#//fuck it system wide effort

[silverjetsystm]

A song of ascents. It is said the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

Despite the myriad of reasons keeping him from a full and complete (final) rest, the one who guards Midtown's nighttime travelers does.

The Midnight Mission’s black facade stands firmly between two other buildings. In the past few years since the macabre Moon Kni.ght has moved in, these two buildings have hosted real estate and health pills slash juice bar. Several other brightly colored signs never delivered on sparkling promises. Plenty of other embedded options. A dance studio, hotels, banks, dispensary, a fabric shop, eating options for all hours of the day embedded in the blocks of those who have lived here for decades.

Crescent moons emblazoned on bulletproof windows glow bright in mid-morning Manhattan. Sunlight unmarred by dust motes warms the study’s thick leafy plants. Clear slivers cast across mahogany desk and green chairs. Air breathes.

Midday light slices across hieroglyphic stone walls, the stone statue, raising glassy flecks in ancient gray. Adult Khon.shu, dressed in human form and function. White glider-cloak draped across its shoulders retains its own light.

Unless told otherwise, Mission – the entity once known as The House of Shadows – will not open its doors to those who cause harm to the inhabitants. A seeker of information to some, a thief by actions not yet written, does not meet criteria. Mission’s doors remain unlocked unlike shuls of their youth. File cabinets manila folders clinically recount recent cases, tax documents, and projects.

Walls watch the woman go up the stairs, enter its endless corridors. Some doors open easily. Others remain shut.

Certain objects are stored beyond anyone but themselves’ reach.

The proprietor(s)’ room is new; they sleep on their king sized bed like a corpse. Mission’s silent chime sounding in REM. A certain mercy Steven is the one who awakens, heart pounding in their chest. Jake tugs Marc’s white phosphorus rage away, leaving Steven’s bed headed and bleary eyed, sagging into pillow-topped mattress. Hinei Hinei Lo Yanum/Lo Yanum v'Lo Yishan bounces in his ears. Steven presses palms into face. “Give me five minutes. Get Marc together. And stop that.”

Hinei Hinei Lo Yanum/Lo Yanum v'Lo Yishan/Shomer Yisrael.

Face washed, teeth brushed, Mr. Kni.ght’s whites cover them. Mask in Steven’s hand, he calmly and collectedly steps into the back. Marc lunges into the front, throat growling, body tensing, heart rate escalating. Icy “Rrrr” reverberates his throat.

Mask pulled on and tucked just right, white leather oxfords stalk the corridors of the Mission in silence. Dress shirt sleeves are rolled to elbows, white leather gloves cover his hands. She can’t hide from him. He’s a heat-seeking missile to one.

Rustling papers would clue him in if he lacked the pull. Mr. Kni.ght leans against the door frame, arms crossed. Teal-silver eyes glare. “My daytime visitors know not to go past the living area. Who are you. Why did you come here.”

Interrogation questions are not phrased like questions.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

I think a lot of what's currently informing my fellow white people curdling like milk and shitting their pants when asked to interrogate their relationship with rap is the way many people (especially well-meaning white people) still can't help but think of racism as something that you get accused of rather than something that influences the entire world in pernicious ways.

like, I think a lot of people currently posting the most cringe takes about rap right now would very much agree that Racism Is Bad and probably even acknowledge that rap has been and is still widely maligned and devalues for racist reasons.

but that last step, acknowledging that your personal tastes and interests are also influenced by systemic racism, is where a LOT of people stumble. it's very easy to assume that because you consider yourself against racism, then your tastes and interests cannot possibly be at all informed by racist. if you're a white American, that's simply extremely unlikely to be true.

speaking from personal experience, I had to Work to decenter whiteness in my media tastes. when I was like 19 I listened to a podcast where a white Jewish man talked about keeping a spreadsheet of the books he read to make sure he was reading a roughly equal number of men and women, and I started doing the same thing to track how many authors of color I was reading. at the time I took pride in my belief that I was reading diversely, but when the year ended I was shocked to discover that people of color had written barely a quarter of the books I'd read. I had been giving myself way too much credit while still unintentionally prioritizing white authors, because white authors were the ones I knew best. so I started making an extremely conscious effort to seek out books by authors of color, both fiction and nonfiction, that sounded like my kind of shit.

music was extremely similar. I grew up a little white girl in a very white city in a very white state; nobody was offering me an education in rap or r&b or soul or hip hop. as an young adult there were definitely some Black artists I liked, like Janelle Monáe, but I had to take the initiative of seeking out more artists to find out who I fuck with. you're not going to like everybody, which is fine, but are you even giving anyone a chance? are you even looking?

racism has roots everywhere, bro. it's not enough to just acknowledge it, you have to actively get digging.

[star-sim]

hopeless ☆ heeseung lee

☆ horrendously down bad! heeseung x fem! reader ☆ summary: absolutely no one would have expected the dark, brooding, and rough heeseung lee to be hopelessly head over heels in love with the sweet, oblivious you. especially you. even with the help of practically the entire year, it's almost pathetic the way heeseung struggles to utter three, simple words to you, let alone look you in the eye. ☆ genre: fluff!!! pining, SUPER WHIPPED HEESEUNG, high school! au, non-idol! au, a lot of 01 liner idols + the rest of enha make appearances, btw this follows the asian school system, SO MUCH FLIRTING OMG, heeseung is kinda pathetic and awk ☆ warning(s)? swearing and dumb characters lol, there is one SA scene, but it is not graphic + very minor violence ☆ word count: 10.8k ☆ this is extremely based off of "danger" by bts, especially the lyric "you're cute, and i'm pathetic" lol enjoy!

Heeseung Lee was stressed. 

No. He was distraught. 

Distraught about how fucking cute you looked today.

Ever since he was a kid, Heeseung loved Halloween, because he loved Trick-or-Treating with his older brother and cousins. However now, at the age of seventeen, he found himself resenting it. Not because there was any issue with the holiday, but because today was Halloween. 

From across the classroom, Heeseung found himself staring, all dazed and empty-headed, at you, who was clad in your cute bunny costume. The way the fluffy, white ears stuck out from the top of your head, as well as the fluffy white coat draped around your shoulders, made you look so soft and cozy and adorable. The way your nose crinkled as you laughed with your friends, sweet sounds coming from your lips as you threw your head back. 

Were you real? How could anyone be so goddamn beautiful and not be an actual angel sent from above? What country did Heeseung save in his past life in order to get to be in your presence in this life?

"Dude, you're staring," a new voice interjected.

"What?" Heeseung tore his eyes away from you. "I wasn't."

Beomgyu Choi was one of Heeseung's classmates. And, like everyone else in their year, Beomgyu knew how enamored Heeseung was with you. Other than yourself, of course.

"I'm tellin' you," Beomgyu plopped down onto his seat, which was beside Heeseung's. He slid his chair so that he would be closer to his classmate, before throwing an arm around Heeseung. "You need to make a move. Like, now."

Heeseung glanced over at his classmate. If he ignored the fake blood on Beomgyu's chin, as well as the fake, plastic vampire teeth and the god-awful Spirit Halloween Dracula cape, he'd know that Beomgyu was 100% correct. 

Everyone (and seriously, everyone) knew that Heeseung Lee had the biggest, juiciest, most obnoxious crush on you. In fact, your own friends had even tasked themselves with the job of putting in a good word for Heeseung, saying things like "Isn't he so cool?" into your ear to hopefully guide you straight into his arms. It's such a well-known fact that some of your teachers have purposefully placed you and Heeseung next to or near each other in order to help him with his more-than-obvious crush. 

With such a big, school-wide effort, it should be expected that at least some progress was made.

Wrong!

Not even a single stroke of progress has been made.

Probably because there was one teensy, weensy, eensy, problem: Heeseung was an absolute mess around you. Heeseung was known as this tall, blunt, and rough guy at school. When he wasn't silently judging everyone, he hung out with his group of friends, who had a reputation for being delinquents. Heeseung Lee, clad in his iconic black leather jacket, was intimidating, and usually had no problem speaking up for himself. But around you? Absolutely not.

If anyone thought that Heeseung Lee could easily speak to you, they were out of their goddamn mind. There were too many instances where your classmates would push Heeseung and you together, only for him to blow it because he was completely incapable of looking you in the eye without turning red. 

In Heeseung's defense, you were the most beautiful person in the world— How is he not supposed to get nervous?

"You know I can't," Heeseung murmured, clenching his fists.

Beomgyu rolled his eyes. "Whatever, Hee. What happened to banger Heeseung Lee? Heeseung Lee that beats up kids? I didn't think you'd be scared of talking to girls."

"First of all," Heeseung frowned, "I'm not a banger and I don't beat up kids. And also, I'm not scared of talking to girls."

His classmate quirked a brow. "Really?" Heeseung nodded. "Because the last time I remember, you could barely get a word out in front of [Name]."

At the sound of your name, Heeseung jerked in his seat, reaching out to grasp Beomgyu's arm. "Shhhh, don't say her name so loud!" he hissed, eyes quivering over to where you were with your friends.

"What?" Beomgyu looked around indiscreetly. "It's not a secret to anyone how you feel about [Name]."

"Shhhh! Shut up!"

When the bell rang, everyone scurried to their seat, and class began. As Beomgyu tuned out the sound of the teacher's voice, he couldn't help but notice the way Heeseung's eyes were completely glued to you. It was almost laughable, the way the boy's eyes were wide, staring at you like you were some god.

Oh god, Heeseung Lee was hopeless.

"Heeseung-hyung, are you free tomorrow?"

It was lunch time. Heeseung and his friends liked to hang around the rooftop of the school, because it was always empty. And plus, no one wanted to be where Heeseung and his friends were— they were too scary!

Heeseung looked at his younger Australian friend, Jake Sim (or Jaeyun Sim, as his official documents stated), who had just asked that question. Heeseung took a bite of the instant ramen that they bought from the vending machine.

"Yeah, why?"

"Good. Because you have a date with [Name] tomorrow."

Heeseung choked. As he coughed, his other younger friend, Sunoo Kim, let out a whine.

"Hyuuunggg!" Sunoo pouted. "Why'd you tell him?"

"It was supposed to be a surprise!" Riki Nishimura, the group's Japanese foreign exchange student friend, added, elbowing Jake in the ribs.

"Whatever," Jake crossed his arms. When Riki nudged him again, Jake opened his mouth to holler, "Jay, back me up!"

Jongseong "Jay" Park was another one of Heeseung's friends, probably the closest person to him. 

"You guys know Heeseung-hyung is going to fuck it up either way, right?" Jay said. "Remember last time?"

"Yeah," Sunghoon Park joined in. "No matter how much we prepared him, Heeseung-hyung still acted like a fucking idiot."

"I'm right here!" Heeseung shouted, still hitting his chest to dislodge the ramen that he choked on. 

Jungwon Yang, the seventh person in their friend group, put a hand on the older boy's shoulder, his lips lifting up into a half-teasing grin, revealing sharp canine teeth, "Hyung, don't listen to them. I think you'll really impress [Name] tomorrow."

It was Heeseung's turn to elbow Jungwon in the ribs.

When Heeseung finally finished coughing up a storm, his friends were already onto another topic, making plans for the next weekend.

"Hey, hey!" Heeseung grumbled. "Aren't you guys going to explain this so-called 'date with [Name]'?"

"What's there to explain?" Riki said. "You're going on a date with [Name]. End of story."

The eldest of the group's face contorted. "What are you guys even saying—"

"Well, it's not technically a date," Sunghoon said, taking a sip of his juice box. "You're, like, hanging out with [Name] though."

That still didn't answer Heeseung's question. 

"When? Where? What time?" he spluttered, eager for answers.

Jake huffed exasperatedly. "Do we have to explain to you everything? It's not that deep, man."

Jungwon rolled his eyes. "Hyung, [Name]'s friends are the presidents of the Environment and Ecology Club, and there's a social tomorrow. It's like birdhouse painting, or something. [Name] is attending to support her friend, so we signed you up, too."

"Birdhouse painting?!" Sunoo's features morphed into confusion. "I thought they were making bracelets?"

"No, I thought there were weaving baskets?" Riki frowned.

"Whatever it is, it sounds lame as hell," Jay remarked.

Jungwon rolled his eyes again, earning a punch on his arm. "Whatever it is, it'll be a great opportunity for you to talk to [Name]." 

The younger boy offered Heeseung a reassuring smile, only to receive a pensive one in return.

When classes resumed, Heeseung felt light-headed and distracted the entire time as he processed the fact that he was going to be around you tomorrow.

Oh god, he sounded like a total loser. Did the mere thought of being in your presence make him nervous? Yes, yes it did. You were just so pretty and sweet, he had no idea what to do. Poor boy, his teeth dug into his bottom lip, clammy palms pressing into the underside of his desk. His knee bounced, and there was absolutely no way that he could even make out a single word the teacher was saying.

Heeseung was going to pass out. 

"Hey, Heeseung?"

That's your voice. It was so pretty and nice on his ears. Was he in heaven? He wouldn't be surprised if your voice was the voice of an angel.

"Heeseung?"

Heeseung was convinced that he was in heaven now. What he wouldn't do to hear your voice every second of his life.

"Heeseung!" another voice interjected. That's what snapped Heeseung out of his daze. Too deep in his head, Heeseung hadn't noticed that the class period ended, and the short passing period had already begun.

At his desk stood Yunjin Huh, Minjeong "Winter" Kim, and... oh my god... you. The three of you had somewhat matching Halloween costumes: Yunjin was a gray mouse, Winter was a cat, and you were a bunny. And now that he looked at it, you all were holding a bag of candy.

While your two friends were giving him the"Are you serious?" looks, you looked at him with wide, kind eyes.

"Heeseung?" your beautiful voice said, fingers reaching into the candy bag that you were holding. "Would you like candy?"

He stared at you. You were giving out candy to everyone in class because it was Halloween... You're such an angel... What did the world do to deserve you...

Winter stepped on Heeseung's foot, snapping him out of his daze once again. The boy let out a small yelp in pain, and as the embarrassment settled in, he heard you let out a small giggle, lips raising up to show off your teeth.

Oh my god, he was going to die.

"Y-Yeah," he stammered out, cursing himself internally. Heeseung couldn't help but feel everyone in class's gaze glued to him. When you handed him a piece of candy, your hand brushed up against his. Heeseung could feel his ears becoming hot, the warmth rising to his neck.

You smiled at him, before saying in a sing-songy voice, "Happy Halloween!"

Heeseung had to force himself not to stare like an absolute fool.

He was really hopeless.

hee: jay i don't think i can do it tomorrow

It was 2AM when Heeseung texted Jay. He spent the entire night thinking about the "date" (probably the least necessary word at the moment), and he simply couldn't sleep.

Heeseung had embarrassed himself too many times in front of you. Like that one time you and him were on cleaning duty together, and he was so distracted by you that he tripped over a bucket of water. Or that one time he sat next to you for a few weeks and his shoes kept squeaking against the floor, making it look like he was farting. Or when he tried to look cool and suave in front of you at some social your friends invited him to only to rip a hole in his pants. And then what happened today... He could not embarrass himself again.

hee: like i think i'm going to die if she sits next to me tomorrow

It was only a matter of seconds when his friend texted back.

jay: you'll be fine trust

Heeseung frowned.

hee: stop lying to me

hee: you know how i am around her

jay: i believe in you

jay: like srsly

hee: that's blind faith

Jay typed for a little bit, before stopping altogether. Heeseung huffed. Did his friend just leave him on read? A few minutes later Jay sent a Wikihow article.

'How to talk to your crush,' it was aptly named. Heeseung deadpanned.

hee: are you being fr right now

jay: give [name] your sexy heeseung charm and you'll be walking off into the sunset hand-in-hand with her in no time

jay: read the article btw

How was this guy an actual person?

hee: kill yourself

jay: give her that passionate, sexy, boiling hot, hotter-than-the-sun, steaming hot heeseung that makes her just want to come up to you and give you the fattest, juiciest kiss on the mouth, i know you can do it soldier

hee: DIE

Heeseung couldn't sleep all night.

At school, the entire day was just plagued with anxiety for what was to come. It didn't help that your friends kept turning around and giving him knowing looks throughout the day. When school finally let out, Heeseung went to the classroom where the birdhouse-painting-bracelet-making-basket-weaving social would be held. His friends told him to go there the moment that school ended, but when he came, there was literally no one there.

Until someone yanked him into the classroom.

"Hey!-" he yelped, before the door slammed. In front of him stood two people that he recognized: Sumin Bae and Sieun Park, two of your friends who also coincidentally were the co-presidents of the Environment and Ecology club.

Sumin cocked a brow at him, crossing her arms. "I hope you're not as hopeless as everyone says you are."

Heeseung opened his mouth to respond, but Sieun cut him off.

"Ugh, that doesn't matter," she pinched her nose-bridge. "We told [Name] to sit near the front, so you better sit there, too."

"Right-" 

Sumin cut him off, too.

"[Name]'s favorite color is pink, and her favorite Sanrio character is Keroppi," Sumin asserted. "And she really likes things that are cute, so like fruit patterns, hearts, stars, yada yada."

Heeseung blinked at them. "And this is relevant how...?"

Sumin and Sieun shared a look.

"You are completely hopeless."

As it turned out, they were giving him details about design-elements that you liked, so that Heeseung could somehow impress you with his birdhouse painting abilities (Jungwon was right, it was birdhouse painting). After info-dumping on him, they kicked him out of the classroom to actually prepare for the social.

As Heeseung was pushed out of the classroom, he bumped into someone. Just as he was about to say, "Watch where you're going," he realized that it was you. 

"Oh, hi, Heeseung!" you greet him cheerfully, your eyes pressing into thin slits as you smile. 

Quick! What does he do? "Hi... [Name]."

"Are you here for the social, too?" The way your eyes gazed at him made him feel shy already.

"Y-Yeah...."

"I didn't know you were interested in the Environment and Ecology club..." You remarked, and Heeseung panicked— Was it obvious that he was here exclusively for you?— but what you said next made him sigh in relief. "That's great! I'm so happy that I finally have someone familiar with me here!"

He's going to faint.

When the social began, you invited him to sit next to you. Heeseung felt stiff as he sat beside you, watching the way that you happily painted your small, wooden birdhouse. Heeseung wanted to start a conversation with you, but each time he thought of something to say, his voice caught in his throat. Sumin and Sieun had given him two dirty looks already, so he needed to make a move now or their efforts would be in vain.

"W-What's that?" he finally stuttered out, pointing to the glob of green on your birdhouse. 

You laugh airily, leaning closer to him so that he can see it better. "Can you guess?"

Heeseung tries to concentrate on guessing, but it's hard when you're close to him. Quick! What's green and something that you like?

"Is that... K-Keroppi?"

"Yeah!" Your face lit up, flashing him a cheeky grin. You nudged him with your elbow, raising your brows at him playfully. "Awww, Hee, you smarty pants! How'd you know?"

Hee?

OhmygodohmygodohmygodyoucalledhimHee.

You stopped laughing, pulling away from him. "Sorry, do you not like being called Hee? Beomgyu sometimes calls you that, so I thought-"

"No, I like it!" Heeseung blurted, a little louder than he wanted to, earning a few questioning looks from people around him. The boy felt abnormally warm, embarrassed at his outburst. "I-I'm okay with you calling me that..."

"Noted!" you said, before your lips curled upward. "Now... are you going to tell me how you could tell that this green blob was Keroppi?"

"Oh uhm..." Heeseung's lips were moving faster than his head, "Y-You dressed up as Keroppi last year for Halloween with Yunjin."

Almost like you were a cartoon character, you perked up at his statement. "You remember?"

Of course he did. How could he forget? You wore a cartoonishly-big red bow around your neck like Keroppi, and had a green Keroppi-style headband. You looked adorable, especially when you went around showing off a Keroppi keychain that you got at the Cinnamoroll Cafe in Hongdae to anyone that was willing to listen.

Heeseung found himself chuckling. "Of course I'd remember your massive red bow."

You stared at him for a few moments, before a bashful grin broke out on your face. You then buried your face in your hands, letting out a groan. "Ughhhh, that's so embarrassing!"

"How?"

It's going good so far, Heeseung thought. Just don't mess it up!

You pouted cutely, your bottom lip jutting out. In the light, he could see the gloss shining off of it so prettily. "My makeup was so fucked up last year, ughhh, it looked so bad."

You? Look bad? Impossible.

"What are you talking about?" Heeseung asked, his doe-like eyes scanning your embarrassed face. "I thought you looked cute."

You stared at him. It took a few pulses for Heeseung to realize what he just said. His face instantly turned three shades warmer and panic was evident in his expression.

"I-I mean— You jus—You were really—"

He shut his mouth when you began laughing. Laughing so hard that you clutched onto his knee, keeling over yourself. His cheeks burned.

You're laughing at him, aren't you? Did he fuck up?

When you noticed the sulky expression on his face, you stopped laughing.

"Sorry, Hee," you said, giving his knee a reassuring squeeze. "It's just... You look so intimidating, when you're really just a sweetheart."

If Heeseung was red before, he was quietly literally the color of a tomato. It was a wonder that the entire room’s temperature didn’t rise given the sheer amount of heat radiating off his person.

"A s-sweetheart?"

"Yeah!" you happily respond. "You're just the cutest, y'know? Like a little puppy."

As much as Heeseung wanted to die happily now that you called him cute, he needed to keep this conversation going. Sucking in a sharp breath, the boy looked at you in the eyes. "W-Well I think the same about you... [Name]."

You looked at him curiously, so he continued, his voice soft and sheepish, "I... also think that you're the cutest."

You blinked at him a few times, before the widest smile that he'd ever seen spread across your cheeks, stretching ear to ear. If only Heeseung wasn't too busy grappling with his shyness, he'd notice the way you let out a soft, bashful giggle, shaking your head and squeezing your eyes shut to keep yourself from being too visibly flustered. Slowly, with all the courage that you had left in you, you raised your hand and placed it on Heeseung's head. You ruffled his soft locks, gushing, "God, you're so cute, Heeseung!"

The rest of the social is filled with soft chatter between the two of you, but Heeseung was honestly too captivated by you to notice the time passing. With his heart on his sleeve, and a sloppily-painted birdhouse in his hands, Heeseung mentally high-fived himself.

Heeseung's friends never heard the end of it. The moment that he got home, Heeseung spammed their groupchat, giving them paragraphs and paragraphs of the events that ensued.

hee: and then she called me cute. like CUTE CUTE, not even like she was alluding it, she used the word CUTE

hee: oh my god i think i'm gonna faint

His friends don't have it in them to flame him. After all, this was progress.

Unbeknownst to him, you were feeling the same things. Everyone knew that Heeseung liked you, except yourself. You had the opposite case: you've had the biggest crush on Heeseung since middle school, but never told a single soul about it. You're a naturally expressive and sweet person, so it was so incredibly hard hiding your feelings for him. 

After all, under that handsome and brooding outer shell, you saw his softness. This past year, you've had so many miscellaneous interactions (at least, it seemed miscellaneous-- everyone but you knew that those interactions were set up) with Heeseung. At the beginning of each interaction, he'd act all mysterious, but as time passed, he'd speak so softly and slowly unravel. 

It was so, so cute. Heeseung was so cute. To say you wanted him would be an understatement. No words were sufficient to fully express the nights that you stayed awake thinking about him, or the makeup looks that you intricately practiced to impress him, or the sheer number of times that you had to hide the fact that you were staring at him.

Maybe you couldn't hide it any longer.

"Wait, what?!"

Heeseung's heart dropped to his stomach the moment he heard the words leave his friend's lips. Chenle Zhong was one of you and Heeseung's mutual friends, and according to him, someone had confessed to you via a letter today.

"Are you serious?" Heeseung asked, pulling his bottom lip into his teeth, chewing pensively. "Do you know who wrote it?"

"Nope, but I'll try to get more info on it," Chenle frowned. "Yunjin says that [Name] laughed at the letter."

When Heeseung didn't say anything, Chenle continued. "Hey, man, that could be a sign, y'know?"

When Heeseung's face morphed into a confused expression, his friend added, "Like, maybe [Name] thinks it's a joke? Maybe she doesn't care for it."

That's what Heeseung hoped for.

Later, Chenle texted him a screenshot of the love letter. To say that Heeseung was appalled would be an understatement. The letter read,

'To my dearest [Name], you're as beautiful as the plum blossoms in the spring. Your lips are soft like pillows, pillows that I would love to fall into an eternal in. I love you, I love you, I'll love you until this paper decomposes and becomes a part of the earth, and maybe then they will be able to force me to forget you. Love, your admirer.'

Heeseung immediately sent it to his groupchat.

jakey: yo who invited shakespeare???

hoon: i had a stroke reading that

sunoo: "your lips are soft like pillows" is crazyyy

hee: chenle gave me updates, apparently [name] knows who the sender is

jay: AND WHO IS THE SENDER??

hee: i don't know

hee: but minjeong says that it's someone from class 2

niki: class 2 is full of snobs

jungwon: i'm still in shock because of "i'll love you until this paper decomposes"

hoon: WHAT IF IT'S JUNGSU HYUNG

niki: oh it's SO over for you heeseung-hyung

As it turned out, it was not, in fact, Jungsu Kim from Class 2, thanks to your friends, who were quite wonderful info-brokers. But he still didn't know who it was.

Laying in bed, Heeseung felt weight on his chest. You laughed at the letter. While that could mean that it was a joke, it could also mean that you thought the person writing the letter was funny... which could mean that you liked them back. Just the mere thought of you with someone else made Heeseung frown deeply. This entire time he was worried about how to act around you, completely ignoring the fact that you yourself could be interested in someone else! God, he was so stupid.

Heeseung needed to know who it was that sent it, and more importantly, if you were romantically interested in them.

Fear makes man do crazy things.

Like walking one's crush to school.

Look, Heeseung was mulling over the situation as he walked to school, when he saw you across the street, walking in the same direction as him. In what could only be called an adrenaline-high, Heeseung ran across the street up to you.

"[Name]!" he called out.

"Heeseung?—Oh my god!"

Poor boy was breathless, flushed in the face. It took him a few moments to catch his breath. Flashing you a grin, Heeseung said, "Let's walk to school together, [Name]."

You're silent for a few moments, before you return the smile. "Of course."

The walk was silent, only the sound of early morning traffic, footsteps against the concrete sidewalk, and the occasional sniffle courtesy of you filling the cold air between the two of you. Speaking of which, your sniffles began to get louder and more frequent. Now out of adrenaline, Heeseung was back to being shy.

Clearing his throat, Heeseung forced his voice out. "Are you— Are you sick?"

You sniffled again, bringing your hand up to swipe your nose. The two of you were at an intersection now, so you pressed the pedestrian button. "No, I just get sniffly when it's cold."

That's. So. Cute. Was what Heeseung was thinking. The way you were rubbing your hands together made you look so adorable, he just wanted to put you in his pocket. 

He must have been staring at you for a while, back in his you-loving daze, because Heeseung did not notice that the streetlight changed, and it was time for the pedestrians to pass.

Not to worry!

Heeseung was completely kicked out of his daze when your smaller hand grabbed his, pulling him along the street. His eyes were glued to the two of your hands, especially where they connected. For someone sniffly, your hands were warm. He liked the way that they fit in his.

Even in the cool morning air, Heeseung suddenly felt warm all over.

You were in the middle of the sidewalk when Heeseung stopped. Feeling bold, he dropped his schoolbag, and began slipping off his thick, black, leather jacket, before draping it over your shoulders. 

When you looked up at him with those curious doe eyes, all his boldness went away.

"Y-You're cold aren't you?" He avoided looking you in the eyes. "Just... Just take it. Y-You can give it back later... or whatever."

You giggled, slipping your arms into the sleeves.

God, you looked so cute in his jacket. Heeseung was going to melt.

And he did melt, because you began doing cute twirls to show off the jacket, posing for him.

"How do I look?" you cheekily asked, popping your leg up. 

Heeseung was speechless, his mouth just left agape. He had to force himself to speak.

"Cute..." he answered, barely audible.

A grin was growing on your face. "Sorry, I didn't hear you. How do I look?"

Heeseung squeezed his eyes shut, huffing. "I said you looked cute!"

The sight of Heeseung's pink cheeks and his cute little pout was enough for you to be satisfied. Before the boy could realize what he said, you picked up his school bag for him, shoving it into one of his hands, before snatching his free hand. You pulled him gently to continue walking, but Heeseung was frozen in place, eyes too busy on you.

"Heeeeee," you elongated your syllables. You squeezed his hand twice, tugging him again. "We can't be late to class, can we?"

Heeseung audibly gulped. "Y-Yeah. You're right.."

You guys began walking again, neither of you wanting to let each other’s hands go.

"And then she held my hand— Isn't that crazy?! She held my hand!"

"Heeseung-hyung, please, I am peeing right now."

It was the lunch period once again. As Heeseung and Sunghoon traversed the hallways to get to the stairwell, the older of two chatted about the events that morning.

"So you held her hand?" Sunghoon asked half-heartedly, barely listening. "And then what?"

Heeseung perked up. "And then we walked to class together, and then she—"

"That's cool and all," the younger friend was walking in front of him. Sunghoon turned over his shoulder. "But did you get any more information about the letter fiasco?"

Oh. 

No, Heeseung didn't.

When they reached the rooftop, his friends gently nudged him to get more information about the letter. 

"You don't want to have one of those 'too late' moments, right?" Jungwon said, chewing on his rice ball. "What if by the time you gather the courage to talk to her, [Name] is already walking off into the sunset hand-in-hand with her secret admirer?!"

"What's with you guys and walking off into the sunset..." Heeseung muttered, running a hand through his hair. 

"I'm serious, hyung!"

"I second that," Jay said lazily.

"I second that," Riki mocked in a squeaky voice, earning him a soft smack at the back of his head.

"Well, what am I supposed to do?" Heeseung asked, frustrated. "I can talk to her or her friends later, but not right now."

Jake scoffed. "What's stopping you from going back inside and talking to [Name] right now?"

The eldest boy didn't have an answer. That's true. There wasn't anything stopping Heeseung from talking to you right now. All the boys were now watching him for an answer, ready to pounce on him for being a coward.

"I don't know!" Heeseung finally said. "I've used up all of my bravery today... I don't think I have it in me to talk to her!"

His friends stared at him questioningly, until the silence was broken by Sunoo taking a loud and very obviously fake phonecall.

"Hi! Yes! Mhm. He's right here. Yeah. Mhm. Thank you!"

Sunoo hung up loudly, and looked at Heeseung with a cocked brow. "I was just on the phone with Yunjin. She says you should probably go talk to [Name]."

Heeseung looked at Sunoo incredulously, but the expectant expressions on his friends' faces made him groan.

"Fine!"

As Heeseung creeped down the school hallway, he came to the classroom that you hung out in at lunch: your homeroom. Standing outside the door, the boy took a deep breath.

Relax, it's just [Name], he had to tell himself, as if that helped at all. What was he even going to say? 

'Hey, are you dating the person that sent you that letter? If you aren't, do you want to get married to me? Haha.'

????

Just as Heeseung was about to slide the door open, he heard a very familiar laugh from inside. Of course he could recognize it. After all, it was you. 

"Yuri is so cute!" he heard you giggle. "She wrote me that little letter as a joke, but I think I'm actually in love with her."

In.

Love.

With.

Her.

"Awww, Yuri, come here and give me a kiss!"

Come.

Give.

You.

A.

Kiss.

"I'm gonna marry you, Yuri!"

Marry.

You.

Yuri.

To Heeseung, everyone was an enemy. No matter their gender or class, the moment that he heard that you got a love letter, everyone became a suspect. It all made sense now. Yuri Jo, the 'Yuri' that you were talking about and to, was from Class 2. He knew that you and her were friends, but he didn't know that you were romantically interested in her. 

Jungwon was right. Now you were going to walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand with her!

hee: guys what if [name] is already taken :(

jakey: what are you on about this time

There was something scary about a 6-feet tall guy mulling around and sulking all day, so luckily no one got in Heeseung's way as he brooded. Unfortunately, he felt his heart hurt whenever he looked at you. Almost cartoonishly, he'd turn away, close his eyes in dramatic pain, and pout. Although he acted a little bit theatrical, it was no doubt that Heeseung felt sad. He really thought he had a chance with you, and now he felt stupid.

Except, he was stupid.

But for a different reason.

"Jesus Christ, you're actually hopeless, Heeseung."

After school, your friends cornered him, somewhere where you wouldn't see. His friends were somehow in close communication with your friends.

"I can't believe you thought me and [Name] were actually dating!"

Heeseung scowled, crossing his arms over his chest, as he leaned against a locker. Before him stood Yunjin, Winter, Yuri, along with a few other of your friends, Hitomi and Minju. 

"I don't know!" Heeseung huffed. "Everyone is an enemy to me—” he glanced at Yuri— “Including Yuri.”

Yunjin scoffed in disbelief. "You're insane."

Soooo... You weren't in any romantic relationship with anyone. Yuri sent you that letter as a joke, and you were just really close to her. Good.

"I don't know how I feel about this guy getting with our [Name]," Winter muttered to Hitomi and Minju, but loud enough for Heeseung to hear.

"Hey!"

"I know, he's a total dumbass," Minju grumbled back.

"Dude, I'm right here!"

Hitomi rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Well, are you free on Friday after school?"

"Yeah, why?" They always asked Heeseung that question when they had some crazy plan up their sleeve. Not like he was any better.

"Wellll," Hitomi began in a sing-songy voice. "[Name] really wants to go to that Cinnamoroll Sweet Cafe in Hongdae on Friday, but none of us are available."

Heeseung nodded slowly. 

"I think it'd be a good way for you to get closer to her, dontcha think?"

And that's how Heeseung scored his first (unofficial) date with you

When your friends told you that Heeseung would accompany you to Hongdae, you almost jumped for joy. Almost. Friday couldn't come any faster. The plan was that you'd meet Heeseung at the train station at 4:30PM, meaning that you had a bit of time to change and get ready. You didn't want to get too ahead of yourself and call it a date, but oh boy did you want to.

What were you going to wear? What if you were too formal? Should you go for a casual look or something more put-together? You needed to impress him!

When Friday came, you practically ran home to get ready. You perfected your makeup, and put on your prettiest outfit. Spraying yourself with your signature perfume, you looked in the mirror. Hopefully, he'll like how you look. 

At the corner of your eye, you spot a black, leather jacket. His black, leather jacket. Without even thinking, you slinked toward it, slipping into the jacket. It smelled like him, the faint scent of his cologne lingering on the leather.

With a final glance in the mirror, you left for the train station.

On the other hand, to say that Heeseung was nervous for the date was an understatement. His heart was about to fall out of chest. He changed into something more casual, made sure to brush out his disheveled hair, and reapplied his cologne. He came to the train station 20 minutes early, just in case something went terribly wrong. He glanced at his phone. For the date, he managed to get a hold of your number, for “communication purposes.” He’d wanted to text you all week, but didn’t have the courage to.

“Hee?” your soft voice calling his name got his attention. Behold, you standing there before him, all dolled up and pretty. This must be the sight he’ll see when he enters heaven, he thought. 

“Hi,” he said, his eyes glazing over your face. You were so pretty. Did you dress up for him? He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but the idea that you wanted to look good for him made Heeseung’s heart skip a beat. “You look…”

He didn’t mean to say that. You smile bashfully. “I look…?”

“So pretty,” Heeseung breathed. “You look so pretty.”

“Thank you,” you smile. Your fingers reach for the hem of his shirt, playing with it, which sends his heart racing. “Well, I think you look handsome, Hee.”

“Th-Thanks.”

The two of you stare into each other’s eyes for a few moments, and Heeseung swears that you’re looking at his lips. You spoke up, breaking the silence. “You notice anything about me?”

Heeseung grasped the collar of his jacket gently with both hands. “My jacket.”

“I was going to give it back to you earlier,” you begin, eyes trained on his lips, “But I think I’ll keep it for today, yeah? Since I look so pretty in it.”

“Oh fuck,” Heeseung cursed under his breath, loud enough for you to hear it and giggle. “Yeah, you can keep it for as long as you want.”

“As long as I want?” you purred, taking a step closer to him. Although it wasn’t clear to anyone else, you were a mess inside. Your heart was palpitating so hard that you could hear it in your ears. Your throat felt dry, and your hands were shaking with mere anxiety and excitement. “What about forever?”

Heeseung cracked a grin. “Do whatever you want. You’re pretty.”

If it wasn’t for the train announcement, you thought you would have kissed his pretty lips right then and there. Taking Heeseung’s hand, you led him to your train cart. 

“Let’s go, Hee.”

The train is much more packed than you expected, but it was the beginning of the weekend after all. The trip from Gyeonggi Province to Hongdae should take no less than an hour. Unfortunately, because of the amount of people in the train, you and Heeseung had to stand for the majority of the time. It should have been uncomfortable, but it simply wasn't. Because you were with Heeseung.

Standing only a few inches away from the boy, your chests almost pressed against each other. You could feel his breath fan your cheeks. The both of you held onto the pole, hands barely brushing against each other when the cart shook against the rails. 

At some point, the shaking was a lot more aggressive than it had previously been. Instinctively, your hand reached for his broad shoulders for stability. Likewise, Heeseung reached for your waist, holding you in place. You and Heeseung shared a long, drawn-out look, eyes getting lost in one another's, before you both avert your gazes shyly, muttering, "sorry." Yet, neither of you moved your hands from their newfound positions.

As minutes passed on the train, your eyes were glued to Heeseung, at least when he wasn't watching. 

You loved the reddish blush that naturally decorated his under-eyes, and the natural corally red at tinted the tip of his ears. His glossy eyes and heart-shaped lips had to be your favorite feature of his, if not for his large, yet delicate hands, so gentle and soft.

You were deep in thought when you suddenly felt a hand creeping on your leg. Nimble fingers from behind, brushing up against the hem of your dress. From the corner of your eye, you saw an older man. He looked unkempt and scruffy, like a delinquent– but nothing like Heeseung. Heeseung looked much better than him.

The man reeked of cigarettes and musk. A nasty grin spread across his face as he peered down at your exposed legs. His hands creeped toward them again, now slightly pushing your dress up. Your teeth sunk into your bottom lip, your entire body stiffening. Your heart began to pound in your chest, your cheeks and skin feeling hot. 

Panic overtook your system. Your once soft breaths became much shorter and quicker, inhaling and exhaling shallow air.

You’ve never been in a situation like this; you’d  never wished, thought, or even considered something like this happening to you– why would you? You had no idea what to do, and were not at all prepared for this. The train was packed to the brim, this man was much bigger and stronger than you, and you did not know how to fight.

The hand moved past your skirt, now under it and directly in contact with your skin. The hand felt dirty, brushing against you. A small frantic whimper escaped your lips when the man’s hand squeezed your bare thigh. It was a small sound, barely audible in the vast bustle of the subway. However, someone did hear it.

Heeseung, doe-eyed and lost in his own world, immediately darted his eyes over to you the moment he heard a sound of discomfort. 

When your eyes met, you could only signal helplessly. Your gaze was wide, pupils dilated, with fear and panic. Heeseung’s eyes narrowed, staring into your eyes for a moment before analyzing your expression. The way you were extremely tense and overwrought casted a sense of suspicion in his head, and your eyes that were seemingly pleading him made him think.

Help, your eyes said.

Heeseung’s dark eyes flickered from your face, to your entire body language, and back to your face, before he spotted a few, foreign fingers creeping around your leg area.

Your shifty eyes kept moving from Heeseung’s to the side, but now that he looked at it, it was like they were pointing behind you. And lo and behold, behind you was a musky pervert, who was shamelessly touching you.

“[Name]…” he whispered. His fists clenched, teeth gritting. He sucked in a deep breath, feeling anger build up in his stomach. You whimpered again in response. He brought a hand to ghost over your shoulder, pushing you very, very, gently to the side. “Move.”

He wound up his fist and sent the hardest punch he could muster to the man square in the jaw.

The man lurched back immediately, his hand moving far, far, away from you. A groan left his lips, his head being thrown back in pain. The man’s fall had pushed a few other people down as well. Other bystanders watched on in shock. Some took out their phones to record and take pictures, others to tell their friends.

You just stood still, leaning into Heeseung, whose fist was a faint red color. With a very careful hand, he brushed the lifted hem of your dress down, which had been messed with earlier.

The man quickly got up once he noticed the new and tense silence over the subway cart.

“Hey!” he shouted, pushing himself up from his downtrodden position. “You little punk, who the fuck do you think you-”

The train announcer called for the stop. Heeseung, ignoring the man, took your arm, pulling you out the door. Before he himself left, Heeseung landed a kick to the man’s crotch, muttering, “Fucking bastard.”

"W-Wait, Hee-!"

Heeseung was silent as the train doors opened, only pulling you along with him. When the two of you were far from the train, he finally stopped, turning to you.

"Are you okay?" was all he asked. You shifted uncomfortably at the thought of what happened earlier.

"Y-Yeah..." you played with the hem of his jacket sheepishly. "Thanks for what you did back there."

Heeseung jolted up at the mention. He didn't love using violence, despite his 'delinquent' reputation, especially in front of you. His hands joined yours at the hem of his jacket, shyly brushing up against yours. 

"Next time," he began, beginning to play with the zipper, "I'll fight every person on that train so that you can sit."

You smiled softly. "You don't have to do that, Hee."

Heeseung slowly zipped up his jacket on you, meeting your eyes, before straightening out your collar. 

"But I want to," he breathed. You gazed at him. His hands were still on the collar of the jacket, close to your face. You noticed the red smudges on his knuckles from punching the man on the train. You took that hand, opening it up, and nuzzling your cheek into it. You took his other hand. To Heeseung's surprise, you pressed soft kisses on his knuckles, rubbing them with your thumb.

"What are you..." his breath hitched when your eyes flickered to his, holding steady eye-contact. 

You pressed one last kiss on his palm. "Thank you, Hee. Really."

"Of course, [Name]," he finally whispered. "Anything for you."

And so, your first date with Heeseung began.

The sweet scent of cinnamon and pastries hit your noses the moment you guys stepped into the Cinnamoroll Cafe. When you were seated, you took a look at the menu. So far, the date was going smoothly. Other than the run-in at the beginning, the chemistry between the two of you was sparking. The conversation was flowing, and if that already wasn't a dream come true, you kept touching Heeseung. On your end, you were practically vibrating in your seat with the sheer amount of excitement you had bubbling in you. You couldn't believe you were on a date with the Heeseung Lee sharing a strawberry banana parfait. 

"Hee," you said, motioning him to come closer to you. He did, so you cupped his cheek, bringing your thumb up to wipe a stray piece of the parfait from his cheek. 

"Oh-" Heeseung's face reddened. How embarrassing! Did you think he was a slob now? You only giggled, bringing both hands up to hold his face. You squished the boy's cheeks, laughing at the way his brows cutely crashed into each other.

"You're so cute, Hee," you said, playing with his cheeks. "The cutest."

That's all you, he thought. You're going to drive him crazy.

Or, at least he thought he thought.

Did he just say that out loud? Heeseung groaned when you threw your head back laughing, hiding his own face in your palms. You chuckled.

Feeling bold, you cupped his cheeks again. You leaned closer, holding his face close to yours. You kissed a soft and chaste kiss on his nose. You couldn't help the heat that rose to your cheeks as the boy flopped over the table, hiding his face in his arms. You ran your fingers through his hair comfortingly, cooing at his cuteness.

"You can't do this to me," Heeseung murmured.

You laughed. It wouldn't hurt to tease him a little more, right? You leaned down, giving the boy another kiss. This time, though, you kissed the top of his head.

"Hee, baby, you're just the cutest, you know that right?"

Heeseung combusted.

After the Cafe, Heeseung and you walked around the Hongdae Festival Street. By now, it was beginning to get darker outside, the air cooling down. It was cold, but to Heeseung, it was perfect, because now he had an excuse to hold your hand. As the two of you walked and talked, you enjoyed the sight of the lights and bustling street. 

Suddenly, a new voice interrupted the two of you's conversation. Turning around, you saw two guys who looked around your age. They were holding a camera and a microphone.

"Hi!" they said, smiling. "We're interviewing couples in Hongdae, would you guys like to be in it? We’ll blur your faces."

Heeseung glanced your joined hands, then back at the two guys, then back at your hands, "O-Oh, we're not a coupl—"

You cut him off. "Of course, we'd love to!"

You flashed Heeseung a grin, squeezing his hand twice, almost as if to say, 'Just go with it.' His ears began to burn, his neck prickling with warmth, before clearing his throat. "Y-Yeah..." he squeezed your hand, "We'd love to."

The two guys cheered, turning on their camera. "All right, first question. How did you guys meet?"

"We went to middle school together," you were quick to answer. "I thought he was really cute, but we didn't start talking until this year."

You didn't know what the fuck you were saying. Was it risky to be so truthful for an internet interview, right in front of your long-time crush? Absolutely. But your heart was pounding so hard in your chest, simply waiting for Heeseung's response.

On the other hand, Heeseung's mind was in complete shambles. Were you telling the truth? The way you answered so smoothly with absolutely no hesitation made it almost seem natural.

"And you?" the interviewer asked. "What did you think about her when you first met?"

"I—" Heeseung's breath hitched. "I thought she was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen."

The way you glanced at him made Heeseung's heart feel like it was about to fall out. "I.. I still think that."

Your expression was unreadable, your lips pressing into a thin line. Then, a huge smile broke out on your face.

"Awww, Heeeee! I didn't know you thought about me like that!" You squeezed his hand again, and he squeezed it back.

"How long have you guys been together?" the interviewer asked.

"We just started dating!" You answered enthusiastically, a weird, surprised sound coming from Heeseung.

The rest of the interview went smoothly, with you mostly answering the questions. You quietly thanked the interviewers, and you and Heeseung were on your way.

Your words kept ringing in Heeseung's head.

Especially your answer to the question, "Why did you like him?"

You answered, "Because he's so perfect."

Heeseung? Perfect? He couldn't believe his ears! Were you telling the truth?

A calm silence fell over you and Heeseung as you walked the bustling streets of Hongdae. That question lingered in his mind, and before he knew it, his mouth was moving faster than his mind.

"Did you mean anything you said?"

His voice seemed to reverberate against the night air, ringing in his ears. You chewed on your lip. Then, you sucked in a sharp breath.

"Of course, Hee," you finally answered. "If it's you, I mean everything."

Heeseung sucked his bottom lip into his teeth, biting down so hard he drew blood. Once again, his hands found home on the hem of his jacket draped over you. 

"Good." He couldn't meet your eyes, not with the knowledge that you meant everything you said. He forced his attention onto the hem of the leather jacket that you were wearing, too shy to look at you. 

Heeseung only looked up when he felt your thumb pressing against his lip, eyes widening.

"Don't bite your lip too hard, Hee," you said, a smile in your voice. You thumb swiped against his lip, wiping off the small blotch of blood on it. "You'll bleed, and I'll have to kiss it better."

Heeseung's tongue darted out to swipe over his bleeding lip, brushing against your thumb. "What if I want you to kiss it better?"

"Well, then you better not keep me waiting."

His eyes flickered to your lips. He wanted to kiss them so bad. They looked so soft. What would they taste like? You liked strawberries— maybe they'd taste like that. When he didn't say or do anything, you changed the topic, unable to hide the disappointment in your face.

"Did you mean it?" You asked. "When you said that I was the most beautiful person you'd ever seen?"

"Oh my god, yes," Heeseung said under his breath, eyes still trained on your lips. "Always."

Another silence fell of you two, simply getting lost in each other's eyes. Maybe it was something in the Hongdae air, but Heeseung felt brave. His hand slithered to your waist, bringing you closer to him. When you slid your hands up his chest, resting them on his shoulders, Heeseung audibly gulped. Your faces inched closer and closer, until you could feel his breath against your cheek. You wanted to lean in and close the gap so bad. And you could tell that he wanted to, too.

Just as you were about to, however, the sound of a car honking and tires screeching interrupted you. Heeseung instinctively pulled away, his head whipping around to look at the commotion.

Oh hell no.

You were not going to let that stop you.

You snatched Heeseung's hand, before pulling him with you. You don't know how much you ran, or for how long, but you ran and ran until you found an empty alleyway.

You pushed him against the hard, concrete wall, a bit harsher than you expected too. Holding him by his shoulders, you put all your weight on him, caging him against the wall.

"You'd let me kiss you, right?" you rasped, out of breath.

Heeseung, also breathless, stared at you, lips parted. 

"I thought I already said," he breathed, "Do whatever you want. You're pretty."

With that, you crashed your lips onto his. His lips were soft, a little chapped. It felt so surreal. The scent of his cologne made you feel dizzy. When you pulled away, it was evident that he was feeling the same as you were. 

It was a chaste kiss, but the tension was so thick in the air. Somehow, that made it even more intimate.

"Wow..." was all Heeseung could utter. Under the moonlight, with you pressed up against him, you looked so goddamn pretty. Your face was illuminated with the pale light, making you look like an angel. Was he in heaven? Did he die yet? He wouldn't mind if he died right then and there, now that you (you!) kissed him. "Fuck, you're gonna kill me, [Name]."

"But you'd like it, right? Because I'm so pretty." The teasing tone in your voice would normally make Heeseung melt, but all he could do was grin. 

"You know I would."

The rest of the night, you and Heeseung don't kiss anymore. Not because you guys didn't want to kiss, but because the adrenaline wore off, and now the both of you were shy. It was almost comical, the way both of you completely reverted back to your bashful and sheepish selves, barely able to make eye-contact with each other.

"Thank you for tonight, Hee," you hummed, as you and Heeseung walked to the train station, hand-in-hand. "I had a lot of fun."

He scanned your face. The slight curve on your lips (oh god, your lips, the way the corner of your lip had a smudge of lipstick from kissing him earlier —how badly he wanted to kiss them again) was contagious. "Of course. I had a lot of fun, too."

The train ride back was quiet. You eventually began dozing off, resting your head on his shoulder.

"You did what?!" was the collective reaction of both you and Heeseung's friends. After that Friday together, you called together all of your friends to your house, to spill the beans. Likewise, Heeseung forced every single one of his friends into his living room.

"Ouuu, you little flirt!" Yunjin exclaimed. Currently, Yunjin, Winter, Hitomi, Yuri, and Minju were seated on your bedroom floor, while you dramatically flopped around on your bed. 

It was now that you explained to your friends your long-time crush on Heeseung, much to their pleasant surprise.

"And then what happened?" Minju asked, filing her finger-nails. "Did you profess your undying love for him?"

You groaned into your pillow. "I can't!"

"Why not?" Winter quirked a brow. "You guys literally kissed."

You let out another groan. "What if he doesn't like me like that?"

Your friends deadpanned.

Heeseung Lee didn't like you. He loved you. They would know better than anyone.

"[Name], honey, you're overthinking it," Yuri nudged you with her foot. "He gave you his jacket. I think that says enough."

"Well, what if I'm just getting ahead of myself and he's just being nice?"

"Girl..."

Heeseung had a similar reaction.

All of his friends stared at him like he just punched their grandmothers.

"You can't be serious right now, hyung..." Sunghoon said, pinching his nose-bridge.

All of his friends were piled onto one couch, while Heeseung laid out on the one across from them, almost like they were in a therapy session. 

"What if she just thinks I'm a good friend?" Heeseung used his hands to speak, theatrically moving them.

"What makes you think that?" Sunoo asked incredulously. 

Heeseung groaned. "[Name] tells Yuri Jo that she wants to marry her and they're good friends."

"Okay, and?"

"Well," Heeseung huffed. "What if [Name] kissed me because she sees me the same way that she sees Yuri?"

"Well, I'm good friends with Jungwon-hyung and I don't kiss him," Riki said matter-of-factly.

"Right..." Jungwon nodded his head slowly. "Hyung, do you really think a good friend would pin you against a wall and kiss you?"

"Do you think a good friend would kiss you three times and then call you cute like a bajillion other times?!" Jake chimed in.

"Let alone choose to keep your jacket?!" Jay sounded tired.

Heeseung clasped his hands together, thinking for a few moments.

"Yes."

All of his friends groaned in defeat.

"You're hopeless."

After a lot of urging and cross-communication between friend-groups, both of your friends managed to convince both you and Heeseung to confess to each other the next Monday.

"What if I faint the moment she says my name?" Heeseung catastrophized to Jay in the school bathroom. 

"Uh, I doubt that, hyung."

Heeseung texted you to meet him under the stairwell, and that was when he was going to confess. On your end, the moment that he texted that, you decided that you'd confess to him then.

When the time came, Heeseung headed out to the stairwell. His hands were clammy, and even when he wiped him on his uniform pants, he couldn't stop the trembling of his hands. What if everyone was instilling false hope in him? Gosh, Heeseung thought he was going to throw up. His stomach was churning, he was going to collapse if he saw you right now—

"Hee?" Your voice broke him out of his internal spiral. Seemingly, there was a halo around you, a light so bright that Heeseung was blinded.

"H-Hi," he stammered, straightening out his posture and clearing his throat.

Your hands were clasped behind your back, leaning forward toward him. "You wanted to talk to me, yeah?"

Heeseung couldn't bring himself to meet your gaze, his shoes suddenly becoming interesting. "Y-Yeah..."

The hallway where the stairwell was located was beginning to feel stuffy. Heeseung had never felt so nervous in his life. He was light-headed, barely able to even balance himself.

"Hee," you reached out to touch his arm, noticing his discomfort. "Let's go outside, okay?"

Going outside should have helped him cool down, but when you shrugged on his leather jacket to combat the cool air, Heeseung realized that there was no way in hell that he was going to get through this confession without dropping dead. 

The two of you walked around the school yard for a few minutes in silence. 

How should he start this confession? He had Sunghoon and Jake write out a script for him, and he spent the entire night memorizing it, but now in your presence he couldn't remember a single word. Should he have written a letter like Yuri Jo? Heeseung couldn't possibly contain himself.

"Hee," you finally said, disrupting the silence. "I have something to tell you."

Heeseung's mind wandered to the worst case scenario. 

You're going to tell him that you're moving across the world to marry the love of your life, aren't you? You're going to say that he's a great friend and that you just got a boyfriend, right? 

No, he needed to tell you his feelings first! If he didn't now, he'd never, and he'd burst into a million pieces!

"M-Me too!" he blurted, stopping in his tracks. 

You blinked at him, then smiled.

Oh, no! It's actually happening!

He could already hear your voice saying, "Hi, Heeseung, my boyfriend just proposed to me and you're invited to the wedding."

You sucked in a breath, parting your lips to speak.

He needed to tell you first! The little demons in his head kept replaying the scene of you asking him to be your groom of honor at your wedding with the love of your life next Saturday. He could hear the marriage officiant announcing, “I now pronounce you husband and wife” at your wedding, and he imagined himself sitting in that little wedding venue holding back tears.

Oh my god, he needed to say it now, or he'll never say it ever!

"Hee, I really--"

Heeseung cut you off. He squeezed his eyes shut, hands balling into fists.

"I like you, [Name]!" he yelled.

.

.

.

You stared at him in disbelief. Or were you flustered? Heeseung couldn't tell. With too much adrenaline in his veins, Heeseung threw away all the preparation and drafted scripts he and his friends made for this very moment.

"I-I.. I like you so much, I'm scared that I'm going to explode!" Heeseung continued shouting at you. He had no idea what he was saying. All he was doing was telling you the thoughts he'd had about you all this time. "You're so, so, so pretty and I can't believe that you're an actual, real, physical, person, and you make me feel so fucking stupid, I can't take it."

Your eyes were bulging out of your head at this point, your jaw dropped. 

"I've never liked anyone like I've liked you, a-and I just wanted to tell you this before you... you go off with someone else!"

Heeseung kept his eyes shut when he was done confessing, letting out a labored breath. There was no way that he could face you. The silence that fell over the two of you made Heeseung's heart sink to the bottom of his stomach. He squeezed his eyes in embarrassment. He gripped the hem of his shirt to relieve the bubbling anxiety inside him. Gosh, he was going to puke.

After a few moments, nothing happened. You didn't say a word. Did you just leave him there standing? Of course, you did. You were probably too kind and angelic to outright reject him. He was a fool to think that he had a chance with you—

Heeseung heard footsteps, and before he could react, he felt a pair of lips on his.

His eyes shot open.

You.

Were.

Kissing.

Him.

!!!

After he confessed!

Poor boy was so stiff, eyes wide.

Did that mean you liked him back?

You pulled away.

Usually, you had a reassuring smile on your face by default. Even during times where you were embarrassed, you almost never showed it on your face.

But this time, your entire face was painted with a flustered expression. Your cute lips jutted out in a mini pout, while your eyes were glued to the ground, avoiding his gaze.

A few pulses passed.

"I... I like you, too... by the way," you murmured.

Another few pulses passed.

You. Liked. Him.

Nonononono wait, was he dreaming?

You.

YOU.

The beautiful, angelic you. 

Liked him.

Without thinking, Heeseung stepped forward, gently grabbing your face.

"You're real, right?" he breathed. When glossy eyes stared back at him, Heeseung felt warmth spread across his chest. Your lips looked so appealing right now, he was craving them again. "I'm not dreaming, yeah?"

You blinked at him a few times. The corners of your lips quirked upward.

"Why, because I'm 'so pretty that you can't believe I'm real?' " your voice had a teasing tone in it, referencing his earlier confession. Heeseung chuckled, letting go of your face so that he could slide his hands to where they belonged: around your waist.

"Just kiss me," he mumbled, looking at you with lidded eyes.

You grinned. "Gladly."

With that, you smashed your lips onto his. Instead of the chaste, soft, kisses that you shared earlier, this one was different. You shoved your tongue into Heeseung's mouth, exploring all its crevices. Poor boy was so surprised that he squeezed your waist, letting out a small whine. The feeling of you smirking against his lips gave him butterflies.

You finally pulled away breathless, but gave him no time to breathe. You grasped his chin, giving you easy control. 

"You drive me so crazy," he murmured against the shell of your ear.

You pressed a kiss at the juncture between his neck and ear. "I drive you crazy?" you cocked your brow.

"You," you muttered. You began pressing kisses down his jaw. 

“Drive.” 

Kiss.

“Me.” 

Kiss. 

“So-” 

Kiss.

"Fucking-" 

Kiss.

"Crazy."

Before you could pounce on him with more kisses, Heeseung, red in the face, flopped over you, hiding his face in the crook of your neck. He let out a cute groan.

"What, are you getting shy on me?" you teased him, running your fingers through his hair. He shook his head against your shoulder, making you coo.

"I can't believe you like me back, that's all," he mumbled, muffled by your shoulder. 

You laughed. "How? I feel like I was so obvious."

Heeseung looked up at you with pink cheeks, frowning. "You don't even want to know how hopelessly in love with you I was."

You quirked a brow at him. 

"Yeah?" You pecked his forehead. "Try me."

Heeseung let out a breathy chuckle. He attacked your lips.

"How about I show you?"

FIN.

likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated :)

[dwaekkicidal]

i need to get this out of my system bc of Jeongin's ATE images that dropped today (this is bc of a part on the video but im posting with the images bc fuck)

<800 words | gn!reader & oral (m receiving)

The sounds of slick, wet noises fill the room. Jeongin was leaning all the way back into the couch, legs spread wide as you sat perfectly between them and rested your hands on his thighs. His right arm was resting behind his head as the other rested on your nape, using his long fingers to stroke your cheek softly with his thumb.

"Jagiya-" His voice was low and raspy, hoarse almost. You lowered your head more, taking him impossibly deeper in your throat as you swallowed around him. The feeling of it pulled a whine from him as he struggled to hold his hips against the cushions, trying with all his might to not buck even farther into your throat and choke you.

Your eyes drag themselves up his body, taking in every detail of his outfit. Starting at the two-toned jeans that are opened and pulled down just slightly so you can touch him properly. Then onto the black shirt that is pulled halfway up his stomach, showing off his abs that rise and fall with each gasp of air into his lungs. The denim jacket that was previously covering him up is now dropping off his shoulder, showing off the muscles there that tense as he stretches down to touch your cheek so lovingly.

Then your eyes land on his neck, taking in the sweaty skin that glistens from the sunlight bleeding through the blinds. They trail up a few inches more and study his lips, the bottom lip is swollen and damp from the way he keeps taking it between his teeth. On your way up again, you catch a glimpse of the colorful band-aid on his cheek that's now loosening up from how hot and sweaty his skin has become. Your eyes finally halt at his. His foxlike eyes are lidded as he gazes into your eyes, having watched your expedition up his body. A single drop of sweat rolls down his temple as his lips part.

"F-Fuck. You really like this look that much? I'll take it- ah... I'll take it home with us." You flatten your tongue around him in contentment, more than happy with the idea and the moan it pulls from him. He watches in awe as you take one more good look at him before tilting your head down and bottoming out as far as you can go, your nose getting tickled by the trimmed hair on his pelvis.

The hand on your neck moves up to the top of your head, holding it in place as he throws his head back in a silent moan. You gag once and take everything in you to fight your gag reflex back, allowing you to swallow around him again. His hips twitch and you can tell he's on the edge so you suck harshly and allow a hand to move near your chin, taking a hold of his balls and massaging them Then you're rewarded for your efforts. His hips twitch and the hand in your hair pushes you down more as he moans loudly, combating those of a pornstar.

He holds you in place as he fucks your mouth softly, riding out his high and moaning loudly into the air. Once he finishes cumming down your throat, he pulls out slowly. He groans at the sight of you swallowing the few drops that are left in your mouth as you make eye contact with him, smirking and presenting your mouth to him to show that it's completely empty.

"You're a fucking menace." He laughs, still breathless from the mind-numbing orgasm. You smile and crawl up his body, finding comfort on his lap and allowing him to pull you into a kiss. His hands rake down your back and rest against your ass, squeezing the flesh there as he shoves his tongue past your lips. He squeezes the flesh there and moans against your mouth, "Thank you, baby. Let me repay-"

His phone rings obnoxiously loud and cuts him off, making him groan loudly and throw his head back. He mumbles curses as he reaches to grab his phone, frowning when he sees his manager's name pop up. Already knowing what that means, you tuck him back into his boxers and tug his jeans up a few inches, zipping them up and closing the metal button there as he talks. The phone is thrown on the couch and he pouts angrily, hands drawing circles into your thighs. "'Said they'll be back in 5 minutes to finish the photoshoot."

You giggle and place a kiss on the corner of his frown, "Don't worry about it, you can take care of me once we're at the hotel~"

[makoodles]

tìtunu | tsu'tey (part 4 | nsfw)

pairing: tsu'tey x human fem reader

word count: 10k words

warnings: nsfw, jealousy, hurt/comfort, size difference, p in v sex, doggy-style, rough (?) sex

notes: i really though that i was finished with this, but y'all got me with the asks about jealous and protective tsu'tey 😭 (also this gif makes me fucking FERALLLL)

read it on ao3

part one | part two | part three (nsfw) | part 4 (nsfw) masterlist

Tsu’tey doesn’t think he’s ever been so smug in his whole life.

He survived the battle with the Sky People, he has healed from his wounds and come back even stronger, and he has been successful in his mating advances with his chosen mate. 

The fact that his chosen mate was one of the little sky demons that he hates so much, was a surprise to the whole village (he had surprised himself too, truthfully) but everything is different with you. You are not destructive, you are not harmful – you study the flora and fauna of his planet with the reverence of a wide-eyed child, and he finds it terribly endearing. You are so small, and his planet can be such a harsh place for one as soft as a human. It’s a constant source of frustration and concern, despite his best efforts to handle and minimise possible risks.

“You are certain?” He demands of the Sky Person in front of him.

The man is one of the so-called scientists that live in the pathetic excuse for housing that the alien demons had built in the forest after the rest of the Sky People had been forced off the planet. There’s not many of them; the ones who stayed were approved by the few loyal demons, and they are largely respectful of the native populations as they try to integrate as much as they are allowed. That does not mean that Tsu’tey trusts them, and it certainly doesn’t mean that he likes them.

“Yes,” The little man in front of him says, visibly nervous. He swallows thickly, his heavy breaths fogging up his odd little mask. “Yes, we tested all the fruit you brought, and they all came up safe for human consumption. A human digestive system wouldn’t be able to break down something like meat from Pandoran animals, but the fruits you brought should be fine. Chemically, it’s quite similar to fruits we have back on Earth-”

Tsu’tey just grunts. He does not care about Earth's fruits. All he wants to know is whether he can feed you some of the fruits that he has foraged, and now that he has gotten his answer he is not inclined to stand around and listen to the little man bumble along any longer.

 Without another word he turns and strides away, reaching his pa’li and pulling himself astride her with ease before urging her forward into the forest. At a swift pace, he reaches the village in no time and from there he moves quickly to find you.

Unsurprisingly, he finds you beneath one of the pxiut trees. You have your notebook open in front of you as you lay on your belly making your silly little notes, totally absorbed in your work. As he approaches, he takes the opportunity to look you over.

You appear content, head bowed over your work as you write. The bright sunshine filters in through the trees overhead, sending dappled patterns over your exposed skin. Seeing your strange human form dressed in the traditional clothes of the Na’vi always sets Tsu’tey alight, and his tail swishes appreciatively as he admires you.

“Hello, demon,” He murmurs when he reaches you, lowering himself to his knees out of pure habit. It has become second-nature to lower himself to your level when he’s around you – he enjoys the closeness of it.

You hum. Though you don’t lift your eyes from your work, a smile is beginning to curve your lips. “Is that any way to greet your mate?”

Tsu’tey’s lips quirk in response, and he leans in so his nose is nuzzling into your hair. You lean into him in a move that’s mostly automatic, and he feels a flare of smug pleasure at the ease with which you melt against his side.

“My little demon,” He corrects himself with a sardonic little grin, enjoying the way you roll your eyes fondly. “I have brought you food. Will you eat?”

Your eyes dart to his immediately, visibly uncertain. He already knows what you’re thinking, and he tries not to wince. 

“It is safe,” He says quickly. “I asked one of the tawtute. They did tests.”

Your expression changes then, your grin growing sharper. “Aw, look at you taking care of me, huh?”

He can tell by your tone of voice that you’re teasing him, but that doesn’t stop the swell of pride in his chest. Yes, he is taking care of you. It’s always gratifying when his efforts are noticed, and he tries not to look too smug as he reaches out to touch you. 

You are laying on your belly with your notebook in front of you, so his hand comes to rest on the back of one of your thighs. You are so small beneath him, so soft and squishy compared to the lean hardness of most Na’vi bodies. He can’t resist squeezing just slightly, just to watch the squidge of your thighs poke out between his spread fingers.

You roll your eyes at him – you know exactly what he’s doing, after all. He has not been very successful at keeping his fascination with your little pliable body a secret, and why should he? You are his mate, and you belong to him as surely as he belongs to you. Getting to touch you like this is a privilege belonging only to him, and he wishes to get as much out of it as he can.

“I always take care of you.” He says, and your smile softens.

“Yeah, big guy, you do.” You say, and the fondness in your voice is so obvious that it makes Tsu’tey’s hardened heart tremble a little in his chest.

His hand slides up your plush thighs and comes to a rest over the swell of your backside, relishing the heat of your skin even through the tewng covering you. You’re even softer here, nothing but squidge, and he allows himself a moment to indulge in squeezing you here too as you laugh.

“Alright, pervert,” You snicker, closing your notebook and pushing yourself up. “You can’t just start feeling me up – we’re in public.”

Tsu’tey’s hand falls away as you move to stand, and he has to fight the urge to pout hard. “The People know that we are mated in the eyes of Eywa.”

“That doesn’t mean that it’s okay to traumatise them all like this.” You snort. “I don’t think anyone wants to see you groping me in broad daylight.”

Many of the People have a sort of morbid curiosity about how mating with a tawtute works, so Tsu’tey isn’t entirely certain that you’re correct in that assumption. There are many who would be only too pleased to watch. But he doesn’t argue; you are beginning to push yourself to your feet, so he stands too. 

“What is pervert?” He asks, looking down at you as you stretch your arms overhead and yawn. 

Truthfully he gets distracted for a moment, admiring your soft belly and exposed skin in Na’vi clothes – if he could burn all your human coverings without you getting angry at him, he certainly would. He wants to see you dressed in the clothes of his People all the time.

You laugh as if he had said something very funny. “A pervert is what you are.”

“Is it a bad thing?” He wonders, reaching out so that his hand rests on the back of your neck across your shoulders. 

Your eyes flutter closed as he kneads lightly at the base of your neck. “No,” You murmur softly. “Not when it’s you.”

He relaxes, nodding decisively before reaching for your small hand. “Come. You will eat and watch me train.”

It’s become almost like a routine for him to drag you with him to practice fighting or sparring. While you don’t come with him every day, he has managed to bring you often enough that the sight of you trailing behind him towards the training ground is a familiar one for the young warriors in training. 

As he leads you towards the training grounds, he sees the few young warriors gathered around the archery practice range turn to watch his approach. Their eyes flicker towards you – though they never say anything about it, he knows that their curiosity is burning at the sight of you at Tsu’tey’s hip. The apprehension and caution about the Sky People is still very much embedded in their hearts and minds, and yet you are probably the least intimidating thing they’ve ever seen in their lives.

Tsu’tey imagines that his own interest and desire for you only fuels their curiosity further. He had gained somewhat of a reputation for himself before he had met you; he is the strongest warrior in the clan, he had been trained from a very young age for leadership, and he is a prominent and well-respected figure within the village. He was much desired as a mate by many women in the clan.

 So when he chose you, the small and soft demon that is entirely unsuited to their planet, it was a source of surprise to many. Yet he is lucky – his people are supportive, even when they do not understand his choice of mate. Even if some of the women remain slightly disgruntled with him.

“You will sit over here,” He pushes you gently towards a clearing, out of the way of the other Na’vi that tower over you, to a spot where you will be safe. “You can see well, from here.”

It’s important that you have a good view, after all. He likes it when you watch him – it’s satisfying to give you a display of his physical strength and his skills, to remind you that he is a strong mate for you.

You just sit down where he’s directed you, and smile eagerly at him. He knows that you enjoy watching him too, and his tail swishes in anticipation. If you are pleased with what you see, it can only mean good things in store for him later.

“What are you up to today, then?” You ask, lounging back in the soft mossy ground against the stump of a tree.

“Spear training, and then hand to hand combat.” He says, reaching into the small bag around his waist. He pulls out the soft wrapped leaf package that he had prepared earlier and hands it to you. “Fruit. Eat.”

You take the wrapped fruit from him and peer at it with curiosity, poking at it with your small fingers. You seem pleased, and take a breath before lifting your mask so you can pop the fruit in your mouth before replacing it.

“It’s good,” You say, smiling, before tilting your head up at him with a faux-innocent expression. “So, do I get to see you all oiled up and wrestling some other super muscly man?”

That makes him chuckle, and he reaches out to stroke a single finger over the top of your head. “Would you like to see that?”

“Oh yeah,” You hum, and your grin behind your mask is unmistakably suggestive. “Definitely.”

His own grin grows sharp, and he bends on one knee so that he can be at eye-level with you. “I can oil myself up and show you wrestling later, after eclipse.”

That makes you laugh, tilting your head back with delight. “Oh, that’s so corny.”

He has no idea what that means, corny, but you look happy so it must be a good thing. He leans down and kisses the top of your head before straightening up. From behind, he can hear some of the younger warriors in training begin to call his name.

He gives you one last lingering look before turning and making his way towards the others.

Training takes the better half of the afternoon. 

He demonstrates spear throwing techniques, he corrects postures and methods, he shouts criticisms and praises by turn. Every so often he glances towards you, mostly out of habit – you have pulled out your little book at some point, and are making notes again. Every single time, without fail, you look up as though you feel his eyes on you. And every time, you beam at him and his heart stumbles a little in his chest. Burying his reactions as best he can in front of his fellow warriors, the most Tsu’tey allows himself is the flick of a single ear.

When they finally do get to hand to hand training, he sees you visibly perk up and his ego inflates significantly. It is so very gratifying to be able to train and show off in front of you, especially when he successfully overcomes his opponents. 

He can feel your watchful eyes on him all the time, pushing him harder and harder as he wrestles with warrior after warrior. The young ones in training watch on too, eager to learn, but the only gaze he truly cares about is yours.

Eventually, he takes a break from tumbling around the square that had been cleared off specifically for training and steps to the side so that he can observe some of the young ones in training practice their form. While he attempts to focus on calling out constructive criticism, he can’t stop his eyes from darting towards you occasionally.

Though your notebook is splayed out front of you, you are making no effort at all to hide the fact that you’re watching him. His chest is heaving and a thin layer of sweat coats his body, and he can feel the weight of your stare dropping slowly over the length of him. It makes him feel hot and itchy, and he has to fight to keep himself from marching right over to you and doing something very stupid indeed.

He is so distracted by your stare that he almost doesn’t notice when one of the other warriors sidles up to him. It is Takuk, and he is watching him with an amused sort of expression.

“Brother,” He greets him, offering the customary gesture of respect. “You are distracted today.”

His statement is nothing but the truth, but Tsu’tey bristles anyway. Takuk had been a hunter trainee not too long ago himself, but has developed into a man in the last year; he has claimed an ikran, he wears a battle band around his waist, but he has not yet taken a mate. Tsu’tey dislikes the way he is looking at you, considering you are already claimed.

“I am not distracted.” Tsu’tey lies through his teeth. His tone is sharp enough that he hopes it will dissuade Takuk from this line of conversation.

Takuk just hums, clearly unconvinced. He has grown irritatingly confident since his iknimaya. He looks over to where you’re sitting; you’ve lowered your head once more to scribble in your book, and Takuk takes the opportunity to squint at you.

“What is it like, being with one of them?” He asks, casting a slant-eyed glance back at Tsu’tey. “Is she not too… small?”

Tsu’tey’s tail lashes around his ankles, though he keeps his expression carefully contained. He is proud to be mated to you, but he does not like questions like this. He does not like to think that Takuk is imagining you like that.

“She is small,” He acknowledges, his voice clipped. “But not too small.”

It is enough to answer his question without giving him details, but Takuk grins as though what he has said is much more revealing than it truly is. When he looks back over in your direction again, Tsu’tey tenses.

Takuk notices, and sighs. “Brother, I am only asking. We are curious about your mate. You are so protective of her.”

Tsu’tey rolls his shoulders, considering. This is not untrue. The curiosity of his people is blatant, and mostly harmless; perhaps he has been too protective, but he has always been a private man.

“It works.” He says at last. It feels a little as though the words are being pulled from him by force. “She is small, and strange, but it works.”

Takuk’s ears twitch forwards in amusement, but he wisely decides not to make a smart comment.

“Even though she cannot make tsaheylu?” He wonders, low and quiet.

Ah. So that is the source of all their curiosity. Tsu’tey supposes he cannot blame them for that. It is a most unusual relationship he has with you, after all. Tsaheylu is the building block of all life on Pandora, and it is how every living creature interacts with the world around them. To have taken a mate that is unable to make this bond would be almost unthinkable to many Na’vi. Tsu’tey supposes he cannot blame them for that morbid curiosity – it would have been unthinkable for him once, too.

“Even though she cannot make tsaheylu.” Tsu’tey confirms quietly. “She sees me anyway.”

Takuk is thoughtfully silent at that, which Tsu’tey is mercifully grateful for. That was a little too vulnerable for his tastes, and he ends up clearing his throat and straightening his shoulders in an attempt to regain some of his authority. 

“Back to training.” He says firmly, reaching out to push at Takuk’s head. “No more making eyes at my mate.”

Takuk just laughs, his ears twitching with good humour. “It is not me you need to tell, brother,” He says, before tilting his head pointedly in your direction. “It is the trainees that are so curious about her.”

Tsu’tey follows his gaze. Sure enough, you are no longer alone in your spot at the side of the training grounds. Several of the hunter trainees are crouched near you, watching you with big curious eyes as you chat to one of the young Na’vi that has been bold enough to creep forward. It is At’u, one of the foremost young men in training.

Tsu’tey’s ears flatten when he sees the way At’u’s tail is coiling. It is the universal signal of interest among their kind, and the audacity of the younglings infuriate him.

Without waiting another moment, Tsu’tey strides your way. He can hear Takuk starting to laugh from behind him, but he ignores him; he is precision-focused on you and the jumped up little shits around you.

When At’u reaches out to touch the hair on your head, Tsu’tey’s vision goes black around the edges. Anger bubbles up in his chest; curiosity is one thing, but having the insolence to touch you right in front of Tsu’tey’s eyes is another thing.

When Tsu’tey reaches you, you look up at him with a smile. He doesn’t return it; he’s too busy levelling a dark glare At’u’s way, his ears flat and tail held low. The youngling’s tail coils low in response, but he does not move away from you.

Tsu’tey hisses at him, baring his sharp teeth as he rounds on the rest of the trainees. They scatter almost instantly, scrambling to flee back to the training area. At’u flees too, flinching hard before following after his friends.

“Tsu’tey!” You hiss at him, visibly horrified. “That was so rude! They were only curious-”

 He’s still glaring at the backs of the young trainees as he crouches down in front of you, but after a moment he turns to look at you. Your brows are scrunched, your eyes flared a little in outrage as you scowl at him. Oh, you look angry with him. It’s more adorable than you probably mean it to be.

“They do not know their place.” He mutters, scooching a little closer to you.

“They’re children!” You protest, rolling your eyes.

“They are training to be hunters and warriors.” Tsu’tey grumbles. As cute as you are when you’re angry, he doesn’t like being on the receiving end of it. “They know what they’re doing. They will be eligible to pick a mate after iknimaya.”

That makes you pause, and your eyes flicker carefully over his face. 

“Are you…” You begin slowly. “Are you jealous? They’re going to pick Na’vi mates. Besides, I already have a mate.”

Warm satisfaction pools in his chest, and he scooches closer to you yet again. Something deep within him eases now that you’re within arms reach.

“Did you not see the way they were twitching their ears at you?” He murmurs, brow furrowing. You hesitate, and his tail lashes in agitation. “I knew it! You do not even see how they act-”

“Oh, hush,” You sigh, reaching out to pet the side of his face. “You’re being silly. Why would I want anyone else when I have a big handsome beefcake like you, huh?”

Tsu’tey has no idea what beefcake is, but you sound pleased when you say it so he imagines it is a good thing. 

Your thumb strokes over his cheek, and then you frown and reach out to wipe under his nose. “You’re bleeding.”

He had received an elbow to the face at some point during hand to hand combat, but it feels only mildly tender now. Still though, when you begin smoothing away the blood with your thumb he leans into your hands. It feels good to be cared for. 

“Does it hurt?” You wonder, peering closer as you try to assess the damage.

“No,” Tsu’tey snorts, a little offended. How weak do you think he is? But then you start to pull away, taking your little hands away from his face, and he’s quick to add, “A little. Will you care for me later?”

That makes you laugh, and his ears wiggle smugly when you lean forward to bump your forehead against his. 

“Yes,” You whisper, grinning up at him. “I’ll take real good care of you.”

His tail thumps off the ground, his mouth beginning to curl in an eager smile. Your eyes are lingering around his sweat-slick chest and your thumb strokes over his bloodied nose, gentle over his bruised skin. He fights the urge to lean in further into your grasp, though it’s difficult.

“You watched me train?”

You huff a soft laugh. “Of course. Couldn’t tear my eyes away. You looked good, big guy.”

Tsu’tey swears he feels his whole heart thump heavily in his chest. There is a bone-deep satisfaction that settles over him at the confirmation that you see him as someone worthy, a good mate. It soothes the edges of his jagged pride and makes him feel whole.

“I am happy to have pleased you,” He murmurs sincerely, tucking his ears low as he meets your eyes. Your eyes soften, and you brush the last remnants of blood from his nose before taking your hand back. “Would you like to watch further?”

You hum in thought for a moment, before shrugging. “I think I’ll head back to the kelku. I wanted to cross-check some notes I took today with my other research.”

Tsu’tey has never been able to make much sense of your science talk, but he inclines his head in acknowledgement. “Then I will meet you back at home, ma’yawntutsyìp.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Tsu’tey’s feels as though he’s crawling out of his skin. He runs through the rest of his duties on autopilot, offering criticism and compliments by turns to the young warriors and hunters throughout the day, but his mind is preoccupied with thoughts of you the whole time.

It’s a struggle to stay focused. He keeps thinking of your eyes tracing over his chest and stomach, of your soft hands on his face, of your coy promise to take care of him later. It feels almost physically painful to force himself to finish out training with the others, but he pushes himself anyway.

It’s nearing evening when he finally begins to finish up, delivering his last few instructions to the young hunters as they begin to ready themselves to return to the village. He’s antsy, watching impatiently as the young ones push and laugh at each other.

When Takuk approaches him again, he has to fight not to roll his eyes – he has picked up too many of your little human mannerisms already.

“Your aim has improved.” Tsu’tey grunts, preoccupied with slinging his bow back over his shoulder.

Takuk perks up, visibly pleased with the compliment. He inclines his head in thanks, before leaning his weight casually back on one leg as he watches Tsu’tey pack up. He’s no doubt noticing that he’s moving with an unusual sense of urgency.

“Your mate is waiting for you, hm?” He asks, his mouth twitching.

Tsu’tey’s tail lashes in warning. He doesn’t like Takuk’s teasing tone, but he can’t help the anticipation that’s building in his stomach at the thought of getting back to you after your teasing throughout the day.

“Yes,” Tsu’tey grunts. “I will bring her fruit.”

Takuk nods, clearly approving, before looking to his feet. He appears to be thinking, and Tsu’tey waits as patiently as he can for him to speak again.

“I am thinking of taking a mate soon,” The young warrior says at last, still keeping his gaze low. “Do.. Do you think that Kaey’ra would have me?”

Tsu’tey pauses to give his question some thought. “Yes. I think she would. It would be a good match.”

Takuk’s shoulders loosen, and his ears rotate forward in satisfaction. It is a confidence booster for Tsu’tey too – it is nice to have his opinion so valued by one of his past students, now a peer. He is happy for his friend, and Tsu’tey claps him on the shoulder. 

“I must plan a courting display,” Takuk murmurs, his brow lowering thoughtfully. “I will-”

He cuts himself off, staring somewhere behind Tsu’tey’s shoulder. Frowning, Tsu’tey turns to follow his gaze only to be met with the sight of one of the young warriors approaching him with his tail tucked low between his legs.

“Ma’Tsu’tey,” He greets, his ears flattened anxiously against his head. “I am sorry-”

“What.” Tsu’tey interrupts, his eyes narrowing. The sight of the youngling all twisted and anxious leaves a bad feeling settling into his stomach. “What is it?”

The youngling looks as though he would rather be anywhere else other than right there. “It’s just.. Your mate is-”

Tsu’tey’s stomach plummets to his feet, and he takes a step forward. His teeth bare without conscious thought. “Where is she?”

The young hunter flinches, but to his credit he doesn’t step back. “She is with tsahìk-”

It feels as though Tsu’tey’s brain has been filled with static panic. He’s hardly aware of turning away from the warriors and racing away, his feet pounding hard against the ground as he shoulders his way past the young trainees that are still lingering around the training area.

The only reason for you to be with Mo’at is that you are injured, and the thought fills Tsu’tey with a bone-deep, nauseating fear. He was only apart from you for a few hours at most – how could you have gotten hurt in such a short space of time? He thinks of your fragile bones, your thin skin, your diminutive stature; he knows that the answer is all too easily.

He can’t help himself from conjuring up worst-case scenarios – he imagines you broken and bleeding, unconscious, crying from pain, calling for him when he’s too far away to hear you. He feels sick as he reaches the village, making a beeline for the tsahìk’s hut.

“Move,” He snarls at someone who walks across his path. He’s blind with panic, hardly even sees who he’s snarling at. They jump out of his way as he storms past, practically diving his way towards the tsahìk’s home.

Usually, Tsu’tey prides himself on his grace and agility. He has always been the best warrior in the clan, and one of the most decorated hunters – his training has left him swift and dextrous. And yet now he finds himself stumbling, acting like a fear-stricken fool as he ducks his way into the hut.

Mo’at doesn’t even glance up at his unceremonious entrance, though you do. You’re perched carefully in the corner, with the tsahìk hunched over you as she carefully wraps your forearm with plant-fibre bandages. The whole space smells like the medicinal herbs used for healing – he guesses that she’s spread healing paste over you.

Something loosens in his chest at the sight of you unbloodied and conscious, though he doesn’t relax just yet.

“Oh, shit.” You sigh when you see him, before offering him a weak little smile.

“What has happened?” He demands, ducking his way under the dried herbs hanging from the woven ceiling as he makes his way towards you.

Mo’at still doesn’t look away from her work. “Where are your manners, Tsu’tey?”

Her tone is sharp enough to chasten him, but he does not relent completely. He comes to a stop over Mo’at’s shoulder and attempts to lean over her in an attempt to see what she’s doing, his tail whipping anxiously around his feet.

When he spots your arm, he makes a wounded sort of noise. Your wrist is all swollen, and if he looks closely he can see the beginning of discolouration around the joint as it begins to bruise. He ends up dropping to his knees beside you. In his haste, he almost pushes Mo’at aside, oblivious to the sharp look she sends his way. 

“What happened, ma’muntxate?” He demands, reaching out to take your wrist in his hand so he can get a better look.

Mo’at knocks his hand away with a resounding slap before hissing a sharp warning at him. “Do not touch while I am bandaging!”

“Is it broken?” He asks, whirling to face the tsahìk. His tail curls around your thigh, squeezing tight as he seeks reassurance in the form of your soft, warm flesh.

“It’s fine-” You start to say, but Tsu’tey isn’t listening to your attempts at placating him.

“It is a sprain.” Mo’at says. Her tone implies that she is sick of dealing with him already, but he pays her no mind.

“How did this happen?” He asks yet again, shuffling forward on his knees so that the bulk of his body is curling around you. There is no danger here in Mo’at’s tent, but it makes him feel better when he hunches protectively around you.

“It’s no big deal,” You say quickly, clearly attempting damage control. “I just- I fell, and I landed a little awkwardly-”

“Fell where?”

That makes you pause, and Tsu’tey’s expression flattens as he waits for your answer.

“Um.. The ladder,” You murmur, glancing down at your lap. “The ladder that leads to the kelku. I slipped climbing up it, and fell. But it wasn’t from very high.”

He hadn’t thought it possible, but he feels his stomach sink even further at that. Fuck, it was his fault. The vine ladder he had woven for you was only meant to be a temporary measure to help you climb up into your shared kelku in the high trees until he could get around to building a more permanent solution. He had considered the possibility of you falling, but never seriously – not even children would fall so easily.

He must look stricken somehow, because your own face begins to contort in response. 

“It was my fault,” You say hurriedly. “I wasn’t paying proper attention, and I slipped. I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

He lets out a soft, low sound, before shaking his head. His jaw is clenched tight. What a stupid mistake for him to make. His tiny soft mate, so frail and weak. He should have known that the ladder was too risky for you to be climbing up and down. Only a sprain; he is so lucky that it was only a sprain. What would he have done if it was something worse? 

Mo’at clicks her tongue, then sits back and surveys her handiwork. It’s as neat and meticulous as ever, the bandages wrapped tight around your injured wrist. 

“There,” Mo’at says simply. “Rest it. It will be just fine in a few days.”

Tsu’tey hardly hears her at all. He’s too busy staring at the bandages, pale green against your bruised skin. This should never have happened. He’s meant to protect you, to keep you safe. That’s what he had promised you. What kind of mate is he, if he can’t even provide a safe way for you to enter the home he had offered you?

He’s pulled out of his cycle of self-flagellation by Mo’at swatting ungently at his head.

“Take your mate and leave,” She says, shooting him an unimpressed look. “No sulking. Just watch after her.”

“Yes, tsahìk.” He says quietly, inclining his head towards her out of respect.

When he turns back to you, you’re already watching him with big, guilty eyes. That only makes him feel worse – why should you feel guilty, when it is him that has failed you?

“Come, ma’yawne,” He murmurs, reaching out to hold you. “I will take you home.”

You open your mouth, no doubt to be stubborn and protest that you can walk yourself, or some other such nonsense, but he doesn’t wait to give you the chance. He just tucks his arms under your back and legs and hauls you up into his arms, holding you close to his chest as he stands.

With one last murmured thanks to Mo’at, he carries you right out of the hut and back into the evening light.

Tsu’tey is willing to admit that over the next few days, he is a little more… vigilant than usual.

“Tsu’tey, seriously,” You complain. “It’s a sprained wrist, it’s nothing!”

He doesn’t justify that with a response. Your injury is not nothing. It is a representation of his failure as a mate, and it hurts his pride to look at the bandages for too long. All he can do is commit himself to ensuring that something like this never happens again.

He brings you food and water in bed, he offers you gifts of books and the silly little glowing pads he manages to bully out of the tawtute in the human science encampment, and he makes sure the kelku is more cushioned and comfortable than ever before. His aim is to make sure that you have everything you need right there in your home, so that you won’t have to leave again – at least, not until he has finished safe-guarding the sloping rope bridge he is attempting to build for you.

Even now, your legs dangle from the edge of the kelku’s entrance as you watch him work on the wide branch below. You’re secure where you are, your hands holding tight to the edge of the tree branch that your legs hang from, but Tsu’tey keeps stealing looks up at you every couple of moments to ensure that you’re still there.

Around the twentieth time he glances up at you, you roll your eyes and meet his gaze with a challenging stare. 

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” You ask, swinging your legs in the air. “It’s a nice day, and I haven’t been out in ages.”

Tsu’tey grunts, but doesn’t answer properly. His tail curls as he weaves another section of his makeshift rope bridge; it will be narrow and a little precarious, but he is certain it will be a better solution than the ladder you had fallen from.

From above, you click your tongue in dissatisfaction. “I know what you’re doing.”

He slants a glance up at you, lips pursed. Once again, he says nothing. Knowing you, you’re not finished speaking yet anyway.

Sure enough, his silence only seems to irritate you.

“I’m not staying up here forever, you know.” You say insistently, and Tsu’tey tenses when you lean forward to get a better look at him as he works on the branch below you. “I know you’re angry at me for getting hurt, but it’s only a sprained wrist and it’s not like-”

“I am not angry.” Tsu’tey interrupts, though he can’t manage to meet your eyes. His ears are pinned to the sides of his head; is that really what you think? 

You let out a clearly frustrated noise. “You’ve hardly spoken to me for days. All you do is work on this stupid bridge-”

He finally looks up at that, lip curling in annoyance as he squints up to you. The rope bridge is admittedly rudimentary, but it’s for you. It’s true that he hasn’t been as demonstrative with his affections as usual for the past couple of days, but you’ve been injured. He couldn’t even think of touching you when you’re hurt – the remnants of bruising around your wrist makes him feel that sense of failure every time he catches sight of them.

When he fails to verbally respond yet again, you scowl at him. “Are you just not going to talk to me?”

At that, he sighs. “What do you want me to say?”

You set your jaw and glare for a second, before promptly shoving yourself to your feet. Tsu’tey tenses once more as you stand, so nerve-wrackingly close to the edge of the kelku, before you turn on your heel and march back inside.

Once you’re gone, Tsu’tey allows his shoulders to drop. Damn. He probably could have handled that better – communication has never been his strong suit. He’s never really felt the compulsion to explain himself or his thinking to anyone before, and now he finds himself at a loss for how to approach his feelings with you.

You think that he’s angry with you, which is absolutely untrue. Are you angry with him? Fuck. 

Sighing, he finishes one last knot in the rope he was working on before dropping it. He needs to sort this out. 

It only takes one jump for him to catch the edge of the kelku with his hands, and then he hauls himself up with ease. Part of the reason that he had been so startled when he realised you had been injured climbing the tree was because it was something that should have been so easy, something that just came naturally to the Omaticaya. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might have been possible for you to fall so easily.

When he steps inside the kelku, he spots your little form curled up on the woven rug atop the cushy leaves he had padded the wooden floor with. You’re holding one of the glowing pad things that the tawtute are always tapping away on, although you don’t appear to be reading anything off it – it seems more like you’re simply staring fixedly at it in an effort to avoid meeting his stare.

He moves slowly towards you, tail held low in as non-threatening a manner as he can manage. You don’t look up, though he can see the way your eyes slide subtly toward him. When he kneels down by your side, you’re forced to raise your gaze towards him.

“I do not mean to upset you, Säsrätx,” He murmurs, his voice low as he bends his head towards you. He does not want you to be angry with him – the thought curdles in his stomach.

You take a slow inhale through your nose, the breath fogging lightly against the clear material of your breathing mask before dissipating. 

“I’m not made of glass, big guy,” You mumble, glancing back down at your hands. “You can’t treat me like a kid just because I got a minor injury.”

Tsu’tey makes a soft grumbling noise in the back of his throat, but doesn’t argue. You’ve never been annoyed at him like this, and he’s surprised by how much he doesn’t like it. He’s never been one to put too much stock in the opinion of others, but this is different. You are his mate, and he doesn’t want to make anything worse.

He adjusts his stance so that he’s crouched at your side, his much bigger body curling over yours as he looms over you. You’re just so small, it makes his palms itch. He hasn’t touched you properly in days, so afraid that he’ll make your injuries worse, but now he’s finding it difficult to keep his hands to himself.

You must be thinking the same thing, because your gaze drifts from his face down over his shoulders and chest, lingering around his woven necklaces and his battle waistband. Tsu’tey preens a little under your eyes, his chest puffing out a little.

“You should not have been hurt like this,” He murmurs, reaching out for your hand. “The kelku should have been safe for you. This was my fault.”

You just sigh, and shake your head. “Don’t be stupid. It was an accident. These things happen.”

Tsu’tey grunts unhappily. He’s too busy peering carefully at your wrist; your wrist and hand look so fragile in his much larger palm, and his lips press together tight as he strokes a careful thumb over the lingering discolouration on your skin. The bruises are almost gone, but he can still see the faint traces remaining.

“I have waited a long time to take a mate and have a family of my own,” He murmurs without looking up at your face. He tilts his head, a wry sort of smirk beginning to grow on his face. “I did not expect it would be with a tawtute, but I would not change things. I have lost too much over the years – I could not take it if something happened to you.”

Your expression wobbles, and then you toss your little piece of technology aside and push yourself up to your knees.

“Tsu’tey,” You whisper, eyes turning soft. “It was only a sprained wrist.”

His tail lashes, but he ducks his head down towards you so that you can cup his face in your little palms. Some of the restlessness in his chest begins to settle now that he has your hands holding his cheeks.

“I do not want you to think less of me as a mate.” He says quietly, reaching up to lay his palm flat over one of your hands on his cheek. “I should have ensured you had a safe way of entering our kelku-”

“Less of you?” You interrupt, choking out a laugh. “Are you kidding? I thought that you would think I was a total skxawng for falling like that. I had literally been promising you earlier that day that I would look after you, and then I ended up hurt like an idiot.”

Tsu’tey just makes a soft, rumbly noise in his chest in an effort to soothe you. To his relief it seems to work, and you relax into his chest. 

“You can take care of me when you are better.” He says, his lips pulling up into a little smirk. It is something he looks forward to.

You hum, tilting your head back so you can look him in the eye with a coy grin. “I’m better now, big guy.”

Tsu’tey starts to snort, to pull back with an eyeroll, but to his surprise you continue grasping at his hand. When he blinks at you, he finds you staring up at him with a determined sort of look about you.

“I mean it,” You whisper, eyes all liquid and pleading. “My arm is fine, Mo’at said so. You haven’t touched me in days.”

Tsu’tey pauses at that. He looks at you properly; behind your breathing mask, your eyelashes are longer and darker than usual, and your lips are glossier. He recognises the traces of what you call makeup, and his ears twitch backwards in surprise. He knows that you wear this when you’re trying to catch his attention, and a little jolt of realisation rockets through him as he looks at you.

“Oh,” He breathes, reaching out to capture your jaw in one hand. “I see. My little mate feels neglected, is that it?”

Your cheeks grow hot in his hand, your eyes flickering away in an attempt to avoid eye contact. Despite your plea for him to touch you, now you appear flustered. 

“Yes.” You whine, tilting your head into his hand. Despite your embarrassment, you manage to appear semi-confident when you finally raise your chin to look at him. “I want you to touch me.”

The edge of your breathing mask digs into his palm, and he starts to grin as he winds his long fingers into your hair. Oh, that soothes his wounded pride. Despite his mistake with the ladder, you still want him. 

He ducks his head and presses a kiss to your neck, humming in satisfaction when you tilt your head back immediately to allow him access to your throat. Tsu’tey lets out a soft breath, and reaches for your waist so he can pull you into his lap. You go eagerly, clambering onto his thighs with a grin. You’re just so pliable, so trusting and needy. As soon as you’re settled in his lap, you start to grind yourself down against the growing stiffness beneath his tewng.

He lets out a quiet, surprised little huff. You really do want him to touch you, and your eagerness rushes straight to his head. He really has been neglecting you if you’re reacting like this just from a simple little neck kiss.

“I will make you feel good, ma’yawntutsyìp.” He promises – he is determined to make up for the last few days of distance between you, and he wants so desperately to taste you.

But when he begins to kiss his way down your chest, your belly, towards your thighs, your fingers weave into the roots of his hair and you tug lightly to stop him.

“As nice as your mouth would be,” You breathe, your mouth curving into a grin. “I said I’d make you feel good, didn’t I?”

His ears twitch, and he tilts his head as he eyes you carefully. You look earnest, but he’s not sure if he understands. You do not want him to use his mouth on you? Why not?

When he doesn’t make any immediate moves, you appear to take initiative yourself. You reach out to take his hand in your much smaller one, and pull it down beneath the hem of the little tewng that had been specially made for you. When his fingers make contact with the wet heat of your cunt, he goes stock still.

“You…” He starts, his brow furrowing as his fingers slide along the slickness between your legs. 

He dips one finger inside, awed by how easily it slips in. It seems like you’re already all stretched out, far wetter than natural – he recognises the texture of the tawtute-made liquid you used on occasion to make the size of him easier to take. Lube, you call it. He slips another finger in, and you moan softly at the slide of it.

“You are ready.” Tsu’tey rumbles in surprise, his fingers twitching inside you.

“I’ve been ready for days,” You complain, dropping your head against his shoulder as you move your hips, attempting to get his fingers working deeper. “Waiting for you to get over your stupid worry and just fuck me.”

That just about sends him over the edge entirely. You had prepared yourself for him just to save time with stretching? The thought of you walking around the kelku for days, all sloppy and dripping down your legs as you wait for him to emerge from his brooding mood and please you sends his thoughts scattering. Fuck. How could he have been so preoccupied with his stupid rope bridge when you were sitting waiting for him to pay attention to you?

“I will fuck you,” He breathes, nuzzling at your jaw eagerly. The human term is harsh on his tongue, but he enjoys the coarseness of it.

“Don’t be gentle.” You blurt, still writhing against the bulge beneath his tewng and sending zings of pleasure shooting up his spine. “Fuck me like you mean it. I won’t break.”

Tsu’tey lets out a soft hiss. Well. What kind of a man would he be if he did not obey his little mate’s orders?

Though you have been making demands, it still seems to surprise you when he launches into movement. He grips your hips and flips you around – it’s a quick movement, and it takes you a moment to regain your bearings when you find yourself on your hands and knees on the soft leaves he’s padded the kelku’s bouncy floor with.

“Fuck, yes.” You breathe, guessing where he’s going with this immediately. You arch your back, pushing your ass back eagerly into his hands as he unties your tewng and tosses it aside.

Tsu’tey bears his teeth in a grin, lowering his face to lay a hot, biting kiss between your shoulderblades. 

“Needy girl,” He rumbles, groping at your ass as his thumbs roll around your puffy, slick pussy and pull you apart so that he can admire the sticky strands of arousal that drip from you. “You are so swollen here. My poor, neglected little mate. I will make this up to you.”

When brushes his fingers through the puffy lips of your cunt and then pushes inside, you can't quite stifle the whine that escapes you. It drives him crazy. You’re still squirming even on your hands and knees beneath him, and Tsu’tey hunches over you so he can plaster his big chest over your back. 

His erection presses thick and heavy against your ass. He grinds into you at the same time as he reaches around and rubs quick, tight circles into your clit. You practically choke, alternating between pushing back into his erection which is laid flushed and hot between your thighs, and pushing forward into his hand, which is still toying with your pussy.

“Come on then, big guy,” You say, your voice wavering slightly as he rubs at your clit. “Stop telling me how good you can fuck me and actually do it.”

That makes Tsu’tey snicker into the hot skin of your neck. Oh, how he can’t wait to fulfill the orders of his bossy little mate. 

Grinning, he reaches out and places a hand on the back of your neck before exerting gentle pressure to push you down onto the padded floor. You go willingly, until you’re face down and ass up in a position that has Tsu’tey’s mouth watering. He can smell your arousal, so sweet and dizzying as you lay exposed and waiting for him.

You crane your neck around so that you can see him as he eyes your arched back and exposed behind eagerly. You look flustered, but your eyes are still challenging as you watch him and wait for his next move.

“So impatient, ma’tawtute,” He rumbles, amused. 

He smooths a hand over your waist and down over your hip and ass. A quick, open-palmed smack is delivered to the soft, squishy flesh of your ass, and you rock forward with a choked gasp. He was careful to control the pressure he used, but even still the hint of force makes your soft cunt flutter around nothing. 

“Come on, big guy,” You gasp, laying your cheek flat against the padded floor as you push your ass back towards him eagerly. “Come on, come on-”

With you all spread out and wet and begging beneath him, his self-control crumbles. He tears off his tewng and grabs at his cock, stroking it with a growled rumble before rubbing the sensitive tip against the slick folds of your cunt. 

You’re gasping already, before he even begins to press inside, and he can’t help but feel impossibly endeared by your stubborn nature. Look at you – so determined and eager to take him.

When he does begin to push inside, you drop your head down to the padded floor and moan, clearly just short of overwhelmed. You’re so tight, Tsu’tey swears he nearly blacks out. He pushes in slowly, his front plastered to your little back as one of his arms reaches under your stomach to support you. The two of you are breathing heavily; you from the struggle of accepting his size inside you, and him from the vice-like grip of your cunt.

“Breathe and relax, my small mate,” He grunts, squeezing his eyes tight as he nuzzles into your shoulder. “You are taking me so well.”

You do as he says unthinkingly, gasping a breath and forcing yourself to relax as he presses inside of you inch by excruciating inch. You can't seem to decide if you want him to hurry up and get it over with or go slow and gentle, and you keep alternating between twitching back on his cock and flinching away from it. Tsu’tey, however, is careful to keep a very medium pace; he pushes evenly and steadily until he's seated inside of you, hunched over your back, and then pauses to let you adjust. 

As you tremble, face pressed into the floor as your pussy flutters frantically around his cock, Tsu’tey presses soft, insistent kisses all around your back and shoulders. It feels as though you’re trying to squeeze his cock right off, and he grunts a moan into the soft flesh of your bare back as you finally begin to ease up around him.

Then, finally, he begins to move.

"Fuck!" You gasp, squirming a little as he starts up at a steady pace.

When his hands come down to grip your hips and keep you in place, you grab at the leaf-padded floor, fingers scrabbling for purchase as the thrusting of his hips rocks your whole body forward. 

He's barely started fucking you at all, but Tsu’tey’s thoughts are already scattered and his body feels like it's close to overheating already. There’s something about seeing you so hungry for him that sends him wild – he’s never taken you from behind before, but the view of your ass stuck up in the air as your cunt sucks him so greedily makes his head spin.

"You feel so good," Tsu’tey murmurs into the side of your throat before biting at it, "So tight around me. Oh, fuck, that's it."

Each thrust pushes you further up the floor, until you’re forced to stop grabbing at the leaf-padding and instead to reach behind you and grab at one of his hands. He takes your hand eagerly, wrapping your odd little five-fingered hand in his own four-fingered one and pinning it to the floor as his other hand uses your hip to pull you back into him. You moan quite happily as you bury your face into the leaf-padding as he fucks you into the floor.

It doesn’t take long before you’re pushing your hips back to meet his thrusts as best you can, and he bares his teeth at the sight beneath him. You’re just adorable – you glance over your shoulder and smile dazedly as you tighten up around him. He makes a soft sound of pleasure and wraps his arm firmly around your stomach to keep you close to him.

“Come on, ma’yawne,” He rumbles, nipping lightly at the juncture of your bare shoulder as you shudder beneath him. “Talk to me.”

You manage an embarrassingly breathless little moan in response, and Tsu’tey snorts a wild sort of laugh. It feels a little as though he's coming apart at the seams. Tsu’tey is big, a fact which is apparently emphasised even further in this position, and it's overwhelming but it's so good — you feel so delightfully perfect, all wrapped around him like a vice as he fills you up.

He must be hitting a spot inside you that makes your legs go weak, because your jaw is slack and you keep making senseless little gasping sounds as you go limp as he fucks into you. It’s so sweet that he thinks momentarily about relenting, but you had asked for this. You did not want him to be gentle, not tonight.

"I didn't hear you." He says, a warning in his voice. His fingers weave into the roots of your hair and fist at the base of your skull, before he pulls your head back so that your face is no longer buried in the floor. “I want to hear you talk to me, my girl.”

"Oh, fucking goddamn shit-" You manage to choke out. His hand pulling your hair has somehow caused you to go semi-boneless as he fucks into you.

He picks up his pace, his hips rolling into yours so that your breath is catching in your chest and your eyes are rolling wildly. When his hand slips under you to start playing with your clit, you make a soft, broken-sounding moan and throw your head back eagerly.

Tsu’tey is so close to coming that his head is actually swimming, his thoughts slow as molasses as every nerve and synapse tunes into you beneath him so that the only thing he can actually focus on is the feel of you gasping and writhing below. He has always taken mating with you seriously, but right now it feels as though his only purpose is touching and stroking and fucking you so good that you forget everything other than him.

“Oh god,” You wheeze, your little hand squeezing tight around his fingers as his other hand uses his grip on your hips to pull you back into his thrusts. “Oh god, oh god, oh god-”

He recognises that frantic edge to your voice, and he bares his teeth in pleasure as he realises just how close you are to coming. His balls slap against your clit with every thrust, and he can feel the way they begin to tighten and draw up as his thrusts get faster. He’s close himself, his teeth practically buzzing with his oncoming orgasm, but he clenches his jaw as he attempts to hold it off. He wants so desperately to come inside you, but only after he’s experienced you creaming and squealing around his cock.

He adjusts his angle just slightly, but it's enough to have you dropping bonelessly back to the floor as you gasp. 

"Fuck, there, don't stop!"

He snickers, though it trails off into a winded sort of snarl. His bossy, demanding little demon of a mate. Your orders only make his cock harder, and he lets out a whole body rumble as he feels his cock start to pulse inside your soft, wet, tight insides. He needs you to come now, before he completely loses his mind.

“Come, ma’yawntutsyìp, my precious one,” He grunts, leaving nipping kisses along the length of your spine. “I want to feel your release around me.”

The combination of his cock rubbing and grinding against the soft spongey part inside of you and the messy stimulation of your clit has your legs trembling and pussy quivering wildly. It feels like you’re being strung tighter and tighter under him as your orgasm draws closer and your breath begins coming in rapid pants. 

You just manage to get out the words "Oh, yes-!" before the pleasure growing in your belly seems to crest and your back bows as you start to cum. All of the pressure that's been building up in your body is set free with the sweetest release, made all the sweeter by the fact that Tsu’tey keeps rocking into you the whole way through, the heavy head of his cock grinding hard against your G-spot the whole time.

Your eyes roll back and your mouth drops open as your orgasm rocks through you, and Tsu’tey watches with wide eyes and avid interest as your entire little body shudders and shakes beneath him.

“Yes,” He breathes, his whole face contorting in toe-curling pleasure as your cunt clenches and ripples around him. “Yes, my love, so good.”

Your orgasm seems to last forever, leaving your chest heaving and back glittering with sweat, but eventually you reach back and slap at his thigh.

“Turn me around,” You wheeze, sounding winded. “Keep going, I want you to come in me-”

Fuck, how he loves it when you make demands. He doesn’t even wait for you to finish speaking before he pulls out, gripping your hips and flipping you around so that you’re on your back. He pushes back in immediately, snarling out a desperate groan as his cock splits you open all over again, you wrapping him up all snug and tight inside.

One of his hands snakes under your back and curls around your waist to pull you up against him as he pounds into you. With the other arm, he's balanced himself on his forearm beside your head for leverage as he drives into you hard and fast. He is still conscious of your limits, of your soft and fragile little human body, but his head is reeling from the sheer sensation and from the squealing little moans that are escaping your mouth. He’s still careful not to hurt you, but he’s also rolling his hips into your more frantically than he’s ever done before.

When you hike your little legs up over Tsu’tey’s narrow hips and squeeze tight around him, he lets out a rather wrecked, desperate sounding whimper. He drops his head to your chest, shoving the woven chest covering out of the way so that he can suck one of your tits into his mouth, sloppily rolling your nipple around on his tongue and clutching at your ass with one hand when you arch into him.

“Oh, fuck,” You gasp, arching your back so that your breasts are pushed further into his face. Your voice is hoarse — you sound absolutely wrecked. “Oh god, yes, please-”

He's hovering right on the precipice of orgasm — it's obvious by his desperate open-mouthed panting, the way he hunches over as his thrusting starts to turn clumsy, and the way he's messily sucking at your tits.

What really pushes him over the edge, to his honest surprise, is when you moan out, “Fuck, I.. Tsu’tey, I really love you-”

Tsu’tey lets out a choked, desperate groan before dropping his forehead to your breastbone as he comes inside of you. It’s like a wave of white rushes through his mind, wiping everything clean inside his head as he strains desperately against you. The motion of his hips stutters and falters as his brow pinches, and he lets out a long, low moan as he grasps at you, his eyes squeezing shut tight as he feels his cum flood your cunt and overflow, dribbling down your ass.

"Oh." He groans, shivering as his elbows give out and he drops down on top of you so that you’re plastered together from head to toe. He tucks his face into your neck and kisses under your ear, enjoying the heat from your overworked, sweaty bodies while also being hyper-conscious of crushing you.

You’re both covered in a sheen of sweat, which makes your bodies slide slickly together whenever either of you move. Tsu’tey’s hand drifts down over your ass, and he squeezes lazily at the soft, squishy flesh there.

“Are you well, my mate?” He rumbles, still a little dazed as he lifts his head to squint down at you. “Did I- are you hurt?”

You’re staring at the ceiling, mouth softly ajar as you take deep, heaving breaths. His question makes you laugh, though it’s a quiet, breathless little sound.

“No,” You whisper, your mouth curving in a dopy sort of smile. “Only sore in the best way. Fuck, that was good.”

The positive affirmation is exactly what he needed to hear, and he feels his tail begin to sway in slow satisfaction. You had been right, after all – you could take it, and you were not necessarily as delicate as he had feared after your injury. The lazy, contented smile on your face only reassures him further that you are happy and unscathed.

He pulls out carefully, his ears twitching as he leaves your perfect, wet warmth. You hiss at the sensation too, and he rumbles a quiet apology before running the pads of his fingers over your swollen, puffy pussy; his come is dripping slowly out of you, and he rubs absently at the wet white trails to massage it into your skin.

“Bring me to the bed,” You say, though it lacks the demanding edge of the previous requests you had made. You sound sleepy, as though he had entirely worn you out.

His mouth twitches, and he reaches down to scoop you into his arms. You go easily, your head rolling around on your neck as you nuzzle into his chest. To his surprise, his own knees feel a little jelly-like when he moves to stand and put weight on them. Damn, he doesn’t think an orgasm has ever left him reeling like this afterwards.

When he lays you out on the tawtute-style bed he had made for you out of plant fibres and leaves, he crawls up next to you and stretches out, his tail undulating in lazy satisfaction. You roll over and shove your face up against his still glistening chest, burrowing close to him.

“Told you I could take it.” You say. You sound exhausted, but so damn pleased with yourself.

Tsu’tey just laughs, a tired sort of chuckle as he nuzzles his nose into your sweet-smelling hair.

“You take it so well, ma’yawntutsyìp,” He assures you fondly, pressing a little kiss to the top of your small, blunt little ear. 

When he takes your hand and pulls it up to his face, he gives a small smile and presses his mouth to the near-invisible remnants of bruising around your wrist. He bares his sharp teeth against your fragile skin as he murmurs, “And I love you too.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Apple to EU: “Go fuck yourself”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

There's a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they're not pro-monopoly – they're just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can't hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the weather.

This ploy is cousins with Jay Rosen's idea of "savvying," defined as: "dismissing valid questions with the insider's, 'and this surprises you?'"

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369?lang=en

In both cases, an apologist for corruption masquerades as a pragmatist who understands the ways of the world, unlike you, a pathetic dreamer who foolishly hopes for a better world. In both cases, the apologist provides cover for corruption, painting it as an inevitability, not a choice. "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."

The reason this foolish nonsense flies is that we are living in an age of rampant corruption and utter impunity. Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. Governments really do ignore horrible crimes by the rich and powerful, and fumble what rare, few enforcement efforts they assay.

Take the GDPR, Europe's landmark privacy law. The GDPR establishes strict limitations of data-collection and processing, and provides for brutal penalties for companies that violate its rules. The immediate impact of the GDPR was a mass-extinction event for Europe's data-brokerages and surveillance advertising companies, all of which were in obvious violation of the GDPR's rules.

But there was a curious pattern to GDPR enforcement: while smaller, EU-based companies were swiftly shuttered by its provisions, the US-based giants that conduct the most brazen, wide-ranging, illegal surveillance escaped unscathed for years and years, continuing to spy on Europeans.

One (erroneous) way to look at this is as a "compliance moat" story. In that story, GDPR requires a bunch of expensive systems that only gigantic companies like Facebook and Google can afford. These compliance costs are a "capital moat" – a way to exclude smaller companies from functioning in the market. Thus, the GDPR acted as an anticompetitive wrecking ball, clearing the field for the largest companies, who get to operate without having to contend with smaller companies nipping at their heels:

https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/27/another-report-shows-gdpr-benefited-google-facebook-hurt-everyone-else/

This is wrong.

Oh, compliance moats are definitely real – think of the calls for AI companies to license their training data. AI companies can easily do this – they'll just buy training data from giant media companies – the very same companies that hope to use models to replace creative workers with algorithms. Create a new copyright over training data won't eliminate AI – it'll just confine AI to the largest, best capitalized companies, who will gladly provide tools to corporations hoping to fire their workforces:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

But just because some regulations can be compliance moats, that doesn't mean that all regulations are compliance moats. And just because some regulations are vigorously applied to small companies while leaving larger firms unscathed, it doesn't follow that the regulation in question is a compliance moat.

A harder look at what happened with the GDPR reveals a completely different dynamic at work. The reason the GDPR vaporized small surveillance companies and left the big companies untouched had nothing to do with compliance costs. The Big Tech companies don't comply with the GDPR – they just get away with violating the GDPR.

How do they get away with it? They fly Irish flags of convenience. Decades ago, Ireland started dabbling with offering tax-havens to the wealthy and mobile – they invented the duty-free store:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty-free_shop#1947%E2%80%931990:_duty_free_establishment

Capturing pennies from the wealthy by helping them avoid fortunes they owed in taxes elsewhere was terribly seductive. In the years that followed, Ireland began aggressively courting the wealthy on an industrial scale, offering corporations the chance to duck their obligations to their host countries by flying an Irish flag of convenience.

There are other countries who've tried this gambit – the "treasure islands" of the Caribbean, the English channel, and elsewhere – but Ireland is part of the EU. In the global competition to help the rich to get richer, Ireland had a killer advantage: access to the EU, the common market, and 500m affluent potential customers. The Caymans can hide your money for you, and there's a few super-luxe stores and art-galleries in George Town where you can spend it, but it's no Champs Elysees or Ku-Damm.

But when you're competing with other countries for the pennies of trillion-dollar tax-dodgers, any wins can be turned into a loss in an instant. After all, any corporation that is footloose enough to establish a Potemkin Headquarters in Dublin and fly the trídhathach can easily up sticks and open another Big Store HQ in some other haven that offers it a sweeter deal.

This has created a global race to the bottom among tax-havens to also serve as regulatory havens – and there's a made-in-the-EU version that sees Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands competing to see who can offer the most impunity for the worst crimes to the most awful corporations in the world.

And that's why Google and Facebook haven't been extinguished by the GDPR while their rivals were. It's not compliance moats – it's impunity. Once a corporation attains a certain scale, it has the excess capital to spend on phony relocations that let it hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, chasing the loosest slots on the strip. Ireland is a made town, where the cops are all on the take, and two thirds of the data commissioner's rulings are eventually overturned by the federal court:

https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/iccl-2023-gdpr-report/

This is a problem among many federations, not just the EU. The US has its onshore-offshore tax- and regulation-havens (Delaware, South Dakota, Texas, etc), and so does Canada (Alberta), and some Swiss cantons are, frankly, batshit:

https://lenews.ch/2017/11/25/swiss-fact-some-swiss-women-had-to-wait-until-1991-to-vote/

None of this is to condemn federations outright. Federations are (potentially) good! But federalism has a vulnerability: the autonomy of the federated states means that they can be played against each other by national or transnational entities, like corporations. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to regulate powerful entities within a federation – but it means that federal regulation needs to account for the risk of jurisdiction-shopping.

Enter the Digital Markets Act, a new Big Tech specific law that, among other things, bans monopoly app stores and payment processing, through which companies like Apple and Google have levied a 30% tax on the entire app market, while arrogating to themselves the right to decide which software their customers may run on their own devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

Apple has responded to this regulation with a gesture of contempt so naked and broad that it beggars belief. As Proton describes, Apple's DMA plan is the very definition of malicious compliance:

https://proton.me/blog/apple-dma-compliance-plan-trap

Recall that the DMA is intended to curtail monopoly software distribution through app stores and mobile platforms' insistence on using their payment processors, whose fees are sky-high. The law is intended to extinguish developer agreements that ban software creators from informing customers that they can get a better deal by initiating payments elsewhere, or by getting a service through the web instead of via an app.

In response, Apple, has instituted a junk fee it calls the "Core Technology Fee": EUR0.50/install for every installation over 1m. As Proton writes, as apps grow more popular, using third-party payment systems will grow less attractive. Apple has offered discounts on its eye-watering payment processing fees to a mere 20% for the first payment and 13% for renewals. Compare this with the normal – and far, far too high – payment processing fees the rest of the industry charges, which run 2-5%. On top of all this, Apple has lied about these new discounted rates, hiding a 3% "processing" fee in its headline figures.

As Proton explains, paying 17% fees and EUR0.50 for each subscriber's renewal makes most software businesses into money-losers. The only way to keep them afloat is to use Apple's old, default payment system. That choice is made more attractive by Apple's inclusion of a "scare screen" that warns you that demons will rend your soul for all eternity if you try to use an alternative payment scheme.

Apple defends this scare screen by saying that it will protect users from the intrinsic unreliability of third-party processors, but as Proton points out, there are plenty of giant corporations who get to use their own payment processors with their iOS apps, because Apple decided they were too big to fuck with. Somehow, Apple can let its customers spend money Uber, McDonald's, Airbnb, Doordash and Amazon without terrorizing them about existential security risks – but not mom-and-pop software vendors or publishers who don't want to hand 30% of their income over to a three-trillion-dollar company.

Apple has also reserved the right to cancel any alternative app store and nuke it from Apple customers' devices without warning, reason or liability. Those app stores also have to post a one-million euro line of credit in order to be considered for iOS. Given these terms, it's obvious that no one is going to offer a third-party app store for iOS and if they did, no one would list their apps in it.

The fuckery goes on and on. If an app developer opts into third-party payments, they can't use Apple's payment processing too – so any users who are scared off by the scare screen have no way to pay the app's creators. And once an app creator opts into third party payments, they can never go back – the decision is permanent.

Apple also reserves the right to change all of these policies later, for the worse ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" -D. Vader). They have warned developers that they might change the API for reporting external sales and revoke developers' right to use alternative app stores at its discretion, with no penalties if that screws the developer.

Apple's contempt extends beyond app marketplaces. The DMA also obliges Apple to open its platform to third party browsers and browser engines. Every browser on iOS is actually just Safari wrapped in a cosmetic skin, because Apple bans third-party browser-engines:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

But, as Mozilla puts it, Apple's plan for this is "as painful as possible":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-ios-browser-rules-firefox

For one thing, Apple will only allow European customers to run alternative browser engines. That means that Firefox will have to "build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear."

(One wonders how Apple will treat Americans living in the EU, whose Apple accounts still have US billing addresses – these people will still be entitled to the browser choice that Apple is grudgingly extending to Europeans.)

All of this sends a strong signal that Apple is planning to run the same playbook with the DMA that Google and Facebook used on the GDPR: ignore the law, use lawyerly bullshit to chaff regulators, and hope that European federalism has sufficiently deep cracks that it can hide in them when the enforcers come to call.

But Apple is about to get a nasty shock. For one thing, the DMA allows wronged parties to start their search for justice in the European federal court system – bypassing the Irish regulators and courts. For another, there is a global movement to check corporate power, and because the tech companies do the same kinds of fuckery in every territory, regulators are able to collaborate across borders to take them down.

Take Apple's app store monopoly. The best reference on this is the report published by the UK Competition and Markets Authority's Digital Markets Unit:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

The devastating case that the DMU report was key to crafting the DMA – but it also inspired a US law aimed at forcing app markets open:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710

And a Japanese enforcement action:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And action in South Korea:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/

These enforcers gather for annual meetings – I spoke at one in London, convened by the Competition and Markets Authority – where they compare notes, form coalitions, and plan strategy:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

This is where the savvying breaks down. Yes, Apple is big enough to run circles around Japan, or South Korea, or the UK. But when those countries join forces with the EU, the USA and other countries that are fed up to the eyeballs with Apple's bullshit, the company is in serious danger.

It's true that Apple has convinced a bunch of its customers that buying a phone from a multi-trillion-dollar corporation makes you a member of an oppressed religious minority:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Some of those self-avowed members of the "Cult of Mac" are willing to take the company's pronouncements at face value and will dutifully repeat Apple's claims to be "protecting" its customers. But even that credulity has its breaking point – Apple can only poison the well so many times before people stop drinking from it. Remember when the company announced a miraculous reversal to its war on right to repair, later revealed to be a bald-faced lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Or when Apple claimed to be protecting phone users' privacy, which was also a lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The savvy will see Apple lying (again) and say, "this surprises you?" No, it doesn't surprise me, but it pisses me off – and I'm not the only one, and Apple's insulting lies are getting less effective by the day.

Image: Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil from Brazil (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annelid_worm,_Atlantic_forest,_northern_littoral_of_Bahia,_Brazil_%2816107326533%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

--

Hubertl (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015-03-04_Elstar_%28apple%29_starting_putrefying_IMG_9761_bis_9772.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[rederiswrites]

Look--I, too, think about the fact that this is somehow a close race and want to despair about my fellow US citizens. I get it. But I try to remember that it's close in part because Trump's team is cheating and lying for all they're worth. Like, they've got Russia and China cheating on their behalf. They're taking huge sums of money from at least one country hostile to US interests, and that's the one we know about. They loaded the courts. They gerrymandered the districts. (They're not the only culprits; my state is Democrat-gerrymandered, but we know who the primary culprits are.) And they LIED AND LIED AND LIED.

They told people who are poor and desperate that they could fix things and the democrats didn't promise that, because the democrats know they don't have that sort of influence on the economy and they're more restrained about just straight fucking lying. And we have a lot of poor and desperate people! And no matter what the federal government does one way or another, that's going to continue to be true, because climate change is extremely costly. Trump can just lie that terrible existential fear away! That's very appealing!

Yes, the only actually VALID reason to vote for Trump and Friends is because you're a white supremacist sexist fascist. I know that; you know that. But I genuinely do not believe that the majority of the people saying they're going to vote for him are, self-awarely at least, white supremacist sexist fascists. They're poorly educated and desperate and they want to believe the shiny part of Trump. And honestly, chances are pretty good they don't even know the shit about him admiring Hitler or swaying for 30 minutes to Ave Maria, because they're getting their news from completely different sources, which also lie and lie and lie.

I'm not trying to whitewash these people--a great many of them hold beliefs compatible with all those belief systems. I know these people. They're my neighbors. Some of them are very kind, self-sacrificing people, who happen also to hold a lot of unexamined terrible beliefs. My neighbor at the old place--got drunk at the neighborhood picnic and yelled about "towelheads". Revolting, yes! Also, he was the first guy on the scene when a fatal accident took place in front of our house, and he and I held and comforted the driver until the paramedics came. People aren't like Lilo's drawing of Stitch. People are complicated messes of contradictory beliefs and widely divergent experiences. I don't hate my neighbors with Trump signs. I am angry and profoundly frustrated, both at them and at the system that has duped them into supporting someone who is radically against their actual interests.

Half the country isn't evil. Somewhat under half the country has fallen for a fairly transparent con, and some portion of that half hold truly, deeply horrifying beliefs. But a huge amount of effort went into that con. Don't forget that, when you feel the faith in humanity bleeding out.

[my-castles-crumbling]

bed - @jegulus-microfic - word count: 486 - NSFW explicit, minors DNI

Regulus had a problem:

James Potter had a very intriguing bed.

Regulus had been staying with the James and Sirius for a month now, freshly graduated from Hogwarts, and that damn bed was all he could think about.

It was...it was big, you see. Full of pillows and blankets and comfy-looking things.

And it looked...bouncy. Like you could do activities on it.

It wasn't Potter. Not really. It was just the bed.

That was the reason Regulus got up from his own bed in the guest room that night. He just wanted to...try it out. The fact that James happened to also be in the bed was just a coincidence.

But when he arrived, the was James turned to him, eyes fiery and wide and questioning....Regulus wasn't unhappy that James was in the bed.

And when he silently straddled the taller man, like he'd done it a thousand times before, slotted their lips together, and swallowed the moan that they both let out, he might have even been happy that James was there.

And when James, eagerly, with shaky hands, pulled down both of their pajama pants, allowing Regulus to properly feel the hardening cock beneath him, he could admit that he wasn't even paying attention to the bed at all.

Instead, he paid attention to the fingers that slowly worked him open and broke him apart, making him let out shaky gasps and embarrassingly needy groans. He focused on the gentle but hungry expression on his face, the way his eyes were constantly searching over him, seemingly to make sure he was okay with what was happening.

He focused on the way James bit his lip with the effort to not thrust up into him as he bottomed out, making both men whimper and grasp at each other desperately.

And then, without warning, Regulus felt himself flipped over, back flat against the mattress he'd been obsessing over for weeks, legs wrapped around James's lower back, hands stretched over his head and tangled with James's own as the other man moved, their eyes connected the entire time.

And he could only focus on the feeling of pleasure wash over him, build in the base of his spine and shock through his system as James began whispering in his ear, "Come for me, baby."

And fuck, he did.

He came, moaning James's name, just as James came inside him, the two of them grasping at each other; pulling at each other like if they didn't, the other would disappear. His vision turned to stars as his back arched. He heard James whisper, "Reg...you're so...fuck..." as they both relaxed a minute later, James collapsing on top of him.

It was only as he lay there, his breathing slowing and the calming weight of James on top of him, that he realized:

Maybe it wasn't the bed he'd been obsessed with, after all.

[imaginesandsmut]

You Sweet Dumb Thing

Ethan Landry is a family orientated guy.

He fucking loves his family, he would do anything for them, he would kill for them. Correction, Ethan was going to kill for them.

Him, his sister and father had it all figured out, their plan to kill Sam and Tara for the death of Richie was something they had planned for the past year. They had all the cogs in the right place and everything was moving smoothly.

That was until he met Y/N.

At first, the new girl in the group who managed to be loved by everyone didn’t change his mind at all. He still went about sharpening his knives and training secretly in the gym to make sure he was powerful enough to take someone down like Chad.

But then she started to weasel her way into a friendship with him, and in turn, his mind.

He hated it. The way she would smile at every single fucking person on the street, how she would offer to help anyone in the group with whatever they needed, how she would smile so widely when she laughed that her eyes squeezed close. He hated it and he hated her.

But that didn’t stop him from fantasising about her during class, at work, with Chad, at night, in the shower, in his bed, in his dreams. Every time he watched a romantic movie, he thought of her. Every time he read a book, he couldn’t process the words because she was covering his thoughts. Even when he had the apartment to himself and got the opportunity to touch himself in peace, she was still there, whispering his name and moaning as he stroked himself.

She consumed his mind that he started to forget about his plans with his family.

Slowly, Chad started to catch on and even began teasing Ethan about his crush on her. Poking his ribs with his elbow whenever she joined the group at their study table, raising his eyebrows whenever she directed a question at Ethan. Chad even went so far to try and wingman him at the halloween party.

~~~~~~~~~

“Look at you man! You’re a snack!” Chad yells over the music, alcohol affecting his system. “Practically an entire meal!”

He was being genuine and kind, but Ethan felt a little ridiculous in his handmade cardboard robot costume that he didn’t feel like anything but a child.

“Now look over there, see Y/N?” He’s pointing to the makeshift dance floor, the girl is question swaying her hips to the music. “How do you think she looks?”

“She’s gorgeous.”

Ethan used to hide his feelings for Y/N from Chad, scrunching his nose and shaking his head whenever Chad questioned him about why he would stare at her for so long. But now, he can’t hide it. Even Tara and Sam knew about his crush.

“Perfect!” Chad shouted, handing another shot to Ethan. “Go ask her out.”

“No, I can’t do that.”

“And why not?” Chad’s tipsy demeanour was making Ethan annoyed, the frat-jock stereotype didn’t even realise how far above them Y/N was.

She was dancing with some random girls she just met 20 minutes prior, laughing at what they were saying whilst trying to keep up with the beat of the song. Her short Princess Peach dress left little to the imagination, her hips moving seductively as she danced to the song.

“We’re friends, I can’t ruin that with her!” Ethan wishes they would stop talking about this, the music pounding on his ears that he has resorted to shouting so Chad could hear him. “And she’d say no.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

~~~~~~~~~

Ethan’s father killed Jason and Greg that night, those Ghostface killer wannabes had it coming and Ethan was annoyed they didn’t get to the boys earlier. Then Ethan’s father attacked Sam and Tara in the bodega, with a shotgun of all weapons.

Ethan, his sister and father were together in his father’s apartment, going over the next part of their plan. Quinn was frantic about who to kill next and that she wants to be the one to do it, Ethan stayed quiet.

“Ethan?” His father spoke up, softly punching his son's knee in an effort to gain some attention back to the conversation.

“Hmm?” Ethan looked up from his position hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped and eyes trained on the floor.

“What do you think?” His father questions, confused as to why his son, who was once obsessed with their plan, now was silent and mentally absent.

“Think of what?” Ethan tried to shake himself back to reality, sitting back on the sofa and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Quinn killing Y/N?”

It was like ice water was dumped over him, his heart stopped beating and his hands grew sweaty. He forced his face to stay neutral, trying his hardest to not give away any emotion.

“Why are we killing Y/N? She’s not an official member of the group.” Ethan’s voice wavered slightly, he hoped that his family didn’t notice. “And why as a solo kill?”

“We can’t have too many people in the apartment tomorrow night when you attack them.” Quinn spoke slowly, twirling her hair around her pointer finger. “Plus I think it’s best to get her out of the way before you try killing the group, you know, in case you freeze up when you see her.”

“Why would I freeze up?”

“Cause you’ve had a hard-on for her for months,” Quinn laughed, “it’s better if I do it tonight and get her out of the way for you.”

“No.” Ethan’s voice was harsh, fueled by anger and fear. His father and sister looked at him, their faces as confused as ever.

“No?” His father wanted desperately to try and understand his son in this moment.

“Quinn can’t kill her.” He knew that he would need to give a good explanation, a reason as to why he was messing up their plan. “I should kill her.”

“You don’t have the balls to do it.” Quinn scoffed, brushing off her brother’s attempt at being tough.

“I’ll fucking do it,” Ethan was looking at his father in the eye, “I need to have this.”

Somehow it worked, a mere hour later Ethan was turning the key Y/N gave him in its slot and pushed her apartment door open, creeping through the living room and towards her bedroom, and towards the sound of running water.

His Ghostface mask obscured his vision slightly but he could still take in the scene around him. Printed posters of her favourite movies covered the walls, colourful decor scattered the hallway. He entered her bedroom, knife in hand as he took in the scene.

Her bed was messy, some soft teddies thrown over the purple floral sheets. Ethan took off his mask to see the room better since this is the first time he’s ever been in it, he felt like he was walking on holy ground.

The brown haired boy pushed his curls from his eyes to look at the pictures she had on her walls - lots of her, Tara and Mindy, some of her and Chad, even some of her and his sister, Quinn.

The ones he stared at were the many pictures of himself and Y/N, a lot of them candids but some of them posed. He felt a surge of pride as he outranked Chad when it came to how many times he was featured on her wall.

The Ghostface mask and knife in his hands grew heavy, as if they were trying to actively fall out of his hands.

He can’t do this.

His thoughts here growing wild and anxious, overloaded with fear as to what he was preparing himself to do. Ethan can’t kill her, he would rather slit his own throat than do it to her. He even realised that he would rather kill someone for her.

The sound of the shower had stopped and Ethan began freaking out, it was now or never. But in that moment, he backed out. He was happy that he took this job from Quinn, but now he needed to find a way to get out and keep his family away from her.

The bathroom door began to open and Ethan knew it was too late for him to run, either she would catch him or someone else would. Instead, he stuffed the mask and knife under her bed haphazardly. The boy struggled with the black robe that covered his body, pulling it roughly over his head and also shoving it under her bed.

Then, quickly trying to find a way to explain why he was in her room, he walked over to her desk and started looking for her Econ notes, his cheeks were hot in anxiety and fear.

“Ethan?”

Her voice was soft and nervous, as if it wasn’t going to be him. Ethan’s shoulders tensed as he slowly turned around, an embarrassed smile on his face.

“Hey?”

“What are you doing?” She was dressed in a small top and even smaller underwear, the flimsy fabric of her top showed her nipples through the fabric whilst her underwear were dainty little lacy things that made Ethan feel hot. 

“Why are you in my room?”

He realised he was ogling her, just staring at her body and she used her arms to cover her chest, not moving from her spot on the other side of the room.

“I’m so sorry.” Ethan pushed himself to say, darting his eyes down as he played with the paper containing her Econ notes in his hands. “I just needed to run in and grab your notes for Econ, I didn’t think you would be here.”

She didn’t say anything, just stared at him whilst trying to cover herself with her arms. He gulped in the silence, just staring down at his hands. She was probably doubting his excuse, wondering why he didn't send a text or ask for them the next day. Ethan’s mind was swirling with his stupidity, he should've just ran.

Ethan has imagined so many times being in Y/N’s room whilst she was wearing that exact outfit, but also in those dreams, he’s much more confident and makes a fucking move.

Now, he can’t even look at her. Too scared that if he takes in her body once more, he’ll get a boner and embarrass himself even further. Even thinking about the fact that she’s standing only 5 steps from him in a see-through top and lace underwear was making him hot and flustered.

He looked at his feet and saw his Ghostface mask poking out from underneath her bed, the knife next to it gleaming in the soft warm light of her bedside table lamp. Y/N was so stupid to be so defenceless, if only she knew how he had protected her from being stabbed to death by his sister, if only she knew of all the things he does for her. If Ethan wasn’t around, Y/N would be so lost, like a little kitten begging for shelter, and Ethan was the only person who could be that for her.

Y/N should be thankful for him.

A new feeling came over Ethan like a cloud rolling over the hills, powerful and daunting as the new darkness showed in his eyes. Confidence began to pump through the blood in his veins, giving him a new aura that even Y/N noticed.

Y/N’s demeanour changed from confused to scared, she had never seen Ethan like this. Her feet started to shuffle back, but the more distance she made between them, Ethan matched her steps and kept the distance.

“Ethan?” She sounded lost, it was like his name was the only word she knew. “Are you feeling good?”

The boy started to grin, closing the distance between them whilst Y/N tried to move further away. He could see it in her eyes, the soft glow of not just fear, but of heat that was spreading all over her body, Although she was stepping away from him, her chest was rising and falling rapidly in anticipation, her eyes were heavy and lidded, and her cheeks were blooming with splotches of red.

She wanted him.

“Do you have any idea how badly I've wanted to be alone with you? To see you like this?” Her back hit the wall and her hands broke apart from her chest to feel the wall behind her. “I’ve been so stressed out lately, please help me?”

“Help you how?” Y/N’s voice was deathly quiet, Ethan had almost missed it due to the blood pounding in his ears almost making him deaf. His brown eyes were pouring into hers, causing her to melt inwardly and her knees were starting to buckle.

“Be a good girl and let me touch you, yeah?”

He could see the range of emotions cross over her face, most of them were confusion and intrigue. Ethan will admit, the nerdy virgin facade he puts on isn't completely false, that definitely was him a year or so ago. But after Richie died, something snapped in the Kirsch family and Ethan grew out of the geek he used to be and became someone completely new, someone sure of themself and hollow.

But the nerd is who Y/N knew, who she was comfortable with. This new person in front of her wasn't the Ethan she was friends with, but he could tell she was turned on nonetheless. Ethan’s body was now pressed up against her, his hands on either side of her head whilst he lowered his lips to ghost over her skin. Her breath hitches as he knows she can feel how hard he is against her, her hips involuntarily bucking.

“You need to tell me you want this.” Even though Ethan was putting on a cool demeanour, he couldn’t help the anxious pumping of his heart at the idea that she’ll say no and push him away.

He waited with baited breath until she nodded her head, it was slight and nervous but it was all he needed before his teeth sunk into her neck, pulling at the skin and hoping to leave a mark.

Y/N moaned loudly into the still silence of the room, her hands flying to pull on his hair, either to pull him away or urge him on, Ethan didn’t know. His brain was foggy from the lust, acting on his primal instincts with the need to own her. Y/N’s panting filled his ears, her hips moving softly against his own.

“Keep going.” Ethan was boarding on being domineering and demanding, to being whiny and pathetic. “Please let me feel you.”

The girl took his words and began grinding herself onto him, heavy and lusty pants. The friction was making Ethan needy and it was making Y/N beg for more. Ethan’s lips were biting the skin on her shoulder and neck, hands reaching underneath the top to tug at her boobs.

“Please,” her head was thrown back as she was desperate for air, “please, Ethan.”

She could feel his smile against her skin, “what do you want, baby?”

“Please.” Her lips were brushing against his temple, the curls tickling her. “Kiss me, touch me, do something.”

“Anything for you.”

Ethan’s mouth crashed onto hers, his tongue already slipping past her lips. It was breathy and hot, teeth clashing as the kiss was too fast for them to even understand. God, Y/N was such a pretty thing but Ethan knew she was trying hard to keep up.

“Take your time,” his right hand left the wall beside her head and started playing with the lace at the border of her underwear, the little bow sewn into the pink fabric gaining some attention from his middle finger. “Let me show you what I can do for you.”

His middle finger moved from the bow and down, touching her through the fabric of her underwear. His fingers reached her pussy through the soft and thin fabric, her wetness already soaking the fabric. It made Ethan laugh; how easily she could get wet for him and he hadn’t even done anything.

“Do you need me here?” Ethan already knew the answer, he just wanted the ego boost of her saying it aloud.

“Mhm.” Her voice was soft and her eyes were screwed shut, but he wanted more.

“Say it.” Ethan’s tone was darker, almost like a yell with how quiet they had both been previously.

“I need you to touch me, Ethan.” Y/N pulled his hair and dragged his face closer, sealing their lips together in a heated his once more before panting out, “please touch me, baby.”

Ethan felt like he could have made her cum through her underwear with how desperate she was for him, but he wasn't that cruel. The boy dipped his fingers past the waistband and dragged them through the wetness between her folds, earning a short and stifling gasp of air from Y/N. She felt so soft, like nothing he’s ever touched before. He moved his two fingers through her slick, his thumb coming down to circle her clit and being awarded with a moan from her, still pressed to his lips.

Ethan pulled away from her lips with a groan, realising how lightheaded his baby was becoming from the kiss, only clumsily moving her lips against his. A soft smile graced his features, spit covering his lips as little heart eyes replaced his pupils.

Y/N panted as she waited for him to say something, but then his index finger pushed into her. He curled it slowly, pumping it in and out before filling her with another one. Y/N’s hands moved from his hair and held onto his shoulders, pulling him closer as her legs were starting to give out. He groans, revelling in the way she reacts to him.

“You’re so pretty, baby.” Ethan whispers, more for his own ears than Y/N’s as she wasn’t even paying attention to him. Instead she was pressing open mouthed kisses to his neck, a physical plea for him to continue.

Her breathing was heavy, whining in pain as his fingers picked up the pace as he stretched her out. Her brain was foggy and numb from the feeling, Ethan can tell from the way she only moans as a reply. She’s clawing at Ethan’s neck as she kisses him, begging him for more than what he is giving her.

“You’re doing so good, pretty girl.” The words of affirmation stirred a need inside her, pushing her to buck her hips and match the movement of his fingers. “Taking me so well.”

Ethan curls his fingers and quickens his pace, fucking her harder with just his fingers. He looked at her face and began ingraining this moment in his memory of how she looks - the way her eyes were glazing over and her jaw went slack with each thrust, his lips so pillowy and wet that he could imagine them taking his dick.

Just when Y/N began tightening around Ethan’s fingers, he pulled them out and caught her with his other arm as she practically fell to the floor. Her body hot and sweaty but not satisfied. She looked up at Ethan just to witness him put his fingers in his mouth to taste her, holding eye contact sharp and steady.

“Want you to finish around me.”

It was all the explanation Ethan gave her before walking backwards so his legs hit the edge of the bed, sitting down and pulling her underwear down before placing her on top of him. She moaned at the friction of her being bare against his rough jeans, mindlessly rubbing herself over his crotch that was now growing and straining against the fabric.

“You like this, don’t you?” Ethan asks her, using his hands to guide her desperate and sloppy movements. “Bet none of the words I’m saying right now are getting through your pretty little head, huh?”

Ethan’s eyes darkened as the image of Y/N getting herself off on his lap was not only something he constantly daydreamed about, but was now a reality. His dick, now frantic to be touched itself, pushed Ethan to turn them around and lay her on the bed.

He took his time taking off his clothes, watching as she squirms on the bed in anticipation. His awkwardly tall body cages her in as he hovers above her, she’s so delicate and pliable, something that he needs to protect.

Ethan holds himself at Y/N’s entrance, rubbing his head through her folds and gathering enough of her slick that he could’ve came right then and there. He held eye contact as he pushed himself in, both groaning at the sensation and whimpering from how good they both felt.

Y/N was like a dream, so easy and manipulatable, she would let Ethan do anything to her right in this moment. His trusting, darling girl.

Ethan started moving with fervent need, her boobs rubbing against his chest with every motion, causing him to become whiny. She tightened around him so good, her small gasps of air and kisses to his neck were so loving. All he wanted to do was pound into her so fast, to hear her screaming of pleasure and ruin her for any other man.

But she deserved sweet, sticky and hot sex to keep her in a daze whilst he killed her friends in a few hours. Then he can come back and ruin her for good, fucking her whilst she cried - about her friends or because of what he was doing to her, Ethan didn’t care. He controlled himself by gripping the sheets, squeezing the flower patterned fabric until in threatened to tear.

“So good.” She moaned, one hand tugging on his hair and the other scraping down his back. “Please, Ethan.”

It was obvious Y/N wanted something, her mind just too cockdrunk and dumb that she couldn’t form words properly.

“You sweet, dumb thing.” He groaned into her neck, one hand in her hair whilst the other dipped down to circle her clit. “Nothing is going through your head but me, yeah?”

She just nodded, mumbling incoherent words and crying to some higher deity. Ethan’s hips started snapping with a newfound speed, pulling in and out of her so quickly that even he was starting to grow stupid from how good she felt, how well she was taking him. His groans turned into whimpers as he buried his head in her neck and continued his previous assault, biting her and marking her up.

Y/N’s hips were bucking to the same rhythm of his, matching his speed whilst squeezing around him in anticipation for her release.

“That’s a good girl.” Although Ethan’s words were confident, his delivery was breathy and submissive. “Taking me so good.”

Y/N started to tear up, the feeling of Ethan touching all over her body was almost too much. His mouth came to her face to kiss her tears away, pressing his lips to hers so she could taste the salty liquid as they kissed, soaking up her moans and whimpers with his mouth.

Ethan broke apart from the kiss and let his head fall back into the crook of her neck, catching a glimpse of the Ghostface mask and knife under her bed. The mask looked back at Ethan, a symbol of the rules he was breaking in this very moment. His father and sister would be livid if they found out what Ethan decided to do when he promised he was going to slit Y/N’s neck.

But the way she was squeezing around him, tugging at his hair and clawing at his back, legs wrapped around him and pinning his body close to her, the small sounds of pleasure that forced its way past her pretty plush lips. More importantly, the feeling of himself inside her, he could even see it, the bulge in her belly showing itself every time he pushed in, then disappearing when he pulled back out.

It all felt better than any kill has.

“Ethan,” Y/N huffed, “I’m gonn- I’m close.”

The lovesick girl had her eyes screwed shut so she couldn’t see Ethan push the Ghostface mask further underneath the bed so he could continue his assault on her, quickening his pace and bending down to take one of her nipples into his mouth, swirling his tongue around and biting on it.

Tears rolled down her face harder, pouring out of her eyes and she could barely get any words out. Almost as if he found a button within her, Y/N gasped and tightened around him, walls convulsing as she came around his cock. Her face in a state of bliss with her contractions around him have Ethan following not so far from behind, his moans and whimpers of pleasure hot in her ear.

And in this moment Ethan had realised that if it came to it, he would kill everyone, including his own family, to keep her.

[mentality-project]

Carry Me Home

Morpheus x Fem!reader

Pushing your way through the crowded bar, you welcome the brisk night air as you stumble onto the streets of London. Blowing off steam with your favourite coworkers at the end of the week had been much-needed fun, but now you were ready for home. A smile tugs at the corner of your lips as your favourite scenes from the night replay in your head, your hands burying into your coat pockets to keep warm. You hum to the tune of the song stuck in your head, the crowds thinning out the closer you get to home. You notice the change in atmosphere five minutes later than you should have, the sound of a raven's caw overhead bringing you back to the present moment.

You hear them before you see them, the rowdy laughter and loud explosions of curse words giving away their position. A glance at the reflective shop front across the street tells you there's three men behind you. Fuck. It could be nothing, but even so...you'd rather not find out. Your feet pick up the pace, but despite your best efforts they sound louder. Closer.

The raven's caw pierces the night air once again, causing you to flinch but you don't stop walking until you barrel into a wall of black. Two hands grab the back of your elbows to steady you, your wide-eyed gaze snapping up to your captor. Relief floods your nervous system at the sight of the familiar stern face.

“Morphy-baby~ I need a ride! Would you be a dear and take me home?”

“You are intoxicated.”

“Maybe~”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“More than enough.” You are oblivious to the withering glare Morpheus sends towards the drunken trio of men before whisking you off to your apartment. --- "Whoa, headrush!" you giggle as you stumble in the hallway as the sand dissipates, "Don't think I'll ever get used to that." Morpheus' gentle grip on your forearms helps you still your clumsy feet, your tipsy giggles falling silent as you get lost in the galaxy of his eyes. Your lips curl up in amazement as you grip the lapels of his coat, "You have such pretty eyes, Morphy...", your smile falters as the next unfiltered thought crosses your mind, "it's not fair."

You don't notice the way he huffs through his nose, disgruntled with the unwanted nickname that has been bestowed upon him.

"You are drunk."

"Yes~ I am~!" your singsong voice is shameless.

"You should be in bed." "You're not the boss of me," you pout up at him.

The Dream Lord says your name in that hypnotic voice of his that sounds like a seduction and a warning rolled into one, and just like that, your defiance shrinks away. "But I'm not even...sleepy..." the yawns that interrupt your protest betray you. "Is that so?" Dream's eyes glint with amusement in the darkness. "Okay, okay, fine! I'll go to bed, but only if you carry me." Morpheus stares down at you while you blink up at him. You had never dared to be so petulant with him before. But then again, he had never encountered you drunk. You yelp when he scoops you up into his arms, kicking your heels off as Morpheus heads for the stairs with you in tow. He is carrying you like you're nothing.

"Oh Mylanta~ Morphy~ you're actually carrying me to bed."

"You insisted."

"Well, yeah...but I didn't think you'd actually do it." King of Dreams is silent and you wonder what's going on in there - long-suffering sigh or an internal scream. It's only when he heads for the doorway to your bedroom that you start to squirm in his arms, "Wait, wait!"

Morpheus raises his eyebrow at you, arms still wound tight around your body. You point to the bathroom. "I need the bathroom. Gotta wash my face. Sleeping in makeup is a sin."

The midnight-haired being obliges you as he carries you into the bathroom, setting you down in front of the sink before he perches on the edge of your bathtub to watch you work. You go in on your eyes and lips with a bottle of liquid remover and cotton balls, following up with some facial wipes. You frown at your reflection while you're on your fourth wipe, unable to ignore the nagging in your head that argues that since you've gotten this far, you really ought to wash your face properly. Your hands are slathered in cleansing balm before you realise that you forgot to tie up your hair.

"Hold my hair back, Morph?" Morpheus is silent as he stands behind you to oblige you, and you watch his reflection in the mirror as he smooths your hair back with both hands before gathering your locks in one hand.

"Cheers, dear." you murmur as you rub the melted balm over your face.

You rinse and repeat with cleanser before following up with moisturiser. A few moments of silence pass when you turn to face Morpheus, blinking up at him.

"I need to pee." you announce before shoving the unsuspecting Endless into the hallway and closing the door behind you.

Morpheus has no time to react and you crack the door open like an afterthought as you peer through the gap. "You're still tucking me in, right?"

"Yes."

"Cool."

The door shuts again, soon followed by the sound of the toilet flushing, then running water. The door flings open and Morpheus is greeted with the sight of you brushing your teeth. You mumble around your toothbrush, using your free hand to guide Morpheus' hand to your hair. He gets the gist, because by the time you're standing in front of the mirror, he's holding your hair in a ponytail again. He lets go as you turn to face him.

"I need a shower, but I'm too lazy."

Morpheus lifts his hand and you're captivated by the stardust that swirls around you. When it lifts, you're in your favourite sleepwear and feeling more squeaky-clean than you ever have in your life.

"Did you just -" you cut yourself off as you run your hands along your arms, through your hair and sniff the collar of your shirt, "did you just glamour magic me clean?"

"Yes."

"How amazing." your voice is hushed as you breath out.

"What was that?" you're oblivious to the amusement that tugs at Morpheus' lips.

"How amazing!" you repeat louder, looking up at Morpheus with wide eyes.

"Will you go to bed now?"

"Yes!" you grin as you put your hand on Morpheus' shoulders before you jump up to wrap your limbs around him like a koala, "I'm ready!" The huff of his breath almost sounds like laughter as his hands grip your thighs, turning on his heel to finally carry you to bed. You gasp as he sets you down and pulls the covers over you.

"Ooh, you're tucking me in~"

"Yes, Your Grace."

"I love it." you grin up at Morpheus before patting the spot next to you, "come here, Morph."

Morpheus sits next to you and you shake your head as you pull the blanket out from under him, "No, lie down. I don't want you sitting near my face. What if you fart?"

"(Y/N), I am Endless. Endless do not -"

"Lie down, please!" you smack the bed as you raise your voice, feeling quite pleased with yourself when the Dream Lord complies.

You shimmy over to his body, throwing your leg over his as you lie your head on his shoulder, curling an arm around his chest.

"This feels nice," you smile as you close your eyes.

Morpheus doesn't respond, but a few moments later you feel his hand rise from your shoulder to stroke your hair and it makes you melt into him even more.

"Ohhh...I love you." you mumble into his coat.

"What did you say?"

"I love you. Please don't stop doing that." your eyes refuse to open as you feel yourself drift further and further into sleep with each stroke.

"Sleep well, (Y/N). I will meet you in The Dreaming."

[bixbythemartian]

This is About Oceangate

...kind of. Like, heads up for people who are sick of hearing about it or are too disturbed by this, just scoot on by, that's fine.

Like everybody else my age who had a middle school special interest in the Titanic that was further fueled by the James Cameron movie (and that sounds very specific, but I absolutely know I'm not alone), I've been following this story fuckin voraciously.

I think everybody I know IRL and online is fucking sick of me talking about it. I have been actively trying not to blog much about it here because I'm so obsessed with it that I'm annoyed with myself. I would like to not be this interested in it.

But a lot of the stuff I can think of to say has been said by a lot of people already, I don't want to add to an already noisy environment if I've got nothing new to say.

So, instead, I want to talk about what I haven't seen very many people talking about- something that's stood out to me about the way the media has been handling this story from the get-go. So, finally, I'm inflicting my days long media binge on you.

The media's handling of this was bad. Like, comprehensively fucked.

For the uninformed, a primer on the situation- feel free to skip down if you know all this, there's a bulleted list right after I get done with this part, look for that. But some of this is important to the terms I use, so I wanted to lay it out. (Also I just want to get a lot of this out of my system, please just let me have this.)

The Titan is a 'cyclops-class' submersible. As far as I can tell, 'cyclops-class' is unique to the people who made this submersible, it's not a widely recognized thing.

The Titan can carry up to five passengers. It was supposed to be rated to reach depths of up to 4000 meters below sea level.

The Titan is/was owned and operated by a company known as Oceangate. There's a lot of questions regarding the safety of the submersible, where the math came from on their depth rating, and- basically everything about the Titan is in question, at this point. There's a lot of questions, but that's not what I want to talk about.

Right now. Maybe later.

A submersible is distinct from a submarine in that it requires a surface support ship for many things- the Titan moved too slow to leave port under its own power and go to the site, it didn't have enough life support to do that kind of thing, etc. A submarine is self-supporting and can operate independently. Kind of pedantic, I know, but the Titan is a submersible, not a submarine.

The Titan had a planned expedition to the wreck of the Titanic on June 18, 2023- this past Sunday, at the time of writing. The expedition was supposed to last around 10 hours. It chartered a ship- the Polar Prince- to act as mother ship, the on the surface support that the Titan requires. (The Polar Prince is owned and operated by a different company than the Titan.)

1 hour and 45 minutes into the expedition, as the Titan was still making its way to the sea floor, the Polar Prince lost all contact with the submersible.

The Titanic wreck is at just under 4000 meters deep, right around 2.5 miles.

Now, my understanding is that the Titan was not fully at the ocean floor at the point contact was lost, but it's not clear how deep the Titan was at that time. We may not ever know this for certain.

When the Titan was reported as missing to the coast guard is kind of unclear, to me- I heard 6 hours after they lost contact, I heard 12 hours after they lost contact, I saw something that indicated they reported it missing immediately- I don't know for sure. When the coast guard report comes out, I'm hoping we'll get a more accurate timeline.

However, as soon as it was reported missing, a massive search and rescue operationg was started. Complicating the search efforts were the fact that the submersible seemed to have no type of emergency distress locator beacon (I'm not sure what the precise nautical terminology would be for this).

The search included visual searching of the surface, dropping buoys with microphones, and ROVs (unmanned remote operated vehicles, deep sea robots operated by crew on ships at the surface) searching the floor, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Deep sea radar etc etc, every tool they had access to.

The search and rescue concluded on Thursday (June 22, 2023) around midday, when they definitively found pieces of the destroyed submersible's pressure vessel (the part of the submersible that held pressure and kept the people safe and alive) in a debris field, approximately 1600 feet away from the Titanic.

The destroyed pressure vessel and reports from the Navy on hearing sounds consistent with implosion at the time the Titan lost contact indicates that the submersible underwent what is being called a 'catastrophic implosion'.

It is now an investigation and recovery operation, while they try to figure out what exactly went wrong.

The five men in the sub are dead. In all likelihood, they died so quickly that their nervous system didn't have time to process what happened. What happened to their bodies during this was probably gory and kind of horrifying, but it's unlikely they experienced any awareness of this.

There were five extremely wealthy men on the submersible- they were not all billionaires, but those that weren't were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If you want a rough sketch of their biographies, there's a link here. Other than them being pretty wealthy, who they are doesn't play that much into what I want to talk about, so I don't feel the need to go into it right now. (Again, as more information comes out, I may come back for another swing.)

So, my complaint. The number of times I saw a news interview with an expert that went like this is not small:

news host interviews deep ocean expert of some variety (who is not involved in rescue)

host asks expert what chances are that the dudes are alive and will be recovered alive

expert, being honest, says something like 'slim to none'

host responds with some amount of sincere-seeming disappointment, then after interview, pivots to the ongoing search for the definitely still alive people

There were news programs with clocks counting down how much theoretical oxygen was left. There were frequent updates to news stories with nothingburgers of additions, just to pad it out. It was, if they were alive at that moment, fucking ghoulish. That they were dead makes it even more horrible.

And I cannot emphasize enough how many experts said, to generalize and paraphrase here: "Unless they are found bobbing on the surface in the next n hours, they are dead. Even if they are alive right this minute, on the bottom of the ocean, there is no hope to rescue them in time."

This is not a failure of any of the rescue entities involved, by the way. The environment they were presumed to be in- 4000 meters under sea level- is so extreme that there are very few vehicles in the world with the capability of even getting to that depth. Like, 10 or less. As far as I know, none of them are designed to do any kind of deep sea rescue- which would have involved carefully scooping up or netting the Titan and hauling it up very slowly. There's no way to transfer personnel between ships at this depth, and the Titan had the largest passenger allowance at this depth, afaik. Like, the odds were incredibly, vanishingly small that these men would live.

The media, at large, never ever really allowed that to change the way they talked about this story or treated the participants in the story. At around 11 am or noon (central daylight time) on Thursday I saw them talking about how 'oxygen is critical'.

Oxygen was critical 24 hours prior. Even by the most generous of expectations, they were out of breathable air. Given how, to put it mildly, janky the submersible seemed to have been, there was absolutely no guarantee that they had even the 96 hours that Oceangate claimed.

Their likelihood of being rescued alive from the ocean floor was minimal on Monday. By Thursday, they were dead- again, unless they were found on the surface somewhere and had managed to carefully preserve their air somehow, they were already dead.

The media didn't really allow for the reality of the situation to be clear until Oceangate and the USCG came out and said 'yeah, they're dead'.

"Well, what's the problem with that?" you might ask. "The United States Coast Guard was the one who was saying it was a rescue up until that point."

Sure. That's their job. Their job is to treat it like an urgent rescue until it is certain that it is not. A significant amount of what they do is to rescue people from doing damnfool things in the water, and keeping hope alive until they find bodies, or evidence thereof. They were doing exactly what they should be doing.

(Whether they do this to this extent for everybody lost at sea is another conversation that's absolutely worth having, as well as their role in border patrol, but I have no bone to pick with the USCG in this particular instance. They did their all until they could do no more, that's the whole point of them, this is how they're supposed to operate.)

The media was not doing what they should be doing. There's an old quote somewhere that I think is just a journalism truism (everyone I've heard talk about it says their journalism professor said it)- if someone tells you it's raining, and someone else tells you it's not, your job isn't to report that, your job is to go outside and see if it's wet.

James Cameron- director of the aforementioned Titanic movie, as well as being a Titanic and deep sea submersible expert, knew they were dead on Monday.

He reached out to some people, he found out that the mother ship lost contact with the crew as well as their location at the same instant, and that the Navy heard a sound consistent with an implosion at around that time.

The information that the Navy heard the implosion was not classified information- they heard it via a listening system that was declassified in the 90s, I believe. Like, I knew about the system just kind of casually because I know random Navy stuff. (My dad was in the Navy, it's mostly osmosis.)

The people on the scene were informed as soon as the Navy knew. (When that was, I'm not sure, except it was before Monday. Probably they had someone go back and listen to it and weren't actively monitoring it, but it's hard to say.)

The deep ocean submersible community knew, well enough that James Cameron could call a buddy and find out. He was telling people on Monday to raise a glass to them.

The media could have had this information, if they did not have it. Either they didn't want to know, or did know, and didn't say it. And I can't say for certain they were suppressing information, but I do know that they frequently downplayed any evidence that these people were dead.

I know on CNN they ran a story about FADOSS- the FlyAway Deep Ocean Salvage System- that was shipped out to Newfoundland. It arrived Wednesday afternoon. Description in the alt text, link here.

At the time this story was published, the people in the sub would have theoretically had less than 24 hours of breathable air. They hadn't even chartered a ship for the FADOSS, at this point. And the port in Newfoundland is hundreds of miles from the site. I'm not sure how many hours away but, like, hours away. I think I heard it's a 6 hour trip, but I'm not certain on that.

This system was referenced in the news as if it was going to be part of the rescue process. Very clearly, this was never going to happen. The quote, 'a process which can take a full day' is a mild understatement, here.

It could, theoretically, be done in 24 hours, but was much more likely to take longer, unless they had enough crew in Newfoundland to do round-the-clock welding.

The response to the question about recovering someone alive is a polite way of saying 'that's not what we do'. They were not part of the rescue operation and were never intended to be, as far as I can tell.

(If you're wondering what part the FADOSS is going to take in the recovery and investigation process, it's not. It's used to lift heavy objects off the floor, and the Titan broke into small enough pieces that the ROVs are believed capable of handling it. FADOSS is on its way back to wherever it is kept. I suspect it was brought out in the edge case that the submersible was found intact with dead crew, to retrieve the vessel whole, so that the families would have bodies to bury.)

Setting aside the 'oh they definitely blew up' news that seems to have been available the whole time, every single piece of evidence and expertise pointed to these people being dead, and yet the news persisted in sort of breathlessly (sorry) talking about the rescue efforts and how much time was left. They persisted in talking about how definitely still alive these people were until they could not do that anymore.

Other examples of this issue are the knocking thing. There were reports of some of the buoys picking up something that could be described as 'knocking'. Some said it was 'every thirty minutes' but we don't know how precise a measurement that was. As soon as they started talking about the knocking, I looked into it.

As it turns out, this is just a thing that happens. The sea is very noisy, and it's hard to determine the source of a sound. Some geological things sound manmade, vice versa. They had a lot of ships cooperating together to work the search area, it's possible that they were hearing noise from those, or something from an oil platform a jillion miles away, because noise travels far and is hard to pinpoint. They had this issue while searching for the sunken USS Thresher and it was one of the ships doing the searching. Given how many different moving parts there were in this search operation, it's hard to say what the knocking was. This is just a thing in the ocean, there's a lot of fuckin noise and experts can't always pinpoint it down in location or even what it might be.

This is why, even though they heard sounds that were consistent with implosion, at the time that the Titan lost total contact with the mother ship, it was still treated as if there was a live rescue operation. Because they couldn't be certain.

But the odds were extremely poor that these men were alive, and almost everybody involved knew that fairly early on. Again, the rescue operation had to go forward like they were looking for someone alive because that's how that works. The media, on the other hand, handled this in a very irresponsible way.

And, like, I know, news media is bad at being news is not some like hot new thing, I've just been building up frustration for days and so it had to come out somehow.

I'm not sure how much of this was just because they're very wealthy men- only one of whom I've ever heard of before- and how much of it was because it was a very bizarre and unique ongoing situation, how much of it was the intersection of that.

But pretty much everybody with enough knowledge to be worth talking to about this knew, like, Monday that even if they weren't dead right then, they were very unlikely to make it out alive, and watching the news wind a bunch of people up over the hopeful outcome was revolting.

Okay. We'll see if I can go 24 hours without talking about this. If you made it to the end of this absolute fucking novel, congratulations and/or I'm sorry.

[klausysworld]

Could you do another part of my queen where the Scooby-Doo gang kidnaps y/n thinking she is just a random normal wolf that Klaus cares about like a pet, but then Bonnie finds out what she is and so they try to use her against Klaus with the help of Esther so they turn her into a human?

My Queen PT2

PT1

Since realising I was the wolf that saved him so many times a thousand years ago, Klaus had become much more eager to spend time with me. He seemed to believe he needed to take care of me, as though he owed it to me because of how I watched over him in the past.

He began to leave steaks outside my den and often tried to bring me into his house but I always refused him. He was the kind of person to not let me leave.

I was a wolf, not a pet dog.

And he became very aware of that when I bit his wrist so hard he nearly cried after he attempted to put a collar on him.

His siblings found the situation bizarre and I don’t blame them. Elijah often sighed when Niklaus tried to lure me into the house.

It seemed the Mikaelsons weren’t the only people who thought me to be a pet.

Salvatores, Gilberts, Forbes and Bennetts did too.

So much so that they had caged me and belittled me. They mocked and tormented me while I paced back and forth thinking of a way to get past. I could force my way out, break the bars and bite them all but I had so much wolves bane in my system that I probably wouldn’t get very far at all.

Besides the stupid witch was doing tests on me which weakened me by the minute and the vampires had buckets of wolfs bane mixed water ready to drown me in if I stepped out of line. Which I figured out wasn’t a bluff when I attempted to bite their precious human.

I remained as calm as I could for as long as I could. In fact I only really became more aggressive when a scarred Esther showed up with an arrogant Finn at her side.

She and Bonnie conversed and before I knew it my entire body was screaming at me in absolute agony.

It was as though my blood was on fine and burning me from the inside out, my limbs all bent the wrong ways and my spine snapped out of place.

I forced myself to my paws on shaky legs and began to bolt, I weaved past the witches. The others had left assuming it would take longer for the spell to take place.

I could hear them yelling and my teeth sunk into Finn’s leg when he lunged forward to grab me making him topple over to the ground and his in pain.

Everything hurt as I dashed through the streets alarming the locals and causing havoc and disaster as cars began to crash and people screamed. My senses were going haywire as my insides were stabbed at.

My body became off balanced as my back legs become longer than my front. I rolled forward and my paws fingers got tangled in my fur hair. My yelp sounded softer than usual and my breathing was heavier. I laid still on the ground for a moment when I saw two arms infront of me. I could feel my heart beating faster and I could feel my skin touching my skin. My fingers twitched and I lifted my hand in horror. I rolled onto my back and with far too much effort, pushed myself up with the palms of my hands.

What the fuck.

I looked down with wide eyes and my lips parted when I poked at my knees, I stretched my toes out with a look of disbelief on my face and hesitantly reached up to touch my nose. My teeth were blunt and and my snout was nonexistent and neither were my whiskers. I could hear my breathing quickening as I frantically looked at my new body.

My hair kept falling infront of my vision, it was as white as my fur but much longer and messier. I had little to no fur hair on the rest of my body making me feel weird as I slowly stood up. I grimaced at the feel of dirt and sticks against my feet, they hurt much more than when it was against my paws. I took a step forward only to return straight back to the ground due to leaning too far forward and having to push myself back up. I got onto my hands and knees before dragging myself to a nearby tree and pulling myself up.

This is not fun.

I basically hobbled through the woods, every step caused a horrible sting in the bases of my feet and the bark of the trees scratched my hands and my breasts if I got too close which hurt much more than I had thought. Thankfully the sky was getting darker so people shouldn’t be around. Stupid hikers and campers.

Thankfully only one guy saw me and he was clearly not in the right mind as he just gave me a thumbs up and walked off with a low whistle.

This would be the only time I am grateful for Klaus bringing me to his home so often because now I had memorised all of the ways there. It took way too long to get here but I made it.

I stared at the door blankly and hit my hands against it harshly making me wince as the sting that spread over my palms and pads of my fingers.

I heard a loud grumbling and a string of curses from Niklaus before the door opened making me stumble slightly as some of my weight had been against it. I fell against his chest and his arms circled me instantly.

God inside here was warm. It was absolutely fucking freezing without my fur and his body radiated heat like an open flame would.

His throat cleared but I didn’t look up at him, only stayed against him somewhat awkwardly, not really knowing what to do in this position. I heard footsteps and turned my head to see Elijah with a frown on his face

“Niklaus…why on earth are you hugging a naked girl in the middle of the night?” He asked getting nearer. His eyes locked on mine before glancing at my hair and back to my eyes again, his brows raised and he cleared his throat before turning his head and walking over out of my sight line. He returned within a second and a soft material was brought over my shoulders. I was guided away from Niklaus’s arms.

“You didn’t let anyone know that your little friend here could turn human” Elijah muttered quietly but not quietly enough apparently.

Klaus looked at me with wide eyes and an open mouth as his hand reached out in front of my face making me bare my teeth. His brows furrowed and I frowned before realising I didn’t exactly look very threatening like this.

“I wasn’t aware either” he whispered as his eyes dragged down my body making me pull the blanket around me and give him a dirty look. He blinked at me before apologising breathlessly and looking to Elijah in utter confusion.

He turned back to me with a hesitant look on his face, “my Queen…how long have you been human?” He asked, his tone almost nervous as he stared at me.

“For gods sake you two, look at her, clearly not very long” Rebekah’s voice came from my right before she was right beside me. “Come on flower, let’s get you washed and dried” she told me, her hands grabbed my arms and she pulled me along. I had not idea what to do. I didn’t know how to talk and I wasn’t able to just bite any of them. My cuts weren’t healing and I felt uncomfortable with everything about me.

My eyes widened at the stair case and my head shook quickly. “Come on, it’s okay” she tried as her hand pulled at mine, she tugged harder and my claws nails dug into her wrist and she let go with a curse. “Why you little-“

“Rebekah! Leave her be” Klaus growled before I felt his hand in my hip making me shift “it’s alright sweetheart, I’m going to lift you and take you up okay? We’ll figure this all out as soon as possible” I said nothing only stiffened and looked at him as I was carried up the stairs, one of his arms went under the back of my knees and the other against my back. I kept as still as I could until I was carefully put back down on my feet.

I looked around in confusion at the cold floors and shiny walls. My eyes widened and I stepped back when water began to blast against a big glass box.

“In you go love, into the shower” he directed while pushing me forward, the blanket was taken from me and I was under the hot water. I looked to him in slight betrayal and he gave a faint smile. I looked at him helplessly until he sighed and pushed his pants down and stepped in behind me. “Alright my Queen, everything’s gonna be okay, I’ll get you all clean and we can get some rest. I’ll get a witch out to help”

I tensed when he mentioned a witch but he didn’t comment on it and instead brought his fingers into my hair while the water poured over it and foamy soap fell to the base of the shower. His hands slid down my back and to my hips making me swallow thickly and turn around to look up at him. He was much taller in human form compared to our wolves.

I had seen Niklaus without any clothes many times after he turned but never had my body reacted the way it was now. Everything felt much hotter and my lower abdomen tingled. I looked up to see his brows risen as his head tilted to the side with a growing smirk on his lips

“Well you certainly are different like this aren’t you?” He hummed making me growl quietly in my throat though it sounded much softer than I had hoped and he chuckled. “Not quite the same affect hm?” His hand cupped my face and his thumb rubbed over my lower lip making my brows furrow “not so strong now are we little wolf?” He cooed at me like I was a child’s, so I did the only logical thing I could think of and bit his thumb.

He hissed and snatched his hand away making me see my opening and rush out of the shower, I was dripping wet as I ran out the bathroom and through his room only for him to appear directly infront of me at the doorway. I let out an ‘mph’ as I knocked into him and winced at the impact against my breasts.

I shoved at his chest but was lifted up and tossed onto his bed making me yelp. In a flash he was back on top of me and my face was heating up significantly as his naked body pressed to mine. My body reacted on its own to him and I was starting to get annoyed with myself. “You need to calm down love” he whispered lowly and a delightful sensation ran along my spine. My breathing picked up and my thighs squeezed together. His fingers brushed over my cheek and he gently kissed the corner of my mouth. “I shouldn’t have belittled you, I got carried away with how adorable you are as a human” he murmured and I let out a breath. “I never expected you to be human my queen, I didn’t think about how desirable you’d look” he whispered “but you’re all confused at the moment and clearly been through something so for now, I will get you something to cover up your stunning body so that I don’t pounce on you…again” he smiled and I gave a weak one in response.

With much reluctance he got me into a shirt and underwear, him self in a similar state and beckoned me over to his side of the bed. I shuffled closer and he brought an arm around me, my nose pressed to his chest and i breathed in his scent. He didn’t smell as strong without my wolf nose but he still smelt nice.

His hand stroked the back of my head pleasantly and I sunk into the bed, being a human wasn’t awful per say but I sure as hell hoped that those stupid witches burned for it.

[reasonsforhope]

Is it true some parts will be under water in 2025? I'm kinda of worried cause someone told me about it bc it was on the news

Eh, not really. Like, technically, but that's a very dramatic way to put it.

What that person told you about was probably this prediction, which says that some roads on some of the Florida Keys might be underwater by 2025.

Does that suck? Yes. But it's also pretty limited in scope.

(And by the way, that's probably not "underwater all the time." There will probably be a number of years of "the roads will be underwater at high tide specifically." I can't currently find a source on this, but that's how tides work, and the Florida Keys article does specifically mention them as a main problem.)

The areas in danger first are pretty universally small, very low islands. Actually, a dozen or so small islands have already gone underwater in the Pacific Ocean, but very importantly, none of those islands were inhabited.

They were mostly small reef islands (that is, the entire island is exposed coral reef detritus) and other uninhabited shoals. Mostly, they were so small scientists had to check old satellite images to even figure out that they disappeared. Literally, we're talking about chunks of land that are just 100 square meters/300 square feet. Again, not great, but still very limited in scope.

As this Live Science article thankfully explains, it's pretty unlikely that any countries at all will disappear before 2100.

Also, just because land is below sea level doesn't mean it will be underwater, and there are very real steps we can take to defend a lot of endangered cities/islands.

For example:

Much of the Netherlands is already below sea level, but the country isn't disappearing, because the Dutch have put a lot of work into building and maintaining coastal defenses.

Multiple surveys (including the one that found the missing islands in Micronesia) also found that not all low-lying islands are vulnerable to erosion and flooding. This is because many islands are protected by mangrove forests, lagoons, or both

Mangrove reforestation in particular is genuinely a super effective anti-flooding strategy that is being deployed pretty widely, and is expected to increase a lot in the coming years. Mangroves are effective at not only preventing short-term flooding, but also mitigating sea-level increases (in part by preventing erosion)

Some islands, esp Pacific Islands, have actually grown during the past couple decades, not shrunk. It really depends on what the island is made up of. Not all land is automatically doomed

You can read more about how sinking countries are fighting back here, and the lessons we can learn from them:

-via Time, June 13, 2019

And finally, and this is good news for reasons I'll explain in a second:

Some of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world are at the top of the danger list. (Note: the predictions at that link are based on some fairly severe warming predictions. They do NOT necessarily reflect what's going to happen or when.)

The cities that are going to be in danger the soonest (still away btw) include New York, London, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Dubai. Lots of very rich people in those cities! Who would really like to not have to move (any of their ten different homes lol)

So, flooding aside, we're going to (by necessity) get a lot better at figuring out the quickest, cheapest, most scalable, and most effective types of coastal defenses real fast.

Are rich countries going to be way more able to get strong coastal defense systems up quickly? Yes. Does that suck? Sure fucking does!! But these solutions don't all require a lot of money or tech to implement, even at a large scale, especially when it's local communities driving the effort.

And, importantly, when rich countries pour a ton of money into figuring this out, that will hugely expand our understanding of what techniques work best, why, and how best to deploy them in different situations. Unlike physical structures, that's valuable knowledge that can be shared very, very widely.

And any technology that comes out of this is going to work like solar panels and other green energy: as more people use it, it will get cheaper and cheaper. Probably really quickly.

So, all told, no one's going to be swallowed up in the next few years. We have time to work on this and a lot of people are already doing so.

Mostly, experts predict that the first wave of large-scale issues will be happening around 2050.

Three decades doesn't sound like enough time, in the face of something like this. But you know what? Responses to climate change are speeding up exponentially, and different types of responses are multiplying and magnifying each other.

We went from inventing flight to landing on the moon in just 66 years.

I wouldn't count us out of the climate change fight yet.

(...I wouldn't count on retiring to Florida either, though)

[allwormdiet]

Sentinel 9.1

Weld's lucky he's endearing, bc oh my god the ways he manages to step in it this arc

Bro, the city has been kaiju'd to hell, everyone who could use the airports to get out has gotten out, no money is gonna be made any time soon so business isn't happening, and nobody is dumb enough to come to Brockton Bay for pleasure right now. No shit the airport is empty. I'm more surprised that you're surprised by that.

Hey Piggot, sorry your job has gotten like a million times more stressful, hope you're hanging in there

Is robbing part of an airport profitable? That doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about airports or robbery to dispute it.

Also it's interesting to see economics and class inequality come up again, especially in the context of disaster response and response to disasters. The gap between rich and poor only gets wider in times of crisis, and the gap was already pretty fucking wide.

So, finally the PRT power classifications get laid out, having been introduced in Interlude 6 and mentioned again in 8.7. And it's mentioned explicitly as something that was used to sort out villains before eventually getting applied to heroes as well. Presumably an effort to know how to respond in case a hero goes off the rails, or maybe just trying to find more justifications to use the system. Dunno. Don't think it matters a ton in the grand scheme of things, trying to shove every power into a neat labeled box seems unproductive after a certain point.

Also yeah "Brute" is a bit of an unfortunate choice, with the additional yikes factor that they were specifically using it to describe villains at first. Like oh, don't worry about dishing out the punishment, it's a Brute after all.

I think Armsmaster would sooner chew off his other arm than retire, so there's definitely a story there

Also yeah Flechette locked in, as expected

This is the only real thing I can ding Piggot's standing for, I don't think it's hard to tell that a friendly rivalry would mean nothing in this context, so the fact that she's coming down on it for even existing feels like an overreaction. Then again, she's trying to bail out a battleship with a bucket, being humorless is hardly the worst offense in a time like this

"They weren't strictly homeless because they were squatting in abandoned commercial and industrial buildings" is certainly a perspective. When they talk about the intentions of Leviathan, it almost makes me wonder if the Docks were targeted to exacerbate things, get more people pissed and hurting and desperate. Between this, being able to target cities based off of social instability and potential media coverage, and possibly trying to eat or free Noelle, that's a lot of different factors possibly urging this attack and its behavior during said attack, and it might just be all of them at once. That's fucking freaky.

Also I think there was a mild slip-up here, calling Moist a Shifter instead of, I'm assuming, a Changer.

Shaper instead of Changer again

Interesting that Hookwolf is the head of the second Empire successor group, wonder if Krieg just didn't have the drive for leadership or got killed after the Endbringer stuff (thus not showing up on the memorial). Also mildly surprised that he's got the biggest number of parahumans.

The fact that the Pure have been rejected "for the time being" raises my hackles though, I've gotta be real. If the Protectorate/PRT actually stoop low enough to cooperate with fucking Nazis I'm gonna start feeling a lot less charitable

So three Masters is Skitter, Bitch, and Regent. I would guess that Skitter is the one they're concerned about, knowing Shadow Stalker's face, and that the other two would be who they consider possible sociopaths.

"Faultline's Crew" is a terrible name honestly. Coil and Faultline both just suck at naming teams...

Also 12 is the highest number we see here, which I guess means Labyrinth is on paper the most busted cape in the city. Good for her.

That's gotta fucking suck, never having a moment away from prying eyes whenever you're in public. How much of this is Weld being a champ and how much of this is Weld being resigned to this being his life?

That. Is rough.

So, that's something interesting. There's an interesting dichotomy between how parahumans can utterly wipe the floor against regular human combatants, even facing 25-to-1 odds with no purely defensive abilities (Grue's darkness can't stop a lucky hit) and coming out of it totally clean, and now there's this concern. We know that the early independent heroes got their shit rocked, Vikare got killed by a blow to the head during a sports riot of all things, so is there an upper limit on how many humans a parahuman can face at once? Does it hinge on how many parahumans are working together to face the threat, like could Grue only take on ten guys on his own if Skitter and Gregor and Spitfire hadn't been there to watch his back?

I'm probably overthinking this, but Piggot apparently considers it worth worrying about, so I won't dismiss the topic out of hand. Parahumans seem to end up above, below, or otherwise apart from the rest of humanity, and that separation could prove troublesome.

Gotta be strange to have your boss act like your dad, but needs must when you don't even remember who you are.

Also yeah fingers crossed Piggot holds to principles here, she doesn't seem the type but I've been disappointed before

Jesus Christ that's a really long-term plan. They've been at this since what, the late 80s?

Also interesting that the terminology uses is stated in-universe to be dated

So what's the "core" Protectorate team in this context? Is that at or above the standing that Armsmaster had before he derailed his own career? Are we talking Triumvirate level, or is there a middle ground I'm not aware of?

I also really really want to know what the meme was involving Weld, that's such a specific thing to have happen

I'm shocked that this would be considered frivolous. That's the kind of opportunity you'd normally seize with both hands, the idea of waving it off seems bizarre. Do they need the Wards too much to fight homicidal supervillains and disarm megaton bombs to let them *checks notes* get more kinds of training in? That feels shortsighted.

Then again a lot of things in Brockton Bay seem shortsighted. The greatest threat against Coil's grand scheme is his own impulsiveness (although easy money says that Taylor will become his biggest problem down the line), the Empire for some reason bothered with petty street crime and protection rackets while being run by, really cannot overstate this, the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation that was doing well enough to have an entire skyscraper, and Lung put in like 1% of the effort he could've given to running the city. Maybe nobody is coming up with five-year plans because nobody is confident they'll live another five years, or maybe it's something in the water supply.

This is funny but it's so fucking rude, oh my God

Oh Weld, Weld no, do not think about Shadow Stalker like that, she'd corrode your dick off your body with her personality.

Oh, Weld. You have put your foot in your mouth already.

This story takes a pretty dim view of humanity, honestly. Poisoning an entire apartment block with chlorine gas just so you can loot it and take over feels extreme; I'm not gonna say it could or would never happen, unfortunately people are just as capable of evil as they are of good and there's not really a limit to how far either of those things can go, but for me at least it's somewhat curious that we don't hear more about any altruists in the city outside of the Protectorate; there would have to be good Samaritans somewhere in the mix, and not even most of them would've already been stabbed or beaten to death by opportunists.

Maybe that's just the perspective the Wards are giving us, but call me crazy, I don't think Taylor is going to be any more optimistic about how things are going.

Also, Clockblocker is jumping down Weld's throat here, but he's not strictly wrong. He's coming into this fresh-faced, having not dealt with any of the aftermath of Leviathan. The strain being put on these kids is intense, not least with the losses that the Protectorate suffered and the teammates they're still grieving. Fifteen hour patrols, Jesus Christ.

Bro got owned by a thirteen-year-old.

How did he not get briefed on the dead Wards? How did he not already look them up for himself? Someone, I think multiple someones, dropped the ball there. I'm also surprised that Weld even asked the question instead of just drawing his own conclusions or looking into it when nobody could catch him being a fool.

Current Thoughts

I do not envy Weld for the situation he's being thrown into. Whatever happens in Boston is clearly a different kind of ballgame from what they're doing here in Brockton Bay, and he has not been read into it yet.

I don't envy any of the Wards, this might be the most thankless position anyone in the city might be stuck with, and none of them are even old enough to buy cigarettes or vote, but they have to fend off looters and wade through waters tainted with death and ruin for hours at a time.

How many rights do you sign away taking this job, getting your ass put on the line like this when not even the military takes kids this young into combat? I think Skitter was right, this whole arrangement blows chunks

[141goblin]

Soft: Chapter two.

CW: Mention of body image, reader feels inferior to her best friend. Slightly suggestive.

A/N: Thank you for all the love on part one, i’m so glad people like my writing. It’s heavily self indulgent so it makes me very happy to know it resonates with people other than me🥰

—>Part one

After a little encouragement from Johnny and the rest of my martini, I find myself stood in front of the group of men and Amelia as her and Johnny both introduce me to his friends. I got a wink and a “Nice to meet you, lovely” from Gaz, a firm handshake and a “Pleasure” from Simon…

“And this is Price, our Captain.”

The wide man smiles warmly and gives me a nod.

“Pleasure to meet you, dove.”

I give him a sweet smile and something between and a nod and an awkward bow/curtsy. Why the fuck am I curtsying? Jesus christ, I need another drink already. I feel my cheeks heating up with embarrassment but luckily, no one mentions it. They either didn’t notice or decide not to mention it. Either way, I don’t care.

Everyone begins to engage in small talk, leaving me stood there in the awkward predicament of being part of the group, but not being part of the conversation. I feel so ridiculous and out of place, like a child that’s stood with a group of adults, unable to join in on their conversation. I pretend like I don’t care and politely excuse myself and walk towards the exit.

I walk outside and sit down on the stone bench, my feet already aching because of my stupid heels, the cold night air nipping at my skin that simultaneously feels too hot because of the amount of alcohol i’ve consumed.

I rummage around in my handbag and pull out my half-empty packet of cigs that I save for when I drink. I always insist that i’m not a smoker, yet the minute I get a few drinks in my system, i’m puffing away like a chimney, making my breath stink. I light up and inhale it deep, feeling the all too familiar burn in my lungs. The smoke curls up into the night air as I exhale, leaving a ribbon of grey in front of me.

I think back to Amelia and how effortlessly pretty she looks, how she’s able to command everyone’s attention just by walking into a room. She doesn’t have to worry about what she looks like 24/7, she doesn’t have to worry about meeting someone in person for the first time after talking on a dating app and feeling terrified of being rejected and being labelled a ‘catfish’ because they didn’t know I was fat from my pictures. I know it’s not her fault, I know that. But deep down, there’s a bitterness, right in the pit of my stomach. She’s gorgeous, she doesn’t have to even try. The bitterness festers and claws at my insides on nights like this, where i’m left alone to entertain myself while she’s off with Johnny or her other friends. I sound like a child, i’m fully aware of that, but still, I feel it. Deep down in my stomach, a dull ache for more, a longing, a yearning to be that girl. Just as i’m stewing in my own grumpiness and general bitterness, I hear the rumble of a deep voice behind me.

“You alright, dove?”

Normally, i’d make an effort to impress a man like him. He’s handsome, too fucking handsome for his own good. Normally, i’d stub out my cigarette and sit up straight to hide the rolls of my stomach that protrude when I sit comfortably. But right now, I don’t care.

“Fine, thanks.”

Clipped, short, blunt. A subtle hint for him to leave me alone. He either ignores it or is too stupid to pick up on it, because he sits down beside me. Thighs spread, one hand on his thigh, the other wrapped around a cigar.

“Not a fan of parties like this, I take it?”

I scoff and flick some ash off the end of my cigarette before taking another deep puff, letting it fill my lungs, the stench of tobacco creating a cloud around me.

“You could say that.”

He laughs, his broad shoulders shaking up and down, the sound rumbly and deep, settling into my bones. He raises his cigar to his lips and takes a drag, the brown cylinder hissing and glowing red at the tip as he sucks. His voice is thick with smoke when he speaks.

“Mm, I get it. Not for everyone.”

I’ve either had too much to drink, am at the end of my tether, or just feel way too comfortable with this man, because what comes next is an outburst, an angry rant.

“I mean, is it for anyone other than rich arseholes or people who have been dragged into it by those rich arseholes? Groups of people pretending to be something they’re not, just to impress each other. I don’t get it. Fucking ridiculous if you ask me. I’d much rather be curled up on my couch with a shit bottle of wine and a takeaway than be here but I couldn’t say no to Amelia. Pain in the arse…”

I expected him to defend the party, or make some excuse that it’s a chance for like-minded people to ‘network’ or some ridiculous bullshit. But, to my surprise, he just laughs again. A warm, rumbling sound that makes me want to press my ear to his chest. I huff and cross my arms over my chest, glaring out into the night, the grassy courtyard scattered with multiple bush-sculptures, or whatever they’re called.

“Feel better, dove?”

I huff and laugh and hum in response. He gives me a tap on the thigh and stands up.

“I’ll be inside, if you decide to stay. I hope your night gets better, dove.”

I give him my best attempt at a warm smile and then he disappears inside again. I take a deep breath and try to shake off the festering bitterness and grumpiness. I should be inside, with my best friend. I stand up, feeling the ache of my heels and walk back inside to the ballroom, putting on a happy face. I spot Amelia, Johnny, Gaz and Simon at a table towards the front so I make my way over. Amelia gives me a concerned look, a silent ask of ‘You okay?’ and I just nod, dismissing it. I’m not getting into it, not here, not now.

A waiter appears and places a blueberry martini in front of me, without me even having to ask and i’ve never been so grateful. I take a large, burning swig and turn to the group with feigned confidence.

“So, what’d I miss?”

Johnny turns to me without taking his eyes off the stage, where a few people are setting up a microphone and some speakers.

“The birthday boy is about to make his big speech. Should be a good one, better than last year.”

The lads share a few knowing laughs, like they’re all giggling over an inside joke, and i’m about to ask what’s funny when a familiar, gravelly voice talks through the microphone and out of the speakers.

“If I could just have your attention for a minute or two-“

Fuck. Sake.

“Just want to say a quick thank you to all of you for coming to celebrate my birthday with me tonight. It’s lovely to see see you all. I hope you all enjoy your night and make complete use of the bar. Behave yourselves”

If there was ever a time I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole, it’d be now. I went on a big, angry rant to the poor man minutes previously, completely ignorant to the fact that the entire reason this party is taking place is because it’s his fucking birthday. I’ve never felt more like a dickhead in all my life, and i’m certain my face is bright red. Price raises a glass and speaks again.

“To us rich arseholes, at least pretend to be on your best behaviour, eh? Here’s to a good night.”

He ends the speech echoing my previous words with a wink in my direction and I’ve never been more embarrassed in my entire life. I must’ve sounded like some entitled, bitchy woman who thinks she’s above rich, fancy parties. I knew i’d never have a chance with a man like him anyway, but now any flicker of hope there was has been completely stubbed out by my own angry words, fuelled by alcohol and bitterness towards being the ‘single, fat friend’.

I down the rest of my martini in an attempt to hide my beetroot-red face and embarrassment, despite the fact that my head is already a little fuzzy and clouded by the way i’ve been chugging blueberry martinis like my life depends on it. Luckily, no one notices my embarrassment and Price goes off to mingle with other people rather than coming back to our table, so I don’t have to confront him. I make a silent ‘thank-you’ to whoever is up there in the sky, whether it be god or some other deity.

The next few hours go by without any more embarrassments, thank god. I do my best to engage in small talk with the lads while simultaneously avoiding Price. I should apologise, I know that, but I doubt he wants to see me. Or hear my whining voice ever again. Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he cut me off and tell me it was his fucking birthday to save me the embarrassment of going off on some pathetic rant about ‘rich arseholes’? Why am I such a fucking idiot?

I excuse myself from the group and go back to the bar to order another drink. Except this time, I order a glass of water along with my martini. Arguably the only good decision i’ve made all night. No, the only good decision i’ve made in a long time. I plop myself down on the same tiny barstool as a few hours previous and take a few swigs of water to try and sober up a little and cool myself down. My hair has gone from being up in a bun and cute-messy, to being free and wild, cascading down my back. I don’t even remember undoing it, but i’m past the point of caring. My face is flushed, my eyes are glassy and my lipstick is faded and the tiniest bit smudged. A whole mess.

I force my thoughts away from considering the mess i’ve become over the course of the night and I look over to Amelia and the group of lads. Before I even have time to register that Price has joined the group, my stomach drops. He’s looking right at me with a fucking smirk on his face. If I wasn’t so embarrassed I’d probably think it was the sexiest thing i’ve ever seen. My face immediately blushes scarlet and I discard the glass of water for my martini. If i’m gonna get through this night with any semblance of dignity, I won’t be doing it sober. I debate getting up and sucking up my pride to apologise for being such a bitch. But then, what if he just laughs in my face and everyone else sees how much of a whiny child I was? Yeah, better not do that.

Amelia seems to notice him staring right at me because in a matter of seconds, she’s following his gaze and then walking over to me, that determined look on her face. She knows somethings going on, and she will demand to know.

“Okay, what the fuck. Did you and birthday boy get it on in the toilets or something without me knowing?”

I scoff and roll my eyes, not meeting her gaze and pouring some more blueberry flavoured courage down my throat.

“Obviously not, Amelia.”

She shakes her head and sits on the stool next to me, determined to get to the bottom of my awkward behaviour.

“Okay, listen. Me and you are gonna get out of here and go back to your apartment with a bottle of your favourite shit wine and we can talk all about it. I can tell you’re not enjoying yourself and I wanna know what’s going on. Gimme five minutes, i’ll be back and then we’re leaving.”

Before I can argue and tell her it’s okay, she’s going back to the group of lads and giving Johnny a kiss goodbye. It’s times like these where i’m reminded why she’s my best friend. She can read my feelings without me having to say a word, and she does truly care about me, even if my stupid little brain tries to convince me otherwise.

I leave the rest of my martini and make my way outside to have a cigarette while I wait for her. It’s well into the night now and considerably colder, and i’m mentally cursing myself for not wearing a jacket. I pull out another cigarette from my handbag and take a deep, long drag. The same burn, the same stench, the same short-lived relief. Just as i’m about to exhale-

“Leaving so soon, dove?”

For fuck sake. Why does this man have to show up at the worst times?

“Afraid so.. Past my bedtime.”

Again, the man laughs. Now, I know i’ve had too much to drink because I feel the warm, rumbly sound deep in my core, between my thighs. I don’t turn around to look at him, I can’t face him. I think i’ll die of embarrassment if I do.

I feel the warmth of something get draped around my shoulders, and the scent of spices and smoke mixed with expensive cologne. I’ve been nothing but a bitch to this man and here he is being chivalrous and giving me his jacket. I say nothing, but i’m grateful for the warmth.

“Hm. Shame. I quite enjoyed that little rant of yours.”

He’s doing in on purpose, i’m sure of it. He’s giving subtle digs to make me feel like even more of an idiot. It’s now when I spin on my heels to face him. I need to apologise. Now or never.

“Listen, about that.-“

“No need to apologise, dove. I liked the honesty. Not often I find a soft, beautiful thing like you with such fire in her.”

Just like that, i’m rendered speechless. I was expecting him to brush me off or belittle me or even scold me. But no. He’s giving me compliments like it’s the most normal thing in the world. I’m stuttering and fumbling over my words when Amelia walks about and grabs my hand, seemingly oblivious to the situation and pulling me into an uber. I get in, still speechless and head spinning. Is my head spinning because of the countless martinis I guzzled or because of him? I don’t know, and I can’t figure it out.

Amelia and I make it back to my apartment as we immediately kick off our shoes and crack open a bottle of shit wine and immediately I feel comfortable, i’m in my own space, drinking my favourite cheap wine with my best friend. Not surrounded by people I don’t know In some huge fucking mansion.

Amelia sits on the other end of the couch, legs intertwined with mine as she sips on the wine and gives me an expectant look, waiting for me to fill her in on tonight’s details.

“So… I went outside for a smoke and Captain Guy followed and sat down next to me. He asked if I was enjoying myself and I said no and went on a big rant, talking about how the only people that enjoy parties like that are rich arseholes and blah blah blah…”

I conveniently leave out the part at the end where he gave me his jacket and called me ‘soft and beautiful’. Which reminds me, I still have his jacket. I make a mental note to give it Johnny so he can give it back to him at some point.

Amelia’s eyes widen and she laughs.

“No way! Is that why he started talking about ‘rich arseholes’ in his speech?”

I nod, my face contorted into shame and embarrassment. Of course, Amelia thinks this is hilarious and nearly chokes on her wine.

“I felt like such a prat. It was the poor man’s birthday and here I am, basically calling him a rich arsehole…”

Amelia’s laughter dies down and she gives me a sympathetic look and a pat on the thigh.

“Girl, don’t even worry. He thought it was funny. Seemed interested in you. Even asked what your name was.”

My eyes instantly widen at the prospect of a man like Price being interested in a woman like me. I’m not exactly everyones cup of tea, i’m a big girl, rough around the edges, basically a hot mess on a good day.

“He what?!”

Amelia sports a shit-eating grin and nods, like she’s satisfied with herself.

“I swear. He came back inside and started asking about you.”

My face blushes like a fucking idiot and I have to bury my face in my hands. Since when did I become the type to get flustered and giddy over a man? Especially a man i’ve met once, and once only. But damn, what a man he is. That voice, broad shoulders, strong arms, thick thighs, strong hips…

The topic of conversation changes away from Price to Johnny and part of me feels grateful, though his words are still bouncing around my head like the DVD symbol on a TV.

“Not often I find a soft, beautiful thing like you with such fire in her.”

They bounce around in my head for the rest of the night, from when Amelia and I tuck into a greasy kebab, to when we settle into bed a good two hours later… The words are echoing around in my skull when my phone buzzes on my nightstand. I’m instantly ripped from my fantasies about the nice man with the wide shoulders when my brain reminds me the notification is probably from my shit-bag of an ex-boyfriend. I roll my eyes and breathe deeply before grabbing my phone, mentally preparing to read more false apologies when i’m completely stopped in my tracks.

Unknown: Nice seeing you tonight, dove. Think you still have my jacket. -JP

JP. The P is for Price, that much is obvious. But J? I begin to wonder about what his first name is… Jack? Jacob? James?

My thumbs hover over the keyboard as I rack my brain to come up with some sort of coherent response. I don’t even question how he got my number, i’m too busy focusing on the fact that he even texted me to begin with, and is calling me ‘Dove’. My stomach swirls. What do I say?

I put my phone down and decide i’ll reply in the morning when the alcohol is out of my system and i’ve had enough time to formulate a response that doesn’t make me sound like an absolute idiot. Until then, his words and text bounce against the corners of my skull, well into the hours of the morning.

[shuenkio]

-ˋˏ ༻ISEKAI LIFE WITH ENHA ❁༺ ˎˊ-

Paring: Enha X m!reader

Content: Fluff, emotion, [curse words]

Isekai: reincarnated to another world as a mc for a mission

Do not copy my works

Crd to all pics&dividers

Heeseung: The day you were here, was the day of his accession. A crown prince who just became the king of his kingdom, since his father, the previous king got ill in his old age. Despite how fresh he was in this field, his father hired you as his assistant, a royal secretary, he knew that his only son could do everything but he was lacking in making decisions, and he needed some advisor to give him a path, which is you. A few years had passed, and his kingdom was doing well because they had Heeseung who was in charge as a King. But he's not doing it alone, all the royal assistants are included too, especially you. If you are not here with him, he'd make a mistake. His Nation keeps growing and developing however that's not the only thing that grows, his feelings for you are also growing. Ofc the rule can't be in love with a lower class like you but he can't stop the feeling, love is love, the fact that you're a boy, made it even worse nevertheless he doesn't give a damn about it, you make him this way, Love.

"Don't worry M/N, if I can't have you nobody will, and please don't push me away, I've loved you since the day you made my life easier, so please give me this chance to make me yours, and you're mine?" You stood on the spot, unable to open your mouth nor to make a move before a system popped out in front of you and announced "You've completed your secret quest: make King Lee fall for you!" What!

Jay: He'd be likely a Royal captain, a masculine man, who stood strong for his country, a bloody demon war who takes victory home every time. You were reincarnated into his student, a training soldier. However things are kinda complicated for you since this is back in the past, a historical world where they didn't have technology, everything was going along with tradition, religion, manners and behavior was a big problem if you did something wrong. Soon enough after half a year, you have become familiar with your life and now is a royal soldier just like what you had been trained for. You had participated in some war and gained a great experience from it which gives an impression to Jay. One day during the bloody time, Jay was in bad shape while fighting with the other captain, he couldn't move because of his wounds as a result he was on the ground right now, moving his body by using his hands. You too were in critical shape, or maybe even worse than him, blood stained all over your body, every corner however for the love of country, and to protect the captain, you're risking your life by shielding him with your body at the very last moment when the opponent drawing a sword toward Jay. A sword cut through your rib, blood dripping, but that didn't stop you, with a dagger in your hand, pressed through against your enemy too. In return them and you, fall to the ground, lifelessly. Jay's eyes wide open, speechless reaction can't even explain well before taking your body, holding you close to him. A captain never cries, but he might break this rule. He brawled his eyes out, and didn't give a fuck about his surrounding.

"Please stay with me, M/N!! you can't die you can't do that, it's my order!!" He shouted, couldn't accept what he'd witnessed rn. "I-- *coughing* have completed my mission -- my lord! My mission is to protect you at all costs, for now since you're okay I think I can close my eyes peacefully ever after... Thanks for everything Captain - Jay" "System: Mission completed!"

Jake: A cowboy from an unknown village, he's quite a popular guy in the town because of his handsome face. Every girl wanted him so badly that even their body, they can give it to Jake without hesitation. However all their doing is no effort to him, he's recently development his sexuality, and he has only a spot for men. Meanwhile, you are an odd boy, who has white hair with blue eyes in the village, which gives a reason for the people to hate on you because, at that time, something odd is what a demon does. On one fine day, while people are bullying you, throwing kinds of stuff at you, Jake suddenly appear and protects you from all those bad things before saying something to them, and they're gone in an instant. He asks if you're ok, you just reply with a dry response since you don't trust people for now. He Pause for a moment to appreciate your beauty while you reply to him, then snap out after you ask him again. He rubs his nape, asking you if you want to be his friend so he can protect you, you decide to give in and accept his request because he's the only one who cares about you. Day by day passed, he taught you about people's daily life, what should they do, what should they eat, blah blah as well as took you to a different place, the sea, the mountains, a place where you never wanted to visit before. In the end, you fail to keep your feelings and make a decision to confess your feelings to him. Under the starry night, watching the shooting star, both of you sitting beside each other, admiring the night galaxy, he doesn't say anything back once you tell him how you feel toward him. Before letting out a relieved sigh, speak.

"I've been waiting for that line for how long, I like you at the very first sight but I choose to make you confess to me first darling~" "mission: ___✓___"

Sunghoon: You and him are childhood friends, but you don't remember anything since you're just reincarnated into this boy's body which you assume, is a prince. Sunghoon is also a prince so it makes sense that both kingdoms are in a good relationship together. Soon enough, Sunghoon's kingdom is throwing a ball party, his father already has a plan, to find a suitable princess for him by doing this. Sunghoon didn't like it, to say that he freaking hate it, he don't want nobody, he don't need a wife, he don't want to start a family, he want to be free and not follow the king's path, he don't want to be a king. The queen tries to convince him, but nothing will do, he's a man of his word, whatever he spitted he'd never swallow it back. You arrived at the ball, in your nice-looking royal designer suit. You look around trying to find your childhood friend, and then suddenly someone pulls your hand before taking you away to a quiet place. You try to release yourself from this person's grip but fail eventually because of how strong he is, even his face you can't see it. When both of you reached the private place, he immediately stopped, and released your hand before turning around, revealing his face, Park Sunghoon! You question him why did he this before he kneeled and cried, at your knee. You began to panic and asked him why. Why? "Your Highness, you can't do this please stand up, if people see you like this, they might assume things!!" You speak, with your shaking voice, the feeling of scared washing all over your body. "M/n...*sobbing* my father and mother want me to get married, I... I don't wanna do this anymore, I wanted to be free, please tell me m/n what should I do!?" He continues to tear apart, you've never seen him in such a state before. "Your Highness, we can settle this in the Palace, we can't talk about something like this here!" You respond, however, it's didn't work."I don't want anyone but you, I want only you m/n! I know it's crazy to love someone who's the same sex as you but I can't help it... And please d-don't leave me ×2 you are the only one I needed the most" the last sentence when he said that, draws attention to you, making you wonder why in the world he said that. "Pardon your highness I don't understand what you're trying to say... I'm not going anywhere! I'm here" You become all sweaty, there's no way he knows who you are.

"I discovered your diary m/n I know everything, even if your mission had been completed some time ago, just please promise me you won't go anywhere, I LOVE you!"

Sunoo: Sunshine Boy would be the innocent, gorgeous, pretty face, and the son of a rich family in the town. He likes flowers, perfume, accessories, and many nice things that scream pretty! But besides his innocent looking and behavior, he had two faces, where the other one is purely evil, and got in his way, making him pissed off, in the next day there'll be a funeral in the town. However despite this personality, he does it for good, he only bullies those bad, pervert guys who take advantage of the girls. When you were doing your quest during the day, walking through the market in full black, his eyes landed on you, while he was doing his business. He thought you were one of those guys, so he began to follow you until both of you, reached the dark alley. You notice someone is following you, so you quickly hide yourself in the shadows. While he was looking for you, you suddenly appeared behind him and asked in a creepy tone why is he here. But the man was too starlet to the point he almost peed himself, so you took off your hood and revealed your face, which calmed him a little bit because of your kind-looking face or maybe not. He and you exchange information together and soon enough he realizes what you're doing, is the same as him so he wants to team up with you to take out the bad guys in the town for humanity together. You didn't deny it since it's a part of your mission too. A mission together with him every night is like a new experience with you, you get to know a lot of things in this world, how the system works and many more that have shocked you. Later on, one day after putting the bad guys in the cage, at midnight with him, both of you sitting on the clock tower, you know how huge it is. Eating your dinner while he steals a glance at you, makes you wonder after all the work with him, as a duo did he feel the same feeling you just discovered? Probably not, you thought this world was so close-minded about having a relationship with the same sex so you decided to not let any word out of your mouth even though you wanted to. Little did you know, he also felt the same way, he also found out he was drawn toward you, the word I like you is not enough to explain his love for you, he likes you... A little bit much. "M/n? Can I ask you something? Don't be mad at me ok? I'm being honest" he said, looking at the moon, that shining bright. You nod, waiting for his response. "It's crazy we've done this together many times and I feel like this part of me still wants you to be here, working with me for all the innocent live here but I think it's got a bit worse than I thought, I don't think you as a partner, I think you are more than a partner to me, more than a friend, and I'm sorry to feel this way, it's ok if you don't feel the same way, I just feel a pressure in my chest if I don't let it out-" he pauses before continuing.

"I like you m/n even though we just met a few months ago, i like you so much that I dream about it, i like you-" You couldn't bear all his heart confession and didn't want to keep him, thinking you didn't feel the same, you cupping his face before slamming your lip against his, his eyes wide open like he was just seen a ghost, then he realized what you mean before returning your kiss, smiling during the kiss. Maybe this mission isn't bad after all.

Jungwon: A young farmer boy who likes taking care of his animals and farm. He is a normal civilian just like everybody, people love him because of how adorable he looks, especially his charm, and dimples. When he discovered you lying down lifelessly on the street while he coming back home, he immediately picked you up, carried you to his house and took care of your injury. You were thankful that there are some kind people here, in this world you're assigned into You thought you would die on that street, freezing to death already but guess fate won't let you die this easy. At the time of his taking care of your sickness, he gave all his might to treat you until you recovered. Again after you have recovered, you thank him for being there for you when you were at your lowest point, and will do anything to pay back for his kindness. He smiled softly at your statement but he said it's fine, he doesn't need anything back, and he likes to see people happy. Once you hear that You just want to give him everything in the world for him, everything he wishes for, however at the moment you don't have anything with you, only yourself with his clothes on that he gives you. You have no better idea, but a hug for him is the least you can do right? You figured it out and decided to give him a tight hug, giving him all the warmth and kindness back to him. His gaze grew soft before resting his chin on your head, giving you the hug you wanted. You keep on giving him your squeezing hug until a system box pops in front of your eyes.

"Secret mission completed: you just made someone fall in love with you!"

Ni-ki: In the third POV, he would be a young pirate, despite his young age, he has been traveling across the sea for his entire life now, so his experience on the water is unstoppable and god-like. He had destroyed hundreds of hundred boats in the past few years, for now, he's the captain of his ship, a fear pirate whom everyone's Afraid of. He doesn't know what's the word rest or sleep since he always pulling all-nighters almost every single day, a part of him said he can't blink or else. In the course of fishing, his worker spotted you lying on an empty log, floating around the ocean, Ni-ki might be a heartless and cruel person but he was once in your shoes, and he didn't want to repeat it just like his ugly past, so he take you in on his ship. Later than for the last few months, you choose to work for him to survive and it's also your mission to do this too, and you didn't know for how long. It's a bit strange that your system didn't show or give information to you, therefore you don't give much care about it, it's better to be alive than die on this wide ocean. While you're staying on this ship, you like to write everything down in your diary book, even your past life and your mission here in this world you are in. One time you were drunk after drinking all the wine, and accidentally burst into the pirate's room because of your vision. You plop down on his bed, as you thought it was your bed, Ni-ki just sitting at his workplace, legs crossing, watching you intensely Before hearing your mumble words about your life and your mission. The next day, while you were moping the floor, he unexpectedly revealed himself behind you, an evil smirk growing on his face he liked teasing you. When you notice his presence, you lower your head as a sign of respect before greeting him a good morning.

"It's a beautiful morning isn't it m/n? Haa... I wish you could stay longer here with me" he spoke, trying to sound oblivious. "my lord, what do you mean by that?" You nervously respond while holding on to the mopping broom tightly. "Don't act dumb kitty, I have gone through all your dairy book, and your make-no-sense words last night when you were drunk, now that I got all the missing pieces, I finally get it, don't worry m/n! Once you step your foot here, you can't leave this ship until the day we grow old together, and Don't even think about leaving, if you don't want me to do something on you~ my sweetheart!"

🗣️ please mind my English! ><

🗣️ Reblog and like is much appreciated ♥

🗣️ this is the hardest work I've done, and also I can't promise I will update tomorrow.

🗣️ CRD to all the owners of dividers.