FIC: Nightswimming (Adult Content Warning)

[etherati]

Title: Nightswimming
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Dan/Walter.
Date Written: 2009
Summary: "The photograph reflects, every streetlight a reminder: these things, they go away - replaced by everyday."
Rating/Warnings: Let's go with R. Sex, but no IKEA-style detail. If anyone disagrees on this, let me know, and I'll change it.
Notes: Nostalgia(n):

Comments

[sandoz_iscariot]

I love this. ;___;

[etherati]

Thank you. Still so glad you do.

[findmyantidrug]

This is easily one of my favorite fics of yours. The format and the subtlety and it's so gentle and, for the record, you are not slipping, you are indeed going uphill.

[etherati]

Thank you, really. I've never written them this way before, still THEM but happier, younger, with something to lose, something worth trying to hold onto. I wasn't sure if it'd worked out.

[findmyantidrug]

;_; Yeah. Yeah, it worked out.

[tuff_ghost]

That was why I was so excited about your calling him Walter, you have never done that before.

Also I only know of one other fic (Kitbuah series) that's had them in an established relationship and then not, for reasons other than death.

I don't want to say I think this is the best thing you've done yet or anything like that because I just know you'll worry more about subsequent fics, trying to always best yourself. But I can definitely say this is something new and different and striking, just like NaB was.

[por_queeee]

This was, uh... Wow. I've never really read a fic like this about them, where they're so young and happy and the moment still proves to be bittersweet. Everything about this was so... Soft, and the lack of explicit sexual detail definitely worked to your advantage on this one.

The day you stop writing good fic is the day I turn into a mermaid and join a polka band... Or something equally impossible.

[etherati]

The problem with the good moments is the knowledge that they will eventually be only memories. :\ Nothing gold can stay, etc etc. I will openly admit that I manage to depress myself on an alarmingly regular basis.

I did keep the sex vague on purpose, because it was more about the contact and the vulnerability and the way that sex CAN be a very innocent thing, in the greater context of lives filled with violence and brutality and all the worst parts of human nature on constant display. Which is a tough thing to get across or even explain to people heh.

[aceles]

Heartbreaking, subtle, and a sex scene written the way they should be written--about the internal landscape, not the science and the fluids. Lovely.

[etherati]

Best kind, in my opinion. I already know what goes where; I want to be given a reason to *care* about it.

I'm glad the subtlety came across. I've always been fascinated by this idea of the future haunting the past as much as the past haunts the future.

[aceles]

You just summed up my feelings in a nutshell.

It did completely color the scene, it really did. It made it bittersweet, where otherwise it would have been an all around happy encounter.

[etherati]

Yeah, it's like... it's good that this happened, it's good that they had this moment, and I tried to emphasize *that*, too, so that it wouldn't drown in the angst - but the good things are eventually just memories that you can't ever get back. Does that make it bad to have had them? Of course not; they're still some of the most wonderful things we have in our lives, but there's an acceptance you have to have that they do go away.

Which is, basically, the entire point of the song that I pulled a lot of the imagery from, so it's not like this was a totally original idea or anything, but I hope I at least did a decent job of sewing it all together.

[__perplexity__]

Wow, that was gorgeous work right there.

"“This is us, this is - this moment, right now, this is ours. Just ours. And I don't care.”"

It really captured the feeling of the moment, you know? I don't want to say "relaxed" but ... it was soft, and it really felt as if they had all the time in the world in a place which was theirs and theirs alone. As such it reflected into our world, and it took me so long to read it simply because I knew I had all the time in the world too.

And I think I may have said it before, but the language you use is amazing. Indeed - and wish me luck in saying this in a way that won't sound offensive! - I find I can't read too much of your writing in succession because it feels like a treat, and I don't want to get used to reading something so mentally fulfilling. Does that, erm, make any sense? *grammar nazi, vocabulary demon, linguistics student XD*

Thank you for sharing!

[etherati]

Thank you; I am honestly thrilled and honored that someone obsessed(I say this in a good way!) with grammar, vocabulary, and linguistics doesn't run screaming from my work. Because I break a lot of rules - I know the rules I'm breaking, and I always say that's the pre-requisite for breaking them, but I still would expect people to be *horrified* by the mess I make of sentence structure, no matter how deliberate.

That's very much the feel I was going for though - this juxtaposition of that feeling, the 'all the time in the world' sense of the world stopping for you for just a little while, and the realization years down the road that no time is ever enough, and nothing ever stands still.

[__perplexity__]

You said it yourself - if you're going to break rules you have to be at least aware of what you're doing to them and why you're doing it. It's not horrifying at all, it just makes one slow to read it differently on occassion, and I don't think that's a bad thing.
And besides, after having such a strict and traditional grammarian teaching Advanced English Grammar for months on end, you begin to respect anyone who can think outside the box XD

Sometiems the feeling of time standing still can be enough though, right? I like the way you can still evoke little traces of the writing in a reply to a comment - that's pretty impressive you know ^-^

STOP THE PRESS there is a Tag saying "Turk" next to this comment box! Does that mean .... .... .... Oh I think I'll be back soon :D:D:D

[etherati]

It's mostly just that I really just write/think that way most of the time, so when I start describing story elements it ends up looking like something from the story. XD