FIC: First/Second (MSR, NC-17, WARNINGS)

[amalnahurriyeh]

Title: First/Second
Author: Amal Nahurriyeh (amalnahurriyeh)
Summary: First times are usually a disaster.
Pairing: MSR
Rating: NC-17 (sex, mental trauma, angst)
Warnings: This is potentially the most triggery thing I've written; please do check out the warnings if you need to know this sort of thing, or PM me or comment if you need more details. ( skip) This is

Comments

[amyhit]

oh, i like this one. a lot. it's got so much going for it - so many subtle shifts of tone and focus and balance, yet it all hangs together. and i completely believe that if they'd had sex at this point it would have gone this way. it would have been difficult, wrenching, gutteral somehow - but also moving and tender underneath it all - which this fic is.

you manage to make me believe that if they'd had sex at this point it might not have been to the ruin of their partnership in the long run. maybe they would've been able to pull themselves together, love each other through the complication of sex. i don't usually buy that. but the way you've written it makes me withhold judgment, and think, maybe.

i particularly love the first of the two sections (oh, for more of this believable angst you've got here). it wasn't as dicey as i'd thought it might be, but i can see where your concern comes from, and i suppose that's the thing, isn't it? you can push the boundaries pretty hard if you do a good job - but if the piece doesn't work then it's going to strike one hell of a bad chord.

i feel like you need a new tag. maybe PWPsych. Porn With Psychology. this sort of fic (there really aren't that many of them) just doesn't read like PWP to me, and it feels odd that it should be tagged or considered as such.

as to favorite lines, they'd have to be the entire last paragraph of section one, particularly -- She is vibrating on a molecular level, jumping between states, pushing every emotion--the terror, the exhaustion, the anger (at him, for him), the sadly hollow ache that was probably love--back down as quickly as she could

i love that - the sucker punch when a writer reminds me that they love each other, and that in this most strange of partnerships, their loving each other only sensitizes them - makes the hard parts hurt all the more -- that for them it's all tied up together, inextricable.

favorite line, though, seems to be the same as everybody else's favorite line: And the way he says her name--but that was always the same, wasn't it. He's been saying it that way for years. ooooh, that is just lump-in-the-throat good.

you've got a way with last lines - a way of making them poignant, but not in the way one expects them to be poignant. you've got that whole 'brush-off-poignance' thing. there's something almost counterintuitive to it, which in the end makes it work. a strike on the off beat to finish a song. it works powerfully when it's right, and you manage to get it right a lot.

[amalnahurriyeh]

I am firmly in the fifth-season-shipping camp--that's where the emotional stakes were just right. Have you read Seisdeadh? I think the way it's handled in there is *exactly* how it should have gone in canon. (OK, minus the Scully torture abduction thing. And the kink probably should stay off camera. Probably.)

Frankly, I'd save the designation PWP for happy-cheerful-smut-biscuit things--and I don't really write it, with the noteable exception of during the Porn Battle. I write a lot of "storytelling via fucking," thought. :)

I think love often means you hurt more. Maybe that's just me.

Thank you so much--your comments always mean a lot to me.

[amyhit]

i haven't read seisdeadh. i've never even heard of it, which has me kind of intrigued. my goodness it's long, though. i'll definitely give it a try. i am, myself, a diehard "mid-late S7 was the right time" person. oddly, i'd never quite thought of it before, but i think it helps me understand the way i feel about your fanfic if i think of it in the context that you're a fifth-season-shipper.

I think love often means you hurt more. Maybe that's just me.

as i see it, it's the profound disonance between love and other things that can sometimes make love itself seem painful. it's getting pulled in such different directions. for normal people, on normal days it's like, "my boss yelled at me and i feel like a failuer, plus i love you." for some people it's, "people are starving and being abused and subjugated world wide, plus i love you." what makes mulder and scully exceptional, to me, is that the love is directly connected to the hurt. if they didn't love each other they would have so many less reasons to hurt. the feedback loop between love and pain is so tightly rigged, for them.