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lis-likes-fics · 19 days

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Love Letters

Pairings: Aaron Hotchner x Reader Word Count: 8.1k words Warnings: Murder, torture, depictions of mental illness, typical Criminal Minds content... A/N: Collabed with a couple friends about the serial killer. Guys, this was hard. Spent sooo much time building this character and then didn't even end up using all of the stuff we came up with. But it was fun and I enjoyed this and I hope you do too! Special thanks to the ones who helped me plan, @the-nerdy-goddess and @thecreature-bug and my beta reader @killerqueen-ofwillowgreen!

A knock on your classroom door has you turning your head, and you smile at the sight of the math teacher one door down.

You know why she's here, sneaking a “meeting” before all the kids get here for homeroom. You roll your eyes, scooting back in your rolling chair and crossing your arms.

“So how was the date Saturday?” Esther asks, raising a teasing brow as she walks further into the room, taking a seat right on the side of your desk. “You get lucky?”

You scoff. “I wish. The guy was boring. It was a total snooze fest.” You pick up a paper from your grading stack, marking another consecutive one hundred on little Amelia's test. “I told him I was a teacher and he told me how he had a crush on his teacher from the eighth grade.”

“Blergh,” she groans, making a face. “Was he a gentleman, at least?”

“I wish, part two. He didn't pull a chair, he didn't open a door.”

She shakes her head in disappointment and pats your back. “Your gentleman is coming to you soon. You deserve it.” She reaches over, picking up your necklace and running her thumb over the F before dropping it back down. “And I like that necklace.”

You laugh sarcastically at her, jutting your chin out toward the mirroring E around her own neck. All the fifth grade teachers wear one, a gift from Sarah’s—the science teacher’s—birthday party. “I like yours.”

She brushes the golden charm on her dark chest with a smile. She scoots off your desk. “Hey, if you're looking for another date, I might have a guy.” She winks at you, and you almost throw a pencil at her.

“Don't you have a class to teach?”

“Eventually,” she shrugs. “Small accident a few blocks away, traffic’s backed up. Buses are late–”

“–and most of your class rides the bus.” You nod, “Yeah.”

She walks to the door, patting the frame twice. “But I'll leave you be. I have copies to print.”

You shoo her away. “Goodbye.”

She winks at you again, clicking her tongue. “See you.”

The elevator doors close as David steps in next to Aaron. After a quick once-over, he smiles. “You look tired. Jack?”

Aaron shakes his head as he glances at his shoes, “No. Jack's fine.”

“Oh,” Dave raises his brows. “Did Aaron Hotchner have a date?”

He chuckles, amused by the assumption. “Me?”

He shrugs. “Good to have a little hope.”

Another rare chuckle passes his lips as he shakes his head again. His voice is low and soft with his amusement. “Yeah, I had a date. With a wrench and a kitchen sink.”

He hums, tilting his head from side to side as if weighing the options. “A date is a date. At least you can fix the sink.”

“Alright,” he mumbles lightheartedly.

Dave pushes the doors open as they enter the round table room, watching as the rest of the team slowly makes their way. When everyone is present and accounted for, he begins.

“What have we got, Garcia?”

Penelope sets her coffee cup down, making a face. “Oh, my little ducklings, nothing good.” The screen turns on and presents a round of crime scene photos, multiple women covered in uniform cuts all matching the other perfectly, besides the differences in the letters adorning their chests. It's graphic and strange.

Garcia avoids looking with everything she has. “Some hikers at the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia were going about their business when they found five perfectly marked graves lined up in a row.” The presses a button and said graves are shown before and after they were dug up. When Garcia says perfect, she means perfect. The graves are perfect rectangles, all the same size and depth and almost as though someone used a ruler to make sure the lines were straight.

“The bodies found were Madeline Johnsons, Beatrice Cabrera, Clara Warner, Dakota Platt,” one more press reveals a woman with dark skin now pale with death, “and our latest victim, Esther Cooke.”

The team flips through the files they were given, analyzing the information as it comes. “All were found covered in multiple incisions all over the body, and letters carved on their chests.” She makes a face. “I don't know how much you guys gate papercuts, but I know that if I got as many as our victims here, I'd be forever emotionally ruined.”

Reid's analytical eyes take in the sight of the bodies. “It's almost reminiscent of Lingchi, translated to ‘slow slicing’ or ‘death by a thousand cuts’. It was a form of torture and execution used in China around the 10th century until the early 20th century.” He talks a mile a minute, squinting his eyes at the photos as he does.

Prentiss shrugs, “Well, one papercut is bad enough, I could never do a thousand.”

JJ brings her drink to her lips. “I couldn't do ten.” They chuckle to each other.

Morgan juts his neck toward his files. “How did they die? The wounds are made for bloodletting.”

Garcia groans lightly. “So not glad you asked. Their throats were slashed, two incisions made at each side of the neck to cut the jugulars.” She adjusts her glasses, glancing at her tablet. “Autopsy reports say very slowly and with a very sharp knife. Like the unsub was trying very hard to keep steady. They also found traces of chemicals used in disinfectant in the wounds.”

Prentiss' brows knit together. “Why not just cut it clean across?”

“Well, look, there are 26 cuts in total on all the bodies, including the one at the neck,” Reid points out. “The incisions were very specific.”

“‘Course it was, look at that pattern,” Morgan says.

Each limb has a total of six equal cuts along the top of them, with the last two finishing off at the neck. It's too specific.

“All of the letters on their chests match the beginning of their names, except for Madeline. She has an A,” Garcia explains. “Madeline's family said she went by Addy.”

“Then the letters carved into them match the first letter of their names,” JJ says. “Maybe he's trying to go through the alphabet.”

“Matches the cuts,” Rossi shrugs. “There are 26 cuts, 26 letters of the alphabet.”

“Who died first and who was last?” Hotch asks, not looking up from his screen.

“They were killed and buried in alphabetical order, sir.”

A few members of the team nod, their theory supported. Reid clasps his hands. “Paired with the perfection of the graves, the specificity of the incisions, the disinfectant, we could be dealing with someone struggling with high level obsessive compulsive disorder.”

They agree.

“But how is he targeting his victims, other than by their names?” Prentiss wonders, “I mean, how does he figure out what their names are in the first place?”

Rossi sighs, “I guess that's what we have to find out.”

Hotch looks up at his team, his stern gaze glancing among them. “Based on the timeline of these kills, we hopefully have about a week before he strikes again. Let's not give him time. Wheels up in thirty.”

You look up at the gentle knock on your door interrupting your silent lunch break. You clear your throat, dropping your hand from your necklace as you lay eyes on Principal Luis.

“Hey,” she greets softly. “You doing okay?”

You nod, offering a half-hearted grin. You've had to smile at your kids all day today, despite the grief, and you were really depending on your break to wind down from it. “Considering.”

“You think you could talk? There are some FBI agents here with a few questions about Esther.”

You sniff, furrowing your brows. “FBI?” For you? You supposed that makes sense. You were close enough…

Two agents walk into the room, their professional blacks offset by the colorful parade that is your classroom. It looks strange, almost silly. You stand to greet them.

The woman offers a smile, a kind face to ease any worries you may have. The man is a little more stern, but there's a gentleness you admire hidden beneath.

“Hello, Ms. Hughes,” he greets. “I'm Agent Aaron Hotchner, this is Agent Jennifer Jareau. We're with the FBI.”

“You can call me JJ,” she says as she reaches a hand out toward you. You take it. “We're here with a few questions about Esther Cooke.”

You try not to look too miserable.

Agent Hotchner’s voice is soft as he speaks to you. “The principal said you and Ms. Cooke were close?”

You nod, crossing your arms. The classrooms are always cold. It's felt a little colder lately.

“She worked right next door,” you try not to stutter. “We were the closest in our department. I'm holding conferences tomorrow with parents about taking some of her kids into my homeroom until we find a…a replacement.”

Noticing your disquiet, JJ speaks up. “Was there anything going on in Ms. Cooke’s life? Anything out of the ordinary?”

Thinking, you shake your head. “Not really.” You shrug, “It was school, home, and not much else. The occasional night out with me, we are–” you clear your throat, “we were both single.”

Agent Hotchner adds in, “We're there any strange absences or even a trip she was going on?”

Again, you think. But nothing really comes up until– “She mentioned that she went on this tour thing with her parents last weekend, local. Some sort of…hiking thing? It's usually for tourists but they won free tickets.” Then you back track, “Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?”

JJ glances at Agent Hotchner. You're not sure what that means. “It could be.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” he asks.

You shrug. “Monday…before she went home. She didn't show up Tuesday or Wednesday, I figured she just got sick or something…forgot to tell me.” You rub your cheek with your sleeve. “I thought it was weird ‘cause she didn't call in or anything. I had to request a sub for her.”

Agent Hotchner nods. “Thank you for your help.”

“Of course. Anything.”

He dug in the inside pocket of his suit. “Call us if you have anything else. Here's my card.”

You reach out to take it, your fingers brushing. It was a comforting feeling. “Thank you.” The words are gentle as they leave you. You shake out of your slight daze, “Uh, here's mine if you have any other questions for me.”

You go behind your desk, grabbing a sticky note shaped like a koala and the first pen you see (which ends up being the brightest green marker you own)... The kids love the colors.

When Agent Hotchner takes it, he almost grins. You recognize the hidden amusement in some of the kids you teach. The ones that are harder to get to open up, even at this age. It's a little sad. Those kids happen to be some of the sweetest you know.

The sight of him in a sophisticated suit with all his professionalism, holding a cutesy koala sticky note is almost comical. He nods his thanks, and then turns to JJ.

They both begin to make their exit when you stop them. “Hey.” They turn. “Did anyone find her necklace?”

“Necklace?” JJ furrows her brow.

You nod. “All the fifth grade teachers have necklaces with our letters on them. Just like this.” You pick up the little charm around your neck for them to examine. “Except she had an E.” You let it drop, scratch the back of your neck as you hum. “Her parents said they never found it when they…”

The thought of saying “dug her up” out loud was haunting, and you already felt that shrinking feeling in your gut.

JJ redirects. “Would she normally take it off?”

You shake your head quickly. “Not Esther. She loves–” you sigh, annoyed now that you keep making the mistake of present tense. As an English teacher, it hurts more somehow. “She loved that necklace. We all do. We wear it nearly every day. Especially now.”

Agent Hotchner nods again, a really gentle movement that you honestly appreciate. “We'll keep an eye out,” he says. “Thank you for your time.”

You nod back at him, offering what smile you can. “Thanks.”

They leave and you check the time. You'd have to get your kids from lunch soon.

“Did she have anything?” Morgan wonders as Hotch and JJ return.

JJ’s teasing brows bounce. “Other than Hotch’s number? A bit.”

Rossi smirks, leaning across the table. “Did you find something special with our Ms. Hughes?” He puts emphasis on the title so Hotch is fully aware of her marital status.

“Let's focus, please.”

Hotch doesn't seem particularly annoyed, but there is a case at hand and he wants it solved as fast as possible.

Besides, it would be unprofessional to call her like this…asking her on a date after questioning her about her recently deceased.

The team giggles quietly amongst themselves. Children. But they do focus in as Morgan's phone rings as a signal to their resident oracle.

“Talk to me, babygirl.”

“I ran those credit card records like Hotch asked,” she starts. “All of which come up with very different results with no special link but one: three of the five all purchased hiking tickets for a guided trail a few days before they went missing. But they're very popular trails, tourists and families go all the time.”

“Hiking trail?”

“Is that significant?”

JJ looks around at the group. “Ms. Hughes said Esther Cooke’s parents won free tickets. They just went last weekend.”

“That would explain why it doesn't show up on the credit card records,” she says. The clack of her keyboard fills the space before she's speaking again. “Oh, yes, I see. The reservation is written in her mother's name.”

Reid looks up from the board where he worked on his geographical profile. “Clara loved out of state,” he says, “she was visiting. That could be how he found out about her.”

Rossi agrees. “So he's choosing most of his victims at the trail. Maybe he's a guide?”

JJ shrugs, “But how is he picking his victims?” She walks over to the pictures of all the victims hung up, their differences glaring as she shakes her head. “He's compulsive, he can't do it at random.”

“I don't think it is,” Hotch says. Eyes fall on him, urging clarification. “Ms. Hughes said something that stuck out to me. Esther Cooke always wore a necklace with the first letter of her name on it, but it was missing from the crime scene.”

The wheels turn in Reid’s head as he breaks away from his map. He picks up the crime scene photos, sorting through them to compare them to the headshots of the victims lining another board. “We might have something,” he mumbles. He picks up the first victim’s pictures. “Here, you can see Madeline wore a necklace with her nickname, Addy, on it. But at the burial site, it's missing.”

Prentiss catches on, picking another. A quick examination has her nodding along. “And look here. Clara had one, too. Hers is just a C.”

Rossi’s heavy brows furrow. “So you think he's targeting these women based on their necklaces?”

Reid words fly from his mouth as he speaks. “If he's killing them, burying them, and carving their letters all in alphabetical order, that could be his trigger—seeing the letters already in place and feeling the need to make it permanent, perfect.”

Morgan picks up Esther's picture, nodding. “We ready to give the profile?”

“I think so. Garcia,” her attention is lightning quick at the sound of her name, just like her wit, “get me a list of everyone who went on those trails and every guide who has led the ones our victims participated in.”

“That list is going to be longer than the Nile, but like Neith, I shall be victorious,” she declares.

Prentiss adds in. “Go ahead and narrow that down to white males who live in the area.”

“That helps.”

“Thank you, babygirl.”

“Happy to help, my salacious little snack.” She smacks the “ck”. He can hear the smirk in her voice. “I'll have that list in a jiffy.” Morgan chuckles as the call ends.

You plaster a grin on your face as you welcome in the next pair. It's been a long day already. The children have been a little fussy, others just sad, about the changes going on during class. The parents you've seen already have been awkward, annoyed, or (on the better occasion) nice, and you're ready to go home.

Just a few more meetings, then you can go home.

“Hello,” you greet. “Thank you for coming in.”

Ms. Tucker smiles gently, doing her best to be kind. She's one of the more patient parents. Her husband on the other hand… You've never been able to describe him as patient.

“Could we make this quick?” Mr. Tucker asks, checking his watch. He blinks harshly once, twice, three times, before looking back up at you. “I've got an appointment in an hour and…thirteen minutes.”

“Don't be rude, Larry,” his ex-wife insists, rolling her eyes as they take a seat in the chairs set in front of your desk. You sit as well, mentally bracing yourself for his meeting.

“Well, she's bringing us in here to tell us our kid isn't doing well in school. How do you want me to behave?” Another tight blink follows as he whispers under his breath, “Behave, behave.”

Ideally, these meetings should take no more than maybe five minutes. But parents make that difficult sometimes.

“Maybe if you spent more time with Peter, he wouldn't be having trouble,” she insists.

The animosity coming off the two of them is creating an environment that makes you want to kick them out of your room and do what you want. But you can't.

He scoffs. “Spend more ti–”

“Actually…”

They turn back to you then, remembering you're there as they close their mouths and listen. “We're not here to talk about his behavior. Peter has been wonderful in class.”

You grab Peter's file. It's just a stack of papers with Esther's old notes for him and his grades. You clear your throat quietly. “As you may know, the teacher next door to me just passed, and we are rearranging her classes until we can find a suitable replacement because we are short staffed.”

You hate saying “replacement”. These meetings have been hard enough simply because she's gone, but being the one of the people already working to replace her has been mentally taxing.

You pull your necklace from inside your shirt, sighing as you look up at them, toying with the charm.

You don't catch it. The movement is so slight and the whisper is so gentle that the moment goes completely over your head as Mr. Tucker's eyes lock on your charm. Under his breath falls a small, “F…F, F.”

“This conference was just to ask about whether or not it would be alright to transfer Peter into my class,” you continue, grasping the top pages out of the file. “Otherwise, his behavior has been fine. He's a smart boy with good grades. Ms. Cooke’s notes do say that he has a bit of trouble mixing with classes though, and he can be a little distracted. Another reason he would switch, he needs the extra social help.”

Ms. Tucker leans in slightly. “You said he has trouble mixing in?”

You nod, tilting your head as you remember Peter's behavior during your classes. “He's a little lonely.”

Mr. Tucker murmurs under his breath, holding onto the words. “Lonely.” His brows twitch. “Lonely…lonely.” You know they're tics, so you try not to make it obvious that you've caught it.

“He got along well with the teachers, but he's closed off to the other students. She saw that a couple of other kids picked on him, but they were little things that we were able to solve fairly quickly.” You sigh, thinking for a moment. You have to choose the right words, or this will end in an argument. “I would recommend trying to get him into things outside of school. A sport or a club, just something to get him to interact with more kids.”

Ms. Tucker is all ears as you speak, taking in what she can as she contemplates a solution. Her ex-husband seems a little out of focus, however. He watches you, his eyes taking you in, in a way that makes you uncomfortable.

“It also helps when the parents are on the same page,” you push through, ignoring the crawling in your skin and focusing on this child and his needs. “I realize you went through a divorce recently, which can be tough on your son. I know it's not my business to manage your relationship, but for the sake of your son, it's important not to be hostile in front of him. It could force him into thinking he has to choose a side, which can lead to negative effects on his mental health.”

She nods, soaking it in. “We can talk about it. You have our permission to take him in.”

“Yes.” Mr. Tucker nods. You watch his head dip three times. “Yes, yes.”

You sigh internally, glad the meeting is coming to a close. “Thank you,” you smile. “Did you have any questions for me?”

He replies, smiling as well. “No. Thank you.”

“Alright,” you close Peter's file, “then we should be good.”

“Thank you,” Ms. Tucker says. She reaches a hand out to shake your hand, and you take it. Her ex-husband does the same, though he lingers a little longer than you appreciate.

“Of course.”

They leave. You take a moment to breathe before you welcome in the next parents. And two meetings later, you've wrapped everything up. After clearing your desk, you snatch your things and head straight for the door.

You're happy to know it's not too late when you step out of the building. The sun is still up, but the moon is beginning to show with the coming evening. As you make your way to your car in the relatively lonely parking lot, it blinks when you unlock the doors.

You open the back door to throw your things inside, slamming it shut and opening the front in one movement.

You don't hear the footsteps behind you over the sound of your relief about the end of your day. So when something comes down hard at the back of your head, your pain and surprise is interrupted by the sudden darkness that overcomes you.

“You're on speaker.”

Garcia’s voice arises from Morgan's voice like the oracle she is. “Then I shall speak my prophecy for all to hear. I narrowed that list down significantly to the tour guides that lead the trails all of the victims went on—except the one who didn't. Speaking of, it turns out that our odd one out, Dakota Platt, put in an application to work as a guide but was denied. Anyway, I came up with three matches.”

Rossi hums. “Narrow the list to anyone recently going through a major change. A divorce, potential job loss, something like that.”

The sound of Garcia’s keyboard is heard over the phone, her voice coming a second later. “That takes one out. There's Perry Williams, he's just suffered a loss in the family—his mother died of lung cancer four months ago, around when the killings started. Then there's one other, Laurence Tucker, who just went through a divorce around a year ago. He's fighting a custody battle with his wife, started a couple weeks before the estimated time of the first murder.”

“Can you take a look at their medical histories?” Prentiss requests.

“Tucker has diagnosed OCD. He stopped taking his meds at the same time as the divorce.”

JJ is already on her feet as she slips her phone in her pocket. “That's our guy.” The rest of the team follow suit.

“I've just sent his home address to your phones.”

Hotch is packing his things as he speaks. “Garcia, go through his history. There may be something to suggest where he may be taking his victims to torture them. He can't be taking them home.”

Morgan raises the phone to his mouth. “Thanks, hot stuff.”

“Anything for you. Garcia out.”

“Clear.”

At the sound of the last check, Hotch lowers his gun as he sighs. “Hotch.” He looks over to see Reid peeking his head out of a room down the hall. He follows him, walking inside and following his gaze down to Reid’s hand, where he's holding a necklace he's pulled from a dark box on the dresser.

There are four necklaces neatly arranged within it, the fifth in Reid’s hand. An E for Esther.

His phone rings. “Yes, Garcia?”

She speaks quickly. “Our guy grew up in the area and attended a schoolhouse when he was little that was shut down years ago for unusual practices with the students. Reports found that the teachers there used to discipline ‘bad kids’—and by bad, I'm not talking just behavior, these are kids with diagnosed Autism, ADHD, OCD, the whole alphabet. Oh…maybe that wasn't the best word.”

“How were they disciplined?” Reid asks, pulling her back on track.

“Oh, right! The teachers used to slap hands with rulers and spank these children, sometimes with paddles. Sometimes kids would come home with big red letters drawn on their chests or clothes when they received failing grades as a way to shame them into passing.” She hums, “I'm guessing that's where the signature comes from.”

Reid sets the necklace down, “Is the building still up?”

“Like I said, it was shut down years ago. It was marked for demolition, but they never got around to it. The building still very much exists, and it's covered in wooden boards and caution tape.”

Hotch nods. “Send us the address. This could be where he's killing them.”

“Already done,” she says. “Also, fun fact. I learned that Tucker's son attends the school Esther Cooke taught at. Apparently, he was one of her students.”

A chill ran down Hotch’s spine as he thought about that. Scrambling in his jacket, he pulls out the koala sticky note in the inside pocket. “Garcia, I need you to give me another address.”

Reid’s brow furrows at his sudden haste. “What's wrong?”

“Ms. Hughes held conferences today for the parents of children Esther Cooke taught.”

Reid walks after him as Garcia retrieves the address. “So?”

“She wears an F.”

Your bleary eyes are so dazed and heavy. Mixed with the pain, it was hard to keep your head up and your eyes open. The letters lining the top of the walls, the alphabet which wraps around the room, fly around your head. It mixes with the chairs and desks, arranged so neatly around the room, lining the walls like the letters do. There's chalk and pencils and paper, all old and run down but set so neatly. The chaos and the tidiness is maddening.

It really hurts. Your arms and legs are covered in cuts, slow and methodical and painful. Your limbs shake with exhaustion, sweat sticks to your forehead and you feel heavy and sick. He'd removed your necklace. It's sitting on the desk where he keeps the rest of his supplies. You want it back.

His disorder is evident, and it bleeds over you with a glaring taunt. Every time he cuts you, he measures it with a ruler, and then you're thrown through the added torture of him disinfecting the wound each time. He counts it each time. He chants under his breath every time he cuts you, every time you talk, every time he blinks.

You just want to go home.

“Mr. Tucker, please,” you beg for the hundredth time, your plea falling on deaf ears.

He shakes his head, his ruler in the middle of your thigh. You want to move it. If he can't make a precise cut, he won't cut. But you don't have the strength. It's taking a lot to keep your head up.

“Hush,” he urges absentmindedly. “Hush, hush.” He adjusts the glasses on the bridge of his nose, careful not to use his hands.

“Why are you doing this?”

His attention is razor sharp as he measures. “I have to.”

It’s the most answer he's given you so far. Maybe if you just keep him talking, you'll be able to talk him out of it. You keep your voice gentle, trying not to sound as pained as you are. “Why?” you ask, though your voice wavers. “What did I do? What did Esther do?”

The name seems to spark something as he nods three times. “E, E, E.”

Your brow furrows. “Is this because of our necklaces?”

He shakes his head this time. Three times. “You won't understand.”

You sigh heavily. “Then help me understand.”

“You won't, you won't.” He picks up the knife, and you flinch away from him. “You won't.”

You keep trying. “You just have to talk to me,” you give him the best smile you can. “You can talk to me, Larry.” If you say his name, maybe you'll appeal to him. You can make it personal. You have to try something.

He mutters under his breath, as though he's thinking. “Talk, talk…talk.”

You nod, speaking slowly. “Yes. Just put the knife down, and we can talk.”

A scream tears through your throat as he drags the sharp blade across your thigh. It burns and it sears and tears stream down your cheeks at the feeling.

“19, 19, 19.”

You don't know what number he's going to, but you're scared for what he'll do when he finishes counting.

You struggle around the lump in your throat to speak, forcing out a breath to try and level yourself. “Is this about your OCD?” He glances up at you, but he doesn't give it too much thought. “I recognize it. Peter has early signs.”

“Peter,” he mumbles, finally taking pause to think. He hums and blinks.

“Yes, Peter,” you urge. “Your son. If you keep going, you could hurt him.” It's hard to see past your tears, but you keep going anyway. “When you get caught, and you will get caught, Peter will be taken away from you forever. He'd never forgive you.”

“Forgive me,” he huffs, shaking his head and rubbing his face. He grips his ruler in one hand. “Forgive me, forgive me.” He presses the ruler to the other leg, “Stop talking.”

You try to squirm, “Larry– Ah!” You purse your lips to stifle your shout, squeezing your eyes shut and clenching your fists.

“20, 20, 20.”

A round of sobs rack through you. You can't hide the pain anymore. It's so evident, and it's so intense. You can't breathe. You hiss as the disinfectant stings.

“Please,” you cry. “Please, just tell me why.”

He shakes his head. He's upset now, you can see it in the crease of his brow, in the excessive head shakes, in the way he rubs his face so roughly. “They said I have to.”

“Who?”

“My teachers.” He looks around the room, and his eyes fall on the alphabet lining the walls.

You follow his gaze. The schoolhouse actually makes sense now. You thought he'd chosen it because it was abandoned…

“I can't do the alphabet. I have to do the alphabet, alphabet.” He says it like he's reciting something, like he's punishing himself.

Your breath is heavy, you blink rapidly, trying to see past your tear-filled eyes. “Your teachers made you do this?”

God, sometimes you hate teachers.

He rubs at his eyes, sighing heavily. “A, A, A,” he begins, speaking quickly and almost like he's struggling to speak. It reminds you of memorization methods. Sometimes you suggest it to students who have trouble remembering vocab—write it down over and over until you remember. Maybe that's why he's doing it? “B, B, B. C, C, C. D, D, D. E, E, E. F.”

He opens his eyes and points his knife at you. “F. F.”

The fear flares within you again. You try not to turn to a blubbering mess. You can't communicate with him if you can't speak properly. “Is that what you're doing?”

He moves to your arm. You try to pull at the duct tape he's got wrapped securely around your hands. You've been trapped here so long, your hands are numb, your wrists are bruising.

“Have to get to Z, Z, Z.”

You almost shout it when he presses the ruler to your arm. “Listen, listen, listen!” you say it in a rush, so, so scared. He actually stops. “Okay, they said to say it three times, right? You have to write it three times?”

The number triggers his tic. “Three, Three, three.” It's honestly becoming annoying. It's insistent and repetitive and it feels almost invasive. But you have to be patient or he'll just kill you faster.

“You don't have to do this.” Your face is itchy from the tears drying and re-wetting, but you can't scratch. “You're gonna be okay.”

He's not listening anymore. “Behave,” he warns, holding the knife to your face. “Behave.” He shakes his head. “Behave.”

He's stopped listening. Despite your screams, he measures and cuts and cleans and measures and cuts and cleans, repeating each number as he comes to it with calculated method.

You clench your fists as the knife digs into your thigh again. You're surprised you can get your broken cries out as you struggle to breathe.

He stands up, taking large steps back to look at his work. You suppose he's almost done, and that terrifies you.

You think about your students, the little kids in your classroom who have already lost one teacher and are now going to lose a second. All those good kids are going through so much already. They all loved Esther. You know they all loved you. You have a wall of art, holiday cards, and plenty of hugged legs to show for it.

You don't want to lose them. You don't want them to lose you.

In a last ditch effort to dissuade him from his pursuits, you shake your head and sigh heavily. “Please.”

He comes closer to you, squinting his eyes to try to ease you. “Shh, shh, shh,” he says. “Just close your eyes. It'll be over soon, soon, soon.”

He presses the ruler to your neck, and you don't have the strength to fight it. It inspires more tears as you shake your head weakly. “Please, please, please.” You chant it, closing your eyes shut. You brace for the end…

Both of you jump when the loudest crash resonates within the room. Wood splinters and heavy boots stomp against the floor. Startled, he staggers back. You open your eyes, lights flashing as the room crowds with armoured people.

“Laurence Tucker, drop the knife.”

You know that voice. You recognize it. It's hard to see past the lights and the tears in your eyes. You know him.

“Can't! Can't. Can't, I have to finish. I have to finish. I have to finish.”

He's panicking. Too many things happening at once, everything out of order, everything out of control. He grips the knife tighter, looking between you and the cops in the room.

Someone else, their voice louder and less patient, shouts. “Drop the knife now!”

“Behave, behave. Behave!”

Someone else's voice, softer and somehow understanding, speaks. Though the voices are beginning to blur. “We know what your teachers did to you,” he bids. “We know how they hurt you.”

They hurt him.

He shakes his alphabet, losing it over the chaos. His frustration is palpable. Every time they speak, he gets more and more angry. “Can't do the alphabet. I have to do the alphabet. I'm supposed to do the alphabet!”

“Larry,” you speak, your voice hoarse from overuse. You catch your breath, keeping your voice level. Like you're talking to one of your students. He's scared, he's angry. He needs patience. “Larry, look at me.”

You can practically feel the concern of the agents rolling off of them. They don't want you misspeaking and making him more upset than he already is.

But he looks at you, and he seems to respond to the softness because his furrowed brows shift very slightly, his anger turns to some semblance of fear.

Although it hurts, you try to smile. It's taking so much to lift your head, even more to get the words out without the heaviness of your rising fear and exhaustion.

“They were bad teachers.” He rubs his face, but you press on, speaking slowly. “They weren't supposed to hurt you. Teachers are supposed to help. They were wrong.”

He closes his eyes. “They were wrong,” he whispers, like he's trying to convince himself. “They were wrong, wrong.”

The desperation seeps in. “Let me help you,” you whisper. “Let them help you.”

“Help me,” he mutters, his voice as quiet as yours. “Help me, help me.”

The first voice, the one you know, he speaks again, patient but still an order. “Drop the knife, and we can help you.”

“Help me,” he whispers. Slowly, he moves as he contemplates the words. “Help me.” They raise their guns in alarm, but he keeps crouching until he's finally kneeling on the floor. He grips the knife. “Help me.”

“Just breathe, Larry,” you huff. The spark of adrenaline you'd gotten from your rescue is wearing off again. You feel like you might pass out. “It'll be okay,” you mutter. “It's going to be okay, it'll be okay.”

He stares at the floor, thinking. “Okay…okay,” he drops the knife, and it clatters to the floor. “Okay.”

They make quick work of cuffing him, forcing his hands behind his back as the metal clinks against itself.

An agent immediately rushes to you, and you immediately recognize him, just as you had his voice. Agent Hotchner kneels before you, carefully removing the duct tape around your wrists and ankles. “Are you alright?” His voice is so soft and gentle. You lean into it as your eyelids become heavier and heavier.

“I think I'm gonna pass out.”

Your voice is scratchy when you speak. He looks you over, and his hand comes to press against your cheek. It's oddly intimate, though you know it's for comfort. You lean into the warmth. It's helping.

“No, you won't,” he says as he removes the tape wrapped around your middle. “I've got you.” He glances behind him, throwing his demand over his shoulder. “Get me a medic.”

He turns back to you. “Can you stand?”

You want to say yes, but you genuinely don't think so. You shake your head, “I don't know.”

“Do you want me to help you stand?”

You nod, the movement choppy. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” he says. He wraps his arm under yours, lifting you slowly, carefully, like you're fragile and precious. “Can you tell me your name?”

Your words are sticky and slow. You genuinely think you're going to pass out. “You know my name.”

“Yes, I do.” He nods, and when you glance up at him, he's giving you the gentlest smile, and you feel like everything is going to be okay. “Can you make sure I have it right?”

You hum. “Fawn Hughes.”

You're so discombobulated that you don't even give him your birth name, instead the one granted to you since you were little.

“Fawn,” he mutters. “Is that your nickname?”

You nod, slowly, and hum.

“It's nice.”

The both of you make your way as he helps you hobble out of the schoolhouse and into the evening air, past golden hour where pinks and purples coat the sky. It goes a little faster when the medic finally arrives. They help you onto a stretcher, and Agent Hotchner apologizes every time you whine at the pain.

When you're settled, he gives you a gentle nod. You grab his hand before he can turn to leave, hoping he doesn't notice the way you wince and knowing he does. “Thank you,” you mutter.

He sighs gently. “Don't thank me.”

“Thank you,” you say again, a little more insistent this time. You swallow thickly, the falling adrenaline increasing the solemnity as your exhaustion begins to crash down on you in waves. You're surprised when you feel a tear slip down the side of your face, disappearing into your hairline. You'd cried so much already, you weren't aware you still could. “He was going to kill me. If you hadn't come through, I'd be dead. So thank you.”

He looks down at you, nodding gently, the movement almost imperceptible. “You're welcome.” He glances at the medic, and then toward the ambulance waiting for you. “They'll take care of you.”

You didn't want to ask, but the need is too strong. You're so scared, and he's the only one here you truly trust. Besides the fact that he'd come to your rescue, you don't necessarily know why.

“Can you please stay?”

He thinks for a moment. Really, he should be here helping the rest of the team. But as he looks over, locking eyes with Rossi talking with Prentiss, he looks between the two of you and sends him a nod.

Agent Hotchner turns back to you and nods. “Yes.”

You want to thank him again, but you know he'll just tell you not to. As they load you into the ambulance, he holds your hand, and you lay back and answer the medics questions.

“Mom, I'm fine.”

You sigh, as your mother's worried voice rises from the other end of your phone. “You were kidnapped and tor—Shit!—tortured by a deranged serial killer. I have a right to be worried.”

“Well, you don't have to be. I'm okay. See?” You show her the bandages wrapped around your arms. “Patched up and healthy. Doctors say I should be out of here tomorrow morning.”

“We'll be there by then.”

“You don't have to come down.”

“Hush. We're coming down, and you can't stop us. I love you, and we'll see you in the morning.”

She hangs up before you can respond. You shake your head and sigh, setting your phone down. At least you know she was worried about you.

You glance up when you hear a knock at your door. “Come in.”

The door opens as Hotch steps inside. His face is gentle, though without a smile. You miss it in a way as you offer your own.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, his voice just as soft.

You take in a breath. “Okay,” you say. “Considering.” You motion to your phone on the bedside table. “Got off the phone with my mom, she's…already on her way from out of state.”

He closes the door gently behind him, sitting on the chair beside your bed. “She's worried about you.”

You nod. “Yeah, I know.” You sigh, glancing over at him. His eyes are on you. Your lip twitches, fighting a bigger smile. You clear your throat. “Doctor said I'll scar, but…the knife was so sharp and steady enough that they should scar fine… They're discharging me in the morning.”

“That's good.”

“Yeah.”

Honestly, the quiet is nice. You look at him, at the features of his face, the softness mixed with his professionalism looks good on him.

“We retrieved this from the schoolhouse,” he says, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit. He hands you a necklace, your necklace. You smile gently, reaching out for it as he places it in your palm.

You're going to have trouble wearing it for a while, but it's nice to have it back. You look up at him thankfully.

“We also found this at Tucker's house.”

He hands you a second necklace. It's identical to your own, except this one has an E…for Esther.

You swallow the rising lump in your throat. Your smile aches as you breathe through the tears threatening to well in your eyes. You look up at him, your smile trembling as you hold back tears you've already shed. “Thank you.” He nods, smiling very briefly. “I'll, uh…I'll get it back to her family.”

“I'm glad I could help.”

Another comfortable silence falls over you. You tilt your head as you look up at him, wrapping the necklace around your fingers as you think. Something's on his mind.

“What is it?” you mutter.

He contemplates for a moment before he speaks. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you manage to talk him down so well? You seemed so…calm.”

You look down at Esther's necklace, thinking for a moment as you shrug. You speak slowly, clearing your throat as you rub the thumb of your free hand along the white bandage on your forearm.

“He told me his teachers made him do it.” You close your eyes and take a steadying breath, the events of the night before too fresh to ignore. “That agent…said his teachers hurt him, so I treated it like an abusive parent situation. He just needed someone to be on his side.”

You hate that it had to be you, but at least you understand why he did what he did. You almost hate that you understand. “He was hurt as a kid. That kid needs to know he's not alone.”

Hotch thinks about that, nodding gently. “You're a wonderful teacher.”

His words are genuine. It warms you and puts you back at ease. “Thanks.” You smile at him, his little one reflecting back at you. “I guess I'll just have to figure out what to do with myself until they let me go back to my kids.”

A tiny chuckle escapes him. It's a good sound for him. “I think the children will be fine.” You chuckle as well, the sound of his laugh a contagious thing that you can't help.

He glances over his shoulder, out of the open blinds of your room to see Rossi standing in the hall. Hotch’s smile simmers down as they make eye contact. He nods, standing to his feet with a sigh.

“I have to go,” he says, almost regretfully. “Get well soon.”

You turn your palm up as it rests in your lap, wanting to reach for him but not wanting to seem desperate. “Thank you.”

“You don't have to thank me, Ms. Hughes.”

After a moment, Hotch turns toward the door, placing his hand on the handle. “Agent Hotchner?” you call timidly, your heart thumping in your chest and your palms clammy. He pauses on his way to the door, turning back to you with a gentle look.

You clear your throat, dipping your head and trying not to seem as nervous as you feel. You almost died. If that didn't tell you how short life is, you don't know what will. Asking wouldn't hurt.

“I know you're probably busy and all, but…” you lick your bottom lip, summoning the courage to look him in the eyes as you smile nervously. “Would you like to go to dinner with me sometime?” You think for a moment, “I'll stop thanking you so much if you do.”

Since meeting this man, the smile he gives you is the largest you've seen on him. It summons your own beaming grin as he looks at you with cheeks you swear are tinted pink. He chuckles gently, taking a couple slow steps to you as he nods. “I would love to.” All the weight of your worries lift from your shoulders with a sigh. “Please, call me Aaron.”

Your cheeks warm at his gentle affection. You have to clear your throat to speak. “Okay, Aaron,” you say. “But only if you call me Fawn.”

Another tiny chuckle comes out of him. “Where did Fawn come from?”

It’s a genuine question, an innocent curiosity you're happy to sate. “I used to be obsessed with deer as a kid. The nickname stuck,” you say with a shrug. “Some people think it's stupid, though. You can call me by my–”

His interruption isn't rude. In fact, you have to fight the urge to hide your face away as he says next, “I'm looking forward to that dinner, Fawn.”

You smile. “I'll hold you to that.”

Aaron gives you one last smile, saying a soft goodbye as he leaves the room to join Rossi, who gives him the biggest smirk he's ever witnessed.

As David opens his mouth to say something, Aaron stops him immediately with a raised hand and an annoyed grin on his face. “Don't.”

David raises his hands in defense, walking silently next to Aaron to join the team.

Criminal Minds taglist: @queermaxwooo @mdanon027 @lilianhallee @hpstuff244444 @thegr8estpuff @niktwazny303 @bubbles2300

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fanfic #aaron hotchner fanfiction #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #reader insert #female reader #fanfic #fanfiction #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner whump #whump fic

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asterias-record-shop · 11 months

Note

mommy kink dave lizewski please and thank you ? 😋 i love your work sm and would be so happy if you decided to write this !!!! 💓😖

╭════• ೋ•✧๑♡๑✧•ೋ •═══╮

— make me a mommy

╰════• ೋ•✧๑♡๑✧•ೋ •═══╯

𓆩[main masterlist]𓆪 𓆩[request/ask me something!]𓆪

Nympho! Reader who never wants to stop having sex after her and Dave take each other’s virginity and wants him to get her pregnant so they can start their family early. **also, lactating can start as early in a pregnancy as a few weeks

“Dave, stop it!” You whine, tugging on his shirt as he leaned over the table looking at ads that were put out saying ‘NOW HIRING’ in big letters. “We bought a house and daddy’s covering the bills for a year, you don’t need to work!”

We didn’t buy a house, your family bought a house for you both to live in. You were a daddy’s girl, and whatever you wanted, your father was surely going to get it for you no matter how much of a dent it put into his extremely deep pockets. Your father didn’t necessarily like Dave, but he didn’t necessarily dislike him either - he just wanted you to be happy.

Dave wanted you to be happy too, he really did, or he wouldn’t have proposed right after graduation. He was looking for a job so that he didn’t live up to your family's expectations of being a horrible person for you to marry. Dave truly did want you to be happy with him, and make sure your parents loved him just as much as you did - not in the same way though, of course.

"I'm almost done, baby, let me just put in this application in." Dave mumbled, inhaling as you slowly came behind him, rubbing his shoulders as you pressed soft kisses to his neck.

"Come on baby, we have stuff to get to remember? I'm ovulating and I found positions for us to try because missionary gets boring," you whispered, your hands pushing down his shirt as you looked over his shoulder at the applications. "You as a firefighter would be pretty hot."

"I don't know about that, honey," he whispered back with a sigh. "You got to go to school and training and whatever."

"What about that?" You suggest, tapping the position for an IT technician. "My daddy said they need one at his company. He can get you a good salary."

Dave shook his head, sighing. "No baby, I don't want any more handouts from your dad. I think a weapons dealer would be hot, don't you?"

You laughed, shaking your head as you tapped another square about the military. "What about that?"

"How would I be able to do that-"

"You being Kick-Ass and not having pain sensors in most of your body," you responded, giggling. "Come on, I would make an amazing military wife. Now put those up..." you pushed the magazines to the side, humming. "And come put a baby in me."

Dave swallowed as you grabbed his wrist, tugging him to your shared room as easily opened the door before jumping on the bed. "So, the article said that if I leaned over the bed a little bit, the sperm will find its way past the cervix quicker because of gravity. Do you think that's true?"

Dave blushed, shrugging. "I-I mean... gravity is real?"

You giggled, sitting up only to slip off your clothes before your stomach started to twist. You burped softly, covering your mouth before rushing to the bathroom and leaning over the toilet. You groaned loudly as you vomited into the toilet, Dave immediately following you and pulling back your hair while holding your shoulder.

For fucks sake, was this it?

When you finally stopped, he passed you a water bottle he got from your shared bedroom, watching as you swashed the water in your mouth before gurgling it and spitting it out. "David, give me a test."

"Y-Yes ma'am," he pulled out the drawer, grabbing you one of the tests as you stood and flushed the toilet, quickly doing your business and cleaning yourself up before flushing and pacing. "Y/N, honey, it's going to be okay."

"I want to be pregnant, Dave," you whisper, inhaling as you push back his hair. "I want to be pregnant with your baby, want to have so many babies with you. I want to be a mommy, Dave."

"You'll be an amazing mommy," Dave assured you, holding your hips as he stared down at your tits. They were already fuller; you had said that lactation can start as early as three weeks after talking to your gynecologist. "Such an amazing mommy."

You paused, looking down at your tits with a slight smile. "Do you want to see if it's... happening?"

He blushed, shaking his head. "I-I don't... I don't think that's right, honey."

"Why does it matter? They're not born yet, they don't need it," you whisper, smiling as you looked back. "Shall we see if it's true?"

"Of course."

You turned around and gasped, squealing. "I'm pregnant!"

Holy shit.

You jumped into his open arms, giggling as you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, Dave spinning you around in excitement. "We're going to be parents! You're going to be a mommy, holy shit," Dave laughed as you stroked his cheeks. "You're going to be the most amazing mommy ever."

"And you're going to be the best daddy ever," you giggled, smiling as his hands ghost the sides of your tummy, eyes trained on your pretty tits. "Want to see if it's happening? We could celebrate with it."

"What, are you going to be my mommy too?" He teased, watching as your cheeks started to tint, smiling down at him. "Oh."

"Well come on. I'm going to be a mommy soon, I should get used to someone calling me that."

Maybe that's how you got here, Dave sucking on your tits as his hips rutted uncontrollably against yours, desperate to be deeper inside of you. "F-Fuck mommy, fuck, you taste so good, I need more."

You were so out of it, your hips unconsciously bucking into his in desperation to cum, to get that high as his hands paw at your tits, squeezing and letting his thumbs glide over your nipples. "I-It's early, Dave, maybe there's not much!"

He had been sucking and pinching, making you cum at least three times just from his work on your tits, oversensitivity flooding your entire body. Every thrust he made had you seeing white, every slide of his thumbs along your hard, pebbled nipple making your eyes roll back, each drag of his cock along your walls and his tip hitting what felt like your cervix.

"You said constant stimulation will make it produce more, right? Please, please mommy, I need more," he groaned, cursing when none was squeezed out of your tit. "Fuck!"

"D-Dave, there's no more, fuck! Just wait, wait a few minutes." You whimpered, staring down at your swollen nipples, gasping when he pulled it back into his mouth.

"Just a little longer, mommy? Please?"

You inhaled, sighing. "Okay."

What kind of mom would you be if you said no, hm?

Taglist: 𓆩[@lem0ns77]𓆪 𓆩[@cecepop15]𓆪 𓆩[@memeorydotcom]𓆪 𓆩[@your-favorite-god]𓆪 𓆩[@xyzstar]𓆪 𓆩[@just-my-shit]𓆪 𓆩[@your-mom21]𓆪 𓆩[@c78r]𓆪 𓆩[@dizscreams]𓆪 𓆩[@copypastedaphne]𓆪 𓆩[@asrt5]𓆪 𓆩[@xoxomoonlightbabe]𓆪 𓆩[@f-aggotry]𓆪

#asterias-record-shop #with love asteria ♡#kick-ass #kick ass #dave lizewski #dave lizewski x reader #aaron taylor johnson #dave lizewski imagine #dave lizewski x you #dave lizewski smut #dave lizewski x fem! reader #dave lizewski x fem! reader smut

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davidlcki · 5 months

Note

BESTIE BEGGING ON MY KNEES we need more david loki x reader out here 😭😭 maybe some angst/comfort?? ILY

jealousy

i got two pretty similar requests so i kinda combined these into one! anywho i fucking LIVE for angst, so i had fun writing this! it’s not as angsty as some of the stuff i’ve written, but i hope this lives up to yalls expectations 🙏

pairing: detective david loki x reader

warnings: cussing, arguing, jealousy, drinking, david gets slapped. implied female reader, though it can be read as gn! i think that’s it 😁

summary: david is jealous of a new hire that’s been flirting with you at the precinct.

words: 1,313

“i’m just saying i don’t like you being all buddy buddy with him.” david’s words shot anger through your veins. he was talking about one of the new hires that you were tasked with showing around the precinct. you were only the receptionist, meaning you had the most spare time to show someone the ropes. you could tell the guy liked you, making a few jokes and letting his eyes linger on you a little longer than they should. this didn’t bother you a bit. you were so smitten with david that no other person would be able to tinge it in even the slightest, so you let it slide and continued on showing him around. in hindsight, you knew this argument was going to happen. you noticed the way david’s jaw clenched as you spoke to the other man, eyes boring holes into the back of his head from his desk, surely imagining a hundred ways to kill him.

“david. i was asked by o’malley to show him the ropes. what am i supposed to do? say no and lose my job?” david shakes his head at your words, sighing heavily.

“no. but you two seemed awful friendly.” his eyes snap over to yours from his place at the counter, a glass of whiskey in his hands.

“there’s nothing behind that. i treat him just like any other coworker. you need to get over this jealousy thing, D. don’t you trust me?” you shoot him a glare, annoyed that he was so untrusting of you. you watch as he downs the rest of his whiskey, slamming the glass down a little harder than he should have. he shakes his head in annoyance.

“he was flirting with you.”

“so what? i love you and only you. i’m not going to let some new hire’s shitty flirting change that.”

“you do this on purpose to mess with me, don’t you?” he scoffs, the slightest slur to his words. this is when you realized he was more drunk than you thought.

“jesus. you’re drunk. i’m not doing this with you while you’re fucking drunk.” you turn on your heel, walking from the kitchen. you were hurt. you knew he was the jealous type, but not like this. you hadn’t done more than show the new hire around and share maybe two laughs, but that was enough to send him over the edge. just as you stepped out of the living room and your feet make contact with the soft carpet from your living room, he spoke again.

“do you not love me anymore? that it?” this for you, was your breaking point. you weren’t thinking anymore as you turned and stormed back into the kitchen, getting face to face with loki who stood from his seat as you came over.

“how dare you?” your voice had a shake to it as you point a finger into his chest. “i would take a fucking bullet for you. god, your insecurities are taking over this relationship david! why cant you trust me like i trust you? half the women in the precinct drool over you every day. but see, i TRUST you. why not talk to me instead of drowning your feelings in fucking liquor first?” by the time you finished speaking you realized tears were coming down your cheeks in thick streams. you could tell what you had said got to david deep down, but you also knew how he was after a few drinks. stubborn as all hell. a few beats of silence pass before his brows furrow, eyes hardening ever so slightly, only something you could notice. you grit your teeth, knowing some bullshit was about to leave his lips.

“you gonna leave me over this now so you can go be with that new hire? what’s his fuckin’ name, john? jake? j-” you cut david’s sentence short with a harsh slap to the face. you knew it was wrong, but you were so hot with anger that any rational thought had been thrown out the window. his head snapped to the side, and for a while he stayed that way, pressing his lips into a flat line as he processed what had just happened, surely getting more sober by the minute. you weren’t the type of person to resort to hitting in situations like this, and your actions shocked the both of you. finally, he turned his head back to look at you, eyes widened ever so slightly. your bottom lip quivered, a threat of more tears to come, and you turned to walk towards your front door before he could say much more. you slipped your shoes on, not taking the time to put on a coat even though snow fell lightly from the dark sky. you didn’t know where you were going, but your feet had carried you through winding sidewalks through the little neighborhoods of conyers for at least a few hours. when you were sure you’d get sick from the cold and lack of a coat, you hesitantly came back home.

you pushed your front door open, and david was sitting on the couch, tv off. his head snapped to you instantly, his eyebrows knotted in worry. clearly he’s had time to sober up and reflect. you hardly make eye contact with him, deciding to head to the shower, hoping it would wash all your feelings away. you ignore as he calls your name out, soon drowning any other sound out with the sound of running water from the shower head. you stepped in so hastily you nearly forgot to pull your socks off. for a while you stood under the stream of hot water with your eyes closed, simply daydreaming. you were only snapped out of it by the sound of the bathroom door opening.

“david. just leave me alone.” you sigh. after a few moments of silence, you speak again.

“helloo? are you trying to be mysterious or something?” suddenly, david pulled the shower curtain back, not hesitating to step into the shower with you. he was still fully clothed.

“hey!!!” you shout, staring at him wide eyed, though a smile was tugging at your lips at the insanity of it all. “D, you’re still in your clothes!” he only looked at you, a solemn expression on his face.

“i’m sorry.” as he spoke, water from the shower dripped down his face, strands of hair falling out of their usual perfect place. you sigh, running a hand down your face and looking back up at him.

“i just don’t want to lose you. i’m scared.” you could hardly here these words from him as he spoke them so quietly, you nearly had to resort to reading his lips.

“i know. i know. i just wish we could talk about these things before you drink.” your eyes scan his face which remained knotted with worry. you noticed a red mark still remained where you had hit him. you look away for a few beats of silence. “i’m sorry for hitting you. i should have never done that.”

“i deserved it.”

a snort escapes you as you look back at him. “maybe just a little. but it was wrong. so i’m sorry.”

a small smile twitches at the corner of his lips. “i forgive you.” his touch was gentle as he pulled you into his embrace. you wrap your arms around his clothed frame, resting your head against his shoulder and sighing deeply, this time with relief.

“did you really have to get in the shower with your clothes though?”

“i thought it would be good for dramatic effect.” you pull away, looking at david who was smiling much wider at his seemingly great idea to get into the shower fully clothed. you shake your head, pressing your lips against his for a few moments.

“you’re an idiot, loki.”

#fanfiction #one shot #jake gyllenhaal #jake gyllenhaal one shot #jake gyllenhaal x reader #jake gyllenhaal x you #david loki x you #david loki x reader #detective david loki #david loki #detective loki one shot #detective loki x reader #detective loki fanfiction #detective loki #prisoners one shot #prisoners #prisoners fanfiction

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txttletale · 27 days

Note

(Other than the really weird bit about "Male presenting Doctor") what were your thoughts about the specials?

pretty mixed bag, pretty messy, but good overall. i think they were very obviously a nostalgia trip for people around my age lol and it worked! i loved seeing tennant and tate back onscreen together, their chemistry hasn't aged a bit, and honestly just watching doctor who that wasn't written by chris chibnall was a breath of fresh air. they weren't boring, like seasons 11 and 12 were, and they didn't go too far off the other end into nonsense like flux did. characters want things again! the show can let itself just be silly! i was literally cheering out loud when donna and the doctor were just saying random scifi gobbledegook at each other for like a solid several minutes during the star beast.

the structure of the specials kind of baffles me. i love wild blue yonder--i think it's definitively the best of the specials as a standalone, it's absolutely fantastic, creepy and atmospheric and bringing things around to RTD's strength, which is well-written characters interacting with each other and letting good actors just act. but at the same time i dont understand why it exists? it feels like...idk. imagine if you watched the star wars original trilogy but instead of the empire strikes back the middle film was just a feature length film about luke and han surviving on an ice planet with no reference to anything that happens in the last film except the two characters' relationship. and then the next film was still return of the jedi, unchanged. it felt like that

i liked all the weird campy silliness of the star beast and the giggle, and they were both very fun! neil patrick harris gave a fantastic performance, there are a lot of very memorable sequences from the giggle, but it's very very all over the place. so many threads get kind of picked up and go nowhere. the toymaker's haunted house dimension goes nowhere. RTD's eyerolling social media commetnary goes nowhere (thank god tbh but yknow im illustrating something here). even the toymaker kind of goes nowhere, after ncuti gatwa shows up he's bascially an afterthought who loses by dropping a ball. obvious parallels to david tennant's first episode with that ball scene could be made, but just... aren't. it feels like load-bearing sectikons of the plot and themes were cut out to make room for a backdoor pilot for the stupid fucking UNIT spinoff

oh and it goes without saying i fucking hate all the UNIT wank in the star beast and the giggle. i hope space nine eleven 2 happens to their stupid fucking avengers tower i cannot stand kate stewart who is constantly a murderous bonehead (in the giggle alone she gets two pepole killed by not listening to the doctor and assuming that this teleporting godlike entity could be restrainted by Two Guys) who is both in and out of universe just a boring nepo baby with no merit of her own

um. i still dont know what happened with the regeneration. i think the implication is that when david tennant dies hell time travel back to become ncuti gatwa inside himself--at least the rehab dialogue seems to make that implication. but it's not really explained or explored? baffling. i do think that fourteen getting to settle down and live a peaceful life with his friends is cute.

oh yeah and the ask said other than that but goddd there was some good stuff in the star beast and honestly with the state of the UK media i will take any perspective on trans people that includes baseline human erespect but some of those lines made me cringe so bad. anyway overall i am cautiously optimistic for the future of the show--oh ncuti was fucking great did i mention that i instantly bnought him as the doctor he owned the scene, the moment he was there it was clear he was the protagonist, and i liked the church on ruby road well enough too--i am cautiously optimistic but i worry that a big UNIT-shaped tumor will devour huge chunks of it and it'll be annoying. also russel t davies is like 60 and i just dont want to hear what he has to say about twitter so im not looking forward to dot and bubble

#ask #doctor who

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writefightandflightclub · 11 months

Text

Blorbo thought of the day #5

Repetition: (Marc Spector x reader)

A/n: a little fluffy blurb 🥰 Starts with angst but Marc provides comfort and it’s lovely because he is lovely.

Warnings: (Reader has some abandonment / self-esteem issues, canon typical allusions to Marc’s past, implied off-camera sexy times, food mentions) Not proofed!

GIF by @anhandfulgirl18

“You a’right?” Marc asks you in his gruff morning voice as your sigh billows dolefully against the bare expanse of his chest. The room is golden hued with sunlight, bright and easy, and your mood as you wake certainly does not match it.

“Bad dream,” you explain curtly, deepening the niggle in your brow. “Just thinking.”

Marc crushes his chin to his chest in an attempt to get a better look at you. Smooths a warm, broad hand down your bare back, the gnarled patterned sheets pushed down around your middles. “What dream? What are you thinking?”

You stiffen, snapping out of your gloomy mood a little as you realise that you’ve been awake for a mere 30 seconds, and yet you have already managed to make his voice sound like that. Despondent. Taut with concern.

Your head still resting on his chest, his heartbeat thudding steadily beneath the shell of your ear, you let your fingers dance lightly over his pec, trailing in slow, repeating circles, round and round. “It’s just….” The words feel too big to come out, like there’s a traffic jam in your throat when you try to say it out loud.

It’s stupid. You know it is.

“What?” Marc encourages, whisper soft, his voice and his hands as gentle as the slip of fresh golden sun into the room.

You push yourself up. Lie on your front next to him, propping your chin on your fisting hands. Despite the tension roping through you, looking at Marc instantly makes you smile, even if the gesture itself is a subdued, somber sort of thing.

You reach up and ruffle his thick, dark strands with the rake of your fingers, fondly combing the tendrils back from his forehead, and he hums for you, low and soft.

God. This man. He always looks especially beautiful on a morning. The mussed, chaotic curls. The shadow of stubble darkening his jaw. The way he fans his long lashes, attempting to blink away the bright morning, always a complete snuggle fiend and wanting to lay in the dark with you just a little longer. The glisten of his Magen David pooled in the hollow of his throat, bobbing there as he swallows. His skin bare and warm and his natural scent not yet polluted by his morning shower.

You don’t think you could ever tire of this sight.

“It’s nothing. Not really. It’s just… Every now and again I get this… horrible gnawing feeling. Like one day you’ll… I dunno. Get bored of me?”

That wakes him up, and for the second time this morning you feel guilt writhe your belly. Marc, meanwhile, looks at you with a pure concern. Gaze flitting over you. Examining you as though you’ve been severely wounded - and he’s only now seeing it. “What do you mean?” He moves, the surprise animating him, and he shifts his elbows backwards to prop his torso up. His necklace elongates, settling into place in the valley of his shapely chest, and his mop of curls flopping once again over his forehead. “Honey. How could I ever?”

You play with a little bit of lint on the bed covers, suddenly intent on it. Retreating away from Marc’s intense, searching stare. “You know. You could. Maybe. From the repetition of it.” Your voice cracks like sun-baked earth - as though the golden morning has already dried you out. “You could get bored. Waking-up next to me every day? Hearing me talk about the same stuff all the time? Fucking me, over and over.”

At that comment, Marc’s brows knit and raise in the middle. His tongue fleets along his lower lip, his mouth turning down at the corners. God, those puppy dog eyes of his never get old.

“But you know I love fucking you over and over, shortcake.”

You shake your head softly. Self-conscious around him, and you have no idea why. “Marc.”

With the wet way you say his name, Marc turns immediately on to his side, still propped up on one elbow, his muscles popping as they bear his weight. And, his freed arm just as immediately is reaching for you. Fingers trailing down your back. You look at him and he looks pained. “Did I… Did I do something to make you think that-“

“-No.” Shit. You shouldn’t have said anything about it. Marc gets so in his head about these things. Always blames himself, as though, if you’re insecure, it means that he isn’t doing a good enough job of loving you. In fact, that could not be further from the truth. “No, Marc. I promise. It’s…” You sigh out a long breath. “It’s just how I feel sometimes. Like eventually, you’ll realise you want someone else. I mean, if I were you, I’d get tired of me too, you know? Sometimes it just feels… inevitable.” Your final word is so heavy that is weighs the tears that pool in your eyes, and yet, even through the blur, you risk a glance up at Marc again.

His palm comes to cradle your cheek. His eyes shine steadily on you. Even glint with an unexpected amusement, despite the situation, which you don’t yet comprehend.

“Baby. Do you never think about who you’re talking to, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. I love repetition. Same thing, over and over? Fucking heaven.”

Your insecurities press you to dispute his statement, and your mouth even drops open to counter him; but, actually, when you think about it…

Marc?

This guy?

The guy who eats the same thing everyday for breakfast, except on Saturdays? Who does all of his tasks in the same way, in the same order, every time? Who watches the same three movies on repeat any time he gets a chance? Who buys four of the same shirt so he rarely has to change it up?

“Yeah. Okay,” you concede. “But, why though?Because it’s… easy? Convenient?” That’s not what you want to be for him.

Marc caresses your cheek with his palm again, gaze flitting fondly over your face. He frowns, like he’s never really thought about the why before. Because it had never really occurred to him to think about it. “No. Not exactly. I guess because… It makes me feel… safe.”

“Safe?”

Safe. Is that what you are to him?

“Yeah. Safe like…”

Not like home. Not like the place that never was; safe.

Safe, like the jumper you knitted him, maybe. Safe, like repeating stitch after repeating stitch wrapped around him, keeping him warm.

Repetition as comfort. Routine as the home he never had, built for himself, block by block.

Like that, maybe? Or, like something else?

You swallow harshly. “Safe like… boring?”

“No,” Marc says calmly, still thinking. “No, baby.”

Then, he moves. Crawls on top of you until his nude body is covering yours, boxing you in all safe.

You see the effort plainly in his face. See from the weight in his brow that he’s painstakingly searching for the right words. That he’s reaching for a way to make you get it. Searching for something which he knows for certain you’ll truly understand. “Safe like…” A lightness settles over Marc’s face as he lands on the very thing. Something you can both understand. No chance of misinterpretation. “Safe like… how Steven makes you feel, you know?” Then, he cocks his head to the side, a slow drag of a smile inching, lopsided, over his plush mouth. “Except, in a less brotherly way. Obviously.”

You can’t help it. You tear up. You know what Steven means to Marc. That Steven represented the first time Marc had felt loved. Protected. That Steven made you feel that same way too. “I really make you feel like that?”

Marc’s eyes glow softly with a smile, crinkles appearing around his eyes, since he’s finally beginning to make you understand. “Yeah. Now you’re getting it. And hey. You’d never get sick of that, would you?”

You wouldn’t. “Never.”

“Good.” He presses a kiss to your lips. Buries his face in your neck, lips sliding tenderly down the column of your throat. Holding you tightly, his body covering you. He kisses along your collarbone, his tongue laving there. “I’ll never be bored of you.”

“Promise?”

Marc props himself up on his forearms, boxing you in either side of your head and nuzzling the tip of his nose against yours. “In a thousand lifetimes? I’d love you over and over and over and over.”

Finally, you submit a watery smile to him, releasing your sadness and your fears and your tension. Wrapping your arms around him and pulling his mouth down to yours for a deep, tender, loving kiss.

“Well,” you suspire when you break for air. “Then I suppose I like repetition too.”

“Oh yeah?”

You kiss the tip of his nose and his face crinkles with a delicious smile. “Yeah. Because I wanna wake up beside you every single day, Marc Spector.” He smiles in awe at you, eyes glistening with unadulterated adoration and you kiss along his jawline. “And sometimes Steven or Jake too,” you add as an aside. “That I’ll allow.” Marc’s face splits into a beaming smile. “Now, kisses for you all.” You grasp his face in your splayed hands and plant three kisses in turn. One on the cheek, one to the centre of his forehead, and one on his lips, which is all for him.

Marc’s eyes flutter closed as your kiss puckers against him. “Now, get off me, will you?” you tease fondly. “I’ll get us some breakfast. I’m gonna need you fuelled-up.”

“What for?”

“For all of the repetitive fucking we’re about to do.”

Marc flips obediently on to his back, folding his arms behind his head and baring himself entirely to you as you sway -naked- towards the kitchen. “Oh, is that right?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, shortcake.”

You are. You’re feeling much better thanks to Marc and the way in which he loves you - which, you’re discovering, never gets old.

“What are we having?” he asks as you begin to raid the cabinets.

“The usual.” you glance towards him, a smirk on your mouth. “I mean. If that’s okay with you.”

He smiles softly at you in return. “The usual sounds perfect.”

It’s funny.

Marc always did love a little repetition.

#marc spector x reader #marc spector #moon knight x reader #moon knight

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kscheibles · 10 months

Text

dream girl (illicit affairs part ii)

part i here

content warnings: f! reader, angst, fluff, smut, oral sex f receiving, drug use (weed), mentions of disordered eating habits

word count: 3.3k

You’re hunched over the desk in Matty’s expensive hotel room. Your wet hair drips onto the desk, pooling on the wooden surface. Matty pushes your hair away from your face and onto your back. You’re covered in a warm, plush hotel robe that feels more like a blanket than something that can double as a towel. With Matty’s hands on you and the familiar rhythm of classic soul music permeating the warmth of the room, you feel almost content.

In your hands is a joint that refuses to roll well. You’ve been painstakingly trying to sort it for what must be ten minutes. You can feel Matty’s eyes boring into you from behind. He knows that you could have been smoking it by now, but you’re too stubborn to let him help.

“Stop staring, you’re making me nervous,” you protest. He reaches his arm towards your hands and you squeal, “No, you’re going to make me spill it!”

“Please baby, it’ll be so much easier for me,” he tries.

“No, I brought you weed I’m going to roll it,” you insist.

“We’ll be lucky if it even lights,” he mutters. You stick your tongue out at him. He smiles wide at the sight of you being so childish.

“I’ll have you know I’ve been practicing!” you say. You finally roll the paper and do a little happy dance. Matty bends down to kiss your forehead. There’s a smell so uniquely him wafting off his body. It’s not his detergent, or cologne, or choice cigarettes. It’s warm and musky and safe. It crowds your senses until all you can think is Mattymattymatty. You look up to take him in. He’s in just his boxers, clad from the waist up in only ink and sweat. Your eyes dart away as you bring the joint to your mouth and lick the paper delicately before twisting off the end.

Matty sits on the desk and hands you a lighter. You bring the crutch end of the joint up to his lips and slip it between them. Then you stand up so you’re taller than him. His eyes follow you intently. You bring the fire up to the end of the zoot and hold it there as he inhales. Matty moves his hand to the side of your face and exhales all over it, causing you to scrunch your eyes and giggle.

“So it works, then?” you taunt. He takes another hit and hands it to you.

“It’s alriiiiight,” he drawls, hooking his arms around your waist, spinning you, and pulling you into his lap.

You roll your eyes and hit it yourself, making sure to inhale properly and get all of the smoke out of your lungs so you don’t cough in front of him. He’d definitely take the piss out of you.

“Mmmmm,” you sigh contentedly as you begin to feel your body relax vertebrae by vertebrae. You take one more hit and hold the joint between your index and middle finger like a cig, turning in his grasp and bringing it up to his mouth. As he takes a drag, you let your fingertips linger on his soft lips. You take the cig away and replace it with your mouth before he exhales. He breathes the earthy smoke into your mouth as he begins to kiss you, rubbing his sensitive lips against yours and you’re perfectly gone for a moment. Your head isn’t where it’s supposed to be. It’s floating up, up, up higher into the air like a balloon let off its string. Abruptly, Matty pulls back.

“Not gonna let you distract me from this darling,” he asserts. He plucks the zoot from your hand and takes a long pull from it. His cheeks hollow as he inhales. He looks like Michaelangeo’s David; all angles and taut stomach and curly hair. Fuck.

“God, this is good stuff,” he sighs.

“You didn’t think I was gonna bring you shit, did you?” you quirk an eyebrow at him, testing him.

“Of course not,” he gasps, faux-offended, “you’re my perfect girl, I know you’re on your shit. Look, you rolled it for me and everything. Dream girl, honestly.” He kisses all over your face and you feel warm everywhere. Whether it’s from his praise or the weed, you can’t tell. He wraps his arm around your neck and pulls you to his chest.

You tilt your head a little to look up at him. His heart beats rhythmically in your ear and his warmth encompasses your whole consciousness. His eyes are pink around the edges, hair flattened from rolling around in bed. The soft skin under his eyes is purple and blue, a remnant of the fifteen-hour flight he took to get to you. Thick, musky smoke curls beautifully around his head like a halo. Now you’re the one staring.

You don’t care, you decide. You’ll stare. Fuck him if he has a problem with it. He catches your eyes, a familiar cheeky glint in them.

“You want some, baby?” he brings the joint to your mouth in mimicry of your earlier actions. It feels so intimate, him giving you what you want. Taking care of you, holding you tight but carefully, fingers grazing your mouth, teasing you. He feeds you the smoke delicately, watching your reaction to it. “Good girl. Look at you, look so perfect right now.” You blush as you exhale.

“Need you,” you admit shyly.

“Is that right?” he chuckles softly, “You’re a needy little thing aren’t you? Come to my room, I fuck you nice and good and you still want more, huh?” You nod along, too blissed out to be embarrassed by his words.

“Please, Matty,” you plead. He stubs the joint out on the desk. Fuck the charge.

“Jump,” he says. You oblige, kissing him once your face is level with his. You kiss him hungrily, slipping your tongue in his mouth as soon as you can, desperate. Your lips tingle as your mind begins to cloud with ecstasy. He moves easily with you in his arms. It makes you feel giddy knowing he can handle you, move you wherever he likes. He could overpower you if he wanted to, hurt you, make you bend to his will. And yet, Matty is gentle.

He sets you down on the foot of the bed and kneels in front of you, untying your robe and pushing it off your shoulders. Once on the floor, he kisses the tops of your feet, your calves, up higher and higher until he reaches the inside of your knees. He looks up at you from under dark curls and thick eyelashes. Your heart melts at the sight of his kiss-bitten lips and delirious smile. He taps each knee softly.

“Open your legs, sweetheart,” he coos. With your legs on either side of him, he moves further into you. “Wider,” he commands and you follow his instructions on instinct. He smiles bigger; if that’s even possible.

“Fuck, you’re glistening,” he says as his eyes drift to your soaked core.

“Don’t tease,” you whine. He reaches up, hand landing on your stomach and pushing you down onto your back.

“But you love it so much when I do,” he retorts. He kisses the soft flesh of your inner thighs, the part that’s scarred by stretch marks that appeared in your adolescence. He licks them delicately and moves closer to your cunt before you get embarrassed enough to ask him to stop. Once his face is aligned with your wetness, he stops and breathes out of his mouth; slowly, deliberately. Allowing his hot breath to envelop you. It’s not even close to enough pressure, enough heat. Instinctually, you lift your hips chasing the warmth of his mouth. You hear Matty chuckle softly, pleased with your eagerness.

He moves his hands up to your pussy, running a finger over your swollen clit and further down to your entrance. He barely pushes in, instead opting to play with the wetness there, running his finger around all sides as if he were trying to rid you completely of it. It’s enough to start the fire inside you but not enough to stop your mind completely. He pushes one finger in lazily as if that would satisfy you now. You’re starving, being fed bite by bite. It’s not what you wanted at all. You had wanted to gorge yourself on pleasure and dopamine and togetherness.

“Matty,” you warn. He takes his finger away. Your head snaps up.

“Please baby, I jus’ wanna play with you,” he pleads, “wanna take my time feeling you out. Will you let me do that, pretty girl?”

There’s a sweetness that washes over you as you lay back down. A steady thrum of pleasure you’re now content with. Let him figure you out, you’ll be a desperately willing participant.

“Atta girl,” he praises, slipping his finger back in. He begins to move it in and out and you mewl at the feeling of his fingers, of building pleasure, of being fucked. At your whimpers, he puts his ring finger in as well, moving both of them together now at an erratic pace. He spreads his fingers apart like he’s trying to open you up, then moves them against your back wall. You jerk like you’ve been shocked every time he tries something new. Then he’s coaxing you to him in a “come here” motion. Drawing you further into him, into ecstasy.

“You want another?” he asks quietly.

“Yes!” your voice comes out louder than expected. You giggle, “sorry– yes,” you amend, quieter this time. Matty presses a quick kiss to your inner thigh and then follows through on his promise, fitting another digit into you, tight as you may be.

“That’s it, bein’ so good for me,” he praises. He moves his fingers in and out gently fucking you with them. Every once and a while, he strokes them against your front wall and you short-circuit for a moment. Your hips follow his hand, bucking up into it as he grazes your sweet spot. It’s no longer enough, you need more, more, more.

“Think you’ve figured me out well enough,” you say, sitting up on your elbows.

When you look down at him, he looks focused, like a kid on Christmas morning figuring out his new toy. There’s an innocence to the genuine interest with which he explores your body, earnestly searching for what makes you feel good. His head jerks up to meet your eyes. Your eyes search his face for a moment and then travel down to where his body meets yours. The sight is dizzying. Matty’s fingers are coated in your wetness and buried so deep inside you. Deeper than you had thought.

“What do you need, darlin’?” he asks.

“Please will you go down on me now?” you pout. You pucker your bottom lip out to show him how serious you are. He grins in response.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he says and ducks down to capture your clit in his mouth. He licks you up and down over and over until you’re chanting his name grasping out for his hair like it’s a lifeline. You know that he won’t listen if you say it’s too much – he likes to be too much for you – but you tug on him anyway. To show him it’s good, that you’re overwhelmed. It spurs him on and he moans into your cunt. The vibrations pulse through your body and you shake, inadvertent lifting your hips to meet his mouth, fucking his face with sweet abandon.

Matty slips two fingers back into you and you cry at the intrusion, head beginning to fill with goo. All you can think is, Right there, stay right there, almost, aaaaah. Matty moves his other hand to your abdomen, feeling your muscles clench and release as he does. As he drags his hand lower, he puts pressure on your lower tummy. The feeling on your front wall is delicious. It sends you over the edge. Matty continues to suck intently at your bud over and over and over, working you through your orgasm until you're not contracting around him anymore. When he can tell you’re done, he removes his fingers from you.

Your grip on Matty’s hair loosens as you relax fully into the bed, now unencumbered by any last threads of anxiety; they’ve all been snapped by your last orgasm. Matty moves up your body until his face is centimeters from yours. On his lips are remnants of your freedom and pleasure. It makes you preen to see him so content to be covered in you. He leans down to you and you indulge him fully, kissing him intently until you can no longer taste yourself on his tongue. You break away to catch your breath.

“Do you want me to return the favor?” you ask him. Your voice is barely above a whisper. It doesn’t need to be, he’s so close to you. He moves to pepper the left side of your neck with chaste, sweet kisses.

“I’m alright, darlin’, thanks,” he breathes into your hair, “consider it a ‘thank you’ for the weed. Honestly, I’m high enough that I lost track of time down there.” You giggle and force him off of you so you can resume your rightful place: nuzzled into his chest, his hand on your hip, and your mind stabilized by the constant beating of his heart.

As soon as you’re there, he gasps.

“Your hair is cold,” he breathes. You sit up straight.

“Oh, sorry,” you say. You spring out of bed to dry it in the restroom. Once you’re in front of the bathroom mirror, towel in your hands, Matty follows you into the small space.

“Let me,” he says. You squint your eyes at him but he doesn’t back down. “Get up on the counter, baby, I’ll take care of you,” he says it like it’s his job or something; like he’s never considered that he wouldn’t get up to dry your hair. You relax. Somehow you’d forgotten that it was Matty you’re with. He's your friend. He sees all your inner thoughts and accepts them. He’s a box for you to put your pain in. He holds it all in his hands like water, careful not to let a drop spill.

You awkwardly jump to sit on the cold tile of the bathroom counter. You hiss when your naked ass makes contact with it and Matty immediately ducks to grab another towel. He slides it under your bum and uses the corner to dab at the mess between your legs.

“This bit was my fault,” he says cheekily. Then he grabs the bath sheet you had earlier and begins to towel your hair, careful not to rub too much at your delicate curls. When he’s done, he grabs the hair dryer and aims it at your roots. The warmth seems to permeate your scalp and seep all the way into your chest and abdomen. You lean your forehead on his shoulder as he dries your hair.

“That’s it, good girl,” he says. The melodic lilt of his voice tempts you to doze on him. “Shhhh, it’s okay. My perfect girl, you can sleep on me.”

You take him up on it.

—

As soon as you shut the door to his room and the cold sterile air of the hall hits you, your experience is thrust into harsh relief with reality. Inside with him isn’t a real place. It’s a fantasy. It’s a place where you pretend not to be who you are. In the real world, you have a dog that needs to be walked, laundry that needs folding. You have physical ailments and mental neuroses that affect your everyday decisions.

Inside with him, you’re pretending. It’s for you a little, but the truth is that it’s mostly for him. You’re happy to be his perfect little male fantasy. You relish in it. When you’re with him, you’re aloof. You’re noncommittal. You don’t mind that he’s leaving soon or that he won’t take you out to dinner – at least that’s what you tell yourself. You wear matching appliquéd underwear and have perfectly painted nails. You dress like you don’t care about your appearance – all sweatpants and baggy T-shirts and scrunchies – but you shower each time before you see him. Meticulously remove every stray hair from your legs, your underarms, your pussy. You dab designer perfume on your wrists, hips, and neck. You eat the greasy, delicious food he orders to the room – and then starve yourself the day after. Whatever it takes to be perfect for him. That’s the real walk of shame, you think, the growling stomach and expensive missing underwear. You could have donated that hundred dollars to charity or given it to a mother and child on the street. Instead, it’s wet with your arousal and stuffed in the bottom of the suitcase of a man who wouldn’t notice if a hundred dollars disappeared from his wallet. Wouldn’t even notice if it were a thousand.

When you're with him, you want to be enticing. Delectable. You want him to see you, smell you, and not be able to keep himself from biting into you. Tasting the sweet coconut oil you’ve rubbed over yourself. You want to be irresistible. That’s how you know you’re good enough. Good enough to be with a rockstar, even if it is just for a hookup. Next time, says a faraway voice in your head, if you’re more perfect, more delicious, softer, flatter, smaller, maybe he’ll stay for longer. Maybe he’ll ask his managers to give him longer breaks from touring. Maybe he’ll fly you out to London with him when he goes to visit his family or make a reservation for the two of you at one of those posh restaurants you’re always criticizing.

All of a sudden, it feels so wrong. Stupid. You were more comfortable in your skin when you were seventeen and someone lusted after your flesh for the first time. Then, you ate what you wanted. Then, you wore delicate floral dresses and displayed your curiosity for the world proudly. Then you would let your nose burn and freckle; a sign that you were young and sucking the nectar from life with as much insistence as you could muster. You would fall into bed spontaneously, excitedly. Out of pure need for your partner. Smelling like sweat and leftover Victoria’s Secret body mist. Dark hair, thick and curly, sprouted from the place where life is created and you didn’t stop for a second to consider it. And the boys. The boys still ate you like you were their last supper, savoring your every last drop and gasp and whimper.

Somewhere along the way you have learned to hate your nature. You change just about everything about you. Your frizzy hair, now flattened and tamed. Your physical form, now adorned with lace and paint. Your soft stomach tortured and ignored. Your forehead lathered in sunscreen to ward off any sign you’re no longer eighteen. Your mind medicated so you don’t feel the pain of being alive as acutely as you once did.

But it still feels good when you’re with him. You feel understood, seen in your core. Past all the superficial bullshit that makes you his “dream girl.”

You can’t help but feel you’re not his dream girl. If you were, he’d have made sacrifices for you by now. Sent you flowers and messages when he was away – well non-sexy messages anyway. Asked to call you his girl.

He would have kissed your body and made you believe his words when he told you “you’re perfect.” Not perfect now, but perfect always. Perfect in essence. That’s what you really crave – more than the late-night conversations and orgasms and bliss – for someone to find your essence perfect. So then it doesn’t matter if you’re shaved or you’ve just woken up, or your roots have grown out. You’d be perfect to him anyways.

a/n: if you hate this, please do not tell me! 😘

#matty healy fanfiction #matty healy smut #matty healy fanfic #matty healy x reader #matty healy x y/n

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cyanogoth · 2 years

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A nonexistent human being. Or is he? (character analysis of Johan Liebert)

A few months ago I’ve read a book which was recommended by one of the Monster’s fans, - “The Divided Self” by Ronald David Laing. He suggested Laing’s work to everyone who’s confused about Johan’s mindset and motivations, just as I’m sure a lot of us were… It was a GREAT recommendation, so insightful that I wanted to share my thoughts and the interpretation I developed.

Any blockquote in this post is from “The Divided Self”, there will be too many to sign each of them, so just keep that in mind :)

It’s going to be a painfully long read, but hopefully a rewarding one too.

PART 1: DEFINITION OF ONTOLOGICAL INSECURITY, TRUE AND FALSE SELF

Firstly we need to get familiar with a few concepts from Laing’s work which will be important for understanding the rest of the essay. His book describes schizoids and schizophrenics, exploring the mechanisms behind their illness. But it is important to understand that he, although a psychiatrist, acknowledged mental illness primarily as an existential/philosophical problem rather than a purely medical one. He saw more value in understanding the patient's experience of the world rather than endlessly examining and manipulating their body.

The first term we will need is ontological insecurity. Let's compare how Laing describes someone who is confident in his own reality - and someone who is not.

The individual, then, may experience his own being as real, alive, whole; as differentiated from the rest of the world in ordinary circumstances so clearly that his identity and autonomy are never in question; as a continuum in time; as having an inner consistency, substantiality, genuineness, and worth; as spatially coextensive with the body; and, usually, as having begun in or around birth and liable to extinction with death. He thus has a firm core of ontological security.

<...>

The individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question. <… > He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body.

If a position of primary ontological security has been reached, the ordinary circumstances of life do not afford a perpetual threat to one's own existence. If such a basis for living has not been reached, the ordinary circumstances of everyday life constitute a continual and deadly threat.

For an individual who’s unsure of his own existence, life becomes a constant struggle to preserve his self. All efforts are made to avoid engulfment, implosion, petrification. Fear of being absorbed is essentially fear of being understood, caught up, seen, loved, "grasped".

To be understood correctly is to be engulfed, to be enclosed, swallowed up, drowned, eaten up, smothered, stifled in or by another person's supposed all-embracing comprehension. It is lonely and painful to be always misunderstood, but there is at least from this point of view a measure of safety in isolation.

The way to deal with this fear is to take one’s true self out of the real world, completely out of reach of other people. A true self withdraws into the depths of the inner world, its connection with an individual’s body is interrupted. That which interacts with the "outside" world and controls actions, movements, words, facial expressions is the false self. A carefully falsified image designed to deflect the gaze of others.

…[he] never allows himself to 'be himself in the presence of anyone else. He avoids social anxiety by never really being with others. He never quite says what he means or means what he says. The part he plays is always not quite himself. He takes care to laugh when he thinks a joke is not funny, and look bored when he is amused. <…> No one, therefore, really knows him, or understands him. He can be himself in safety only in isolation, albeit with a sense of emptiness and unreality. With others, he plays an elaborate game of pretense and equivocation. His social self is felt to be false and futile. - Laing describing his patient

However, another fear, of petrification, or objectification, clashes with the previous one. Fear of being absorbed makes one flee from the gaze of others, but by hiding from it, an individual ceases to be perceived by anyone, which once again puts their substantiality into question. An individual is very much afraid of being perceived by others as an object, as something inanimate, as a machine, as an “it” without subjectivity. It’s as if any potential observer is Medusa, who can instantly turn an individual to stone with a mere gaze. This fear pushes a person to "existential suicide" - he pretends to be "dead", giving up his own autonomy before someone else can deaden him and treat him as an inanimate object. Also, as a way of protecting himself, an individual might turn everyone around him into stone too - because a phantom, hallucination, or an object couldn’t harm him, only real human beings are capable of such.

Fear of implosion is the same as fear of absorbing the real experience of life. An individual is empty, he is a vacuum - but this vacuum he begins to think of as himself. Any substantial relationship with the world and people threatens to "tear" him, so he avoids it, too.

Now let’s clarify what is false self, how it relates to the true one and the world.

If the individual delegates all transactions between himself and the other to a system within his being which is not 'him', then the world is experienced as unreal, and all that belongs to this system is felt to be false, futile, and meaningless.

Here’s an illustration from “The Divided Self” to better visualize what is meant here.

The reality of the world and of the self are mutually potentiated by the direct relationship between self and other. In Figure 2, there is a vicious circle.

the person who does not act in reality and only acts in phantasy becomes himself unreal.

The true self resides in an imaginary, devoid world of phantoms. It becomes unembodied, not represented in the real world. The real world, in return, loses its vitality in the eyes of a schizoid, viewed now as filled with objects.

The false self is a mask, a performance, an imaginary identity with little or nothing to do with the true self of the individual. Laing describes cases in which the false self starts to emerge in childhood and such children are described by their parents as remarkably obedient, compliant, undemanding. They conform perfectly to the expectations of the family and the environment. They begin to mockingly imitate what is desired of them. This is not necessarily an absurdly "good" image; it can also be absurdly evil, if that is what the world wishes the individual to be.

The point of having a false self is to not let any part of the true one slip to the real world, where an individual has no power over what will be done to it. To give something about him away is to rely on others mercy, and it’s a risk a schizoid can't afford.

in reality, in 'the objective element', nothing of 'him' shall exist, and no footprints or fingerprints of the 'self shall have been left.

Now to the interesting part - how all of that correlates to Johan.

PART 2: ROOTS OF JOHAN’S ONTOLOGICAL INSECURITY

Firstly, of course, dressing up as a sister. He probably could sense already that it’s done for a reason, not for the fun of it. The family led “a quiet life”, which is probably difficult to do with two kids. So, my suggestion: the twins grew up with the feeling that they have to hide from some sort of danger and avoid attention. But, Anna didn’t have to hide her real appearance, unlike Johan, for whom pretending to be someone else became an important part of remaining safe.

Did he conceal as someone else, or was he only an imposter for the real human that for sure is present in the world?

Because everyone, besides mother and sister, only knew the sister, the girl, the daughter. She was definitely real. Was he really ever there?

Even the mother couldn’t tell them apart. He became an illusory twin.

The moment their mother hesitated could only solidify Johan’s intrusive thoughts. She had someone in mind, could it be that she hesitated because at that exact moment couldn’t tell where the kid she’d given up?

Did he only stand a chance to live, physically and existentially, only if he concealed as someone else? Because if people could see him for what he truly was, he would not be saved.

My guess is that Johan's perception of himself was so distorted that he no longer thought of himself as the real thing; that the true self worth protecting wasn’t inside of him, it was his sister, and he was fake in his entirety. He was a mere pretender who had to ward off danger from the true self. Johan's saying "I am you, and you are me" and referring to Anna as "my other self" indirectly confirms my assumption - he began to see himself and his sister as an integrated system, where he is nothing more than a facade and his sister is the living, real, substantial, human one.

The mother's hesitance in choosing between the two children added fuel to Johan's already flimsy sense of his own substantiality. What if she was not choosing between the twins, but simply could not at that moment figure out which one was which? Keeping a particular child in mind, she just couldn't tell who was really the kid she was thinking of and who was posing as such? Where is the real child and where is the false one?

The feeling of insecurity, the loneliness, the pain of their mother's abandonment, the sympathy for this sister, and the enormous guilt that the real one of them two had fallen into clutches of monsters. The twins' whole life consisted of constant attempts of intruders to destroy their lives and identities.

The days after Anna’s return prior to being found on Czech-German border mark Johan’s existential death.

Something in him collapsed in that interval of time. When his mother was choosing between them, he was still a normal child (or, at least, nothing described in manga showed us his abnormality) - afraid of being abandoned by his mother, of being handed over to be torn apart by sinister strangers whose intentions were unknown, but from whom he’d been running for as long as he could remember. All these feelings died in him. When and how exactly, we don't know, but a completely different Johan crosses the Czech-German border - detached, horrifyingly tranquil, indifferent to death. In a sense, he no longer has anything to fear, the short chain of events has been so devastating that he unknowingly committed existential suicide. Even if it’s death that’s awaiting them, no one will be able to put their hands on them, no one will be able to twist their souls and minds.

Laing’s patients often described their inner world as a wasteland, devoid of any sign of life. There are quotes from his book in which Laing talks about his patient and cites his words:

The self becomes desiccated and dead. In his dream world James experienced himself as even more alone in a desolate world than in his waking existence, for example:

“.. . I was standing in the middle of a barren landscape. It was absolutely flat. There was no life in sight. The grass was hardly growing. My feet were stuck in mud… ”

“. .. . I was in a lonely place of rocks and sand. I had fled there from something; now I was trying to get back to somewhere but didn't know which way to go… “

Reminds us of something, doesn’t it?

And it’s a precise reflection of Johan's world, the real Johan, where his self ended up imprisoned. However, he was a little luckier than the other schizoids - there was room for one more person in his world.

Mentally, Johan never made it out of that wasteland, only his body was saved. He calls this landscape a scenery of the Doomsday, not only because his body was close to death in that very space, but because it so strongly resembled Johan's inner landscape. It was the last place his soul has seen.

PART 3: KINDERHEIM 511 AND THE LIEBERTS

One’s true self, residing in a world of phantoms, ceases to engage with the real world through the individual's body. What is this body occupied with meanwhile?

Instead of being the core of his true self, the body is felt as the core of a false self, which a detached, disembodied, 'inner', 'true' self looks on at with tenderness, amusement, or hatred as the case may be. <…> The unembodied self, as onlooker at all the body does, engages in nothing directly.

This offers an answer as to why Kinderheim didn’t have the same destructive impact on Johan as it had on other children. His true self was already out of reach, it couldn’t be obtained no matter what they did to him externally.

They could get nothing from him. "They could only beat me up but they could not do me any real harm." That is, any damage to his body could not really hurt him.

In a sad way, the experiments on Johan's psyche were not successful, for he himself, quite unknowingly, subjected himself to all the horrors to which the Kinderheim warders were about to subject him.

You cannot kill what is dead, drain what’s empty, objectify what’s inanimate. That's why they didn't make it.

But Johan, of course, is the result they strived for but couldn’t achieve: a human so terrified and defenseless that is pushed to abandon his sensitivity in order to survive.

Thus, to forgo one's autonomy becomes the means of secretly safeguarding it; to play possum, to feign death, becomes a means of preserving one's aliveness. To turn oneself into a stone becomes a way of not being turned into a stone by someone else.

It seems to me that Johan was ready to settle down and stop running after escaping Kinderheim 511. But he left the orphanage with a critically dangerous revelation - sometimes it’s either you, or everyone else; his actions clearly show that he won’t hesitate to obliterate everything and everyone if it ensures safety. I just don’t think he expected to find himself in a similar position so soon, when he was adopted by Lieberts.

The thing about him is that he played along, he became what the world wanted him to become, yet it wasn’t enough to finally be left alone. The man they ran away from showed up at their doorstep and Johan lost his temper. Nothing helped the twins to escape monsters - living under different names, with different caregivers, in different places, together, separated- NOTHING was ever enough.

Maybe it was around the time his plan to be the last one standing was formed. Wiping out every sparkle of life from the world was the last attempt to gain safety.

Johan doesn’t care much about dying because his existential death has already happened, he already feels a lot more dead and frozen than alive. He already convinced himself that there’s nothing true about him, and out of two of them his sister is the true self. It doesn’t matter if he dies, he was never there from the start. But even after the gunshot he hopes to live through his sister.

Everything that comes after that wretched rainy night is an attempt to secure himself and his sister from the world that was on their tail for as long as they lived. He is ready to be separated from her and let her live under a different name if that’s how the monster finally loses track of her; he’s ready to enter the underworld, to take control of the German economy, to kill people.

It seems to me, because of the confinement of his true self in the realm of insubstantiality, he became unable to perceive people from the real world as alive and autonomous, that’s the sad reason why he could kill so easily. What he saw around were ghosts, objects that were mimicking human beings, not actual humans.

But there were exceptions.

Only Anna and Tenma are shown together with Johan in the wasteland of his inner world, where his true self dwells - them being there with him is a way of telling us, readers, that only these two truly know Johan. And therefore, only they can be spared.

I just want to emphasize: for Johan, “destroying the world” and “be the last one standing” wasn’t something he did for fun, or just because he could. It’s the last endeavor of a tortured child convinced in hostility of all living things to find peace.

PART 4: THE TALE OF THE NAMELESS MONSTER

The self is, however, charged with hatred in its envy of the rich, vivid, abundant life which is always elsewhere; always there, never here. The self, as we said, is empty and dry. One might call it an oral self in so far as it is empty and longs to be and dreads being filled up. But its orality is such that it can never be satiated by any amount of drinking, feeding, eating, chewing, swallowing. It is unable to incorporate anything. It remains a bottomless pit; a gaping maw that can never be filled up.

In the tale of the nameless monster, Johan can be both the monster and the boy who has been possessed by a foreign entity. That depends on how you interpret it.

This tale could be an allegory for what is happening to the twins, which are represented as nameless monsters. Johan could not remain himself, all the time hiding under different "faces'', changing names and identities. However, he couldn’t stay in any of them for long. His nature was bursting out, destroying these masks and whatever and whoever was around in the process. Nina on the other hand, even knowing her past, accepted the truth. Accepted her mother's choice and hardships she had to endure. She no longer tries to appear to be someone else, having chosen to move on with her life.

A second interpretation: Johan-the-Prince and our Johan are both weakened boys on a brink of death. For each of them, letting the Monster in, something scary, unnatural to humans, was a way to survive. So our Johan suppressed his sensitivity and susceptibility by pretending to be a not-quite-human, until traces and even references to his humanity have all but disappeared.

I don't think the fairytale manipulated Johan as a child, messing up his consciousness. What’s truly sinister about this picture book is that it foretold his fate.

As an adult, he picks up this book and sees himself in both the monster, who could not bear the present self and took on another's form, and the boy, who in an attempt to survive has ceased to be human, has destroyed everything around him. All that remains is solitude.

Imageries of the prince and the monster merge into one, and in one thing they are similar - in a fear of losing their lives, they lied primarily to themselves, and that lie destroyed the being of each of them. Neither monster nor prince really saved what they were protecting so desperately.

In addition, the book itself was an object from Johan's distant childhood, now almost forgotten, and served also as a reminder of the times when he was an ordinary, normal child.

Johan was wearing masks all the time, but the greatest of all his deceptions was not to live under the names “Johan Liebert”, “Franz Heinau”, “Erich Springer”, or any other for that matter. The most atrocious lie was to wear a mask of the nameless monster, even convincing himrself that this is who he is, that the emptiness and void is all there is to him. Wearing the guise of the nameless monster for years he had almost lost every memory of being human, and the book in his hands was a painful, violent reminder of his cowardly self-deception, his abandoned humanity, his forgotten self.

PART 5: I AM NOT YOU, AND YOU ARE NOT ME

From the moment the book falls into his hands, Johan probably realizes that his worldview is very much distorted. One of his fundamental beliefs about himself has been undermined, so debunking the rest of his illusions becomes a priority.

He remembers orchestrating the massacre at Kinderheim, but his belief that he was always capable of such things is shaken. He suspects that in his lost memories he will find the answer to the question he didn’t even think of asking. If he wasn’t born a monster, how did he become one?

We are not allowed to listen to the entire contents of the tape from Kinderheim 511. Only his attachment to Anna becomes apparent from it; but maybe he proceeds to talk about the Red Rose Mansion next. During interrogation he could recall his sister's words, which he heard again and again after her return. Her story was told in the first person POV: “I saw <....> I heard <…> I was <...> I ran <...>”. On recording he could repeat verbatim the words of his sister, and then, as an adult listening to it, misunderstand the meaning of those words. After all, he heard himself saying “I was taken <...>, I saw people die <...> , I ran away…” And only on the basis of this would he latch on to the story about the Red Rose Mansion as an explanation for what he had become.

Johan then decides to destroy the place. Although he clearly doesn’t recognize it, it doesn’t ring the bell yet.

Johan at that moment still considers himself a single set of personalities with his sister, and believes that in his mother's eyes they looked the same.

I can only assume that he told Čapek that Nina would kill him because he mistakenly thought that Nina held the same opinion about their connection as he did. If he's willing to kill for her, she'll do the same. Of course, he was wrong: he saw himself as an extension, a shadow of his sister, taking her joy and pain as his own; Nina, as much as she loved her brother, did not see herself and him as one, and clearly drew boundaries between her being and Johan's.

The capacity to experience oneself as autonomous means that one has really come to realize that one is a separate person from everyone else. No matter how deeply I am committed in joy or suffering to someone else, he is not me, and I am not him.

The assumption of being taken away by Bonaparta and being cast aside by his mother was one of the last crutches guarding him from the horrifying truth - he was the one who turned himself into a monster.

He cries when he hears Nina's story. Realizing that they’re not one, and she has never perceived Johan in this way. She is not his true self, and he is not his sister's false self. He sees more and more clearly the outlines of the true self within him, and he does not like the picture emerging before him at all.

All the “saving” he was doing turned out to be a sham that didn’t bring any of the twins the expected result. He experienced the guilt of denying himself existence and grew so enraged that he decided to kill himself. He now saw his true self - destructive, without a good reason. And realized it had to be eradicated, along with the man, the Monster, who made him that way - Franz Bonaparta.

PART 6: RUHENHEIM

The final stage of Johan's collapse, the massacre at Ruhenheim.

When he gets to Bonaparta's old house and finds numerous sketches of him and his sister as children he understands that Bonaparta was not “a monster outside of him”.

He refers to him as such when meeting Čapek, implying that Franz is to blame for him becoming a murderer. Upon seeing these sketches he recognized that Bonaparta's intentions had changed greatly over the years, and both Anna and himself were able to escape their fate because of his suddenly awakened sympathy. Not that this excuses Bonaparta, he was the one who designed the experiment after all. But these sketches were a confirmation of his kind intentions towards the twins, whatever they may have been at the outset.

It turns out that when Bonaparta came to visit the Lieberts, he was no longer a threat to Johan and Anna. Johan now knew that the night he shot the Lieberts had indeed stumbled and made a fatal mistake which tore him apart from Anna and plunged him deeper into the abyss of despair.

The event that finally convinced him of the animosity of the world and the lack of a safe corner anywhere in it was a figment of his mind which was led by fear.

This discovery was the final straw for Johan. Any image he had of himself collapsed for good.

The ending of "Monster" is Johan's realization of the fact that he undoubtedly Is. He exists, he is real, and he is him. And he was among the people who denied him the right to live; he was incapable of standing up for himself and recognizing his right to life, as his sister managed to do. He was so eager to erase any traces of himself from the world that didn’t notice the huge trail of blood dragging behind him, that was solid evidence of his existence, the only thing he had left.

He didn’t need to do horrible things that only left him and Nina traumatised. That left him all alone, miserable, separated from her.

He tried so hard to evade the evil people that he killed his Self before anyone had a chance to lay a hand on it.

When he set out to be nothing, his guilt was not only that he had no right to do all the things that an ordinary person can do, but that he had not the courage to do these things over and against and despite his conscience which sought to tell him that everything he did or could do in this life among other people was wrong. His guilt was in endorsing by his own decision this feeling that he had no right to life, and in denying himself access to the possibilities of this life.

After everything he learned about his past, Johan can’t forgive himself. For throwing himself into oblivion, for locking himself in the darkness. For making himself a monster that he was not born to be, that he had a chance not to become.

He was just as capable and deserving of normal life and real, deep connection with others as any other human being. He just convinced himself that he wasn’t one, and nobody dared to contradict him.

There is a desire in him to preserve not only himself from being consumed, but also those he cares about from himself. He thinks of his love as disastrous - because of it, Anna lost her brother and adoptive parents. Tenma, who saved him, was forced to be on the run for several years after becoming a murder suspect.

If there is anything the schizoid individual is likely to believe in, it is his own destructiveness. He is unable to believe that he can fill his own emptiness without reducing what is there to nothing. He regards his own love and that of others as being as destructive as hatred. To be loved threatens his self; but his love is equally dangerous to anyone else. His isolation is not entirely for his own self's sake. It is also out of concern for others. <…>

…what the schizoid individual feels daily. He says, 'It would not be fair to anyone I might love, to love him.' <…> He descends into a vortex of non-being in order to avoid being, but also to preserve being from himself.

He wishes to die now more than ever - a real death, this time. Not just existential, but total. The true end, as he called it.

Appearing in front of Bonaparta and Tenma, he doesn't aim at Franz, because he no longer blames Bonaparta for what he has become.

Johan said the only thing everyone is equal in is death, and what was behind his words: he says to Tenma that not everyone is worthy of saving, of being loved and forgiven, and Tenma should've finally realized this after meeting him and really knowing him. Because he's a monster, and being cheerful, having hope and light in their life is something that others can have, but he can’t; he's completely out of this human world and the only thing he has in common with everyone else is that they are mortal and so is he.

But even in his death he is mistaken. Once again believing he has no right to exist, he hopes to laugh at the world one last time, and die at the hands of the man who once saved him. After all, he certainly wouldn't have done it, knowing what Johan would grow up to be.

Isn’t that right, Dr. Tenma?…

Nina forgave him and the man who saved his life long time ago doesn’t regret his choice anymore and commits to it. The only people dear to him have recognized his right to live, whatever he may be.

Alas, how this affected him, we don’t know, and all we’re left with is speculation.

As a sentimental person, I want to believe that it meant something to Johan.

But what I really don't doubt is that Johan by the end is a completely different character to the one he used to be. Broken, disarmed, miserable. But it’s finally truly him.

"I think I must have figured out how the show ended. The Magnificent Steiner, he probably, became human again."

PART 7: THE FINAL ESCAPE

A mother plays a huge role in the development of her children's ontological insecurity - sometimes by being outright dismissive, sometimes by simply enjoying the child's undemanding and calm nature.

Here's what you can read about the mother’s impact in “The Divided Self”, those are Laing's reflections and descriptions of several of his patients.

... we suggest that a necessary component in the development of the self is the experience of oneself as a person under the loving eye of the mother.

His own feeling about his birth was that neither his father nor his mother had wanted him and, indeed, that they had never forgiven him for being born. <…> He was treated as though he wasn't there.' For his part, not only did he feel awkward and obvious, he felt guilty simply at 'being in the world in the first place'. His mother had, it seems, eyes only for herself. She was blind to him. He was not seen.

She had a great deal to say about her mother. She was smothering her, she would not let her live, and she had never wanted her.

Johan’s mother's choice was the first one in the long list of his miseries, it also triggered his ontological insecurity. And how could it not arise when the mother herself abandoned one of her children?

However, Johan was unaware that his mother had thought up names for the two of them, even before he and Nina were born. It turns out that the arrival of the second child was not an unpleasant surprise to her, she was looking forward to having them both.

She had always acknowledged the existence of both her children, and in her eyes they certainly weren’t a one big entity divided by chance into two bodies, one of which was never meant to be there.

But Johan looks truly disturbed after listening to Tenma. And this new revelation could also be another beginning to despair.

There is a door that must not be opened. What lays behind it: a paradise, or another monster?

Tenma, by telling him that the mother had given names to both of them, might have brought Johan down to a new hell. Where the mother recognised the reality of both her children and yet seriously chose which of them to keep.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life, but since it’s fiction we’re talking about, I think we should pay attention to the fact that Johan wakes up only after hearing Tenma’s words. There is a symbolic meaning of him being stuck between life and death for so long.

It’s like he was resisting to be alive again, refusing to stay awake, choosing to be in a coma rather than walk this Earth again. But yet he didn’t die - a part of Johan was holding onto life despite all the horrors it brought to him.

In his last waking moments, he was miserable after discovering all the truth about himself. He really wanted to die, he thought it was the only thing he was deserving of; but Tenma didn’t shot him, his sister forgave him - and it wasn’t the outcome he expected at all. It started an inner conflict he didn’t have the time to resolve.

Johan as well could see the memory of mother’s choice in a different light. By opening up to Tenma he admitted it as a serious enough cause for him to abandon his humanity, as he really was living in a world full of threats. Hiding and pretending came natural to a child that didn’t know any better. And his mother, however hurtful her choice was and how wrong was the very fact of it, loved both of her children, Johan knows that for sure now. Maybe, he could finally forgive himself for becoming a monster. There was no one left to blame for the way he had turned out, no one to take revenge on - even himself.

(I know it can be confusing, so I’ll clarify, just in case - by “forgiving himself” i don't mean he simply dismissed the damage he did to others. He could only forgive the one he, with his own hands, inflicted upon himself, finally realizing, he had no other choice in his circumstances.)

He had a chance to accept that he had the right to exist all along, from the very beginning.

Finally, I want to get into the last excerpt from Laing's book. These are his patient's words from their conversation.

I could only be good if you saw it in me. It was only when I looked at myself through your eyes that I could see anything good. Otherwise, I only saw myself as a starving, annoying brat whom everyone hated and I hated myself for being that way. I wanted to tear out my stomach for being so hungry.

<…> Everyone should be able to look back in their memory and be sure he had a mother who loved him, all of him; even his piss and shit. He should be sure his mother loved him just for being himself; not for what he could do. Otherwise he feels he has no right to exist. He feels he should never have been born. No matter what happens to this person in life, no matter how much he gets hurt, he can always look back to this and feel that he is lovable. He can love himself and he cannot be broken. If he can't fall back on this, he can be broken. You can only be broken if you're already in pieces. As long as my baby-self has never been loved then I was in pieces. By loving me as a baby, you made me whole.

<…> It was terribly hard for me to stop being a schizophrenic. I knew I didn't want to be a Smith (patient’s family name), because then I was nothing but old Professor Smith's granddaughter. I couldn't be sure that I could feel as though I were your child, and I wasn't sure of myself. The only thing I was sure of was being a 'catatonic, paranoid and schizophrenic'. I had seen that written on my chart. That at least had substance and gave me an identity and personality. [What led you to change?] When I was sure that you would let me feel like your child and that you would care for me lovingly. If you could like the real me, then I could too. I could allow myself just to be me and didn't need a title.

I walked back to see the hospital recently, and for a moment I could lose myself in the feeling of the past. In there I could be left alone. The world was going by outside, but I had a whole world inside me. Nobody could get at it and disturb it. For a moment I felt a tremendous longing to be back. It has been so safe and quiet. But then I realized that I can have love and fun in the real world and I started to hate the hospital. I hated the four walls and the feeling of being locked in. I hated the memory of never being really satisfied by my fantasies.

The above passage resembles Johan in many ways: the hunger he felt for real life, the doubt of being loved by mother, the bond which he developed with Tenma…. The last has to be special for Johan: the doctor didn’t simply let him off the hook in the end, he actively chose to save his life.

And just as Laing's patient laments how difficult it was for her to give up the label of "crazy, schizophrenic” because it was the only description she felt could be applied to her, Johan couldn’t part with the mask of the nameless monster for the longest time. It was, after all, the only constant in his life. And now he knows that "nameless" part isn’t really true. Or maybe it doesn't matter anymore. He is just him.

It’s up for a debate whether Johan chose life or death in the end. There’s evidence for both and this ambiguity is sure intentional on the author’s part.

I just want to believe it was a newfound hope that got Johan out of the hospital bed.

#johan liebert #monster anime #naoki urasawa's monster #anime analysis #monster anime analysis #nina fortner #kenzo tenma #naoki urusawa #monster meta

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rbinsgf · 1 year

Text

Turn the other cheek, and I take it on the chin

(Now with a Part 2)

Saying Robin was pissed would be the understatement of the century. She was on a rampage. Mind focused on one target and nothing would tame her fury beside strangling the obnoxiously loud life out of Eddie freaking Munson.

Robin isn’t a violent person, she sometimes even called herself a pacifist, but she had limits.

Steve Harrington kicked puppy expression was her limit number one.

It was supposed to be a boring Tuesday afternoon shift at Family Video and Steve was to clock in two hours after her for the closing shift.

It was a normal boring Tuesday, not many customers came on Tuesdays so Robin was left to do and redo the inventory or browse the aisles she had arranged three times since starting her shift.

The video store was silent except for the faint sound of the top 40 and the squawking of her converse on the tiled floor.

But then the bell above the door jingled and Robin had turned with a smile, enthusiastic at the thought of any distraction, her smile vanished in an instant.

Before her was standing a sad looking Steve Harrington, his big cow eyes glossy with unshed tears and even his hair looked deflated.

Robin rushed over him, eyes scanning his figure for any kind of injury,

"Steve what hap- oof"

The force of her friend trying to bury his bigger frame in between her arms cut her short in her questioning.

Steve was now shamelessly sobbing in the fabric of her work vest, snot and tears mixing on the green fibers.

Robin stroked his hair and held him until he calmed down enough to talk. After a few minutes of Steve sobbing on her shoulder she beckoned him in the break room to sit him down and give him some water.

After Steve had calmed down and downed three cups of water like a man stranded in the desert, Robin sat next to him and waited.

A beat. And another. Steve opened and closed his mouth a few times in between sniffles, trying to work out an explanation to his breakdown.

Robin’s brows were creased in worry and she was seconds away from ripping her lips to shreds as she gnawed at them waiting for her friend to talk. And oh, oh how she would’ve preferred to hear something about the upside down, or a failed date or, god forbid, the discontinuation of the Farrah Fawcett spray. But what she heard was worse than any of the above..

~Around half an hour before~

Steve parked in front of the little house humming some David Bowie song he heard earlier that week.

It was a normal Tuesday, he was about to drive the kids home from Hellfire before joining Robin at work for the closing shift at Family Video.

The door to the house wasn’t locked so Steve let himself in as he had done dozens of times before, a small smile was tugging at his lips as he walked towards the basement hearing laughter and voices.

His smile flattered as the ongoing conversation became cleared as he reached the end of the stairs, not quite entering the room enough to be seen by the club.

Hellfire’s meetings were always boisterous and loud so Steve tuned them all out when waiting for it to end, but he just couldn’t do it today, not after hearing some very interesting traits about Eddie’s newly created NPC.

Apparently Eddie thought it would be fun to make an NPC based on Steve making it a mean airhead who dies trying to get a girl at all cost.

Eddie had seemed pretty proud of him actually so Steve didn’t mind at first,

but then in the span of a second they went from talking about the NPC to talking about actual Steve.

Mike had said something about the NPC being a genius next to who he was based off of and, it’s Mike so Steve didn’t really care.

But then the others seemed to have took it as an opportunity to open some sort of trial on him.

They all started to talk over each other about some dumb stuff he had said or stupid thing he did or those times when he doesn’t get what everyone’s talking about. And it’s okay, Steve knows that he isn’t smart or whatever but it still hurts.

Eddie only pitched in after the rest has quieted down and saying if the NPC was to be 100% accurate he would’ve made it "an asshole King of a bullshit land"

That’s when Steve left, turning on his heels and bumping on the door on his way up the stairs.

The other noticed him then, it only made them laugh at how he couldn’t take a joke or be grateful to be even remotely included in the game.

He walked out of the house and into his car, speeding off towards Family Video.

He didn’t look back not once, the kids could take themselves home for all he cared or Eddie would take them anyway. The thought of Eddie hurts a spot in his chest Steve tried to ignore as he waited for the streetlight to turn green. He had thought they were finally friends, counted the guy as one of his best friend actually. Steve had thought Eddie had seen him for who he really was and liked that real Steve. Steve had told Eddie all about that time in high school, why Steve acted that way, he had told him about the bathroom incident and Nancy’s words. Steve thought Eddie had understood him. Guess Steve was wrong about that too. The light turned green and Steve swallowed his tears.

If there is someone above it all, Robin hopes they can pardon all the awful thoughts that crossed her mind about Eddie Munson and what she was about to do to him.

She was vibrating with fury, Eddie knew Steve now, they’d spent so many nights hanging out the three of them. (She had even thought that there was something more there between the two of them. )

Oh she hoped Eddie hadn’t skipped too many P.E classes, she was about to hunt him and he was better of running. And fast.

"Robin you’re hurting my hand"

The quiet wincing coming from Steve brought her back to the situation at hand, she quickly released his hand and got up,

"The kids, they’re dumb and ungrateful brats, but they’re still children so I’m mad at them but well…Now Eddie ? Stevie I want you to know that I’m about to break each of his bones one by one."

Steve snorted at her spiel,

"It’s not worth it Robbie, I think he wanted to keep the approbation of the Hellfire’s members by shitting on the dumb jock, for old times sake and whatnot.."

"No it’s not okay Steve ! Eddie is supposed to be your friend and that’s so hypocritical of him to rant about conformity but still seeking validation by shitting on you !"

Robin was red, her arms flailing around her in angry motions. Steve sighed and looked away,

"I mean, I was an asshole, maybe he hasn’t forgiven me and waited for revenge or something."

"Yeah key words here Steve, was, it’s all in the past and you weren’t that bad per se." That is true, for all his King Steve title, Steve didn’t do much aside from snorting next to Tommy shoving nerds into lockers or cackling when Carol’s venom was particularly snarky. He never touched anyone, yes he was arrogant and mean but it was all a disguise.

And Eddie fucking knew that.

Robin looked at Steve, his forlorn expression and anxious hands nearly ripping holes in his sweater cemented her next action.

In one smooth motion she took his car keys and ran out of the store.

Hellfire survived an angry town mob, the Kids survived a whole other dimensions but none of them were ready for what was about to come.

Eddie may have survived once, thanks to Steve’s CPR training by the way, but Robin was seriously considering finishing what the bats had started.

—————————————-

Alright gang I’m slowly going back to writing and I thought of some angst because why not right ? This story will probably be made of three parts i think.

If you guys have any tips, requests, critics or literally anything to say please let me know I love talking with people here and it doesn’t happen a lot !

(Next chapter will be from Eddie’s pov)

#steve harrington #eddie munson #robin buckley #stranger things #stranger things 4 #steddie #the fruity four #steve x eddie #platonic soulmates stobin #stobin friendship #stobin #steve and robin #steddie ficlet #steddie fic #angst ?

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mamawasatesttube · 3 months

Note

For the fic prompts: 52) “I Wouldn’t Change A Thing About You” with the Souperfam? Thinking about them again (<- Guy who’s always thinking about them)

👉🏾🥺👈🏾

“—in the originals, there were actually five different guys playing Darth Vader! They had the main guy who played him in the full suit, David Prowse, and then his stunt double for a lotta the fight scenes, Bob Anderson, but then his voice was James Earl Jones, obvie. But James didn’t do the breathing! That was another dude named Ben Burtt.”

Across the table, Kon pauses to suck at his milkshake. Kara swings her legs back and forth before hooking her heels back onto the bar on her barstool, humming. He was right; this place has really good fries. And the burgers are solid, too.

“That’s only four guys, though,” she says, counting them off on her salty fingers. “David, Bob, James, and Ben.”

“Yeah! I’m getting there.” Kon grins. He dips one of his fries into the pink swirl of his milkshake (strawberry, because he says he likes everything fruity). Kara wrinkles her nose. That still seems weird to her. But Kon pops it into his mouth, chews, swallows, and continues: “The last guy is Sebastian Shaw. Who was only Vader in two scenes! Although technically you could argue he was never Vader and was only Anakin, if the semantics of that mean anything to you.”

Kara has seen these movies a grand total of once. Very recently. As in, Kon got her to agree to watch all of them this weekend. As in, they finished watching Return of the Jedi about ten minutes before they came here for a late lunch.

“They do not,” she assures.

To her surprise, though, Kon deflates a little. “Oh.” He drops his gaze to the fries left in his basket, then looks up again with a grin that doesn’t seem quite as genuine. “Right, yeah, I’ve been rambling for a while, haven’t I? It’s probably gotta get boring to anyone who doesn’t have these movies literally uploaded into their brain.”

He laughs, but Kara doesn’t join in. She frowns. “I wasn’t telling you to stop,” she objects, and lightly kicks him under the table to accent it. “I was just saying the semantics don’t mean anything to me!” Another kick.

“Stop kicking me,” he pouts, so naturally, she kicks him again. “Linda!”

This time, when her foot connects with his jeans, it freezes in place. Kara gasps, then glares at him. She could probably pull free of his telekinetic grip, but that’d definitely take superstrength, and this diner might not look too kindly on a potential hole in the ceiling. “Let go!”

“Only if you stop kicking me!”

“Then stop pouting and keep telling me movie trivia!”

“You don’t have to say that if you’re getting bored!” Kon huffs. His glasses do nothing to hide the flush on his cheeks. “I know I get rambly sometimes. Blame Cadmus, they’re the ones who made me so good at being annoying.”

He grins again, but Kara’s not buying it. He’s not very slick about hiding that this is an insecurity, is he? He probably thinks he’s being slick. He’s not. It’s endearing.

“I don’t think you’re annoying,” she says honestly. “I like that you get enthusiastic about stuff. I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”

And then, because that’s embarrassingly earnest to say to her cousin while they’re in public, she has to follow it up properly, before she starts blushing too. Lightning-quick, she swipes a finger through his milkshake and dabs a dollop onto the tip of his nose. Ha!

Kon squawks. “Linda!” he protests, face even redder. He scrubs his hand over his nose, then licks the melting milkshake from his palm. “Jeez!”

Kara grins at him. “Your move, Conner.” As a concession, she dips one of her fries into her milkshake (simple and plain vanilla), then pops it into her mouth.

Kon huffs at her and makes a big show of rolling his eyes and scrubbing his face with a napkin. “Uncivilized,” he sniffs. But the telltale soft look in his eyes tells her she’s won, even before he opens his mouth. “Anywhoozies. So after the release of the prequel trilogy, George Lucas decided they needed to do some continuity edits on the originals, and there was a rerelease, and…”

#clarkkent-irons #kon #kara #souperfam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#infodumping is a love language and so is listening to an infodump #superfam

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jaskierx · 5 months

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look, i've been an ardent defender of taika in the past, but i really do feel like he might've just decided to be done with the show, and that's why it was canceled. he's shown a complete lack of enthusiasm about it since s2 aired, and honestly he strikes me as someone who gets bored with projects very easily. there was way too much support from hbo max (merch, ad campaigns, those fucking profile icons) to make me believe otherwise. and from david's post, it doesn't sound like he'll be shopping around the show to other streamers, which is only further evidence that it was an internal decision rather than a network one.

anon i mean this with the utmost sincerity - back the fuck off

you don't know him. you don't know him from adam. you can't tell anything at all about a famous person from how they act in bts content or on social media. how do you know he gets bored with projects very easily? he works on loads of stuff, do you really think he bails the first time anything gets boring? do you think he'd have been successful in the industry if that was true?

he literally got ed's tattoos. he wears kraken jewellery. he said the role made him fall in love with acting again. he was working with his friends. s2 was filmed in his home country.

david jenkins has confirmed that taika was on board for s3.

maybe the 'complete lack of enthusiasm' was because he gets criticised for every fucking thing he says so he decided not to bother

#asks #anon #taika waititi #ofmd

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mariacallous · 5 months

Text

‘I don’t like it when a comedian just spouts his own political views and relies on the audience agreeing with him to get a round of applause,’ announces Ricky Gervais in his new Netflix Special Armageddon. For 60-minutes Gervais, clad in his usual black t-shirt and jeans get-up, tells jokes about dwarfs, gay people, ‘disabled creatures’, African babies with AIDs, Chinese people eating dogs, people pretending to be asylum seekers, people pretending to have ADHD, students taking micky mouse degrees, Greta Thunberg, homeless people (‘fucking horrible’) and the fragile and narcissistic ‘woke’ youth. Which is to say that Gervais just spouts his own political views and relies on the audience agreeing with him to get a round of applause.

Gervais’s portrayal of David Brent in mockumentary The Office (2002) was a work of comic genius. Brent, a hapless white-collar middle manager who desperately wants to be popular, cuts a pathetic but ultimately sympathetic figure. The viewer didn’t so much hate Brent as feel sorry for him; he was an uncalibrated fool but a well meaning one, hence the happy ending written for him in the Christmas Specials that brought the curtain down on the story in 2003. Gervais foolishly resurrected Brent in 2016 for a feature length spin-off, Life on the Road (2016), this time without the grounding influence of his original co-writer on The Office Stephen Merchant. All of a sudden the charm had gone out of the franchise and Brent had morphed into something genuinely tragic and repulsive, trucking in boring jokes about gays and fat people.

Expressing any form of reservation or note of disapproval about anti-woke comedy nowadays is to get oneself marked down as an invertebrate. For those of us who possess a strong enough constitution to sit through jokes that poke fun at the shibboleths of political correctness - provided they are actually funny - retorts like this don’t hold much water. But I’ve come to realise that such humour is increasingly sustained by a section of the audience being reliably ‘offended’ by it and kicking off. How else to keep the lucrative conceit going which says that rich middle aged white men telling rollicking jokes about asylum seekers are heroic truth-tellers saying the unsayable? These days Gervais’s adoring fanbase seem more enthusiastic at the prospect of upsetting their political opponents than about the material itself. And who could blame them: most of the jokes in Armageddon are hackneyed and stale - ‘Doctor, Doctor, I keep thinking I’m a pair of curtains’; ‘You are then’. Heady stuff that is indeed guaranteed to ‘annoy all the right people’.

Netflix describes Armageddon as ‘controversial takes on political correctness and oversensitivity in a taboo-busting comedy special about the end of humanity’. Yet those on the receiving end of Gervais’s barbs are hardly considered off limits by the wider culture: illegal immigrants, the homeless and transgender people are all regularly subjected to invective from government politicians and Britain’s overwhelmingly right-wing media. By all means make an off-colour joke about those groups if you wish: I’m a big boy and I know how to use the remote control. But you won’t convince me that publicly flogging these tabloid bête noires makes one a gutsy truth teller. It’s true that a disability charity condemned Armageddon before it was released on Christmas Day for a joke Gervais makes about terminally ill children. But it’s also true that Gervais is still on Netflix telling the joke, which perhaps gives a good indication of just how risqué this style of humour really is.

One of the biggest cheers from the audience during Gervais’s performance in Armageddon erupts in response to a fatuous joke about mobs pulling down statues originally put up to honour slave traders - another example of woke hypocrisy apparently. ‘He was a slave trader, pull down the fucking statue.’ ‘He built the hospital, should we pull that down too?’ ‘No, leave the hospital’. It’s certainly true that wealthy people have historically (and not just historically) tried to launder their reputations through philanthropy (and on this note Gervais enjoys boasting about how wealthy he is and how much money he donates to animals, who he prefers to humans). But you needn’t take a course in critical race theory to recognise that those who became uncontrollably rich from the slave trade might have set aside some of their tainted money for similar ends. ‘Pride and vanity have built more hospitals than all the virtues together,’ wrote the Dutch physician Bernard de Mandeville in The Fable of the Bees, his eighteenth century polemic against philanthropic hypocrisy.

It isn’t for me to tell a comedian who the ‘correct’ target of his humour ought to be - comedy is subjective after all. But then Gervais’s current shtick is of a piece with right-wing populism more generally, characterised as it is by a servility to the very power it ostensibly rails against. I’m no more required to accept Gervais’s assessment of himself as a brave heretic saying the unsayable than I am obliged to join in with the hysterical blue pencil-wielding critics who really do want to see him cancelled. As to who is currently coming out on top, Armageddon is apparently the highest grossing single stand-up performance ever, bringing in £1,410,000 for a recent show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Cancel culture indeed.

At one time conservatives and reactionaries would doggedly stand athwart history yelling Stop. Nowadays they need constant reassurance that they are still the plucky countercultural underdogs they imagined themselves to be in the halcyon days of their youth. Which is understandable I suppose. Nobody wants to be the angry young man whose waistband has inexorably expanded along with his list of blimpish grievances. ‘I think I am woke, but I think that word has changed,’ says Gervais. In other words it’s not him, it’s us. ‘No-one likes a white middle aged man anymore,’ laments Gervais at another point in the show. I’ve heard that one before too.

I used to enjoy Ricky Gervais but when I think of him today I always imagine some braying face demanding to know how ‘triggered’ I am by something puerile he’s said. This ‘type’ is seemingly ubiquitous at the moment: everything is geared toward getting a rise out of the libs and sticking it to the man in a way that doesn’t threaten one’s status as a servant of power (am I still allowed to say “man”? hehe - you get the gist).

The role of humour according to Gervais is ‘to laugh at bad shit to get us through it’. Which isn’t a terrible definition, though I suppose it depends on what one considers the ‘bad shit’ to be. I found much of the material in Armageddon indistinguishable from the endless bleating we hear in some quarters about the country going to the dawgs because of foreigners and queers and the young with their trendy ailments and political correctness et cetera. I can’t say I feel hysterical or offended by jokes about that stuff - soporific is more the word that springs to mind. Perhaps I should just be grateful that Gervais didn’t make an ‘Orange man bad’ joke. Maybe he’s saving those gags for his next Netflix Special when Donald Trump is President of the United States again. Important to laugh at the truly bad shit first though right.

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possibilistfanfiction · 1 year

Note

avatrice + kiss on the back of the hand?

[ava + some friends, more outside pov (in the future!) for @unicyclehippo]

despite the fact that physical therapy is boring, and not at all your favorite activity, you like your therapist, brian, and at least you’ve gotten to consistently schedule it early enough in the morning you don’t miss your bridge group. and you’ve been compliant — mostly; you did spend more time on your feet last week than you were supposed to, but your grandson was visiting and you would never let him leave without having his favorite brisket and matzoh ball soup — and have done the exercises brian gives you to do at home every day.

the physical therapy gym is mostly boring, more — and you hate to say it — old people, like you, recovering from total knee or total hip replacements, and a few young athletes. your son, ezra, drops you off and picks you up twice a week; sometimes his husband, marcus, fills in and he always takes you to get donuts afterward, your little secret. today you sit at the table you always start at, your walker steady and almost unnecessary at this point, and a young woman, exhausted-looking and the kind of pretty that could easily belong in a party when you were young, sitting in a sleek wheelchair by the table, smiles gently across you. you’re early by a few minutes — ezra is wonderful, but he’s a bit wound up all the time — so you smile back. ‘i’m ruth,’ you say.

‘hi.’ the young woman seems happy to talk, cheerful. ‘i’m ava.’

‘very exciting beginning to your morning, it seems like.’

she groans. ‘ugh, tell me about it. my partner barely woke up in time to drive me here.’

you laugh. ‘not a morning person?’

ava rolls her eyes. ‘no, not at all. i love mornings though, even if they’re at physical therapy.’

‘it’s not so bad,’ you tell her. ‘have you done it before?’

‘not really.’ she shrugs. ‘i have some chronic spine stuff from a car accident when i was younger, and my doctors have tried… a lot, so we’re hoping this helps everything.’

‘i hope it’ll help.’ you gesture to your walker. ‘total hip replacement. from being old.’

ava’s smile is bright. ‘kinda cool, to get old, though, huh? and to have as cool of clothes as you do? i can only hope the same for myself, one day.’

it’s sweet, and sincere, and aching under the surface. ‘it is wonderful, to get to grow old. and —‘ you wink — ‘to get to be better dressed than everyone around you.’

‘hell yeah.’ she looks at her own hoodie and joggers. ‘i usually am better dressed than this, or, at least, more fun; i just had surgery last week.’

‘well, when you’re feeling better, i’m sure i’ll be very impressed.’

‘i don’t know about that.’ ava blushes a little, and you’re delighted. ‘i think my partner is probably the better dressed of the two of us; she’s very chic. but i’m fun!’

‘fun is the most important part. especially when you’re an old lady.’

she laughs and then brian walks up, says hi to you, and you wave. ‘good luck, ava. i’ll talk to you soon.’

‘for sure,’ she tells you enthusiastically.

you’re waiting on a bench in front of the physical therapy gym in the warm sunshine — not too hot, not too cold, perfect — when ava walks toward you, slowly and with a cane, but walking.

‘is this seat taken?’

‘for a pretty girl like you? absolutely not.’

she laughs, bright and warm. ‘ruth, you flirt.’

‘i’m old.’ she sits gingerly and it makes you hurt for her, just a little — not that she needs any mobility aids, but because it’s clear she’s in pain. ‘i get to flirt whenever i want.’

‘oh, is that how it works?’

‘absolutely,’ you tell her sagely.

‘well, other than me, of course, let me know if there are any crushes i should know about? i love drama, and my life is, both tragically and fortunately, drama free right now.’

‘well, sean in my bridge group, and david from shul. oh, and lee from my favorite cafe i go to for lunch.’

‘hmm, pros and cons? or are we playing the field?’

you laugh, and you tell her about sean’s clever hands, the beautiful way david reads scripture, how lee always offers you half his reuben. ava listens attentively, like she really cares, and, after she asks a thoughtful series of questions about how to play bridge — my girlfriend would probably demolish at this game, honestly — you understand that she really does care; she really does want to know you. so you ask her questions too; her partner’s name is beatrice, and she is, according to ava, beautiful and kind and exacting; ava grew up mostly in spain and is a bartender, which she loves, and they live in a house on the beach because beatrice, apparently, works in consulting all over europe, and also enjoys teaching aikido. ‘she has four black belts,’ ava says, and fans herself. it makes you laugh, and when marcus drives up in his practical, nice bmw hybrid, you pat her hand.

‘see you tuesday, ruth.’

‘enjoy your weekend, ava.’

ava’s walking better on tuesday, and she sits next to you without asking this time, after you’re both finished. she fishes around in her crossbody bag and then holds out her hand, some candy with wrappers in mandarin on her palm. ‘they’re plum candies. they’re beatrice’s favorites, so i thought i was being sweet, but, i kinda went overboard and ordered, like, enough for a small army.’

you laugh but take one — you would never turn down an offered sweet; something of a communion — and open it while ava does the same. it’s wonderful: flavorful and sweet and a little sour, and you tell ava that.

‘ugh, i know,’ she says. ‘i don’t think bea had had them for a really long time; she cried the other day.’ ava smiles, like she’s trying not to laugh. ‘it was very sweet. a little dramatic, but i get it. i kind of go crazy for panellets.’

‘well, i’m making babka tomorrow, how about i bring you both some thursday?’

‘ruth, that’s too much.’

‘i love to share food,’ you say. ‘really, it’s part of the job description of a bubbe. they only let you in if you share your babka.’

ava rolls her eyes but then she nods. ‘i would really love that.’

ezra drives up, and you stand — easily, now, without pain and much stiffness — and wave.

your babka turns out as good as it always does — the best at shul, despite the fact that yael claims hers is better — and you place a few carefully in a tupperware to bring to ava, who seems a little wilted when she sits next to you. she waves you off when you look concerned.

’no big deal,’ she says. ‘just didn’t sleep too well last night. but! now i’m going to eat the world’s best babka and nap after bea drops me off. do you think i could convince her to nap with me?’

‘depends on why you didn’t sleep well last night.’

it takes ava a minute but then she laughs, brightening immediately. ‘ruth!’

‘you’re young, you should be having fun.’

‘oh, we have fun.’ ava grins. ‘don’t worry.’

‘well, speaking of fun,’ you say, ‘a few of my friends and i go to this water aerobics class at the country club together, every wednesday. i’m sorry if i was eavesdropping, but i heard kayvon tell you that some water therapy might be helpful? it’s really quite fun.’

‘that sounds awesome, honestly. i just got cleared to drive myself next week, so i would love that!’

you don’t bother to mention that everyone in the class is over seventy, mostly because you don’t really care, but, also, ava doesn’t seem to care, at all, that you’re at least fifty years older than her: you’re friends, and she’s kind, and bright.

once again, marcus is there to pick her up before her ride, but you give her your number — and you add her on facebook, because that’s easier for you sometimes — before you leave. you send her the details later that day, and she responds with a few emojis you don’t understand, but that your grandson laughs at when you show him. good enough.

‘i didn’t know, really, what to wear to water aerobics,’ ava says, happily sitting on the edge of the pool with you. she has on a simple red one-piece, her hair tied up in a bun, although short pieces escape. the back dips low and you see multiple scars, some faded and one new, and painful looking; ava’s light often makes you forget why you first met.

‘this is great,’ you tell her. you gesture to your brightly colored, polka dotted tankini. ‘you can spice it up however much you want. just wait until you meet angela.’

as if on cue, angela, tall and Black and striking, walks in, with her perpetually perfect close cropped hair, in a pair of heels and draped in an elegant silk coverup over a royal blue bikini. ‘whoa,’ ava says, and it’s so earnest it makes you laugh.

‘listen,’ ava says, ‘i’m bi, queer, and, yeah, i have a partner who is so so so beautiful, like, god, this morning she came home from surfing and used our outdoor shower — thank god for her trust fund, am i right? — but… ruth, i have eyes.’ she looks over to you. ‘you have eyes too, right? like, no offense to sean and david and lee, but… angela is stunning, okay?’

‘she is,’ you grant her, mostly because you’re amused. angela walks over and smiles, gracious and perfect, and you gesture to ava, who gulps. ‘angela, ava. ava, angela.’

‘hello, ava,’ angela says. ‘ruth says that she’s quite fond of you from physical therapy.’

‘yeah,’ ava says, a little stunned. ‘that’s — that’s really kind, ruth.’

‘we don’t invite just anyone to water aerobics. it’s an exclusive club.’

‘other than courtney,’ angela grumbles.

’well, true,’ you admit. ‘but she’s not part of lunch. ava, next week, you should come join us.’

‘i would love that,’ she says. ‘beatrice will too, i’ll make sure of it.’

you laugh, and angela waves to rosa and farha when she sees them. class goes great; ava seems, when you look over at her a few times, to enjoy it a lot. even though you hadn’t really worried that ava would feel out of place, any nagging feelings are assuaged when she gets out of the pool and wraps a towel around her shoulders, carefully moves on the wet floor with a cane.

‘i told bea i’d be home soon,’ she says, ‘and she gets kinda nervous when i’m late. but! i’ll see you at therapy tomorrow, and i’ll definitely plan on lunch next week.’ she hesitates for a moment and then gives you a hug, which fills you with a very particular kind of warmth. ‘thank you, for inviting me.’

‘of course, ava. see you tomorrow.’

you see ava at therapy and you think, for the most part, she’s improving: you haven’t seen her wheelchair in months, and she still uses her cane, but you think it’s mostly because it feels safer, especially if she’s sore. you start going once a week but it doesn’t really matter, because she comes to water aerobics in increasingly fun swimsuits, including a purple stripped bikini that makes even angela whistle. ‘oh, to be young again,’ she had said, and ava had blushed.

‘so, how did you meet beatrice?’ margot asks, back from her annual trip to florida.

ava puts down her fork and smiles, so soft. ‘work, in spain. a job i didn’t even want, even. but, even from when we first met, she’s always just been so kind. we spent a sabbatical together, one summer, and that’s when i really fell in love with her.’

‘love at first sight, then?’ angela grins.

‘maybe not quite,’ ava says, then laughs. ‘i was… difficult, back then. obviously, i’m a total angel now.’

you roll your eyes and farha says, ‘oh, sure.’

‘we’ve been through a lot,’ ava says, softer and very sincere. ‘she’s — she’s the best person i know.’

‘well we need to meet her,’ you decide, even though you’ve been meaning to ask them both to shabbat soon anyway. ‘bring her to lunch friday?’

‘if that’s okay with everyone? i guarantee she has exceedingly good manners, much much better than mine.’

‘low bar,’ rosa says.

‘ha ha, very funny.’ ava tries her best not to smile but then does anyway, brighter than the noon sun overhead outside.

you’re just sitting down at the table, one extra seat this week, when ava perks up and then stands, steady and even, and you see who you know, from pictures ava has shown you, is beatrice, smiling a little nervously. ‘hi, baby,’ ava says, and beatrice takes ava’s hand and gently places a kiss to her knuckles, like a genuine knight.

‘absurd,’ angela whispers from next to you, and you try not to laugh loud enough for them to hear you, because they’re young but they’re not that young: they have a home together, and you know, from the few things ava has mentioned privately, usually on days that are too, too bright, things have been hard, and they’ve had to spend time apart in the past, and ava is thankful.

‘hello, everyone,’ beatrice says, her accent and posture extremely formal, in contrast to her casual but still, somehow, smart black hoodie and white sweatshorts and birkenstocks. her hair is in a messy bun, a few strands escaping that ava happily pushes behind her ears, and a big tattoo sitting above her left knee; she’s muscular and strong, but there are freckles spread across her cheeks and, when ava smiles at her, she softens, entirely. they are young, and, even though ava has shown you pictures, you’re still struck, in the moment, by how much they fit.

there’s a chorus of hi, beatrice and it’s so good to meet you and ava talks about you all the time, but beatrice takes it all in stride, a happy little smile on her face. you understand, quickly, that they fit, the same way you and aaron had, so long ago: ava is loud and overwhelmingly bright, enthusiastic and generous with all of her affection, and beatrice is quietly funny, whip smart, and thoughtfully attentive to ava. she turns and listens, fully, to whoever is talking, and knows about rosa’s birding, and the shrine farha talks about in lahore, and the new podcast angela is listening to. she’s impressive, as a person, and ava seems distinctly aware of it, basking, a little, in being chosen by someone so special.

‘sorry i’m underdressed,’ beatrice says after you order. ‘i was surfing this morning, and then had to jump on a work call, and i didn’t want to be late.’

‘everything okay?’ ava checks.

‘yes,’ beatrice says, soothes a hand along ava’s thigh and then squeezes her knee. ‘nothing of concern.’

ava squints. ’were you just asleep? you wouldn’t lie to me, right?’

beatrice pauses. ‘i was — well, catching up on some sleep, when camila called.’

ava barks a laugh. ‘bea is the sleepiest person i know.’

‘sleep is one of the great pleasures of life,’ angela says, regal and finite in her statement, ‘among other things in bed.’

beatrice grins while ava blushes. ‘now i know why you like coming to these classes and lunches so much,’ beatrice says, shooting angela a wink. ‘you do have a type.’

‘ah, and what a type it is,’ ava says, sighing for effect, seemingly recovered from her momentary emabrassment.

at the end of lunch, you do invite them to shabbat, and beatrice asks your favorite kind of kosher wine.

‘okay, you are all sworn to secrecy,’ ava says, leaning forward at the table. it’s not particularly quiet, because farha’s hearing aides can only do so much, and rosa flat out refuses to wear any, but there’s no on important around you anyway.

‘wonderful,’ angela says.

‘i love a secret,’ you agree.

‘well.’ ava lets out a big breath. ‘beatrice and i are going to switzerland, next week, to the alps, where we spent our first summer together, and i —‘ she shakes her head — ‘this feels so crazy, but i’m going to propose.’

it sends the whole table into a flurry of excitement, asking about ava’s plan — a hike, the one they would go on every tuesday together, slowly and for fun �� and the ring ava had picked out — beautiful, and elegant, and perfect, you think — and, ‘do you think she’ll say yes?’

ava gulps. ‘i know she wants to spend her life with me.’ she sounds sure, and calm, despite her fingers nervously fidgeting with her napkin. ‘she was… very religious, for a long time, so, like, she’s always been really accepting of other same sex marriages, but i think it’s taken her a minute to get her to feel ready for, like, our own very queer marriage. sacrament, and all that, i guess.’ she shakes her head. ‘but anyway, yes! i think she’s ready. i think she really wants to get married.’

her smile is gentle, serene, and you had watched beatrice — in neat linen, her hair long and swept over her shoulder, fight her way through eating multiple bites of gefilte fish last friday, even though it was clear she hated it, and say prayers in hebrew, quietly. ava had been in her chair; you hadn’t asked, and neither had anyone from shul or your family, but beatrice had made sure that she had everything she needed, unobtrusive and practiced. ava had been, unexpectedly, the life of the party, charming everyone with her laugh and her silly puns and a very spirited debate with your granddaughter about women’s soccer. they’re a pair, you understood, very clearly: at the end of the night, ava had encouraged beatrice, gently, to take extra kugel along with the challah and chicken you’d already put in tupperware for them; beatrice had gotten their sweaters from the closet and handed ava’s to hers with a kiss to her forehead, tender and private, a moment that had belonged just to them.

‘we’ll all be eagerly awaiting the engagement photographs,’ angela says with sure gravitas.

‘post them on facebook,’ you tell her, and ava laughs, but she promises, later, when you give her a hug, that she will.

‘thank you, for inviting us,’ you tell ava, a bit in awe, if you’re being honest, of their house. she bounces around happily, and angela just looks at you with a raised brow for a moment. there are bright red and gold decorations everywhere, and beatrice walks over with a neat bun and beautiful jacket, embroidered so elegantly even angela seems a little in love with it.

’happy new year,’ she says, and you both give her a hug as you return the sentiment, then shows you to their kitchen, with a spread of chinese food that smell so, so good, and then gestures out to the open-air doors and patio that overlooks the ocean. ‘help yourselves to whatever you want. ruth, there are plenty of dishes that i made sure meet all kosher standards; they should be labeled. and there’s plenty of seating, and come find me if you need anything.’ she pauses. ‘or ava, but she gets a little… activated when we have a lot of people over.’

‘so, did we know how rich they were?’ angela says, loading her plate with everything she can after beatrice walks away to greet more guests.

‘not this rich.’

you both wait a beat and then laugh, and you find seats by the railing; your hip doesn’t hurt at all anymore. ava finds you both eventually and steals an egg roll from your plate with a laugh. ‘i’ll get you another one,’ she promises. ‘and, i just wanted to say, thanks for being my friends. i know it’s silly, but the water aerobics have really helped me feel better — and much less bored — when my mobility has been limited. and i love hearing about your lives, and sharing mine. i just —’ she scrubs her hand along the back of her neck, her hair neatly trimmed to her chin, fluttering in the breeze. ‘i went a long time without great role models.’

it’s so sincere and so touching. angela sniffles and you fish a hanky from your purse and hand it to her; she dabs her eyes.

‘don’t call us old,’ she says, voice breaking, and ava laughs.

‘i could’ve called you my adoptive grandmothers, so count your blessings.’

you roll your eyes when she takes a big, smiling bite of her (your) egg roll. ‘you are a blessing,’ you tell her.

ava swallows her bite and then leans to hug you, tight and sincere. ‘thank you,’ she whispers.

‘happy new year, ava.’

‘yeah,’ she says, a little teary but with a huge smile. ‘happy new year.’

#we have been talking abt ava & her bubbe for... Months !! lol #finally got to it #ava & the gals #ft sleepy bea #wn #warrior nun fic #avatrice #avatrice fic #prompts #also happy lunar new year!!!! this is the new year they're attending fyi if that isn't clear lol #also yes ava's type rly is like exacting smartly dressed women who are in fact taller than her

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