Fic: An Ecstacy of Fumbling (Slade Wilson, 1/1)
Title: An Ecstacy of Fumbling
Summary: Slade hasn’t killed anyone yet. Not that he knows of.
Character: Slade Wilson, pre-Deathstroke
Rating: R
Word Count: 1824
AN: For Katarik, whose enthusiasm about converting others to Slade-love ought to be rewarded. Title, predictably enough, is taken from Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est.”
( An Ecstacy of Fumbling )
Summary: Slade hasn’t killed anyone yet. Not that he knows of.
Character: Slade Wilson, pre-Deathstroke
Rating: R
Word Count: 1824
AN: For Katarik, whose enthusiasm about converting others to Slade-love ought to be rewarded. Title, predictably enough, is taken from Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est.”
( An Ecstacy of Fumbling )
He's so... oh, Nokomis, he's so *young*. He's a baby. (He's Jason in a more obvious war.)
In his mind his fingers went much, much higher on her thigh than they ever had in that soda parlor booth, and even if he wasn’t quite sure what a woman felt like he knew it had to be as sweet as caressing the trigger on a M1.
The Slade in my head first had sex when he was thirteen or so, with the sixteen-to-nineteen-year-old girl down the block, but I believe this, too. And !!! to the trigger. !!!
He thinks, briefly, of the silence of an empty church as he enters the blanketed-off partition in the makeshift brothel, where a girl who only knows ten words in English, all filthy or about money, mechanically teaches him about instinct and lust and hot pleasure.
She doesn’t make him a man. The war’s already done that.
*SHRIEKS*
Oh, honey. Oh, *Slade*.
“Why don’t they get the fucking Flash to come over here and take out the commies? It’d only take him a minute,” grumbles one soldier.
“Same reason they can’t get the whole damned Justice Society over here,” Slade replies. “This hellhole’s too dirty for their baby-soft hands. ‘Sides, someone has to keep your granny’s sweet patootie safe.”
If he thought about how easy it would be for them to fix all this, he wouldn’t be able to continue cleaning his gun and lugging his pack and killing who he was commanded to.
I. Yes. Perfect, and now I have in my head stories of Slade's father and/or Frannie telling him about Captain America, about Bucky, about all the heroes who helped in WWII. And then there's Slade in the dirt with no bright costumes, nothing but grime and the dirty shine of his gun.
Also, using cussed instead of cursed is excellent. Perfect for that time period, and for a boy as young as Slade still is.
*memories*
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With her *smile* and touching him like she touched his father and APPLE PIE, DUDE, I may have actually let out a small shriek of "American as apple pie!" and also *home*. Too-small bed and the kicback and the bullets and and and.
Yipes.
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And, well, if it wasn't disturbing it wouldn't be right, let alone written well.
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*beams*
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That wasn't in my mind at all, and now it is and... !!!
*glee* If I wrote a Slade that you can believe in, then I've accomplished what I was hoping to. Especially if you believe him even when he doesn't always mesh with the one in your head.
And then there's Slade in the dirt with no bright costumes, nothing but grime and the dirty shine of his gun.
*nods* The practical implications of superheroism and everything that they don't and can't do, and how the everyday man would see that is fascinating to me, and I could so see something like this shaping later disdain and mistrust and just everything, you know?
I'm so very very glad that this fic worked for you. *beams*
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I FEEL THIS MEANS I WIN.
You totally wrote a Slade I believe in, and now I have BUNNIES DARN YOU.
Yesssss. Capes and costumes and bright shiny things and bright shiny *ideals*, and he knows exactly how useful those are when you're choking on blood-damp dust.
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*noddity nods* Exactly! Ideals are nice and all in the abstract, but if they don't hold up to reality, then they aren't worth basing everything on.
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