Cane23

Or make him 'turn in the grave'! 😜

Thanks, but no, no way student could take the battle against the master! I mean, c'mon - @CasualWanderer82 is making references on Milan Kundera!!!!!!!!

Wolf is fighting himself. Watching Devon's protectiveness, brings up his guilt, buried deep down in subconscious. He's human after all and, as much as he is dangerous, he is not pure evil - he's a tragic character condemned to live in hell! @empath, you've ended this chapter with another cliff! Suspense is killing me!

@Laura S. Fox you've said in comments about different perspectives, different characters share of the same event. For example, this drunken episode between Brad and Lyn seems like, rather annoying moment for Lyn but fateful moment for Brad. It will be interesting to read how it came to moment that Brad became Lyn's obsession for all those years!

What a magnificent psychological cliff hanger! The complete final scene of this chapter is Nick’s goodbye, though Adrian doesn’t know it yet. Nick is awake - literally, psychologically and symbolically! He is integrated and he can see clearly! He knows what Adrian is and what he himself has become through loving him. There’s no more delusion, no more pretending this can end well. His body is still beside Adrian, but his mind is already leaving. Adrian, by contrast, is asleep — literally in bed, but also emotionally unawake. He is still caught in the dream that love will save him without transformation, that longing is enough, that want is the same thing as care. Adrian thinks they’re safe. Nick knows they’re not. Adrian believes he’s found home. Nick knows it’s a house on fire. At the beginning of the chapter, Caleb is back. This time there is no audience, they have very personal conversation with Caleb opening to Nick. Nick's shadow is still deeply buried under the tons of intellectual thoughts and literal quotes. But he is shaken! A crucial definition of love has been spoken - "Disappear for someone?" We can now read Nick’s silence, restraint, and emotional self-withdrawal not as coldness, consequence of having once “disappeared” too deeply—and being afraid to do it again. Caleb smiled, soft and crooked. "Especially if it hurts." What Caleb says and Nick knows it too well is that the pain is only real proof of love! Love is a sacrifice. The story follows interaction between Adrian and Nick. What we learn from their dynamics since the fatal encounter is something @CasualWanderer82 has mentioned in one of his comments - there are no victims in this story! Choosing to dance with blondie, we see Nick's dark side - he is not intervening wanting to see Adrian vulnerable, the satisfaction seeing Adrian furry... finally, the acknowledgment how he feels - “Not good. Not kind. But powerful”. The way Nick says “I’m not your property” but still surrenders to that fierce kiss shows how conflicted he is—aware of the toxicity but seduced by the intensity. The scene where Adrian is coming to Nick is one of the rare Adrian's moments of honesty! But it relieves more than it seems. Adrian’s confession here is so achingly human: flawed, scared, self-sabotaging, but utterly sincere. His vulnerability cracks through his usual bravado. Here we see that, although having many narcissistic tendencies he is not a classic case of NPD. Yes, Adrian's I love you is also narcissistic, possessive, and full of fear but it’s a damaged love. Incomplete! Adrian wants to be loved but doesn't want to love because love means sacrifice, surrendering power. It means to "Disappear for someone?" Adrian craves love as if his Persona is the whole truth of him: the charming, magnetic, wounded, tragic man; the golden boy with the haunted eyes. That surface self, crafted with care, is seductive because it protects him from shame, from rejection, from the terrifying confrontation with his own Shadow—the parts of himself he represses, denies, or fears. Real love demands for Adrian to be really Seen, that the Shadow be brought into the light: the lies, the neediness, the betrayals, the self-loathing, the damage. And Adrian isn’t ready, or willing, to do that work. Finally, this chapter brings us back to very beginning, the first communication between Caleb and Nick at the class. Caleb has brought up a hunger as motivation, putting morality at the side. We could say the brutal truth; the core of this tragedy is that both Nick and Adrian undoubtfully know to distinct right from wrong, but both constantly make the wrong choices. Desire corrupts judgment. Knowing what’s right doesn’t neutralize hunger. Especially not when that hunger is knotted up with identity, survival, and longing. This @CasualWanderer82 comment about Adrian has put my brain in work! First, I thought - why good? Good, bad, normal...what does it mean in this essay on humanity? But then, that word, humanity started to blink as neon sign! Beneath Adrian’s messy, self-destructive behavior and emotional chaos, there’s an essential core of kindness, vulnerability, and genuine capacity for love and goodness. In other words, good means Adrian’s core humanity. Is Nick's final Disappearance going to help Adrian to confront and heal his daemons, so goodness can emerge and grow?

Ash & Desmond - The Avengers! 😁 They've got their own chapter and, I have to agree with others, it's really amazing chapter. I like the communication between Croft and Ash. Two warriors, father and son, getting close together. Ash receiving acknowledge he's been waiting his whole life - his father is proud of him!

In short - what goes around comes around! Great story!

Great news! It's going to be very helpful, especially with your ambitious plans! As you've said, this is not romance. Still, I can imagine Sean and Griff, retired, living together somewhere isolated in the wildness (Hoover and Clyde )!

This is so beautiful @Laura S. Fox! It is amazing how Ryder can really SEE Danny, not his face or his body...he can look into his soul! These two persons are too nice to stay separated! I'm not even sure they belong to the isolated pack...they belong to the desert island, a tropical paradise with only two of them!

@JJQuinn this is AMAZING! Alexis' officers regrouts new soldiers, while imprisoned, she is still a mastermind of the whole dark operation. Dark revenge squad, twisted Peter Pan - an anti-fairytale! I can already see the next chapters as @JJQuinn's version of Silence of the Lambs, with Hanibal Lector being a female - Alexis and Griff as investigator. Oh my...it is going to incredible psychological battle!

I can't wait for the moment when Ash will tell Kieran - Where's your (step)daddy?!

I can only say how I see it... If Richard reincarnates the Jung, Caleb reincarnates the Freud. Caleb has planted the seed and left; he is not needed anymore. Harvest has been done in the Ocean, five years later, with Richard's guidance. @CasualWanderer82 has given us a few clues in this chapter. 'Friendly warning' from a colleague, letter from the University Bobby has discovered among Nick's personal things, sudden trip to town... "Then I'll burn carefully." If Nick tamed his flame, he has run away from himself. And here he is, five years later, whole again! Are letter and trip to town connected to Nick's resignation from university? I have a plan... Nick's Last supper was the overture; Nick is preparing a grand finale! There is one interesting fact that tells us a lot about general frustration of the society. Parents were making complaints about lectures, protecting their legally adult children! We can say that society has a persona but hasn't embraced its shadow! To quote Jung: "Society's persona is its myth of being good, functional, and safe. Its shadow is the raw, erotic, violent, spiritual, tragic, joyful mess it refuses to name. What it cannot integrate, it attacks." *Enough of me, @CasualWanderer82, next chapter please! 🙂

As you've said before - @CasualWanderer82 gave us Nik's chapter, then we had Bobby's chapter - so, it is potential Adrian's chapter that could make us see him! Psyche adjustment - I like it! 🙂 The problem is the one cannot be helped if he doesn't want it! Of course, it can happen if he is shaken enough from the outside. Nick has the finger on the trigger here... So, we'll see! Adrian is very complex character. Adrian feels inferior to Nick, but he is hiding it deep down. He wouldn’t admit it even to himself. Nick has discipline, Adrian is chaos; Nick is respected (even worshiped), Adrian is feared and (sexually) desired; Nick sees and feels people while Adrian is just a good actor! And above all, Nick still loves him. But...Nick cannot worship and admire him the way Adrian needs. So, what Adrian does? His inability to earn that worship in the ways Nick values, pushes him toward Bobby. Nick loves Adrian but doesn't want to kneel in front of him unlike Bobby who is kneeling but out of totally different reasons. Instead of love, here is submission; instead of connection, here is worship. Adrian did everything wrong out of right reasons and, in a way, that makes him a tragic character! @CasualWanderer82 makes the point here that 2 inches bigger penis, doesn't necessarily mean bigger man! Not even bigger ego...maybe only mask - unbreakable facade. We are on Freud's field here - Adrian has the bigger organ (penis) but Nick carries the phallus—the symbolic power! *I think that you'll get tired of my (over)analyzing! Just can't help it!

This is a dance, but not the dance of two bodies, it's dance of trauma and tenderness! It is slow, emotionally charged dance with Bobby, desperately trying to use learned patterns and Nick opening new horizons to damaged boy. Chapter starts with turning of the mirrors. Bobby is the one who is watching Nick at the beach. What follows is the conversation Bobby never had. This is not a trade, Nick doesn't want his body - he doesn't take as Adrian, he is giving. And that's what confuses him as with Adrian, Bobby has learnt that everything has the price and the price to be seen is pain. Nick sees him without charging and it is both relieving and terrifying at the same time. He felt stripped, again. Not by lust this time, but by something worse. Something intimate. Bobby was used to bodies. To desire. To manipulation, hunger, and being wanted. But this was someone seeing him without asking to touch him. Bobby is looking around Nick's things. It's a deep emotional moment. As his father is sleeping in the bed, Bobby tries to connect with Nick - looking his notes, touching his shirt...trying to embrace Nick's Self. It is not invasion of the privacy; it is desperate searching for the life belt. It is looking for answers... Adrian awakes, 'master of the house', he's still in charge. He doesn't see himself capable of abuse, he wears his mask perfectly the Persona to the world and to himself with the Shadow deeply buried. The guy who, even drugged cannot speak the truth is deeply delusional and, I have to agree with others that his awakening is very, very doubtful! Of course, the predators don’t sleep peacefully. Denial lets him sleep. Adrian denies hurting Bobby not because he’s confused—but because accepting it would require the collapse of too many lies! In showering scene, brilliantly reaching its climax with fog and mirror, Bobby, slowly, but not finally, starts to embrace his unconscious! It comes to him what he became and who has made him that way, but he is not ready to acknowledge it completely. If Nick's reborn started in Ocean, I dare to say that Bobby's reborn started exactly in that bathroom, watching his true self in the mirror - seeing the bruise! In final scene between Nick and Bobby, Bobby's mask finally fell. It's all a subtle fight between Nick's tenderness and Bobby's lack of knowledge how to accept love without turning it violent or desperate. “Look at me.” says Nick. This is not seduction, this is not transaction, this is not taking... And then it happens. I've said in my previous comment that this is not a fairytale, but it doesn't lack in magic. Because the kiss Bobby shared with Nick was the kiss that woke up Sleeping Beauty from a dream, a kiss that cured a Snow White from a poisoned apple! "It didn't feel like just a kiss. It felt like a promise, a whisper of what was to come. Nick's mouth moved with an unhurried, deliberate rhythm, like he was savoring every second of Bobby's taste. His tongue slipped out, tracing the seam of Bobby's lips, coaxing them open with a wet, hungry insistence that made Bobby's knees wobble." Bobby felt like he was kissed for the first time...maybe because he was seen for the first time - really seen!

And ass against the wall!

I like a good villain, but I like a good punishment more! 😉

I guess it was some sort of manipulation, something like - Let's drink ONE drink together and I'll go! There is NO 'only one' drink with alcoholic!

Revenge is a dish best served cold! That is the only way because, Ian did so much evil that punishment must be slow and painful!

I'm not pissed at Victor. They all know who Victor is, we all know who Victor is, so, no point in being pissed at scum for being scum! But I'm really pissed at Kildares! All of them! As if the last drama in school, with committee inquiry was not enough! I understand they are young, immature...but, really?!?!?! How many second chances do you want?! Everything is wrong, party, alcohol, absent parents, bringing alcoholic to the drinking party and even making him in charge of it?! One way ticket to the North Carolina is not the only problem here. Not even the biggest. We have two damaged kids with serious relapse and regression! Months of therapy erased for a few hours of fun! Now, both of them have to cope with serious guilt! This is not going to be easy! At least I hope they are going to learn something out of this!

It's so intriguing, isn't it? We were all asking what Nick (or Bobby) will do. But the main question is, is Adrian going to confront his Shadow and, finally, Integrate? Only then we can speak about 'happy' end - of course, not in a 'fairytale' sense but, to quote myself quoting Jung - the point is not to be 'happy' in superficial way but to be real, integrated and alive!

I LOVE Secret Author Story Contest; it's such a fun!!!

In-laws are going to be there too! It is going to be more like Hunger Games!

"negotiation" and "negation" I dare say this is your personal message (conscious or unconscious) to the critics that read your work through a prism of "morality"! 😉

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain" -Jung This story is a masterpiece, Jungian study case, philosophy and psychology of characters wrapped in, almost, poetic background! Prof. Morrisey, man with perfect mask. The Persona of calm, polite, intellectual, loyal, 'moral' individual. Repressed by, I believe mainly social circumstances, he is unable to embrace The Shadow and achieve complete individuation. 'Betrayal can be beautiful'; it's not about morality, it's about hunger - are messages Nick find in literature, but his individuation is intellectual, not emotional. "The person who does not confront their shadow is condemned to be its slave!" (Jung) "Then...why the fuck didn't you say anything?" Nick exhaled, almost a laugh. "Because I loved you. And love, Adrian, is a quiet cannibal. It eats the warnings. It swallows the doubts. It tells you that pain is just another form of intimacy." We saw that Anima has not been integrated as Nick's vision of Adrian was idolized and love was irrational... It was almost worship. As the shocking revelation has been the catalyst, ocean becomes the grave of the 'old' prof. Morrisey and place of the rebirth of integrated Nick. "The man he had tried to become. The loyal one. The loving one. The one who waited. But something stirred inside him, small, unbroken. Not rage. Not hope. Something more primal. A reluctant, stubborn flicker. Life." What is life - it's SELF, finally the integration is complete, and Nick is whole! And now - the culmination! "I want you to fuck him" Adrian's downfall is completed, he is 'naked' as watching his husband changing. He, finally, sees Nick's true Self! Nick is in total control, ultimate domination. “There was no triumph in him. No cruelty. Only recognition.” "He's all yours." Nick has the final word. And once again, table turning with Nick’s dissection of Bobby... What did embrace of his true self bring to Nick? Certainly not happiness and good feeling, as Jung says -wholeness include light and shadow, joy and suffering the point is not to be 'happy' in superficial way but to be real, integrated and alive! Finally, it's my personal impression that, Richard, the wise neighbor, reincarnates the Jung himself (if our master author @CasualWanderer82 doesn't include him deeply in this dark Tango). THANK YOU @CasualWanderer82 for inspire me to read some Jung again! You @CasualWanderer82, my friend, are genius!

Maybe drugged...but than, Men Up game could easily become a Wicked game! Scary!