Until His Hands Go Numb: A Themed Rec List/Meta Essay for Kink_Bingo
I didn't quite get my story done for kink_bingo amnesty. (Or rather, I got swallowed up by the research for the story that evolved when I wasn't looking.)
So that I can try a new card next go round, I wanted to post something.
I don't do short. And I don't do nicely defined categories. What follows is kind of a recs list--but there are only two stories on it. They're both Hawaii Five-0 (2010).
It's also kind of a close reading of parts of the stories. And a little bit of meta about kink.
It's for the obedience square on my card (which wasn't the square I was writing a story for, but, whatever.)
While I was poking around reading stuff from the kink_bingo wiki, I came across this passage. It's from an essay by Deborah Teramis Christian called "A Slave Is Not a Submissive." Christian attempts to explain the dynamic at work for submissives:
The submissive decides how much authority sie will cede to another, how much control sie will bow to, and what aspects of hir life sie will surrender to the dominant's command. Submissive power exchange is about choice: about the option to decide how one feels about a demand and what one is going to do about it. At any point that the sub is not comfortable with this arrangement, it is within hir rights to say "No, I'm not going to do that", and this becomes a signal to the couple that they need to renegotiate something. It does not completely derail the power dynamic between them.
H50 seems to be generating its fair share of D/s or bondage or S/M fic. This doesn't surprise me. All you have to do is watch the first scene in which Steve and Danny meet to understand why those of us who in our fic like a D/s relationship that's loaded with two people who are aware of power dynamics and are capable of negotiating about them to understand why this fandom in particular seems to be totally capable of generating fic that touches on issues on power, consent, negotiation, and obedience like this fandom. Those issues leap out in their relationship from the very beginning.
This promo from CBS shows that Danny and Steve don't exactly "meet cute" as the vapid discourse that network execs often use to describe characters' meetings. (The bit where Danny and Steve encounter each other for the first time is about 42 or 44 seconds in. I do also highly recommend watching to the end so you can see Steve twist Danny's arm up behind him, followed by Danny punching Steve as payback toward the very end of the clip. I figure on a kink-themed community, that part may also play with with a number of people reading this post.)
Come on. Watch that and tell me that there isn't a very special power dynamic at work between these two. I dare you. That clip makes my case for me; it wasn't a shock to me that there was going to be some awesome potential for kink in H50 stories.
Since the world is full of differences, what works for me may not be what works for everyone else. (Chances are that it's not.) So before we go any further, I figure I should define what makes a kink story work for me. A kink story that works for me is one in which the story gets the dynamic described by Christian in the quote above. I prefer stories in which submissives are not abjectly characterized. I know that works for some people, and hey, to all of us our own, right? But I want to read stories in which the submissives in the story choose to submit. For me, that's what makes a story hot. I know that for some people, the setting itself-the toys, the situation, the general mise en scene-is what categorizes a story as kink. But for me, by itself, the ritual, the toys, the titles, and the setting are not enough; the stories I most enjoy reading are kink stories in which the submissive is characterized as being an inherently powerful person who chooses to surrender that power. (You can kind of see how H50 is ready made for this, right?) I enjoy reading stories in which the dominants are mindful of the power they're being temporarily given and get turned on precisely because they realize that the other person (or other people) in the room at the time are participating willingly. I need this to be about the brains of the people involved as much as it's about the bodies.
That doesn't mean that a relationship (usually a pairing, but it doesn't have to be) has to have long meticulously detailed conversations about consent. I know for a lot of people one of the barriers to feeling comfortable writing about kink-and RACK in particular-is trying to figure out how to get the characters to have conversations about limits without feeling like you've been dumped into kink manual. But it can be done! I've seen stories that do it extraordinarily well. I'm about to talk about two of them next.
And I suspect that's why especially when it comes to kink, I like non-first time stories as much (if not more than) first time stories. Subsequent-time stories often mean that the chances that the people involved have gotten better at communicating have gone up. For me, RACK doesn’t mean that the people involved in a particular scene don't occasionally push boundaries.
So the stories I like most are the ones that keep the characters in character but make explicit kink dynamics that it's easy for me to see in the source text.
In this post, I'm going to talk about two stories from H50 fandom that I think did that extraordinarily successfully. That's not to say that there aren't other stories that do these things well. That's not to say that these stories will work for everyone. And fair warning, one of the stories comes with its own warnings. But I'd like to focus on the details in these stories that do work because I'm a firm believer that if you can figure out what does work in one story, you're a good way toward being able to use that information to write better in your own work.
And you should probably know that everything I'm about to talk about will contain massive spoilers for the stories, so if you're a spoiler phobe, I'd suggest you go read the stories that follow first before you read the analysis.
The two stories are "End Around" by Topaz and "Put Your Mind at Ease"by Elenaor_Lavish. Both stories are centrally concerned with questions of obedience although they are wildly different in terms of how much obedience is called for an in what contexts. In one, it's erotizicized. In the other, it's a barrier to sexual desire-and not an especially pleasant one. But in both cases, the stories show the ways that obedience can be tied, at least in fic, to desire.
One of the many things about "End-Around" by Topaz119 that I like is that it's not a first time story. I love me a first time story as much as the next girl. (Just like I love me some hurt-comfort, and some sex pollen/aliens/some other totally flimsy excuse made them do it stories too.), but I also think that especially with kink, once you get past the first time, there are interesting possibilities that aren't available with first time stories.
The story begins with Steve and Danny in bed (where they should always be when they aren't out dangling criminals off roofs or bungeeing criminals to the hoods of cars as far as I'm concerned. Or taking care of Gracie.) Danny's being asked by Steve to tell him what it is he wants. In fact, as the story describes it, "Danny's still shaking from the orgasm Steve's fucked out of him, all his nerves firing randomly from the overload of Steve's dick buried in him and Steve's hand wrapped around his dick and Steve's mouth biting bruises into his neck."
Which I am strictly quoting in order to demonstrate precisely how hot conversations about consent can be. Ahem.
Danny's response (which in his inner monologue he knows is maybe not the best thing to say) is "I want you to be fucking honest with me."
This, predictably, leads to Steve running away. (Don't worry. This is Steve McGarrett. It's an in-character, stoic, SEAL approved tactical retreat.)
The first selling point of this set up for a story for me is that when Steve gets out of the shower, he's surprised to find Danny still there. Danny is not going to let this go. This works for me because one of the things that Danny and Steve have in common is epic tenacity. Sure, Danny's is more like a particularly deranged terrier. (And I say this as a fan of terriers, but, truthfully. Once locked on, most terriers are deranged. The argument could be made that "deranged terrier" is redundant. What I'm saying is that Danny is focused a little more wildly focused than is typical even for a typical terrier-hence a deranged terrier. He's particularly deranged even for a terrier.) And Steve's is a bit more like a laser sight on a sniper rifle. But they're both pretty task-oriented types, so it makes sense to me that Danny's still on the bed, and Steve's slightly surprised that Danny stuck around, but that doesn't mean that Steve's going to back down either.
In the course of the story, which is told consistently from Danny's point of view, we come to realize a few things.
First, Danny and Steve have been fucking like minks.
Second, that fucking has been pretty kinky.
Third, Danny is a very smart guy. He's also a good detective because he notices stuff. Danny talks about how his failure to notice stuff led to the end of his marriage with Rachel. So this time around, he's determined not to miss stuff. This makes reading his partner well-at work as much as he does in the bedroom-a priority.
I, frankly, think her characterization of both Danny and Steve is spot on in this passage as he gives us his reading of the little stuff Steve does-stuff other people might not notice:
So, yeah, on the job--that's where Danny notices shit like how Steve can be functioning at a level most guys would kill for and still be shut down. When he's like that, he does everything right and most things perfect, but there's a little dullness to it all, like he's taken whatever it is that makes him, him, and tucked it away for safe-keeping. When it's really him--even when he's acting like a crazy motherfucker, doing things that are so insanely stupid Danny almost can't watch--there's a, a joy about him that makes it so Danny can't look away. That sounds stupid and cheesy even in Danny's head, but it's the God's honest truth.
I admit, part of what I like about this story is that I read that and see stuff in the show I've seen and go "Hey, look, I'm totally right. Somebody else pegged the same thing!" (Note: I did not say pegged the same person. That's a different story, and one I am totally willing to read, for the record.) Danny here is being set up narratively to be able to be an excellent dom; he's totally capable of reading subtle behavior cues about the state of mind of his sub. (Yes, I remember that this is supposed to be about obedience. I promise, I'm getting there.) So you can imagine how Danny responds when he twigs to the fact that not only has he seen Steve dissociate during sex, but he's seen Steve go elsewhere during the particular bedroom activities that turn Danny on the most:
Danny realizes that he's seen that shut-down look in Steve's eyes when they're fucking. Not all the time, which is good--to put it mildly--but it maybe makes it worse when Danny figures out that it's really only happened the times when they've been screwing around with restraints, which scenario happens to be Danny's A-#1 bulletproof kink. He's never hidden how much it turns him on, just like Steve's never hidden how much he likes getting Danny all twisted up. Steve's never said anything one way or another about it specifically, but that doesn't mean Danny's going to let himself off the hook on this one.
See, Danny here is doing a responsible dom thing. He's assessing his own desires and the needs and desires of his partner. Problem is, Danny really likes restraints.
I should add, calling them doms or subs here may be confusing. Really, both of them are written as switches, but for purposes of keeping a very long post moderately less long, I'm using dom to mean the person who is currently in the role of the dom. Danny makes it clear that he's just as happy to be the person being tied up as the one doing the tying.
So. Steve and Danny have some conversations about this-which you should read. They are awesomely written. Since I feel kind of bad about quoting as much of the story as I have, I'm not going to quote the whole back and forth between them-because the whole thing really is that good. It's in character. They voices are spot on.
And they talk through exactly what will and won't trigger Steve.
Eventually, they settle on a middle ground: Danny will tell Steve what to do, and Steve will, essentially restrain himself.
If you are looking for a smoking hot bit of fic all about obedience, I think you'd be hard pressed to find one that works much better than this one. Steve McGarrett, bad ass Navy SEAL, holding himself restrained with nothing but his will, as Detective Danny Williams orders him to do so. I know that for a lot of people the traditional ritual of Master and Slave is a turn on, and in the right fic, I can totally enjoy reading it. But in this story, that's not the dynamic at work. These are not guys who run on ritual. In fact, sometimes I wonder if Steve is even passingly familiar with any rules at all.
For that reason, a scene that focuses on obedience but that is specific to how it might play out with these two characters works for me. Both Steve and Danny remain exactly who they are. In fact, it's clear-although the details are never really clearly discussed-that it's the fact that they are who they are that led to the problem in the first place. The story strongly suggests that McGarrett's issues with restraints are likely tied to stuff he's been through in his day job. Which, you know, given their day jobs, makes sense.
The second story that for me is very much a kink story about obedience (and I know that for a lot of people, this is going to be a harder sell, so be patient with me) is "Put Your Mind at Ease" by Elanor Lavish.
I do have one factual quibble/reservation with this story. It's a small one, and in a fandom like H50 (where, you know, Steve McGarrett is a SEAL and a naval aviator at the same time? Or the HQ of a rogue task force is inside 'Iolani Palace. We will not speak of the particular issues with doing that when there's not a native Hawai'ian in the entire primary cast of the show.) where, well, let's just say that scrupulous adherence to plausibility isn't a strong suit of the show.
At any rate, in a fandom like this, it's a totally valid choice-and probably a smarter one than I'm capable of making-to just suspend disbelief a little bit. If you're okay with just waving your hands and saying that for purposes of this story, DADT has been repealed unambiguously, then you won't have the problem with the story that I did.
The reality, however, is that for LGBT folks currently serving in the armed forces, DADT is still very much temporarily in effect. They know, as we know, that it is on its way to being dead. But it's not 100% dead yet, and until all the legal stuff settles down for good, places like the Servicemembers Defense Network are telling LGBT folks not to out themselves just yet. And I also think it's important to note that the repeal of DADT does not give protection to trans folks. You can read more about that if you're interested. Because I've been following DADT news pretty closely, the fact that some military personnel in the story were willing to be as out as they were didn't ring true to me. Or maybe that's just the part where I'm old and cynical. I'm fairly sure the big gay wedding of a SEAL in D.C. would count as outing yourself. I'm not saying that this makes it a bad story; I just personally can't suspend my disbelief quite that far yet, so that fact kicked me out of the story temporarily. I only mention it because it might have the same effect on other people. I was more than willing to jump right back in because the rest of it is totally awesomesauce.
Part of what makes it so good is the fact that this story hits dead on what it feels like to be queer and feel compelled to attempt to erase any trace of proof of that from your life. In fact, it does the metaphoric equivalent of what happens to Steve's hands at the end of "End-Around." In this story, Steve McGarrett has been reflexively hiding parts of his identity and sexuality so long, that it's like if those emotions were parts of his body, they'd have gone stiff and numb from having been in that position so long. It takes him a while to come back from that position of extreme obedience.
Steve has to restore circulation to his queerness because he gets a wedding invite from a former team member. To get an idea of just how queer the wedding is, the handwritten note on the back tells Steve that the theme for the stag party is "Navy goes commando." His response to reading the invitation and the note speaks volumes about how obedient--not to the Navy's directive, but to his own internalized version of it, Steve has been and for how long he's been that obedient:
Steve’s pulse is racing. Sure enough, when he turns it back over, the invite warmly welcomes him to witness the union of Jeffrey Allen Taymor and William Michael Fontaine. His first thought is stupid, stupid, how could he be so stupid, along with a knee-jerk reaction to crank his gas stove and burn the evidence right there. It takes a full twenty seconds for the realization to kick in.
Steve's aware that as DADT slowly gets undone, burning any proof of a gay wedding is no longer required, but it's such an ingrained habit that it's a little like the first few showers you take after chopping off long hair; you're still pouring the amount of shampoo you used to need into your palm before you remember that you don't need that much anymore.
One of the smartest scenes in the story is one that describes Steve's emotional response to a guy in his unit who dared to send his boyfriend a personal email before a particularly dangerous mission. In the story, the guy makes it back from the mission, only to be dragged off and subjected to investigations for violating DADT. Steve recounts how mad he was at the guy:
It was so stupid, Steve remembers thinking. They all knew the Navy read their emails, they all knew anything could be a red flag. Jax was a moron. A total fucking moron who couldn’t keep his shit together and now they were down a munitions expert. It was unforgivable to let down the unit like that. Steve almost put his fist down Jax’s throat when he told them, called him a fucking traitor; the unit had to hold him back from a fight. Come to think of it, Jeff’s the one who twisted Steve’s arm behind his back and walked him out into the hot desert air. “Cool off,” Jeff said tersely. “It’s all fucked to hell, and I know you didn’t mean that shit.”
But he did. Steve held his unit to the same high standard he held himself, and Steve McGarrett was never going to risk the safety of his unit or his position in the Navy for a quick fuck, no matter how much he wanted it. He wasn’t going to buy twink porn and try to hide it in his kit. He wasn’t going to be seen hanging out at gay bars or let some eager recruit suck him off before a mission or get a damn boyfriend and send him fucking emails the night before a firefight. He was going to do what he had to do to get through every day without facing that demon inside him, and he really fucking expected the rest of his men to do the same.
Somehow, Steve never thought to blame the policy itself.
And that, my friends, is obedience in a nutshell. It's not the kind of obedience that I find sexy. But it is how obedience sometimes works in ways that are not productive (or I guess are productive if your desire is to get people to internalize self-loathing). Steve McGarrett took obedience to the regulations so close to the letter of the law that he directed his blame toward the wrong bunch of people. Why would McGarrett, who is generally smart enough not to fall for stupid maneuvers do that? Because it was a way to protect himself. I like stories that deal with questions of homophobia and do it well, and I wish there were more slash stories that handled internalized homophobia with a quarter of the skill this one does.
Of course, as with all repressions, all those feelings that McGarrett has been stuffing down since 1994 do come back when a crack emerges in the wall that was holding them back. And when they do return, they return with the vengeance of the repressed. Steve at first thinks about how he's going to deal with them, wondering if he can use the same techniques he used back then:
He hasn’t deluded himself this well since his Annapolis days when he fell for his Combat Tactics instructor and managed to shut his libido down completely with a regimen of daily three-hour workouts.
But he's older, and he realizes that he's in a very different situation, and that most importantly, he doesn’t have to. If he chooses to let them come back, it won't mean he has to give us him job. He has the kind of predictable freak out that you might expect from that many years of repression that was that intense and complete. Predicatably, Danny goes to rescue him. Among the many things I love about the story is that when the thaw begins, and Steve's feelings start to come back, they surface at utterly inappropriate, totally inconvenient times. Because, that my friends, is how both emotions and repression work.
I will also freely admit that part of my love for this story stems from the fact that it's one of the best renderings in fiction of one of the facts about being queer that a lot of people don't get: those of us who are queer always know we're queer. We never forget. And at a certain point, we kind of have to learn to operate on the assumption that other people will get it even while we know that not everyone will, and that that disconnect will result in ridiculousness. Heterosexism being what it is, there can be some interesting and unintended fallout when other people assume we're straight while we know we're not. This fact leads to interesting misreadings all over the place.
More than once in this story, Steve is assumed to be homophobic by others around him. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. But in Steve's mind, I don't think his desire to punch Jax-that unit buddy who got busted for the email to his boyfriend--is homophobia; I think he wants to smack Jax for being stupid enough to get caught-and at the same time for being brave enough to do something McGarrett wants to do. It's complicated, like internalized homophobia can be when it's forced on you. When your only choices are to give up the career that you love or cut off a substantial chunk of your sexual identity, I'm willing to be understanding of the ways that internalized homophobia is likely going to erupt in unexpected ways.
This story gets the complexity of those dynamics spot on. (And also, any story that puts in my head the image of Catherine Rollins fantasizing about pegging Steve McGarrett wins at life. I'm just sayin'.)
I'm sure there are other great stories out there; I've read a few others I really enjoyed. But the idea behind this contribution was less about making a long list of themed recs and more about talking in detail about why the presentation of the kink in these particular stories was as effective (for me, your mileage may vary) as it was in these stories. If you didn't read the stories before you read this, maybe my analysis of certain elements of the stories will highlight those dynamics as you read them for the first time. If you've already read them, maybe this will encourage people to go back and reread and focus on some parts of the stories that they overlooked because they were generally distracted by the smoking hotness of the rest of the stories. Either way, these two stories were works that, for me, captured the most vibrant aspects of what can make obedience such a hot component of a story.
So that I can try a new card next go round, I wanted to post something.
I don't do short. And I don't do nicely defined categories. What follows is kind of a recs list--but there are only two stories on it. They're both Hawaii Five-0 (2010).
It's also kind of a close reading of parts of the stories. And a little bit of meta about kink.
It's for the obedience square on my card (which wasn't the square I was writing a story for, but, whatever.)
While I was poking around reading stuff from the kink_bingo wiki, I came across this passage. It's from an essay by Deborah Teramis Christian called "A Slave Is Not a Submissive." Christian attempts to explain the dynamic at work for submissives:
The submissive decides how much authority sie will cede to another, how much control sie will bow to, and what aspects of hir life sie will surrender to the dominant's command. Submissive power exchange is about choice: about the option to decide how one feels about a demand and what one is going to do about it. At any point that the sub is not comfortable with this arrangement, it is within hir rights to say "No, I'm not going to do that", and this becomes a signal to the couple that they need to renegotiate something. It does not completely derail the power dynamic between them.
H50 seems to be generating its fair share of D/s or bondage or S/M fic. This doesn't surprise me. All you have to do is watch the first scene in which Steve and Danny meet to understand why those of us who in our fic like a D/s relationship that's loaded with two people who are aware of power dynamics and are capable of negotiating about them to understand why this fandom in particular seems to be totally capable of generating fic that touches on issues on power, consent, negotiation, and obedience like this fandom. Those issues leap out in their relationship from the very beginning.
This promo from CBS shows that Danny and Steve don't exactly "meet cute" as the vapid discourse that network execs often use to describe characters' meetings. (The bit where Danny and Steve encounter each other for the first time is about 42 or 44 seconds in. I do also highly recommend watching to the end so you can see Steve twist Danny's arm up behind him, followed by Danny punching Steve as payback toward the very end of the clip. I figure on a kink-themed community, that part may also play with with a number of people reading this post.)
Come on. Watch that and tell me that there isn't a very special power dynamic at work between these two. I dare you. That clip makes my case for me; it wasn't a shock to me that there was going to be some awesome potential for kink in H50 stories.
Since the world is full of differences, what works for me may not be what works for everyone else. (Chances are that it's not.) So before we go any further, I figure I should define what makes a kink story work for me. A kink story that works for me is one in which the story gets the dynamic described by Christian in the quote above. I prefer stories in which submissives are not abjectly characterized. I know that works for some people, and hey, to all of us our own, right? But I want to read stories in which the submissives in the story choose to submit. For me, that's what makes a story hot. I know that for some people, the setting itself-the toys, the situation, the general mise en scene-is what categorizes a story as kink. But for me, by itself, the ritual, the toys, the titles, and the setting are not enough; the stories I most enjoy reading are kink stories in which the submissive is characterized as being an inherently powerful person who chooses to surrender that power. (You can kind of see how H50 is ready made for this, right?) I enjoy reading stories in which the dominants are mindful of the power they're being temporarily given and get turned on precisely because they realize that the other person (or other people) in the room at the time are participating willingly. I need this to be about the brains of the people involved as much as it's about the bodies.
That doesn't mean that a relationship (usually a pairing, but it doesn't have to be) has to have long meticulously detailed conversations about consent. I know for a lot of people one of the barriers to feeling comfortable writing about kink-and RACK in particular-is trying to figure out how to get the characters to have conversations about limits without feeling like you've been dumped into kink manual. But it can be done! I've seen stories that do it extraordinarily well. I'm about to talk about two of them next.
And I suspect that's why especially when it comes to kink, I like non-first time stories as much (if not more than) first time stories. Subsequent-time stories often mean that the chances that the people involved have gotten better at communicating have gone up. For me, RACK doesn’t mean that the people involved in a particular scene don't occasionally push boundaries.
So the stories I like most are the ones that keep the characters in character but make explicit kink dynamics that it's easy for me to see in the source text.
In this post, I'm going to talk about two stories from H50 fandom that I think did that extraordinarily successfully. That's not to say that there aren't other stories that do these things well. That's not to say that these stories will work for everyone. And fair warning, one of the stories comes with its own warnings. But I'd like to focus on the details in these stories that do work because I'm a firm believer that if you can figure out what does work in one story, you're a good way toward being able to use that information to write better in your own work.
And you should probably know that everything I'm about to talk about will contain massive spoilers for the stories, so if you're a spoiler phobe, I'd suggest you go read the stories that follow first before you read the analysis.
The two stories are "End Around" by Topaz and "Put Your Mind at Ease"by Elenaor_Lavish. Both stories are centrally concerned with questions of obedience although they are wildly different in terms of how much obedience is called for an in what contexts. In one, it's erotizicized. In the other, it's a barrier to sexual desire-and not an especially pleasant one. But in both cases, the stories show the ways that obedience can be tied, at least in fic, to desire.
One of the many things about "End-Around" by Topaz119 that I like is that it's not a first time story. I love me a first time story as much as the next girl. (Just like I love me some hurt-comfort, and some sex pollen/aliens/some other totally flimsy excuse made them do it stories too.), but I also think that especially with kink, once you get past the first time, there are interesting possibilities that aren't available with first time stories.
The story begins with Steve and Danny in bed (where they should always be when they aren't out dangling criminals off roofs or bungeeing criminals to the hoods of cars as far as I'm concerned. Or taking care of Gracie.) Danny's being asked by Steve to tell him what it is he wants. In fact, as the story describes it, "Danny's still shaking from the orgasm Steve's fucked out of him, all his nerves firing randomly from the overload of Steve's dick buried in him and Steve's hand wrapped around his dick and Steve's mouth biting bruises into his neck."
Which I am strictly quoting in order to demonstrate precisely how hot conversations about consent can be. Ahem.
Danny's response (which in his inner monologue he knows is maybe not the best thing to say) is "I want you to be fucking honest with me."
This, predictably, leads to Steve running away. (Don't worry. This is Steve McGarrett. It's an in-character, stoic, SEAL approved tactical retreat.)
The first selling point of this set up for a story for me is that when Steve gets out of the shower, he's surprised to find Danny still there. Danny is not going to let this go. This works for me because one of the things that Danny and Steve have in common is epic tenacity. Sure, Danny's is more like a particularly deranged terrier. (And I say this as a fan of terriers, but, truthfully. Once locked on, most terriers are deranged. The argument could be made that "deranged terrier" is redundant. What I'm saying is that Danny is focused a little more wildly focused than is typical even for a typical terrier-hence a deranged terrier. He's particularly deranged even for a terrier.) And Steve's is a bit more like a laser sight on a sniper rifle. But they're both pretty task-oriented types, so it makes sense to me that Danny's still on the bed, and Steve's slightly surprised that Danny stuck around, but that doesn't mean that Steve's going to back down either.
In the course of the story, which is told consistently from Danny's point of view, we come to realize a few things.
First, Danny and Steve have been fucking like minks.
Second, that fucking has been pretty kinky.
Third, Danny is a very smart guy. He's also a good detective because he notices stuff. Danny talks about how his failure to notice stuff led to the end of his marriage with Rachel. So this time around, he's determined not to miss stuff. This makes reading his partner well-at work as much as he does in the bedroom-a priority.
I, frankly, think her characterization of both Danny and Steve is spot on in this passage as he gives us his reading of the little stuff Steve does-stuff other people might not notice:
So, yeah, on the job--that's where Danny notices shit like how Steve can be functioning at a level most guys would kill for and still be shut down. When he's like that, he does everything right and most things perfect, but there's a little dullness to it all, like he's taken whatever it is that makes him, him, and tucked it away for safe-keeping. When it's really him--even when he's acting like a crazy motherfucker, doing things that are so insanely stupid Danny almost can't watch--there's a, a joy about him that makes it so Danny can't look away. That sounds stupid and cheesy even in Danny's head, but it's the God's honest truth.
I admit, part of what I like about this story is that I read that and see stuff in the show I've seen and go "Hey, look, I'm totally right. Somebody else pegged the same thing!" (Note: I did not say pegged the same person. That's a different story, and one I am totally willing to read, for the record.) Danny here is being set up narratively to be able to be an excellent dom; he's totally capable of reading subtle behavior cues about the state of mind of his sub. (Yes, I remember that this is supposed to be about obedience. I promise, I'm getting there.) So you can imagine how Danny responds when he twigs to the fact that not only has he seen Steve dissociate during sex, but he's seen Steve go elsewhere during the particular bedroom activities that turn Danny on the most:
Danny realizes that he's seen that shut-down look in Steve's eyes when they're fucking. Not all the time, which is good--to put it mildly--but it maybe makes it worse when Danny figures out that it's really only happened the times when they've been screwing around with restraints, which scenario happens to be Danny's A-#1 bulletproof kink. He's never hidden how much it turns him on, just like Steve's never hidden how much he likes getting Danny all twisted up. Steve's never said anything one way or another about it specifically, but that doesn't mean Danny's going to let himself off the hook on this one.
See, Danny here is doing a responsible dom thing. He's assessing his own desires and the needs and desires of his partner. Problem is, Danny really likes restraints.
I should add, calling them doms or subs here may be confusing. Really, both of them are written as switches, but for purposes of keeping a very long post moderately less long, I'm using dom to mean the person who is currently in the role of the dom. Danny makes it clear that he's just as happy to be the person being tied up as the one doing the tying.
So. Steve and Danny have some conversations about this-which you should read. They are awesomely written. Since I feel kind of bad about quoting as much of the story as I have, I'm not going to quote the whole back and forth between them-because the whole thing really is that good. It's in character. They voices are spot on.
And they talk through exactly what will and won't trigger Steve.
Eventually, they settle on a middle ground: Danny will tell Steve what to do, and Steve will, essentially restrain himself.
If you are looking for a smoking hot bit of fic all about obedience, I think you'd be hard pressed to find one that works much better than this one. Steve McGarrett, bad ass Navy SEAL, holding himself restrained with nothing but his will, as Detective Danny Williams orders him to do so. I know that for a lot of people the traditional ritual of Master and Slave is a turn on, and in the right fic, I can totally enjoy reading it. But in this story, that's not the dynamic at work. These are not guys who run on ritual. In fact, sometimes I wonder if Steve is even passingly familiar with any rules at all.
For that reason, a scene that focuses on obedience but that is specific to how it might play out with these two characters works for me. Both Steve and Danny remain exactly who they are. In fact, it's clear-although the details are never really clearly discussed-that it's the fact that they are who they are that led to the problem in the first place. The story strongly suggests that McGarrett's issues with restraints are likely tied to stuff he's been through in his day job. Which, you know, given their day jobs, makes sense.
The second story that for me is very much a kink story about obedience (and I know that for a lot of people, this is going to be a harder sell, so be patient with me) is "Put Your Mind at Ease" by Elanor Lavish.
I do have one factual quibble/reservation with this story. It's a small one, and in a fandom like H50 (where, you know, Steve McGarrett is a SEAL and a naval aviator at the same time? Or the HQ of a rogue task force is inside 'Iolani Palace. We will not speak of the particular issues with doing that when there's not a native Hawai'ian in the entire primary cast of the show.) where, well, let's just say that scrupulous adherence to plausibility isn't a strong suit of the show.
At any rate, in a fandom like this, it's a totally valid choice-and probably a smarter one than I'm capable of making-to just suspend disbelief a little bit. If you're okay with just waving your hands and saying that for purposes of this story, DADT has been repealed unambiguously, then you won't have the problem with the story that I did.
The reality, however, is that for LGBT folks currently serving in the armed forces, DADT is still very much temporarily in effect. They know, as we know, that it is on its way to being dead. But it's not 100% dead yet, and until all the legal stuff settles down for good, places like the Servicemembers Defense Network are telling LGBT folks not to out themselves just yet. And I also think it's important to note that the repeal of DADT does not give protection to trans folks. You can read more about that if you're interested. Because I've been following DADT news pretty closely, the fact that some military personnel in the story were willing to be as out as they were didn't ring true to me. Or maybe that's just the part where I'm old and cynical. I'm fairly sure the big gay wedding of a SEAL in D.C. would count as outing yourself. I'm not saying that this makes it a bad story; I just personally can't suspend my disbelief quite that far yet, so that fact kicked me out of the story temporarily. I only mention it because it might have the same effect on other people. I was more than willing to jump right back in because the rest of it is totally awesomesauce.
Part of what makes it so good is the fact that this story hits dead on what it feels like to be queer and feel compelled to attempt to erase any trace of proof of that from your life. In fact, it does the metaphoric equivalent of what happens to Steve's hands at the end of "End-Around." In this story, Steve McGarrett has been reflexively hiding parts of his identity and sexuality so long, that it's like if those emotions were parts of his body, they'd have gone stiff and numb from having been in that position so long. It takes him a while to come back from that position of extreme obedience.
Steve has to restore circulation to his queerness because he gets a wedding invite from a former team member. To get an idea of just how queer the wedding is, the handwritten note on the back tells Steve that the theme for the stag party is "Navy goes commando." His response to reading the invitation and the note speaks volumes about how obedient--not to the Navy's directive, but to his own internalized version of it, Steve has been and for how long he's been that obedient:
Steve’s pulse is racing. Sure enough, when he turns it back over, the invite warmly welcomes him to witness the union of Jeffrey Allen Taymor and William Michael Fontaine. His first thought is stupid, stupid, how could he be so stupid, along with a knee-jerk reaction to crank his gas stove and burn the evidence right there. It takes a full twenty seconds for the realization to kick in.
Steve's aware that as DADT slowly gets undone, burning any proof of a gay wedding is no longer required, but it's such an ingrained habit that it's a little like the first few showers you take after chopping off long hair; you're still pouring the amount of shampoo you used to need into your palm before you remember that you don't need that much anymore.
One of the smartest scenes in the story is one that describes Steve's emotional response to a guy in his unit who dared to send his boyfriend a personal email before a particularly dangerous mission. In the story, the guy makes it back from the mission, only to be dragged off and subjected to investigations for violating DADT. Steve recounts how mad he was at the guy:
It was so stupid, Steve remembers thinking. They all knew the Navy read their emails, they all knew anything could be a red flag. Jax was a moron. A total fucking moron who couldn’t keep his shit together and now they were down a munitions expert. It was unforgivable to let down the unit like that. Steve almost put his fist down Jax’s throat when he told them, called him a fucking traitor; the unit had to hold him back from a fight. Come to think of it, Jeff’s the one who twisted Steve’s arm behind his back and walked him out into the hot desert air. “Cool off,” Jeff said tersely. “It’s all fucked to hell, and I know you didn’t mean that shit.”
But he did. Steve held his unit to the same high standard he held himself, and Steve McGarrett was never going to risk the safety of his unit or his position in the Navy for a quick fuck, no matter how much he wanted it. He wasn’t going to buy twink porn and try to hide it in his kit. He wasn’t going to be seen hanging out at gay bars or let some eager recruit suck him off before a mission or get a damn boyfriend and send him fucking emails the night before a firefight. He was going to do what he had to do to get through every day without facing that demon inside him, and he really fucking expected the rest of his men to do the same.
Somehow, Steve never thought to blame the policy itself.
And that, my friends, is obedience in a nutshell. It's not the kind of obedience that I find sexy. But it is how obedience sometimes works in ways that are not productive (or I guess are productive if your desire is to get people to internalize self-loathing). Steve McGarrett took obedience to the regulations so close to the letter of the law that he directed his blame toward the wrong bunch of people. Why would McGarrett, who is generally smart enough not to fall for stupid maneuvers do that? Because it was a way to protect himself. I like stories that deal with questions of homophobia and do it well, and I wish there were more slash stories that handled internalized homophobia with a quarter of the skill this one does.
Of course, as with all repressions, all those feelings that McGarrett has been stuffing down since 1994 do come back when a crack emerges in the wall that was holding them back. And when they do return, they return with the vengeance of the repressed. Steve at first thinks about how he's going to deal with them, wondering if he can use the same techniques he used back then:
He hasn’t deluded himself this well since his Annapolis days when he fell for his Combat Tactics instructor and managed to shut his libido down completely with a regimen of daily three-hour workouts.
But he's older, and he realizes that he's in a very different situation, and that most importantly, he doesn’t have to. If he chooses to let them come back, it won't mean he has to give us him job. He has the kind of predictable freak out that you might expect from that many years of repression that was that intense and complete. Predicatably, Danny goes to rescue him. Among the many things I love about the story is that when the thaw begins, and Steve's feelings start to come back, they surface at utterly inappropriate, totally inconvenient times. Because, that my friends, is how both emotions and repression work.
I will also freely admit that part of my love for this story stems from the fact that it's one of the best renderings in fiction of one of the facts about being queer that a lot of people don't get: those of us who are queer always know we're queer. We never forget. And at a certain point, we kind of have to learn to operate on the assumption that other people will get it even while we know that not everyone will, and that that disconnect will result in ridiculousness. Heterosexism being what it is, there can be some interesting and unintended fallout when other people assume we're straight while we know we're not. This fact leads to interesting misreadings all over the place.
More than once in this story, Steve is assumed to be homophobic by others around him. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. But in Steve's mind, I don't think his desire to punch Jax-that unit buddy who got busted for the email to his boyfriend--is homophobia; I think he wants to smack Jax for being stupid enough to get caught-and at the same time for being brave enough to do something McGarrett wants to do. It's complicated, like internalized homophobia can be when it's forced on you. When your only choices are to give up the career that you love or cut off a substantial chunk of your sexual identity, I'm willing to be understanding of the ways that internalized homophobia is likely going to erupt in unexpected ways.
This story gets the complexity of those dynamics spot on. (And also, any story that puts in my head the image of Catherine Rollins fantasizing about pegging Steve McGarrett wins at life. I'm just sayin'.)
I'm sure there are other great stories out there; I've read a few others I really enjoyed. But the idea behind this contribution was less about making a long list of themed recs and more about talking in detail about why the presentation of the kink in these particular stories was as effective (for me, your mileage may vary) as it was in these stories. If you didn't read the stories before you read this, maybe my analysis of certain elements of the stories will highlight those dynamics as you read them for the first time. If you've already read them, maybe this will encourage people to go back and reread and focus on some parts of the stories that they overlooked because they were generally distracted by the smoking hotness of the rest of the stories. Either way, these two stories were works that, for me, captured the most vibrant aspects of what can make obedience such a hot component of a story.