JOE. Your Joe is so perfect in this. I love how he doesn't get it, doesn't get why Nick's angry and upset, can't make the connection that Nick is so easily making. I particularly love that Joe just knows this in terms of what isn't happening, how he can't connect with Nick now, that they aren't talking. I love how he realises their argument in how it divides them, not by how he feels, not by how Nick is acting but just what is missing. I DON'T EVEN THINK THAT MAKES SENSE. Joe is just so in tune with Nick that the only way he realises their fighting is that they don't talk, that he doesn't automatically understand everything Nick says, doesn't predict his brother's words. You make it echo so lonely, like two people who had some supernatural psychic link or something that's now broken, and Joe has this echoing hollowness where Nick's voice used to be.
Oh fuck. That one "What's wrong?" and after what Joe has seen and it HURTS. Like, I gasped out loud, the amount of WEIGHT in that one word and Nick might be angry, might be thrown off but it's still Joe and there's so much love in just two words, how the fuck do you do that? The immediacy, the panic, it's all so beautiful. I love how desperate everything feels and how suddenly you realize the depth between Joe and Nick. It's so perfectly crafted, these two sceens back to back. You can really taste the difference between the KoL and Joe and Nick. And man, the desperation. Joe's desperation have Nick, to protect him, and I'm actually kind of crying dammit it's four a.m. and this is just haunting.
The kiss. Sweet and long and so perfectly natural, such an extension, more just an acknowledgement, a promise, a reiteration of how they're together and how much they mean to each other and this is maybe the only way they can, the only way they can actually show those feelings without tearing themselves apart. That whole scene, from the slight awkwardness to the tired certainty, it works so so beautifully, so bittersweet as Joe struggles to realise how much he loves Nick in the lens of what they could become.
He tries to make this feel different, new, wrong, and he can't.
FUCK. That was SO perfect you don't even know. You might know, but even then you don't really know. So there. That was honestly just beautiful, heart-wrenchingly beautiful. I wish I could describe why but I can't, it just fit so well with them, with what they are and will be. Fuck that was beautiful.
(Ahaha! MGMT is my ringtone too!)
The morning was just. I love it, how unbalanced but okay they are, how they've got new equations to work out but that's not such a big deal. Because they grow and change but they don't move away. I love that, though it's uneasy, you've made is so obvious how solid they are. How inextricable.
And the ending. Fuck, the ending. I had to re-read it three or four times just to wrap my head around it. At first I saw it as hopeful, a promise that Joe and Nick can live as they do, that being together doesn't mean self-destruction. But then there's this whole dark undercurrent. Sure, the KoL know their music, but they still drink until they'd curse out a 16 year old kid who looks up at them, they still get so fucked up that they have brutal sex in hotels. And that hope, that promise of more almost becomes... a warning, something bruised and painful and the fact that Nick STILL looks up to them is as bitter as it is sweet. God, what a fantastic ending. I was wondering how you'd finish it, considering our talks about it, but this was so... not what I expected but so utterly perfect in the whole context of the fic, that idea of balance and unbalance, of being together and falling apart.
Honestly, just. Fuck. What a punch in the gut, the whole thing. I feel like I've weathered a storm coming through this, sitting on the other side of one night of total emotional trauma for Joe, seeing him go through such horrific self-doubt and pain and worry. Gorgeous story, Jen. Just. Fuck, I'm floored. Unebelivable.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: And maybe sometimes I'm glad I don't actually have brothers.
Date: 2009-05-03 07:51 am (UTC)Oh fuck. That one "What's wrong?" and after what Joe has seen and it HURTS. Like, I gasped out loud, the amount of WEIGHT in that one word and Nick might be angry, might be thrown off but it's still Joe and there's so much love in just two words, how the fuck do you do that? The immediacy, the panic, it's all so beautiful. I love how desperate everything feels and how suddenly you realize the depth between Joe and Nick. It's so perfectly crafted, these two sceens back to back. You can really taste the difference between the KoL and Joe and Nick. And man, the desperation. Joe's desperation have Nick, to protect him, and I'm actually kind of crying dammit it's four a.m. and this is just haunting.
The kiss. Sweet and long and so perfectly natural, such an extension, more just an acknowledgement, a promise, a reiteration of how they're together and how much they mean to each other and this is maybe the only way they can, the only way they can actually show those feelings without tearing themselves apart. That whole scene, from the slight awkwardness to the tired certainty, it works so so beautifully, so bittersweet as Joe struggles to realise how much he loves Nick in the lens of what they could become.
He tries to make this feel different, new, wrong, and he can't.
FUCK. That was SO perfect you don't even know. You might know, but even then you don't really know. So there. That was honestly just beautiful, heart-wrenchingly beautiful. I wish I could describe why but I can't, it just fit so well with them, with what they are and will be. Fuck that was beautiful.
(Ahaha! MGMT is my ringtone too!)
The morning was just. I love it, how unbalanced but okay they are, how they've got new equations to work out but that's not such a big deal. Because they grow and change but they don't move away. I love that, though it's uneasy, you've made is so obvious how solid they are. How inextricable.
And the ending. Fuck, the ending. I had to re-read it three or four times just to wrap my head around it. At first I saw it as hopeful, a promise that Joe and Nick can live as they do, that being together doesn't mean self-destruction. But then there's this whole dark undercurrent. Sure, the KoL know their music, but they still drink until they'd curse out a 16 year old kid who looks up at them, they still get so fucked up that they have brutal sex in hotels. And that hope, that promise of more almost becomes... a warning, something bruised and painful and the fact that Nick STILL looks up to them is as bitter as it is sweet. God, what a fantastic ending. I was wondering how you'd finish it, considering our talks about it, but this was so... not what I expected but so utterly perfect in the whole context of the fic, that idea of balance and unbalance, of being together and falling apart.
Honestly, just. Fuck. What a punch in the gut, the whole thing. I feel like I've weathered a storm coming through this, sitting on the other side of one night of total emotional trauma for Joe, seeing him go through such horrific self-doubt and pain and worry. Gorgeous story, Jen. Just. Fuck, I'm floored. Unebelivable.