She backed away completely and leaned against the off-white tile, palms pressed until her knuckles whitened, as if she needed girder beams to talk about this, and when she finally began to speak her voice went flat, one-key monotone with no rise or fall. --Meh. They’re taking a shower together and you have cute flirty kisses and touching that leads to emo I COULDN’T PROTECT YOU guilt in Jack. I love how he asks her this. How he wants to not talk about it but really can’t steer too far away from the conversation and the memories that burn at his consciousness. I love how in a weird way it HELPS him to hear about her pain and the horrifying loneliness she felt at the hospital, because for him she just…died. And that was how it was in his head, and the emo story in which she is severely depressed but DIDN’T die is like just important to him and he wants to hear it.
But her fingers on his skin create a sensation clipped directly from every last fantasy he’s been suppressing for months, a shaken soda exploding in his nervous system. --you are just so damned good at that! This bandaging scene is so GOOD and you managed to make it meaningful. The dialogue that’s like “I wish I’d been there. After”?? It makes me keel over.
“That felt-” He can feel the flush in his face. “Good.”
She can’t master the quirk at the edge of her mouth, although he can tell she tries. “Like, good good?” --OH MY GOD. You just…That line. They’re just so honest with each other, even when it’s embarrassing. But this works so well, because Jack hasn’t been touched in SO long and you portray the very human response from no touching ----- > lots and lots of touching so believably. And you even have Renee thinking about human touch later and it makes me awe-struck by how your headspace has so many of these cool parallels.
THEN THEY’RE EATING NACHOS AND SHARING SODA! I can’t even.
Still, at the moment he’s holding a queso-coated chip toward her mouth, giving her that unfiltered grin she can feel from the inside out, shivery jitters that spark in her hair. She nabs it in one bite, sucking cheese off the end of his thumb in the process.-- WHERE did you learn to write description like that? In two sentences right there you managed to like, tell an entire story. Which sounds so corny, but I truly feel that this is the case. It tells us how rare that kind of smile on Jack is, how comfortable they are being intimate and affectionate with each other, how delighted he is by HER, how he wants her to eat, how she wants to be flirty in the process. SO MUCH is in that.
Push-ups vs. running MORE PARALLELS. And here we have them putting it together on their own FOR EACH OTHER. That’s another cool thing you do. Even though you’ve already established these distracting tactics and defense mechanisms separately for the audience in the first two chapters, now we get to see them realizing they were not alone in needing the diversion. And the line about how Jack knows how to work out the knots she didn’t know where there? AUGH. They are one in the same. So complimentary. (also, it cracked me up when Jack specified “not thousands” when he was talking about shots of whiskey after telling her about the push-ups. He is so damn cute.)
Her toes tickle, warm, and no matter how ferociously he tries to think of nothing but this moment, soap and chocolate and way he’d forgotten how it felt to laugh, to fall asleep with the heated jut of a shoulder blade on his chest, he can’t stop himself from wondering if he’ll be sorry. -- How about nothing flashy? I just ask your writing if it wants to marry me? See what it says?
He tastes suds and marshmallows, and when her hands graze his throat, it stings from the inside. --- Hey! Kinda like what you’re doing to me with this story?
Geez dude. This story is my favorite. So when you post my favorite CHAPTER you have to forgive me if I get a bit carried away. I LOVE it. And you. So much.
no subject
But her fingers on his skin create a sensation clipped directly from every last fantasy he’s been suppressing for months, a shaken soda exploding in his nervous system. --you are just so damned good at that! This bandaging scene is so GOOD and you managed to make it meaningful. The dialogue that’s like “I wish I’d been there. After”?? It makes me keel over.
“That felt-” He can feel the flush in his face. “Good.”
She can’t master the quirk at the edge of her mouth, although he can tell she tries. “Like, good good?” --OH MY GOD. You just…That line. They’re just so honest with each other, even when it’s embarrassing. But this works so well, because Jack hasn’t been touched in SO long and you portray the very human response from no touching ----- > lots and lots of touching so believably. And you even have Renee thinking about human touch later and it makes me awe-struck by how your headspace has so many of these cool parallels.
THEN THEY’RE EATING NACHOS AND SHARING SODA! I can’t even.
Still, at the moment he’s holding a queso-coated chip toward her mouth, giving her that unfiltered grin she can feel from the inside out, shivery jitters that spark in her hair. She nabs it in one bite, sucking cheese off the end of his thumb in the process.-- WHERE did you learn to write description like that? In two sentences right there you managed to like, tell an entire story. Which sounds so corny, but I truly feel that this is the case. It tells us how rare that kind of smile on Jack is, how comfortable they are being intimate and affectionate with each other, how delighted he is by HER, how he wants her to eat, how she wants to be flirty in the process. SO MUCH is in that.
Push-ups vs. running MORE PARALLELS. And here we have them putting it together on their own FOR EACH OTHER. That’s another cool thing you do. Even though you’ve already established these distracting tactics and defense mechanisms separately for the audience in the first two chapters, now we get to see them realizing they were not alone in needing the diversion. And the line about how Jack knows how to work out the knots she didn’t know where there? AUGH. They are one in the same. So complimentary. (also, it cracked me up when Jack specified “not thousands” when he was talking about shots of whiskey after telling her about the push-ups. He is so damn cute.)
Her toes tickle, warm, and no matter how ferociously he tries to think of nothing but this moment, soap and chocolate and way he’d forgotten how it felt to laugh, to fall asleep with the heated jut of a shoulder blade on his chest, he can’t stop himself from wondering if he’ll be sorry. -- How about nothing flashy? I just ask your writing if it wants to marry me? See what it says?
He tastes suds and marshmallows, and when her hands graze his throat, it stings from the inside. --- Hey! Kinda like what you’re doing to me with this story?
Geez dude. This story is my favorite. So when you post my favorite CHAPTER you have to forgive me if I get a bit carried away. I LOVE it. And you. So much.