#All using as a commentary on how clothing is both women's nightmare‚ something they both desperately hate and yet rely on for strength‚

[kyouka-supremacy]

What's p/p?

Ah, I meant to say, pp, Psycho-Pass. I usually add slashes to avoid unprompted rambles to show up in main tags, sorry if that resulted confusing.

I love Psycho-Pass. I already made a post about why bsd fans might find it enjoyable, but honestly, there's so much more to it beyond what it has in common with bsd.

The prompts for reflection this series offers are just wonderful: on the relationship between citizens and government, on pervasive systems, on freedom of choice and free will, on safety vs. freedom, on discrimination of minorities and creation of scapegoats, on propaganda and brainwashing, on the increasing and treacherous presence of technology in everyday life, on how government uses technology to control and manipulate people, on fighting the system from the inside vs. fighting the system from the outside. I should watch it again too. It's crazy good.

Akane Tsunemori - the coprotagonist of the first season, the protagonist of the second season and overall the true core and heart of the franchise - is one of the most complex and beautiful characters I ever met. Her growth and character development is truly amazing: the way she starts off as unknowing and naïve, and grows so so much from there; how her writing finds this perfect balance between becoming more mature / hardening and staying true to her beliefs - even when everyone, the system, the people she relies to, the people she looks up to - tell her that there's no other way, that it can't be. It's breathtaking. She is a breathtaking character. The way alone that no matter how conscious and aware she becomes of how cruel the world is, how unredeemable people are, how beyond saving the system is, she still keeps believing in humans… It may sound cliché by itself, but believe me, it's wonderfully executed, and her character is truly amazing. Not to mention, the way she mirrors the coprotagonist Kougami is fabulous, but this is not really about him; she's an amazing character of her own right, and I will die on this hill.

The female cast in general is all amazing honestly. Don't get me wrong, the male characters are just as complex and multilayered (and I LOVE Gino and Kou, how couldn't I), but that's… Something we're more accustomed to, while finding well written female characters is objectively much harder. Female characters in Psycho-Pass aren't written as female characters, they're written as people, just as much as their male counterparts are. They have their fears and hopes and strengths and weaknesses just like any other character. I love Yayoi for being strong and coolheaded. I love (LOVE) Shion for being her fabulous self, kind and flirty and confident and with an heart so big, and for her subverting the trope of guy in the chair by being a glamorous woman who's also incredibly competent at her job of analyst. I love Akane's friends and I don't like season 3 but Mai is genuinely awesome and a joy every time she's on screen. I love Risa so much I could die, I love how strong and independent she is, I love the dilemmas she had to face, I love her choices and how they might have been the wrong ones and how it still haunts her, I love the tragedy of her character in general, I love the doomed friendship that used to be between her Gino and Kou. I love love love Fredrica, I love her being bossy and confident, diligent and determined. There's just a lot of… Strong and independent women in Psycho-Pass, and it's not just a way of saying, they really are.

I LOVE women loving other women, canonly, on screen. The confirmation may be delegated to a small moment in the last episode of the first season, but the fact that it's still there nonetheless, and how it confirms that all the previous moments and exchanges were indeed moments and didn't leave it to ambiguity… It's nice, to say that the first season of Psycho-Pass came out in 2012. And you might have to wait eight years, three seasons, five movies for it, but the phrase “I just want to go outside, dine somewhere nice, and go for walks with someone I love” may make it worth it.

And I LOVE how all the leader positions are filled by women. It's a little funny, honestly, in the best way– despite what I made it look like so far, the Psycho-Pass cast is still men-dominated (or at least a pretty equally split 50/50?); yet all the leader positions are always filled by women: Akane and Mika and Kasei and Frederica and Karina, it's always women.

Also, Mika is a brilliant character. Of course I love her. I'm so so sorry for how much hate and criticism she gets (over being a purposely annoying character! Insane! When Dazai exists!), when she does really and excellent job at conveying “look! A fucked up brainwashed individual in a fucked up brainwashing environment! I wonder how that could have happened!”. Not to mention that her growth, her long and devious way to admitting that the system is flawed, is truly well made, too. Unpopular opinion, characters with big flaws, characters who are unsufferable and make lives impossible to everyone around them, characters who mess up again and again, are actually great to watch.

Again, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore Gino and Kou too ahah. They're both great!! But that you can probably see by your own. Gino in particular used to be my favourite, how his character does a total 180° turn. I love to see men admit their mistakes and make the choice to be better tomorrow.

About that, the relationships between the characters are AMAZING. Especially the main trio Akane / Kou / Gino, all the combinations within it are beautiful and deep and brilliant, so so enjoyable to explore and with their fair share of canon content, while still never straying to romantic territory (I mean, Akane/Kou may be going in that direction, but if that's true, that's the slowest slow burn I've ever witnessed in my life).

What's more. The world building / general premise - a dystopian world, where your predisposition to do crime can be measured and the government makes use of such technology to monitor and control the population and guarantee everyone's safety - is genuinely interesting and compelling. The aesthetic is genuinely cool (AH, now that I think about it, I've got my unfair bias for people in suits, and pp has a LOT of people in suits… ). The opening and endings feature great artists like Egoist, Ryo, Who-ya Extended and Cö shu Nie, so you're sure to love them!!

(Also, Psycho-Pass is something I used to spend entire nights talking about with a friend, and I'm always thinking about her and hold her tight to my heart in every moment so. That's worth mentioning for me, pfffttt. I love my friend so much.)

Finally, because the other Psycho-Pass post I made here keeps haunting me for the lack of trigger warnings, please be aware: Psycho-Pass DOES have trigger warnings. Pretty much for eveything you can think of. Sexual assault and gore and body horror on the top of my mind, but it's quite dark and gritty at parts in its entirety, so please please keep that in mind if you decide to pick it up.

Well, this is the end of my Psycho-Pass love letter for now. Please give it a chance if you can! I'll go rewatch it now. General watch order, in order of release, is season 1 → season 2 → movie → Sinners of the System movie trilogy → season 3 → First Inspector movie → Providence movie. I don't really like the third season or First Inspector movie (the characters are still great tho, even the newly introduced ones), and I've yet to watch Providence. The first season later came out with an extended edition of added scenes between episodes, and they're quite nice, so if you can't get ahold of it, you might want to look up for a compilation of the missing scenes still.

[stereostevie]

Spoiler alert! This story describes the ending of "Antebellum," so if you haven't seen it, it will be spoiled ... because spoilers. Last chance to turn back before we spoil everything in this movie.

"Oh, great, another slave movie" is exactly what I was thinking the first 38 minutes of writer/directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz's "Antebellum," but clearly the psychological thriller turns out to be much more than that.

Starring Janelle Monáe, Jena Malone, Eric Lange and Jack Huston, "Antebellum" opens with scenes of a Civil War-era plantation. We see a drowsy Monáe being ushered in, draped over a horse, while Confederate soldiers try to violently prevent an enslaved Black woman from running away – but something is slightly off.

The woman at the start of the movie has a septum piercing, a pregnant Julia (Kiersey Clemons) recognizes Eden (Monáe) as being from Virginia and somewhat a prominent figure (how does she know?!), there's an airplane flying overhead and we definitely see a cellphone at least twice. I wasn't the greatest at U.S. history, but I could've sworn there were no planes in the 1800s, let alone cellphones.

It's all the more confusing when these scenes are juxtaposed against a modern-day America, where Veronica Henley (also Monáe), a successful author, is tapped to speak at a conference in New Orleans. At first, her only connection to Eden appears to be a nightmare she had early in the film, but she also encounters figures from the plantation.

Turns out, there are white people going around America in the here and now kidnapping Black people, and using them as props for their little Civil War re-enactment game. The audacity. We find out that these aren't actually two separate time periods, but that the atrocities of the 1800s are happening in 2020.

Throughout "Antebellum," we get hints the times are intertwined, one being when a sinister Elizabeth (Malone, whose character name is the same in both eras) video chats with Veronica. Elizabeth compliments Veronica's Pat McGrath lipstick enviously, and she steals the lipstick shortly before kidnapping Veronica in an act of cultural appropriation.

"You think about hatred of others as a repelling (thing), you don't like them, you don't want to look like them, but really there's a deep undercurrent of jealousy and want of what another person has," Malone says. "Wanting to push someone in the mud while daydreaming about taking their clothes for yourself, taking their language for yourself, their music."

The ending of "Antebellum" is one we all hoped for but didn't expect. Eden/Veronica escapes her cabin while the plantation's owner known as "Him" (Lange) sleeps beside her. She attempts to make her way to freedom and takes down anyone who stands in her way.

Veronica ends up burning Him and Captain Jasper (Huston) alive inside a shed and drags Elizabeth on the back of a stolen horse, ultimately killing all three. We see Veronica reign supreme in the end, saving not only herself but the rest of Black folks trapped on the plantation.

"Endings matter. I was not interested in doing a movie around white people saving Black people. If this Black woman didn't come out heroic and victorious, I wasn't going to do it," Monáe says. "This is not a white savior film, this is not a film where Black women don't win."

Veronica taking things into her own hands was more about justice than revenge, Bush says, adding that Black people "cannot rely upon the government or authorities to provide the justice we deserve." He says her triumph represents the "beauty of the resilience" in Black women generally, which comes at a great cost.

"You don't get through this unscathed," Bush says. "We are all still carrying around the trauma that our ancestors, our grandparents, our great-grandparents our great-great-grandparents and perhaps even us still carry."

Even though Veronica succeeds, there is significant loss. After suffering through enough trauma on the plantation, Julia takes her own life.

Bush describes Julia as a commentary on how Black women endure so much, noting that Julia could be a person already dealing with mental health issues on top of her pregnancy and just not understanding how all of this is happening.

"It was about Sandra Bland, it was about Black women who are medical outcomes for not being believed, it was about our issues with childbirth – it's so many things wrapped up into one character," Bush says. "You do feel hopeless and you can feel hopeless even in today's America."

[seaalgae]

Update... 2!!!

Sword again, featuring DREAMS and ADVENTURES and A SMALL AMOUNT OF SOCIOPOLITICAL COMMENTARY i mean what no not really

Starts with HOP an MIA having apparently BONDED with their starters, which Lee APPROVES of. He offers to judge their first battle as Rivals:tm:

It's gonna be tacklespam let's be real

Vs Wooloo

(unlimited tackle works)

Vs Grookey

(We Ember now)

(yes hop i already knew about type advantages)

It's an easy win, and can't *not* be one

And now Hop wants to do the GYM CHALLENGE, proving that he is a JOCK. I do not yet know Mia's alignment but she's probably LESS SPORTY. They go to Route 2 to get POKEDEXES.

It's the earlygame there is not a whole lot I can talk about. But now I can finally SAVE

Also the Wooloo broke through the GATE to MEET ITS DESTINY, so of course we had to save it to keep our share of the plot as it is. Also Hop wants to BE A HERO and Mia IS JUST THERE FOR THE RIDE

(for all the fear the wilds are level 2)

There's An Awoo and we all rush off to check, because of course we are. HOP runs off into the mist like a true horror protag. We follow him. AND THEN WE SPOT A PUPPY AND PET IT. THE END

we pet it with our attacks, but none of its attacks work at all, ever, and the fog keeps happening, and eventually we WIPE and wake up outside the woods. Leon finds us, proving perhaps that he is NOT pants with DIRECTIONS. Yet another lie.

Also he saved the Wooloo, because this is his game and we're just spectating.

Anyway it's time to TALK TO MOM and SET OUT ON AN ADVENTURE

"Remember that Scorbunny will battle to the end for you" mom no

Anyway on route 1 there's a sleeping Wooloo line and I'm 100% not waking them.

AND IT'S CATCH TIME

First catch: Lump (female Blipbug, quirky, level 4)

Anyway the lab is in town and OH MY GOD MAGNOLIA HAS A CORGI

Enter SONIA, the character that 90% of wlw are into, except LEON forgot to drink his daily Respect Women Juice today so he just roasts her. Except she was LEON'S RIVAL and thus can probably kick all sorts of ass on her own. Spoilers: she parallels HOP

The PHONE is forcibly converted into the ROTOMDEX FROM GEN 7. Somehow they've started to MASS PRODUCE ROTOM, probably through BREEDING. Instead of ecological collapse it just means EVERYONE HAS ROTOM, and when they get released they go on to DEVASTATE THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT. I am forced to speculate that this was the catalyst for Galar banning any and all potentially invasive species, and now the royals have switched over fully to ROTOM REMOVAL. Instead of foxes or something i guess?

my hand hurts so I'm stopping for now byeee

cont'd from last night

Okay so I apparently left off at the lab? And on stepping outside A RANDOM STRANGER gives us a POTION, which is ACTUALLY A BIT SKETCHY. He then tells you to TALK TO EVERYONE, which is some kind of INTROVERT NIGHTMARE, so we will be NOT doing that.

insert POKEMON CENTER TUTORIAL

...insert SKIPPING THE POKEMON CENTER TUTORIAL, because both Mia and Hop are USELESS TEENS, which means they KNOW HOW THE WORLD WORKS ALL TOO WELL. They have DEPRESSION.

Now for the important part: CLOTHES SHOPPING. Mia's look is now that of a LAZY STUDENT, namely, jeans, hoodie, hat

Hop then meets us at the edge of town to discuss the GYM CHALLENGE, which is the ONLY WAY to socially rise in Galar's HELLISH POST-CAPITALIST MONARCHY. He tells you that both of you should get ENDORSEMENTS in order to be rivals, and that means going to ROUTE 2 to be endorsed by PROFESSOR MAGNOLIA

Hop wisely decides to BUILD HIS TEAM, which leads to LEON coming out of nowhere in order to offer a CATCHING TUTORIAL, because he's looking out for his brother under a guise of obfuscating stupidity. I am hereby imagining that the two TEASE ONE ANOTHER about THINGS

Our catch? Stanley (male zigzagoon, careful, level 6)

I fucking love galaran zigzagoon, but now it's grind time

It's also HARDCORE CONTROLLER DRIFT TIME, which I'm interpreting as Mia having an EXTREMELY SHORT ATTENTION SPAN

Also we get our first TRAINER BATTLE partway through; a youngster with a SKWOVET. We fight it with STANLEY until he needs to switch, then KICKS takes over. All in all, a good time.

The same happens with a SECOND TRAINER, who has CHEWTLE, and is dispatched in much the same way.

Third trainer has a blipbug and gets embered. Quite thrilling.

Now we have the FIRST HINTS OF THE PLOT, where LEON is asking MAGNOLIA about DYNAMAX SCIENCE. MAGNOLIA says that her daughter will probably finish her work, which is OMINOUS. She INVITES YOU IN for TEA AND SCIENCE. Leon proves his HIMBO NATURE by relating everything back to BATTLES, and Hop asks Magnolia to consider convincing Leon to endorse them, despite the fact that he's LITERALLY RIGHT THERE. Leon reveals that he'd planned to do that anyway and asks the two to BATTLE to show that they're good enough.

The battle happens at SUNSET, which is RAD.

VS HOP: Stanley vs Wooloo: Leer/tackle -> tackle/growl, tackle/tackle, tackle KO

Stanley vs Grookey (switch to Kicks)/branch poke, ember (burn)/branch poke, ember KO

Kicks vs Rookidee Quick attack/peck, Quick attack KO

Battle WON

Hop handles the win MATURELY, and then LEON gives them both an ENDORSEMENT (though Leon notes that HOP has a habit of getting stuck on the aesthetiques). The two are ready to be RIVALS.

AND THEN a meteor happens and they both get WISHING STARS, which can be made into DYNAMAX BANDS. The timing is FORTUITOUS. SONIA appears, congratulates them, and then makes CURRY, and the party goes to bed, happy, full, and filled with purpose

Thus ends the first arc of this anime.

[every-last-inch-of-me]

Bar-awling || Fab(ber) 5

 A fight breaks loose at the Hunted Deer.

@freddie-eddie-wiggins, @hngrylikethewoolf, @hellfire-damnation 

(Max + Clayton no longer in play but we didn’t want to lose everyone’s hard work)

[TW: violence, gore, blood, sexism, homophobia]

FREDDIE: 

Freddie pushed his glass halfway across the bar, waiting for the hose to hover above and dispense whatever concoction Gaston felt like bestowing on him in that moment. It had become somewhat of a running joke, the barely drinkable beverages that graced Freddie’s glass whenever he set foot in the Deer. Though, the company tonight was somewhat better than it usually was. Fred unhooked one of his heels from the barstool’s footrest and crossed his legs, brushing invisible dust from his trousers. 

“So, I get called into the meeting with my boss, told I’m being reassigned, which honestly is a nightmare, because I was just starting to find common ground with…” He paused, taking his drink and thanking Gaston, “...anyway, it’s been a nightmare, and I can’t bear to be in my flat right now, it’s a complete mess, and Percy spent all last night crying and pissing in the kitchen.” Freddie sighed, catching Gaston’s eye again. “Can I get a glass of white as well, large please?”

ERROL: 

It was nice, gettin' to talk to Freddie like this again. It had been a few days since the last time they'd gotten together, brunch after a late morning. After that the sheriff had been slammed with paperwork and calls, breaking the new bloke into the town beat, and general other headache-inducing business. Came with the territory, but a drink out was much preferable to staying in these days. 

He swirled his brandy around the glass, and took a swallow, listening to the younger man speak with his head resting on a hand. The noise of the bar was stuck in the background, something Errol was easily able to tune out. No one else was his problem here, anyhow, not until they made themselves that way. No, he was here off duty and he was here with Freddie and he was going to make sure they had a decent time of it.

Raising a brow, the Irishman snorted. "Right, an' his grounds fer yer "reassignment" were what, exactly?" Shaking his head, he signaled for another drink from Gaston, thanked him quietly when he got one, and then turned his attention right back where it belonged. He shrugged a shoulder, almost artfully nonchalant, before saying on the tail end of another drink: "Stay at mine. Percy likes Del, they'd be fine. An' I can get 'im tah stop pissin' everywhere real quick like." He smirked slightly, a boyish quality to it, before sobering up. "Doors always open, Fred." 

CLAYTON: 

It was a relatively crowded night at The Hunted Deer. Relative to the fact that William had only been in Swynlake a number of weeks. Still, the werewolf restriction petition (has nobody thought of an acronym yet? This town: imbecilic) was of hot topic in accordance with two instances of werewolf promulgation in town. Two werewolves just out in the open. It was laughable. And if two identified publicly, how many were still scared and hiding? Had he stumbled upon an entire pack? 

Coming back into the bar from the loo, William saw that someone had taken his seat near the more crowded area, where the debate had broken out. Considering his true beliefs were on the more extreme end of the Magick spectrum, his public, Clayton persona, took a more reserved stance. It was all about inflicting fear. They’re dangerous, unpredictable. It was a bar, and everyone had a couple hours of drinking tucked under their belts by now. Slurs began getting tossed around. ‘Beasts’ they were called. 

Moving down the bar a bit, William leaned his forearms against the wooden edge and waited for Gaston to walk his way. Beside him, his ear couldn’t help but pick up the sound of a persona he thought only existed in movies. Not being able to help himself, his eyes took a cautious look across the pair of... men before settling on their feet. 

FREDDIE:

“Jon just left. I don’t know, had to go back to London, found something better, moved departments. Whatever it is, he’s no longer in need of my services, and Taylor, the guy I was assisting before, just up and died, so now I’m just temping for this one guy while they replace Jon and give me to that guy.” Freddie said, taking up the glass of wine and a couple of large mouthfuls from it. 

He considered Errol’s proposition for less than a second. Memories of Errol’s flat, charming as it was, flashed before him, and he shook his head. “I don’t think that’ll work, my shoes alone wouldn’t fit in your wardrobe, and your living room window isn’t south facing.” Freddie said, dismissing that thought without having to fully entertain what it meant. There was something heavy in the word cohabiting that had Freddie mentally backing away, no matter how warm the idea of lazy mornings and quiet evenings was. 

That was when he noticed the man behind Errol. Freddie didn’t notice men as often as he used to, but this one was staring...at his feet. He glanced down, thinking he might have scuffed the Louboutins, but no, they seemed fine. He looked back up then, meeting the other’s eye and cocking his head in challenge, gaze stony. 

CLAYTON:

William held the man’s gaze for a second, before pulling away and turning to lean against the bar with his back to both of them. Luckily within the same moment, Gaston walked over to him. 

Not knowing the night would be so lively he had started the evening out with a few glasses of whiskey-- soon, he was clinking glasses with half the bar. Stepping down to beer wasn’t ideal, but after some hearty ‘rounds with the boys,’ there was no going back. 

“Beer.” He told his friend. “You know perhaps it’s worth adding whether men should wear heels to this discussion? Or, maybe now that I think about it, it shouldn’t really be up for debate at all,” he joked with a wicked grin. 

GASTON:

Gaston followed his friend's eyes to the heels in question. He'd almost got used to Freddie trotting into the bar like a giant rat, last seen on a makeover TV show and, after the initial distaste, he was nearly coming to not completely dislike the fellow. After all, he had to give it to him, he usually drank the shit Gaston put in his glass. A lot of supposedly bigger blokes wouldn't.

But as always, when presented with something to pick at, Gaston did his best to join in. "Don't really think it's up for debate. They don't put them in the men's section for a reason," he said, pulling the head on the pint and pushing it over. Gaston partitioned most things in life into sections. Beer and hunting and women were men's things. Cocktails and high heels and other men were women's things. If it was something he knew his grandfather would see and grunt 'people at home wouldn't let you get away with shows like that', it probably meant it was in the wrong section. That was the thing with the country, it had grasped the natural order of things at the roots and, by right of being there first, refused to let go. Even if there was a new natural order of things called 'letting everybody bloody well get on with it'.

He shot a sideways glance at the priest, who peered over his glasses with eyes that said 'don't', and shrugged. "Bet there's a dirty corner in the Bible that the bloody do-gooders pretend isn't there anymore that says something like 'Thou shalt not tit around in your mother's clothing' and then something about death by stoning."

ERROL: 

The Irishman made a sound at the back of his throat and shook his head. "Shame, 'at. Know he wasn' always amazin'  but was still familiar. An' a guy dyin' is jus'...shite." He didn't really know what to say to that, honestly. There were few things he really could say, beside condolences and commiseration. Errol snorted into his glass at the dismissal of his offer, nodding his head a bit and then giving a shrug. "'S a change o' pace fer ye. If he wanna stay wif me, ye can. Yer welcome tah. Yer place 'as more room, mine's cozy." The inflection on the word was intentional and he smirked a bit, wiggling his brows at the other man in a bit of a tease. He wanted him to know he understood; the offer was always open though, as was Errol's door. 

The sheriff glanced where Freddie was looking, his shoes, a bit of a frown on his face. He was confused for a second before he caught the younger man staring at a bloke behind them, eyes hard and challenging. Then he heard the commentary and grit his teeth. He would have let it go, honestly. People were going to be wankers no matter what he did or said. But hate speech was illegal in England, and it sounded like this particular strain of topic had gone on well into the evening. 

And he was off duty. 

"Why don' ye shove it where th' sun don' shine, boyo? Maybe it'll shove th' stick outta yer arse." Or push it further in and impale him. "'S none o' yer damn business." That was a warning and it would be the only one this guy would get. Errol wasn't about to badge him but if it came down to it, he would. He'd wanted a peaceful evening, some drinks with Freddie. And this is what he got. 

Errol knew Freddie could take care of himself, mumbled as much when he turned back towards him with stiffened shoulders. His eyes were hard, glaring at the barkeep as he continued on. Off to the side, he could see the local priest glaring just as crossley at the man, clear disapproval on his face. Good. At least someone else was bothered by it. 

CLAYTON: 

Oi. The mouth on this bloke. 

Suddenly, William felt almost giddy. 

“No,” he said, turning to face them, looking amused, “that’s certainly not any sort of business I partake in,” his eyes flicked to the one with long hair, “’ shoving things up arses,’ as you say.” Looking back to the older man, William didn’t even try to hide the smirk that played on his lips. With a lift of his chin towards the effeminate one, he said, “However, if you’re looking for advice, I’m sure your girlfriend was working in that industry back when you still thought you were a genuine man.” 

Turning back to Gaston, William clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I’ll tell you what, chum, it’s been a busy night, you’ve been working hard--” Pulling a £20 quid from his wallet, he slid it across the bar over to Gaston. “And I hear you’re getting a bit lonely. No shame in it, my friend, no shame. Tonight, your dry-spell ends on me.” Tossing a casual glance to the man in heels as he slid over another £20, William said, “How much, darling? Seeing as this old chap can afford you, I assume it’s not much.” 

FREDDIE: 

And suddenly Freddie knew this man. He’d seen him in his father’s board meetings. Read him in the comments on those videos. Glimpsed him every time he stepped out of the house in heels and had to tolerate getting looked up and down and sneered at. It just so happened tonight his patience wore from “thin” to “out”. It had been years since he had a fight, and Freddie’s palms itched. He looked down at the note and smiled, chuckling down at his chest as he took the hair band from his wrist and pulled his hair back in a bun. Didn’t want to give the prick anything loose to yank on. 

He passed Errol, cupping his cheek and leaving a quick kiss on his lips. “For you, gorgeous…” He said, voice sickly sweet as he reeled back (thumb over fingers, aim past the face, swing from the shoulder) and made contact with that crunch. The crunch that hit him harder than the coke did, with the same high. He reached out beside him and pocketed the 20. “I’d say twenty quid about covers that.” He said, stamping on the other’s foot with the high heel he’d hated so much. 

“Consider that one on the house.” 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

CLAYTON:

William moved, not a lot, but he budged. The man in heels walloped a punch that hit hard enough to daze him, staying almost completely frozen in place until he felt him crush one of his toes. Another crunch. 

It won a round of “Ooooo’s” from the rest of the bar. 

Then, there was a moment of silence. He was hunched, having jolted from the pain in his foot. His vision went red, matching the blood now running from his nose onto his shirt. 

With a snarl, not unlike a growl, William glowered at the assailant. These people. Small-town nothings. He wiped his mouth against the back of his sleeve to keep from spitting. They had no idea who they were testing. 

Some idiot from across the bar shouted, “Fag!” and for a moment William wondered if he was the one being jeered at. 

He lunged.

With one hand around his attacker’s neck, while his other arm was barred against the man’s chest to block his arms, William took three massive steps forward, forcing the other man back, before throwing him down, crashing across the row of bar stools. 

Suddenly, the bar erupted into chaos. 

ERROL: 

Errol knew what was going to happen the moment he saw Freddie's smile fall. There was something there that he had never seen before, some burning light, like anger and hatred and pain all rolled into one. It made him wonder who had caused it, made a flare of protective instinct swell in his chest. The fact that the bastard behind them had the gall to call Freddie a hooker because of his choice in footwear, then had the audacity to call Errol his John was the last straw. 

The Irishman didn't have to do much, really. He'd already shucked his coat off and tossed it over the back of his bar stool, but he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and rolled them all the way to his elbows anyway. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Freddie pulling his hair up. A smirk twisted his features, a stab of pride washing through him. Atta boy, he thought, ready to turn on his heel and wallop the man sound enough he'd be shitting his teeth out for a week.

Instead, Freddie's hands caught him, stilled him. They froze in time and, brow furrowing, the silver-haired man registered what he was about to do a second too late. Even if he'd wanted to stop him, he couldn't. Freddie was already reeling back and taking a swing and, fuck, what a swing it was. The lummox barely swayed, but he was dazed, and blood trickled down from his nose. The sight was satisfying to watch. 

And, then, all hell broke loose. 

Someone from the crowd around them shouted, a slur that he was all too familiar with, and the arsehole lunged. He had Freddie round the neck and slammed him into the stools. And Errol saw red. There was no hesitation, even as the bar erupted around them, as he stood, squared his stance off and kicked off the ground in a perfect arch. His dominant leg came up, whip-fast from the left,  and slammed across the back of the bloke's head.

The sheer satisfaction of watching him stumble away from Freddie wasn't enough, however. Now, Errol was looking for blood. He'd do his job in a moment. He just wanted another shot at him. Shifting his stance, the Irishman shifted back and then launched into a forward kick. His foot landed square in the man's chest. He stumbled again, backwards this time, and Errol smiled.

The message should have been clear but, if not, he was ready to go a few more rounds. 

Around them, fights were breaking out and furniture was being tossed about. Straightening, Errol fished out his badge, palmed it, and got ready to fuck up everyone's evening. 

CLAYTON:

The first kick was enough to make William forget about his original problem, one that he had not been convinced was completely dealt with yet. The second kick sent him tumbling backward over a table and crashing to the floor. 

As the brawl rushed in around them, William became separated from the couple. His head throbbed. With one hand gingerly guarding the sore spot on the back of his skull, he stumbled his way over to the far wall. Steadying himself for a moment, it took all his concentration to calm a severe wave of nausea-- a clear sign of a being concussed. 

Sensing something to his left, William snapped his attention to the man he caught in his peripheral. Claude. Gaston’s meek, nosy friend. 

William was breathing heavily, all of his senses on fire. With grunts and screams echoing across the bar he recalled Claude’s attitude towards him earlier: dismissive. Like he didn’t respect William... Most men were intimidated or awed by him, but he was seldom simply overlooked. 

Livid at the notion that he hadn’t landed a hit on his second attacker, William ached to hit the closest thing to him. With an evil smile curling around his lips, he grabbed Claude by the collar, and without exchanging so much as one word, he decked him. A solid shiner on the left eye, one hit across the face, and then he dropped the sorry man. Straightening up, William took a deep breath, re-broke his nose back into place, and then walked back into the fight. 

CLAUDE: 

The priest had been watching the altercation across the bar from a distance, eyes drawn there originally by Gaston's purposeful commentary. He had originally come to the bar that evening to visit with his friend, perhaps study for his upcoming exams. What he had not expected, however, was the surly man Gaston had latched onto to be there. He certainly hadn't expected to be accosted, either, though Clayton's entire being reeked of self-importance and booze. 

A pitiful combination and a cowardly one, at that. It reminded Claude so viscerally of Laurent that the man had found himself shying away, purposefully avoiding that side of the bar all evening. He'd listened as Clayton and, following his poor example, Gaston spoke ill of not only the magicks in town but of numerous other "ingrates." Though Clayton hadn't used the word (and Claude wondered  if he even possessed the vocabulary to understand what it meant, let alone use it) the meaning was there all the same. 

When he went after that man in the high heels, Claude's gut sank into the bar floor. 

When the man's companion retaliated and the bar erupted into chaos Claude's heart leapt into his throat. He would have stayed where he was, away from the fight that had his hands shaking and his anxiety skyrocketing, but another patron had been thrown into his table. The priest scrambled away only to be dragged up into the air by his collar. He could see above the crowd, the sea of fists, and was staring into the pure malice of Clayton's face. 

Whatever he had done to incite such a reaction (beyond ignore him entirely), Claude flinched away from the man's fist as it came crashing into his face, a blow that cut open the skin across his cheekbone and had his left eye throbbing in pain. If he'd had his glasses on, they would have shattered. From the feeling of it, he knew from experience that it would swell and that his face would be mottled black and blue come the morning. 

Temporarily unbalanced, the priest crumpled to the floor. He narrowly missed another patron's booted foot kicking him in the groin. It caught his ribs instead with a harsh thud! Curling in on himself and breathing shallowly now from the pain, Claude dragged himself upwards and towards the bar. 

He didn't realize there were glass shards caught in his hands, falling from his clothing, from the bottles and glasses that had been smashed by the brawl. 

GASTON:

The barman watched the scene quickly unfold in front of him. He'd seen fights before. Two separate people on two separate occasions had had their ears bitten off outside his pub. But they tended to be small things. If people got involved, they got involved because they were good friends of the participants. And if he got involved, it was only to take bets from the gathering crowd of onlookers. He'd never seen a fight like this. Likely, he imagined, because the best part of his patrons had been coming since it opened, another part had been dragged along as wives and children of said patrons, and the rest had come for a cheap but relatively tasty meal. Or so he thought. Apparently today they'd decided to air their age old grievances with the crowd.

An American movie style brawl. The first and probably the last in the bar's history.

He would have laughed if it wasn't for the crunch of a table halfway across the room and the sight of someone picking up their plate and stepping back from the impending doom as their peas tumbled across the floor. Well, and the shame. The little voice in his head that sounded like his mother but was probably actually just the shadow of his conscience sighed. 'This was supposed to be a family pub,' it said. 'How do you expect ladies to want to come here when you let things like this-'

The thought was cut off however by the sight of the priest raising into the air, acquiring a nice purple bruise and falling back into the crowd. Gaston found him a moment later scrambling across the floor towards the bar and, when he was in arm's reach, hauled him by the scruff of his shirt over the counter.

Boy o' boy would there be some reckoning. 

He was already writing the banning notices in his head and totting up the furniture and utensils he was going to be putting on a certain Frederick's tab. And that was the least of it.

But for the moment, he crouched with the priest, his fingers taking his chin and pulling back his hair a little to expose the damage. He'd seen a hard punch and received a few himself. It looked bad. Worse than bad. Even so, it wasn't life threatening.

"Stay there," he grunted, pulling the crow bar that his father had kept under the bar for events like this and thought for a moment on what exactly he was going to do.

ERROL: 

The chaos that had erupted around him and Freddie, while separating the two a bit, also kept that arsehole away from the other man. That was fine with him. But he also figured that, without Freddie or Errol himself to beat on, the bloke would find another target. Call it a bit of a hunch but he'd been around the block a time or two. He knew his type. If you couldn't hit one weaker person, you hit another. Made you feel powerful or some such bollocks. 

To Errol, it was cowardly.

The sheriff was proven right or, at least, he thought he was. He could see the priest scrambling across the bar floor when there was a break in the mob. Though he was a bit away from him, Errol could plainly see the already swelling face and the blood, the cuts and the fear in his eyes. Something glazed over, like. It was a look he'd seen countless times, for different reasons, and it made anger well up in his belly. 

The priest was pulled behind the bar by the owner and Errol made a mental note to ask the man how he was fairing after this was all cleaned up.

His badge was still in his hand but Errol had to shove it into the front pocket of his jeans. Needed both hands to be able to push through the crowd. If he needed to he was gonna hop up on the ruddy bar to get their attention. And that was his plan until someone laid into him from the side, a right hook that caught him on the chin. It barely moved him, really, but it pissed him off. He just wanted to get back to Freddie and he considered ignoring it but he knew the dumbarse might be drunk enough to try to follow. 

"Swing at me again, boyo, I dare yah," he growled, eyes bright with anger. Whatever the man saw on his face made him back away, but the snarl stayed as he stalked the way he'd been heading, a fair bit satisfied that his old commander's voice had worked. 

FREDDIE: 

Freddie wasn’t sure where Errol was in the mob, but it had been a long time since he’d been in a proper bar fight, and now he just wanted blood. He broke the nose of the man that pulled his hair, broke the foot of the one that went for his gut, and almost clawed an eye out of the man who spat at him. He could taste blood, and feel his cheek split and throbbing, but he felt alive. 

He was laughing, high and loud, spitting blood at the floor and continuing to laugh, adrenaline coursing through him at a brutal pace. It was chaos. Absolute warfare. No matter how feminine he presented, the testosterone, the drive to conquer had taken a front seat in his mind. So after a brief pause for breath, and with his mascara smudged down his face, he dove back into the fight. He heard Errol snarl from somewhere close behind him and for a moment was sobered by the thought of how much trouble he’d be in when all of this calmed down. 

MAX:

Max was technically off duty. Not by much, but technically he was off duty. He fancied a drink, and knew Gaston’s was a sound place. Not many women or men interested in men, but Max wasn’t out on the pull, he just wanted a quiet pint and a de-stress from the mountain of paperwork he’d had to endure today. He knew Errol would only be breathing down his neck if he didn’t get it done. 

Max could hear a ruckus from outside, but hadn’t realised he was stepping right into World War Three. 

So much for a quiet pint.

He saw Errol’s head bob up out of the fray and elbowed his way through the jumped-up wannabe Hard Men™ to grab his boss by the shoulder of his shirt. “Oi, need some backup?” He asked, catching sight of Gaston as well, giving him a certain nod to let him know he had things under control now… or would do, shortly. 

GASTON:

With his head just above the line of the bar, Gaston spotted the policeman enter the pub, meeting his gaze for a moment. From what he could tell, there were at least two of them. Though he wasn't sure he trusted either of them to slow the crowd down. There were too many people and not enough of them.

Besides, he had his part to play and he wanted to hit at least one person for ruining his bar.

After a moment's breath, he leapt onto the counter, wielding the crowbar and staring into the middle of the crowd. "OKAY!" He yelled, though at first, no one turned. So he picked up a glass and threw it directly at the head of a nearby patron. "I SAID. O. K."

For a second the noise lulled as a few heads turned his way and he gave the weapon a demonstrative swing. "IF YOU ALL DON'T STOP THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW, I'M GONNA COME DOWN THERE AND START BREAKING SOME KNEECAPS." His jaw twitched. "AND JUST FOR REFERENCE, THAT'LL BE AFTER THOSE BASTARDS HAVE ARRESTED YOU."

Clayton: 

It was too easy. 

William grabbed the collar of one bloke and punched his lights out, knocking him into two more sorry fools. He had lost track of who his friends were supposed to be in this fight and who he should’ve been aiming for.

But that was the best kind of fight, wasn’t it? A free for all. 

It meant anyone who came within a five-foot radius of him was getting hit. 

From what he could tell, the worst of his injuries was a cut on the back of his head. Some idiot had smashed a glass against his skull. “Are you trying to turn this into a knife fight?” He had roared in a blind rage as he threw the man over the bar, smashing… too much glass in the process. 

Suddenly someone in the background was bellowing. Usually a sign of someone wanting a challenge, or that the police had shown up. 

He looked up to see it was Gaston. 

Deciding that the fight, or at least the better part of it, was over, William dropped the guy he’d been holding up about to punch. Wiping the blood from his nose with the back of his sleeve, William sniffed and waited for Gaston’s cue.  

***

GASTON:

The next hour passed in a blur of silver stars and blue uniforms, all of whom he was trying his best to avoid. And too, it seemed, were the best part of the pub's patrons - bloodied and blue and running home to bed. They'd never find all of them and for that he was thankful. After all, police were bad for the health.

He waited until the sheriff was out of the building and slowly pulled the door to, trying not to think about just what the inside of his bar would look like when he turned around.

"Fuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk."

[hencethebravery]

If you're interested I'd love some fic commentary for Alive.

Oh, yes, very much so. btw, sorry to take so long answering this. I was far and away this weekend. If you’d like to read “Alive,” without my obnoxious commentary you can do so here. xo

I’m (still) doing author commentary!

One day, I plan to love so loudly, my body abandons every demon harvesting me. — Arati Warrier, “Alive”

A/N: I didn’t mean for this to happen, but this fic turned into an exploration of trauma and anxiety. The Killian in this soon-to-be universe ended up being a war veteran with OCD and illogical, rampaging thoughts and I ended up choosing the poem after the fact.

It’s a tricky thing. Once you’ve known the taste of someone’s lips and found it to be a far more momentous occasion than you had initially anticipated. Beforehand, one might think you’ll only know it the one time, and the odds of it happening again are unlikely, so… you do it, aye? Curious. How do you not do it again? That’s the question, isn’t it? Especially if it was a little bit unexpected, let’s say—it had failed to show up on the calendar for the month of June, and now the rest of your life is totally fucked to hell.

It’s not possible that anyone else’s lips could throw such a wrench into his schedule. Not even much of one, to be fair. Working freelance as he did, odd hours and odd jobs, one unexpected, life-altering kiss does not a fucked up schedule make. If anything, there was an added flair to his rather mundane existence that hadn’t been there earlier. Spike the coffee, eat an egg, walk the dog, kiss your mate, do the shopping—and what was that last thing?

You: “What was the what thing?”

Your Brother: “Kiss your who?”

Doesn’t matter. Point is, when you’re talking to your brother about sharing an all too brief kiss with the bloke you once rode the bus with, you try and keep it casual. After all, Liam Jones has no reason to know that you’ve circled June the 5th in an expensive black ink that’s bled through the page—all the way through to August, in fact, when there’s supposed to be a boat trip scheduled for the whole lot of you, and you have to ask yourself, “How do you not do it again?”

A/N: I’m really excited, because I’m in the middle of writing a tiny prequel to this fic (quite by accident), and having the opportunity to provide commentary on this is super helpful. Anyway, a lot of the anxiety and OCD-esque thoughts seen here often show up in my own brain, which is why they show up here. Sometimes if my schedule gets disrupted, even a little bit, it’ll ruin the rest of the week or the month or the year or whatever, so I ended up relying on the whole “schedule” thing a few times. Making it vaguely humorous is the only way to deal, hence, Killian treating his own coping strategies as objectively silly is a common enough mechanism.

The answer to that question is that you bloody well don’t. You keep that tongue of yours firmly ensconced inside your own mouth unless you’re shouting down bar maids or showing up your know-it-all brother at trivia night. You manage to live your life for a whole two months without screwing anything up. Well done, you.

You manage to abide by the calendar you’ve kept since naval training—the calendar that, for all intents and purposes, saved your life once upon a time. Being the roughed up, dramatic younger brother had its perks, but in the end, rampant alcoholism, a suspicious rash, and a series of exceptionally burned bridges had taught him the benefits of following a careful schedule. It hasn’t managed to buff out all the sharp corners; rum tastes too sweet and his memory is a little too good, but no price is too high when you’re trying to avoid the odd skin allergy. Which is what it was.

Regardless, August arrives and it’s hotter than the East Coast has any right to be. He’s quite confident in his assertions that even Afghanistan wasn’t this hot, and considering the fact that Afghanistan was actually hell, he’s not sure what to make of the temper tantrum that the state of Maine seems to be currently throwing.

“Just last week you were complaining about how cold it was,” comes David’s muffled voice from below deck, “enjoy it.”

David Nolan is of an optimism so profound it’s certain not to be believed. The man has thought exceedingly well of almost everyone and everything in their lives since they were children, which, to Killian’s mind, can only end badly. He’s not written it down, but it has been inscribed within the gelatinous valleys of his brain somewhere, this unspoken responsibility—don’t let it ruin him. Having people like David Nolan in the world is a very important thing, and the only way to keep them around is to have people like Killian picking up the pessimistic slack.

A/N: Killian as a black sheep has become a common trope in a lot of my OUAT fic where he makes an appearance. I love his brash selfishness in contrast with the “Charming” family’s own tendency to be selfless. I love that he probably sees it as his responsibility to use his darker impulses to help those people who have managed to retain their own lighter impulses. God. I love him so much.

“It’s my boat, mate,” Killian shouts down the hatch, “I’ll complain where I like.”

On the side of his monthly calendars there’s a designated “Notes” section, set aside for various odds and ends. He’s been known to put some poetry there on occasion, either verses he’s written or found, a phone number or two, an exceptional cocktail, what have you. For the month of August there’s a sailboat at the top (nothing too fancy), followed by wave, after wave, after wave, and then, down at the bottom, there’s a capsized sailboat. Hence, pessimism.

The heat is physically uncomfortable, to be sure, but it’s also demanding. For example, it demands that two men working on a boat out in the hot sun remove some of their clothing in order to avoid fainting or otherwise feeling ill in such unreasonable weather. This, however, requires him to confront the somewhat uncomfortable question of how he avoids doing the thing he had done only the once—with no intention of repeating said thing. His calendar said so.

A/N: @phiralovesloki loves “His calendar said so,” and I love her because she loves it so much. It’s like an endless cycle of love.

David Nolan in a t-shirt is not unlike David Nolan wearing nothing at all. If anything, it might be worse. Without the shirt, it’s almost as if he’s existing in a moment of unreality, wherein there’s nothing especially remarkable about that chest over there other than the fact that it is one. He’s got one of those too—if anything, his is better, covered in a masculine dusting of hair as it is. David’s white t-shirt looks like it’s been run through the wash a couple hundred times. There are barely-there tears at the sleeves and around the collar. Today it is stained with sweat beneath his arms and lower back.

A/N: Josh and Colin are two of the most aesthetically pleasing humans I have been #blessed to witness. I know this seems kind of like a female Gaze moment, but whatever, we deserve it. Women get “Gazed” at everyday of our lives, so it’s only fair that I write a poetical fanfiction wherein I get to think about two handsome men on a boat in tight, ratty t-shirts. Leave me alone.

The heat is overwhelming, like the desert, only there’s a wetness in the air that makes it harder to breathe. For a moment, he misses the feeling of having a gun in his hand so he grabs a beer from the cooler and holds it against his neck, his pulse tapping against the glass like machine gun fire. Interrupt.

A/N: To use the word “interrupt” in the middle of obsessive thoughts is something my therapist taught me. The more you know.

“You see those clouds?”

David’s voice is soft at his side, his own mouth wrapped around the lip of a bottle and he has to say that no, he hadn’t even noticed. The poorly drawn “ship” sailing on the pages of his calendar starts to sink in the wake of poor weather and his heart aches—keeps beating quickly in his chest and he knows a panic attack when he feels one. Inconvenient things, they seem to be.

“Killian,” David says, apparently for the second time, and he puts a hand on his shoulder. Definitely not in the calendar.

Killian doesn’t much feel like answering. Killian wants to write about the sky in his notebook. Not any sky, mind you. This sky, because it’s somewhat of a nightmare to behold. Even with the boat tied to the dock and the sight of safe, dry land in the distance, the sky at this moment is a wild thing. Moments ago, the air smelled like salt and bubbling yeast. The sun was a large, imposing spotlight on the deck of his ship, making the wood warm, their skin sweat.

In June the air smells like earth. Certain parts of the farm are freshly turned at this time of year, and no matter where you go, it emanates over the property. Through the fields, over the lake, between the trees. Over hill, over dale, point made. June is new. They are, the both of them, new. When Killian kisses David, it’s because he can no longer bear it.

“The wanting.” Answering the question, what was it he could no longer bear? Because he was starving in his little house by the sea full of dry, winter air that had given him nosebleeds. It was probably all that dirt in the air—all those trees in bloom. All that pollen in his hair, the perpetually dirty state of his hands.

The answer is a little bit dramatic, but David seems to take it in stride, either because he’s known Killian for most of his life, or maybe because he understands, either way, he smiles. When David smiles it’s a thing you don’t need to see, and sure, you should, of course you should, but Killian is exceedingly grateful that in this moment, he doesn’t need to open his eyes.

A/N: When Josh Dallas smiles it is literally like looking into the sun. That’s what this is about.

It’s his gut that’s empty, not his gaze. He is, quite frankly, sick of opening his eyes. All he needs to do is feel it, and he knows that his friend “wants” too—just as frantically, as hungrily, as poetically. He plays the follow-up question in his head on a tortuous loop the next few days. He even writes it down so he can stare at the shape of the letters and hate himself even more than he already does.

“How is it you smell like that?”

Because it is something… indescribable. He can wax poetic on the state of the air in June all he likes, he has words on words on words to describe it, but all of a sudden, the smell of this man is the scent of which he cannot seem to describe. And he answers, “Like what?” and Killian can only answer with his mouth against his, because it’s not about the words suddenly—it’s about the breath. It’s about David’s forehead against his, their lips barely touching, and he answers with a kiss because he’s a fucking idiot.

August doesn’t smell new. It smells tired. Or maybe he’s just tired. Either way, the bright, overbearing sun is lost behind a sky of heavy, dark clouds and the man at his shoulder smells like beer and sweat. Like the moth-eaten blankets he had kept below deck all winter. The trees are gone but he can still feel the bark against the skin of his back.

“We’ve got to tie the lot of this down,” he answers suddenly. He had wanted to avoid the inevitability of turning around to face him, the tree at his back—with that concerned look on his face. Killian smiles, but it’s not like David’s in June. You’d have to see it, or you wouldn’t even know it was there. “She’ll be fine tied to the dock, but I don’t want to lose any of this gear.”

He’d savor the refreshing feeling of the breeze if there were any time for it, but they seem to have run out of it, and thankfully for him, David seems to have adopted a similar sense of urgency. Moving around deck as he is, his hands wrapped deftly around thick rope, one knot after another. The thunder continues on in the distance, unperturbed, and there’s a flash of lightening that leaves an echo across a purple sky.

There’s another crack followed by a second flash, and the sky opens. Despite the maddening anxiety he has contended with all day, there is something undeniably satisfying about knowing he was right about the “shirt on being worse” thing. David pauses in his run about the deck to enjoy the torrent of rain that’s been unleashed on the two of them, a loud yell of relief passing his lips, and Killian wonders what they taste like in August. At sea, in a storm—like salt? Like rain? Like the beer they’d been drinking earlier. Like dirt, like himself, lingering on his tongue for months.

When David dashes across the deck, clothes clinging to his form, every muscle carved beneath wet fabric as if he were a statue, Killian is busy trying to forget about the sinking ship in his calendar. He’s trying to remember what it was his therapist had said about “being in the moment,” and suddenly David’s lips don’t taste like June. They taste like August, in the rain. Wet and messy and just as hungry as before.

“Aren’t you sick of it,” David not quite shouts against his lips, the rain and wind lashing against the deck, “that ‘wanting?’” He’s smiling again, that wide, sunshine-smile that he has worn everyday of his life and Killian can see it out of the corner of his eye. In between the heavy, wet drops hanging from his lashes and the hair falling against his forehead—of course he can see it.

“Yes!” Killian shouts over yet another thunder clap, both of their faces turned towards a manic sky. “Bloody exhausted!”

A/N: For all my talk about Killian Jones being a black sheep he’s also a dramatic garbage human and someone needs to make fun of him sometimes. Re: David, calling out Killian’s Extra™ ass, mumbling about “wanting,” when it’s just a kiss and he needs to fucking relax.

The sound of the storm is softer below deck, as if it were a record playing in another room. The ship tugs on her moors but she’s steady, tied against the dock as she is. The only other sound is that of the air heaving in and out of their lungs, heavy with anticipation and adrenaline.

“You smell good too,” David admits between each, tired breath, “I’m sorry I made you wait.”

“Sometimes the waiting is the best part,” Killian answers gently, and there’s something in his tone, a note of understanding that he’s impressed to find he actually believes. “I’m good at waiting.”

As David moves closer he peels the wet t-shirt off his back and chuckles, shaking his head. “No, you’re really not.” The shirt falls with a decisive, wet splat against the ground, but Killian is too distracted by the return of David’s forehead, his hand against his neck. His fingernails are short and blunt against his skin, the scratch of an almost, but he feels his skin prickle all the same. Standing still in wet clothes, the warmth of the sun a fleeting memory, he knows he should feel cold but there’s this heat inside of him—flickering and alive.

A/N: Canon tells us that Killian Jones can wait, but does he do it well? idk about that. Dude turned Emma Swan into a ship for a year.

“If that’s the case,” he whispers, his own hands hovering at his sides, “what are you waiting for?”

The kiss is gentler this time, the shelter of the cabin urging slowness, carefulness. Here, they are beyond the reach of the whipping wind and stinging rain. The gaze of a seaside town, the towering pines. Their breath is softer, less like they’re running out of time, and there’s a drag between each pass of his lips. He feels as if he’s being savored and it’s not a thing that you deny yourself a second time.

“You should—” David’s voice is rough, like he hasn’t spoken in years and Killian’s pride does a little victory dance at the thought of its return, “You should change.”

Logically, Killian knows that David means “change clothes,” he knows this unequivocally. But he also has a tendency to err on the side of unnecessarily meaningful and he takes it to mean something else. Not in a negative way, he does not, by any means, feel that David wants him to be somebody else. This he also knows, unequivocally. What he also knows, what he has come to learn, is that his heart in its current state? It’s not sustainable. “You should change,” his heart speaks in David’s voice, “you need not want quite so much, when you can so easily have it.”

A/N: That was basically a long-winded way of saying that you should stop getting in your own way, which is usually my main problem.

He shivers at the sensation of cool air hitting his bare flesh, but there’s hardly a moment to feel uncomfortable. There’s David’s hand against the soft skin of his stomach, his fingers trailing through the fine hair beneath his belly button, and the warmth, it feels as if he’s slipping into a soaking tub. The rain continues it’s harsh pitter-pattering against the side of the boat as they move towards the small bed, clumsy step after clumsy step.

It smells like dust as they land, like the attic in the farmhouse, but the pile of blankets manages to catch them just fine. The cotton, washed one too many times, coming up to swallow their legs and shoulders, keeping them in a soft, dry place. He secures his own lips against David’s jaw, that sharp corner just beneath his ear and the moan that follows is more of a feeling than a sound—more of a sob than a gasp.

When he returns to his lips to catch yet another, quiet moan, it tastes even better than it had in June, then it had above deck moments earlier. Again, indescribable, and he feels a bit frustrated by the fact that words might fail him sometimes. After all, they do sit so well on his tongue, they feel manageable in a way that his thoughts don’t, that his heart doesn’t, and without them he worries that he’ll lose any sense of control he might have.

At some point the rain must stop, but it’s hard to notice, what with the hands and the lips and the feeling of his stomach as it moves against his own, in and out with every breath, sometimes quick and sometimes so slowly he’s worried that he’s holding it. At some point, in between the feeling of David’s lips against his rib cage and his hands at the button of his jeans, the sun very briefly returns before evening falls.

It’s his favorite time of day, those few moments before twilight. The rich, buttery light of the setting sun falls through the porthole over the bed, warming their entwined bodies atop the mussed blankets. The darkness behind Killian’s closed eyes turns a muted red color, and he can feel the warmth of the sun as it slowly sets against his skin, the fleeting light of day a gentle goodbye.

The water is calm against the boat, rocking them carefully back and forth, and his mind has never been quieter. The steady torture of a mind that refuses to settle, that must be shaken up and poured out over each and every month, everyday—that must be considered and thought over and applied and re-applied. Where no one means what they say, where he rarely means what he even says, but here, in this moment between sleeping and waking, it is blessedly silent.

He hears David mutter something against the back of his neck, and he knows, even without being able to see. He smiles.

A/N: I really hope that this fic was familiar to people who live with anxiety everyday, because it was certainly familiar to me as I was writing it. I know it’s also Captain Charming and CC is magical to be sure, but I still hope all the anxiety-related stuff was interesting for people.

[dulcedemon]

Current Attractions...

The Cranes are Flying(Letyat zhuravli - 1957): So beautifully filmed! The black and white is so crisp, and the camerawork is so daring at times that it gives the impression of being much more recently produced. As Soviet-era cinema goes, this must be my new reigning favorite, because I watched it 2.5 times before sending it back. Not that I have viewed many Russian/Soviet movies in general...and my favorite other than The Cranes are Flying is not really Russian but a Russian-Cuban effort I Am Cuba/Soy Cuba(1964). The female lead here is Tatyana Samoylova, whose appearance brought to my mind both Audrey Hepburn and Björk. She plays Veronika, who is aptly nicknamed Squirrel by her boyfriend[Boris played by Aleksey Batalov]. No sooner do they begin talk of marriage, when Boris is called to serve at the front line as the Nazis invade Russia. They are separated without a fond farewell... Back home, civilian life is frequently upheaved by air raids. One particularly devastating action sequence involves a run through a mostly destroyed and still burning building. There are two train depot scenes, one near the beginning and one at the end of the film, which serve as emotional bookends for the experience of the war. Tearful and fearful as the soldiers go off to fight...jubilant and festive upon their return, both scenes are extraordinary in their capture of emotion; the camera sweeps slowly through the crowd, lingering now and then on individual moments and faces. There is also an element of poetry in a verse Veronika recites in whole or in part at different points throughout: Cranes like ships, sailing in the sky white ones, grey ones with long beaks they fly. Little croaking frogs, why didn't you look up? You kept on hopping and jumping. That's why you got eaten up.

Miss Hokusai(Sarusuberi - 2016): Unexpectedly delightful in a number of ways...the animation is high quality and the story is unique. A renowned artist and his teenage daughter/apprentice live unconventionally while creating art. That is more or less it. Miss Hokusai is already fairly mature, barely still a teenager if she in fact was(historically). She does not spend her time seeking romance as her peers might. Though in terms of actual friends, her social life appears limited to her father's other apprentices/admirers. It's a delicate yet surprising story, one written more for its life than its entertainment value. I watched the making of featurette after the movie...I wasn't expecting a female author. Though it made perfect sense as I thought about it afterward...the author...her life. I think we're all prone to stereotypes and misconceptions. I took the erotica[both father and daughter pay the bills by painting erotic images] and the spot on commentary about art, artists and gender depiction, especially the parts where Master Hokusai critiques the work of his various apprentices(daughter included), and wrongly assumed male authorship. The movie gives a bit of an epilogue, which succinctly conveys the life and art of an unconventional beauty incomparable in her time.

Saboteur(1942): Not outstanding when compared to other Hitchcock efforts I've seen. Has more than a little in common with 39 Steps(1935) and also Young and Innocent(1937). One of the villians(there are several) creepily resembles Fred Trump(Yes, the orange nightmare's dad.). That part, Charles Tobin, is expertly acted by Otto Kruger in a brilliantly detestable performance. In fact, the good guy gets in a great bit of dialogue as a direct result of being screwed over by that character: Just because he's got a big ranch and a fancy pool and a lovely house, doesn't mean he's a nice guy. Why don't you find out the kind of things he's been doing! I was too immersed in the details of the setting in which Alfred Hitchcock made his cameo to see it --I had to go back and look after watching the extras. Fun roadside billboard: The final tribute...Beautiful Funeral...$49.50 and tax...See your local mortician. Hitchcock's use of actual footage of the burned SS Normandie on its side in New York Harbor was controversial for a time and objected to by the US Navy.

Hypersomnia(2016): An Argentinian-made mindfuck of a movie about human trafficking, drug abuse, alternate reality, cognitive dissociation, and familial telepathy...with a psycho-sex-torture killer thrown in to keep it exciting.

Devil's Bride(Tulen Morisan - 2016): Based on the witch hunts that took place in Finland during the 1600s, it goes as far as to use real names of the people who were put on trial and sentenced to death. As a historical drama, it looks good, however the characters are not particularly endearing or engrossing. It does successfully demonstrate how one moment of selfish caprice and spite born of envy can destroy many lives. For a time, making accusations of witchcraft was a handy way to dispose of rivals, popular midwives, unpopular neighbors, the physically and/or mentally infirm, indigent single women, land-owning single women(if any), business-running single women, single women who wouldn't sleep with the judge, single women who did sleep with the judge, married women whose husbands were sick of them, married women whose husbands' mistresses were sick of them, mistresses of married men whose wives found out about it, and so on and so on...

The Silenced(Gyeongseonghakyoo: Sarajin sonyeodeul - 2015): I had hoped for more 1930s clothing in this set in 1930s story, but most of the cast is in school uniform for the duration. At first glance, the setting is a girls' boarding school in a remote wooded area, but soon it gets mentioned that it's a "sanatorium school", which means each student has or had something medically or mentally wrong with them. Other than the latest edition to the student body, who suffers from tuberculosis, the audience isn't told what is wrong with the other girls. Also, almost all of the girls are either orphans or otherwise unwelcome at home. Every student must participate in a treatment regimen of medication and physical fitness classes(and Camellia(?) blossom eating/drinking?). Strange behavior and violent side effects ensue.

Honeymoon(Luna de miel - 2015): A predator and prey piece from Mexico...starts strong and coherent, gets ghastly and revolting, collapses into stupidity. The synopsis tries to make it sound like there is a possibility for some twisted chance at romance --Don't believe it! --It's torture porn, heavy on the torture and light on the porn.