Secondhand Smoke

[mithrigil]

.

I have been sitting on this prompt for two goddamned months and have revised and tweaked it more than anything else I have ever written, including the M.A. thesis.

I am so damned proud of this piece. I hope I'm right to be.

Title: Secondhand Smoke
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon
Characters: Subaru, Seishirou
Rating: NC-17. Sex,

Comments

[nebulia]

OH. MY. GOD.

Amazing and beautiful and hot and dark and wonderful and SO perfect--

I love you.

So hard.

[mithrigil]

::blush:: Thank you so much! Haha, this was a trip.

[nebulia]

In a totally awesome way. Trippiness is good, seriosuly. XD

[mithrigil]

Sei is a drug. A nasty, nasty drug.

[byzantienne]

Read it twice, once for being shocked, once for thinking about why. Then put the music on headphones -- that's a trip in and of itself, like being slapped, worse than hearing it on computer speakers alone -- and read it again with that on loop.

This is the most violent piece I think I've read from you; the most actualized in its violence, raw and nasty and perverse, nothing held back. There's a word for what's going on here, in Greek -- διαφθειρειν, to destroy utterly, corrupt, seduce. The thread of dirt that runs through this is subtle and devastating, starting with Subaru's fantasy of discarding himself like garbage and culminating in his disgust at his own reflected image (the smears on the glass, oh) and then his acceptance of that disgust (it can't be undone). Corruption and rot. There's nothing clean here, on either side

[mithrigil]

Okay the first thing I do is thank you. A lot. For articulating this all and just being awesome

[byzantienne]

The MSI is, in and of itself, extremely affecting. I am debating whether I want to download it, now -- knowing that if I do, I'll listen to it enough that it'll lose the punch it has, and not being sure that I want to lose that.

-- oh, I /love/ that, that this is how Sei cares for Subaru. (Shades of 'Venn Diagram', actually -- who do you trust to give you what you need? Whatever that might be?) That ties so well with what you're saying about it not being pain that arouses Sei, but Subaru's reactions to it.

I definitely see corruption/chaos as inevitable here; that message is served as much by the spiraling nastiness, the energy and speed at which Subaru loses/gives up control in favor of being in pain/being alive, as it is by the sex itself. For something that is 3600 words long, this moves at an incredible speed.

Oh, god yes, "addictive personality" grabbed me right away (but then I look for the mutual-obsession moments). And the fact that this is a /first/ consummation is just exquisitely horrible. Better/worse indeed.

[mithrigil]

It's been stuck in my head on and off for the past two months. Let me tell you now, I should never sing rock. If you ever hear me do NIN in the shower or at karaoke...yeah. :snerk: Opera singers do not lend themselves well to angry white boys of the modern era.

Shades of Venn Diagram indeed--I will ask you to check the respective timestamps of the two. What is this encounter commemorating, I wonder... ::devious::

I'm also surprised at the general pace of this--it was hard to control. All the dactyls helped, actually, and the M-dashes probably had something to do with that as well. When a third of the words are stuttered and the rest are elided, it goes by quicker than expected.

[intradependency]

1. Whoa. Like whoa

[mithrigil]

1. :flaring blush!:

2. I have to wonder if I could ever have written this without the kink experience I have, just based on all the injury experience I have. And the answer might be no, but still.

3. If you are saying what I think you're saying, then I'm really glad of it--despite them both being magical and their world not quite ours, I am thrilled that they're something approacing real, here. This moment was definitely about their personal wants and their personal injury. I think the amount of guttural realism in this was helpful with that. I never wanted Subaru or Seishirou to be an archetype of any kind.

:blushing, still: Thank you so much.

[intradependency]

2. Aha. Ha. Ah. "It is all in the name of research. Now take the goddamned whip and [/strike]."

(Fandom turned me in a matter of months.)

3. Yes, I think that's it, the lack of mysticism. It brought back maddening memories of Japan. I could almost smell them/the place. Very human in the complexity of the lust.

[mithrigil]

3. Oh that makes me feel awesome. Thank you. Thank you so damned much.

[ms_asylum]

Wow.

You are utterly amazing at imagery. Cliche as it sounds, I feel like I know the exact dive of a vending machine against which this took place. That was HOT.

And so were the pictures.

I'm glad this fandom hasn't died.

[mithrigil]

Nope, the party's still going even if we're late to it...and the culture of nostalgia that's so pervasive today is probably contributing to that.

And thanks so much! Delving into the atmosphere of this was a pleasure--Puel and I are also going to redo the shoot when we find a proper machine to take them against.

[reflecttheother]

“Are you alive?”

::puddle of happy goo::

You have every damn right to be proud of this piece.

[mithrigil]

:blush:

Thanks! (So relieved.)