The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
London Spy: Ben Whishaw, dreamy lover/genius Ed Holcroft and sage Jim Broadbent
Aloysius J. Gleek:
LONDONSPYFANFIC
Stay
Chapter 1: Symphonies
By thecountessolivia
Published: 02-15-2016
Updated: -02-17-2016
http://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
http://archiveofourown.org/works/6023503?view_full_work=true
Summary:
The morning after Alex's first night with Danny / The morning after Danny's first night with Alex
His eyes open and scan about for the glowing red digits of the little alarm clock he'd spotted on a shelf last night. 5AM. On Sundays he always wakes up at 5AM. That much at least is the same.
Sundays are routine. Run ten miles, shower, get dressed. Long breakfast at Hixter in the company of his laptop, refactoring code and cleaning up repos - all while pretending that he's not there, amidst the bustle of the brunching set, to avoid the deafening silence of his flat. Pick up his dry cleaning and tidy it away slowly, passing the time. Walk the forty minute walk from Battersea to Marylebone, letting his brain unpick an obscure bug or optimise the performance of a subclass along the way. Browse vintage maps and travel guides at Daunt Books, daring at times to hope that someone, anyone, might strike up a conversation. Head home, squirm past the surveillance cameras, force down something healthy from the local deli. Then free weights, press-ups and planks until his muscles scream. Code. Read. Some evenings, before bed, a mild sedative to still the waves of panic that appear at regular intervals. Before drifting off into a thin sleep, make a mental note of whether or not, during the course of the day, he'd spoken more than a few words to anyone at all.
Sundays mean the droning hum of his brain cells and the low-key dread and nausea of having to face their inscrutable, sneering company at work the next day.
This morning, in the strange, untidy flat in Vauxhall, the same brain cells roar and strain with music. Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, huge, raucous symphonies all tumbling into one.
While the noise and the chaos broadcast through his mind, Alex lies quietly in the thinning darkness. The bedroom air is thick with a stale, electrolytic sweetness he's never smelled before and he grasps that he is breathing in the sillage of sex.
He feels too warm. Nothing has taught his body's thermostat to attune itself to the skin-on-skin proximity of another human being. Hands braided over his chest, he practices utter stillness, unsure how much movement would suffice to wake the soft, near-scorching shape pressed up beside him. He listens to the fast, regular breaths coming from beneath the soft mess of dark hair tickling his shoulder. He feels the breaths collide with the skin of his arm and their warmth assures him of at least one thing.
This isn't a breakdown. You haven't imagined this. You are here.
Until Danny wakes, everything else is uncertainty.
---------------
In a matter of hours, all the academic theories and hopeless imaginings of "this is what it will feel like" had cracked and collapsed around him.
Scored by the chaotic symphonies, last night loops through Alex like an enormous, domed projection. The scent, the weight, the taste of him, all as immense as newly discovered planets. Every touch like a streak of light plummeting into the insatiable well of darkness he's been dying in for years.
Giddy, nameless feelings pulsate through him, amplified by the tingling soreness radiating between his legs and the burning closeness of Danny's skin. He attempts to restore order through compartmentalisation. He divides the night into limbs, actions, sensations. The hands. The skilled, patient hands that caressed and arranged him, while his own only knew to clutch and grab and squeeze. The same hands opening him up, careful fingers guiding him past the brief barrier of pressure and pain until, as gasp after gasp escaped him, he was penetrated and split with pleasure so intense it seemed like violence. The face. Peering down at him through the near darkness, strained with quiet feeling, the beautiful face and soft green eyes of the man who said he would stay.
Flashes of awkwardness infest each fragment. He thinks of the starved, crude kisses he'd crashed into Danny's mouth, raw with alcohol; the noises he'd let himself make; the fistfuls of hair he'd pulled at, not knowing his strength. The mess he'd made of both of them after, helping to pull off the condom with shaking hands. Danny's gentle, whispered "S'okay" an answer to his apologetic smiles and his soundless giggles. Being cleaned up, then kissed and held like a clumsy child before slumping unceremoniously into sleep.
Until Danny wakes, everything is adrift.
I don't know how I did. I don't know what I'm meant to do next.
He takes on the uncertainty and the chaos with conditional logic. He weighs the possible outcomes. If he leaves now, he can still resume the Sunday routine and not have to face whatever will come - indifference, rejection - when Danny wakes up. He can collect what he's been given and carry it off with him, then hold on to it forever.
Careful as a pickpocket he slides from the bed. Tiptoeing his way through the towels, cast-off shoes and shot glasses lining the floor, he collates an incomplete set of his clothing. He pulls on his boxers, dusts off his jumper and socks and, slipping out quietly, ferries them in a neatly folded bundle towards the bathroom, seeking the rest of his scattered possessions.
He opens the door and makes the dark-haired woman inside squeal with surprise. She's brushing her teeth and, upon seeing Alex, spits into the sink. She grins. "Morning!" she chirps and flashes a clean grin. She's dressed for going out - how had he not heard her come back in? She scans him up and down. Flooding with distress, he breathes a quiet "Sorry", snags his trousers from the bathroom floor and retreats.
How many others had the flatmate seen creep out of Danny's bedroom? What was their routine?
He has to go.
---------------
Back in the bedroom, he begins to dress. He pulls his jumper over his head and when he emerges, Danny is sat up in bed, one hand rubbing against a sleepy eye.
"You're dressed...? What time is it?"
He lets it out, as quick as a breath.
"I should go."
Even as he says it, his limbs are steering him away from his stated intent, mechanically moved by some desperate force. He's back on the bed and his forehead is dropping onto a warm shoulder. He's wrapping his arms about Danny's waist. He's clinging on.
Help me. Help me, please, like you did last night.
His hair is being stroked and kissed.
"Have you got plans? Or..."
"I have to do some work." he manages and finds he is shaking.
Don't make me go.
His face is lifted by warm hands and smiling eyes tether him down.
"I understand. And what would you like to do today?"
He presses his mouth to Danny's, grabbing at the lifeline.
"I'd like to stay."
---------------
At least the morning is a certainty. He settles back into the bed and quietly loses himself in the comfort of Danny's gentle commotion. He follows every movement and gesture with wonder, collecting each into a scrapbook of posterity.
Danny yawns, slips on a t-shirt, tidies sundries from the floor, puts on music Alex doesn't recognise, hums along to it, casts back smiling glances, fetches two cups of milky tea, opens the window, finally settles back down on the bed, cross-legged and close.
"Are you always up this early?"
He nods. He stares into the cup of tea pressed into his hands, that novel, alien thing made for him by someone else. Small caresses keep him anchored to reality, the back of Danny's hand brushing in rhythmic strokes against his knee.
"I'd have thought you'd fancy a lie-in. Especially after..."
"Was it OK? I mean... " he interrupts, desperate to know, but courage deserts him mid-sentence. He doesn't dare look up.
Danny leans in, kisses his eyelids, his nose, then finds his gaze.
"Alex... nothing's ever felt as good. Ever. Not even close."
---------------
Minutes drift them by, then hours. The room is aired and filled with light. He's kissed, touched and cradled, whispered to.
"We could still sleep in, you know."
"I'd rather stay like this for a while. And talk. If that's OK."
"OK. On one condition."
Danny slips from his arms and from the bed. He settles on the windowsill, lights a cigarette and smiles.
"Promise me we'll have a lie-in next weekend."
The future tense and plural pronoun bestow on Alex something he recognises at once as the beginning of happiness.
Notes:
Some days ago I deleted most of my LS fics.
This is one that never got posted, written a few weeks ago in an attempt to crawl into Alex's head immediately after he lost his virginity. Not easy and not entirely successful.
- Hixter Bankside was the shooting location for D&A's first breakfast.
- The shooting script for Episode 1 mentions Alex's flat as being in Chelsea, but the actual building is located in Battersea.
- Daunt Books is a beautiful, independent bookseller in Marylebone, specialising in old travel guides. Not mentioned in the show but the sort of place Alex would like, I should think.
Stay
Chapter 2: Sparkle
By thecountessolivia
Published: 02-15-2016
Updated: -02-17-2016
http://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
http://archiveofourown.org/works/6023503?view_full_work=true
Summary:
The morning after Alex's first night with Danny / The morning after Danny's first night with Alex
Don't obsess. Don't gush. Don't grin. Don't cling. Don't think about how good you made him feel. Don't think about his soft little gasps. Or the fact that you've already memorised the exact location of the very tiny mole near his collarbone. Or the weight of his long, toned legs as your hands lifted them apart. Or the sight of his cock, more gorgeous than you ever imagined, spurting unaided against his stomach while your own pressed again and again into that tender spot inside him.
Don't think how you'd murder to never see him sad or worried again, ever. Above all else, don't dare to think that what you gave to him or took from him last night grants you any right to hope that he's yours.
Danny's got a box full of impulses and he's struggling to keep the lid on. The only thing he's thought about for weeks is manifested within his crappy old bed in the form of impossible, beautiful Alex. Alex, still and solemn and obliviously sexy. Alex, knees hugged to his chest, in his boxer shorts and jumper and with hair out of place. Alex, whose serious blue eyes are tracking his every move. Alex, who timidly asked to stay.
As the eyes follow him about, he tries to look calm and graceful, but feels like a scruffy, giddy idiot. He's flitting through the bedroom, tidying away the mess they've made and humming along to the music from his ancient iPod. He's stupidly awake at stupid o'clock, buzzing as if he'd smoked a few crystals but so fucking sober that his brain itself is a crystal, clean and fresh and twinkling and sparkling with love.
This is so good. This is unreal. He can't remember the last time a bloke stayed until the next day. Even James used to sneak off like a thief in the night, and that was a steady relationship - or so the bastard told him. But this is beyond anything. This is Alex.
He summons up all the discipline he can muster. For at least the next few minutes, he'll need to keep some distance. Danny knows what Alex must smell like - sleep, sex, sweat, traces of his strange, timid cologne - and if he gets close enough to catch that scent again then he'll spew something awful like:
"Last night was so special."
or
"You were so beautiful."
or
"You did so well."
Instead, he smiles at the taciturn man in his bed and goes off to make some tea.
---------------
Cross-legged across from each other, they're snogging slowly and Danny is adrift on a cloud of bliss. Head tilting to different angles, lips barely open, then wide and pressing, Alex is practicing and experimenting, obviously so, and Danny doesn't mind in the slightest. He lends his mouth, keeps it soft, slack and passive, and tries not to giggle when Alex's warm, tea-scented tongue reaches strange recesses between his teeth and his cheek.
"So. I could make us breakfast or... there's this nice little cafe down the road..." He's murmuring between licks, suckles and tender bites. "We could pop out in a bit..."
Christ. When he pulls back, Alex's face is a luminous fairground of innocence and wonder. Is he really so awed at the idea of going to a greasy spoon? He's nodding and the smallest smile is pressing up the curves of that beautiful mouth, still wet with Danny's kisses. Then the smile vanishes.
"I'll need a shower."
"Sure, yeah."
"Yes, but I..." The absurd cheekbones are flushing a soft pink.
"You?"
Alex looks down and his fingers fiddle with the hem of his pants. Danny laughs and slaps his forehead, understanding.
"God, of course!"
He plants a reassuring smooch on Alex then clambers over the bed towards his sideboard. He wrestles open a sticky drawer, rummages for the only pair he knows will be big enough. He collapses into a giggling fit as he puts his find on display.
"Ta-da! They were a Christmas present. Sorry. But they're clean and they're yours to wear!"
Alex's eyes grow wide at the sight of a red pair of boxer shorts patterned with happy little snowmen. Then he slumps forward on the bed, smothers his face with a pillow and shakes with silent laughter.
Notes:
Couldn't resist having a go at Danny's POV of the same morning.
The music Danny hums to and Alex doesn't recognise is Wild Beasts - Mecca
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCJ7_NPtNEo[/youtube]
Published on Jun 18, 2014
from the album Present Tense
WILD BEASTS LYRICS
"Mecca"
All we want is to feel that feeling again
Just a drop on the lips and we're more than equipped
There is some thirst that's gotta be quenched, yeah
All we want is to feel that feeling again
We didn't reach a high it was always inside
We just coaxed it from the place it would hide.
We move in fear, we move in desire
Now I know how you feel.
I'm a pilgrim, you're the shrine to
All the lovers that loved before us
And breathed in this ether.
Where the body goes the mind will follow soon after.
Cause all we want is to know the vivid moment
Yeah, how we feel now was felt by the ancients
Yeah, all we want is to know the vivid moment
Just surrender your limbs to my every whim
Now we're lovers, we are cartwheeling.
We move in fear, we move in desire
Now I know how you feel.
I'm a pilgrim, you're the shrine to
All the lovers that loved before us
And breathed in this ether.
Where the body goes the mind will follow soon after.
We've a Mecca now, weave a Mecca now, no less
To hold the other end of the thread. Hold on-
We move in fear, we move in desire
Now I know how you feel.
I'm a pilgrim, you're the shrine to
All the lovers that loved before us
And breathed in this ether.
Where the body goes the mind will follow soon after.
'Cause, all we want is to feel that feeling again,
Yeah, all we want is to feel that feeling again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Beasts
Aloysius J. Gleek:
Aloysius J. Gleek:
OMG! Alex was in New York--maybe this winter? ON ST. MARK'S PLACE! (between 2nd and 3rd Aves) Keep your eyes peeled!
(Whew! Got a much better image of Mr. Holcroft--but even when fuzzy, I knew exactly WHERE that photo was taken! (Probably/maybe a couple of years ago, by the looks of things? Look at his small white iPhone.) Love the rucksack/knapsack Ed is rocking, so Alex--look at the Google StreetView image below, and there's a fellow, dead center, wearing--a knapsack--very St. Mark's/EV(East Village)!
Aloysius J. Gleek:
LONDONSPYFANARTJOHANIRAE
London Spy Episode 1 | Daniel Holt attempts Seduction again! It is super effective!
http://johanirae.tumblr.com/tagged/fanart/page/2
Aloysius J. Gleek:
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Broadcast live from the Donmar Warehouse 28 January 2016
To Be Rebroadcast in New York 19 March 2016 7:00PM
Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space
Check for local listings in your city!
--- Quote from: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 06, 2016, 11:55:38 am ---
--- End quote ---
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY7l51L1eQM[/youtube]Published on Dec 16, 2015
Broadcast live to cinemas on 28 January 2016.
Broadcast NYC Symphony Space
19 March 2016 7:00PM
--- Quote from: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 06, 2016, 11:55:38 am ---
--- End quote ---
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxbqpsHqZxE[/youtube]Published on Dec 16, 2015
Broadcast live to cinemas on 28 January 2016.
Broadcast NYC Symphony Space
19 March 2016 7:00PM
--- Quote from: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 06, 2016, 11:55:38 am ---
--- End quote ---
★★★★★ ‘Theatre at its most seductive’ Evening Standard
★★★★ ‘Heady and intoxicating. A brilliantly revived adaptation’ Daily Telegraph
★★★★ ‘An evening to richly savour’ Guardian
★★★★ ‘Electrifying. Funny, moving and uncomfortably provocative’ Sunday Times
★★★★ ‘Janet McTeer is absolutely magnificent’ The Times
★★★★ ‘West is great as Valmont, a booming, lusty bounder’ Time Out
Following the hugely successful broadcasts of Coriolanus and King Lear, National Theatre Live brings the Donmar Warehouse’s highly anticipated new production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses to cinemas - broadcast live from the Donmar’s London home.
Directed by Josie Rourke (Coriolanus), the cast includes Elaine Cassidy (The Paradise), Janet McTeer (The White Queen), Dominic West (The Wire), and Edward Holcroft (London Spy).
In 1782, Choderlos de Laclos’ novel of sex, intrigue and betrayal in pre-revolutionary France scandalised the world. Two hundred years later, Christopher Hampton's irresistible adaptation swept the board, winning the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best Play. Josie Rourke’s revival now marks the play’s thirty year anniversary.
Former lovers, the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont now compete in games of seduction and revenge. Merteuil incites Valmont to corrupt the innocent Cecile de Volanges before her wedding night but Valmont has targeted the peerlessly virtuous and beautiful Madame de Tourvel. While these merciless aristocrats toy with others’ hearts and reputations, their own may prove more fragile than they supposed.
http://www.symphonyspace.org/event/9096/Film-Theatre/nt-live-les-liaisons-dangereuses
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