Watchmen Kink Meme 3. Weeeeeeee.
Rules of the meme:
1. Anonymously post a pairing and prompt you would like to see written. Since this is a kink meme, there is supposted to be a kink involved, but normal well-written prompts should work just as well.
2. Anonymous will respond to your post and write it for you! Art and such is also acceptable/awesome. Multiple people may respond to ( Read more... )
Inaction was not to persist forever: the students may not realize it, but the last of the moderates in power have been ousted by the ongoing power struggles within the Party. This is as evident as day when the General Secretary Zhao Ziyang steps up onto the podium in the middle of the square, tears floating at the rims of his eyes as he proclaims in a trembling voice, don't do this to yourselves. Don't do this to your lives. Please move on, and change will come. Eventually. You must be patient.
Always, eventually. Deng wonders if he is tired of waiting-- but he has always been patient.Red, on the other hand, is as agitated as ever. "Old guard will be mobilizing soon," he growls, and shys away from Deng's touch that night.
Red's promise, seemingly tied to the world's fate: truckloads of soldiers arrive in the city, dressed in military greens and shading their eyes with hands and the brims of their hats. The crowds in the streets, millions strong, prevent them from ever reaching the Square. One woman implores of them, don't you know what we're doing? don't you know what we're fighting for? please, don't be the tools of a small handful. there was a time when the soldiers were of the people. we are those people.
Tears stream down her cheeks, and Deng feels a pinch of emotion at her words. He quickly pushes it away, faint remnants of dream-speech echoing in his ears.
The stalemate pushes the soldiers back to the suburbs; a temporary armistice between the people and their Army settles uneasily over the Square, and the marching is more like wandering now. Sure enough, that night, a single, armored vehicle rumbles full speed into the square. The barrage of citizen-hurled wick-and-kerosene stuffed bottles does nothing to stop it. The armored vehicle charges on, patchwork flames on its shanks, all mechanical groans and ground-shattering judgment and fury. Minutes later, the behemoth's denizens are speaking, repeating from the center, voices amplified by megaphones and the success of their lone campaign, that everyone must return to their homes, immediately. Everyone must return.
Each one of Deng's classmates leaves, in couples, until only the two of them are left in the wake of this desertion. Sirens screech and the megaphone from the center is no longer leading the crowd in rhythm-full, sing song catechisms: Red's grip on the signpost handle wears thin in his hands. The Time Is Now. They stand there until the first hints of the morning sun arise, dew chilling both of them to the bone, nature's cold apathy spread in damp sheets across the Square. Dew-frost glimmers on Red's skin, a slow, magnifying dance against his freckles, and his hair filled with ladybug-beads.
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Deng reaches out and tugs at Red's shoulder, hand curling around the bone and muscle and tugs him horizontally until the other man's head is flush against his shoulder. The signpost falls to his side, and Red lets out an ennk of displeasure at the contact, or disappointment in himself for failing his vigil, this symbolic night of the protest's capitulation, even if it's--
"Just for a moment," Deng whispers (or does he implore it? for which one of them is he asking?). Red's eyes are closed now, silent acquiescence, eyelashes a dark smudge against his cheeks, an unforgiving black against the pale pink of the morning's reflection. It feels like a dream, cold and relentless, the soreness in Deng's legs building up and they're still keeping watch here, their stronghold breached, and yet, his heart still swells with compassion and something that dares not speak its name, yet.
"Come on," Deng says. "Let's go back. Just for a bit. We'll come back, first thing in the morning. We can pick up some food for everyone else, too."
He's not sure if it's an entreaty or an imperative or a simple, factual statement when Red says, "stay here."
He wants to give in, but Red is about to fall over, the sign post dragging on the ground, now, and Deng knows that time is running out.
"This way," he says, and his grip on Red's shoulder is dense and he can be uncompromising, too. "I promise. First thing tomorrow."
His legs ache on the bicycle pedals, and Red is heavy against his back, the side of the other man's face pressed into the nylon of his jacket and beyond that, the knobs of his spine. They sleep pressed against each other, Deng's limbs a hollow around Red's, his nose buried in the quiet moss-red of the other man's hair. This thing like joy that Deng feels mixes itself with fatigue and the everywhere-ache of his body, and Deng cannot disambiguate one thing from another, need and requirement weighing heavily on his eyelids and everything else is sinking, too, into a deep, dark cradle where the light doesn't reach. Deng is so close, on the cusp of heartache and the realization of something vital-- that Red would allow him these things, yet--
Yet...
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They've arrived.
Deng is hyper aware, as if a fog has been lifted from his eyes, yet his mind refuses cohesion, rejects comprehension. His fingers are tight around the plastic bags-- this is the heart of the protest, and protest requires carbohydrates and protein and liquids just like any other human endeavor. Red is shaking with rage next to him, the bags in his hands rustling with his body's vibrations, tremors of sheet-white sound.
A girl somewhere in the crowd proclaims, a little too loudly over the hush, they're really doing this.
They roll in, gears crunching the ground beneath them and the Square is still resilient against their weight, the Square only another platform now, another blank slate for anyone to write on. The final barrier of interlinked arms and fingers and all the blood of Man stitched together can offer no promise against these dark, faceless, metal behemoths and the trail of their oblong track-tires scrape against the concrete, shrill with the promise of reclamation.
Red's hands, still wound tightly around those shopping bags, knuckles turning white and it's like he can't let go. Vibrating like a strung wire, the seconds ticking by and then the click of a bomb-catch unfastening-- Deng's voice is broken when he says, "don't," but he knows it's too late.
Always has been. Always will be.
Red has forced his way past the crowds, has crawled over the metal railing that seals off the road, marching into the middle of the unshakable path.
The crowd buzzes with the hollow whine of so many people whispering, so many murmurs, channels of wind. The humming inflates slowly, high-pitched edges of mainstream sound, then they balloon suddenly in great heaves and waves, a tsunami of cheers, the tide crashing in Deng's ears. The tanks, so many gears spinning and twirling and Red standing there in the middle of it all, and Deng cannot look away, just like everybody else.
He wants to shout, to call him back, but common sense stops him, how dangerous would it be to say his name now, to give him away. He prays that nobody else in the crowd remembers Red's speech the other week against the Heroes' Monument, that everybody else will have the propriety not to name him.
The tanks stop, go, and Red follows them, side-stepping and skirting around them. He drops the bags, (noodles, green beans, onions and scallions, you too are a part of the movement, the food of the last stand) and climbs up the iron mammoth, fingers scrambling for purchase against the sharkskin exterior, all rough, unrefined metal and camouflage green, and hoists himself up.
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Each step taken back toward the crowd is ten years, the agony of a hundred lifetimes, and when Deng meets Red in the crush with one of his own (and he must have pushed his way to the front of the crowd, too, and his glasses have been knocked off somewhere in the fray), his arms envelop Red in something protective and desperate, trying to hang onto that motion blur pure, wildly oscillating energy, as much as he can. He can still feel the echo of sun-soaked metal on Red's hands and knees, where he had climbed, sprawled, and stood--
"God," he chokes, and there's a shifting under his hands, maybe-- Red's own arms coming up to meet him, "I--"
They're ripped away from each other and Red is hoisted up on the shoulders of many, infinite rounds of salutations and cheers like lead in his ears but Deng bears it all.
---
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...*speechless*
Ok. This? This is going onto my list of things to reread over and over again when I'm sad, because it makes me so damn happy.
Please accept my incoherent squee in place of an intelligent comment.
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But really, I'm a-ok with whatever you do. Angst followed by happiness *hinthint* is always better than the other way around.
Forgot to say this earlier, but GAH THE SHIRT REMOVING SCENE. Oh, the repression! The tension! Which all adds up to being really hot despite nothing actually happening.
And the way you wrote the dialogue without quotation marks - reminds me of how the French do it in the few French books I've read. It kind of makes the dialogue meld together with the narration, and all the mixing up really adds to the mood. If that makes any sense. *wishes to have your articulation skills*
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Other things I love, y'know, beyond the entire thing: the way Deng's feelings for Red are tied into the politics, working in lines/idea directly from the GN, shirt removal nnrgg.
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The shirt removal part was definitely really fun to write. I almost had them go... well... further along, but Chinese people circa the 1980s are still pretty repressed (in contrast with their Western/American counterparts). Not to mention Ror is repressed no matter what universe he's in.
the way Deng's feelings for Red are tied into the politics
I find the Dan/Ror relationship is always tied to politics one way or another--standing up in the face of gov't corruption, immorality, and other timeless sorts of political/social evils. But it's fun to play with the China concept, since the spirit of the times is so focused on symbolism and martyrs and grand gestures (that's just the way Chinese history seems to work), and Dan has always been susceptible to his environment, being a sort of natural empath and all...
I'm glad this has sparked your interest in the student protests of 1989! "The Gate of Heavenly Peace" is an AWESOME dramatic documentary that I've been using as source material for this fic-- definitely not your usual, dry, stodgy stuff-- there's are lots of interviews with crazy students and hilarious footage of the crazy old coots that run the Party.
ugh. rambling again. sorry. *sheepish*
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This is my favorite paragraph here:
--Yes, yes, Deng says, exaltation more than an agreement and his own fingers are moving of their own will, twisting on each button, slowing his pace as he moves south. Red's stomach ripples under his touch, and he inches his face into the juncture of the other man's neck and shoulder, holds there, in as much as out, ghost-breaths belying the frantic shuddering of his own heart and the possibility of things.
It's so delicate, just like that whole scene.
The very ending part here is so moving, as if he feels now that this is going to take them both apart.
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And CAN I SAY HOW EXCITED I AM to sink my teeth into your Western!AU? I've not been very diligent about scouring the old KMs for fic but I am so glad that you made a masterpost for it! xD xD
Okay, going to post the next part to this now...
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