Demo Reeling Across the Universe, Chapter 4: Expressionism
Title: Expressionism
Rating: R for sex, violence, and frank discussions of such matters
Word Count: 1,497 (aprox.)
Characters, Pairings: Demo Reel gang, OC aliens, Donnie/everyone
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my socks.
Spoilers: For TRMGO, and my previous chapters of this series (see below.)
Warnings: Discussion of sexual abuse of a minor by a family member, allusions to prison rape.
Summary: The gang embrace German Expressionism, Carl has a bit of an Episode, Donnie experiences a fantasy, and Rebecca and Quinn share a moment.
A/N: A long time coming, sorry, got busy. This one is … odd. There’s allusions to the film and also lots of random sex, then some serious character development thrown in for good measure.
Part 1: http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/314671.html
Part 2: http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/314904.html
Part 3: http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/316366.html
Months ago, they would have all blamed Donnie. Now, they all blame each other, themselves, and the universe in general.
Nobody objects to experimenting with styles, tilting the cameras (Quinn has built new ones out of alien tech, and converted existing cameras into ones useable by human hands) and playing with lighting. Shadows loom on walls, Donnie stares up in horror while Rebecca towers over him, eyes hollow and dark in the dim lighting. The music is menacing and unsettling. The buildings dwarf them, cold and lifeless, and the rooms are full of odd-angles and sharp corners.
They tease Carl for getting so excited on set about their forays into German Expressionism. He glares and keeps his jacket over his lap for the rest of the day, and that night he watches Rebecca ride Donnie and then flips her over and fucks her so hard their mattress breaks. Rebecca doesn’t care, laughs at the smashed remnants of the bedstead and pulls some of the ripped fabric over herself, tangled between Donnie and Carl.
“All that pent up … expressionism …” Rebecca mumbles, half asleep already. “We shoulda done this a long time ago.”
“Ja,” Carl nods, looking around the room for his hat and seeing Quinn asleep cuddling it like a teddy bear. “Gute nacht, mine lieblings,” he says, slumping against the pile of pillows.
“Gute nacht,” Rebecca returns.
“Gute nacht,” Tacoma says.
“What … they said …” Donnie snuffles.
~*~
They start making documentaries. Specials on the places they’re visiting, local landmarks, “a day in the life of the city.” They leave the camera running on a street corner for the full day, record time-lapses of busy spaceports, conduct hand-held walks through bazaars.
Donnie speaks, wistfully, of his trip to ShadowCon, his adventures with Uncle Yo and the filming of all the strangely dressed people there. Carl speaks longingly of the adoring frauleins. Donnie blushes and admits to nights of Pocky-fueled sex in Uncle Yo’s hotel room. After a few drinks of something bubbling and red at a bar, he talks about a one-night stand with another guy, EgoRaptor or something, long-haired and ever-smiling. After a few more drinks he opens up about a very confusing but pleasantly intense night with the both of them, tangled in hotel sheets, with Donnie pleading for the weekend to never end.
After he tells them that, Tacoma takes his left hand, and Rebecca takes his right. They don’t let go until they’re all back at the inn where they’re staying, and then it’s only to strip Donnie of the gaucho-like pants he’s taken to wearing on this planet and gently but insistently shove him into the huge shower room.
That’s how Quinn and Carl find them when they return from shooting the extra footage downtown. They’re too tired to join, just rinse the dirt and sweat from their bodies and collapse on the bed, offering suggestions as Donnie becomes more and more sensitive to their touches.
~*~
“We shoulda stuck with th’ German Expressionism. Nobody knew what the fuck ta make o’ those.” Quinn growls.
“Or the time-lapse stuff. That was good. It was … soothing. Fascinating. We showed people things they forgot to notice, after walking those roads every day, riding those busses and trains and giant turtles.” Rebecca glances over their meager inventory. “Is this gonna be enough?”
“It’s plenty. Don’t yeh worry, me n’ Carl have gotten outta tighter corners than this.”
“Carl’s not here.” Rebecca points out, face grim.
“No, but Carl’s in there, and he ain’t gonna give up. He’ll be fighting his way out with us. All we gotta do is get ta him.”
Rebecca nods, and picks up the largest gun. “This one is mine. I named her Juliet.”
Quinn nods. “Right-o. Ready ta kick some government arse?”
Rebecca primes the gun. It whirrs and blinks a blue light. “Locked and loaded!”
~*~
“We should have stuck with German Expressionism,” Donnie sighs, head in his hands.
It was true that things had gotten … out of hand. Turned out that making a movie about the exploitative factory conditions on the Moons of Yrtalee was considered a crime worthy of making the filmmakers “enemies of the state.” Not only that, the movie had been so inflammatory that three moons and two surrounding planets were currently experiencing explosive class warfare. The workers and the oppressive ruling class were fighting it out, and the Demo Reel gang was caught in the middle.
Literally caught, in the cases of Donnie, Tacoma, and Carl.
“Should never have moved on to political shit.” Donnie moans.
“Donnie, don’t say that. We needed to move on, innovate. Hey, the documentary-stuff started out good, right?” Tacoma puts his arm around Donnie’s shoulders.
“I … I guess …” Donnie mumbles.
“Perhaps zis ist mine punishment,” Carl muses, staring out the small window of their cramped cell. “I escaped ze military tribunals, I outlived mine comrades and all of mine enemies … perhaps now I shall finally face justice.”
Tacoma stares at the German man. Donnie surfaces out of his sulk to stare as well.
“Carl …” Donnie says slowly. “You’ve mentioned ‘The War’ before … which war exactly?”
“Does it matter?” Carl practically spits. “Every war is ze same. Give ze men weapons, tell zem to kill ze men in ze other uniforms. You fight und fight until you are dead or ze enemy ist dead.”
Tacoma and Donnie share A Look.
“Well!” Donnie grins with forced cheerfulness. “I know whose prison bitch I’m gonna be! No offense, Tacoma, but I think Carl’s the best protector I can sell my ass to.”
Tacoma rolls his eyes. “I don’t think we’ll have time for that, Donnie …”
“I’m trying to be optimistic here.” Donnie glares. “Let me entertain my teenage fantasies of prison-sex, ok?”
“You watched a lot of Oz in college, didn’t you?” Tacoma tilts his head.
Donnie squirms. “So what if I did?”
Carl pounds on the door of their cell. “Feiglinge! Come unt face me like ze men whose skins you vear! You think I fear ze deaths you unt your kind vill bring?”
“Carl!” Tacoma stands up. “Carl, calm down!”
“Nein!” Carl roars, kicking at the door now. “Verdammte! Snakes unt lizards unt planets vith no gravity unt more WAR!”
And then he kicks the door down. One of the guards, it turns out, was standing in front of the door, and is now squashed almost comically flat beneath it.
Alarm bells ring. Carl screams obscenities in at least three languages and runs down the hallway.
Donne and Tacoma peer around the door, give each other another Look, pick up the door, and lock themselves back inside. They huddle in the corner of the cell on the one fold-down bed and listen to the echoing shouts of German and blaring alarm bells.
Tacoma smiles tentatively. “So … about those prison-sex fantasies?”
Donnie laughs, then looks up at him through lowered lashes. “You gonna protect me, big man?”
Tacoma stretches and flexes the modest muscles he has to work with. “That all depends on what you do for me, snowflake.”
Donnie sinks down onto his knees.
~*~
“I think it’s Christmas, back home.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Quinn peers through the binoculars. “I was tryin’ ta do a little math the other day, figger out how many nights an’ days we’ve spent out here.”
“Hmmm … Christmas …” Rebecca frowns.
“Don’t tell me yeh don’t like Christmas, now girlie!” Quinn looks aghast.
“It’s not the Holiday it’s … the family,” Rebecca sighs. “Do we have to talk about this now, Quinn, really?”
Quinn shrugs. “It’s up ta you, but we’ve got another fifteen minutes or so before the patrol changes over.”
Rebecca toys with the ammunition pack on her belt. “My uncle. It’s … it’s complicated. He ruined a lot of stuff for me. He ruined me for a while, I thought I wasn’t … I thought it was my … I thought …” Rebecca blinks furiously. “I thought it was my f-”
Quinn leans over and hugs her, long and hard, a proper bear-hug. Rebecca can practically hear her ribs creak.
“It’s not yer fault, lassie. It’s that bloody nonce’s fault.”
“I know that now,” Rebecca rubs her face on her sleeve. “I just wish I’d known it then. Or that someone else had noticed and … told me. That it wasn’t my fault.”
Quinn squeezes her on the shoulder. Rebecca steals his hat momentarily, eventually returning it.
“We ought have Christmas. On our ship. Once we get everyone off this goddamn moon. I’ll steal a tree and we’ll decorate it with … I dunno, that basket of costume jewelry,
After several long minutes of silence, Quinn hefts his gun. “Ready ta free those eejits?”
“Hey,” Rebecca punches him on the shoulder, a little harder than ‘playfully.’ “They might be … e-jits, but they’re our e-jits.”
“That they are, lassie, that they are.” Quinn nods. “Let’s go bust some heads.”
(To be continued …)
Rating: R for sex, violence, and frank discussions of such matters
Word Count: 1,497 (aprox.)
Characters, Pairings: Demo Reel gang, OC aliens, Donnie/everyone
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my socks.
Spoilers: For TRMGO, and my previous chapters of this series (see below.)
Warnings: Discussion of sexual abuse of a minor by a family member, allusions to prison rape.
Summary: The gang embrace German Expressionism, Carl has a bit of an Episode, Donnie experiences a fantasy, and Rebecca and Quinn share a moment.
A/N: A long time coming, sorry, got busy. This one is … odd. There’s allusions to the film and also lots of random sex, then some serious character development thrown in for good measure.
Part 1: http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/314671.html
Part 2: http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/314904.html
Part 3: http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/316366.html
Months ago, they would have all blamed Donnie. Now, they all blame each other, themselves, and the universe in general.
Nobody objects to experimenting with styles, tilting the cameras (Quinn has built new ones out of alien tech, and converted existing cameras into ones useable by human hands) and playing with lighting. Shadows loom on walls, Donnie stares up in horror while Rebecca towers over him, eyes hollow and dark in the dim lighting. The music is menacing and unsettling. The buildings dwarf them, cold and lifeless, and the rooms are full of odd-angles and sharp corners.
They tease Carl for getting so excited on set about their forays into German Expressionism. He glares and keeps his jacket over his lap for the rest of the day, and that night he watches Rebecca ride Donnie and then flips her over and fucks her so hard their mattress breaks. Rebecca doesn’t care, laughs at the smashed remnants of the bedstead and pulls some of the ripped fabric over herself, tangled between Donnie and Carl.
“All that pent up … expressionism …” Rebecca mumbles, half asleep already. “We shoulda done this a long time ago.”
“Ja,” Carl nods, looking around the room for his hat and seeing Quinn asleep cuddling it like a teddy bear. “Gute nacht, mine lieblings,” he says, slumping against the pile of pillows.
“Gute nacht,” Rebecca returns.
“Gute nacht,” Tacoma says.
“What … they said …” Donnie snuffles.
~*~
They start making documentaries. Specials on the places they’re visiting, local landmarks, “a day in the life of the city.” They leave the camera running on a street corner for the full day, record time-lapses of busy spaceports, conduct hand-held walks through bazaars.
Donnie speaks, wistfully, of his trip to ShadowCon, his adventures with Uncle Yo and the filming of all the strangely dressed people there. Carl speaks longingly of the adoring frauleins. Donnie blushes and admits to nights of Pocky-fueled sex in Uncle Yo’s hotel room. After a few drinks of something bubbling and red at a bar, he talks about a one-night stand with another guy, EgoRaptor or something, long-haired and ever-smiling. After a few more drinks he opens up about a very confusing but pleasantly intense night with the both of them, tangled in hotel sheets, with Donnie pleading for the weekend to never end.
After he tells them that, Tacoma takes his left hand, and Rebecca takes his right. They don’t let go until they’re all back at the inn where they’re staying, and then it’s only to strip Donnie of the gaucho-like pants he’s taken to wearing on this planet and gently but insistently shove him into the huge shower room.
That’s how Quinn and Carl find them when they return from shooting the extra footage downtown. They’re too tired to join, just rinse the dirt and sweat from their bodies and collapse on the bed, offering suggestions as Donnie becomes more and more sensitive to their touches.
~*~
“We shoulda stuck with th’ German Expressionism. Nobody knew what the fuck ta make o’ those.” Quinn growls.
“Or the time-lapse stuff. That was good. It was … soothing. Fascinating. We showed people things they forgot to notice, after walking those roads every day, riding those busses and trains and giant turtles.” Rebecca glances over their meager inventory. “Is this gonna be enough?”
“It’s plenty. Don’t yeh worry, me n’ Carl have gotten outta tighter corners than this.”
“Carl’s not here.” Rebecca points out, face grim.
“No, but Carl’s in there, and he ain’t gonna give up. He’ll be fighting his way out with us. All we gotta do is get ta him.”
Rebecca nods, and picks up the largest gun. “This one is mine. I named her Juliet.”
Quinn nods. “Right-o. Ready ta kick some government arse?”
Rebecca primes the gun. It whirrs and blinks a blue light. “Locked and loaded!”
~*~
“We should have stuck with German Expressionism,” Donnie sighs, head in his hands.
It was true that things had gotten … out of hand. Turned out that making a movie about the exploitative factory conditions on the Moons of Yrtalee was considered a crime worthy of making the filmmakers “enemies of the state.” Not only that, the movie had been so inflammatory that three moons and two surrounding planets were currently experiencing explosive class warfare. The workers and the oppressive ruling class were fighting it out, and the Demo Reel gang was caught in the middle.
Literally caught, in the cases of Donnie, Tacoma, and Carl.
“Should never have moved on to political shit.” Donnie moans.
“Donnie, don’t say that. We needed to move on, innovate. Hey, the documentary-stuff started out good, right?” Tacoma puts his arm around Donnie’s shoulders.
“I … I guess …” Donnie mumbles.
“Perhaps zis ist mine punishment,” Carl muses, staring out the small window of their cramped cell. “I escaped ze military tribunals, I outlived mine comrades and all of mine enemies … perhaps now I shall finally face justice.”
Tacoma stares at the German man. Donnie surfaces out of his sulk to stare as well.
“Carl …” Donnie says slowly. “You’ve mentioned ‘The War’ before … which war exactly?”
“Does it matter?” Carl practically spits. “Every war is ze same. Give ze men weapons, tell zem to kill ze men in ze other uniforms. You fight und fight until you are dead or ze enemy ist dead.”
Tacoma and Donnie share A Look.
“Well!” Donnie grins with forced cheerfulness. “I know whose prison bitch I’m gonna be! No offense, Tacoma, but I think Carl’s the best protector I can sell my ass to.”
Tacoma rolls his eyes. “I don’t think we’ll have time for that, Donnie …”
“I’m trying to be optimistic here.” Donnie glares. “Let me entertain my teenage fantasies of prison-sex, ok?”
“You watched a lot of Oz in college, didn’t you?” Tacoma tilts his head.
Donnie squirms. “So what if I did?”
Carl pounds on the door of their cell. “Feiglinge! Come unt face me like ze men whose skins you vear! You think I fear ze deaths you unt your kind vill bring?”
“Carl!” Tacoma stands up. “Carl, calm down!”
“Nein!” Carl roars, kicking at the door now. “Verdammte! Snakes unt lizards unt planets vith no gravity unt more WAR!”
And then he kicks the door down. One of the guards, it turns out, was standing in front of the door, and is now squashed almost comically flat beneath it.
Alarm bells ring. Carl screams obscenities in at least three languages and runs down the hallway.
Donne and Tacoma peer around the door, give each other another Look, pick up the door, and lock themselves back inside. They huddle in the corner of the cell on the one fold-down bed and listen to the echoing shouts of German and blaring alarm bells.
Tacoma smiles tentatively. “So … about those prison-sex fantasies?”
Donnie laughs, then looks up at him through lowered lashes. “You gonna protect me, big man?”
Tacoma stretches and flexes the modest muscles he has to work with. “That all depends on what you do for me, snowflake.”
Donnie sinks down onto his knees.
~*~
“I think it’s Christmas, back home.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Quinn peers through the binoculars. “I was tryin’ ta do a little math the other day, figger out how many nights an’ days we’ve spent out here.”
“Hmmm … Christmas …” Rebecca frowns.
“Don’t tell me yeh don’t like Christmas, now girlie!” Quinn looks aghast.
“It’s not the Holiday it’s … the family,” Rebecca sighs. “Do we have to talk about this now, Quinn, really?”
Quinn shrugs. “It’s up ta you, but we’ve got another fifteen minutes or so before the patrol changes over.”
Rebecca toys with the ammunition pack on her belt. “My uncle. It’s … it’s complicated. He ruined a lot of stuff for me. He ruined me for a while, I thought I wasn’t … I thought it was my … I thought …” Rebecca blinks furiously. “I thought it was my f-”
Quinn leans over and hugs her, long and hard, a proper bear-hug. Rebecca can practically hear her ribs creak.
“It’s not yer fault, lassie. It’s that bloody nonce’s fault.”
“I know that now,” Rebecca rubs her face on her sleeve. “I just wish I’d known it then. Or that someone else had noticed and … told me. That it wasn’t my fault.”
Quinn squeezes her on the shoulder. Rebecca steals his hat momentarily, eventually returning it.
“We ought have Christmas. On our ship. Once we get everyone off this goddamn moon. I’ll steal a tree and we’ll decorate it with … I dunno, that basket of costume jewelry,
After several long minutes of silence, Quinn hefts his gun. “Ready ta free those eejits?”
“Hey,” Rebecca punches him on the shoulder, a little harder than ‘playfully.’ “They might be … e-jits, but they’re our e-jits.”
“That they are, lassie, that they are.” Quinn nods. “Let’s go bust some heads.”
(To be continued …)