l'ombra del figlio esangue

Generalities

Hello : ) You can call me Aimé, Collerico or any other name that has sprouted from your fervid imagination. They pronouns only, but I don't care about being called girl/dude etc., go crazy!

More about the user: my favourite animals are cows, my favourite kind of tea is earl grey & I have been known to sigh really deeply very often. Here's two truths and a lie: I am ambidextrous, I'm a morning person, I never kill bugs (not even mosquitoes!).

About the blog & housekeeping

Want to know who I am named after? Click HERE!

This is an eclectic depository for the things I care about, and at times even things I don't really care about but that appeal to me! This is, also, for the most part a writing/fandom blog.

I do engage with media that has themes of incest, sexual abuse and general violence; my fascination in the literary/artistic performance of such themes stems both from an academic interest and from personal experience, and thus I try to engage with them in what I feel like is the most well informed manner, still I do not have a specific tag for these things as they are quite pervasive to my Pursuits so feel free to block me.

Other interests that aren't fandom-specific: medieval history&literature; poetry; ecological niches; stationery; ceramics; botany; rhizomatic systems; the sexual politics of meat (intersection between feminism, communism and veganism); the theodicy of suffering; terrible women & horrible men; familial dynamics; the Haunting Ghost of Gender etc. I'm sure I'm forgetting other things, but you'll know soon enough.

Tag directory

Most of my fandom posts are tagged with either the acronym or the full name, sometimes both. Every movie I watch is tagged with [movie name]+[year of release], I could forget the year but I'll fix it sooner or later. As for the books/quotes I only tag the author's name, same thing goes for paintings/art.

Fanfiction/snippets are tagged my writing. Asks are tagged quaestiones, my original text posts that don't fall in any other category are tagged it speaks, often they are personal, they could be deleted. Generally OK to reblog.

Most of the tags are quite self-explanatory but I do have some other specific ones:

but I beneath a rougher sea -> waves/water/the ocean;

empedocles on etna -> mountains!

innere -> rooms I would like to be inside of;

livewire -> creatures...

let us dance -> music! Audio!

pater -> my tag for bears & boars. I know I said my favourite animals are cows, but I love bears & boars dearly;

reading theory to play with my concepts -> what it says on the tin, in the most boring way I like period dramas and I want to be Informed when portraying something;

reeling feeding feeling -> poignant prose I want to keep track of;

sein und zeit -> being & time! Other concepts I'm fond of, the underlying sense of yeatsian Tragic Joy that comes along with being a human;

this slow disrobing of summer -> metaphysical explanations for tangible truths (middle seasons).

I have a running queue but it isn't tagged, which means once a day you might see a reblog from me although I'm not here. This, as it has been explained to me, is what it means to be an online Presence.

Secondary locations

Adelchi on Ao3

That is it.

I don't have any other social media! I also do not have discord: the best way to contact me is either here or asking me for my email.

Blog theses

He does read as a taciturn-loner character, though to me he's also someone who values solitude not because he doesn't like other people – he's fun, entertaining, a bit of a show off, he deeply cares about his men, and he has a sense of Duty – but because he fundamentally doesn't like himself. Or at least certain parts of his Self (his vulnerability, speculatively his queerness, too).

The Army isn't a place where one can be Alone, but transporting him into a scenario in which he is a lighthouse keeper is a great way to explore these exacerbated traits of his!

I also like lighthouses as haunting places of service. You're alone & you're tasked with the life of other people; you're alone & the Sea is right there with you. It's not being In It & it's not being Next to It. You're being subsumed by your duty, you're a beacon and not a man & your house is your place of work, your residence and your cage.

They're also the ideal Location to be working on Radios, which is something about Gale's character that I find so endearing : ) & so fascinating as well: you're broadcasting signals into the atmosphere & the atmosphere carries them for you; I think he'd like radio-dramas, I think maybe he'd sit down with a cup of coffee & socks that need mending & HIS PIPE! (his oral fixation...) & he'd listen to his Mysteries and Comedies #smiling. There could be many Signs & Symbols about Hearing a Disembodied Voice from Far Away & said Voice keeping Gale company. I find it deeply romantic, and I believe Gale wouldn't mind being alone because he can entertain himself endlessly but the problem is that he's stagnating & shriveling, a tree trying to grow into its own roots.

Cue, of course, John Egan... I like the prospect of him coming not from the sea, but from the air – crash landing, maybe. John - well. He's a fun guy, he's a cuckoo clock, he's an indolent drunk with a liver the size of his head and a heart three times bigger. And Maybe the plane crashed willingly, but as he finds him the only thing Gale knows is that he's a heavy bastard who's almost bled through his mattress (Gale has spent the night in watchful silence sitting in his armchair).

Once John wakes up, at first there is the You tried to kill yourself but you failed shameful recognition, then John sees Gale, who's lost his battle to sleep. He sees his gaunt cheeks and his long eyelashes, his round mouth, the width of his shoulders; is this the sign he was searching for? Even if it isn't, he's going to grab it with both hands and not let go. Gale wakes up, too, and a lightning strikes outside. This is a story about the weather!

After dutiful presentations, they're left to their own devices. Gale knows how to take care of himself because he has to, but he's not a doctor. The recovery takes time. It's frankly a miracle John's survived – he's got broken ribs & Gale has to help him to and from the bathroom, which in any case would have been an undignified experience even if he were to be able to do it himself (the bathroom is outside). At one point, Gale offers his radio, to contact someone, anyone, but John refuses. He says there's no one who'd want to hear from him (he hasn't set it up right!!). Gale is secretly glad; he'd forgotten how beautiful an annoyance could be.

And it's not like John is idling away, though he really should be laying still. He knows how to knit (the middle brother of two sisters), he knows how to cook, he knows so many stories – fun, sad, stories about planes and love and the meeting place of Sky and Sea –, he provokes Gale, he makes fun of him, he mends all his socks and sweaters, he breaks one of his radios by accident and they argue and scream and Gale says I'm not going to hurt you because you can't do it yourself. John laughs, he gets closer and even beaten and broken he's all-encompassing. He says: You think you're better than me? You think I don't feel you at night, shivering next to me?

Because this is a story about the weather, a window shuts closed and a thunder makes the glass shudder, and they have terrible sex: the lighthouse offers lamp oil but John refuses to use it as lubrication, so they only get spit & prayers & John's ribs are still tender & he's probably got a broken leg, too, so Gale has to ride him. It hurts too much & he doesn't know how to make it good; John is hurting too because Gale keeps putting his weight on his ribcage & biting his collarbones to suffuse his groans. It's fast and they cum but only God knows why or how.

Gale doesn't say anything. He gets up, gets dressed, and leaves John in his bed (it's theirs, at this point), half-naked, breathing hard, crying a little bit at his own cruelty. He feels he forced Gale into a corner, like he's keeping a fish out of the water just to see how big their lungs are.

Outside, Gale is walking too close to the cliff's edge, trying to make sense of what's happening, what's been happening. John gets up, too, he hops and wobbles. Of course, as this is a story about the weather, it's raining. A gentle drizzle promising bigger waves, but it's enough to make the grass path over the cliff treacherous. John slips and falls down and Gale sees his slow descent & runs down to him, almost breaks his neck, he falls down too and skins his knees in the rush to reach him, to get him off the ground & to bring him back inside, where they each catalogue their tiny hurts and their huge wounds, this time careful and slow, this time kissing, whispering connections of lips and tongue.

In the end, they sit down at the small table of the kitchenette, over two mugs of coffee, hair still damp, and don't say anything. They understand that what they did cannot be erased from their memories, maybe they don't want to.

John tells Gale he's going to have to turn up the light soon (it's a story about weather!) & Gale says Don't tell me how to do my job, John. And shave your damned mustache, it gave me a rash. And it's ugly to boot.

John laughs, their feet are touching.

When he’s done, Bucky makes a cigarette and a lighter appear out of thin air. Blinking at the spark of fire in the otherwise dark room Gale categorizes each sensation. His ass hurts, he starts with the most immediate. It hurts and he knew it would hurt: he’d conceptualized it in his vulgar daydreams, those he couldn’t even bear to share with himself as the only witness to his reprobation. He’d pictured it as the pain of a paper cut, invisible and infection-hot, impossible to deal with.

At fifteen an older boy named Jack would tell Gale and his friends about this girl, Mary, and her tight little asshole, and he’d say – even though by his own admission he couldn’t really compare the two – that it was better than fucking her pussy: it was tighter, and warmer, sometimes drier which felt good due to the friction. In his adolescent mind this last fact made sense because Wyoming in the winter was a slaughterhouse, the long sleep of a paranoid killer setting traps and hunting his neighbors, which translated to harsh people not caring for indulgences.

In any case, a healthy fifteen-year-old boy was going to nauseously imagine it, there was no helping it. He’d close his eyes, curious, one hand laying on his navel, and he’d see Jack’s penis – he’d call it penis, because cock felt too intimate, too daring – sink into a furled hole, an anonymous crevice, that was soft and hot but dry.

He’d pull on his own cock, and he would come quickly and silently, washing his hands in the sink – he’d only masturbate in the bathroom, thinking about Jack and his size; Mary wasn’t much taller than a thirteen-year-old. At the time he and Marge were threading a careful tapestry of cheek-kisses and hand-holding, going to the pictures when he could scrounge up enough for two tickets, studying together – Marge wanted to be a stenographer – and the farthest his imagination could go was a washed out photograph of her at a dance hall, skirt riding up her legs. He couldn’t do it. Marge was his friend, first of all. And if he’d had to be honest with himself, Mary – to whom he’d had no ties with – also wasn’t featured in those shameful private moments.

It was Jack, tall and broad. It was Jack and his big hands, his skillful fingers, knowing what to touch and where to prod, and it was Gale, in the aftermath, thinking it couldn’t have felt all that great to the recipient, in the first place.

At thirty-three, the amount of times he’d breached himself open with his fingers were two. Once, after the first sordid retelling, and twice, after meeting Bucky at Randolph. He’d concluded that it wasn’t going to work, because he was a man, and getting filled was for women, who are small and soft and occasionally dry in the right places. And that for them it wouldn’t hurt, because they were made for that. And he feels vindicated for the briefest second, because it hurts for him, too, only not in the way he thought it would hurt.

It’s a gentle ache, in the realm of tender: a muscle resettling itself after being worked hard, but not too much, not enough to tear. It’s sharp, as Bucky’s cock is big, long, big like he is big, fat like he is fat, slightly curved and sweet, Gale laughs, insanely, a sweet cock for a sweet man.

“What’s so funny?” Bucky says, as Gale’s snickering turns into giggling turns into smothering sobs, “Gale?”

“It doesn’t really hurt,” Gale replies, admits, not in the way it should.

“I’d hoped so,” Bucky is carefully maneuvering the both of them over the small, creaky bed of his motel room, “Are you…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but he stops moving; he’s laid Gale on his back, and he on his side, superimposed over Gale’s front, a searing, naked weight squelching his nerves, thumbs obscenely stroking over Gale’s hipbones, calf slithering up and down Gale’s leg. A sickly wave of goosebumps rose to forbear a prickling bout of stomach-churning and regretting. A week ago he should’ve been saying yes in front of twenty people and an altar. Instead, he got bent over, he was opened, touched, kissed, one hand at his nape and the other grabbing his waist, then pushing down, weeping and bleeding and for an awful moment he’d thought shitting as well but his stomach had been too empty for it to be a real threat, and the worst part of it all is that it felt good. Of course it feels good, Bucky gave it to him.

“I’m fine.”

“OK.”

“I am.”

“I said OK, Buck.”

“I thought– it doesn’t matter, anyhow.”

The windows are juddering as the trucks start their pilgrimage to the highways, and Bucky sights, shifting once more, sagging into the mattress. Stomach to stomach, dropping his head next to Gale’s on the pillow, he’s melting like a dense wax spreading over his whole body and he smells like Red Lucky Strikes, the pungent odour of sex – sweat and semen. Gale, hesitantly, brings his hands over John’s back, the texture of his skin uneven. He closes his eyes.

John says: “Tomorrow I’ll make you eat ten flapjacks for breakfast.”

Gale shakes his head, he’s always being spared by John’s mercy.

“Dream bigger, Bucky.”

“Twenty, then,” he murmurs, “drowned in syrup.”

“If you don’t suffocate me first,” he says, stunned, sleepy, silent for once.

“Shh,” Bucky says, “we’re sleeping, now.”