding with a wry quip like he expects, he feels her hand reach over and draw his own from his lap, and soon the sensation of velvety soft skin registers in his mind as she presses his palm to her cheek. His fingertips trace the outline of her jaw before moving across the bridge of her nose; the bone there is both at once delicate and strong, and as his fingers glide up toward her forehead, he can make out the distinct furrow of a worry line centered just between her eyebrows.

He then drops his hand and offers her a small smile. “I can tell you’re quite beautiful. No wonder Cid always asks for you by name.”

But her own hand is still grasping lightly at his forearm, and she is close enough to his side that he can feel her warm breath on the exposed skin of his neck. “Would you consider letting me return the favor?” she asks. “I promise not to knock your visor askew this time.”

He snorts softly, but an inkling of anxiety trickles into his gut; he’d never been on the receiving end of a woman’s touch in public before, not even once, not even when he had said goodbye to the redhead for the very last time, even though all he had wanted to do was shout her name from the rooftop of the Citadel and carry her across the threshold of the home they would never have together.

But Ignis is no longer the man he used to be, back when appearances were everything and consummate professionalism was more important than telling the woman he loved how much she truly meant to him, and he wasn’t about to let himself make the same foolish mistakes of his youth. “Go on, then,” he says quietly.

Her hand meets his bare face, tentatively at first, then more deliberately as he yields to her touch. He can smell her Sylleblossom perfume mingling with the aroma of coffee that must have dribbled over the side of her cup while she was holding it, and his mouth parts slightly when her fingers graze the vertical scar that splits his lower lip. And although the strategist doesn’t quite understand it, she somehow feels like honesty and virtue and pure kindness all rolled into the palm of one gentle hand, and his eyelids flutter shut as her hair stirs in the breeze around them and tickles his cheek.

Then a whole new sensation registers at the back of Ignis’ mind, and an explosion of invisible fireworks goes off behind his blind eyes when he feels her lips brush softly against his own.

#dancing around the redhead's name like LALALALALA IDGAF #ignis scientia #ffxv fanfiction #final fantasy xv #ffxv #ff15 #ignis #ignis stupeo scientia

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failtoplan · 5 years

Text

Letter to Prof Appiah

I recently read ‘The Lies that Bind’ by Anthony Kwame Appiah. I thought it was fantastic book and left me with many thoughts and responses. I wrote him a letter, but he didn’t reply, so I shall share it here… Hopefully some of them make sense for those that haven’t read the book, and for anyone who has, would be fascinated to hear.

——

Dear Professor Appiah

Firstly, apologies for this unsolicited note, and the second rate undergrad-level thoughts it contains.

After finishing ‘The Lies that Bind’, I really wanted to put down some thoughts - I hope you don’t thing its too weird that I have then sent them to you….

I have been thinking a lot about the ideas that you explore about identity within your book. Identity - and in particular nationality and it’s composite bits - is something that I have been thinking about a lot recently and a little bit for a long time, particularly as mixed-race Afro-caribbean Brit living in an British Asian former colony (Singapore) for the last four years. (I could write multiple emails just picking apart my observations on identity here in response to some of your writing - one of my neighbours told me the story of how, as a young boy, he went to bed waving one flag and woke up waving another 53 years ago)

On a personal level I really connected with the elements you wove in of your own story and how your unique viewpoint allows you to describe the absurdity of reductive and singular notions of identity that essentialists and ethnocentrists cling to. Having in my own small way straddled multiple worlds during my own experience; most obviously of race, but also of class and of culture, I have always had a sense that ‘obvious’ category divides and definitions aren’t particularly natural or clear or obvious, but I also feel that is the gift of a privileged viewpoint. I smiled when you referred to yourself as ‘English’ as I remember one particularly revealing late night debate with a very good friend (he still is now) from my college who vehemently denied me use of the title because I “don’t have the blood”.

The thing that really struck me as I read your work was the outsized role that Country or the Nation plays in tying together the contemporary versions of the four other sorts of identity that you explore. It seems that (to borrow one of your most lovely turns of phrase in the book) Nation, or the Nationalism born of the industrial nation state is the ‘Medusa Gaze’ that fixes and reduces the other facets identities. Between the French Revolution, the 19th Century romantic liberal-national movements and the technological and economic shifts of the Industrial Revolution, the overlapping, multilayered versions of identity that still lingered at the time of Ettore’s birth were hammered flat, collapsed and co-opted by modern Nationalism. Ironic that what at the start of the 19th Century was the great ideal of the liberal (I remember studying why ‘Deutschland Deutschland Uber Alles’ was a message initially to inspire citizens of a patchwork of grand-duchies and principalities to ‘feel’ German above ‘Protestant’ or ‘Hanseatic’ or ‘Prussian’) became the refuge and strength of the authoritarian. Perhaps natural too, as once the liberal-national dream to ‘create’ has been fulfilled, the logical next step is to ‘conserve’?

Then of course this was exported to the rest of the world, through amongst other things the ‘Census, Map, Museum’ as Benedict Anderson puts it, and as you recognise when you talk about the invention of the Hindu (the same is true of the definition ‘Malay’ in Singapore - there has been some fantastic work done on how this authoritarian island utopia is a post colonial government deploying unreconstituted colonial structures and powers.

By lashing together states-wide tribalism for mass mobilisation - for war and for industry, using the vines and tentacles of creed and colour and culture, Country became Nation and it fixed these ideas, creating a mass cultural product that was compellingly simple and dangerously compelling. The lies we tell ourselves aren’t a problem in themselves - as you highlight in so many of your pre-industrial examples, until they are denied the elasticity and vibrancy to continue to flex and grow. Some of the examples you use from religion and evolving consensus on values highlight this beautifully, and in part I wanted to write to you to see what your response would be to the thought which struck me - namely, that it was this industrial homogenisation of these other elements by the Nation-State (to which I would add language, at least as a historical category to this) which caused so many of the problems we see now in ‘identity politics’; that identity politics as we see it, is a product of this process. Religious fundamentalism, racial essentialism and cultural ossification are all modern industrial products, and like Nationalism, are profoundly unsuited to the reality of the contemporary world - it’s no coincidence that it primarily is supranational bodies like the EU that are suited to - and have at least had some limited success being - a counterpoint to transnational corporations.

When you then went on to argue the opposite when it came to class, that we do not pay enough attention to it’s continuity and the myth of meritocracy (our 20th Century version of Mayer’s ‘Persistence of the Old Regime’) I was even more excited. Perhaps here I push my reading of you work too far into my limited (and rusty) intellectual realm as a historian by training, a democratic socialist by inclination and someone working in the ‘commercial application of social sciences’ (I say grandiosely - I am but a humble market researcher…) but could in some ways this be the counterpoint to Nation? Maybe I have been listening to Paul Robeson sing ‘Joe Hill’ too often recently, but it struck me that if the two work in opposite directions and by making class as you describe it more visible, class could provide a counterpoint to the problems of Nation? Or at least as a lever to prise back apart some richness and layers?

Lastly, as a liberal, the thing that you touch upon which touched me most is in your section on Cultural appropriation. When other ‘liberals’ throw it round cheaply, I shudder. That is truly (to use another of your phrases - and I have been using these a lot talking to people recently, so it’s not just here to flatter you in this email) a source code fallacy. By engaging on those terms, they truly are reinforcing exactly the essentialism that you rail against, and having had this argument with so many people recently, and ‘tarnishing’ my ‘correct’ cosmopolitan/liberal credentials it was relief to read someone far more eloquent and intelligent and me articulate the sentiment. he yardstick of ‘respect’ is a useful heuristic for making the phrase redundant. There are a few copies of the book along with specific pages called out already on their way to some people. You express the idea far better than I have ever managed!

Anyway, I hope you have time to read this, and certainly don’t expect a reply, but I really just wanted to say thank you for writing something so thought provoking and refreshing - definitely one of my books of the year so far,

Best

Adam

(human)

P.S I do also really wonder if you have read any, and what you think of the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates, but I feel like that must be an irritating question you get asked all the time, and the FT was wise enough to avoid it in their recent interview with you, so I shall do the same. His work does remind me of a bad joke someone told me - Why is race like Santa Claus? They are both not real, but have both caused so much genuine sorrow and suffering…

#nationality #identity #class #race #politics #cuture

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sentimentalica · 7 years

Text

Coney Island Baby

.. Do you remember the way Robert Duncan taught me how to forge a scream into a smile? When I wore that shimmer dress with a bright face, dangling in and out of bending lower backs, as if yielding for the concave is always as safe and sound as a sound is ever safe. Or was it more than soft as softness usually sweeps for? What I imagine comes next is like a third person involvement in a screwed dormitory, drafting the atlantic, where I plead that a lion cannot surf, perhaps he bit off the cream that polluted the blue phantom pains from your waist and down.

A childless women in a pair of knitted boxershorts wrecking nylon sinuses on a blissful Friday.

I still adore the messy promises of an advertisement Henry Miller disregarded when cutting the Brooklyn Bridge in half,

before looking overwhelmingly to one side towards the navy yard and to the other,

a skyscraping playground left by Frank O´Hara in the midst of writing Lunch Poems to his downtown lover, my hero in tights who prefered a typewriter over the museum so he could fully commit to language as a lifelong affair with typing out those faces we never saw-

Back to Miller on the bridge,

after humming calm untitled jazz scores to the jewish men abiding fear of Javeh with the tide, in an opium fuzz- there hovering in the hudson river screaming out from his deflated lungs; “Either way is hell.

And in that throwback of a breeze, he lifted up the wind that was hardly present, as all literature begin to explain, replacing the sun with crisp gleaming grapefruits

sleeping their tails off by the boats, channeling this and that to someone so unique in the mind of a person in love- not even getting through to the middle

of what that could possibly entail, I reached for the pen that dropped to the floor.

I have enclosed all of these excerpts from that day of disclosure, where roaming with thrifty eyes were enough to carry observations as valid

as their imploding certificate of choice.

I painfully watched you dodge again and again all the signals from the woman across the room, who was fiddling with old news papers and caressing her presence with yours- what more could you offer than a significant blow to her hair? Don´t you know she just fancied a tickle all the while you plundered the new bought lace with such a precision, that not only changed her mind but that sold her the momentary conviction that

two bodies are better than one.

Nadja by André Breton is being moulded prematurely. The havoc of looseness, abstraction and faith comes to term with what bohemia needed in order to survive-

it wasn´t the firewater, the endless dipsomaniacs or the following haze of polyamourous misconduct,

and it wasn’t explained to you on page 24 of texte zur kunste,

it arrived on the first submarine put under oceanic credentials in 1776,

taking us fingertipping with smudge free tokens across a timeline of panic and refusal to pay the fine for loosing.

Nadja makes drawings of mermaids and ravens in tuxedos on napkins, con aperitifs from regulars at bars that wear mustaches as neat as the reclining canes next to woollen slacks and tipping leather shoes, and most importantly, she wears the objection and surrender to the myth-

Before the map was a map-like mappish mock making a trail of the female on the run from a young soldier, a rusty locomotive and yellow cannon fudder- she who dropped a face beneath the love of god, that feared you to be up there with the rest and descended you poor,

but wealthy enough to go figure in the world, relentless or cool,

leading up to Tikal and the viaducts of Rome.

In my diaries, I have written that she was found in July, when it was still a frigid crater. These seasonal mileages seem to make soup into porridge, where it should have been steak burned slightly from the toaster.

The string that spinned from unsolicited leverage a journal can only attempt to regain when left alone, brings up again the question, what essentially is so special, and what is so rare that it must be done?

I think of Meret Oppenheimer´s wooden foot model of two feet forever connected by the toe-

I wonder if the same idea could be applied to a straightjacket? Having two identical jackets connected at the end of the left and the right sleeve, so when wrapped around, one are interlocked, sharing that closeness but forever be disconnected by the brain. Airing the thought to my father, he tells me so all relationships by virture will grow- Applied insanity is cocoonish by nature,

only its sad to me but rest assured enough, if its is meant to be buckled as nice or not.

Here was not the following that took the flight in good moods- forgiven is my tempo, and forgotten is my malignant partitur- speaking on behalf of the lesser memories in transit(Hangups need company too):

On the third floor of this catatonic ship, remembered as an apartment building housing all the dresses left behind, some from Kenneth Anger´s puce moments, some by your calibrated daughter and a few by my amputed former self,

as we all took turns in wearing them for the camera, the mirror and the door-

none to which I recall made a remarkable difference, and none to which I recall bothered to master the right hand more than the left- as if the hand, the gesture and the handle bar pulled enough forces to tell the next inhabitant to keep still.

I sit on a twirling barstool by the window overlooking the petite arrondissement, number forgotten and mail box key even more- because the mail here was as thinly stacked as the handkerchieves in the drawer, where left over weed buds had seen better moisture and light to grow- as if smoking and caring were one and the same whenever we opened one more envelope, unravelling detritus and gold- you always told me that I should dance with my eyebrows lowered, as if to look gargantuan and benign, my pupils like rodents and my neck like the unbroken vase on the table left untouched whenever we would fight over all the things, over all the sentiments unnecessary by the age of who cares.

The piano departs a melody into the carcass locked brain child, he swam so careless and far- we wondered when drowning could turn talent,

instead did our words under the bed, the carpet and the foil-

where giving the lampshades names and strobing my heart with sentimental ennui, then so sudden a decision by two individuals about to leave Mercury for Neptune, I believe they call them your parents, but it might as well be Frederique from downstairs playing games with us.

Even if I sold you my pirouette, the plie and the adagio in one and the same deal- watching the pants folding when undressing for you, I tried to release my own heat and dust from the etude in waiting for the signs of exile and disempowerment, as the feet, the bricks and the fastly lit matches danced in front of a peak, the one that I would actually fall from, that after some minutes was just as exhilarating as the vortex of boredom or apathy,

color me dead, please.

How lukewarm these tunnels can be, as if temperature could make hell and paradise separable only by a few degrees- lets wait and see of how tired we become- the ice can just as well be the kindest thing you have ever and will ever know.

Why did we decide to follow the trafficked fanfare on last weeks Sunday,

the day that trimmed our hair into petty nobodies and cerebral distress overshadowing the fact that you left me by the wink of an eye-

I spent the rest of that afternoon pestering my nose after doghouses and snaredrum infernos-

slaving to the eternal search of my lovers marks,

as if sniffing them out again would re-live the wormholes I tried so hard to get out of.

Dear elbows, do you still bestow upon yourselves the rejected caleidoscope of the last battle by that oak tree in the mud? A fist in the eye of a beggar climbing my way-

convincing he who doesn’t want to give you to give you exactly just that-

Was I maddened by your chest, your scribbled version of a song and that Irish brilliance of another intellectual wake? Had I not worn that hat and had I not put on that nonsensical laughter, would you have taken me to the fifth floor? Had I not said those uninspiring lies and oblivious contradictions,

would you have lifted up my skirt and felt yourself into the busty abyss? The dreams that dream you in and out of the edge, the transpired blueprint of your neckline, all that make you read me out again, to be summoned the brevity and the holy weight of the day

when I´ll fantastically open the door again.

I know you painted those words on the wall, so the whole city eradicated the horses, the automobiles and everything that Paul Virilio will write about in some decades in the pentecostal future,

the stark violet century of a clenching lawn-

even after the bedlinens stretched its last fibers,

You who rescued my pillow in March.

I spent my last evenings peacefully honing the opulent relics, representing all the phallic emotions of our time- they call it architecture and it died when your face spoke their version of gratitude. Resurrected was the only theatre in town, and the stage was ours, and one day with a two week release note, I will bleed myself ready for Not I, and my teeth would reach the elasticity of a wild duck, chewing your knuckles and swallowing the poignant marks devoted to the editor of heartfelt misanthropies.

Graphofobia, the fear of writing, and Philofobia, the fear of falling in love- these two reckless twins are tormenting me at night, giving short stories their flare for fight against the light- drifting as us, into, let´s say, a more or less fumbling form of hope, perhaps this is not the idea and neither a glitchy plat du jour, but I have not so much as a heroine in them to connect with- as I violate the tropes in their spinnings.

I must continue without you, and frame the last image.

Here´s a man who resembled a fox so much that he began the behaviour of one, as he painted his skin orange, fortified his freckles with feathers sucked in gum arabica and sought the mystery of a white end to his life becoming a bold aspiration to confront exactly just that.

You keep me here with your global pauses of serene blockage, all the while Handel, Bach, Mihalovici and Schubert is flowing out of the windows of your condominium, like flights of epicurean princesses- while in me, non had fled as much as a mile, out here then so far from the strata of asphalt, may they who cringe remove the organs that nurture and grow abundantly out here in the wild, dark and green, if only the spline could split in millions and defer into the quantum leap, so my head could release the whips, and then I will take that money you send to keep me imprisoned and

torture the very cloud your head has been replaced with. The doctors have become my characters for a play that will travel across the Indo-European landslide, and finally reach you back in Paris one day- they will not wear white coats this time, but black face paint, really more like a minstrel show with a diagnosed tone, and they will make you laugh and then cry when they show you the multiple X-rays and the empty pill jars all the while arresting the very pile of skeletons underneath the stage, dragging and re-assembling bones til the break of dawn in which a glowing fish and a silver-rectangled octopus attempt an opportunistic strangle of the entire cast.

I remember you saying that tragedy is the controlling denominator of our destiny- from which we all will suffer as redemption continues to exist as a moral predicament.

This will not be the theme of my life.

Because as long as I only understand the water if it wants to drown me and fill me with that which is already me in the most biodynamic logic possible, call it peace, name it an exit of thought- either way, it can make a fleet for those who cannot swim.

I decided to stop dreaming of you, of stopping the waves on the shoreline all together, this is nowhere as close to the flowers obeying sunlit reflection of the aluminium stationaries frequently flipped and retained

as the potential support system for visitation and small talk-

cold when dark and only remotely pleasant if heated by some bourgeois arse.

Unravelling the not yet written into a sanctuary- I thought it had so very little to do with the love I scheduled for, that it´s all just a wasteland of deceptive pleasure-

tuned into your grey streaks I fell in love with along with the smell of freshly applied wax.

My intellect reeks fixtures in situ, removing is not the same as hiding, when taking a picture, and leaving the sun, I relapse into that slum animal- eating a 400kg heart from a dinosaure.

Even though I want to write you the beauty and the beast in one and forever changing opera buffa,

it will never emotionally rescue the concept of us, despite that I know you will open the kilogram tortured package and drop a knife on a monday, cutting a toenail and a bond, a monday we remembered as a normal day that never seated normality enough to consider the sublime in white sugar cubes, that rushes through your veins and never returns.

Hi again, again and again and its hello ok? a bloody hello, a hello that don’t need a hello back but yes, its hi for you now, maybe not maybe, i don’t know, a nod or a sank, a smack, a what might not be eyes and a foot.

Greet me the one opportunity with salt- hydrating afterwards with water dripping from your sullen chins whenever the fois grois let you down as April lost its kingdom,

but in the food hall, I look up at incandescent swords, cutting blue light into yellow umbrellas,

these manufactured resemblances to the decline of victorian households, let me think of two parallels, one that commemorate the loss of the living room as we know it with the itchy chandeliers and their wavering spirits, and secondly, that modernism was not a private affair at all, but rather, the first ill conceived format for the public as a neutralised mass, ironically only commissioned by shallow hands, the way social currency will drive and destroy our future- but the carpet can’t be pulled out just yet, cause we still make the same mistakes again, just as the one made when they decided to push me out from the ground. so I’m left with the story of how I fought with mother, and how her pearls glitched in the stature of silence and in the betrayed light of her satin robe, not giving any right to my hands shifting the prodigious stalker of decorative puns-

The book shelf was weaker than I, and so the archive was disastrous to my temper,

the way you all attempted to put a lit on genuine rage,

and not even once trying to justify its potential within itself as much as a chess game needs gravity and a birds eye.

Mother, I´d rather fight with you again in the fortuitous swing of a chandelier, than to sit next to you and watch TV until you cannot breathe anymore and my insanity has been mirrored dazzlingly between the cushions and the remote-

Why couldn´t Icarus be more precarious? Moving under the sun, heading for collapse. Remember that director who asked me to be a cat sleeping under a shadow casted by a tower about to fall on a little bench, where a bag of flour had just expired, leaving a town in hunger and grinded desperation? If I could only emphasise the most wondrous places in the world that bypasses strangers as carefully carved columns, pretending to be pillars of the might, covering my most favourite vertical spots in the vision from my stand. If romance could live forever in train stations, back alleys and trenches- even holes to shit in, temporary life could linger and soothe a bit longer, die, and then anticipate and leave very little marks on my skin,

as if these places are meant for the mass, the crowds and in these, I, and you spend half of our lives,

leaving me to suspect that a life could be so reasonably unnoticed and ghostly-

My longing of your couch, your fume perturbed coat and your grinding shoes- if I could belong to these items and die in another persons grave, i´d come pretty close to the truth. After black, you said, you can´t really return to colors- as we sat there opposite each other in your kitchen, as two darkened snails- being detained and free from whatever demanded us to be anything of interest out there, out there on the dull street, out there on the mortal pavement where only a stabbing and a parked vehicle could aspire to change.

I awake in my single bed frame, a single slide, a single keyhole- I wonder if its similar the one we never locked but that we stuffed with wet newspaper so silence could permit. The resonance of steps are friends now, can you imagine, just as I skipped that surface of that wooden floor in the apartment in Paris,

where my limbs were angles and curvatures, my steps were heavy there, just as your yawn, just as your limp posture, there by the window, there with a cigarette, there with a sentence that transformed the world, as if that pure entity was yours to discover and to assemble anew-

a fare well to the absurd you say,

when I looked up from that surrealist magazine Minotaure, and how I repeatedly begged for a contact there so I could publish my renderings of growing up with a molesting brother, a Prussian mother and a father, who, to your misapprehension I have made peace with by now-

you believe that the Jungian archetype will never be fully satisfied and that I look for a father figure in you,

but the bollocks and the dread of that must remain scarcely unresolved because its fiction derived from cocaine covered beards that sink and scooba dive into inferior lakes of innocent minds. Id rather avail myself of the story where the mother is my rock, and the brother my curtain, my father a chair, on which you kindly sit on, family being your home and so me, what could I possibly do to further objectify myself?

Perhaps a taxidermic bear, extended back as a carpet, soft stepping and where rudimentary love making sheds an eye before the fire- here I sleep, eat and forget about the matches, once again- foxtrotting, cocktail hours aside, when a rare street light makes up for the broken candle that intended to bury us alive.

How I hated that coat and how I resented those shoes- dress me with your plays, your whispering novels, I infatuated myself with the demise-

An elegy to the woman who I saw putting on 20 coats, 5 hats, 3 pair of shoes and 8 stockings, who diligently picked up tulips and gave each one away to imaginary passer byes, the stronger sexes of our time, in which she sang “Pleas Don´t Talk About Me When I´m Gone” by Gene Austen.

Don´t forget the one you haven´t met yet, is what I want you to say to someone one day, and that someone once told you and meant it and glanced just right over your shoulder while inhaling a fractal of bad breathe, while half way defeatist kept pulling your eyes back where they used to belong- in the junction of the deepest knowledge

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