#“this is just a me problem” why did you make a whole fucking video for your 82k subs then. you can just ignore it

[newspecies]

im watching the video. got mad. i think the main thing to remember about "mary sue" style self insert characters is that they aren't meant for you!!! they're self indulgent! they're made specifically for the artist and maybe their friends and NO ONE ELSE!!! please. please just use the block button. close your eyes. click away.

[abyssal-luka]

that reminds me, have you ever seen how weird they got about stimboards on tiktok? fucking wild

[prlssprfctn]

Batsiblings convince Jason to get himself a cooking Tiktok account, and he gives in. To his surprise, he quickly gains millions of followers and a loyal auditory. The only problem? Jason has no idea that these people came here not necessary for recipes.

Jason: Geez, my followers had been pissing me off lately.

Dick, confused: Huh? Why?

Jason: They keep commenting ATE. Like, dude? Fucking where? I am not eating in my cooking videos. What is the fucking point?

Tim, choking: Oh my fucking God-

Jason, making an angry text post for his followers: YOU ALL. STOP COMMENTING "RAW". MY MEAT IS NOT RAW. I AM A PROPER COOK. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???

Cassandra: Maybe it is time to tell him...

Tim, Steph, Duke, in unison: NO

Bruce, awkwardly trying to have a conversation with Jason: Hey, lad, how is your cooking blog is going?

Jason: Uh, people keep commenting cryptid messages. Like, the last time I was showing the right way to tenderise meat for chops because apparently it wasn't clear and someone requested the whole video? Anyway, I did it, and the whole comment section was writing me "in bed, on the floor, on the couch, on a chair, against the wall, against the window, against the door"... Like, why would I do that, not in the kitchen?

Bruce, no less clueless: Maybe it some kind of challenge. Kids love trying new stuff in extreme places nowadays.

Jason: Huh. Maybe. Thanks.

Bruce, just proud to have a proper conversation and somehow a help: Anytime, Jaylad!

Damian, who was unblissfully educated on the slang matter by Tim (because it was his responsibility as a big brother to traumatise him), with his eye twitching: ...None of these words were in Quran

[dilfosaur]

well i haven't spilled my guts on tumblr since i was in college but it's the platform that's felt The Most Mine thru the years, so

let's talk!

i've had a huge chip on my shoulder that i wanted off before the year ends. very bad professional experience to follow

so firstly to get ahead of the speculating, i'm not naming names or anything. some of you will puzzle out who i'm talking about, but please don't bother anyone especially not on my behalf. i've worked hard to distance myself from them the past few months. shit happens, especially when you're a dumb bitch (that's me!)

but also this person was someone i considered a close friend and it makes me uneasy to possibly direct backlash at them. "then why post about it" bc i did intermittent work for them for over a year. this is just about that. so hear me out

basically it started off fine. i initially did some commission work for good pay, then was invited to become more involved with their team. unfortunately as i became more involved with their operation it became more disorganized over time. projects started then forgotten, constantly shifting schedules, lapsing communication between roles, confusing financials, and often inconsistent if not late payments. during mid 2023 i was doing colorist work, sometimes on a one day turnaround (all while also preparing drawfee's summer merch launch). the payroll wasn't set up correctly so i wasn't paid for that work for over a year (more on that later), tho to be fair that was largely my own fault at first as i just didnt realize the payments didn't go thru lol

i always consider myself decently capable of separating friendship and coworker-ship; i run a company with 4 wonderful friends, going strong for almost 5 years. that didn't really work out in this case. by early this year our friendship was on the rocks; work issues fed into personal issues and vice versa. so as the rest of this shit plays out, we had just had our first "big fight" which i felt very bad about and added to all the upcoming tension

a huge point of friction was the fact that i really wanted to work with them to make a music video for one of their songs. i've always wanted a chance to make a music video, was confident in a concept i came up with, and even did some concept art for the idea. everyone insisted they loved the concept and that we should do it, but we kept pushing it back for various reasons. it ended up becoming a huge sticking point for my frustrations, which i tried to express productively. TLDR, we eventually got around to discussing it seriously around april.

i planned to ask for $4000 with negotiable add-on for the whole project, which was my Friend Discount price. i was offered a contract for $1000 flat rate, as they insisted that was the only budget they had for it.

don't ask me why i signed it lol. i didn't even counter offer

there was some girlmath to it: i wanted an extra 1k for a student scholarship i provide every spring and well, there it was. but if i had to guess, i saw it as something i just couldn't back down from any more. i caused these folks- my friends- a lot of problems bc i dug my heels in so deep to chase this project, so fuck it we ball

i had about 4 months to solo a 3 minute music video. they wanted it done in august so they could release it before summer ended, bc "it was a summer song". to be fair i was asked if i needed them to pay for anything extra like assistants (which i would have to find and manage) but i was so immediately overwhelmed that i didn't wanna slow down to wait on that process lol. there was very minimal communication other than brief progress check-ins every few weeks. i did everything for that project myself: the original concept, character designs, storyboards, layouts, backgrounds. i even did the editing/compositing for the final cut of the MV. the only favor i did myself was limiting the amount of it that was actually animated to simple loops and motions. hardly my best work but it was work still done

i did it all in between my full time job. i ended up having to take nearly a month away from most of my drawfee duties (with the support of the others) to make the august deadline. i only ever asked for a 3 day extension (notice given about a week in advance, around the same time i was given the final song file lol). i finished the music video at 6am on the final deadline and recorded drawfee the next day on 2 hours of sleep

but it was done, coolies. the team was very happy with the final product. honestly, without getting into it, those were a very emotionally taxing 4 months. on the professional side, i regretted agreeing to the project and especially for the dogshit rate they offered. i felt like a hypocrite- as someone who always wanted to advocate for younger artists demanding their worth in a world that's getting increasingly hostile toward creatives, i failed myself

so when i met with the manager to discuss the release plan, i told them to do whatever worked best for them as i only had one request: i wanted my credit removed from the project

tbh... like... lmao this dramatic bitch right!! but really, i decided that bad practices only breed worse business. friends or not, it was unprofessional of me to accept such a low paying job so i just didn't want my name used in association. everything felt so muddled to me and i was just really tired at this point

the manager was very understanding and then offered that i could be paid more. they said that their team "was surprised" i accepted their low rate and they would be happy to up the amount. this confused me as the initial budget seemed pretty set and at no point between april and august was i offered a better rate. i knew these guys weren't made of money. so, i declined. i didn't want to put anyone out of their means over work that was already done and agreed upon. but more importantly, i was over the whole thing and didn't want to prolong the project with a contract renegotiation. i just insisted my name be removed

they decided to use a pseudonym (which i was fine with) so they could create a story about a character who made the MV (this sounds really convoluted but i don't know how better to put it without getting specific, sorry). that way if people asked about the credit, they could speak comfortably about it without signaling that something went wrong behind the scenes. ok, kind of a silly narrative imo but whatevs. and maybe this is where i finally went truly wrong but. yolo i guess

i gave the name "D. Smithee", D as in dilfosaur and Smithee as in Alan Smithee. look it up for fun film trivia ig! was it passive aggressive of me to reference that in this context? yeah, honestly. but i thought it was kinda funny and really not that deep. if it was a problem, i have other real, non-cheeky pseudonyms i regularly use. the manager accepted it and all i had to do was wait for them to post the video and i could leave the whole experience behind me

a week later i received a message from the manager that my pseudonym had been denied by the rest of the team bc one of them got the reference. fair enough lol. however, they decided that rather than ask for a different name, the were going to make one up for me that they liked and would "fit the [story]", without asking me

and that! is when i finally snapped!

i was so tired of giving them concessions at this point and having a credit made up for me without any input from me felt genuinely violating and unethical. i started to Panic bc of how stressed i was, and asked for my overdue payments (aka the $500 still owed on the MV, and the colorist rate from a year prior that was never paid even tho i reported it in january) to be scheduled ASAP as i was leaving the work discord immediately

i finally told them off for exploiting me throughout the months while i kept trying to just be nice and finish my contact cleanly. in return i was told that it was unfair to say that as i agreed to everything- i accepted their cheap rate and denied further payment so that was all settled, and it was ok to change my credit without my consent bc i "said they could do whatever with the release". i called bullshit, ended the convo as kindly as i could, and cried lol. they agreed to ditch the pseudonym and just give no credit. that night was the last i heard from anyone on that team

and the real kicker?

august came and went. then september, october... and they never released the music video

and i don't know why, because i was never contacted about it. i've been removed from the picture entirely i guess. 4 months and boatloads of stress. just. up in smoke. i don't know what i expected honestly

it's hard to not take everything that happened personally and as done in bad faith. i really do, honestly. i've had plenty of shitty deals in my almost 10 year art career, but it hits different from people you saw as friends. but to the point of "why not keep it private", i have never felt so disrespected as a professional as i did this past year. i can toy with money and credits and other formalities all i want, but my work- my ideas, my labor, my effort- is still so important to me. i felt like the biggest idiot for doing so much work, pouring so much of myself into a piece for someone's use, for what has amounted to nothing

but more importantly i hated myself for undervaluing my work, even if initially i thought this person was a trusted friend. money is not really an issue for me- drawfee is my main job and i am fine and comfortable. it's so important to pay artists appropriately but i often undersell my own work bc i value the collaboration and passion between creatives more than the reward. i think a lot of artists tend to feel the same, and it often makes us easy to take advantage of. it's so difficult to find the balance between passion and making a fair living, and i think there's some shame within ourselves when artists choose to prioritize that passion

i wanted to finally get all this off my chest bc i was ashamed of every choice i made. things like this happen all the time i'm sure and hiding these mistakes only make it easier for it to happen to other people

tldr always value your work and protect your passion from people who just see it as a product. and don't give cheeky pseudonyms i guess lol

(and again pls don't bother anyone involved about this. a lot of chaos has left my life as i moved past all this, and this is me closing a door without opening new ones hopefully lol)

this shit was truly

so ass.

but i'm moving past it now

but on a nicer note. outside of all of this nonsense, i made lots of good memories this year. i'm truly so grateful to the many wonderful people in my life who keep me going even when i fuck up big time!

and thank you to all of you strangers who, despite everything, give me the time of day. especially if you read this whole thing. you're a real one :')

happy new year!

[misshugs]

₂The Cameragirl² || snc

After an eventful night in the haunted asylum, you and the guys began looking at the footage, only for you to start making cocky remarks that might've set a spark you weren't expecting.

contains: just fluff and reader trying to be funny (but failing miserably), cheeky comments from reader, cursing, slight flirting? idk i suck at it

a/n: "part 2" of The Cameragirl, no need to read the first part though! but for context: you got choked by a ghost and you almost died but colby saved you by giving you mouth to mouth

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

word count: 2.3k

[u n e d i t e d]

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You don't exactly remember when you fell asleep, you're just sure that right after you fell on your bed you were knocked out.

It wasn't something that happened often, but boy you were tired due to last nights events. Beause of that and because of your commonly terrible sleeping habits, Sam and Colby didn't even want to bother you much.

They did however check on you after they woke up hours later, making sure you were still breathing. The experience has somewhat made them paranoid about what could happen to you.

Although they cleansed you before returning, they'd much prefer to be one hundred percent sure you were alright.

The problem was, you were a light sleeper. After they finished checking up on you, your eyes opened up slightly. Groaning a bit from the ache in your body from the fall you had a couple of hours prior. You stretched yourself nonetheless.

Yawning, you sat down and rubbed your eyes. Taking your phone from your nightstand, you looked at the hour. 01:17 PM. Sighing softly, you stood up and fixed yourself up before walking out of the room.

Looking around, you heard mumbling from the other room. It was the office. You walked inside and saw them both looking back at the footage.

You furrowed your brows. Usually, you were a part of this process. Why did they begin without you?

Since they haven't noticed you yet, you started walking closer without making any sounds. As quiet as you possibly could, you basically stood behind them, watching the footage.

"What're you doing?" You asked, gaining a scream from Sam and a jump from Colby, almost falling off the chair. A smile grew wide on your face after that reaction.

"Fuck! You scared me!" Sam exclaimed, putting his hand on his chest.

"Oh my god, my heart." Colby said, hiding his face in his hands.

"That's for beginning without me." You said, crossing your arms on your chest.

"You were sleeping so soundly after all that happened, we didn't want to disturb you. And... we were curious... sorry." Colby admitted. You sighed.

"It's alright, I guess. What's this part?"

"We just started watching the part where... it happened." Sam said, looking at you.

"Ooh, okay. Then go back, my head's a little fuzzy, I can't remember clearly what happened, I want to know." As you said that, they nodded and ran back the video.

You didn't miss much anyways. They rewined right when they began arguing about it not being a good idea and whatnot. They haven't seen the whole night or anything, they just skipped right to the end.

After the arguing and the preparation for everyone to go into their respective corridors, the challenge began.

They paused the video. "Even though it made sense, it was still strange for you to be so persistent about it, was it not?" Colby said, looking at you. "Also, can you please sit down? There's a chair right there. You're stressing me out."

"No." You quickly answered.

"Why?" He asked.

"I don't want to, it's my fight or flight mode. It's easier to run while standing up." You giggled softly, which gave them both a sense of peace that you couldn't even imagine.

You were their everything, and thinking that their everything could've ended up like that made them so overprotective that they would've absolutely slept with you that night... to keep you protected, of course.

"Also, my legs feel numb, I don't want to cut the circulation again, it felt weird last time." You admitted.

Sam quickly stood up, concerned. "Are you okay? Do you need an oxygen mask again or something?? Water?"

"Wha- no. Calm down. Jeez." You said, grabbing his shoulder and making him sit back down. "Anyways, about the video. Um... I do remember having this urge to do it. I don't think it might've been anything bad, but I did have this... feeling, I guess."

"Maybe it wasn't you?" Colby said, raising a brow. "Maybe something was making you feel that way, just so that you were left alone... like it happened." You thought about it.

"I... guess it's an option." You shrugged.

"It could've also been a possession. It is said that people tend to quickly switch emotions when one is possessed." Sam continued. "Or... it could've also been the fact that you were so indifferent about it all."

"I'm just used to it, it's not like I don't believe."

"Yeah, but since we were making our reactions so... extra in comparison, maybe the spirits were trying to target you?" Colby added.

"...yeah, it does add up. Well, continue. Let's see what truly happened. I genuinely can't remember." They nodded and the video rewined.

As you began walking through the corridor, you began to speak on the video, it was almost automatic when you heard your voice that you started whining. "Oh, fuck no. Nevermind. This is so cringe. I remember this."

They started laughing and kept on watching although you pleaded for them to skip it. You tried to stop it yourself but Sam quickly held you back, hugging you and your arms, unable to move.

You didn't have the strength at the moment to try and get out of his grasp, but you tried anyways.

Not like it mattered. Not like you minded, actually. In the way he was holding you back, he basically let you sit on his lap while watching.

You didn't mind at all.

"You guys know I suck at youtube, I was trying to be funny, it didn't work." You laughed a little bit while your voice also seemed on the edge of breaking, mainly fake crying.

"What do you mean? You did great." Colby said, hiding his smile underneath his hand. Listening to your cute attempts on making jokes. It melted him.

"I can see you trying not to laugh, Colby." You fake cried again.

"Whaaat? I would never." He said. Sam didn't hide anything. His smile only giving away how much he was actually enjoying this version of you. If only you were open enough for them to be able to record and replay more of this.

A couple of minutes into the video, you started panting, heavy breathing could be heard. It was when you began to explain that you could barely breathe. "It feels... hard to breathe." You said in the video, your lips visibly shaking.

As you began walking faster, you could see through the video that you stopped on you tracks. Blinking your eyes as you looked at, what you remembered to be, a figure.

You tried to breathe.

"Holy shit. Holy shit! Did you see that?" Sam said, letting you go and pausing the video and quickly going back a couple of seconds. You stood up from his lap to let him search quickly.

"What?" Colby asked. Confused, you got closer. He started playing the video once again, this time, slower. You could see the light on your neck moving.

"Holy fuck. Look at that. It looks as if something is like, pushing on your neck. Like pressing onto as if you're getting choked." Sam explains, pointing at the marks on your neck where there seemed to be a dent suddenly forming.

"Oh my god." You said as you touched your neck, remembering what happened barely a couple of hours ago. Colby had his mouth wide open after watching that.

"That's... that's poltergeist activity right there. It's undeniable." He said, looking at the both of you. You nodded, shocked at how much power this entity seemed to have. "We need to get you properly cleansed, we can't be having another demon up someone's ass." He contined, looking directly at Sam, who seemed offended. You chuckled.

As they continued the video, they heard the soft 'help' that you could barely spit out, your voice breaking in the midst of it. The quick movement of the camera as you turned around only to be thrown to the floor. Seconds later, watching as you tried to crawl back but your body seemingly giving up as quickly as you tried to do so.

It broke their hearts, even more so knowing you tried to scream for help. And so, the camera kept rolling for what felt like an eternity.

"How long did it took for you guys to come look for me?" You asked, seeing as the video kept going.

"So far, it's been five minutes..." Sam said softly, painfully watching the screen.

"Oh my god, I was dead for five minutes?"

"Don't say it like that." Colby looked at you, almost sad. Fear went through his body at the thought of not have gotten there on time.

"It is true though... oh, there are my heroes." They smiled softly as you said that. As you heard the conversation they had while you were unconscious, you scoffed. "You guys thought it was a joke?"

"Hey, listen. We've had our jokes and giggles with extreme pranks before, it could've been a possibility." Colby put his hands up in defense, looking at you truthfully. "Honestly, I was wishing it was."

"Sam. Call 911. This is real." Colby said on the video. Before you could completely understand what was going on, you saw him kissing you.

Well, saving your life, but touching lips nonetheless.

Your cheeks started switching colors. You obviously don't remember much, but your brain didn't thought about the fact he had to give you some oxygen back.

Your fingers touched your lips softly as you were watching. They seemed to be immerse on watching what happened, thankfully. You don't think you could handle their stares right now.

Trying to calm yourself down, you saw yourself waking up. No further from that, you saw as Sam helped you up for a split second before the camera was turned off.

"And that's the footage alright. Wow." Colby sighed and looked at Sam, and then at you.

"That was... something. I can't believe we caught that on camera... it's proof, yeah, but... you were seriously hurt." Sam says, looking at you. "Are you... okay with this?" He asked, you looked at him, confused.

"What? You mean for posting it? Oh yeah, I don't mind. Don't worry about it. I'm safe and sound anyways." You said, smiling as you put your hands on your hips.

"Just making sure you're okay with it." He said and you nodded, understanding his kind gesture.

"So..." You began, gaining the attention of them both. "Are you gonna keep the part where Colby kisses m- uh, gives me mouth to mouth?" You quickly correct yourself, trying to act cool. Not leaving your stare from the screen.

"What?" They smirked at your sneaky comment.

Fuck.

"What?" You asked back looking at Sam, seemingly ignoring their cocky smile as much as you could.

"What did you say?" He asked.

"If you're gonna keep the mouth to mouth on the video."

"Not that, when you stuttered." Colby obliged, making you nervous.

"...I said Colby?" You raised an eyebrow, looking confused although you perfectly knew what they were talking about. They shook their head.

"You know what we mean." Sam says, reclining back on his chair, getting comfortable as he looks at you, amused by the situation. Mimicking Sam's actions; Colby lied back, a hand underneath his chin, smirking back at you.

Like Gods. They looked like Gods.

It was driving you insane.

You sighed, "I'm just saying. A bit upset that that was my first kiss with any of you- I mean, not like I was... waiting for one anyways, of course. Ahem." You started mumbling at the end, looking away while scratching the side of your neck.

It wasn't anything strange for all of you to have some sort of stupid flirting in between conversations, but usually they were extremely noticeable jokes.

These? Oh. These weren't jokes. These were genuine mistakes.

And a part of you hated these silly accidents. Mainly because they knew.

"There seem to be a lot of mixed signs in what you're saying." Colby said, smiling at Sam then looking back at you. "I'm a bit confused in what to believe here."

You shrugged. "Believe what you want to believe, good sir."

"It's just that I don't know if we're on the same page, you know?" Colby continued, looking at Sam. "I only know he's with me."

"Oh, for sure." The sexual tension only filling the room even more. Usually, the jokes were seemingly too overboard and hence, you could tell they were that, plain jokes.

Usually.

Just like your silly little mistakes, these weren't jokes.

"And what does that mean?" You raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, we know what we want. We don't know if it is what you want though."

You sighed heavily, seemingly loosing yourself for a moment as you whined. "Dear God, why are y'all so hot?" You looked up, dozing out of existence after thinking about their looks, their positioning, their everything.

.

.

.

Wait.

Wait.

WHAT DID YOU JUST THROW OUT OF YOUR MOUTH?

You accidentally said your thoughts out loud.

How does that even happen?!

When you realized what you've done, your eyes went wide, quickly looking at them. "Oh. Fuck. I didn't just- oh God." You didn't even wait to see their reaction as you began walking away. They quickly stood up, and you quickly sped up.

You started laughing but you were absolutely dying inside out of embarrassment. "Come back here!" Sam yelled as he got a hold of you and hugged you from behind, quickly throwing you over his shoulder.

"Let me gooo!" You yelped, moving your legs as you laughed purely by reflex. He held your legs in place. You were blushing hard.

"Nu-uh. We're gonna have a chat, young lady." Colby said, crossing his arms as you looked at him with a pout on your face. Sam turned around and slapped your ass, walking back to the room. You yelped, not expecting the sudden movement.

"A nice, long chat." Sam said as you sighed.

Oh boy. It's gonna be a long night.

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how do you guys like the banner? i got creative(ish)

also pls tell me what you thought about the fic, cause i don't really know if i did good with the idea, i did want them to review the footage but i also wanted a bit of tension or something extra to make it spicy, i'm not sure if i did a good job tho...

thank you for reading!

-nikkõ

smol taglist: @lemonnightmare @yourfavoritefangirl @stardollswrld

[steddiealltheway]

When Eddie gets excited, he gets a bit overwhelmed. At least, that’s what Steve has noticed, with the way Eddie has to take a quick running lap, bounce up and down, etc. whenever he gets too happy.

Steve secretly thinks it’s adorable and tries his best to induce these little happy zoomies.

It doesn’t take much. Sometimes it’s just a small compliment such as, “That shirt looks nice on you,” that has Eddie bouncing on his heels and fidgeting with his rings with a smile on his face. Sometimes, Steve tries to notice something new like when Eddie trims his bangs or paints his nails, that makes Eddie flush red and mumble, “Yeah, I did,” before taking a quick walk around Family Video before making his way back to him.

This time, Steve isn’t really trying to get a reaction out of Eddie who is angrily storming around the break room of Family Video after Steve had seen his face upon entering the store and ushered him to the back.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Eddie mutters out, running a hand over his face. Steve sits back quietly, letting Eddie go on a little rant. “He said, we were allowed to have the basement for our campaign. All of it. Then, Ted Wheeler in all his glory suddenly says that we’re too loud, and we can’t do the campaign at their house anymore. I mean… it’s one more session! He could’ve sat in that damn recliner and shut him mouth for one more session! Fuck.”

Eddie groans dramatically and sits on the ground, head in his hands. “I don’t know what to do. It’s summer so we don’t have access to the school. And I can’t risk breaking in and having them take away my well earned diploma. Plus, my trailer is too small, and no one else has the privacy of Mike’s basement. We’re done for!”

Steve shrugs, seeing a clear answer to the problem. “You can do it at my house. My parents are never home, and I can stay in my room for as long as you need.”

Eddie’s head snaps up. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, not really sure why he’s so shocked.

Eddie stands up quickly. “You’re positive you can deal with all the Hellfire members in your house?”

Steve nods. “I’ll even buy you guys pizza if you want.”

“Buy us pizza…” Eddie mumbles under his breath in disbelief. “Steve Harrington, are you granting me permission to use your house for Hellfire Club meaning hours of us yelling maybe even late into the night while we play our nerdy game?”

Steve nods and shrugs again. “Yeah. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Not that big of a deal?” Eddie repeats, once again in disbelief. He slightly smiles. “We’re going to be able to complete the campaign.” He bounces on his heels excitedly. “We’re going to complete the campaign!” He runs up to Steve and hugs him tightly, jumping up and down, successfully jostling a laughing Steve in his arms. “We have a place to complete the campaign!!”

Eddie puts him down and pulls back with a big smiles. “Thank you! Seriously thank you. This means so much I could just-”

Before Steve can react, Eddie is leaning forward and pressing his mouth against his in an enthusiastic kiss.

Eddie pulls back quickly and puts his hands over his mouth in horror. “Oh my gosh. I’m so- fuck. I’m so fucking sorry. I just got uh…”

Steve waves him off as Eddie backs as far away from him as possible. “You just got excited. It’s okay.”

It’s okay as it can be considering that Steve really wants to kiss Eddie again although he’s not sure what that really means. But suddenly the urge to make Eddie happy makes a whole lot of sense.

Shit. Okay. He can work with this.

He glances up at Eddie who looks petrified in fear. “I just got excited…” he whispers out.

Steve slowly makes his way to him and puts his hands on his shoulders. “It’s okay, Eddie. Really. I uh, enjoyed it.”

“You enjoyed it?” Eddie echoes uncertainly.

“Yes. But if it was just an excitement thing, I understand.”

Eddie breathes out, “And what if it was more than an excitement thing?”

Steve takes a step further into Eddie’s space and tilts his head. “Then I’d ask if I could kiss you.”

Eddie swallows harshly and leans forward. “It was definitely more than an excitement thing.”

Steve smiles softly and asks, “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” Eddie says, slipping his hands into Steve’s hair as he moves forward again.

This time, Steve knows to respond, moving his lips against Eddie’s gently before tracing his tongue against the seam of his lips, exploring the inside of his mouth when Eddie lets him in.

When Steve reluctantly pulls away from the kiss to check on Eddie, he gets a quick nip to the lip.

Eddie flushes red. “So, I sometimes bite when I’m happy.”

Steve leans in again and whispers against his lips, “Thank god I’m into that.”

And he’s going to make sure to learn all the ways to elicit these responses from Eddie, but first, he’s going to learn all the ways Eddie likes to be kissed.

[stevie-petey]

moron

I own you.  The words practically drip from your rose coated lips, meant only for Steve, and he knows he’s lost.  “Yeah, whatever.” And it’s agreed. Come this Saturday, you and Steve will be working together. No one else, just the two of you, for eight long, maddening hours. 

Summary: steve really hates his coworker, but you know who he hates even more ? your shitty ex boyfriend (who he just so happens to share jacket preferences with)

Rating: general, violence, lots of swearing

Warnings: allusions to abuse, use of bitch as derogatory language towards women, shitty ex boyfriend, violence, enemies to lovers (more friends), fem!reader, use of y/n

Words: 3.9k

Before you swing in: hey gang !! long time no stevie blurb, so here yall go <3 please, read the warnings for this one. theres a really shitty character in this and he may be triggering, so please be safe.

-

Steve doesn’t consider himself a bad guy.

Sure, he had the whole “King Steve” stint back in high school where he was an asshole to everyone, but he chooses to ignore those four years of his life. They were a brief lapse of judgment. 

A very long, brief lapse of judgment. But whatever.

The point is that Steve opens the door for strangers. He greets everyone with a smile and a polite nod of his head. When Robin forgets her lunch at work, Steve always gives her his. He walks his neighbor’s dog, he offers to carry groceries for the elderly. Hell, he even waves at babies. 

By all accounts, Steve would consider himself a goddamn saint. 

Except when it comes to you. 

Steve isn’t holding open any fucking doors for you and if you ever asked him to walk your dog, he’d laugh in your face. The moment you stepped foot in Family Video for your first shift, you made Steve’s life a living hell. He doesn’t know why or how you manage to dig so deep under his skin, but he’s convinced you do it on purpose. 

The movies you stack on the shelf always somehow manage to land on Steve’s head. The jokes you make with Robin are always at his expense. You never clock in on time, extending his shift by one more minute every goddamn time. The way you laugh pierces Steve’s skull, the sound rings in his ears and blinds his senses long enough to feel nauseous. 

Steve likes everyone, he isn’t a hard guy to please, but he truly, deeply, hates you. 

“Y/N wanted me to ask if you’d cover her shift this weekend,” Robin scans a beat up copy of Grease, trying to feign indifference as she brings the topic up. She absolutely doesn’t want to be doing this, she knows that any mention of you to Steve makes his eye twitch, but you called her crying and Robin is far too sympathetic for her own good. 

Predictably, Steve’s eye twitches and he snatches the movie from his coworker. “What, did she fall and hit her head this morning?” He scoffs, he can’t believe you even thought he’d consider the idea. “She knows I’d rather her show up with a broken arm and matching black eye to work before ever covering her shift.”

“Okay, that’s psychotically cruel. You know that, right?” Robin scans another movie and shakes her head. Steve hates you, she gets that, and while she doesn’t understand why, she also doesn’t like how much of an asshole he is about it. You’re her friend, too. Robin really likes you. 

“Good, I meant for it to be.”

“Steve, she’s going through a hard time right now–”

“No, I don’t wanna hear it, alright? I don’t care if her grandma died and left her an orphan,” the sound of the bell above Family Video’s front door rings, but Steve is too lost in his rant to hear it. “There’s no way in hell I’m ever, ever helping that demonic witch of a human being.”

Robin’s eyes widen and she tries to cover the teen’s mouth, hissing his name, but Steve bats her hand away and keeps going. “Y/N is a fucking moron for thinking otherwise, and that’s her problem. I mean, I know she’s your friend, which I still don’t know how she even managed to do that, but–”

“Steve!” Again Robin tries to get her friend to stop talking, but Steve is on a roll now. He’s fired up, tired of biting his tongue for the last six months. 

“She makes me want to physically tear my skin off and shove it down my throat every time she opens her mouth. And I’m being nice right now. I mean, I will gladly say this all to her tiny, annoying face–”

“Oh, you would?”

Immediately Steve’s voice dies and his words fall down upon his shoulders. He doesn’t dare turn around. He’s frozen. He’s convinced himself that if he doesn’t move then he can linger in the remaining few seconds where he hasn’t just said all those horrendous things with you standing right behind him. 

Robin drops her head onto the counter and groans. “You’re an idiot, Harrington.”

“Well, are you going to turn around?” Your breath almost fans Steve’s neck, you’ve walked up to him. He can practically envision the curl in your eyebrows whenever you get angry. An expression Steve has become familiar with. 

He gulps, still refusing to turn around. “You know, I really don’t think I can turn around.” His legs shake. Steve doesn’t think he’s ever fucked up this horribly before, and he’s fucked up a lot in his life. 

“Robin,” you turn your attention to her, the edge in your voice is the only indication of your anger. “Please inform our coworker that it’s inappropriate to use that language in a workplace, and please also inform him that I will no longer be needing him to cover my shift.”

“You… Don’t?” Robin looks between you and Steve. He still hasn’t looked at you yet, his face stares straight as if he’s trying to somehow disintegrate. You, however, face her with a steely look in your eyes, which surprises her. She thought there’d be more heartbreak in them. “I-I mean, are you sure? All things considered…”

“I’m fine.” The way you say it leaves no room for arguments. It’s already been decided, and Robin knows not to try and reason with you. She deflates, and you’re pleased with this. Even though her sympathy is unneeded, you can use it to your advantage. You’re going to make Steve pay. “In fact, I think you should inform our coworker that he’s covering your shift this weekend.”

Robin chokes on her spit, startled, while Steve finally turns to face you. “I’m sorry?”

“Aw, it’s okay, Harrington.” You pat his chest, albeit with more force than probably necessary, which he huffs at. “But I think the apology will work even better after spending some quality time together.”

You’re going to spend the entire eight hour shift making Steve’s life hell on earth. And he knows it.

“But–” 

“Say, Robin. What’s the company policy on harassment of employees?” You tap your finger against your chin with a menacing smile on your face. You’re enjoying this, and Steve hates you even more for that. “Doesn’t it say something about verbal insults?”

Steve sends the girl a pleading glance, begging her not to respond, but she can only shake her head at him. He’s the one who couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut. Sighing, Robin nods. “Yeah, it does.”

“I thought it did! Thanks, Buckley.” You wink at her before facing Steve again. He almost flinches at the coldness in your eyes. He’s so, so fucked. “Harrington, I’m sure you simply forgot, and I’m sure I can let bygones be bygones after you cover our dear friend’s shift. Yeah?”

I own you. 

The words practically drip from your rose coated lips, meant only for Steve, and he knows he’s lost. 

“Yeah, whatever.”

And it’s agreed. Come this Saturday, you and Steve will be working together. No one else, just the two of you, for eight long, maddening hours. 

–

When Steve arrives at work Saturday, you’ve already clocked in. 

He finds you sitting at the cash register, looking over the shipment for tomorrow. Sundays are the restock days, and the lists of orders are a pain in the ass to get through. It can take hours, sometimes even days, to comb through. When you see Steve walk in, you give him an icy smile. “Oh, perfect timing!” 

“We’re supposed to get here at eight.”

“And being early never hurt anyone.” Although you’re never early, you’re always late, and both of you know this. You scratch something off from the list, eyes never leaving Steve, and he can’t help but feel that the rough scratch of the pen is meant to symbolize his face. 

“What do you want?” Steve is too tired to play your games. He recognizes that he was a grade A asshole to you a few days ago, but this is going too far. 

You flick your hair behind your shoulder and straighten your posture. The gesture casts a cloud of a sickly sweet pomegranate scent over to Steve, causing him to sneeze violently. He’s always hated the perfume you wear. Smiling at the desired effect, you finally shove the restock lists towards him. “I need you to start sorting through next week’s orders.”

Steve looks at the lists and nearly cries. There’s at least thirty pages in the stack, doubled sided, with five columns and fifty rows. This is the largest shipment order he’s ever seen since working at Family Video, he can’t even believe it’s real.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Nope!” You hop down from the counter and walk over to the cart of returned movies. “Now, I’d get started if I were you. You know how much Keith hates it when we don’t get Sunday’s orders in on time.”

Your figure disappears behind a shelf of movies and Steve pretends to strangle you with his bare hands. You planned this. He doesn’t know how, but you did. If he didn’t have a reason to hate you so much, now he does. 

Hours pass by, you don’t at all speak to Steve as he labors over the shipments. Family Video requires the employees to manually input all the orders into the computer to send to the supply chain. The process alone is impractical and takes longer than it should, but pair that with the shitty computers that Keith refuses to upgrade, it makes Steve contemplate running into the road. The browser crashes three separate times. At one point he loses track of which movie he’d been on and has to restart an entire row at number forty-three.

It’s the worst fucking five hours of Steve’s entire life.

Meanwhile, all you do those five hours is browse through some online catalog on the other computer and help a total of two customers who come in. 

By the time Steve has finally finished inputting everything, words float around his vision and he can feel the beginning stages of a headache forming. The pressure sits right behind his left eye, dull and throbbing. 

All because he couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut.

Steve should really learn to listen to Robin. 

“Are you all done?” You materialize next to Steve, startling him and he lets out an embarrassing shriek, which you snicker at. “Wow, Harrington. You’re really tense today.”

He rolls his eyes and steps away from you. “Gee, I wonder why.”

“Yeah, who knows!” Steve glares at you and you smile right back at him. “Anyways, since you finished up so fast, why don’t you sort through the backorders next? It shouldn’t take you that long.”

The backorders. 

Steve wants to fucking scream.

The backorders are all the movies that the store can’t input into the system. They’re orders that get messed up, misplaced, and abandoned in Keith’s disgusting office. The pile of discarded movies has grown so large that it rivals Steve’s height and build. It’s its own entity at this point. A terrifying, breakdown inducing entity. 

You’re a fucking evil genius. 

But if Steve even looks at the backorders, he thinks he might actually murder you. 

“No,” he crosses his arms, trying to look more dignified and intimidating than he really feels. Awkwardly placing his weight on his left foot, he purposely ducks his head down to emphasize how much taller he is than you. “No way in hell am I going through the backorders.”

“I wonder what Keith would say when I tell him all the wonderful things you said about me on Wednesday,” you step forward, angling your head up to get a better look at Steve. You want him to see all the hatred you have for him in your eyes. 

What he said about you hurt. There’s no other way to put it. His words had been venom upon your skin, searing the flesh as it left a nasty scar. The wound has festered ever since, making your already shitty week even worse. 

Steve had called you “fucking moron”. Just like he had. 

“Oh, screw company policy and whatever that asshole Keith says!” Steve doesn’t care anymore if he has a job by the end of today. He’s had enough of your shitty mind games and power plays. He may have been a dick, but he doesn’t deserve any of this, either. The strenuous labor and migraines. “I’m done, alright? You’re being such a–”

“Bitch?” A gruff voice chuckles, interrupting. Steve, surprised to hear another male voice in the store, quickly turns around. 

The guy is tall, taller than Steve. That’s the first thing he notices. Then he notices the cold blue of his eyes and the way your entire body freezes in fear when you see him. Steve moves your body behind his, unconsciously putting you out of harm’s way, protecting you from whoever the hell this guy is in front of him. It’s instinctual, he doesn’t hesitate.

Who the fuck does this guy think he is, calling you a bitch?

“I would never call her that,” Steve squares his shoulders, putting ice into his words as he does so. He wouldn’t. He was going to call you a child. Steve would never call a woman a bitch, his mother raised him better than that and Robin would hit him if he ever did.

The guy laughs again. “You sure about that, buddy?”

“Jack,” Steve almost doesn’t hear you, you’re barely audible. He’s never heard your voice so soft before, so weak and scared; he decides he never, ever wants to be the cause of this voice. “You can’t be here.”

“Says who? I don’t see anybody kickin’ me out.” The guy, Jack, shrugs indifferently. He stuffs his hands into his jacket, it’s made of a nice, suede material that Steve is ashamed to admit he’d wear himself. “I wanted to see you, sweetheart.”

Jack tries to step closer to you, but Steve blocks him. “Funny, I thought she was a bitch?”

“Bitch, sweetheart, easy fuck, fucking moron.” Jack laughs, only this time it’s cruel. “It’s all the same when it comes to Y/N.”

Fucking moron.

Steve had said the same about you. A heavy weight of shame crushes his chest. He should’ve never called you such a cruel name. He knows that, now. 

“Don’t fucking talk about her like that,” Steve sneers, hand now coming around your arm as if terrified Jack will pull you away from him. “What the hell is your problem, man?”

“Why don’t you mind your own business? This is a conversation between me and the sweetheart over here.” Jack tries to reach for you again, but Steve shoves the guy away. He stumbles back, a wicked smile on his face. “Oh, the pretty boy can fight?”

“Steve,” You finally speak again, trying to shove yourself between the two men. The room grows hot and you don’t want anyone getting hurt. Not here, not with Steve. “Just leave it alone, walk away–”

Only Jack grabs your arm and viciously pulls, causing a pained yelp to escape you. A nerve pinches in your shoulder, he sends your body flying forward. His grip is harsh, it will leave bruises tomorrow, and you’re weak against him. Fear chokes you, he always does this.

“Don’t touch her.” Steve’s fist collides with Jack’s face, starbursts of pain explode in his wrist but he doesn’t care. All he sees is red now. Jack hurt you. He caused you to cry out in pain. Steve punches him again, the sound of pain you made rings in his ears, turns his blood cold and his anger boiling hot. 

Jack recovers from the punches quickly and he raises his fist, but you try to get him away from Steve. “Stop!” 

The fist comes down, you brace for impact, helpless against it, but the sound of skin hitting skin is all you’re met with. You open your eyes, Jack’s fist is in Steve’s palm. Stunned, Jack is too slow to pull away before Steve wraps his arm around his and twists it behind his back. The muscles strain, the ligament cries in pain as Jack’s arm is pulled dangerously far back. 

“Fuck!” Jack screams, contorting his body desperately to get out of the death lock he’s in. 

“You’re going to leave,” Steve hisses into his ear, “and you’re going to never, ever come back. If you even look at Y/N again I swear,” he mercilessly pulls even harder on Jack’s arm, the bone threatens to snap, but he doesn’t care. “I will break every bone in your fucking body.”

And with that, Steve finally releases Jack, who crashes pathetically to the ground. The moment he’s freed, he scrambles to his feet and cradles his sprained arm. He’s panting, no longer the confident and arrogant asshole he once was when he walked into Family Video ten minutes prior.

“Fuck you,” Jack spits out at Steve, but he’s already walking backwards towards the door to leave. “That bitch isn’t worth it, anyways.”

The door slams closed. 

Silence fills the void that the violence left behind. 

Steve shakes out his wrist, wringing out the pain from the punches. His knuckles are red, raw, bruising with every passing second. He brings the injured hand closer to inspect it, wincing at the inflamed skin. 

“You’re hurt.”

Your eyes linger on the blood that leaks from his knuckles. The skin has split, but the pain that the nerve endings scream over soothes Steve. He shakes his hand out again as he shakes his head at you. “I’m fine.”

But you don’t believe him.

Carefully, slowly, you bring your uninjured hand over Steve’s injured one. Your touch is gentle, hesitant. The pads of your fingers skim over the bruising that litters Steve’s skin. “I’m sorry.” 

“Hey, no.” Steve pulls his hand away, he doesn’t like what the image of his injury is doing to you. He’s not used to your tenderness, the sympathy you blanket him with. Besides, he isn’t the only one who got hurt. Steve instead brings your hand up, holding your wrist delicately as he sucks in a breath seeing the bruises Jack left. “You didn’t deserve any of that.”

You don’t say anything. 

Steve kisses the damaged skin, he feels you shiver beneath his lips. He isn’t sure why he does it, he just knows that he wishes he could physically remove the burn of the bruises from your memory. 

Minutes pass, the silence is all that is spoken. 

Eventually the two of you get back to work. There’s still two more hours before either of you can leave, even if the thought of staying in the store suffocates you. No other customers come in. It’s just you and Steve, matching bruises to keep you guys company. 

When four in the afternoon comes along, Steve clocks both of you out and locks the store up. He doesn’t let you do a single thing. He insists on having you sit by the window as he finishes the last restock orders and closes the door. His hand softly guides you outside, lingering on your waist as he locks the store’s doors for the night. 

“Alright, well…” Steve clears his throat. He doesn’t know what else to say to you. “Guess I’ll just, you know, leave–”

“Please don’t leave me alone.”

His breath catches. You stare up at him, eyes wide with fear and vulnerability and despair. “I…”

“Please,” you can’t walk home alone. Not tonight. Not after everything that happened today. “I just…”

Without saying anything, Steve’s hand finds yours, and he walks you to his car. He opens the door for you, closes it softly behind you once you get in. He gets into his own seat, turns the radio on and fiddles with the stations until he finds the one he knows you like. Every time you have a shift together, you play the same station and sing along to all your favorite songs.

It used to drive Steve insane.

Now he’s relieved he can do this one thing for you.

The drive is quiet. The only conversation that is made is mumbled directions to your house. It isn’t a far drive, but Steve takes his time anyways. He doesn’t know if you have anyone to go home to, he knows you haven’t stopped shaking quite yet. 

“Turn here,” your voice is hoarse from lack of use.

Steve listens, turns into a neighborhood he’s unfamiliar with. He thinks he’s nearing your home and he isn’t ready to let you go just yet. He knows you have to talk about what happened today. The bruises on his knuckles will fade, but the memory of Jack’s cruel words won’t. 

“So,” He clears his throat. He’s doing the right thing, he knows he is. “Jack. He was…?”

You’re quiet for several moments and Steve is afraid he’s ruined everything, pushed you too far, but eventually you respond. “Ex boyfriend. Broke up a week ago. He didn’t take it well.”

“I hate him.”

Despite the fatigue that weighs upon you and the dread that Jack will come back, you can’t help but laugh at what Steve has said. “Yeah, I guess I do, too.”

Silence falls again. Steve pulls into your driveway, he turns the car off, the headlights die, but neither one of you move. 

“You’re not, you know.”

You finally face Steve, confused as to what he’s referencing. “What?”

“You’re not a ‘fucking moron’. And you’re definitely not a bitch.” He clarifies, eyes meeting yours. You’re almost breathless by how brightly they shine with remorse. You’ve never known a man who felt such an emotion. “Jack is a dick, and so was I.”

“Steve…”

He doesn’t let you pity him. He knows what he did was wrong, the words that fell from his mouth about you will haunt him forever. Steve may not have liked you, but he didn’t have any right to say those things about you. “I really am sorry, Y/N.” 

There’s nothing to forgive.

Steve isn’t Jack. You know that, now. 

“It’s okay. I think I made you go through enough today, anyways.” You nudge his shoulder with yours, risking physical affection just this once. “First the restock orders and then defending my honor? I think we’re even.”

“I was pretty heroic, wasn’t I?” Steve tries to laugh, play along, but it’s bitter on his tongue. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for how much he hurt you. 

Noticing his darkened expression, you poke Steve’s cheek. “Hey, you’re not allowed to brood. I’m the one whose crazy ex showed up at work today.” But it doesn’t work, he doesn’t laugh and you know he blames himself for everything. “Look at me, Steve.”

Night has fallen and the honey brown in Steve’s eyes resembles darkened ash. You place your hand on his, careful not to disturb his bruises. “I forgive you, but if you insist on being such an annoying jerk about it, then you can make it up to me by being my friend.”

“Your friend?” Steve doesn’t pull his hand away from yours, and it’s a start. 

“Yup, think you can handle that?” 

“‘Friends’,” he lets the word roll over his tongue. Tests it out, gets a feel for what it would be like to call you his friend. He thinks he likes the way it feels, the weight that accompanies it is one that settles his chest, soothes his wounds. “I guess I can be okay with that.”

He smiles at you, then, and you smile back.

You’re beautiful when you smile; warm, angelic.  

Steve doesn’t consider himself a bad guy, but by all accounts, he considers you a goddamn saint. 

-

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[iamsebastiansstan]

surrender at your feet - stepbro!NAC x fem!reader

summary - This kink is getting out of hand, but he doesn’t give a single fuck, because where he is sick and rotten, she is, too.

wc - 15k lol - MINORS DNI !

warnings - dark!Nicholas so beware, stepcest, manipulation, somnophilia, oral (m and f receiving), edging, crying during sex, dirty talk, face slapping (the sexual and non sexual kind), borderline abusive Nicholas, panty kink, non-consensual voyeurism (he's watching her taking a shower without her knowing), exhibitionism (grinding where others could see), but they looove each other whatever whatever <3

A/N - this one... LOL THIS ONE almost did me in, it took me so long to write and it's nowhere near done but it was gnawing at my brain so I had to post it. 's a likkle fucked up so don't read if you aren't into that sick shit, thanks. super plot heavy, part two is gonna be a lot smuttier! feedback is always appreciated, love you <3

this one is for @hoffmansgirl and @urlitttlevenicebitch specifically, thanks for holding my hand throughout all this nastiness my Darlings 🖤

PART 1 / 2:

It started a couple of years back, when she first came into his life, fists swinging and lips cursing. She hated it, hated being part of this family, hated the new house she moved into, hated his father, hated him.

It was a lot for her to take in, and he understood. He, too, had some nights where he had to clench his teeth through the onslaught of tears, fuming at the fact that his mother just up and left them like that, moved to fucking Italy to be with Sergio or Francesco or whatever the fuck his name is, giving up everything she had in her life, including her only son. It hurt, but he bore it, and that was the main difference between them, wasn’t it? Where she was loud and rebellious, a little spitfire, he was quiet and brooding, preferring to keep a low profile.

He's just glad she got used to it, over time, even building a solid relationship with her stepfather. He was grateful for the mother figure his stepmom posed in his life, as well, he had missed having that. 

The two of them, though? 

Acquaintances rather than stepsiblings, and he couldn’t pick between hating the frost between them or being thankful for the emotional distance, considering his feelings towards her. Feelings he doesn’t- can’t- talk about. 

They grew into their adult years together, and the older they got, the more he’s had to try to resist her, his rational brain reminding him of what it’d look like, the rest of his body yearning for her in ways he didn’t even know were possible. 

He’s also glad they both decided to stay home for college, so he can keep an eye on her, brotherly love and all that. Their house isn’t big, but three slim stories high, and he shares the top floor with her, his bedroom next to hers, a bathroom across the hall, blessedly far away from where their parents sleep one floor down. The walls are thin, too, so he can make sure she isn’t sneaking out at night, or taking phone calls she isn’t supposed to be having, and-

He's protective, sue him.

“Nick, have you seen my tanning oil?” she calls from just outside his door, making him look up from the video game he’s playing. 

His frustration runs deep, he’s getting fucking obliterated.

“It’s not in the cabinet?”

“No, that’s why I’m asking!”

“Maybe you left it downstairs yesterday?”

They’re on summer break, and every day, like clockwork, she spends her whole morning tanning her skin, lounging by the pool, reading a book. This past semester has been hard on her, he knows, so she didn’t exactly have time for a job on the side, which means going away on vacation is not in the cards for her right now. He’d love for them to go away together, he’d pay for it no problem, but there’s no way in hell she’d ever say yes to that, so he stays home and sulks. But only a little. He doesn’t mind.

He looks out the window and sees her stomping towards the sunbed, bending down in her tiny bikini that’s showing off her ass and straightening out with the bottle of oil clutched tightly in her hand. She turns towards where his window is and smiles at him, giving him a thumbs up that makes him feel warm on the inside. 

Here’s another thing he loves about having a room on this floor, apart from getting to share it with her: his big window has a very clear view of their garden including the pool, where he can watch her skimpy swimsuit-clad body, covered in oil, at that, for as long as he wants, but if he stands to the side just so, he also gets a glimpse of the spacious outdoor shower their parents insisted on building last summer. It’s perfect to rinse off in after the mud treatments they like to put on in their outdoor sauna, but also perfect to clean yourself in after you’ve doused your body in oil that you don’t want to soil the inside bathroom with, the way his sister prefers to do. He can’t see everything from there, especially not without getting caught- one look up and his hiding spot would be busted- but he can see enough to satisfy his need to feel closer to her, see more of her, his delusion of connection being fed plenty. 

And so he patiently waits for her to get tired of laying around, for her to start feeling too hot under the rays of the August sun, for her to pack up her stuff and languidly move to the shower. Nicholas gets up from his desk and discreetly positions himself just right, just to see enough of the shower. It’s built in a spiral with the showerhead in the middle, and she hangs up her silk robe outside and then walks in, hands already reaching behind herself to pull the strings of her top, making it fall away. This is a sight he’ll never grow tired of: her full breasts on display, perky nipples hard from the change in temperature, making his mouth water for a taste. He’d treat them so well, suck them so good. 

Next are her bottoms, and this is where his line of sight isn’t cutting it properly, he can’t see past the curve of her ass or the spot where her stomach becomes her mound, but he’s okay with it, okay with imagining it without knowing exactly. It makes it sweeter, in a way, lets the anticipation build for what he hopes will someday become an inevitability. 

Grabbing the bottle of shower gel from the rack on the wall and spreading it on her loofa generously, she starts cleaning herself, rubbing her small hands all over that smooth skin, getting rid of the oil that made her look shiny and lickable. Nicholas feels his cock stir but he doesn’t do anything about it, the risk of getting caught too high. He can explain away why he’s standing by his window, but there’s no explanation for why he’s looking outside with his cock in his hand. He just commits every moment to memory and jerks off after, that’s how it’s always been. 

Always, up until now, apparently, because she does something he’s never seen her do before: she leans against the wall, just outside of the stream of water, and lets one hand trail down her stomach, very obviously stopping at her pussy and keeping it there. Her other hand grabs at her breast as she throws her head back, and Nicholas audibly moans when he realizes that fuck, his stepsister is touching herself under the shower. He knows it’s wrong to watch, has known since the very first time he did, having to squash the guilt day in and day out, but he couldn’t look away now if he tried. 

Hand grabbing his cock through his shorts, he palms at the hardness of it, bites his lip when she does, wishes he could look down at her body the way she does, see what she’s doing to that undoubtedly sweet pussy of hers. It’s like his brain has been switched off when he plunges his hand into his underwear and grasps his rock hard dick, not pulling it out but giving himself enough room for movement as he desperately jerks it, speeding up when he sees her arm moving faster, not daring to shut his eyes as he watches her close hers and come with her face scrunched up. It doesn’t take him long and he’s right there with her, spilling his load hot all over himself, uncaring because what he just witnessed was the hottest thing of his life.

She sighs heavily, judging by the movement of her chest, and he sees her clean herself quickly before shutting the water off and grabbing the towel that’s hanging to the side.

He doesn’t stay to watch her walk out. 

*** 

He acts normal around her, because of course he does, what else is he supposed to do? They eat dinner together every night, as a family, they go to the movies every now and then, when there’s something good on and her friends are busy, he drives her home from parties, when his friends decide to drink and make him the designated driver of the group. 

Such is the case tonight, after a few students from their college had one too many at the bar crawl and he offered to take some of them home. After dropping off his last friend from the group, it’s just the two of them in the car.

“You never drink,” she mumbles, watching the streetlights as they drive by.

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“Just not my thing.”

She scoffs. “I feel like you’d be a lot more fun if you did.”

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise. This is a level of honesty she wouldn’t allow herself without liquid courage. 

“Why’s that?”

“Dunno,” she shrugs. “You’re a little… stuck-up. Actually, no. You’re strict.”

He smiles softly.

“I guess I am. You had fun tonight?”

She grins at him when he looks over at her.

“Fuck yeah. Gave Sam my number, he said he’d text me tomorrow.” 

Jealousy flares in his chest, bright and ugly, and he grips the steering wheel to keep himself from saying something he’ll regret.

“Oh, really? I heard he’s bad news, (Y/N).”

She clicks her tongue, all sass, before she replies, “People talk, but it’s mainly bullshit. He’s a good guy.”

He lets her answer hang in the air, out of things to contribute to this stupid conversation. Fuckin’ Sam, of all people. 

After a while, she speaks up again.

“What about you? I never see you with anyone.”

He smiles to himself, shrugging.

“I date around a bit, nothing serious. I don’t have the capacity for it right now.”

I’m too focused on you, he doesn’t say. It’s been around two weeks since he’s had sex, choosing to hit up a girl from class every now and then, when his frustration gets too intense, but he’s not really interested in anything but the physical, with nobody. Well, nobody apart from his stepsister, of course.

They arrive at home, and he parks the car, turns it off and looks to his right where she’s sitting.

“Lots of girls have a crush on you, Nicholas,” she whispers, doesn’t look at him, “I hear them talk. They want you.”

He knows, but he doesn’t care.

“Yeah? And how does that make you feel, to hear them thirsting after your big brother?”

He’s tethering on an edge, here, and he’s aware of it. They don’t really talk about what they are to each other, they don’t really talk at all, actually, but he throws caution in the wind and hopes her drunk self will let him get away with it.

Her eyes are hard when they meet his, albeit for just a second.

“I think it’s stupid,” she mumbles, “none of them are good enough for you.” With that she undoes her seatbelt and gets out, bends down to look at him one more time, says, “Thank you for the ride, Nick,” and slams the door shut.

He sits there long after she’s walked into the house. 

*** 

When he hears a slight, insistent buzzing sound, he first thinks it’s tinnitus. He pops his ears, digs a knuckle in to try to make it stop before deciding that, nope, it’s not coming from within his head. It’s coming from the other side of the wall.

Seeing as the walls are paper-thin, Nicholas hears most of what goes on in her room, as does she when he doesn’t watch how loud he’s being in his.

He doesn’t listen to music loudly, instead he opts for using his headphones, because he knows she loves to read and prefers a quiet atmosphere to do so. She stops her singing and humming at around ten p.m., because she knows he’s a ridiculously light sleeper and can hear every sound she makes. They look out for each other, as siblings are supposed to, no matter their relation.

But he’s never heard buzzing before, especially not like this, it’s too drawn out for it to be her phone leaned against the wall, signaling a call. Is it a hair clipper? In her room? No way, why would she-

“Oh… oh, fuck,” he hears, her voice high and breathy, and-

Oh. Oh. 

Heat crawls up his neck as he lets the realization sink in, tries his best to stay still and not press his head against the wall to listen in further. He lasts exactly eleven seconds before he’s scooting across his bed to get as close as possible, to hear as much as he can. 

Her moans are stifled but they’re audible nonetheless, making his cock stir. The buzzing must be a vibrator, something she apparently has never used before, because he would’ve heard it if it was the same as this one. Or maybe she’s only used it when he was out of the house, which makes an uncomfortable feeling spread in his gut. Why is she hiding this from him? What else is she hiding from him? 

Nicholas reels himself in through the fog of horniness clouding his mind, reminds himself that she isn’t hiding anything, per se, reminds himself that she’s got a right to privacy, and he is crossing many lines by doing what he does, but. He can’t help it, alright? He needs her, he adores her. 

So he presses his ear against the wall above his headboard, works his pants open and takes his cock out, and bites his lip to keep from moaning right along with her as he listens to her labored breathing, the strong buzzing of the toy that’s pressed- into her pussy? against her pussy?- and the slight whimper that escapes her every now and then. He’s always only imagined what she’d sound like, but now he’s got her actual noises in his ears, and he saves those sounds to his spank bank to get off to forever. God, he can’t believe she’s so vocal even when she’s undoubtedly trying not to be. What a fucking treat she is for him. 

It's over faster than he’d like to admit but he can’t be embarrassed when this literal wet dream material landed in his lap, and after he’s made himself bust to the sound of her reaching her peak herself, biting his knuckles and doing everything in his power not to make a sound and scare her off, he takes his shirt off to wipe the mess with, not finding anything else within arm’s reach.

Deciding to wait a beat before going to the bathroom for a shower, he’s surprised to see her exiting her room at the exact same time he does, looking disheveled and holding a towel with something bundled up in it. No doubt that fucking toy. Her eyes widen comically when she sees him, stops in her tracks, and he can’t help the raise of his eyebrows either. 

“You go ahead,” he tells her, motioning to the bathroom.

“Nah,” she says, her cheeks coloring adorably, “I gotta shower, I’ll take a bit longer.”

He nods, suppresses a smirk.

“Okay, I’ll give you a knock when I’m done.” 

Feeling smug, he purposely takes his time, lets her stew in her discomfort. 

Walking back to his room, he gives her the promised knock before closing his door behind himself. He listens for her footsteps. It takes her almost five minutes to move. 

*** 

If you asked Nicholas if he’d describe himself as creepy, he’d flat-out tell you no. If you asked him if he’d call himself a perv, he’d have to think about it. If you, however, asked him if he’s got some serious sexual issues, he’d nod enthusiastically and ask you if you had the number of a good therapist. Or a priest. At this point, he’ll take any help he can get.

Because he knows this isn’t normal, knows it rationally, but the thing is that he’s a dude in his twenties who just so prefers to think with his cock, mainly, and so he doesn’t care. 

Plus, lately, she’s been a real tease. Nothing too crazy, subtility is her strong suit, but enough to drive him mad. When she sits herself down next to him at dinner, she’ll turn to him, put her feet up on his chair, under his thighs. 

“Please, warm them for me?” she’ll pout, making him roll his eyes in fake annoyance while his heartrate kicks up a notch. 

“You’re not even wearing socks!” he’ll snap, but of course he’ll warm her feet up.

She’s started tanning topless, but only when she’s on her stomach, not revealing too much, but more than she has before. The sight of her tits under the shower is still a treat, though. 

And, on top of it all, she’s started putting her clothes in his hamper. They each have their own hamper in the bathroom, right next to each other, and mix-ups have happened over the years, but three in one week is a bit much. First it was her shirt, then it was two pairs of socks, then her bra. He wordlessly put them into hers without thinking about it, but now he’s struggling.

Because now he’s looking at a thong, a worn thong, on top of the shirt he tossed in last night. How he knows it’s worn? There’s a tiny spot on the crotch, dried pussy juice, whatever it may be, but it suddenly makes his tongue feel heavy and the sight of it makes him think the only way to stop his brain from short circuiting is to put his mouth on it, which, no. Even for him, that is too far, he doesn’t do that.

What he does do, however, after he checks behind himself to make sure she isn’t coincidentally walking by at this exact moment, is pocket them, walk into his room with them heavy on his person, and when he shuts the door, he realizes he hasn’t taken a single breath the entire way there. 

His hands shake when they take the panties out, and his cock hardens so fast that it makes him dizzy for a second. He contemplates bringing them up to his nose and inhaling but decides against it. If he ever gets to smell her, he wants it to be her, fully, nothing else. Tossing them on the bed, he sits down, takes a minute to himself.

That must have fucking been on purpose, right? There is no way she didn’t do that for him to find it. No way. The thong was planted, presented, almost, she wanted him to see it and then what? What reaction is she expecting? He won’t give her a direct one, that’s for damn sure. It’s too risky, what if it really was accidental, he’d make himself look like an absolute psycho.

Resolute, he decides not to do anything about it yet, not regarding her, at least. By himself, that’s another story entirely. He’s undoing his pants before he knows it, taking off his shirt and getting completely naked. Nick leans back against his headboard, gets comfortable among the pillows, and starts playing with his cock slowly.

He's hard, wet already, throbbing, but he takes his time, teases the tip, imagines it’s her tongue instead. Grabbing the panties, he wraps them around his base, makes sure they’re on properly and holds them with one hand while his other speeds up, eager to get off. The sight of that lacy black material around his dick, the contrast similar to how it’d be if he just got her on her back, pulled them to the side and slid into her hot cunt, that thought driving him insane, driving him closer and closer to his orgasm. 

He comes with a shout and isn’t even ashamed of it, makes sure to let his semen run along his shaft and pool on the material of the thong, let it get soaked a little, before he takes it away completely and uses it to wipe away what he can. For the rest he uses a tissue from his bedside table. 

It takes him a while to build that courage up, but he walks to her hamper, puts her ruined underwear at the very top of the dirty pile of her laundry.

Hours later, at night when everyone’s asleep and regret hits him, panic grips at his throat, he goes through it again, can’t find the damn pair of panties among the same pile of clothes.

Nobody in the house did the laundry today, he knows, he’s been the only one at home the entire time.

*** 

Their parents have no qualms about going on vacation for a few weeks and leaving their kids at home alone, and he’s absolutely fine with it for the most part, if only she wasn’t so insistent on letting her rebellious streak show now that nobody can correct her, partying every damn night and showing up at all times of the morning, leaving him worried sick.

“At least have the fucking decency to let me know when you won’t be coming home, so I don’t worry,” he snaps at her after the fourth night of her going out.

“You’re not my fucking father,” she hisses and leaves, skirt too short and heels too high, leaving Nicholas boiling with rage.

It’s only a small surprise when, one day, he walks into the living room after a post-lunch nap and catches her on the couch, straddling Sam. He had forgotten about the guy, about her telling him that they’d exchanged numbers, and he feels the bright hot mix of jealousy and anger make its way into his blood stream.

“Well, well, well,” he drawls, smirks when they jump apart, ending their little make out session, “who do we have here?”

She glares at him with her mouth red and wet, panting slightly, and if he had any less self-control, he’d grab her by the throat and drag her off this loser’s lap.

“Nicholas, hey dude,” Sam chuckles, a little embarrassed and a lot sheepish as she gets off his lap, stands up with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“Let’s go up to my room, Sam,” she says, is about to pull him up when Nicholas’ loud laugh interrupts her, makes her whip her head around to look at him.

Stop being weird, her gaze tells him, but she has no clue how normal he’s being right now, has no clue what it is he wants to do instead. 

“I don’t fucking think so, (Y/N),” he snarls, leans against the wall with his arms crossed as well. Two can play this game. “Samuel, you were just about to leave, weren’t you.”

“Actually, I- I wasn’t really-“

“Wasn’t a question.”

“Nick!” she hisses, looks at him with wide-eyed fury, “What the fuck are you doing? Sam, you really don’t have to leave, let’s just go upstairs.” 

“(Y/N),” Nicholas starts, grit teeth and dark eyes, “I said he’s leaving, end of story.” 

“Hey, it’s all good, babe,” Sam says, and even though that nickname makes Nicholas’ stomach turn, he appreciates that the boy has at least some respect left. “I don’t wanna get you in trouble. I’ll see you around, yeah?”

He presses a kiss to her cheek and grabs his backpack, walks past Nicholas with a small nod and disappears through the door. The silence he leaves behind is deafening as they look at each other, and she’s spitting mad, he can tell, shaking with it.

She grits, “What the fuck was that?” 

He shrugs, tries to act nonchalant, tries to keep control over the situation.

“You’re not going to hang out with him again, okay?”

“What?” she yells, disbelief coloring her voice.

“Lower your fuckin’ tone when speaking to me,” he hisses, stalks over to her and grabs her by the shoulders. “Sam is a piece of shit, and I will not let my sister hang around people like him, am I understood? You won’t see him again.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

He doesn’t think, just for a second, and suddenly his hand is at her throat, slamming her against the wall and crowding into her. He can’t consider his next steps, the ringing in his ears is too loud.

“Who the fuck do you think I am, huh? It’s enough now, (Y/N)! It’s enough!”

There’s fear in her eyes as she stares up at him, pulse hammering under his fingertips, but she doesn’t fight him, doesn’t struggle against him. 

He cages her in, lips a hair-width from hers as he gently whispers, “Now, what is it that you’re not going to do anymore?”

She swallows hard, a movement that’s constricted by his tight grip.

“S-see Sam,” she whimpers, not taking her gaze off him.

Nicholas smiles. 

“Atta girl,” he praises, moves the knuckle of his other hand along her cheekbone. “And while we’re at it, you’re not going to any more parties, okay? Four in a row are enough, don’t you think?” She gives him a jerky nod, wordless but appeasing, nonetheless. “Very good, wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” he smiles, condescension dripping from every syllable, watching her shake her head no before he lets instinct take over and presses a kiss to her forehead, all loving brother like. “Now go up to your room, I’ll see you at dinner, yeah?”

She’s out of his grasp before he can even step away fully.

He serves dinner silently, chicken and mac’n’cheese, her favorite. She whispers a small thank you and digs in, doesn’t look at him. Nicholas knows he might have gone a bit far today, especially so suddenly, but he only did it for her. The stories about Sam really did make their rounds, and he’d hate for his little sister to be known as one of that scumbag’s girls. Fuck no. 

“’m sorry about today,” he says after he’s let the atmosphere settle. “I should’ve been gentler, less angry, maybe. But I really am just worried about you, (Y/N), you can understand that, can’t you?”

It takes her a beat before she can look at him, chewing her food slowly. He gives her a small smile, encouraging, he hopes. He puts his hand on the table, palm up, looks at it then looks at her. She’s eyeing him with distrust before exhaling deeply, slowly, oh so slowly, reaching out and putting her hand in his.

His heart is threatening to beat out of his chest- they don’t touch, not ever- but he’s grateful. He considers it an accepted peace offering.

“I know,” she mumbles, “I was just… excited. About him liking me. I know it was probably a stupid thing of me to do.” 

“It was,” he says, keeping his tone gentle, “but it’s okay, I’m here to fix it if needed, okay? I’m your big brother, I’ll help you.”

“You keep saying that,” she notes, eyes hard but tone unsure. “That- that you’re my brother. But you aren’t, not really. We aren’t related.” 

He hums, thinks about how he should react without giving too much away. She’s right, they aren’t, but he needs her to trust him the way she would if they were. 

“We’re family in all the ways that matter, (Y/N). Okay?” he decides to say, squeezes her hand with the corners of his mouth tucked up.

That’s enough for her, apparently, because she gives him a nod and goes back to eating her dinner. When he lets go of her hand, she keeps it on the table, just within reach. 

He takes it as a sign, he’s going to be okay. 

She spends the entire next day in bed, not going outside once, and he knows because he hears that damn toy buzzing. His dick and his palm are sore by the time evening rolls around, because after all, he had to at least try to match her one for one. At least Sam is nowhere to be found, and Nick intends to keep it that way.

*** 

It sneaks in slowly, the need to be more involved, to order her around. It shows up at lunch, at dinner, one more piece of broccoli, one more scoop of rice. 

“Are you on a diet or somethin’? You’ve barely eaten.”

“Guess my appetite isn’t very big today.”

“C’mon, have some more.” Silence. “Hey, (Y/N).” A wide-eyed look. “For me?” A tiny smile, a shrug, a nod.

He refills her plate, an itsy-bitsy portion, and smiles when she eats it. He doesn’t want her to start feeling unwell now that she wakes up late and skips breakfast altogether, he needs to take care of her when their parents aren’t around. Nicholas isn’t the type to control anyone’s food intake, that would be ridiculous, but he doesn’t want her to miss out on her nutrients. 

Sometimes, she doesn’t let him.

“I really am full, I’ll have the leftovers tomorrow.”

He concedes, smiles at her. 

“Okay, I’ll put the rest in the fridge. The container is microwave proof, yeah?”

“’kay. Thank you, Nick.”

When he passes by her, he decides to be impulsive and bend down, press a kiss to the top of her head. He feels himself blush when she preens under his touch. It’s not weird, it’s a show of appreciation between stepsiblings. 

He’s walking by the bathroom, snacking on a banana, when he sees her standing in front of the mirror and curling her hair. Nick stops, leans against the doorframe and takes a bite.

“You going out in that?” he asks, motions with the half-eaten banana.

She turns, surprised, looks down at herself.

“Yeah, why? You don’t like it?”

“Where are you going?”

“Getting coffee with the girls.”

He hums, looks her up and down, unashamed in his staring. She may think it’s for the outfit, he knows it’s for her delicious body. 

“I feel like a flowy skirt would be cute. Or a dress, I don’t know. Nothing too short.”

She nods, looks at her baggy jeans.

“Want me to change?” her tone is genuine when she asks, none of the usual snark audible in it.

Nicholas chews slowly, looks to the side, unsure what to do. She’s letting him do this, giving it to him.

“Do you want to?”

“If… if you want me to, then yeah.”

He nods, finishes the bite, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Yeah, change into that olive green tennis skirt you have. It’ll go well with your top.” 

She smiles brightly, nods. 

“Okay, I will.” He’s just about to turn and walk away when she calls, “Thank you, big brother.” 

He throws her a smile over his shoulder and scurries away to dispose of the banana peel. His dick is hard in his pants.

Before she walks out, she knocks on his door, steps in when he allows it.

“Like this?” she asks, twirls once to let him see the full outfit.

She’s so fucking cute, he can’t decide if he wants to wrap her up in his arms forever or fuck her ‘til she’s crying.

He beckons her closer with his index finger, reaches out to touch the hem of her skirt once she’s close enough, pulls at it, like he’s assessing the material.

“Much better,” he rasps, smiles up at her from where he’s sitting at his desk chair. “Have fun, pretty. Call me if you need anything.”

She nods, smile so wide the corners of her eyes are crinkling, and she leaves. He exhales deeply, a warm feeling in his chest. This is going better than he could’ve imagined. 

“Come watch this movie with me,” he says, popcorn already in his lap, finger about to press play on the remote.

“I was gonna go to sleep… I’m so tired.”

That’s what she had said the past two nights, as well, only to stay up to fuck herself until well after midnight. It really must be a new toy, he thinks, her obsession with it, with getting off, way too intense for it to be anything but a new sensation. He knows she’s not a virgin, much to his dismay, but he has no clue if she gets fucked on the regular. Nick’s been making it difficult for her as well, he knows, not letting her out of the house too late.

“C’mon, just a bit? If you fall asleep, I’ll carry you upstairs.”

“I don’t know, Nick…”

“(Y/N),” he starts, voice stern now, “come sit down with me. It’s been a while since we last just spent time together.”

Reluctantly, she stomps her way over to him, annoyed. She does sit down, though, he’ll give her that, doesn’t even put too much distance between them. He smiles, presses play and leans back, enjoying the intro. She takes a handful of popcorn when he holds the bowl out to her but declines a second, which he’s fine with. 

It doesn’t take long for her to start squirming. 

First, it’s just some movement back and forth, it can pass as burrowing into the couch cushions, getting comfortable. Then it’s crossing and uncrossing her legs, over and over again, before she gives up with a humph and sits still. That lasts all of five minutes before she moves again, tucking her legs under her, then putting her weight on her right hip, then her left, shuffling around until he loses his patience.

“Could you stop fucking moving, what is your problem?” he snaps, looks over to her furrowed brows and mouth turned into a frown.

“I can’t get comfy!” she says, a slight whine in her voice, and he doesn’t know if she’s being bratty or if she really is just frustrated. 

“Just sit your ass down, (Y/N), it can’t be that hard.” 

“Whatever,” she mumbles and stays in the position she is in.

That is, until her squirming starts up again not even ten minutes later, with her sitting on her hands, then wringing them between her thighs, making him unable to focus on the movie. 

“That’s it,” he growls and without a second thought he hauls her up, ignores her screech of protest as he positions her between his thighs, holds her upper body tight while his legs secure hers.

“Nicholas, what the fuck?! Let me go!”

“What the fuck you so restless for, huh?” he breathes against her ear, but it’s in no way sexual. He needs her to hold still.

“Just let me go up to my room, please,” she whines, throws her head back, and he wonders what the hell has gotten into her when he remembers that, oops, he has been keeping her from going upstairs to play with her little friend.

His stepsister is horny, he realizes. 

A dirty smirk spreads along his face as he grips her tighter, makes her lean against him as he cages her in.

“Why? What’s so important in your room?” he asks, all fake cluelessness, loves watching her squirm when trying to come up with an answer.

She’s hot all over now, he can feel it, and he enjoys it massively. 

“Nothing, ‘m just sleepy, please- Nick, c’mon! This is fucked up!” 

She thrashes against him, but she’s got no chance, there’s a reason why he works out six days a week, and when she’s tired herself out enough, she goes limp against him.

“Tell ya what,” Nichola says, smug in how conversational he sounds, how nonchalant as he repositions her, puts her against his side, her wrists clutched in one strong hand and her leg hiked up against his stomach where he holds her thigh firmly, doesn’t let her get away. Her core is pressed against his hipbone, partially his thigh, and he feels like he’s dreaming as he does this, like this isn’t real life with real life consequences, that’s how badly he wants it. “If you need it that badly, you’ll give it to yourself against my hip, okay? But that’s the only way, (Y/N), you hear me? The only way.”

Her eyes are wide as saucers where they’re staring at him, mouth agape. She’s so small like this, clutched in his grip, and he wishes he could kiss her, but it’s not time for that, not yet. 

“W-what?” she whispers faintly.

“You heard me. If you need it, then this is how you’ll do it. And if not, then you’ll sit here, all still and pretty, and finish this movie with me. And when I let you go up to your room, you won’t touch, am I understood?”

“You’re fucking insane,” she spits, eyes on fire but her cheeks are red.

Nicholas chuckles, shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

He continues watching the movie and pays her no mind apart from making sure his grip stays too tight for her to get out of. Her breathing is hard, audible, but he ignores it, acts like she’s the weirdo for thinking that this is weird, and when she finally starts squirming again, he has to bite his lip to suppress a smirk.

“Why are you making me do this?” she whispers through a huff, decidedly not looking at him.

“’m not making you do anything. It’s your decision whether you wanna be good or not.”

She scoffs. “You’re so messed up. I can’t believe I have to fucking live with you, put up with… with this shit.”

He shrugs, nonplussed. He knows she doesn’t mean it. Their relationship has never been lovey-dovey, but they’ve never been outright nasty to each other, not even during the hardest times of adjusting in the beginning. 

“Shut up and watch the movie, (Y/N),” he says, dismisses her, enjoys how she’s stewing in her anger and frustration.

It’s miniscule when it starts, the slight flexing of her thighs. Nicholas can feel it, but he doesn’t move, lets her do her thing in the hopes that she’ll get bolder with it, give herself over to her needs. He imagines her clenching her pussy, trying to get friction on her clit that way, wonders how she prefers to come. A strong exhale snaps him out of his thoughts, the way she moves further down his body, again, seeming like she’s settling in against him, but he knows she’s looking for a good angle. 

The fact that her subtility- usually a trait she possesses perfectly- goes flying out the window once she’s horny enough, needy enough, is something he stows away to use against her later, when he needs it. He’s observant, sue him, it’s just natural. 

A few minutes pass before she takes the next step, tightening her leg around him through a cough, ridiculously so. Why’d she have to cough, he thinks bemusedly, it’s not a sound she’s trying to cover up, but a movement. Wide hips and an undoubtedly needy cunt, that’s what she’s currently rolling against him, slowly and irregularly. He feels frustrated for her, there’s no way this is doing anything to help, and it shows in the way she huffs every now and then, impatience building.

“Just do it,” he whispers, keeps his voice calm and his chest even despite his heart threatening to beat out of his chest. “You can, what’re you scared of?”

The breath rushing out of her lungs is shaky as she turns her head and buries her face in his shoulder, a groan escaping her.

“Please, Nick,” she whines- sobs, almost- as he trails his hand down to her tailbone, pushes her flush against him, encourages her to rotate her hips and rub herself against him.

“That’s a good girl, just like that,” Nicholas whispers, nose in her hair, smelling the faint scent of roses. “Give in, that’s it. You can make yourself feel good, it’s okay.”

She positions herself so she gets more of his thigh between her legs and starts humping him in earnest, breathing open-mouthed against his shoulder, and he so badly wishes she would look at him, wants to see the flush on her cheeks and the tears in her eyes. 

“Does that feel good? Tell me, (Y/N).” She nods, but he isn’t satisfied. “Use your words like a big girl, c’mon. Don’t go dumb on me yet.” 

Her whine is high-pitched as she takes a moment to gather the courage, but when she does speak, it makes his cock jump where it’s trapped in his pants. 

“Y-yeah, ‘s good… oh, oh fuck.”

When he’s sure she won’t bolt, he lets go of her arms, snakes his hands around her body and guides her movements. Her hands immediately hold onto his torso, face burying in his neck, moist breath against his skin. This feels so much like heaven that he’s dizzy with it. 

“Yeah, that’s nice, ain’t it? Atta girl.”

Her movements are precise, he knows she’s found a way to make it good, to hit her desired spot just right by the way her body is bound tight, and her breathing is labored, words stuttered. That’s all he can see with her gorgeous face turned away from him, but he’ll get there. He grabs her ass and grinds his thigh into her pussy, grins at her surprised moan.

“Holy fuck,” she hisses, cants her hips back and forth across a good spot.

“Yeah, that’s it, just like that. Needed it badly, didn’t you? Your cunt’s been desperate all evening, huh?”

She nods, gives him a broken confirmation, whines when he threads his fingers into her hair and pulls.

“Nnngh, Nick, I need- ugh, I can’t-“

“Yes, you can. Look at me, (Y/N). C’mon, look at me, baby.” 

He’s pushing it with the nickname, but he doesn’t care, not when his dick is leaking steadily in his pants, needy to feel her. Not yet, though, he needs to play his cards right. 

When she looks up it knocks the breath out of his chest, the way her lips are bitten raw, her eyes glazed over, cheeks covered by a pink blush and a slight sheen of sweat. She’s so hot for it, and he’s so hot for her, and he needs her to come so he can go to his room and jerk off while thinking of exactly this scenario for… forever, probably. He’ll never get her out of his system, he just knows it, his baby stepsister anchored deep in his soul.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” he breathes, resists the urge to kiss her, but he does put a thumb to her lips and lets her suck a kiss into the pad of it while her hips work tirelessly to get her pussy off. “From now on, whenever you need it this badly, you come to me, okay? You ask me and I’ll help you. Am I making myself clear, (Y/N)?”

She nods dazedly, furrows her brows as her hips start speeding up.

“Y-yeah, Nick, I’ll ask you. Need it, need t’a ask you, need it.”

Nicholas’ heart swells three sizes at her promise and he decides to let her tumble over the edge, grinds his thigh into her center and pushes her ass down to meet the thrusts, smiles wickedly when her eyes roll back.

“You’re gonna come, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, yes-“

“Gonna cream your panties on your big stepbrother’s thigh? That what you need?” Forehead meeting his shoulder, she whines through a pathetic nod, lets him move her up and down before he whispers, “Let go baby. Show me how you come for your brother, c’mon.”

“Nicholas, fuck!”

The sound she makes when she releases rivals an angel choir, breathy and high and so full of ecstasy, he feels he could come right there with her, completely untouched. She rides it out, humps his thigh until she’s shuddering, until she collapses on top of his body to catch her heaving breath.

Nicholas can’t help but pull her tighter against him, hold her through her aftershocks, uncaring about the consequences, about being pushed away. She wouldn’t, no fucking way she would, not when she’s this vulnerable and he’s this willing to help her through any situation. 

They stay like that for a little before he reaches down to take her by the chin, pull her head up to look at him. There are unshed tears in her eyes, a wobbly lip, but he can’t be the one dealing with this now. She needs to settle in on her own. 

“You did so well, ‘m proud of you,” he smiles, shakes her face a little, “you okay?”

Taking a beat, she nods her head, albeit a little hesitantly. 

He smiles at that, lets go of her and darts his eyes to the stairs. 

“Good. Off you go then, get cleaned up and then get in bed. And no touching, yeah?” 

She gets up on wobbly legs, steadies herself against the back of the couch as she slowly makes her way to the stairs. Before she disappears, he calls her name, makes her turn around.

“And remember,” he says, grin smug, “you come to me. Always come to me.”

*** 

It’s summer, and it’s way too hot, and Nicholas usually finishes his daily swim before she even wakes up, but today he decides to take it easy and wait for her to take her usual place on the sunbed before he strides out to cool off in the pool.

They haven’t talked about what happened two nights ago, and they won’t, he knows, not explicitly anyway. Luckily, she isn’t avoiding him, the atmosphere when they’re around each other rather comfortable. It’s a little unnerving and a lot surprising, he must admit, but Nicholas has never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

The way she’s watching him jump into the water, do his laps, lean against the side of the pool to take a breather- none of it goes unnoticed, and he enjoys it immensely. He doesn’t show off on purpose, doesn’t need to, sees her biting her lip at his usual demeanor, no exaggeration needed. When he’s counted his fifty, he heaves himself up and gets out of the pool, her eyes tracking the way his biceps bulge. A smirk makes its way onto his face, all smug, and he doesn’t even try to hide it.

Taking his towel, he wipes his face dry before spreading it across the sunbed next to hers, laying down.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks, hiding his eyes behind a pair of shades.

“Already did, didn’t you?”

He hums. “Guess I did.”

“Want some tanning oil?”

“Depends,” he says, dares to, “will you rub it on me?”

Her snort is full of humor, thank God.  

“Fuck no.”

“Then no, thank you.”

He loves their little banter, is fond of it, endlessly grateful that it hasn’t changed since that one fateful night. The silence stretches as they lay there, letting the rays of the sun warm their skin, and soon enough he hears shuffling coming from her side. Looking up, he can see her gathering her stuff. 

“Leaving already?”

She nods. “It’s Nina’s birthday dinner tonight, and I still need to get ready.”

“You’ll show me your outfit before you leave, right?”

Even though he’s phrased it like a question, she knows damn well that it’s an order. This pleases him.

“Yes, of course.”

She’ll go to the shower as she always does, but before she can, he decides to let his little stepsister in on a secret. She’s earned it, after all, being such a good girl for him.

“Have I ever told you that the window in my room gives me a near perfect view of the inside of our outdoor shower?” he lies conversationally, giving her a blinding smile.

Every muscle in her body tenses momentarily before she turns her head towards him ever so slowly. Her hard swallow is audible, even out here, even to him.

“No,” she rasps, voice shaky, “You never told me that, Nicholas.”

“Hm. Well, just thought you should know.”

He leaves it at that, lays back on his back, trying hard not to smirk. He can sense how this admission is fucking her up on the inside, the shock and the danger tied to it. 

He’s so sure she’ll let it go, but as has become a theme with her, she takes him by surprise when she asks, “Did you only notice? Or… did you- did you watch? Me?”

Brave little girl, he’s almost proud.

Keeping his voice borderline bored, he replies, “I watched, a little. You don’t seriously believe I could look away from a pretty little thing like you, (Y/N).”

He pulls his shades down a little and eyes her body, gives her a nasty smirk before leaning back again.

When she huffs, stalks away to get into that damn shower, he gives her all of ten seconds before he’s after her, sneaking in behind her and catching her just in time to see her bikini top fall away. When she spots him leaning against the entrance, a gasp escapes her, hands flying up to cover herself.

The gesture makes him scoff, all ridicule. 

“Please,” he says, looks her in the eye, “nothing I ain’t seen before, sweetheart.”

A frown makes its way onto her face, petulant and bratty in a way she usually isn’t, and she slowly lowers her hands, gives him an eyeful of her tits. They’re even more gorgeous up-close, and he chuckles dirtily, looks his fill.

“That’s so unfair, Nick,” she tuts, “You look at mine but won’t show me yours?”

His smile softens a little. 

“You’re lookin’ at it,” he says, arms out as if to say: there ya go! “I haven’t seen anything past your waistline, (Y/N).” The look she gives him is skeptical, but he knows what sincerity looks like, knows how to make it visible on his own face. She believes him. “Unless, you want to, of course. In which case…”

A pointed glance at her bikini bottoms has her cross her arms over her chest, scoffing.

“You wish,” she snaps, turns around and ends the conversation.

He lets her.

“Whatever you want, sweetheart. But remember your one rule, yeah? You need it, you ask your big brother for help. Got it?”

When she scoffs, doesn’t say anything, chooses to ignore him, he lets himself lose a tiny thread of patience. Three steps take him towards her where he grabs her soaking wet hair, really drives his fingertips into her scalp, and yanks her back so hard her knees buckle through her obnoxious shriek.

“I asked you something, (Y/N),” he hisses, uncaring that her frantic nod makes her cause herself pain, pulling at her hair like that.

She’s grabbing at his arm as she yelps, “Yes, yes I got it, Nicholas, I got it-“

“Good,” he grits, shoves her away from him and eyes her up and down before leaving the shower, leaving her to carefully pat at her surely burning scalp. 

He had to leave, or he would’ve done some damage. Nicholas hates when she ignores him. 

Despite everything, or maybe even because of it, she knocks on his door later to get his approval for her outfit. He takes his time looking at her, makes her twirl for him, reaches under her shirt to make sure the material is thick enough to keep her warm throughout the evening. Nicholas makes her bend down as he kisses her cheek sweetly, resting his forehead against her temple.

“’m sorry,” he apologizes again, truly feeling sour at his outburst, “you be careful, and call me if you need anything, yeah?”

She nods, doesn’t say anything for a long moment before she moves her face, presses a kiss to his forehead. A soft smile directed at him is the last thing he sees before she leaves. 

*** 

It’s been a while since he’s heard the buzzing from the other side of the wall, and now that it’s cutting through the comfortable silence on this warm evening, it makes red hot fury rise in his chest.

Nicholas would consider himself a patient, understanding young man, but with how she’s been playing him, he doesn’t see his positive traits lasting for much longer. He’s been clear, twice now- made her repeat his rule, even- and yet she’s in there, defiling her precious cunt with that… that fucking toy. He hates it.

Without thinking much about it he walks out of his room and steps in front of her door, that annoying sound following him like the plague, before he bursts into her bedroom, stopping in his tracks at the scene before him.

The scoff leaves his lips before he can hold it back. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

She’s on her back, legs bent and in the air, hands hidden between her thighs. The wide-eyed look she gives him- full of fear and shock- makes his gut churn. That fucking sound. He needs it off, right now.

“That fucking-“ he snaps, walks over to her and snatches the damn thing out of her hands, turns it off and throws it on the bed. Impulse has him grip her throat, revel in the way her pulse is hammering against his palm, pull her close, terrified gaze meeting his stormy eyes. He doesn’t care. He told her, and now look at her disrespect. “What the fuck did I tell you, huh?”

“Nicholas, wh- what are you-“

He shakes her, not gently, grabs her hair in his other hand so she’d look at him. “What is your rule, (Y/N)? Hm? The one fucking rule I gave you, and here you are, breaking it, fucking-“ he blindly pats the bed in search for the toy, finds it, holds it up to her, “-for this? This thing? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

She doesn’t comprehend, he can tell, and although he usually loves when he’s got her speechless and dumb, now it just pisses him off beyond belief. There’s no way she didn’t know, no fucking way she didn’t know.

“Explain yourself,” he hisses, grips her tighter, wedges himself between her spread thighs and does his best to ignore the warmth emitting from that place. He’s willing to give her a chance, and she better not waste it. 

“I- I didn’t-“ she whimpers, swallows, “I didn’t know you were being- being actually serious, I… I was s-scared.”

The tears in her eyes are threatening to overflow and Nicholas feels his cock twitch at that. Good, let her cry.

He scoffs. “And you expect me to believe that, after everything?”

“What if I had been wrong and you had been fucking with me all along?” she yells, then, surprises him with the way she fights through the tremor in her voice. “You would’ve deemed me a freak and- and shunned me, and then what? Then I’d be without a brother, and- I’d hate- hate that. So much. Fuck!”

He can feel his gaze soften along with his grip on her hair, butterflies exploding in his stomach. His little stepsister needs him, needs him way more than he needs her, apparently, needs him in a way that is so beyond sexual that it makes his head spin. He can work with that, will work with that, until she’s nothing but a thin thread wrapped around his little finger, nothing but a miniscule puddle of putty in his wide palm. 

He suppresses a smirk, turns it into a warm smile, instead. 

“Oh, baby,” he coos, scoots closer and rests his forehead against hers, feels her heaving chest and warm breath, “you’ll never be without me again, you hear me? There’s nothing you could do that would turn me away from you. Now that we’re siblings, this shit is forever, do you understand? Tell me, (Y/N).”

Her eyes are screwed shut but she nods at his demand, inhales deeply and exhales slowly, calming herself like a big girl. His big girl.

“Ye-yeah, I guess,” she murmurs, “I do now.”

He hums, leans in and presses their mouths together, a dry press with explosive consequences. His heart starts hammering in his chest when she lets out a sigh against his lips, and he breaks away with a smile, looks her in the eye.

“Okay?”

She nods, licks her red, red lips. Another kiss, just as chaste. He won’t give in, not yet. 

“Now,” he starts, puts the bass back in his voice, “this… this can’t go unpunished, though, you get that, right?”

Her eyes widen while her brows furrow, confusion evident on that gorgeous face. He looks at her sheepishly.

“W-why? It wasn’t, like, on purpose.”

Nick chuckles, finds the toy easily, turns it over in his hands. It’s slightly sticky where it’s been pressed against her, but he doesn’t mind. He intends to make it messier. 

“Accidents can happen, of course,” he drawls, allows, “but this early on in our relationship? Nah, don’t think so.”

With that he switches the toy on, leans back and pushes her thighs apart, moves slow and deliberate. Her gaze stays questioning up until he presses the buzzing vibrator against her cunt fully, watches when her leg twitches. She’s beautiful down here, wet and swollen, lips that will frame the fat length of his cock nicely, a sweet little clit that he’ll love to torture to completion. He’s got so many plans for her, but for now he ignores the salivating of his mouth and focuses his eyes on her rolled back ones, turns the vibe up a notch and smirks wickedly.

“You wanted to come, little sister?” he asks, chuckles darkly, “I’ll make you come. Over and over and over, until you beg me to stop.” Another press of the button, another violent lurch of her upper body that he holds down no problem, “And when you do start to beg,” he hisses, presses closer, revels in her whining and gasping, “I will ignore it, and make this pussy sob for me again, you hear me?” 

Nicholas smiles as she comes, spasms so hard he almost loses his tight grip on her, but thankfully his body is big enough to keep her thighs apart around it. Where only minutes ago he hated the sound of this little tool, he now ignores it expertly, presses it against her clit and appreciates the help it gives him. Her wails, the punching of her fists against the mattress through her next orgasms would alert everyone in the house if it weren’t empty, and he can’t wait to hear those sounds when he’s got her impaled on his dick.

“Please, no more, no-“

“Take it,” he says, flicks his wrist, “Give me more, c’mon.”

“Nicholas, I can’t!” she sobs, grabs the sheets to hold on to something, to bear the assault on her cunt better. “Hurts, Nick, please, hurts!”

“Good,” he smiles, turns it all the way up after her fifth peak, “Let it hurt, baby, let this pussy submit to me. Let her say her goodbyes to this goddamn thing,” he can’t help but snarl, “I’ll be all you need from now on, yeah, everything this pussy needs. Your big brother, your owner, all in one, huh?” 

Her last orgasm has her thrash against his hold, throwing her head back, but he keeps his hand right where it hurts the most, forces her to ride it out until her bones shake with it. 

When he finally, finally turns the toy off and tosses it aside, he carefully gathers her shivering body in his arms, holds her face against his neck and rocks her back and forth. Nick makes sure her legs stay spread where they’re shaking uncontrollably, makes sure nothing toucher her overstimulated pussy. It’ll take her a while to stop crying, he guesses, he doesn’t want to draw it out more than necessary. 

Say what you want about him, but he’s no monster. 

When her breath has evened out and her tremors have subsided, he lets his hand find her hair and grip it once more, firmly, not cruelly. Looking into her eyes, he smiles, kisses her lips, whispers, “What’s your rule, little sister?”

She shudders but replies, “Wh-when I want to come, I tell you. I ask you for help.” 

He nods, gets up slowly, adjusts his rock-hard cock in his pants. Her wide eyes track every movement, but he stays resilient, turns to leave the room but changes his mind. Two steps take him back to her where he grabs her, pries her mouth open forcefully, spits inside where a whimper is fighting its way out, cracks his hand across one rosy, tear-streaked cheek and gets off on the shocked sob that escapes her.

Straightening out, he moves to the door.

“And don’t you dare ever fucking forget it.”

*** 

It’s not like he’s got some masterplan when it comes to her, it’s not like he’s calm and collected and in control of his mind and body, it’s just that he has strong instincts and even stronger impulses and he can’t help but act on them, not in his life outside of this house he’s sharing with her, but here? Definitely, evidently. 

He isn’t in control, not really, because he loses his mind little by little, every day. When she passes by him on her way to the fridge and drives her hand through his hair, when she smiles at him from where she’s laying on the sunbed, when she lets him watch her shower. The way she asks if he approves of her outfit, if she should make him food, if she can have a hug. 

She’s never asked for a kiss, but he gives her some anyway, knows she wants them by the way she melts into the touches, lets his tongue roam around in that sinful mouth, lets him pull her closer by the grip on her ass. 

The first time Nicholas gives her his cock, not fully, but pushes it between her lips, is when they’re under the shower.

It goes like this: she beckons him to follow her into the outdoor shower so he can oversee that she really does get clean, as he does often, points to her body parts and smiles when she drags her loofah along that spot. He helps her where she can’t reach, gets her back for her, the backs of her thighs, scrubs her clean really well. He’s in his swimwear so he doesn’t mind getting wet, pulls her against his chest, her ass pressed to his crotch, soaps up her tits, massages them, pinches her hard nipples and chuckles at her moan.

Strong hands drift down lower, over her stomach and down to where he knows her cunt is already clenching, getting wet. 

“Have to clean this dirty pussy as well, don’t we?” he whispers before spreading her open with one hand, driving between her folds with the other.

He keeps this step clinical for the most part, takes his time as her breaths starts to get shallow, all the way up until she gives in and with her bottom lip clutched between those perfect teeth asks him, “Big brother, can you please make me come?”

Oh, he’ll never tire of this.

“Of course, baby,” he replies, because this is for him as much as her. Moreso for him, probably. 

Her twitching clit feels hard under his pointer finger where he’s circling it, drawing down to her hole to gather some of her juices to make the glide better, making sure to keep her out of the spray of the water. As expected, her eyes are glued to what he’s doing between her wide hips, moaning softly with every swipe of his finger.

“Mmm, what have we got here?” he asks teasingly as he lets two of his fingers circle her entrance, two because he knows she can take it, “A hungry little hole, hm?” 

They push in easily, make her breath hitch, and he maneuvers them so they’re standing under the shower stream, so it’s aimed right at her exposed clit. His stepsister spasms, but he holds her tightly. The water banging down on her swollen nub, his fingers pressing against that gorgeous spot inside of her, his voice whispering delicious filth in her ear- she’s naïve if she ever thought she stood a chance.

She comes with a silent cry, lets him bear the weight of her shaking body as she lets the sensations overcome her, moans as he talks her through it, good fucking girl, that’s my babysis, if only I had known about how sweet this cunt is, give it to me, just like that, tight little hole and it’s all for me.

When she sinks to her knees slowly, he doesn’t protest. Unsure if the wetness on her face is from the water or her tears, he decides to take it easy on her, pats her head and soothes her as she buries her face in his soaked swim shorts. She finds the tent in them easily, mouths at it, looking up at him from under her clumped lashes.

He scoffs, fondness in every dangerous syllable as he says, “Don’t bare your throat to me unless you want me to fuck it.”

But his little girl, God bless her neediness, soldiers on, licks a stripe up to his navel so his hands would have enough space to pull his shorts down. Mind hazy with the view she’s giving him- her little body beneath him, submitting on her knees- he grabs his cock as it springs free, feeds it into her panting mouth and groans when she doesn’t stop swallowing him down, lets him into the depths of this fuckhole. The bobbing and sucking that immediately follow has him hold on to the wall, knees weak.

“Yeah, yes,” he laughs, delirious with lust, “That’s a good girl, fuck. Who’s been fucking my little sister, huh? Who’s been teaching you to take cock this good?”

She lets him go with a pop, doesn’t say anything as she bunches four of her fingers up and shoves them down her throat, down to the knuckles, not a single gag or splutter leaving her mouth. His ears ring at the sight, and he’d never call her this out loud, but he considers himself more than blessed to have such an eager and naturally talented whore on his hands. The thought of her standing in front of the bathroom mirror, gagging on her own fingers, practicing for her stepbrother’s cock, training that throat for its intended use, spit and tears on the determined lines of her face, makes his pulse quicken and balls throb.

“Fuck,” he growls, grabs her by the hair and shoves in, her nose nestled in his pubes nicely. She struggles, but not much, and he realizes that he wouldn’t care even if she did. He gave her a fair warning. “Fucking perfect, yeah, sucking me so well, take that dick, just like that. ‘m gonna load up your mouth nicely, baby, gonna feed you full, gonna take days for the taste of my jizz to leave your molars, fuck-“

Nick’s orgasm crashes over him full force, has him bend and press even deeper into her mouth, laughing through her whines and protests, the slapping of her hands against whatever body part of his she can reach. She can’t breathe because of him, but he, as well, can’t breathe because of her, so it checks out. When he lets her go, she scrambles away from him, coughs through forceful inhales, wide and scared eyes looking up at him.

“Told you,” he pants, shrugs, “you wanted it.” 

She doesn’t say anything- even if she did, it’d barely come out, he knows, voice shot to shit. He washes himself quickly, rids his skin of the stickiness of her spit, before grabbing her by her upper arm and roughly hauling her to her feet.

“Ouch, you’re hurting me-“

“Shut the fuck up and let me take care of you,” he says, starts washing her sloppily, and he was right. Her voice is hoarse.

“Could do it more gently,” she grumbles, yelps when he bites at her shoulder, soothes the spot with his tongue.

“You’re incredible,” he whispers over the noise of the shower, “That was… talent.”

She chuckles shily, turns to look up at him.

“Can I have a kiss?”

His gut clenches as his face explodes in a smile, pulling her in to kiss her deeply. The way she melts into him, lets herself be held despite knowing what those hands are capable of, makes his heart jump for her.

It’s a sticky situation, but he’s got the upper hand, still.

He has to make sure it stays that way.

*** 

“This tastes vile.”

“No, it doesn’t! Sweet and salty is a classic combination!”

“The textures are weird, though. I need to chew my popcorn thoroughly so I wouldn’t choke on it, and the Malteser is… distracting.”

A snort. “You three years old, Nicholas? Gotta focus on chewing that bad, huh?”

“You little-“

“Ah, stop! That tickles, Nick- ah, no! No, don’t-“

“I’ll show you three years old!”

Laughter, panting, snickering, silence.

“Watch the damn movie, you brat.”

“I’m all out of Maltesers now.”

“Good, that’ll keep you from coming up with these weird concoctions.”

“Tsk. Jerk.”

The sound of lips smacking. 

*** 

Their parents come back earlier than expected. Nicholas isn’t mad at that, but things will become trickier with her now. They’ll have to be sneakier, more careful, but the risk of getting caught makes something hot clench in his stomach. No doubt, they’ll manage well.

He’s asked to pick them up from the airport and he doesn’t object, takes his stepsister with him. The drive is comfortable, she plays her favorite songs, he hums along.

“Oh, Nicky,” their mom sighs when she pulls away from a hug, smiling sheepishly, teeth whiter in contrast with her tan. There’s two people standing next to their parents, Nicholas doesn’t know them. “We told Sandra and Marcus that we’ll drive them home, we didn’t expect (Y/N) to come with you.” 

Oh. Oops. Six people, five seats, that’ll be a tight fit. 

“We can also just take a cab-“

“Nonsense,” their dad interrupts Sandra, “(Y/N) will just sit in Nicholas’ lap, right? Y’all don’t mind, do you, kids?” 

The look he gives them, stern in good old Chavez fashion, leaves no room for argument.

“Um…” her eyes are darting from him to their dad, but Nicholas just shrugs, does his best to look nonchalant. 

“’course not, it’s a short drive. Let’s just hope we don’t get caught.”

His dad brushes him off before he motions for their friends to start walking with them, Nicholas leading the way. (Y/N) stays behind with her mom, talking quietly. The whole way home with her ass perched on his lap? He wills his dick to calm down where it’s chubbing up in his pants, to no avail. His body does what it wants. Having arrived at the car, their dad puts the suitcases in the trunk while the others pile in one after the other, Nicholas’ sister the very last to sit down, getting comfortable on his lap. He groans when she moves roughly to get situated, a small apology falling from her lips. He pinches her side for that, causing her to yelp, gets snapped at by their dad for it. 

“Behave, y’all,” he grumbles, making Nicholas smirk.

(Y/N) still gets uncomfortable when dad scolds her, too apologetic for her own good, but Nick knows there’s very little heat behind the roughly spoken words. It’s what he has in common with his father, he supposes.

They start driving and Nicholas ducks his head as much as he can so they wouldn’t look too suspicious in case they drive by a cop car. The grownups are talking loudly amongst themselves, and he loops his hands around her waist, holds her steady. Her head barely touches the top of the car, and he loves just how small she is. The urge to kiss at the back of her neck is huge, but he resists. He’ll just have to sneak into her room later and put her on her knees, fuck her throat the way he’s been doing for the past few days.

Not much time passes before she starts squirming.

“Y’alright?” he asks her, loosening his hold in case it puts her body in an uncomfortable position.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. All good.”

A beat passes before she does it again, presses her weight down on his lap, making him clench his teeth. There’s no way she can’t feel his boner, and there’s no way he’ll do anything about anything right here, right now. Fucking tease, his sister is. 

“Can you quit it?” he hisses lowly when she honest to God grinds her ass down, makes him dizzy for a split second. The inseam of his jeans has never felt tighter and his dick’s never been more familiar with discomfort than just now.

The giggle she lets out gets muffled by her palm as she glances back at him, all wide-eyed and falsely innocent, and she shrugs.

“Sorry, big brother, ‘s just a little uncomfy like this.”

The way she purrs it, that bittersweet name, makes his gut churn. He has half a mind to keep from pinching her sides, grabbing her hair and shaking her so she’ll stop her shenanigans. If she thinks that she can act out now just because their parents are back home, lulled into false security, she’s got another thing coming.

“That’s a great song, dad. Can you turn it up a little?” he calls, smiling when his dad obliges.

“That’s my boy,” the older man says, ever the rock’n’roll fan.

Now that the music’s loud enough, distracting enough, Nicholas dares to put his lips next to her ear, hiss out a warning. 

“You keep this little charade up and I’ll hurt your cunt until you’re crying on my tongue when we get home, (Y/N).”

It can be interpreted as something sexy, tinged with a little bit of sultry, but she knows better. When he mentions pain, he means pain. She knows that damn well, scared despite the fact that she gets off on it. Nicholas prefers to keep his girl on her toes.

“Sorry,” she whispers, a tilt to her mouth, but when their dad accidentally overlooks a pothole and the car jumps, she lets her weight press down harder than necessary, grabs his thigh to steady herself but digs her little finger in just a little too deep. 

Alright then, he’s warned her.

Her skirt is wide, frilly enough to hide his hand sneaking down between his own legs, up to reach between hers, his eyes trained on the unassuming guests next to them. The couple seems too preoccupied to pay them any mind, though, and he uses that to his advantage, presses his knuckles into his stepsister’s pussy and rubs roughly. Clever little girl, hides her yelp of surprise behind a cough, same way he hides his smirk when he feels the damp fabric, feels the way her clit hardens under his merciless touch.

“You stay quiet now,” he whispers, pulsing his touch against her skin, teasing her into an approaching orgasm. Not that he’ll let her come, not now and not later, for that matter. 

Where only minutes ago her grinding and rocking pissed him off, he now enjoys feeling her chase her pleasure, enjoys how hard she’s trying to be subtle. A quick glance towards the others tells him that nobody is looking at them, still enjoying the music, and her face in the rearview mirror is stoic as well, just a tiny furrow between her brows a potential giveaway, but only to those who know what’s going on, only to Nicholas. 

“Good baby, my good fuckin’ baby,” he rasps, clutches at her pussy and squeezes, makes her feel it.

Another whimper, another cough.

“Y’alright, sweetheart?” their mother then asks, turning down the music, forcing Nicholas to still his hand and hold his breath in hopes of not getting caught. “You’ve been coughing an awful lot during the drive.”

(Y/N) just smiles, shakes her head.

“It’s nothing, mom, just something in my throat. We were watching a movie and having popcorn before picking you guys up, must be a kernel that’s stuck or something.”

Her mom looks back, gaze worried but she nods, placated. 

The rest of the ride home doesn’t take long, thank God, and he lets their parents settle back in, assures them that they’ve eaten, tells them they’ll finish the movie they had started in his room before ushering her upstairs, mildly annoyed at her sudden inability to walk properly.

“The fuck’s gotten into you?” he hisses, pushes her up the stairs.

“’m so wet, my legs feel like jello,” she whimpers, and he almost forces her on her knees right there in the hallway, but alas, he’s got to keep his very last thread of patience alive if he wants to train her to be his perfect little doll. She won’t learn otherwise, he fears.

“You’re cute,” he smiles before pushing his door open, pulling her into the room and immediately making sure she falls onto his bed- made and ready, for a change- watching him as he locks the door. “You’ll be cuter when I’m done with you, though.” 

It doesn’t take long for him to ride her skirt up, pull her panties down and stuff them in her mouth, wet patch first. Her pussy is glistening in front of him, and he wastes no time putting his mouth on it and sucking hard, the pain of the blood rushing to the surface making her groan. Pain, he promised, pain, she’ll get. She peaks quickly but he doesn’t let her go over the edge, pulls away and lands a nasty slap on her pussy that leaves her shaking, leaves her throbbing. 

“That’s what you fuckin’ get you goddamn tease,” he snaps before continuing his pattern.

He eats, waits, slaps. Eats, waits, slaps. 

Holds his palm over her cunt and presses, moves, watches her writhe with the cotton hanging from her mouth, little sister mouth filled with little sister panties. His cock throbs for it. 

When she’s actively crying, sobbing her little heart out, he throws her legs in the air and commands her to hold them up. It’s a testament to her desperation, the way she obliges without complaint, the way she’s been doing as told without a single tone of complaint. Not taking advantage of that would be a shame. Two moves and his cock is free, hanging heavy between his shaky legs but he doesn’t care, grabs it and jerks himself before his knees can give out.

“That’s a good girl, present yourself to your big brother,” he moans, looks at her puffy pussy and her wide, teary eyes, the way she’s begging with them, eyeing the blur of his hand over his fat dick before settling her pleading gaze onto his. “Gonna come, gonna cover you in it, mark my territory and make you smell like me, y’want that, (Y/N)? Want everyone to know that your sweet cunt belongs to your big brother?”

This kink is getting out of hand, but he doesn’t give a single fuck, because where he is sick and rotten, she is, too.

She nods through a moan and there he is, spurting his hot semen all across her slapped-red cunt, covering what’s his from the outside, for now. She gasps when the streaks hit her skin, rocks back and forth while he rides out his climax, and when he’s done, all panting and heavy-lidded, he drives his fingers through the mess and brings it up to her lips, smearing it on her underwear.

“You know this one already, don’t you?” he says, breath heavy as he continues to clean her that way, soiling her panties. “That’s what you did with the thong I ruined, didn’t you? Sucked my jizz out of the lace like a come-addicted little slut, didn’t you? Huh?”

A single tear rolls down her shame-tinted cheek, and he groans through a chuckle.

“Show me. Show me how you did it.”

The ruined cotton gets pulled out between her lips before her tongue finds it, licks the globs away roughly, sweet lips pursing over the material before her little cheeks hollow, sucking his juices out. If he hadn’t been using her every day, he’d be rock hard again now, but alas, his balls are empty and the contents of them are currently being greedily sucked down her talented throat. Nicholas is one lucky guy.

When she’s done, he rips the panties out of her mouth and kisses her bruisingly, hungrily, devours the taste of their combined fluids and moans when she pulls him close. Being held onto is one of Nicholas’ favorite things in the world, the sheer need in such a simple gesture, but nobody’s body has ever felt this right around his. 

“What the fuck,” she whispers against his lips, laughing through the tears that are staining her cheeks. “I feel like I came but I didn’t. What…”

He smiles, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“You’ll be coming soon enough, baby, this was just a little taste of what happens when you piss me off. And you did piss me off, that teasing in the car was- it was almost unbearable. Nearly fucked you right then and there.”

Her smile is small, almost timid, but it vanishes quickly. Nicholas tilts his head in question and gets an answer immediately, albeit reluctantly. 

“Why… Why haven’t you? Fucked me yet, I mean. We’ve been doing this, us, for a while now and you’ve never… I don’t- I’m just wondering, ‘s all.” 

A stutter in his chest tells him his heart’s melting for her, the insecure tilt to her voice, and he has to try hard not to jump her right then and there. Leave it to his girl to catch him off guard, rip at the reigns he’s clutching onto so tightly. He makes sure to keep his voice soft, tries to make her understand without spooking her, now that she’s eating from the palm of his hand like this. 

“You’re the sweetest thing, do you know that?” he muses, taps her chin when she looks away. “I just don’t wanna rush anything. I wanna take my time with you, make it real good for you… You can understand that, right?”

It’s not really a question, but she nods like the good girl she is.

“You that desperate for my cock, (Y/N)?” he can’t help but tease, earning himself a swat to the shoulder. They laugh together, his favorite sound. 

“I was just curious, Nick. Usually guys are, well-“

“I’m not just any guy though, okay?” his voice is stern now, all humor wiped from it. “I won’t treat you like they did. I’m your stepbrother, I care about you.”

The warm smile she gives him zaps him right down to his toes, leaning in so she can kiss him the way she wants to. They make out a little, enjoy each other. 

He makes a mental note, smug about her needing him so badly. A lot can be done with that, and he plans to see just how much fun it’ll bring him.

*** 

The sneaking around is even harder than he imagined, their parents insisting to make up for lost time and not parting from them for even a day. It’s visits to the park, family barbecues, movie nights, the whole shebang. He barely manages to get a kiss in when they’re passing each other in the hallway, a slap to the ass when she walks out of the bathroom before he walks in. 

A feeling of restlessness comes with it, paired with the irrational fear of false scrutiny. What if it’s written all over his face, he thinks, that he wants her, whenever he looks at her, that he’s fighting off the urge to kiss her whenever she’s close, to rest his hand atop her thigh and feel her muscles twitch, to lean his arm against hers when they’re standing close, to bury his nose in her hair and inhale the chamomile scent of her latest favorite shampoo? Poker faces take years to construct, and he’s used the time wisely, but what if, now that he has her, his has crumbled to pieces at his unsteady feet?

So Nicholas adjusts, turns away when he catches her looking for too long, keeps the touching to a minimum, makes sure to roll his eyes at her whenever their mom is around, makes sure to let some sour jokes slip whenever their dad listens in, just to keep the illusion up.

He makes do, as does she, even though he knows she doesn’t like it.

“I ain’t mean it like that, you know that,” he cajoles when she gets mad for real, squeezes at his heart with one well-placed pout. 

“I know, ‘s just… it sucks, y’know?”

Well, if that ain’t true.

He holds her through some big feelings, as a big brother should, kisses it better whenever the opportunity arises. 

“Is she still not up? What’s gotten into her, I told her the time of departure!”

“Relax, mom, we’ve still got another forty minutes,” Nicholas says through a mouthful of an apple, scrolling on his phone. It pings with an invite to a party next Saturday, and he saves the info to think it over later. 

“Oh, you know how long she takes in the bathroom,” mom grumbles, fleets about in the kitchen to pack the snacks and sandwiches, making sure they’re set for the day at the lake. Nicholas doesn’t know where his dad is. “Go wake her, please, Nick? I’ve still got so much to pack.”

“Do you need my help with that?”

“No, I need to not be interrupted. Go get (Y/N), please?”

He sighs and gets up, throws the apple core away. Sticky hands find his jeans and he wipes them thoughtlessly, much to the dismay of the woman who still does his laundry, as he makes his way up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. He knocks twice- just for shits and gigs, uncaring about whatever privacy his sister thinks she gets in this house- before opening her door and stopping in his tracks. 

Slow steps take him inside, shutting the door behind himself, and the sight before him makes his stomach clench. She’s in her tank top, one boob spilling out from the material, and her little panties, framing her cheeks perfectly from where she’s got one leg bent. Her face is smushed in the pillow so her mouth purses in a pout, half open, red and drooly. 

It takes him a split second to make the decision. They haven’t talked about it, but they never talk about anything, not really. He takes and she gives, that’s their dynamic, that’s who they are. So it’s guilt-free when he walks over to her bed, pulls his joggers and underwear down, grips his cock to stroke it to hardness. 

The memory of how he had her throat around his cock every night before the return of their parents gets him there fast, makes him miss it even more now, the need pooling low in his gut. 

There’s precome dripping from his slit and he bends his knees a little so her face is in front of his crotch, smears his cockhead on those full lips, smirks when she scrunches her nose up before her face relaxes again. Heartbeat in his throat, he does it again, groans when her tongue darts out this time. Her reflexes seem to revolve around fucking him up, making the darkest of thoughts push to the forefront of his mind, even in her sleep.

“Good fuckin’ girl, fuck,” Nick murmurs under his breath, jerks his cock faster and makes sure to bump against her lips on every upstroke, gloss her gorgeous pout with his essence. She’s so adorable, and all his to ruin. 

He strokes himself a little faster, gets closer and pulls his cock up so his balls would bump against her chin, her nose, wherever they can reach on every upstroke. Laughing isn’t an option but he’d like to, let the dirty sound out, indulge fully in how he’s humiliating her without her knowledge. Maybe he’ll ask her if he can film her next time. He loves her, she knows that, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, would only do all the baddirtywrong things that make her pussy clench for him.

One hand reaches out to grab at her face and pinch her cheeks, create a delicious pout that serves as the perfect little cup when he finally spills onto her face, onto her lips, streaks the inside of her mouth and groans lowly when her lashes flutter around her slowly opening eyes.

“Wh-“

“Shut up,” he hisses, grabs her rougher as he rides out his orgasm, “take it, little girl, take it, have my come, taste it, atta girl, there she is-“

“Nicholas!” the whine bubbles out of her throat, somewhat garbled through the come covering her mouth, and she scrunches her face up when he lets her go, exhales deeply before holding his softening dick out to her.

“Well?” he asks, expectant look on his face and the ball of pride in his chest explodes into a million fuzzy feelings when she only contemplates for a second before taking him in her mouth, cleaning him up.

She swallows all he gave her, collects everything from around her mouth onto her tongue, lips smacking at the taste.

“What the hell was that?” she asks, no real heat behind her words. Her voice is shot from sleep, all raspy and adorable.

He bends down to press a kiss against her forehead.

Nick gives her a shrug.

“You got my come, don’t complain,” he tells her, matter-of-factly, “also, mom wants you downstairs ASAP. We’re leaving soon.” 

Her annoyed huff is amusing to him, but he leaves her be for now, wants to keep the teasing for later. 

“Oh, and (Y/N)?” He waits for her to look at him. “I’ll make it up to you later. Come find me in the outdoor shower when you’re done, we’ll make it quick.”

The blush on her cheeks stays with him all the way downstairs. 

TAGLIST:

@nicholaschavezslut69 / @blackynsupremacy / @motherismotheringggg / @lalavenderangel / @niteskysx / @nicholaslut / @nicholaschavezbby / @emluvsuxo 🖤

[inkskinned]

there's this video you've probably seen already where a woman is shaking in front of a microphone and delicately tries to ask - how can i make my husband listen to me, i've tried everything, i don't want to seem ungrateful and the other man laughs - the problem is that you married a man, we're only listening 25% of the time and we only understand 5% of that! and the audience laughs and the woman laughs and you just sat there, phone in your hand, letting the sound of it echo

and the thing is that people make think-pieces about it (isn't this one of them) and satire versions and "flipping the script" which is good and fun but at the end of the day, there's some truth in that man's response about men-not-listening. and you have tried to language that feeling for years, this sense that you can only take up 33% of a conversation before others view it as being "dominating".

it's not that they aren't listening, it's that the action they're taking is purposefully silencing. it's different. you accidentally-don't-listen a lot; just because the world is loud and you're distracted. you don't mean anything by it. and the truth is that the man who spoke is relying on that to be true of you; the way it's true of everyone. but there is a different undertone to his kind of not-listening. what he means is they don't respect you and you shouldn't expect them to. there is a difference between oh shit i forgot to take the trash out and why didn't you remind me to do it, just like there is a difference between i didn't realize you wanted to go out this weekend and why do you expect me to plan things why can't you just tell me where we're going.

and the thing is that it isn't just him, and it's actually not just because of your gender - your skin, your class status, your weight, their ableism - it happens often. so often it feels like a tightness around your throat and a weight in your stomach. you're not even "really" allowed to be upset about it, because to them it's a joke. and they laugh. and you know exactly the amount of work that goes into every conversation. how you have to work to condense down your thoughts into intelligent, crisp soundbites; worried someone will try to swoop in and cut you off. and there's this sense from everyone else - oh stop being so sensitive, are you really upset just because they weren't listening and you don't know how to say the way that feels when it happens constantly.

there's that video of the science summit where a woman in the audience finally says let her speak please! and the whole crowd bursts into applause and the man leading the summit holds up his hands and bows his head and says oops, sorry! like what he did was awkward and embarrassing, a little social gaffe that happens easily. later in your meetings, you're asked to take notes, and you don't say anything, you just hear let her speak please! ringing in your head and know that you'll never be brave enough for that kind of thing. and besides. think of all the people who agree this was a one-off, he just got excited and all of the people who say one man is not indicative of all of society

at the dinner table you're talking about someone you don't like and how he's not good to his girlfriend and how she always has to remind him to put the effort in and before him, she was glowing with curiosity and passion but now she just seems... tired, unhappy. that he likes the way she burns out; she stays home and takes care of him and their 2 kids. and your father sniffs and says that men take a while to learn those kinds of things. and you just stare at him and think about your childhood and are like - no wonder i turned out like this

and you want to say - there's no fucking secret school or mystic form of communication. i was not sent to Rearing a Child University. i did not graduate from Getting Chores Done College. i ask questions and i listen and i pay attention, because that's basic fucking human decency. it stems from respect, and how i respect others and their agency. i clean the house because someone should clean. not because it comes "naturally".

hell, you had to google "how to boil an egg" the other day, just because you usually make them scrambled. you can never remember which of the 2 bathroom cleaners make chlorine gas, only that two of them definitely do. you've accidentally bleached your clothes. it took you like 3 years of self-teaching before you figured out how to actually cook things correctly - for that whole time, you burnt or undercooked everything. but you did teach yourself; just like you taught yourself how to listen with empathy. just like how you taught yourself to think before you speak. to be kind first, to be better at communicating. it seemed like a good thing, an adult thing.

the joke the man in the video makes is that women say i'm fine! when they are not fine. and you think about the 150 conversations that happened around that; about how she probably has had so many arguments with her husband. how she said i'm upset you don't take me anywhere and he got mad at her because of course i do, you made me go to that stupid restaurant like last week and she probably said that's not what i'm saying and he said now i'm supposed to be psychic or something and she said no of course not and he said how am i supposed to know what to do when you don't even like everything and she said i do like things and he said well how am i supposed to win? and her pastor probably told her to be more grateful because they do things at all, even if she has to plan them and her mom probably told her that's just how men are honey and she probably cried over her journal, trying to figure out why the fuck she "has everything" and is still so bitterly, horribly unhappy

and how, in your life, for so many reasons, you looked down the barrel of another argument; of explaining yourself and being vulnerable and begging for help again. how many times you just said i'm fine because it was better than doing that again; it was better than wringing yourself out when it's literally easier to just pretend. because he wasn't going to listen. your father wasn't going to be better and your boyfriend wasn't going to be better and your boss wasn't going to be more respectful.

and you sit in front of a video of a woman shaking, looking horrible and guilt-wrought that she's even asking this question. and you know; deep in your heart - that's you. in a different life, you are her. you've stood in her spot. and you had to listen while someone else cackled - why would we bother to notice when you talk?

[ashleyisartsy]

Problems (objective and personal) I'm not seeing discussed a lot w this new WatcherTV thing, in no particular order:

-Alienates people internationally who literally CANNOT GET the streaming service!

-Alienates casual fans who don't watch or want to watch all of their shows. Putting down 60 bucks a year to watch just one or two shows is kind of insane, at least for me.

-The volume of content Watcher has produced historically hasn't been enough to justify a separate streamer. I understand there's no way a small team could compete with something like Netflix, obviously, but that's what you're trying to do by putting yourself in the streamer market.

-Will this streamer be secure? What steps are in place to protect your viewers info? ESPECIALLY payment info.

-Will it be easily watchable on multiple devices? I watch YouTube videos on my phone at work 90% of the time, or at home on my TV thru my switch. Is this a browser only deal?

-What are the internet requirements for this? Believe it or not most streaming services won't run on my internet personally. I don't have any for that reason. I can watch YouTube on 360p, or on my 2-bar-reception phone data. Not everywhere has stable reliable internet.

-The suddenness and totality of the move was going to be jarring no matter what, if the idea had been introduced gradually or started as a hybrid model to test audience interest there wouldn't be nearly this amount of pushback.

-I understand the people saying "pay artists!!" Bc I am one, and I get that their quality is expensive and they have a whole company's worth of people to support. I do actually think their work is worth paying for! Everyone's is! But convincing anyone to pay for something they previously got for free is going to be a hard sell. They were still getting paid before, they're now just asking us to pay instead of the advertisers. Idk about you, but that's a way bigger hit to my pocketbook than a multimillion dollar company's bank account.

-I get that YouTube can be a really shitty place to be a creator sometimes, and that being beholden to advertisers is something they don't want to be. It's why they left Buzzfeed! They already have a patreon and merch and it's clearly not been enough for their ambitions. But shooting yourself in the foot because your running shoes are wearing out isn't going to make you a better marathon runner. They had to know that there was going to be a not small portion of their audience unwilling to make this move with them (and again, lots literally aren't able to!)

-If they had a free w/ ads option, or even did a hybrid model with whole shows behind the pay wall, or even just ran a fucking crowd funding campaign to help cover costs of new seasons of shows, any of those things could have worked. They don't even have YouTube memberships turned on, which I've personally seen many many channels do even when they already have a patreon. It really doesn't seem like they've exhausted other options, at least from an outside perspective, which is all we have as viewers!

-I get that this has been in the works for a long time, and that there probably isn't a way for them to back out now. But I hope they can find a way to make this more accessible if they want it to work at all. I truly am not wishing for their downfall, but the whole situation is an awful mess.

Idk, rant over. As a lot of you are I'm feeling very disappointed and upset with this one, and I'm not paying for it either. Hope the boys can salvage this one for their and their crew's sake. Would really hate for this to be the end.

[deesseshesca]

PAC : Is this new crush worth it ?

Il a tout essayer...lol

ASK QUESTION REGARDING ANYTHING MANIFESTIATION, SPIRITUALITY, DEATH, WITCHCRAFT, LOVE OR JUST MY OPINION.

WORKING ON A VIDEO CONCEPT FOR Y'ALL.

THX FOR FOR YOU INPUT ON THE PROJECT.

PILE 1

This pile and pile 3,4 … u guys decide to play mind games with me and I only could channel your last crush. 

First y’all are my blank canva. Nothing ever happens. No kiss, no holding hand, no bf/gf just no nothing ( Don't worry babe … I am working on a serie for y’all) 

Rn is not looking good for y’all. You just stood on business with a long distance situationship. I feel like the most y’all did was some phone sex. I dont even know if you truly love them but you were genuinely excited to see a serious fucking offer in you love life. Just for it to be a fucking mess. 

Your next crush… ig. 

Lol I just felt somebody rolling their fucking eye. I just heard the meme : ‘’ Again … The fuck again … Nothing new …’’. Girl, give me a chance. Your next serious offer, you may miss it because you are too busy complaining about how your love life never takes off unlike your peers. Don't get me wrong,  I get how it could be frustrating but  I am just telling the messages. In this pile, I feel like I am in a mob meeting with my boss and I did not sell my quota. (ME: ‘’Let me tell you ! No let me tell u something !) C’mon don't shoot the messenger, I am just relaying the message…Damm. While you are going to be slowly slipping in melancholy, a new girl is going to make her away too. All she can do is hope you look at her the way you look at all the other ‘’almost bf’’ that cross your life. Y’all may be straight … but y’all also never explore. How can you be so sure of something when you don't even try to test the other possibility ? On the other hand, I feel like y’all only get off on lesbian porn. LOL don't worry I understand… This is a safe place. I am going to speak from my very fucking humble tarot reader experience. We both know there's nothing wrong with you. You did the healing and you are actually working towards your goals. Most of y’all go to the gym or eat healthy or have an amazing sleep schedule. If you are not the problem but the result keeps failing the expectation maybe the problem is the formula (YES… I am an EX stem student … but tell me I am wrong … (still waiting)). Mamacita come down ! The whole scenery of the conversation changed, now we were both spinning and falling in a sea of red. I did not tell you that you are lesbian or that your life is a lie. All I told you is to let go ! Allow yourself to feel. So instead of going for someone that checks all your boxes, maybe you should try somebody with whom you actually have some chemistry first. 

If u want to maybe find more detail check the free PAC on my Ko-Fi. If it did not resonate, try your luck on my free video PAC on my Ko-Fi.

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PILE 2 

Bestie, let’s be so for real right now this is not the dreamy romance you deserve. This crush? A total ✨no-go✨. It’s giving emotional entrapment, not fairytale love. You’re way too divine to be entertaining someone who's already locked in with someone else.

Think about it why waste your sparkle on a situation that’s already tangled? You’re meant for a love that flows effortlessly, where you don’t have to second-guess your worth or wait for someone to choose you. The right one? They’ll be all in, no hesitation, no complications.

So, let’s redirect that energy, babe. Romanticize yourself instead. Go do something that makes you feel expensive, play your favorite love songs (but about you), and trust that something so much better is on the way. 💕💫

If u want to maybe find more detail check the free PAC on my Ko-Fi. If it did not resonate, try your luck on my free video PAC on my Ko-Fi.

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PILE 3 

In this group, y’all may speak Arabic or are learning. 

You guys also got fucking ghosted out of nowhere and is is really fucked up because you guys were dealing with this person for at least 2 months on a daily basis. 

But you did not even tweak. You block them and completely move on. Standing on big business. 

They are going to me sadly surprised when they are going to make their comeback.

LESBIAN 

Your next crush … ig. 

Lol … you guys are going to chase after a girl that already loves you. Don't get me wrong is a new girl but I see her being amused by how much effort you are putting to impress her. While she is already in love with your hair, your eyes, your lips, the way your body moves, the way you think, everything you like and hate, she's in love with your essence and everything you will grow up to be. If you have big boobs, girl … she wont stop daydreaming about sleeping on your melons. Don't get me started on all her late night fantasy and the time she will spend masturbating at the thought of u. You are going to loose hair, trying to understand why the fuck is this girl not crazy about you yet. No shes not playing games … you are just too much in your fucking head, to realize that she's already yours. 

If u want to maybe find more detail check the free PAC on my Ko-Fi. If it did not resonate, try your luck on my free video PAC on my Ko-Fi.

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STRAIGHT. 

There's a lot of intimacy between y’all. Get off the gutter I ain't talking sex ( but if you do pursue an union with them babe wrapping it up because the slow love making is going to make u see the stars and u might manifest a little big blessings). The way you guys look at each other, the way you guys hold hands, the grace in which you both speak about each other and to each other even when you guys are arguing can be about the most basic shit. Like which apple is best, red or green. The passion, intensity and grace makes it look like we are looking at Romeo and Juliet going at it when they need to decide whether they should die together or live apart. No I dont think yall are suicidal and I was no making a reference about the situation of the fight but he purity of a flamboyant love in everything y’all do. Even people around you are going to catch it and realize how different and superior your couple is ( LOL this is about a crush but I am writing like you guys are for sure going to take their love offer). People dont look at y’all like ‘’ Eww go get a room’’ nahh they look around waiting for camera to come the fuck out because this must be a fucking movie. In an ethereal and disturbing way. Also this person has a background with a lot of culture, could be Hispanic or Caribbean. I see a merge of two people with 2 heavy and beautiful cultures. 

If u want to maybe find more detail check the free PAC on my Ko-Fi. If it did not resonate, try your luck on my free video PAC on my Ko-Fi.

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PILE 4 

Somebody from your past is coming back. Y’all last relationship was with someone with a heavy narcissistic tendency. Other of yall was verbal abuse on a daily by that person. They are going to try to spin the block (Me: Yeah babe I know it has been years/months since you dealt with that person but they still have you in their vision). DO NOT FALL FOR IT ! They have a target on you. They will act like a new leaf but their goal is very dark. They want you to pay for everything you made them lose. Maybe when y’all were dealing with is person nobody knew how fuck he/she was. A lot of people thought they were relationship goals until you freed yourself from the guilt and broke the illusions. 

Angel number : 333 may be important for y’all. Whatever decision you just took, just know your spiritual team is 10 toes behind you. 

You next crush … ig.

Chérie d’Amour, y’all look the fuck good ! Congrats on your change. I know you may be beating yourself up because you hit THE goal you had envisioned for yourself. Maybe some of y’all lost weight but you are not exactly the number you wish to weigh by now. Babe is not about the weight and so much bigger than that.  You glow, your hair is healthy, you are more confident in your curves, you have boundaries and stand on it with ease. Your makeup looks sooo good. You may have change the way you dress, dont get me wrong, you always have been a very stylish gyal but now you look THE FUCK good. I see someone coming towards me, somebody that you will have your eyes on but I am hearing : ‘’I don't chase, I attract’’. Meaning if he doesn't come for you that it aint meant to be because a girl like you ain't never desperate. When they are going to make a move on you, you are going to make it hard because you are all that plus some taxes. AS YOU FUCKING SHOULD. I see you still letting them know at least that you are in fact interested in getting to know them but nothing is for sure. You know what's funny is the whole time they were plotting on you, you just never paid attention to them. They liked you wayyyyy before you even knew they existed. Believe me,  they ain't going to give up until they make you theirs. I am hearing from them : ‘’ All I need is the platform. I already have the plan’’ ME: ‘’Right, Right’’. 

If u want to maybe find more detail check the free PAC on my Ko-Fi. If it did not resonate, try your luck on my free video PAC on my Ko-Fi.

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[reds-skull]

CW FLASHING IN THE VIDEO (3rd from the bottom)

This is it. 3 months in the works, the comic (and video) are finally done.

A little over a year ago, I uploaded the first work in Revenant AU, Ghost's origin comic. I never thought I'd write a whole series for this, but I'm so glad I did. I got a whole new hobby out of it, haha.

I already began working on part 2, but this for me marks the start of it. I'm really excited to get back into this world!

Under the cut there are some comments on the comic I thought some people might be interested in (don't wanna make this post longer than it already is lol). I will upload the frames from the video separately, with comments on it there.

Bottom line is, thank you for letting me just go wild with this :)

Okay, I'm mostly gonna talk about the part where Fate shows Makarov the 141+Farah. Makarov doesn't see the Fate of people as literal images, he often has to interpret odd symbolism in the flashes he gets from the Weave of Fate.

I decided to go for a style I saw in a collection of calling cards in MW3, mainly from this one:

You can really see it in the faces and pitch-black cel shading.

I'll be going in order of appearance, starting with Farah.

Obviously, each of the "flashes" shows the Reaping of each person, Farah being crushed under rubble. Behind her is a helo of green gas, which symbolizes the Russian experimental gas. The motifs around her are more interesting imo - they're taken from the Urzik flag (and yeah apparently it's "Urzik" and not "Urzikstani"... according to the wiki at least). Wings, plants (feels to me like a pomegranate and some sort of crop, but I couldn't find what it is specifically), and a moon, upside down.

I'm skipping ahead a bit, but I've had the idea to make a drawing of Gaz in the Hanged Man pose since I started the AU basically. I tried sketching it once, and it went bad so I gave up lol. But I decided to come back to that here, and add some sort of tarot connection to all of them. I know practically nothing about tarot, googled the meanings of each, they fit well enough, I called it a day lol.

So Farah is the Moon, upside down.

Price is next, showing him taking control of the brain of someone. I didn't use the flag of the UK for the 141 (it'd be kinda boring...), instead I took the Taskforce 141 logo, and broke it down to different elements.

I took the laurels for Price, both framing his illustration and sitting above his head like a crown. I decided he will be the Emperor.

Next up is Gaz, the Hanged Man of course. Gaz gets both the wings and the stars (I changed mine to 4-pointed because... I like them better). Pretty clear why, both symbols relate to the sky. The illustrations kinda follow a rough day cycle, if that makes sense. Farah being night, with the moon. Price with his golden and purple color palette, twilight. Gaz being sunrise, and Ghost and Soap, day. This is why Gaz has a sun behind him.

Ghost was fun because he's the only inhuman one out of the group. I'll let you think what that implies, that even in Fate's Weave, Ghost is an outlier... Ghost gets the skull, and the card "Death". That one was easy, but what I did add is blood flowing down the skulls, like tear tracks...

Soap, the problem child, gave me the most issues as always. For once, it wasn't his fucking face, it was the flames behind him, and overall contrast and readability issues. Soap's illustration is probably packed with the most "hidden" details, though they're obvious if you've read the fic and Konchar's side story. The headless man behind Soap is Konchar himself, holding 4 chains with dog tags on them. The 4 soldiers from Soap's squad, who he killed before Soap was Reaped. Soap's pose is from the moment he came to his senses, after getting shot in the head and destroying a large part of Verdansk. He has 4 swords, pointing at him and downwards, so his card is 4 of Swords, upside down.

Between Soap and Ghost is a circle and a triangle. I'll explain that in the post concerning the video, since that's where I got that from.

If you read all of this, thank you so much! There will be another post for you to read in a moment lol

[perseruna]

heyyyy do you have any details/sources for the ca*ill being a jackass thing? ngl i watch twn for yen and jaskier so i was already planning on continuing to season 4 but i'd love some reasons to be actively excited for the actor switch. but i haven't kept up on the behind-the-scenes stuff so i'm kinda lost on that front if you're up for sharing any of what you know!

okay guys buckle up this is THE anti henry cavill megathread xoxo

First of all him dating a teenager as a 33 year old fully grown man literally gross and disgusting.

Also as this quote implies they started dating a year prior and only went public when she was 19 so they supposedly started dating when she was 18.

His entire dating history is a MESS. Sure the women he dated are not him, but he chose to date them, I wouldn't even associate myself with people like these let alone be in a relationship with them. He dated the infamous transphobic TERF Gina Carano, albeit before her loud controversy, but I doubt her harmful views were any different back then. His current gf has a history of doing black face.

His "Me Too" comments.

His comments on the Me Too movement are literally so vile. If you don’t want to be called a rapist, just don’t rape women, it’s literally as simple as that. They’re even more foul because they’re promoting the idea that women lie about their abusive for fame, promoting that harmful rhetoric especially in our times is incredibly dangerous.

Now onto his on set behavior.

We can't talk about his set behavior without mentioning the deuxmoi set leak. Here's the transcript of it:

[Transcript:

There’s something I really really wanted to read to you guys--it has to do with why Henry Cavill left The Witcher. I know that was something that you guys were super interested in when it happened, and I just recently got this message. Somebody was like “Hey, do you want to know what really went down?” And I was like “Sure!” So let me just read it. It says:

“At the beginning of the show, Henry was good to work with. A lot of difficult demands that made people feel like he wasn’t a team player, but that’s not unusual for a really big star. Though in TV it truly usually doesn’t happen until the second season. But in season two and three something shifted and he became really impossible for women to work with, which is always a big problem, but even worse here because the showrunner is a woman. He would try to overrule her and try to get changes made last minute across the board without her knowledge, which, if you know anything about showrunning, is completely fucked. The showrunner has to sign off on every miniscule detail down to the buttons on a costume. Female writers and directors were suddenly being completely ignored on set, unable to do their jobs. Every department head was complaining. He started making comments—it wasn’t a sexual thing, he wasn’t grabbing anyone or being lewd, but it was disrespectful and toxic all the same.

“He is deeply addicted to video games, to the point where it was like working with any other addict. He was distracted, he was late, he was obsessive, and a lot of people think the misogyny came from gamer world. Video game bro language is not how you talk to coworkers, and he wouldn’t stop. Someone on the show compared it to watching someone get brainwashed by QAnon, like his whole personality shifted. Eventually his disrespect escalated. He would rewrite scenes without even alerting the other actors in the scenes until it was time to shoot. He decided that he didn’t want any romantic scenes at all—no kissing scenes, no shirtless scenes, et cetera. He wanted complete control of storylines but really had no idea of the limitations of TV, structure, budget, et cetera. He formed a weird alliance with one writer who was also a gamer, who eventually got fired after multiple HR complaints were made and after that writer left, Henry did anything he could to hold up production and cause problems.

“Eventually top brass at Netflix was tired of him costing them money with delays and HR investigations and the showrunner was asked to construct a potential exit for him. Netflix reached out to him personally and he was given one final warning, and violated that warning with an email he sent to the entire writing staff right after that meeting. That was it. It’s very disappointing.”

End transcript.]

Now believe me or not, but I know from a really good source that the leak was indeed real.

There's a lot of patterned behavior that tracks with what we know of him and his past controversies.

After that leak came out, there was a lot of people from different places coming to comment that ‘yes’ they’ve heard a very similar story adding a little bit more details of their own.

this quickly deleted tweet from one of the writers/producers:

there were rumors about him being an asshole to Anya specifically.

He went on record that he doesn't "understand" sex scenes. Which I know the sex discourse is rampant nowadays and each to their own, but he specifically signed up for a role that requires those scenes and then refused to do them and was allegedly nasty to Anya about it and with the way he talks about women...

Also it’s important to touch upon the “writer he had a weird alliance with” that man in question is Beau DeMayo of the recent fame of getting fired by Marvel from X-Men ‘97. He was previously allegedly fired from The Witcher for being emotionally and physically abusive. And he allegedly got fired from X-Men for being abusive as well. One of The Witcher writers tweeted this after Beau smeared them for “disliking the books” Beau was literally the first person to start that narrative.

The fact that it was HIS idea not to say lines of his dialogue in S1 and instead grunt. To the point that Joey had to take Henry’s lines and make it his own, so the plot would make sense, he talks about it in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Oyh0t117t0U&, and then once S2 press arrived Henry was talking about how he was trying to fight the big bad writers to give him more lines. Ridiculous.

Everyone is already pointing out that the cast looks so much happier without him, and it’s very true. Henry was never present on close to any BTS pics from filming the previous seasons, or on any cast dinners or birthdays. He wouldn't even do any shared interviews with the other three mains but only had solo interviews which to me was giving disrespectful like you're an ensemble you’re not the only lead here. It felt like he was above them to sit down and answer questions with them. When they were doing press junkets in Brazil and Poland Anya, Joey and Freya would always arrive together and leave together with that man leaving all the events early and by himself. And like people who post quotes from the cast about him being perfect from press junkets as “proof” are insane to me like Obviously they’re going to say nice things about him, not only they're newcomers, and he's an established industry name, but they’re doing PRESS for a show that he’s a STAR of (well, was lmao)

The fact that he never defended Anya from the racist trolls, even though most of them were HIS fans. Like she had to go through so much and that man couldn’t make a single comment about it as a leading man BUT he could make a whole IG post because people were being mean to his gf and calling her out for doing blackface.

And sure people might say that a lot of these are unverified sources, and I’d get it if it was a singular case, but there are a ton of these accounts that all match each other. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

[angstflavoured]

I would love to hear more about your toxic pim and charlie headcanons. All I can think of is Pim might be too desperate to prove something and Charlie has that "alpha male" thing

SO GLAD YOU ASKED !!!! I need to rant about this to clear things up bc I think about how Charpim would work so much and it makes me go insane bc their dynamic is fucking incredible.

Ill take this as an opportunity to do a little character study and explain why i think they would inherently be toxic at their very core 👹👹 and how I think their relationship would even function.

First off, a HUGE roadblock is the fact that they have completely different ideals. They want totally different things in life and go about life almost in completely opposite ways.

Pim's been shown in canon multiple times to want a normal, healthy, nuclear family. He wants a wife and kids and wants to raise them well and be the father figure for them that he himself never had. It's apparent that he wants to settle down, and just hasn't found anyone willing to. When he even talks to Shrimpina, he can't help puking and making a fool of himself and tossing and turning at night over it. This makes it clear that while i do NOT AT ALL think he's a virgin, Pim doesn't have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff. It's probably all been pretty awkward and never lasted very long.

I don't think that him or Charlie have any problems with being gay, but I do think that Pim settling down with a guy does inherently shatter his ideals. ESPECIALLY with the way Charlie acts. Being with Charlie wouldn't be a picture perfect movie couple, and I think that would really frustrate and disappoint Pim when Charlie doesn't act like he's "supposed" to. He wouldn't really be a BOYFRIEND to him. Pim is just a lot more romantic and holds a lot more hope in the idea of love than Charlie does. He's an optimist and Charlie is VERYRYYY much a pessimist.

The way that Charlie goes about relationships is MUCH more laid back and casual. His girlfriend (who IS CONFIRMED to be his girlfriend by Zach himself in the commentary videos, you can find it pretty easy on YouTube) is hardly ever mentioned and doesn't seem to hold much weight to him at all. To me, that whole thing with her being there kind of confirmed that Charlie casually hooks up with people/dates a lot, and doesn't really take it all that seriously. He doesn't have any intentions of settling down or moving in with anyone. Even in the ep where the fucken mustard chick was flirting with him, Charlie didn't seem to give two shits or even get a little flustered. He'd USED to that kind of stuff, where Pim isn't.

It's been a joke multiple times that even for a critter, Pim is perceived as pretty unattractive and weird looking 😭😭 and that's the biggest difference between them I think. Charlie is single BY CHOICE, while Pim is single because he can't get anyone who wants to long term date him.

If Charlie and Pim ever slept together or did anything, I think it would hold a lot more weight for Pim than it would for Charlie. Charlie is a fucking asshole! He doesn't show affection well, he's pretty inconsiderate of other people, he's very slobby and hardly takes care of himself. He wouldn't want to DATE pim the way that Pim would want to date Charlie. Pim would want to do all that mushy stuff that he's seen in movies that he's never been able to try, like holding hands and cuddling and going out to cute dinners.

CHARLIE WOULDN'T WANNA DO THAT! He's VERY CLEARLY SHOWN in canon to not be that kinda guy. He can hardly even think about himself, he doesn't have the time or want to expend the energy thinking about someone else on a daily basis. Just look at the fucking difference in their rooms--

They work at the same job at the same position, they should be making the same amount of money. And from the Brazil episode where they talk about funds, it doesn't seem like its a super lot. But Pim spent more time and money making his room look nice and his sheets and pillows match, somewhere with a nicer view and cute painted walls. Charlie just bought the cheapest, ugliest little shithole he could find.

You can fucking bet that they would not be good living together, that is if Charlie even wanted to live with him. You can literally see in the back that his sink is full of dirty dishes bro. He probably uses paper plates and plastic cups for everything so he doesn't have to do the dishes, you can bet he's always ordering nasty ass takeout food.

Also sorry, but like please open your eyes and look at the way Charlie treats Pim in the show. Obviously he cares about him and holds him as a dear friend, but he just is kinda a shitty person and doesn't do it very well a lot of the time. He's constantly fucking negative and rude, and it clearly takes a mental toll on Pim. Pim's always the one trying really hard to invite Charlie out to things, like in the alien episode. Pim just wants to hang out and tried to find something Charlie might like, and Charlie was grumpy and dismissive and tried to leave multiple times.

In the most RECENT EPISODE, he got in a physical fight with Alan and was being a dick about physical contact that he basically initiated. In the alien episode, Charlie was screaming at the aliens and ignored pim, ended up clocking him in the fucking face and didn't say a single word about it because HE WASN'T SORRY, HE DIDN'T FUCKING CARE.

they're both incredibly flawed people in completely opposite ways, and they'd both want entirely different things out of the other one. They'd both be trying to change each other, the way they literally already do in the show.

i love charpim more than anything with my entire soul, and im not trying to be a doomer about it, im just so sick of people potraying them like

Charlie: I... I like you... is that okay?

Pim: yes.... would it be okay if I kissed you?

LIKE GIRL WHAT ARE YOU SAYINGGGG THEY ARE GROWN ASS, DIRTY, GROSS MEN WITH DICK AND BALLS.

There was a whole episode where pim literally turned into a fucking crazy ass creature because he was so incredibly jealous of Charlie getting what PIM had wanted. Pim wanted to be a hero and help people and save the day and live out his little idealized world, and when CHARLIE got that and he didn't, it pissed him the fuck off. He wasn't happy for Charlie, Pim WANTED what Charlie had.

LIKE OH MY GOD, THEY'RE JUST SO DISFUNCTIONAL!!!

Their relationship would be fucking crazy and rocky and TOXIC, and that's like the whole appeal of it imo. that's literally how they act in canon. I think that the two of them could eventually work things out to be pretty happy, but it would NOT be without its hardships and it definitely would still never be anything even close to textbook.

THEY'RE FUCKING FREAKS IDK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also almost forgot, not even to mention Charlie's substance abuse and how its canonically shown he gets rude and violent. like r u kidding.

[ms-demeanor]

sex work is work, no problem with that, but spamming sex work absolutely everywhere now is not okay. bot or not, it is not okay to shove your probably fake/stolen tits or ass into everyone's face even where kids are. it is absolutely the lowest, cheapest trash doing that. are these people showing their barely covered up pussy to school kids on the street to maybe get a customer? because they are doing exactly that on the internet. if you cant find customers and need to lower yourself to std ridden junkey trash standards who missed the way and entitled themselves to begging for money outside trash town, zero support from me!

Yeah you really sound like someone who supports sex workers. That's what I always think when I hear people using words like "disease-ridden" and "junkie" - 'wow, that person must be SUCH an ally. braver than any US marine, thank you for your service, person who believes sex work is work but thinks STIs or drug addiction are 'trash'.'

So, point by point:

It's not absolutely everywhere. You don't see people trying to link their onlyfans on facebook most of the time (i've actually never seen it but i could believe it is happening, though it's not common because FB has real-name policies that are unfriendly to sex workers). You're unlikely to see fansly links as sidebar ads on cspan. People aren't linking their pages in the amazon reviews. You're seeing it "everywhere" because you're not going anywhere. Tell me you spend all your time on two to three platforms without telling me you spend all your time on two to three platforms. Instagram, tiktok, twitter, and tumblr are full of people who are promoting all kinds of brands and one of those kinds of brands is sex work.

Those are also all platforms that have age restrictions and behavior standards, and of all of them tumblr is the one that has the history of being the most openly sexual and the least connected to legal identities. People are linking to their diy porn because of the culture of these websites both currently and historically. I once posted a video on this website of me bringing myself to orgasm in a public bathroom stall then inserting a dildo into my vagina before I went on stage and performed a set with my band. I did it for free and for fun five years ago, the week before the porn ban hit.

What I'm saying here is that the culture of this website has a much longer history of openness about sex and sexuality and the visual presentation of sex than it does of being full of people who think teens shouldn't see nipples. This is an *extremely* reasonable place to post information linking to porn that you make and to use cute pictures of yourself to do so.

It's also really easy to tell that these people aren't bots or using stolen images because the whole point of the live platform is that you can click through and go talk to them. Strange Aeons did just that and you can see what happened. (click on that video for a fun cameo at 6:04) Turns out live users are just a bunch of people (not networks stealing images the way that actual porn *bots* on tumblr do) and the ones who are trying to do sex work on the live platform itself get banned.

But also kids too young to see the occasional boob shouldn't be on tumblr! (like, seriously, define kids. what age is too young to see the kinds of images allowed by the tumblr live tos? how about the ones banned by the tumblr live tos? How old should you have to be before someone shows you an ahegao face on a hoodie in public? What should the punishment be for the ahegao fashionistas for exposing six year olds to anime tongues? What should the minimum age be to go on the beach and see men in speedos? Fifteen, or is that still abusive to children? Maybe we should make it twenty to be safe, or better yet why don't we make it twenty AND ban speedos? this is what you sound like, you fucking asshole). Tumblr has age limits and people under that age limit shouldn't be looking at most things on this website. A smiling woman in a bikini top or a dude with his abs out are fucking nothing compared to the kind of damage you personally and specifically are trying to inflict with your shitty ideas.

Posting t&a on tumblr is not at all comparable to doing street level work and soliciting children for a number of reasons, but I'd just like to really take the time to point out that you just compared the profile pics on tumblr live to sexually soliciting a child. You literally did the "x group i hate are pedophiles" thing, which is exactly why it's such a huge problem that any and all types of nudity have been stigmatized online. We have created an entirely new paradigm of "pedophile" that means "existed around a child while wearing tight pants." You are such a fucking clueless, sanctimonious pile of shit that you can't even see that that's what you're doing. This is literally, exactly kink at pride discourse.

And that's even if I grant you that these people are posting t&a! Go look at the live leaderboards, you don't have to accept the ToS to see the leaderboards! We are talking about *at most* saucy pin-up levels of eroticism. I have seen fucking holiday cards with more visible cleavage than any of the top 200 tumblr live streamers right now.

The only thing in your final sentence that makes any sense is that you are positioning tumblr as trash town.

Yeah. I'm actually not at all impressed by tumblr recently and that has a lot more to do with the influx or resurgence of nuance-allergic, anti-sex, whiny shits like you than it does with a banner that i can scroll past in a quarter of a second.

I want people reading this to really, really sit down and think about what they're calling assault or hypersexualiztion or whatever. We are talking about profile pictures. You are so offended by a bar of 4 profile pictures at the top of your dash that you're comparing regular ass humans (some of whom are sex workers and some of whom are just streamers who took thirst trap selfies) to the real life solicitation and abuse of children.

TOUCHING GRASS IS NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU PLEASE GO INTERACT WITH ACTUAL REAL HUMANS WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT DASHCON OR MILKSHAKE DUCK ARE. YOU ARE CRITICALLY INTERNET POISONED AND IF YOU TALKED TO SOMEONE AT THE DMV AND DESCRIBED IT AS ASSAULTING CHILDREN TO HAVE SOMEONE IN A BIKINI ON A BILLBOARD THEY WOULD IMMEDIATELY BEGIN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET AWAY FROM YOU. THINK OF THIS POST AS THE CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR TELLING YOU THAT THE SHADOWS YOU'RE SEEING AREN'T ACTUALLY DEMONS BUT THAT YOU ARE GOING TO REALLY REGRET IT IF YOU DON'T GO OUTSIDE.

[ohsohoney]

When it comes to love you're just as blinded.

Part Two

Eminem x Musician

Summary: It starts with a drunk embarrassing video, it spirals into something a whole lot more.

Note: Thank you for all the love on the last post! Figured I'd post the next part seeing as I said on the last update I have a whole story in mind for this but not sure how well it will go down:)

Set in 2014, just after the release of LP 2 || Em’s daughters are renamed here because it felt weird not to and also have different ages– doesn’t affect the story much but just a warning!

Masterlist

Weeks passed, during which I had spent a lot of my time back home dealing with Lottie’s schooling and making sure that she was mostly settled. She’d had a rough go of it last year, school being something that we both seemed to have had an issue with, but watching her struggle through some of the same problems I’d once faced was difficult and so I wanted her to know that she had the support I felt I’d never had. 

I’d been dragged off to shoots and studio sessions here and there, not much coming out of the latter in truth, but had stayed mostly confined to London. Which was why I was having a fucking mare over the fact that I was set to leave for a couple weeks without her. Not that I wasn’t excited about it all, nervous too, but it was work and that didn’t seem to trump whatever it was that was going on in Lottie’s life. Thankfully, she’d caught wind of my obvious anxiety and seemed to be happier than she’d been the previous term, had even gone out of her way to assure me that nothing would happen in the time I’d be gone.

So she was staying with her mum for a short time, my brother promising to check in on her from time to time too, even whilst he was still deployed overseas, as well as a couple friends of mine. Truthfully, if I’d had to leave her without those extra reassurances in place I don’t think I would have gone.

But here I was, across the pond doing an interview for a magazine spread and shooting in New York. 

It had been a long day, a plethora of outfit changes and little food due to the constant rush of things, so I was thankful for the short break we’d been gifted before the last set was meant to start. Although saying that, I was still stuck staring down at two pairs of heels that had been pushed into my arms the second I’d stumbled away from the cameras.

Eventually I grew tired of chewing on my lower lip and pulled out my phone.

Messages  Help Which shoes?

His response wasn’t immediate but came sooner than expected.

Messages  The Martian Why

With a roll of my eyes, accompanied by a semi-amused sigh, I shot another text back. Because in truth, what had I really expected? I’d learned all too quickly the man wasn’t made for texting.

Messages  I said help?? Forget it, can you call?

The ringing was practically instantaneous, enough so that the sound made me jump at its unexpectedness. 

“You got a foot fetish I don’t know ‘bout?”

I smiled at the sound of his voice and then laughed at the absurdity of his greeting. “Hi to you, too. And no, but if that’s something you’re into I’d rather not know.”

Marshall hummed around a mouthful of swallowed words before there was a slight sound of movement that echoed down the line alongside a door clicking shut.

“Did I interrupt?” I questioned, thinking back to the conversation we’d had earlier that same morning. He hadn't mentioned any set plans but I knew that he tended to frequent the studio at odd hours whenever inspiration hit. ���I was just messing before, it’s not that important.”

“You’re fine, they can wait. Wanted to grab something anyway.” He said and the reply warmed me, there weren’t many who’d go out of their way to make time for me. Although that was just me assuming again. “You good?”

I slumped back into the dressing room chair at the ask, it was a ballache to get comfy in but I wouldn’t dare complain about it now, not after having spent two hours sat dead still in the fucking thing. “Just a long day. Got these last few shots to get done and then I’ll be free.”

My voice sounded wistful enough before my face then scrunched at the sudden gurgle given by my stomach. It must have been just loud enough for the mic to have picked up because Em was quick to question, “You eaten yet?”

I shook my head, forgetting for a split second that we weren’t on one of our usual Facetime calls. “Going to, after I get this done.”

A grunt resonated, broken up by the sound of cabinets being opened and closed, “Idiot.”

Smiling at the one word response I’d garnered, I peered back over at the shoes I still had to pick between. I sighed, “Swear it, I’m gonna head straight back to the hotel and order a shit ton of food. Probably pass out beside a bowl of gravy or summat before I have to be at the airport.”

There was a brief pause.

“Paul did sort the tickets right?”

“Yeah, Mila emailed them yesterday.” I reassured him as I reached up to rub at my eye, stopping a second short of actually doing so, having forgotten about the makeup that would have to be redone if I went and followed through on the action. “Again, you didn’t have to do that.”

“What I tell you?” He reminded me and I huffed out a small chuckle.

“To shut the fuck up about it?”

Marshall hummed once more, “Exactly. A car will be outside once you land.”

My lips pursed as I fought to dampen my appreciative grin, knowing he’d somehow hear it, even from a state away. Which was a strange thing to think about, having been an entire ocean apart for the majority of time we’d spoken. That first phone call felt like a lifetime ago almost. “Car’s a bit much, I don’t mind grabbing a cab or calling for one.”

He didn’t deign that with an audible answer.

“Em, I’m serious.” I laughed, the stress I’d felt earlier about the shoot slowly falling away, enough so that I let myself relax into the chair out of hell. “You’re already doing so much for me. I mean, the flights alone but, you’re already letting me stay with you too.” 

And wasn’t that an insane concept, but he’d been adamant on it, claimed it made no sense for me to rent some pricey room in the city when he had more than enough in that big old house of his. I had pressed in return though, told him it was more than fine, me holding up in some hotel, and that I didn’t want to feel as though I’d be stepping on anyone’s toes, or become this ominous presence that he had to keep sidestepping around in his own home. But then the topic of paps had come up, safety, keeping the album underwraps. I hadn’t been able to argue with him much after that. He was a paranoid fucker, but from what I’d heard from him in small snippets, he had his reasons.

“Car will be outside.” He repeated a second time, leaving no room for much more said on the topic, so I gave in, sliding down slightly further in the crappy chair just as a rep ran by the room calling out to me. “Got to go?” He asked, having heard the shout too.

I wet my lower lip, allowing my eyes to close for a moment. “Two minutes.” But I knew that I'd blink and they’d be over too soon.

I listened to his low chuckle resonate and let go of a slow breath at the sound, a sudden tiredness overcoming me. 

“Call me when you get back.” I heard him say, more background noise filtering through his end that told me his time was more than likely up too. “And, the blue.”

My brow pinched at the last comment he gave me before my eyes flickered back over to the two pairs of heels perched on the dresser, one black, one blue. I cracked a grin, “Go Lions?”

I could almost hear the smirk in his retort, “You know it.”

The shoot went over about as well as expected after the short break concluded. It seemed that everybody was about as ready to head out as I was, but I was just so grateful to all of them for the work and effort they’d put in that I made a quick round of thanking the few that hadn’t darted straight out the door the second they could, before I eventually followed.

So by the time I made it back to my hotel it was late enough that the lobby was rowdy with the usual partygoers and a rather large bridal party. I slipped into a lift as quickly as I could and headed straight up to my floor, all too relieved to finally kick off my shoes and topple into bed after having been on my feet since four that morning.

I didn’t earn much reprieve though, seeing as soon after I’d put in an order to room service that my phone started to ring. I groaned into the pillow petulantly before I finally heaved a large sigh and made my way down the duvet to grab at the mobile I’d dropped there upon entering.

“Yeah?”

“Ouch. Haven’t spoken in weeks and that’s the only greeting I get?”

I blinked at the startling sound of a familiar voice and forced myself back up into a sitting position, smiling brightly at the surprise. “I didn’t know it was you!” I retorted quickly, shocked by the sudden call, “I thought you would phone when you got to your next base!”

“There was a switch up, got a couple days off here after–” He paused and I knew then that something must have happened out there.

“You okay?” I murmured, voice quiet but not enough to go unheard. It was always hard hearing about the things my little brother experienced when he was out deployed, but he loved it. It had been his life since the moment he’d left home at eighteen and had enlisted. I felt foolish after I’d asked it and winced at my question, “Sorry, that was stupid. I just meant–”

Danny’s laughter filtered through then, making me feel a tad bit lighter. It was always so hard talking about serious shit with him sometimes, but if there was anyone who could brighten up a room, even one full of the walking dead, then it would have to be him. Which is why I let myself laugh too when he ribbed into me for the stumble, making fun of the way I’d gone and fretted over my poor choice of words.

“Fuck off! I’m running on like four hours sleep and have yet to eat!” I shot back at him, shaking my head at the entire conversation, grateful that we could just jump back and forth between both the good and the bad. I missed him a whole lot sometimes, it was hard not knowing if he was safe. “I’m tryna be a good sister here!”

“Uhuh,” He drolled, dragging the dull sound out. Before he switched things up, “Speaking of, you spoke to Lottie since you've been gone?”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek at the ask, falling back into the mountain of pillows the hotel offered only to glance up at the stark ceiling. “Yesterday. I’ll text her in a sec though, she’ll probably just be getting out of school.” I looked over at the clock to double check that and hummed. “Why, have you?”

“No,” Danny answered me carefully, “But I phoned mum.”

My tongue worked its way between my front teeth at the mere mention of her. “Right. What did she have to say then?” But I was already regretting asking. 

“Said she ain’t seen you. That Lotts got dropped off in some car with a suitcase a couple days ago.”

I felt the skin around my eyes tighten before I took a deep breath, “That so?” 

It was almost funny how much the woman could change and flip things around to better suit her narrative. Lotts had stayed at a friend’s the night before I’d been set to fly out here, she’d been more than happy to have been dropped off at her mums and so I didn’t know why it was now being made into a bigger deal, as though I’d shoved her in some randomer’s car without so much as a goodbye. 

He must have realised I was silently stewing because I didn’t miss the light chortle Danny tried to cover up with a cough.

“I know she’s hard work, El, trust me.” He commented after, always playing the role of referee, “Just surprised me, is all, when she said she hadn’t seen you.”

Hollowing out my cheeks to keep from taking out my agitation on him, I took a second to calm back down and find the best answer to give. “I haven’t seen her because I don’t go there.”

“What, to the house?”

My eyes slipped closed at the startled disbelief in his tone. “Where else? Why would I want to go back there, Dan?”

We knew each other so well that I could practically see his lazy shrug, it made me miss him that much more. “Just figured, you know?”

No, you don’t know. I wanted to say, but wouldn’t. I couldn’t be like her, have the kids running around trying to keep track of who said and did what. I hummed quietly to myself instead, feigning disinterest when really my skin had begun to itch at the reminder. “She okay then?” I asked just for something to say, figuring that there must have been something going on for him to have mentioned it.

“Reckon so,” He replied easy enough though, probably having recognised something or other in my voice to keep from prodding much more on the previous topic, “Sounded off on our call but didn’t mention anything. Still, figured I’d let you know seeing as Lotts is there with her.”

My eyes suddenly stung and I hissed out a curse, “What did she sound like? Slurred, or?”

He knew exactly what I was getting at with that and thankfully was quick to reassure me, “Nah, nothing like that I don’t think. Just sketchy, like all jumpy and shit– careful with her words almost.” 

“Right.” I dragged out in a slow exhale, thinking it over. The question of going back home now spun round in my mind.

“Don’t.” I heard Danny say not a moment later as though he knew exactly what train of thought I'd hopped on, “You’re working, things are fine. Lotts is fine. Everything's good. So just enjoy yourself, yeah? Stop worrying so much.”

“Hard not to.” I huffed and rubbed at my eye.

His next words sounded apologetic, which wasn’t heard too often with him. “Shouldn’t have mentioned it, just wanted to keep you in the know.”

Immediately I shook my head at his retort, “No, you were right to. I mean, you’re a world away and I’d want you to let me know if you thought something was up rather than keeping it quiet and something happening.” 

“You’re a world away too.” He laughed at me, and it was nice for just a moment to listen to the familiarity of it. 

Danny was only three years younger than me, but that gap in age had only ever felt so large when we’d been kids– me sheltering him from everything going on at home until he’d grown too old to not to understand– and now. What with me looking after Lottie practically fulltime and him being stationed thousands of miles away, us only seeing each other when the odds willed it. 

“Don’t mean that you should go and get all pissy over this.” He said, pulling my attention back, “Stressing will just fuck you up more so than you already are.”

I snorted at the irony of that. “Alright, pipe down Private Ryan.”

“Ha ha.” He deadpanned in a way that only your brother could, “When d’you get funny?”

Humoured, my scowl didn’t quite radiate enough scorn and neither did my reply seeing as I went and chuckled around it, “I’ve always been the funnier sibling. Just ask Lotts.”

“Nah, Lotts would say herself and then me.” Danny argued for the sake of it, “Face it, Els. You’re old.”

“Twat.” I shot back childishly, though he merely laughed.

“Yeah, but you’re the cause of it.” He quipped, grinning now, I was sure of it, before he went and changed the subject entirely, “How ‘bout them Giants, anyway?”

Rolling my eyes hard enough to feel a slight strain, I granted the idiot a small chuckle. “You actually care enough to ask?”

“Nah,” He breezed on through a heavy breath, “I’ll stick to the FC, thanks. Just figured since you mentioned you were out in New York.”

I hummed softly, peering over towards the window. The blinds were now open, not still pulled from when I’d forgotten about them in the rush I’d been in this morning, so I figured someone must’ve opened them when they’d come in to clean. Which, even after all these years, still made me feel weird. Sure, it was their job but I hated the thought of people clearing up after me. Even more so when I remembered having had the same role down at the local pub back home. 

“It’s fine, chilly, but it’s October, you know?”

Danny’s ever typical smirk was prominent in his next set of words, “Still warm over here, think I’m actually catching a tan.”

Chuckling, I kicked my legs out over the duvet. “I’m so jealous it hurts. How is it out there anyway? Never been to Cyprus, heard it’s lovely– that’s still where you’re at right?”

He acknowledged it in a soft hum, “Yeah we are, and it’s alright, not as good as Mali though. Miss it there, the food, the people.”

I smiled softly to myself at the nostalgic yearning he voiced. Vaguely remembering his few mentions of a girl during our short calls and odd texts when he’d been there, but I didn’t ask. Thing was with Danny, if he wanted to talk about something he would. Otherwise it was like squeezing water from a sodding stone. “You know where you’re headed next?”

“No, on leave for a bit after this so I’ll find out sooner or later.”

I perked up at that. “What, you headed home then?”

It had been a good few months since I’d last seen the kid in person, let alone had him back home with us.

Danny must have anticipated my excitement because he laughed brightly in turn and his voice was full of warmth, “Yeah, so you’d best get ready to see my mug in a couple weeks.”

My mind tallied up the next month or so of my schedule. I was in Detroit for the next two weeks on an odd sort of break I’d somehow managed to pull, seeing as I was still somewhat ‘working’ and had put in extra hours before flying out. Then I’d been asked to do a couple of video interviews, mostly to keep up appearances and hint at new music in the works– but I could do that anywhere. Everything after that was up in the air.

“You got a place to stay?” I was quick to query and he must have known what I was getting at by asking.

“I’ll swing by mum’s and pick up the spare set of keys I have there, make sure my room’s ready before I get to yours, yeah? Want fresh sheets and a gift basket waiting.”

The fucking cheek. “I haven’t touched it since you left the last time, so if you’ve got shitstained pants lying about or a goldfish in there, then I’ll expect you’ll be in for a right treat.”

“Ah shit! Forgot about Nemo.” He snarked, but it was followed by a snort, “Dick. Besides, I haven’t and you know it.”

I hummed dubiously and then laughed when he clucked his tongue at me, probably geering up to argue, but then the door sounded. I stopped short at the rapid taps and was instantly reminded of the call I’d put in earlier. “Sorry, it’s probably room service.” I told him, already sliding off the bed to head on over towards the knock, “Forgot about it when you rang.”

“No worries,” He said easily, “I’ll try and call you again in a couple days, yeah?”

I paused at that, “What? No, you don’t have to hang up!”

Danny just chuckled though and I could see him sat there humoured by my reaction as he shook that big old head of his. “It’s fine, if you look as tired as you fucking sound then you’ll be out like a light sooner or later. I’ve still got some time here to piss away anyway so I’ll text.”

I couldn’t find it in me to be much annoyed by his quip, he was probably right. “Okay, it was nice to hear your voice though.” I admitted as I went and opened the door to let in a guy with a silver trolley, I thanked him quietly with a smile of my own and a tip as he left.

“You’re welcome.” Danny teased snidely once the door had closed, “Always happy to shed a bit of laughter into your life. Can’t imagine you get too many people brightening up your day out there.”

I rolled my eyes. 

“They ain’t all bad.” I informed him in reply to that Yank reference of his, picking up a chip as I did so, they were still steaming and hot enough to scold my mouth. 

“That so?” Danny wondered out loud, “Got someone special out there, have ya?”

“Fuck off, Danny!” I all but sung, chuckling when he started calling out ‘I knew it’ and making stupid kissy noises into the phone, forever a fucking wind up. “You’re so far from right but whatever. Now can I go eat or you gonna bother me some more?”

“Yeah, yeah. Enjoy your food– and the mystery man!”

He hung up before I could even think to conjure up a word, leaving the room in relative silence. Baffled, I resorted to shaking my head then moved to pick up the few plates I’d ordered, taking them over towards the bed and turning on the tele more for sound than actual entertainment. 

I only glanced back down at my phone again when it buzzed against the plush white sheets beside me. I continued chewing, but felt my brow pinch slightly as I looked back on a few texts and emails I’d received whilst on my call with Danny. I reasoned that I could ignore most of them until tomorrow when I had time to waste waiting on my flight, but there was one that my eye got stuck on.

Messages  The Martian You get back ok?

Typically, it was me that texted and Em who called. But seeing as how the roles here had suddenly reversed I forgoed typing back and instead clicked on the little video camera icon in the top right corner of our chat. 

It rang for a beat, then two.

“The fuck’s this?”

I held the phone up a little higher at the voice, having gotten a bit lost in the lifetime show which had been playing on the tv as well as my food. Glancing down, I was glad to spot his surly face peering back into the camera and smiled, before I caught sight of myself in the small box at the bottom and grimaced. Danny had been right, I looked half dead.

“And what’s with the face?”

With a wrinkle of my nose, I pulled my gaze away from the box figuring that the first time this man had seen me was possibly at my worst so what difference did this make? Still, I answered him. “I look dead.”

He blew an amused breath out of his nose and I realised a second too late that he was walking around in a room I had yet to see, before he eventually fell back onto a plethora of dark sheets. I realised he must’ve been getting ready to turn in when I called. He looked a little tired too, eyes heavier under the dim lights of his bedroom. “You’ve got a black eye. Looks tough.”

The corner of my mouth tugged upwards at the odd compliment as I brought the phone in closer to get a better look at the eye I’d gone and rubbed earlier, smearing a shit ton of glitter and eyeliner all over my cheek. I droned in retort, wiping underneath my waterline in an attempt to somehow save it, but it seemed it didn’t work the way I hoped, not from the smug look Marshall was now sporting. I flipped him off and fell back further into the pillows, taking the plate of chips I’d ordered with me.

“I forgot to take it off when I got in.” I explained, huffing out a slight chuckle, “But I doubt that even I can make glitter look tough.”

Em appeared to tilt his head in a ‘whatever you say’ sort of way, before his eyes turned surveying. “You finally fillin’ up?”

My expression shifted at the way he’d phrased that but whilst he seemed humoured by the reaction he obviously wasn’t just asking for the fun of it. “Yeah, a strange assortment but I’ll take it.”

He looked a little bemused by my answer and so I shifted to better show him what I was talking about. I first pointed out the glass cup I had balancing nearby, perched beside a plate of gooey goods, “I got some weird iced tea ‘cause I forgot that you lot don’t know how to do it right, as well as this cake selection thing.” He hummed, hand coming up to rest on his chest just as I picked up another chip covered in ketchup. “And then just a bowl of chips. Don’t tell anyone but this hotel’s room service sucks ass.”

I watched on as he raised a brow at the shoddy American accent I’d equipped for the end of that sentence before he eventually replied, “Fries.”

“Yeah no.” I rolled my eyes, chewing on another chip just to spite him for the correction. It was one of the many things I couldn’t wrap my head around whenever I was visiting. 

“The hell they’re not.” Marshall was quick to shoot straight back, “You go out and ask for chips at some restaurant you’re gettin’ looked at like an odd fucker. And anyway, how's that a meal?”

“It’s food.” I enforced with a soft snort, pleased to have gotten him a little riled up, “At this point I’d eat gum off your shoe, I’m that hungry. And anyway, fries is only used here and in like, fast food chains?”

“Rolling back round to that foot fetish. This a hint?” He ragged, but his face remained stoic enough that I had to laugh, and loudly too. Marshall just continued on though, still stuck on the debate, “They’re legit french fries.”

“Fuck’s sake, only you call them that! Over there it’s just fried potato.”

“Exactly fuckin’ fries!” It was probably the most animated I’d seen him in a couple days, all because we were both so hellbent on being right. 

I groaned, mostly just to keep up the act. I didn’t much care either way at this point, far too exhausted from the early morning start and too little sleep, but it was nice to finally see him not stressing. Something which had become a recurrence over the passing weeks since the idea of the album had started to come into reality. 

“Whatever. We’ll just call up the Oxford Dictionary tomorrow or whatever, ask them.”

“Biased jury.” He remarked but then there was a barely audible creak and his attention was being redirected to something beyond the screen. “Hey, baby. You have a good time?” I heard him mumble, the phone having lowered a tad.

There was an excited retort that seemed to grow closer, but my breath was caught in the back of my throat at the sudden realisation of just who it had to have been.

Marshall sat up a little further, shoulders coming to rest against the headboard so that he could hug the girl that crept into the corners of the screen. He pressed a kiss to the side of her head, murmuring in her ear, and I let my eyes flicker back down to my food, feeling like I was intruding on a tender moment.

I’d always known that he had kids, anyone who listened to his music could tell you that much, and he’d briefly mentioned them a handful of times in the time we’d spoken too. But I had yet to meet either the infamous Rosie or his eldest daughter, seeing as she was fresh out of college and his youngest wasn’t often around when we did speak. 

They spoke back and forth in a soft cadence for a while and when I chanced a glance back down at my phone I found that Em had me perched on his knee, now sat up on the mattress so that he could better talk to his daughter who sat opposite. I didn’t want to interrupt or just hang up, so I took the time to tidy away the bowl I held, as well as the iced tea I didn’t much like the look of. I was quiet with it, pushing them back onto the trolley but kept hold of the small plate of cakes I had on the bedside table, having had an eye on one of the brownies since it had first been wheeled in.

I still had a couple of makeup wipes left in the packet I’d used that morning by the bed, so I used one to swipe away the heavy black sat under my eyes, internally promising myself that I would cleanse before I ultimately fell asleep.

“Really? Show me!”

I seemed to tune back in at the sound of the small voice, face a little glowy and a touch red from the wipe I’d just used but thankfully now free of smudgy panda patches. 

“You there?”

Blinking, I realised belatedly that Marshall had been addressing me there. I was confused and a little slow in reapproaching the screen, but smiled softly at the sight of Em and his actual mini me, because it was just maddening how much of him she had been given.

“I’m here.” I said, almost a little shyly, unsure but prepared to end the call so that he could spend some time with his daughter. But he went and surprised me, completely actually, because he handed the phone over to Rosie who beamed at the sudden sight of me, gaze lighting up with some sort of recognition.

She was young, I noted, younger than Lottie by a couple of years but not by many. She wore her long hair in a ponytail with a pretty bow at the very top, as well as a smile that seemed to only emphasise her bright eyes. “I can’t believe you’re the El Dad’s been talking about.”

Out of everything I’d expected her to say, that had been pretty low on the list– if it had even been there at all. My mouth parted just as my eyes darted over to where Marshall was sat just behind the girl, still in shot but off to the side. He acted as though he hadn’t heard a word, gaze stuck on the hand he was running through the end of the girl’s hair. Ah, so it was like that, was it?

“Oh yeah?” I ended up chuckling, mostly to ease my emotions and the whirling thoughts that had erupted, immensely glad that I’d had the foresight to wipe my face clean before she’d said hello. I could only guess that she’d probably heard some of my music from that reaction, before I was hastily reminded of the fact that she had been one of the few that had shown Em that video of me. 

There was a hurried nod of her head, “Your songs are some of my favourites!”

I grinned softly at that, immensely pleased by the sweet sentiment, and only hoped that her favourites were some of my newer stuff, instead of the few songs I’d realised before I’d gotten signed, those were angry and aimed at a whole other audience.

“I’ve listened to a couple of yours too.” I shot back teasingly, smile only growing when I caught sight of Em’s slight frown as well as Rosie’s own, “My favourite songs from your dad all feature you.”

She seemed to like that answer and giggled, going on to tell me a little about the last song she could remember helping with. I listened attentively, nodding along and commenting when I could, actually surprised by the amount of knowledge she seemed to have picked on whilst growing up around her dad.

It was just after she said something about the upcoming album that her eyes went wide in shock and she gasped, spinning back around to look at her dad over her shoulder. Marshall stared, baiting the kid into thinking she’d gone and let the big secret slip, which in itself had me fighting down a chuckle, before he soon cracked. 

He cowered playfully when Rosie jumped at him, giggling at the thought that she’d gone and ruined it all for him, only growing louder when the man tickled her sides to roll her off him. The camera followed the pair, landing with a thump somewhere on the floor, before Marshall was back, obviously having picked it up and holding it up high enough so that I could see the little girl’s narrowed eyed expression behind him. Her smile did little to infuse the scowl she bore. 

I bit back my own.

Em took a deep breath and steeled his expression a tad, “Try that again, girlie. I dare you.”

“Dad.” The girl complained as the man knocked her back down when she tried to kneel her way on closer to the phone. I laughed quietly at them and shook my head, catching him watching me for a second too long when I looked back, but then he was sitting over by the headboard again, encouraging the girl to join him too.

When she poked her tongue out at him, he pulled a face in return. It was a moment I was content to be a part of but which also reminded me of the days of when Lotts had been that young, back before I’d managed to score studio time or even a meeting with a label exec.

I must've been wearing an odd look because Marshall’s mouth twitched when he glanced back at me, lifting a single eyebrow. I knew what he was asking with the action and so I dipped my chin in a slow gesture to assure him I was okay.

The night continued on like that for a little while longer, just the three of us talking, Rosie telling us about the afternoon she’d spent with her sister, before Em finally managed to rouse her into getting ready for bed. I took that to be lights out for me too, listening quietly whilst he sent the little girl on her way, promising that he’d be there to tuck her into bed in just a second.

My smile was all mushy when his door rattled shut, I knew it too but was too tired to hide it so simply settled for relaxing my head further against the headboard. His face went through a rapid relay of emotions when he caught it though, before he eventually stamped out anything recognisable. I blinked blearily in return.

“‘Til tomorrow?” I assumed, chuckling softly whilst he dragged a hand over the top of his head. I noticed then that the blond was gone.

He gave a hum, voice low in the quiet of his room, “You gotta be up to catch a plane.”

A wave of anticipation hit me at the very reminder and even as sleepy as I felt, I continued to smile. “I do.”

A quiet pause dragged between us, an odd tension building. I waited for him to say something, perhaps another reminder or–

“Get some sleep.”

Or that.

I swallowed back my grin and then nodded. “You too.”

The tiniest beginnings of a curl could be made out on his lips before he shook his head and turned, leaving me with a black screen and a tally of our time spent on call.

3 hours 17 minutes