#we must distract them from our political errors | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

potteresque-ire · 4 years

Note

Concerning the incredibly far and deep reach of CCP’s propaganda, the narratives the government can spin and call the truth; does ‘the common normal populace’ actually know what’s really going on?

Hello everyone!!! Happy Chinese New Year!!

I’m grouping these asks because if I hear them correctly, they’re all related to this question: how much do people in China know about the atrocities committed by their government, and why don’t they do something about it?

It’s a difficult question, isn’t it? A potentially upsetting one too, just to think about. My answers are more opinion-based, more personal this time. Since there’re no polls about what people know, they have to be based a little more on my own impression, which has more chances of error. Please bear with me and proceed with caution ...

As with people in most countries, what people know is hugely dependent on individuals. Specifically, re: politics, I can think of at least three reasons why people don’t have the facts

1) they have limited access to information 2) they’re being lied to about what they know 3) they’re not interested in current affairs.

1), of course, is what most people think about when it comes to China. You’re right, Anon(s), that VPN use is indeed rampant in the country and is essentially an open secret; there’re no official numbers but surveys have estimated the number of users can be up to 100 million, most of them being youngsters. They use it to do exactly what most of us would imagine: gain access to things they don’t have otherwise. Instagram has been (sporadically?) blocked since 2014 September and so while users may have set up their accounts while being overseas, it’s indeed, (very) possible, that they’ve set up and maintained their account under VPN use.

Wait, you may ask, so you mean the Great Firewall of China doesn’t exist?

That’s exactly the official stance. Not because of private VPN use, but because individuals/companies can apply for a license via their telecommunications company to visit all internet sites. Hence, the government’s claim that the Great Firewall doesn’t exist—you’ll be let through as long as you ask (and we’ll watch your every step)! There are also no explicit laws prohibiting the use of private VPNs; only a handful of arrests associated with private VPN use have been made and only since 2019, and the punishment is considered light—no imprisonment, just fines. It is, in contrast, against the law to *provide* private VPN services, and while companies have been shut down, the crackdown has still been incredibly sluggish by Chinese government’s standards, especially when the Xi regime has made its intention of banning VPN known and directives have been issued for that in 2017.

Why has VPN continued to enjoy this “grey existence”? Because without VPN, a lot of foreign businesses would leave—some, for example, require the most efficient online tools developed outside China to track the foreign markets, and talents have rejected job offers in the country when they realised they couldn’t get on their favourite social media. The science and tech sectors also rely heavily on VPN—programmers relying on Google to search stackoverflow, for example, to find known solutions to bugs.

VPNs have also served political purposes—Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-critical communities all over the world are all painfully aware of the Chinese government’s practice of hiring its own collection of internet commentators (”50 Cent Party”), and at times, mobilising their youths (gamers, fan circles) to scale the Firewall and astroturf, throw insults at the “CCP enemies” and bomb message boards with pro-CCP messages.

Also, a significant fraction of VPN companies, both in China and overseas, have been reported to have Chinese ownership, by companies with government connections. These VPN services provide a false sense of security for those who do not enjoy having big brother peeking behind their backs while acting as surveillance tools that extend beyond the country.

(Please be careful about free VPNs).

The next question: If until now, users of private VPNs only rarely get into trouble, what’s holding them from scaling the Great Firewall and learning the facts?

It is this: the law isn’t about “climbing the wall”, but what one does outside the wall.

Article 6 of the 2016 edition of Cybersecurity law states the following:

第六条　国家倡导诚实守信、健康文明的网络行为，推动传播社会主义核心价值观，采取措施提高全社会的网络安全意识和水平，形成全社会��同参与促进网络安全的良好环境

Article 6: The State advocates sincere, honest, healthy and civilized network conduct; promoting dissemination of the core socialist values, adopting measures to raise the entire society's awareness and level of network security, and forming a good environment for the entire society to jointly participate in advancing network security.

What this article implies is this ~ legally, Chinese citizens are bound to the Chinese government’s rules of good internet conduct, regardless of whether they use VPN to get on the internet. As with many Chinese laws, however, the vagueness in wording invites more questions than answers. Is it getting on Twitter, a banned website, “sincere, honest, healthy and civilized network conduct”? Obviously, it’s illegal to interact with other users about the Xinjiang’s internment camps, but what if one only goes there to talk about their favourite stars, because on Weibo supertopic they can’t even mention the stars’ name, can’t ahkgkhagjkfaskjgdf about their favourite fics? What if one goes there to discuss a M- or E-rated fic? Where is the line drawn and given its vagueness, will that line move tomorrow? How?

Most people, therefore, have opted to simply stay away from VPN. After all, China offers its own version of many of the fun websites out there (Weibo-Twitter; Instagram-Oasis; Tiktok-Douyin; Youtube-Bilibili). For those who do use VPN, they tend to stick to websites that are unlikely to cause issues (such as Instagram; Instagram became an issue when Hong Kongers started to upload information about the protests on there).

Now, let’s proceed to 2): People don’t know the facts because they’re being lied to about what they know.

There’s a difference between having access to facts and knowing that they’re facts. This is among the most painful lessons, perhaps, for those who followed the politics of the United States in the last few years (please forgive me for the US-centric-ness of the following few paragraphs!). Even with equal access to identical information, people can vary a LOT in their understanding of what are facts and what are lies.

This illustrates the power of propaganda—and propaganda in the US isn’t even centralised. Some media outlets and individuals (political leaders and analysts) have more say on what should be viewed as the truth, but parties without significant power—small foreign and domestic interests, fringe political organisations, conspiracy theorists, regular folks—have also made critical contributions to the “fake news” phenomenon in the US. There haven’t been apparent coordinations between these parties; little concerted effort has been made to create one coherent story out of the many tales told.

In China, the propaganda effort is centralised, coordinated, free of distractions from competing story lines. The One Story the government decides on is repeated, over and over again, on newspapers, in shows, in textbooks, on signs on the streets, on social media. To put it another way, when it comes to political discourse, the country is designed to be an echo chamber with 1.4 billion people. Over time, the One Stories inevitably become firmly held beliefs—so firmly held that even if the people are exposed to facts, they no longer believe in them.

This is especially true when the source of the facts are countries with strong traditions of freedoms of speech and press, where the facts are often laid out with a critical eye to the administration and with vastly different opinions attached to them. While we view the latter as evidences that the values we embrace are alive and well—a critical eye to the administration means the Fourth Estate is doing its job, and the different opinions means freedom of speech gets to live another day—people who haven’t been exposed to these values tend to interpret these things as signs of weakness of the government. They may think the Chinese government is better than its counterparts elsewhere because no one is penning scathing criticisms against it. They may think the Chinese government is stronger because it unifies the opinions of their people—the failure of which, they’ve been taught, would lead to social chaos and economic free-fall.

The Chinese population has also been “immunised” against the truths that may be exposed about their government by a propaganda talking point used since Chairman Mao’s days—that the “Imperialist” western world, particularly the United States, is always scheming its downfall. The phrase often used is 美帝亡我之心不死 (”The heart (intention) of Imperialist US to bring us down will never die”). Unfavourable truths exposed must therefore be part of the “bring down China” scheme. This decades-old demonisation of the political apparatus of the US and Europe also prepares the people to accept what most would see as outrageous conspiracy theories: for example, in March 2020, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that the US Army intentionally planted COVID in Wuhan during the 2019 Military World games. “Foreign interference” becomes a frequent and convenient scapegoat for policy decisions gone wrong, sometimes to a (somewhat) hilarious effect ~ for example, a Taiwanese journalist calculated the cost required for the CIA to fund the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, as the Chinese government had claimed—and it turned out that the CIA was too poor to do it.

(Many of us in the US would probably laugh at the idea that our government is capable of secretly paying 2 million foreign-language speaking strangers to show up together in one march.) (It can’t even get the COVID relief payments to its own people right over a period of months.)

(Fun trivia for turtles! As 美帝=“Imperialist US” is the synonym of a feared, imaginary super-villain—super organised, super efficient, super everywhere and super impossible to take down—c-BJYX, the indestructible No. 1 CP fandom in China, has been nicknamed “美帝 cp” by those not so enamoured with it.)

Finally, there’s the psychological factor. Once a set of beliefs becomes personal truths, listening to alternatives can be very upsetting (for those in the US: imagine the blue voting block made to listen to Fox News). Hence, even when people gain access to the facts later—for example, when they study/work abroad, even emigrate—they often don’t take advantage of the access. Instead, they remain logged in in the Chinese social media sites where they’re comfortable with not only the politics but also the language and the friendships they’ve built, and continue to immerse themselves in an environment heavy with CCP propaganda. They remain defenders of the Chinese government; some have even gone out and harass people who disagree with it, in the name of freedom of speech that their country of origin never offered to them.

Censorship, of course, is an important component of building a One Story echo chamber, and I should add a note about it: censorship in China comes in vastly different strengths. The restrictions on LGBT+ issues, for example, are fairly lax, relatively speaking—“homosexuality” remains a term one can find on their internet and a topic the administration continues to address, and while BL dramas are censored, their adapted versions, along with highly publicised discussions of their original material, have so far been tolerated. The strictest form of Chinese censorship would’ve allowed neither: any mention of the 1989 June 4th Tiananmen Square massacre , for example, is immediately removed, including any hints that the event may have happened. When the former leader of the Chinese government, Jiang Zemin (江澤民), was rumoured to have passed away, the censorship apparatus went so far as to remove all mentions of Jiang, which also happened to mean “large rivers”. Chinese netizens therefore joked that major rivers had ceased to exist in China that day, as one couldn’t find any information about them online.

(LGBT+ activists have therefore remained optimistic about the future of their campaign, despite the current state of affairs. To put it simply: the Chinese government has bigger fish to fry. Sexual minorities haven’t had major clashes with the administration, haven’t embarrassed the Chinese government with their demand for rights as the ethnic minorities—the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, the Mongolians etc did. Political dissidents, including the millions in Hong Kong, are also (far) ahead in the ranking of fish size.)

For most issues, the censorship effort sits somewhere in the middle and is often inconsistent over time. The people, therefore, often have knowledge that an event has happened — even when the event is considered, beyond the Great Firewall, damaging to the reputation of the Chinese government. However, critical information is often missing in their knowledge, or is heavily distorted. For example, overseas Chinese citizens have insisted that the motivation of the 2019 Hong Kong Protests was economic, echoing the longstanding CCP propaganda that Hong Kongers have been jealous of China’s prosperity (reality: China’s GDP per capita was $10,268 USD in 2019, and Hong Kong’s, $48,713—more than 4 times higher). They missed out a critical fact: while the fast economic growth of China has created some unease—Hong Kongers have always known the Chinese government has only tolerated them and their freedoms for their ability to generate wealth—what has truly ignited Hong Kong’s anger is the Chinese government’s violation of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, and the terms it had agreed upon to get back the then British crown colony. Hong Kong hasn’t been demanding autonomy and freedoms because it’s a troublemaker, but because these things were promised to the city as conditions of the 1997 handover. As residents of the world’s third largest financial centre, Hong Kongers are diligent drafters and executioners of contracts (which international treaties are) and above all, faithful believers of them. For an asker (the Chinese government) to claim a contract as “historical” because it has received the goods (Hong Kong) and no longer feels a need to pay (allow Hong Kong 50 years of freedoms and autonomy) is offensive to the principle, the very heart and soul of the city.

(Gg’s former boss was a Hong Konger, and his experience working for him was a rather accurate reflection of Hong Kong’s view on business. What made an impression to Gg—that the posters should be without rips and misprints, even if these imperfections were not the fault of the design company—is a no-brainer to the Hong Konger in me reading the interview. Delivering high quality goods and services isn’t an act of kindness but rather, of professionalism and respect for the contract.)

(This interview is a highly recommended read, for those who’ve missed it!)

(One more example of “conveniently missed critical information”: remember GG’s show on Chongqing? Did you know the underground bombing shelters were not built by the Communist government, but the Nationalist government that was still ruling China during WWII?)

Anyway, where was I?

Right. We’re getting to 3): People are not getting the facts on the political situation in China because they’re not interested in current affairs.

Some—well, many— people are not interested in politics.

Some of you may be thinking: well, I’m not interested either. I follow politics because it’s important.

Why is it important? Because political engagement means you can do something about the many ills of the society, speak for those who cannot, force the government to change by voting, by voicing your opinion, by going to marches and protests etc.

What if you follow politics and still can’t do most of these things? What if, if you do choose to do these things, the price you pay may be astronomical? Will you still follow politics or devote your time, your energy to something else, something you’ve got more control over, something that won’t be as saddening, frustrating because it’s something you can actually change?

3) is therefore intricately related to why people often don’t do anything, even if they manage to find out about the facts.

There’re no national elections in China. Marches and protests are practically banned because while the Chinese Constitution guarantees the freedom of assembly (as it does freedom of speech and press; Article 35), it also explicitly states that "Citizens of the People’s Republic of China, in exercising their freedoms and rights, may not infringe upon the interests of the State, of society or of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.” (Article 51) — ie. the freedoms and rights only go as far as if they do not stand in the government’s way. Social media and all communications platforms are under constant surveillance, and so only opinions tolerated by the government is allowed...

And so, the fact, social ill that has broken your heart—you can’t tell for sure if it isn’t talked about because the government has censored it, how many people know about it and more importantly, how many among the people who know about it will agree with your take. If you break your silence and voice your concerns, how many people will have your back, even if you also conceive them as victims of the social ill? If the social ill is the lack of rights of a minority group, for example, will they appreciate your speaking out, or will your “rocking-the-boat” make things even worse for them? A heavily watched net means communications with the oppressed/vulnerable social groups are often filled with obstacles, if not outright impossible. You don’t know how these groups feel; you don’t even know how many affected individuals are there. You watch the and news and shows and they all talk about how wonderfully things are going; how everyone seems so hopeful and positive and happy with their lives—are you the only person feeling that way? Are you wrong? If you speak out then, will you be yelling into the void, or worse, yelling at the police who “invites” you for a chat in the police station? To speak for those who do not have a voice to speak, are you ready, willing to take the risk of also becoming one who no longer has a voice to speak? Is your family ready?

To put it another way: the opportunity cost of “doing something” about the political situation can be astronomically high in China, compared to the opportunity cost of us doing something similar in our own country.

If I want to support the LGBT+ population in my part of the US, for example, I can do so effectively with minimal investment and most importantly, with minimal risk. By pasting a rainbow flag on this Tumblr post, for example, I’ve already signalled to those who need support on this issue that I’m ready to give mine. And this “signal” of mine will join the hundreds and thousands on the site, collectively telling the activists doing the “on the ground” fighting that they’re not alone; that they have my vote of support. I pose no danger to myself in doing so; no one will accuse me of, arrest me for infringing upon the interests of the State and the Collective. The rainbow flag, a display of my stance, will not turn into a blurred blob the next time I look at it, transform overnight from a symbol of solidarity to a warning sign to those who may wish to join the cause. There’s no danger for me, even, to carry an actual, huge rainbow flag to Pride, perform my activism in person. I don’t have to worry about my phone already giving away my identity as a protester to the government, especially in post-COVID times. I don’t need to watch out for plain clothes pretending to be my allies. I don’t have to look at the many surveillance cameras present and wonder if I’ll get blacklisted as a troublemaker.

Am I still being tracked and taken pictures of? Possibly. But for this cause, at least, I’m not afraid that these information will be used to arrest me. If I were arrested, I know there'll be lawyers and activists who would come to my aid. LOUDLY. ANGRILY.

I’m not afraid. Period. I’m having fun. And I doubt I can say the same if I try to carry a rainbow flag to Tiananmen square and march there.

This vast difference in the opportunity cost of taking political action is the reason why I’ve refrained from demanding those who live under authoritarian dictatorships to stand up for their neighbours who’ve been oppressed / bullied by their governments. I’ve refrained from criticising them for looking away, minding their own business. Do I wish they’ve take action? Of course I do. Am I aware that their lack of action is potentially more harmful because of the frequent atrocities happening around them? Yes. But I also understand that going on a fight is far more frightening when one doesn’t even have a sense of how many will join their side of the fight; I understand that fighting for what one deserves—freedoms, rights, justice—should never equal martyrdom, and just because a regime has elected to put equal signs between the two doesn’t mean those equal signs should ever be there. I remind myself that, to ask the people in any authoritarian dictatorship to stand up for a political cause is to ask them to make sacrifices that we, as people in relatively free societies, do not need to make when standing up for the same cause. In a country where a father demanding the truth about the milk product poisoning of his own son got jail time for “eliciting social disorder”, to stand up for even a single issue, no matter how small that issue is, requires courage that I’m not sure I have.

I can’t ask anyone to do anything I may not be able to do myself.

And this is why I, too, have chosen to support these people, even if many of them are single-issue activists, even when many support the Chinese government on other issues that matter. For example, the late Dr Li Wenliang, one of the eight COVID whistleblowers in China who passed away from the disease, was an opponent of the Hong Kong Protest, but I still (greatly) appreciate, respect him for what he did. As long as they’re not actively helping the government to cause (more) harm to others, as long as their cooperation with their government falls within what is demanded of them as citizens, they have my support. Why? Because most people who speak out in China cannot afford to stand up for more than one cause before it becomes dangerous for them. Because even if it’s only a tiny vulnerable social group, one small minority that makes a tiny step towards more rights, more freedoms, more justice, it’s still a victory in a country where rights, freedoms and justice are luxury items for those with neither political nor economic power. Because those who’re not part of the ruling class cannot afford to cherry pick their allies, cannot afford to in-fight when the ruling class already holds absolute power. Because I still believe in pay-it-forward, that most people who’ve benefited from someone standing up for them, even for one small incident, one minor cause, is more likely to stand up for someone else.

This is, admittedly, not always an easy choice to make—not for me, at least. I do get frustrated, can’t help but think at times that those who subscribe to and spread propaganda are, to a certain extent, corroborators of the atrocities committed by their government. (So, to those who’ve felt this frustration, you’re not alone!). And the Hong Konger in me has every reason to be furious with everything about China right now—all I could think of, when I listened to Gg singing 異鄉人 Foreigner the other night, are all the Hong Kongers fleeing the city now, as refugees, because of their political beliefs.

But for now, I’m hanging on. I’ve been able to tell myself that given the country’s political reality, given its tradition of collectivism (which tends to view confrontational dissent with scorn), the paths to freedoms, to equal rights and acceptance, will not be the same as what I’ve seen, what I’ve wished for. They’ll likely be slow; They’ll likely be long and winding, taking three steps forward and two steps back; they’d likely be unexpected in places, offer us surprises —

And since it’s Chinese New Year / Valentines and I’m feeling brave (irresponsible?), I’d venture a little bit of speculation and say this ~ yes, I’ve wondered if one of these many paths may be trodden, intentionally or not, by two beautiful male idols and their millions of turtles. Is it wishful, fantastical thinking? I’d be the first to admit the answer is yes. But the BJYX scheme has been so well executed as of now, so effective that I can’t help but wonder if it’s leading towards some sort of a goal, whether devised by the humans involved or by the gods/Fates who, as c-turtles have said so romantically, have been writing an original BL story with our favourite boys. The goal may be personal —simply two people being able to act more like themselves again under the spotlight—or a bit more ambitious…

… Because the sneakers + ice-cream post did catch my attention (will probably have to devote a post on that?). Another small incident that has caught my attention, unrelated to Gg and Dd but can significantly change the path they may be trodding, is this — in June 2020, People’s Daily, the state controlled newspaper, boasted its country’s increasing friendliness towards the LGBT+ communities on Twitter . While the tweet was met with skepticism and soon removed, the message it sent is this: the Chinese government may have figured out the the Western world (in particular, the younger generations) view LGBT+ rights as a measure of progressiveness. While I’m still leaning towards the government maintaining a tight grip on LGBT+ rights within its borders, with the strengthening call to boycott 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics because of the country’s poor human rights record, I can see a glimmer of possibility that the same government may do the unexpected and cater to the queer community for the sake of propaganda. As I mentioned, the queer community hasn’t caused much headache for the Chinese government, and so it’s far more likely to be chosen as the “benefactors” of such a “we’re a human rights champion too!” propaganda campaign than, say, ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Promoting dissemination of core socialist values has always sat high on the CCP’s agenda list, and its target audience has always included foreign, non-Chinese populations; this effort is known as 大外宣—“The Great External Propaganda”. And who better to cast as leads of an international propaganda campaign on LGBT+ rights than two of its own stars who’ve already demonstrated loyalty to the government, who’ve already garnered international fame from a TV series widely viewed as queer, and who may actually be queer?

(And if—if!!!— this ever happens, may I ask everyone to please consider doing the following? Please do not feel a need to express gratitude. Please do not act as though it’s a gift. Celebrate as you would celebrate anyone in a free country exercising their birthright to live, to love the way they want — no less than that, no more than that.)

(For those who’ve asked ~ as international fans, not allowing the CCP to modify our expectations of how a government should behave may be one of the most effective ways to protect Gg and Dd.)

(I call this learning from the best: get the goods we want (more rights for the people in China), refuse to pay the cost (subscribe to CCP’s propaganda), and RUN! ❤️💛💚)

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx #pie answers

239 notes · View notes

thefilmsnob · 2 years

Text

Thirteen Lives: ***1/2 out of 5

Some news stories are so remarkable, so teeming with drama and intrigue that you just know they’ll inspire a film adaptation. Watching coverage of the Tham Luang cave rescue in the summer of 2018 was like being on the edge of your seat at the movies except the stakes were real and profoundly high. So, naturally, in the four years since that ordeal, there’ve been not only multiple films released but also documentaries, books and song as well.

Even if you remove the variables, it was still a devastating situation; twelve adolescent soccer players and a coach found themselves trapped inside a cave in northern Thailand. What made it uniquely terrifying, though, was that they were about 2.5km from the entrance, trapped there by monsoon rain that continued to flood the cave. These factors combined with the incredibly narrow underwater corridors made the idea of rescue seem impossible. Meanwhile, the team had little to no food, no light, no toilets and no way of knowing if help was on the way. Their fear and discomfort must have been excruciating.

This information makes the opening of director Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives chilling. The gorgeous green hills that tower over the soccer field where our story begins can only do so much to distract us from the inevitable. Same goes for this joyous scene of a boys’ soccer team wrapping up practise before a birthday party which they were supposed to attend. However, as the youngsters leave the field in excitement, they decide to take a detour to explore a nearby cave and you want to literally shout at the screen, “For the love of God, just go to the party!”

But kids will be kids. There’s a palpable sense of dread when the focus shifts to their parents at the party, especially since we know what their real-life counterparts had to endure. That feeling intensifies as they head to the caves, see the kids’ bikes and fear for the worst. They, along with the audience, realize the boys are in grave danger and need to alert as many emergency crews as possible.

This is inescapably a ‘white saviour’ story in the literal sense that white men helped save Thai children. It’s a controversial trope, but in this case, it’s undeniable reality. It would’ve been irresponsible not to recruit some of the world’s greatest divers based on politics. But, Howard and writer William Nicholson wisely focus on the Thai characters as much as possible: the children, their parents, government officials, journalists, Royal Thai Navy SEALs and so on. In fact, the big Hollywood stars don’t even appear until the second act and even then, they don’t monopolize the story. There’s a true sense of unity here as Europeans and Southeast Asians come together to save lives.

This narrative dispersion is at once a commendable quality and a dramatic impediment. When the British divers Richard Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) and John Volanthen (Colin Farrell) arrive to lend their vast experience and expertise, there’s little fanfare. They don’t march in and take over; the Thai authorities are still running the show. It’s realistic, as is the depiction of these two decent, unassuming men, Richard being slightly blunter and more methodical compared to John’s warm and tactful demeanor. The authenticity is welcome but somewhat hollow and not fully realized. We sometimes struggle to identify with these men—and most of the others—as fidelity takes precedence over character and a concentrated point of view.

That’s less an overt error by the filmmakers as it is a minor side effect of their discipline and reluctance to ‘Hollywoodize’ a story that’s already brimming with drama. Howard’s more concerned with a meticulous re-enactment and in that sense he succeeds. Obstacles most films would deem inconsequential are treated with a deserved seriousness. The best example is the actual egress of the boys. It wasn’t enough just to find them and guide them out; there’s an enlightening discussion that details the problems that could arise, particularly the panic and unpredictable movement of the boys which would risk both their rescuers’ lives and their own.

That’s where Richard Harris (Joel Edgerton) comes in. Harris is an anesthesiologist who plans to sedate the boys and have them carried out like packages. But, as he explains to the authorities in a pitch perfect scene, if the dosage isn’t precise, it could kill them and with the hours-long dive, they’d need a second dose at some point, administered by mostly amateurs. As he tells them bluntly but with deep compassion, he expects several casualties. Even though we know the outcome, Edgerton’s so convincing, he puts doubt in our minds.

From there, we finally see the long and gruelling rescue. Outside the cave, we witness the politics involved and the brutal decisions faced by governor Narongsak Osatanakorn (Sahajak Boonthanakit). We follow thousands of volunteers including the poor farmers who sacrifice their crops by allowing water to be diverted from the mountains to their fields. Meanwhile, in the caves, Howard and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom work wonders with light, space and water to maximize tension. Claustrophobia builds as the divers negotiate dangerously narrow underwater passages with stalactites hanging from the cave ceiling like sharp teeth ready to bite down any second. Periodically, a map appears onscreen showing us how deep inside the cave characters are, just in case we weren’t nervous enough. And the whole time you’re thinking, “How…in the hell…did they pull this off?”

As drama goes, Thirteen Lives has its flaws. You wish for more insight into the minds of the characters, especially the kids who are virtually blank slates. And in its steadfast pursuit of realism, the filmmakers cut some emotional moments a bit too short. But, as a technical feat, it’s mesmerizing. Like the rescue, this is the work of countless dedicated and talented people who’ve recreated an event as accurately and tactfully as possible. Moreover, it’s a testament to what can be accomplished when people from dozens of countries work together instead of succumbing to petty differences.

#thirteen lives #movie review #movies #ron howard #viggo mortensen #collin farrell

1 note · View note

comrade-meow · 3 years

Link

“On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.” —Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto

“It is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.” —Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto

Introduction

“[…] the question of prostitutes will give rise to many serious problems here. Take them back to productive work, bring them into the social economy. That is what we must do. But it is difficult and a complicated task to carry out in the present conditions of our economic life and in all the prevailing circumstances. There you have one aspect of the women’s problem which, after the seizure of power by the proletariat, looms large before us and demands a practical solution.” —V. I. Lenin, Conversation with Clara Zetkin, 1920

The subject is endlessly debated on the internet—and terms like “sex work” are slipped in to distract would-be Marxists from examining the matter of prostitution. But we must begin by stating that the matter of prostitution for Marxists has been resolved for approaching 200 years, and there is no ambiguity on this. It is mentioned three times in the Communist Manifesto—the most basic introductory text to Communism that all Communists unite around. To be a Marxist is to oppose prostitution. More importantly, Marxism gives us the framework to analyze exactly why Marxists have historically come to this position, and why Marxists today reject terms like “sex worker” that seek to sanitize prostitution, which we understand as sexual violence, mainly against women.

It is trendy to compare prostitution to work—without ever delving into what Marxists even mean by “worker”—and to frame the most basic Marxist positions as “backward.” Without delving too far into the individual theorists behind the sanitation of sexual violence as “sex work,” it is enough to identify this tendency as the inheritance of third-wave feminism, which has overlapped with postmodern method of analysis. Engels himself likened prostitution to slavery, and for very precise political economic reasons. What brought Marx and Engels together to begin with were Engels’s astute observations on political economy. Suffice it to say, Engels is a great authority on the subject second only to Marx. Engels wrote,

“Wage labor appears sporadically, side by side with slave labor, and at the same time, as its necessary correlate, the professional prostitution of free women side by side with the forced surrender of the slave.”

Engels viewed these as a necessary correlate, meaning a unity of opposites, where the identity of each depends on the existence of the other.

When examining the trend of “sex worker advocacy” we see two things most often. The first is to totally hollow out the term “worker” of any of its political-economic definitions. The second is to lump various classes and strata together into a single category—this means even distinct trades undertaken by distinct classes are conflated and flattened into one singular “oppressed” group. By defect of the first error, which destroys the understanding of the economic identity of the worker, we arrive at the second, that porno movie performers, exotic dancers, street prostitutes, “cam girls,” and others are all one thing. Apologists maintain this as if the exchange of money for a sex service or sexualized service somehow, in and of itself, constitutes such an ultimate commonality among these “workers” that it obliterates the profound concrete differences in each case to their actual relationships to production. One of the most critical phenomena erased in their analysis is the profound stratification, which exists even within groupings that do have a similar relationship to production. Putting their position into practice entails forcing class collaboration between management, entertainer, and slave.

A brief history

Comrade Mary Inman, one of the staunchest antirevisionists in the CPUSA of the 1930s-40’s, whose contributions will be discussed more thoroughly later, offers the following powerful passage:

“Prostitution did not start with folk customs. It did not grow out of group marriages between free people, for pre-slavery tribes had no such institution. It did not grow out of mystic rites, nor sex worship. It was always a rape institution. Even in the earliest records of prostitution, the evidence shows that the people lived in terrible degradation rising from economic slavery, and did not have the freedom to decide such matters.”

We do not have any interest in going over the earth’s recorded history of prostitution, and will use this section only to establish some relevant facts pertaining to its history in the US.

In the war for control over the colonies that some call the “American Revolution,” as well as throughout the US Civil War, women were unofficially enlisted as prostitutes to follow the soldiers to “keep morale high.”[1] At this time, the ruling class found this a necessity in order to sustain the war. It is useful to understand the shifts and changes that the ruling class makes in terms of prostitution. In wartime, their puritanical Christian opposition vanishes in favor of the cold pragmatism of whatever they think it takes to win.

Prostitution, while technically illegal in the 19th century, was widespread, and brothels were commonplace. The laws were simply not enforced. This period was not without war, considering the increase in Native genocide carried out by the settlers during westward expansion. And this colonial expansion meant the expansion of brothels as well.

In the early 1900s, the precursor to the FBI, the Bureau of Investigations, cracked down on prostitution in earnest for the first time in US history.[2] Their reason, far from having anything to do with the rights of those experiencing sexual violence, was, as they put it, “to oppose white slavery.” In practice this effort constituted a political maneuver as well as a propaganda effort. In order to enforce social segregation and further consolidate settler-colonialism, the ruling class attempted to get white women out of brothels. This campaign has had long-lasting effects: even today the majority of prostitutes are not white. This is similar to the way the US imperialist ruling class carries out the “War on Drugs,” primarily to harm the oppressed nations of its population.

What we have attempted to sketch out here is that the question of prostitution in the US cannot be separated from the US history of settler-colonialism—that these things march in step as what Engels might call “necessary correlates.” Prostitution, like chattel slavery and settler-colonialism (genocide against the indigenous North Americans), was an ingredient in the US imperialist project, and it served its master well. This argument, that prostitution and colonialism in the US are necessary correlates of each other, deserves its own paper, but here we must move on from it.

In all of these instances, economic conditions provide the impulse for prostitution.

Some basic prostitution statistics

One of the strongest examples of the unbreakable link between, on the one hand, the fact that the US is a prisonhouse of nations, built up through settler-colonialism and slavery, and prostitution on the other hand, is the fact that 40% of prostitutes in the US are Black[3] (Black people constitute only 13.4% of the overall population), while the majority of johns are white.[4] And it is commonplace that many regular johns are police.[5]

According to Havocscope, a website dedicated to researching global black markets, the average cost of a trick in many places is £14–50, with minors earning less. Due to the constant conditions of national oppression in the US, Black people tend to earn less than others. This trend cannot be forgotten when we evaluate prostitution. This is yet one further way the stratification of the trade takes shape. While prostitutes earn twice as much as the average US worker and three times as much as the average woman in the US, much of this income is withheld by pimps.

The sex-positive apologists of prostitution will without fail argue that the trade somehow is or can be “empowering.” But statistically, the majority of prostitutes are victims of child abuse (one study found 73% were physically abused as children)[6], and there is evidence that they enter the trade at an average age of 15.[7] An average starting age of 15 or anywhere close all but eliminates the myth of the consenting prostitute. Underage prostitutes—which is what the majority of them start as— face physical violence, emotional manipulation, and other forms of gendered abuse to coerce them to start.

It is economic necessity that sets the conditions for prostitution—there are no exceptions. Sex that a woman would not otherwise engage except in exchange for money is no longer “sex” but rape, as the ability to consent is removed by economic coercion—and a prostitute is always coerced economically. Prostitution is most often rape.

Some men are prostitutes as well, but 69% of those arrested are women, including arrested johns and pimps.[8]

Atlanta, one of the US cities with a majority Black population, is home to the country’s highest-grossing pimps, who reap about £23614 a week on average.[9] Some of these pimps are women who maintain hierarchy and obedience among the prostitutes, another way stratification manifests. This also makes it obvious that prostitution is caused by economic conditions and is not just (as some maintain) a result of personal sexist attitudes.

For obvious reasons, the majority of assaults experienced by prostitutes go unreported. 89% of adult prostitutes want to quit, but due to economic coercion feel that they cannot.[10] Being in thrall to a pimp, who controls everything and deploys severe psychological and sometimes physical abuse, makes the victim of prostitution far less likely to admit to wanting to quit, which itself skews statistics. Understanding that many enthralled women cannot speak up about their abuse, we would do well to understand that things are far worse than the picture painted by what makes it into official reports.

Which prostitute?

Unlike workers and more specifically proletarians, prostitutes are not engaged in productive, socially-productive, or reproductive labor. They do not receive a wage in the proletarian sense (of receiving a portion of what they produce in a value form/money, with the bulk of their labor being exploited by the owner) and are not devoid of the tools of their occupation, which in this case are the bodies of the prostitutes themselves. To return to the question of stratification, we can observe that in terms of relationship to production, a woman engaged in street-level prostitution without a pimp is distinct from those with pimps, and both are distinct from women who work for escort services or through self-promotion on websites (past examples are Backpage and Craigslist).

For the majority of women trapped in prostitution, the reality of a pimp forces them to the lower strata (this is combined in many cases with national oppression). They have no financial independence from their boss/owner, who makes all or all major decisions regarding their activity: what they do and do not engage in, what subsistence is allowed, and what accommodations are awarded or denied. But those in this most common situation do not qualify in any sense as proletarian despite the pimp behaving like a boss or even like an owner, because he does not simply “own the business”—he owns the women. These women come far closer to being slaves than to being workers. The wage of a slave is nothing except subsistence; the owner of the slave, in our instance the pimp, is the chief executive of every aspect of life. That includes housing, food, clothing, tools, and everything else—provided by the pimp to subsidize the prostitute in order for her to live and continue earning them profit. This is one of the most extreme forms of exploitation, not to mention the most inhumane. Nonetheless, the degree of oppression and brutality one faces does not determine one’s relationship to production, nor does intense oppression alone place one in the social class of the proletariat. Further distancing the enthralled woman from the worker is the fact that she cannot just quit of her own accord; like the slave, she can only organize her escape.

The only method of organization for a slave is rebellion and escape; there are no such things as reformist options for the slave. These contradictions are part of why slavery as a widespread mode of production was replaced by feudalism (in turn replaced by capitalism), which was more manageable, and why capitalism itself is more profitable than slavery in terms of the performance and capacity of the productive forces.

This highlights the position that in the women’s struggle, the only Communist approach regarding the majority of women in prostitution is to organize them out of it, and that this is accomplished mainly through People’s War and socialist revolution. At some stage of revolutionary struggle, this means the use of revolutionary violence against lumpenproletarian gangs that back up the pimps in the military sense. Short of this option, the only acceptable tactic is to secure the transition of individual women into productive work and the opportunity to gain other skills, a total change of social environment, and continuous political education and thought reform. This can improve the conditions of some prostitutes and rehabilitate them into being proletarians, but it cannot emancipate them as women or end prostitution. Furthermore, it requires a high level or organization: it needs Party committees and mass organizations to lead the effort and a Red Army and militias to defend this work and protect the ex-prostitute, securing her escape from the trade, preventing retaliatory action from pimps, and so on.

Any effort to transpose the methods used in workers struggles’ into the realm of prostitution falls hopelessly short. A struggle against a pimp cannot be carried out in the same way as a struggle against a factory owner or regular boss. Arguing that it can and must be carried out the same way—viewing prostitutes as workers and pimps as bosses to be struggled against—really lacks all Marxist understanding of why workers can be organized against bosses and so lapses into a subjective moralist approach to combating oppression. People of this persuasion attempt to implement prostitute unions; like the syndicalist, they dream of a union for everything, and are under the delusion that slaves can unionize and struggle for reforms against their slave-master.

While the so-called Maoists who promote right-opportunism will admit that prostitution cannot persist under socialism, they often make concessions, by believing in and promoting the construction of prostitute trade unions.

Being under the control of a pimp prevents a prostitute from all independent activity and independent thinking. The woman chained by the pimp cannot be organized into a trade union. A union of prostitutes who through some unknown force have ceased to be enthralled to pimps, due to the inevitable emergence of leadership and people who professionally manage such a union, will inevitably just generate its own, internal pimps. This is true because if the union bureaucracy is not completely ineffective (that is, if the union actually exists and functions), they would find themselves enforcing payment from reneging johns, securing housing in times of income shortage, bribing or negotiating with police, and sustaining their professional organizers with dues: they would in essence be pimps with a more charitable subsidiary. The use of violent reprisal and or the lack thereof is not the decisive factor in determining a pimp’s relationship to production—what is principal is the fact of reproducing prostitutes. The likelihood of successfully organizing such a union— or even making a substantial attempt at doing so—is so slim that it hardly merits mention beyond the totally hypothetical. We give it attention here only to point out the utter ridiculousness of the right-opportunist line.

In the case of prostitutes without pimps (who are not being pimped upon the point of being organized), who basically take contracts independently and have full access to their own income, these are more or less the lumpenproletarian (declassed) version of the petty bourgeoisie who own their own means of production. For them the formation of a union is impossible. After all, a “union” of those who own their own means of production (lumpen or not) is actually called a cartel. Furthermore, the existence of a cartel gives impulse to the hiring of a general staff—plus, the stratification of prostitution would allow the cartel to employ other prostitutes under its protection—this again is a return to pimping. Prostitutes who become pimps are not unheard of, and some reports show that new pimps are drawn to the trade through familial connections with prostitutes.[11]

A free market always has a trajectory that can be scientifically understood and described. A free market that sees the formation of cartels to manage the market will in turn eventually see the formation of conglomerates and monopolies. For legal and illegal trade, this inevitably leads to war. It is much more difficult for illegal businesses to establish conglomerates and monopolies due to the nature of the competition in these markets. In this case, competition is for clients (market share), for slaves (“workers”), and for other resources. The organization of competition for illegal businesses brings war faster and more often than it does for legal business. This facet restricts growth—nonetheless, these prostitution cartels would be held to the same economic laws as drug cartels and would need the same level of maintenance (the protection of the business’s interests through violence).

The existence of all sexualized business further engenders pimping, by normalizing sexual performance for money. This is made worse with the line that sex is work.

“Sex work” as a catch-all term

Rarely is the word “worker” so arbitrarily attached to any trade (or multiple trades), without any regard to class as it is with sex trades. Yet the bourgeois feminists of the “sex positivist” variety will insist that “sex worker” is a legitimate and useful category, like “service industry worker.” While it is true that sexualized professions are organized along industrial lines (including aspects of reproductive labor), prostitution, sexual entertainment, and so on do not even constitute a single industry, and this fact certainly doesn’t qualify everyone in these industries as “workers.”

Attempts to treat “sex work” as a coherent scientific category run into trouble immediately. In the case of prostitutes, a slave is not a worker, and a small business venture does not make one a worker either. A stripper is ultimately a performer. No one would assert that a professional comedian or actor is a “worker,” just as professional athletes are not “workers” and so cannot be lumped into the category of “athletic worker.” A stripper, like all performers and entertainers, has a totally different relationship to production from a worker, given the category of workers as it is understood by Marxists. Even in instances where they do not own the venue or website, these professionals still mainly own their own means of production, making them part of the petty bourgeoisie and not part of the proletariat. In the instance of those carrying out their trade in strip clubs, the stripper most often tips out the staff and pays the club a portion of her earnings. For workers, this relationship is the other way around: a hostess at a club or restaurant, like the rest of the general staff, is paid a wage by the business itself (even if she is forced to rely on tips) and thus experiences exploitation of her labor power.

Like a craftsman or small merchant who rents a booth or a stand, the “cam girl,” like the stripper, is merely paying a rent or service fee to the club or website. Furthermore, unlike workers, these people are making a brand for themselves, cultivating a clientele that follows them from outlet to outlet.

Women in pornography in some cases are coerced or trafficked and therefore have a relationship to production more like that of a pimped prostitute. In other cases, the individual has an agent and is free to take contracts, as an actress would—and no professional actress can be classified as a worker. Therefore the overwhelming majority of people engaged in pornography in the US, who occupy one of these two relationships to production, cannot be scientifically understood as workers.

It is far more apt to say that, of those whom (apologists of sexism) call “sex workers” who aren’t engaged in prostitution, the majority are small-scale sex-capitalists of the petty-bourgeois class. The term does not hold the same appeal as “sex worker” for these apologists precisely because it does not serve the purpose of sanitizing sexual exploitation, violence, and rape. While there is much discussion about rape culture, there exists a massive blind spot in its organization through the sex trades.

Sanitization of rape and sexual violence through terminology

“To describe prostitution as sex work and a prostitute as a sex worker means to give legitimacy to sexual exploitation of helpless women and children. It means ignoring the basic factors, which push women and children into prostitution such as poverty, violence and inequalities. It tries to make the profession look dignified and as a ‘job like any other job’.”

—New Vistas Publications, originally printed in People’s March, an organ of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)

The term “sex work” was coined in the 1970s by Carol Leigh, for exactly the purpose identified and criticized in the above quotation. Leigh heads an NGO called BAYSWAN (Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network). A large part of the financing for this organization comes from its collaboration with law enforcement.

As with all efforts to sanitize rape and other violence against women with the term “sex work,” BAYSWAN uses the term as a catch-all to include anyone in the “adult entertainment” industries, as well as street prostitutes. Its ambiguous inclusion of “massage parlor employees” is just an obscurantist way of providing ideological legitimization to brothels, most typically attached to human trafficking and the sexual abuse of undocumented women. While BAYSWAN claims to provide social benefits and other types of help to these women, their liaison work with the police speaks the loudest to their actual class position. The police are nothing more than the strong arm of the bourgeois state. Typical of NGOs in imperialist countries, BAYSWAN serves as a managerial department delegating scraps from the master’s table to some of the most destitute. This is not undertaken in the interests of the people but in the interest of maintaining and reproducing the rule of the imperialist class at home. It is important to state that the main purpose of BAYSWAN, and other NGOs like it, is not to rehabilitate women out of prostitution but instead to normalize the abuse they face, so that their trade is seen as comparable to any normal job, and accepted like any other.

The typical liberal and postmodernist analyses of the oppression faced by prostitutes hold that its roots lie in socially imposed “stigma” rather than in the exploitive nature of capitalism—as if workers who were proud of their assembly-line jobs would be any less abused and exploited. Even proletarian jobs under capitalism that maintain some shoddy “integrity” in the social sense or at least lack “stigma” are still alienating for the worker and operate on exploitation of the workers’ labor. But again, prostitution is unlike any proletarian job, as nothing is produced or reproduced, and the “labor” itself is not socially necessary. In fact, for women as a whole and particularly for women of the proletariat, it is socially destructive.

For the Marxist, not recognizing prostitutes and entertainers as proletarians is a matter of political economy and not of any kind of outdated moralism. Marxism does not blame the victims, in this case women forced into sexual violence and exploitation due to economic hardships.

Marxists have never evaluated prostitution in moral terms but instead have insisted on examining it in political-economic terms and, as always, with a class analysis. This is why Lenin considered bourgeois women to be engaged in prostitution. Lenin also grasped the progressive aspect of those would-be defenders of prostitutes, but he drew the line at defending prostitution itself. In his conversations with Clara Zetkin in 1920, he explained how this moral impulse can turn into a backward idea:

“I have heard some peculiar things on this matter from Russian and German comrades. I must tell you. I was told that a talented woman communist in Hamburg is publishing a paper for prostitutes and that she wants to organize them for the revolutionary fight. Rosa acted and felt as a communist when in an article she championed the cause of the prostitutes who were imprisoned for any transgression of police regulations in carrying on their dreary trade. They are, unfortunately, doubly sacrificed by bourgeois society. First, by its accursed property system, and, secondly, by its accursed moral hypocrisy. That is obvious. Only he who is brutal or short-sighted can forget it. But still, that is not at all the same thing as considering prostitutes—how shall I put it?—to be a special revolutionary militant section, as organizing them and publishing a factory paper for them. Aren’t there really any other working women in Germany to organize, for whom a paper can be issued, who must be drawn into your struggles? The other is only a diseased excrescence. It reminds me of the literary fashion of painting every prostitute as a sweet Madonna. The origin of that was healthy, too: social sympathy, rebellion against the virtuous hypocrisy of the respectable bourgeois. But the healthy part became corrupted and degenerate.”

While addressing the means that bourgeois forces use to “combat” prostitution (or, in reality, to maintain it in whatever form they need it to take in a given historical circumstance), Lenin was equally critical: “What means of struggle were proposed by the elegant bourgeois delegates to the congress? Mainly two methods—religion and police. They are, it appears, the valid and reliable methods of combating prostitution.”

Lenin did not argue for the legal recognition of prostitution to combat social stigma, but for its end, through socialist revolution, which destroys the root economic causes of it. We must understand that even after socialist revolution, exploitation does not vanish overnight; it is done away with in the processes of the dictatorship of the proletariat and, critically, with cultural revolution. Marxists, while insisting that prostitution is not “sex work,” still stand firm against the hypocritical moralization of the bourgeoisie, who create and preserve the very conditions that force women into prostitution.

What is crucial to understand in the position of the great Lenin is that he simultaneously opposed the organizing of prostitutes as prostitutes for the revolution while at the same time condemning the bourgeois moralism that helps reproduce prostitution and deepens the oppression of prostitutes. After the revolution, Lenin and those who held the revolutionary line after his premature death worked tirelessly to abolish prostitution. We will get more into the experience of the socialist projects’ approaches to prostitution in later sections.

Arguments for legalization

Those most committed to the sanitization of rape and sexual violence are the most vocal advocates for the legalization of prostitution, which Marxists emphatically oppose. Legalization, far from securing “workers’ rights” in the instance of prostitution, only opens the floodgates for major investment of capital on the part of imperialists. With legalization, the pimp becomes protected by law—taking on a new form, and the prostitute legally owes and pays him a portion of her earnings. With legalization come legal recruitment and the widespread indoctrination of women and girls to prepare them for the trade.

Arguments that legal recognition protects the employee are based on bourgeois moralism and not Marxist political economy—and profound naiveté or ignorance of the actual workings of capitalism. Miners, factory workers, and fast food workers all have laws that are in place (usually hard-won through class struggle) that are supposed to protect them, yet as long as capitalism persists they are hounded, worked to death, and exploited without mercy. The legal recognition of these trades has not stopped the boss from stepping on our necks.

The idea that legal recognition will somehow limit the use of trafficked girls and women is also absurd. Pornography has been legal for decades, and the flow of black-market pornography and coerced women has not gone away. For that matter, many workers are hired illegally for all sorts of trades, hyper-exploited, and then discarded like old shoes. This would be magnified with legal prostitution. Countries with legal recognition of prostitution can and do see an increase in sex tourism;[12] people from all over the world can go exploit and dominate women in these countries, the only difference being that in these places the bourgeois State can tax it officially rather than unofficially through payoffs.

“Prostitution Is Sexual Violence,” first printed in People’s March, an organ of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), explains the global forces behind prostitution in this way:

“Firstly, the sex trade is now organized on a global basis just as any other multinational enterprise. It has become a transnational industry. It is one of the most developed and specialized industries [and] offers a wide range of services to the customers, and has most innovative market strategies to attract clients all over the world. The principal players and beneficiaries of the sex industry are cohesive and organized. The intricate web of actors involved in the sex trade today includes not just the prostitutes and the client, but an entire syndicate consisting of the pimps, the brothel owners, the police, the politicians and the local doctors. The principal actors connected to the sex trade are not confined by narrow national or territorial boundaries in the context of a globalized world. They operate both legally as well as clandestinely and it is believed that the profits … to the organizations of [the] sex-industry currently equal those flowing out of the global illegal trade in arms and narcotics. Moreover [it is] like any [of the] other multinational enterprises, such as the tourism industry, entertainment industry, travel and transportation industry, international media industry, underground narcotics and crime industry and so on.”

From this they draw the following conclusion:

“Thus the magnitude, expanse, organization, role of capital accumulation and range of market strategies employed to sell sexual services make the contemporary global sex industry qualitatively different from the old practice of prostitution and sex trade.”

Suffice it to say that genuine Marxists must insist that any legalization in the US would be the further bane of women in the nations oppressed by US imperialism. As “Prostitution is Sexual Violence” puts it,

“in fact this argument [for legalization] is being promoted to make it easy to legalize the import of prostitutes to the imperialist countries and other centers of tourism.”

They highlight the dialectical relationship between the sex trades of the imperialist and oppressed nations. We will quote the pamphlet at length:

“As Engels succinctly put it, it is ‘the absolute domination of the male over the female sex as the fundamental law of society.’ She is a victim of patriarchal oppression within the profession. Once a woman enters the trade, there is no way out. She is completely at the mercy of the sex-starved customer, the pimp and the police. Physical assaults and rapes are a daily occurrence. More than half of the prostituted women in the Third World countries had contracted HIV/AIDs. A 1985 Canadian report on the sex industry reported that the women in prostitution in that country suffer [a] mortality rate 40 times the national average. It could be even worse in countries like India. All this proves that the argument that once prostitution is legalized it can be more effectively regulated[,] making it safe for all those involved, that the spread of HIV can be slowed, that sex workers can have access to health and so on, are sheer fraud. The fact is that all forms of sexual commodification, whether legalized or not, lead to an increase in the level of abusive and exploitative activity.

The interest of the State in permitting legalization is not the prostitute and her rights but to check the spread of sexually transmitted deceases. It involves heavy regulation of prostitution through a whole host of zoning and licensing laws. Zoning segregates the prostitutes into a separate locality and their civil liberties are restricted outside the specified zone. Licensing means issue of licenses, registration and the disbursement of health cards to the women. Legalization makes it mandatory for the women to undergo medical check-ups regularly or face imprisonment.

Legalizing prostitution is legalizing violence.”

We must look beyond the ideological sanitizers of sexual violence, who speak loudly from academic, activist, and “harm reduction” circles and look closer at the actual economic forces behind these advocates. It is the commercial sex industry that stands to benefit the most from legalized prostitution, and so they are its biggest backers. Legalization is just a moral shield to protect and secure greater profits from the continued sexual abuse of women. With legalization, small brothels can become big chains, and whole corporations can be built up; those involved legally and illegally in the sex industry who possess the most capital are in the best position to reap the profits. The same issue exists with the legalization of the recreational use of marijuana: the small-time grower/dealer gets swallowed up by the white corporate elite, while oppressed-nations people remain incarcerated for their role in the trade. Legalization, in the final instance, benefits only the ruling class.

The Indian Maoists address the question of legalization succinctly:

“Legalization of prostitution is not a solution because legalization implies men’s self-evident right to be customers. Accepting services offered through a normal job is neither violent nor abusive. Legalizing it as a normal occupation would be an acceptance of the division of labor, which men have created, a division, where women’s real occupational choices are far narrower than men’s. Legalization will not remove the harmful effects suffered by the women. Women will still be forced to protect themselves against a massive invasion of strange men, as well as the physical violence.

Legalization means [the imposition] of regulation by the State to ensure the continuation and perpetuation of prostitution. It implies that they have to pay taxes, i.e., the prostitute needs to serve more customers to get the money needed. Legalization means that more men will become customers, and more women are needed as prostitutes, and more women, especially women in poverty, will be forced into prostitution. Legalizing prostitution will only increase the chances of exploitation. The experiences of the countries where prostitution was legalized also show how this [has] given [a] big boost to the trade and [has] increased sexual abuse. For instance, in Australia and in some states in the US where legalization was implemented, it was found that there was an alarming increase in the number of illegal brothels too along with an increase in the legal trade.”

Prostitution, through allowing the purchase of access to women’s bodies, harms all women, and not just those in the trade—legalization, far from being harm reduction, just increases social harm for all women. Recruitment is one of the cornerstones of pimping. With legalization, the horrors of recruitment and the pressure to be recruited take on dystopian proportions.

American exceptionalism: The legacies of revisionism and settler-colonialism

The women’s struggle was going strong in the Communist Party of the USA—up until Earl Browder became general secretary of the Party and began implementing his arch-revisionist line. The revisionist ideology that overtook the CPUSA—Browderism and then William Z. Foster’s continuation of it—was like a prototype of the revisionism that would take hold in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even though the latter would completely consume the former, the former was in many ways its forerunner. Foster, like Brezhnev, would come out against his predecessor—and just as it was with Brezhnev’s condemnations, this was only superficial politicking that still carried forward, and in fact fortified, the revisionist position. This revisionism brought deep harm to the women’s movement, with a lasting stain on the US left today that extends far beyond the husk that calls itself the CPUSA.

Browderism successfully liquidated not only the program of the Party but the Party itself in 1944. It comes as no shock that Browder’s wife led the liquidation of the women’s struggle against antirevisionist women in the Party like Mary Inman. Inman wrote a great deal on the question of prostitution, devoting three chapters to it in her book In Woman’s Defense. To understand the question of prostitution today, it is important to grasp the reverberating effects of Browderism. Rightist lines that seek to either sanitize prostitution by dressing it up as “sex work” or misconstrue prostitutes as a revolutionary subject all result in part from a faith in American exceptionalism—first, in that they all seek to establish a reformist, class-collaborationist approach to prostitution; and second and more importantly, because they divorce the phenomenon from imperialism. It is important to remember that the bourgeois definition of “work” is anything you do for money. In this way they can frame owners and bosses as workers alongside those they exploit, since any job (legal or illegal) can therefore be misconstrued as work.

Many of these rightists (who are abundant in progressive struggles as well as in every revisionist organization) will concede that sex-based tourism in the Third World and human trafficking are, in principle at least, something to be opposed. They take no major issue with the writings on the subject from the Maoists in India, including the text “Prostitution Is Sexual Violence.” But when it comes to applying these universal principles at home in their imperialist country, they stir up the ghost of American exceptionalism. For reasons they cannot explain without their belief in this exceptionalism. They impose an artificial disconnect: here in the First World (not just in the US but clearly in Canada also, with the opportunists in the fake PCR-RCP), prostitutes are now workers, and furthermore an important part of the proletariat!—and to hell with actually studying nearly 200 years of Communist agitation and propaganda on the matter! They charge those who do assert the correct historical position with being outdated dogmatists. To oppose prostitution from the Marxist position, just as Marxists have always opposed it, earns one a volley of buzzwords and condemnation as a SWERF (that is, “sex worker exclusionary radical feminist”)—even while (a) “sex work” is a made-up term that runs counter to Marxist political economy and (b) Marxists explicitly reject radical feminism on a fundamental level. Without any economic analysis, the American exceptionalists have made defending prostitution a prerequisite for being a leftist, not only defending it from a moral standpoint but even going so far as to frame degradation and abuse as empowering. Revisionism still plays its part in turning a thing into its opposite.

Mary Inman described the continuum of revisionism aptly:

“Furthermore, wrecking on the Woman Question has not only continued since the ousting of Browder, but has even been accelerated under the leadership of Dennis (ably abetted by Foster, who warned against an ‘over correction of errors’ at a time when nothing had been done to stop their liquidatory practices affecting Communist work amongst women).” (13 Years of CPUSA Misleadership on the Woman Question)

The liquidation of Communist work among women today is assisted tremendously by postmodernism, which has practically been established as “common sense” for the left and occupies a near-hegemonic position in mainstream US activist movements. And of course, postmodernist cretins agree with Browder that the class struggle itself is mitigated in a country like the US, where “free women” can “freely choose” prostitution and it is backward to pass critical judgment on the trade of women.

Inman referred to this thinking as the “culture of prostitution”:

“Prostitution has been laid at women’s door, and it is said that she enters the practice from choice because it suits her nature, and is one of the attributes of Eve. Nor is this all. Prostitution has created its own degenerate philosophy, which has penetrated into circles not directly affected by it.” (In Woman’s Defense)

The contemporary apologists still maintain that prostitution is a choice, by insisting they are workers like any other who are free to choose a career (within the confines of their class and circumstance). Even though they do not resort to Scripture to justify their views, the same metaphysics finds traction.

Inman contributes valuable criticism of bourgeois culture’s portrayal of prostitutes in films as free-spirited travelers who select their own johns. Writing in the 1930s and 40s, Inman portrays this superstructural device, which has remained in currency since the time of her writing:

“Persons who acquired their opinions about prostitution from such as Mae West pictures, wherein the talented star portrayed the woman of questionable character who went freely about the country having adventures, knowing romance, wearing swell clothes and dominating the situation in which she found herself, selecting carefully her lovers and avoiding those men who did not appeal to her esthetic tastes, in fact roving, wise-cracking, free-lance, exploited by no one, will have the wrong picture of the real lives of such women.” (In Woman’s Defense)

We can cite obvious examples like the film Pretty Woman, but the message is driven home in the more up-to-date postmodern approaches in films and television shows, where the term “sex worker” has fully replaced the term “prostitute,” and “prostitute” is now viewed as nothing more than a sexist slur. The culture of prostitution still exists, finding its niche in the phony progressivism of postmodernism, which tirelessly seeks to pass off a fanciful illusion as the truth.

On the website Mel Magazine we find articles like “The Most Realistic Sex-Worker Portrayals in Pop Culture, According to Sex Workers.” In this article we find such gems as the following: “The Deuce is a sweaty buffet of debauchery calling back to the kind of heroin-soaked freedom Janis Joplin sang about.” Only the most profoundly deluded petty-bourgeois dilettante would conflate heroin with freedom, as it exists mainly as a weapon to keep the lower classes enchained, robbing them of even the most basic freedoms.

The author continues, “The protagonist is Candy, a clever veteran escort played by the excellent, but oddly cast Maggie Gyllenhaal, who walks the tracks, pimp-free. Unfazed and visibly bored, Candy works alone while her cohorts — mostly large and lovely black women — get smacked around by their white regulars and bullied by their pimps. She says to one fast-talking hopeful, ‘No one makes money off this pussy but me.’ Candy’s optimism in this regard is admirable but naïve (capitalism, for instance); still, she has more agency than most of the show’s other characters.”

The tokenization and abuse of Black women is merely unpleasant background noise for the free-spirited “Candy,” whom the author finds immediately relatable. No mention is made of the fact this devil-may-care character rises throughout the series to become a well-paid pornographer and exploiter of other women. The only real criticism of the show put forward by the article is on the basis of crude identity politics—they complain that the show was written by men and not co-written by “sex workers.” This is the best they can come up with when parroting the culture of prostitution today.

For the petty-bourgeois dilettante, “sex workers” are often imagined as struggling heroines, usually white women who choose prostitution as a clever way of bucking the system, and thus they view it as a rebellious act against capitalism itself. They are far removed from the mass tragedy and genocide that the women of the Third World face. Nor can they fathom the anguish of the people of the internal colonies in the US, where prostitution is the most prevalent.

The “sex worker” image constructed by bourgeois intellectuals has a special allure for the petty bourgeoisie: it evokes the myth of class ascension (like that of the fictional Candy mentioned above). With this myth we find a girl—most likely from a troubled background—who grinds her way toward becoming a small business proprietor. Maybe she becomes a pornographer producing the films after starring in them. For the identity politics crowd, this is thrilling because now exploited women are the ones exploiting women. They are not at all concerned that exploitation remains intact and has now simply found a better way to apologize for itself. This rags-to-riches story so often told is a powerful device in the service of ruling-class management of class relationships under capitalism. After all, their argument goes, this is just the unchained agency of free modern women.

In the following passage, Inman might as well be writing in the present day on the question of those who argue for the existence of agency in prostitution by rebranding it “sex work”:

“There is a noticeable tendency in much of the literature on prostitution to confuse a wanted sex act with prostitution, and efforts are made to show by indirection, or otherwise, that they are either the same or that the former leads into the later.” (In Woman’s Defense)

Of course, she also recognized that the phenomenon is not exclusive to women from the working class:

“The scope of prostitution is wider than the working-class women, for by no means are all the daughters of the middle-class families secure, nor, for that matter, are daughters from professional and upper-class families where fortunes were affected by economic breakdown.” (In Woman’s Defense)

Anyone “freely choosing” “sex work” without the pressure of economic conditions is not experiencing the reality of the declassed women Inman is writing about, or of the majority of women trapped in prostitution in the US for that matter.

Browderism did not limit its assaults only to the women’s struggle. It also directed attacks against the national liberation struggles of the internal colonies, and a major casualty of this time was the Communist work among the Black Nation. The work among the Black Nation was more or less eroded by the Popular Front period of the Communist International, and it was none other than Popular Frontism that gave powerful impulse to the rightists in the Party, led by Browder and then Foster.

The national question has all but gone from the program of the CPUSA and only a few of the revisionist relics of the New Communist Movement still uphold it even superficially. And even given their acknowledgment of the necessity of this work, no meaningful struggles are led to conquer the power of self-determination for the internal colonies. And it is perfectly natural for these types who insist on delinking prostitution from colonialism to be seduced into the quagmire of prostitution apologia. No honest study of colonialism can go without mentioning the settlers breaking the colonized into prostitution, through direct violent coercion as well as the violence of economic coercion, both equal in their atrocity.

Even cursory examinations of the real conditions faced by indigenous people in the US and people in the internal colonies—even studies carried out by bourgeois researchers—can highlight the way settler-colonialism manifests in prostitution, as the following passage reveals:

“Many AI/AN [American Indian and Alaskan Native] people live in adverse social and physical environments that place them at high risk of exposure to traumatic events with rates of violent victimization more than twice the national average. High rates of poverty, homelessness, and chronic health problems in AI/AN communities create vulnerability to prostitution and trafficking among AI/AN women by increasing economic stress and decreasing the ability to resist predators. AI/AN women are subject to high rates of childhood sexual assaults, domestic violence, and rape both on and off reservations. The vast majority of prostituted women were sexually assaulted as children, usually by multiple perpetrators, and were revictimized as adults in prostitution as they experienced being hunted, dominated, harassed, pimped, assaulted, battered, and sometimes murdered by sex buyers, pimps, and traffickers.” (Farley, Deer, Golding, et al., Prostitution and Trafficking of American/Indian Alaska Native Women in Minnesota; citations removed from quotation for brevity)

The argument that prostitution is a free choice, combined with the disproportionately high representation of Black and native women in prostitution, is nothing short of the thinly veiled racism of the petty bourgeoisie.

It is as absurd and cruel to divorce these facts from the US settler-colonial project as it would be to pretend that South African apartheid had nothing to do with prostitution in that country, as elaborated on here:

“Indigenous South African women are at great risk for all of the factors that increase vulnerability to prostitution: family and community violence including an epidemic of sexual violence, life-threatening poverty, lack of educational and job opportunities, lack of health services throughout their lifetimes, and lack of culturally appropriate social services that would help them escape prostitution. When alternatives to prostitution are not available—although it can appear to be a choice—prostitution is coerced by social harms such as child abuse, racism, sexism, and poverty. All of these forms of violence against women, including prostitution, are related.” (Madlala-Routledge, Farley, Barengayabo, et al., “‘I feel like I’m still living under apartheid’: Racialized Sexual Exploitation of 100 Women in South African Prostitution”)

While bourgeois feminist researchers can come up with no actual method of abolishing prostitution, they can be useful insofar as their data can be verified. Socialism, meanwhile, has direct means of both fighting and abolishing prostitution successfully.

According to Lenin, “no amount of ‘moral indignation’ (hypocritical in 99 cases out of 100) about prostitution can do anything against this trade in female flesh; so long as wage-slavery exists, inevitably prostitution too will exist. All the oppressed and exploited classes throughout the history of human societies have always been forced (and it is in this that their exploitation consists) to give up to their oppressors, first, their unpaid labor and, second, their women as concubines for the ‘masters.’”

The great socialist projects’ approaches to combating and abolishing prostitution

“We are now approaching a social revolution in which the economic foundations of monogamy as they have existed hitherto will disappear just as surely as those of its complement—prostitution.”

—Engels, Origin of the Family

“Not only have the people in the Soviet Union abolished prostitution, but wherever the people have become the dominant economic power, even in part of the country, they have abolished prostitution, for example in the districts in China controlled by the people’s movements.”

—Mary Inman, In Woman’s Defense

Engels was speaking of a hypothetical socialist revolution, but one that would inevitably take place based on a concrete analysis of concrete conditions. This social revolution would erupt in Russia in 1917 and have world-changing consequence:

“The workers’ revolution in Russia has shattered the basis of capitalism and has struck a blow at the former dependence of women upon men. All citizens are equal before the work collective. They are equally obliged to work for the common good and are equally eligible to the support of the collective when they need it. A woman provides for herself not by marriage but by the part she plays in production and the contribution she makes to the people’s wealth.” (Kollontai, “Prostitution and Ways of Fighting It”)

Kollontai—understanding that society maintained much of its old superstructure post-revolution as well as widespread conditions of economic hardship, low productive capacity, and other difficulties resulting from the still-developing economic base—firmly grasped that the revolution, while having abolished the main causes of these things (private property, etc.) still had much to do in the struggle against prostitution that persisted in these conditions.

She took up the charge to lead the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in this effort:

“Some people might say that since prostitution will have no place once the power of the workers and the basis of communism are strengthened, no special campaign is necessary. This type of argument fails to take into account the harmful and disuniting effect that prostitution has on the construction of a new communist society.”

The above quotation should be particularly salient for Maoists who grasp that revolution must continue under the dictatorship of the proletariat to align society with the new socialist base.

She further insisted that the prostitution that persisted under the proletarian dictatorship posed a great risk to social unity, to class unity, and to the economic construction of the Soviet Union. Her position was that prostitution was a private enterprise running counter to the workers’ republic and hence had to be abolished.

And great changes had indeed begun to take place in the workers’ republic, revolutionizing both the base and the superstructure. Merchants of any sort were now considered speculators, and all citizens were to be involved in productive labor. Kollontai writes,

“We do not, therefore, condemn prostitution and fight against it as a special category but as an aspect of labor desertion. To us in the workers’ republic it is not important whether a woman sells herself to one man or to many, whether she is classed as a professional prostitute selling her favors to a succession of clients or as a wife selling herself to her husband. All women who avoid work and do not take part in production or in caring for children are liable, on the same basis as prostitutes, to be forced to work.”

In the period of tsarist Russia, just prior to the revolution, prostitution was regulated but not illegal. There was punishment for procuring and pimping but not for prostitution. The revolution stepped in to shake the world and change everything. This included the lives of women in prostitution, who were now to be provided productive jobs.

Given that the conditions which give rise to prostitution were being combated, and that former prostitutes were undergoing political education and engaged in labor, prostitution could not remain the force that it had been in tsarist Russia. Women were mobilized in Soviet society, and prostitution did not come back in force until capitalist restoration post-Khrushchev.

China, having the oldest brothels in the world, surpassing even those of the Netherlands, had much to accomplish after Liberation in 1949, approaches developed in the liberated areas, where prostitution had been abolished must now be applied country wide. Pre-revolutionary China, like tsarist Russia, had only regulated prostitution rather than legally banning it. In pre-revolutionary China there were “licensed prostitutes,” who were some of the worst victims of social oppression. These were called “mist and flower maidens.” After the victory of the revolution, these women were provided lodging and education in socialist reformatories. Most crucially, these women were liberated and taught the differences between the old and new societies.

One of the first acts of the socialist State in the People’s Republic of China was the abolition of old marriage laws that treated women as the property of their husbands. The overthrow of these laws benefited the former prostitutes, many of whom were women and children sold into lives of sexual slavery by husbands or fathers trying to avoid starvation. The liberation of China from the yoke of imperialist and colonial domination reverberated through all of Chinese society (and in fact throughout the whole world), with Mao’s great declaration that “women hold up half the sky” signaling a new age where women would come to carry out half of production.

The women’s movement found its continuation and further flourished in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, when Jiang Qing helped to lead an assault on the old culture, which at best portrayed women as little more than accomplices to male revolutionaries—and at worst as property. Notably, this can be seen in the remake of the Chinese classic “The Bride with White Hair,” wherein the heroine, instead of relying on a male soldier as in the original, sees to her own liberation. And the old society’s conceptions of prostitution came under similar attack.

With the persecution of Comrade Jiang and her three comrades, who represented the Communist line against the reactionary line of Deng Xiaoping and his clique, came an assault on the women’s movement of an even greater magnitude than the one that occurred in the US.

Among many other comparable measures, Deng removed women from such jobs as factory worker and train driver and threw them into office administrator positions.[13] Gendered labor that had been combated during the Cultural Revolution found its full expression in the Deng years.[14] Sex-based advertising and prostitution made a big comeback.[15] Female stereotyping made a return even in children’s books, training a new generation for the restored capitalist mode of production.[16] The Japanese film Yearning for Home that depicted prostitutes was aired on state TV and defended by the Dengite-run Beijing Review against critics who insisted that the film harmed young women and ran counter to the revolution. The old operas that had been banned—ones like “The Drunken Beauty,” about an emperor and his concubines—were performed at the Peking Opera. Pornography and prostitution were restored with capitalism.

Of course, the existing People’s Wars in Peru, Turkey, India, and the Philippines provide living examples of how to regard prostitution, how to end it in Communist-controlled base areas, and how to organize women out of the trade and into the People’s Army. Unlike bourgeois or imperialist armies, People’s Armies have no need for prostitution in “boosting the morale” of male troops, and so bands of prostitutes do not follow the soldiers. People’s soldiers are upstanding and fortified against such low behavior.

Before becoming a full-blown revisionist, Parvati described the effect of People’s War on the women peasants of Nepal:

“People’s War has given a revolutionary alternative life to young aspiring men and women. Women’s lives, particularly in rural areas, are so monotonous, set in a repeated pattern of reproductive activities. [With] marriage being arranged at much younger age[s], they have no way of escaping from this beaten track life cycle. For aspiring women to venture out of village means almost getting trapped into prostitution or being trafficked to India (it is estimated that about 150,000 women from Nepal are trafficked to urban centers of India!) or are trapped to [low-paying] sweat shops where sexual harassment is rampant. Thus for such aspiring women, the People’s War offers them [a] challenging opportunity to work side by side with men on equal term[s] and to prove their worth mentally and physically.” (“Women’s Participation in People’s War in Nepal”)

Conclusion

Many apologists for prostitution refuse to hear analysis on the question from anyone who is not “a sex worker.” Others still will claim that they are or have been “sex workers” themselves, and are therefore beyond the need for an objective class analysis. Few have actually studied the economic forces behind prostitution, getting deeper into what is actually being bought and sold, who owns the business, what class forces are in contradiction, and so on. Many still refuse to explore prostitution as an economic phenomenon—one occurring in a world in the thrall of imperialism at that. They have (likely before even reading this article) come to the conclusion that the only possible criticisms of prostitution are moral ones, ones that intend to stigmatize the prostitute for daring to defy the chastity sometimes imposed on women. Like the bourgeois religious hypocrite, they cannot fathom prostitution beyond moral objection—morality is the only framework they can find.

As discussed above, Marxists, unlike any of the above-mentioned camps, do not view prostitution (or almost anything else) in terms of morality, but in terms of class struggle—this means we criticize on the basis of an economic analysis. It is, after all, economic conditions that provide impulse to the trade in the first place. Moral objection does not rate here.

There are those who will say they are Marxists, but that they are “not dogmatists”—thereby justifying their clean break with 200 years of analysis on the matter. They may not be dogmatic Marxists, but they are dogmatists nonetheless: dogmatists of postmodernism, of identity politics, of third-wave feminism, and other degenerate bourgeois ideology. They do not so much object to the conclusions of Marxism (at least not most of the time), and they may even have a strong dislike of capitalism. What they oppose is the Marxist method—the same method that is universal and ever-improving, which has led comrades throughout history to develop clear lines on the matter of prostitution. This method and framework for analysis has been sharpened through discovery and mainly through violent class struggle. It has made new discoveries (a scientific analysis of modern imperialism, an understanding of the necessity and forms of proletarian dictatorship, cultural revolution, etc.) along the way. None of the apologists of prostitution can offer a single development, discovery, or condition that fundamentally alters the historic Marxist analysis of prostitution.

Marxists have never understood prostitution as simply the plight of “fallen women” who were just “raised wrong” in slums or other harmful conditions. Marxism has never sought to blame women for the conditions that force them into prostitution. Yet accusing all critics of prostitution of this thinking is the knee-jerk reaction of the apologist. This is the only response they can imagine from those who do not see the trade as “empowering” or “a job like any other.” No job, legal or illegal in the capitalist system, is empowering; all jobs without exception are alienating.

So how do the sanitizers of anti-woman violence come to their distorted views? Well, when an adventurous and impulsive petty-bourgeois dilettante, like one of Mae West’s characters, willingly chooses “sex work” (as a growing number of petty-bourgeois people are claiming) and finds the “stigma” to be the only uncomfortable part, all while never experiencing the raw and inhuman degradation that is imposed on most women in these trades—her goal can only be to sanitize the whole thing. In their attempts to be seen as better than the majority, they work to rebrand any trade that has to do with sex or that has been sexualized—now framing entertainers and performers and even enslaved women as “workers,” now not only defending prostitution as a trade but even preaching its virtue to anyone they can guilt into listening. Some of them will even insist against all reason that these trades must be allowed to continue under the socialist system. But, of course, a socialist society cannot “legalize” or “nationalize” prostitution without the state becoming a pimp. These women who claim that “sex work” empowers them, at the same time, are acknowledging that regular working-class jobs are disempowering. This speaks volumes about their class stand and ambitions, and their detestation of the working class. They would rather be sexually exploited than engage in production alongside the proletariat—these can only be considered sham Marxists, and likened to compradors among women. For these it is not economic poverty or low social status or colonialism that drives them to the trade—it is the mere threat, faced by all petty bourgeoisie, of forced integration into the proletariat. They are in solidarity with the rest of their class in labor desertion.

Feminism emerged with dual aspects of progress and reaction. It has existed with these contradictions ever since and has principally become a tool of the bourgeoisie, in a buffet of bourgeois feminisms. The worst of these take facets of women’s oppression and simply re-dress them as their opposites, women’s empowerment. Now the most degrading trades imposed upon women are the most championed. The petty-bourgeois sex adventurist will brag about making more than the stupid women at work in maid service, food service, transportation, and factory work. She will say that she is smarter and has managed to get out of the rat race. She identifies her trade as labor desertion, and she is correct. But she is incorrect that this somehow makes her choice the correct one while the women of the proletariat are just sheep. It is one thing to have an incorrect idea—it is another to spread it like gospel.

The petty-bourgeois sex-capitalist has nothing in common with working women. She lives a life of bourgeois decadence and is a commercial for misogyny. She insists that it is a good and normal thing for women to be able to be rented. She gives men a fair price, so as to reproduce the idea within themselves and among men broadly, that women are a commodity. All the women who struggle against this collectively form a sort of picket line, and the petty-bourgeois sex-capitalist gleefully crosses it. She is uninhibited.

For the Communist in the women’s struggle, the line is perfectly clear: we must serve the people. Inman writes,

“The struggle against prostitution is the struggle against the capitalist class. Since prostitution has an economic basis and the woman enters it because of economic insecurity, one form of the struggle must be economic: demands for a living wage for all women who work.

And for those denied a role in industry or social production, either directly or indirectly in legitimate service, demands must be raised that they be given compensation. Social production in general must be made to bear the responsibility of their support until such a time as they can be given a part in such work.

But an effective struggle against prostitution must also attack and expose the whole cynical, decadent moral structure that supports sex-subjugation, and the role of sex vigilantes who then dog the footsteps of subject women.” (Inman, In Woman’s Defense)

Thus our aim is not to stigmatize the women forced into prostitution but to justify their liberation from slavery with a Marxist class analysis.

Article by Kavga

Notes

Sarah Handley-Cousins, “Prostitutes!” National Museum of Civil War Medicine website.

Melissa Gira Grant, “When Prostitution Wasn’t a Crime,” AlterNet.

rights4girls.org, “Racial & Gender Disparities in the Sex Trade.”

Devon D. Brewer, John J. Potterat, and Stephen Q. Muth, “Clients of Prostitute Women.”

Matthias Gafni, “Oakland Police Scandal: How Often Are Cops Having Sex with Prostitutes?” Mercury News (Bay Area).

Jo-Anne Madeleine Stoltz, Kate Shannon, Thomas Kerr, et al., “Associations between Childhood Maltreatment and Sex Work in a Cohort of Drug-Using Youth,” Social Science & Medicine 65, no. 6, 1214–21.

Janie Har, “Is the Average Age of Entry into Sex Trafficking between 12 and 14 Years Old?” PolitiFact; Emi Koyama, “The Average Age of Entry into Prostitution Is NOT 13,” eminism.com.

Howard N. Snyder, “Arrest in the United States, 1990-2010,” U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Erin Fuchs, “Atlanta’s Underground Sex Trade Is Booming,” Business Insider.

Melissa Farley, “Risks of Prostitution,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 3, no. 1, 97–108.

Meredith Dank, Bilal Khan, P. Mitchell Downey, et al. “Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major US Cities,” Urban Institute.

Barbara Kavemann, “Findings of a Study on the Impact of the German Prostitution Act,” Social Science Women’s Research Institute at the Protestant University of Applied Sciences Freiburg.

Hong Guo, “The Impacts of Economic Reform on Women in China,” MA thesis, University of Regina, 1997.

New Vistas Publications, Women in the Chinese Revolution (1921–1950).

Elaine Jeffreys, China, Sex and Prostitution.

New Vistas Publications, Women in the Chinese Revolution.

43 notes · View notes

trashboatprince · 4 years

Text

I saw a challenge to write something sexy about Mr. Harrison and Mr. Cortese from this post by @naniiebimworks and I’m not missing the chance to make content of them in written form. Love me some Crowley and Aziraphale’s personas.

Summery: Warlock is too old for his nanny, but he’s not too old to start having a private tutor. Make that two tutors, who happen to look a bit like the nanny and the gardener who followed her off the grounds.

And already there’s something going on between them.

AKA Crowley and Aziraphale are really into how the other looks for this next phase of the plans.

Warning: these two are already in a relationship. Not full on content, but there is touching and such, gotta keep it pg-13 cause some of my followers are young. Also, not beta’d, so forgive the grammar errors

EDIT: There’s an extra mature chapter on ao3

On with the fic!

Nanny Ashtoreth put in her two weeks without much of a fuss, politely telling the Dowlings that young Warlock had no need for her anymore, it was time for him to get his lessons from a professional and not a nanny who was smarter than expected.

She recommended someone she said she had worked with previously, that he was highly recommended.

The day after she departed from the estate, there was a knock at the door and a tall, sharp man in an even sharper, dark suit stood there, carrying a briefcase under his arm. “I’m Mr. Harrison,” he greeted the doorman with a voice that dared him to say something, “Nanny Ashtoreth told me that this is where I would I be teaching.”

Without waiting, he stepped past the doorman and into the foyer, where he greeted Mrs. Dowling, who stepped down the stairs to greet him.

Mr. Harrison reminded her greatly of Nanny, that they looked rather similar. The same red colored hair, same facial structure, though clearly Harrison his sharp cheek bones under a beard.

“We’re cousins.” He told her simply, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.

He would start his lessons with Warlock tomorrow at nine.

The next morning, while Mr. Harrison was teaching Warlock his first lessons on the ancient armies of the world, there was yet another knock at the door.

The doorman was surprised to see a man with wild, near-white hair and an equally wild beard standing there, smiling. He was dressed in creams and golds, a stark contrast to the clothing of the other man who had been at the door the day before. “Good morning!” He greeted the poor employee with a Welsh tint to his voice. “I am Mr. Cortese, I was hired to be the private tutor to Warlock Dowling.”

“Uhh…” The doorman blinked, before making himself professional. “I am so sorry to inform you that Mrs. Dowling has already hired a tutor yesterday.”

“Oh?” Mr. Cortese asked, eyebrows raised high as he glanced about past the man, as if looking for the person who took his job. “I am sure that the young boy wouldn’t mind two instructors.”

The man at the door sighed and said he would get his boss to speak to the stranger. Ten minutes later, Mrs. Dowling hired Mr. Cortese to be Warlock’s second tutor, taking two days of the week and sharing one with his coworker.

She took note that he reminded her of someone, but she wasn’t sure. Sort of like the weird gardener who happened to leave right after Nanny Ashtoreth did, but house staff come and go.

“… And that, young Warlock, is why one must not draw on his books, you never know what their worth will be in the future.” Cortese sighed loudly as he finished with erasing the last of the doodles the young boy had drawn on the open pages of the history book in front of him.

“I thought it made it look cool.” Warlock replied in his defense and Cortese nearly rolled his eyes before removing his pocket watch from his vest pocket, looking at the time.

“Right, well, it seems that our lesson for history is over for today. Off you go, enjoy your hour break. When you return, we shall begin our coverage of literature.” He waved a hand towards the door and Warlock didn’t need to be told twice to run off for fun, there was a video game with his name on it that he couldn’t keep waiting any longer.

Cortese watched him run out of the room with a small huff, smiling as he started to clean up the books and papers on the table of the building’s library where he was to do his lessons. He paused when he smelled something, a strong cologne that covered a natural, demonic musk that he knew all too well. “Mr. Harrison, I assume?” He turned to meet the man who he had yet to be introduced to since arriving yesterday.

Leaning against a bookcase, Cortese stared from behind his reading glasses, feeling his face heat up just a bit as he looked at his counterpart.

Harrison was in a dark suit, fitting of him, opened jacket and tie just a bit loose. The angel inwardly cursed as he looked at how the other had styled his hair, pulled back in a tight short ponytail. He hadn’t seen Crowley since they left the estate, wanting to get themselves ready for their next personas.

Seems that Crowley miracled up a beard that looked too good on him, the littlest of changes to the demon always got something stirring in Aziraphale, be it a new haircut or the addition of facial hair.

And he did a combo, damn him.

Clearing his throat, Cortese straightened himself up, adjusting his jacket. “I almost didn’t get the job because of you.” He told the redhead, who only smirked, crossing his arms.

“You’d have gotten it anyway, and look, you did! Come on, you knew I was gonna show up first, made it less… suspicious, if we both showed up at the same time.” Pushing himself off of the bookshelf, Harrison sauntered over to partner in this scheme, the smirk turning more playful as he stepped around Cortese, looking him up and down behind dark lenses.

He stopped behind the shorter man, who froze up at the eyes that he felt on his backside, those hungry eyes…

“Nice suit,” Harrison commented, “suits you, love the colors. Golds and creams? A change of pace from the tartan.”

“Oh!” Cortese turned sharply, giving him a hard stare. “Must I repeat myself? Tartan is stylish! But, if you must know, I decided to change it up a bit. I do wear other clothing you know, Mr. Harrison.”

Harrison looked at him, before shrugging. “Of course, just… can’t help admirin’ how good you look when you mix it up a bit.” He was suddenly closer, when had he gotten so close? Cortese stepped back, feeling his backside bump against the table, he was pinned.

“You need to dress up more, angel.” Harrison then frowned before chuckling. “No, don’t do that, you become too much of a tease when you step out of the norm.” He toyed with the silk tie that Cortese wore, slowly, carefully loosening it as he tugged down on the knot with one finger.

Cortese’s face flared up red as a heat pooled in his stomach. “M-Mr. Harrison! You wily man, behave yourself!” He swatted at the hand. “You should be professional!”

“Oh please,” The demon rolled his eyes before leaning in closer, “it’s not like we didn’t have our fun as the nanny and the gardener, yeah? Won’t take these fools long to start rumors about us as well…”

Cortese paused, looking at Harrison’s face. Right, they had been a bit adventurous and frisky with one another when in their previous personas, what’s the harm of having a little fun as two tutors? It was like something out of his romance section, but he wouldn’t voice that out loud.

“We waited a few months as Ashtoreth and Francis before we got handy, my dear.” He finally replied and Harrison groaned.

“Wow, way to be a real buzzkill, angel!” He moved to step back, but Harrison found himself in place, hands on his hips that suddenly were pressed against Cortese’s. “Whu-?”

“Who said we weren’t going to have any fun?” The blond scoffed. “Besides…” There was a snap of fingers and Harrison heard a lock set in place.

Cortese leaned in close to his ear, he could practically hear the smug smile in the other’s voice. “We have less than an hour before my next lesson and I’d like to get my ‘coworker’ a bit better. Is that alright with you?”

The string of sounds from Harrison was all Cortese needed as an answer.

Someone, Harrison found himself flipped around, his own back pressed into the table with the angel pinning him to it, kissing him hard on the lips. Any coherent thoughts in the redhead’s mind were thrown out the window as he was snogged into next week, wrapping his legs around soft hips.

He pulled back, panting a bit as he looked at the hazel eyes that stared right at him. “Damn, angel, you’re in a mood.”

“You’re a terrible tease, dressing up like this.” Cortese huffed, kissing at his neck before working on undoing the already-loose knot of Harrison’s tie. “You know I love seeing you dressed up.”

“Mmm… sssshould do it more often than…” Harrison tilted his head back, lifting his hand up to snap his fingers, but a hand stopped him. “Come on, don’t go slow…” He groaned.

“No, I want to take it slow, I’m not going to just have your clothes vanish on me!” Cortese scoffed as he pulled back to start working on removing the suit jacket, taking note that he rather liked the pattern on it, Crowley needed to wear more patterns in his wardrobe.

Harrison pouted before his own fingers got to work on unbuttoning the vest Cortese wore, legs still firmly in place around the other’s waist. “How far?”

“Hmm… heavy petting?”

There was a loud snort. “Who taught you that?!” Harrison laughed before undoing the last button. He looked at the other man, a coy smile on his face. “Lovin’ the changes, angel. You look so good with that hair, almost feral, very you.”

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

“Just commentin’.” Harrison mumbled as he pulled him down, talking against the other’s lips before kissing him hard. Cortese mumbled a reply that fell on deaf ears, the two clearly distracted be kissing and the sneaky fingers playing with the tie the other wore.

Both were discarded on the table, and Harrison was vaguely aware that his hair had slipped from the ponytail it had been in. He would have made a comment, but he was distracted by perfectly manicured fingers playing with his freed hair, and by the body that pressed against him.

His own fingers busied themselves with groping a rather nice, soft bottom, earning a squeak from the angel who was still toying with his hair. Harrison smirked, pressing down on the ample flesh, keeping Cortese against him as he moved to suck on the exposed skin of his advisory’s neck.

The room felt hot and both angel and demon were feeling even hotter, fingers moving here and there, but never to what was going to be wanting some attention. Well, Harrison thought, time to change that-

There was a sharp set of knocks at the doors to the library and Cortese pulled back sharply from Harrison, losing his balance and dropping to the floor at the sudden intrusion.

“Ssshit!” Harrison sat up straight and worked quickly to straighten out his shirt, trying to button it back up from where Cortese had popped a few of the buttons.

“Y-yes? Who’s there?” Cortese called out.

“Mr. Cortese,” came Warlock’s voice from the other side, “can I come in?”

“In a moment!” The blond replied before trying to get his vest and shirt back in order. “Oh, this was a bad idea…!” He whispered towards the other man in the room, who was trying to get his hair back into place.

“Yeah, yeah, I know! Gotta wait until the kid’s asleep, ‘r somethin’…” Harrison jumped from the table, throwing on his coat, then grabbing a tie, tossing the other at Cortese who was quick to try and get it done up.

Once Harrison thought he had everything in order, he rushed to the door, the lock suddenly undone and the door opened to reveal Warlock, standing there with a confusion on his face. “We’ll continue our discussion of the plans later, yes, Mr. Cortese?” He spoke, as if nothing had just happened, outside of the flushed look on his cheeks and the rumpled state of his clothes.

“Y-yes, of course, do come looking for me when you have the chance, Mr. Harrison.” Cortese replied, swallowing as he straightened his jacket out. He watched the other man walk past Warlock without much word and turned to the child. “Yes, did you need something?” He asked, trying to act like Warlock did not just interrupt something.

“Wonderin’ if I left my phone in here.” Warlock replied before tilting his head. “How come you’re wearin’ Mr. Harrison’s tie?”

Cortese looked down, seeing that, yes, he was wearing the dark colored tie.

This was gonna be a long next couple of years.

END

They make up for lost time later, but make sure that it’s when no one will bother them. >.>

Anyway, first time every writing for Harrison and Cortese that wasn’t them as the Radio Omens boys, it was fun.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #anthony j crowley #aziraphale #mr harrison #mr cortese #john's drabbles

187 notes · View notes

forbidden-sorcery · 4 years

Quote

To put things only a bit simplistically, we must ask ourselves questions about how we truly want to live in the near future: Will the human being be nothing but a function, a mere epiphenomenon of vast political and social forces, a residue of commodity production and consumption? Or will the human being be an existentialist at the center of her own life, a creature who co-participates in the creation and consumption of her habitat, an animal among a world she senses as kin? These questions imply profoundly different values, and the outcomes of pursuing them could not be more different. Through the way of life called civilization, we have become parasites of one another and a cancer to the broader biosphere. The modern human is a tragicomic caricature: a creature who cannot so much as eat or shit without plugging into one of the apertures of a vast, world-eating industrial infrastructure; a creature whose capacities are daily diminished and who is evermore humiliated and moronized by the latest consumerist excrescence, from automated salt-shakers and “organic water” to hiring fake friends to appear in “selfies” taken by that apotheosis of anomie, the smartphone; and a creature for whom the emptiness and ennui of his life is so obvious and incontrovertible that it can only be drowned by ceaseless and shallow distraction. The gravity of our error has been plain for centuries; it is time to turn away. The present situation is grim: the forces of the parasitic classes are vast, submission and resignation are widespread, and the biosphere is, by some estimates, already irrevocably in a mass extinction spiral. But whether we deserters are so fabulously successful as to initiate a widespread secessionist movement, or so insignificant as to make merely “pockets of happiness” that quickly pass away after our deaths, I believe the choice is clear. It is a modern, utilitarian moral calculus that measures the value of a course of action in terms of its expected quantitative consequences, and thus elicits the dismissive scoff at the possible insignificance of a relatively small number of deserters scattered around the world. For many of the ancients, as well as modern iconoclasts, value and meaning are found instead in the individual’s own sense of virtue, all the more so in the face of tragedy. Exactly what such a virtue ethic might be in this late period of civilization will be developed throughout this journal, but the values espoused throughout this piece are a first glimpse. Thus, our invitation to all those who can hear it: Refuse the submissive values and false hopes of the dominant ideologies; follow the implications of radical critique — say and live what you know to be true. Refuse the slavery of being a mere appendage of Leviathan — take back your life. Refuse the cancerousness of techno-industrial-agricultural life — pursue mutuality with the living world and rediscover your animality.

Bellamy Fitzpatrick

#Bellamy Fitzpatrick #anti-civ #green anarchy

13 notes · View notes

barbika1508 · 4 years

Text

Hiwaga (Vampire! Jeongguk x Reader)

Part 2

Words: 11,2k

Genre: Soulmate AU, Reincarnation AU, Enemies to Lovers, Action, Romance, Smut, Flufffffff

Pairing: Vampire! Jeongguk x Reader

Warnings: More cursing, Nightmares

Summary: Life was good, playing out better than it has been ever before. My future was bright and full of promises and wishes coming to realization. All up until she showed up. She stormed though the front doors ruining everything along the way by her mere presence derailing my goals and purpose in life. A puny mortal, a child, a complete nuisance, and yet…The key to an unimaginable life, to the truth all along.

Author's note: Hiwaga – mystery; full of wonder Words in italics are dialogues or thoughts that Jeongguk reads from others. So I’ve done research with this fic, and used certain words that need explanation…given that there can be A LOT I’ve put a dictionary just below the fic if anyone is interested :3

Jeongguk’s POV:

‘’YOONGIIIIII-YAAAHHH!!!’’ comes the call not really disrupting others, but it does pull the gained momentum to a full stop, everyone now straightening up, eyes and heads turned towards the entrance. We all observe as the owner of that annoying voice comes in sight, dressed in none other than Yoongi hyungs favourite red hoodie that he mostly lounges around in.

‘’I’ve figure it out!’’ she continues on oblivious to the others stopping because of her. Our elder simply smiles and turns his attention completely onto her, as she offers up a thick book that at first glance leaves me wondering how she was able to pick it up. Frankly if you look at her you wouldn’t assume that she’d be able to lift much.

He simply hums in acknowledgement, eyes scanning the page his smile gradually fading. Namjoon appears at the doorframe a moment later, the girl not jumping or flinching at his sudden presence like most humans would normally react to. Wordlessly she accepts a notebook from him, her own eyes darting left and right a frown drawing itself across her features. Hmmm she’s kind of cute…

‘’What’s going on?’’ Taehyung asks frowning as he shifts the spear he’s using to train, between his hands. We’re all dressed the same, in black tank tops and grey sweatpants most of us barefoot too. We came to the fully equipped gym which we’ve transformed into an arena its purpose clear – practice martial arts and combat between another. Hyung had just started teaching us new techniques honestly surprising us all as he joined in from the beginning.

We don’t necessarily need the fitness or practice – nobody even broke a sweat in the last hour we’ve been training – but the impending tension that has settled after the ball two nights ago, doesn’t seem to loosen up so this is the best next thing to relieve some form of built up frustration. Even though neither Yoongi nor Jin hyung revealed anything yet, both of them are hiding their emotions back but everyone just knows that something is happening. Fighting is a temporary distraction.

Most vampires don’t actually need to fight or simply never learn how to because they rely solemnly on their powers or abilities. And half of us could lean onto using our powers, but Yoongi made sure we had a good solid base of self-defence before he had us train our abilities. For example, his power is scary and rare and doesn’t require of him to ever lift a finger whilst fighting. Others had to learn the hard way how to control their powers. That includes myself – mentality and people’s minds are tricky.

‘’Research.’’ Its Namjoon that replies handing over a regular pencil that he usually sticks behind his ear whenever he’s working on something in the library where he has been spending a lot of time lately again at. The human accepts it, and is quick to start and scribble something over a page. Being the only one left out of this round I approach them first, eyeing Yoongi for a moment further his eyes darting over to Namjoon.

‘’This is bothersome.’’ He comments offering the book to Namjoon who accepts it nodding silently. The girl curses out of the blue, the swear words that spill from her mouth unfamiliar to my ear, and judging by other hyung’s faces they are stumped too. Some curses don’t even sound like words, but once she shuts up and looks at the platinum blonde elder, she looks beyond annoyed while he burst into chuckles shaking his head ‘’Yah, Y/N-ah there are kids here.’’ He teases back the occurrence and light-heartedness that he shows to her still unfamiliar. He must be the only one who understood whatever came from her mouth.

I spare a glance at Seokjin who is shaking his head, two fingers pressed against the inner of his eyes. Okay he understood her to, but to what degree I’m not sure.

‘’Aish.’’ She intakes a breath ready to smack Yoongi with the notebook but refrains from doing so, her eyes darting over to us. Maybe it’s just my imagination but I get a feeling as if they linger on me for a moment longer ‘’Not funny. They called me a child.’’ She ends up pouting and showing her notebook over to Yoongi. Glancing at Namjoon he’s awkwardly smiling, eyes averted down onto the thick book ‘’And other things I don’t need to translate.’’ Grumbling she adds looking upset as she glares at him unamused. Everyone offers soft chuckles in return finally relaxing more as they step closer.

Hyung’s arm rises wrapping around her shoulders reassuringly ‘’Well that was the plan was it not?’’

My eyes dart over to Tae and Jimin, exchanging looks between both of them in question and sort of answer at the revelation ‘’Yeh.’’ Her reply is curt arms crossed over while she turns her eyes towards Namjoon ‘’We’re close to figuring it out. Its trickier than I thought. Haven’t practiced Gaya in so long…Kaya…aish even my pronunciation is completely off.’’ She signs looking exasperated.

‘’Wait…’’ Hoseok starts tensing up taking barely half a step towards her in the uneven circle we’ve created ‘’Kaya as in the language? Karak? Like 5th century, dead long and forgotten language?!’’ he looks at them in complete disbelief mouth hanging ajar. He’s almost on his toes. I immediately look at the human, that nods fingers tapping against the page of her notebook impatiently or out of nerves.

‘’That one yes. Why? Do you know it???’’ her eyes sparkle for a moment, but hyung is quick to turn his head away and raise his hands in defeat.

‘’That’s way before my time.’’ he mumbles pouting. I watch as Y/N enthusiasm diminishes instantly. She sighs heavily looking at Yoongi who’s already staring back at her.

‘’Aigo.’’ She complains pouting ‘’It’s all on us then buddy.’’ She adds on offering Namjoon a soft smile. I can see her disappointment clearly in the way her shoulders lower sag. I narrow my eyes as I watch her, not really comprehending that there’s a chance that she actually knows a dead language. The name of it or the know how about it. She barely speaks proper Korean!!!!! And to know of a pre-Korean language makes zero logic!!!

‘’Uh huh. I’m sure we can handle it. Easy.’’ Namjoon replies trying to sound positive but, we all know he’s putting up a front for her sake ‘’I’ll head into the city right away. Go to my usual places to snoop around for any fragments. There should be at least something somewhere.’’ And with that, and a silent confirmation from Jin and Yoongi, he bids us goodbye’s and heads out disappearing quickly as he appeared before.

‘’What are you even translating? Did that douche-ling make another cryptic speech?’’ Jimin asks looking annoyed, tapping both fingers against the handles of his dual swords which are resting against the ground. Y/N instead of quickly replying looks over at Yoongi, who takes her notebook and closes it. Is she waiting for permission or is she actually being respectful for once?!?

‘’In the beginning yeah, he bounced with Karak but then switched to Latin mid-way.’’ Yoongi snorts smirking but there’s no amusement to his words ‘’Y/N-ah already translated his official scripts and the other speech, and the propositions he gave us.’’

‘’Lots of politics involved.’’ Jin confirms looking lost in thought, holding his head propped up with one hand, the other remaining crossed across his chest.

‘’There’s something else isn’t there.’’ I pick up on the lack of explanation staring straight at the human. Her lips go into a tight line eyes averting looking anywhere else, while she shifts her feet in line with her shoulders, stance defensive with her centre balanced. That much I can read out once her shoulders square up, and her leg muscles clench and unclench. Why is she wearing a hoodie and shorts again?!? Her bare legs look very nicely defined, I never noticed it.

‘’I wrote down notes of the conversation that Wangseja had with his advisor.’’ Everyone takes a double take at her disclosure clearly none of us expecting something like this of her. Maybe she isn’t a clueless bimbo after all.

‘’That still wouldn’t fully explain the usage of Karak.’’ Hoseok speaks up thoughtful ‘’Do you think them speaking out loud was deliberate or simply a foolish error?’’

He has a point there. It could be a trap, but Yoongi is quick to shake his head in denial arm now having shifted around Y/N, his hand placed on her hip ‘’I don’t think it’s either of those. It’s safe to assume for certain than none of you assumed that Y/N-ah here spoke more than 3 languages, let alone Karak in the mix right?’’ the other hyungs nod along eyeing her suspiciously, except for Jin that offers a smirk and Taehyung that seems to be revaluating his stance over her again ‘’Point made then.’’

That boulder in my stomach reappears again, as with prideful eyes Yoongi turns to look at her with a wider smile, while she shakes her head instead twirling the pen, he hasn’t confiscated from her. She’s shifting from one foot to another lulling side to side impatiently making him retreat his arm away.

This girl never seems to be able to stand still even for a second ‘’Yeah, yeah I’m more than meets the eye, bla, bla.’’ She shows her tongue at her supposedly life-term friend ‘’Never heard that one before.’’ she mocks, and slides the pen smoothly behind Hyung’s ear who doesn’t blink twice at her antics. Even more so as she reaches for his Geom that is sheathed on his left hip ‘’So instead of wracking our brains uselessly with the lack of information that we are stuck with, I would like to lay of some steam as well.’’ she draws out the double-edged sword, with poise, letting the handle go while she maintains the balance of it, flipping the sword around a single digit, capturing it successfully once it does a 360 turn.

She looks pleased upon capturing it, perking up and giving of an almost goofy smile. Oh no. Don’t tell me this is something else that she isn’t going to take seriously?

‘’You wanna play with us little mortal?’’ Jimin pips up looking enthusiastic and livelier all of the sudden. But he doesn’t slide forward and move closer to her like I know he would prefer to. It brings a smile to my face, the thought of him being so afraid of hyung that he doesn’t dare approach her in his presence all that much.

Looking at the girl, she’s preoccupied with hyung’s sword, trying to find the balance of it as she holds it by the handle horizontally keeping it steady. At his comment, she lets the sword fall but catches it before the tip can hit the ground.

‘’Jagi?’’ the nickname has everyone in the room freeze on spot. There are two reaction that she grants herself. Chuckles of amusement, that aren’t as quiet as the hyungs wants them to be – nobody in their sane mind would want to experience Yoongi’s wrath. Tae ends up ducking behind Hoseok as he’s the loudest, hence why the elders glare is instantaneous as he turns to glare at both giggling men.

Jin hyung straight up turns around hand covering his mouth, but his shoulders are shaking badly. Hoseok ends up grinning wider and starts too coo instead, teasing in between but mostly telling Y/N how adorable she is for some reason. Jimin settles for kneeling on the ground hands still holding into his own dual swords grin present over his features, eyes having disappeared from how much he finds this whole situation amusing.

I on the other hand hold back the bile that gathers in my stomach. Ew. Just no. Why? Seriously why. I cringe and listen to the way Yoongi is quick to defend her and not himself! He’s advocating for her, coming up with excuses as to why he is allowing her to use this nickname on him. Looking at her, she’s grinning widely clearly amused by the situation she has created.

I seriously feel sick to my stomach. It’s wrong it’s all just wrong. I seriously don’t like her. Just as I was starting to, I don’t anymore I really don’t. She’s way to cocky right now, acting as if she has hyung wrapped around her finger. He storms after our so called ‘dance line’ with the exception of me, as they start teasing the two louder and bolder. Unbothered she remains put just watching blurs go around, her eyes not able to pick up much on what’s going on as the chase begins.

If she wasn’t here – hyung would be chasing me too with the others. I let a few good comebacks die on my tongue knowing first-hand what it’s like to get silly punishment from Yoongi after badmouthing him or anyone else. Her mere presence right now is to put it in simple words; extinguishes my will to live. And yeah, I’ve been a vampire for almost 200 years but fuck does she weight me down. Is it because I can’t read her thoughts? I shift on my feet, dropping my arms from the crossed-up position I’ve had them. While my left hand reasts against my hip, I let my right rest over the handle of my own Geom. I’ve decided to build upon my skills with it, even though it’s not commonly used anymore, it’s still gives the thrill like no other.

That familiar itch raises in my throat slowly, prickling at it mostly. I think this type I haven’t felt since I’ve been freshly turned. But that was another story as my hunger for blood then was insatiable. When all I could think about was blood, and the constant pain that held me in its clutches. It’s starting to appear somewhat, but not necessarily for blood alone which is puzzling as to what’s happening to me.

‘’You look like you’re having fun.’’ I raise an eyebrow as I look down at her in surprise ‘’The whole brooding thing you’ve got going on right now, is a good strategy. I commend you on that dude.’’

‘’Strategy?’’ I ask bemused eyeing her carefully as she steps right next to me and turns to watch the chaos that’s still unfolding across us. Her approach is like – if you were sitting on the very edge of a couch, she’s the person that would sit right next to you. Can she get even more annoying than this?!

‘’Well yeah.’’ She starts and looks at me slightly losing the edge of confidence she has ‘’To avoid this mess that’s happening. Wasn’t that…’’ she trails off clearly doubting herself ‘’Never mind then.’’ she’s quick to look away, left hand reaching up to scratch at her cheek, but she keeps it there avoiding to look at me.

I can’t help but to smile at her behaviour. Is she blushing?!

Odd. Humans are weird. Narrowing my eyes as I continue watching her, I can’t help but to relax a bit. Her hair is a mess as always, falling over her shoulders, clearly uncombed or unattended. Not that she’s dirty, she smells fresh and like she bathed fairly recently that strawberry hint present underneath the artificial flavour of honey scented shampoo.

The hoodie is too big on her body as it’s too big for hyung himself but on her it easily reaches her mid tights. Having said that the branded shorts with white stripes at the side of her legs peek just from beneath the red hoodie. Otherwise her legs are exposed, and following the curves from her meaty thighs, down to her calves I can see she’s back at being restless her left foot tapping against the ground the rubber of her sneakers making faint noise against the wood of the ground.

Shouts raising has me turning up, ready to defend myself from blatantly staring at her or crudely said ogling her. To my rare luck Yoongi has both Jimin and Taehyung pinned down, clearly having fun as he fake scolds them. Hoseok has given up and is sitting on the ground, hands propping himself up as he’s leant backwards. Jin hasn’t even participated in whatever they have going on, and is sitting in the corner of the room, kneeling against the wall with his new pink coloured Samsung Z in his hands, typing furiously on it with a small smirk on his face.

‘’Hey do you know why did the scarecrow win an award?’’ Jin starts getting everyone’s attention eyes rising after he asks the question. He even glances towards us. And we all know what’s coming it’s clear as a single cloud on a clear sunny day ‘’Because he was outstanding in his field.’’

I roll my eyes instantly, biting onto my lower lip because it’s ridiculous. Jimin burst into laughter first, Hoseok and Tae groaning but ending up laughing more so because of Jimin that rolls away from Yoongi who has let go of both vampires and is staring at hyung with a scrunched-up expression.

‘’Seriously hyung?’’ he breathes shaking his head. But a smile is present.

I’m genuinely startled when Y/N places her hand on my shoulder, body trembling as she tries to keep her own giggles down, but is not having much success with it. I stare at her confused but slightly fascinated by the rosiness that covers her cheeks, and face. Her eyes crinkle as they shut, mouth twisted into a grin. Her hold on my shoulder is surprisingly firm, again in the back of my mind making me revaluate the estimate I put on her about her strength.

‘’You’re laughing at that?’’ I ask trying to sound unimpressed but fail at it completely as I smile all due to her own amusement, the joke not being that drop-dead-funny.

She shakes her head instead and let’s go of me taking a step to the side hand readjusting the hold on hyung’s Geom once more ‘’The delivery was A+.’’ she points out as she starts to calm down.

‘’Thank you, Y/N-ah! You see brats? Someone appreciates my jokes! It’s why from now on Y/N-ah is my favourite creature ever!!!’’ he shouts out acting bratty himself. Jimin and Tae are both on their feet making their way over to Jin, probably with the intention of convincing him that they are his favourite whatever.

‘’Gee thanks.’’ Y/N chuckles bringing my attention back to her ‘’Never been called someone’s favourite ‘creature’ but I’ll take it.’’ she ends up grinning happily as she turns to me, warmth still lingering on her cheeks. As well as over my shoulder where her hand was ‘’Anyways you wanna practice Sour boy?’’ I immediately frown at that nickname as does she scrunching up her nose adorably for a moment ‘’Sour creature?’’ she tries ending up chuckling to herself as she shift left and right, the calmness leaving her while her jumpiness coming back ‘’Can’t use Sour wolf those right are reserved obviously…’’ I tilt my head not having a clue what’s she’s referring to ‘’…sour…ah never mind.’’ Again, she’s shaking her head but isn’t hiding away. She twists the sword again putting her left foot forward balancing her centre first, hands and sword following suit ‘’So you wanna try going against me?’’

It’s a dare.

I want to burst into laughter already imagining 3 moves alone to disarm her in a blink of her eye. But hyung’s words in my head stop me from over reacting at the preposterous challenge that’s right in front of me.

Humour her Jeongguk-ah. It will do good for your patience.

Taking a hold of my own blade, I spare a glance over towards Yoongi first noticing that everyone is watching us. They are going to be entertained I’ll make sure I will…

In a blink of an eye and my own, as my reflexes are enhanced mind you – I find myself dumbfounded, as her sword flashes due to the light and clashes against my own, knocking it sideways proving that my hold on it wasn’t as tight as it should have been.

As I look down at her burning but non-glowing human eyes, she’s glaring at me with some sort of fire in her irises. Her hand is back on me, firmly holding onto the inside of my forearm, while her blade is angled in a seemingly awkward position right arm positioned over her left body twisted to the side. But the most important part is; the tip of her sword is located right under my chin. The body of the Geom is strategically positioned in a way that would block any stronger and direct attack from myself.

The cheers burst out of the blue interrupting the silence that happened due to her unexpected actions.

My tongue darts to my cheek as I snort and tilt my head narrowing my eyes at her, as she ends up smiling but look serious doing so. She ends up pulling her hand and sword back, rising it up in triumph.

‘’Lesson number one; always be ready for the unexpected.’’ Jin speaks up oddly enough giving me a more serious look.

I don’t even bother looking towards others, and focus on the girl before me that’s literally skipping on her spot 2 steps away from me. She wiggles her eyebrows at me, sword getting placed to rest against her shoulder angled at an around 80 degree ‘’Lesson 1000-something-something never lose focus.’’ She imitates Yoongi’s pattern of speech clearly making fun of him making me know that he trained her as well. Her head turns to the right to give him a look.

I twirl my Geom keeping in mind that even though I’m about to surprise her as she surprised me, I a voice screaming at me to keep my movements slow. It would be an easy defeat – like taking candy from a baby – if I use my regular speed and agility on her. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

As I raise my blade, she instantly blocks it spinning with elegance at the perfect time. While I’m holding the leather wrapped handle with both hands, she only uses one and efficiently blocks me, her blade only briefly losing a hold twitching backwards and then coming to a still.

‘’To rough?’’ I tease, as she grabs for the long handle with her left hand the pressure against my blade turning prominent. Fuck. I didn’t expect in the slightest that she would be even able to push against me. But that’s maybe because I didn’t focus on taking a hold of my Geom in a proper way like I should have. I underestimated her.

She doesn’t reply initially, but offers a smirk jaw locked tight. To my astonishment she unpredictably steps back, and raises her Geom ready to strike down, which I block successfully intercepting her attacks from the get go. The fact remains that tips the balance contradictory to my own belief and those of my hyungs as with my brief lack of concentration, everything changes – words fill my mind – because she has managed from the get go to legitimately push me backwards. She has me moving, whole body getting in tune and reflexes to work as two close calls of the metal coming in contact with me have me focusing solemnly on her.

It isn’t until she’s out of breath that she jumps back like in the beginning, and simply breathes harshly through her nose. That’s the weakness of being a human. Getting tired. I know it’s not fair but I take my chance and charge forward, confident that I’ve got an easy win under my belt.

But as I move forward faster than I should I’ll admit her left hand reaches and gets in line with where my sword is pointed at. She’s reaching forward as if she is about to pick an apple, the action itself insane. That has me stopping right before the blade can touch, forcing my whole body to a halt. That’s when she strikes, finger wrapping onto the top of my blade against the blunt part of it.

It all happens so fast even for me, as she holds onto my weapon and just like the first time, she’s finds herself right up in my personal space, her blade finding a home under my chin it seems.

Her face is almost feral – that’s how I’d describe it the easiest. She’s showing her blunt teeth as she breathes fast heart absolutely pounding in her chest, as she glares at me the fire I saw before has turned into some sort of a blizzard, and hunger. The cheers that erupt of disbelief and glee get all muted - her blood is calling out to me. I can feel it vibrating in her veins, pumping steadily though her heart. It sounds like a forgotten lullaby her speeding but regulating steady heartbeat. It brings a taste of nostalgia forward.

The smile that stretches across her lips seems newly unique, only for my eyes – there’s of course that prominent sense of victory, happiness that’s prominent in her whole being still only inches away from me.

I’m left blinking in confusion, the hold of my blade being let go as someone pulls her backwards the cold blade that was located under my chin retreating as well as her warmth and now prominent smell of fruitiness, and something else that I can almost taste in the air – something that kind of remind me of the smell I remember that came from my own clothes when I was still a human.

‘’Ah our sweet Golden Maknae, it seems you have meet you’re match in at least one category!’’ Jin cheers throwing his arm over my shoulders, looking extremely gleeful as he starts poking my sides. I twist at his ministration but keep watching as Hoseok lifts Y/N up onto his shoulders, her hands free from weapons and desperate to hold onto something as she dangerously shifts and tries to balance herself on his shoulders. His oblivious jumping spree continues despite her cries of protests with Jimin standing behind the two ready to catch her as Taehyung dances along with the vampire that’s carrying her.

I can’t shake off the tingles that seem to entrap me in a sense, running over my skin prickling at my long stopped beating heart. I stare almost dumbly listening to the shouts and cheers from the human girl, that decided to act along with the boys’ antics easily following and mimicking them having the time of her life judging by the giant smile she has on, and adorable chuckles that raise. But the smile she gave me doesn’t resemble this one, one bit. The one I got was more – her.

‘’Good effort, Jeongguk-ah.’’ Yoongi speaks up appearing finally on my right, hand holding onto his Geom once more. Meeting his eyes, they seem soft the smirk he has not too promising for my dignity ‘’Of course you’ve managed to accomplish all the don’ts than do’s in what I’ve taught you, but it was a good lesson nonetheless.’’

Jin stars laughing immediately agreeing with Yoongi, the jokes and mockery following after.

I hate losing, I despise it with my whole being given that I’m not sure if I still have a soul. And even though irritation is brewing under my skin, I can’t find myself to feel real anger of any sorts. She threw me off too much to completely understand the feeling I’m experiencing, in regards of her.

Of course, I still don’t like her, why would I pfffff. This is only a reason more that I need to start and upstage her frankly speaking. I’m not jealous of her being in hyung’s good graces or anything childish like that but…I’m the golden maknae. I need to knock her down a peg or two.

I find myself watching her like a hawk, awaiting the anger and frustration to hit me…it doesn’t. And that’s concerning me slightly.

*A few days later*

I squint automatically at the spill and change of contrasting light that floods into the room. My eyes are quick to adapt but my brain forces me to react humanly. Rounding the corner, I’m met with a wide and open door that leads to the side of the mansion, into the gardens and towards the pathway that leads towards the garage. I sigh annoyed that someone is trying to start a prank war again. It’s a poor prank just leaving the doors open, but the sun that’s shinning inside is frankly bothersome enough to diminish my mood.

I was having a good match going on the whole night, winning every time of course setting new records. The peckish-ness appeared out of nowhere – I fed 2 days ago, there’s no reason why I’m feeling hungry again. I should be fine and yet, my throat itches uncomfortably enough so that I need to take plan B; Take a blood bag from the fridge to calm myself down.

I rarely do this, hating the cold and very artificial taste that the bag leaves on the blood. But the blood bags are there for this exact reason.

I stand at the entrance of the lavish kitchen and dining area on my right and place my hands onto my hips just contemplating my life choices as one does in the middle of the day – or night for some. Why does it have to be so sunny, why can’t it just keep raining. Of course, it has been a while since I’ve seen sunlight, but I sure as hell didn’t miss it that much. It’s absolutely glowing against the polished marble flooring, and reflecting all over the clean white kitchen.

There are bowls on the kitchen island, the presence of them making me listen in a focus for a moment if someone is close and trying to scare me. Silence. Strange. Approaching the kitchen island and avoiding the stray odd ray of sunlight that stretches across the room, thanks to a curtain being moved, I see pastry has been laid out on a wooden desk. Two banana’s lies on another chopping board still intact, while a gooey brown substance resides in a pot next to the pastry.

I’m so confused. What is this supposed to be?

Looking around for Jin hyung I’m left wondering if he’s back at experimenting with human food and trying to impress our annoying temporary human resident. Last time he baked 10 cakes, of different flavours, which the human did thank him over hundreds of times for, but barely made a dent in them. We had to throw them out after 4 days, with Jin hyung reasoning that it’s logical as they were going to go bad. Sounds like bullshit to me as in my time cakes were a delicacy to get often, but I feel as if they are more compact and longer lasting than 4 days but what do I know about human food. Eh.

Glancing towards outside keeping my eyes trained on the marble flooring I pick up on someone talking fast and thoughts of How lovely and kind, she is flooding my mind That girl has a knack for flowers, and it helps that she’s extra nice unlike most of Mr. Min’s friends I block out the gardeners thoughts as they continue wandering about Yoongi…yet again. Shaking my head to clear my mind, I take the chance squinting and frowning at the brightness even more prominent, my eyes trained to the outside watching as Y/N stumbles over her feet but recollects herself. She’s carrying a small bouquet of what seem like lavender coloured roses. I didn’t even know we grow those. The flowers don’t look that nice during the night I’ll admit that. But I know Jin hyung wanted multi coloured flowers, and I know there was a Boquete of blue roses placed on this very kitchen island some time ago.

I watch as the girl jumps exaggeratingly childish and cheerful onto the concrete ground of the mansions floor and short patio. Her bare feet make barely any noise, as she approaches.

‘’Oh, hey what are you doing up still?’’ she asks squinting but due to the contrast she must be experiencing. I’m surprise she spotted me outside. She kinda looks that sort of an adorable-ugly.

‘’You do know that we don’t sleep right?’’ I ask hesitant not sure if she knows this fact. I stare at her, ready to bolt to her aid as she stumbles again once she steps inside closing her eyes and taking 2 steps blindly ahead.

‘’I know that, I meant as in up now. Everyone is usually closed off at this time.’’ she’s quick to explain opening her eyes carefully, looking around still squinting the ugliness still there.

‘’I should be asking you why are you up instead. Aren’t you usually dead asleep by this time?’’ I turn the conversation around, watching as she reaches the counter and places the roses on it, turning back to the doors. I snort to myself at her choice of clothing being a white shirt with jean overalls that hang slightly lose on her.

‘’To be honest I drank one energy drink or two too much, so I’m wide awake.’’ She replies turning to look at me, expression relaxing into a normal one, eyes still blinking quickly a few more times glossiness present in them ‘’Do you mind the doors?’’ the question has my brows rising in question ‘’Is the light bothering you? I can close them, if it is.’’

Surprised I contemplate for a moment, preferring that she does close the door off but there’s something more to her unusual question ‘’I’m fine with them as they are.’’ I lie and sit myself on the second bar stool from the right corner of the kitchen island, making sure I’m keeping a safe distance from the pesky sun.

‘’Oh good.’’ she sighs in relief perking up ‘’To be honest I didn’t even know how much I’ve missed the sun.’’ the short explanation is happy as she practically skips over to the doors anyways.

‘’Hm I bet you do.’’ I mumble reaching out for one rose, seeing with the corner of my eye as she slips into a pair of slippers that she has left near the wall which I didn’t even notice were there.

‘’Do you?’’ looking up she doesn’t seem like she means anything ill with the question. I think she’s naïve enough to be genuinely curious.

I take a moment to think about it looking out at the brightness, while she goes to rummage around the cabinets ‘’I’m not sure.’’ I admit ‘’I miss sightseeing certain places in day-light. It’s just easier going at night, instead of putting a ton of cream to my skin, and having an umbrella along.’’ I ramble remembering the time when I visited Paris alone. I put a ton of sun cream on, and picked out a designer umbrella, but the curious looks and people randomly asking me to take pictures with them as they thought I was a model or something got tiresome really fast.

‘’Hmm, that would guarantee unwanted attention I’m sure.’’ Her comment has me turning to her again curious as it’s like she read right through my thoughts. She’s filling out a vase or just a tall ornate glass up with water, face portraying her concentration with the matter.

‘’So, whenever you aren’t hanging out with vampires are you usually acting as a regular human being then?’’ I ask interested in her answer and maybe to learn more about her. Even though hyungs have quickly grown to thrust her, I still have my reservations. She talks a lot like A LOT but she never really reveals to much exclusively about herself.

I get a snort in reply eyes meeting my own briefly with a slight glare and edge before she turns to the vase and flowers ‘’It differentiates.’’ She starts ‘’I used to have a job high up somewhat, so yeah, I’ve spent the last couple of years just working. Working, sleeping and eating.’’ I’m taken a back at the new information not having expected her to reply seriously ‘’Had to be on point and available 24/7. You know how greedy humans can get.’’ She sighs tiredly. I can’t argue with that statement so I simply offer a faint nod, watching as her fingers work delicately over the flower petals, rearranging them around neatly. She accepts the flower I was toying with, with a small smile ‘’So one day when I was going to a library to do some research for a project I was doing, I stumbled upon a revelation and just decided to quit.’’

Taking a step back she cheers up instantly ‘’Ta-da.’’ I observe her mirthfulness observing her as she steps over to the sink, letting the water on as she runs her hands under it ‘’So with that done, and wanting to avoid confrontation as any normal human being…’’ I roll my eyes at that knowing what lengths humans are willing to take to avoid confrontations ‘’…I hoped on a plane and, after 5 hours from landing I walked right through your front door.’’ She ends her explanation, whipping her hands with a kitchen cloth.

‘’Just like that huh? No attachments nothing?’’ she nods immediately as I tilt my head shifting after to rest it over my bent left arm ‘’Aren’t you humans known for unnecessarily attachments to people and objects?’’

She chuckles at my statement nodding and smirking amused, hands set in motion as she stirs the gooey substance in the small pot. Smells like chocolate but the melted kind ‘’You’re right about that for the most part and people. But I’ve been sort of a nomad my whole life. Never stayed in one place for too long.’’ She shrugs spreading the substance all over the pastry working meticulously and evening it all out ‘’Didn’t find a reason to settle down.’’

‘’Why thought? Did your parents move a lot so that’s why you can’t find a place you genuinely like?’’ having studied a bit of psychology I pick up on her not fully revealed and rounded answer. She’s generalizing herself a lot. Her movements don’t stop or pause in hesitation at my question.

‘’The second part is more correct in a sense. My parents eh they were what they were.’’ Again, she shrugs, placing the two bananas on the edge of the pastry ‘’I moved a lot with my partner actually. We went on adventures and whatnot, ready to marry and all that jazz.’’ I raise both eyebrows feeling perplexed not having expecting that from the likes of her. That sounds a lot harsher than I intended it to but…I would have never expected her to want to marry, or well be serious about it.

For some reason I can’t imagine her being paired up with any regular man or woman, specially not human for some reason. It feels wrong, feels like nobody ordinary like that can handle her.

‘’Tragedy?’’ I ask assuming the progression of her story.

‘’Yep!’’ she replies too cheerfully for the theme of the conversation, popping the ‘p’ childishly ‘’Wasn’t meant to be.’’ She offers a smile as she looks at me, not looking that particular sad. It must have taken her a long time to get over it thought, because her eyes aren’t matching the mask that she has put on. I can heart the almost pitter patter of her slightly speed up heart. And the shakiness to her hands isn’t missed.

‘’Most things aren’t.’’ I agree remembering my own human experience. I was meant to marry a girl from my village. Being a fisherman, third generation I was meant to uphold the family tradition, and have managed to snob the prettiest girl. But yeah. Not everything is destined to happen as you expect them to. Although looking back I know Na-yeon was wrong for me in all aspect. Even back then with my human set mind and precepting I was mostly doing it as it was expected of me, and not because I genuinely wanted it ‘’Also what are you even doing?’’ I find myself frowning as she starts to roll the whole thing together, bananas disappearing inside the roll.

She doesn’t even respond for a moment, and has stopped breathing. I’m about to stand up and help her out force her to breathe when she straightens up grinning widely again that triumphant expression I’ve seen before present.

‘’A HA!!!!’’ she cheers removing her hands away carefully looking extremely proud at the brown coloured roll that’s left on the tray ‘’I present to you, a perfectly made chocolate banana pudding roll!!’’ she presents’ hands pointing at it dramatically.

I glance at the severely unimpressed desert ‘’Judging by that crack right there, it isn’t as perfect as you claim it to be actually.’’

‘’What no!’’ she rushes leaning over it, bumping her hips into the stone counter. Curses raise, sounding way to rough for the image of a soft girl that she’s unintentionally portraying as of today. She preoccupies herself with inspecting the roll ending up frowning as she straightens up hands placed on the counter while she glares at the desert as if it has offended her.

‘’If it’s any consolation if I were still human, I’d eat it.’’ my words have her shoulders softening up as she shifts and eyes it some more. Her lower lips juts out slightly mouth forming into this sort of adorable hurt puppy pout.

But it only lasts a few seconds, lips quick to turn upwards onto a thankful smile ‘’Thanks.’’ Once her eyes meet my own, I get this odd warm sensation in my chest, seeing her brighten up thanks to my words and encouragement.

‘’Your welcome.’’

*A few days later, later*

‘’I don’t understand why I have to be the one to check on her.’’

A pause ‘’Probably because you’re the only one to dislike her the most. And the most probable to not make any advances.’’ At this I immediately fake throwing up, Taehyung chuckles following as on que ‘’See?’’ he points out smirking ‘’Namjoon hyung got almost punched when he accidentally told a pick-up line yesterday. She didn’t even register it, but Yoongi hyung just went off on him. Poor Namjoonie.’’ He tuts shaking his head finding hyungs predicament funny judging by the smirk he has on.

‘’As perceptive as she is, she can be so annoyingly dull.’’ I half snarl exasperated groaning to myself.

‘’That’s mean Jeonggukie.’’ He raises a complaint ‘’Don’t be so cocky. There’s always more than meets the eye. Even in regards of humans.’’

‘’Yeah, we’ve all seen that but…’’ looking at Taehyung that’s still walking besides me, arm brushing against my own mischievously now and then – he’s giving me this fond look as his eyes take me in. We start to slow our steps down, as we’ve reached the doors that led to the library.

‘’But?’’ he insists as I shrug stuffing my hands into the front pockets of the oversize black hoodie I have on.

‘’I just don’t like her.’’ I mumble, glancing towards the door lowering my tone.

‘’Yeah why is that?’’ glancing up I’m surprised at the way he narrows his eyes, and gets sort of serious, licking his lips quickly.

It’s easy to let the frustration rise up again, get a hold of me around my throat choking me up for a moment as I have to think what to tell him exactly. He’s smarter than he looks, always two steps in front of you, catching Yoongi and Jin hyung of guard even though the two of them have practically seen it all in all the years they’ve been alive. This isn’t said in vain when others warn against Taehyung. He’s as cunning as he is stunning.

‘’It’s the way she is! She just gets on my nerves you know.’’ I try lamely frowning gaze going to the doors ‘’The way she breathes is exaggerated, the way she talks, her voice is way to scratchy and of pitched, the lack of manners towards hyungs ugh…’’ If I was human, I’d shudder from anger but I simply close my eyes in frustration that part of her still irking me greatly ‘’…and the way she keeps on wearing hyungs clothes, and not sleeping enough. Does she even eat enough? What is that all about.’’

I end up glaring at Taehyung who nods once holding his serious demander but soon after ends up smirking widely eyes sparkling almost. He arches an eyebrow clearly having thought of something ‘’There’s also the fact that she almost beat your score in Overwatch.’’

‘’THAT TOO!!’’ I half exclaim throwing my hands in the air, then proceed to step up and don for a moment ‘’With my reflexes how is that possible?!’’ Taehyung just keeps nodding in understanding ‘’She’s a child that’s what she is! Doesn’t reach any level where we are, mentally and maturely.’’

‘’Pfff says the late bloomer himself.’’ I stop moving around and give hyung a challenging glare.

‘’I wasn’t that late. Just had extra on my plate in regards of my abilities.’’ I pout going into a similar pose as the beginning just standing closer to the doors.

‘’Aigo, Aigo, Golden maknae.’’ He tuts affectionately walking closer hand coming up to place it over my shoulder as he leans close to me ‘’You’ve got a fair point there yes, but don’t you think that we’ve had to accept you too in the beginning? That there weren’t any let’s say fractions of hesitance’s from our parts?’’

At this my nose scrunches up as I know it’s true, about their reservations when it came to me. My telepathy came at a disadvantage in the beginning, strength easily frightening even Hoseok hyung who is considered to be the best fighter in our clan.

‘’That’s it Jeonggukie. I see how your clogs are starting to turn. Do you see my point?’’

‘’She’s human hyung. There’s a difference.’’ At this he waves his hand straightening up.

‘’Meaning it’s in your favour if you really despise her that much. She’ll die judging by her bad lifestyle choices in a decade or two. Maybe three.’’ He shrugs attitude way to uncaring unlike our conversation a few days ago where he praised her and defended her loudly against Jimin who was upset at her yet another refusal. So, the switch has me second guessing him, and myself as…I didn’t even think about her dying.

It causes that boulder that hasn’t left my stomach to churn and twist, burning even at the thought of imagining seeing her lifeless body.

I don’t even notice that we’ve fallen silent until hyung speaks up again ‘’Anyways I’m gonna go find Jin hyung and maybe convince him to go to the city with me. I need new pair of shoes and a new collection is rumoured to be just on the verge of launching.’’ He wiggles his eyebrows patting my shoulder for a moment in consolation before he’s backing away, right hand stuck in the pocket of his pants whilst he gives me a finger gun with his left-hand winking a cold breeze of air whooshing past me, his eyes for a brief second turning icy blue ‘’Good luck, Bunny. And be nice to our human. They are fragile creatures after all.’’

I tilt my head in confusion staring at him ready to ask what he means by that but he disappears in a blink of an eye taking off leaving me alone. Even though I don’t exactly need air to breathe I do take it in and sigh, recollecting the confusion that are my emotions and have been for the past few days. Spinning on my heel I glance towards the double doors which are decorated with golden motifs, having been painted into white the wood barely peeking through unlike the inner side that displaying the many years the tree had before it was chopped down.

Pressing onto the handle of the left door I silently without making any sounds enter the big room from another perspective, the other entrance being in the ballroom whilst this one leads inside from a corridor that connects to the music room in the back of this huge house.

Nothing seems out of the usual as I take a look at the ground floor. Nothing moves either. I can hear her speed up heart and breathing, murmurs now and then cutting of the serenity. I walk over to the table that has been left since the “party” we’ve had. The name plates have been removed from its surface but it has been filled up by different books, and scrolls even. I glance over the few notebooks and stray papers here and there easily recognising Namjoon’s handwriting as well as Yoongi hyungs. The cracked screen of the iPad is mocking me as it lays unsafely on one corner of the table.

What has my immediate attention is a different looking notebook. I smirk in amusement as this handwriting is as of a child, words scribbled down in a fast pace, letters somewhere half formed or just distorted, even smudged. There’s an ink stain from a hand near the edge of the page, which I brush my own fingers over it. I can’t read through the text as it’s written in another language, and the choice of letters themselves are unusual. I don’t think I can even pronounce any word.

I’m not really here to offer my academic assistance as I barely speak any English myself, but it’s kind of nice to see that her character is clearly portrayed in the way she writes, and how she fills the page up irregularly. She’s as chaotic in real life and on paper.

Musing for a moment further spotting glasses and bottles of water on the other end of the lengthy table, I do glance upwards towards the second floor, hearing as a pen or something small as a pen clatters hitting the ground. By the lack of movement, I already figured she was asleep.

Silly human. Her life style is really un-well and extremely badly planned. Stepping around the table my intention on getting the girl and carrying her to her bedroom, gets postponed as my eyes shift onto a book, that for whatever reason has my feet stopping.

The gold of the cover is unusual between the rest of the books with used and dried up leather and yellowed pages. I pick it up, buried in between a stack of smaller scrolls and encyclopaedias actually. I frown at the title; it’s about mythology. Every kind actually.

What’s the most puzzling is that it’s written by hand. And the handwritings differentiate. Multiple people worked on this, and judging by the smell of the ink and paper things have been added or pulled out. Pictures are drawn here and there, and languages vary from all around the world from what I can judge by some symbols and added explanations in English.

There’s a myth about Thor, expanding at least 20 pages. Another myth about Pele a Hawaiian goddess covers well over 30 pages with many illustrations, and instructions from what I can assume for tattoos.

Shifting around I do recognize myths from the hand drawn images instead of their native titles. Nearing almost the end of the book, as I sniff at the pages and feeling like a complete idiot for a moment, I have to sit down as these are completely new pages added to this. Taking a look across the table, I find the A4 format pages placed near the corner just ahead of me, along with an old type-y looking pen with ink next to it.

Turning a page, I recognise the writing as being Jin hyungs which completely catches me of guard. Is this what they have been working on? Writing about myths?!

Don’t we have a coven war brewing?

Shuffling through the many written pages coming to the last one, I stare blankly for a moment the myth about Dangun which I know as it’s of Korean mythology. And as appropriate it is written in Korean.

What am I missing here? Why have they been working on this?! Why did other people work on this?! I pull the pages going slowly backwards, seeing stories actually unfolding. It’s not hard to connect the dots after a few pages, that these are from Yoongi hyung. But these are dating WAYYYY back in the millennia it feels like when hyung was as young as we are now it seems. But he was more mature definitely.

I frown at a half empty page where a sketch has been drawn into a half finished only the golden frame being finished. The sketch though - I can tell that linear lines are spears and, some even arrows that are sticking from what seems to be a pile of bodies on the floor? Only one figure is standing in the centre of the picture, with their back towards us armour robust and yet slim in a sense. I narrow my eyes at the handle of the soldier – the pommel is shaped like a pouncing lion.

Battle of Hwangsanbeol

That’s the title. I know about it from what hyung told me, but this is written much more in detail. The main explanation is from what humans are being told in schools, I remember it from college when I studied mechanics years ago. But the new ink underneath and Yoongi hyungs writing, is an indicator that this is where his story begins.

He didn’t take sides in particular, changing armours as he shifted from a Silla’s soldier into a soldier of the Tang army. The similarity is there with added commentary to make you know more about how life was then. What gets my attention is the comradery between hyung and another fellow that name is very generalized. They’ve struck a friendship and have covered for one another in battle, which had him switching sides and to remain with the Silla side out of curiosity and maybe even naivety he describes it. He didn’t have as much experience then as he does now to have judged everything smartly enough, even though the odds were clearly in Silla’s favour.

The praise towards the human soldier is tremendous, giving him full credit of saving his life more than once. And even though he was a turned by that point into an immortal, the praise has even me feeling grateful towards the man.

He did raise up in ranks, but he never left Yoongi behind. During the main battle after the slaughter, he describes his fellow soldier as being remorseful, as they stared across the field of many fallen soldiers and warriors and manslaughter that stretched miles away it had seemed at the time. It was brutal but necessary – I forget that hyung is from a completely different timeline sometimes. It’s easy to mistake him, and others for younger vampires.

The solider…tilting my head I spot a few notes written lightly over hyungs hand-writing. My frown deepens as the anger I felt before towards her starts to simmer - it’s not hard to see that this is Y/N’s handwriting. Her comments are absolutely ridiculous, playing hyung’s praise off – she’s dismissing it. How dare she? What does she know about wars, she was born in peaceful times, I bet to a good family! She hasn’t never experienced the horrors of wars, the stench, the travesty the fear the…

‘’No!’’ a shout has me glancing up stiffly. I notice how my fingers have curled into fists and how tight my jaw has locked together from anger ‘’…don’t…’’ she breathes out her heart beat now hammering. Confused I glance upwards thinking that she’s playing a joke on me. I’m ready to fucking snap at her – if she really is pulling a joke on me right now, I’m going to kick her out of the house myself.

‘’Ah no…’’ her words shift a cry following. What? Standing up I wait for amount further listening to her speed up breathing that’s sounds like hysteria ‘’NOOOO DON’T TAKE HIM NOOO!!!!!!’’ her cry is of terror and panic. It absolutely shocks me to my core but has me moving upwards, reaching the second floor and top of stairs in a second ‘’NO HE’S MY SOU…’’ she continues to shout switching to another language panic rising.

I’m completely disoriented by the mess that I find on the upper floor, books pulled and settled in piles on the ground, as posters of maps hang up over the book’s shelves. The 2 floor is sort of a balcony going half around the room above both entrances. After legit 2 spins around myself, I pick up on a mattress actually located in the very corner of the library. There’s a sheet stuck to the bent down ceiling, and a ton of blankets are thrown around the mattress.

I can see her finally, leg sticking up shoulder peeking over as she shifts onto her side ‘’Agápi mou, agápi mouuuuu…’’

‘’Shhhhh Y/N-ah.’’ I whisper as I run to her side, kneeling right next to her, my hands coming in contact with her overheated skin. She’s drenched in sweat, and twitching like crazy as if she’s fighting someone ‘’Wake up Y/N-ah it’s just a dream it’s not real, it’s not real!’’

‘’No…don’t go…’’ I pull her body into my lap without a second thought. As I brush her hair away from her face she flinches away probably because of my cooler hand. She’s overheating. What catches me of guard and has me whining is the tears that are running down her cheeks.

‘’Y/N-ah wake up, please wake up! It’s not real okay, it’s just a nightmare! You’re here with me in the library safe and sound! Come on you silly human wake up.’’ I urge her on rambling shaking her gently. She startles awake, eyes flying open hands in fists ready to fight. I half expect her to punch me but once her eyes find mine, she ends up smiling tiredly body immediately going lax in my hold.

‘’My love.’’ She says in Korean right hand reaching up, left palm pressed flat against my chest where my heart is.

‘’Don’t fall back asleep.’’ I try as her eyes fall close back again, her breathing having stabilized somewhat ‘’The one time I legit want to hang out with you, you suddenly want to sleep ah? The disrespect.’’ I laugh worried as I take her in. The bags under her eyes are prominent, and her cheeks which looks sort of more sunken aren’t reassuring me with her wellbeing at all.

I stare as her eyes blink open, taking me in clearly her hand that’s resting over my chest raises up shakily to cup my other cheek.

The blissful expression that settled before turns into a frown and a pout, as her eyes take my features in the change in mood confusing me with what to do. I readjust my hold gently, holding her steadily in my arms, making sure I’m not pressing to much of my skin against hers. I’ve heard from others that humans don’t like our colder skin in particular.

‘’Jeongguk-ah.’’ She states to which I offer a smile immediately as she seems to be coming back from wherever her mind took her.

‘’Yep. That’s my name.’’ I reply feeling her body tense up but not prominently. She’s waking up slowly at her own pace. She hums suddenly and pulls her hands back. I have to stop myself from wanting to tell her that it’s fine if she wants to touch me. That only conflicts my emotions all the more.

‘’Sorry am…was I making too much noise?’’ she asks gathering her thoughts, eyes darting around getting clearer as she notices the odd position we’ve fallen into.

‘’No, not at all.’’ I says wanting to immediately start reassuring her that everything is fine and she didn’t do anything wrong, but I have a hunch she’s not going to believe me either way ‘’Hyung wanted to see where you were exactly, and I was bored so. Two birds in one stone.’’

I help her up, as she starts to shift wanting to sit on her own. Silence begins after my brief explanation and after I’ve helped her sit back down onto the mattress. Without her permission I grab for a warm looking blanket and pull it over her shoulders, sitting down properly right next to her having this need to be as close as possible. Maybe I should offer a hug? Please say yes.

‘’What time is it even?’’ comes her question before I can ask her my own. She starts sifting more towards me, in the beginning of her sudden restlessness keeping the blanket around herself as she reaches with both hands upwards to rub her fingers across her eyes.

‘’Around 10AM.’’ I reply glancing towards the curtains, that are letting through sunlight from outside across the polished wooden floors only ‘’I think Jin hyung missed you at breakfast today.’’ I offer a smile while she pulls her hands away, running one through her messy hair quickly. She’s hunched forward into what seems like an awkward position – her gaze still seems far off like she’s not fully present yet.

‘’Oh yeah breakfast.’’ She mumbles glancing to the end of the mattress, to which I notice more pages and a silver notebook that has slid from the edge of the makeshift bed the papers all sprawled on the ground clearly by accident ‘’I didn’t mean to sleep.’’ She starts clearly her brain slowly starting up as she looks at me finally absently scratching the back of her head ‘’My back started to hurt, so I figured I should lay down or lean against the wall.’’ Ah so that’s why there are so many blankets piled up against the wall behind us.

‘’You should think more about getting proper sleep.’’ I comment ‘’I’m sure as great as this place is and cosy, I bet a proper bed would feel a lot nicer.’’

My heart and stomach flutter as she breaks into a small smile looking back to me amused ‘’Heard that before.’’

I shake my head immediately ‘’Uh huh. And if you’d listen, I think that would magically stop too.’’

She chuckles at my words, the gesture filling me with sort of pride that I actually made her smile and laugh. Oddly I want to comfort her properly. I want to make sure that she’s alright. Seeing her so distressed it…I can’t help but to still feel a bit freaked out myself. Her state is worrisome. Traces of her tears are still present over her puffy cheeks.

‘’So...’’ I start awkwardly ‘’Are you okay?’’

At this she looks away smile disappearing slowly ‘’I’m fine.’’ Another smile raises over her slightly dry lips this one clearly forced. She’s putting up a front – I just want to help her.

‘’You…’’

‘’I’m fine!’’ she’s quick to add not even looking at me swiftly pushing herself away, crawling over to the fallen notes, hands prompt with gathering her things ‘’Its fine. Totally fine.’’ She repeats it like a mantra, almost doubling over when she attempts to stand up ‘’I got it!’’ after the exclamation she’s up on her feet, proudly smiling goofiness making an appearance ‘’Totally A okay!!!’’

Frowning I’m quick to stand up following as she starts walking forward, feet slipping into her slippers before descending down the steps.

‘’You sure are saying that a lot for someone that just woke up screaming.’’ I don’t hold myself back this time. Even though I can’t see her face as she’s slowly descending down, the spring in her step isn’t present as much. She always walks with a bounce to her.

‘’This is the first time, it happened.’’ She huffs walking straight over to the table once her feet reach the ground. I grimace at her blatant lie, having heard her before in similar states that make much more sense now. But it’s always Yoongi that’s was at her side, specially whenever she went to sleep. It is different completely different to hear her from across the house, than from seeing her up close. It gives new meaning to her as a person.

‘’Yes, but it’s the first time that I’ve seen you sleep and wake up like that.’’ I point out as she places her notes on the desk, probably noticing the opened book I’ve left behind in my haste. Her head remains turned towards it, eyes going over the opened page ‘’You have nightmares every time you sleep, don’t you?’’

Taking the last two steps my feet touch the ground floor. I wait for her response as I make my way over to her left side, standing near her but putting enough distance to give her personal space. She flips the golden book to a close, placing a random one atop of it, shoulders shrugging in the meantime. Is she trying to hide it away from me? Or herself?

‘’A lot of people have nightmares, Jeongguk-ssi.’’ The serious look she gives me, irks me in a bad way. And not as in before where I felt agitated selfishly thinking of myself, but in a way that she’s treating me distantly - like I’ve been treating her more or less. The honorific is just the cheery on top. I think the phrase ‘give him some of his own medicine’ is appropriate to point out right now.

‘’Not like that.’’

She keeps staring at me upholding the glare she settles on. It’s so different from what I’ve seen her be and act around others. For the first time, I feel like I see another side of her which she clearly doesn’t like to reveal to anyone. Or anyone that’s not hyung. It’s starting to really bother me. Of course, I don’t really want her hurting or in pain, what just had occurred is something I’m ever going forget, but I’m sort of glad that I was here to snap her out of whatever nightmare she was in. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. She looked completely heartbroken, and lost.

Seeing that she has taken up a stubborn approach, it’s hard to miss the way her body trembles. Wearing a pair of grey sweatpants, and a simple t-shirt the difference in temperature has her obviously chilly maybe even cold.

Given that she doesn’t intend to lose whatever staring contest we have going on, I end up breaking it and reach for the end of my hoodie, tugging it over my head smoothly ‘’Here.’’ I say offering. She doesn’t reveal how surprised she is on the outside – only her heart jumping slightly does – but she does raise an eyebrow in question ‘’You look cold and neither of us need hyung to scold us if you’ll catch the flue.’’ If I was a human, I know my cheeks would be bright red as my reasoning is clearly lame.

She accepts the hoodie with a quiet ‘thank you’ and tugs in on quickly ‘’Okay so, where was I? You can help me move some stuff and get books I need…’’ I’m pleasantly surprised that she��s quick to fall into her work after what just happened. I do keep myself quiet as this is clearly a distraction. But the smile that raises over my lips I cannot stop. Even with her back turned towards me, she looks good in my clothes. My hoodie suits her. And I’m sure my scent will mix better with hers than hyung’s.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Dictionary: Dangun - was the legendary founder and god-king of Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom Gaya also rendered Kaya or Karak - is the presumed language of the Gaya confederacy in southern Korea Geom - is the generic term for "sword", but more specifically also refers to a shorter straight-blade, double-edged sword with a somewhat blunted tip Lavender roses - is often a sign of enchantment and love at first sight. Those who have been enraptured by feelings of love and adoration have used lavender roses to express their romantic feelings and intentions. Agápi mou /Greek/ - My love

#jeon jungkook x reader #bts vampire au #BTS jungkook #jungkook x reader #bts vampire #bts jungguk #bts jeon jungkook #jeongguk x reader #bts romance #bts jeon jeongguk #yoongi vampire #bts fanfic #bts fanfction #bts fluff

49 notes · View notes

tarisilmarwen · 4 years

Text

Crumbling

I want you all to know that this is entirely @burr-ell's fault and you can direct your complaints for emotional damage at her.

TW: Implied torture

---

When Starfire's first scream went up Robin flinched, but after a momentary pause, shook himself and kept working, concentrating on the lines of code scrolling across Cyborg's arm display.

The pale blue light from it was all that illuminated the cell, splashing across the thick reinforced steel walls. Blast-proof, electro-saw proof, an impressive feat of construction really, that he might have appreciated in a circumstance where it wasn't severely limiting their options for escape.

Robin's belt had been confiscated, along with the lockpicks he kept hidden on his person--they had been very thorough--further limiting their choices. Cyborg's hands had been removed at the wrists, his biointerface messed with so that he couldn't access any of his inbuilt weapons or tools, and with Raven and Beast Boy both locked in power nullification collars and Starfire in the next room having who knew what being done to her, this was their last idea left.

Cyborg sat calmly in place, checking their progress. Metal tubes from the stumps of his wrists trailed across the floor in both directions, hotwired into Beast Boy and Raven's collars. As Robin slowly restored his programming line by line, he was hacking into them, working through the simple encryption that protected the collars from outside signal interruption.

The half-robot felt Robin stiffen again, as another scream went up from behind the wall, the boy's hands on his metal arm fisting tightly. Cyborg glanced up, seeing Robin's face twisting, as though he were the one being tortured.

He touched Robin's shoulder. "Hey," he called. "She'll be all right," he said, encouragingly. "Our girl's really strong, you know."

Robin exhaled slowly, relaxing his hands. "I know, I just..." His voice was shaky, a trembling note in it. "I hate hearing her in pain."

He kept his words quiet, low, a nervous crawling awareness in the back of his head of the eyes watching him. Or, single eye rather.

Slade sat in the shadows against the far wall, observing silently. The reason he was here--the only reason, he'd emphasized repeatedly--was lying prone across the man's lap. Jericho was unconscious and pale, electric burns all across his face and body, his uniform ripped and dirty.

Robin tried not to think about the fact that whatever had been done to him was probably being done to Starfire, right that moment.

Despite his cautious whisper, Slade apparently overheard him. "Then you had better work quickly," he commented, witheringly flat.

The Boy Wonder resisted the urge to snap back at the villain.

"I'm trying, it's--" He let out a frustrated exhale. "--it's complicated."

"That's an encouraging assessment," Slade said.

"Look, if you don't have anything productive to say just shut up," Beast Boy piped up, snapping, crossing his arms and glaring at the man. "Seriously dude."

Slade turned his head and held up a hand, backing off.

Robin paid Beast Boy a grateful look, to which the changeling replied with a nod, and then got back to work, fixing another line of code.

He tried not to think about what was happening in the next room. What Starfire had offered herself up for, to save the rest of them.

He still hated it every time it replayed in his head.

***

The heavy door clicked open, spilling blinding light into the dark cell. The Titans tensed, Robin and Beast Boy and Raven all standing at once to their feet, glaring across at the white-coated villain and his armed entourage.

The guards raised their firearms immediately to discourage any funny business as their boss stepped forward.

"Finding your accommodations comfortable?" he asked, a veneer of politeness over his slimy cadence.

"Oh yeah," Beast Boy snarked. "Pitch black room with no seats or TV, just five-star stuff there."

The man--a mad scientist who went by the name Dr. Agony--shifted to face Slade's corner, sneering. "I must say, Deathstroke," he said, "I was never expecting you to bring so many young heroes with you. I always thought you worked alone. I suppose I should thank you." A creepy grin spread his face. "Now I have plenty of test subjects for my experiments!" he crowed.

Slade's glare had been ice cold, seething with withheld anger. "I hope you realize you're dead when I get out of here," he said calmly.

Dr. Agony backed off with a bit of a nervous laugh, turning his attention instead to the Titans. He looked them over one by one, considering them, scrutinizing them.

"Let's see... who to try my device on next?" he mused. A hand pinched his chin in contemplation as he paced before them. "The youngest?" he suggested, stopping briefly in front of Beast Boy, who glared right back. Dr. Agony glanced aside at Robin thoughtfully. "Or perhaps the one without powers?"

There was a stirring next to the Boy Wonder, and an orange hand inserted itself between him and the doctor.

"I will do it," Starfire said firmly.

Dr. Agony clapped his hands together and rubbed them. "A volunteer! Oh how exciting! This has never happened!" he gushed.

Robin turned aside to Starfire, his expression agonized. "Star, don't," he begged. "Let me do it."

She shook her head.

"I am more resilient than the rest of you and... I have faced torture before," she told him, hesitating on the last part. She turned her face up to him with a sad smile. "I will be okay," she promised in a whisper.

Robin bit his lip, but stepped back with a nod.

Starfire steeled herself, facing the villain.

"Right this way, my dear!" he said, extending a hand past himself towards the door.

Straightening her chin, Starfire walked past him. The guards flanked her on the way out, hiding her from view before Dr. Agony followed behind and the door snapped shut plunging them into pitch blackness once again.

***

The minutes ticked on inside the cell. Cyborg tested his biointerface every so often, slowly regaining functionality. Raven sat in a meditative position, eyes closed, concentrating on the vague sensations she could feel past the collar's dampening. Beast Boy fidgeted, bouncing his foot and tapping his hands on his knee.

Occasional yells came from behind the door, but they were brief. Aside from making the Titans flinch, they weren't a distraction.

Until suddenly... the screaming didn't stop.

A shriek went up, louder than before, long and agonized. Robin gasped sharply, head whipping towards the door. The shriek went on, and on, and on.

Beast Boy stopped fidgeting. Raven's face pinched, her eyes tightening, and Cyborg looked towards the wall worriedly. Even Slade cast a concerned look that direction.

Shaking, Robin forced his attention back down on Cyborg's arm, fingers sliding across the display keys. Starfire's scream finally died down, and Robin almost sighed in relief, but then a new wail started. And then another, and then another, and then another after that.

Robin's fingers fumbled and he frantically backtracked several lines of code to correct several errors he'd made, only to make new ones. He tapped agitatedly at the keyboard display before his hands dropped off Cyborg's arm, covering his face.

"Oh god..." he breathed.

"Don't give up," Cyborg encouraged, eyes earnest. "You've almost got it."

Robin inhaled deeply, trying again.

Raven's eyes were open now, fixed on the wall, her face paling as Starfire's screaming continued in an uninterrupted streak. Beast Boy gave a little whimper, bringing his hand up and biting his thumb.

They didn't need to say anything for Robin to understand what they were all thinking. The sooner Cyborg was fixed, the quicker they could help Starfire. It was all up to him. It was all up--

Starfire screeched, a shrill high-pitched cry that rang like alarm bells in their heads.

Robin rocked back, his hands clamping over his ears, fingers clawing against his scalp, squeezing his eyes closed tightly.

"Stop..." he whispered. "Stop it..." His voice trembled as he begged the open air. "...please..."

"Robin," Cyborg called.

No response.

"Robin, hey!" Cyborg said, a little louder, lifting his arm and sharply slapping the boy's shoulder with the stub of his wrist. "Snap out of it! I need to you focus!" he admonished, eyes and expression firm.

Robin shook his head weakly. "I can't... I--I can't, Cyborg, she..." he stammered.

"We can't help her unless we finish this," Cyborg reminded him with emphasis.

It was no use. Robin was already curling up with his knees to his chest, mumbling incoherently, hands still squeezing his ears.

"...my fault, s'all my fault, I shouldn't have let her..."

Cyborg glanced about in aggravation and frustration. "C'mon man, don't do this now," he pleaded, an edge of desperation creeping into his face.

He glanced briefly towards Slade--no help there, he knew. He looked to the other Titans. Raven had her gaze on Robin now, looking pained. Beast Boy's eyes were wide as saucers, the blood drained from his face as he looked on, horrified.

Cyborg gave a growl. "B, you're up. Get over here," he ordered.

"Me?!" Beast Boy squeaked. He gawped indignantly. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Finish fixing my code, now come on," Cyborg said, urging him over with his head.

Beast Boy picked up the wire leading into his collar and dragged it over with him as he came over, stepping around Robin as the Boy Wonder trembled in place.

He leaned down and took a quick look at the text in Cyborg's arm. He blanched again.

"Dude, what is this? Is this Python?! I'm not qualified for this!" the changeling protested.

"You hack computers all the time!" Cyborg argued, his voice rising.

"Yeah but that's different! I can't just mess around in your systems!"

"Well someone has to do it!" Cyborg snapped loudly.

His shout echoed in the room a moment, then left the room completely silent save for Robin's whimpering gibberish.

Cyborg noticed the stressed glimmer hugging the edges of Beast Boy's eyes, and sighed, lowering his voice again.

"Look, it's easy," he said quietly. "Just read out the code to me, and I'll tell you exactly what to do."

Beast Boy's pinched eyes flicked towards Robin, but Robin's head was buried in his knees and shaking, so with extreme reluctance he knelt down by Cyborg, accepting that--for the moment--the Titans' fearless leader was useless to them.

"Okay..." Beast Boy breathed, trying to calm his nerves. His sensitive ears could pick out every decibel of Starfire's screaming and that forced him to remember what was at stake. "Okay... So, the first line is--"

The two of them worked quickly, Beast Boy reading out the lines of code and programming and Cyborg quickly identifying which part was wrong and instructing the changeling how to change it.

Sharp electric crackling could now be heard, punctuating the spaces between Starfire's screams. Robin squished himself smaller and smaller, his arms like vices around his leg, whispering, "Stopitstopitstopistopit..." in a long blended stream.

Slade was silent in the corner, watching with an unreadable expression, but Cyborg thought he caught a glimpse of the man's grip tightening protectively on Jericho.

The half-robot sent signals to Raven's collar again.

"Ngh!" she grunted, giving a harsh jolt and a flinch behind her closed eyes.

Beast Boy paused a moment, glancing over in concern. "Raven?" he asked. "What is it?"

Raven's face was grimacing in discomfort. "It's working," she relayed. She opened her eyes, expression grim. "I can feel her."

Beast Boy's eyes widened. He glanced first at Robin--who had finally pulled his face from his knees, a tormented look on his haggard features--and then at Cyborg, who nodded.

The changeling's voice grew a little tighter and higher-pitched as he read out the next part.

"Okay, so I close the brackets right?"

"Yeah, and make sure those quotation marks are inside the parenthesis," Cyborg confirmed.

Starfire's next scream was louder than ever, ending in a horrible pained sobbing.

"Azar..." Raven breathed.

Robin uncurled with a cry, surging to his feet, flinging himself against the door.

"STOP IT! STOP IT! LEAVE HER ALONE!" he shouted, pounding on the metal with his fists. "LEAVE HER ALONE!"

"Oh man..." Beast Boy whimpered, his attention already drawing away from Cyborg's arm towards the awful display.

"Keep going," Cyborg urged.

Beast Boy kept reading aloud the lines, following Cyborg's instructions to fix them, trying to ignore the slams and crashing coming from in front of them as Robin threw himself bodily into the thick cell wall.

Bang! BANG!

Robin couldn't think, half-feral with fear and desperation. He screamed his lungs out furiously, scratching, clawing at the door, smashing his fists into it over and over.

"BASTARD!" he shrieked. "I'LL KILL YOU! I SWEAR I'LL KILL YOU!"

There was nothing in his head but panic and anger. Starfire was out there, she was in pain, and he couldn't make it stop.

There was a low voice from beyond the door--Dr. Agony maybe?--and a breath in-between a surge of electric humming and Starfire's awful, awful scream-filled cries of agony.

"STOP!" he yelled in response. "Starfire! Starfire!" His vision was blurring, his knuckles were bruised and his head spun but he didn't care, he just wanted to smash through the wall and pull her from that stupid device and hold her and bury his face in her hair and know she was okay, tell her she was okay, tell it it had all stopped. He reeled back with a dry sob. "Take me instead!" he called. "Take me, please, I'll do anything!" Wet heat was welling up in his eyes but he was beyond the point of noticing anymore. "Please just stop! Please!"

He drew back and slammed himself into the door again.

"Stop hurting her!"

"Robin--" Raven began to say, worried gaze fixed on him mutely.

Another slam.

"I'll kill you, you bastard. I'LL KILL YOU! STOP IT!"

"Robin stop, she can hear you!" Raven cried.

A hand clutched at her temple. Cyborg and Beast Boy's work was evident in the fading numbness, the ever-loudening echoes she could feel through her empathic senses, which rang with feedback from her bond with Robin. Starfire's pain fed into Robin's distress, which fed back into Starfire's, cyclical and building and stumbling over each other in her head and she almost didn't want her powers back if this hellish loop of pain and fear and hopelessness was what waited for her.

Robin just charged headlong into the door again with a snarling cry.

Raven shifted, moving to get up, but Slade was already beating her to the punch. Jericho was laid down carefully on the floor and the man stood to his feet, walking calmly over to the frenzied Robin.

The Boy Wonder smashed into the door once more, reeling back with a pained groan and clutching at his shoulder. He was moving back to try again, but just as he lurched forward Slade's hand caught his arm and stopped him, turning the boy to face him.

"That's enough, Robin," he said sternly.

Robin rounded on him, shouting shrilly. "This is all your fault!" he yelled. His arm drew back for a swing. "We wouldn't even be here if you hadn't--"

Slade caught the punch he threw, gripping Robin's wrist tightly, harshly.

"This. Won't. Help her," he hissed, the words pinching through his teeth.

Robin inhaled shakily, the tears in his eyes welling up and finally spilling down his cheeks. He leaned forward, choking back a sob, resting his forehead on Slade's chestplate.

Slade stiffened, dropping Robin's wrist and giving an aggravated hiss. His hands hovered awkwardly in the air. The Titans gaped openly, wearing matching expressions of shock. Robin sniffled pitifully, his shoulders shaking.

After a long uncomfortable moment, Slade finally pushed at Robin's shoulders, and Robin seemed to come to himself, pulling quickly back and wiping at his eyes.

"'m sorry. I'm sorry," he mumbled.

Cyborg shook his head, nudging Beast Boy with his knee to keep working. They could process how weird all this was later. "All right, BB, I think one more signal disruption should do it."

Beast Boy nodded, returning to the lines of code and entering in another cipher.

As soon as he finished, Cyborg tested the inner mechanism of his sonic cannon, sending a surge of electricity through his arm, up the wire, and into Raven's collar.

It shorted, sparking and then popping open and Raven snapped up her hands in a flash.

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" she yelled.

Black energy poured out from her, extinguishing the dim computer display, and a chill surrounded them. Sounded muted out for a moment before becoming horribly clear, light and open air hitting their faces.

Their feet were barely back on solid ground before Robin launched himself forward, screaming wretchedly. He body-checked one of Dr. Agony's technicians, slamming the man into the ground, his fist uppercutting the man's jaw. A couple more brutal punches smashed into the technician's face before the guards were finally reacting, rushing forward, pulling the Boy Wonder off. He twisted around, his arms flailing, legs sweeping out for kicks and he soon became a blur to the other Titans' eyes.

Raven let her powers lash around the room, slicing through rifles, smacking men into the walls. The wires rolled up into Cyborg's wrist stubs and he shoulder-slammed a technician aside to retrieve one of his hands from a metal table. Beast Boy tossed him his other one and Cyborg's sonic cannon ratcheted up, adding its noise to the chaos and din.

At some point Beast Boy's collar came off and his roars sounded as he towered over the room in T-Rex form, sweeping his tail across a row of equipment and tables and splintering the rack they had Starfire attached to. She collapsed across the rubble, crimson hair splaying across the ground.

Raven shoved out walls of black matter, pushing obstacles aside so she could clear a path to the Tamaranian. The empathic waves she could sense from Starfire were finally calming, but Robin was blaring louder than ever. She cast her eyes about, looking for him.

There was a swoosh of air, a dull thud, and a wet gargle from her right, and her empathic senses felt a rush of fear blossoming; her head whipped that direction in time to see a quick flash of Slade, Jericho over his shoulder, pulling a knife from Dr. Agony's gut. The man toppled over, out of sight, and she had turn away to sidestep the blow a guard was swinging at her.

She looked forward again. Beast Boy and Cyborg were making their way to Starfire's side. Robin had another guard pinned underneath him; the man's nose was broken--possibly his jaw too--and blood streamed freely down his face and Robin was still punching, each blow harder and harder, screaming with every breath.

Raven reached out as he was lifting his fist again, snagging his wrist.

"Enough!" she shouted. She pulled him backwards off the guard, yanking him to his feet, grabbing his arms near the shoulders. "It's okay, it's okay Robin, we've got her now," she assured him. "Calm down."

He gasped heavily, catching his breath, every limb shaking and vibrating, the rage within him quivering. With enormous effort, he forced himself to take deeper and slower breaths.

A soft groan sounded.

Robin shoved Raven aside with his arm, running and stumbling towards the fallen princess. Cyborg had turned her over, was busy examining her, checking her pulse, her breathing, but Robin couldn't wait for him to be finished, throwing himself down and scooping her up in his arms, squeezing her tightly.

"Star..." he sobbed, tear tracks streaking down his face again. "Star I'm so, so sorry! I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." he breathed over and over again.

She moaned quietly, her eyelids fluttering open, eyes still vibrantly green in spite of the pallor of her skin and the burn marks marring her clothes and extremities.

Her mouth twitched with a smile.

"Robin..." she whispered, and the relief in her voice made the floodgates open and Robin cried openly, wheezing, shuddering, sobbing until he hiccuped, unable to make himself move or do anything but hold her tighter and tighter, feel her heartbeat against his chest.

She was warm...

The other Titans hovered, keeping careful watch over the fallen guards and technicians. Raven glanced over and grimaced at the growing pool of blood underneath the twisted body of the doctor. Slade and Jericho had vanished. She couldn't sense them anywhere near.

Feeling the consciousnesses of several men beginning to return, she tugged lightly on Robin's cape.

"We can't stay here," she told him.

Pulling his head up, Robin inhaled and nodded. He didn't move for several long seconds though, and finally Beast Boy just nosed his way under them, becoming an elephant to carry them out of there.

Raven lifted Cyborg and the Titans made their escape, turning down hallways and corridors until they emerged into the open air.

Robin cradled Starfire tightly the whole way, slowly growing numb to the world.

***

Sunlight streamed into the room, bright to match the cadence of her voice as she sat up, eating and talking.

Robin hovered outside the door to the medbay, holding his elbows. Hesitating.

Starfire picked food from her tray as she chatted, dressed in a light hospital gown, her arms wrapped with white bandages. The other Titans--plus Jericho--were arranged around her in a supportive circle. She sounded okay, but Robin had heard crying from the room in the middle of the night, and he wasn't sure if it was his nightmares bleeding into reality or reality bleeding into his nightmares.

He was almost afraid to ask.

"You know I can sense you standing out there."

Robin startled at Raven's voice from inside the room. The conversation had gone quiet without him noticing. With a grimace, he stepped around the doorframe.

Cyborg leaned back from Starfire's hospital bed, sending him a grin.

"Look who decided to finally join us," he quipped.

His grin faded as he and Beast Boy separated from the rest and came over to speak with him privately.

"Real talk, are you okay man?" Cyborg asked, voice low. "You took everything pretty hard."

The concern with which they were looking at him was scalding and he hated it. "I'm not the one who got..." He paid an uncomfortable glance at Starfire and Jericho. "...experimented on."

"Yeah but you, like... completely fell apart," Beast Boy pointed out, whispering. "You practically wanted a hug from Slade."

"Don't remind me," Robin muttered.

"Robin?" Starfire called from behind them.

"We'll talk later," Robin decided, pushing past the other boys.

Starfire beamed broadly upon seeing him. She extended a hand, motioning for him to sit next to her. Jericho got up from the spot she indicated, nodding at Robin.

Should we let you two have a minute? he signed.

"Yes. Thanks," he said gratefully.

Jericho grabbed the stand his IV was hanging from and rolled it along with him, motioning for the others to follow.

Raven cast a look at him that promised they would be talking later before she followed the boys out of the room, Beast Boy and Cyborg sharing matching expressions of reluctance.

Their footsteps faded from hearing.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Robin flung himself across the room to her side, his arms wrapping tight around her, a choked sound coming from him.

Starfire let out a grunt of surprise at first, but quickly wound her arms across his back. Her face tucked into the crook of his neck and she felt his shoulders shaking.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I'm so sorry, Starfire, when I heard you I just--I couldn't--"

"I know," she told him. "I understand." She squeezed him tighter, her fingers curling into his tunic. "But it was... difficult... hearing you and knowing you could not help me."

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

They stayed there, embracing each other, Robin's tears dripping down his chin.

Eventually he pulled back, mashing his hands across his cheeks. He inhaled shakily, leveling his eyes at her in concern. "Are... you okay now?" he asked anxiously.

She hesitated to answer, glancing down. "I am... not sleeping well," she admitted softly. "Sounds startle me. I had an awful nightmare last night." She traced the blanket across her legs with her fingers. "Jericho says he is feeling much the same." Her eyes lifted again, bright and soft, and a sad smile touched her lips. "But we are healing quickly from the physical damage." She shook her head. "In time, the emotional will fade as well."

His hand crept across the bed for hers, interlacing their fingers. "I'll be here if... if you need to talk. About anything."

Her smile edged wider. "Thank you." She squeezed his hand. "Now please," she told him, "I know you have not slept either, so go and get some rest. For me."

"In a bit," he promised. "I need to... look at you for a while."

She let him, her thumb brushing over the back of his hand as the sunlight framed their heads and a sense of quiet peace settled over them.

#robstar #robin #starfire #slade #raven #beast boy #cyborg #Teen Titans #fanfiction #i take zero responsibility for this i was goaded #HAPPY EASTER HAVE SOME ANGST #prompt fics

78 notes · View notes

hollyand-writes · 5 years

Link

In this chapter, Emile de Launcet tries to chat up Merrill at the Hawke Estate ball, and she accepts a dance from Sir Carver just to get away from him.

Title: A Chance Engagement Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Chapters: 38/? Pairings: Eventual Carver/Merrill, background F!Mahariel/Tamlen, other pairings not revealed yet because of spoilers Other characters: Marian Hawke, Bethany Hawke, Leandra Hawke, Isabela, Tamlen, Fenarel, Female Mahariel, Keeper Marethari, Sabrae Clan, Arishok, Pol Other tags: Alternative Universe - Regency, Pride & Prejudice References, Bethany and Carver Hawke Live, Pride & Prejudice AU, Fluff and Humour, Ballroom Dancing, Secret Relationships, Comedy of Errors

Summary:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, Lady Leandra Amell tried to impress upon her three children, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife. However she hoped this wisdom would be received by her offspring, Lady Amell was dismayed to find that it had not had the effect she intended.”

Regency AU. When Miss Merrill attends the Kirkwall public assembly ball, the last man she expects to engage in a dance is Carver Hawke – a single man who has just come into possession of a large fortune. This chance meeting, however, sets them both on a path they never expected.

READ FROM THE BEGINNING ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

---------

Merrill was delighted with her first two dances with Pol. Granted, he was far clumsier than she was – but that was understandable; before her coming-out, she herself had found the minuet tricky to learn – and he often moved wrong without knowing it, and had to be gently pulled or persuaded back into the right dance steps. Nonetheless, she had enjoyed dancing with the handsome elf; it had certainly been a good distraction from some of the whispers of the human nobles. There had been two women in particular she had overheard, when they had not cared about lowering their voices in her presence:

‘Why are there so many elves here?’

‘The Hawkes invited them. Be polite.’

‘I hear they also invited the Qunari. I suppose we shall have to “be polite” too.’

‘You know as well as I do that we are here out of curiosity over how they will all conduct themselves. Think of it this way! It is entertainment!’

‘As entertaining as Empress Celene’s ball at the Winter Palace, do you think?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I understand the mischievous elf girl who cut the corset lacing on the de Launcet dresses at the Halamshiral ball will not be in attendance. Although I would be amused if it happened again, here.’

‘I should not think it would matter if the elves helped them expose themselves. The dresses the de Launcet girls are wearing suggest they do not need any additional help in baring all.’

The two ladies tittered; and Merrill had been pleased, just then, to spy Captain Isabela in the crowd, and had taken the opportunity to walk over and greet her.

Read more on AO3...

#merrill x carver #merrill #carver hawke #dragon age #carver #Regency AU #Regency!AU #dragon age 2 fanfic #carrill #carver x merrill #fanfic update #a chance engagement

22 notes · View notes

whetstonefires · 5 years

Link

Earth-3

Characters: Owlman, Talon, Superwoman, Orin of Atlantis, Donna Troy, Garth

Warnings: Dehumanization, vague sleazing at 13yo, brief mention of past eye trauma, villains

Words: ~4,500

For Sheillagh O., who has been very very patient about something that in theory was going to be done by the end of January.

--------

Talon ducked under his master’s elbow and slid the knife in where it belonged, at the base of Owlman’s spine.

It was one of three blades that slotted invisibly into the armor plates along his torso, to serve as additional rigid protection as long as they were in place and, when necessary, to offer an extra edge.

Not that the Owl ever even looked unarmed, nor would be harmless if he were. But there was a difference between the menace of jet claws, and the sharp point that could be made with five inches of steel.

Talon ducked back out again, lifted the left gauntlet from its stand and waited for the matching hand to be held out, that he might slide it on. This might take some space of seconds, as Owlman was flipping through the day’s reports on an obsidian clipboard, inset with faceted beads of smoky quartz forming the shape of the feather tattoo he gave his fully initiated followers, the footsoldiers of his Court.

(There had been a lecture last month, when the clipboard was delivered, about the choice of materials, and the balance between useful opulence and absurd ostentation. The latter, it seemed, would have been using actual gemstones in the decoration, rather than mere quartz.

Talon was glad it wasn’t set with diamonds. Inevitably one would have fallen out and gotten lost, and Owlman would have been in a temper.)

Without looking up from whatever document was making him frown so thunderously, the Owl extended his left hand. Gauntlet on. Flex, to make sure it had settled correctly. Pass the clipboard into that hand, obsidian impervious to the bite of claws, as Talon circled silently around his back.

It was important not to keep his master waiting, but neither could he distract him with haste and rush. There was a balance in this, as in all things. Perfection must brush the fingertips with every movement, though it might never alight within the palm. This was attainable. He had been well taught.

The old Talons had not been trained as squires. He’d been told that by one of the round white masks, old blood who had known Talons before him, in feathered armor, and trained them too. White circle inset with great dark eyes looking down, thinking little of him, in his ragged grey and scarlet. White mask and the voice that issued from behind it familiar, from times when he had been in error, and required punishment.

But the Court had changed, since the days when Talon wore the armor. And the King who ruled it now preferred the personal touch.

He didn’t need help arming up, of course. The entirety of the royal raiment was very particularly designed to be manageable by the wearer, without assistance, because Owlman felt that trust was a negotiable commodity but not one he preferred ever to have to rely upon.

A second pair of hands saved time and trouble, however, and the more height Talon put on, the more often it was his service that was called for, rather than that of the old man. He could almost reach the top of the Owl’s head now, if he stretched.

Clipboard transferred, the second powerful hand stretched out, and Talon slid the gauntlet onto it. Another flex of claws. Testing articulation. It was unthinkable that this armor could be neglected enough to rust, but something could always have gone wrong. Never assume.

The claws dove toward his neck, and Talon froze. What mistake had he made?

But his throat was not opened. One great knuckle hooked carefully under the edge of his jaw. The armored inner pad of the vast thumb pressed against his lower left bicuspid, through the thin flesh of his face. The very end of the thumb’s black claw pricked at the corner of his mouth.

Firmly, the heavy hand turned his face up, into Owlman’s where he knew better than to look unless instructed. Pale blue eyes punched into his own sharply enough it felt they should have punctured, and oozed down his face blindly. (He hated when that happened. The slime stayed even after he recovered, and blindness in the interim was awful.)

“Talon,” said his king, as softly as he ever said anything that was not a threat. Deep, smooth, and just a step shy of gloating. None of the cool sharp edges of his anger. Talon had done nothing wrong. The band around his heart loosened. “Focus.”

The hand withdrew from his chin, and Talon dipped his head in contrition. How could he always tell, somehow. What carelessness crept into his movements, when his mind began to spin away behind his eyes?

"Good." The Owl reached out and lifted the feathered mantle from its stand himself, swinging its weight around his shoulders to settle there, doubling his already great size and casting shadow over the gleaming-dark surface of his breastplate.

Reached up to draw the mask down over his face, and tipped his chin back as he did, throat bared, so that Talon knew to step close, reach up, and hook carefully along the the gorget the row of fastenings that kept the great cloak in place.

A twitch of broad armored shoulders brought the feathers into line, and they were ready to depart.

The meeting was on an island in international waters. Waters, however, that were within a convenient distance of Gotham by small watercraft, a thing ensured by the simple expedient of Owlman having donated the location to the cause.

Not that he didn't still own it, technically speaking, through a network of shells. (Talon knew vaguely that these were legal entities, but always pictured tiny curling conches and delicate oyster-carapaces strung on chains, swinging with every breeze.) But it was used for only this, and was treated for Society purposes as common ground.

The other members maintained just the narrowest thread of awareness that they were on his territory—enough to incline them to defer, but not enough to make them feel trapped.

It was a careful balance his lord maintained, over these titans of the world. Talon knew the delicate power of it because he was one of the most mobile weights on the scales, but also because he imagined anyone would, watching power flow back and forth amongst the mighty. The unstoppable force of alien or amazon curbed and redirected to a common purpose.

Or was that only anyone who had been watching Owlman all their life. Talon could not say.

The Court had been this restive, once. When Talon was new. Had still required delicacy, though never quite so much, because no one in it had had a fraction of the strength gathered here. Now all the Courtiers had learned to bow their round white faces and avert their staring Tyton eyes, and the King had turned his gaze beyond Gotham, into the greater world.

The waves broke black about them as they raced eastward, leaving the lights of Gotham far behind. It was low in the water, this small vessel, but fast and quiet as the wings of owls in the night air. Owlman steered, very upright in the only seat.

Talon crouched at his left hand, one bare knee steadying him against the inside of the hull. It was cold. Thin steel between him and the ocean’s depth.

He could drown for a very long time, before he stopped waking up again.

Sometimes when the boat was caught by a rise, he jostled against his lord’s knee. The Owl took no notice.

“Listen closely to the others,” he instructed, at length, as the shore of the little island and the tower’s height came into view. As though Talon might have forgotten. “I will be expecting a detailed report at the end of the evening.”

He didn’t glance toward Talon. Verbal confirmation was required. “Yes, my lord.”

“Good. I intend to avoid conflict tonight, and in addition to the question of expanded membership, the political situation has expanded the agenda, so we may run late. You may speak to whatever hangers-on the rest have brought as necessary to extract information, but be subtle.”

“…yes, my lord.”

“You have doubts?”

“No, my lord.”

“Obviously they’ll be suspicious if you act out of character.” Yes, exactly. “Don’t.”

Well. That limited the options. A challenge, but the better kind. The more choices he was given, after all, the more likely it was he would make one that was wrong.

Talon tipped his head back a little to catch the flash of the stars. They said you could use them in place of a clock, if you knew them well enough. There would be a clock in the meeting-hall, to time his mission by. Owlman always made sure that business could be conducted according to schedule, so that if it was departed from it would be a conscious decision, and not the careless creep of accidental waste.

There were few worse things than error.

The ocean spoke, and the stars were silent, and he understood neither.

The prince of Atlantis was leaping lightly up onto the dock when they drew alongside it, casting the reins that bound his dolphin mounts aside into the cold March water. He had no need to hitch them in place; they would come when he called.

Careless, artless display of power. All the more effective for its lack of calculation.

"Orin," Owlman inclined his head minutely as he stepped across from vessel to pier. Talon knelt at his heel, lashing the boat in place against the dock—unliving things could not be counted upon to remain obediently where they were left, if something wished to carry them away, nor to come back when called upon, and the ocean did not bow to the Owl-king's will.

"Owl," the prince replied, return nod almost lost in the way he swept his pale hair back, scattering salt droplets against the rising moon, glittering even brighter than the golden scales of his armor. "Lovely night."

"Mm." Disinterested agreement. Claws loose. No offense taken. The embossed patterns of his armor caught the moon in them far more subtly, a spider's web over polished night. "Shall we go up?"

"You take the open sky too much for granted, my good bird," smiled His Highness, voice light as sun on water. "But surely. I sent my squire ahead to ensure the provisions would be suitable, today."

No staff was kept on the secret island, for security reasons, and thus catering was limited. The speedster Dash had been in charge of the food at the previous meeting a month ago, and his contribution had been dozens of cheeseburgers in paper sacks, whose scent had made Talon's idiot mouth water, even though last time he'd eaten anything of the kind (spoils from a target’s home) it had sat in his stomach like stone, until he lost it into a gutter.

Superwoman had been entirely amused by the cheeseburgers, and Ultraman had only gotten annoyed once he saw that Owlman was, and realized his own standards should be higher. Atom, who was the most recent addition to the cohort, had seemed indifferent, as much as the mood of a man six inches high could be read from any distance.

But Hydrolord had almost walked out in offense. Surface dweller food, he said, was suspicious to begin with, fast food was beneath his royal dignity, and cattle were disgusting.

The fact that he'd known what it was at a glance had not gone unnoticed, even by Talon. His Highness went ashore incognito; this was known. Whether he'd eaten Burger King before or only seen it, or watched the advertisements, had mattered less however than the general calumny cast by all upon Dash's entirely unconcerned head. It had been hypnotic, that unconcern. The fragile mortal man with nothing but speed to protect him, surrounded by the most dangerous people on Earth, so sure he could not be touched that a mocking smile played at the corner of his mouth even as Ultraman fumed and Owlman's lip curled in disgust; as Hydrolord made the sea crash against the rocks outside as though it would swallow the fortress whole.

Dash was terribly powerful or very foolish, and either way he was brave.

Perhaps he had given the offense purposely, to show how little he cared for his colleagues’ anger, or perhaps he hadn’t cared enough to concern himself with what they might want. He had simply sat back in his chair at the high council table and eaten cheeseburgers almost too quickly to see the motion of hand to mouth, and yet with no great hurry, and smiled, and let the empty paper wrappers pile up at his elbow.

The meeting had ended early and with everyone but Dash in ill temper, even Superwoman, who’d gotten fed up by then with Atlantean and Kryptonian sulking.

If the Dash had been waging some kind of war that day, Talon thought he might have won.

But this was a new night, and the ocean prince seemed in good spirits as he led the way up the winding gravel path, toward the stone turrets of the refurbished old fort. Pirate-hunters had sailed from this island, once. Never pirates.

The Superwoman intercepted them all in the entry annex. “Orin! Owlman! Just barely on time!” She was wearing a cape today, a great billow of cloth-of-gold that trailed behind her like smoke as she swept forward across black tile, but still fell heavy about her whenever it hung still.

“Diana,” the prince greeted the princess, all careful courtesy. His armor glimmered a slightly paler shade than her mantle. “A fair moon for you?”

“Lovely. I fought some sort of prehistoric flightless dragon in a magical cavern. It was delicious. Have you bested that Kraken yet?”

“It’s learning to fear me.”

She leaned in and patted his cheek, a condescension he accepted with a tight-lipped smile. “Well done,” she said.

“Thank you.” His bow was stiff. “Excuse me.” Prince Orin stalked off toward where his squire was carefully adjusting the placement of silver domes over platters on the long sideboard, his good mood dispelled.

Silver corroded rapidly in seawater. Those domes were not an Atlantean affectation. Talon had seen something similar in Owlman’s home. Wondered if asking about them would be a believable opening to conversation.

“Oh, and you brought your cupbearer again, I see!” Superwoman exclaimed to the King of Owls, the full weight of her attention falling onto Talon, and immediately claiming the whole of his focus. (Not quite the whole; some was still reserved for his king.) “I like this one,” she announced, tapping a thumb against the bronze armor plating along her upper arm with a noise like rain on tin roofing, mouth curling up. “He doesn’t flinch.”

Flinch? Well. No. It wasn't that she wasn't terrifying, of course. Talon simply had very little energy to waste on feelings like fear. He'd been trained better than that.

"Your Highness," he murmured, ducking his head. A hand came down upon it. Not quite as large as Owlman’s, and bare.

"Hm," she hummed. "Courteous little creature you've trained, Bruce. Your way is so dismally slow, though." Long fingers that could crunch bone like dry leaves toyed with his hair.

Owlman's hand clamped down on Talon's shoulder. "But effective."

"I think you'll find my methods are entirely efficacious, thank you." The sharp note in her voice promised pain, but the hand that slipped from his hair, curled down his face and under his chin was merely firm.

Talon's breath threatened to stutter in his chest. He was supposed to defer to her. He was not supposed to allow liberties. How to resolve these dictates. Was this a test.

If Owlman objected to having his right hand pawed at, he would say something. The hand on his shoulder had tightened, but not in threat. Not as a message. There would be claws in that. Talon submitted to the touch.

The Superwoman's skin against his face seemed to burn. As though with perpetual fever. They said she had been created in divine fire. Talon knew his own body temperature was low. A side effect of the electrum in his bones.

Owlman touched him barehanded, sometimes. That was never so hot as this.

She tilted his head up with a firm pressure, and he stared vacantly into her forehead.

"Why the mask?" she murmured.

"That intangible mystique." The Owlman's voice was heavy with impatient sarcasm. "Diana, if you're finished inspecting my possessions..."

Superwoman swiped the pad of her thumb over Talon's lips. The pressure struck like a bolt of lightning, raced up and down his spine, wrenched at his gut and left his whole skin tingling, chilled. He didn't quite manage to suppress all reaction; his master certainly felt the twitch through the hand still clasped tight around his shoulder. It tightened.

"Chapped," she observed. "You should look into an oil or wax for that, boy."

"Diana." Exasperation. There were very few beings in the world Owlman would bother to show exasperation without menace, but the Superwoman was beyond his power to control, or to readily annihilate. He seemed almost a man, with her. Merely mortal.

The Owl would not let the Superwoman take Talon. He would not. It was too great a loss of face. The practical inconvenience of losing him could be weathered, if necessary, but politically—

"Oh, very well." The Superwoman took her hand away. Talon had never been so grateful to belong to Owlman. "Do drop fifty cents on a tube of chapstick for the boy, though; it can't be efficient for his lips to be constantly splitting, no matter how fast they heal, and it's poor aesthetics."

"Thank you," Owlman said, withering. "For your input."

"Always happy to help, Bruce." She winked at Talon. "See you around, pretty boy."

“Isn’t he too young for you?” the Owl grumbled, falling into step with Superwoman and leaving Talon where he stood, the turn of his head and slope of his shoulder indicating absent dismissal. The edges of their capes brushed together, hard sunlight and soft shadow.

“But showing such potential. You do have nice taste, and they’re so delightfully moldable at that age.”

“Must you always interfere with my things.”

“You’re so generous with them. I only trashed your beach house a little, and I took care of the bodies myself. Anyway, I’ll let you play with my next acquisition if you like.”

“I’m not much for games.”

They were out of earshot, then, and approaching the great oval table that took up one whole end of the hall, raised up on a dais with a single beam of light pouring down onto the center, reflecting from the polished surface enough to light the faces seated around it, though the spotlight did not quite reach them.

Ultraman was already in his chair, its high winged back blazoned with the crest of his house on a gilded field. In the smaller chair facing his, Dash sprawled comfortably back against his sigil of lightning.

As he, Superwoman, and Hydrolord all reached their places, Owlman flicked the particular sign of dismissal that meant commence duties toward Talon. At the table, Atom expanded abruptly into being to fill his seat, and in the shadowed hall beyond, Talon fell away toward the lesser table that lay along the far wall.

Where Garth of Atlantis had, in his master’s absence, been cornered by Donna of Themiscyra.

She loomed over him with only a slight advantage in height, and though she seemed unarmed but for the coiled whip stored on one hip, and was smiling, the threat implied in the way she stood far too close for courtesy was very clear.

Prince Orin’s squire was his master’s opposite: stockily built, and thus solid even for an Atlantean, but only half a head taller than Talon despite being the eldest of the three, with ringlets of dark hair and purple eyes, and in place of the broad smile or frothing rage most common on His Highness of the Seas, Garth’s expression alternated between brusque bare-courtesy and poorly hidden resentment.

He seemed a very poor courtier and was a mess of defensive vulnerabilities, but had clearly been selected for his loyalty over all other concerns.

The Superwoman's right hand, in contrast, was her mirror image—"My sister, Donna," she had said absently the first time she brought the girl with her, and the resemblance was strong; stronger than his had ever been to the Owl, and they’d been mistaken for blood relations more than once, the few times he’d been deployed at his master’s side outside of uniform. And yet there were differences, ones Talon had catalogued at once, and watched still for any change.

Her balance was less perfect, and when she lashed out the loss of control was far less calculated, far likelier to leave her vulnerable. The fire in her stare was different, full of sparks and a snapping pride that spoke to doubts which could undoubtedly be targeted, if it came to a fight. Owlman had estimated her age at fourteen, with the caveat that Amazons did not age at the usual human rate.

Talon had spent three meetings with them already, without having been forced to fight. He was sure it was only a matter of time.

Today seemed likely to be the day, by the set of each of their shoulders. He might welcome it—pain was a small sacrifice for the clean certainty of violence, even against those he must not kill without a clear command. Certainly it would be easier than any other interaction.

But in combat he would have no luck subtly extracting information from their conversation. No good. He had a mission to complete. And Owlman planned to avoid conflict tonight.

“Careful, Amazon,” Garth cautioned, as Talon drew near. “To insult me is to insult my master.”

Superwoman’s protégée flicked the long tail of her hair out dismissively. “And I should be scared of your prince? What power does he have, besides the right to go crying to his mommy?”

“He is knight of the seven seas and the prince of Atlantis, who holds the trident of Neptune.”

“And what is that to the Queen of the Cats? Face it, he’s only here to pretend to be relevant outside his goldfish bowl.”

Garth’s hand strayed toward his waist, though there was no visible weapon there. “You insolent—”

His teeth snapped shut on word and possibly tongue as the heel of Donna Troy’s hand slammed up under his chin.

In the disorientation this created she yanked his gut onto her fist with a handful of curls, then flipped the triple human weight of an Atlantean’s dense muscle and bone casually over her shoulder.

He hit the ground on his face and had only time to break the fall before she was on him again, twisting his arm tight against his spine so that any struggle might tear it from its moorings—an even more serious injury for a boy who swam everywhere than it would be on the surface.

She dragged his head back with a loop of silver whip around his throat.

“Insolent,” she said, her face hanging just above the back of his ear, though she spoke loud and clear enough that Talon had no struggle to hear, “is a word for your inferiors. I am no such thing.

“I am the Lady of Ilium, carrying the legacy of the Titans that stand beyond the world. Troy fell because it trusted too well in the guardianship of Poseidon. Learn from them.

“Because if you continue to cross me I will challenge you to a duel of honor, and throw you down again with my lady and the gods to witness, and shackle your will to mine. And do you think your prince will still value your service, if he can’t trust you not to obey me, instead?”

The squire’s short breath and silence were answer enough, and Donna Troy smirked and let him go, standing up and not offering to help him to his feet. The long half-second it took him to rise spoke volumes to those who knew how to look, and the Amazon flicked the long tail of her hair again in scorn.

She flicked her eyes toward Talon with the gesture, and he realized she was gauging his opinion, his reaction to her violence and her successful threat. She wanted his approval? Or his respect. Or his fear.

He didn't fear her. Genuinely. There was...very little she could do that could threaten him, really. Up at the high table, her mistress was smiling sharkishly at his master, looking for a weakness. She would not find it. She would never find it.

Lady Ilium dismissed the squire of Atlantis and tried her own sharkish smile out on Talon, assured of his attention. He showed his teeth in return. It was not a comforting expression, but he didn't think it would be taken as a threat.

Could she break his will, with her magic? What would that be like?

"Anything to say, Birdie-bye?" she asked him.

Perfect. An opening.

He tilted his head. "Your queens don't know about this meeting, do they?" It was a question for both, if Garth wanted to seize the floor.

"Tch." Donna rolled her eyes and looked away, up at the table where the adults were indulging in intrigue. "Hippolyta will come around." She shot him a look. "Anyway it's not as though your government approves."

Owlman owned the city and state governments. The federal was proving a little more challenging. Talon shrugged one shoulder in carefully calculated indifference. It wasn’t the same thing. “My king,” he said, “is here.”

“And you think being the lord of a made-up Court with no realm of his own is somehow of more account than heir to an empire covering two thirds of the world?” Garth demanded.

Talon regarded him without expression, and the Lady Ilium burst into snorting laughter at the sight, and leaned forward to backhand Talon’s arm—a gesture that seemed almost friendly meant, though he felt blood vessels burst at the impact, and immediately begin to mend. “You’re chatty today, aren’t you shorty? Don’t worry about Diana, she knows what’s up. Her mom’s old-fashioned, we just have to work around her for now.

"Lots of Amazons want in on the outside world, letting you men control it just because it would be a huge chore to change things is such a drag.”

She wrapped an arm around Garth’s neck, too quick for him to evade, but rather than choking or cracking his spine she just dragged him sideways, until his head was conveniently positioned to violently tousle his curls. “And don’t worry about Atlantis, gillsy. We’re not gonna mess with your soggy system, that’s what allies is all about. You’re getting us onside, Atalanta’s gonna owe you.”

Donna Troy, Talon decided, was not originally from Themiscyra. Valuable intelligence, if he could support it with evidence. As a first step he would have to find a way to get her to touch him again, and confirm the impression of a hand far too cool to be a thing like her sister-mistress, of earth and holy fire.

16 notes · View notes

antilagardelle · 4 years

Text

C.S. Lewis on bulverism. An excerpt from Mere Christianity:

It is a disastrous discovery, as Emerson says somewhere, that we exist. I mean, it is disastrous when instead of merely attending to a rose we are forced to think of ourselves looking at the rose, with a certain type of mind and a certain type of eyes. It is disastrous because, if you are not very careful, the color of the rose gets attributed to our optic nerves and its scent to our noses, and in the end there is no rose left. The professional philosophers have been bothered about this universal black-out for over two hundred years, and the world has not much listened to them. But the same disaster is now occurring on a level we can all understand.

We have recently “discovered that we exist” in two new senses. The Freudians have discovered that we exist as bundles of complexes. The Marxians have discovered that we exist as members of some economic class. In the old days it was supposed that if a thing seemed obviously true to a hundred men, then it was probably true in fact. Nowadays the Freudian will tell you to go and analyze the hundred: you will find that they all think Elizabeth a great queen because they all have a mother-complex. Their thoughts are psychologically tainted at the source. And the Marxist will tell you to go and examine the economic interests of the hundred; you will find that they all think freedom a good thing because they are all members of the bourgeoisie whose prosperity is increased by a policy of laissez-faire. Their thoughts are “ideologically tainted” at the source.

Now this is obviously great fun; but it has not always been noticed that there is a bill to pay for it. There are two questions that people who say this kind of thing ought to be asked. The first is, are all thoughts thus tainted at the source, or only some? The second is, does the taint invalidate the tainted thought – in the sense of making it untrue – or not?

If they say that all thoughts are thus tainted, then, of course, we must remind them that Freudianism and Marxism are as much systems of thought as Christian theology or philosophical idealism. The Freudian and Marxian are in the same boat with all the rest of us, and cannot criticize us from outside. They have sawn off the branch they were sitting on. If, on the other hand, they say that the taint need not invalidate their thinking, then neither need it invalidate ours. In which case they have saved their own branch, but also saved ours along with it.

The only line they can really take is to say that some thoughts are tainted and others are not – which has the advantage (if Freudians and Marxians regard it as an advantage) of being what every sane man has always believed. But if that is so, we must then ask how you find out which are tainted and which are not. It is no earthly use saying that those are tainted which agree with the secret wishes of the thinker. Some of the things I should like to believe must in fact be true; it is impossible to arrange a universe which contradicts everyone’s wishes, in every respect, at every moment. Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.” You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant – but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.

In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became to be so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism.” Some day I am going the write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father – who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third – “Oh, you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.

I find the fruits of his discovery almost everywhere. Thus I see my religion dismissed on the grounds that “the comfortable parson had every reason for assuring the nineteenth century worker that poverty would be rewarded in another world.” Well, no doubt he had. On the assumption that Christianity is an error, I can see clearly enough that some people would still have a motive for inculcating it. I see it so easily that I can, of course, play the game the other way round, by saying that “the modern man has every reason for trying to convince himself that there are no eternal sanctions behind the morality he is rejecting.” For Bulverism is a truly democratic game in the sense that all can play it all day long, and that it give no unfair advantage to the small and offensive minority who reason. But of course it gets us not one inch nearer to deciding whether, as a matter of fact, the Christian religion is true or false. That question remains to be discussed on quite different grounds – a matter of philosophical and historical argument. However it were decided, the improper motives of some people, both for believing it and for disbelieving it, would remain just as they are.

I see Bulverism at work in every political argument. The capitalists must be bad economists because we know why they want capitalism, and equally Communists must be bad economists because we know why they want Communism. Thus, the Bulverists on both sides. In reality, of course, either the doctrines of the capitalists are false, or the doctrines of the Communists, or both; but you can only find out the rights and wrongs by reasoning – never by being rude about your opponent’s psychology.

Until Bulverism is crushed, reason can play no effective part in human affairs. Each side snatches it early as a weapon against the other; but between the two reason itself is discredited. And why should reason not be discredited? It would be easy, in answer, to point to the present state of the world, but the real answer is even more immediate. The forces discrediting reason, themselves depend of reasoning. You must reason even to Bulverize. You are trying to prove that all proofs are invalid. If you fail, you fail. If you succeed, then you fail even more – for the proof that all proofs are invalid must be invalid itself.

#religion #atheism #agnostism #christianity #philosophy #epistemology #ideology #capitalism #debate #communism #sociology #psychology

1 note · View note

ezzydean · 5 years

Text

rubber cement and taped fingers

‘Fuck up bassist seeks drummer. Fuck up drummer preferred. If not fucked up, fucking up will be provided for you. -NTOE’

NTOE. No Trial Only Error.

NTOE may not be the next big thing but for Matsukawa Issei it's as good a chance as any to see where life takes him next. Now if only his life would stop trying to screw him over that would be great thanks.

aka that HanaMatsu band au no one asked for but I wrote anyway

on AO3

after the cut (it’s just short of 9k)

“Hey Issei?”

Issei takes a deep breath, eyelids fluttering in irritation, and glances over at his roommate sprawled on the floor.

“Yes Lev?”

“If I found you a new job would you stop being mad at me for accidentally getting you fired from your last job?”

He considers his roommate for a moment. Lev’s face looks sincere enough and, honestly, Issei is getting tired of Lev’s sad wet kitten found in a cardboard box stare.

“Possibly.”

Lev looks down at his phone. “Hey isn’t NTOE that band that always played at the club you and she-who-must-not-be-named-around-polite-company used to go to? The only band you actually liked at that place?”

“It is. Why?”

Lev rolls up onto his knees and shuffles over to Issei. “Get ready to not be mad at me anymore,” he says as he shoves his phone into Issei’s face.

He glances at the screen and sighs. He really isn’t sure he’s going to be finding any kind of decent jobs from a classified ads app that looks like a twelve year old made it. But he skims through the post anyway.

‘Fuck up bassist seeks drummer. Fuck up drummer preferred. If not fucked up, fucking up will be provided for you. -NTOE’

NTOE. No Trial Only Error.

There is no way it can actually be them. They aren’t a huge band, nothing super known and mainstream. But they are popular among the clubs and bars and rumor has it that there were talks of record deals on the horizon for them. So no way they are looking for a drummer. Not for real.

But — he mentally counts what’s left in his bank account and overlays that with the fact that none of his dozen applications for a more respectable job have called him back yet — it isn’t like there’s any harm in trying.

—

Issei glances up and down the street. It’s hard to believe that this is NTOE’s home base. Or studio or whatever. It’s only a few minutes away from his apartment. Hell he and Lev used to walk by this building every time they went to the club until she-who-must-not-be-named-around-polite-company ruined it for him. He looks down at the address on his phone and then back up at the door. This is the place and the door is unlocked when he tries it so he goes inside.

He doesn’t exactly have butterflies dancing in his guts or anything but there is anticipation buzzing in his chest. This is kind of a chance of a lifetime for him. The chance not just to be in a band but to be in one of his current favorite bands? If this really is No Trial Only Error then he’ll have to remember to get something awesome for Lev for finding this chance for him. And if it isn’t actually them then it isn’t like he’s really out anything other than a couple hours of time.

“Hello?” His voice echoes awkwardly through the empty room. Like it’s trying to fill up more space than it’s supposed to. “Anyone here?”

“Well hello there.”

He turns to the side and spots a man leaning against the far wall, brown hair stylishly falling over his forehead and a mischievous sparkle in his brown eyes that comforts Issei and makes him nervous in equal measures.

“Um.” Issei glances down at his phone again to double check the name. This is not the lead singer for NTOE. He looks nothing like the guy Issei had seen working the crowd at the club last year. “Iwaizumi?” he asks hesitantly anyway.

The man snorts in amusement. “Oh please. He wishes he looked like me.” He looks Issei up and down. “So you’re the guy.”

“Am I?”

Issei knows mischief. He knows it when it’s hiding behind corners and tucked into drawers and tiptoeing through dimly lit corridors. So of course he recognizes it when it’s staring him straight in the eye. Or, more accurately, when it’s eyeballing him like a starving man at a buffet.

“You look like you’d be the guy.”

“I do?”

“You do.”

“Well I’m glad we got that all sorted out.” He slips his phone in his back pocket. “I’m Matsukawa Issei. But I’m sure you know that already. Since I’m the guy.”

“Of course you are. And I do. And you are.” The man pushes away from the wall with the kind of grace that comes effortlessly. Issei knows the difference between effortless grace and practiced grace. Grace had been trained into him at a young age after all. “I’m Oikawa Tooru. NTOE’s producer and the role model they all aspire to be like.”

“Oh fuck if I ever aspire to be like you just take me into the alley and shoot me in the head.” Issei looks over his shoulder and into the deep, dark blue eyes of NTOE’s lead guitarist, Nanase Haruka, as he steps into the building.

“Haruka I’m so glad you pulled yourself away from your bathtub to join us.”

“Oikawa if you call me by my given name one more time I will drown you in your own toilet.”

“Love you too boo.”

Nanase sighs like the entire world is on his shoulders and looks at Issei. “Please tell me you’re the fuck up drummer we’ve been waiting for. If I have to go another practice listening to Oikawa talking instead of actually letting us play I will start stabbing myself in the ear with my own guitar picks.”

Issei is pretty sure he’s the fuck up drummer they’re waiting for. So he nods like he’s 100% sure and introduces himself once again. “I’m Matsukawa Issei.”

“So Mattsun,” Oikawa says cheerfully. “We’ve got the stuff set up in back. Why don’t you show us what you can do and we’ll go from there.”

Oikawa throws his arm around Issei’s shoulder and tugs him towards a door across the room. This is either the chance of a lifetime or he’s being led to a room where they’re going to murder and dismember him. He’s really, really, really hoping for the former. It’s this thought and the fact that Oikawa called him ‘Mattsun’ like they had been friends their whole live or something that distracts him enough to just let Oikawa drag him along. Nanase tsks but follows only a few steps behind them.

“You know that Iwaizumi won’t be happy you’re starting without him,” Nanase mutters.

“Of course I do.”

“But you’re going to do it anyway.”

“Of course I am.”

Oikawa shepherds Issei towards the drum kit and Haru shuffles off across the room from them. “I’ll say something moderately polite at your funeral,” Nanase says as he drops onto the couch.

“You’re so sweet.” Nanase nods at Oikawa’s words and fishes something out of his pocket. Issei can’t quite see what it is from where he’s settling behind the drums but it glints in the light as Nanase’s fingers twitch. “Now,” Oikawa says as he turns his attention on Issei. “Let’s see what you can do.”

—

Playing drums isn’t Issei’s life. It isn’t his end all be all. Music isn’t the air he breathes or anything like that. But he does love it. It does move him and he wants it to move others. He loves the beat, the feel of the sticks in his hand, the numbness vibrating up his arms from each hit at the end of a good session. He loves seeing people move to the beat he lays down.

So it’s not his life.

But opening his eyes and seeing Oikawa and Nanase nodding along, seeing Nanase’s fingers tapping against his knee like he can’t help himself, gives him a rush that nothing else in life has managed to give him yet. The deep hum of bass startles him out of his thoughts. He glances over and spots Hanamaki Takahiro, NTOE’s bassist, flashing him a peace sign before focusing back on his guitar, fingers gliding over the strings lovingly and skillfully.

“Glad to see you didn’t listen when I asked you to wait for us.” Iwaizumi Hajime, NTOE’s frontman, is leaning against the door frame scowling at Oikawa.

“Oh Iwa-chan if I listened to everything you said to me Makki would still be slogging his way through a business education he hates and Haru-chan-”

“There are two people who are allowed to call me that and you are neither of them,” Haru butts in.

“-well Haru-chan would be some famous sports star who is bored in life,” Oikawa continues like he doesn’t even hear Nanase. Issei is starting to feel like anything Oikawa doesn’t want to deal with is just white noise to him. “So you’re all welcome.”

“You’re also half the reason our last drummer quit,” Iwaizumi states.

Oikawa snorts rudely. “Well if he hadn’t been che-”

“I’m Hanamaki by the way.” The bassist sidles over to the drum kit, blocking out Oikawa and Iwaizumi from Issei’s view and distracting him from whatever conversation they’re having. “Hanamaki Takahiro. I’m the one who posted the ad.”

“Ah. The fuck up bassist that was seeking me.”

Hanamaki blushes a little. “That’s me. Fuck up extraordinaire.” Hanamaki drops his gaze to his guitar and taps his thumb against the neck nervously. Issei narrows his eyes; he’s just met him but he doesn’t really like seeing that look on Hanamaki’s face. Like he’s embarrassed. So Issei pokes Hanamaki in the chest with a drumstick and flicks the tip of his nose when he looks up.

“Oh I like that. We should get that printed on cards. Hanamaki and Matsukawa: Fuck Up Extraordinaires.”

Hanamaki grins and that’s it. Issei is a goner. He might as well have just signed his soul away to the devil. He grins back at Hanamaki.

“I don’t know,” Hanamaki muses. “Matsukawa and Hanamaki: Fuck Up Extraordinaires sounds pretty good too.”

“We’ll get both.”

“They’re bonding already,” Nanase says from the couch. “This is either going to turn out brilliantly or we’ll all need therapy.”

“You say that like we don’t all already need therapy,” Oikawa replies. “Well then.” He gestures towards a guitar leaning against the wall and gives Nanase a pointed look. “Let’s see what the four of you can do.”

—

“Issei?”

He looks up from the book in his lap at the sound of his name. His roommate is standing in the doorway shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a worried child. He’s even biting at his lower lip as he does it. It’s endearing. And a little irritating.

“Lev.”

“Um. Are you done being mad at me about the whole job thing?”

“I mean. You did get me fired from one of the best paying and most stable jobs I’ve ever had.” He glances down at his book and turns the page slowly. Just because he isn’t really all that mad at Lev anymore doesn’t mean he can’t be dramatic about it. He sighs deeply and watches Lev out of the corner of his eye. Then he groans. Had he known when he agreed to live with the guy that Lev could be the human embodiment of the sad face emoji he might have looked a little harder for a roommate. “Not like that’s saying much. None of my jobs have been the greatest, Lev. We’re good.”

Lev immediately brightens and rushes over to flop onto the couch next to Issei.

“So you got the spot? You’re the new drummer?”

“So far.”

The tryout, or whatever it had been, had gone smoothly. They didn’t practice anything super complex as a band or anything like that but he got the chance to show off his skills solo and then Nanase and Hanamaki had each taken a turn doing a little freestyle session with him while Iwaizumi and Oikawa listened and nodded approvingly. Then there had been that little stretch of heaven where he and Hanamaki had synced up perfectly without even trying and Nanase had slipped right into place a moment later and it had felt like they had been playing together since the beginning of time. It had been pretty fucking perfect actually.

“So like do you get to play with them somewhere? A gig at a club or something I can come watch you at?”

“There will be a lot of practices before any gigs I’m sure. I’m good, Lev, but I’m not a musical genius,” he adds when he spots Lev’s pout coming back. “When we get to the point where there will be a gig you’ll be the first person I tell. I promise.”

Lev makes some sort of happy noise and wiggles excitedly; he really is some weird kitten/puppy hybrid and Issei makes a mental note to tell Seijuurou he was right. Sei will be ecstatic. He loves being right. “I can’t wait to someday tell people that I know people in a band.”

It’s three hours later as Issei is getting ready for bed that he registers the fact that Lev had said ‘people’ in a band and not ‘a person’ in a band. Foreboding curls in his stomach.

This… this might be interesting.

—

“So. Matsukawa.”

“So. Iwaizumi.”

Iwaizumi snorts quietly and rolls his eyes. “So you think you wanna do this thing? Officially be one of us and all that?”

“You mean I’m not already? Oikawa talks to me like he’s known me since I was a child or something.”

“Well Oikawa kind of treats everyone like he’s known them since they were a child. Or like he’s a child.”

“Yeah and Hanamaki wants to stick his tongue down your throat,” Nanase butts in, like he always seems to do. “Doesn’t technically mean you’re one of us yet.”

“Damn Nanase. And here I thought you and I were BFFLs and all that. We bonded over… you know… stuff.”

“Okay focus.” Issei grins wolfishly at Iwaizumi and looks at him with dramatically wide eyes. All the better to hear him with and all that. “I need to know if you want in for sure. Because if you do then we need to introduce you to our managers.”

“Well I’m in if you’ll take me.”

The door to the building slams open on cue and gleeful laughter fills the room. “Good,” Iwaizumi says. “Because Hazuki and Matsuoka are here to meet you.”

“Have fun with that,” Nanase mutters. He pulls his headphones on and wanders over to the couch, skillfully evading the blond ball of energy that launches itself at him.

“Aw Haru-chan,” the blond whines as he tries to climb onto Nanase’s lap while Nanase pushes him away. “Why are you so mean?”

“Matsukawa,” Iwaizumi says, “meet Hazuki Nagisa. One of our managers.” The blond glances over his shoulder and grins at Issei. Then he immediately turns back to Nanase and starts talking to him excitedly, arms gesturing wildly, even though Nanase is ignoring him. Someone clears their throat beside him. “And this is Matsuoka Kou.”

“I’m the manager who actually gets stuff done.”

Issei turns to face Matsuoka and gives her a polite bow, along with his full attention. Good manners had been trained into him from a young age after all. “Nice to meet you,” he says as politely as possible. “It will be a pleasure to work with you.”

Matsuoka makes a pleasantly surprised noise and nods approvingly. “Punctual. Polite. I like this one.”

“A fuck up I may be but I’m a fuck up with good manners.” His mother had always told him that. Or something like that. Something about how even if you fuck up tremendously, as long as you’re a polite person they can’t completely ruin your character. And a person’s character was one of their most important possessions. Or something. His mother hadn’t always been the most coherent person at times. But she had made sure he had manners and knew used proper grammar and could catch a marshmallow in his mouth no matter how far up it had been thrown.

“So,” Hazuki pops up into his vision. “You’re serious about this? You wanna join the gloriousness that is NTOE?”

“Well. It’s not like I have anything else to be doing with my life right now. And I always did kind of want to be in a band.”

—

"Band Bonding," Hanamaki says with a smirk that totally does not make Issei weak in the knees. Except that it does.

"Not to be confused with Band Bondage. That's an entirely different level of friendship," Nanase delivers in the deadpan way Issei has come to thoroughly appreciate in the last couple months.

"You kidnapped me on my way to the grocery store for bonding time?"

"Were you low on toilet paper? Cause the last time Oikawa got kidnapped on the way to the grocery store he forgot to buy toilet paper when he was finally free and I wound up on the toilet very unhappy with him the next day." And there’s Iwaizumi's odd brand of humor. Which isn't really all that odd except Iwaizumi is like 26 and has that serious face that could belong to a 50 year old business man and he’s more likely to use potty humor than anyone else in the band.

“I feel like this has so much potential for disaster,” Issei mutters. To himself apparently because the other three ignore him and continue leading him down the block. Past the grocery store. Past the music store. Past everything until they reached a bus stop. “Okay but seriously if this thing is gonna make me more than an hour late I need to let my roommate know cause I’m supposed to meet him and his sister for food this afternoon.”

“Invite them with.” Everyone stops and stares at Nanase who looked confused. And a little bit betrayed like he hadn’t meant to say the words but his brain and mouth had done it anyway. “Why did I say that?”

“Aw Nanase. We truly are BFFLs.” Nanase looks ill at the statement and Issei laughs.

“I have enough BFFLs thanks.”

“I mean. I’d like to meet the roommate.” Hanamaki shrugs when they all glance at him. “Matsukawa talks about him a lot. So if he’s staying in the band we’re probably gonna see a lot of him anyway.”

They all look at Iwaizumi. Who groans. He doesn’t really seem to like being the leader but had told Issei on more than one occasion that letting anyone else be the group leader had wound up in horrible disasters that he usually got the worst of. So it’s kind of self-preservation for him to just take the lead.

“Invite him if you want. Cause yeah. We’re kidnapping you for the rest of the day.” Iwaizumi slaps him on the shoulder as the bus pulled up to the curb.

—

“I feel like this is your fault.” Issei looks up at Haru’s voice. Lev is in the corner gesturing excitedly at something he’s telling Oikawa.

“What is?”

“Him,” Haru grumbles. “Your roommate.”

“Hey you told me to invite him.”

“It wasn’t intentional and even if it was I didn’t realize at the time that he would be so…” His voice drops off as Lev laughs loudly.

“So much?” Issei supplies when Haru doesn’t seem interested in continuing his thought. “Yeah. Lev is something else. But he’s loyal - almost to a fault sometimes - and in my experience his kind of loyal is hard to come by.” He shrugs when he notices Haru’s unimpressed expression. “He’s good people. He’ll grow on you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Haru mutters.

Issei watches him shuffle off to the corner where his guitar is propped up. He’s not sure if he’s ever going to understand Haru. The guy is all sorts of contradictions. He claims he’s not all that into the whole music thing yet when he plays Issei swears he can see Haru’s eyes light up like the world is being handed to him on a platter. He says he’s not a people person yet he’s always drawing Issei into conversations. Haru glances over and frowns at him; he’s got the whole aloof artist thing down that’s for sure. But whatever. It’s not like Lev is being that big of a distraction to anyone but Oikawa at the moment and, honestly, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Oikawa can bring a practice to a violent stop that refuses to start again until his final tiniest whim is met. But he has an ear for the details and as irritating as he can be Issei’s pretty sure NTOE is lucky to have him.

He settles behind his drums and twirls his sticks a few times, staring back at Haru until Haru huffs at him and turns away. Issei looks down at his hands. It still hasn’t really hit him that he’s part of this all. That he’s part of NTOE. That NTOE isn’t some foreign entity that he only knows from a few club performances and whatever online presence he notices. It’s actually pretty awesome.

—

Haru lets out a disgusted noise and Issei feels something small bounce off his shoulder. It doesn’t deter him in the slightest. Makki huffs out a laugh against his lips and, honestly, Issei feels like he never wants to leave. Issei nips gently at Makki’s bottom lip.

“Just, ugh,” Haru groans. “Seriously we’re supposed to be rehearsing.”

Issei ignores him. Makki is a great kisser and nothing Haru does is going to stop them. Another small object hits his shoulder again followed immediately by one landing in his hair. Makki plucks it out and glances at it, laughing against Issei’s lips.

“A guitar pick? How fitting,” he says over Issei’s shoulder. Then he goes right back to kissing Issei again. Issei’s so lucky. First he got to join NTOE. Now he gets to make out with Makki pretty much whenever he wants.

The door from the main room to the rehearsal room opens and Issei vaguely hears Kou’s voice.

“Oh I’m glad to see you’re putting my bargain purchase to good use,” she says as Issei feels yet another guitar pick bounce off of him. “5000 picks for the price of 500!”

“The manufacturer was going out of business,” Iwaizumi says from his spot next to Haru. Issei’s pretty sure Iwaizumi is holding the bucket of picks for Haru. Honestly he’s waiting for Haru to just start flinging handfuls of picks at them all at once. Or just upending the bucket over their head.

“Exactly! Bargain!” Kou sweeps into the room fully, door slamming shut behind her. “I knew you’d find a use for them!”

“I found them in the back of your closet,” Iwaizumi replies.

“Oh so you found your way out of the closet then? Congratulations.”

“Kou.” Issei is sure that if he pulled himself away from Makki he would see Iwaizumi’s shit-eating grin in place. “I was never in the closet. You know this. I know this. People I’ve never even met know this.”

“Either way you found them!”

Issei still isn’t sure if Iwaizumi and Kou are flirting. He may never be sure if they are. He could walk in on them making out and still probably not be sure if they’re actually flirting. He mentally shrugs and goes back to kissing Makki. It’s a better use of his time than trying to figure out his new friends’ relationship statuses.

Oikawa finally comes back out of the bathroom. “Iwa-chan,” he whines, “I just found a guitar pick in my underwear.”

“Ugh,” Iwaizumi groans, “I never, under any circumstances, need to know what goes on in your underwear.”

“I second that,” Haru adds. A moment later Issei feels the collar of his shirt yanked away from his neck as dozens of guitar picks are dumped down his shirt.

It still doesn’t stop him from making out with Makki.

—

Issei watches Haru standing next to him. The guy is practically radiating tension. Stiff as a board somehow despite his slouch. Haru’s fingers run along his guitar idly as he glares across the room. “Somehow this is your fault,” he says to Hazuki.

Hazuki’s face is an adorable scrunch of confusion. That’s what gets you, Issei had found out the hard way. He looks so sweet and innocent and bubbly. It hides the devious whirling machinations of his devious little mind. Kou at least looks devious enough to start with when she eyes you like a top tier prize at a carnival. There’s no surprise, no sense of world warping betrayal when she reveals her master plan and how you so easily walked right into it.

“What are you talking about?” Hazuki asks. “And how is it my fault?”

Haru points across the room and Issei looks over to see Lev flopped on the couch. He’s actually being perfectly polite and quiet today. Which might have something to so with Issei promising to get him into their show for free next week so long as he behaves. With the way he acts normally Issei never would have expected that seeing Lev fairly calm and collected would set Haru on edge so badly. But if this is all it takes to freak Haru out then maybe Issei needs to get Lev to behave more often.

“I don’t know how it’s your fault. But it is. It’s a disaster and you need to fix it. For the sake of peace in the band.”

Hazuki glances at Issei in confusion but Issei just shrugs. Hazuki has known Haru longer than Issei has so he should know how Haru is by now.

“Okay. I don’t exactly know what you want me to do but I’ll do something I suppose.”

“Good. Fix it.”

There’s no way that’s gonna come back and bite Haru in the ass. But Issei kindly refrains from saying as much; Haru has already kicked him in the shin once today after all.

—

There never has and never will be anything quite like the rush of being on stage. The hum of the crowd, the sharp bite of the lights, the buzz of energy snapping between them all. Honestly Issei’s sometimes a little surprised not to see actual sparks arcing from Hajime’s lips to the microphone or from Haru and Takahiro’s fingers and their guitars. To not see the jolts of electricity with each snap of his sticks against his drums.

They play through two encores and seriously consider staying for a third. But Kou’s standing at the edge of their vision, hands on hips and expression promising pain if they don’t get their asses off the stage right now, so they make their final bows and slip off the stage. The quiet that rushes over them after the door to the stage shuts tries to damper their spirits, to yank away that thrill they just felt. But they cling to it, and each other, refusing to let go. Hajime’s got his arm thrown around Haru’s shoulder and his fingers twitch against Haru’s bared skin. Haru doesn’t look like he wants to yank Hajime’s arm off for touching him so Issei figures he must be riding his own high. Issei and Takahiro are following them down the hall with their arms wrapped around each other’s waist. It’s damn near perfect.

It’s everything he never realized he wanted in life right at that moment. His grin dims just a smidge, he can feel it, as the thought tumbles into his mind that he’s only missing one thing right now. Laughter fills the hallway and he stumbles a little. It’s got to just be his mind playing tricks on him and he shakes his head with a dumb smile when Takahiro glances at him in confusion. No way it’s anything else.

They round the corner at the end of the hallway towards their tiny, sad excuse for a dressing room and Issei freezes for a moment. Just a moment but it’s long enough for two of the people lounging against the wall near the dressing room door to turn and spot him.

“Issei!” Momo and Sei cry out in unison. Mere seconds later he’s being crushed in a Mikoshiba hug that he honestly never thought he’d feel again.

“You’re alive,” Momo is practically sobbing, rubbing his snotty nose on Issei’s shoulder.

“You vanish into thin air. You don’t write. You don’t call. And now you’re in a band? You deviant you.” Sei tangles his fingers in Issei’s sweaty hair and playfully tugs at it. “I’ve missed you kid.”

His face is red. From embarrassment, shock, exertion from the show or all of them at once, he’s not sure. But he falls into the dressing room with a grin splitting his face and Takahiro slipping back against his side as soon as Sei and Momo release him. The tiny room is far too warm as introductions are being made but there’s no place he’d rather be in this moment. Not even home alone with Takahiro pressing him against his bedroom door doing wonderfully wicked things with his mouth. That’s how perfect this moment is now.

—

“So,” Sei asks the next morning when Issei wanders into the living room still half asleep. Sei sits up and nods to the spot next to him on the couch. Issei could probably make it to the bathroom and lock it before Sei could catch him and make him talk. But that sounds like far too much effort this early in the day. Especially after the night he had.

“So,” Issei replies as he sits down. He eyes his best friend warily. Are they even still best friends? It’s been nearly three years since they’ve talked and at least another two since they’ve seen each other face to face. It’s been amazing to see Sei and Momo but are they going to turn around and tell his family where he is? Is he going to have to uproot himself right as he’s finally settling into a good thing? Is he going to have to give up Takahiro and Lev and everything he has here?

“For crying out loud stop thinking so much,” Sei finally gripes. He reaches out and flicks Issei in the forehead. “I’m not going to tattle on you. If I was I would have done it three months ago when Nagisa told me the name of the newest member of NTOE.” Issei exhales slowly. Of course Sei wasn’t going to rat him out. Sei growls at him. “I can’t believe you even thought that.”

“Well the last person who found out didn’t exactly take it well.”

“Yeah, well, Emi was conniving bitch,” Sei says so matter of factly that Issei snorts. “What about Lev?”

“What about Lev?”

“You’ve at least told him, right? He’s gotta be the closest thing you have to a best friend these days. I mean he can’t compare to me but, really, who can?”

Issei snorts again. Then he falls onto his side so his head is in Sei’s lap. “You are hard to beat,” he admits. “And no I haven’t told Lev,” he adds softly. “But I’m sure he’s figured some of it out. He was here for the end of Emi’s reign over my heart.”

“I’m, uh, not sure your heart is what she was controlling,” Lev says from the doorway. “She had a grip a little lower I think.” Issei can feel his face flushing in embarrassment. He’s not sure what exactly he’s embarrassed by though. “But I have to say as nasty as she was in the end I still liked her better than Fuyuko.” His voice drops to a shuddery whisper on the name and an answering shudder rolls through Issei’s body.

She-who-must-not-be-named-around-polite-company. Now that was a mistake Issei would happily spend the rest of his life forgetting. But he has Takahiro now. So whatever.

“Wait,” Issei says suddenly. “Nagisa told you about me months ago? How do you know him?”

“He’s a cousin,” Momo pipes in. A moment later he’s scrambling over the arm of the couch to flop onto Issei. Who allows it because it’s Momo and he’s always had a soft spot for Momo. He’s less happy when, a moment after that, Momo reaches up and drags Lev into the mix as well. This couch was not built to fit four muscly, long limbed adults in this way. But they make it work somehow.

“A cousin,” Issei eventually manages to grit out.

“Yep,” Sei answers. “On mother’s side. So I would have heard your name eventually, I’m sure. Even if I wasn’t the one with about eighty percent of the ownership of the band.”

—

Takahiro curls closer to him and kisses his cheek a few times just to make Issei laugh. Which he does. Because Takahiro is adorable and it tickles when he does that. They’re supposed to be rehearsing. And really Issei had every intention of rehearsing when he got here. But Takahiro is just so fucking attractive and Issei is still a little caught up in the fact he can kiss Takahiro any time he wants to that he just got a little carried away. And it’s not like any of the others have tried to stop them today.

Granted Lev and Momo are curled up on the couch making out enthusiastically so it’s not like they’re even paying attention to what Issei and Takahiro are doing. But Haru and Hajime are not making out with anyone so they should be yelling or throwing things or spraying Issei and Takahiro with water guns or something. It’s almost a little alarming and Issei tilts away from Takahiro so he can see what’s happening.

They’re just talking. Though Haru does seem to be a bit aggravated and he’s gesturing towards Momo and Lev a lot as he leans close to Hajime and hisses something at him. At least Issei assumes he’s hissing it. His eyes are doing the glaring squinty thing they do when he hisses at people. The irritated gestures and hissing continue but Issei turns his full attention back to Takahiro and Takahiro’s amazing lips. At least until the door swings open and Nagisa comes bounding into the room with Sei and Kou in tow. He only pulls away then because he can hear Kou’s voice and Kou showing up here means Serious Business is about to happen.

She still scares him a little. And he’s pretty sure she knows it and approves.

Haru, however, appears to have no fear of death because he stalks across the room, ignoring whatever Kou is trying to say, and herds Nagisa into the corner near Issei and Takahiro.

“What’s up, Haru-chan?” Nagisa asks sweetly.

“You’re not gonna ‘Haru-chan’ your way out of this one. You were supposed to make it better, Nagisa.”

Issei has no idea what Haru is talking about and a glance and Takahiro shows he doesn’t know either. Nagisa, however, seems to know exactly what is happening. Because he just tilts his head and grins.

“Oh Haru-chan.” His voice is frighteningly and deceptively sweet as he blinks innocently up at Haru. Issei feels a chill go down his spine; surely Nagisa was some sort of soul collector in a different life or universe. “Haru-chan, Momo comes with a brother.”

Issei’s eyes dart over to Sei, who is watching Nagisa and Haru with amusement dancing in his eyes, and then back. Oh shit. He never thought of that. Takahiro snorts against Issei’s cheek, clearly reaching the same conclusion.

“Yeah Haru-chan,” Oikawa’s voice startles Issei a little bit. He had actually forgotten that Oikawa was here. He’d been tucked away with his laptop open and headphones on listening to their latest recordings so intently that he had basically become part of the background. But now he leans against Haru’s back and eyes Sei like a piece of his precious melon bread. “Momo comes with a brother.”

Haru groans. “Fuck why is Oikawa here? Who brought him? Why does he have to breathe?”

—

Haru is on a rampage. Issei has no idea what is going on. Yesterday Haru was sprawled across the very same couch Issei is on today tossing music puns and innuendos back and forth with Issei like a baseball, relaxed as could be, and today he’s stomping around the room practically hissing at everything and everyone in sight. Seriously Issei is pretty sure he just saw Haru growl at the plant in the corner. Then again maybe the plant had it coming. Maybe it insulted Haru’s sister.

Huh. Does Haru even have a sister? Issei tilts his head as he watches Haru pace around the room. Nine months into being a full fledged member of NTOE and he honestly doesn’t know a lot of personal details about his bandmates. Even Takahiro. Which is kind of sad when he thinks about it because he spends a lot of time with Takahiro and not all of it making out. They really do spend a decent amount of time just laying around and talking about stuff. But nothing too personal and Issei has to wonder if that’s his fault. Takahiro had just rolled with the fact that Sei and Isse knew each other, that they had been best friends in childhood. But he’s never pressed for anything. Even though there is no way he doesn’t know that Sei is from a wealthy family. Since Sei practically owns the band and all that. So about the only way for them to have been childhood BFFs was for Issei to be from a wealthy family too. Unless he thinks Issei was a servant’s son or something.

Shit. He doesn’t even know if Takahiro has any siblings. He doesn’t think he does. But he can’t remember ever talking about it.

Shit fuck damn. Why does Haru have to be in a shit mood and make Issei think about things?

Haru kicks something and sullenly watches it roll across the floor in Issei’s direction.

“Did my drumstick do something to offend you?”

Haru’s glare is something fierce and for a moment Issei actually starts to go through what he knows he’s done and said around Haru the last week because holy shit maybe he did do something. Then Haru deflates with a sigh and collapses onto the floor next to the couch.

“You’ve, uh, known Mikoshiba awhile right?”

And now the questions about his past start. Issei mentally shakes out his thoughts and nods. He’s ready for whatever Haru asks. He’s already decided that he’s not going to keep anything from his bands, from his friends.

“Yeah since we were kids.”

“He seems really, uh, cheerful.” Haru sounds like he’s feeling out his words, picking them carefully. For a moment Issei is trying to figure out his angle, figure out what part of his past Haru is trying to dig into. The last time someone pried into his past using the Mikoshiba’s as a crowbar had ended… messily for all parties involved.

He glances down at Haru and his eyes widen. Haru is kind of scrunched into his hoodie with his face set in a scowl and his fingers drumming a nervous looking beat against his knees. The suspicion in his mind clears in an instant and he grins.

“You like him,” he whispers gleefully. Oh this is so much better than digging up his past. Haru flushes and Issei can’t help but stare. He doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen Haru flustered by anything. “You like him a lot.”

Haru opens his mouth to respond but the door opens and he snaps his mouth shut when he spots Hajime and Oikawa coming in. He hops to his feet and stomps across the room to snag Hajime’s elbow and nearly drag him right back out of the room. Oikawa and Issei stare at the door for a moment after they leave and then Oikawa shrugs and comes to sit on the arm of the couch near Issei’s head.

“So Matsukawa.”

“Oikawa.”

“You’ve known Mikoshiba for awhile.” His voice drifts off like it’s a question and it takes Issei a moment to recover at the deja vu washing over him. His recovery turns into him suddenly laughing so hard he rolls off the couch with tears in his eyes while Oikawa looks on in confusion.

“Oh this is so much better than I could ever have imagined,” he says by way of explanation when he finally stops giggling enough to catch his breath. “This is gonna be so hilarious to watch.”

—

He had been right. It had been hilarious. It was still kind of hilarious. But it had also been over two months since Sei and Momo had been introduced to the group. Over two months of watching Haru glare at Lev and Momo. Over two months of Tooru’s constant presence around the band. Over two months of listening to Haru and Tooru’s scathing banter. It’s kind of getting to the point where Issei just wants them to kiss each other or kill each other. Whichever gets them to chill out faster.

Hiro takes his hand as they leave his apartment for the short walk to the studio. Issei is blessed. He really really is.

“Question,” Hiro says, swinging their hands a little.

“Shoot.”

“What would you have done if I had been as in denial of liking you that Haru seems to be about Miksohiba?”

“Cried. A lot. It would have been gross.” Hiro laughs at him and fuck the things he’d do to be surrounded by that laugh forever. “No seriously. Ask Lev. He’s seen me. It’s disgusting. All snotty and blotchy. In one of my less proud moments I once used one of his socks to blow my nose. Thank heavens it was clean.” Hiro is shaking, nearly doubled over in his laughter, and he pulls away from Issei only to prop himself up against the wall of the studio.

Issei grins. He grins a lot around Hiro. It’s a good thing.

When Hiro calms enough to straighten Issei grabs his hand and drags him inside.

Where Haru is staring Lev down. Which is impressive given how much taller than Haru Lev is.

“You did this,” Haru insists. “You sent this to us. This is all your doing!”

“But,” Lev protests. “But I thought I was doing a good thing? I found the ad and now Issei has a job and have a drummer?”

“You ruined a perfectly good lead singer is what you did. Look at him. He’s got anxiety!” Haru jabs his finger towards the back of the room where Hajime is leaning against the wall nearly hyperventilating.

“What’s going on?” Lev looks so relieved to see them that Issei almost feels guilty for being late because he was too wrapped up in making out with Hiro to notice the time. Almost. Haru’s glare turns to him and Lev scurries over to hide behind him.

“You,” Haru hisses. The venom in his voice actually makes Issei take half a step back and bump into Lev. “It’s as much your fault as his.” Hiro squeezes Issei’s hand and then hurries over to Hajime’s side. Issei can make out his soothing voice but he doesn’t dare look away from Haru.

“What’s going on?” he asks again.

“This entire thing is a disaster and it’s all your fault.”

“What is a disaster? What are you talking about?”

“This.” Haru grabs a piece of paper off the nearby counter and shoves it against Issei’s chest.

It’s a letter of apology retracting their invitation to perform at their gig next week and at first Issei doesn’t get it. There have been other occasions where the club or venue have pulled their spot. Too many sets booked or not enough interest for that night. It happens. Then he reads a little further. His fingers go cold as the words nearly halfway down the page finally sink in.

…and it has come to our attention that one Matsukawa Issei is a part of your band and as such in the terms laid out with the Matsukawa family Matsukawa Issei is prohibited from performing in our club. You will also find a list enclosed of facilities that have similar agreements with the Matsukawa family.

Issei doesn’t have to look to know that it’s most of, if not all of, the clubs in a reasonable distance from their home base. He has to remind himself that clenching his jaw and grinding his teeth won’t do anything and he forces himself to relax. He wants to lash out, wants to tear the paper into shreds, wants to beat something up. Before he can do any of that he folds the paper up and sets it back on the counter and marches himself out of the building. Before the door even closes behind him he’s got his phone out and is calling Kou. Maybe if he throws himself at her feet and beg for mercy she’ll forgive him.

—

Kou’s entire stance radiates just how unimpressed she is with him right now.

“Please. Just. Even if I have to leave NTOE just tell me you can fix it somehow.”

“Even if you have to leave?”

“I would rather see them be able to perform with a different drummer than to be banned just because my family has suddenly decided to care about what I do. Please,” he repeats because, honestly, he can’t say it enough right now. “You’re basically my only hope.”

“Have you considered talking to your family?”

“I would rather you just kill me and bury me in a remote unmarked forest grave.”

Kou snorts. “I mean I’m sure that could be arranged if you really wanted me to.” She sighs, humor gone as she reads over the paper in her hands once again. “But I was thinking something more along the line of letting a friend of mine read through this. He’s got a great mind for stuff like this. If you don’t mind more people knowing about your connection to these particular Matsukawa’s.”

“If it can get this stupid ban lifted then I will tell them anything they think they need to know.”

Kou smiles at him. “Good. I’ll set up a meeting with Akashi. Don’t worry Issei. We’ll get this sorted out one way or another.”

It feels like it takes forever. This is why Issei hates his family. They don’t even care in the end. They just don’t like the idea that he’s out here living his life and they can’t control him. But in their eyes if he’s using the Matsukawa name in this part of the world he needs to be living like a Matsukawa and acting like a Matsukawa and all that entails.

It’s the Matuskawa name that’s important and once Issei brings him all the documents that he can get his hands on Akashi quickly finds just the loophole he needs to be out from their shadows once and for all: he needs to give up all claims to the Matsukawa name and be adopted into a new family. Akashi’s frankly terrifying and intense gaze drill into him the seriousness of the situation. But it’s a pretty easy decision in the end. It’s not like he’s really been part of the family for years.

The hardest part, other than not really being able to see Hiro or the rest of the band and his friends, is figuring out who he can get to adopt him into their family. At least until Lev and Sei and Momo shove their way into one of his meetings with Akashi and Lev drops a handful of papers into Issei’s lap.

“Seiko already filled out all the paperwork since she’s the eldest and basically the head of the family. Haiba Issei sounds a little weird but it’s yours if you want it.”

Akashi plucks the papers from Issei’s lap and skims through them.

“We wanted to adopt you,” Momo butts in before Issei can say anything at all, “but we figured our families are too close and there’s no doubt already a three story pile of paperwork and rules and legal bullshit to wade through between the Matsukawa’s and the Mikoshiba’s.”

“It seems that everything is in order here. I would just have to draw you up the papers to renounce your claim on the Matsukawa name and the ones to change your family name to Haiba.”

Issei looks around at his friends. He can barely believe that this is happening. He can barely believe that this is where his life is now. He can barely believe that he’s even hesitating in the slightest considering he hasn’t seen Hiro in two weeks and feels a little like he’s dying without NTOE bickering around him.

“That’s it? It’s that easy?”

“It’s only this easy because I owe Matsuoka a favor and I like her to begin with. If it were anyone else this solution would be much more painful I’m sure.” Issei isn’t entirely sure if Akashi is joking or not. He can’t really read the lawyer and his sense of humor. “But if you wish it I will start getting the papers in order. It could be all taken care of within nine days if you wish.”

—

It actually only takes five days. Issei’s not sure if Akashi is just that good to begin with or if his intense glare just made things move faster or what. But he’s not complaining. Not one bit. He looks down at his new ID with an odd sense of wonder dancing through his gut. He wasn’t Matsukawa Issei anymore. He was Haiba Issei. And yeah Lev was right. It sounds so weird. But he’ll get used to it.

Now he just has to go and apologize to everyone for causing such a disastrous pothole in their road and hope they forgive him.

It’s the only time since he discovered where the home base was that he actually regrets that he lives so close. It takes him mere minutes to get there and before he’s ready he’s looking up at the nondescript door and taking deep breaths. He finally pushes open the door when someone walks past him and looks at him suspiciously for the third time in as many minutes.

The first thing he notices is that it smells like home and his shoulders immediately start to sink into their normal slouch.

The next thing he notices is Hajime, Tooru, and Haru standing near the door to the back room.

The thing that really makes it sink in that he’s back is Hajime’s voice filling the room while Tooru snickers at something.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you two were one comment away from fucking each other’s brains out.”

Haru lets out a disgusted noise. “Ew. Fuck you, Hajime. I have standards.”

Hajime snorts. “I didn’t realize your preference for muscled jocks was a standard, Haru.”

“I didn’t think you had standards Haru-chan. I figured you just rolled over for whoever waggled their fingers at you.”

“If I did you still wouldn’t get me to do jack shit.”

Hajime rubs his forehead, no doubt already regretting that he even started this conversation at all. Issei just stands near the door and takes it all in. Fuck he’s missed these idiots.

“Tooru,” Hajime says, almost whines actually and that makes Issei snort. Thankfully they don’t hear him under the sound of the door to the back room opening and Nagisa and Kou coming out of it. “Why can’t you two just have sex so I don’t have to suffer through your weird little mating ritual any longer?”

“Ew. Iwa-chan. That’s just wrong. It would be like me having sex with you. That’s just wrong.”

“Who’s having sex with Hajime?” Nagisa pipes up, eyed glancing over Hajime’s body and nearly devouring him. Well then. That’s something Issei never noticed before.

“No one. That’s the tragedy,” Tooru says breezily. “You want to turn this tragedy into a story of hope?”

“Oikawa,” Hajime bites out as he jabs a finger at Tooru’s chest. “Do not encourage him. Hazuki,” he snaps before Nagisa can even open his mouth, “do not encourage him. Just. Both of you stop talking to each other.”

“But then how do we do our jobs Iwa-chan?” Tooru coos at Hajime.

“And how do we get you laid?” Nagisa asks innocently.

Hajime looks like he’s ready to bust a blood vessel and Issei is about to step forward to at least draw their attention when Hiro is suddenly blocking his way.

“Hey there,” Hiro says softly.

“Hey yourself.”

“Can I help you with something?” For a moment Issei almost panics. Has he really fucked this all up? Is it too late?

He almost turns tail and bolts out before the others take notice of him. But then he sees the glimmer of mischief in Hiro’s eyes.

“I’m here to respond to an ad I saw a while back,” he says instead of any of the other stuff crowding around in his head.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Haiba Issei. Fuck up drummer. Hope the spot’s still available.”

“Are you a fuck up? Or a Fuck Up Extraordinaire? We only take the best here.” Hiro leans a little closer and Issei reaches out to snag the pocket of his hoodie and tug him close.

“Oh I am one of the best fuck ups you’ll ever meet.” Hiro leans in and kisses him and forget what he thought a moment ago: this is home.

“One of the best kissers too,” Hiro mutters against his lips. “Welcome to the band Haiba Issei.”

44 notes · View notes