Crystalline Flavors by kimberlite

[splix.livejournal.com]

Title: Crystalline Flavors

Author: kimberlite

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Q/O

Warnings: None.

Author's e-mail, web site and/or LJ id: kimberlite@cox.net http://www.ravenswing.com/kimberlite/index.html kimberlite

Link to Story: On M-A: http://www.masterapprentice.org/archive/c/crystalline_flavors.html

Reason for Recommending: Probably the first Q/O piece I read that made me realize that fanfic could be both erotic and poetic. Short, spare (not a word nor a syllable wasted), and lovely, it has a deceptively simple structure of description, action, and reaction that flowers into deep passion and tenderness. A most exquisite piece.

Quote from story:

He tastes solid like granite.

I run my hand over his back, feeling the well-toned muscles ripple beneath my fingers. He shifts up onto hands and knees, waiting for my next exploration.

He tastes molten like magma.

I feel the heat radiating from his body as my legs wedge his apart. He pushes his hips back, silently asking for more.

Comments

[starbrow.livejournal.com]

One of my favorites, here. I do so love it when an author can write with such elegance, say everything needed, and /nothing/ more than what is needed.

[kimberlite.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for the kind words. :)

[gloriana.livejournal.com]

(who knows if this will post, since lj is moving at the pace of a lava flow that's feeling a mite chilled, but here goes anyway)

Great rec, Splix!! I've adored this story for ages; even used it in a critique panel at two cons, especially for the following reason: I first read it through very quickly, not paying much attention, hit the end and then went: woah! Hold on a minute! And went and read it again. Because there is that gorgeous structure: The chorus of the single-line paragraph/simile (except the two things compared are not things you'd ever think of as like one another, unless you were Kimberlite and a geologist); then the verse, action and reaction. As you said, closer to poetry than prose.

And the thing I loved most about that is the way it echoes the subject matter: the way you can start off with a pile of rocks that seems loose, unconnnected; but underneath, in the crystals from which they have grown, there is this much more rigid structure, the beauty of recurring forms. Nothing pleases me so much as a story where form and content are married as perfectly as they are here. And, of course, both tied in to the canon/fanon, though Kimberlite never makes the reference explicitly.

[kimberlite.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Gloriana, for seeing so much in this little piece. You had me smiling all day. :)