#i had a german roommate in high school so i try to style him after what i remember

[lavendertwilight89]

What You Like-- White Day Speical

Hope this makes up for the lack of Valentine’s Post :) 

Thanks go to @keichanz​ for her fic “Selfie” that inspired parts of my fic

@lemonlushff​ @clearwillow​ for hosting White Day!

@dangerouspompadour​ @akitokihojo​ @bearpluscat​ @kaze-ranna​ @xfangheartx​ @sarah-writes-stories​

Enjoyyyyyyy

She awoke with a start. It wasn’t the first time this had happened since she moved out of her family’s shrine. It had only been a month maybe since it had become a permanent move. She got a nearby one-bedroom apartment; she needed her own escape—she meant place! She gathered her surroundings and realized she was completely alone… like usual… until she noticed the sound of running water…

What. The. Fuck. Happened???!? She remembered she hit the sauce pretty hard last night. Last night marked four of the longest years of her life. Four long years without her friends from the other side of the well. Four years without the love of her life. Four years of pure misery… Ugh her head was going to split in two from her careless actions or probably the worst hangover she had ever had…

Since her quick departure from the Feudal Era four years ago, she couldn’t shake her rampant and monstrous dreams. They caused her frequent disruptions throughout the night and drove the need for alcohol (well, to be honest, that wasn’t the only reason for her to start drinking). College had been not the best experience—especially when she had to share a room with a roommate. She knew her dorm mate didn’t care for her; in-regards-to: well-being, modesty, or just all around courtesy. She often had a pillow (sometimes heavier objects) thrown at her if she was screaming or crying in her sleep to wake her up, had her food ate without permission, or had her privacy violated…But the worst thing was—her roommate was what one would have referred to as ‘loose’. And by that, she didn’t care that she entertained men. No, she understood. Your body, your rules. Kagome didn’t care about what or who she did that with… She did, however, care her roommate did it when she was in the same freaking room!!!!

She often had to find refuge in Yuka and Eri’s room. Ayumi had decided to travel abroad her year having taken extended courses in high school of German to prepare her. But their second year, the four of them got a suite style apartment and things worked out better. But the nightmares never faded. She started to sleep with a nightlight, kept her bow close, started drinking before bed... Her friends felt for her, but they had their own lives, their own boyfriends.  They still hadn’t heard the full story of what happened to Inuyasha… They just knew he was gone. They tried to reset her up a couple times with Hojo… But she refused when she knew it was a date-like-thing. She was determined to always wait for Inuyasha to find her. He always found her… He would always come for her…

She could have started screaming because not only did she hear the shower running, but she looked down at herself and she was FUCKING NAKED.  And she was extremely sore down there. FUCK. DAMNIT ALL. UGH. Tears started to form in the corners of her eyes from her own stupidity… Four long years of not ever having a boyfriend, no random make-out sessions or anything… and she lost it on a night she blacked out… Actually, she could kind of visual some of what happened, so not completely blacked out, just some parts were missing… Think! Think how did I let this happen!?!?

 She had been out with the girls and their boyfriends. She didn’t have to work, for once, on the weekend in the Emergency room. She usually was always worked weekend shifts with her being so new and willing—because obviously she didn’t have anything else to do. No boyfriend. She avoided home because of the reminders of her past, didn’t want to be alone in her new apartment... An excuse to avoid people in general… But when her friends called her, she reluctantly agreed as she hadn’t been out with them since graduation…basically a full month ago… whoops…

They had bought her shots all evening and kept trying to get her to make a move on Hojo because they knew she was upset about this was year number four without Inuyasha. They were at the newest club down the street from her apartment. They’d made her wear a black pencil skirt and a forest green sleeveless tank, sheer, but she insisted she had a black camisole underneath so no one could see anything inappropriate. She had been nicknamed the prude of the group. She didn’t care though. She didn’t care what anybody thought. She would stay a virgin her whole life if she had to. She would wait for him… Her friends assumed she was just nervous… Pfffft. Don’t get her wrong, she pleasured herself enough at home, but no one excited her. No one sang her that sweet erotic song like the owner of those amber eyes had. Call her prude, nervous about the idea of someone down there, whatever—bottom line was she wasn’t easy. She refused to just sleep with someone who didn’t even appeal to her. Maybe if someone had come along that inspired those feelings… Those wants… But no, no one had. Ever. There was no one who made her feel like that. She was doomed to become the crazy cat lady who fucked herself with her fingers.

But she also reluctantly, refused to give up hope. She could have decided just to more or less poison herself with shot after shot and pray Hojo would finally look okay enough to just ‘bang it out’. But no. Barf. Nope. Sorry, he had been the most boring person she had met. She’d prefer Koga. Koga. Even then, if Koga appeared right there in front of her, she’d still say no. Because it wasn’t him. Still didn’t have that beautiful silver hair that fell to his waist, those sexy little triangles that sat on top of his head, furrowing dark brows, sultry smirk…

After she lost count of shots, she snuck away and paid her tab. She didn’t really remember signing her name or how much she tipped, but that was neither here nor there. She made enough to support herself, her habits, and then some. She dipped out before her friends tried to get her to dance with Hojo. Nothing had ever turned her off less than them dancing together. She’d prefer to dance with her brother. Ok, she admitted, that was kind of crass, but still—that’s what she equated a dance with Hojo with; like her brother trying to make move on her. Barf. Hojo had just become that constant reminder to her how boring her life had become once she returned from the Feudal Era. A reminder of what she really wanted… Oh Gods, she thought she was going to be sick. Nope. Nope. She needed to make it to the apartment.

She walked noisily up the stairs. Staggering around and laughing at herself, she knew she looked like a drunken idiot. The only person who she knew who lived here was Jiro, her across the hall neighbor. She didn’t mind him. He was okay looking. He had black hair, kinda longer than most but wore it in that trending man-bun. He had bright blue eyes. Brighter than Miroku’s. It was weird because he looked similar to her old friend... But he was nice and not at all handsy. He listened to some of her college stories. Listened to her cry. Watched movies with her as she passed out from her drinking too much in an evening. He was nice guy. He never took advantage. But it probably did help she made it clear nothing would EVER happen.

She finally got to the fifth floor (the thought occurred to her why hadn’t she taken the elevator? Oh yea, she couldn’t figure out the buttons hahahaha). And he was standing there. She had to be crazy. It wasn’t him. Demons were gone. They hadn’t been around in ages. She searched, researched, tried to find any clue that they could be around. That he could be around… That they’d just gone into hiding… Nothing… She clearly was delusional at that point. Drunk. Yea, definitely that. She had what… four shots bought for her? No, probably like six…eight? Not including the two drinks she had herself?

But this was the first time she felt like she could actually sense him. His demonic aura… She hadn’t given up all her hopes yet. But she resigned herself and just smiled sadly thinking her mind was playing tricks on her though; it was their four year anniversary of being separated after all.

“Heyyyyy… Why you up so late, Jirooooooo?” She sang drunkenly.

His face changed from sheer awe to confusion. His head titled as she approached him stumbling in her heals. As she watched his ears twitch, wow she had a very active imagination, she tripped and gasped but his arms caught her easily. She giggled and hiccupped turning up to face him.

“Opps, sorry ‘bout that! Probably had like, four too many tonight…I blame the girls though. They bought more than half, said stuff about ‘no pity party’ or sumthin’…” she felt her face heat as his hands didn’t move away nor did he say anything… probably just thought she was being crazy and had been helpless like usual when she was absorbed in her bad influences. She turned away from his chest to the purse in her hands to grab her keys but unfortunately spilled the entire contents onto the floor with only her keys and purse intact.

“Ugh *hiccup*darnnnnnnnn! Jiro, lemme go, I need to pick all this up and climb into bed,” she slurred.

He still didn’t release her and was breathing unsteadily. What had gotten into him? “You’re acting all weird ‘n stuff Jiro, everythin’ ok? I’d ask if you wanna talk but it’s late and I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna remember at this *hiccup* point,” she drowsily turned to face him.

Goddddddddd[AR1] [AR2] . That FACE was still staring back at her with those amber eyes, silver hair, fluffy ears, dark brows, tan skin…

“Uhm… Jiro? I know this sounds kinda crazy… but—you have a different face on ya. For real, I need to go to bed. I’m losin’ my mind.”

“Whose face do I have, Ka-Go-Me?”

Her eyes widen and her breath hitched. She swallowed uneasily. That…that voice… Maybe this was a sign—she should just give into her needs and just fuck this dude already that now took on Inuyasha’s form. For whatever reason, the universe, the Gods, her imagination were finally making her see, hear, smell, and touch “Inuyasha” again… She had refused to entertain those ideas anyway just in case Inuyasha did manage to come along… Well not just because that. The attraction thing was huge. But she hoped if he had lived 500+ years he didn’t wait for her… She just knew his sense of smell would put him off if she fooled around with someone not special to her, but he could probably forgive her for not waiting... Wait—was that why she didn’t find any one attractive? For the off chance he finalllllllllly appeared, he would smell her? What was she saying? Thinking? God, all her thoughts were jumbled. She didn’t need to play counselor to herself right then. Maybe she should’ve just stopped waiting… He was gone… This wasn’t him. No, she couldn’t allow her heart to be shattered again…

“Wh—uhm—” she cleared her throat, blushed having heard her name said like that. It’d been since she started traveling with Inuyasha since her name was pronounced like that. She was beyond flustered. “Ji-Jiro uhm, it’s late, I may be drunk but—but—I’m waiting for someone. If you know what I *hiccup* mean. Go home,” she said flailing her arms towards his apartment.

His eyes softened, “Who are you waiting for?”

He had been acting so weird and clingy! So unusual for him. He would have usually just leave her, let her stumble—he respected her independence. Even though sometimes in the morning she wondered whyyyyyyyy he would have left her in the state she was in. But he remained steadfast—his arms still around her. She figured he could come in for bit… He was always respective… He wouldn’t have tried anything… Grabbing her keys she leaned forward against his chest, resting her head on his shoulder—had he gotten taller?—reaching around him and put them in the door and twisted. Even with heals, she probably would’ve been able to meet his head… He wasn’t that tall… Who knows, she was obliterated. What was she thinking about anyway? His arms slightly increased their pressure around her, and she swore he took a giant whiff of her hair.

“Well come on in; I probably can’t walk anyway without you’re help. The girls thought it’d be ‘sexy’ to wear these disastrous shoes… but I’ll tell you a story Jiro *hiccup*. About the man I fell in love with…that one’s new right? I know I’ve been refusing to share, but I’m probably numb enough to share tonight.”

He bent slightly and picked her up bridal style causing her to shriek a little in startlement and her to wrap her arms around his neck. Wow, his hair was really that long? She wove her fingers through it… Jiro’s hair isn’t this long, there’s no way I’m that creative with my imagination… Nope—nope don’t let your hopes get raised. You’re just crazy. Crazy. Yep. He paused at her ministrations looking down at her as she turned back to face him… Her heart was racing… She swore she saw him eye her lips and lick his briefly but then placed her on the couch gently before turning away. She immediately missed the intimate contact. He returned to the door and picked up all her things from the floor outside putting them back in the bag for her. Dude, he was such a nice guy. She felt bad to burden him with her problems…

He closed the door behind him and stopped midstride having caught an eye of a picture she had by the front door. The picture of her and Inuyasha taking a selfie in the feudal era. Where she was encompassed between his legs smiling radiantly into the camera and he had his handsome cocky smirk on his face. She giggled drawing his attention back towards her.

“That’s the guy you look like right now. Liquor is a cruel bitch like that, I guess. His name is…was… Inuyasha… I met him when I was fifteen… We uh… knew each other for three years. He was in love with someone else, for a while there… but I couldn’t stop how I felt. If anything, the love I had for him just grew stronger. We had so many moments I really thought, ‘he feels the same’… Like one time he made me cold medicine, he had told me he was scared to lose me but that he needed me by his side, different battles, uh, things happened to have those words fall from his stubborn crass mouth, but he’d also give my his haori even if it meant he’d be more vulnerable… Kisses on the cheek…Temple… A couple on the…” she lightly touched her lips remembering the sensation. “I was eighteen when we got separated by time, literally, and I’ve been searching for him since. Today made four years...FOUR. Can you believe that?? But I’m still lookin’. Even though I don’t think I’ll ever find him… I-I…”

He came and sat by her and looked at her worriedly.

“I’m not crazy—not some childish girl lovesick on some crush she had in high school! I love him! It was real! I’ll find him! I’ll prove everyone and even myself wrong! He can’t be gone! He-he can’t…H-he always has come for me…I-I can’t give up on him,” she started crying. Sobbing actually. Hysterically. How embarrassing. God she was pathetic; she’d been so good about keeping her secrets about her broken heart. Her resistance to move on. Her lack of enthusiasm of seeing the people she still had in life. She always just cried and said she didn’t want to talk about it… Jiro never had pried further. But she apparently lost her last shred of dignity and bawled like a child. “You should leave. Please, don’t judge me. Please! I-I can’t lose you as a friend. I lost all my closest friends then too…The ones that mattered. I-I just miss him so much!”

He grabbed her hands from her face and looked into her eyes with those beautiful rich golden eyes…

“Kagome…It is me…I-I’m not Jiro. You aren’t seeing things—it really is me.”

She stared at him disbelievingly. “It-It can’t be…”

“It is though, Kagome. You’re not just seeing things. I’m here! I’m real,” he steered her hands to his ears. Oh God, she swore he started purring as she massaged them.

“It—I—this isn’t possible…”

“I’m sorry it took so long for me to get to you. I tried to find you but the first time I came by you had left for college… I should have just told your mom who I was when I came by, but I didn’t want to distract you from your future or what you wanted… You were still so young and I wanted to give you time to grow still… The next time she said you had gotten a job at a hospital nearby, but you didn’t come by often. She was reluctant to tell me where you live, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to protect your privacy—but I actually got a call from Jiro before I could actually tell her who I was while I was with her. He was certain it was you. I told her I was a friend of yours and swore everything would make sense after I talked to you… I-I just wanted to make sure you still wanted to see me. To be in my life before I said anything to her, I just had to see you… I came here and I-I found…” he trailed off. This had happened earlier that very day… He had just left her mom’s house and came here. She had unpacked those pictures since she had the time and Jiro came by and had lunch with her. Her mom had called her three times while she was out… and she stupidly ignored all three. He had waited here for her for hours... And found her stumbling up the stairs laughing to herself drunk as fucking skunk. Nope! He wasn’t real! No God was that cruel. He was for sure an illusion.

“No, no, no, no, noooooo….P-Prove it! Prove to me, you are who you say you are then; prove you’re real,” that extra hiccup at the end made her realize how unserious she sounded—but she thought she sounded pretty desperate at least.

He slightly cringed but appeared to be willing to play her little game, “Ok… ask me anything you’d think I wouldn’t be honest about…anything you want…”

“Mk fine I will! *Hiccup* How did we meet?”

He got up and got her a glass of water and returned handing it to her, “You broke the seal on me. The one Kikyo placed…You broke the arrow, and I attacked you for the jewel. The subjugation beads were placed on me and we began to travel together after you shattered the jewel.”

“What about, how did I get back and forth?”

“The stupid fucking well…You came and went to be with your family and for those stupid tests at school…I should’ve smashed that thing when I had the chance before it separated us.”

She blinked… It couldn’t be… There was no way…

“Ki-kyo…” she said brokenly hoping he would know what she was asking.

“Sigh…I know we never really addressed this. Hopefully this will be enough. I loved Kikyo. We both sought each other out on loneliness. The problem was, we didn’t trust each other. She didn’t trust me because of my demonic heritage. She wanted me to become human using the jewel… I hesitated because I wasn’t sure that was something I wanted. But she said as long as the jewel existed, she could only be a shrine maiden. A priestess. She wanted to be ordinary—in order to be a normal woman with a normal life, the jewel had to be used... I agreed, because I was done being alone, and couldn’t take it if she wouldn’t be with me if I was a half-demon… but in the end I didn’t trust her to believe she wouldn’t try to kill me. After all, I was a dirty half-breed. Then I met you; you taught me to trust, work with others, befriend others… care about other people…

“When she was resurrected, I had already started to fall for you. We were beneath that tree in the village when I tried to kiss you and you pushed me away. But with Kikyo back among the living so shortly after that, my duty to avenge her, save her from the person she had become… it was too much. I couldn’t stop myself from falling for you, but I refused to let you know. Because I was stupid, stubborn, afraid you didn’t feel the same. Even once I did hear that you did love me, the idea that anyone I loved died, it drove me away from you… It didn’t stop the little moments between us. I-I couldn’t help it. Knowing you actually did love me… I just—I wanted to wait until it was all over before we could actually figure out what was between us.

“Kikyo will always be my first love; but Kagome, you had always and will always have my heart.” He took her hand and placed it on his chest. Oh Gods… this—this—

“Th-that picture…” she continued. She had to hear more.

“You brought your cell phone back one time and you took pictures with all of us… So that you had something to remember us by just in case…We were awake after the others fell asleep… I asked you for another one to be shot because the other one we had taken before wasn’t good enough. I wanted… I made you believe it was something you wanted, a better picture with just us… We took a couple. The last one I surprised you and kissed you.”

She swallowed. She knew she was going to start crying again. Stupid drunken images. He couldn’t have been real. But it reallllllly seemed like he was. She didn’t normally see him when she was wasted... Even though she really wanted to. She thought it would numb her pain. Make her forget. But there he was—right there in front of her. On her navy couch. Red button-down shirt, grey suit pants, long silver locks uncut, blazing amber eyes… Oh Gods… this wasn’t real… She wouldn’t allow her hopes to be raised. They had been shattered so soooo many times, she couldn’t allow herself to allow the deception in.  

“Where did you find me after the final battle?”

“In the jewel…”

“And we…”

He grabbed her face and kissed her softly which made her melt into his body. She finally let herself go. Who cared? No one could or even would blame her. Even if it wasn’t Inuyasha, she had proved her loyalty to him and then some. She climbed into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to pull him as close to her as humanly possible. His hands found themselves on her hips. She felt it. They were both hungry. Hot. Aroused. Needy.

He still smelled of pinewood, forest, musk. God, she had butterflies swirling in her stomach, heat spreading to her lower regions. If this was a dream, an illusion, or just a drunken image, she couldn’t have stopped it even if she wanted to. She needed him. Or whatever he was. Right then. Right there. She shifted and started to slowly grind on his hips, moaning all the while she started to unbutton his red shirt... His hands found hers and he pulled away. She whimpered loudly in disappointment.

“Kagome—God—You don’t know what this means to me. Seeing you, finding you again… But—but you’re drunk. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“Don’t care,” she tried to start kissing him again only for him to have kept her still.

“I’m not going to take advantage of you like this. We just found each other again. I—I can’t—”

“Inuyasha—it’s been four years for me, five-hundred-four for you…Just—shut up” she plunged forward and finally was able to recapture his mouth and he seemingly reluctantly resumed kissing her. Her hands started their handy work again until she shoved off his shirt down his fucking ripplin’ muscles. God, he was more built than he had been before. She swore she could have cum just from the sensation of her fingers touching his warm god-like body, or even having kissed him and him kiss her back in such fervor probably only they could have ever knew.

She moaned as she kept rubbing herself against his very present hardened length. Her skirt was basically no longer a skirt as it was so pushed up exposing her heat. She felt bad knowing that his pants probably were just as wet as her panties. If this was a fantasy she had conjured up, whew boy was it an amazing one. But each kiss, each brush of their tongues, each moan, growl, pant had begun to break down her walls to let her start believing it was reality. He was groaning but clearly hadn’t lost himself completely yet. If this was a dream, she wouldn’t have had that! He was going to fully enjoy this just as much as she planned to. It just then it became a plan of how to get him to unwind.

She moved from his lips, which did cause her to whine a bit but kissing her way down his jaw to his shoulder, to his pecks, Godddddddd. She was beyond wet. She was so horny it was unbelievable. She had never felt like that with anyone. She needed him more than she needed air. But he clearly refused to undress her or be an active participant aside from kissing her. Fine; she admitted she was drunk. But she didn’t care. She maybe would have regretted this in the morning, but the alcohol was definitely convincing her to not give a shit right then.  If this truly was Inuyasha, she would have zero regrets… She dropped to the ground between his legs and laughed. Which in turn caused her to hiccup making her only laugh harder.

She turned her eyes back to his face who was flushed but gazed down at her with concern.

“I waited for you, ya know? I couldn’t find anyone who was even half the man you are…I’ve never done…anything…” she trailed off while her hands moved along his thighs which caused his muscles to tighten and forced him to let out a low groan. She reached his button and unbuttoned while she maintained eye contact. She then pulled down the zipper. Slowly. Teasingly. Testing.

“Ka-Kagome—”

“Sh, sh, shhhhh. I’m going to prove this isn’t just about me…Inuyasha…I need this for myself too…Please…” Her skipped a beat when she uttered his name. She tugged down his pants to which he seemed hesitant but still willing complied to her nonverbal commands.

After a long look into his unsure hazy eyes, she turned to look at his twitching hardened cock. This had to be real. Even her imagination couldn’t have made this kind of thing up—the details were so…explicit. Mouthwatering. They made her body burn with excitement. She slowly wrapped her fingers delicately around it and stroked up gently. He jumped and growled. Mmmmm how she missed that sound.

She bent forward and took him in her mouth. His hands shot out to her shoulder and he tried to push her off; but she clenched one hand onto his bare thigh to steady herself and reassure him. Her other remained stroking in time with her taking him as deep as she could in her mouth, covering what she couldn’t contain. Clearly his resolve was weak enough at that point as it kept him from completely over-powering her. Or her fantasy she was stronger. Whatever it was.

He started panting and moved his hands into her hair, but he did not push her down or try to control the speed. It was like he just enjoyed having her tresses in his hands, between his fingers—she didn’t mind either. The sensations only added to her desires. He still rumbled through his gasped breaths, deep from his chest. She felt him twitch in her mouth and his grip tightened as he tried to pull her away but she held firm; she swirled her tongue around the tip, softly grazing him as she would bob up with her teeth and then encase him with her tongue on way the back down. She wanted to know how he tasted or wondered what her imagination would dream up. She was determined to keep going no matter how fucked up she would feel tomorrow. She had to know if in that very moment he was real…

“Kagome—I’m gonna—" She looked up at him and it caused him to hold his breath. His flushed face, tremoring body, God, she started praying to all the Gods she hadn’t spoken to in years that this wasn’t a dream or some drunken made up illusion.

He howled when he released, and she drank him up like she was parched and stuck in the desert, unsure when she would see water again… He was her savior. Her light. Those golden eyes bore into her own chocolate orbs heating her like she was laying on the beach in the middle of summer. She pulled back once she felt him stop pouring into her mouth and remained kneeling.

He grabbed her by her upper arms and drug her back up to him and kissed her hard. His tongue pushed back her lips and she let him taste himself in her mouth. He growled in approval and embraced her hard. He pulled back for them to catch their respective breaths again and locked eyes with her before he kissed her forehead gently.

“Kagome… I-“

“Inuyasha… Please…”

“Grrrr, you’re still the same stubborn wench from five-hundred years ago.”

“Hehehehe, you can say that. Please, I just… I want to believe you’re real… That you’re really here… Please…” she implored stroking her hand on his cheek.

He leaned into her hand sighing. He was still holding back. For whatever he was, real, fake, in between, he was uneasily wavered. Her hand moved subconsciously to his ear where she started kneading it in her finger. He more or less purred (she would never tell him that if he had been real) and kissed her again. She melted in his arms as he picked her up letting her wrap her legs around his bare waist and was carried to the bedroom. She actually didn’t remember that very clearly, she was still in a drunken haze, and only felt she was becoming more intoxicated by that man’s tongue working every angle of her mouth while her own grazed his sharp fangs. Was it possible to get high on this feeling? If so, she was.

He sat her on the bed and moved to unbutton her top but, yet AGAIN, paused. She exhaled irritably and earned a chuckle in addition to the resumption of his fingers delicately unbuttoning her top. She released his shoulders so he could push her top down her arms. She pulled her own camisole over her head and unzipped her skirt letting it fall loosely to her bottom and legs. She sat in just her under garments—lustful eyes set on him. Pleading. Begging for his touch. He slowly cupped her breast which caused a very unexpected sound to escape her own mouth. His mouth moved to her neck and his tongue laved its way to her shoulder.

Her walls were almost broken at that moment. This was a million times better than any fantasy she had dreamed up. She couldn’t have controlled her panting or her withering body at his ministrations even if she had tried to. Her images started to get harder to remember from the night before. Ughhhh noooooo! Keep thinking stupid!!!!

Her bra came off, did she take it off? Or him?

She remembered lifting up her hips for him to pull down her skirt while his mouth suckled on her nipples. That wet hot mouth on her breast made her mewl loudly. She was putty in his hands. Her underwear met an unfortunate fate, while she didn’t see them being removed, she heard a very distinct tear and the sensation of lace went missing…

She had been lying flat on her back as he crawled above her; he took her lips in her gently and lovingly. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and lightly brushed her fingers over his back and then threaded her fingers in long silver hair. He pulled away and started to trail his way back down her body, nipping, licking, kissing, hands brushing against every surface his face passed.

Fire. She was on fire. She was desperate for her release. She had never been so achy in her life. She was brokenly saying his name over and over pleading for him to understand what she wanted when she felt his tongue lick between her folds against her core.

She wailed and locked her hands on his head. Pressing him, if possible, further into her. His pace was torturous. She could tell he was learning her smell and taste all over again. She heard him mumble about how amazing she smelled and he had so many dreams about tasting her—none of which stacked up to that moment.

“Please Inuyasha… Pleaseeeee…”

That was what broke him—he began to set a better, fast rhythm. He used one hand to keep her hips steady (which she hadn’t been aware they were apparently out of control) and the other had started pumping a digit in and out of her. She had already been spoiled. She could never go back to her own fingers. No. Never. They would never stack up.

She was sooooooo close. The coil in belly was pulled tight. She wasn’t even sure if she had been panting or breathless at this point. She remembered trying to buck her hips in time with his fingers (wait, he added some??) but he still held her hips still. But the moment his mouth clamped down on her nub she was gone. Literally and figuratively. That was it.

 The shower turned off and she heard the sound a towel being wrapped… She was scared. She figured she might as well check herself into a mental institution… That or AA. She knew she had issues. She shivered in revulsion pulling the cover up to her breasts and closed her eyes when the bathroom door opened in the hallway.

“Kagome?”

Th-that voice… She dared peek and… it really was him. He was standing there, wrapped in a towel hanging from his hips, hair dripping from the shower, concerned eyes on her. She threw the sheet off, stumbled out of bed, and jumped to embrace him. He caught her easily and held her close as she sobbed into his chest brokenly weeping his name. He started to stroke her hair then picked up her and carried her back to the bed. They remained like that for some time until she finally calmed down.

“I-I’m sorry, Kagome.”

“What?” she asked as she lifted her head from his chest.

“I said I’m sorry… I… I took advantage of you…” his ears were flat on his head and he trembled slightly.

“Inuyasha, what do you mean?”

“I let you talk me into going further than I had planned on. I knew you were drunk and I tried to stop, I tried to stop you, but you were so persistent and I—I missed you so much, your scent was driving my instincts wild and—”

“Inuyasha,” she pressed a hand to cup his cheek which he leaned into. “I wasn’t—I didn’t—uhm…honestly I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember everything from last night. But I know you wouldn’t have taken advantage of me. I actually have never been with anyone before and the fact I was so desperate in the parts I do remember, I’m not surprised I made us have sex,” he opened his mouth but she pressed a finger to it. “Wait, I want to finish. The parts I do remember I know you made me feel alive, for the first time in years. Just like when we traveled together. I’m not sorry last night happened. I love you so much, Inuyasha. I always wanted to be with you. I had been waiting for you, trying to find you since the well closed. I-I just hope… you’d be willing to do it again while I am sober and that I didn’t ruin our chances at that...”

He nipped her finger lightly and she squeaked and pulled it back blushing like mad. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but…” she braced herself for him to tell her he regretted last night and that there would be no repeat. She couldn’t have said she would have blamed him. She had been stupid. She shouldn’t have been that drunk. She was seriously going to start a sober streak after today. Hopefully she could win him back…

“We actually didn’t have sex.” She blinked. Twice. Did she hear that right? They…did not? But why was…

“Why don’t you tell me what the last thing you remember, Kagome.”

“Uhm… you-you had just finished, uhm—” she blushed like mad, just remembering what his tongue had made her feel heated her up. She noticed he stiffened beneath her, sniffing the air, and he growled sexily. She tried to swallow but before she could, he had her pinned underneath him, lips pressed to hers hotly. She moaned from the contact and let his tongue enter her mouth while she used hers to reacquaint herself with those fangs. He pulled away and started kissing down her jaw rumbling deep in his chest as she struggled to breathe. Her body was in flames. Clearly, she was always going to burn with him. She was so hot, so needy, she had never wanted anything more than his mouth to go lower. She wanted to jump into the flames with him.

“Let me—refresh—your memory—Ka—Go—Me,” he said brokenly as he kissed all down her chest and took her nipple in his mouth. She mewled, gasped, moaned, she had no control her body or the sounds it produced for him. The alcohol had not been a source of fuel—her body and mind apparently craved him so much that any touch would send her over the edge. But she had zero cares about being so wanton because it seemed like it just egged him on more. She arched herself into his mouth and massaged his ears as he thoroughly refreshed her memory. After each of her breasts for fully loved, bitten, suckled, he continued his quest south. He knelt to the ground between her legs allowing the towel to drop as he gave her a teasing lick. Her hands latched onto his head, entwining her fingers in his hair while she moaned his name.

“Oh Gods, Inuyashaaaaaa!” her hips rocked in rhythm with his tongue, she was aching. Yes, she had this pleasure last night, but at that moment, she knew she would never get enough from him. Ever.

He pushed two fingers into her folds and started pumping in and out of her while the other hand reached up and started to knead her breast. His mouth found purchase on her sensitive nub and she about lost it right there with a desperate cry until he drew back—damnit!!! He’s a fucking tease!!!

“We stopped right after you came last night. You more or less passed out mumbling not to leave you again… Let me tell you something right now, wench…” he started pumping his fingers faster, harder, making her cry from pleasure but still not enough to release for him. “I have no intention of ever letting you out of my life again. We were born for each other, Kagome. I waited five-hundred years for this moment; and I was not going to mark you while you drunk out of your fucking mind. But Gods, did I want to, I’m struggling for control now.”

“Th-Then stop—take me—pleaseeeeee—ahhhhhh! Inu-Inuyasha please!”

“Don’t gotta ask twice,” he smirked his mouth engulfed around her jewel and sucked hard. She came hard crying out loudly, soaking his fingers and the edge of her bed. She didn’t get a moment to recover as he rose to his feet and steered her fully on the mattress then climbed over her. Their mouths locked and her legs swung and wrapped themselves around his hips while her arms swathed his shoulders. He lined himself up at her entrance but paused.

“Inuyashaaaa—” she whined pathetically.

“Do… you do know this is a ‘forever’ kind of thing…right? Demons, we don’t just go and do this with anybody… We either need to sire an heir…or we plan on mating forever. I won’t be able to stop my inner demon if we start Kagome—it has been screaming since last night to take you. Claim you. But—I know as a human, you need to know, that you will watch your friends die. Your family. Time will become almost nonexistent… Are you sure this is what you want? I—I am just so thankful to have you back. I want anything you want.”

“Inuyasha… if I’m with you, I will always be whole. I will never regret this decision. Four years was enough for me to know I could never be without you. I want to be with you… Always,” she reached up to cup his face and pulled him down for a tender kiss.  As their lips were locked, he pushed forward gently. She felt herself slowly being stretched but it felt so amazing to feel this complete, it overrode the slight pain and discomfort. She was so wet, it made it easy for him to slide in. She suspected he was restraining himself to not just shove himself fully in her. Or this felt completely overbearingly amazing. His face was pleasure ridden she couldn’t tell one reason from the other.

He rested his forehead against hers once he was fully sheathed in her. He was likely trying to control himself, but she refused to have any of that. She needed him. All of him. Demon, Human, Half. That wall of disbelief was shattered last night and almost lurked its ugly head back again when she had woken up—she was vulnerable and demanded to be filled by Inuyasha. This was real. He had come for her.

She bucked her hips causing them both to gasp and moan out their pleasure. He took his cue and began slowly driving into her. She met him thrust for thrust—encouraging him to go faster, deeper, harder. He gritted her name through clenched teeth, his fangs elongating. She reassured him by cupping his face then slowly moving her hands to stroke his ears. His growl vibrated her to the core, and he began to plunge in deeper and faster. She could barely keep her eyes open let alone not grasp his ears tightly; before she could have harmed his little furry appendages, she dropped her hands onto his shoulders, stabbing him with her blunt nails, no longer able to match his pace. She was just along for the ride and this was the best roller coaster she had ever rode.

She was mewling, crying out his name and probably a God or two, begging for more. She was so close. So close. She heard him cuss under his breath and opened her eyes see his purple strips present on his cheeks. She felt his claws prick her hips. He had finally lost whatever battle he had within himself. But his amber eyes shined through.

“I-I’m close, Kagome.”

“Me-Me too! Ah! God!”

“When I release, I’m going to mark you. Here—” he dropped his head and licked the junction of her shoulder and neck and pulled back up to make eye contact.

“Okay—Inu-Inuyashaaa, pleaseee…”

“Yea, Kagome? What do you want? What do you neeeed?” he purred.

She couldn’t articulate what she really needed—but she knew what she wanted. She knew one way to finish them both. She looked up to make sure he was watching as she let go of one of his shoulders and dropped her hand to rub her overly stimulated nub. He sucked in a breath and almost closed his eyes, but he looked too entranced to look away. His thrusts became harder and he resumed his previous pace before having paused to tell her about the mark. She cried out his name as her coil snapped, her core seized around him, pulling him in, trying not to let him go, milking him for all he had.

He roared her name as he came pulling her up to his mouth and bit down. She whimpered in pain but didn’t fight him. She wanted this. Craved this closeness. Absorbed his demonic aura into her body happily without hesitation.

He pulled his fangs from her first and swabbed the blood with his tongue then pulled out of her slowly. He released her hips and lowered himself back down to the bed gently next to her. She immediately closed the gap clambering to rest her head on his chest. He chuckled and wrapped his arm around her pulling her body close, leaving his hand on her bottom, stroking it gently.

“So… if we didn’t have sex last night…” she peered up to look him in the eyes. He placed a pillow under him so he was elevated so he could look down into her eyes with ease.

“We didn’t. I would have never take advantage of you when you were that far gone. Marking you and having explain everything after? Yea, if the beads still worked, I would have been sat to Berlin.”

“No, I wouldn’t have been mad, but—why was I sore between my legs when I woke up?”

“You were sore… Oh! I forgot! You wiggled your way out of my hold last night complaining about having to pee and you fell hard straddling the toilet. I came in but you shoed me out… I waited outside the door only to hear you fall in the shower—you’re lucky you didn’t bust your head open.”

“OH… God…” she covered her face with her hands. “Why you would still want me to mate with me after last night?”

“Kagome, when you came up those stairs you reeked of liquor and sadness, all I wanted to do was make the pain stop. Jiro said for the month you’ve lived here all you’ve done is drink yourself to sleep or cry. He said you refused to open-up and he didn’t want to push you in fear you wouldn’t let him learn who you really were. After hearing about your nightmares and everything else, it tore me up to know this was how you had been living… I thought it was best you decide on a future for yourself; I didn’t realize how much you would suffer alone like I had though, and I’m so sorry. I understood why you had been drinking the way you had.”

“Inuyasha, you didn’t know. It’s ok. We’re together now. That’s all that—wait a minute, how do you know Jiro?”

“You really don’t see it?”

“That he kind of looks like Miroku? Yes, I do. But I didn’t…how…I know you’ve lived for hundreds of years… I just have so many questions! What are you doing now? What—what happened from then to… now?”

“The short version is Sesshomaru and I run a technology cooperation together, he’s still Lord of the freaking West, regions are still divided into four. Two jackasses run East and South that I try to refrain from every having to interact with and Koga is head of the North. He mated Ayame, have a giant pack of little nasty flea-bags—” she elbowed him in the chest and he rolled his eyes. “We’re fine now. He’s mated. He actually doesn’t know I have been lookin’ for you. I can’t wait to see his face.”

“But he’s with Ayame now. Why would he be upset?”

“That dumbass wolf, even though he is mated to Ayame and is a loyal mate, has never given up looking for you. He still cared about you. Yes, he has grown to love Ayame and would never abandon her, but he was convinced I let you die… never heard the end of it. All this shit about he would have never allowed that to happen, how I let you down… not that he isn’t a total moron for thinking that but…”

She reached up and cupped his face and he kissed the inside of her palm. She crawled her way to lay on top of him and took his lips with hers. It was slow, loving, patient kiss. She tried to convey all her emotions, gratitude, love, longing, anything she felt to show how there was no anger or grudge she could have held.  Slowly the kiss turned more sensual, not that she was trying to start anything again, but Inuyasha was there, lying beneath her, naked, and she was fairly certain she felt a certain piece of anatomy poking her thighs. His wrapped his arms around her back slowly rubbing up and down until his hands found purchase on her ass and squeezed. He slowly rubbed himself on her and she moaned into his mouth allowing his tongue to reacquaint itself with her taste. She felt herself growing warm again and pulled away slightly gazing into his eyes. He stared back at her with all the love she had ever dreamed he would have for her.

Still breathing raggedly, she pressed as she started using her hips to aid his hands in their little dance of rubbing her core on his length, “What else?”

“Hahaha… you would be a talker… Sess’ and Rin mated when she was eighteen, I—we have three bratty nieces and one asshole nephew.”

She dipped her face to lick his nipple causing his breath to get caught in his throat, “Shippo?”

“Shippo is mated to some fox demon he met at the that stupid inn we went to. They’ve been mated for about three hundred years… Couple kids. Technically our grandkids—adopted—fuck Kagome—” She had bit his neck and started kissing up his jaw to his mouth again.

“I-I know they’re gone… but what about…”

“Miroku and Sango lived long full lives. Eight kids. Lech wasn’t exaggerating about wanting a big family. Kirara actually lives with me for now; she was traveling to each descendant of Miroku and Sango for a while. She still will visit them here and there—but they usually come to visit us because it’s easier that way. Family reunion shit. Ugh,” he grabbed her hips to steady her a bit. She knew she was teasing him, but to be fair, she owed him from keeping her so on edge last night and this morning. “J-Jiro is one of them, probably the closest to their original heirs—the story is passed down in the family and they just refer to me as ‘uncle’. J—God damnit you’re trying to kill me—” her hands were rubbing the base of his ears and she was dipping her wet opening just at the tip of him. She was impressed he was still talking as coherently as he was, but he was speaking extremely fast.

“I’m sorry? You got cut off… what about Jiro?” she smirked with another twist of her hips almost letting him in fully.

“Son of a—if this is the punishment I have to have, I guess I’ll take it,” he smirked back at her as he reached one hand between them and grabbed her mounds, fingers dancing before twisting and pinching her nipple. Her breath caught as he chuckled, “Jiro runs a dojo his family started years ago we helped fund. He technically works for me and we are as close as the monk and I were. He said he saw the pictures we took put up in your apartment yesterday and finally put two and two together—” he moved his over hand and started rubbing her jewel. She moaned and finally couldn’t take anymore torture and pushed back letting him be sheathed within her. He remained still for her to adjust—both panting having endured what seemed like hours of teasing. She finally tested to see what it be like to move forward and push back. HOLY. FUCK. RIGHT. THERE.

He sat up and she immediately grasped his shoulder raising herself up to push herself back down and didn’t expect to feel him thrust up. She gasped and withered from the sensation. She was already almost there. He was so hard she imagined he probably was too. But she didn’t care. She would’ve rode him all day. They had years of catching up to do. She remembered she was off all weekend too and mentally did a happy dance as she bounced up and down literally on his cock.

“Do that again,” he said huskily.

“Wh-what?”

“Touch yourself. I want to feel you,” he whispered into her ear, licking the shell and grabbing the lobe in his teeth.

She didn’t falter her pace and did as she was told. He leaned down and took her nipple in his mouth sucking, nibbling. She froze and crashed down on to him crying her release, trembling, holding onto him as she tried to ground herself. She felt like she was soaring through the skies like they used to do—traveling on his back. Free, carefree, just enjoying the scenery.  Together.

His hands on her hips guided her to lie back as he resumed their previous pace as she came down from her high. His mouth found her mark and re-pierced it with his fangs, sucking hard on her skin.

“Fuck!! INUYASHAAAAA—” she was already restrung ready to snap again when she felt him stiffen and grumble her name as he growled loudly letting himself go causing her to wail as she felt her walls crash down on his length buried within her. He crashed down on top of her, completely spent, head resting on her chest as she languidly brought her arms around him.

She was exhausted. She felt sleep edging its way faster and faster through her consciousness but she wouldn’t allow it to claim her yet. Four years. Over five hundred for him. She needed to be with him. She didn’t want the connection to be broken just yet. She swallowed and softly asked, “How are you here…? I mean, why haven’t I been able to sense any demons? It sounds like there are plenty around here…”

“Mmmmm,” he reached one arm up tilting his head to find the strand of hair his hand began to twirl through. “We have charms. Like the fuyoheki Naraku used. Made it easier to be less noticeable; blend in and have less trouble amounting power. The demon council that had been established knew we couldn’t keep killing humans who would wage war on us, and humans would never fully accept us. We often had to change identities, move to different countries for awhile until people who knew us and would have realized we didn’t age passed, but all in all it hasn’t been too hard to amount wealth and stuff. Make life more comfortable.”

“You never… you never took another mate?”

“Never found one I loved. You were always in my heart Kagome. Don’t be mad, but I did try. I really did because I knew you expect me to; but no one ever came close to how I felt about you. I told you for demons sex is just—different. Even though I am only half, my demon half refused to allow us to go around fucking anyone who gave me any attention. It only desired you. It knew you would be back… My human half recognized that too. My love for you made me refuse to move on…I also felt no need to sire any descendants of my own. I had Shippo. Adopted or not, he is our son.”

“I’m so sorry you spent all these centuries alone… It—it’s all my—” Inuyasha leaned up and took her lips to cut her off.

“Shut up. You won’t let me apologize for making you wait, then you aren’t allowed to blame yourself for being my mate.” She blushed hotly and averted eye contact. “Shippo is probably going shit himself when I tell him I found you.”

“What does he do now?”

“He’s actually a teacher—Chemistry. You know. Has a thing for burning shit and all,” he winked at her causing her to giggle.

Her phone began chirping from the living room. She groaned and patted his shoulder to move. He jumped off the bed after a quick peck to her temple, grabbed the phone and returned to lay by her side instantly. She had to blink to realize he had even actually moved before looking at the caller id. “MOM” it read. She answered, “Hello?”

“Kagome! I’ve been trying to reach you all evening! Are you ok? Your friends said you disappeared at the bar and they weren’t able to reach you either! Jiro didn’t answer his phone and someone has come by looking for you twice at the shrine! He wouldn’t say who he was, only that he was a friend! What is going on??”

“Mom, mom, calm down. I’m ok. I’m great actually.”

“Kagome—you had us so worried! We thought something happened to you!”

“Mom—I’m really fine. I promise. I—”

“Kagome this behavior has to stop! I’ve let it go long enough but—”

Inuyasha grabbed the phone from Kagome, “Mrs. Higurashi?”

“—enough—You! You were at my house yesterday!”

“Yea, I found her.”

“Kagome!!!!”

“Owwwwww—not so loud. Hurts the damn ears.” Kagome grabbed the phone back shaking her head at him and massaged the abused appendage.

“Mom, he is a friend… Well, more than that actually,” Inuyasha snaked the arm his head wasn’t propped up on around her waist.

“What do you mean Kagome? You said you haven’t been seeing anyone since you came back from the Feudal Era! Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“Mom, I didn’t lie. He found me. Yesterday. It’s Inuyasha,” he lowered himself to rest his head on her chest again as she stroked his ears.

“Kagome—Are—Are you sure??”

“Doggy ears and all,” she said with a giggle flicking the said appendage making him growl in annoyance.

“Oh my gosh! That’s wonderful news Kagome! So, when will you be getting married and giving me grandchildren? OH! Will they have his ears?!? Are you coming over tonight for dinner still?? Bring him!! I can’t wait to actually see him again without that disguise he was wearing!”

Inuyasha nodded yes to the question on Kagome’s tongue, “Uh—yes, we will be there tonight.”

“Ok my darling, have fun!” she could literally hear the smirk and wink from the phone. “Be safe—no grandchildren until after you’re married!”

“MOTHER!”

“Love you!” she heard a click and held the phone away from her. Completely mortified. Inuyasha snickered in response.

“Keep laughing dog-boy and you won’t have to worry about kids,” looking at her multiple missed calls and texts and quickly responding without being totally forthcoming to her friends.

“Right, as if you could hold out on me—don’t forget who had to be the one to tell you no,” his mouth engulfing her breast.

She sucked in her breath and shifted her hips a little, “Ah! Mk, you’re right.”

“Besides, not to be gross, but I can smell when you’re in heat.”

“That’s not surprising; if anything, it explains why you act the way you would. Extra moody and pushing me to go home because I was ‘bothering’ you,” she smirked realizing it wasn’t actually a lie. “Oh, the girls want to go out again tonight. They want to know who finally ‘met my standards’... But I think I’m gonna pass…”

He rolled his eyes as he trailed kisses up to her collar bone, neck stopping to lave her mark again, then made his way to her lips.

“We should go after dinner with your family,” he breathed on her lips.

“W-We? Y-You wanna go to a club? Really? But—I didn’t think you’d—”

“Keh, I think you forget I’ve lived five-hundred years since we last saw each other. My nieces, while they can kick anyone’s asses, all enjoy that scene. ‘Someone’ said one of us has to watch them. Protective Uncle is better than Asshole Dad. I’ll warn the fucks, Sess would just kill them. Also, not to make you jealous, but enough women I dated wanted to do that kind of shit… But there’s only one person I ever wanted to grind on,” he winked as he came back down to smoother her in kisses as she giggled.

“Uhm… Ok. I guess we can go. I’m sorry in advance if they bring Hojo.”

He laughed, “I’d actually love to kick that scrawny fuck’s ass if he tries anything while I’m there. But,” he started to rub his hands along her body, lingered on her curves and then settled for massaging circles in between her folds, “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to Ka-Go-Me?”

She groaned internally. How could someone invoke such intense feelings out of a person? How could he make her so desperate with barely any effort?? After being fully dated multiple times already.

“College. Sucky roommate. Friends still pushy. Graduated. Nurse,” she informed through each kiss exchanged with their as he teased her.

“Heh, impatient are we?” he smirked down at her as she was already breathless. He leaned closer to her ear and whispered, “Why don’t we go shower together this time and then get breakfast?”

She nodded vigorously and he laughed as he edged off her allowing her to the lead the way…

 At dinner, Inuyasha filled her family in on his five-hundred years between when he saw Kagome last to now. He apparently worked for Takashasi Enterprises and was directly under Sesshomaru as the COO. His identity was currently Yashiko Takahashi and went by “Yash”. She recognized the name immediately and was shocked how well-known he had been and she never realized it was him. But he told her that had been the point. He couldn’t risk his younger self ever catching whiff of him and his presence. He was, up until four years ago, opening the new branch of their company in Berlin to avoid them.

He had an apartment near where his work was but also owned properties around the world. He maintained his human disguise originally until Sota and her mother begged to see his ears again. It all had been so surreal… He was really there—eating dinner with them again, holding her hand under the table, he had given her his old haori when they stopped at his place to change before dinner, and she had decided to wear it over her cocktail dress she picked to wear for when they went to the club again. She realized she had never been happier. More complete. As she looked into Inuyasha’s eyes, her mate, her life, she realized the feeling was mutual.

  Still debating on maybe a part 2? Epilogue? We will see 

[yeoldenews]

Let’s be history detectives...

(Episode 2! aka This Ended Up Longer Than I Intended and I Apologize)

Since I seemed to get some interest (and a lot of really amazing feedback) the last time I did this, I thought I would document and share another “history detective” project I’m working on.

Today’s project is this date book from 1945 kept by an ambulance driver working at the front along the Rhine in the last days of WWII.

This diary is an interesting one because, while it was very sporadically updated, its few entries are very long, very well written and contains some of the most compelling storytelling I’ve ever come across in a diary. All while mentioning hardly any personal information about our diarist! (Because why make it easy for me?)

The diary begins with one 22 page entry written on March 25, 1945.

The beginning of this entry states...

“With the New Year come resolutions and mine are to be in the form of keeping a diary. I wish that before I left New York I had picked up one of the same, for now, on March 25th, that I try to begin this record, most thoughts and experiences are old.”

This first entry covers events from December 1944 through March 1945 and ends in mid-sentence (”I had been scared never so much in my life. No one was asleep...”).

There are then 4 scattered entries throughout March and April and then the diary skips nearly seven months with no entries from April 20th to October 9th.

After picking back up on October 9th there are detailed daily entries through November 7th which tell of our diarist’s life working in Paris after the war, and then four entries in December. The last of which (December 18th) ends “Oh! Well! Life is at least interesting.”

Let’s see if we can track this guy down (as well as share some of his amazing stories from WWII and life in 1940s Paris)...

First off I just want to give an example of our diarist’s amazingly vivid storytelling, which is unlike any other diary I’ve ever come across...

“Evacuations came at all hours of the day or night and we drove over snowbound roads wide enough only for one car. The drifts piled four and five feet high on either side of the road and after a four or five hour trip to Hericort our hands were blistered with holding the wheel steady when driving.

Prestone [anti-freeze] finally came for the car radiators and this allowed us more time to sleep in the morning, less grease on our hands, less time spent in washing up, and a hell of a lot of work on the cars besides.

Rumors were rampant of a big push and we knew it was true when three of our ambulances went up to Bitschwiller. From Masevaux the distance was eleven miles; the time it took to make the trip, with patients, two hours and a quarter. Conditions for driving were the worst imaginable. The road was covered with glare ice; off to one side was a drop, ranging anywhere from twenty to five hundred feet. There was no fence or marker to warn a driver of a particularly bad turn or an especially long drop. Most of the time it snowed and occasionally the storm was a blizzard, blanketing the windshield of every car and gumming up the wiper.

The road was built with a horse and wagon in mind; there was hardly room in spots for one car. At night we blacked out our headlights on one side of the mountain for we were directly under observation by the Jerries. Our average speed was perhaps seven miles per hour, and I for one drove the whole way in first gear...”

As you can see, despite our diarist’s gripping stories and wonderful writing style, there are virtually no hints as to who was writing this, other than an ambulance driver in Eastern France during WWII.

He very seldom talks about other people in any sort of specific way, and in fact the entire first 22 page entry contains no names whatsoever.

When people are mentioned it is usually in connection with a larger story he is telling. For example: he mentions another driver in his unit is from Portland, only because they run into a medical unit from Portland who knows him and invites them to join the unit’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

He does talk about himself occasionally, but most often in a very introspective manner. He writes about his feelings and fears, rather than his personal history. One of my favorite examples is him talking about how he crawled into his sleeping bag when they were being shelled because it felt safer for some reason.

He mentions becoming desensitized to the violence around him, but shares several examples of cases that still got to him, including a French soldier who survived fighting in North Africa only to die in a car crash on his way back to his family in Paris and a graphic description of an American soldier hit by an anti-personnel mine.

He also often talks about the fact he has a stutter, and how self conscious it makes him.

In the later part of the diary, once he is living in Paris, his entries become much more typical and mention a few names of friends and co-workers and descriptions of his work that may prove helpful. This is where most of our clues are going to come from, but let’s see if there is anything useful hidden among the stories in the first 22 pages.

The clues...

“our unit of 89 AFS men left New York in middle November”

The first and most important detail is that our diarist was not in the army, but in the “AFS” or American Field Service. The AFS was an organization founded in WWI, which allowed men who were not eligible for army service (usually for health reasons) to serve as ambulance drivers and stretcher carriers at the front.

“This town [Marseille] has a reputation of being rough and dirty, a sailor’s port, or so I remembered from my previous trip to France in ‘36.″

Our diarist traveled to France (and presumably back to the US, most likely New York) in 1936. If you read my first “Let’s be history detectives” you may recall that 1930s civilian passenger records were how I solved that case.

“Most of us were in our early 20s, however, just out of college or just entering... a generalization could be made that most came from well-to-do families and were educated in the best schools.”

If our diarist is included in “most of us”, he is likely in his early 20s, comes from a well-to-do family and is well educated. All of this seems to fit with my general impressions of his writing style and a few comments he made about their accommodations, which lead me to believe he is not used to roughing it.

Moving on from the first entry... his account for April 19th, contains the first full name “Bill Hoffman”, who is mentioned as having captured a German prisoner. Unfortunately there is no indication as to whether Bill Hoffman is in our diarist’s AFS unit, or is just a random soldier, and the name itself is too common to be of much use without context. But it’s still worth noting.

After seven blank months the diary picks back up on October 9th to find our diarist living in Paris and hunting for an apartment. He mentions visiting a friend named Brock Lawrence to see what his apartment is like. After a few entries he and Brock decide to get a larger apartment and move in together.

He talks about the night life in Paris (including the fact that there are only 3 nightclubs he can afford) and mentions the names of a few friends he goes out with.

He talks quite a bit about his job, while never stating exactly what he does. However there are plenty of clues to narrow it down...

He mentions editors and printers, delivery and distribution orders, and his entry for October 20th states, “The magazines must be run around to the important Army people and must be seen in the right place. I am the guy who does it.”

So he appears to have been working for a magazine publisher/distributor/printer in Paris.

One of his jobs was “picking up the film at Orly” and one entry states that “Newsweek and I had a race to the printers with the film. Newsweek arriving first since its plane came in twenty minutes ahead of mine.”

If he was picking up film at Orly, that means the publication he works for was likely an international news magazine, and probably a sizable and successful one if they were having film flown in to an international airport on a daily basis. The rivalry with Newsweek seems to confirm this.

The last piece of information that seems to verify this is a mention of the company offices moving to 4 Place de la Concorde. Place de la Concorde is right in the heart of Paris and would not have been a cheap place for an office.

Other interesting miscellaneous facts about our diarist found in the latter half of the diary include...

He mentions considering going back to Princeton, so presumably he attended there before the war.

He was sending a large portion of his salary to a bank account in New York City. This, along with a few other comments, makes me think he is probably a New Yorker.

So who are we looking for???

An AFS ambulance driver who served in France in 1944 and 1945.

His AFS unit had someone from Portland, Oregon in it and may have had a member named Bill Hoffman.

He was likely in his early 20s.

He was likely from a wealthy background.

He attended Princeton.

He likely lived New York City prior to the war.

He had previously been to France in 1936.

His roommate in Paris was named Brock Lawrence.

After the war he worked for a large international news magazine which had offices at 4 Place de la Concorde in Paris.

All in all this is honestly not a lot to go on, but it’s better than nothing. So let’s dig in...

So right away I hit the jackpot. It turns out that the AFS has an extensive online archive/virtual museum.

I decide to try a shot in the dark and see if there’s a Bill Hoffman listed in the archives. Turns out there are actually a few, but only one who served in France as an ambulance driver during WWII.

He certainly fits the well-to-do and well educated description. His unit was called “FR 4″. I decided to go through the rest of the members of the unit to see if anything stuck out to me, and look who I found...

Myron Brockway Lawrence, who presumably went by Brock! Our diarist must have known Brock from his time in the AFS. And even more interesting, Brock is from Portland, Oregon, just like the AFS member in the New Year’s story. The only person besides Bill Hoffman who is mentioned in any detail.

It’s looking more and more like we’re looking for someone who was in the FR 4 unit.

Considering how many people were in the unit, I’m going to try to narrow down our suspects a bit.

Going through the details in their biographies I find seven individuals in FR 4 who attended Princeton, and then immediately eliminate three of those for not fitting our profile (one for age, and two for having served elsewhere in the world prior to serving in France whereas our diarist makes it pretty obvious that this is his first tour).

So now, in an amazingly short amount of time, we’re already have four good candidates who might be our guy...

Donald Neil Elberfeld of Short Hills, NJ

Henry Robertson Fenwick of Glyndon, MD

Edmund Richards Tweedy Kelley of Darien, CT

James Henry McEwen Jr. of Burlington, NC

I decide to see if any of these gentlemen happened to have traveled across the Atlantic in 1936. If you recall from my previous case, just like with immigration and customs today, everybody who entered the US in the 1930s was recorded. Most of those documents are now public record and are available through various websites, some for free, but most cost money to access.

After running searches for all four men (including alternate spellings and nicknames because passenger records are notoriously inaccurate) I end up with only one result...

An eleven year old Edmund Kelley arriving in New York City on the S.S. Manhattan from Southampton on September 3, 1936!

Ships leaving the French port of Le Havre often stopped in Southampton or Cobh to pick up additional passengers before heading back across the Atlantic, so this would definitely fit someone returning from France. (It’s also possible the family traveled in England as well and was just returning directly from there.) 

Let’s go down our “Who are we looking for?” list and see how we’re doing...

An AFS ambulance driver who served in France in 1944 and 1945.

✓

His AFS unit had someone from Portland, Oregon in it and may have had a member named Bill Hoffman.

Bill Hoffman was in his unit, as was Brock Lawrence who was from Portland ✓

He was likely in his early 20s.

The birth date listed on his passenger records would make him 19/20 when the diary was written. ✓

He was likely from a wealthy background.

His address on the passenger record is listed as “8 East 92nd Street” in New York City. Google Maps places this address as less than a block away from Central Park, so I think that’s a pretty safe ✓ on the being wealthy thing.

He attended Princeton.

✓

He likely lived New York City prior to the war.

✓

He had previously been to France in 1936.

✓

His roommate in Paris was named Brock Lawrence.

I can’t prove they were roommates, but they definitely knew each other. So ✓-ish.

After the war he worked for a large international news magazine which had offices at 4 Place de la Concorde in Paris.

this is the only piece I haven’t been able to confirm yet

It’s looking pretty darn good that Edmund Kelly is our diarist, but I’d like to be as close to 100% positive as possible. Let’s see if we can find out a bit more about Edmund and make our case sounder.

The great thing about people who went to college in the first half of the 20th century is that alumni associations were serious business. Most major universities published regular alumni magazines letting people know what former students were up to, and held yearly reunions. So our next stop is the website for Princeton’s alumni association.

And it takes me less than 30 seconds to check the last item off our list...

Edmund, who went by Ned, worked for Time-Life (a very large, very successful international news magazine) for eight years after the war.

I hadn’t been able to find any records of what was located at 4 Place de la Concorde, but combining the address with “Time-Life”, I find a few references that confirm the location. As well as a photo taken from the office. Pretty nice view...

So that’s a ✓.

To add another (entirely unexpected) nail in the coffin of this case, his obituary happens to mention two other tidbits that match up with details from the diary...

“Burdened with a speech impediment, Ned nevertheless incorporated his handicap into his personality in a long, successful sales career.”

Remember how I mentioned our diarist’s frequent mentions of his stutter? Who would have thought that would be mentioned in his obituary?

The other fun tidbit is...

“Ned considered that his winning an Opel [a German car popular in France] during a day-long poker game was a notable accomplishment.”

Our diarist mentions playing poker all the time and, while he never specifically brings up any particular winnings, later on when he is in Paris there is a passing mention to him having some extra cash that month from selling “the car”.

I’m convinced we have our guy!

Meet Ned Kelley (no, not that Ned Kelly)...

This project took me two or three hours (most of it reading the diary) and honestly turned out to be A LOT easier than I had originally expected thanks to the amazing archives of the American Field Service. Everyone go hug a local archivist!

Random extra trivia... Ned’s brother Solon aka Sollie, not Sopon like the passenger manifest says (like I said, they’re notoriously inaccurate) was a fighter pilot in WWII and I found this pretty kickass picture of him on the American Air Museum in Britain website.

[starsmadeofsalt]

Sorry about including you so little in this, I did not want to write you in a way that did not fit your epic personality ^^”

(This is because Gilbert is older than Ludwig by quite a bit in Childhood Hetalia. This first one is if Gilbert isn't in the class, since you'll probs focus on the younger kids as teens? If not, I can easily write a quick story with Ava in the class, if you'd like - just message me if you want that. Idk if you want 2 OCs, but I can send in another for the class, if you like this one. She's pretty different from Ava, so I think you'll like her. If you're interested, I'll message her appearance and anything else you want to know because I'm terrible at making art ^^ I love your art style! BTW, in here, Germania just can’t come for personal reasons, lol)

@childhood-hetalia-blog

Ava clicked away through videos on her laptop. Click. Click. Click. In the other room, she could hear her roommate Gilbert drop… something in the apartment's kitchen. Another bang. She rolled her eyes and groaned. "Keep it down, will you?" she yelled. "I'm trying to contact the high school." 

A pause. "You liar! You're just watching those Grandpa Hates things videos!" He appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, front covered in water. He saw Ava's screen before she could change to her email. "See?" Gilbert said, huffing. "It may not be those videos, but that's close enough!" 

"I hope you do realize, 'Chef', that you have about one hour to get something ready when your brother and his friend come over for dinner," she replied absentmindedly. 

"That's completely unfair! You're the one who forced this job on me!" he protested.

"Yeah? Well, maybe stop playing your goddamn flute at three in the morning." 

Grumbling, Gilbert got back in the kitchen, banging around, then eventually leaving to go to the grocery store. Looks like dinner would not be immediately ready when the pair arrived, Ava thought. She closed her laptop and turned on her email notifications on her phone. Cleaning up, she vacuumed, dusted, and wiped down surfaces, despite the apartment's cleanliness already. Why couldn't they have gone out to the diner on the corner, again? She felt rather awkward, having no real connection to Gilbert's family yet, having only moved in with him this year in July after finishing college, answering his online post looking for a roommate. 

Gilbert reentered about half an hour later, arms laden with groceries. No email yet. Gilbert rolled his eyes when he saw Ava cleaning - between the two of them, the apartment was always spotless. "You know, if you scrubbed harder, you could make a hole in the table," Gilbert said, heading into the kitchen.

"Yeah, yeah, what are you making?" Ava headed into the kitchen and grabbed paper napkins and some of their scant, mismatching silverware. Sodas and beer rested in the fridge - beer for the "adults". 

"I don't know yet, but I bought a lot of stuff, Ava." 

"If you already blew our week's grocery budget on tonight, I'm going to strangle you." 

"Kinky," Gilbert smirked, chopping up some vegetables. Ava rolled her eyes and went to her small bedroom to change. It was a miracle how they managed to cover the rent with their current meager salaries on this beauty, in a good location with two bedrooms, a living space that could double as an eating area,  a kitchen, and a bathroom. She really hoped the school accepted her application for the open English Literature and French positions. Well, at least one of them. 

She came out, dressed decently in a nice white blouse and blue jeans, her black hair tied in a bun. "Gilbert! I'll watch the food, go change out of that shirt, it's nasty!"

The buzzer rang before he could retort. Ava jumped and ran to the intercom, dabbing on lip gloss at the same time. She asked into the speaker, "Yes? Ava Sommer speaking?" 

"Um, Ludwig Beilschmidt, your roommate's younger brother?" a deep teenager's voice resonated back. She buzzed him and the friend in. What was her name again? God, she had a terrible memory.

Soon, Ludwig and the friend were at the door and Ava let them in. They sat awkwardly at the table as Gilbert cooked. He did participate in small conversations, but he was distracted by trying to make a decent dinner for four on a budget for two. Ava's phone chimed in the midst of an awkward silence. Her email. 

"Oh, I'm so, so sorry! I need to see this, it's for a job application, please excuse me," Ava flustered. She got up to check her email when Ludwig - was he seriously only in high school? - asked, "What are you applying for?" 

"I applied for the open English Literature and French teaching positions at [insert high school]!" Ava responded, grinning as she pulled her email up on her phone. Ludwig raised a brow. "That's where I go to school. Did you get the job?" 

Ava looked at the email. She sighed. "Just a scam," she sighed. "What's a girl got to do to get a job these days?" 

"Work hard, which is what you seem to be doing," Ludwig replied. Ava decided she liked Gilbert's more reserved brother and chatted with him amicably, her awkwardness melting. Somehow, Ava and Ludwig's friend got into a serious debate over the message of Marley and Me, and Ludwig looked confused. He'd never seen the movie. Gilbert occasionally piped up, yelling his opinions. He finished, bringing some kind of meat-potato-vegetable dish he threw together. Compared to what usually happened for dinner, this was first class. Ava rushed to the fridge, grabbed two beers and a variety of sodas, and got back to dinner. 

"You sure are fitting the German stereotype," Ava teased Gilbert after a few bites of food and minutes of silences. 

"What do you mean? I am not a 'stereotype'! What even is a German stereotype?" Gilbert retorted. Ludwig rolled his eyes and ate his food, while his friend seemed ready to say something, then held herself back.

"There's a really funny and offensive one that combines German stereotypes with weird jokes. Well, not so much German stereotypes, but it’s funny as hell," Ava replied, pulling out her laptop. "This guy's called Brandon Rogers." She pulled up a video titled "Fashion is Blind". Soon, Gilbert was in uproarious laughter, while Ludwig looked highly confused and fairly offended by the video. "W-what?" he asked, trying to comprehend the video. "I don't understand the point of this." He took another bite of the food, puzzling over the video. 

Another chime. Her email. Again. Ava whipped her phone out and unlocked it, opening the email. 

"Ms. Sommer, we… okay… okay…" she read. Ludwig asked, "What's the result?" 

"Do you take English Literature or French? If you do, then you're looking at your new teacher." She smiled, ecstatic. Ludwig smiled back, unsure of what to think. Gilbert slammed his hand on Ava's back. "Congratulations! When do you start?" he asked. 

Ludwig, externally, sweat a little, off-put by the video she showed him, but he managed to smile since this was important to her. Internally, he worried. And worried.

Would she put a book with dying dogs on the English Literature curriculum?

[thomaschattertonwilliams]

John Edgar Wideman Against the World

BY THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS JAN. 26, 2017 John Edgar Wideman likes to be in places where people don’t know who he is or what he does for a living. He spends most of the year in New York, but two of his favorite people here are his barber and his massage therapist, both Chinese immigrants who barely speak English. He was explaining this to me in December, over a lunch of rare steak-frites and Bordeaux at Lucien, a bistro a few blocks from his Lower East Side apartment. “I go to a bar, I get to know the bartenders and the manager,” he said. “That’s where I get my mezcal, that’s my place, that’s what I do. But parties, hanging out?” He shook his head. “I don’t have anybody living around me who has much of a sense of what I do. That’s exactly what I like.” Lucien Bahaj, the restaurant’s owner, and his wife, Phyllis, came over to the table to greet Wideman. It was clear they knew him as a regular but, judging from their conversation, not at all as the author of 21 highly distinguished works of fiction and nonfiction or as a MacArthur genius who was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters or, for that matter, as one of the first three African-Americans to ever earn a Rhodes Scholarship. If they knew any of that about Wideman the writer, they would also have to know this about Wideman the person: He is the older brother of a man convicted of murder, serving a life sentence without the chance of parole; the uncle of a young man shot execution-style in his own home; the father of a boy who, at age 16, woke up one night while traveling with a group of campers, got out of bed and stabbed his roommate to death while he was sleeping. The drama of Wideman’s personal history can seem almost mythical, refracting so many aspects of the larger black experience in America, an experience defined less by its consistencies, perhaps, than by its many contradictions — the stunning and ongoing plurality of victories and defeats. Now 75, Wideman is noticeably gentler-looking than the severe ice-grill that has glared from dust jackets for so many years. After Bahaj left, he confessed to me that he had been reading reviews of his newest book, “Writing to Save a Life,” published in November. He noted that critics tend to write about him as an isolated and haunted figure, an idea he has resisted but has been coming to accept about himself. “I mean, if everyone tells you your feet stink, after a while, you may think you washed the boys, but everybody can’t be wrong.” He laughed at himself but then soberly conceded, “I always felt extremely isolated.” That loneliness Wideman speaks of is twofold: both peculiar to him and quintessentially black, especially for more talented men of his era. I have seen this loneliness, too, in my father, a man of Wideman’s generation and the first in his family to break out of the segregated South and get a college education, a dual triumph that simultaneously freed him and left him a consummate outsider. For Wideman, who spent much of his working life in places like Wyoming and Western Massachusetts and rural Maine, this solitude has been further compounded by cold mathematics. Not only is mainstream publishing overwhelmingly white, it is also nearly bereft of black writers like him: American men of letters descended from Southern slaves, who position themselves as part of a grand and omnivorous intellectual and artistic tradition. Though we live in the most racially fraught period in at least a generation, much of what we read on the subject comes from pundits, journalists and internet think-piece writers whose experiences and perspectives are rooted more in the language of critical theory than in anything resembling literary mastery. “Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File,” about 10 years in the making, is a slim but powerful volume, an account of the brief and terrible life of Louis (Saint) Till, the largely forgotten father of Emmett Till, the Chicago boy whose horrific lynching in Mississippi in 1955 shamed the nation. It feels in many ways like an apotheosis, a project that combines and distills all the various obsessions of a brilliant half-century investigation into the existential predicament of, as Wideman once put it to The Paris Review, “a person who’s still scarred and outraged and mystified by the experience of Europe and Africa and slavery and the relationship between those continents.” It is the late-phase masterwork of a man still trying desperately to figure out how America works at a time when his perennial concerns — freedom and confinement, policing, fatherhood, the inheritance of trauma and ontological stigma — feel as pertinent as ever. Yet, thus far at least, both black and white audiences engaged in the perpetual national conversation on race have mostly ignored it. (Critics less so: It was recently named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in general nonfiction). Perhaps this is because Wideman’s layered and sometimes contradictory insights resist abbreviation and easy dissemination in short bursts of epiphany on social media. His disposition is to bypass blunt polemic and make his case through description and story, which is by necessity inventive, conditional and ambiguous. Simplicity sells, but the truth is seldom simple. And the truth, as Wideman put it to me at one point during lunch, his food an afterthought, his eyes locked on his hands as if he could somehow manipulate his words with his fingers, is that whatever existential pain separates black America from the world, “it ain’t nothing to do with our blood, it ain’t nothing to do with our history, it is essentially a recognition, the most profound and basic human recognition that you are alone. I am alone.” Born in Washington in 1941, John Wideman was raised in Homewood, a black neighborhood in Pittsburgh said to have been founded by a runaway slave. In the world that shaped him, appearances were often deceptive. His father was dark-skinned, but his mother, Bette, was pale enough to pass for white if she wore a scarf over her hair. It was only in adulthood, he told me, that he discovered that her biological grandfather was actually a German butcher. (“Not a Nazi!” he clarified. “The other kind of German butcher.”) Bette’s father was a man named John French, who was, as Wideman describes in his recent book, “lighter than many of the Italian immigrants he worked beside plastering and hanging wallpaper.” Wideman saw early on that race, and by extension identity, were nebulous formations: collective fictional endeavors, albeit ones with real consequences. When he was 12, Wideman’s family relocated to middle-class Shadyside, where he attended high school and became valedictorian and captain of the basketball team. The University of Pennsylvania came calling and offered an academic scholarship. He was an excellent student in college, and before he graduated in 1963, Gene Shalit wrote an article about him in Look magazine titled “The Astonishing John Wideman.” This was both an incredible individual honor and a damning acknowledgment of the scarcity of black faces at places like Penn. It could not have been easy, but Wideman evinced the polar opposite of a sense of victimization. “To me, being Negro is only a physical fact,” he told Shalit. “If there were something I wanted very badly that being Negro prevented me from doing, then I might have the confrontation of a racial problem, and I would be driven to do something about it. I’m sure I would. But so far, the things that I’ve wanted to do haven’t been held back from me because of my being a Negro.” After Penn, Wideman studied 18th-century narrative technique at Oxford, married a white Penn graduate named Judith Goldman and eventually became one of Penn’s first black tenured professors. He quickly wrote three well-received novels that failed to find large audiences and that he has since described as operating on the apprentice level. It was not until 1981, with the publication of his story collection “Damballah,” that Wideman grew into his mature style, a learned and distinctively black register that switches naturally between the sublime and the profane, an earthy vernacular and a high literary mode with which he spins tales both true and untrue that overlap and accumulate, like 3-D printing, into tangible landscapes and characters. “Damballah,” along with the novels “Sent for You Yesterday“ and “Hiding Place,” formed what has since become known as the Homewood Trilogy and marked Wideman’s emergence as one of the premier novelists in the country. But even as Wideman’s career was on the rise, his family life back home had been ravaged. His brother Robby was arrested in 1976 after participating in a botched robbery that ended with the victim dying of a gunshot wound to the shoulder. He was convicted and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Wideman spent years interviewing him during soul-crushing visits to Western Penitentiary. In the course of these conversations, he got to know his brother more intimately there than he ever had on the outside, and in 1984, he published “Brothers and Keepers,” a collaborative nonfiction attempt to come to grips with how their two life trajectories had parted so drastically: how he had become the friend of someone like Senator Bill Bradley, while his brother had developed “prison arms.” It was at once a book about Robby’s obvious guilt and grim history leading up to the crime and also about the extremity of his punishment. The victim, who was white, was himself a criminal, Wideman told me, but “nobody ever said anything about him having criminal genes.” What’s more, it was one of Robby’s accomplices who pulled the trigger. In the summer of 1986, two years after the publication of “Brothers and Keepers” and 10 years after Robby’s arrest, Wideman’s middle child, Jacob, a tawny, blond-haired black boy who displayed serious developmental problems, accompanied a small group of teenagers on a tour across the West. At a stopover at the University Inn motel in Flagstaff, Ariz., inexplicably, he twice buried a six-inch blade in the chest of his sleeping white roommate, Eric Kane. It was a horrific crime — it took hours for Kane to bleed to death — and prosecutors routed Jacob into the adult system, though he was just a teenager. Like his uncle Robby, Jacob was sentenced to life in prison, but he was granted the possibility of parole. The salacious story of the great black writer’s homicidal son was quickly picked up in newspapers across the country and given lengthy treatment in respectively compassionate and vicious pieces that ran in Esquire and Vanity Fair. Wideman himself has never written about Jacob, at least never directly. “My son doesn’t like me to talk about his situation,” he told The Paris Review, “so I don’t. Period.” This was very much on my mind as I prepared to ask Wideman about this aspect of his biography. A friend had alerted me in early November — on Election Day, actually — that Jacob, now almost 47, had been granted release from prison. Wideman confirmed that his son is currently living in a halfway house after serving 30 years in prison and having been denied parole on six previous occasions. This unexpected turn of events, he confided, has left him somehow optimistic. “It kind of put all the other news in perspective.” He recently recorded a segment on NPR and found himself tongue-tied, trying to make sense of the current political upheaval. “The idea that my son was out. ...” he told me, his voice trailing off. “Hey, nothing else mattered.” ‘I don’t have anybody living around me who has much of a sense of what I do. That’s exactly what I like.’ I asked Wideman whether, given the specificity of Jacob’s own personal demons, the level of his parents’ education and social capital and the sheer fact that he could pass for Caucasian, it made sense to think of his collision with the criminal-justice system in the same terms we keep for poor and more conventionally black men like Till or Robby Wideman. He replied that Jacob’s defense lawyers, with whom he has since become friends, came to believe that the state was looking to make an example of Jacob. In Arizona at the time, Wideman said, “there were more and more immigrants, black people, street crime, drugs,” and the lawyers told Wideman in confidence that they believed the state had plans to seek the death penalty. The family instead accepted a plea deal. Wideman maintains that he has never argued for Jacob’s innocence — it was he and Judy who took him to the police station — though he does insist on pointing out an uncomfortable truth: Jacob was a natural and appropriate candidate for juvenile imprisonment, but he instead nearly became an opportunity to expand the reach of capital punishment, because, Wideman believes, his victim was white. This was “strange,” he told me, but it was not for lack of precedent. I both understood and sympathized with his point, but it was one of the few moments in speaking with him that I found myself questioning the accuracy of mapping a tragedy so specific onto one so universal. Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, works out of a spacious, book-lined office just inside the main gates. When I visited her in December to get a better sense of Wideman’s position in the black and wider American tradition, she compared him with Albert Murray, the unjustly overshadowed brother-in-arms of Ralph Ellison. As was the case with Murray, Wideman’s writing is, Perry said, “not really something you can designate as belonging to one or the other side of a political spectrum. It’s actually about your disposition toward life.” This is a hard-won quality she believes is found more often today among black male writers born before 1950. And that is why, in our current racial conversation, which can tend to be “too driven” by younger voices, she said, there’s “something particularly useful about hearing from someone who is in his 70s.” But Wideman’s cerebral sensibility is one that resists easy consumption. Even his longtime friend and agent, Andrew Wylie, describes his work as probably destined for “a fairly select audience, as is the case with many of the best writers in the world.” He is, in other words, a writers’ writer. One of his many admirers is Mitchell S. Jackson, the author of “The Residue Years,” a 2013 semi-autobiographical account of his experience selling drugs in college and going to prison. One line of Wideman’s has stuck with Jackson for years: “The facts speak for themselves, but never speak for us.” If you were to look at the facts of Jackson’s own life, he says, you would see a guy who sold drugs, went to prison and made a success of himself writing about it. “But,” he said, “it’s what’s between that that’s who we are.” “Writing to Save a Life” chronicles Wideman’s attempt to fill in some of those gaping blanks between the rock-hard facts of Louis Till’s life and the files relating to his court-martial, which seem to suggest the American military systematically railroaded the young soldier into a practically predetermined guilty verdict. Stationed in Civitavecchia, Italy, during the twilight of World War II. Till, along with two other black servicemen, was accused of the rape of two Italian women and the murder of another, on purely circumstantial evidence and despite enormous amounts of contradictory testimony. “No, all witnesses agree: Too dark to tell what color clothing the attackers wore,” Wideman writes. “Yes, all witnesses agree: We could see the color of the invaders’ skin.” A military court sentenced Till and one other man to death by hanging. There is not a whole lot Wideman or any of his readers can know for sure about Till, but what we do learn is often unattractive. He beat his wife, Mamie, who took out a restraining order. He squandered the family’s income. Presented by a judge with the dubious choice of prison or the military, he opted for the latter and ended up in the former anyway, in a distant Mediterranean cell near Ezra Pound of all people. He is not Rosa Parks by any stretch of the imagination, and Wideman makes no attempt to sanctify his character. Yet there is undeniably something in him that the author not only relates to but also admires, and it has to do with the fact that Till does not ever beg or plead but keeps quiet, even stoic, in the face of a system that “provides agents ample, perhaps irresistible, opportunities for abuse.” What unsettles Wideman about the Till case is not only that it was flagrantly flawed but that everything had the veneer of propriety about it. “Every T crossed, every I dotted,” he writes. “But seamless, careful, by-the-book performance provides no evidence of what the spider’s thinking about the fly enmeshed in its web.” Even participants in an unjust system can be blind to the ways they sustain it. It’s a jarring idea when taken to its logical conclusion, that, independent of any willful bigotry, the person on the jury or in the voting booth may not even know why she decided the way that she did. For Wideman, this means that transcendent racial harmony may permanently lie on the horizon, just beyond our reach. Which is also why, in his view, storytelling takes on the dimensions of a battle royal, a “never-ending struggle” to make sense of the world, which implies a kind of “ultimate democracy” but also “a kind of chaos.” In a 1990 Esquire profile he wrote of Michael Jordan, Wideman observed that “a great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips, teaches us to perceive reality differently. Proust said of his countryman and contemporary, the late-19th-century Impressionist Auguste Renoir: ‘Before Renoir painted there were no Renoir women in Paris, now you see them everywhere.’ ” Wideman has, with this book, achieved a similar feat. The most disturbing argument he makes in “Writing to Save a Life” is that, whether guilty of any particular actions in Italy or not, Till’s one true offense is something that can be accurately described only as a crime of being: In the logic of the criminal-justice system, people like Till, people bound to the wrong side of that stubborn fiction of race, often seem to necessitate “a pre-emptive strike.” I had never once thought of nor seen Louis Till before Wideman painted him so exquisitely, and now I have to acknowledge that he is all around me. Walter Scott? He’s Louis Till; so is Eric Garner. Michael Brown, unsympathetic as he appears on that convenience-store video — I can no longer see him without conjuring Emmett’s father. Seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald, wandering through the Chicago night until his body jumps and jerks from 16 shots? Louis (Saint) Till. Poor Philando Castile — pulled over at least 49 times in 13 years before the final and fatal interaction that left him bleeding in front of his girlfriend and her daughter and all the rest of us on Facebook Live — is a high-tech Louis Till. Ditto Alton Sterling down in Baton Rouge, Freddie Gray up in Baltimore and “bad dude” Terence Crutcher out in Tulsa: all these men are Louis Tills. Trayvon Martin and 12-year-old Tamir Rice are something else altogether, heart-rending combinations of both Tills, père and fils, doomed man-children in the fretful, trigger-happy imagination of American vigilantes and law enforcement. Whatever other crimes may or may not have been committed, may or may not have potentially been on the brink of being committed, these were all crimes of being before they were anything else. That is one true story, whatever other stories there may be, and Wideman has told it masterfully. On a freezing Saturday afternoon that dropped an almost nonexistent film of snow, I waited for Wideman in the entryway to a McDonald’s near his home. For the past decade and a half he has lived in a quiet, somewhat inaccessible corner of Lower Manhattan that seems to suit his need to be on the periphery. It’s the same in France, where he has long been published by the top-tier Gallimard but eschews the cafe scene in Paris, preferring to spend summers with his second wife, Catherine, at their home on the coast of Brittany. ‘Seamless, careful, by-the-book performance provides no evidence of what the spider’s thinking about the fly enmeshed in its web.’ I had come to join him on one of his favorite walks, a cinematic back and forth across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn, “an old habit” he once fictionalized in a short story for Harper’s. He arrived promptly, in a pair of black New Balance running shoes and a smart black Nike Dri-Fit ensemble that surprised me. Whatever he had done with the elderly gentleman I talked to just days earlier, I couldn’t tell you. He seemed 10 to 15 years younger and even to stand several inches taller. As we wove through traffic and up the ramp to the pedestrian walkway, he initiated then maintained an outlandish stride that left me, 40 years his junior, struggling to keep up. Wideman has written repeatedly of his lifelong love for the game of basketball, both the organized kind that provided a haven of rules and order and got him out of Pittsburgh but also the pickup kind that he gave up, with great sadness, only when he hit 60. He still lifts weights and runs occasionally and, in talking with him, I began to suspect, could also drink me under the table. As we walked, the wind whipping off the East River and the metal-on-metal of J, M and Z trains rattling beside us and the whir of microfiber generated by the swinging of his arms combined to nearly drown out his voice, which hadn’t grown one decibel louder. The truth is, I told him, he has written a hell of a book at the age of 75. I wanted to know if it was in any way harder for him than it had been earlier in his career. “Everything is gravy now,” he said. “By the time I finished playing basketball, I used to be, you know, the star, the go-to guy for whomever I played for. But at the end of the time on the playground, to make a layup, you know, to steal the ball once — it’s gravy. You don’t have to worry about carrying the team, your rep. You’re just out there, and anything you can get is good.” He had finally given up his last teaching post at Brown, because, he explained, when he can no longer perform a task to his standards, he has no choice but to walk away. The writing still works, though, even he agreed, and he mentioned a new story he just completed for Harper’s. We walked along the waterfront before warming up over steak and eggs and bloody marys at a Polish restaurant Wideman likes on Bedford Avenue. When we finally headed back to Manhattan, I asked him about the ending of “Writing to Save a Life,” a mystifying passage in which he is standing over Till’s bleak, half-size grave near Fère-en-Tardenois, France, 75 miles east of Paris, on an ignominious plot of land where all 96 soldiers (83 of them black) who were executed by the U.S. military during World War II are buried. Wideman imagines himself talking in down-home, midcentury black slang to the dead young man as if he were a brother or a comrade, telling him a fable about a tenacious swarm of honeybees. When a muscular grizzly bear rampages their hive for honey, “every damn mama bee, daddy bee and every little jitterbug bee jump Brer Bear’s burly ass,” Wideman says to Till. And as the bear gets mad and starts swatting and growling, some of “the wildest, meanest bees,” the crazy Kamikazes, “dives down the bear’s big mouth.” The bear starts thrashing about in pain, but the craziest bees sting him deep inside his throat and stomach until he vomits blood and honey and all those bees back up, hurting so bad that, he wishes “he ain’t never been born.” The beehive is obliterated, but the strange thing is, out of all that gratuitous destruction, “not all the Kamikaze bees dead in there. A few crawls out the mess.” They’re sticky and banged up, “but a couple few alive. Alive and just as wild, mean and crazy as ever.” If the bear comes back, “they gone bust his big chops wide open again.” What, I asked him, does that all mean? He paused to consider my question. Then he said he thought it meant that “we need [expletives] like Till.” I nodded and said goodbye to him in front of his building on the cold and windswept corner of Grand Street, mulling over his words as I walked back to the subway. Was he really saying that oppressed people need people, even bad people, to take the fight to the beast of American racism, a conflict in which almost any retaliatory act might find justification? It seemed far too simplistic a story for Wideman to tell, and it left me underwhelmed, turning the image over and over in my mind as I descended to the platform and headed back to Brooklyn. Then slowly, somewhere under the river, I began to wonder if he was saying something else, a much more complicated and interesting story. I began to wonder if he was saying that people like Till — people who do actual wrong and veer off course and go and get smashed down the hardest — aren’t antiheroes so much as sacrificial explorers who have ventured quite literally into the belly of the furious beast, exposing for the rest of us the very extent of the danger within, and how lucky we may have been to escape it.