#fulsom prison
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I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humour, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God.
- Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash and June Carter at Fulsom Prison. For decades Cash nearly always opened his gigs with Folsom Prison Blues after greeting the audience with the same introduction each time: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,”. On 13th January 1968, Johnny Cash and June Carter, the Statler Brothers, the Tennessee Three, with Carl Perkins on guitar, recorded a live version of the song before the prisoners of Folsom State Prison, Folsom, California.
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A full transcribe of MARCUS PIKE'S dialogue/lines from the TV show THE MENTALIST
Includes full dialogue, and dialogue from any deleted/additional scenes available.
I've created this as a point of reference when writing for Pedro's characters, and I hope you find it useful. Even if you just want to read the dialogue. 🖤
FULL MASTERLIST OF PEDRO CHARACTERS DIALOGUE
☝🏻Dialogue has been fully transcribed by myself using reference to original scripts (if available), audio subtitles and using my own two ears. Therefore, mistakes can be made, however I have tried to be as fully accurate as I can. If you spot an obvious mistake, please kindly let me know. Where audio is not clear, I have marked with *inaudible* Scenes are separated for ease of reference.
FULL SCRIPT DIALOGUE: (ALL EPISODES - MARCUS WAS IN 6 EPISODES IN SEASON 6 AND 1 EPISODE IN SEASON 7)
EP 16, S6 VIOLETS
Mrs Hennigan, why was your husband trying to save this painting in particular?
We’ll do our best to get it back for you.
I’m special agent Marcus Pike, this is agent Searles. You’re… Patrick Jane, right? Abbot’s guy?
What makes you say that?
Sure. I’ve heard good things about you. We’d be happy to have your input. These guys, they’re… they’re really good. And our cases don’t usually lead to homicide.
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Art thieves used to be about sneaking. Night time break-ins. Not anymore. The new generation prefers guns. This guy is the leader. He does the talking, runs the show. But until yesterday morning, he’s never killed anybody. They’ve done about six jobs between Dallas and Phoenix in the last two years, taking down about one hundred million worth in art and artefacts.
Stolen art can take a long time to sell. So our guess is they’re sitting on a lot of the art, including the paintings from yesterday's heist.
Well, they’ve only slipped up once. We found a glove a few blocks from a gallery they robbed in Phoenix. We managed to get a partial print and we got a hit. Aaron Polaski. Time for armed robbery and battery, he’s also the former middleweight boxing champ at Fulsom prison.
Yeah, we brought him in for questioning but he lawyered up quick and told the CIP. These guys are pros.
We do, but nothings popped. Doesn't seem to have a lot of friends. He hangs out a lot at a bar on sixth street.
So, how do we do that?
I don’t know what any of that means.
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I always feel a little bit like Aladdin right here.
It’s stolen.
Sometimes we just get part of a haul. We sit on the art so the crooks don’t know we have a lead and we keep it here while we investigate the rest of it.
Well, we keep a pretty tight lid. Our own secret museum.
No. Just, once or twice…
Well, I-I don’t wanna second guess you, Mr Jane, but if you wanna use these paintings as bait, the guy running this crew knows a lot about art, he’ll know this stuff is stolen.
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We ready?
What the hell’s that?
He asked him for some napkins, so?
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No, he's gonna do it… watch.
There you go.
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Pass the rice, please.
It’s a drug forfeiture. On loan from the DEA. So, what’s the story with Jane and Lisbon?
No, I mean are they in a relationship? A couple?
It’s going good. You got a nice red cross.
Yeah.
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This is Pike.
Okay, well, we, uh… we shut down the inside cameras, so you don’t have to worry about any more prying eyes, and just so you know there is someone outside the house, we’re guessing it’s another one of McCabe’s crew.
No, we’ve got eyes on ‘em. Don’t worry. You’re safe. I wouldn’t lie to you.
Well you’re… you were real good.
Well, that’s a shame. There’s a pretty good diner just down the street from you. Biscuits and gravy, if that’s your thing.
Alright, well what about pancakes?
They have about six kinds; chocolate chip, banana, all that good stuff.
Maybe, just a… little bit. I can have some sent over to you.
No, you’re right I won’t tease you anymore. I won’t even mention the waffles.
Right, well I don’t know what a canape is, but bon appetit. Goodnight, Lisbon.
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This is the part I don’t understand; we’re not gonna rob the museum?
Why not? I mean, he robs the paintings from the museum, we catch them red handed, case closed. We all go home.
Then why is he at the museum with Jane?
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How is it?
You probably like that Chicago style stuff, right?
Hmm… I'm not really in the mood for pizza. You know what sounds good? Those pancakes we were talking about before.
Do you wanna go?
Yeah. Dinner is the best time for breakfast. What do you say?
Look, if you don’t wanna go, just say so. We’re cool. It’s good, but I like you, and I think you’re a hell of a good looking woman and I’d love to get to know you better.
Let’s go.
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Uh… well, uh… Y-you-
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EP 18 S6 FOREST GREEN
Hey.
Coffee?
I made you breakfast.
Well when there’s a guest, I like to make a fuss.
Yeah?
It’s just work stuff. Listen, I was wondering if we could get dinner tonight? Or… is that weird because we went out last night? Is-is two nights in a row weird?
Okay, good. I’ll make a reservation.
Well, like I said, I like to make a fuss.
Yeah.
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I came looking for you, but they said you’re still in the woods. I’m disappointed.
No problem. What’s holding you up?
Have your people tried accessing a forestry satellite? They’re imaging that area all the time looking for fire outbreaks.
I used one once to find a guy who was running with some stolen Frederick Remmingtons.
Bye.
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No, it’s okay. I took another girl out to dinner last night instead.
Yeah.
Gladys. Eg-Eg-Egbert.
It’s the best I could do in the spur of the moment.
Oh, well, I’m glad. I’m a lousy liar, so you’re right. Actually, there’s uh, something I wanted to tell you.
That work stuff, it’s actually a promotion. The Bureau is forming a task force to deal with international art theft. It’ll be working with Scotland Yard and a few other agencies. Long story short, they, uh, they-they want me to run it. Yeah, but they want me to run it from DC.
So, I’m telling them no.
Well, I’m allowed.
I’m not a kid. I’ve been married and divorced. I know when something’s real. And when it could get serious. I feel that way about us. Do you… feel that way?
Look, one thing I know is that when you feel that way about someone, you gotta hang on ‘cause… because it doesn't happen very often.
I know. It’s okay.
What if you came with me?
I’m asking what if we went to DC, you and me, together? What do you think of that, Teresa?
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EP 19 S6 BROWN EYED GIRLS
You fell asleep.
So listen, urm… turns out my old band’s playing a gig downtown tonight. Do you wanna go?
I never told you I was in a band?
Bass. Vocals.
Yeah?
Okay then. We need a cab.
Was that “do you like butter with your popcorn” or “will you come with me to DC?”
I understand, a hundred per cent. Take your time, there’s no deadline.
You’re welcome.
Go ahead.
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I got some Thai from that place over on South Congress.
I know.
Not really, I have an ulterior motive. Just trying to make DC look attractive.
Yeah… yeah…
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Hey.
Guess what? That show we missed the other night. They’re playing another one in forty-five minutes, we can catch it if… if you guys are done?
See ya, Patrick.
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Am I interrupting?
I heard about your grand jury. I’m pulling for you. But I think you did what any good father and husband would do.
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EP 20 S6 II TOVOLO BIANCO
Oh. Oh look, Casablanca’s on. “Here’s looking at you, kid.” You know Bogart made that line up? It wasn’t in the script.
What? Are you serious?
This is not an old movie! This is a classic, you gotta watch this. You’re gonna love it.
Is everything okay?
Well, Teresa, I may not be able to read minds like Jane, but even I can tell when something’s going on.
Do you wanna talk about it?
Just wanna say that I know that moving to DC is a big thing and it might raise issues you don’t feel totally comfortable talking to me about, but I just want you to know it’s okay. You go through whatever process you need to, just… let me know when you make a decision. I’ll be here.
Well, various things, but basically it’s a love story about a woman who has to choose between two men. There’s also a baseball game on.
Yeah, let’s do that.
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Jane?
Yeah. Teresa! It’s, uh… It’s Jane…
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EP 21 S6 BLACK HEARTS
So… what are you thinking?
Well, Abbot’s right, it’s a great job. And Don’s the best.
Look, Teresa. I’ve been patient. But… I kind of went out on a limb for you. Pushed Don to pass on other candidates so that I could have you with me in DC. I mean, I know it’s a big decision, but it’s a decision you need to make.
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There you are. Ready to go?
Look, about, uh, DC. I know it’s a lot to take in and I didn’t mean to pressure you.
Yeah, I did. Maybe a little. But, it’s your life and… I just wanna be a part of it.
Are you sure?
Wow…. wow, I wish we were somewhere more romantic, but… but what the hell. Will you marry me?
Don’t freak out.
I know, I know. You need time to think about it.
There’s no pressure, okay?
You’re a tough date. Have you told Jane that you’re leaving yet?
Oh. He’ll understand.
I’ll be downstairs.
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EP 22 S6 BLUE BIRD
Hey, sweetheart, How are ya?
Yes!
Okay. Alright, alright. Text me your flight information and I’ll be there. Teresa, it’s gonna be great, you’re gonna love the neighbourhood. It’s-it’s full of restaurants, your favourite kind, I got a number to an excellent… (fades out)
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EP 1 S7 NOTHING BUT BLUE SKIES
Jane.
I was, uh, looking for Teresa.
Yeah, she probably is.
It’s for an undercover thing. So, it’s, uh… you and her.
I know. I know that. So do you have a plan?
Well, I was offering her a life. A home, a family if she wanted one. A future. Have you thought about any of that?
Well, what are you offering her? I mean, other than Patrick Jane?
Well I was upstairs, giving a deposition. I thought I would say hi. Stupid idea.
Anyway, It’s good to see you, Teresa.
Jane.
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FULL MASTERLIST OF PEDRO CHARACTERS DIALOGUE
#pedro pascal#marcus pike#pedro pascal characters#marcus pike the mentalist#the mentalist#PPCU#marcus pike dialogue
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how do you think napoleons mental health fared at st. helena? obviously he was pretty depressed but i like your take on things
Hahaha oh man. Napoleon on St. Helena.
I mean, he had his good days and his bad, but yeah I would say there is a broad undercurrent of melancholy to him on St. Helena - but how much of that is looking back and knowing what a dismal end it was going to be, it's hard to say. We go to him with things already coloured, to a certain degree, which informs how we assess that time.
The first few years we see him in better spirit than later on. Which makes sense, by 1819/20 he knew he was sick - I don't think he knew outright that he was dying, but he knew he wasn't well. (And Napoleon knew what killed his father and that men in the family did have a habit of dying on the younger side (and he would join their number).)
Being sick and in pain brings out the worst in all people, let alone Napoleon who was not a good patient, to say the least. And being sick does nothing for mental health, worsening an already not great situation.
In addition, the living situation wasn't ideal for many reasons (damp, cold, draughty, limited privacy etc.) and then there were the stressors of being a prisoner, not having freedom of movement in the way he did previously, managing the shifting dynamics of Longwood which were many and complex, being surrounded by people who are here because of you and who all want to leave and are not subtle about it, possible personal recriminations (the acknowledgement that he may be slightly to blame for the situation only comes in later years) so on and so forth.
But yeah, I'm not sure what I have to say on this beyond the obvious and what has been said already by better informed historians than myself.
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I suppose with Writer Hat On, I would say that I think we can see him beginning to unpack some things that he had held at a distance during Empire when he was performing what he thought an Emperor should be (e.g., Duroc's death, Josephine's death, a few childhood things, various resentments he had etc.). Or if not unpack, certainly look at in more depth than he seems to have done previously.
However, we don't have the minute-by-minute account of him from Empire how we do with St. Helena and so it's really impossible to say this with any grand certainty. It's truly just my idle speculation based on the fact that gods' know he had time and also the brain, when you're finally settled and not rushing around working 16h days, starts to do this thing of allowing you to access memories/feelings/etc. that you might not have been able to recall or look at previously and if you want to you, you can work through them. Napoleon, being Napoleon, likely looked at them then said "back into the mental cabinet with you. If I never think about difficult things or talk about them, it makes them go away, right?"
Napoleon was certainly bitter about his situation on St. Helena and that shows up in some of his pronouncements. It's one of the reasons I'm warry of taking Napoleon's assessments about his feelings towards people from this time too seriously. They certainly may reflect how he felt at that moment, and what he believed for that second, but are they fulsome accounts of his thoughts and views and feelings? Not really.
For example, it's on St. Helena where we get his pronouncement of having loved very few people in his life (and Joseph is one of them). Napoleon dared sit there and say shit like, "I have only ever loved five (5) people in all 40+ years of my life" and Bertrand, who has known him since Toulon, has to nod and go, "uh huh. sure. mk."
(I imagine Bertrand did a lot of staring into the camera during St. Helena, I swear you can practically hear it in some of his journal entries.)
Napoleon: fucking English rewriting stuff in their newspapers, changing it all around, full of lies. Revisionism!
Bertrand: yes. we wouldn't know anything about that would we.
Napoleon: get out.
But, all this said, Napoleon was also a person who tried to rally, even in adverse circumstances of which there was no end in sight. Other than death. So, despite low spirits there were plenty of moments of joy and humour and pleasure to be seen throughout his time there.
It is a fun game to go through and look at his declarations about people and events and they do somewhat align with the good days and bad (i.e., he had some beautiful things to say about Josephine and they're generally captured in the front end of their St. Helena stay, when he was still in good health, and they're on days when like the Balcombes visited and Napoleon was in lively spirits because of it. Granted, Mrs. Balcombe looked like Josephine, apparently, so that I'm sure also jogged some of Napoleon's happier memories).
It's as I said at the top, there were good days and bad. Was he depressed? Likely yes. I mean, once again we can't diagnose the dead, and nor should we. But, if you want my "after three glasses of wine, quick ask Ellis their opinions on dead people" view, Napoleon certainly seems to have been broadly on the depressed side for much of his time there. Was he always in the dumps? No. Absolutely not. But does it seem to be an undercurrent of life for him while on St Helena? Yes, more or less.
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I hope that answers your question! I'm honoured that you want my opinions on these things and endeavour to try and be balanced, in my own way.
And again, because this is tumblr I feel the need to add the usual disclaimer of: don't psychoanalyse the dead in a professional capacity. If you're reading a work that starts going down that path, engage critically and know that it's all malarkey.
I'm personally responding to asks, providing what I hope are reasonably even-keeled replies, and don't endorse the psychological-analysis approach to history that some historians engage in (i.e., the "let's give everyone various disorders and diagnose them based on extant information which is naturally flawed and, of course, incomplete. Because this seems like a reasonable thing to do" approach).
All that said - thank you for the ask! I do enjoy nattering on about Napoleon. ❤️❤️
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Mom: I have a food baby.
Me: whats its name? You have to name it.
Mom: Full. Short for Fulsome. As in Fulsom County Blues.
Me: Implying your body is the prison it must break out of?
Mom: it is, and it will. Tomorrow.
Me: RIP your bathroom.
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Fulsom prison blues is a lux song but i can’t put it in her playlist bc people will think I’m dropping hints that she’s committed a murder personally. Some characters I could just throw it in there as a symbolic touch but lux is like you know she’d have it in her under the right circumstances
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Wednesday continued
After our explore, we headed to an idyllic spot on the edge of a little arm of Lake Dunston to enjoy our picnic. Tho photos will speak for themselves.
The sun was warm and the chill of recent days gone.
Soon we were packed up, but, leaving the Jeep where it was, we wandered off up the hill to Carrick (another Ayrshire reference) Winery for a delicious coffee.
Honestly, Raymond and I just spend all our time oohing and aahing!
Eventually it was time for home. Rod asked Sheila if she would like to drive. Loving a go in the Jeep, she readily accepted the offer - a decision she would come to regret…
We bowled along for half an hour, taking some little roads, steep roads, bendy roads and bumpy roads, finally returning to the main road not far from our destination. We drove past a parked police car which, surprisingly, pulled out, followed us and put on his flashing lights! She had to pull over. He then peeped his horn, in a deep New Zealand growl - three times. No-one knew why. It transpired he wanted her further off the road! So at a perilous angle, halfway into a ditch, Sheila awaited his interrogation.
In New Zealand, there is a three digit number which you can call if you see someone driving dangerously and, amazingly, the police respond! Someone had phoned in a grey Jeep doing many naughty things on the road we had travelled. But no number plate. We knew it wasn’t Sheila; she knew it wasn’t her, but he didn’t. In a state of righteous indignation, extreme anxiety and sheer terror, she wound down the window and up popped the cherubic face of the nicest policeman you could ever come across! But that didn’t really help. He had to do his job. Her license was checked, (she didn’t tell me she picked up some penalty points a couple of months of ago, until later!); he went away and made a call; he asked the details of our route; he went away and made a call; he breathalysed her (she passed) and, eventually, he let her go, wishing us a happy holiday! She certainly didn’t get over it straightaway and that wasn’t made any easier by us singing snippets of ‘I fought the law and the law won’, ‘I shot the sheriff’ and ‘Fulsome Prison Blues’!
After such an eventful day, we came back to a cosy house and played cards to help Sheila get over her trauma.
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Mixed Breeds comics 1998
Trivia: 1998 is when "Mutts" started to stink. Therefore, it's when "Mixed Breeds" starts to soar.
In the vignette episode "The Resolutions", the characters share their New Year's resolutions.
In "For Sweater or For So Much Worse", Muffin schemes with Bearl to get rid of a sweater Minnie made for her. And in "Neutral Territory", Bearl and Muffin go on a quest to a neutral land so they can find a bed.
In "Muffin and the Chocolate Factory", Muffin gets her head stuck in a cookie jar and a cookie jar stuck in her head.
In "Total Eclipse of the Brain", Muffin and Nancy telepathically fight for Columbia's love.
In "Any Way the Wind Clothes", a windstorm starts to take off people's layers.
Trivia: "Mixed Breeds" never resorts to begging.
In "Hi Hi Birdie", Morty gets a songwriting agent. In "Manic Mud Day", the duo attends a mud pit for a spirit week.
In the story "Look Who's Talking Not", Fitz's effort to teach Bearl to speak makes the latter become a ventriloquist.
In "What to Mixpect When You're Dixpecting", the duo encounters Dixie's baby brother.
In "Mixed Breeds in Paris", Bearl and Muffin go to Paris and find it's not too different from home.
In "My Muffin Colored Days", Muffin experiences color changes when her emotions get strong.
In "The Sphinx", Muffin acts as a psychic sphinx.
In "The Accidental Golfers", Bearl and Muffin inadvertently become great golf caddies. And in "The Trashy-mooners", Fitz and Minnie go into the garbage to recover a wedding ring.
In "A Pizza My Art", Mr. Feynmanbot has the power to print art onto pizza. In "Pool Summer", Muffin faces her fear of the pool.
In "Sweet Vic-Tree", Muffin becomes a local hero when she reaches the top of a tree.
In the very special storyline "The Ruff Boat", Bearl and Muffin become lost at sea...
...but turn their boat into a cruise ship.
In the story "In Minnie's Eyes", Muffin gets glasses that were meant for Minnie. And in "Fulsome Prison Blues", the duet gets arrested at Brunswick's behest because it's secure.
In "Show and/or Tell", the duo becomes Dixie's show-and-tell consultants.
In "Tree Goes the Neighborhood", Muffin rushes to sell all her stocks before a tree gets cut down.
In "The Legends of Secretary Mussels", Mayor Baugo's secretary writes his memoirs.
In "Walk Like a Conniption", Postnie aspires to get to a kite show - on foot.
In "Black Cat Fever", Muffin becomes a black cat with magic power. In "Pound Puppies", the duo finds themselves as the new owners of a group of strays. (First story to be based on a Shelter Story.)
In the story "Go Nuts", the duet infiltrate the squirrels' refrigerator. In "The Prince and the Pawprints", the duet tracks down pawprints.
In "Taste Makes Haste", Bearl plays chef when Muffin finds all food tasteless. In "Belly Rubs", Bearl starts a charity for rubbing his belly.
And in "Have Yourself a Meowy Little Postmas", Postnie and Columbia team up to write Christmas carols.
"Mutts" has just started to stink, so "Mixed Breeds" will get a whole lot better after this.
Original strips: January 1998, February 1998, March 1998, April 1998, May 1998, June 1998, July 1998, August 1998, September 1998, October 1998, November 1998, December 1998
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Brutality (FFXIV Write 2023 #22: Fulsome)
Maybe she went too strong on that prisoner, maybe she was too brutal with her enemies, but the Twin Adders had caller her during her time within the Grand Company multiple times for her displays of brutality. She was merciless with her enemies and even when they asked for forgiveness, she never let them escape without being knocked out at least once. They deserved a lesson for harming what she tried to protect.
For many, it was exaggerated. Her displays of violence weren't needed and yet she did shown up her strength. For some, it was needed, without her the enemies would have fought again even with chains on their wrists. She never really knew when her strength was necessary and when it was too much, she noticed quickly that many people would scold her for either being too brutal or not enough.
She stopped listening to the complaints after a while.
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fever in a shockwave., ii | Joe "Bear" Graves x f!Reader
pt., ii | dreaming alone in a hotel bed
You chase kerosene dreams and wrap yourself up in a web of lies but none of it matters when he pulls you close, lips to your temple, and breathes your name out between deep gasps for air.
You could stay like this forever, you think, spun tight in his four walls.
warnings: violence; smut, P-in-V sex, female reader, female gendered anatomy, unsafe sex; the slightest flavour of (secret) Dom!Joe, D/s undertones; angst; poor/unhealthy coping methods
wordcount: 11,7k
notes: this is chock full of smut. gratuitously so. and angst.
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AO3 MIRROR | PLAYLIST
The man in his—Bear's—chair is nothing like him at all.
A lawyer from out of town. Some smarmy collegiate who wears his honours on his iron-pressed lapels, and slicks his hair back with the same grease he tucks into the folds of his clandestine smile.
He orders a Moscow Mule, and tells you—unprompted—about the time he went to Russia, and had one at this fancy nightclub in Saint Petersburg. Then, mockingly, brings the one you made to his lips, and says: very American, but what else can you expect in a place like this?
It used to be easy to slip into something that was sure to garner tips from men like him. Ditsy and impressionable; fulsome. It racks in big numbers when you sit back, flutter your lashes, and pretend they're a gift, and just by sitting across from you, indulging you in their worldly wonders and professional prowess is something you'd be remiss to ignore.
Now, however, the skin you wear feels too tight, tacky. It clings to your flesh, pulling at the downy soft hairs that cover your body until it stings with each movement you make.
A dance that was once effortless now makes you stumble.
But you deal with it.
(Four walls. A roof.)
"Want anything else?" You ask, smiling so wide it hurts.
He leans his elbows on the grimy countertop, and then makes a face when his skin sticks to the exposed lath below. His grimace makes him seem more human. Weak. Vulnerable.
"Eugh," he snorts, and then looks up at you. "Maybe wipe this counter down a bit better, yeah? And I guess I'll go for whisky sour. A mule might not be in your repertoire."
You smile, placid and thin, and miss the gruff responses from Bear a little more with each word the man spits.
"Sure."
You wonder what Bear would say about him. Something gruff, a rough rasp of stinks of Yale covered up with a cough.
It makes you smile.
He stays until closing, and considering it's Friday (now Saturday), this isn't too surprising.
But him following you out the back door is.
"Come on, I'll take you back to my hotel, and we can have some fun together—"
"No, I'm good," you say, offering some facsimile of a smile.
It's the standard no, leave me alone without actually having to commit to a full rejection. A man like this—fragile ego, Bear might have said—will undoubtedly complain to your manager if you're not perfectly curated disinterest that he can spin as you being a prude, a bitch, uptight to his friends waiting for him in the car.
"Oh, come on," he insists, grinning.
He moves until you're backed up into the alcove, tucked against brick and stucco. The shadow from the awning above stretches over your head. A prison. Anxiety spikes through your chest; the tang of it is a livewire zing that races through your bloodstream.
It's not that you're in any real danger—the chef is throwing out the trash around the corner; a lady wanders by with her ugly little Pomeranian who keeps barking at the group of guys, windows rolled down, as they holler for him to hurry it up.
People are around, all within proximity.
But it's the liquor on his breath. The hands that reach for you without permission, leaving stains over your blouse when the sweat from his palms crinkle the fabric.
The look in his eye. The things he said—my dad got that one guy off with a light slap on the wrist; you know, the SEAL who betrayed his country? Hogart, or something. Now, the military is kissing his ass—and the way he said them. Oozing scorn. Confidence.
It is the air of untouchability that wafts from his Gucci belt, Yves Saint Laurent trousers, Ralph Lauren polo tucked into his pants, and the thick watch on his wrist—Rolex, you’re sure.
The military is kissing his ass.
You've met his particular type before.
Fragile. A paper-thin ego.
That, and the whisky sours, all coalesce into a noxious cocktail. Dangerous.
His hand falls to the wall beside you, blocking off your only escape. The yells turn to whistles, and it's the bravado that sparks in his evergreen eyes that make you recoil. He has an audience, now. A group of peers and mates who'll tear into him should he wander back empty handed after making his interest so clear.
They, you think, are worse than anything else right now. The idea of failure in front of people who have only ever been allowed to see him succeed.
"What else are you doing tonight? Hang out with us a little bit—"
"I think she said no."
Bear. It's Bear.
The relief in seeing him standing under the flushed lamp in the parking lot is dizzying. It stacks in your marrow, piling thick and heavy on one side until you start to list, to dip toward him.
"Joe—," the word is cut off when the man—Yale graduate, drinks Moscow Mules in Russia—turns, brows bunching in alarm.
"I don't think I asked you," he scoffs, turning to Bear. The grin on his lips falters at the sight of him—messy burnt umber beard, thick and scraggly; mouth knotted into an even line; but it's his eyes that make him stumble. Angry, burning sapphires leaking something eager and mad into the red blood vessels from sleepless nights, and the thrill of a fight.
Bear is huge. Massive. The fabric of his red plaid button down strains around his shoulders, his biceps.
Under the shadows cast in the dusk, he looms unfathomably large. Imposing.
His hands curl into fists by sides.
"Yeah, well, I think she said to go away." He takes a step forward, jaw set.
You want to say something—it's fine, you're not worth it—but it dies on your tongue when the man turns to you, glaring.
"Like I'd want to slum it with some cheap fuck—"
Bear gets to you in three steps. Three. His hands wrap around the man's jacket, and he hails him off of you, shoving him to concrete with a snarl ripping through his chest.
Bear says nothing. He just—
Swings.
In the time it takes for his friends in the Audi to realise something is wrong, he's almost finished.
He hits him and the sickening squelch, the crunch of bone, makes you gasp, makes your stomach churn—rotten, filled with cheap, flat cola you'd sipped on during lunch—and you expect it to end.
But it doesn't.
He doesn't stop.
"Bear—!" Each hit quiets the man beneath him until all you can hear is the sound of his knuckles splitting over wet, tacky flesh. "Joe—"
You grab his arm, fingers barely spanning the bulk of his flexing, bulging bicep, but he stills at your touch, at the frenzy in your voice.
His chest heaves with his exertion, eyes swing to you, wild and blacker than the ocean at midnight, and you see something simmering in those depths. It's deeper than anger. Mechanical. Routine.
This isn't him losing control, but finding it.
You still, heart hammering in your chest with each garish wheeze the man below Bear makes. It's a rattle that shears through you, that cuts deep until all the ignorance has been expertly flayed, and stripped. Hung to dry.
There is no pretending. No avoiding the stacking glee in his eyes when he drops them to the man, then the mess of his hand—bloody pulp, cracks in the cartilage of each knuckle where a thick bed of scabs once rested.
When he turns back to you, he doesn't hide it. He lets you see the unhindered pleasure in the cut of his irises; oceans of mercury shaded blue. Maybe, it itches some dark part of his brain, imbues him with a deluge of chemicals—dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin—until he's satiated the hunger inside that craves control over violence and chaos.
This is him exercising dominion over something, over someone. Reclaiming ownership.
This is cathartic for him, you think.
Brutality. Bloodshed.
It's a jarring disconnect from the man you'd seen slouched over your sticky table, taking over-generous gulps of his whisky. The intimidating, lour man who was secretly dorky and clean cut beneath the bulk of muscle and disaster.
Where one ends and the other begins is blurred under the heady scent of oxidising copper and salt, and in that murky coalescence, he waits.
For you to run, revolt, recoil—
You can’t imagine his anger is easy for anyone to stomach. Bear is a terrifying force of nature: bitter, broken, and brutal. You should run. Flee. Everything inside of you says to do so, to escape the clutch of a man who ruined his hands on the teeth of someone who was just a little too pushy, a little too entitled. He could snap at any moment.
A wild animal is only as tame as circumstance allows.
(Run—)
You’ve never been good at listening, anyway.
You take his hand in yours, fingers threading through wet, warm blood, and tug on his wrist.
"It's done, Joe," you say, and wonder what he makes of the tremble in your voice, the quiver in your joints.
He stares at you, plain and bare, and so startlingly sober that you almost can't recognise him, but it's gone in an instant. His eyes shudder, a frisson passes. His hands spasm, a proxysm, and then he's pulling away from you.
The man drops to the ground with a crunch, loose gravel rucking over pavement, and you wince at the crack his head makes when Joe tosses him.
He doesn't spare the man a single glance. The heel of his boot catches the shiny pin on the man's lapel when he steps over him, heading right for you.
His friends yell in the background, muted hollering about calling the police, and jail, and charges, and how they are witnesses to this, but Bear doesn't even acknowledge them outside of barking out a low: get him outta here before I do the same damn thing to you.
He reaches you in a single step, and all you can hear is the heavy breaths he takes, the way his chest expands under his flannel button down. It's in a state: ripped, buttons around the collar torn off from when the man grabbed him, trying to dislodge the mountain that just kept coming. His collar pokes through, blue shirt below a startling contrast to the red tartan.
"You alright?" He asks, words scorched and thick with smoke.
His sense of fashion is not what you should be focusing on right now. He beat a man. Beat him into a pulp. You watch his friends drag him away, threats spilling from their lips as they wedge him into the backseat of the car. None of them make any move to come after Bear, but you guess it makes sense.
Blood drips from his torn knuckles, but that's all. Aside from the ripped shirt, he stands before you intact. Unblemished. Victorious.
It took less than a minute.
A molten heat spumes inside of you. His head tilts, forehead wrinkles. It makes the scar above his brow bone more pronounced, and you find yourself nodding.
"I'm gonna ask you again, and I expect an answer." It's a command. You're not a soldier and yet you find yourself snapping to attention from his tone alone. "Are you alright?"
"I am." You offer a shaky smile that feels out of place with the puddle of blood pooling near his feet. "You… you came. I wasn't expecting you—we closed already so, you kinda missed—well. Everything."
Cerulean flashes, flickers with moondust white. In the indigo aether behind him, you find Tycho's crater, and wonder if the pits in his eyes were made from the same cosmic rock that split the surface of the moon deep enough that the pocks could be seen all the way down here on earth.
In a parking lot of some sleazy dive that's never anyone's first choice.
(Like you—)
"I'm here, now."
"Yeah." It tastes like chlorine when you breathe in. "You are."
He doesn't let you patch him up.
It's fine. Worry about yourself first.
There is nothing to worry about. Nothing to fuss over. You're not used to it.
You first, he says, the divots in his forehead catching in the flushed glow of the lamp above. Always, alright? You first.
(You can't remember the last time anyone has ever said those words to you. Or if anyone has ever said them before at all.)
So, you grab a few bottles from under the shelf, and wonder if this is what it feels like to slip into that poetic madness writers talk about sometimes.
(Or maybe you're just Pavlov's dog.)
Bloodied knuckles grip the nozzle of the bottle, pulsing and oozing blood that's not, exclusively, his own. He holds it out to you after taking a swig, eyes burning pits of sapphire-crested coal.
You take the bottle without a word, and taste the acrid tang of his saliva on the rim. Smoky. Musky. You hold it on your tongue for a moment before letting the ethanol cleanse it away. Burning. The scotch is bitter and clean when it slides down your throat.
"Ugh," you make a noise when you swallow, a gag tangled in a wet grimace, mouth tugging downward at the burn. "That's gross."
"Yeah," he huffs, eyes crinkling when his lips twist into that strange proxy of a smile. A half-turn, crook. Not ready to commit to the full circle. "Gets the job done."
"And what is the job?" You push the bottle out toward him, looking away from the not-quite grin that flashes, bloodied and bruised around his upper lip. The sight of him in red makes something sour churn in your stomach.
You like it a little too much. Sickening.
"Forgetting."
You turn to him when he sucks in a sharp breath after uttering the word, catching polluted blue in the hazy lamps above. He takes the bottle from your hands, sticky fingers, still wet with blood, with—
Teeth, pulp.
Something about the way he skirts his gaze makes you think he didn't mean to say the word aloud. Unutterable, made solid. Filled in with the gritty rasp of his voice, hoarse and raw from his quiet, forceful growl into the face of a man who became the manifestation of his ire. Split lip, busted nose. Broken teeth.
He's still breathing. Lucid enough to drag himself away from the beast of a man boring down on him, seething plumes of condensation into the midnight air. He'll be fine, you hope. His friends got him home. Maybe, to a hospital.
(Pray, for the first time in years. Aeons. Don't let him die. Don't let Bear get mixed up in this.)
Bear shows no remorse, or concern for the jagged buccaneer lines splitting flesh that is only just starting to heal. Bruised, bloodied knuckles. Always.
Yet, you think this was the first time in a while it was cut on teeth instead of brick. Drywall.
"Yeah," you say, if only to fill in the gap of silence that settles, oppressive and biting, and stem the echoes of your thoughts from surfacing.
Vile things like he looks good in red. In anger. Looks, you think, even better when he's bending down, bearing his weight on someone as he punches them over and over and over—
Sick. Wrong. Twisted.
The way he gave into the ugliness inside of his eyes when he saw the man grab you, so entirely reactive—yet, horrifically aware at the same time—should scare you away. Make you run. Flee.
It doesn't.
It grounds you.
In those snap seconds between staring at the bloom of red on your arm, the sharp inhale between clenched teeth, the wince, and throwing his hand out to snag the loose collar of the man's shirt, you saw everything flicker through hazy blue.
Assessment. Decision. Outcome.
He weighed them all on the scale in half-seconds. Measured them all in terms of probabilities, rationality, and concretes in the long term.
It wasn't thoughtlessness or blind rage that made him throw the punch, but the knowledge that, to him, it was the only way out.
It doesn't scare you. If anything, it makes you feel safer.
"Thanks," you say, words you should have said much earlier, probably, but they're out now. Verbalised. Uttered. Drenched in awe so thick, it makes him tense, jerk his head toward you.
Disbelief, then, colours his expression. "You're… thanking me. For beating a man to pulp in front of you?"
You shrug. "For helping me."
And Bear just—
Stares. Gawks. His eyes flash with something just as raw and cut open as the cuts on his knuckles, the wounds inside his head when he takes in your blunt sincerity. Your bold-faced honesty.
He knows, of course, that you never mince words. That you never say things you don't mean.
He'd told you himself, didn't he?
You know what I like about you? You said, heart lodged in your throat, beating on the sleeves of your shirt. He looked up from his rye, brows raising.
At the time, it was meant as a sleazy way to try and pick him but after the two women he turned down in the span of a week, choices he normally would have followed through with. Left with. He didn't. He stayed until closing, and walked you to your car. Stumbled home, then, alone.
You wondered if he saw that. If there was something in your expression that he picked up on. His guard rose instantly. Hackles rising. Distance in shades of blue and amber pitched in front of him as he brought the glass to his lips, fingers blanching under the strain.
Rejection, then. You swallowed it down, and offered another truth in exchange:
That you always tip.
The way he instantly relaxed broke your heart a little. You know what I like about you?
Your smile was wobbly. My gin and tonic?
That you never lie. Never say anything you don't mean.
You wanted to laugh. Scoff. He's wrong. So, so wrong.
(You never stop lying. Running.)
His stare is always, always so intense. Soul-searching. His head ducks down, his brows raise, and he stares. Bores those pretty blues so deep into you it almost feels like he can chisel inside your head, crack it open, and rummage about your deepest thoughts.
But it's decidedly one-sided.
When it comes to himself, he looks away. Drops his gaze. Shirks. Hides.
"Christ, you think I helped you?"
The blood dripping to the pavement says more than any words could, so you simply nod. Know he'll understand it, anyway.
"I'm not a—"
A good man. The most clichè thing that every good man has ever said. You huff, shaking your head. "My hero."
It's supposed to make him smile. Or laugh, or—
Or, something.
Anything else except flinching. Jerking back as if you'd struck him.
"Don't—," he swallows thickly, shifting on his feet. His hands leave smears of red on his shirt when he shoves the flat of his palms under his biceps. His head bobs. "Don't say that. Don't—don't call me that. I'm not—"
"You saved me, Joe," you dip your head in a bland punctuation of your sincerity. "Whether you like it or not, in my eyes, that makes you a good person. My hero."
He says nothing. Goes quiet. Still.
It's not uncomfortable. It isn't, despite the itch under your skin. The effervescent buzz of cheap malt, a stagnant crush on a man who's firmly, decisively, off-limits, and the intoxication of being defended. Fought for.
No one fights for you.
Not your mum or her new series of boyfriends or husbands that show up during holidays and trips, and then disappear into the void of cheap monikers—Dominican man, a guy from the pub, a loser from Suffolk, a lawyer from New Jersey.
Not your dad.
Not even yourself.
It pools inside of you, noxious and overwhelming. The land you stand on wobbles, crumbles. You sink beneath the sentiment until you're drowning in a briny, stagnant aquifer at the bottom.
(You never learned how to swim.)
You take another drink, and feel his eyes on you. Heavy. Oppressive. You almost choke when you swallow.
It's too much. Too—
Just. Too much. You need it to stop. You need him to see you for what you are, and run. Flee before you can. Before you have this in your hands, and ruin it like you do everything else before sprinting into the void, into the chasm that swallows you whole.
So. You talk. Open your stupid little mouth, and say stupid little words. Biting. Alluring. You aim for coyness but miss the mark, and sound like a frightened kid.
"If you keep staring at me like that—"
He's close when you turn. Closer than you expected. Hulking. Massive. He towers over you, swaying on his feet. His eyes are murky gyres.
"What?" He challenges, and takes a step closer. "What will you do?"
He murmurs the word so rough, so low, that you struggle to hear him.
"I might have to cut you off again."
It gets you a flicker of humour. Something biting and dry. His brow raises, lines creasing. A flash of his teeth on the left when he pulls the corner of his mouth up into a grin. Mocking. Sardonic.
"Oh, yeah?"
Standing over you like this, full height, head bowed, brow raises, he looks intimidating. All bulk. Brawn. He's tall. Broad. He folds you inside the bracket of his body with ease, tucking you into his shadow, and then moves forward.
You step back.
His gait swallows yours. Back, back. Forward. Back, back. Forward. Back, back—
You feel the clammy brick wall against your skin. No escape.
Forward. Forward—
Your hair catches on the pocks in the brick when you drag your chin up to meet burning azure. The pinch feels a little bit like retribution when you see smoke curling in, thick billows of geyser grey eclipsing lazuli until it's drenched in smog. Cloudy. Broken. It smatters across his eyes, a want so thick your breath stutters in your chest, catches like a sharp hiccup in your throat because when, when, has anyone ever stared at you so openly before.
The want is palpable. Stifling.
You think of Magellanic clouds; nebulous vapours clinging to the sticky lining of your lungs until it clots in thick plumes of cosmic dust. It gnarls around you until all you can see is the sky above his head—indigo with smears of ochre in the far distance, the breaking of dawn over the horizon—and him. Blistering blue. Surly, sour. The tang of alcohol makes your head feel gummy and soporific.
Bear closes the negligible distance, his chest brushing over the zipper of your loose windbreaker, bleeding heat through the metal until it scorches your flesh.
His hands rest on the wall beside each temple. Your fingers tighten around the bottle, head swimming with that same want that echoes like a battle cry in the blood vessels that leak into the milky whites of his eyes.
"You gonna cut me off again?" His eyes flicker down to the whisky clutched in your hands.
You tremble. Polymer whines against the brick when you move. His nostrils flare.
He leans down, his breath, humid and malty, ghosts over your cheek. He smells like a distillery. Like the bottom swallow of a beer bottle left out in the sun.
Drunk.
But you are, too.
His hands fall from the wall, knuckles leaking blood down his wrist, and curl on your hips. They span the entirety of your waist, from the jut of your hip bone to the swell of your ass.
They slide down, faltering slightly when your cheeks sit in the palm of his hand. He sucks in a deep breath, one that fills the expanse of his chest until it brushes over yours.
You drop the bottle. It shatters on the concrete, drenching the hem of your trousers in liquor. It goes unacknowledged. He doesn’t look away at all.
His eyes flash again, filling with that same palpable want as before, and then—
He grips the backs of your thighs, tight in his hold. And moves, shifts. He rocks up when he lifts you, back sliding against the brick wall. You barely have time to gasp before you're several feet off the ground, legs dangling in his grip as he hefts you into his embrace, pushing flush to your chest.
Your arms wrap around his broad shoulders, clinging to him as he holds you up, takes you in.
It's hot. The hottest thing that has ever happened to you. He picks you up like you weigh nothing. Not even a shudder from his chest, a tremble in his shoulders. Even with his broken knuckles, he still holds you up, keeping you steady as he stares at you. His forehead drops, but he doesn't kiss you. He swallows your breath, eyes drinking you in. A pendulum of blistering blue between your eyes, your lips.
A tease.
You've never seen him so hesitant.
Your arms tighten. "You ever gonna kiss me, Joe, or—"
He huffs, a choked off laugh, eyes dropping once before he tilts his chin, devouring your mouth in a searing kiss.
Your head cracks against the brick when he shoves himself into you, swallowing you whole. His mouth is rapacious, his hands grip you tight, keeping you right where he wants you.
It feels like the culmination of everything. The little touches, fleeting glances. All of it leads to this moment where he presses his mouth to your skin like he's been starved for it, and drinks you down like ambrosia found in the glass that once littered the countertop around him.
His weight sags into you, beard scratching your chin, jaw, neck as he peppers sloppy, open-mouthed kisses over your skin.
"M'gonna fuck you." It's a promise. Maybe, even a warning.
You shiver, head swimming on the heady taste of him, the smell—wet pennies, whisky, and bad choices—and slur your words into his starchy beard. "Just like a Taurus—"
He swallows your words down with an exasperated groan, muttering a husked Jesus Christ into the seal of your mouth, teeth nipping you in something that might have been punishment, but only makes you keen, rutting against him, eager and wanting.
"Take me home," you gasp, and see napalm flare in the recess of his midnight blue eyes.
(The shine of it tastes like victory in amber—)
Bear leaks aggression when he latches on to you, pulling you stumbling down the boardwalk until you land at the doorstep of the motel you'd dropped him off at. He pushes your back against the cold door, hands grasping your body, tight and wanting, and plying you with kisses down the column of your throat, your collarbones, your chest. He drops to his knees on the cement, hikes your shirt up, and suckles the soft skin of your navel until it blooms red under his sharp teeth and the scratch of his beard.
It's rough. Blistering.
You barely have time to think, to react, before he surges back to his feet, pushing the door open, and dragging you inside.
There is no time to get acquainted with the ruins of his misery. His hands are molten, rough, on your skin, and push at you until you're splayed out on the bed before him.
And you expect him to fall onto you, descend on your willing flesh the same way he'd done before until your skin was painted red from his mouth, and bruised by his hands.
But he doesn't.
He just—
Watches. Drinks you in.
It's a startling moment of intimacy in something that has been so dizzyingly brutal up until this point. A lapse. A silence.
And you—
Your throat itches with the need to fill it. To quench the stagnancy that bleeds in from the crease of his eyes, and the heaving of his chest. The congealed blood that smears over your skin, remnants of his still agitated knuckles, cool under the sudden chill that sweeps you through. Hardened like cement on your flesh.
You sit up, reaching for him. "B—Bear—"
His eyes flash. Throat bobs when he swallows.
"Lay back." Is all he says. His knee lifts and settles on the edge of the bed. "I need to be inside of you."
And fuck—
It's not dirty talk. It's awkward and stilted, and the words bring a flush to his cheeks that you can't, entirely, blame on alcohol alone, but it fills you with a thick, almost dizzying, sense of heat because it's him.
Because it's the words you'd longed to hear since he sat down and lifted two fingers up in the air for your attention. Since he looked at you, truly looked at you, and still came back.
And sure—the nameless dive bar on the fringes of town is the perfect spot for someone to submerge themselves in anonymity and vices without the prying eyes of their suburban neighbours knowing about the affairs under the table, and the draw of that would be perfect for him so he didn't have to deal with the thick layer of pity seeping into the eyes of those who know, him knew his wife.
You're not special.
But you want to be.
And when he braces his arms above your head, eyes flaring to life under the jaundiced glow of the lamp beside the bed that creaks and whines with each moment, you feel like you might be.
"Don't keep me waiting."
He falls on you, thick thighs wrenching you open to fit his bulk between them, and he laughs. Laughs, and laughs, and says:
"You need to learn some patience."
You respond, breathless and quivering beneath him: "so teach me."
(And he does.)
His hands tug on the rope securing you to the broken headboard. Military knots. Efficient. Inescapable.
His hands fall, then, to your hips, fingers tracing the bruises he left last night. The breath he takes is sucked in through clenched teeth, and you try to remind yourself that under this, he's a good man. A good—
His cock nudges against the mess between your legs—fucking take me, that's it, gonna fill your cunt up—and he pushes. No foreplay. You can't remember if there ever was any to start with.
He's big—thick, cut. His cock splits you apart until you're shuddering beneath his bulk, hands twisting pathetically against the binds that lock you in place.
Stop squirming, you remember him saying, words sticking to his throat.
I can't, you whined, and he'd pulled the cord off the phone, and tied your hands to the bedpost. A simple solution. Ever the planner.
Now, you're pinned under a man who fell asleep—twice—while he was still cumming inside of you.
A man you'd picked up at a dive bar like a stray, like a bad dream, and terrible choices. A venereal disease. Oh, God.
You shove your forehead into the rough pillow—flat, greasy; it stinks of stale sweat and sleep—and try not to focus on the regret.
His cock is huge, massive.
The cheap vibrators you bought on a whim—Amazon.com, four day shipping because you couldn't afford expedited or Prime—are nothing, nothing, compared to this. The real fucking deal.
And you're not a virgin. Not really.
(But you've already lost whenever you have to bridge a gap with technically tacked on at the end.)
"Fuck—," and it's too much. You've taken him, to the root, balls fuckin' deep, kid, but your pussy aches, core throbs like a pulsing wound. The space behind your belly button feels battered, bruised. Pried open by the blunt head of his cock, even though you know it's anatomically impossible. A lock picked at; scratches around the keyway. "Stop—!"
It's an embarrassing squeak. A mousy, shrill little thing that whistles through your clenched esophagus, voice strained and high, and draped in shades of pain.
It didn't hurt before.
Well, no. It did. It hurt like one of those sunburns you'd sometimes get as a kid. Skin raw and infected, blistering with sweat and oozing. The kind that made touching anything agonising. That made the heat seep out from your pores despite the goosebumps that prickled along your swollen flesh.
But—
It was good. It was—
Probably the alcohol. You're sober, now.
"What?" He grunts, word bitten between his clenched teeth. But he stops.
A good man. A great one, even, had he not been shredded into base parts, primal instinct, then patched up with sutures made of barbed wire.
"It—," you gasp when he moves, his knees shift on the lumpy, creaking mattress, and cock shifts, length pressed taut to your walls. "It hurts."
His hands are brands on your skin. You can't see him—you can just feel him. Thighs the size of tree trunks glued to the backs of yours, both of them dwarfed by a single one of his, hips spanning wide, so much wider than your own. Several inches of space from the end of your outer leg to his on both sides.
The thought makes you dizzy.
"Hurts?" He echoes the words, slurred, but not—
Not like before. He, like you, isn't nearly as drunk as he was when this first started. Lucidity bleeds into the word, and that—
You aren't, entirely, sure what to make of it.
"I just fucked you," he says, blunt. Brutal.
Your pussy flutters, core liquifying. God, it's his voice. It's the anger in wrinkles of his forehead, the eyes that would look so fucking pretty if they weren't glazed over, glossy. It's everything, really. All of the bad, the ugly, the rot, and the infectious miasma, and—
All of the potential good. The ones he buries deep.
"I, um…," you aren't really sure how to say I've only ever fucked myself on a pencil-thin, cheap purple vibrator and your cock is, like, the size of five of them clustered together.
And a steady, long-term boyfriend in college who was extremely religious. A man who had stuck it in, once and not even all the way, and promptly fled.
Maybe, a hook up here or there to balm your broken heart, but none of them come close to his absurd size. His girth. His length. Most of them were about the same size as your blue vibrator.
Average. You're used to average men. Normal men. Not ones with a firehose between their thighs, and almost as thick as a coke can.
(Average men. Not hired, governmentally trained killers who beat a man to a bloodied pulp in seconds because he told him to leave you alone, and the man didn't obey.)
Well. Maybe, you do know how to say it. So, you do. Verbatim, because why not? In for a penny, in for a pound.
But he stills.
"You're a virgin?"
No, you think, huffing. Definitely not after the pounding he gave you last night.
"I've—been fucked," you refute, burning from the sting of embarrassment.
He makes a noise—patronising and draped in the hue of disbelief. He must sniff your lies out, then. Like some big, dumb dog—
"They ever cum inside you?"
There's a heat in his tone that makes your toes curl. "No. Never. I've always used—used condoms."
You hear the click in his voice when he swallows. "Good girl."
It does something to you. The low, soft praise goes straight to your core, your heart, and you suck in a shuddering breath, tensing. He notices, he must—a military man of unknown origin, he sees everything. Everything.
He grunts, and you feel him slowly pull out, cock sliding against your soft, sore, walls in a way that makes you tremble, and pant, mouth pressed, open and gasping, into the pillow. It's gross. You taste salt on your tongue, and a strange sense of regret and relief when he's out of your aching cunt. You liked the fill of him. The feeling of him wrenching you open, but you can't. Can't. He's too big. Too thick.
"Lay on your back."
It's an awkward shuffle with your hands still bound at the wrist, and him, still so close behind you. You have to spread your legs apart to fit, and the weight of his gaze, hungry and wanting, on your bare pussy makes you flush. Makes heat pool under your cheeks.
His broad hand presses against the soft skin of your inner thigh when you go to push your knees together, eyes smouldering blue in the pale yellow light of the lamp on the bedside table.
"Keep 'em open," he rasps, nostrils flaring as he stares down at you. His gaze lifts, once, brow wrinkled, pinched, as he waits for you to acknowledge his command. Definitely top dog in the military, you think. A commander. Or something. "I'm not finished with you."
It's a promise and a curse.
He shuffles down the bed, the box spring creaking with each movement he makes, cock swinging between his legs, heavy and fat and vermilion and leaking cum onto the scratchy sheets. The sight of it—him—makes your heart leap, pulsing in your throat.
"Where are you—," it's cut off with another embarrassing yelp when he grabs you, and hikes your leg over his shoulder. He bends down, hand splaying out on your thigh, pressing your knee to the mattress as the other dangles over his broad shoulder. "What are you doing—?"
"What does it look like?" he huffs, chin grazing your sensitive flesh. His eyes burn sapphire in the light. "Or has no one ever gone down on you before, either?"
Either. God—
"That's—," you choke when he brings his hand to your cunt, palm pressed flat against the heat of you. "Oh, fuck—"
His fingers pry your folds apart, eyes darting down to gaze at you. His mouth parts, white teeth catching his bottom lip. "Christ… Look at you."
His words puncture a hole deep inside of you that spills molten want in your core. Fuck, fuck—
He groans low, eyes drinking you in. There is a flush to his cheeks, burning roseate beneath thick tuffs of auburn.
You can't remember the string of slurred words he let out last night, but he seems quieter. Hungrier.
His mouth is searing when he presses it to your inner thigh, teeth scraping over the flesh until it puddles red under his molars. He starts in the centre, moving his mouth up to your bent knee, nipping the sensitive flesh there until more petals of red blossom.
It feels good. Better than good.
"You're getting so wet," he murmurs quietly. A rumble. It ghosts over your flesh until goosebumps bubble across the surface. "You want this, don't you?"
It's a command. The word is pulled out of your throat before you can even think. Yes. Yes, of course you want that. His cock is as thick as your wrist and almost the length of your forearm. He's stupidly fucking big, that it makes your eyes roll a little in the back of your head just thinking about it. He's a massive man. Terrifying. And you want him to fuck you. To make you feel so good again like last night when you screamed so loud, the room beside you pounded on the wall, and told him to shut that bitch up.
And he laughed. Laughed when he was balls fuckin' deep, kid, inside of you, and it was stupidly delirious, and clotted over something within you, sealing over a wound you weren't even aware of, and you want more. More of it, more of him.
More of the way he fell on you, chin notched on your shoulder, lips pressed—messy and wet, breath sour—against your cheekbone and temple, and said, wanna really piss them off? Gonna make you scream. He did. Over and over and over again—made you scream as he fucked you as hard, and deep as he could, splitting your cunt open until just the shape of him could fit.
You screamed until dawn broke through the seal of the door, spilling grey light through the gap. Until he grunted in your ear, mouth open as he panted against your skin, filling you with hot—too hot, too much—spurts of cum until it sat, heavy and thick, against your womb.
You didn't cum. No foreplay, too much alcohol; no one fucked you like this. Even your sparse hook-ups were painted in the roseate shade of romance; sickly sweet and unsatisfying, but you'd somehow managed to convince yourself it was the sentiment that mattered.
But now—
He moves lower, mouthing over your flesh until your leg is tacky and wet from his searing lips, his tongue. It's a promise of what's to come, a mimicry of what he's going to do to you. Each kiss brings his mouth closer, closer, until his tongue is licking a hot, wet stripe over your mons, eyes fever bright, and achingly lucid as he breathes you in.
His chin dips, nose sliding against the triangular cut of your slit, tip pressed taut to your throbbing clit, and—
You shatter. Break. The aching whimper that spills out, a mangled ruin of something that sounds a little bit like Bear, please seems to spurn him on, as if he was waiting for it. To hear you beg for his mouth on your cunt.
A frisson of pleasure flutters over his flushed face, beard fluttering when he huffs a deep breath through his nose, drawing the scent of you in, and ghosting his exhale over your spread pussy. It's good—he hasn't even touched you yet, just pressed his nose to your clit and breathed on you, and already your toes are curling, hands tugging harshly against the cord that keeps you from carting your fingers through his hair, or pulling his mouth closer.
"God, you smell s'fuckin' good," he murmurs into the seam of your cunt, voice wrecked, ruined, a garbled mess of tremulous syllables that only barely sound legible. "Bet you taste even better."
He doesn't give you a second to prepare yourself.
His mouth devours your cunt with the same fervour he showed your flesh. All lips, teeth, and tongue—a maddening pattern of tactical precision dedicated to making you come undone under the heat of his mouth.
It's messy, a touch clumsy. He's drunk, and you are, too; but it's good. It's great. It's everything you'd imagined it would be to have him between your thighs. The rough graze of his beard chafing the soft skin of your legs, his big hand settling, hotter than a brand, on the underside of your knee, keeping you open for him. His tongue—
He circles the tip around your throbbing clit until you taste stardust in the back of your throat, eyes flashing with the white nebula that stretches out before you with each insistent swipe over you.
Thick fingers pressing against your aching hole brings you back to earth. You gasp, mewl, at the stretch when he buries them inside of you; thick, long. The suddenness of his touch makes your back arch, your hips rutting against his face, eager for something, something—
"Please, Joe, please—"
He groans into your cunt, eyes fluttering. "Gotta be patient."
"I can't—I can't—"
He pushes his fingers inside of you again, and the shock of cold, wet metal catching on your skin, stretched taut around his knuckles makes you tremble, makes you quake. But there is no escape. No way out. You take it as he thrusts them deep, scraping across your sensitive, soft walls until each brush of his knuckles makes you see stars.
You cum on his fingers, his tongue laving against your clit, and it's the first time—first time—cheap plastic isn't involved but flesh, skin, and you lose it a little in the heat. In the fever that scorches your veins until they're bubbling and blistered.
And he rides you through it all, eyes fixed on your face when you fall apart. Liquid sapphire. Like the ocean. You yearn to slip below the waves, let the briny water fill your lungs.
Your feet stumble on the slimy sediment below, but your heels dig in, pressed to the warmth of his back, and you hold on tight against the current that wants to sweep you away.
Out to sea. Away from land.
Lost, forever, in blue.
He watches you struggle to swallow his cock, cheeks bulging and eyes watering as you stare up at him kneeling over your head, and the way he looks at you makes your belly burn, blistering, with want.
"S'good," he groans, forehead wrinkles, cheeks the darkest shade of roseate. His beard is still damp, still wet from when he devoured you whole, and made you cum on his tongue, lips lifted up in a snarl so he could press the flat of his front teeth to your clit. You don't think he's ever looked more handsome than when he stares down at you in raw, naked blue. "Doin' s'good. Takin' me so—uhhhn, fuck—so good—"
He grunts like a beast. A rasping groan dragged up from deep within his belly, echoing through his ribs. It vibrates the air around you until your head buzzes from the decibels, the frequency the perfect pitch to set you on fire.
Bear cums with a choked roar, and watches—greedily, hungrily—as you swallow down his cum, hand resting over your jugular to feel it all slide down in three, thick gulps. His eyes flutter, chest—slick with sweat; coarse hair matted to his wet skin—heaves as he cums, letting out a series of deep, bone-rattling grunts of your name, and uhhh fuck, fuck, fuck, yeah, take it, that’s it—
Ocean blue eyes fall, lidded and heavy, when he slides his softening cock out of your mouth, spitting cum on your tongue, lips, as he slips free.
His eyes widen, then, when he sees it staining your skin, and you think of what he said before—church every Sunday, prayer before every meal, before bed, in the morning; before a mission—and wonder if the sight of you covered in the pearlescent mess, proof of your coupling, makes him think of Catholic guilt. Sins. Damnation.
His thumb slides over your cheekbone, catching the droplets that run down the seam of your swollen, bruised lips.
"You—," he swallows. You watch his Adam's apple bob, and see more than just concern in the craters of blue. "You alright?"
You run your tongue over your stinging lips, making a show of the slow way you roll it over tender, red flesh, and flash a languid smile up at him, mouth glossy and wet from spit and cum. You feel it pool the corners of your mouth. "You taste so good, Bear."
His eyes darken into a deep slate. The electric blue sky before an approaching tornado hits.
"Dirty girl—," he groans, voice a thunderclap. A storm surge in the distance.
(You just haven't figured out yet if you're in the eye of the storm, or should be ducking for cover.)
Your wrists are raw—much like the rest of you. Chafed and red, and cut a little around the delicate bump of your bone.
He swallows when he sees it. A click in his throat. Something flashes in the depths of moondust blue: awareness, maybe. Coherence. Sobriety.
His thumb, rough and worn; skin dry and cracked, rubs the congealed blood on the seam.
You're not sure if it's meant to soothe or to erase.
(You think that those might not be mutually exclusive with him.)
He doesn't say sorry. Doesn't say much of anything, really. But he rubs your skin, soothing the ache in your wrists, and seems a little flustered at the sight of your raw flesh. Maybe, a little embarrassed that he lost control so much.
(Or maybe, that he liked it more than he thought he would.)
His hand folds over your wrist—bearish paws; long, thick fingers, knuckles split, cracked, and scarred—and swallows it whole. Consumed, entirely, in his clutch. He shudders when he sees how easily his thumb curls over his index finger. Delicate bones in his loose grip. He squeezes once, twice. The undulations feel rhythmic and routine: the same pattern you used on those dumb, yellow stress balls they handed out in the therapist's office.
One, two, three. One, two, three.
You let him.
Let him hold your arm in his palm, his thumb brushing over your soft skin, and stay quiet. Silent. There is a war cerulean; battles in azul. You watch it play out in the krasts of his eyes, craters that mirror Tycho.
It's when his jaw clicks, teeth grinding together, do you know that there is a stalemate.
"C'mon," he rasps, voice static, scratchy. He swallows, and jerks his chin toward the bed. "Lay down with me."
"There was a man," he clears his throat, and the noise makes you shift, sliding your cheek across his chest to look at him. He meets your stare. Oceanic white. You can't place the look in his eyes. Melting glaciers. He clears his throat again, and brings his hand up to play with the hair falling over your shoulder. "He, uh. He was like… a mentor to me. Didn't… didn't like my old man. He was—"
Something twists over his expression; an old hurt. An ancient ache. It's healed. Skin pink and smooth, but still pulls tight some days.
"—A piece of shit."
Your fingers cart through the bed of hair on his chest, sweat-slicked and matted. Gritty. Salt clings to the tips when you drag them through the wry curls. It's not a comfort. It's not much of anything. Just—
Reassurance. You're here, your fingerprints on his skin, his sweat on your hands. His heart thudding in your ear.
"I see him sometimes," he admits, the words sticking to his throat when he swallows. The words crawl up, climbing through the molasses that congeal there, thick and tacky from his impromptu shattering. "I see all of them."
You don't offer anything. No words, no sounds of sympathy. He isn't looking for answers; this isn't a problem that needs a solution. It's a confessional. It's taking stock of his scars, and the splinters in his mind.
You don't know why he's telling you this, these words are meant for someone special. Someone important.
"I had a daughter, a—"
Had. Had.
"She—" it's choked. "I killed a lot of people, and then she died. I wasn't—I wasn't home when it happened. I was a world away, killing a kid."
He swallows, but says nothing more. Waits. Waits.
You wonder if it's for condemnation. For scorn or hatred, disgust. Maybe you should feel those things for a man who confesses to killing a child in war, but—
You don't.
Simply put. You feel nothing at all. Or—
No.
You feel too much. It roars through you, an avalanche of emotions, all coalescing together into one massive volley of everything. They whip by, too fast for you to reach out and cling to any of them.
So, you don't. You let them run through you, shredding your insides until it's raw and empty, and numb.
Numb.
But he isn't. Not really. You feel his muscles tense, coiling. Preparing to flee.
You press your hand to heart, feeling the rapid pulse against your palm. He quiets under your touch.
"It's okay." You murmur, raising up to place a kiss at the corner of his mouth. Soft, tender. "It's okay, Joe."
His eyes tell you everything: it isn't, but he doesn't care. He'd do it again, again, again.
Instead, he says:
"I don't know how to move on."
Your breath stutters in your chest.
You're thirteen again. Your mum has a new husband now. A man who is several shades of okay all neatly wrapped a wholesome bow. A pastor. Less likely to cheat, she says, and then her face sours. Sours and twists with a lingering pain you feel in your bones.
The perceived loyalty due to occupation. It's a rocky foundation to start a marriage on.
(You don't tell her this. She would never listen to you, anyway.)
They take you to the Dominican three months after they told you your dad died.
Left us for something better, and ended up dying alone, is what she tells you, eyes red-rimmed and cheeks raw. Her spite isn't enough to cover up the ache in her voice when she speaks. Good riddance.
You don't think your dad was a bad man. He made terrible choices, and hurt you deep—so, so deep that a chasm formed in the punch he left behind; eroded and blistering—but he isn't a monster.
Wasn't.
Wasn't, now, because you never use present tense when talking about him. Never. You forced yourself to grow out of that habit while you were lost inside the strange microcosm you fell into the weeks (months, years) after his death.
You stop referring to him in currents because it gives you hope (stupid, stupid—) and gnarls behind your ribs like a sickness. A rotting wound that never heals. One you wish you could remove, scrape off of your bones until it's gone.
They cut off the necrosed parts to save the rest of the body. Sever the gangrenous limb to keep the heart beating. You think about doing the same but then you'd have a hole inside of you the size of a canyon, of Tycho, and nothing to fill it.
You'd gotten used to the stench of rot, anyway.
(Gone, forever. But with this—you still feel him, even if it's poisoning your bloodstream, and rotting your bones.)
It makes you think of before when you could say isn't or is or does or won't or will instead of wasn't, used to, did. Past tense. Gone. Faded. Ripped out of your life like the ugly pages of your journal where you'd penned letters to him each holiday, birthday, father's day—only for them to be crumbled and tossed in the bin.
Gone. Gone.
(He never wrote back, anyway.)
You still ache. Still hurt. Things you wished you said, things you wished you didn't. It clots inside of your sternum. Where it leaks hurt and feels like a sore throat whenever you try to say his name, speak of him.
You wonder if it's the same for him.
"I lost my dad."
He tenses, and the breath he takes is dipped in an aching sense of understanding, a small measure of relief.
It's not happiness over death: it's camaraderie in shades of loss.
Kinship in grief. There is always that resounding sense of familiarity whenever you meet someone who's suffered the same agony, the same bereavement. Around everyone else, you pretend. You have to. Telling them about the clandestine phantoms that reach for you, the talons that dig into your flesh, hooking into your skin, isn't the same as sharing it with someone who knows.
There is no pity. No sense of discomfort when they flounder, unsure what to say or do, or how to make a throbbing hurt stop. It's just—
Understanding. Acceptance.
"He cheated on my mum," you trace figure-eights in the thick bed of hair that covers his chest. "Left us for her. I used to wait for him to come home everyday. I never said anything to her, but I'd hope. And then—," his fingers mimic the pattern on your shoulder blade. You shiver, burrow closer into his warmth. "She left him. And—and he died. All alone. The last thing he ever said to me was that he'd teach me how to swim."
He's quiet, milling over your words. His chest vibrates when he makes a noise; the rasping of an old engine. A grumble. "Did you ever learn?"
"No."
You wonder if he thinks about the promise he made you that night on the boardwalk. A pinky promise cemented with peanut butter.
"How do you let go?"
You think of empty bottles, and emptier promises.
Swimming lessons you avoided. Ones you ran from.
"It's not something you learn. It's just—something you have to do. You can't bury it because it'll just rot. You can't run from it because it'll just catch up to you. You have to face it. Take it on. Or it ruins you."
An epiphany in sin.
"Can't bury it."
His hands slide over your flesh, heavy and wanting, and you let him. Let him take, take—
Rough finger scrape over your hardening nipple before it's swallowed in the cup of his massive palm.
Bear heaves, breath harsh and heavy, when he rolls you under him, under his bulk.
Eyes flash blue. Blue. Blue. Clearer than you'd ever seen them before. Melting sapphire cresting over only black. You see nothing but yourself in his eyes, glossy and dark in the shine of his gaze.
Something gnarls over the surface. Stones skipped over a stagnant pool, a currentless pond.
It trembles. Water rippling.
And then it breaks.
His arms brace on the flat pillow above your head, chest pressed so tight to your own, it almost hurts to breathe. Your lungs can barely expand under his weight, his bulk, but you don't push him away. Your nail digs into the hard, fleshy planes of his back, legs locked around his thick waist as he seats himself as deep as possible inside of you.
Your gasps, heavy pants, are shared in the thin space that separates you. He swallows each noise you let out down, eyes fixed, unwavering, focused—and so blue, blue, blue—on yours, widening at the corners.
His mouth is open, parted, and he kisses you, it feels like he's trying to drink you in, devour you.
It's still not enough. You need him closer.
"I know," he slurs the word into your mouth, and kisses you again, jaw dropping open, unhinging, as he tries to consume you whole. "I need this, I need it—"
He fucks you hard, and deep. Each thrust is blunt, bludgeoning. It jars into you until phosphenes erupt over your widened eyes, moulting black across your vision. His cockhead grinds into the soft plug of your womb, and each time he hits, he pauses for a moment, and then moves. Moves his hips in a way that feels like he's trying to wrench it open, to jimmy your seal until it gives, until he's closer to you than ever before.
It's brutal. Deep, and punishing. He takes, takes—
"I need it—fuck—I—"
He babbles into your mouth, lips wide and wet as he presses sloppy kisses to your face in the middle of each desperate, crushing word.
"If—if it's too much, hit me," he grunts, pushing in so deep inside of you, that something gives. Something gives, breaks, and he's suddenly deeper than he'd ever been before, and it aches. It hurts, but you want it to. "Just—fuckin' hit me if you can't take it—"
Your trembling legs tighten around him, hand raking up his back until you meet the soft hair at the nape of his neck. You cup the back of his head in the palm of your hand, pulling him closer. Closer.
You'll give whatever he needs. Whatever he wants.
He groans your name and it sounds like relief, something desperate and aching. It breaks something inside of him. Shatters his tenuous self-control, and he falls into you. Into the seal of your arms. He mouths over your face, catching your lips in a messy, breathless kiss, whispering gospels of need into your open mouth, filling your lungs with his hymnal.
"I need—I need this, I need you—"
He bears down on you, lungs straining under his heft, but you choke it down. Choking in the air he releases, and let it clot in your collapsing lungs.
"Take it, Joe, take it—"
In your hands, he shatters.
The days merge, congeal into each other in a sticky-wet gossamer of sweat, and sex, and booze.
You can take him now. To the root. He goes out, once, and brings back a bottle of lube and a tequila, and has a spark in his eyes that makes your heart hammer.
He drinks from the bottle as you wrap your lips around his cock, hand slick and wet and sticky from the lube, eyes glowing amber as he gazes down at you.
You forget where you are, and spend your time between the sheets, under his body as he mouths across your ankle, suckling the impression of his teeth into your skin as he fucks you hard and deep, the headboard slamming against the wall each punishing thrust.
Or on top of him, his hands oscillating between gripping your hips, slamming your pelvis down to swallow his cock to the base, or grasping your swaying breasts, fingers pinching your aching nipples between rough, calloused fingers, telling you how good you look, how amazing you feel.
(His hand around your throat once. Not squeezing. Not tightening. Just holding you steady as you rode him, bouncing on his cock until you felt your lungs collapse, and your heart lurch.)
He likes you on your back, likes to fuck you deep, hard; punishing. Likes to fold your body in half, knees pressed to your chest as he opens you up, and batters against the seal of your womb as if he was demanding entrance. He can't miss anything like this. Every expression, every flicker across your face, is catalogued. Filtered. Filed. He uses it against you, then. Angling his cock, and battering against that place that made your eyes roll, or made you moan the loudest.
It's a struggle with his girth, but he spends an hour fucking you stupid, stretching you with his cock, until he can roll you on your belly, fingers gripping the headboard, cheek pressed to the damp pillow, as he fucks you from behind, giving you all of him. Take me, he husks, gripping your hips so hard, you can feel your bones bruise. That's it. Good girl. Good—fuck—!
It's messy, and gross, and he doesn't even bother showering unless it means he can push you flush against the slimy tile, and fill your cunt up over and over again.
He doesn't bother with condoms. Likes, you think, to watch it leak out of your raw, chafed pussy when he's finished. He leans back on his haunches, eyes fixed on the apex of your thighs, chin tilted to the side as he drinks right from the bottle, and stares. Watches. His throat bobs with each gulp, spent, sticky cock twitching when you clench, spilling more of his cum onto the always damp mattress below.
You stink of sex and the whisky he pours over your breasts, hungry mouth following to slurp the droplets up.
It twists around you until everything feels out of focus, dizzying. You don't remember anything except the musky taste of his briny skin, his viscous cum on your tongue, your face and chest (fuck, never did this before—); the searing heat of his body pressing you into the stale mattress again until all you know how to say is yes, please, more, and his name over and over again.
It's numbed. Dulled.
You're blissed out on sex and the taste of him, the wrought iron scent of his scabbed knuckles, the crack on the corner of his lip, and alcohol.
You chase kerosene dreams and wrap yourself up in a web of lies but none of it matters when he pulls you close, lips to your temple, and breathes your name out between deep gasps for air.
You could stay like this forever, you think, spun tight in his four walls.
He lays down, and tugs you into the crook of his body, head resting on his big arm. It's firm, unyielding, under your head. The pressure makes something ache in your skull.
It feels a bit too natural to turn in his embrace, until your face is pressed into the seam of his armpit, hand falling over his chest, bent at the elbow to let your palm rest over his sternum. The rapid thud of his heart doesn't calm you like those trashy harlequin novels you'd read, but it feels good when it pulses under your lifeline. The rhythm is familiar.
A reminder that you're not alone despite the chasm that looms in the narrow space between your bodies.
His hand wraps over your shoulders, bringing you closer to him. A lover's embrace. Cuddling. It doesn't make sense inside this, inside—
Whatever this is.
A mistake.
(A sickness.)
His arm tightens around you, head turning toward you.
It's the closest you'd ever been to him before. Glacial blue framed by thick brown lashes.
Your mother would have called them kind eyes; small, almond shaped with hooded lids. Upturned.
You wonder if the sentiment would still ring true even with the ghosts that lurk in the crevasses. Pitched bivouacs in the alcoves where they linger. Fester.
This moment feels like too much. The shades of intimacy are jarring, unnatural considering the status of this whole thing. It doesn't fit. Doesn't belong.
(You wonder if he held them like this, too, and hate yourself a little bit more when cold metal sears your skin.)
The echo of his heart—
You know why it's so familiar now.
It's the throb of a gaping wound, pulsing with infection.
(His four walls begin to crumble under the deluge that rears. A home made of mud, pipe dreams, and papier-mache.)
The towel reeks of mildew when you scour it through your wet hair, and the scent lingers on the split ends that cling to your damp skin.
Proof of the weekend lingers in the blemishes staining your body, in the soreness between your thighs, the back of your throat when he pressed the cup of his hand to the back of your skull, and fed you his cock—
Your head swims. Dizzy and too full, and too—
Too much.
It feels like waking up in the middle of a fever. Skin burning, searing; the starchy sheets cling to you, and everything feels—uncomfortable. Too much, too much.
It's like that, but worse because you're not sick. You're not in the throes of a fever, but of reality. Brutal and crushing, and awful, and—
Your skin feels too small. Too tight. Your head aches—a weekend spent drinking nothing but him, and booze, and cheap spring water, and stale, bitter coffee from the convenience store down the road—and you wish it was from a hangover only, dehydration, and lack of proper sleep, and—
And not from the bitter clutch of poor choices. Bad decisions.
Sick. Maybe, you are.
You press the back of your hand to your forehead, but your skin is cold, clammy.
(You wish it was hot enough to burn.)
He's sitting on the edge of the bed when you open the bathroom door, steam billowing out around you like a hazy white cloud, and lifts his chin, eyes finding yours.
He's softer, somehow.
Open. Raw. Vulnerable.
But the stillness feels like stagnant water brimming with microbes that will kill you with just a drop.
You taste biofilm when his lips press to yours, tongue carrying the tang of legionella.
A sickness. A sickness—
A bottle of whisky sits on the end-table. Open. Half-finished.
His lips are glossy with the shine of it.
Why you expected sobriety when this whole weekend was fuelled with nothing but the bitter taste of regret and ethanol is something you can't contend with when he's looking at you, eyes reddened from the high, lack of sleep.
Can't bury it so he looks for answers at the bottom of the bottle.
You think of pretty boy and wonder if this is what he meant when he said send him home, but don't let him destroy himself like this.
"Hey," his hands are too gentle around your forearm, fingers tucked much too gingerly around the circumference. He swallows you whole. Fingers overlapping. You fit in the palm of his hand.
A place you don't belong.
He pulls you into the crux of his thighs.
"Look—," he starts, but says nothing else. His eyes skirt down, running the length of you as you stand, bare and bruised by his hands, fingers, lips, teeth. A mosaic of sin on your flesh. A brutal display of pittence in the form of a handprint on your hips. Black stains over your neck, under your jaw.
He likes it, you think. His eyes darken, twisting with something proprietary. Possessive. A hunger, a want. Rapacious.
Your body is painted with lies. Deception. Handprints in the form of self-destruction.
It's—
An awakening. A slap back into reality.
There is no fairytale ending with a man who loses himself in amber.
Who fingered you with his wedding ring on—
"I want to—"
"—You should go home."
You expect anger.
Resentment. Bitterness.
But something aching gnarls over his brow, a hurt that feels as flummoxing as it is heartaching; a devastating blow—one that leaves him blindsided and crushed. And you don't get it. You don't. He shouldn't be hurt over this. There shouldn't be the glimmer of agony in his eyes when he looks at you as if you'd struck him across the face with your open, searing palm.
It blisters through you. Third degree burns from the sun after spending all day in the ocean before being washed up on the rocky beach. Spat out onto the shore after trying to chase that effervescent feeling of when you were younger, and did nothing at all to try and save yourself from drowning.
A high in blue.
A high in booze.
(Maybe, you're a lot more alike than you want to admit.)
What did your mum say?
If only she sent his sorry ass home instead of sucking his—
"Go home, Bear."
The borrowed words tumble out, shaded in concealed agony. It's everything you wished she had said to him, to your father, before you knew what it felt like to feel water flood your lungs.
"You don't know what you're talking about," it's deadly. Low. A broken husk that shatters the roseate haze that clung to the blue in his iris. It bleeds out. A polynya in its place.
"I'm not going to be the other woman."
It feels—
Awful.
There is no catharsis in this when he looks up, when his eyes flash in something that sits heavy in your chest. Recognition. Sobriety.
"You need to fix yourself. Straighten up. Go home."
He leaves, and takes another part of you with him.
(You sever a part of yourself and leave in the mouldering hotel room that still reeks of stale sweat, cheap whisky, and sex.)
#more shameless smut and angst#Joe needs a hug and some therapy#but all we have in stock atm is sex#Joe Graves#Bear Graves#Joe 'the Bear' Graves#Joe the Bear Graves#SIX#Navy Seals SIX#SIX 2017#navy seal team six#joe graves x reader#joe graves x you#bear graves x reader#joe bear graves x reader#joe bear graves
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I sat with my pen in my hand, trying to think up the worst reason a person could have for killing another person, and that’s what came to mind.
- Johnny Cash
This is how Cash explained how he came up with the line ‘But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die’ in his iconic song ‘Fulsom Prison Blues’.
In 1953, Johnny Cash recorded ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and two years later included it on his album Johnny Cash and his Hot and Blue Guitar! Cash was inspired to write the song after seeing the 1951 movie Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison while serving in West Germany with the United States Air Force at Landsberg in Bavaria. The location, incidentally, of another famous gaol and where Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf when he was incarcerated after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1924. After the war it was re-named War Criminal Prison No. 1 and kept war criminals convicted at the Nuremberg trials.
Folsom Prison Blues cleverly combined two folk idioms - the train song and the prison song. For decades Cash nearly always opened his gigs with Folsom Prison Blues after greeting the audience with the same introduction each time: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,”. On 13th January 1968, Johnny Cash and June Carter, the Statler Brothers, the Tennessee Three, with Carl Perkins on guitar, recorded a live version of the song before the prisoners of Folsom State Prison, Folsom, California. The performances - one in the morning, another in the afternoon - can be heard on the album Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison.
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January 13th, 1968
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The 25 best symphonic metal albums (by Metal Hammer)
24. Sirenia - Riddles, Ruins & Revelations (2021)
Pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a symphonic metal band, Sirenia’s 10th studio album Riddles, Ruins & Revelations embraced the darker side of the human psyche, as themes of addiction and declining mental health took centre stage in this sprawling epic. The Norwegians welcomed huge, melodic death metal elements to an already bustling pallet of gothic synths, infectious grooves and seductive melodies, Sirenia’s duality of melding beautiful music to harrowing subject matter making for a sympho-industrial masterpiece.
20. Delain - Lucidity (2006)
Former Within Temptation keyboardist Martijn Westerholt intended Delain to be a studio project, but his ambitious vision melded cinematic orchestration and bombastic metal into an extravagant gothic symphony too good to be kept locked away. Appearances from previous bandmate Sharon den Adel and then-Nightwish bassist Marko Hietala helped Delain’s credibility, however it was the angelic vocals of (now former) frontwoman Charlotte Wessels that brought the band’s debut album to life. Majestic and heart-sweepingly melodramatic, Lucidity is an essential chef’s kiss of a record. Mwah!
14. Theatre of Tragedy - Velvet Darkness They Fear (1996)
Arguably the most important of the European bands springing up in reaction to the romantic gothic doom innovations of My Dying Bride, this Norwegian septet’s seductive second album was steeped in the spirit of grandiloquent overdrive. Not only one of the first doom bands to employ full-time keyboards, Theatre Of Tragedy pioneered metal’s ‘beauty and the beast’ aesthetic, with duetting angelic/demonic vocals giving fulsome voice to a mournful soundtrack enhanced by the strings of the Streicherensemble Nedeltcho Boiadjiev, under German pianist Klaus Wagenleiter.
10. Epica - The Holographic Principle (2016)
By Epica's seventh studio platter The Holographic Principle, the hardworking Dutch sextet were a well-oiled machine: muscular, confident and keen to ramp up just about every element of their multi-faceted signature sound. More heavenly choirs, more unorthodox ethnic instrumentation, more brutal metal riffs, more of everything – and everything better, from storming killer-robot headbanger Universal Death Squad to the sublime elegiac grace of Once Upon A Nightmare. “You can’t ever reach the ceiling,” notes frontwoman Simone Simons of the album’s densely textured, hyperactive opulence.
6. After Forever - Prison Of Desire (2000)
While many turn to Decipher as the jewel of these Dutch sensualists’ discography, its predecessor, debut Prison Of Desire, not only shined a brighter light on the possibilities for growing orchestration and sumptuousness in metal, it introduced soprano Floor Jansen (current Nightwish vocalist) to the world. Coloured by the wildness of youth, main composer Mark Jansen’s death metal past and the possibility their sound could have fallen flat with the denim’n’leather-clad hordes, Prison Of Desire teemed with rawness and no-holds-barred extravagance.
5. Within Temptation - The Silent Force (2004)
Although you’re likely to be distracted by the captivating strength of Sharon den Adel’s upfront vocal dynamism, Within Temptation’s symphonic aspirations reached their most querulously romantic apex on this goosebump-inducing masterwork of the form. Although the guitars were louder and crunchier than on 2000’s Mother Earth, and the open- hearted pop savvy was at full widescreen pelt, this 2004 follow-up confirmed the band’s special affinity for wizardly orchestral bombast, here performed by the Ego Works Session Orchestra, under the noted Russian conductor Felix Korobov.
3. Nightwish - Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2015)
While the Finnish band were already among the elite of symphonic metal, Endless Forms Most Beautiful really raised the bar for the genre. The concept was based around the evolutionary theories of Richard Dawkins – who even guests on the record – and Charles Darwin, and the scope and expanse of the music matched the ideological ambition. It all came together in a brilliantly realised, fully formed album, with new vocalist Floor Jansen proving a fine addition to the band. Endless Forms Most Beautiful was the sound of Nightwish coming of age.
#Emmanuelle Zoldan#Sirenia#Charlotte Wessels#Delain#liv kristine#theatre of tragedy#Simone Simons#Epica#Floor Jansen#After Forever#nightwish#Sharon den Adel#within temptation
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Music for Films, Vol. II: Chick Habit
For good and for ill, Quentin Tarantino’s movies have been strongly associated with postmodern pop culture — particularly by folks whose reactions to the word “postmodern” tend toward pursed lips and school-marmishly wagged fingers. There for a while, reading David Denby on Tarantino was similar to reading Michiko Kakutani on Thomas Pynchon: almost always the same review, the same complaints about characters lacking “psychological depth,” the same handwringing over an ostensible moral insipidness. Truth be told, Tarantino’s pranksome delight with flashy surfaces and stylistic flourishes that are ends in themselves gives tentative credence to some of the caviling. Critics have raised related concerns over the superficiality of Tarantino’s tendency toward stunt casting, especially his resurrections of aging actors relegated to the film industry’s commercial margins: John Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, David Carradine, Darryl Hannah, Don Johnson and so on. There might be a measure of cynicism in the accompanying cinematic nudging and winking, but it’s also the case that a number of the performances have been terrific.
The writer-director brings a similar sensibility to his sound-tracking choices, demonstrating the cooler-than-thou, deep-catalog knowledge of an obsessive crate-digger. Tarantino thematized that knowledge in his break-through feature, Reservoir Dogs (1992). Throughout the film, the characters tune in to Steven Wright deadpanning as the deejay of “K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the Seventies”; like the characters, the viewer transforms into a listener, treated to such fare as the George Baker Selection’s “Little Green Bag” (1970) and Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut” (1971). As with the above-mentioned actors, Tarantino has sifted pop culture’s castoffs and detritus, unearthing songs and delivering experiences of renewed value — and thereby proving the keenness of his instincts and aesthetic wit. “Listen to (or look at) this!” he seems to say, with his cockeyed, faux-incredulous grin. “Can you believe you were just going to throw this out?” And mostly, it works. If the Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” (1974) has become a sort of semi-ironized accompaniment to hipsterish good times, that resonance has a lot more to do with Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel and Co. cruising L.A. in a hulking American sedan than with the Disney Co.’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
In Death Proof (2007), Tarantino’s seventh film and unaccountably his least favorite, soundtrack and screen are both full to bursting with the flotsam and jetsam of “entertainment” conceived as an industry.
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In just the opening minutes, we see outmoded moviehouse announcements, complete with cigarette-burn cue dots; big posters of Brigitte Bardot from Les Bijoutiers du claire de lune (1958) and of Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue (1970) bedecking the apartment of Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier); the tee shirt worn by Shanna (Jordan Ladd), which bears the image of Tura Satana; and strutting under all of it are the brassy cadences of Jack Nitzsche’s “The Last Race,” taken from his soundtrack for the teensploitation flick Village of the Giants (1965). Bibs and bobs, bits and pieces of low- and middle-brow cinema are cut up and reconstructed into a fulsome swirl of signs. And there’s an unpleasant edge to it; the cuts are echoed by the action of the camera, which has been busily cleaving the bodies of the women on screen into fragments and parts. First the feet of Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), propped up on a dashboard; then Julia, all ass and gams; then Arlene’s lower half again, chopped into slices by the stairs she dashes up (“I gotta take the world’s biggest fucking piss!”) and by the close-up that settles on her belly and pelvis, her hand shoved awkwardly into her crotch.
As often happens in Tarantino’s movies, furiously busy meta-discursive play collapses the images’ problematic content under multiple levels of reference and pastiche. The film is one half of Grindhouse (2007), Tarantino’s collaboration with his buddy Robert Rodriguez, an old-fashioned double-feature comprising the men’s love letters to the exploitation cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. In those thousands of movies — mondo, beach-cutie, nudie-cutie, women in prison, early slasher, rape-revenge, biker gang, chop-socky, Spaghetti Western and muscle-car-worship flicks (and we could add more subgenres to the list) — symbolic violence inflicted on women’s bodies was de rigueur, and frequently the principal draw. Tarantino shot Death Proof himself, so he is (more than usually) directly responsible for all the framing and focusing — and he’s far too canny a filmmaker not to know precisely what he’s doing with and to those bodies. The excessive, camera-mediated gashing and trimming is a knowing, perhaps deprecating nod to all that previous, gratuitous T&A. His sound-tracking choice of “The Last Race” metaphorically underscores the point: in Bert I. Gordon’s Village of the Giants, bikini-clad teens find and consume an experimental growth serum, which causes them to expand to massive proportions. Really big boobs, actual acres of ass. Get it?
Of course, all the implied japing and judging is deeply embedded in the film’s matrix of esoteric references and fleeting allusions. You’d have to be very well versed in the history of exploitation cinema to pick up on the indirect homage to Gordon’s goofy movie. But as in Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino doesn’t just gesture, he dramatizes, folding an authoritative geekdom into the action of Death Proof. In the set-up to Death Proof’s notorious car crash scene, Julia is on the phone, instructing one of her fellow deejays to play “Hold Tight!” (1966) by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. Don’t recognize the names? “For your information,” Julia snorts, Pete Townsend briefly considered abandoning the Who, and he thought about joining the now-obscure beat band, to make it “Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, Tich & Pete. And if you ask me, he should have.”
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It’s among the most gruesomely violent sequences in Tarantino’s films (which do not run short on graphic bloodshed), and Julia receives its most spectacular punishment. Those legs and that rump, upon which the camera has lavished so much attention, are torn apart. Her right leg flips, flies and slaps the pavement, a hunk of suddenly flaccid meat. Again, Tarantino proves himself an adept arranger of image, sign and significance. Want to accuse him of fetishizing Julia’s legs? He’ll materialize the move, reducing the limb to a manipulable fragment, and he’ll invest the moment with all of the intrinsic violence of the fetish. He’ll even do you one better — he’ll make that violence visible. Want to watch? You better buckle up and hold tight.
Hold on a second. “Hold Tight”? The soundtrack has passed over from intertextual in-joke to cruel punchline. It doesn’t help that the song is so much fun, and that it’s fun watching the girls groove along to it, just before Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) obliterates them, again and again and again. The awful insistence of the repetition is another set-up, establishing the film’s narrative logic: the repeated pattern and libidinal charge-and-release of Stuntman Mike’s vehicular predations. It is, indeed, “a sex thing,” as Sheriff Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) informs us in his cartoonish, redneck lawman’s drawl. Soon the sexually charged repetitions pile up: see Abernathy’s (Rosario Dawson) feet hanging out of Kim’s (Tracie Thom) 1972 Mustang, in a visual echo of Arlene’s, and of Julia’s. Then listen to Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) belt out some of Smith’s cover of “Baby It’s You” (1969), which we most recently heard 44 minutes before, as Julia danced ecstatically by the Texas Chili Bar’s jukebox. Then watch Abernathy as she sees Stuntman Mike’s tricked-out ’71 Nova, a vibrating hunk of metallic machismo — just like Arlene saw it, idling menacingly back in Austin, with another snatch of “Baby It’s You” wisping through that moment’s portent.
For a certain kind of viewer, the Nova’s low-slung, growling charms are hard to resist, as is the sleazy snarl of Willy DeVille’s “It’s So Easy” (1980; and we might note that Jack Nitzsche produced a couple of Mink DeVille’s early records, connecting another couple strands in the web) on the Nova’s car stereo. Those prospective pleasures raise the question of just who the film is for. That may seem obvious: the same folks — dudes, mostly — who find pleasure in exploitation movies like Vanishing Point (1971), Satan’s Sadists (1969) or The Big Doll House (1971). But there are a few other things to account for, like how Death Proof repeatedly passes the Bechdel Test, and how long those scenes of conversation among women go on, and on. Most notable is the eight-minute diner scene, a single take featuring Abernathy, Kim, Lee and Zoë (Zoë Bell, doing a cinematic rendition of her fabulous self, an instance of stunt casting that literalizes the “stunt” part). Among other things, the women discuss their careers in film, the merits of gun ownership and Kim and Zoë’s love of (you guessed it) car chase movies like Vanishing Point. One could read that as a liberatory move, a suggestion that cinema of all kinds is open to all comers. All that’s required is a willingness to watch. But watching the diner scene becomes increasing claustrophobic. The camera circles the women’s table incessantly, and on the periphery of the shot, sitting at the diner’s counter, is Stuntman Mike. The circling becomes predatory, the threat seems pervasive.
If you’ve seen the film, you know how that plays out: Zoë and Kim play “ship’s mast” on a white 1970 Dodge Challenger (the Vanishing Point car); Stuntman Mike shows up and terrorizes them mercilessly; but then Abernathy, Zoë and Kim chase him down and beat the living shit out of him, likely fatally. In another sharply conceived cinematic maneuver, Tarantino executes a climactic sequence that inverts the diner scene: the women surround Stuntman Mike, abject and pleading, and punch and kick him as he bounces from one of them to another. The camera zips from vantage to vantage within the circle, deliriously tracking the action. All the jump cuts intensify the violence, and they provide another contrast to the diner’s scene’s silky, unbroken shot. The sounds and the impact of the blows verge on slapstick, and our identification with the women makes it a giddily gross good time.
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So, an inversion seeks to undo repetition. Certainly, Stuntman Mike’s intent to repeat the car-crash-kill-thrill is undone, and predator becomes prey. But, as is inevitable with Tarantino’s cinema, there are complications, other echoes and patterns to suss out. For instance: as the women stride toward the wrecked Nova, while Stuntman Mike pathetically wails, the camera zooms in on their asses. Bad asses? Nice asses? What’s the right nomenclature? To make sure we can put the shot together with Julia’s first appearance in the film, Abernathy has hiked up her skirt, revealing a lot of leg. Repetition reasserts itself. In an exacerbating circumstance, Harvey Weinstein’s grubby fingerprints are smeared onto the film. Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios is credited with production of Grindhouse, but Dimension Films, a Weinstein Brothers company, handled distribution.
When the film cuts to its end titles, we hear April March’s “Chick Habit” (1995), with its spot-on lyric: “Hang up the chick habit / Hang it up, daddy / Or you’ll never get another fix.” And so on. Even here, where the girl-power vibe feels strongest (cue Abernathy burying a bootheel in Stuntman Mike’s face), there are echoes, patterns. Note how the striding bassline of “Chick Habit” strongly recalls the pulse beating through Nitzsche’s “The Last Race.” Note that March’s song is a cover, of “Laisse tomber les filles,” originally recorded by yé-yé girl France Gall. The song was penned by Serge Gainsbourg, pop provocateur and notorious womanizer. The two collaborated again, releasing “Les Sucettes,” a tune about a teeny-bopper who really likes sucking on lollipops, when Gall was barely 18; the accompanying scandal nearly torpedoed her career. Gall refused to ever sing another song by Gainsbourg, and disavowed her hits.
Again, that’s all deeply embedded, somewhere in the film’s complicated play of pop irony and double-entendre and the sudden explosions of delight and disgust that intermittently reveal and conceal. Again, you’d have to know your pop history really well to catch up with the complications, and Death Proof moves so fast that there’s always another reference or allusion demanding your attention as the cars growl and the blood spurts. Too many signs to track, too many signals to decipher — that’s the postmodern. But perhaps we have become too glib, assuming that all signs are somehow equivalent. Death Proof insists otherwise. Much has been made of the film’s strange relation to digital filmmaking, of the sort that Rodriguez has made a career out of. Part of Grindhouse’s shtick is its goofball applications of CGI, all the scratches and skips and flaws that the filmmakers lovingly applied. They are digital effects, masquerading as damaged celluloid. Tarantino cut back against that grain, filming as much of the car chase’s maniacal stuntwork in meatspace as he safely could. Purposeful practical filmmaking, for a digitally enhanced cinematic experience, attempting to mimic the ways real film interacts with the physical environment and its manifold histories. Is that clever, or just more cultural clutter?
Amid all the clutter that crowds the characters onscreen, and their conversations in the film’s field of sound, it can be easy to lose track of the distinctions between appearances and the traces of the real bodies that worked to bring Death Proof to life. Which is why Tarantino’s inclusion of Bell is so crucial. She provides another inversion: Instead of masking her individual presence, doing stunts for other actresses in their clothes and hair (for Lucy Lawless in Xena: Warrior Princess, or for Uma Thurman in Tarantino’s Kill Bill films), Bell is herself, doing what she does best, projecting the technical elements of filmmaking — usually meant to bleed seamlessly into illusion — right onto the surface of the screen. And instead of allowing one group of girls to slip into a repeated pattern, bodies easily exchanged for other bodies, Bell’s presence and its implicit insistence on her particularity (who else can move like she does?) breaks up the superficial logic of cinema’s market for the feminine. She disrupts its chick habit. There’s only one woman like her.
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Jonathan Shaw
#music for films#chick habit#jonathan shaw#dusted magazine#death proof#quentin tarantino#reservoir dogs#grindhouse#Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich
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nothing proves that dean’s character was totally destroyed in later seasons more than fulsom prison blues. dean is fully willing to stay in jail, with or without sam just to finish the job and save people. Later seasons dean could never
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Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta defends giving sex predator Jeffrey Epstein the plea deal of the century
When Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta was a federal prosecutor in 2008 he gave sex predator Jeffrey Epstein a joke of a plea deal on sex crime charges. Epstein was given a 13-month prison sentence, but the billionaire spent most of the time in his plush office. He never faced federal charges. Now that Epstein has been arrested on additional charges of sickening sex crimes against children, people are asking Acosta why the hell he let Epstein off the hook the first time around by giving him a secret deal that a federal judge ruled had violated the victims' rights. At a press conference, Acosta answered that question by telling reporters that he did the best he could, that times have changed since 2008, and that the victims weren't cooperative enough. He concluded his statement by lavishing fulsome praise on President Trump.
CBS News White House correspondent Paula Reid, a former federal prosecutor, said Acosta's defense is bogus. "They had potentially dozens of witnesses they could have used to push this case forward," she said.
https://boingboing.net/2019/07/10/labor-secretary-alexander-acos.html
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