#stakeout on dope street
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Steven Seagal is... OUT FOR JUSTICE!
In the crossover event of the season, @thechurchofsplatterdaysaints and @watching-pictures-move have decided to join forces and tackle the human ponytail himself, Mr. Steven Seagal, starting with the 1991 John Flynn-directed classic, Out for Justice. There will be twice the bone-breaking, twice the indignant speechifying, twice the atrocious outfits, twice the weird cosplaying as members of other cultures. You can find @thechurchofsplatterdaysaints's thoughts on Out for Justice HERE. We hope you have as much fun reading about it as we did revisiting and writing about it. Enjoy!
Among its many qualities, Out for Justice has an all-timer title card. Seagal is sitting in a van with his partner on a stakeout when he notices a pimp beating on his hoes. Because he is presumably an honourable man (not in real life, and maybe not onscreen either), he decides to blow this bust that was likely several months in the making and dishes out some of the justice of the title on the pimp. Because Seagal is a foot taller than the pimp, he handily brushes off any swings the guy takes at him, and then tosses him through a windshield. Freeze frame. “Steven Seagal,” over the hole in the windshield, between the guy’s limp torso and Seagal’s scowling face. Cut to black. “Out for Justice.”
The movie is, in my humble opinion, Seagal’s best movie, in large part because it most entertainingly solutions for his shortcomings. Seagal can be an awkward physical presence (we’ve all seen that clip of him running in Above the Law), but this movie gets a lot more mileage out of the way he towers over his co-stars, like a spectre of death descending upon them, his hands kept busy with weapons both improvised and deliberate so he doesn’t flail them around awkwardly. The movie gives him a convincing streetwise swagger, and while his disinterested line readings and slipping Italian accent could be the source of laughs (and the latter certainly is), they place him intriguingly between both sides of the law. He gets scenes where he pleads with his captain Jerry Orbach to let him use less conventional methods. “I'll feed you every dope-diggin' dive he's got, but let me do it my way. You just give me an unmarked and a shotgun, alright?” In a first for movies about loose cannon cops, Orbach agrees after a few seconds of deliberation.
These alternate with scenes where he pals around with the local mob guys, alternately paying his respects and insulting them depending on his mood. Seagal at this point was cosplaying as a man with connections to the Sicilian mob (something that was truer of producer Julius Nasso), and he tries to sell this by lovingly reminiscing about the time his mob relation left some poor bastard in the trunk of their car while taking him to the movies, his Italian accent disappearing for large stretches of dialogue only to pop up when you least expect it. (That’s just Seagal keeping you on your toes.) The movie originated as a heftier story about the mob, and traces of this ambition can be felt in the Arthur Miller quote that opens the movie, and the smoky widescreen cinematography that wrings a certain grim atmosphere from the Brooklyn streets. Squint at some of the shadowy wood-paneled interior scenes and you see hints of Gordon Willis’ work on The Godfather. Given that this is a movie about Seagal beating the bejesus out of half of Brooklyn’s population, the finished film lacks such depth, but these elements do give a certain weight to the violence that transpires.
Less successful are the attempts to position Seagal as a family man and animal lover (he finds an abandoned puppy and christens it “Coraggio”, which is the strongest his Italian accent gets during the entire movie), although we do get a scene where Seagal tells the grocer he won’t buy dog food from New Jersey (“I don’t want no radioactive stuff”) and a hilariously out of place punchline to end the movie ("Is that a police dog or what?"). The scenes with his wife, a nice Italian girl who had the misfortune of having Seagal inflicted on her and is looking to get a divorce, have a really uncomfortable energy, especially when they have a heart to heart conversation him sitting on the couch and her kneeling in front of him. Moments like this, and other scenes where he speaks crudely to women, intimidates them or jerks them around, are where Seagal’s real life sleaziness seeps in. I understand that this may make parts of the movie hard to watch for some, but I do think these scenes carry a certain meanness that works with the overall movie. This is a cruel world, and that extends to our supposed heroes.
But the movie’s masterstroke is the villain. Seagal has never agreed to lose a physical altercation, so a more physically imposing villain would be a non-starter. Instead the movie pairs him with a villain who’s crazier and totally unpredictable, a totally demonic William Forsythe who goes on a crack-addled violent rampage seemingly with a death wish. Within the first few minutes, he not only offs Seagal’s partner in broad daylight in front of his friends and family, but then shoots a motorist in the head over a roadside argument. Anything can happen.
Because Forsythe is a maniac and Seagal is ruthless, the violence here gets pretty unhinged. Every altercation is a twist on Newton’s third law: every action has a disproportionately gruesome reaction. (The movie had to be edited down from an initial MPAA rating of NC-17.) Pull out a meat cleaver on Seagal? Expect some fingers lopped off. A shotgun is within reach? There’s a good chance somebody’s losing a knee. And don’t even think about picking up that corkscrew. The most entertaining stretch of the movie has Seagal insult every single jag-off in a bar and then take them out one by one with the help of some billiard balls in a towel, in a bone-crunching twist on Eddie Murphy’s star-making shakedown of a redneck bar in 48 Hrs. (Among his opponents is Dan Inosanto, sparring partner of Bruce Lee, referred affectionately by the other patrons as “Sticks”. In real life Inosanto could likely kick Seagal’s ass, but the scene is still a lot of fun.) And the final confrontation is less a fight scene than the systematic destruction of the villain’s body.
And holding all this together is a constant state of movement, with both the villain and Seagal driving around Brooklyn wreaking violent havoc, the movie exploding unpredictably into violence every few minutes. All bets are off.
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stakeout on dope street (us, kershner 58)
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Instagram @Baines
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No More Light (Chapter 7)
Summary: John is on a stakeout. But finds his attention is on a woman who moves into an apartment below the one he’s meant to be watching.
John Winchester & original fictional character. Eventual smut, plenty of angst.
Warnings: Cursing, talk of sacrifice, violence, mentions of abuse, light smut (nothing x rated)
Word Count: 2,643
Chapter summary: John and Red put their plan into action.
Italics are flashbacks.
SERIES MASTERLIST // MAIN MASTERLIST
I don’t remember if I had any places to go. The job with the stolen blood bags had been the main gig, I don’t usually like planning anything too far ahead of time. I don’t know who I’m gonna let down by not showing up somewhere. I didn’t wanna think about the next job, the next person in trouble. Red was it. All I could think about was her. I was invested.
My foot was pressing down hard, the miles building up behind us. The sun was setting and the thirst was real. I had to get to a bar quick.
Pulling up at a clean lookin’ establishment in the main street I hopped out. When the door swung open I could smell the beer soaked tables, that shit just stays in the wood. A bit of sawdust on the floor to cover the blood stains. Real nice.
The barkeep ignored me when I sat at the bar, chair squeaking as I shifted.
Red slapped her bag against the counter top and sighed heavily, getting the attention we needed.
‘Glass of Irish and something sweet for the lady.’ I grumbled, rubbing my hand across my beard, damn thing itches and hurts at the same time. It’s gotta go.
Red leaned over to me and brushed a hand across where I’d been touching. ‘I like it.’
‘You been reading my mind, doll?’
Crinkling her nose, she took a sip from the rum and coke that was handed to her.
‘Just what I needed. Back in a sec.’ Red disappeared into the ladies, leaving me to scope out the bar.
This was the place alright. It stank, it was dark and a few guys had eyes on me since I walked in. No one followed Red, at least.
It wouldn’t take long for her brother to arrive if any of these guys were his cronies. I starting tapping my foot, I didn’t like how long she was taking, if she were back here with me I could rest easy.
I swallowed the whiskey in two gulps, it burned so good. Her familiar scent hit me before she sat down again.
‘Fresh as a daisy.’
I chuckled. ‘You’re always fresh as a daisy.’
‘Thanks, John. That’s sweet.’
Red leaned in smiling and pecked me right on the lips. The barkeep gave us a sideways glance and threw open the cellar door, the clang as it hit the bar gave Red a jolt. She made an ‘oof’ sound.
‘Jumpy are we?’
The bottle of whiskey was within reach, fuck it. It took another shot.
‘I’m ok…considering.’
I grabbed hold of her hand, it was soft and small in my calloused ham.
‘I’m itchin’ to get going.’ With my free hand I shifted my leather jacket aside, giving her a glimpse of my 9mm tucked into my waistband.
The door swung open, a brilliant blast of evening light hit us where we were sitting. The silhouette was burned into my eyes, the fucker stood there that long.
‘Give us the girl and you can go.’ It said.
Red grabbed hold of the crook of my elbow.
‘Who is us?’
The speaker stepped in and stood aside for someone else, someone much larger. ‘Fuck me,’ I groaned.
Realisation crossed the big dopes face. ‘You!’ he pointed a finger at me from his one good hand.
‘Gigantor, let’s be friends.’
‘My name is not gigantor,’ he seethed, spit coating his bottom lip, leaking onto his chin.
I held up my hands, ‘take it easy big guy. I’m tryna be nice here. But, ‘fraid to say, my girl is not going with you.’
‘Oh she’s your girl now?’ The first guy stepped forward, abs pulled in, arms clenched as if he were going to run up on me.
‘Step back, brother or you’ll get a whole lot of me comin’ at you.’
I didn’t reach for my gun, I was trying to keep a cool head.
‘Why do men always think violence is the answer?’ Red’s statement to me a few nights ago rang through my mind like a bell.
Gigantor crossed an arm over his compadre’s chest. ‘Just give us the girl.’
‘Why do you say ‘the girl’? Like you’re in a movie or something, idiot.’ Red piped up behind me.
‘Get in the car, Mona, Ray’s waiting on you.’
‘Fuck Ray and fuck you.’
A click came from behind us. The barkeep had his barrel pointed at me.
‘If you take her, I go free?’
Gigantor shifted his eyes to Red then back at me. ‘Yeah.’
Yeah right.
‘I’ll go. Just leave him alone.’
Red bravely stood from her barstool, pushing her skirt over her knees. She glanced at me, giving me a nod that said ‘it’s cool.’
I stood down and watched her leave the bar. The arms surrounding her, blocking her from my view.
I can’t describe how I felt right then. My red headed dream woman disappearing with dangerous men, their hands on her.
Time stopped as I made my way across to the door, all eyes watching me go, I felt them searing into me, pecking at the shell of my very being.
But it had been the plan. It was our plan and I was to follow.
They had done nothing to her…yet. But I knew I was gonna kill them all.
Hours later, I was huddled in a swamp, soaked to my knees in foul smelling water. I didn’t notice or I didn’t care.
I could hear her voice carrying across the night air.
‘Nothin’ will hurt you Red, I’m here.’ I whispered in to the heavy stillness. Southern nights, I hated them.
With the raucous of the followers surrounding her, you wouldn’t think I could hear anything else but I was tuned into her. I could feel her around me, just as she was last night.
The softness under me, I was all sweaty and gasping while she purred sweetly. Clinging to my arms, she raked at my skin, pouting. The initial push had made her shiver, her eyes widening. But I went slow, talking to her like she was the most precious thing on earth, telling her how good she felt and how good I wanted make her feel.
Her head was thrown back between the pillows, the crescendo reached with a wail she didn’t know she had in her. ‘Do that again, John.’ She grinned down at me, biting her lip and giggling.
My mouth found her perfect lips again and I drank her down, that sweet slick I wanted so bad. She took everything I gave her with a wide eyed excitement.
‘I’d done it before but I’ve never felt it before,’ she gasped when I lay next to her.
Sleeping on her back for an hour or so, chest rising and falling with her dreams. Waking and smiling before she opened her eyes. Resting on her elbow to look down at me. I’d only caught a few minutes here and there.
‘John, can we do it again? All the way this time.’
‘Anything you want, Red.’ I kissed her like I hadn’t kissed any other woman for years, my arms keeping the weight from her before she begged for it. She wanted all of me, head to toe, my skin on hers.
Sinking in and feeling the resistance was a thrill I’d never experienced. ‘Take a breath, sweetheart,’ I whispered while I ran my lips down her neck, sucking the sweet dip between her collar bones. After a few shallow thrusts she let me in.
It could just be the hunter in me but I felt something change in her right at that moment, there was a heat shimmering through the air that hadn’t been there before.
Was it true what she’d said? She’d own the demon if she took ownership of her body?
Red fell asleep a little after that, asking me to gently rub her thigh. I tried to stay awake but c’mon, I’m an old man, I’ll drift off after a good fuck.
The sound of a door creaking open reached me, the main man, Raymond Caro, Desdemona’s big brother sashayed into the circle of robed followers. He held up his hands as if to quieten the rabble.
‘Brothers, we come here to celebrate the ascension of myself. A special night indeed, only made possible by my beautiful sister, Desdemona.’ Raymond pressed a hand against his sisters forehead, stroking his thumb back and forth fondly.
The anger boiled in me, I set it to simmer…for now.
How dare he say her name as if he revered her. As if he loved her.
My sweet Desdemona. Was it me that whispered it?
Red whimpered in assent. ‘All for you big brother.’
I could see Raymond’s ego flare, the hay-headed fucker. His blonde hair had grown wild, beard unkempt as if he were the 21st century Jesus.
The chanting started up again and Raymond started waving his arms about.
I was just about to roll my eyes as the infantile display but something caught my attention.
The swamp had stilled, the sound of the night had stopped. The hairs stood on the back of my neck when I heard the shrill sound. I don’t know where it came from, neither did the robed men surrounding Red, they were turning their heads this way and that trying to figure out the source of this rising vibration. There was a crack and a boom. The branches of the trees around me shuddered.
What the fuck was happening?
I stood to my full height, still covered by the leaves. No one had spotted me yet.
Red groaned again, writhing on the stone slab where she had been bound.
From here I could see the night gown clinging to her sweat sodden skin. She was scared, I didn’t need to see it to know. My heart sank at the thought of the woman laying there, afraid of what was to come and no one was helping.
None of the fuckers surrounding her would help her because they had been promised a share of the spoils.
A chill wind whipped past me and rustled the trees.
Raymond was shouting, his face lifted to the night sky.
Red thrashed back and forth her limbs uncontrollably flailing painfully.
It was memory thankfully, coz I had nothin’ with me. The words rolled off my tongue like it was the lyrics of my favourite song. I had my eyes on Red and only Red. The air feeling like it was closing in on me, shifting colour from black to grey, flashes of images like a tv screen was projected for all to see.
Red was there, gyrating on top of men, all men for all eternity. My hands spread wide, palms down to the earth. You’ll be cast back to the pit from where you came.
The ground swelled beneath me, yawning wide and threatening.
Red was in a fevered dream, telling me all of her secrets. If I could, I would tell her it was all ok, whatever the demon had her do was not her fault. None of it was.
Raymond found whatever balls he had and tried to square up to me.
‘It’s my demon, give it to me.’
‘I’ll give you somethin,’ I think I said. Or maybe I was too focused on this one thing. This ball of hateful black energy convulsing against the endless dark above me. ‘Back to hell with you.’ I managed to say between the words I didn’t know I’d memorised.
‘John!’ She sounded relieved, alive.
Thank god she was alive.
The demon was gaining shape, Raymond was engaging it, urging it to come into him and live within his skin.
The cacophony was deafening.
Keep calling my name, Red, I urged her. I won’t forget myself.
One last push, I had the strength to do it. The ground opened up, flames licking at my boots, threatening to pull me down with it.
A scream and a swirl of smoke and it was gone.
‘What have you done???’ Raymond cried.
I ran to Red, freeing her from her bonds, but she was tied too tight.
‘It’s gone, help me get your sister out of the ropes.’
Raymond was looking at the ground where the hole had been.
The screech of car tyres told us any of the losers that stuck around for this bogus ceremony had gotten outta here fast.
My flick knife was in my hand and cutting into the ropes.
‘Ray.’ Red rubbed the marks on her wrists, sitting up with my help.
‘Why would you do this?’ He looked to me.
‘You could hurt any more people, Ray.’
He ignored his sister, his red rimmed eyes fixed on me. ‘Motherfucker, don’t you know who I am?’
‘I kinda wouldn’t give a fuck, only you’ve made a show of getting your sister away from whatever kind of life she wanted and into your fantasy of stealing her power. Don’t you know that’s the one thing you can’t do?’
The dumb fucker just titled his head, confused.
‘You can’t take a woman’s power. Nothing earthly or otherwise has that influence.’
Red grabbed the gun in my waist band, I dared not stop her.
‘Wow, baby sister, cool it.’ Raymond put on a facade of submission, reaching over to her all the while, his intent clear.
Red’s hand shook while she pointed my gun at him.
‘For years he’s been using me to service his friends, the men that wanted to sit with him in the heavenly courts. For his own gain, for fun. I couldn’t live with myself if he took it, John.’
We were sitting on the floor of Faye’s kitchen while she told me her plan.
The goons would find her quick enough. Everybody was afraid of Raymond in her hometown.
Once she was taken, her brother would start the ritual, he was afraid of losing time. It could only be done under the full moon and the pregnant belly of the wench hung low tonight.
‘If I don’t kill him, he will kill me and countless innocent people. No one should have that kind of power, John. When the ritual starts, you have to find some way to stop it.’
And I did. My old journal had given me some ideas. I’d been around the block a time or two.
‘The demon is gone. Now there’s only me, plain old Desdemona.’ She gripped the handle of the gun with both hands, her strength giving out.
‘Just a little slut with nothing else to give the world but what’s between her legs,’ her brother laughed, reaching behind his back to what I assumed was a weapon.
‘Steady on now, buck.’
‘Fuck you, Raymond.’
The scorched earth opened up next to him, a long arm of black mist enveloped him. With a screech, Raymond fell to the ground, his belly scraping against the cement while he clawed in panic.
A strange popping noise followed him as he disappeared into the ground.
‘Did you do that??’ I held myself steady.
Red smiled, ‘I told you I could control it.’
‘You did?’
Red shimmied to her feet, standing next to me over the spot her brother had been standing.
‘When I gave myself to someone, the demon would be under my control. That’s the sneaky ways of it. Raymond had me for so long locked away he could do whatever he wanted.’
‘Ok, I heard you say that I just didn’t realise you could do THAT.’ I gestured to the area around us.
‘Are you impressed?’ Red beamed up at me.
‘Hell yeah I am.’
I risked a quick kiss, hoping it wouldn’t awaken the ground demon again.
‘John?’ She whispered against my mouth.
‘Yes?’
‘Take me back to your motel?’
‘Yes ma’am’.
#john winchester#john winchester fic#john winchester fiction#spn#supernatural#supernatural fiction#spn fiction#spn au#supernatural au#john winchester smut#john winchester x ofc#john winchester/ofc#fiction#fan fiction#no more light
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good omens / good place
“I’m completely on board for this Soul Squad idea,” Chidi says, “seeing as it’s way better than the alternative of succumbing to the existential terror, but I still have some questions. Like how? How are we supposed to push a soul on track from the bad to the good? We’re a demon, four hell-bound humans, and a – a Janet! Isn’t there some book we could read?" Eleanor starts one of her full-body eyerolls, so Chidi course-corrects. “An expert we could ask. Are there any, I don’t know, guardian angels on Earth trying to nudge people in the right direction?”
“Each side only gets to have one agent stationed on Earth,” Michael says. “I’ve been warned to stay away from the one from my side, they say he’s gone cuckoo after six thousand years on Earth. We could try the other one, though he might have also lost his marbles. Janet, where’s the Good Place agent on Earth?”
“I can’t live-update his position while I’m on Earth,” Janet says. “But according to my records, the Principality Aziraphale spends 82% of his time at A.Z. Fell & Co. Rare and Antiquarian Books, Soho, London, England.”
Tahani clapped her hands together. “Oh! Does this mean we get to go to London?”
“The only angel living on Earth owns a bookshop,” Chidi says, his eyes lighting up like he’s been promised a thousand chocolate-dipped orgasms. “That makes so much sense.”
“Ugh,” Eleanor says. “Of course the only angel on Earth is a boring nerd. Why can’t angels be hot like demons?” When the others all stare at her, she throws her hands up. “Oh, come on. Michael’s a silver fox. I’m just saying. I’m not gonna make it weird or anything. (1)”
Nobly deciding to ignore this, Michael says, “Fine, we’ll ask him. But if he tries to smite me, I plan to run like a chicken.”
It takes a three-hour stakeout to catch the bookshop opening. Chidi, Jason, and Tahani spend the whole time trying to come up with a list of the questions they want to ask a real, actual angel (2). Eleanor doesn’t want to ask him anything. She knows she’s not going to the Good Place, so why work herself into one of her death spirals of jealousy?
Chidi makes a beeline for the aisles as soon as they walk into the bookshop. “Ooooh! Is that a signed Slavoj Zizek?”
A man who Eleanor could only describe as a cross between an English professor and a historical re-enactor descends on Chidi from the back of the bookshop like the wrath of God. He watches Chidi like he might try chewing or humping the book instead of reading it. He says frostily, “Can I help you?”
“Show me your philosophy section,” Chidi says, in the tones of a starving man asking for a single potato chip.
“Chidi, please focus,” says Michael, stepping forward. “This is the angel we’re here to talk to.”
The bookshop guy’s eyes widen when he looks at Michael. “Crowley!” he calls. “One of your side is here! Could you please ask him to go away?”
“WHAT!” cries a voice from the back of the shop.
“Now, we don’t need to get nasty,” Michael says. “This isn’t an official visit. I have four humans and a Good Janet with me, see?”
“A Good Janet? My, I’ve only ever heard of you from the architects, I’ve never seen one of you before... your design is quite ingenious, my dear.”
“Thank you!” says Janet, beaming back at him. That leads to more beaming, in a feedback cycle of completely genuine smiles that’s starting to give Eleanor a headache just looking at it.
“He’s really an angel?” Jason said to Michael in a way he probably thought was subtle.
“Yes,” Michael says, squinting. “He’s actually kind of blinding to look at if you can see in all twenty dimensions.”
“Dope!” Jason says, grinning. “The bible study teacher at Lynyrd Skynyrd High School always said that gay people can’t go to heaven, and I told her that was stupid and got detention. I was totally right!”
“Jason...” Tahani begins, glancing at the angel. “He might just be overenthusiastic about vintage clothing.” Eleanor rolls her eyes at Tahani. Angel or no angel, this guy is obviously gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide (3).
That's when six feet of bad ideas squeezed into a pair of black skinny jeans appears in the aisle behind the angel. “Keteb? Is that you? What are you doing on Earth with a Good Janet?”
Guh. Eleanor was totally right about demons being hot.
“Please, I go by Michael these days,” Michael says. “When you have to deal with condemned souls all the time, it’s so much easier if you use a name that sounds familiar.”
“You named yourself after an angel? You have some cheek, you have.”
“This is all a very touching reunion,” Tahani says, “but we do have some rather important questions about salvation and the immortal soul, so if there’s some place where we all might gather for tea...”
That finally seems to break the angel out of his endless cycle of glowing smiles and compliments with Good Janet, which were getting so intense that Eleanor’s eyes were starting to water a little just seeing it from the side. “An excellent idea. There’s a table for eight miraculously free at a lovely cafe down the street.”
(more to come? probably. stay tuned.)
Footnotes:
(1) She didn’t make it weird, but Michael felt decidedly weird sitting next to her the whole flight to London. Did she want to touch her wet mouthparts to his? He hoped not.
(2) Jason wanted to know why angels help baseball teams win but not football teams.
(3) This was fine by Eleanor, who was herself gayer than a sleepoverful of middle school girls practicing how to kiss.
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With every post, a smile, ت
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Stakeout on Dope Street (1958), a major motion picture produced by Roger Corman for Warner Brothers.
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JA ONE XTC
JA • • •
KEVIN HELDMAN lives in New York. This is his first piece for "Rolling Stone." (ROLLING STONE,FEB 9,1995)
THE FIRST TIME I meet JA, he skates up to me wearing Rollerblades, his cap played backward, on a street corner in Manhattan at around midnight. He's white, 24 years old, with a short, muscular build and a blond crew cut. He has been writing graffiti off and on in New York for almost 10 years and is the founder of a loosely affiliated crew called XTC. His hands, arms, legs and scalp show a variety of scars from nightsticks, razor wire, fists and sharp, jagged things he has climbed up, on or over. He has been beaten by the police -- a "wood shampoo," he calls it -- has been shot at, has fallen off a highway sign into moving traffic, has run naked through train yards tagging, has been chased down highways by rival writers wielding golf clubs and has risked his life innumerable times writing graffiti -- bombing, getting up.
JA lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment. There's graffiti on a wall-length mirror, a weight bench, a Lava lamp to bug out on, cans of paint stacked in the corner, a large Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) sticker on the side of the refrigerator. The buzzer to his apartment lists a false name; his phone number is unlisted to avoid law-enforcement representatives as well as conflicts with other writers. While JA and one of his writing partners, JD, and I are discussing their apprehension about this story, JD, offering up a maxim from the graffiti life, tells me matter-of-factly, "You wouldn't fuck us over, we know where you live."
At JA's apartment we look through photos. There are hundreds of pictures of writers inside out-of-service subway cars that they've just covered completely with their tags, pictures of writers wearing orange safety vests -- to impersonate transit workers -- and walking subway tracks, pictures of detectives and transit workers inspecting graffiti that JA and crew put up the previous night, pictures of stylized JA 'throw-ups' large, bubble-lettered logos written 15 feet up and 50 times across a highway retaining wall. Picture after picture of JA's on trains, JA's on trucks, on store gates, bridges, rooftops, billboards -- all labeled, claimed and recorded on film.
JA comes from a well-to-do family; his parents are divorced; his father holds a high-profile position in the entertainment industry. JA is aware that in some people's minds this last fact calls into question his street legitimacy, and he has put a great deal of effort into resisting the correlation between privileged and soft. He estimates he has been arrested 15 times for various crimes. He doesn't have a job, and it's unclear how he supports himself. Every time we've been together, he's been high or going to get high. Once he called me from Rikers Island prison, where he was serving a couple of months for disorderly conduct and a probation violation. He said some of the inmates saw him tagging in a notebook and asked him to do tattoos for them.
It sounds right. Wherever he is, JA dominates his surroundings. With his crew, he picks the spots to hit, the stores to rack from; he controls the mission. He gives directions in the car, plans the activities, sets the mood. And he takes everything a step further than the people he's with. He climbs higher, stays awake longer, sucks deepest on the blunt, writes the most graffiti. And though he's respected by other writers for testing the limits -- he has been described to me by other writers as a king and, by way of compliment, as "the sickest guy I ever met" -- that same recklessness sometimes alienates him from the majority who don't have such a huge appetite for chaos, adrenaline, self-destruction.
When I ask a city detective who specializes in combating graffiti if there are any particularly well-known writers, he immediately mentions JA and adds with a bit of pride in his voice, "We know each other." He calls JA the "biggest graffiti writer of all time" (though the detective would prefer that I didn't mention that, because it'll only encourage JA). "He's probably got the most throw-ups in the city, in the country, in the world," the detective says. "If the average big-time graffiti vandal has 10,000 tags, JA's got 100,000. He's probably done -- in New York City alone -- at least $5 million worth of damage."
AT ABOUT 3 A.M., JA AND TWO OTHER WRITERS go out to hit a billboard off the West Side Highway in Harlem. Tonight there are SET, a 21-year-old white writer from Queens, N.Y., and JD, a black Latino writer the same age, also from Queens. They load their backpacks with racked cans of Rustoleum, fat cap nozzles, heavy 2-foot industrial bolt cutters and surgical gloves. We pile into a car and start driving, Schooly D blasting on the radio. First a stop at a deli where JA and SET go in and steal beer. Then we drive around Harlem trying a number of different dope spots, keeping an eye out for "berries" -- police cars. JA tosses a finished 40-ounce out the window in a high arc, and it smashes on the street.
At different points, JA gets out of the car and casually walks the streets and into buildings, looking for dealers. A good part of the graffiti life involves walking anywhere in the city, at any time, and not being afraid -- or being afraid and doing it anyway.
We arrive at a spot where JA has tagged the dealer's name on a wall in his territory. The three writers buy a vial of crack and a vial of angel dust and combine them ("spacebase") in a hollowed-out Phillies blunt. JD tells me that "certain drugs will enhance your bombing," citing dust for courage and strength ("bionics"). They've also bombed on mescaline, Valium, marijuana, crack and malt liquor. SET tells a story of climbing highway poles with a spray can at 6 a.m., "all Xanaxed out."
While JD is preparing the blunt, JA walks across the street with a spray can and throws up all three of their tags in 4-foot-high bubbled, connected letters. In the corner, he writes my name.
We then drive to a waterfront area at the edge of the city -- a deserted site with warehouses, railroad tracks and patches of urban wilderness dotted with high-rise billboards. All three writers are now high, and we sit on a curb outside the car smoking cigarettes. From a distance we can see a group of men milling around a parked car near a loading dock that we have to pass. This provokes 30 minutes of obsessive speculation, a stoned stakeout with play by play:
"Dude, they're writers," says SET. "Let's go down and check them out," says JD. "Wait, let's see what they write," says JA. "Yo -- they're going into the trunk," says SET. "Cans, dude, they're going for their cans. Dude, they're writers. "There could be beef, possible beef," says JA. "Can we confirm cans, do we see cans?" SET wants to know. Yes, they do have cans," SET answers for himself. "There are cans. They are writers." It turns out that the men are thieves, part of a group robbing a nearby truck. In a few moments guards appear with flashlights and at least one drawn gun. The thieves scatter as guard dogs fan out around the area, barking crazily.
We wait this out a bit until JA announces, "It's on." Hood pulled up on his head, he leads us creeping through the woods (which for JA has become the cinematic jungles of Nam). It's stop and go, JA crawling on his stomach, unnecessarily close to one of the guards who's searching nearby. We pass through graffiti-covered tunnels (with the requisite cinematic drip drip), over crumbling stairs overgrown with weeds and brush, along dark, heavily littered trails used by crackheads.
We get near the billboard, and JA uses the bolt cutters to cut holes in two chain-link fences. We crawl through and walk along the railroad tracks until we get to the base of the sign. JA, with his backpack on, climbs about 40 feet on a thin piece of metal pipe attached to the main pillar. JD, after a few failed attempts, follows with the bolt cutters shoved down his pants and passes them to JA. Hanging in midair, his legs wrapped around a small piece of ladder, JA cuts the padlock and opens up the hatch to the catwalk. He then lowers his arm to JD, who is wrapped around the pole just below him, struggling. "J, give me your hand, "I'll pull you up," JA tells him. JD hesitates. He is reluctant to let go and continues treadmilling on the pole, trying to make it up. JD, give me your hand." JD doesn't want to refuse, but he's uncomfortable entrusting his life to JA. He won't let go of the pole. JA says it again, firmly, calmly, utterly confident: "J give me your hand." JD's arm reaches up, and JA pulls JD up onto the catwalk. Next, SET, the frailest of the three, follows unsteadily. They've called down and offered to put up his tag, but he insists on going up. "Dude, fuck that, I'm down," he says. I look away while he makes his way up, sure that he's going to fall (he almost does twice). The three have developed a set pattern for dividing the labor when they're "blowing up," one writer outlining, another working behind him, filling in. For 40 minutes I watch them working furiously, throwing shadows as they cover ads for Parliament and Amtrak with large multicolored throw-ups SET and JD bickering about space, JA scolding them, tossing down empty cans.
They risk their lives again climbing down. Parts of their faces are covered in paint, and their eyes beam as all three stare at the billboard, asking, "Isn't it beautiful?' And there is something intoxicating about seeing such an inaccessible, clean object gotten to and made gaudy. We get in the car and drive the West Side Highway northbound and then southbound so they can critique their work. "Damn, I should've used the white," JD says.
The next day both billboards are newly re-covered, all the graffiti gone. JA tells me the three went back earlier to get pictures and made small talk with the workers who were cleaning it off.
GRAFFITI HAS BEEN THROUGH A NUMBER OF incarnations since it surfaced in New York in the early 70s with a Greek teen-ager named Taki 183. It developed from the straightforward writing of a name to highly stylized, seemingly illegible tags (a kind of penmanship slang) to wild-style throw-ups and elaborate (master) "pieces" and character art. There has been racist graffiti political writing, drug advertising, gang graffiti. There is an art-graf scene from which Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiac, LEE, Futura 2000, Lady Pink and others emerged; aerosol advertising; techno graffiti written into computer programs; anti-billboard graffiti; stickers; and stencil writing. There are art students doing street work in San Francisco ("nonpermissional public art"); mural work in underground tunnels in New York; gallery shows from Colorado to New Jersey; all-day Graffiti-a-Thons; and there are graffiti artists lecturing art classes at universities. Graffiti has become part of urban culture, hip-hop culture and commercial culture, has spread to the suburbs and can be found in the backwoods of California's national forests. There are graffiti magazines, graffiti stores, commissioned walls, walls of fame and a video series available (Out to bomb) documenting writers going out on graffiti missions, complete with soundtrack. Graffiti was celebrated as a metaphor in the 70s (Norman Mailer's "The Faith of Graffiti"); it went Hollywood in the '80s (Beat Street, Turk 182!, Wild Style); and in the '90s it has been increasingly used to memorialize the inner-city dead.
But as much as graffiti has found acceptance, it has been vilified a hundred times more. Writers are now being charged with felonies and given lengthy jail terms -- a 15-year-old in California was recently sentenced to eight years in a juvenile detention center. Writers have been given up to 1000 hours of community service and forced to undergo years of psychological counseling; their parents have been hit with civil suits. In California a graffiti writer's driver's license can be revoked for a year; high-school diplomas and transcripts can also be withheld until parents make restitution. In some cities property owners who fail to remove graffiti from their property are subject to fines and possible jail time. Last spring in St. Louis, Cincinnati, San Antonio and Sacramento, Calif., politicians proposed legislation to cane graffiti writers (four to 10 hits with a wooden paddle, administered by parents or by a bailiff in a public courtroom). Across the nation, legislation has been passed making it illegal to sell spray paint and wide-tipped markers to anyone under 18, and often the materials must be kept locked up in the stores. Several cities have tried to ban the sales altogether, license sellers of spray paint and require customers to give their name and address when purchasing paint. In New York some hardware-store owners will give a surveillance photo of anyone buying a large quantity of spray cans to the police. In Chicago people have been charged with possession of paint. In San Jose, Calif., undercover police officers ran a sting operation -- posing as filmmakers working on a graffiti documentary -- and arrested 31 writers.
Hidden cameras, motion detectors, laser removal, specially developed chemical coatings, night goggles, razor wire, guard dogs, a National Graffiti Information Network, graffiti hot lines, bounties paid to informers -- one estimate is that it costs $4 billion a year nationally to clean graffiti -- all in an effort to stop those who "visually laugh in the face of communities," as a Wall Street Journal editorial raged.
The popular perception is that since the late 1980s when New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority adopted a zero tolerance toward subway graffiti (the MTA either cleaned or destroyed more than 6,000 graffiti-covered subway cars, immediately pulling a train out of service if any graffiti appeared on it), graffiti culture had died in the place of its birth. According to many graffiti writers, however, the MTA, in its attempt to kill graffiti, only succeeded in bringing it out of the tunnels and train yards and making it angry. Or as Jeff Ferrell, a criminologist who has chronicled the Denver graffiti scene, theorizes, the authorities' crackdown moved graffiti writing from subculture to counterculture. The work on the trains no longer ran, so writers started hitting the streets. Out in the open they had to work faster and more often. The artistry started to matter less and less. Throw-ups, small cryptic tags done in marker and even the straightforward writing of a name became the dominant imagery. What mattered was quantity ("making noise"), whether the writer had heart, was true to the game, was "real." And the graffiti world started to attract more and more people who weren't looking for an alternative art canvas but simply wanted to be connected to an outlaw community, to a venerable street tradition that allowed the opportunity to advertise their defiance. "It's that I'm doing it that I get my rush, not by everyone seeing it," says JA. "Yeah, that's nice, but if that's all that's gonna motivate you to do it, you're gonna stop writing. That's what happened to a lot of writers." JD tells me: "We're just putting it in their faces; it's like 'Yo, you gotta put up with it.'"
Newspapers have now settled on the term "graffiti vandal" rather than "artist" or "writer." Graffiti writers casually refer to their work as doing destruction." In recent years graffiti has become more and more about beefs and wars, about "fucking up the MTA," "fucking up the city."
Writers started taking a jock attitude toward getting up frequently and tagging in hard-to-reach places, adopting a machismo toward going over other writers' work and defending their own ("If you can write, you can fight"). Whereas graffiti writing was once considered an alternative to the street, now it imports drugs, violence, weapons and theft from that world -- the romance of the criminal deviant rather than the artistic deviant. In New York today, one police source estimates there are approximately 100,000 people involved in a variety of types of graffiti writing. The police have caught writers as young as 8 and as old as 42. And there's a small group of hard-core writers who are getting older who either wrote when graffiti was in its prime or long for the days when it was, those who write out of compulsion, for each other and for the authorities who try to combat graffiti, writers who haven't found anything in their lives substantial or hype enough to replace graffiti writing.
The writers in their 20s come mostly from working-class families and have limited prospects and ambitions for the future. SET works in a drugstore and has taken lithium and Prozac for occasional depression; JD dropped out of high school and is unemployed, last working as a messenger, where he met JA. They spend their nights driving 80 miles an hour down city highways, balancing 40-ounce bottles of Old English 800 between their legs, smoking blunts and crack-laced cigarettes called coolies, always playing with the radio. They reminisce endlessly about the past, when graf was real, when graf ran on the trains, and they swap stories about who's doing what on the scene. The talk is a combo platter of Spicoli, homeboy, New Age jock and eighth grade: The dude is a fuckin' total turd. . . . I definitely would've gotten waxed. . . . It's like some bogus job. . . . I'm amped, I'm Audi, you buggin . . . You gotta be there fully, go all out, focus. . . . Dudes have bitten off SET, he's got toys jockin' him. . . .
They carry beepers, sometimes guns, go upstate or to Long Island to "prey on the hicks" and to rack cans of spray paint. They talk about upcoming court cases and probation, about quitting, getting their lives together, even as they plan new spots to hit, practice their style by writing on the walls of their apartments, on boxes of food, on any stray piece of paper (younger writers practice on school notebooks that teachers have been known to confiscate and turn over to the police). They call graffiti a "social tool" and "some kind of ill form of communication," refer to every writer no matter his age as "kid." Talk in the graffiti life vacillates between banality and mythology, much like the activity itself: hours of drudgery, hanging out, waiting, interrupted by brief episodes of exhilaration. JD, echoing a common refrain, says, "Graffiti writers are like bitches: a lot of lying, a lot of talking, a lot of gossip." They don't like tagging with girls ("cuties," or if they use drugs, "zooties") around because all they say is (in a whiny voice), You're crazy. . . . Write my name."
WHEN JA TALKS ABOUT GRAFFITI, HE'S reluctant to offer up any of the media-ready cliches about the culture (and he knows most of them). He's more inclined to say, "Fuck the graffiti world," and scoff at graf shops, videos, conventions and 'zines. But he can be sentimental about how he began -- riding the No. 1, 2 and 3 trains when he was young, bugging out on the graffiti-covered cars, asking himself, "How did they do that? Who are they?" And he'll respectfully invoke the names of long-gone writers he admired when he was just starting out: SKEME, ZEPHYR, REVOLT, MIN.
JA, typical of the new school, primarily bombs, covering wide areas with throw-ups. He treats graffiti less as an art form than as an athletic competition, concentrating on getting his tag in difficult-to-reach places, focusing on quantity and working in defiance of an aesthetic that demands that public property be kept clean. (Writers almost exclusively hit public or commercial property.)
And when JA is not being cynical, he can talk for hours about the technique, the plotting, the logistics of the game like "motion bombing" by clockwork a carefully scoped subway train that he knows has to stop for a set time, at a set place, when it gets a certain signal in the tunnels. He says, "To me, the challenge that graffiti poses, there's something very invigorating and freeing about it, something almost spiritual. There's a kind of euphoria, more than any kind of drug or sex can give you, give me . . . for real."
JA says he wants to quit, and he talks about doing it as if he were in a 12-step program. "How a person in recovery takes it one day a time, that's how I gotta take it," he says. You get burnt out. There's pretty much nothing more the city can throw at me; it's all been done." But then he'll hear about a yard full of clean sanitation trucks, the upcoming Puerto Rican Day Parade (a reason to bomb Fifth Avenue) or a billboard in an isolated area; or it'll be 3 a.m., he'll be stoned, driving around or sitting in the living room, playing NBA Jam, and someone will say it: "Yo, I got a couple of cans in the trunk. . . ." REAS, an old-school writer of 12 years who, after a struggle and a number of relapses, eventually quit the life, says, "Graffiti can become like a hole you're stuck in; it can just keep on going and going, there's always another spot to write on."
SAST is in his late 20s and calls himself semiretired after 13 years in the graf scene. He still carries around a marker with him wherever he goes and cops little STONE tags (when he's high, he writes, STONED). He's driving JA and me around the city one night, showing me different objects they've tagged, returning again and again to drug spots to buy dust and crack, smoking, with the radio blasting; he's telling war stories about JA jumping onto moving trains, JA hanging off the outside of a speeding four-wheel drive. SAST is driving at top speed, cutting in between cars, tailgating, swerving. A number of times as we're racing down the highway, I ask him if he could slow down. He smiles, asks if I'm scared, tells me not to worry, that he's a more cautious driver when he's dusted. At one point on the FDR, a car cuts in front of us. JA decides to have some fun.
"Yo, he burnt you, SAST," JA says. We start to pick up speed. Yo, SAST, he dissed you, he cold dissed you, SAST." SAST is buying it, the look on his face becoming more determined as we go 70, 80, 90 miles an hour, hugging the divider, flying between cars. I turn to JA, who's in the back seat, and I try to get him to stop. JA ignores me, sitting back perfectly relaxed, smiling, urging SAST to go faster and faster, getting off, my fear adding to his rush.
At around 4 a.m., SAST drops us off on the middle of the Manhattan Bridge and leaves. JA wants to show me a throw-up he did the week before. We climb over the divider from the roadway to the subway tracks. JA explains that we have to cross the north and the southbound tracks to get to the outer part of the bridge. In between there are a number of large gaps and two electrified third rails, and we're 135 feet above the East River. As we're standing on the tracks, we hear the sound of an oncoming train. JA tells me to hide, to crouch down in the V where two diagonal braces meet just beside the tracks.
I climb into position, holding on to the metal beams, head down, looking at the water as the train slams by the side of my body. This happens twice more. Eventually, I cross over to the outer edge of the bridge, which is under construction, and JA points out his tag about 40 feet above on what looks like a crow's-nest on a support pillar. After a few moments of admiring the view, stepping carefully around the many opportunities to fall, JA hands me his cigarettes and keys. He starts crawling up one of the braces on the side of the bridge, disappears within the structure for a moment, emerges and makes his way to an electrical box on a pillar. Then he snakes his way up the piping and grabs on to a curved support. Using only his hands he starts to shimmy up; at one point he's hanging almost completely upside down. If he falls now, he'll land backward onto one of the tiers and drop into the river below. He continues to pull himself up, the old paint breaking off in his hands, and finally he flips his body over a railing to get to the spot where he tagged. He doesn't have a can or a marker with him, and at this point graffiti seems incidental. He comes down and tells me that when he did the original tag he was with two writers; one he half carried up, the other stopped at a certain point and later told JA that watching him do that tag made him appreciate life, being alive.
We walk for 10 minutes along a narrow, grooved catwalk on the side of the tracks; a thin wire cable prevents a fall into the river. A few times, looking down through the grooves, I have to stop, force myself to take the next step straight ahead, shake off the vertigo. JA is practically jogging ahead of me. We exit the bridge into Chinatown as the sun comes up and go to eat breakfast. JA tells me he's a vegetarian.
IF YOU TALK TO SERIOUS GRAFFITI writers, most of them will echo the same themes; they decry the commercialization of graf, condemn the toys and poseurs and alternately hate and feel attached to the authorities who try to stop them. They say with equal parts bravado and self-deprecation that a graffiti writer is a bum, a criminal, a vandal, slick, sick, obsessed, sneaky, street-smart, living on edges figurative and literal. They show and catalog cuts and scars on their bodies from razor wire, pieces of metal, knives, box cutters. I once casually asked a writer named GHOST if he knew another writer whose work I had seen in a graf'zine. "Yeah, I know him, he stabbed me," GHOST replies matter-of-factly. "We've still got beef." SET tells me he was caught by two DTs (detectives) who assaulted him, took his cans of paint and sprayed his body and face. JA tells similar stories of police beatings for his making officers run after him, of cops making him empty his spray cans on his sneakers or on the back of a fellow writer's jacket. JD has had 48 stitches in his back and 18 in his head over "graffiti-related beef." JA's best friend and writing partner, SANE SMITH, a legendary all-city writer who was sued by the city and the MTA for graffiti, was found dead, floating in Jamaica Bay. There's endless speculation in the grafworld as to whether he was pushed, fell or jumped off a bridge. SANE is so respected, there are some writers today who spend time in public libraries reading and rereading the newspaper microfilm about his death, his arrests, his career. According to JA, after SANE's death, his brother, SMiTH, also a respected graffiti artist, found a piece of paper on which SANE had written his and JA's tag and off to the side, FLYING HIGH THE XTC WAY. It now hangs on JA's apartment wall.
One morning, JA and I jump off the end of a subway platform and head into the tunnels. He shows me hidden rooms, emergency hatches that open to the sidewalk, where to stand when the trains come by. He tells me about the time SANE lay face down in a shallow drainage ditch on the tracks as an express train ran inches above him. JA says anytime he was being chased by the police he would run into a nearby subway station, jump off the platform and run into the tunnels. The police would never follow. KET, a veteran graffiti writer, tells me how in the tunnels he would accidentally step on homeless people sleeping. They'd see him tagging and would occasionally ask that he "throw them up," write their names on the wall. He usually would. Walking in the darkness between the electrified rails as trains race by, JA tells me the story of two writers he had beef with who came into the tunnels to cross out his tags. Where the cross-outs stop is where they were killed by an approaching train.
The last time I go out with JA, SET and JD, they pick me up at around 2 am. We drive down to the Lower East Side to hit a yard where about 60 trucks and vans are parked next to one another. Every vehicle is already covered with throw-ups and tags, but the three start to write anyway, JA in a near frenzy. They're running in between the rows, crawling under trucks, jumping from roof to roof, wedged down in between the trailers, engulfed in nauseating clouds of paint fumes (the writers sometimes blow multicolored mucous out of their noses), going over some writers' tags, respecting others, JA throwing up SANE's name, searching for any little piece of clean space to write on. JA, who had once again been talking about retirement, is now hungry to write and wants to hit another spot. But JD doesn't have any paint, SET needs gas money for his car, and they have to drive upstate the next morning to appear in court for a paint-theft charge.
During the ride back uptown the car is mostly quiet, the mood depressed. And even when the three were in the truck yard, even when JA was at his most intense, it seemed closer to work, routine, habit. There are moments like this when they seem genuinely worn out by the constant stress, the danger, the legal problems, the drugging, the fighting, the obligation to always hit another spot. And it's usually when the day is starting.
About a week later I get a call from another writer whom JA had told I was writing an article on graffiti. He tells me he has never been king, never gone all city, but now he is making a comeback, coming out of retirement with a new tag. He says he could do it easily today because there is no real competition. He says he was thinking about trying to make some money off of graffiti -- galleries. canvases, whatever . . . to get paid.
"I gotta do something," the writer says. "I can't rap, I can't dance, I got this silly little job." We talk more, and he tells me he appreciates that I'm writing about writers, trying to get inside the head of a vandal, telling the real deal. He also tells me that graffiti is dying, that the city is buffing it, that new writers are all toys and are letting it die, but it's still worth it to write.
I ask why, and then comes the inevitable justification that every writer has to believe and take pleasure in, the idea that order will always have to play catch-up with them. "It takes me seconds to do a quick throw-up; it takes them like 10 minutes to clean it," he says. "Who's coming out on top?"
#graffiti#ja#ja one#ja nyc#ja one nyc#new york graffiti#xtc crew#xtc#graff nyc#ja graffiti#ja one graffiti
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i’m looking at you and my heart loves the view
14. “can i have this dance?”
for jennifer!!! @storyinmyeyes thank you lovely <3
(married fluff in which undercover operations absolutely definitely count as dates)
read on ao3
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“You know, I think this might be our first actual date since we got married.” Jake says cheerfully, grinning at her as he hands her a ridiculously expensive glass of champagne - she takes a small sip (they’re on duty, after all) and makes a face at him, furrowing her eyebrows as she processes the sad details of their dating life.
“That can’t be true. We went out to dinner last month-“
“-And had to bust the head chef halfway through for money laundering, remember?” Amy sighs as he pops a third fancy canape in his mouth, doing another routine scan of this mega fancy rich people event they’re hoping to make a huge bust at if Rosa’s intel checks out.
Jake’s been playing Constance Augustine for most of evening, rich guy who just bought a new yacht – he’d usually be inclined to create a more compelling backstory, but his incredible, amazing, super-hot wife is currently wearing a red dress that’s had him more than a little…distracted for most of the night.
She keeps catching him staring and beaming with this little proud smile that’s only driving him more crazy – it’s kind of a miracle he’s able to speak at all.
They’ve been here for a while - mingling with the guests, Amy clinging to his arm tighter than usual, easily committing to her undercover role as an glowing presence of ethereal radiance that laughs at everything he says. It’s heavenly, really, and it’s also the first night out they’ve had (that wasn’t spent at Shaw’s) in a very long time.
“Okay, but this shouldn’t even count as a date. We’re working.” She frowns, picking at the tray of olives in front of her, and he throws up an eyebrow.
Intense undercover operation or not, he’ll definitely take it as a date. Stuff can be two things - he’s pretty sure a very wise, beautiful woman once told him that.
“That discounts like…” - He hums thoughtfully, counting them up on his fingers – “our last eight dates, then.” Amy gives a defeated huff of disappointment while glancing over at the guarded door they keep seeing people disappear into and not come back – against soft amusement, he feels concern rising in his chest, and reaches across the table to take her hand in his.
Really, he doesn’t care deeply about the whole ‘dating’ thing – he’s more than happy to get takeaway and chill out on the sofa yelling at Jeopardy and watching reruns of their favourite sitcoms, which is luckily what most of their weeknights consist of. Despite his contentment, he knows Amy is more eager to do something special once in a while, even if their dedication to their jobs tends to make more challenging for them than most. She’s never exactly been one to shy away from a challenge.
“Hey, it’s okay. We’re just…busy people who like our jobs.”
“I know. It’s just sometimes I feel like our whole lives are work.”
“I mean, that was kind of inevitable, right?” Curiosity practically pools from her pupils and he absentmindedly traces small intimate loops over her knuckles, heart lifting every time he brushes up against familiar cool silver and he gratefully remembers hey, awesome, this smart gorgeous lady somehow agreed to put up with me for the rest of her life.
“Our first date was a stakeout. Our first kiss was on a undercover mission - that I’m totally counting as a second date ‘cause we shared a flan and said nice things about each other and you jumped me in the park afterwards-“
“-I didn’t jump you. It was to keep our cover!“ There’s this indigence in her tone which is just begging him to shoot her a knowing look.
“-Ames, you literally couldn’t keep your hands off me. You slammed me up against a tree.”
“…You liked it.”
“Oh, hell yes I liked it. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” He grins, fondly remembering the feeling of his poor feeble heart almost giving out after kissing Amy twice in one night and it being everything – all weird and electrifying and exhilarating and awkward and the best thing that ever happened to him.
All this time, all that’s passed since then; yet still there’s never really been anyone else he’d rather make out with to keep their cover.
(To be fair, the record shows that there’s never really been anyone else, period.)
“I guess I’m trying to say that if our dating life and our work life wasn’t so horrifically entangled, we might not have even got together in the first place. You’d be dating some super-hot rich dentist guy or something and I’d probably be out on the streets selling my beautiful body for money.” She laughs, his favourite sound in the entire world, and he squeezes her hand a little tighter.
“And hey, if it makes you feel better, there’s no-one else I’d rather go undercover with than you.”
“I’ll tell Charles you said that. Poor guy’s going to be crushed.” Amy says, eyes sparkling with gentle endearment and this kind of gratitude that makes his heart soar.
“Eh, he’ll understand.” He waves his hand dismissively, leaning over the table to kiss her – it’s far too fleeting for his liking, all delicate and chaste – but heartfelt, too, still enough to make him a little breathless afterwards.
Like clockwork, the music changes to something softer, slower, and they exchange glances. He double checks the tactical plans and available exits and guard rotation before deciding oh, they absolutely have to, standing and offering her his arm.
“Can I have this dance?” She’s about to protest, he knows she is, and he’s about to tell her that he doesn’t mind if she steps on his toes – but she sighs, takes one last glimpse at the guards and back at him, and stands, taking his arm.
“Just one. After that we’re busting these bastards.” She takes his arm as they walk out on to the dancefloor and start to sway in what vaguely resembles some sort of rhythm, which he thinks is as good as they’re probably going to get. Amy’s distracted, though, still lamenting their poor work/life balance, and he knows what he has to do.
“You free Saturday?” He whispers in her ear, one hand steady on her waist as she looks up at him in confusion.
“What?”
“I’m taking you out on a date. A real, actual, romantic stylez date. No drug busts or stakeouts or undercover operations or paperwork. Dinner at that Italian place you like, just us.” He might have to call in a few favours but it’s already worth it for the smile on her face.
“Seriously?” There’s this colour of hope to her voice that he kind of just wants to bottle up and keep for himself on rainy days.
“Peralta guarantee.” They share an intimate smile, Amy resting her head on his shoulder – the scent of her perfume and the grapefruit shampoo he definitely doesn’t love to steal wafts through the air like it does in the commercials and he’s so unbelievably happy.
“I’ll mark it in the calendar.”
They catch the bad guys twenty minutes later and hand them over to a smiling Rosa in other twenty, so Jake proudly labels it as pretty dope as far as undercover dates go.
(Of course, he rates it less as dope and more as star-seeing, show-stopping, spectacular once the undercover part is over and that red dress she’s been wearing all night is lying on their bedroom floor.)
#b99#b99 fic#jake x amy#peraltiago#my writing#sian does prompts#they're so happy!! they deserve to be happy!!!#shut up sian#planning on every single one of these prompts being shameless fluff and you can't stop me#also yes that is a hsm lyric and it's perfect so fight me
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New trending GIF tagged dead, warner archive, the end, stakeout on dope street via Giphy http://ift.tt/2jJQp2b
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Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) Pt. 3
A Kwon Jiyong x Reader AU series featuring Kim Jiwon and Choi Seunghyun
Genre: Crime/Mafia/ANGST
Word count: 3,100+
Summary: You joined the police force years ago to help clean up the streets of Seoul and rid the city of organized crime. You’ve seen some shit. You’re surely prepared for anything...but how are you supposed to feel when the big bad crime boss you’ve been after turns out to be a familiar (to say the least) face?
Part 1 Part 2 ... Part 4
Key: Y/L/N- your last name
(A/N: shit is going DOWN...and it is only just beginning)
Everyone in the station was impressed with how quickly your team prepared themselves for Tuesday. Under your direction, the warehouse was bugged that morning, while a group of men were assigned to keep a lookout in an undercover vehicle and monitor recordings. Three separate groups of four; yourself and Seunghyun included, would be ready to storm the building at a moment’s notice.
Having been a part of numerous busts and stakeouts in the past, you felt more than ready for the mission with the utmost confidence in your teammates. The plan was fool proof.
9:35pm
“Van 1: Move in. I repeat: move in. Most of you have done this before but some of you haven’t so I’m going to say this and I’m only going to explain it once: You’ve got to keep a low profile, otherwise any of his men keeping a look out will spot you in a second and give us all away. Do not, I repeat, do NOT let yourselves be seen. Officer Choi and I will be listening to the audio as you all are receiving it and will inform the rest of the officers when the time is right. Report any and everything you see immediately as you see it so the rest of us aren’t going in blind. Is that clear?” You gave your orders through the walkie-talkie while Seunghyun and the rest of your team assumed a low profile in parked cars along side streets.
“Clear. Moving in now.” One of your men responded. You nodded your head silently as you continued to stare forward, waiting.
“Time, Officer Choi.”
“9:39.” He announced, to which you released a deep breath. “All right. In five minutes, we should head in.”
Seunghyun had been visibly anxious for majority of the night thus far. You took notice each time he shifted in his seat, tapped his knuckles on the dashboard and any small twiddle of his thumbs. He was staring out the passenger side window, his left knee bouncing in place, when you offered a conversation starter. “Did you receive thorough simulation training for a night like this at the academy?”
He turned to you with a smirk. “Definitely. I’m ready to get in there.”
You nodded your head with a chuckle, opening your mouth to respond before he beat you to it. “You don’t…uh, I noticed that the station doesn’t have any record of what G-Dragon looks like…is that right?”
You sighed. He’d brought up the one fact that bothered you the most about this case. The piece of information that everyone constantly gave you shit for not possessing. You couldn’t keep your head from dropping slightly and releasing another chuckle.
“That’s right. Our profile regarding his appearance is pretty useless, gathering the little consistencies we’ve managed to find amongst those we’ve rounded up that claim to have seen or worked with him before. In all honesty, I don’t have the slightest clue what this man looks like.” You watched as Seunghyun nodded in response before you continued. “But I’m not worried about it.”
His head tilted slightly. “Why’s that?”
“He’s their boss. Their leader. If this meeting goes down the way Park Jihun leads me to believe it will, it’ll be a no brainer which one is him. He won’t say much, but it’ll be made very clear that he is the only one in that room whose opinion matters.”
He smiled back at you. “That makes perfect sense to me. You know, I noticed that-”
“Senior Y/L/N. Come in.” A transmission over your walkie talkie put an end to your conversation. It was the team responsible for alerting you and your men when the coast was clear.
“What’s going on? What do you see?” You replied hastily.
“Just did a quick scope of the perimeter. At least five men in the basement. We’ve got sight of two we’re suspecting on guard duty on 5th and 6th. But if you and the rest of ours come up from the south side, you should be in the clear with access to windows. Lieutenant Park and his boys will cover the two guards whenever you give word.”
“Copy that. We’re heading in now.” You replied confidently before looking to Seunghyun with raised eyebrows. It appeared Jihun hadn’t bullshitted you two after all.
Everything continued to go according to plan as Seunghyun and your team of four gathered behind a bush near the closest window viewing the basement.
There they were: five men gathered around a table topped with glasses of liquor and ashtrays. Each of them in button ups and suit pants, sporting gold watches. It was a scene straight out of a movie.
From your angle, the only man whose face you could not see was seated at the head of the table; he wore the only blazer and his fingers were decorated in rings.
Bingo.
You didn’t even need to put your ear piece in to tune into the room’s audio to confirm who he was. While the other men sat leaned forward with their fists on the table, he was sitting comfortably slouched to the side of his chair; his left hand supporting his head while his right gripped its side of the chair. You watched intently as he ran his fingers through his slicked, jet black hair while he listened to his men discuss business.
You payed attention to their lips moving long enough for Seunghyun to nudge your right arm. Your head whipped to the side as you made eye contact with him. His hand was holding his ear piece close; the look in his eyes was a silent reminder for you to do the same.
“We’ve got him.” He whispered in a low voice.
You wasted no time in placing your piece in your ear and turning it on. Your heart rate increased as their voices became clear, matching the movement of their lips.
“I’m not saying I think he’s a problem; but he knows we’re not exactly dealing with legitimate businesses here.” The man on the far right corner spoke.
The man opposite to him chuckled, taking a sip from his glass before countering. “Everyone in the goddamn city knows we’re not involved in legitimate businesses.”
“Correct, but he knows a bit more than everyone.” He muttered reluctantly.
“…And what exactly is ‘a bit more?’”
Chills ran up your spine as their boss spoke. It was the first time you’d officially heard G Dragon’s voice and it put your stomach in knots. It was almost familiar.
All of them turned their gazes to him with concerned expressions before the man who brought up the topic replied. “Well…He knows about the rackets, the extortion...the dope.” He said his third point with clear caution, understanding the list was more than enough.
You held your breath as you placed your thumb on the transmission button of your walkie talkie, ready to give the word to your team as soon as G Dragon gave some sort of confirmation to their organized crime.
Just as you heard him let out a chuckle and watched as his shoulders bounced up and down in sync with the sound, a transmission came through the device, making you jump.
“Senior Y/L/N, we might have a problem.” Detective Park whispered amongst the static.
A look of frustration pulled at your eyebrows as you silently suppressed any instinct to panic. He was responsible for watching the men guarding the corners and taking care of them once you gave everyone the signal. What could possibly be going wrong already?
As you pressed the button down and opened your mouth to send a reply, Seunghyun leaned in to interrupt. “I’ll handle it. You keep listening and I’ll be right back.”
It was an extremely reckless decision to make during a mission as important as this, but there was a look in Seunghyun’s eyes that made you trust him. You just nodded your head as he made a swift break for the outside perimeter and you checked back into their conversation.
“So...what you’re saying is...”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you twice. Fucking handle it, the same way you handled Jongsoo.”
Your eyes widened as the crime boss made a blatant reference to one of the recently slain men. He’d been suspected of working with G Dragon right before his death. You looked to your left and right and met the eyes of the other two men in your group, anxiously awaiting your signal, but saw no sign of your partner.
You sighed, quickly making an executive decision to proceed. But as you pressed your thumb on the button of your walkie talkie, a piercing whistle made itself known from the other side of the building. All three of your heads sprang up, abandoning your watch on the scene in the basement.
“Fuck.” You hissed. There was no mistaking that sound.
Someone had been spotted.
Your eyes darted back to the basement as you noticed everyone remove themselves from their seats, having heard the distress call. The four men shouted to each other, while G Dragon stood in a visibly annoyed stance with his hands on his hips and his head looking down, still with his back turned to you.
“The fucking cops! They found us!”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
“Fucking damnit, GD, what do we do?”
“Whose idea was it to meet in an abandoned warehouse? How suspicious is that?!”
“Would all of you just shut the fuck up?” He announced.
Another shiver ran down your spine as a nervous sweat made itself clear on your forehead. You all needed to act, and you needed to act now.
You stood up and immediately motioned for the two men to follow you while you held your walkie talkie close to your face. “I don’t know what the fuck just happened and why no one informed me exactly what was going on but it is time to move. I don’t care that we’ve been spotted, we need to get in there and we need to get in NOW. Everyone get inside exactly as we planned. Stay alert and stay armed. Report any and everything to me. If I am making myself crystal clear then MOVE.” You urgently gave your orders over the radio as the three of you sprinted to the nearest entrance.
You swung the door open as your two men entered with another team of four; everyone’s pistols were drawn and aimed forward, ready for anything. Nobody was leaving until somebody was put in handcuffs.
Your paces drastically slowed down as the door shut and the darkness of the building swallowed all of you. All that could be heard was breathing, along with muffled yelling in the distance.
“Someone get their damn flashlight out.” You snapped.
As the bare halls and floor beams illuminated before you, another transmission came in; this time it was Seunghyun. “They’re on the ground floor and they’ve disbursed.”
You wasted no time in giving follow-up orders. “All right, separate and cover all walkways. Do not let them flea this building.” You didn’t even bother to take the time to question what your partner had been doing this whole time. Everyone parted ways in pairs of two while you, without thinking, ran forward alone.
You could envision Jiwon’s look of disapproval perfectly once your own breathing was all you could hear and everything in front of you had gone black. You whipped your head in all directions as you walked for what felt like ten minutes until you saw a small light from afar, paired with the sound of voices.
You paced forward with both hands locked on your gun as the sounds became louder. You pulled the hammer back as you approached what you now recognized as a room and made a quick 90 degree turn to enter into its dim lighting.
The room was wide and empty aside from some broken furniture and mounds of dust and cobwebs accompanying them. There were large windows straight ahead of you and openings to the rest of the warehouse on either side of the one you’d entered through. But it wasn’t the layout that caught your attention. It was the out of breath, well-dressed man standing before you; G Dragon himself.
He was standing in one of the more poorly lit areas of the room with his back turned about twenty feet away, but you’d recognized his stature. “Don’t move a fucking muscle!” You warned, announcing your presence as you took aim.
He stayed in place, saying nothing. “Do you fucking hear me?!” You shouted after what felt like too long of a pause.
He released a cynical laugh before slowly turning to face you. “Yeah, yeah, I hear you...”
“I said don’t move a mus...!” You stopped. Your eyes widened and your heart immediately sank as his face finally revealed itself in better lighting.
The familiarity of his voice over the speakers finally made sense as you now heard it in person, clear as day.
All the intense months you’d spent trying to gain a proper description of his appearance and location flashed before your eyes. No amount of training, or trips to the psychiatrist for that matter, could have prepared you for this moment. Never again did you think you’d see this face, especially not like this.
“J-Ji-...Jiyong?” You questioned with a broken voice as you subconsciously loosened grip on your gun.
The corner of his mouth pulled into its signature shit eating grin. “Hey troublemaker.”
You couldn’t move. All you could do was stare and try to absorb what was absolutely impossible to process. Your chest clenched as anxiety flooded your veins and a million thoughts fired inside your head.
“Wh-…What are you doing? What is this?”
You could barely speak, but you forced it out, knowing just how many people in this building wanted to see the man in front of you…may he be dead or alive.
He merely raised his eyebrows and narrowed his eyes.
You scoffed out of frustration. “So…you’re G-Dragon?”
The words tasted just as bitter as they sounded. For a singular moment in time, you convinced yourself that your head must have slammed against something in the dark, somewhere in the warehouse. This couldn’t be real…you had to be dreaming, and your body was just laying on a floor beam, waiting to be found by your teammates. You refused to believe it...until you heard him laugh.
It wasn’t the same dark, twisted one you’d heard just moments before. It wasn’t “GD.” It was Jiyong…your Jiyong.
He held one hand on his waist, while the back of the other blocked his smile. He was acting like an embarrassed child; and you could hardly handle the memories it brought back.
“I know. I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.” He said to the ground, before locking eyes with you and nodding. “So you really became a cop after all.”
You inhaled sharply, pushing through the tears that had subconsciously flooded your eyes and readjusted grip on your gun. Your chest was heavy as you aimed it towards him. “Don’t fuck with me right now.” His smile fell. “Don’t try to distract me. Don’t try to downplay ANY of this. YOU are a fucking criminal.” You continued, flabbergasted. A few tears fell from your eyes, but you refused to blink. You sniffed and clenched your teeth. “And I’m supposed to take you away in handcuffs.”
His expression darkened. He placed his hands inside his pockets and sighed deeply. “You don’t understa-..”
“Shut up!” You shot back. “Don’t you say another word to me!”
You took a deep breath, trying to ignore how badly your hands were shaking. It felt impossible to maintain any sort of intimidating demeanor. More tears filled your eyes as you grew more frustrated. “Surrender, and come quietly, and no one has to...”
You’d barely began to state the ultimatum before one of his men flung themselves into the room.
Everything happened so quickly. It could have been thirty seconds for all you know, but it all seemed to pass by in slow motion.
He ran to Jiyong’s side, screaming something unintelligible. Your mind was just barely able to match his face to one from the basement. It was the man who’d sat on the far corner of the table; the one who’d brought up tonight’s topic, and evidently the one who’d felt he had something to prove.
Your eyes had fully adjusted to the lighting of the room just in time to see the gun in his hand. He’d ran in and immediately pointed the illegal firearm at you with a crazed look in his eyes. You had almost no time to think.
Jiyong bared his teeth, acting fast and grabbing the man by his collar and pulled him towards his face. His expression was scolding as he muttered under his breath.
Your breathing had increased exponentially. “Yah! Drop the gun!” You warned, now pointing yours at the room’s newest occupant.
Jiyong whispered one last thing before letting go of his collar.
“Stop the whispering and drop the gun! This is my last warning!!” Your pulse ricocheted between your ears.
Jiyong looked down to release another sigh before returning his gaze to you. “Y/N.”
Instead of replying, you merely switched aim from his cohort back to him. You felt the sweat begin to drip down your neck.
His pokerface didn’t falter. “This is nothing personal.”
As you opened your mouth to question him, his henchman quickly took aim once again.
You heard the sound before you felt anything.
BANG! BANG!
You heard the gunshots echo throughout the warehouse as you fell to the ground. You looked down, dropping your own gun, and seeing the pool of crimson red gathering around your right leg. You felt a sensation that could only be described as excruciating, radiating from your kneecap to your ankle. Your breathing was labored, working as hard as possible to keep you conscious. You cried out helplessly.
Your vision blurred as you looked around the room in a panic. The man had fled, but your eyes immediately found Jiyong, who was now climbing out of a window.
He paused to look at you, feebly laying there, with a clear sadness in his eyes. A groan ripped through your chest as you clenched your teeth, trying to bare through the pain. Before disappearing into the night, you saw him look to the hallway behind you; his expression suddenly becoming angry and alert.
You watched him duck out the window frame before you found the strength to scream, releasing every last ounce of energy. “YOU MOTHER FUCKER!”
The last thing you could remember, before surrendering to the agony and losing all consciousness, were Seunghyun’s arms hoisting your body into the air while he shouted for someone to call an ambulance.
#g dragon scenarios#kwon jiyong scenario#bigbang scenario#g dragon au#kwon jiyong au#bigbang au#kpop scenarios#g dragon fanfiction#kwon jiyong fanfiction#kwon jiyong angst#g dragon angst
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Stakeout On Dope Street (1958) d. Irvin Kershner (poster from US)
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