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aaluminiumas · 2 years

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My Name Is Balathu

Rachel King wasn’t accustomed to crying.

In the CIA, women were widely yet surreptitiously disliked. However, the top brass would never have the stomach to admit it openly – the head honchos justly apprehended the public disclosure, ostensibly sticking to the recent political agenda and maintaining the veneer of modernity. Still, if someone had spotted a tear in her eye, she would’ve been immediately labeled as a pussy. Right: ‘just another chick’ who botched everything and derailed the operation, perfectly planned and drafted by one of the prominent agents of the agency – by one of the male agents, relying on endless jive, gossip, and infinite saber-rattling in front of each other. What’s worse, her husband Eric was dispatched to Iraq, too. They needed a showpiece lieutenant colonel with a hefty portfolio under his arm. To add insult to injury, not only was he sent directly into the headquarters for further instructions, the man was assigned to her raid group. It may seriously undermine her career and enshroud her in a thick layer of grapevine, speculations, and allegations – she’d been through it before. And this scuttlebutt again: “he’d dragged her out of there, of course… she would’ve never made it.” No matter how hard she struggled, his presence nevertheless threatened her independence and authority. No matter how often she proved her competence and demonstrated her well-honed skills, the vast majority of people tended to believe that Eric was far more experienced, his already proverbial excellence turned into a fundamental truth. Sure, he’d hauled the Queen Bitch out of there…

While he did not.

This Queen Bitch remained to rot in Iraq, Rachel laughed bitterly. She had long stopped to cherish idle hopes to make friends and was very well aware of the lovely moniker bestowed on her by her fellow agents. Eloquent, quite so. However, if not for her nerve and her undeniably bitchy behavior – by her colleagues’ standards, of course – she would have never achieved what she’d achieved. Anyways, it didn’t make any sense now. She got stuck in Iraqi catacombs, got entrapped in the mazelike caverns with her chest pierced through, her body nailed down to a large stone– she was destined to die a terrible, agonizing death.

The woman closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Oddly enough, it scarcely hurt: she may have been affected by adrenaline in her blood – which helped immensely – or it was her brain that failed to process the situation and worked frantically neglecting the pain. She fumbled the spear with both her hands and endeavored to pluck it out. The weapon did not move an inch, but it wiggled in the wound – for a second, Rachel thought she could fall unconscious. She stood no chance. She’d been at an impasse before, and she did have to raise her voice at her subordinates when they started to prophesize death to the entire division, but now– Well, now she'd better start praying for a quick demise. If only did she believe in God–

Out of the blue, she heard a quiet crepitation somewhere in the distance, which was soon followed by an almost inaudible rustling.

“Eric? Eric, is this you?”

His name immediately came to mind. Weird. She thought they had called it quits long ago, and his presence would only consolidate her decision. What if she was in terrible haste..?

“Eric, I’m here!”

No response. The rustling appeared to have dispersed in the encompassing murk of the cave. These labyrinthine passages remained a mystery even to the omnipresent archaeologists, let alone a bunch of operatives trying to find a way out. Could it be an illusion? Was she seeing things? Quite possible. Or it could be bats, unknown species of insects or god knows what other species originated in the darkness of the dungeon.

“Eric?”

Rachel pricked up her ears. At first, she couldn’t make out a single sound beside water dripping down the stalactites, and the distant din, but gradually she trained her ears and began to distinguish feeble, steady breathing and an inconspicuous rub of a soft sole against the stone floor. Their fatigues, created in accordance with the field conditions and the requirements of the environment, failed to remain completely noiseless: heavy combat boots with rubber anti-tracking soles could sabotage covert operations – albeit they did not slide off the smoothest stones, the footwear, unfortunately, tended to betray the presence in reverberant surroundings, such as these caves.

So, those were not the military. Not the Iraqi, right, but– not her husband either.

The woman turned her head, trying to find the source of the sound. Whoever it was, the stranger oriented in this hall quite well – and he certainly crawled towards her. Her call significantly simplified the task: she had revealed her position. A blunder made only by the inexperienced.

A scrawny figure abruptly detached from the shawl of darkness and made several wobbly steps in her direction. The creature reminded a human being: a tall, emaciated man with an ancient helmet on his head. Dark skin stretched around his limbs so tightly that Rachel could see the spots where sinews attached to bones. A blood-blotched parang dangled at his waist. The bony ankles were wrapped around by a twine affixed to old abraded sandals. That's where the similarity to humans ended. As soon as she realized she could discern the facial traits of the stranger, Rachel, stymied, palsied. The swarthy face, painted with ritual paint, was mutilated by a pair of long fangs resembling chelicerae. He lacked lips: the decaying, decomposing mouth revealed ugly stubs of rotten teeth.

The woman felt nauseous. Even though the creature differentiated from the monsters Jason and Nick had slaughtered and decimated in the Sacrificial Hall, he didn’t seem to possess reason and empathy, just like his peers. On the other hand, he wasn’t aggressive: quite on the contrary, his sensible gestures betrayed a vague sense of purpose. He did not intend to attack; otherwise, he would’ve pounced on her as soon as he heard her voice.

The man looked around and suddenly gazed at her with his blind, pale eyes. As if understanding that Rachel had been scrutinizing him, he treaded confidently to her while she, completely petrified, kept watching his movements. The woman couldn’t utter a sound, her voice trapped in her throat; nevertheless, her hands made another attempt at tugging the massive spear out of her chest. The stranger appeared beside her in the blink of an eye, but he did not lash out at her – he clearly had no intention to assail her. Mesmerized, Rachel found the courage to peer at the deformed face.

In the eyes, now covered by the ashy veil of blindness, one could still recognize a thin borderline between the once-brown iris and the white.

“Who are you?..” she murmured.

The man canted his head to the side and glared at her. His desiccated, gaunt hand reached for her cheek, and Rachel, panicking, tried to shun from it. A galvanic movement – and she comprehended that a warm finger lay onto her lips.

He asked her to calm down.

She made another attempt to break loose, but the stranger pressed the finger tighter to her mouth.

“Why do you do that..?”

His dry, rough palm brushed across her visage and gently directed her head up to face him. Deep inside her head, she heard a low, quiet voice:

“My name is Balathu. Your new life starts now.”

At this, Rachel stopped to recalcitrate, suddenly realizing that instead of the searing pain she was growing accustomed to, her body welcomed a bizarre sense of warmth.

#house of ashes #dark pictures house of ashes #jason kolchek #fanfiction #fanfic #rachel king #nick kay #eric king #salim othman #balathu #the dark pictures anthology

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imaginesupply · 3 years

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Homecoming - Chapter Three

(Gif's not my own.)

Summary: The day has arrived, Captain Syverson is going home. For good, this time. He is going home to a civilian life he can hardly remember and a wife he barely knows, with memories of the war still fresh on his mind. Love might not be able to heal everything on its own, but it’s a good start.

Genres: Romance, drama.

Story warnings: Smut (always fully consensual), mentions of PTSD and nightmares and mental health, angst, hurt and comfort, fluff, mentions of war (minor), mentions of cheating (minor), mentions of pregnancy (very minor), police appearance (very minor), violence (very minor).

Notes:

It’s my first time writing for one of Henry’s characters and I’m unsure I did Sy’s character any justice.

This is a Capt. Syverson x OFC (Ada) story, written in 3rd person POV but OFC’s physical description is very limited so it could also be read as Capt. Syverson x Reader, I think.

English is not my first language, so there might be some mistakes. Proofread, but not beta’ed. We die like men and all that.

Timeline is a little wacky: The movie takes place in 2003 and the U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq in 2011, but I never set a precise date because I don’t think it’s essential for this story. However, some elements might not be realistic because if we set this story in 2003: Phone cameras quality was not as good as it’s now, but for the purpose of the chapters, I will need you to imagine you could film great videos with your flip phone haha. Plus, it says Sy is coming back after being deployed for more than three years which makes no sense unless we set this in 2006 or later. I am asking you disregard any time inconsistencies.

Also: I am not American. I only lived in the US for six months and it was in the Midwest, not Texas so please bear with me if I write something stupid.

Finally: This will be a Christmas fic and I intend to post the last chapter (there will be seven in total) on or before Christmas. However, religion is never mentioned in this story and the Christmas-sy elements of this story are limited to family gathering, gift giving and tree decorating.

Chapter Three starts after the cut. (Chapter Two can be found here.) Let me know if you wish to be tagged in future chapters or if you wish to be removed from the tag list.

Chapter Three

Chapter warnings: Smut, alcohol consumption (moderate), mentions of contraception and of pregnancy.

I think that’s it, but this chapter killed my brain – it was very difficult to write and I feel like I botched it. There are various important moments in this chapter that I found very hard to translate from my brain into words. And the smut, oh my God, it’s so bad!

"You know, when you came to me all bossy and told me to lose my clothes, I had something a lot different in mind." Sy grumbled from the bed, where he was sat wearing nothing but boxer briefs.

Ada laughed and turned around, sticking out her tongue at him before going back to what she was doing, namely sorting through Sy's clothes in the walk-in closet. She slid a pair of jeans off its hangers and threw it at him without looking back. "I admit that I probably don't need as many clothes as I own, but you're definitely a minimalist."

Sy grunted noncommittally, he was not amused, but tried on the jeans all the same. They didn't fit, he couldn't pull them up past the thighs. "Hey darlin'," he called her, a hint of amusement audible in his voice.

She turned around at the pet name and then forced herself not to laugh at the sight in front of her. Sy had already been a burly man when they had met, but it seemed he had managed to gain even more muscle mass in the past few months, now looking like an absolute bear of a man. Ada grinned and tilted her head at the cardboard box at the end of the bed. "Put those in the donation pile."

"Yes, ma'am," Sy said, getting up and doing as asked.

Ada grabbed her small pencil and added another item to the list. "So, you need jeans, new boots, sweatshirts, t-shirts..." She went on, listing the items. What he needed was a whole new wardrobe and she was the woman for the mission.

Turning around, she found Sy rolling his eyes at her. "I ain't need no new t-shirts, woman. I got the black one, the red one and the khaki one."

Ada chuckled and approached him on the bed, coming to stand between his legs. It was unusual for her to be taller than him, and with him sitting on the bed and her standing up, she still didn't have that much of an advantage. With a grin, she leaned forward and kissed his forehead before pulling back to look into his eyes. Instinctively, almost an automatism, his hands found purchase on her hips.

"Last time you wore your red 'DILLIGAF' t-shirt, three separate kids stopped and asked you what the acronym stood for and you looked at me for help."

Sy held her gaze, not keen on losing the staring contest. Ada didn't want to relent but she didn't want to force him either, not after what had happened while grocery shopping. "It's okay if you really don't want to go, I won't for-"

Sy shook his head, silencing her before she could even finish. "Let's get this shopping over with. But I'm warning you: I'll be complaining the whole time."

For a moment, Ada pursed her lips, seemingly unconvinced but eventually her frown was replaced with a grin. "I would expect nothing else from you, grumpy bear," she teased before turning around, excited about the task at hand.

Sy left to get dressed but not before landing a playful smack on her ass.

°°°

It went just as Ada had imagined. Sy sat down on the sofa at the far end of the store, keeping everything in sight, and she would occasionally come up to him with suggestions. To an onlooker, they resembled a devout worshipper trying to make offerings to a very picky and very handsome god.

His replies to the items she presented to him went anywhere from 'no' to 'not a chance in hell', without forgetting the classic 'you lost your mind, darlin’'.

After visiting three stores and Ada trying to visually guess his size because Sy absolutely refused to try out any of the clothes, they had managed to get most of what he needed. It just turned out to be near recreations of the clothes he already owned, just bigger and newer. And with more child friendly texts.

They stopped for coffee by the center of the open-air mall. True to himself, Sy ordered just that - a coffee with 'none of the fancy shit'.

"You're sure you don't want to go to any of your stores?" Sy asked, watching her sip on her colorful drink.

Well, the idea was tempting but she already had more candles and blankets than necessary. And she knew he was uneasy even if he was hiding it well. "No, it's okay. I know you don't like shopping and I can just ask some friends if I really want to go." Sy hummed.

By the time Ada finished her season exclusive drink, she noticed Sy was staring at a shop window. She was almost excited that he was finally interested in buying clothes before noticing that it was some video game advertisement.

"You can buy the game, if you want. No need to stare," she teased.

He reverted his attention back to her. "It's only compatible with the new console that came out last month and that one's sold out." Ada started beaming as he spoke. "What?"

"Well... a few months ago, I came across the launch announcement on the Internet. And I had seen the old model in the study, so I knew you liked it and since you were coming home soon..."

Sy's eyes became even bluer for a moment, a huge grin threatening to illuminate his face. "Are you saying that...?"

Ada laughed, shaking her head. He looked like a kid on Christmas Day. "Yes. It's wrapped in gift paper in the basement under the utility sink."

"I love you, wife."

Again, she scoffed. "Yeah, yeah... Now let's go get you that damn game."

°°°

Later that day, or rather night, Sy wasn't even paying attention to the movie they, or rather, she was watching. He had gotten the gist of it - superheroes teaming up together to save the world - that sufficed him. His focus was entirely on his wife nested between his legs, her back resting against his chest.

When they got home from the mall and went to sort through his clothes and belongings, finally unpacking the rest of his duffel bag, Ada came across his dog tags. She asked if she could keep them. Sy frowned at the odd request but agreed nonetheless, shrugging dismissively.

Ada then proceeded to put the chain around her neck and slide the tags under her blouse. He had stared at her a little confused; she was smiling, looking all smug as if she had managed to trick him out of something valuable and not just two cheap metal tags hanging off an equally cheap chain.

"The fact that I get to have both your tags means I am very lucky to have gotten you back alive and in one piece. I don't want to ever forget that."

With his height advantage, even sitting behind her, Sy could see the chain disappearing under her pajamas and the tags resting in the valley of her breasts. Somehow, the sight made him feel even more possessive than the wedding band on her ring finger.

Things always had felt slightly uncertain with Ada, there had always been the shadow of a doubt in his mind when it came to her. They had gotten married on a whim and she knew he was a green beret, deployed most of the time. It's an entirely different thing to marry someone you get to see for a couple of weeks every once in a blue moon and to actually live, share a home with someone. When Sy had told her, he was coming home for good over the phone, he had half expected her to ask him for a divorce or to find himself alone at the airport. His face hadn't shown it, but when Ada put on the damn chain he had hated wearing in the goddamn desert where it would chafe his nape or get tangled in his chest hairs, Sy felt as happy as a sand boy.

She seemed honest when she said there was nothing going on with that Tom guy. Not that he could truly blame her if there was, even if it would have broken him. His parents had been married for over thirty-five years and his mom found a new boyfriend not even two years after his father's passing.

And yet, Ada was there, cuddling with him on the couch. She hadn't served him with divorce papers upon his arrival. Instead, they had spent the past few days pretty much glued together as they usually did when he was on leave.

Maybe it was time he started to believe that he had come home to his wife and she really wasn't going anywhere. Especially since she hadn't asked him to wear a condom ever since he got home and he hadn't seen her contraceptive pills on her nightstand either. Sy even checked the bathroom cabinet where he knew she kept some medication, but he didn't find anything there either. This morning, he had even considered asking her about it, but he figured that if she hadn't mentioned anything so far, it was because she wanted it to be a surprise and he didn't want to ruin it. Though he'd be lying if he said he wasn't going to be checking the same cabinet for pregnancy tests in the future.

"You good?" Ada asked as the film came to an end, tilting her head back but only getting a view of his beard. It made her smile, though. Sy really was her bear: big, strong and hairy.

"Yeah, I just," he stammered slightly as if waking up from his thoughts. "I was thinking we should probably change the stairs' railing into something safer before we have kids running up and down."

"Yep, that's not gonna happen," Ada chipped in, jumping off the couch before starting to fold the blanket.

"What?" Sy blurted out, turning all his attention to her. "The railing or the kids?"

"The kids," she replied nonchalantly, now laying the blanket in the basket by the sofa. "If you want to redo the stairs, that's fine. I think we could even paint them white."

In a second, Sy was up on his feet, his imposing stature crowding her. "What do you mean, that ain't happening? You don't want kids?"

Ada frowned, suddenly uncomfortable at his intense stare. "No.”

"Why did you never tell me?"

"Why did you assume kids were a given?" Ada retorted, taking a few steps back to put some distance between them. "I figured that if it was important to you, you'd have mentioned it sooner, at some point at least."

Sy had to fight the urge to yell at her, the feeling of betrayal and even anger overwhelming him. If he never spoke of it before, it was because he didn't want to have kids while he was deployed and miss their first years. Instead, he forced himself to calm down, taking a deep breath. "Is that a not now or a not ever?"

Ada looked away for a second, gathering her thoughts before moving her eyes back to him. "I got a new Mirena coil a couple of months ago, so I'm set for the next three years at least."

He had no idea what the fuck a 'Mirena coil' was supposed to be but it wasn't hard to figure out. Instinctively, his hand went to the back of head, raking through his short hair. "Just to be clear, Ada," Sy paused, his nostrils flaring, "you don't want children?"

It didn't even take her a second to start regretting her counter after it came out. "Do you?" She snapped back, the enunciation of the 'you' harsher than she had intended.

The effect was instant, her question giving him pause. Did he? Now reflecting on it, Sy realized he had never asked himself that question. It was just something that you did. First you got a house, then you found a wife and started a family. He had never thought about it as an option, just as the next step if he was lucky enough not to die in Iraq.

"I'm so sorry," Ada apologized, her tone alone expressing her regret. She took his hand, forcing him to look at her only to find her eyes glistening as she attempted not to cry. "I didn't mean it like that. I wasn't questioning your parenting skills. I know you'd make a fantastic father, Sy." Her eyes closed as she took a deep breath before opening them again, their corners wet with tears this time. "I just never saw myself having kids, but if it's something you really -"

"I ain't gonna force you to start a family with me," Sy rebuffed, offended at the very thought. The abruption of it even making Ada smile, if only briefly.

She shook her head quickly. "What I meant was that if you want to be a father, then I wish for you to become one. But... I won't be a part of that scenario."

"No." He said, dismissing the idea as soon as she voiced it, catching her hands in his and stilling them midair when she started gesticulating instead.

"No, this is important!" Ada protested. "I want you to be happy, Sy. And I won't stand in the way of your happiness. You deserve to live the life you want and if that includes a family -"

"No." Sy ordered, his tone final and resolute, silencing her instantly. He had never used this voice with her in the past, usually reserving it for the soldiers in his unit. "Stop with that ridiculous suggestion, woman." Ada blinked. It was obvious in her eyes that she wanted to argue but she didn't dare defy his hard stare.

Sy closed his eyes and swallowed, searching for the right words. "The choice between having kids with some other woman or getting to be with you, is a damn easy one. I'd rather we be a family of two than have children with some woman I could never love."

She was crying again, tears streaming down her reddened cheeks. Had he said something wrong? Ada didn't let him wonder for too long, her hand fisting in his t-shirt to pull him down to her lips for a ravenous kiss, their teeth clicking together.

"You know," Ada breathed out against his lips once they parted for air. "It doesn't have to be just the two of us. I am partial to pets."

Later in bed, with his sleeping wife snoring softly and her head resting on his chest, Sy tried to process their conversation only to realize there wasn't much to process at all. It didn't feel that much like giving up on a dream, as it felt like defining the contours his future with Ada. All that mattered to him was that it was a future with the woman whose contagious laugh he had manifested in his mind time and time again to drown out the sound of gunfire and make it through. Children might have been a bonus, he wouldn’t deny that, but their absence was something he could live with. He couldn’t same the thing about Ada.

°°°

"Got your," Sy paused, frowning as he read off the label, entering the kitchen, "Willamette Valley Pinot noir. How many do you need?"

Ada looked away from the oven to find him carrying four bottles of her favorite wine. Did he think they were drunkheads? "Do you want for Tom to have to spend the night here because we're all over the legal alcohol limit and unable to drive?" She laughed.

Sy grimaced. "One bottle it is," he announced, making her laugh all the harder as he set down a single bottle on the table that was already set before casting away the other bottles in the pantry - where they did not, in fact, belong.

Just as was his habit, Sy sneaked up on his wife as she leaned over the kitchen counter, putting away the remaining ingredients and hugged her back to him with one arm. He then dipped a finger in the jar she had filled with leftover caramel and brought it to mouth.

She gasped at his manners. "You can't just stick your fingers in everything that's sweet and lick it off, Sy," Ada chided. She heard it as soon as the words left her mouth, but it was too late.

A deep laugh rumbled in his chest behind her. "Can't I?" Sy goaded her mockingly.

Ada took a deep breath. She knew where this was headed and they didn't have time. It was primordial her pie didn't overcook, and Tom would be there soon. "You know what I meant," she groaned, attempting to sound annoyed but he could hear the smile in her voice.

"Do I?" He whispered against her ear, his beard tickling her skin and his warm breath making her shiver as he slid his hand under her skirt until he was cupping her damp sex over her panties. "Are you certain about that, darlin'?"

Her hands held on to the counter and her eyes closed as he started rubbing his hand along her folds over the fabric. He was also beginning to harden behind at an impressive rate. The temptation made her whimper. "We don't have time," Ada protested, even as her head fell back against him and she leaned into his touch, silently begging for more as she not-so innocently ground her ass on his crotch.

A swift glance at the clock on the wall told him all he needed to know. They had seven minutes. It would have to be enough, Sy decided. Time being of the essence, he was determined not to waste any.

“Open up your legs for your captain, darlin’,” he rasped, his nose nuzzling in the shallow of her neck, his hands already busy bunching up the soft fabric of her skirt around her waist.

“Sy,” Ada lightheartedly protested his eagerness. The idea was certainly enticing but they truly didn’t have time and she really needed to keep an eye on the pie. “We can’t-“

“I said, open your legs,” he repeated, gritting out the words as his foot snuck between her ankles, forcing her legs open himself. Sy barely had to apply any pressure, Ada complied instantly at his tone. There were very few situations in which she let him boss her around and this was one of them.

His hands brushed over her naked thighs, enjoying the way she shivered as he did so. Sliding his fingers higher up her inner legs, Sy expertly slid the scanty lace of her thong aside in order to access her clit. Ada keened under his touch, the rough skin of his finger pads slowly circling her already swollen nub. She couldn’t decide between pressing into his touch or attempting to pull away from it; it was both too little and too much all at once. “Already so wet and I’ve barely done anything to you,” he teased, hoping to sound less worked up than he was. Sy was set on keeping the upper hand. “Tell me, what is it that you want, darlin’?”

Ada whined as he removed his fingers from her core, his hands going to her hips instead and pulling her to him, letting her feel how hard he was for her. His wife reacted by rubbing her ass against him, determined to get what she wanted without having to voice it. “Sy,” she complained when he didn’t bite the bait, still grinding on him, surely getting his jeans wet with her slick.

“That’s not how it works, darlin’,” he chastised, going back to teasing her. His touch was ghostlike, too light to provide any real satisfaction and she groaned in frustration. “You have to ask for it like a good girl.”

He felt her body tense up against his as she tried chasing the friction of his fingers where she wanted them most, but Sy drew away before she could. “I swear to God I am going to make you regret-“

Smack. Ada gasped at the sharp spank on her ass, her body bending over the counter at the impact. Her ass was just too tempting in this position and Sy was running out of patience. “Ask like a good girl,” he ordered between gritted teeth, his hand descending to palm his crotch, hoping for some relief. Her little stunt was turning him on more than it should have.

“God, Sy, just fuck me already!” She sobbed, her legs rubbing together out of their own volition but her husband stayed put, rubbing his palm of his covered cock as he watched her. He wasn’t going to give up any time soon, she realized with a strangled sigh. “Please fuck me, captain,” she whispered, relenting.

Within a second, Sy was unbuckling his belt and pulling down his zipper. His cock was red, hard and throbbing impatiently. With time running out, Sy pushed himself into her without a warning. Ada whined at the stretch, gripping at the flour covered kitchen counter as one of his hands grabbed hold of her hips, the other moving to her breast. Then he started ploughing into her like there was no tomorrow.

Ada kept whimpering his name, but even she didn’t know what it was she was asking for. Her hips were digging into the cold stone and she knew there would be bruises come morning. He had barely started fucking her and she was already beginning to tense up with how worked up she was. “Are you gonna cum for me, darlin’?” Sy grunted, his jaw tense as her inner muscles clenched all around his cock. Ada nodded meekly, unable to speak. Just when he was starting to doubt he’d be able to hold off long enough for her to climax, Ada cried out, her tight walls milking him as she came. Sy exploded inside her with a strangled groan, slowly coming to a still inside her.

The doorbell rang. At seven o’clock on the dot.

"Fucking Brits and their punctuality!" Sy cursed, still panting before pulling away from her and tepidly leaving her warmth. Ada chuckled at his reaction, holding onto the counter for support for a few more seconds until she felt somewhat steady on her feet.

Sy tucked himself back into his pants and she adjusted her skirt over her thighs again before letting out a panicked squeak and turning around. Her front was covered in the flour she has spread on counter for the pie and the white handprint on her breast where he had held on to her was very visible on her black blouse. Sy couldn't keep himself from laughing. She looked great if you asked him, especially since Tom would be going to see just how well he took care of her. "I'll go get changed and you get the door!"

°°°

Sy’s eyes widened, positively surprised as he brought the first forkful of boeuf bourguignon to his mouth. The dish hadn’t appeared particularly appetizing on the plate, but it tasted so much better than it looked. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Ada glancing at him with an ‘I told you so’ smirk.

“I received a new shipment of books at the store today,” Tom told Ada in between bites. He owned a bookstore downtown, Sy had learnt. “There’s a new murder mystery I’m sure you’ll love.”

Ada stilled, a look of excitement washing over her face. “Is there… poison?”

Tom laughed. He had expected that question from her. “Ah, yes. And it’s set in the 1920s!”

Sy glanced from the one to the other, forcing himself not to sigh. Ada’s excitement was adorable, but Tom was grating on his nerves. All the conversation so far had been about novels they’d read recently.

“Please tell me that you saved me a copy.” Ada shrieked enthusiastically, prompting Tom to laugh before he suddenly producer a hardcover out of seemingly thin air. As if she was scared that he was only taunting her with it, Ada leaned over the table and snatched the book out of his hand, a smug look on her face before she started reading the back cover. Sy looked at her and chuckled, shaking his head fondly at her almost childish elation.

"So, where did you two meet?" Tom asked, shifting his attention to Sy. "Ada always told me that it was a story for another time."

Sy's grip tightened on his cutlery. Admittedly, the strong animosity toward the man had faded, but he was still not keen on making conversation with the man. "Here in Austin," Sy replied before going back to his food. Ada had to stifle a laugh at the face Tom made at the curt answer.

"I'll tell you," she offered, capturing Tom's attention. "I had just graduated with my Masters and managed to land a PhD position here in Austin. I was freshly debarked out of France and I was only to start to start mid January but I flew over in December already - wanting to fly with my own wings and all that." Tom chuckled as she gestured derisively with the story.

"Anyway, I hadn't found a flat yet, all my stuff was in a storage unit and I had the brilliant idea of going to Vegas. On my own. In a 1979 black Camaro rental."

Sy finally looked up from his plate. "It was from 1980 and it was dark gray, not black, darling’."

Ada found herself staring curiously at her husband as he interrupted her story before laughing. That's what it took to get him to talk?

"So, it was a 1979, dark gray Camaro,” Ada correctly herself. “Anyway, obviously it did not have a navigation system and I stopped at one of the few open bars open at 5pm on Christmas Eve, ordered a beer and tried making sense of the maps I found in the glovebox, making a list of the different exits and turns I would have to make.

"Sy was there drinking with some friends – loud friends, might I add. Well, I am struggling with the maps and he must notice because he approaches me at the counter, takes of his cap and asks me if I need help, in his southern drawl. Actually, no wait, his exact words were” Ada paused, clearing her voice. “’Need some help reading that map, darling?'" Tom laughed at her ridiculous attempt to imitate Sy’s baritone voice. To Ada's surprise, Sy blushed. It was barely visible beneath his beard, but it was there and it was the cutest thing she had ever seen.

"I looked down at the map she was studying and asked her if she was headed somewhere on the east coast. She then slowly looked at me and confidently told me she was going to Nevada, until I pointed out that she was highlighting the road that went East and her face burned up, all self-conscious." Sy recounted, now laughing as well and even Tom scoffed. " I said: ‘At this point, even a navigation system can’t help you, darlin’. You’d need an escort.”

Ada bit her lip, remembering that moment clearly in her mind. She had flushed, staring at the muscular man that towered next to her. He was burly and rugged and yet still exhaled a little softness behind it all. 'Well then, will you be my escort to Vegas? I am leaving tonight,' she had blurted out before she could stop herself.

"I cannot believe you drove from Austin to Las Vegas with a stranger, Ada!" Tom said teasingly, clearly surprised by his friend’s spontaneity and recklessness.

"Yes, I made him miss Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his family, and the best part is that we got married the day we reached Vegas on New Year’s Eve.” They had stopped a few times along the way, visited some towns and she had only known Sy for seven days when we got hitched at the kitschiest chapel imaginable. “We had to hurry to get a marriage license before the courthouse closed and a half-naked dude officiated because everyone else was already booked.”

Sy chuckled, sitting back against his chair and wrapping his arm around Ada's shoulders possessively. "She made me wear my old uniform that lasted all of fifteen minutes and was presided by an officer dressed as a cherub." He gestured at the framed picture standing on the cupboard next to them.

They looked absolutely ridiculous. Sy's uniform made him look too serious next to a tipsy Ada who wore the only white dress she had been able to find on such short notice and that definitely hadn’t been meant for a wedding because it turned out to be partly see-through under the camera flashes.

Ada shared some more stories about Vegas before excusing herself to the bathroom, the conversation instantly dying out as she disappeared, leaving both men in an uncomfortable silence until Sy’s curiosity got to him.

"So, you and her...?" Sy left his question unfinished. He wasn't sure what exactly it was that he was asking, he just wanted to know all there was to know.

In front of him, Tom gracefully dabbed him mouth with the ivory napkin and shook his head, with a tight smile. "No, nothing of the sort," the Englishman replied dismissively before Sy's inquiring stare forced him to expound. "It's not that I didn't think of pursuing something more with her, but Ada made it very clear from the beginning that she was a married woman and a faithful wife."

Sy hummed noncommittally, though internally he was reassured and maybe even elated. Mike had really filled his head with shit. Deep down, he always knew his Ada wasn't like that, it just felt good to hear it.

"My wife, for whom I left England, passed away only two months before Ada and I met. I was going through a rough patch then - and that's a euphemism. Carla had been talking to me about watching a particular film ever since it had been announced, it was an adaptation of her favorite novel." Tom explained, a smile warming up his features. "When she died before it premiered, I wasn't even sure if I even wanted to watch it without her... But the tickets had already been purchased and part of me hoped that for two hours, it would feel like Carla was sitting right next to me."

Sy listened, feeling sympathetic, if not a little uncomfortable by the man’s openness. He still wanted to dislike Tom but at the same time he couldn't imagine the wreck he'd be if Ada were to die on him.

"The cinema was packed and to accommodate a large group, Ada asked whether I minded if she sat down next to me,” Tom paused briefly, smiling at the memory. “I think it was listening to her laugh, cry and eat popcorn next to me during the movie that gave me the strength to drive home instead of off a cliff that night."

Sy gulped down the rest of his wine, still not a fan of the taste as he faced the Englishman before him. Not that he would ever say it out loud, but if he had failed to make it alive out of that godforsaken desert, he had to concede Tom would not have been the worst for Ada.

Silence fell again and Sy became uncomfortable, deciding to pour Tom some more wine. “I am glad Ada and you were there for each other.” When I should’ve been there for her myself but wasn’t, Sy thought but left it unsaid.

Tom chuckled as he observed the burly man in front of him. For all his muscles and gruff exterior, he carried the slightest of insecurities when it came to his wife. "There's a thick silver notebook Ada has kept for a couple of years. Maybe you should have a look at it.”

Sy wanted to ask what he was talking about but was interrupted by the sound of Ada's high heels clicking on the wooden floor as she made her way back to them. "I hope you weren't talking ill of me behind my back," she teased, squeezing Sy's shoulder absentmindedly. "Now, who's ready for my slightly overcooked tarte tatin.” Ada eyed her husband pointedly.

#henry cavill smut #syverson smut #henry cavill x reader #syverson x reader #henry cavill x ofc #syverson x ofc

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yourreddancer · 2 years

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Russia's army is in a woeful state

THE ECONOMIST

Apr 30th 2022 edition

Sorrows in battalions

Russia's army is in a woeful state

The fiasco in Ukraine could be a reflection of a bad strategy or a poor fighting force

Apr 30th 2022

THE JOB of organising NATO’s biggest military exercise since the cold war kept Admiral James Foggo, then the commander of American naval forces in Europe and Africa, busy in the summer of 2018. Trident Juncture was to gather 50,000 personnel, 250 aircraft and 65 warships in the European Arctic in October. As logistically taxing as that sounds, it was small fry compared with what Russia was planning in Siberia in September. The Vostok exercises would be the biggest since the Soviet Union’s mammoth Zapad drills of 1981, boasted Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister: they would involve 300,000 troops, 1,000 aircraft and 80 warships.

This was a huge feat. “It was a big lift for us to get 50,000 people in the field,” recalled Admiral Foggo recently. “How did they do that?” The answer, he eventually realised, was that they did not do it. A company of troops (150 at most) at Vostok was counted as a battalion or even a regiment (closer to 1,000). Single warships were passed off as whole squadrons. This chicanery might have been a warning sign that not everything was as it seemed in the Russian armed forces, even before they got bogged down in the suburbs of Kyiv.

“It’s not a professional army out there,” said Admiral Foggo. “It looks like a bunch of undisciplined rabble.” Since they invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Russian forces have succeeded in capturing just one big city, Kherson, along with the ruins of Mariupol and chunks of Donbas, the eastern industrial region that they partially occupied in 2014 and now hope to conquer in its entirety. That meagre haul has come at the cost of 15,000 dead Russian soldiers, according to a recent British estimate, exceeding in two months the Soviet losses in a decade of war in Afghanistan. The invasion has clearly been a fiasco, but how accurate a reflection of Russia’s military capabilities is it, astonished Western generals wonder?

On the eve of war, Russia’s invasion force was considered formidable. American intelligence agencies reckoned that Kyiv would fall in days. Some European officials thought it might just hold out for a few weeks. No one thought that the city would be welcoming such dignitaries as Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, America’s secretaries of state and defence respectively, two months after the fighting started. The belief was that Russia would do to Ukraine what America had done to Iraq in 1991: shock and awe it into submission in a swift, decisive campaign.

This belief was based on the assumption that Russia had undertaken the same sort of root-and-branch military reform that America underwent in the 18-year period between its defeat in Vietnam and its victory in the first Gulf war. In 2008 a war with Georgia, a country of fewer than 4m people, though successful in the end, had exposed the Russian army’s shortcomings. Russia fielded obsolete equipment, struggled to find Georgian artillery and botched its command and control. At one stage, Russia’s general staff allegedly could not reach the defence minister for ten hours. “It is impossible to not notice a certain gap between theory and practice,” acknowledged Russia’s army chief at the time. To close that gap, the armed forces were slashed in size and spruced up.

Ambition in spades

Russian military expenditure, when measured properly—that is, in exchange rates adjusted for purchasing power—almost doubled between 2008 and 2021, rising to over $250bn, about triple the level of Britain or France (see charts). Around 600 new planes, 840 helicopters and 2,300 drones were added to the arsenal between 2010 and 2020. New tanks and missiles were flaunted at parades in Moscow. Russia tested new tactics and equipment in Donbas, after its first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and in its campaign to prop up Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator, the following year.

A retired European general says that watching this new model army fail reminds him of visiting East Germany and Poland after the end of the cold war, and seeing the enemy up close. “We realised how shite the 3rd Shock Army was,” he says, referring to a much-vaunted Soviet formation based in Magdeburg. “We’ve again allowed ourselves to be taken in by some of the propaganda that they put our way.” Russia’s army was known to have problems, says Petr Pavel, a retired Czech general who chaired NATO’s military committee in 2015-18, “but the scope of these came as a surprise to many, including myself—I believed that the Russians had learnt their lessons.”

The charitable interpretation is that the Russian army has been hobbled in Ukraine less by its own deficiencies than by Mr Putin’s delusions. His insistence on plotting the war in secrecy complicated military planning. The FSB, a successor to the KGB, told him that Ukraine was riddled with Russian agents and would quickly fold. That probably spurred the foolish decision to start the war by sending lightly armed paratroopers to seize an airport on the outskirts of Kyiv and lone columns of armour to advance into the city of Kharkiv, causing heavy casualties to elite units.

Yet, this coup de main having fizzled, the army then chose to plough into the second largest country in Europe from several directions, splitting 120 or so battalion tactical groups (BTGs) into lots of ineffective and isolated forces. Bad tactics then compounded bad strategy: armour, infantry and artillery fought their own disconnected campaigns. Tanks that should have been protected by infantry on foot instead roamed alone, only to be picked off in Ukrainian ambushes. Artillery, the mainstay of the Russian army since tsarist times, though directed with ferocity at cities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol, could not break through Ukrainian lines around Kyiv.

Problems in profusion

In recent weeks officials and experts have debated the causes of Russian failure. Some have drawn comparisons to the collapse of the French army in 1940. But the analogy is not apt, says Christopher Dougherty, a former planner for the Pentagon. “France failed because it followed bad doctrine,” he says. “Russia’s failing in part because it’s not following its doctrine, or basic principles of war.”

Inexperience is part of the problem. As the historian Michael Howard once noted, the expertise a military officer hones “is almost unique in that he may only have to exercise it once in a lifetime, if indeed that often. It is as if a surgeon had to practise throughout his life on dummies for one real operation.” America has been wielding the scalpel nearly continuously since the end of the cold war, in Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and so on. Russia has not fought a war of this magnitude against an organised army since seizing Manchuria from Japan in 1945.

Things it could do in smaller wars, in Donbas and Syria—such as using electronic sensors on drones to feed back targets for artillery—have proved harder on a larger scale. And things that appeared easy in America’s wars, such as wiping out an enemy’s air defences, are actually quite hard. Russia’s air force is flying several hundred sorties a day, but it is still struggling to track and hit moving targets, and remains heavily reliant on unguided or “dumb” bombs that can be dropped accurately only at low altitudes, exposing its planes to anti-aircraft fire.

All armies make mistakes. Some make more than others. The distinguishing feature of good armies is that they learn from their mistakes rapidly. In abandoning Kyiv, focusing on Donbas and putting a single general, Alexander Dvornikov, in charge of a cacophonous campaign, Russia is belatedly showing signs of adaptation. In early April a Western official, when asked whether Russia was improving tactically, observed that armoured columns were still being sent unsupported and in single file into Ukrainian-held territory—a suicidal manoeuvre. On April 27th another official said that Russian forces in Donbas appeared unwilling, or unable, to advance in heavy rain.

In part, Russia’s woes are down to Ukraine’s heroic resistance, buoyed by a torrent of Western weaponry and intelligence. “But just as much credit for the shattering of Russian illusions lies in a phenomenon long known to military sociologists,” writes Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University, “that armies, by and large, reflect the qualities of the societies from which they emerge.” Russia’s state, says Mr Cohen, “rests on corruption, lies, lawlessness and coercion”. Each one has been laid bare by Russia’s army in this war.

“They put a lot of money into modernisation,” says General Pavel. “But a lot of this money was lost in the process.” Corruption surely helps explain why Russian vehicles were equipped with cheap Chinese tyres, and thus found themselves stuck in the Ukrainian mud. It may also explain why so many Russian units found themselves without encrypted radios and were forced to rely on insecure civilian substitutes or even Ukrainian mobile phone networks. That, in turn, may well have contributed to the war’s toll on Russian generals (Ukraine claims to have killed ten of them), since their communications at the front line would have been easier to intercept.

Yet corruption cannot be the whole story. Ukraine is also corrupt, and not much less so than Russia: they sit respectively in 122nd and 136th position on the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International, a pressure group. What really distinguishes the two is fighting spirit. Ukrainian soldiers are battling for the survival of their country. Many Russian ones did not even know they were going to war until they were ordered over the border. A European intelligence official says that conscripts—whom Mr Putin has repeatedly and publicly promised not to send to war—have resisted pressure to sign contracts that would turn them into professional soldiers; others have refused to serve outright. The official says that units affected include the 106th Guards Airborne Division and its 51st Guards Parachute Regiment, which are part of the notionally elite VDV airborne forces, and the 423rd Motorised Rifle Regiment, part of an important tank division.

Difficulties in droves

Ill-trained and poorly motivated soldiers are a liability in any conflict; they are especially unsuited to the complexities of modern combined-arms warfare, which requires tanks, infantry, artillery and air power to work in synchrony. To attempt such daunting co-ordination in Ukraine with sullen teenagers, press-ganged into service, fed expired rations and equipped with badly maintained vehicles was the height of optimism.

Such a task requires, at the very least, sound leadership. And that too is in short supply. Non-commissioned officers—senior enlisted men who train and supervise soldiers—are the backbone of NATO’s armed forces. Russia does not have a comparable cadre. There are “too many colonels and not enough corporals”, says a European defence official. Staff training is rigid and outdated, he says, obsessed with the second world war and with little attention paid to newer conflicts. That may explain why doctrine was thrown out of the window. Manoeuvres that seemed easy at Vostok and other stage-managed exercises proved harder to reproduce under fire and far from home.

To the extent that Russian officers have studied their military history, they appear to have imbibed the worst lessons of the Afghan, Chechen and Syrian wars. During their occupation of northern Ukraine, Russian soldiers not only drank heavily and looted homes and shops, but murdered large numbers of civilians. Some have been rewarded for it. On April 18th the 64th Motorised Infantry Brigade, accused of massacring civilians in Bucha, was decorated by Mr Putin for its “mass heroism and courage” and accorded the honour of becoming a “Guards” unit.

War crimes are not always irrational. They can serve a political purpose, such as terrorising the population into submission. Nor are they incompatible with military prowess: Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht was good at both fighting and murdering. But brutality can also be counterproductive, inspiring the enemy to fight tenaciously rather than surrender and risk being killed anyway.

The savagery and confusion of Russia’s forces in Ukraine is consistent with their recent conduct in Syria. Their bombing of Ukrainian hospitals echoes their bombardment of Syrian health facilities. By the same token, Israeli military officers who watched the Russian air force in Syria closely came away surprised by its struggles with air defence, target acquisition and high-tempo sorties. At one stage they thought Syrian involvement in air operations was the only plausible explanation for such a low level of professionalism.

In the end they concluded that Russia lacked the training, doctrine and experience to make the most of its advanced warplanes. Israeli military pilots were struck, both on combat tours and during their day jobs as airline pilots, by Russia’s crude approach to electronic warfare, which involved blocking GPS signals over vast swathes of the eastern Mediterranean, sometimes for weeks at a time. When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine became bogged down, Israeli analysts realised that Russian ground forces were afflicted by many of the same problems.

Some of Russia’s friends appear to be drawing the same lesson. Syed Ata Hasnain, a retired Indian general who once commanded India’s forces in Kashmir, notes “Russian incompetence in the field”, rooted in “hubris and reluctance to follow time-tested military basics”. A group of retired Indian diplomats and generals affiliated with the Vivekananda International Foundation, a nationalist think-tank close to the Indian government, recently discussed Russia’s “visible and abject lack of preparation” and “severe logistical incompetence”. The fact that India is the biggest buyer of Russian arms lent their conclusion particular weight: “the quality of Russian technology previously thought to be superlative is increasingly being questioned”—though Ukraine, of course, uses much of the same equipment.

A similar process of reassessment is now under way in Western armed forces. One camp argues that the Russian threat to NATO is not as great as was feared. “The reputation of the Russian military has been battered and will take a generation to recover,” reads a recent assessment by a NATO government. “It has proven to be worth less than the sum of its parts in a modern, complex battlespace.” But another school of thought cautions against hasty judgments. It is too early to draw sweeping lessons, a senior NATO official warns, with the war still raging and both sides adapting.

If one of Russia’s errors was to draw false confidence from its success in seizing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and averting the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in 2015, the argument runs, there is a similar risk that Russia’s foes might infer too much from the current shambles in Ukraine. Michael Kofman of CNA, a think-tank, acknowledges that he and other experts “overestimated the impact of reforms…and underestimated the rot under Shoigu”. But context is everything, he notes. In recent years the scenarios that have preoccupied NATO planners have not been wars on the scale of the current one, but more modest and realistic, “bite and hold” operations, such as a Russian invasion of parts of the Baltic states or the seizure of islands such as Norway’s Svalbard.

Wars like this could play out very differently from the debacle in Ukraine. They would start with a narrower front, involve fewer forces and place less strain on logistics, says Mr Kofman. Neither the Kremlin nor the Russian general staff would necessarily underestimate NATO in the way that they mistakenly dismissed the Ukrainian army. And if the Russian government was not trying to play down a future conflict as nothing more than a “special military operation”, as it has in Ukraine, it could mobilise reserves and conscripts in far greater numbers. Many crucial Russian capabilities, such as anti-satellite weapons and advanced submarines, are not known to have been tested in Ukraine at all.

Geography is important, too. While Russian logistics are “eerily reminiscent” of the old Soviet army, says Ronald Ti, a military logistician who lectures at the Baltic Defence College in Estonia, their dependence on railways would be less of a problem in an attack on the Baltic states. “A fait accompli operation where they bite off a chunk of Estonian territory is well within their capabilities,” says Dr Ti, “because they can quite easily supply that from railheads.” (Whether the Russian air force, its inexperience and frailties now exposed, could protect those railheads from NATO air strikes is another matter.)

Lessons in abundance

Mr Kofman believes the question of “how much of this war is a bad army, which in important ways it clearly is, and how much is a truly terrible plan” has not yet been answered. And yet answering it is essential. In a seminal paper in 1995, James Fearon, a political scientist at Stanford University in California, argued that costly and destructive wars that rational governments would prefer to avert through negotiation can nonetheless still occur owing to miscalculations about the other side’s capabilities. In theory, a war-averting peace deal would reflect the relative power of the two potential belligerents. But the two sides can fail to reach such a bargain because that relative power is not always obvious.

“Leaders know things about their military capabilities and willingness to fight that other states do not know,” wrote Mr Fearon, “and in bargaining situations they can have incentives to misrepresent such private information in order to gain a better deal.” That helps explain why Russia so wildly inflated its supposed prowess in the Vostok exercises. And it can work. “I suspect many of us were taken in by Victory Day parades that showed us all of the smart bits of kit,” says the European general.

The battle for Donbas will not entirely settle this debate. A Russian army that prevails in a war of attrition through sheer firepower and mass would still be a far cry from the nimble, high-tech force advertised over the past decade. More likely is that Russia’s plodding forces will exhaust themselves long before they achieve their objectives in southern and eastern Ukraine, let alone before mounting another attempt on Kyiv. The world’s military planners will be watching not just how far Russia gets in the weeks ahead, but also what that says about its forces’ resilience, adaptability and leadership. Like a knife pushed into old wood, the progress of the campaign will reveal how deep the rot runs. ■

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isaf-larper · 1 year

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SHE FUCKING SAID IT LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOO

#botched iraq

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warsofasoiaf · 2 years

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Question: were the US victories in Iraq & Afghanistan (against the conventional forces) impressive in their own rights, or were they facing opposition which was so severely outclassed that they're incomparable to the Russian war against Ukraine?

Defeating outclassed opposition doesn't necessarily imply that something can't be impressive. Saddam Hussein was both outnumbered and outclassed in terms of technology in Desert Storm, but the operation itself was conducted incredibly professionally. See the Operations Room's Desert Storm playlist to show just how complex and skillfully executed the entire campaign was. So in terms of execution against a conventional force, both were quite well done, achieving the defeat of the conventional forces with minimal loss of life to friendly forces. The aftermath was where they botched it, and in the lead-up and the spurious logic to invade, and everything else. But the actual military craft, the planning and execution, was well done.

Thanks for the question, Cle-Guy.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#military science

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catullus101 · 3 years

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Scandal at the National: Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain (1980)

On 16th October 1980 Howard Brenton's play The Romans in Britain opened at the National Theatre. The play, which draws interesting parallels between the Roman conquest of Britain and the British rule of Ireland, was at the centre of a scandal due to an explicit scene in which a Roman soldier (Peter Sproule) attempted to rape a naked druid (Greg Hicks). On opening night the play was called ‘a disgrace to the NT’ and several members of the audience left at the interval and demanded a refund. But the worst was yet to come.

In order to stage the sexual assault, actor Peter Sproule used to put his fist around his genitals and stick out his thumb to simulate an erection: those few inches of flesh proved to be fateful when solicitor Graham Ross-Cornes mistook them for an actual penis. On March 15, director Michael Bogdanov had to appear at the Old Bailey after having been accused of procuring the commission of an act of gross indecency. He faced, if convicted, up to two years in jail. The charges were put forward by Mary Whitehouse, Secretary of the National Viewers and Listeners' Association, who claimed that the scene violated section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act of 1956. Section 13 had been designed to regulate "homosexual behaviour" in public when homosexuality was still a criminal offence in the UK.

And indeed the judge, Mr Christopher Staughton, ruled that there was ‘nothing in the spirit or the scope of the Sexual Offences Act which would lead to the exemption altogether of conduct in the theatre’. Therefore, the trial could take place and the prosecuting counsel needed to demonstrate that performing gay sex was in itself an act of gross indecency since, in Staughton's words, ‘pretending to commit an act of buggery is not an act of gross indecency merely because buggery itself is an act of gross indecency … it is the simulation of the conduct which actually occurs which must be proved to be an act of gross indecency’.

The trial went on for four days until Ian Kennedy, the prosecuting counsel, mysteriously asked to withdraw the case. Although a private prosecution cannot be withdrawn after the judge has ruled that a triable offence has been committed, the General-Attorney issued a nolle prosequi on the case and the trial ended. Both parties claimed to be the winner and Mrs Whitehouse went on to say that the case ‘had established a very important legal verdict’. The lack of a clear winner left confusion regarding the interpretation of the ruling, but the judge’s decision to apply to the theatre a law that intended to regulate real life set a dangerous precedent, and The Guardian commented that ‘Mr Justice Staughton endows the 1956 Act with a fearsome potency which parliament did not intend then, or in 1968, or today … It is a depressing and threatening day for British drama and all connected with it’.

The confusion around the legitimacy of staging the play and the fear of legal repercussions resulted in a lack of new productions during the 80s, to the point that when Cambridge University students mounted a revival of the play in 1989 Mary Whitehouse called the police on them. The Romans in Britain received its first major revival at the Crucible Theatre in 2006. The Independet described the attempted rape as ‘one of the most morally powerful and pointed episodes in the piece … The assault was derided in 1980 as too crude a symbol of imperial conquest, but now it calls to mind those disgusting photographs from Abu Ghraib. Given our involvement in the botched occupation of Iraq, we need a play that subjects the imperialistic impulse to intelligent analysis’.

#the romans in britain #howard brenton #national theatre

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litwitlady · 4 years

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Operation (4/?)

Read the Board Game Verse on AO3.

Michael is over an hour late. He knocks on Alex’s door and steps back to wait. He hears a muffled ‘come in’ and lets himself inside. All the lights are off and everything is silent until he hears Alex clear his throat. Walking down the hallway, Michael finds him buried beneath a blanket, nothing but his head poking out. ‘I took a nap while I waited. Everything okay?’

Michael nods. ‘Yeah, Isobel was just worried about Max. You feeling alright?’

Alex sits up and throws the blanket off. ‘Better than alright. I thought a nap might help make my hands steadier so I can beat you tonight. Finally.’ He grins up at Michael, devilish glint in his eye. ‘Food’s on the way, but let’s start playing so I can start winning.’

Back at the dining room table, Michael drops into the chair next to Alex. ‘You do realize that I’m very good with my fingers, right? You still remember from all those times I -’

‘Stop.’ Alex holds his hand to Michael’s face. ‘If I recall correctly, my own fingers did just as good a job as yours. I could argue maybe even better. At least sometimes.’

MIchael nods, making a face that indicates he’s magnanimously letting Alex get away with absolute clownery. ‘We’ll see.’

The game starts off pretty evenly. Both of them choosing the easiest body parts to remove and doing so successfully. The best part for Michael is watching Alex concentrate, tip of his tongue snaking out of the corner of his mouth. It’s cute and he tells him so. ‘Shoosh, Guerin. Stop trying to distract me with your flirting.’

Eventually, the only thing left is the pencil. The most notorious piece of all. It’s Michael’s turn and he takes a deep breath before picking up the tweezers. Just as he lowers them to the tiny, slivered piece, Alex speaks. ‘The moon’s wet.’ Michael jumps and his hand jerks wildly, setting off the buzzer and lighting up the naked man’s red nose.

He glares at a smug Alex. ‘The moon’s wet? That’s cheating.’

Alex’s grin only grows. ‘There’s absolutely no rule against talking about wet moons.’

‘It’s implied in the spirit of the game. Each player gets to concentrate on removing the piece instead of their blabbermouth ex.’ He leans over the board and carefully removes the pencil, throwing it at Alex’s face.

Alex bats the small plastic pencil onto the table. ‘Blabbermouth ex? I thought my problem was the exact opposite of being a blabbermouth.’ He starts to put the game away, his smile unwilling to die.

The doorbell interrupts them, announcing the arrival of their dinner. They sit on the sofa, both choosing opposite sides so that an empty cushion remains between them. Alex pulls the wool blanket back over his lap and offers to share with Michael who readily accepts. ‘Want to watch a movie?’ Alex opens the Netflix app and tosses Michael the remote. ‘Pick anything you want.’

Michael settles on A Knight’s Tale. Alex doesn’t question the choice, only smiles to himself behind his food. Not in a million years would he have expected Michael to choose this particular movie. But once the movie starts playing and Michael starts chuckling along to all the best parts, Alex thinks the choice isn’t so surprising after all. He imagines that maybe Isobel forced him to watch it one day back in high school, and despite Michael’s fervent protests, he fell in love with its charm.

It’s not really a stretch. He always did fall in love so easily back then.

As the movie progresses, Alex sinks lower and lower into the couch, sliding back beneath his blanket and stretching out his left leg. He stops just shy of pressing his foot against Michael’s hip. But a few minutes later, he feels Michael’s warm hand wrap around his ankle and pull his foot onto his lap. Again, Alex hides his smile, only this time behind his blanket.

The room grows darker and Alex watches as the moonlight slants across Michael’s skin, casting shadows in the sharpest corners of his jaw. An eerie glow haloes his profile, and Alex forgets all about the movie, preferring to watch Michael instead. A fourth button is threatening to come undone and Michael’s lips twitch slightly with every joke the movie makes. Alex also notices that Michael keeps flexing his left hand, stretching his fingers against the couch’s arm and squeezing his fist open and shut. ‘Does your hand hurt?’

Michael glances down at him and shakes his head. ‘Not really. Old habit, I guess.’

Alex sits up and scoots closer, reaching for his hand and massaging between his knuckles. ‘Let me know if anything hurts or feels too uncomfortable. You never told me what happened. How you got healed? I assumed it was Max, obviously.’

‘It was. He got drunk on power after killing Noah, grabbed my hand, and healed me.’ His voice is quiet, too quiet. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense, but I didn’t want to be healed.’

Alex nods, continuing to work at the kinks in the back of his hand, pressing hardest in the spots that used to be rigid and gnarled. ‘I know. And it does make sense. No matter what I said the last time we spoke about your hand being covered.’

‘I told myself the mangled mess of my hand reminded me to be wary of hope. That every time my hand seized with overwork, I’d remember how dangerous hope could be and make better decisions in the future.’ He leans into Alex, butting their shoulders together. ‘But it was more than that actually. Or maybe it wasn’t really that at all. My hand helped slow me down. Made me take breaks when otherwise I’d get so wrapped up in a project I’d forget to eat or sleep. It allowed me to rest and kept me sharp.’

‘It’s similar with my leg.’ Alex rubs at his own right knee. ‘If you’d asked me right after I woke up in Germany, I’d have said I wanted nothing more than to grow back a new one.’ He switches to Michael’s right hand, starting the massage all over again. ‘But now? I don’t know that I’d change anything. There are parts that suck - things I can no longer do in the same ways I used to. But, I don't know, it’s who I am now. And I worked hard to be this version of me. I like this version of me, the ways I’ve grown stronger. Maybe even I like this version better.’

‘I never asked you what happened. In Iraq.’ Michael tugs at Alex’s right leg until it’s in his lap. Alex releases his hand and Michael starts to knead the tension loose above his knee. ‘I should have asked.’

They both look up as the credits begin to roll on the movie. ‘It’s okay. No one asks. No one really wants to know. It’s a pretty common story - roadside bomb, shredded foot, and a botched tourniquet because our medic died in the explosion.’ He lays his head on Michael’s shoulder and closes his eyes, trying to remember anything after the initial clap of the bomb and the first lick of fire gnawing on his skin. But there’s nothing, always nothing. He’s been told that makes him lucky.

Michael works at the tight muscles in his thigh, and Alex can’t help but drift off to sleep. The minute Alex goes lax against him, Michael switches off the television and stretches his legs onto the coffee table, resting his head on top of Alex’s and shutting his own eyes. It’s Michael’s first time spending the night. But it won’t be his last.

They wake with the sun, tangled together and eyes wide with a strange mix of wonder and relief. Half-holding their breaths, both wait for the other one to move off the couch. Minutes tick by. When nothing happens, Michael tucks the blanket around them tighter, cocooning them together with no protests from Alex. ‘What’s next week’s game?’

Alex nuzzles further into Michael’s neck and murmurs something neither of them understands, already falling back to sleep. Michael smiles into his hair and joins him.

#malex #malex fic

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babyawacs · 1 year

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@amnesty .@amnesty .@hrw @hrw @all @world @deutschland #the #basis #was #example #default #trickery #toddler #control #incident #based @law @laws @harvard_law @fact ‎ #howitallstarted #howitallbegan was itisnot christian kiss whois he what canhe whereishe from whatishedoing here somehow it lead to usa assassin killer butchered children charged as killer thenlikely assassin hiding only and then refuses to return tothe usa the usa dancingontheir nose andtherefore torture that the usa wee illlllneeeeveragain dare ‎s this and extra torture then oh woopsie allright allrighright russianmethod russischemethode it that!!!!! is hwothe verfassungsschutz calledit the nut it trick inall rapes molests for security danger botch coveredup usa buisy iraq germany nothjinghappened and any harm they had as he hates us enemy ofstate this is the basis innocence is nothing furious toddler is the attitutde counts afterall botch 2years whoisit then18years any trick toquell harm shuffles hostagetakers with medivel vogelfrei dowhatyouwant tothatguy usa outsource avert the worst with whattheydo tothetoddler this deedtype stuff is gruesome ////

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penelopebook · 2 years

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Discover New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Karen Rose's brand-new series set in the sultry, crime-ridden city of New Orleans and featuring a tough team of high-end private investigators who are after justice--no matter what they have to do to get it. There are good cops. And there are bad cops. The question is...who wins?After completing her tours with the Marines in Iraq, Molly Sutton knew she could take down any bad guy she met. But when her law enforcement agency in North Carolina turned against her, she joined up with her former CO Burke Broussard, who left New Orleans PD to set up a private investigative service for people who couldn't find justice elsewhere.Gabe Hebert saw the toll that working for the NOPD took on his dad and decided instead to make a name for himself as one of the best young chefs in the French Quarter. But when his father's death is ruled a suicide after a deliberately botched investigation by his former captain, Gabe knows his dad stumbled

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Monday, September 13, 2021

UN chief: World is at `pivotal moment’ (AP) U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a dire warning that the world is moving in the wrong direction and faces “a pivotal moment” where continuing business as usual could lead to a breakdown of global order and a future of perpetual crisis. Changing course could signal a breakthrough to a greener and safer future, he said. The U.N. chief said the world’s nations and people must reverse today’s dangerous trends and choose “the breakthrough scenario.” The world is under “enormous stress” on almost every front, he said, and the COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call demonstrating the failure of nations to come together and take joint decisions to help all people in the face of a global life-threatening emergency. Guterres said this “paralysis” extends far beyond COVID-19 to the failures to tackle the climate crisis and “our suicidal war on nature and the collapse of biodiversity,” the “unchecked inequality” undermining the cohesion of societies, and technology’s advances “without guard rails to protect us from its unforeseen consequences.” In other signs of a more chaotic and insecure world, he pointed to rising poverty, hunger and gender inequality after decades of decline, the extreme risk to human life and the planet from nuclear war and a climate breakdown, and the inequality, discrimination and injustice bringing people into the streets to protest.

World marks 20th anniversary of 9/11 (AP) The world solemnly marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on Saturday, remembering the dead, invoking the heroes and taking stock of the aftermath just weeks after the bloody end of the Afghanistan war that was launched in response to the terror attacks. Victims’ relatives and four U.S. presidents paid respects at the sites where hijacked planes killed nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil. Others gathered for observances from Portland, Maine, to Guam, or for volunteer projects on what has become a day of service in the U.S. Foreign leaders expressed sympathy over an attack that happened in the U.S. but claimed victims from more than 90 countries.

Phony diagnoses are hiding high rates of drugging at nursing homes (NYT) The risks to patients treated with antipsychotics—which understaffed nursing homes have often used as “chemical straitjackets”—are so high that nursing homes must report to the government how many of their residents are on these potent medications. But there is an important caveat: The government doesn’t publicly divulge the use of antipsychotics given to residents with schizophrenia or two other conditions. A Times investigation found a pattern of questionable schizophrenia diagnoses nationwide. The result: The government and the industry are obscuring the true rate of antipsychotic drug use on vulnerable residents. The share of residents with a schizophrenia diagnosis has increased to 11 percent from less than 7 percent since 2012. At least 21 percent of nursing home residents are on antipsychotic drugs.

Tropical Storm Nicholas forms in Gulf of Mexico (AP) Tropical Storm Nicholas strengthened as it headed for the Gulf Coast on Sunday, threatening heavy rain and floods in coastal areas of Texas, Mexico and Louisiana. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said tropical storm warnings were issued for coastal Texas and the northeast coast of Mexico. Nicholas is expected to produce total rainfall of 5 to 10 inches (13 to 25 centimeters), with isolated maximum amounts of 15 inches, across portions of coastal Texas into southwest Louisiana on Sunday through midweek. The storm was expected to bring the heaviest rainfall west of where Hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana two weeks ago.

Britain decides against vaccine passports (AP) Britain’s health secretary said Sunday that authorities have decided not to require vaccine passports for entry into nightclubs and other crowded events in England, reversing course amid opposition from some of the Conservative government’s supporters in Parliament. Sajid Javid said the government has shelved the idea of vaccine passports for now but could reconsider the decision if COVID-19 cases rise exponentially once again. The U-turn came just days after the government’s vaccines minister and the culture secretary suggested that vaccine passports would still be necessary, despite growing opposition from lawmakers. Such passports are required in other European countries, like France. Members of the governing Conservative Party have objected to such passports as an unacceptable burden on businesses and an infringement on residents’ human rights.

Thousands of Catalans rally for independence in Barcelona (Reuters) Thousands of Catalans chanted, sang and waved flags as they marched through Barcelona on Saturday, calling for the region’s independence from Spain. The march, organised by the grassroots Assemblea Nacional Catalana ANC, was the first since Spain’s government pardoned nine Catalan separatist leaders who had been jailed for their role in a 2017 botched bid for independence, which was Spain’s biggest political crisis in decades. Most marchers wore face coverings. Police said about 108,000 people took part. ANC put the figure close to 400,000. The protests took place at a moment of lower tension between Barcelona and Madrid than in past years as the central and regional governments favour dialogue despite their opposing views on independence.

In Hungary, pope meets PM Orban, his political opposite (Reuters) Pope Francis arrived in Hungary early on Sunday, starting an unusually short stay that underlines differences with his political opposite, nationalist and anti-immigrant Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Francis, 84, who is spending only seven hours in the capital Budapest, went directly from the airport to a private meeting with Orban and President Janos Ader in the Museum of Fine Arts. Unlike nearly every other papal trip, there was no live television coverage of the preliminary greetings or the photo opportunities that usually precede and follow such meetings. The pope is making the brief Budapest stop to say a Mass closing an international Roman Catholic meeting, known as an International Eucharist Congress. On Sunday afternoon he moves on to Slovakia, where he will stay much longer, visiting four cities before returning to Rome on Wednesday.

Nine-cent taxi rides in rural South Korea are a “godsend.” (NYT) In 2013, Seocheon County faced a crisis. As its population declined, so did the number of bus passengers, which led to unprofitable routes being canceled, stranding those in remote hamlets who did not own cars. The county’s solution? The 100-won taxi. (Longer routes cost 1,500 won, or about $1.30.) Anyone whose hamlet is more than 2,300 feet from a bus stop can call one, and the county picks up the rest of the fare. The taxis carried nearly 40,000 passengers last year, which cost the county $147,000. Since the 100-won taxi was introduced, people in remote villages have traveled outside twice as often, according to a government survey. More than 2.7 million passengers used similar taxi services in rural South Korea last year.

Strong typhoon cuts power, causes flooding in northern Philippines (Reuters) Several communities remain flooded and without power after a strong typhoon battered the Philippines’ northernmost islands, the authorities said on Sunday, displacing thousands of people. Typhoon Chanthu, which at one point was categorised by the Philippine weather bureau as a category 5 storm, has weakened after powering into the northernmost region, including the Batanes island group, on Saturday, the weather bureau said. “It’s one of the strongest typhoons I’ve felt,” said Dennis Ballesteros Valdez, a resident of Sabtang town in the province of Batanes, which is often pummelled by powerful typhoons. Some 20 typhoons hit the Philippines on average each year, according to the weather authorities.

Taliban flag rises over seat of power on fateful anniversary (AP) The Taliban raised their flag over the Afghan presidential palace Saturday, a spokesman said, as the U.S. and the world marked the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The white banner, emblazoned with a Quranic verse, was hoisted by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the Taliban interim government, in a low-key ceremony. In a tweet, Afghanistan’s first president to follow the 2001 collapse of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, called for “peace and stability” and expressed the hope that the new caretaker Cabinet that included no women and no non-Taliban would become an “inclusive government that can be the real face of the whole Afghanistan.”

Death and suffering in Iraq a painful legacy of 9/11 attacks (AP) Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. But the terrorist attacks in the United States changed forever the lives of Iraqis. In their aftermath, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, swiftly deposing the Taliban regime that had been sheltering Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaida terror network blamed for the attacks. But it was not long before President George W. Bush shifted his attention to Iraq, identifying it, along with Iran and North Korea, as part of an “axis of evil” and asserting that its brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, was armed with weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Qaida. No evidence of either was found. What followed was a U.S.-led invasion of a country in the heart of the Middle East that spurred a decade of war, with consequences that reverberate across the region to this day. After decades of conflict, Iraq today has a relatively stable government, and the car bombings, suicide attacks and death squads have subsided. But the economy is in tatters, its infrastructure is crumbling and corruption is rampant. The government, with its fractious politics, is unable to control the dozens of powerful Iran-backed militias that wield enormous control.

#headlines #news

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