Fic: An Ecstacy of Fumbling (Slade Wilson, 1/1)

[nokomis305]

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.”

Comments

[katarik]

*wee flaily hands of OH MY BABY BOY*

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

[katarik]

ALSO ALSO ALSO. FRANNIE.

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.

[nokomis305]

I had to, you should have known that! Because it's Frannie, and Slade, and she totally would have understood what he was going through, trying to adjust to living in the civilian world after being surrounded by soldiers and death. (Not that that makes it any less disturbing, mind you...)

[katarik]

Frannie would *absolutely* have gotten it. In ways Adeline wouldn't have.

And, well, if it wasn't disturbing it wouldn't be right, let alone written well.

[rubynye]

Wow. This is as painfully good a story about war and about Slade as I've read.

[nokomis305]

*blushes* Thank you so much! ♥

[__marcelo]

Wow. Even if I had never heard about Slade, I'd love the character just from the backstory you wrote in here. I love this!

[nokomis305]

*beams* I'm really glad that the backstory was compelling! It was fun to write a character that could grow into the Slade we know. Thank you!

This is unfairly awesome.

[razorsmile]

When he’s alone, laying in his boyhood bed that doesn’t fit anymore,

I will spend the rest of my writing career figuring out how you did that with one fucking word. Made it clear that the bed not fitting has nothing to do with size.

Re: This is unfairly awesome.

[nokomis305]

*beams*

Thank you so much! I'm glad the progression of the story allowed for that sentence to take the connotation that I was aiming for. :D