#88.fic

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[sits down to write a smut fic] The plot of this smut fic is that Character A abandoned god long ago and yet hungers for a return to his embrace

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I always forget to post my new fics here. Surprise "Hotel Vast Horizon" sequel! Short and sweet and somehow pure fluff.

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My working backstory for Max Durocher, very Seize The Day, cobbled together with fragmented Mann commentary over the years: of mixed Black American [father's side] and Haitian immigrant [mother's side] heritage, raised middle class in Ladera Heights, high-achiever, beloved by his teachers, private school and college degree both subsidized by GATE programs/scholarship, piano lessons and high school business plan competitions… now gunning for the Black Diamond of downward mobility slopes; guilt-infested Mama's Boy of the Resentful Trauma-Bond typology; raised by a nurse and an insurance salesman with all the damage that entails; youngest of three brothers with all the Malcolm in the Middle shenanigans that entails; emotionally distant father absconded with another woman when Max was in grade school, started a second family with whom he leads an apparently happier and more prosperous life; brothers financially successful white collar go-getters, now geographically distant, largely to get away from their mother (but there is far more love among them than sibling rivalry, and his brothers are protective of him); once an in-demand child actor for television specials and commercials — Ida encouraged this and doted on him in a Munchhausen's-by-Proxy Dance Moms sort of way, with the hopes that he would break into eventual Hollywood stardom (when the dream dissolved, so too did her favor); neurotically convinced as a boy that his failure caused his mother to fall ill; was obsessed with Golden Age Hollywood as an adolescent and spends much of his downtime as an adult watching Turner Classic Movies with a newspaper in his lap; though his mother discouraged it, he spent his twenties/early thirties trying to make it as a Vegas lounge act while working a variety of odd jobs on weekdays; made some lousy "friends" and on his 34th birthday gambled away his grandmother's inheritance (which was going to be that down payment on a Town Car. He has still not told Ida about this); subsequently developed a pathological aversion to risk; has done so many crosswords in his life that he is, unbeknownst to himself in all his modesty and naiveté, a puzzle savant and walking trivia encyclopedia; the type of nerd who was picked last for gym class but didn't warrant enough attention come middle school to even be properly bullied; grandparents owned a candy store but they were never allowed to have candy in the house — Ida warned it would ruin their health. I could go on!

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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Surprise Neil/Vincent kiss prompt chapter update! Featuring Vincent Hanna awkwardly flirting while high on morphine.

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directors cut u KNOW im askin abt some weird sin baybee! tell me all abt it

What an insane undertaking that was! I remember when the premise occurred to me, I was walking down Michigan Avenue back in September of 2022 and it just fell out of the sky: "What if Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley actually met each other right here in Chicago instead of passing each other like ships in the night? And what if Vincent thought Neil was an undercover cop, and Neil thought Vincent was a fellow thief?" It's the closest I've ever come to writing something approaching a film script, and looking back over it the amount of plot engineering and dialogue involved was bananas. It is still at its core a romance, but it required me to dip my toes in other forms of genre writing that were totally foreign to me until I committed to seeing it through. I still have no idea how I managed!

Writing a brand-new diner scene from scratch was by far the most intimidating thing I've ever done in the fandom. It's such a perfect scene the way Mann has it in the original, so how the hell was I gonna replicate that chemistry under such radically different circumstances? I took a purely symbolic tack with respect to their domestic failures (hence the dollhouse story), and since Vincent was not surveilling/pursuing Neil on the job what was a tense pseudo-interrogation became a game of omission between the two of them. That scene at Lake Michigan with the sun rising was meant to mirror/invert the one where Neil returns home at twilight and sets his gun on the table, because I can't write a Mann fic and not insert a large body of water for the protagonist(s) to contemplate.

But my favorite chapter is actually the one where they reunite at the bar, because there are three levels of conversation happening simultaneously: the one Neil thinks he is having with Vincent, the one Vincent pretends to be having with Neil, and the one Vincent is actually having with Neil (known only to himself). Every line has multiple layers of meaning, because at that moment Vincent has figured out who and what Neil actually is, and Neil still thinks he's dealing with one of his own. Vincent goes from flirting to speaking in grim jokes and double-entendres, hinting at his fear that Neil will go ballistic on him once he realizes that Vincent is actually a cop:

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to say ‘thank you’ to that.” “Oh. Please. Don’t thank me. But it is a compliment.” “That’s right. I forgot. Yours are the kind should come with a manual.” “Wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea.” “That’s new.” “I just get the feeling you’re not the kind of guy who’s real comfortable with ambiguities, you know? Uncertainty. Spontaneity. Shit gets weird, life throws you curve balls, you walk across the field, beat the umpire to death with the bat.”

But the best part of "Some Weird Sin" for me as a writer and Heat obsessive was the excuse it gave me to play around with Nate as a supporting character. I will now look for any excuse to shoehorn him into a fic. He's the Mr. Deadpan Straight Man to Neil's infatuated romantic/gangster entrepreneur, and the conversations they have were some of my favorites to write:

Neil stops reading. He knows the rest. “We could frame it,” he says, pointing to where an assortment of commissioned lithographs presides over rows of gleaming bottles, portraits of outlaw blues legends and romantic Hollywood renegades. “Put it up behind the bar.” “You’re a comedian now, too.” Nate’s expression is unchanged. “A Renaissance man.” “Tough crowd in here.”

I never knew I could have so much fun writing something so challenging. And because I can't resist putting myself through the wringer a second time, I am already halfway done with a two-part epilogue. Coming soon to an AO3 theater near you!

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💧Share something romantic/hot from your WIP, or just something sweet if it's gen.

☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

🌪️Sum up a WIP with a few fic tropes/Ao3 tags.

Share something romantic/hot from your WIP, or just something sweet if it's gen:

“Did I frighten you earlier? I didn’t mean to frighten you. Oh, baby, I’m sorry.” “Neil—” “An angel of mercy. You got a face like an angel, did you know that?” It was like being seduced by a mental patient. God help him, it was working. Neil cradled him roughly, pawing lovingly all over his face, stroking his cheek with the same hand that had swung down on his nightstand like a hammer, shattering marble. They were scalding. Vincent swept a hand over his forehead. He was burning up, feverish. “I would never hurt you, I swear to God. I swear to the moon. I would kiss your hands and curl at your feet and want for nothin’ else.” His eyes sharpened in a luminous flash, and a hot clarity pierced his delirium. “I want to bend you over. I want to fuck you ‘till you don’t walk straight.” Vincent’s voice cracked. “Oh, God.”

Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

The above, LOL. I have like 11,000 words of this wacky Heat 1995 werewolf AU where Neil's the lycanthrope and Vincent's the huntsman who finds him near-death and nurses him back to health. The setting is a weird parallel universe that hybridizes fin-de-siecle Europe and postwar America. There's magic and technology and religion and politics and all that good stuff. I'm having a lot of fun with it in my spare time, but I have no idea if I'll ever summon the fortitude/creativity to finish it. There's a lot of worldbuilding involved.

Sum up a WIP with a few fic tropes/AO3 tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, Protectiveness, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Sex, Porn With Feelings.

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Director’s Cut - Rebirth of the Cool (particularly: What jump started the plotting and writing of the fic?)

One of my favorites, thank you Stevie! Mostly, I was just desperate for more of what Collateral did so well: a dialogue between two very damaged, interesting characters, so I had to invent a reason for them to reunite and talk to each other again. The central premise behind the fic was that Max and Vincent had each fucked each other up so badly that they were ironically completely lost without the other's counsel. Max of course has intractable PTSD and relapsing agoraphobia, and Vincent is just pathetically lonely and rudderless after his Career-Ending Injury. The only person he can think to go to is Max, but he can't be the least bit normal or entirely non-violent about pursuing whatever concept of "friendship" exists in his stunted sociopathic mind. I also just loved the idea of Vincent being the exact kick in the pants that Max needed to make his entrepreneurial dreams come true — what's so terrifying about a high-risk business investment after that close of a scrape with death, right? — with the caveat that "happily ever after" is a very unlikely outcome for a guy who's been so badly traumatized. Hence him selling his company, and his marital troubles with Annie.

The way their reunion proceeded was just me trying to follow the likeliest pathways carved out by the existing canon. Max would almost certainly refuse to believe that Vincent doesn't have some ulterior motive, and Vincent would be annoyed/offended that Max just can't let bygones be bygones. (What's a little attempted murder between friends, right?!) Since I wanted to delve a little more into Vincent's backstory as hinted at by Mann in the DC, and since Max is naturally curious about him, I had Vincent bait him with the opportunity to ask questions (and then cruelly pull the rug out from under him). But Max is a brilliant dude, and emotionally perceptive in ways that Vincent can't keep up with. Hence the tables turning at the end! It was important for me that the ending mirror the ending of the original, where Max surprises Vincent by taking a chance and getting the better of him. He can tell that Vincent is lying about lying.

Other random notes: I had the whole thing go down in the recreation room because 1) I wanted a pool table as a nod to Tom Cruise's role in The Color of Money (only now he's the mentor figure), and 2) Vincent spends the night playing mind games with Max. The plate glass windows overlooking the backyard pool was me leaning all the way into Vibe Check: Michael Mann. The story about the turntable is borrowed from my own life; I do NOT have a violent abusive father, however I do have one who lovingly installed a high-fidelity sound system in my bedroom. And the stuff about Pat Martino is all completely true, and something that was fortunately totally thematically relevant and the exact type of story Vincent would have on deck for infodumping where appropriate.

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6, 11, 18 for the writing asks?

How did you decide what tense and POV(s) to use?

For “Hotel Vast Horizon” and “Some Weird Sin,” I wanted to use present tense because Heat 2 was written in present tense. But I find third person limited much more instinctive and less technically difficult, so that’s my default for POV. I chose Vincent for “Hotel Vast Horizon” because it was my first Heat fic, and I just personally identify more with Vincent and find his perspective and voice easier to inhabit. Maybe a little too easy! I figured I’d challenge myself by switching to Neil for “Some Weird Sin,” and I’d like to think I pulled it off. He’s right up there with Vincent Hanna as one of my favorite characters ever, and an easy antihero to fall in love with. I wanted to understand what made him tick, and the events that shaped him into the hardened, intelligent, complicated, and yet still sensitive/romantic man that we see in the film.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing it?

I’m going to pick “Some Weird Sin” and “Bulletproof” for this one because A) for the former I had to re-write the iconic diner scene from scratch, trying to achieve comparable and frankly stratospheric levels of instant chemistry between the two leads, and B) for the latter I was doing the same for two characters where no diner scene existed, and was far more improbable (not to mention combative!) under the circumstances.

I will also say that in general, smut scenes are a huge pain in the ass—no pun intended—because at least in my case you’re trying to strike a balance between the typical cathartic genre tropes and real-deal human biology, which is a tricky technical tightrope to walk. Sex “IRL” is nothing like sex in romance fiction, for the most part, but I’m loath to dispense with plausible realism. At the very least, I don’t want the reader consciously suspending disbelief if I can help it.

Talk about your editing and revision process:

I don’t use a beta because I’m a clandestine control freak, which I know affects the quality of my work—I firmly believe that everyone benefits from an editor! But such is my neurosis. What I try to use in lieu of a second pair of eyes is as much time away from a completed draft as I can manage, because the more I’ve forgotten what I’ve written, the less precious/more objective I’ll be in making revisions.