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thedowntown500 · 18 days ago

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Letters From The Earth

by Mark Twain (1909)

The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast -- archangels -- their heads level with His ankle-bone.

When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, "I have thought. Behold!"

He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain-spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nailheads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe.

At the end of an hour the Grand Council was dismissed.

They left the Presence impressed and thoughtful, and retired to a private place, where they might talk with freedom. None of the three seemed to want to begin, though all wanted somebody to do it. Each was burning to discuss the great event, but would prefer not to commit himself till he should know how the others regarded it. So there was some aimless and halting conversation about matters of no consequence, and this dragged tediously along, arriving nowhere, until at last the archangel Satan gathered his courage together -- of which he had a very good supply -- and broke ground. He said: "We know what we are here to talk about, my lords, and we may as well put pretense aside, and begin. If this is the opinion of the Council -- "

"It is, it is!" said Gabriel and Michael, gratefully interrupting.

"Very well, then, let us proceed. We have witnessed a wonderful thing; as to that, we are necessarily agreed. As to the value of it -- if it has any -- that is a matter which does not personally concern us. We can have as many opinions about it as we like, and that is our limit. We have no vote. I think Space was well enough, just as it was, and useful, too. Cold and dark -- a restful place, now and then, after a season of the overdelicate climate and trying splendors of heaven. But these are details of no considerable moment; the new feature, the immense feature, is -- what, gentlemen?"

"The invention and introduction of automatic, unsupervised, self-regulating law for the government of those myriads of whirling and racing suns and worlds!"

"That is it!" said Satan. "You perceive that it is a stupendous idea. Nothing approaching it has been evolved from the Master Intellect before. Law -- Automatic Law -- exact and unvarying Law -- requiring no watching, no correcting, no readjusting while the eternities endure! He said those countless vast bodies would plunge through the wastes of Space ages and ages, at unimaginable speed, around stupendous orbits, yet never collide, and never lengthen nor shorten their orbital periods by so much as the hundredth part of a second in two thousand years! That is the new miracle, and the greatest of all -- Automatic Law! And He gave it a name -- the LAW OF NATURE -- and said Natural Law is the LAW OF GOD -- interchangeable names for one and the same thing."

"Yes," said Michael, "and He said He would establish Natural Law -- the Law of God -- throughout His dominions, and its authority should be supreme and inviolable."

"Also," said Gabriel, "He said He would by and by create animals, and place them, likewise, under the authority of that Law."

"Yes," said Satan, "I heard Him, but did not understand. What is animals, Gabriel?"

"Ah, how should I know? How should any of us know? It is a new word."

[Interval of three centuries, celestial time -- the equivalent of a hundred million years, earthly time. Enter a Messenger-Angel.]

"My lords, He is making animals. Will it please you to come and see?"

They went, they saw, and were perplexed. Deeply perplexed -- and the Creator noticed it, and said, "Ask. I will answer."

"Divine One," said Satan, making obeisance, "what are they for?"

"They are an experiment in Morals and Conduct. Observe them, and be instructed."

There were thousands of them. They were full of activities. Busy, all busy -- mainly in persecuting each other. Satan remarked -- after examining one of them through a powerful microscope: "This large beast is killing weaker animals, Divine One."

"The tiger -- yes. The law of his nature is ferocity. The law of his nature is the Law of God. He cannot disobey it."

"Then in obeying it he commits no offense, Divine One?"

"No, he is blameless."

"This other creature, here, is timid, Divine One, and suffers death without resisting."

"The rabbit -- yes. He is without courage. It is the law of his nature -- the Law of God. He must obey it."

"Then he cannot honorably be required to go counter to his nature and resist, Divine One?"

"No. No creature can be honorably required to go counter to the law of his nature -- the Law of God."

After a long time and many questions, Satan said, "The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?"

"They are not to blame. It is the law of their nature. And always the law of nature is the Law of God. Now -- observe -- behold! A new creature -- and the masterpiece -- Man!"

Men, women, children, they came swarming in flocks, in droves, in millions.

"What shall you do with them, Divine One?"

"Put into each individual, in differing shades and degrees, all the various Moral Qualities, in mass, that have been distributed, a single distinguishing characteristic at a time, among the nonspeaking animal world -- courage, cowardice, ferocity, gentleness, fairness, justice, cunning, treachery, magnanimity, cruelty, malice, malignity, lust, mercy, pity, purity, selfishness, sweetness, honor, love, hate, baseness, nobility, loyalty, falsity, veracity, untruthfulness -- each human being shall have all of these in him, and they will constitute his nature. In some, there will be high and fine characteristics which will submerge the evil ones, and those will be called good men; in others the evil characteristics will have dominion, and those will be called bad men. Observe -- behold -- they vanish!"

"Whither are they gone, Divine One?"

"To the earth -- they and all their fellow animals."

"What is the earth?"

"A small globe I made, a time, two times and a half ago. You saw it, but did not notice it in the explosion of worlds and suns that sprayed from my hand. Man is an experiment, the other animals are another experiment. Time will show whether they were worth the trouble. The exhibition is over; you may take your leave, my lords."

Several days passed by.

This stands for a long stretch of (our) time, since in heaven a day is as a thousand years.

Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator's sparkling industries -- remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms. He had made them confidentially to his safe friends the other archangels, but they had been overheard by some ordinary angels and reported at Headquarters.

He was ordered into banishment for a day -- the celestial day. It was a punishment he was used to, on account of his too flexible tongue. Formerly he had been deported into Space, there being nowhither else to send him, and had flapped tediously around there in the eternal night and the Arctic chill; but now it occurred to him to push on and hunt up the earth and see how the Human-Race experiment was coming along.

By and by he wrote home -- very privately -- to St. Michael and St. Gabriel about it.

Satan's Letter

This is a strange place, and extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God." This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.

Moreover -- if I may put another strain upon you -- he thinks he is the Creator's pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affront, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance. I must put one more strain upon you: he thinks he is going to heaven!

He has salaried teachers who tell him that. They also tell him there is a hell, of everlasting fire, and that he will go to it if he doesn't keep the Commandments. What are Commandments? They are a curiosity. I will tell you about them by and by.

Letter II

"I have told you nothing about man that is not true." You must pardon me if I repeat that remark now and then in these letters; I want you to take seriously the things I am telling you, and I feel that if I were in your place and you in mine, I should need that reminder from time to time, to keep my credulity from flagging.

For there is nothing about man that is not strange to an immortal. He looks at nothing as we look at it, his sense of proportion is quite different from ours, and his sense of values is so widely divergent from ours, that with all our large intellectual powers it is not likely that even the most gifted among us would ever be quite able to understand it.

For instance, take this sample: he has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race -- and of ours -- sexual intercourse!

It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water!

His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists -- utterly and entirely -- of diversions which he cares next to nothing about, here in the earth, yet is quite sure he will like them in heaven. Isn't it curious? Isn't it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it is not so. I will give you details.

Most men do not sing, most men cannot sing, most men will not stay when others are singing if it be continued more than two hours. Note that.

Only about two men in a hundred can play upon a musical instrument, and not four in a hundred have any wish to learn how. Set that down.

Many men pray, not many of them like to do it. A few pray long, the others make a short cut.

More men go to church than want to.

To forty-nine men in fifty the Sabbath Day is a dreary, dreary bore.

Of all the men in a church on a Sunday, two-thirds are tired when the service is half over, and the rest before it is finished.

The gladdest moment for all of them is when the preacher uplifts his hands for the benediction. You can hear the soft rustle of relief that sweeps the house, and you recognize that it is eloquent with gratitude.

All nations look down upon all other nations.

All nations dislike all other nations.

All white nations despise all colored nations, of whatever hue, and oppress them when they can.

White men will not associate with "niggers," nor marry them.

They will not allow them in their schools and churches.

All the world hates the Jew, and will not endure him except when he is rich.

I ask you to note all those particulars.

Further. All sane people detest noise.

All people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their life. Monotony quickly wearies them.

Every man, according to the mental equipment that has fallen to his share, exercises his intellect constantly, ceaselessly, and this exercise makes up a vast and valued and essential part of his life. The lowest intellect, like the highest, possesses a skill of some kind and takes a keen pleasure in testing it, proving it, perfecting it. The urchin who is his comrade's superior in games is as diligent and as enthusiastic in his practice as are the sculptor, the painter, the pianist, the mathematician and the rest. Not one of them could be happy if his talent were put under an interdict.

Now then, you have the facts. You know what the human race enjoys, and what it doesn't enjoy. It has invented a heaven out of its own head, all by itself: guess what it is like! In fifteen hundred eternities you couldn't do it. The ablest mind known to you or me in fifty million aeons couldn't do it. Very well, I will tell you about it.

1. First of all, I recall to your attention the extraordinary fact with which I began. To wit, that the human being, like the immortals, naturally places sexual intercourse far and away above all other joys -- yet he has left it out of his heaven! The very thought of it excites him; opportunity sets him wild; in this state he will risk life, reputation, everything -- even his queer heaven itself -- to make good that opportunity and ride it to the overwhelming climax. From youth to middle age all men and all women prize copulation above all other pleasures combined, yet it is actually as I have said: it is not in their heaven; prayer takes its place.

They prize it thus highly; yet, like all their so-called "boons," it is a poor thing. At its very best and longest the act is brief beyond imagination -- the imagination of an immortal, I mean. In the matter of repetition the man is limited -- oh, quite beyond immortal conception. We who continue the act and its supremest ecstasies unbroken and without withdrawal for centuries, will never be able to understand or adequately pity the awful poverty of these people in that rich gift which, possessed as we possess it, makes all other possessions trivial and not worth the trouble of invoicing.

2. In man's heaven everybody sings! The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on earth is able to do it there. The universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on, all day long, and every day, during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody stays; whereas in the earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is of one hymn alone. The words are always the same, in number they are only about a dozen, there is no rhyme, there is no poetry: "Hosannah, hosannah, hosannah, Lord God of Sabaoth, 'rah! 'rah! 'rah! siss! -- boom! ... a-a-ah!"

3. Meantime, every person is playing on a harp -- those millions and millions! -- whereas not more than twenty in the thousand of them could play an instrument in the earth, or ever wanted to.

Consider the deafening hurricane of sound -- millions and millions of voices screaming at once and millions and millions of harps gritting their teeth at the same time! I ask you: is it hideous, is it odious, is it horrible?

Consider further: it is a praise service; a service of compliment, of flattery, of adulation! Do you ask who it is that is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insane compliment; and who not only endures it, but likes it, enjoys it, requires if, commands it? Hold your breath!

It is God! This race's god, I mean. He sits on his throne, attended by his four and twenty elders and some other dignitaries pertaining to his court, and looks out over his miles and miles of tempestuous worshipers, and smiles, and purrs, and nods his satisfaction northward, eastward, southward; as quaint and nave a spectacle as has yet been imagined in this universe, I take it.

It is easy to see that the inventor of the heavens did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of some sorry little sovereign State up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere.

All sane white people hate noise; yet they have tranquilly accepted this kind of heaven -- without thinking, without reflection, without examination -- and they actually want to go to it! Profoundly devout old gray-headed men put in a large part of their time dreaming of the happy day when they will lay down the cares of this life and enter into the joys of that place. Yet you can see how unreal it is to them, and how little it takes a grip upon them as being fact, for they make no practical preparation for the great change: you never see one of them with a harp, you never hear one of them sing.

As you have seen, that singular show is a service of praise: praise by hymn, praise by prostration. It takes the place of "church." Now then, in the earth these people cannot stand much church -- an hour and a quarter is the limit, and they draw the line at once a week. That is to say, Sunday. One day in seven; and even then they do not look forward to it with longing. And so -- consider what their heaven provides for them: "church" that lasts forever, and a Sabbath that has no end! They quickly weary of this brief hebdomadal Sabbath here, yet they long for that eternal one; they dream of it, they talk about it, they think they think they are going to enjoy it -- with all their simple hearts they think they think they are going to be happy in it!

It is because they do not think at all; they only think they think. Whereas they can't think; not two human beings in ten thousand have anything to think with. And as to imagination -- oh, well, look at their heaven! They accept it, they approve it, they admire it. That gives you their intellectual measure.

4. The inventor of their heaven empties into it all the nations of the earth, in one common jumble. All are on an equality absolute, no one of them ranking another; they have to be "brothers"; they have to mix together, pray together, harp together, hosannah together -- whites, niggers, Jews, everybody -- there's no distinction. Here in the earth all nations hate each other, and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet every pious person adores that heaven and wants to get into it. He really does. And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart, and hug, and hug, and hug!

He is a marvel -- man is! I would I knew who invented him.

5. Every man in the earth possesses some share of intellect, large or small; and be it large or be it small he takes pride in it. Also his heart swells at mention of the names of the majestic intellectual chiefs of his race, and he loves the tale of their splendid achievements. For he is of their blood, and in honoring themselves they have honored him. Lo, what the mind of man can do! he cries, and calls the roll of the illustrious of all ages; and points to the imperishable literatures they have given to the world, and the mechanical wonders they have invented, and the glories wherewith they have clothed science and the arts; and to them he uncovers as to kings, and gives to them the profoundest homage, and the sincerest, his exultant heart can furnish -- thus exalting intellect above all things else in the world, and enthroning it there under the arching skies in a supremacy unapproachable. And then he contrived a heaven that hasn't a rag of intellectuality in it anywhere!

Is it odd, is it curious, is it puzzling? It is exactly as I have said, incredible as it may sound. This sincere adorer of intellect and prodigal rewarder of its mighty services here in the earth has invented a religion and a heaven which pay no compliments to intellect, offer it no distinctions, fling it no largess: in fact, never even mention it.

By this time you will have noticed that the human being's heaven has been thought out and constructed upon an absolute definite plan; and that this plan is, that it shall contain, in labored detail, each and every imaginable thing that is repulsive to a man, and not a single thing he likes!

Very well, the further we proceed the more will this curious fact be apparent.

Make a note of it: in man's heaven there are no exercises for the intellect, nothing for it to live upon. It would rot there in a year -- rot and stink. Rot and stink -- and at that stage become holy. A blessed thing: for only the holy can stand the joys of that bedlam.

Letter III

You have noticed that the human being is a curiosity. In times past he has had (and worn out and flung away) hundreds and hundreds of religions; today he has hundreds and hundreds of religions, and launches not fewer than three new ones every year. I could enlarge that number and still be within the facts.

One of his principle religions is called the Christian. A sketch of it will interest you. It sets forth in detail in a book containing two million words, called the Old and New Testaments. Also it has another name -- The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God -- the one I have been speaking of.

It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.

This Bible is built mainly out of the fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; all its best precepts and rules of conduct came also from those Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about.

What shall we do? If we believe, with these people, that their God invented these cruel things, we slander him; if we believe that these people invented them themselves, we slander them. It is an unpleasant dilemma in either case, for neither of these parties has done us any harm.

For the sake of tranquility, let us take a side. Let us join forces with the people and put the whole ungracious burden upon him -- heaven, hell, Bible and all. It does not seem right, it does not seem fair; and yet when you consider that heaven, and how crushingly charged it is with everything that is repulsive to a human being, how can we believe a human being invented it? And when I come to tell you about hell, the stain will be greater still, and you will be likely to say, No, a man would not provide that place, for either himself or anybody else; he simply couldn't.

That innocent Bible tells about the Creation. Of what -- the universe? Yes, the universe. In six days!

God did it. He did not call it the universe -- that name is modern. His whole attention was upon this world. He constructed it in five days -- and then? It took him only one day to make twenty million suns and eighty million planets!

What were they for -- according to this idea? To furnish light for this little toy-world. That was his whole purpose; he had no other. One of the twenty million suns (the smallest one) was to light it in the daytime, the rest were to help one of the universe's countless moons modify the darkness of its nights.

It is quite manifest that he believed his fresh-made skies were diamond-sown with those myriads of twinkling stars the moment his first-day's sun sank below the horizon; whereas, in fact, not a single star winked in that black vault until three years and a half after that memorable week's formidable industries had been completed.[**] then one star appeared, all solitary and alone, and began to blink. Three years later another one appeared. The two blinked together for more than four years before a third joined them. At the end of the first hundred years there were not yet twenty-five stars twinkling in the wide wastes of those gloomy skies. At the end of a thousand years not enough stars were yet visible to make a show. At the end of a million years only half of the present array had sent their light over the telescopic frontiers, and it took another million for the rest to follow suit, as the vulgar phrase goes. There being at that time no telescope, their advent was not observed.

For three hundred years, now, the Christian astronomer has known that his Deity didn't make the stars in those tremendous six days; but the Christian astronomer does not enlarge upon that detail. Neither does the priest.

In his Book, God is eloquent in his praises of his mighty works, and calls them by the largest names he can find -- thus indicating that he has a strong and just admiration of magnitudes; yet he made those millions of prodigious suns to light this wee little orb, instead of appointing this orb's little sun to dance attendance upon them. He mentions Arcturus in his book -- you remember Arcturus; we went there once. It is one of the earth's night lamps! -- that giant globe which is fifty thousand times as large as the earth's sun, and compares with it as a melon compares with a cathedral.

However, the Sunday school still teaches the child that Arcturus was created to help light this earth, and the child grows up and continues to believe it long after he has found out that the probabilities are against it being so.

According to the Book and its servants the universe is only six thousand years old. It is only within the last hundred years that studious, inquiring minds have found out that it is nearer a hundred million.

During the Six Days, God created man and the other animals.

He made a man and a woman and placed them in a pleasant garden, along with the other creatures. they all lived together there in harmony and contentment and blooming youth for some time; then trouble came. God had warned the man and the woman that they must not eat of the fruit of a certain tree. And he added a most strange remark: he said that if they ate of it they should surely die. Strange, for the reason that inasmuch as they had never seen a sample death they could not possibly know what he meant. Neither would he nor any other god have been able to make those ignorant children understand what was meant, without furnishing a sample. The mere word could have no meaning for them, any more than it would have for an infant of days.

Presently a serpent sought them out privately, and came to them walking upright, which was the way of serpents in those days. The serpent said the forbidden fruit would store their vacant minds with knowledge. So they ate it, which was quite natural, for man is so made that he eagerly wants to know; whereas the priest, like God, whose imitator and representative he is, has made it his business from the beginning to keep him from knowing any useful thing.

Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and at once a great light streamed into their dim heads. They had acquired knowledge. What knowledge -- useful knowledge? No -- merely knowledge that there was such a thing as good, and such a thing as evil, and how to do evil. they couldn't do it before. Therefore all their acts up to this time had been without stain, without blame, without offense.

But now they could do evil -- and suffer for it; now they had acquired what the Church calls an invaluable possession, the Moral Sense; that sense which differentiates man from the beast and sets him above the beast. Instead of below the beast -- where one would suppose his proper place would be, since he is always foul-minded and guilty and the beast always clean-minded and innocent. It is like valuing a watch that must go wrong, above a watch that can't.

The Church still prizes the Moral Sense as man's noblest asset today, although the Church knows God had a distinctly poor opinion of it and did what he could in his clumsy way to keep his happy Children of the Garden from acquiring it.

Very well, Adam and Eve now knew what evil was, and how to do it. They knew how to do various kinds of wrong things, and among them one principal one -- the one God had his mind on principally. That one was the art and mystery of sexual intercourse. To them it was a magnificent discovery, and they stopped idling around and turned their entire attention to it, poor exultant young things!

In the midst of one of these celebrations they heard God walking among the bushes, which was an afternoon custom of his, and they were smitten with fright. Why? Because they were naked. They had not known it before. They had not minded it before; neither had God.

In that memorable moment immodesty was born; and some people have valued it ever since, though it would certainly puzzle them to explain why.

Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed -- naked and pure-minded; and no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They have entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty and the soiled mind; there was no other way to get it. A Christian mother's first duty is to soil her child's mind, and she does not neglect it. Her lad grows up to be a missionary, and goes to the innocent savage and to the civilized Japanese, and soils their minds. Whereupon they adopt immodesty, they conceal their bodies, they stop bathing naked together.

The convention miscalled modesty has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason, and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anybody's whim, anybody's diseased caprice. And so, in India the refined lady covers her face and breasts and leaves her legs naked from the hips down, while the refined European lady covers her legs and exposes her face and her breasts. In lands inhabited by the innocent savage the refined European lady soon gets used to full-grown native stark-nakedness, and ceases to be offended by it. A highly cultivated French count and countess -- unrelated to each other -- who were marooned in their nightclothes, by shipwreck, upon an uninhabited island in the eighteenth century, were soon naked. Also ashamed -- for a week. After that their nakedness did not trouble them, and they soon ceased to think about it.

You have never seen a person with clothes on. Oh, well, you haven't lost anything.

To proceed with the Biblical curiosities. Naturally you will think the threat to punish Adam and Eve for disobeying was of course not carried out, since they did not create themselves, nor their natures nor their impulses nor their weaknesses, and hence were not properly subject to anyone's commands, and not responsible to anybody for their acts. It will surprise you to know that the threat was carried out. Adam and Eve were punished, and that crime finds apologists unto this day. The sentence of death was executed.

As you perceive, the only person responsible for the couple's offense escaped; and not only escaped but became the executioner of the innocent.

In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be unkind to do it here. Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but no one uses it in religious matters.

The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.

Very well, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden, and eventually assassinated them. All for disobeying a command which he had no right to utter. But he did not stop there, as you will see. He has one code of morals for himself, and quite another for his children. He requires his children to deal justly -- and gently -- with offenders, and forgive them seventy-and-seven times; whereas he deals neither justly nor gently with anyone, and he did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense and say, "You may go free this time, and I will give you another chance."

On the contrary! He elected to punish their children, all through the ages to the end of time, for a trifling offense committed by others before they were born. He is punishing them yet. In mild ways? No, in atrocious ones.

You would not suppose that this kind of Being gets many compliments. Undeceive yourself: the world calls him the All-Just, the All-Righteous, the All-Good, the All-Merciful, the All-Forgiving, the All-Truthful, the All-Loving, the Source of All Morality. These sarcasms are uttered daily, all over the world. But not as conscious sarcasms. No, they are meant seriously: they are uttered without a smile.

Letter IV

So the First Pair went forth from the Garden under a curse -- a permanent one. They had lost every pleasure they had possessed before "The Fall"; and yet they were rich, for they had gained one worth all the rest: they knew the Supreme Art.

They practiced it diligently and were filled with contentment. The Deity ordered them to practice it. They obeyed, this time. But it was just as well it was not forbidden, for they would have practiced it anyhow, if a thousand Deities had forbidden it.

Results followed. By the name of Cain and Abel. And these had some sisters; and knew what to do with them. And so there were some more results: Cain and Abel begot some nephews and nieces. These, in their turn, begot some second cousins. At this point classification of relationships began to get difficult, and the attempt to keep it up was abandoned.

The pleasant labor of populating the world went on from age to age, and with prime efficiency; for in those happy days the sexes were still competent for the Supreme Art when by rights they ought to have been dead eight hundred years. The sweeter sex, the dearer sex, the lovelier sex was manifestly at its very best, then, for it was even able to attract gods. Real gods. They came down out of heaven and had wonderful times with those hot young blossoms. The Bible tells about it.

By help of those visiting foreigners the population grew and grew until it numbered several millions. But it was a disappointment to the Deity. He was dissatisfied with its morals; which in some respects were not any better than his own. Indeed they were an unflatteringly close imitation of his own. They were a very bad people, and as he knew of no way to reform them, he wisely concluded to abolish them. This is the only really enlightened and superior idea his Bible has credited him with, and it would have made his reputation for all time if he could only have kept to it and carried it out. But he was always unstable -- except in his advertisements -- and his good resolution broke down. He took a pride in man; man was his finest invention; man was his pet, after the housefly, and he could not bear to lose him wholly; so he finally decided to save a sample of him and drown the rest.

Nothing could be more characteristic of him. He created all those infamous people, and he alone was responsible for their conduct. Not one of them deserved death, yet it was certainly good policy to extinguish them; especially since in creating them the master crime had already been committed, and to allow them to go on procreating would be a distinct addition to the crime. But at the same time there could be no justice, no fairness, in any favoritism -- all should be drowned or none.

No, he would not have it so; he would save half a dozen and try the race over again. He was not able to foresee that it would go rotten again, for he is only the Far-Sighted One in his advertisements.

He saved out Noah and his family, and arranged to exterminate the rest. He planned an Ark, and Noah built it. Neither of them had ever built an Ark before, nor knew anything about Arks; and so something out of the common was to be expected. It happened. Noah was a farmer, and although he knew what was required of the Ark he was quite incompetent to say whether this one would be large enough to meet the requirements or not (which it wasn't), so he ventured no advice. The Deity did not know it wasn't large enough, but took the chances and made no adequate measurements. In the end the ship fell far short of the necessities, and to this day the world still suffers for it.

Noah built the Ark. He built it the best he could, but left out most of the essentials. It had no rudder, it had no sails, it had no compass, it had no pumps, it had no charts, no lead-lines, no anchors, no log, no light, no ventilation, and as for cargo room -- which was the main thing -- the less said about that the better. It was to be at sea eleven months, and would need fresh water enough to fill two Arks of its size -- yet the additional Ark was not provided. Water from outside could not be utilized: half of it would be salt water, and men and land animals could not drink it.

For not only was a sample of man to be saved, but business samples of the other animals, too. You must understand that when Adam ate the apple in the Garden and learned how to multiply and replenish, the other animals learned the Art, too, by watching Adam. It was cunning of them, it was neat; for they got all that was worth having out of the apple without tasting it and afflicting themselves with the disastrous Moral Sense, the parent of all immoralities.

Letter V

Noah began to collect animals. There was to be one couple of each and every sort of creature that walked or crawled, or swam or flew, in the world of animated nature. We have to guess at how long it took to collect the creatures and how much it cost, for there is no record of these details. When Symmachus made preparation to introduce his young son to grown-up life in imperial Rome, he sent men to Asia, Africa and everywhere to collect wild animals for the arena-fights. It took the men three years to accumulate the animals and fetch them to Rome. Merely quadrupeds and alligators, you understand -- no birds, no snakes, no frogs, no worms, no lice, no rats, no fleas, no ticks, no caterpillars, no spiders, no houseflies, no mosquitoes -- nothing but just plain simple quadrupeds and alligators: and no quadrupeds except fighting ones. Yet it was as I have said: it took three years to collect them, and the cost of animals and transportation and the men's wages footed up $4,500,000.

How many animals? We do not know. But it was under five thousand, for that was the largest number ever gathered for those Roman shows, and it was Titus, not Symmachus, who made that collection. Those were mere baby museums, compared to Noah's contract. Of birds and beasts and fresh-water creatures he had to collect 146,000 kinds; and of insects upwards of two million species.

Thousands and thousands of those things are very difficult to catch, and if Noah had not given up and resigned, he would be on the job yet, as Leviticus used to say. However, I do not mean that he withdrew. No, he did not do that. He gathered as many creatures as he had room for, and then stopped.

If he had known all the requirements in the beginning, he would have been aware that what was needed was a fleet of Arks. But he did not know how many kinds of creatures there were, neither did his Chief. So he had no Kangaroo, and no 'possom, and no Gila monster, and no ornithorhynchus, and lacked a multitude of other indispensable blessings which a loving Creator had provided for man and forgotten about, they having long ago wandered to a side of this world which he had never seen and with whose affairs he was not acquainted. And so everyone of them came within a hair of getting drowned.

They only escaped by an accident. There was not water enough to go around. Only enough was provided to flood one small corner of the globe -- the rest of the globe was not then known, and was supposed to be nonexistent.

However, the thing that really and finally and definitely determined Noah to stop with enough species for purely business purposes and let the rest become extinct, was an incident of the last days: an excited stranger arrived with some most alarming news. He said he had been camping among some mountains and valleys about six hundred miles away, and he had seen a wonderful thing there: he stood upon a precipice overlooking a wide valley, and up the valley he was a billowy black sea of strange animal life coming. Presently the creatures passed by, struggling, fighting, scrambling, screeching, snorting -- horrible vast masses of tumultuous flesh! Sloths as big as an elephant; frogs as big as a cow; a megatherium and his harem huge beyond belief; saurians and saurians and saurians, group after group, family after family, species after species -- a hundred feet long, thirty feet high, and twice as quarrelsome; one of them hit a perfectly blameless Durham bull a thump with its tail and sent it whizzing three hundred feet into the air and it fell at the man's feet with a sigh and was no more. The man said that these prodigious animals had heard about the Ark and were coming. Coming to get saved from the flood. And not coming in pairs, they were all coming: they did not know the passengers were restricted to pairs, the man said, and wouldn't care a rap for the regulations, anyway -- they would sail in that Ark or know the reason why. The man said the Ark would not hold the half of them; and moreover they were coming hungry, and would eat up everything there was, including the menagerie and the family.

All these facts were suppressed, in the Biblical account. You find not a hint of them there. The whole thing is hushed up. Not even the names of those vast creatures are mentioned. It shows you that when people have left a reproachful vacancy in a contract they can be as shady about it in Bibles as elsewhere. Those powerful animals would be of inestimable value to man now, when transportation is so hard pressed and expensive, but they are all lost to him. All lost, and by Noah's fault. They all got drowned. Some of them as much as eight million years ago.

Very well, the stranger told his tale, and Noah saw that he must get away before the monsters arrived. He would have sailed at once, but the upholsterers and decorators of the housefly's drawing room still had some finishing touches to put on, and that lost him a day. Another day was lost in getting the flies aboard, there being sixty-eight billions of them and the Deity still afraid there might not be enough. Another day was lost in stowing forty tons of selected filth for the flies' sustenance.

Then at last, Noah sailed; and none too soon, for the Ark was only just sinking out of sight on the horizon when the monsters arrived, and added their lamentations to those of the multitude of weeping fathers and mothers and frightened little children who were clinging to the wave-washed rocks in the pouring rain and lifting imploring prayers to an All-Just and All-Forgiving and All-Pitying Being who had never answered a prayer since those crags were builded, grain by grain, out of the sands, and would still not have answered one when the ages should have crumbled them to sand again.

Letter VI

On the third day, about noon, it was found that a fly and been left behind. The return voyage turned out to be long and difficult, on account of the lack of chart and compass, and because of the changed aspects of all coasts, the steadily rising water having submerged some of the lower landmarks and given to higher ones an unfamiliar look; but after sixteen days of earnest and faithful seeking, the fly was found at last, and received on board with hymns of praise and gratitude, the Family standing meanwhile uncovered, our of reverence for its divine origin. It was weary and worn, and had suffered somewhat from the weather, but was otherwise in good estate. Men and their families had died of hunger on barren mountain tops, but it had not lacked for food, the multitudinous corpses furnishing it in rank and rotten richness. Thus was the sacred bird providentially preserved.

Providentially. That is the word. For the fly had not been left behind by accident. No, the hand of Providence was in it. There are no accidents. All things that happen, happen for a purpose. They are foreseen from the beginning of time, they are ordained from the beginning of time. From the dawn of Creation the Lord had foreseen that Noah, being alarmed and confused by the invasion of the prodigious brevet fossils, would prematurely fly to sea unprovided with a certain invaluable disease. He would have all the other diseases, and could distribute them among the new races of men as they appeared in the world, but he would lack one of the very best -- typhoid fever; a malady which, when the circumstances are especially favorable, is able to utterly wreck a patient without killing him; for it can restore him to his feet with a long life in him, and yet deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, and idiotic. The housefly is its main disseminator, and is more competent and more calamitously effective than all the other distributors of the dreaded scourge put together. And so, by foreordination from the beginning of time, this fly was left behind to seek out a typhoid corpse and feed upon its corruptions and gaum its legs with germs and transmit them to the re-peopled world for permanent business. From that one housefly, in the ages that have since elapsed, billions of sickbeds have been stocked, billions of wrecked bodies sent tottering about the earth, and billions of cemeteries recruited with the dead.

It is most difficult to understand the disposition of the Bible God, it is such a confusion of contradictions; of watery instabilities and iron firmness; of goody-goody abstract morals made out of words, and concreted hell-born ones made out of acts; of fleeting kindness repented of in permanent malignities.

However, when after much puzzling you get at the key to his disposition, you do at last arrive at a sort of understanding of it. With a most quaint and juvenile and astonishing frankness he has furnished that key himself. It is jealousy!

I expect that to take your breath away. You are aware -- for I have already told you in an earlier letter -- that among human beings jealousy ranks distinctly as a weakness; a trade-mark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.

Jealousy. Do not forget it, keep it in mind. It is the key. With it you will come to partly understand God as we go along; without it nobody can understand him. As I have said, he has openly held up this treasonous key himself, for all to see. He says, naïvely, outspokenly, and without suggestion of embarrassment: "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."

You see, it is only another way of saying, "I the Lord thy God am a small God; a small God, and fretful about small things."

He was giving a warning: he could not bear the thought of any other God getting some of the Sunday compliments of this comical little human race -- he wanted all of them for himself. He valued them. To him they were riches; just as tin money is to a Zulu.

But wait -- I am not fair; I am misrepresenting him; prejudice is beguiling me into saying what is not true. He did not say he wanted all of the adulations; he said nothing about not being willing to share them with his fellow gods; what he said was, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

It is a quite different thing, and puts him in a much better light -- I confess it. There was an abundance of gods, the woods were full of them, as the saying is, and all he demanded was that he should be ranked as high as the others -- not above any of them, but not below any of them. He was willing that they should fertilize earthly virgins, but not on any better terms than he could have for himself in his turn. He wanted to be held their equal. This he insisted upon, in the clearest language: he would have no other gods before him. They could march abreast with him, but none of them could head the procession, and he did not claim the right to head it himself.

Do you think he was able to stick to that upright and creditable position? No. He could keep to a bad resolution forever, but he couldn't keep to a good one a month. By and by he threw aside and calmly claimed to be the only God in the entire universe.

As I was saying, jealousy is the key; all through his history it is present and prominent. It is the blood and bone of his disposition, it is the basis of his character. How small a thing can wreck his composure and disorder his judgement if it touches the raw of his jealousy! And nothing warms up this trait so quickly and so surely and so exaggeratedly as a suspicion that some competition with the god-Trust is impending. The fear that if Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge they would "be as gods" so fired his jealousy that his reason was affected, and he could not treat those poor creatures either fairly or charitably, or even refrain from dealing cruelly and criminally with their blameless posterity.

To this day his reason has never recovered from that shock; a wild nightmare of vengefulness has possessed him ever since, and he has almost bankrupted his native ingenuities in inventing pains and miseries and humiliations and heartbreaks wherewith to embitter the brief lives of Adam's descendants. Think of the diseases he has contrived for them! They are multitudinous; no book can name them all. And each one is a trap, set for an innocent victim.

The human being is a machine. An automatic machine. It is composed of thousands of complex and delicate mechanisms, which perform their functions harmoniously and perfectly, in accordance with laws devised for their governance, and over which the man himself has no authority, no mastership, no control. For each one of these thousands of mechanisms the Creator has planned an enemy, whose office is to harass it, pester it, persecute it, damage it, afflict it with pains, and miseries, and ultimate destruction. Not one has been overlooked.

From cradle to grave these enemies are always at work; they know no rest, night or day. They are an army: an organized army; a besieging army; an assaulting army; an army that is alert, watchful, eager, merciless; an army that never relents, never grants a truce.

It moves by squad, by company, by battalion, by regiment, by brigade, by division, by army corps; upon occasion it masses its parts and moves upon mankind with its whole strength. It is the Creator's Grand Army, and he is the Commander-in-Chief. Along its battlefront its grisly banners wave their legends in the face of the sun: Disaster, Disease, and the rest.

Disease! That is the main force, the diligent force, the devastating force! It attacks the infant the moment it is born; it furnishes it one malady after another: croup, measles, mumps, bowel troubles, teething pains, scarlet fever, and other childhood specialties. It chases the child into youth and furnishes it some specialties for that time of life. It chases the youth into maturity, maturity into age, age into the grave.

With these facts before you will you now try to guess man's chiefest pet name for this ferocious Commander-in-Chief? I will save you the trouble -- but you must not laugh. It is Our Father in Heaven!

It is curious -- the way the human mind works. The Christian begins with this straight proposition, this definite proposition, this inflexible and uncompromising proposition: God is all-knowing, and all-powerful.

This being the case, nothing can happen without his knowing beforehand that it is going to happen; nothing happens without his permission; nothing can happen that he chooses to prevent.

That is definite enough, isn't it? It makes the Creator distinctly responsible for everything that happens, doesn't it?

The Christian concedes it in that italicized sentence. Concedes it with feeling, with enthusiasm.

Then, having thus made the Creator responsible for all those pains and diseases and miseries above enumerated, and which he could have prevented, the gifted Christian blandly calls him Our Father!

It is as I tell you. He equips the Creator with every trait that goes to the making of a fiend, and then arrives at the conclusion that a fiend and a father are the same thing! Yet he would deny that a malevolent lunatic and a Sunday school superintendent are essentially the same. What do you think of the human mind? I mean, in case you think there is a human mind.

Letter VII

Noah and his family were saved -- if that could be called an advantage. I throw in the if for the reason that there has never been an intelligent person of the age of sixty who would consent to live his life over again. His or anyone else's. The Family were saved, yes, but they were not comfortable, for they were full of microbes. Full to the eyebrows; fat with them, obese with them, distended like balloons. It was a disagreeable condition, but it could not be helped, because enough microbes had to be saved to supply the future races of men with desolating diseases, and there were but eight persons on board to serve as hotels for them. The microbes were by far the most important part of the Ark's cargo, and the part the Creator was most anxious about and most infatuated with. They had to have good nourishment and pleasant accommodations. There were typhoid germs, and cholera germs, and hydrophobia germs, and lockjaw germs, and consumption germs, and black-plague germs, and some hundreds of other aristocrats, specially precious creations, golden bearers of God's love to man, blessed gifts of the infatuated Father to his children -- all of which had to be sumptuously housed and richly entertained; these were located in the choicest places the interiors of the Family could furnish: in the lungs, in the heart, in the brain, in the kidneys, in the blood, in the guts. In the guts particularly. The great intestine was the favorite resort. There they gathered, by countless billions, and worked, and fed, and squirmed, and sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving; and at night when it was quiet you could hear the soft murmur of it. The large intestine was in effect their heaven. They stuffed it solid; they made it as rigid as a coil of gaspipe. They took pride in this. Their principal hymn made gratified reference to it:

The discomforts furnished by the Ark were many and various. The family had to live right in the presence of the multitudinous animals, and breathe the distressing stench they make and be deafened day and night with the thunder-crash of noise their roarings and screechings produced; and in additions to these intolerable discomforts it was a peculiarly trying place for the ladies, for they could look in no direction without seeing some thousands of the creatures engaged in multiplying and replenishing. And then, there were the flies. They swarmed everywhere, and persecuted the Family all day long. They were the first animals up, in the morning, and the last ones down, at night. But they must not be killed, they must not be injured, they were sacred, their origin was divine, they were the special pets of the Creator, his darlings.

By and by the other creatures would be distributed here and there about the earth -- scattered: the tigers to India, the lions and the elephants to the vacant desert and the secret places of the jungle, the birds to the boundless regions of empty space, the insects to one or another climate, according to nature and requirement; but the fly? He is of no nationality; all the climates are his home, all the globe is his province, all creatures that breathe are his prey, and unto them all he is a scourge and a hell.

To man he is a divine ambassador, a minister plenipotentiary, the Creator's special representative. He infests him in his cradle; clings in bunches to his gummy eyelids; buzzes and bites and harries him, robbing him of his sleep and his weary mother of her strength in those long vigils which she devotes to protecting her child from this pest's persecutions. The fly harries the sick man in his home, in the hospital, even on his deathbed at his last gasp. Pesters him at his meals; previously hunts up patients suffering from loathsome and deadly diseases; wades in their sores, gaums its legs with a million death-dealing germs; then comes to that healthy man's table and wipes these things off on the butter and discharges a bowel-load of typhoid germs and excrement on his batter-cakes. The housefly wrecks more human constitutions and destroys more human lives than all God's multitude of misery-messengers and death-agents put together.

Shem was full of hookworms. It is wonderful, the thorough and comprehensive study which the Creator devoted to the great work of making man miserable. I have said he devised a special affliction-agent for each and every detail of man's structure, overlooking not a single one, and I said the truth. Many poor people have to go barefoot, because they cannot afford shoes. The Creator saw his opportunity. I will remark, in passing, that he always has his eye on the poor. Nine-tenths of his disease-inventions were intended for the poor, and they get them. The well-to-do get only what is left over. Do not suspect me of speaking unheedfully, for it is not so: the vast bulk of the Creator's affliction-inventions are specially designed for the persecution of the poor. You could guess this by the fact that one of the pulpit's finest and commonest names for the Creator is "The Friend of the Poor." Under no circumstances does the pulpit ever pay the Creator a compliment that has a vestige of truth in it. The poor's most implacable and unwearying enemy is their Father in Heaven. The poor's only real friend is their fellow man. He is sorry for them, he pities them, and he shows it by his deeds. He does much to relieve their distresses; and in every case their Father in Heaven gets the credit of it.

Just so with diseases. If science exterminates a disease which has been working for God, it is God that gets the credit, and all the pulpits break into grateful advertising-raptures and call attention to how good he is! Yes, he has done it. Perhaps he has waited a thousand years before doing it. That is nothing; the pulpit says he was thinking about it all the time. When exasperated men rise up and sweep away an age-long tyranny and set a nation free, the first thing the delighted pulpit does is to advertise it as God's work, and invite the people to get down on their knees and pour out their thanks to him for it. And the pulpit says with admiring emotion, "Let tyrants understand that the Eye that never sleeps is upon them; and let them remember that the Lord our God will not always be patient, but will loose the whirlwinds of his wrath upon them in his appointed day."

They forget to mention that he is the slowest mover in the universe; that his Eye that never sleeps, might as well, since it takes it a century to see what any other eye would see in a week; that in all history there is not an instance where he thought of a noble deed first, but always thought of it just a little after somebody else had thought of it and done it. He arrives then, and annexes the dividend.

Very well, six thousand years ago Shem was full of hookworms. Microscopic in size, invisible to the unaided eye. All of the Creator's specially deadly disease-producers are invisible. It is an ingenious idea. For thousands of years it kept man from getting at the roots of his maladies, and defeated his attempts to master them. It is only very recently that science has succeeded in exposing some of these treacheries.

The very latest of these blessed triumphs of science is the discovery and identification of the ambuscaded assassin which goes by the name of the hookworm. Its special prey is the barefooted poor. It lies in wait in warm regions and sandy places and digs its way into their unprotected feet.

The hookworm was discovered two or three years ago by a physician, who had been patiently studying its victims for a long time. The disease induced by the hookworm had been doing its evil work here and there in the earth ever since Shem landed on Ararat, but it was never suspected to be a disease at all. The people who had it were merely supposed to be lazy, and were therefore despised and made fun of, when they should have been pitied. The hookworm is a peculiarly sneaking and underhanded invention, and has done its surreptitious work unmolested for ages; but that physician and his helpers will exterminate it now.

God is back of this. He has been thinking about it for six thousand years, and making up his mind. The idea of exterminating the hookworm was his. He came very near doing it before Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles did. But he is in time to get the credit of it. He always is.

It is going to cost a million dollars. He was probably just in the act of contributing that sum when a man pushed in ahead of him -- as usual. Mr. Rockefeller. He furnishes the million, but the credit will go elsewhere -- as usual. This morning's journal tells us something about the hookworm's operations:

The poor children are under the Eye that never sleeps, you see. They have had that ill luck in all the ages. They and "the Lord's poor" -- as the sarcastic phrase goes -- have never been able to get away from that Eye's attentions.

Yes, the poor, the humble, the ignorant -- they are the ones that catch it. Take the "Sleeping Sickness," of Africa. This atrocious cruelty has for its victims a race of ignorant and unoffending blacks whom God placed in a remote wilderness, and bent his parental Eye upon them -- the one that never sleeps when there is a chance to breed sorrow for somebody. He arranged for these people before the Flood. The chosen agent was a fly, related to the tsetse; the tsetse is a fly which has command of the Zambezi country and stings cattle and horses to death, thus rendering that region uninhabitable by man. The tsetse's awful relative deposits a microbe which produces the Sleeping Sickness. Ham was full of these microbes, and when the voyage was over he discharged them in Africa and the havoc began, never to find amelioration until six thousand years should go by and science should pry into the mystery and hunt out the cause of the disease. The pious nations are now thanking God, and praising him for coming to the rescue of his poor blacks. The pulpit says the praise is due to him. He is surely a curious Being. He commits a fearful crime, continues that crime unbroken for six thousand years, and is then entitled to praise because he suggests to somebody else to modify its severities. He is called patient, and he certainly must be patient, or he would have sunk the pulpit in perdition ages ago for the ghastly compliments it pays him.

Science has this to say about the Sleeping Sickness, otherwise called the Negro Lethargy:

It is he whom Church and people call Our Father in Heaven who has invented the fly and sent him to inflict this dreary long misery and melancholy and wretchedness, and decay of body and mind, upon a poor savage who has done that Great Criminal no harm. There isn't a man in the world who doesn't pity that poor black sufferer, and there isn't a man that wouldn't make him whole if he could. To find the one person who has no pity for him you must go to heaven; to find the one person who is able to heal him and couldn't be persuaded to do it, you must go to the same place. There is only one father cruel enough to afflict his child with that horrible disease -- only one. Not all the eternities can produce another one. Do you like reproachful poetical indignations warmly expressed? Here is one, hot from the heart of a slave:

I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way.

Letter VIII

Man is without any doubt the most interesting fool there is. Also the most eccentric. He hasn't a single written law, in his Bible or out of it, which has any but just one purpose and intention -- to limit or defeat the law of God.

He can seldom take a plain fact and get any but a wrong meaning out of it. He cannot help this; it is the way the confusion he calls his mind is constructed. Consider the things he concedes, and the curious conclusions he draws from them.

For instance, he concedes that God made man. Made him without man's desire of privity.

This seems to plainly and indisputably make God, and God alone, responsible for man's acts. But man denies this.

He concedes that God has made the angels perfect, without blemish, and immune from pain and death, and that he could have been similarly kind to man if he had wanted to, but denies that he was under any moral obligation to do it.

He concedes that man has no moral right to visit the child of his begetting with wanton cruelties, painful diseases and death, but refuses to limit God's privileges in this sort with the children of his begetting.

The Bible and man's statutes forbid murder, adultery, fornication, lying, treachery, robbery, oppression and other crimes, but contend that God is free of these laws and has a right to break them when he will.

He concedes that God gives to each man his temperament, his disposition, at birth; he concedes that man cannot by any process change this temperament, but must remain always under its dominion. Yet if it be full of dreadful passions, in one man's case, and barren of them in another man's, it is right and rational to punish the one for his crimes, and reward the other for abstaining from crime.

There -- let us consider these curiosities.

Temperament (Disposition)

Take two extremes of temperament -- the goat and the tortoise.

Neither of these creatures makes its own temperament, but is born with it, like man, and can no more change it than can man.

Temperament is the law of God written in the heart of every creature by God's own hand, and must be obeyed, and will be obeyed in spite of all restricting or forbidding statutes, let them emanate whence they may.

Very well, lust is the dominant feature of the goat's temperament, the law of God is in its heart, and it must obey it and will obey it the whole day long in the rutting season, without stopping to eat or drink. If the Bible said to the goat, "Thou shalt not fornicate, thou shalt not commit adultery," even Man -- sap-headed man -- would recognize the foolishness of the prohibition, and would grant that the goat ought not to be punished for obeying the law of his Maker. Yet he thinks it right and just that man should be put under the prohibition. All men. All alike.

On its face this is stupid, for, by temperament, which is the real law of God, many men are goats and can't help committing adultery when they get a chance; whereas there are numbers of men who, by temperament, can keep their purity and let an opportunity go by if the woman lacks in attractiveness. But the Bible doesn't allow adultery at all, whether a person can help it or not. It allows no distinction between goat and tortoise -- the excitable goat, the emotional goat, that has to have some adultery every day or fade and die; and the tortoise, that cold calm puritan, that takes a treat only once in two years and then goes to sleep in the midst of it and doesn't wake up for sixty days. No lady goat is safe from criminal assault, even on the Sabbath Day, when there is a gentleman goat within three miles to leeward of her and nothing in the way but a fence fourteen feet high, whereas neither the gentleman tortoise nor the lady tortoise is ever hungry enough for solemn joys of fornication to be willing to break the Sabbath to get them. Now according to man's curious reasoning, the goat has earned punishment, and the tortoise praise.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery" is a command which makes no distinction between the following persons. They are all required to obey it:

Children at birth.

Children in the cradle.

School children.

Youths and maidens.

Fresh adults.

Older ones.

Men and women of 40.

Of 50.

Of 60.

Of 70.

Of 80.

Of 90.

Of 100.

The command does not distribute its burden equally, and cannot.

It is not hard upon the three sets of children.

It is hard -- harder -- still harder upon the next three sets -- cruelly hard.

It is blessedly softened to the next three sets.

It has now done all the damage it can, and might as well be put out of commission. Yet with comical imbecility it is continued, and the four remaining estates are put under its crushing ban. Poor old wrecks, they couldn't disobey if they tried. And think -- because they holily refrain from adulterating each other, they get praise for it! Which is nonsense; for even the Bible knows enough to know that if the oldest veteran there could get his lost heyday back again for an hour he would cast that commandment to the winds and ruin the first woman he came across, even though she were an entire stranger.

It is as I have said: every statute in the Bible and in the law-books is an attempt to defeat a law of God -- in other words an unalterable and indestructible law of nature. These people's God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of the Bible's statutes. He breaks every one of the himself, adultery and all.

The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman's construction is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life.

The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in man's construction is this: During your entire life you shall be under inflexible limits and restrictions, sexually.

During twenty-three days in every month (in absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. Also she wants that candle -- yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart.

But man is only briefly competent; and only then in the moderate measure applicable to the word in his sex's case. He is competent from the age of sixteen or seventeen thence-forward for thirty-five years. After fifty his performance is of poor quality, the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great value to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new. There is nothing the matter with her plant. Her candlestick is as firm as ever, whereas his candle is increasingly softened and weakened by the weather of age, as the years go by, until at last it can no longer stand, and is mournfully laid to rest in the hope of a blessed resurrection which is never to come.

By the woman's make, her plant has to be out of service three days in the month, and during a part of her pregnancy. These are times of discomfort, often of suffering. For fair and just compensation she has the high privilege of unlimited adultery all the other days of her life.

That is the law of God, as revealed in her make. What becomes of this high privilege? Does she live in free enjoyment of it? No. Nowhere in the whole world. She is robbed of it everywhere. Who does this? Man. Man's statutes -- if the Bible is the Word of God.

Now there you have a sample of man's "reasoning powers," as he calls them. He observes certain facts. For instance, that in all his life he never sees the day that he can satisfy one woman; also, that no woman ever sees the day that she can't overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her.[**] He puts those strikingly suggestive and luminous facts together, and from them draws this astonishing conclusion: The Creator intended the woman to be restricted to one man.

So he concretes that singular conclusion into law, for good and all.

And he does it without consulting the woman, although she has a thousand times more at stake in the matter than he has. His procreative competency is limited to an average of a hundred exercises per year for fifty years, hers is good for three thousand a year for that whole time -- and as many years longer as she may live. Thus his life interest in the matter is five thousand refreshments, while hers is a hundred and fifty thousand; yet instead of fairly and honorably leaving the making of the law to the person who has an overwhelming interest at stake in it, this immeasurable hog, who has nothing at stake in it worth considering, makes it himself!

You have heretofore found out, by my teachings, that man is a fool; you are now aware that woman is a damned fool.

Now if you or any other really intelligent person were arranging the fairness and justices between man and woman, you would give the man one-fiftieth interest in one woman, and the woman a harem. Now wouldn't you? Necessarily. I give you my word, this creature with the decrepit candle has arranged it exactly the other way. Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. To save his life he could not have kept two of these young creatures satisfactorily refreshed, even if he had had fifteen experts to help him. Necessarily almost the entire thousand had to go hungry years and years on a stretch. Conceive of a man hardhearted enough to look daily upon all that suffering and not be moved to mitigate it. He even wantonly added a sharp pang to that pathetic misery; for he kept within those women's sight, always, stalwart watchmen whose splendid masculine forms made the poor lassies' mouths water but who hadn't anything to solace a candlestick with, these gentry being eunuchs. A eunuch is a person whose candle has been put out. By art.[**]

From time to time, as I go along, I will take up a Biblical statute and show you that it always violates a law of God, and then is imported into the lawbooks of the nations, where it continues its violations. But those things will keep; there is no hurry.

Letter IX

The Ark continued its voyage, drifting around here and there and yonder, compassless and uncontrolled, the sport of the random winds and swirling currents. And the rain, the rain, the rain! It kept falling, pouring, drenching, flooding. No such rain had ever been seen before. Sixteen inches a day had been heard of, but that was nothing to this. This was a hundred and twenty inches a day -- ten feet! At this incredible rate it rained forty days and forty nights, and submerged every hill that was four hundred feet high. Then the heavens and even the angels went dry; no more water was to be had.

As a Universal flood it was a disappointment, but there had been heaps of Universal Floods before, as is witnessed by all the Bibles of all the nations, and this was as good as the best one.

At last the Ark soared aloft and came to rest on top of Mount Ararat, seventeen thousand feet above the valley, and its living freight got out and went down the mountain.

Noah planted a vineyard, and drank the wine and was overcome.

This person had been selected from all the populations because he was the best sample there was. He was to start the human race on a new basis. This was the new basis. The promise was bad. To go further with the experiment was to run a great and most unwise risk. Now was the time to do with these people what had been so judiciously done with the others -- drown them. Anybody but the Creator would have seen this. But he didn't see it. That is, maybe he didn't.

It is claimed that from the beginning of time he foresaw everything that would happen in the world. If that is true, he foresaw that Adam and Eve would eat the apple; that their posterity would be unendurable and have to be drowned; that Noah's posterity would in their turn be unendurable, and that by and by he would have to leave his throne in heaven and come down and be crucified to save that same tiresome human race again. The whole of it? No! A part of it? Yes. Now much of it? In each generation, for hundreds and hundreds of generations, a billion would die and all go to perdition except perhaps ten thousand out of the billion. The ten thousand would have to come from the little body of Christians, and only one in the hundred of that little body would stand any chance. None of them at all except such Roman Catholics as should have the luck to have a priest handy to sandpaper their souls at the last gasp, and here and there a presbyterian. No others savable. All the others damned. By the million.

Shall you grant that he foresaw all this? The pulpit grants it. It is the same as granting that in the matter of intellect the Deity is the Head Pauper of the Universe, and that in the matter of morals and character he is away down on the level of David.

Letter X

The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward. The Old Testament is interested mainly in blood and sensuality. The New one in Salvation. Salvation by fire.

The first time the Deity came down to earth, he brought life and death; when he came the second time, he brought hell.

Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain, a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs -- the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.

In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.

The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it.

Now here is a curious thing. It is believed by everybody that while he was in heaven he was stern, hard, resentful, jealous, and cruel; but that when he came down to earth and assumed the name Jesus Christ, he became the opposite of what he was before: that is to say, he became sweet, and gentle, merciful, forgiving, and all harshness disappeared from his nature and a deep and yearning love for his poor human children took its place. Whereas it was as Jesus Christ that he devised hell and proclaimed it!

Which is to say, that as the meek and gentle Savior he was a thousand billion times crueler than ever he was in the Old Testament -- oh, incomparably more atrocious than ever he was when he was at the very worst in those old days!

Meek and gentle? By and by we will examine this popular sarcasm by the light of the hell which he invented.

While it is true that the palm for malignity must be granted to Jesus, the inventor of hell, he was hard and ungentle enough for all godlike purposes even before he became a Christian. It does not appear that he ever stopped to reflect that he was to blame when a man went wrong, inasmuch as the man was merely acting in accordance with the disposition he had afflicted him with. No, he punished the man, instead of punishing himself. Moreover, the punishment usually oversized the offense. Often, too, it fell, not upon the doer of a misdeed, but upon somebody else -- a chief man, the head of a community, for instance.

Does that look fair to you? It does not appear that the "heads of the people" got any of the adultery, yet it is they that are hanged, instead of "the people."

If it was fair and right in that day it would be fair and right today, for the pulpit maintains that God's justice is eternal and unchangeable; also that he is the Fountain of Morals, and that his morals are eternal and unchangeable. Very well, then, we must believe that if the people of New York should begin to commit whoredom with the daughters of New Jersey, it would be fair and right to set up a gallows in front of the city hall and hang the mayor and the sheriff and the judges and the archbishop on it, although they did not get any of it. It does not look right to me.

Moreover, you may be quite sure of one thing: it couldn't happen. These people would not allow it. They are better than their Bible. Nothing would happen here, except some lawsuits, for damages, if the incident couldn't be hushed up; and even down South they would not proceed against persons who did not get any of it; they would get a rope and hunt for the correspondents, and if they couldn't find them they would lynch a nigger.

Things have greatly improved since the Almighty's time, let the pulpit say what it may.

Will you examine the Deity's morals and disposition and conduct a little further? And will you remember that in the Sunday school the little children are urged to love the Almighty, and honor him, and praise him, and make him their model and try to be as like him as they can? Read:

The Biblical law says: "Thou shalt not kill."

The law of God, planted in the heart of man at his birth, says: "Thou shalt kill."

The chapter I have quoted shows you that the book-statute is once more a failure. It cannot set aside the more powerful law of nature.

According to the belief of these people, it was God himself who said: "Thou shalt not kill."

Then it is plain that he cannot keep his own commandments.

He killed all those people -- every male.

They had offended the Deity in some way. We know what the offense was, without looking; that is to say, we know it was a trifle; some small thing that no one but a god would attach any importance to. It is more than likely that a Midianite had been duplicating the conduct of one Onan, who was commanded to "go into his brother's wife" -- which he did; but instead of finishing, "he spilled it on the ground." The Lord slew Onan for that, for the lord could never abide indelicacy. The Lord slew Onan, and to this day the Christian world cannot understand why he stopped with Onan, instead of slaying all the inhabitants for three hundred miles around -- they being innocent of offense, and therefore the very ones he would usually slay. For that had always been his idea of fair dealing. If he had had a motto, it would have read, "Let no innocent person escape." You remember what he did in the time of the flood. There were multitudes and multitudes of tiny little children, and he knew they had never done him any harm; but their relations had, and that was enough for him: he saw the waters rise toward their screaming lips, he saw the wild terror in their eyes, he saw that agony of appeal in the mothers' faces which would have touched any heart but his, but he was after the guiltless particularly, than he drowned those poor little chaps.

And you will remember that in the case of Adam's posterity all the billions are innocent -- none of them had a share in his offense, but the Deity holds them guilty to this day. None gets off, except by acknowledging that guilt -- no cheaper lie will answer.

Some Midianite must have repeated Onan's act, and brought that dire disaster upon his nation. If that was not the indelicacy that outraged the feelings of the Deity, then I know what it was: some Midianite had been pissing against the wall. I am sure of it, for that was an impropriety which the Source of all Etiquette never could stand. A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches, and get off, but he must not piss against the wall -- that would be going quite too far. The origin of the divine prejudice against this humble crime is not stated; but we know that the prejudice was very strong -- so strong that nothing but a wholesale massacre of the people inhabiting the region where the wall was defiled could satisfy the Deity.

Take the case of Jeroboam. "I will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall." It was done. And not only was the man that did it cut off, but everybody else.

The same with the house of Baasha: everybody was exterminated, kinsfolks, friends, and all, leaving "not one that pisseth against a wall."

In the case of Jeroboam you have a striking instance of the Deity's custom of not limiting his punishments to the guilty; the innocent are included. Even the "remnant" of that unhappy house was removed, even "as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone." That includes the women, the young maids, and the little girls. All innocent, for they couldn't piss against a wall. Nobody of that sex can. None but members of the other sex can achieve that feat.

A curious prejudice. And it still exists. Protestant parents still keep the Bible handy in the house, so that the children can study it, and one of the first things the little boys and girls learn is to be righteous and holy and not piss against the wall. They study those passages more than they study any others, except those which incite to masturbation. Those they hunt out and study in private. No Protestant child exists who does not masturbate. That art is the earliest accomplishment his religion confers upon him. Also the earliest her religion confers upon her.

The Bible has this advantage over all other books that teach refinement and good manners: that it goes to the child. It goes to the mind at its most impressible and receptive age -- the others have to wait.

That rule was made in the old days because "The Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp."

It is probably not worthwhile to try to find out, for certain, why the Midianites were exterminated. We can only be sure that it was for no large offense; for the cases of Adam, and the Flood, and the defilers of the wall teach us that much. A Midianite may have left his paddle at home and thus brought on the trouble. However, it is no matter. The main thing is the trouble itself, and the morals of one kind and another that it offers for the instruction and elevation of the Christian of today.

God wrote upon the tables of stone: "Thou shalt not kill," Also: "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Paul, speaking by the divine voice, advised against sexual intercourse altogether. A great change from the divine view as it existed at the time of the Midianite incident.

Letter XI

Human history in all ages is red with blood, and bitter with hate, and stained with cruelties; but not since Biblical times have these features been without a limit of some kind. Even the Church, which is credited with having spilt more innocent blood, since the beginning of its supremacy, than all the political wars put together have spilt, has observed a limit. A sort of limit. But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy -- he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered.

He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty. The babies were innocent, the beasts were innocent, many of the men, many of the women, many of the boys, many of the girls were innocent, yet they had to suffer with the guilty. What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.

The heaviest punishment of all was meted out to persons who could not by any possibility have deserved so horrible a fate -- the 32,000 virgins. Their naked privacies were probed, to make sure that they still possessed the hymen unruptured; after this humiliation they were sent away from the land that had been their home, to be sold into slavery; the worst of slaveries and the shamefulest, the slavery of prostitution; bed-slavery, to excite lust, and satisfy it with their bodies; slavery to any buyer, be he gentleman or be he a coarse and filthy ruffian.

It was the Father that inflicted this ferocious and undeserved punishment upon those bereaved and friendless virgins, whose parents and kindred he had slaughtered before their eyes. And were they praying to him for pity and rescue, meantime? Without a doubt of it.

These virgins were "spoil" plunder, booty. He claimed his share and got it. What use had he for virgins? Examine his later history and you will know.

His priests got a share of the virgins, too. What use could priests make of virgins? The private history of the Roman Catholic confessional can answer that question for you. The confessional's chief amusement has been seduction -- in all the ages of the Church. Père Hyacinth testifies that of a hundred priests confessed by him, ninety-nine had used the confessional effectively for the seduction of married women and young girls. One priest confessed that of nine hundred girls and women whom he had served as father and confessor in his time, none had escaped his lecherous embrace but he elderly and the homely. The official list of questions which the priest is required to ask will overmasteringly excite any woman who is not a paralytic.

There is nothing in either savage or civilized history that is more utterly complete, more remorselessly sweeping than the Father of Mercy's campaign among the Midianites. The official report does not furnish the incidents, episodes, and minor details, it deals only in information in masses: all the virgins, all the men, all the babies, all "creatures that breathe," all houses, all cities; it gives you just one vast picture, spread abroad here and there and yonder, as far as eye can reach, of charred ruin and storm-swept desolation; your imagination adds a brooding stillness, an awful hush -- the hush of death. But of course there were incidents. Where shall we get them?

Out of history of yesterday's date. Out of history made by the red Indian of America. He has duplicated God's work, and done it in the very spirit of God. In 1862 the Indians in Minnesota, having been deeply wronged and treacherously treated by the government of the United States, rose against the white settlers and massacred them; massacred all they could lay their hands upon, sparing neither age nor sex. Consider this incident:

Twelve Indians broke into a farmhouse at daybreak and captured the family. It consisted of the farmer and his wife and four daughters, the youngest aged fourteen and the eldest eighteen. They crucified the parents; that is to say, they stood them stark naked against the wall of the living room and nailed their hands to the wall. Then they stripped the daughters bare, stretched them upon the floor in front of their parents, and repeatedly ravished them. Finally they crucified the girls against the wall opposite this parents, and cut off their noses and their breasts. They also -- but I will not go into that. There is a limit. There are indignities so atrocious that the pen cannot write them. One member of that poor crucified family -- the father -- was still alive when help came two days later.

Now you have one incident of the Minnesota massacre. I could give you fifty. They would cover all the different kinds of cruelty the brutal human talent has ever invented.

And now you know, by these sure indications, what happened under the personal direction of the Father of Mercies in his Midianite campaign. The Minnesota campaign was merely a duplicate of the Midianite raid. Nothing happened in the one that didn't happen in the other.

No, that is not strictly true. The Indian was more merciful than was the Father of Mercies. He sold no virgins into slavery to minister to the lusts of the murderers of their kindred while their sad lives might last; he raped them, then charitably made their subsequent sufferings brief, ending them with the precious gift of death. He burned some of the houses, but not all of them. He carried out innocent dumb brutes, but he took the lives of none.

Would you expect this same conscienceless God, this moral bankrupt, to become a teacher of morals; of gentleness; of meekness; of righteousness; of purity? It looks impossible, extravagant; but listen to him. These are his own words:

The mouth that uttered these immense sarcasms, these giant hypocrisies, is the very same that ordered the wholesale massacre of the Midianitish men and babies and cattle; the wholesale destruction of house and city; the wholesale banishment of the virgins into a filthy and unspeakable slavery. This is the same person who brought upon the Midianites the fiendish cruelties which were repeated by the red Indians, detail by detail, in Minnesota eighteen centuries later. The Midianite episode filled him with joy. So did the Minnesota one, or he would have prevented it.

The Beatitudes and the quoted chapters from Numbers and Deuteronomy ought always to be read from the pulpit together; then the congregation would get an all-round view of Our Father in Heaven. Yet not in a single instance have I ever known a clergyman to do this.

#The Creator’s Act: The Creator #depicted in a grand and majestic manner #creates a multitude of suns and stars #filling the void of space with light and order.#The Archangels’ Discussion: After witnessing this creation #the archangels retire to discuss its significance. They are particularly struck by the concept of “Automatic Law” or “Natural Law #” which governs the universe without the need for constant divine intervention.#Satan’s Perspective: Satan #characterized as thoughtful and bold #leads the discussion. He marvels at the idea of a self-regulating universe #where celestial bodies move in perfect harmony according to unchanging laws.#Introduction of Animals: The Creator plans to introduce animals #which will also be governed by these natural laws. The archangels are curious and somewhat puzzled by this new concept.#Key Themes:#Creation and Order: Twain uses the creation of the universe to explore the idea of a perfectly ordered system governed by natural laws.#Divine Authority and Natural Law: The story emphasizes the supremacy and inviolability of natural law #equating it with divine law.#Skepticism and Curiosity: The archangels #especially Satan #exhibit a mix of awe and skepticism as they try to understand the Creator’s grand design.#Context:#“Letters from the Earth” was written during a difficult period in Twain’s life and reflects his critical views on religion and humanity.

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smileysuh · 7 months ago

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crossroads

🌙 starring. Kim Mingyu & Jeon Wonwoo x afab!Reader

🔮 preview. If one neighbour is a Doberman, then the other is a Golden Retriever. They’re like night and day, and yet, you’re drawn to both, as if some gravitational or celestial power is pulling you to them… it also helps that they both have motorcycles. How had it been so easy to ghost Wonwoo in the past, only to find yourself at a crossroads with his roommate seven months later?

tw/cw. Threesome, unprotected sex, multiple sex scenes, big dick Mingyu, creampie, oral (f/m receiving), blow job, deep throating, hand job, Eiffel tower/spit roasting, breast worship, nipple pinching, nipple licking, panty kink, eating pussy through panties, fingering, squirting, pussy stretching, praise, dirty talk, ‘sir’, dom!Wonwoo, switch!mingyu, blindfold/sensory deprivation, voyeurism, listening to your neighbour have sex, masturbation, reader reads erotica, mutual masturbation, slight dacryphilia, blindfold/sensory deprivation, inklings of humiliation, etc… I pet names: (hers) angel, baby. (Mingyu’s) gyu. (Wonwoo’s) sir.

👹 rating.18+ explicit I wc. 19.8k

🍭 aus. Biker!meanie, booktok!reader, neighbours!au, etc…

☀️ mlist + an. This was not supposed to be this long. I don’t know how this happened.

Prologue

“Who keeps messaging you?” your cousin asks, trying to act nonchalant as he sips his margarita, but you can feel his eyes on you as you stare at your phone.

“The Harley dude,” you sigh, quickly reading the text message.

“The guy who missed your first date because he was napping?” Jeonghan nearly chokes on his drink, setting it down in favor of flashing you a judgemental look.

“Yeah, the same guy who also tried to rebook our first date as a group ride night with all his friends,” you roll your own eyes at the stupidity of men. While the idea is fun, it’s not the way to get to know someone new.

Jeonghan lets out a low whistle. “Sheesh.”

“You can say that again.” You set your phone down, grabbing at your bellini, and relaxing against the patio chair, trying to soak up the sunshine in an effort to calm yourself.

“Well? What did he say?” your cousin presses.

“He said his entire week is free if I want to meet up.”

“And what did you say?”

“Nothing.” You tip your head back, letting out a contented breath. “He had two chances, I’m not about to give him a third.”

“Summer is almost over,” Jeonghan points out. “I know you wanted to find some hot dude with a motorcycle and ride off into the sunset. You’re getting low on time.”

“Honestly, Hannie? This Jeon guy is not worth it.”

One

After a long winter, it’s finally getting warm enough that you can open your apartment windows and enjoy the fresh air. Trees are beginning to blossom, birds are singing songs that act as white noise while you sit at your dining table completing the last few emails for your remote job.

As you’re finishing up your very last correspondence of the day, new noises join in with the robbins and wrens. These noises, however, are nowhere near as pleasant.

There’s a banging outside your door, a few thumps, and a distinctly male voice cursing.

Living in a fairly quiet apartment complex, these sorts of sounds aren’t something you’re used to, and they can only mean one thing; your landlord finally found new tenants for the two-bedroom next door that’s been vacant for over a month.

With a sigh, you close your laptop, wrapping your sweater tightly around your body as you venture toward your door. You can’t help the curiosity bubbling inside of you, and after another deep breath, you decide to take a peak into the hallway beyond.

Two men are struggling to get a couch through the doorway into unit 317. You stay silent, watching the way one man’s biceps bulge with each maneuver. His hair is on the longer side, dark strands licking and curling at his throat, which is covered in a light sheen of sweat from the effort of moving.

“Come on Cheol, we’re almost there,” he encourages the man holding up the other end of the sofa.

“Fuck you, Mingyu,” the other says, stepping back into the apartment and out of your view.

You wait patiently, and after a minute or so, the pretty man moves into the hallway again, giving you a full view of his face. He lets out a deep breath, shaking out his muscular arms- that’s when his eyes meet yours, and you swear your heart skips a beat in your chest.

His mouth curves into a wide grin. “Hi! Sorry if we bugged you with the noise- that couch was not making moving easy.”

“It’s okay,” you assure him quickly. “You must be my new neighbours.” Your gaze shifts past him to the second man, who has appeared in the hallway too.

“Nah- I mean, I am, but this is Cheol, he’s just a friend,” the pretty man tries to explain, stopping in front of you. He wipes his hand along his jean leg, then holds it out to you, “I’m Mingyu.”

You allow him to shake your hand. Despite his attempt to wipe some of the sweat away, his palm is still a little clammy, although, you’re shocked to find that the physical contact isn’t unpleasant.

You tell him your name, watching Cheol trudge past you to the elevator. “So if that guy isn’t your roommate, who is?”

“My buddy Wonwoo. He’s actually visiting family in Korea right now, won’t be moving in till the end of the month.”

“I see,” you nod. “Well, welcome to the building.”

“Thanks,” Mingyu beams again. “If all our neighbours are as friendly as you, I think we’ll like it here.”

“If I’m being honest, we’re a quiet building, lots of us are kind of reclusive,” you try to explain, choosing your words carefully.

You hear Cheol let out a chuckle as he waits for the elevator, and you wonder what he’s found so funny.

“Quiet,” Mingyu repeats, letting out a breath. “Noted. We’ll do our best not to be a disruption.”

You want to believe him, but something in his grin tells you not to.

Two

It’s been about a month and a half since Mingyu moved in. You’ve not seen him, or his roommate, although, you have heard them through your shared wall a few times. One of them - Wonwoo you’re guessing- is pretty into video games, because yelled lines like ‘I’m trying to revive you, dipshit!’ and ‘stop fucking dying so much then!’ have irritated you and interrupted your soft girl movie nights.

From what you can tell, Mingyu’s elusive friend who was visiting Korea is now sharing his bedroom wall with you, and at two AM on a Tuesday night, your suspicion is confirmed. You wake to noises that aren’t gamer screams, they’re screams of pleasure.

Muffled cries of “harder, daddy!�� and “please!” have your skin tingling as you shift under your duvet, feeling suddenly very hot.

As you lay there and listen to the sound of a headboard beginning to hit the wall, you try to decide if you’re annoyed, or horny. The tingling between your thighs, and the heat along your neck makes you think it might be a combination of both.

Part of you wants to bang your fist against the wall, but you’re much too shy to risk any sort of confrontation. Instead, you simply lay there, fighting the need to slip your hand down your sleeping shorts.

You figure the sex will be over soon, but five minutes stretches into fifteen. The woman’s cries have stopped, but the low thumping of a bedframe against the wall has only gotten more intense.

You’re no stranger to kinky shit- you’re an avid reader of smut afterall, and being a voracious reader, your mind comes up with reasons why the girl may have stopped begging. Had Wonwoo put something in her mouth to shut her up? Panties perhapse? Or had he flipped her into doggy position, pressing a hand to the back of her head to force her face against the pillows?

If Mingyu had been hot, his best friend must be sexy too- guys like that travel in packs, and Cheol hadn’t been bad on the eyes either. You imagine a faceless man, muscled and gorgeous, railing some girl not four feet away from you, with only a wall keeping you from seeing the perverse act. You feel dirty, like a voyeur, and you’re equal parts relieved and saddened when the noise finally stops.

You sit in silence, listening to your own heavy breaths for a few minutes, wondering if the sounds will pick up again.

They don’t, and soon, you’re drifting off into a lusty sleep.

Three

You’ve been awoken to the sounds of sex three times now. The idea of approaching the property manager to file a noise complaint has been on your mind, but you can’t find it within yourself to make waves.

Due to all of this, when you finally bump into Mingyu in the building’s shared laundry room, you see it as the perfect chance to quietly resolve the issue without causing trouble.

He’s dressed in gym shorts and a black muscle shirt that shows off his expansive shoulders as he moves wet clothes into the dryer. Standing in the doorway of the laundry room, you’re once again struck by how beautiful your new neighbour is.

With a deep breath to find courage, you appraoch him, going for the washing machine next to his. “Hi,” you greet him.

“Oh, hey neighbour,” Mingyu grins, pausing what he’s doing to look you up and down.

You’re hyper aware of the sleeping shorts that hardly cover your legs, and the sweater you’d tossed on does little to hide the fact that you’re currently braless. Even so, if you don’t bring up the noises now, you’re not sure when you’ll get another chance.

“Hey, do you uh…” your words come out quiet, and you try to raise your voice a little, wanting to sound confident, “do you think you could ask your roommate and his girlfriend to keep it down?”

“Huh?” Mingyu’s brows furrow in confusion.

“The person whose room is next to mine,” you try to explain. “They’ve been kind of loud with uh… a girl, recently.”

“Oh!” You can practically see the lighbulb go off in Mingyu’s eyes. “Sorry, you said girlfriend, and that part stumped me. The last time was about a week ago, yeah?”

“Something like that.”

“Don’t worry, I already talked to him a few days ago. Told him to get his fuck buddies to keep it down- they’re annoying, huh? I thought I was the only one losing sleep over it.”

“Definitely not the only one,” you let out a small laugh. “If I’m being honest, I was considering talking to the property manager about it, but I don’t like to cause issues, so I’m glad we’re on the same page about this.”

“We’re for sure on the same page,” Mingyu assures you. “Thanks for not talking to the manager about this- hey, listen, what if I give you my number, and if it happens again, you just have to text me and I’ll go bang on his door or something?”

“I’d appreciate that,” you grin, watching him pull out his phone so he can grab your digits. “Honestly, I work from home, and for the most part, you guys have been pretty great neighbours.”

“Ooh, one of those post covid remote jobs,” Mingyu nods in understanding. “I mean, I’m out during the days usually, I work at a tattoo shop across town, and Wonwoo sleeps most of the time so he can be awake for his evening bar job.”

“That actually kind of makes sense,” you admit. “I never see you guys around.”

“Well…” Mingyu leans against the dryer, flashing you a boyish grin. “We could change that. You could come over sometime.”

Your heart leaps into your throat. From his body language, and the suggestion, you’re pretty sure this gorgeous man is flirting with you. “I, uh…” you swallow thickly, “maybe.”

“Well, I have your number, and now…” Mingyu types something into his phone and a moment later yours dings, “you have mine. So if you want to take me up on that offer, just shoot me a text.”

“Okay.” The words comes out kind of shaky, and you internally smack yourself for becoming so shy from this pretty man hitting on you.

With a wink, Mingyu leaves the laundry room, and your thoughts are scattered for the rest of the day.

Four

It’s been too long since you’ve seen all your friends from highschool. Soonyoung, Seokmin and Seungkwan are three of the rowdiest guys you know. They love doing bar crawls with you whenever they’re all in town and can find the time.

Seungkwan lives in another city these days, studying law at a prestigious university. Soonyoung travels the country with dance troup. And Seokmin spends hours every day at the theater practicing for new performances and productions.

They’ve taken you to a bar you’ve never been to, and you’re enjoying the booth style seating. Millennial and old classics are playing through the speakers, and every time a good song comes on, the three men start singing, whether it be Cher, or Britney, or even Kesha.

You’re a few drinks deep, but they’re even deeper, and it’s gotten to the part of the evening where they want to hear everything about your love life.

“Okay, book girlie,” Soonyoung slurs, throwing his arm around your shoulders, “spill the beans. Who you fucking?”

You laugh, pushing at his cheek to get his face away from yours. He wreaks of tequila and the Gucci cologne he practically drowns himself in every night before going out. It’s not the most pleasant combination.

“I’m single,” you insist.

“We all know you always have your eye on someone,” Seungkwan insists, leaning over the table to point his finger at you. “Tell us.”

“Okay, maybe there is someone I’m interested in,” you admit.

All three men let out delighted squeals and laughs. “We knew it!” Seokmin exclaims.

“The issue is, he’s my neighbour, and dating in your apartment building can get messy,” you explain.

“We love messy,” Soonyoung insists.

“You love messy,” you correct.

“So who’s this hot neighbour?” Seungkwan asks, wanting to dive into the gossip.

“His name is Mingyu.” You let out a sigh. “He’s tall, and handsome, and his arms-”

“Does he have a motorcycle?” Soonyoung interrupts you. “We know you love men with bikes.”

“I don’t think so,” you shake your head. “But it doesn’t matter. My motorcycle phase was last summer.”

“Baby,” Seungwan frowns dramatically, “Honey, sweetheart- You’re a booktok girl. We all know kinky little sluts like you need their bikertok boy to make their fantasies come true.”

You hate it when Seungkwan reads you to filth like this, and you hate it even more that he’s so right. You’ll always have a soft spot for men on motorcycles- or is it a wet spot?

“Anyways, Mingyu is cute, he gave me his number and invited me over-”

“Bitch, go fuck him!” Soonyoung bellows a little too loudly, and you immediately slap a hand over his mouth, looking around to see if anyone heard him.

That’s when your eyes land on a man behind the bar. His curly dark hair is cute, but when you study his regally handsome face, you realize you recougnize him.

“Fuck,” you whisper, immediately lifting your drink to hide behind it.

“What?” Seungkwan turns in his seat. “The bartender?”

“Babes, he’s been checking you out all night,” Soonyoung grins, cuddling closer to you.

It’s only Seokmin who studies you and asks, “Do you know him?”

“The bartender?” Seungkwan scoffs, as if it’s a stupid idea, although, when he turns to look at you again, his jaw drops. “Fuck, you do know him! Girl, spill!”

“Do you guys remember that Harley dude from the summer? Jeon? The one I ghosted after he missed our first date then suggested a ride night with all his friends to make up for it?” you ask, lowering your voice and continuing to hide behind the glass in your hand.

“Shit, that’s the Harley dude?” Seokmin’s eyes widen in realization.

“Fuck me, this is awkward,” you groan, taking a large sip from your drink. “Can we get out of here?”

“Babes, we just ordered another round,” Seungkwan points out, lifting his full Gin and Tonic to show you.

“Don’t be like this,” Soonyoung pouts. “Harley man is a bartender, so what? He can’t ruin our night. Maybe he doesn’t even recougnize you!”

“If he’s been staring, I bet you he does,” Seungkwan points out, taking a swig of his drink.

“Thanks, Seungkwan,” you say sarcastically, “that really makes me feel so much better.”

Your friend only grins, raising his glass.

You do your best to be calm, but you can��t control the racing of your heart. Your gaze keeps shifting to Jeon, and then, the night takes a turn for the worse: Mingyu walks in, followed closely by Cheol, and some other guy you haven’t met.

The group walks right up to the bartop, and you note the way Mingyu grins at Jeon, holding out a hand so the two can do a slight hug over the counter before the three men take their seats.

“Shit,” you whisper, downing your drink.

“What?” Soonyoung also whispers, following your gaze.

“That’s my neighbour,” you explain. “This is not good.”

“Looks like they know each other,” Seungkwan points out.

“Again,” you sigh, “not helping. Fuck me, I need to go to the bathroom.”

You stand abruptly from the table, darting off to the space at the back of the bar. In the ladies room, you splash your hands with cold water, trying to chase away the fire that licks across your skin. Your heart is still thundering in your chest, and deep breaths don’t do anything to help.

You feel like you’re caged in- like there’s no way out of this bar without running into Jeon and Mingyu.

You’re not sure how long you stay in the washroom, trying to relax- you give your friends time to finish their drinks, and you’re hoping that when you exit, you can simply escape with them, using the three men as a human shield.

When you exit the bathroom, however, you run directly into Mingyu, who’s just coming out of the men’s room.

“Sorry-” he apologizes, only to look you up and down. “No way! Neighbour? Damn, I didn’t expect to see you here!”

“Oh, hi,” you say awkwardly, forcing a smile.

“How’s your night going?” You usually like Mingyu’s happy energy, but right now, it feels nearly overwhelming.

“Good, you?”

“My night’s going great- hey, listen, I want you to meet someone!” Mingyu grabs your hand, and before you can stop him, your large neighbour is dragging you back out into the bar.

As he tugs you closer and closer to Jeon, pieces begin to click in your head, and when you reach the bartop, you’re not even surprised when Mingyu says, “This is Wonwoo, my roommate!” He had mentioned Wonwoo worked at a bar, after all.

“Hi,” you say awkwardly, forcing get another smile.

Jeon - or Wonwoo - looks you up and down. God, he’s even more handsome than his Tinder pictures had made him out to be. But fuck, you’ve heard him fucking other girls through your bedroom wall over three times- and you’d ghosted him-

“Hi,” Wonwoo echoes, his voice all deep and sexy in the loud noise of the bar.

You feel like the wind has been knocked out of you.

“Wonwoo, this is our neighbour, you know, the one I mentioned.” There’s an insinuation in Mingyu’s tone, and the fact that he’d talked about you to Wonwoo has your stomach erupting into erratic butterflies that threaten to catch in your throat.

“Right.” Wonwoo’s tone is so unimpressed, and you’d bet your life the man is holding a grudge over the whole ghosting thing.

“Wait, Y/N, you should join us for a drink!” Mingyu suggests.

“Actually, I’m here with friends, I should really get back to them,” you say awkwardly, tugging your hand away from Mingyu’s grip. “Thanks for the offer though.”

“Right, yeah, okay.” God, Mingyu looks like a kicked puppy, but then he flashes you a smile and your heart melts. “Listen, text me, just to let me know when you get home safe.”

“You got it,” you agree quickly, giving him a tight lipped grin before you nearly stumble over yourself to get back to your table. “Guys, we have to leave, now.”

“What happened?” Seokmin asks, clearly concerned while Seungkwan sighs and pulls out a wad of cash.

“They do know each other,” Soonyoung blurts out.

“Turns out Harley Jeon isn’t just Harley Jeon, he’s also Wonwoo, Mingyu’s roommate,” you quickly explain, grabbing your jacket to wrap around your body.

Soonyoung’s eyes light up in realization. “And they were roommates,” he whispers.

“And I ghosted one of them!” you whisper yell back. “The same one who I’ve heard fucking multiple girls through my wall over three times!”

Seungkwan lets out a chuckle. “Girl. You’re fucked.”

Five

Jeonghan lets out a deep sigh. “You know, when Seokmin texted me to come check on you for some Grade-A Tea, I never expected any of this.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you roll your eyes. “I know I’m in deep shit.”

“Nah, you’re good,” your cousin assures you, standing and stretching. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I wish I had the confidence in myself that you have in me,” you breathe, also rising to your feet. Jeonghan’s been over for a while now, and after giving him all the gossip, you feel like you could use some time to yourself.

“You’ll get there,” your cousin assures you, heading toward your front door so he can slip into his shoes. “Keep me updated.”

“I will. Thanks for coming to see me.”

“Of course,” Jeonghan opens your front door, stepping into the hallway before pulling you into a hug. “If I didn’t have a board meeting tomorrow, you know I’d stay longer.”

“I know. But I’m good,” you assure him. “I think I’ll sleep early tonight. This week has been a lot.”

“Sounds like it,” he nods, releasing you in favor of heading over to the elevator. Before he can press the button, however, the elevator dings, the doors opening. Wonwoo steps out. He stops infront of Jeonghan, giving him a once over before his eyes shift to you, still standing by the doorway to your unit.

Then, to your annoyance, Wonwoo grins, shaking his head and brushing past your cousin.

Jeonghan gets into the elevator, the doors closing, and as Wonwoo walks past you, you can’t help but make waves. “What?”

“I never said anything.” Wonwoo stops in front of you, hands nonchalantly tucked in the leather pockets of his jacket.

“You gave me a look,” you insist.

He shrugs. “It’s just gonna break Gyu’s heart to know you already have a man in your life, that’s all.”

You roll your eyes. “That was my cousin.”

“Sure it was.”

“It was!” You can’t help the way your voice is raising.

“And the guys at the bar?”

“Friends!”

“Right.”

He turns to leave, and you swallow thickly, mind reeling for a comeback.

“I just don’t see how you can be making assumptions about me,” you state.

Wonwoo stops, gaze finding you again. “What do you mean?”

“Just that.. I mean… I’ve heard you fucking girls, mister Jeon, if that’s even your real name!”

He actually grins at your words, eye brows raising in surprise. “Girl, actually, singular. It was one girl. A recent hookup. She’s not into gags like the others, they’re generally pretty quiet for you, aren’t they?”

You’re so shocked by what he’s just said that you physically take a step back, jaw dropping.

“Oh, and by the way,” Wonwoo heads to his door, reaching into his jacket for his keys. “Mister Jeon is what people call my father, I’m sure you know that I prefer to be called Daddy.”

He unlocks his apartment, flashing you a wink before he heads inside. You stand in your doorway for a solid ten seconds, processing his words before you go back to your room to scream into a pillow.

Six

After the events of the week, and work on top of that, a nap the moment you're done sending the last emails of the day is exactly what you need.

Birds are singing outside, your window ajar. The warming air carries the scent of blossoming buds, and you relax against your pillow, enjoying the feeling of your duvet against your skin.

You’re just drifting off when a loud engine jolts you back into consciousness. You flop onto your back, staring at the ceiling.

You’ve been a motorcycle fan for long enough to know the sound of one when you hear it, and as the revving continues, you’d bet your right hand that some jackass is doing burnouts in the alley outside.

It’s probably some enthusiastic douchebag who has finally brought their motorcycle out of the garage after a long winter-

Actually, wait. You know an asshole with a motorcycle. An asshole with a Harley to be exact.

Fucking Jeon Wonwoo.

God, you hate that man.

Grabbing your pillow, you burry your head under it, wishing for the sounds to stop.

Surprisingly, soon enough, you hear the motorcycle take off, with two more engines revving up to follow.

Your apartment complex used to be so nice and peaceful.

It used to be.

Seven

After your nap had been interrupted, you’d trudged around for a while. It’s the evening now, and you have no energy to cook, so you’ve ordered takeout. When you head down to the lobby to grab your food, you bump into Mingyu.

“Look at us, always running into each other,” he grins, watching you step by him to bend down and pick up your takeout.

“Seems like a common theme,” you agree, letting out a sigh.

“You good, neighbour? You look tired.”

“You want the truth?” you ask, straightening to look at him.

“Always.” He holds the door open for you to come back into the apartment complex.

As you head to the elevator, you choose your words carefully, after all, you’re pretty sure Wonwoo was culprit behind the motorcycle incident two hours ago. “I just… I was trying to have a nap after work, been tired lately, and some guy was revving his motorcycle outside my window. He woke me up and I was too irritated to go back to sleep.”

As you enter the elevator, you notice Mingyu’s skin turning pink, and his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly. “Actually… uh… I, uh…” He rubs the back of his neck. “I have a Harley, but uh, I got a new sportsbike, and that was me doing burnouts to test it out a little.”

Your heart lurches into your throat, your jaw dropping. When it comes to your neighbours in 317, you always find yourself conflicted. You’re annoyed at him, but at the same time, the fact that he also has a motorcycle makes this ten out of ten man even ten times hotter-

“Oh,” you look down at your takeout.

“I’m really sorry,” he apologizes quickly. “It won’t happen again- you won’t tell our building manager it was me right? Like, we’re good?”

“Yeah, we’re good,” you let out a breath. “I mean, technically quiet hours don’t start till ten pm, and this was like, five, so I guess it’s my own fault for trying to nap so early.”

“Not your fault,” he assures you. “You definitely look like you need some rest- if it helps, I promise no burnouts near the apartment.” Mingyu even crosses his heart, and your body relaxes, shoulders slumping as you crack a smile.

“Okay, that would be nice.”

The elevator dings as it reaches your floor, and the two of you exit together, closing the short distance to your door.

“Your takeout smells good,” Mingyu notes. “Maybe you could put yourself in a food coma and pass out for a bit, I promise there will be no noise issues tonight.”

“That sounds nice, actually,” you admit.

“Also uh… you know, you still haven’t taken me up on that offer about coming over sometime.”

When you look over at Mingyu, you find him leaning against the hallway wall, staring down at you with soft puppy dog eyes.

“Yeah, I’ve been busy-” you search for an excuse. “Also, I mean, I don’t know if Wonwoo would be good with me coming over.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Mingyu shrugs, which is when you realize that Wonwoo must not have told Mingyu anything about your failed dates or the ghosting.

“He just didn’t seem to like me very much when you introduced us,” you blurt out, grasping for straws.

“He always has a resting bitch face, don’t take it personally,” Mingyu assures you. “Seriously, come over sometime, we don’t bite.”

Mingyu might not, but you get the sneaking suspicion that Wonwoo does.

Eight

The reverse harem adult romance your reading had drawn you in when you’d first opened it, but as time goes by, your mind keeps wandering when you reach the sex scenes.

Threesomes have you imagining Wonwoo and Mingyu, and try as you might, you can’t shake the image from your head.

It doesn’t help that they fit the character personalities, one puppylike lover, and one more stoic and dominant. You can’t help but wonder what the two would be like in bed, and with a groan of frustration, you slot your bookmark between the pages and set the novel down on the bed next to you.

As you sit there, deep in thought, you think about what Mingyu had said about owning a Harley.

That’s when you realize, last summer, when Wonwoo had suggested a Harley ride night as a date- if you had gone with him, would you have met Mingyu?

You decide that Mingyu definitely would have been there.

It’s interesting how the domino effect works- or maybe this is invisible string theory; the idea that, you can pass someone, or have missed chances, but one way or another, that person will always end up in your life.

What would have happened if you’d met Mingyu that way?

What would have happened if you’d met Wonwoo that way?

At the moment, there’s no question as to which of the two neighbours you prefer. Mingyu is happy and welcoming, he always has a smile, and you could see yourself having a great relationship with him- if things were to take a turn that way.

But on the flip side, Wonwoo is more similar to the type you’ve dated in the past.

If one neighbour is a Doberman, then the other is a Golden Retriever. They’re like night and day, and yet, you’re drawn to both, as if some gravitational or celestial power is pulling you to them… it also helps that they both have motorcycles.

How had it been so easy to ghost Wonwoo in the past, only to find yourself at a crossroads with his roommate seven months later?

Nine

You’re outside your apartment waiting for an Uber when two familiar men on motorcycles pull up in front of you.

Wonwoo’s on his Harley. It’s all black, and although you’re not very well verses with motorcycle types, you’re pretty sure it’s a Fat Boy or a Street Bob- but as you stare at the wheels, you begin to lean toward Street Bob.

Mingyu, in contrast, is on a red Kawasaki Ninja, which is evident by the name on the side. He lifts up his visor when he comes to a stop two feet away. “Hey, neighbour,” he greets you. “Waiting for someone?”

“An Uber is picking me up.”

“An Uber?” Mingyu looks around. “Where are you headed?”

“A family thing. We’re going to be drinking so I figured I shouldn’t drive,” you explain.

“Good idea,” he nods, then, without skipping a beat, he asks, “Wanna ride?”

You gaze shifts from Mingyu to Wonwoo, and you can practically see the Harley rider roll his eyes. With an aggressive rev of his engine, Wonwoo bolts off, leaving you and Mingyu in his dust.

“Uh, don’t you two have plans?” you ask.

“We did, but we were just going for a ride. I can take you where you need to be and meet him later,” Mingyu shrugs. “Seriously, don’t mind him.”

You’ve been on a motorcycle once before, and you know enough to understand that the short romper and light spring jacket you’re wearing is not enough to protect you on the back of a bike. And that’s the least of your worries. “I don’t have a helmet-”

Mingyu begins to undo his, and you watch in shock as he pulls it off, shaking out his hair and offering you the red head gear. “Take mine.”

“Isn’t it illegal to ride without one?”

“We’ll be fast- but not dangerous, I’ll be good, I promise. Where are we going?”

With a deep breath, you pull up your Aunt’s house on your phone’s map app, showing it to Mingyu.

“I can get you there in ten minutes, easy,” he says.

“This is not a good idea,” you warn, although you accept the helmet.

“Cancel your Uber,” Mingyu urges softly. “Let me do this for you.”

With one last sigh, you cancel your ride, then, you allow Mingyu to help you onto the back of his bike.

“Have you ever been on one of these before?” he asks.

“Once,” you admit, adjusting the helmet on your head before you tentatively wrap your arms around Mingyu’s large body.

“Just hold on tight.”

“Take care of me,” you retort.

Mingyu grins. “Always.”

A moment later, he’s revving his engine, and the two of you take off on his bike, your clothes whipping around and contorting flat to the curves of your form.

You hold Mingyu tighter, and he takes one hand off his handlebars to rest it over yours for a second, giving you a reassuring squeeze.

When he pulls onto the main road, Mingyu is true to his word about not being dangerous. He doesn’t lane split or push the bike too hard. When you come up to traffic, he waits patiently, resting his elbow on your knee as if this is something the two of you have done together a hundred times before.

You become so lost in how attracted you are to Mingyu- how you have to hug him tight when he accelerates, that the trip is over before you know it. He pulls up to your aunts house, turning to offer you a hand so you can get off the Ninja.

Your legs feel wobbly as you step on solid ground, and Mingyu helps you with the chin clasp of the helmet, removing it easily.

“Thanks for being my backpack,” he smiles.

“Thanks for giving me a ride,” you grin back.

“If you want, you can text me when you’re done, and I’ll get you home safe. I’ll even bring a spare helmet this time, and maybe a proper riding jacket for you.”

“That would be really nice actually.”

“You got it, angel,” Mingyu flashes you a wink before he pulls the helmet onto his head. You move to the sidewalk, standing there to watch him as he gives you one last nod and takes off, the engine loud enough to be heard even as he makes it two blocks away in record time.

A low whistle startles you, and you turn to see Jeonghan standing in the driveway. “Damn, that dude was hot.”

“That’s my neighbour,” you sigh.

“Which one?”

“The good one!”

“You should take him up on that offer of hanging out,” Jeonghan suggests.

“And you should keep your nose out of my love life.”

Your cousin simply laughs. “Never going to happen.”

Ten

The jacket Mingyu brings for you when he picks you up from your family gathering is long enough to be a dress. You struggle with the thick material as you try to get on his bike, and you can see Mingyu grinning from the opening in his full face helmet.

“That’s it,” he encourages you, allowing you to settle behind him.

You pat his thigh when you’re good to go, and the two of you slot down your visors before he takes off.

It’s the late evening now, and being on his bike feels different in the dark. The city lights whip past you, and the lanes are pretty empty for Mingyu to go faster. Now that you’re both in full protective gear, there’s not as much of a need to be safe, although, as you hold tightly to your neighbour, you realize this might be as safe as you’ve ever felt.

You trust Mingyu, in a way that you can’t quite explain.

As it was before, it’s easy to get lost in the act of being on Mingyu’s motorcycle, and before you know it, he’s pulling into your apartment complex’s underground garage.

You hate that the ride has ended so quickly, and you hate it even more that you have to let go of Mingyu’s large, warm body. You stand next to the motorcycle while he gets off of it, and you wait patiently for him to take off his helmet before he helps you with your own.

“Do you have plans for the rest of the night?” Mingyu asks while the two of you walk toward the elevator.

“Not really,” you admit. In fact, you’re feeling a little tired. You hadn’t drank as much at the family dinner as you thought you would, and sleep sounds pretty good right about now.

“Do you wanna come see my place?”

“I really shouldn’t-”

“If you’re worried about Wonwoo, he went to work before I came to pick you up,” Mingyu tells you. “Come on, just one drink or something. Don’t you wanna compare your one bedroom to my two bedroom?”

You are curious to see what sort of decorations these two men have- they’re mid to late twenties at best, and you love to laugh.

“Fine, one drink,” you let out a breath as you enter the elevator, turning to look up at Mingyu. “Why do you care so much if I come over? Like, honestly?”

Mingyu meets your gaze, fiddling with the helmet in his hand. “I guess maybe… because I like you.” He shrugs. “You’re a good neighbour, and an even better backpack. You look cute in my jacket- why wouldn’t I want to get to know you better?”

“That’s a good answer,” you admit with a laugh.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he grins.

When the two of you exit the elevator, you follow Mingyu past your apartment to his own door. You watch the way he pulls out his keys, fumbling a little to get into his place. He lets you enter first, and you step into the foreign home with a curious gaze.

You slip out of your shoes, undoing his jacket around your shoulders as you wander further into the apartment. The two men are cleaner than you would have expected. The furniture is minimalist, and mostly cream coloured- which isn’t a shade you would have thought would match the motorcycle riding, black wearing men. You wonder how the couch in the den is so well kept- there’s not a hint of stains on the nicely textured cover, no beer or food-

There’s no dirty dishes in the sink, no miscellaneous bowl of car keys and other shit that guys always tend to carry in their pockets.

In fact, this place almost looks like a ‘girl sanctuary,’ the type of pintrest board apartment inspo you’d find online.

“What do you think?” Mingyu asks, coming up behind you and helping you take off his jacket.

“It’s really nice,” you say honestly. “Not what I expected.”

“I’m a bit of a neat freak,” he admits with a chuckle.

So he’s big, muscled, kind, rides a motorcycle, and he knows how to do housewife cleaning duties? How did you ever manage to score a jackpot like him for a neighbour?

“Anyways, take a seat on the couch, I’ll grab some beer. You drink beer, right?”

“Sure.” You move to settle into the sofa, and Mingyu brings over two cans of lager from the fridge, cracking one open before he hands it to you.

“Cheers,” he grins, gently clinking his can against your own.

You take a sip, focusing on the way Mingyu sits on the other end of the couch, angling his body toward you. “So… you mentioned you work at a tattoo parlour? How did you get into that?”

“I’ve always been into art,” he explains. “My buddy Cheol was more into tattoos with me, opened up his own shop and encouraged me to apprentice with him after I graduated from uni with my arts degree. I wish there was more to it, but I really just got kind of lucky.”

The list of his good qualities just keeps getting better and better- a university educated man? Yes please.

“I guess, maybe what I’m wondering is why you don’t have any tattoos yourself?” you ask, looking at the beautiful unblemished skin shown off by his muscle shirt.

Mingyu laughs, also gazing down at his arms. “Would you judge me if I told you I’m scared of needles.”

“That’s cute,” you grin, sipping your beer.

“You’re cute,” he retorts, mirroring your motion and trying to hide his smile behind the can in his hand. “Anyways, you said you’d been on a motorcycle before?”

“Yeah, just once.”

“Tell me about it?”

“There’s nothing much to say,” you admit. “Went on a date with a guy, he mentioned he had a sports bike, offered to take me for a ride, so I said yes.”

“So…” Mingyu taps his fingers along his beer can, “you like guys with bikes?”

You let out a laugh. “Maybe.”

“I’m feeling better and better about my odds,” Mingyu smiles.

“Your odds are very good,” you tell him. Now it’s your turn to drink in an effort to hide the massive grin on your face.

“Yeah? I was a little worried, I mean, I gave you my number and you didn’t text- took a little bit of convincing to get you on my bike, to get you into the apartment- I hope I didn’t overstep anything there.”

“No, you’re fine,” you assure him. “I can just… be a bit shy sometimes.”

“It’s cute though.”

Your skin heats at the compliment, heart thundering in your rib cage. “What about you? I’m into bikes, are you into cute girls?”

“A hundred percent,” he nods. “They’re my favourite kind.”

“Do you have any experience dating neighbours?”

“No, but I’d like that to change.”

“Do you think being neighbours could complicate things?” you enquire.

“I mean… if I didn’t see you as girlfriend material, then yeah, I’d never turn a neighbour into a hookup, but then again, I’m not huge into hookups to begin with,” Mingyu explains.

“You know… I’m trying to find even one red flag about you, and I’m seriously coming up empty.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

You smile, looking down at your nearly finished beer. “I guess not.”

“How about you? Any red flags?” he asks.

Aside from the downright pornographic books you read on the daily? “Probably not.”

“Probably not, huh?” Mingyu chuckles. “Maybe I should be the one keeping a look out for red, but then again, with rose tinted glasses, red wouldn’t stand out that much to me anyways.”

You’d not expected your night to turn out like this. You’d figured it would be a nice family dinner, some drinking, then an Uber home and sleep. Instead, you’ve been on Mingyu’s bike twice, worn his jacket, his helmet- and now you’re here in his house, with your hot neighbour flirting with you in the most wholesome way-

In your tired state, you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. Your shyness is taking over- the fear of the unknown, of making a misstep, clouding your enjoyment of the peaceful space Mingyu has created in his apartment.

“Listen, don’t take this the wrong way,” you sigh, finishing your beer, “But I’m really tired-”

“Yeah, no worries, I said just one beer and it looks like you’re done,” Mingyu is quick to down the rest of his, reaching out to take your can so he can move to the kitchen. He places the empties under his sink, and you follow, keeping your distance.

“Thank you for this though. I know we didn’t talk for that long, but I feel like I know you better,” you admit.

“I’ve still got a lot of questions for you,” he grins. “But I’ll save those for another time. I’m not about to get in the way of a girl and her beauty sleep.”

“I appreciate that.” The two of you head to his door, and you slip your shoes on.

“Can I give you a goodbye hug or something?” Mingyu suggests. “It would feel weird letting you leave without one.”

You nod, allowing Mingyu to pull you close to his chest. He’s so tall, your cheek pressed tight to his well defined pecs- and fuck, he smells good. This isn’t the overpowering Gucci type cologne that Soonyoung wears, it’s a more muted, spicy yet clean scent. It’s the type of scent that encourages you to take a deep breath, your body relaxing as your neighbour hugs you.

“Thanks for coming over,” Mingyu whispers.

When you go to pull away, you find yourself tilting your head to look up at him. Your eyes meet, and it feels as if you’re hanging in a moment frozen in time. Your breath catches when his gaze dips down to your mouth, and you know what’s coming next.

His hand cups your cheek, stroking your skin, and he gives you ample opportunity to pull away, but you don’t. You simply stare into his beautiful chocolate brown eyes, waiting for him to make the move that you know is going to capture your heart completely.

When his lips finally touch yours, that sense of relief washes over you again. You shift in his embrace, wrapping your arms around the back of his neck to pull him closer. Mingyu lets out a soft sigh of contentment, parting his mouth ever so slightly so he can lick at your lower lip.

You mirror the motion, your tongues gently clashing.

You’ve met some guys who try to force their way into your mouth, who try to dominate you- but Mingyu isn’t like that. He’s soft and fluid, reacting to your movements moreso than anything else. His hands slip down to your hips, holding you close while you kiss each other.

No first kiss has ever felt this natural, and like with riding the bike, it becomes so easy to get lost in your neighbour.

When you finally break away, you’re both breathing heavily. You can taste the beer on your lips, and it makes you release a small laugh, giddy joy surging through your entire body.

“That was…” Mingyu swallows thickly, “wow.”

“Yeah,” you agree. “Wow.”

Eleven

It’s been two weeks since you started getting to know Mingyu better. You’ve gone on motorcycle dates, stopped at food trucks while enjoying the sunshine of spring, and when Wonwoo’s not around, Mingyu has invited you over for movie nights.

While there’s been lots of kissing, and a growing desire for more, the two of you haven’t gone much farther than second base. You kind of like taking things slow with Mingyu, he’s very good at not applying any pressure, and you adore that about him.

You’re hanging out in your apartment when Mingyu calls you, asking if you have any garlic he can borrow for his meal plan. Part of you thinks it’s a little late for dinner, but you agree anyways.

Sometimes you think he comes up with this sort of thing just to see you, stealing kisses at your door- but this time, when he comes over to grab ingredients, he doesn’t simply wait in the hallway.

“Can I come in?” he asks, peering at your apartment beyond.

“Come in?” you repeat.

“Yeah, I mean, you’ve seen my place, and I haven’t really gotten to see yours yet.” He sounds nonchalant, but you can tell that your personal space - the way you conduct yourself in your own home - is something that makes him curious.

“Okay.” You step away from the door. “Come on in.”

Mingyu bends down to kiss you as he steps over the threshold, and you grin against his lips, enjoying the way his hands softly grab your waist.

“I’m guessing you didn’t really need garlic, did you?” you tease.

“Nope, I ate dinner after work.” Mingyu takes his shoes off while you close the door behind him, and he looks around your apartment. “It’s nice in here.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want to give me a tour?” he asks.

You let out a giggle. “Okay.”

You’ve never given a formal tour of your apartment before, but you do your best, showing him through the kitchen and the small living room area. You’ve got certain knick knacks that are special to you, and you explain them to Mingyu while he listens with a smile.

Finally, you make it to your bedroom. Before you can even open your mouth to say anything, Mingyu’s arms are wrapping around you, his chest pressed to your back, lips on your throat.

He already knows your sweet spots, and you let out a soft sigh, tilting your head to make things easier for him.

“Gyu…”

“Do you want me to stop?” he whispers in your ear, nibbling gently on the lobe.

“No.”

You hadn’t expected this tonight, but you’re at a point now where you don’t want to wait. Mingyu isn’t the type to use you and leave you. He’s made his intentions clear, and the sexual chemistry between the two of you is undeniable.

You find yourself turning in Mingyu’s embrace, cupping his cheek so you can draw his lips to yours. He lets out an immediate groan of satisfaction, and it goes straight to your core, which flutters with delight. You kiss him deeply, pouring all your wants and desires into the meeting of your mouths.

Then your hands find the bottom of his shirt, and before you know it, you’re stripping the fabric from Mingyu’s body and tracing your hands over the muscles you love so much.

His body jolts when you tease your nails across his lower abdomen, and it prompts Mingyu to reach down, cupping your ass and easily lifting you up. Your legs wrap around his hips, tongues clashing in a lusty battle as he carries you to your bed.

Your hands trace along his strong shoulders as he lays you onto the mattress, looking down at you with blown pupils. He’s breathing heavily already, and you can see the bulge of his cock through his jeans.

You’ve grinded against him before, sitting on his lap on his couch while he rubs your tits through your comfortable evening sweaters, so you know how big Mingyu is, but knowing he’s about to be inside of you makes your heart race in an entirely different way.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Mingyu asks again, straightening to look down at you.

“Uh huh,” you sit up, meeting his gaze. Then you reach out, undoing his buckle while keeping steady eye contact.

“Fuck,” Mingyu groans, chest heaving with each breath. “You don’t have to-”

“Don’t have to what?” you tease, moving onto the zipper, which you tug down roughly.

“Don’t have to-” he swallows thickly. “I want to make you feel good.”

“What if you do that after?” you suggest. “I want to make you feel good first.”

“Fuck, Angel, okay.”

“Yeah?” You raise a brow at him, hooking your fingers in his jeans and briefs.

“Yeah,” he nods quickly. “Do whatever you want- whatever you want.”

You tug his pants down, allowing them to bag at his knees. You’re already much too focused on the cock in front of you to care about getting him fully undressed.

Your eyes take in Mingyu’s rock hard length. You’re not great with measurements, but you swear he must be seven or eight inches. He’s got a pretty mushroom tip, all flushed and pink. There’s a prominent vein running along the underside of him, and it makes your mouth water.

You haven’t sucked cock in a while, but you’d read a very good erotica about it last night, and you know exactly what to do.

Grabbing the base of him, you angle Mingyu’s cock slightly upward, running your tongue along the vein.

“Shit,” Mingyu groans, hands flying to your head. He doesn’t apply any pressure, simply strokes you as you take the tip past your lips, suckling on it and twirling your tongue. “You’re- fuck, you’re good at this.”

You let out a happy hum, and the vibration makes him twitch, pushing him further into your mouth.

Your eyes are closed now, and you allow yourself to enjoy the act of pleasuring Mingyu. After being so patient with you over the past few weeks, he deserves it. The sounds he’s letting out are more than enough encouragement for you, and soon, your drool begins to drip down to your fingers, making it easier for you to pump his neglected shaft.

There’s no way in Hell you’ll ever be able to fit all of him in your mouth, but unless he’s used to dating women schooled in oral aerobics or some shit, you doubt any of his past lovers have ever achieved that feat either.

Instead, you focus most of your attention on the tip, knowing that the head of his cock is where he’s got a lot of his nerve endings.

Your tongue dips along his slit, tasting the salty precum. Mingyu moans loudly above you, fingers threading through your hair.

“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna cum too fast,” he warns you.

Part of you wants him to cum, so you go even harder- only for Mingyu to gently pull you off of him.

You blink up at the gorgeous man, pleased to find that he’s flushed. His chest, shoulders, neck and cheeks are all a pretty pink colour, and he’s panting heavily. “Seriously, Angel, I don’t want to cum yet.”

“What if I want you to cum?”

“I’m not making you swallow the first time we sleep together,” Mingyu states, and you can tell that it’s a hard boundary. “And I’m not cumming on you either- I think…” he licks his lips, “I think it’s my turn to make you feel good now.”

“Yeah?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

Then Mingyu leans down over you, grabbing your shirt and tugging it off. Your pants are discarded next, left on the floor next to his own while he adjusts you on your bed.

He’s left your bra and panties on, and when his lips find yours again, you kind of appreciate that he’s intent on more foreplay.

Your core is aching through the cotton fabric, and your nipples are pressing up toward the cups still confining them. It’s driving you crazy as he kisses you deeply, but then one of his hands reaches up to massage you through your bra, and you let out a sinful whine.

“Take it off,” you whimper, “please.”

Mingyu’s mouth moves from your lips to your throat, and he reaches under you, undoing the clasp. He gently pulls the bra from your form, and his kisses finally make it to your breasts.

His soft hair is teasing your skin with each kiss, but when his lips wrap around your sensitive nipple, you can’t even find it within yourself to care about the slight ticklish sensation. Mingyu’s got your full attention now, his teeth gently dragging across the hardened bud, making you cry out even louder.

You grab at his broad shoulders, holding onto him for dear life, wriggling under his large form.

His cock is pressing between your legs, rubbing against your pussy through the thin fabric of your panties.

“Fuck, Gyu-” you whimper. “I want you so bad.”

He groans in response, moving to your other breast to pay it as much attention as he had the first. Your neighbour takes his time, and you enjoy every second of it, although you’re absolutely desperate for more.

You want him to take the lead, as you lean more toward a submissive temperament in bed, despite the ballsy way you’d approach sucking his cock for the first time.

You wonder if he’s aching the way you are- if he’s throbbing with need for you the way your pussy is already trying to clench around nothing, anticipating the cock that’s going to split you open in a way that no man ever has before.

Unable to help yourself anymore, you reach down between your bodies, grabbing his length and pumping him gently. Mingyu groans against your breasts, giving you one last lick before he brings his mouth up to your own again.

“Angel, fuck-” he practically whimpers, thrusting toward your hand. “You’re not ready yet.”

“I’m ready,” you try to assure him.

“Trust me,” Mingyu’s hand slips into your panties, two fingers teasing your core, “As wet as you are, you’re not ready for me.”

“Gyu-” You want to argue, but when he pushes two digits into your core, you realize he’s right. Because even with two fingers, you feel like he’s stretching your tight walls.

You’re so wet that it makes it easy for Mingyu to begin finger fucking you, his mouth finding your throat so he can kiss your sweet spot desperately while you continue to stroke his cock.

“Wanna make you cum once,” he groans, “before- fuck, before I take you.”

Your core throbs at his words, and it’s clear from the smile you feel against your skin that Mingyu can feel the way your body is reacting to him.

“Do you like when I talk dirty to you, Angel?” he asks.

“Yeah.” You nod, applying more pressure as you stroke him off.

“You’re already taking my fingers so well, who got you this wet?”

“You did, Gyu,” you whimper.

“Can you cum with just fingers? Or should I rub your sensitive little clit too?”

“My clit-”

His palm immediately finds the bud of nerves, and you let out a strangled gasp, your eyes rolling into the back of your head. “Fuck-” Your hand stops on his cock in favour of grabbing both of his shoulders.

“Like this?” he asks, applying a little more pressure that has you wiggling beneath him.

“Yeah, just like that,” you groan, threading your fingers through his hair, guiding him to continue kissing your throat while he finger fucks you open.

“Have you wanted this as much as I have?”

“Even more,” you confess.

“Not possible,” he retorts, but by the squelching of your pussy, you’re pretty sure you have him beat. You don’t have the energy or the mental focus to fight him on this, so you simply give in to the pleasure he’s providing you. “So good for me.”

“Gyu-” you whimper, legs shaking as your orgasm builds much too fast in the pit of your stomach.

“Always so good for me,” he continues. “The best backpack. The best neighbour. The best girl-”

You cry out as your orgasm slams into you with no warning. Something about this brand of praise has made you feral, and your core throbs around Mingyu’s fingers as he works you through your high.

“Just like that,” he coos. “So good for me.”

You draw his lips to yours, kissing him breathlessly. He kisses you back, tongue invading your mouth and gently stroking your own.

You’re practically shaking by the time your orgasm is over, and Mingyu pulls his hand out of your panties. “I’m gonna take these off now,” he tells you, pressing a kiss to your nose. “And grab a condom.”

“Actually…” You bite at your lip, meeting his gaze. “I’m on birth control.”

He pauses for a moment, and you can see the wheels practically turning in his head. “And… I mean, I know I’m clean-”

“I’m clean too,” you assure him. ‘It’s uh… it’s been a while for me, since I… well, you know.”

You can feel your skin heating at the admission of your near celibacy over the past few months. While you’ve imagined fucking all sorts of heros and villains in your books, the only thing that’s been inside you recently has been your six inch glittery pink dildo.

“And you uh… you want me to cum inside?” Mingyu clarifies.

“Please?”

Mingyu lets out a shaky breath, then he nods. “Okay, yeah, I can do that.”

He tugs your panties down your legs, and before you know it, the two of you are completely naked. Mingyu returns between your thighs, his arm muscles bulging as he holds himself over you, one hand grabbing the base of his cock so he can tease himself through your pussy lips.

“Can I convince you to let me eat you out first?”

“I need you,” you tell him, on the verge of crying if you don’t get your way.

“Another time, then.”

“Another time,” you agree with a laugh.

The tip of his cock teases by your clit and it makes your entire body jolt at the sensitivity.

“If it’s uh… if it’s too much,” Mingyu licks his lips, tearing his gaze from your core so he can look you in the eyes, “if it’s too much just let me know and I’ll stop.”

“Gyu, please, I’ll be okay-” you try to assure him, although, you’re not sure if you’re even certain with yourself on this one. There’s a possibility you might not even be able to walk tomorrow, but that’s a risk you’re more than willing to take.

He brings the tip of his cock down to your wet hole, gently pushing into you. The head alone is enough to have you moaning, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and throwing your head back against the pillows.

“Fuck-”

“Yeah,” his breath is hot against your chest, “I know, I’m sorry.”

It’s so endearing that the man is sorry his cock is so big.

“Don’t be sorry,” you let out a laugh, “I’ll just have to get used to you.”

“I like the sound of that,” Mingyu admits, pushing another inch past your wet walls. “Fuck, you have no idea how good you feel.”

“Just wait till you’re fully inside of me,” you whisper, closing your eyes and doing your best to relax your body so you can take him.

Mingyu lets out a groan, hips gently thrusting so he can coat his cock in your wet juices. Each movement has him burying deeper and deeper, earning sounds of pleasure from your lips.

Your nails claw at his shoulders, but it’s clear that Mingyu is too focused on your pussy to even care or notice.

“Almost there,” he tells you, capturing his bottom lip between his teeth.

Nothing in the world has ever felt like Mingyu, and as his hips finally come flush to your own and he lets out a sigh of relief, you know that there’s no coming back from this.

You both groan “Fuck” in unison, crashing your lips together a moment later as he begins to move. He starts off slow and gentle, his cock hitting spots so deep that you swear he’s rearranging your guts

You’ve spent years reading erotica, imagining what great sex would really look like, and now, you’re finally experiencing it for yourself.

You’ve never gone completely mind numb for someone before, but with Mingyu, you’re reduced to feral instinct. Sounds like the ones leaving your lips right now are not sounds that have ever come out of you before, and you swear you’ve never been this wet in your life.

Each thrust has Mingyu’s tip rubbing against a place that has you seeing stars, and as he picks up his pace, it’s the most you can do to keep kissing him even while wanting to scream with pleasure.

Your nails dig into his shoulders, and when Mingyu releases a grunt, bringing his mouth to your throat so he can gently bite at your skin, you realize he kind of likes the pain.

The thought has your pussy tingling with even more delight, and Mingyu groans loudly.

“So good,” he moans. “So fucking good.”

“Don’t stop, please, fuck- no one has ever fucked me like this before-”

From the way Mingyu fucks you even harder, it’s clear he also has a praise kink. It’s funny how often praise and pain go hand in hand in pleasure.

You’re thankful for all the books you’ve read about this sort of thing, because they allow you to read Mingyu in a way that you’ve never imagined being able to read someone. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and you adore it.

Mingyu lifts his thigh, angling himself better on the bed so each thrust can go as deep as possible. Your headboard is hitting the wall now, and part of you almost wishes Wonwoo was home so you could annoy him with the sound as much as he’s annoyed you with it.

But at the same time, you’re glad Wonwoo is probably at work. As interesting as being a vouyer is when you’re the one listening in, due to your interesting past with your Harley loving neighbour, you’re not sure how you’d feel about him being privy to this intimate moment you’re sharing with Mingyu.

It’s clear Mingyu is completely present with you. From the sounds escaping him, you know that he’s not thinking about anyone else listening in. His ability to be completely enraptured by you makes it easier for you to get lost in him again, and when you draw his lips to yours, your mind goes pleasantly blank once more.

You’re not sure how long he fucks you like this, but soon, his hand finds your clit again, and you realize he wants you to cum with him.

“Can you give me one more?” he asks, looking down at you with those eyes you’ve come to adore.

“Yeah,” you nod, already feeling the tightening of your abdominal muscles. You’re still sensitive from your first orgasm, and it’s way too easy for him to get you there again, especially with the way his cock drags against your inner walls and sets your entire body on fire.

“Fuck, you’re getting so tight, Angel, holy shit-” Mingyu groans deeply, pressing his forehead against your own. Each panting breath, each whimpered moan and grunt that escapes Mingyu has you closer and closer to the edge.

He should seriously consider getting a job reading erotica for money, like on the Quinn app or something, because fuck, no man has ever sounded this sexy before.

“Come on,” he encourages you, “I won’t be able to last, fuck- you’re gonna cum with me, right?”

“Yeah-”

“You’re close?”

“Yes-” You dig your nails into his shoulders, closing your eyes and focusing on the way he’s circling your clit.

“Please, please, please,” he practically begs, bringing his lips to your ear. “Be a good girl and cum for me again, come on, Angel, cum on my cock.”

You explode around him, crying out. Your legs tighten around his hips, and Mingyu’s entire body shudders as he cums with you. You can feel your core throbbing around him, milking him of his cum as he fills you to your absolute limit.

You’re both gasping, holding each other like life lines while orgasms ravage your bodies. It’s Heaven, but from the way your muscles are contracting, it’s also a little bit of Hell. Nothing has felt this good, but you know you’re going to be exhausted in the morning- fuck, you’re already exhausted.

Mingyu’s thrusts have faltered, but he tries to ride you through your highs. Soon, he’s half collapsing on top of you, your sweaty chests pressed together. Then he’s kissing you desperately, and it feels like you’re both pouring a thousand unsaid words into the meeting of your lips.

You make out for a short while, and then Mingyu pulls out of you, reaching for the kleenex box on your nightstand. “Here,” he offers, holding it between your thighs to stop any cum from dripping onto the bed.

“Thanks,” you let out a small laugh. “I’m gonna head to the bathroom.”

“Good idea.”

Your legs are wobbly when you stand up, and it reminds you of the first time you’d gotten off the back of his bike.

You don’t mind Mingyu making it hard for you to walk, in both ways.

Inside the bathroom, you do your best to use the toilet and clean up the cum. After double checking yourself in the mirror and deciding to brush your teeth for good measure, you head back to your bedroom… which is where you find Mingyu flipping through the most recent book you’ve been reading.

Your heart lurches into your throat, body freezing in the doorway.

“I didn’t know you read this sort of thing,” Mingyu muses, looking up at you.

“What?” you squeak.

“Erotica,” he responds casually. “This seems interesting though.”

You slowly approach the bed, joining Mingyu under the covers while he reaches to put your book back on your nightstand.

“Uh…” you don’t even know what to say. “I didn’t mean for you to see that.”

Mingyu laughs, pulling you close to his chest. “Why not? It’s not like I’m judging you.”

“You’re not?”

“Nope. Why would I? I think I read somewhere that men like visual porn and women lean towards the written stuff, nothing to be ashamed of.”

He really is the perfect man.

“Plus, I keep seeing shit on tiktok about booktok girls needing their bikertok boy, I don’t mind filling that role for you.” Another nonchalant comment that makes your heart do somersaults. “Although… aren’t all of you booktok girls into masked men and threesomes and shit?”

His words make you hide your face against his chest, shyness overcoming you.

“Sorry, was that an overstep?” he laughs, rubbing your back with a large, warm hand.

“No, I’m just not used to talking about this, especially not with guys I just slept with.”

“The erotica you read is the fantasy you’re interested in, it would be a shame never to talk about it,” Mingyu muses. “That threesome between the demon knight and the guardian angel seemed pretty interesting.”

“God, you really weren’t supposed to read the book on my nightstand.” You can feel your skin getting hotter with embarrassment with each passing second.

“You’re adorable.” Mingyu cuddles you closer. “Look, I’m just going to put this out there, and if your answer is a no, then it’s a no… If you ever did want to try a threesome, Wonwoo would be into it.”

Now your heart is really racing, and your entire body stiffens in Mingyu’s embrace.

“Shit, my bad for even suggesting it,” Mingyu apologizes immediately.

“It’s not that…” you take a deep breath. If you’re going to continue things with Mingyu, he needs to know about your past - however unimportant it is - with Wonwoo. “Look… I uh… I matched with Wonwoo on a dating app last summer, nothing came out of it, but, I don’t know, I still feel awkward around him.”

Mingyu is silent for a few seconds, and you’re too scared to look up at his face, too scared of the expression you might find there.

“That would actually explain a lot,” Mingyu says finally.

“It would?”

“Yeah, when I first introduced you two, he was more of an asshole than usual. And that first time I offered you a ride on my bike, he just took off. I kind of chalked it up to him being socially awkward sometimes around cute girls, but, now things make a bit more sense.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

“It’s all good,” Mingyu assures you, rubbing your back. “Honestly, I’m pretty tired. How do you feel about the two of us staying here tonight, cuddling till we fall asleep, and talking more about this in the morning?”

You let out a sigh of relief. “That actually sounds perfect.”

Twelve - Wonwoo

As if listening to you and Mingyu fuck the first time wasn’t enough, Wonwoo had been woken up at three am, and then again at seven to the sound of your moans carrying through his walls.

His room is dark thanks to his black out curtains, but in the blackness of his room, Wonwoo finally snaps. He’d done his best to wear noise cancellers the first time, to put his head under his pillow the second, but now, Wonwoo has lost all of his resolve.

Your small whimpers are simply too hard to resist, and as Wonwoo’s hand slips down to his aching cock, he can’t help but wonder what would have happened if things had worked out with you all those months ago. It could be him that you’re under right now, not his best friend, and that’s a conflicting thought.

Wonwoo lets out a quiet sigh as he begins to stroke his hard length. He closes his eyes, focusing on the muffled sounds of pleasure that make it through the walls.

When Mingyu had first mentioned that Wonwoo’s escapades had been keeping you up, he’d dismissed it, but now after being woken three times, he can see your annoyance.

He’ll have to try to go easier on you.

As Wonwoo works himself up to your moans, he wonders if you’ve ever been in this exact situation; touching yourself while he got off with someone else just a few feet through a wall.

The thought sends a shiver up Wonwoo’s spine and he shifts under his duvet, tossing the fabric off of himself, abdominal muscles clenching with delight.

From the sound of Mingyu’s thrusts and the headboard hitting the wall, Wonwoo’s pretty sure Mingyu is close already- fuck, he would be too if he had you to bury his morning wood into. And from the noises escaping you, Wonwoo knows you’re just as close.

He applies more pressure to his aching cock, speeding up his strokes- Wonwoo wants to cum with you and his roommate, although he’s not quite sure why.

Sure, once you both cum, his entertainment is over, but there’s a need to be paired with you both, something that goes beyond a voyeuristic act like watching porn, which he could easily switch to when you’re finished if he wanted to prolong the experience.

A muffled “Fuck, I’m close” has Wonwoo’s entire body tensing, and as your moans crescendo, the tightly wound knot inside of him snaps. He lets out a gasp, pumping his cock while ropes of his own cum paint his chest.

He wishes his hand was you, but the image of you instead of his hand is enough to make another wave of pleasure pass over him. He works himself through it to the point of overstimulation, finally stopping when the headboard sounds cease.

Wonwoo lays there for a moment, eyes closed, catching his breath.

When he finally turns his phone flashlight on and looks down at his chest, he realizes he’s cum more listening to you and Mingyu fuck than he’s probably ever cum inside of a girl.

It’s then that Wonwoo realizes how truly screwed he is.

Thirteen

Seungkwan had nearly spat out his drink when you’d revealed Mingyu’s offer to invite Wonwoo into your bed. Soonyoung’s jaw had dropped, and it’s stayed that way. Seokmin looks like he’s having a panic attack, his cheeks all flushed, his hands tugging at the neckline of his dress shirt.

“So what are you going to do?” Seungkwan asks finally, taking a sip of his Gin and Tonic with his wide eyes glued to you.

“I’m honestly not sure,” you admit, letting out a sigh.

“Bitch,” Seungkwan rolls his eyes, “don’t give us that. You read smutty threesome shit all the time, and here you are, being propositioned by your hot neighbour and his best friend, who both ride motorcycles, I might add- this is a fucking no brainer and we all know it.”

“You’ve been wanting a proper fuck session forever,” Soonyoung agrees.

“It’s actually like… one of your biggest things,” Seokmin points out, nodding.

“But don’t you think this would be messy?” you ask. “Like, if these were randoms I’d never see again, it would be one thing- but they live next to me, and I’m low key dating Mingyu. Wonwoo doesn’t seem like the polyamory type.”

“Babes,” Seungkwan reaches a hand across the table to squeeze your forearm, “This doesn’t have to be polyamory. Wonwoo can just be some dude that fucks you with his bestie sometimes. You can mostly focus on Mingyu, I mean, after all, we all know you and Wonwoo don’t even really like each other after the whole… ghosting thing.”

“Which is so valid,” Seokmin assures you, also reaching out to grab your hand. “Who suggests a group motorcycle trip as a first date, that was very stupid.”

“Plus, didn’t you mention hearing Wonwoo fuck some girl through your wall?” Soonyoung asks, playing with the straw in his bellini. “I bet you’re wondering why she was being so loud. I mean, obviously his dick game must be good.”

“I have been wondering,” you admit. “Mingyu is so soft with me, so good and gentle- Wonwoo seems like he might be the opposite.”

“And you’ll never really know until you give this a try.” Seungkwan pats your hand encouragingly. “I think you have your answer, babes. Go make those smutty dreams of yours come true, or you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

Fourteen

Mingyu’s been coming over more and more often. Even though his place is just next door, he tends to have a preference for holding you until he passes out in your bed. You don’t mind, being in his arms helps you get the best rest you’ve had in ages, and you never feel closer to him than you do when you wake up next to him in the morning.

It’s a Sunday, and you’re laying in bed. Mingyu had gotten up, decided he’d wanted you for breakfast, fucked your brains out, and now, you’re stroking each others skin while you catch your breaths.

“Are you thinking about something?” Mingyu asks, and you realize he must have noted your silence.

You take a deep breath, looking up into his eyes. He’s done his best to foster an environment of safety- you know you can talk to him about anything, and now seems as good a time as any to broach a few subjects that have been weighing you down.

“What are we doing?” you ask.

“We’re cuddling?”

You let out a laugh. “No, I mean… what are we doing? Like… I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you, and from the way you spoke at the start of all of this, it sounded like you were looking for a relationship, but ever since you mentioned inviting Wonwoo into bed, I guess I’m just a little confused about… the trajectory of this. Sharing the girl you want to date exclusively with your bestie just doesn’t seem like a usual start to a new relationship.”

“Valid question,” he nods. “I can see where I caused some confusion… I guess, I mean- It’s not that I want to date you exclusively, I already am dating you exclusively, and I have been since the start.”

While this is news to you, you suppose it’s not the most surprising thing. Mingyu has been spending so much time with you lately, he’d have to be Superman or the world’s more snakey person to be able to juggle anyone else.

“When it comes to the whole Wonwoo thing- If I’m being honest, we’ve been friends forever. We’ve had like… three or four threesomes together? So I guess I feel comfortable inviting him because we have that foundation of trust there, and based on the stuff you read - correct me if I’m wrong - but I think a threesome is on your bucket list.”

Now this is some hot gossip. You’d never for a moment considered the idea that Wonwoo and Mingyu have shared girls together before- but now that the idea is out in the open, you feel stupid for it having never crossed your mind.

“So there really wouldn’t be any jealousy or any problems if Wonwoo joined us?” you clarify.

“There never have been before. Wonwoo’s not the relationship type. If I honestly thought there would be a problem, I wouldn’t have brought it up,” Mingyu tells you. “Sounds like you’re open to it.”

“I am,” you admit. “Also… I’m exclusively seeing you too, by the way.”

Mingyu laughs. “I know, Angel. Wonwoo is an exception, the only exception.”

“Agreed.”

“So…” Mingyu pulls you tighter to his chest. “Are we gonna bring this up with him?”

“Do you want to ask him?”

“I think we should do it together.”

The idea of bringing this up with Wonwoo makes your heart race. “You think he’ll react okay?”

“Angel, he matched with you on Tinder before, and tried to take you out three times, even if you did ghost him, you’re way too sexy for him to ever say no to.”

Fifteen

When you’d arrived at Mingyu’s place after dinner, he’d suggested a movie night. Wonwoo usually gets off work around one am, and with his Harley, Mingyu expected him to be back at one thirty at the latest.

Around midnight, you’d fallen asleep, with Mingyu following close behind, and when the sound of the front door unlocking finally pulls you from your slumber, a quick check at the clock tells you it’s already past two.

Mingyu groans behind you, pulling you closer, pressing his lips to the back of your neck.

Wonwoo walks into the den area in time to see the exchange, and he pauses by the open concept kitchen, staring at you in the dim darkness of the space.

“What are you doing out here on the couch?” he asks.

“We were waiting for you,” you say softly, pushing at Mingyu’s hand in an effort to wake him up fully.

Wonwoo stays quiet, and after a moment, Mingyu finally groans and sits up, turning to look at his best friend. Mingyu rubs at his eyes, yawning. “We have something to talk to you about,” he mumbles.

“Let's hear it,” Wonwoo sighs, setting his helmet and gloves onto the kitchen counter before he goes to remove his leather jacket.

“You know what… maybe it’s too late for this,” you suggest, turning to look at Mingyu.

“Don’t be shy,” he encourages you, pulling you closer and kissing your throat.

You note the way your body reacts, head tilting to the side to give him better access. It’s clear that you’re not as afraid of being watched as you’d thought you might be, and when your gaze shifts to Wonwoo, you find him staring at the place where you and Mingyu’s bodies connect.

A muscle in his jaw feathers, and you see the way his fist clenches at his side, but he stays silent.

“Do you want me to do it?” Mingyu asks.

“Yes, please.”

Mingyu gives a reassuring kiss to your cheek. “I know you two have a past-” he begins.

“She told you about that, did she?” Wonwoo interrupts.

“Uh huh, she’s a good girl like that,” Mingyu holds you tighter. “Anyways, I know you two have a past, and I know you’re attracted to each other-”

“Mingyu.” There’s a warning tone in Wonwoo’s voice now, and it makes your skin tingle.

“I’m too tired to do this right,” Mingyu sighs, “but listen, she wants to try a threesome, we’ve done threesomes, I figured I’d put it on the table, if you’re interested.”

Wonwoo stands in the kitchen for a moment, then he lets out a sigh, turning and placing both of his hands on the counter. He looks down at the ground, and you wonder what’s going through his head.

“Aren’t you two dating?” he asks finally.

You open your mouth to respond but decide to shut it, turning to Mingyu to allow him to answer. “Yeah, I mean, we’re exclusive.”

“How can you be exclusive if you’re inviting me into a fucking threesome?” Wonwoo snaps.

“Because you’re you,” Mingyu shrugs. “Why do you seem mad?”

Wonwoo lets out a deep sigh. “This isn’t the right way to start a relationship, Gyu.”

You find it comical that Wonwoo - of all people - is trying to school Mingyu on how to treat a girl.

“I’m pretty confident in us,” Mingyu grins, pressing a kiss to your cheek. You kind of love how sure he is, and it makes your trust in the budding relationship feel even stronger. “Look, if you don’t want to-”

“I want to.”

It feels like the air is knocked from your lungs. Yes, you’ve considered this for weeks, but part of you never really thought it would get this far, never thought Wonwoo would actually agree-

“I’ve been listening to you two fuck through a wall for weeks,” Wonwoo continues. “Of course I fucking want to.”

“So what’s the problem?” Mingyu asks, brows furrowing at why his friend still sounds so angry.

Wonwoo turns to look at you. “This is going to complicate things.”

“Only if you let it,” Mingyu argues. “Look, you’re both overthinkers, and I get that, but with me here, I’ll keep us all grounded, I promise.”

“It’s not that easy,” Wonwoo sighs.

“It can be, if you both let it be.” He sounds so sure, and you want to believe him on this-

“So is this just going to be a one time thing?” Wonwoo asks, and you note the way his gaze shifts from his roommate to you. Then you feel Mingyu’s eyes too.

“Uh… I hadn’t thought that far,” you admit.

“We could always just go with the flow,” Mingyu suggests.

“You know I’m not that kind of guy,” Wonwoo retorts.

“Honestly, I know it was just a simple case of ghosting, but you two don’t seem to actually like each other that much,” Mingyu points out, “unless I’m misreading something. So how about we give it a shot, and go from there?”

Wonwoo looks to you, and after a moment to consider it, you nod, he mirrors the motion soon after.

“Fine. I’m in.”

“Can you try to sound more enthusiastic?” Mingyu teases. “This is my Angel I’m letting you get a taste of.”

“Don’t test your luck,” Wonwoo warns. “Are we doing this right now?”

“I’m already half hard just thinking about it,” Mingyu grins. “Are you up for this, Angel?”

Things are happening a little fast for you, but you worry that if you don’t bite the bullet and try this now, you might chicken out if you give yourself enough time to overthink and talk yourself out of it.

“Let’s do it,” you respond.

Wonwoo stares at you from the kitchen, and you wait to see who will move first. Finally, Wonwoo nods. “Okay, my room.”

He walks away without another word. Mingyu is quick to get up, reaching down to tug you to your feet. You’re a little shocked at how abrupt Wonwoo is being, and how quick Mingyu is to act on Wonwoo’s locational choice.

You’ve never seen the inside of Wonwoo’s room, and you find it even more minimally furnished than the rest of the apartment. With nothing but a bed, a dresser and a gaming station set up, Wonwoo clearly has very few loves in his life. There are no books, no clothes strewn about- it almost looks like a room straight from the Ikea Catalogue with the theme ‘my ocd teenage gamer’s sanctuary.’

The only thing of any true interest, is a tiled wall mount light piece, and from the way Wonwoo is standing near it and looking down at his phone, you’re pretty sure it’s bluetooth. As Mingyu leads you to go sit with him on the bed, the tiles begin to change colour, and you’re not even surprised when Wonwoo goes for a red hue that makes this entire situation feel correctly sinful.

Mingyu sits behind you, prompting you to settle on his lap. His hands find your thighs, stroking you through your sweatpants. You can tell he’s waiting on something, and when Wonwoo finally looks up at the two of you, setting his phone down, you realize just how much power you’re about to hand over to the man you’d ghosted all those months ago.

Wonwoo approaches you and Mingyu, coming to stand right in front of you. He meets your gaze, but he’s quiet. You hold your tongue, knowing that now is not the time to start being a brat.

“So,” Wonwoo says finally. “My guess is Mingyu’s been going easy on you since you started fucking.”

Mingyu lets out a laugh behind you, and you find yourself wanting to defend him. “I wouldn’t say he’s been going easy on me-”

“I’m going to make an assessment, and you’re going to tell me if I’m wrong,” Wonwoo states. “You look like the kind of girl who wants to be dominated. The shy ones can sometimes be the kinkiest girls you’ll ever meet, and something tells me that if you’re interested in a threesome - interested enough to let me be the one to come in here and fuck you - you’ve got some specific itches that need to be scratched. Mingyu’s a vanilla boy. He doesn’t even like to call sleeping with a girl fucking. I’m betting he gives you everything you want, never makes you work for it, or beg for it, or any of that shit. The guy wakes up three times a night to rail you for fuck’s sake. So I’m guessing, even though he probably meets most of your needs, there’s something you’re missing that Mingyu thinks I can provide.”

Mingyu’s mouth finds your throat, pressing soft kisses that wordlessly tell you he’s not about to answer this assessment, it’s fully on you.

“I…” you swallow thickly. “I guess, I mean, that sounds correct.”

“You’re happy with Mingyu.” It’s more of a statement than a question, but you find the need to answer it anyways, so you nod quickly.

“Very happy.”

“But he doesn’t dominate you.”

You shake your head.

“And tonight, you want someone to tell you what to do.”

You nod.

“You want someone to make you scream the way I made that other girl scream, the girl that kept you up at night. You want what I was giving her.”

“God, yes,” you admit, letting out a shuddery breath. You can feel Mingyu smile against your throat, and he wraps his arms tighter around you, holding you close to his chest. You can feel his cock straining up against your ass, and it’s driving you wild already.

“What’s off the table?” Wonwoo asks. “Be thorough.”

“I think… no anal. Hard pass on anal, at least, right now,” you start. “And… please don’t be mean to me? Like… don’t degrade me?”

“If you’re our good girl, there will be no reason to degrade you, will there?” Wonwoo says smoothly, reaching out to cup your jaw. His thumb brushes by your lips and you open your mouth for him, accepting the digit that presses flat to your tongue. “See, you’re just a good girl looking for direction, there won’t be a problem tonight.”

He removes his hand, and part of you mourns the loss.

“Everything else is on the table?” he clarifies.

“Nothing gross.”

“Nothing gross,” Wonwoo repeats with a laugh. “I guess that’s all subjective, but I get what you mean.”

God, you wonder what dirty, nasty things this man has done in his lifetime.

“Safeword?” Wonwoo asks next.

You take a deep breath, only needing a moment to consider one. “Harley.”

Mingyu groans behind you, his hands teasing up your thighs, closer and closer to where you need him while he begins to suck on your sweet spot. You can tell from his reaction that the safe word pleased him, and you know that everyone is aware how close you are to letting the fun actually begin.

Wonwoo has done his due diligence, now, he just has to do you.

“Gyu, how about you get her warmed up?” Wonwoo suggests, and the man you’re sitting on wastes no time with the request. Mingyu immediately slips his hand under the waistband of your sweatpants, fingers finding your clit through your panties while you squirm on his lap.

“Fuck,” Mingyu groans, “she’s so wet already.”

“That’s no surprise,” Wonwoo says nonchalantly, pivoting and moving away.

You watch him go, curious as to what he’s up to. Mingyu, meanwhile, is focused on getting your attention. He pushes your panties to the side, stroking your pussy, teasing as if he’s about to dip his fingers into you, only to circle your clit again.

You snap way too easily, turning to press kisses along his jaw. You reach a hand up to cup his cheek, prompting him to meet your lips. All it takes is a little tongue action for Mingyu to also break, finally slipping a digit into your wet core.

You whimper at the feeling, grinding down on his hand. The wiggling of your hips adds friction to the front of Mingyu’s pants, and he releases his own groan of pleasure.

He adds a second finger and you find yourself gasping. Your thighs spread to accommodate Mingyu. His slow stroking is driving you wild, and the ever constant pressure on your clit only intensifies the situation.

“Lay her down,” Wonwoo’s voice snaps you out of your Mingyu haze, and you break the kiss to blink up at Wonwoo.

You notice something in his hands, but before you can get a better look, Mingyu is pulling his hand from your core and standing up, taking you with him.

He gently places you onto the bed, tearing off your pants. His fingers go to hook in your underwear, but one tutting sound from Wonwoo makes him stop in his tracks.

“Leave those on for now,” Wonwoo instructs. “You might be skipping things because you’re needy, but I remember your panty kink.”

Panty kink? Mingyu has a panty kink?

Fuck.

You wonder how much Wonwoo knows about Mingyu’s sexual preferences, things that you haven’t even learned yet.

No matter how worried you were about this before you agreed to a threesome, it’s becoming more and more clear that Wonwoo might carry the keys to unlocking Mingyu’s full potential in bed- now, you’re worried what that means for the fully monogamous aspect of your relationship.

“Take off your shirt and bra for us,” Wonwoo prompts next. “I want to see you.”

His voice had softened at the end of the request, and the fact that Wonwoo has a good mix between commanding, and a tone that’s almost on the pleading side, has you immediately making good on what he’s just asked of you.

You slip your shirt off, tossing it onto the floor. Arching your back, you get at the clasp of your bra, and soon, it joins the discarded fabric next to the bed.

Mingyu gets onto the mattress between your thighs, his hands stroking up your legs, which spread for him again.

“Here,” Wonwoo tosses the thing he’d been holding onto your chest.

When you pick it up, you realize it’s a blindfold.

Wonwoo meets your questioning gaze. “Put that on. You trust us, right?”

You swallow thickly, then, you slip on the blindfold, obscuring your vision completely.

“That’s our good girl,” Wonwoo muses, and his satisfaction has your core throbbing. He’s being a lot nicer than you’d hoped he would be- part of you had wondered if this would a rage fueled fuck, revenge for the ghosting. But the way Wonwoo’s treating you- it’s clear he has no animosity toward you for your past, regardless of the cold way he’s been acting toward you up until tonight.

Even with the blindfold, it’s clear who’s still rubbing your legs. And when Mingyu shifts his weight, bending down to press kisses along your inner thighs, you know it’s still him.

Although there aren’t any surprises happening in terms of who is touching you, with your vision cut off, every brush of Mingyu against your skin feels even more intense. Without the pressure of keeping your eyes open, or following the action with your gaze, you can simply lay back and enjoy what’s happening.

Mingyu’s mouth reaches your core, and his breath through the fabric makes you twitch.

When his tongue makes contact with your wet panties, you both let out groans. The world seems suspended in anticipated pleasure, if even just for a moment, before Mingyu practically dives in.

His tongue pushes at your panties, and the teasing aspect of his muscle prodding at your core has your stomach already twisting into knots. It’s like he’s trying to devour your underwear, trying to push his tongue through so he can get at you-

You’d never imagined keeping your pussy covered with a thin piece of fabric would reveal to you how desperate Mingyu is to properly be eating you.

Your hands reach down, tangling in Mingyu’s hair, and you begin to grind against his face, using his nose to add pressure to your clit.

Something brushes by your nipple, and you practically jump at the contact. Then, the soft bud is pinched between two fingers. It’s not a hard pinch, not enough to hurt, but enough to have your pussy throbbing even more from the idea of pain.

You also know that it’s Wonwoo who has finally decided to touch you, and you’re kind of scared of the effect that’s having.

Mingyu doesn’t even notice his friend beginning to play with your tits, he’s much too distracted by licking your core through your panties. You’d bet that if you took your blind fold off right now, you’d find his own eyes closed, his mind completely consumed by the act of being close to your pussy without really being able to get at it.

“Does he feel good?” Wonwoo asks.

“Uh huh,” you nod, tightening your grip in Mingyu’s hair so you can grind harder against his mouth.

“He’s already nearly breaking,” Wonwoo muses, “how far along are you?”

“I-” You swallow thickly. “I don’t know.”

“I want you to enjoy the teasing, want you to be brought to the edge like this, and when you’re finally about to snap, I’ll let him pull your panties to the side. You can ride his face while you cum for us.”

Your muscles clench at his words, and you nod quickly. “Okay.”

“Where are your manners?” He pinches your nipple even more roughly, and you let out a delighted squeal.

“Okay, yes, thank you, thank you, Wonwoo,” you correct yourself.

“Good girl.” The pinching subsides, but you almost miss the pain. “You look good like this.”

“Thank you!” you blurt out, not wanting to fumble your manners so early just because he’s being sweet to you.

Wonwoo’s fingers leave your breast, and your focus shifts to Mingyu again. He’s begun rubbing his nose against your clit, and you’d bet that Wonwoo’s words about getting you to the edge have inspired the motion.

Mingyu knows that clit stimulus will get you there faster than the teasing of his tongue along your panties, and you give yourself to the pleasure he’s providing.

Wet lips wrap around your nipple and your body jolts. One your hands immediately flies to the back of Wonwoo’s head, threading through his soft curls while he sucks on you. He releases a groan of satisfaction. You respond with a whimper of your own, pushing your chest up toward his mouth.

Nothing has ever felt like this.

Having two sexy men worship you is making your body short circuit faster than it ever has before.

You can feel your orgasm rising in your stomach, and before you even know it, you’re letting out a gasp. “Fuck, I’m close- shit, thank you, fuck, I’m gonna-”

You can’t even finish your sentence, Mingyu tugs your panties to the side, pushing two digits into your hole while his lips find your clit, sucking the sensitive bud while he groans like a starved man.

Wonwoo’s teeth simultaneously graze your nipple, and the combination of stimuli is enough to throw you over the edge.

Your pussy clamps down on Mingyu’s fingers, waves of pleasure exploding out from your core. The loudest moan you’ve ever released sings out of you, and your grip tightens in both of their curls. You’re used to having one anchor, Mingyu, who you hold onto to keep you from floating too high to cloud nine, but now, even with two anchors, you still find yourself drifting away into a state of bliss you’ve never even dreamed of.

Wonwoo’s free hand finds your neglected breast, and a pinch at your nipple has even more electric energy surging through you, your back arching at how intense this all is.

Mingyu hasn’t stopped between your thighs, his fingers are unrelenting inside of your throbbing core, his tongue flicking your clit better than any vibrator or toy ever has.

You cum, and cum, and cum-

Mingyu releases a sinful groan, and you can feel something splash your inner thighs. Mingyu pulls away from your clit, licking up the liquid-

Wonwoo’s mouth leaves your breasts, and you can feel his gaze slipping between your legs.

“Fuck, I didn’t know you could squirt, baby,” he muses, massaging your breast in a way that almost feels loving.

“I didn’t-” you struggle to speak amidst your moans, “I can’t-

“No one’s ever made you squirt before?” Wonwoo finishes your sentence for you.

“No, sir, I mean- yes, sir-”

You hear Wonwoo let out a chuckle, and he pinches your nipple, making you cry out even more. “Sir, huh? Looks like our good girl has really learned her manners, Gyu.”

You’re not sure where the title had come from, but calling Wonwoo ‘sir’ had just felt right, it still feels right, as you writhe against his bed sheets.

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” Wonwoo sighs. Fingers brush by your cheek, and the sudden touch makes you flinch. “She’s crying, Gyu.”

Mingyu groans deeply, his fingers coming to a stop in your pussy. When he removes them, and both men pull away, you can finally take a deep breath after the intensity of your orgasm. Your entire body shudders as you try to steady yourself after what they’ve just given you.

In the periphery, you can hear a wet sucking sound, and you’d bet your life that Mingyu is licking his fingers clean.

“Squirting all over him like that got your boyfriend hard as fuck, baby, I think I’ll be nice and let him fuck you now.”

God, there’s so much you want to think about with that sentence- specifically the way Wonwoo just referred to Mingyu as your boyfriend, a term that you haven’t yet used- but you’re also so needy for Mingyu’s cock now that you can’t sit and ponder the relationship development.

“Yes, please, Mingyu, fuck, need your cock-” you whine, reaching down to tug your panties off-

Another set of hands grabs the fabric, and before you can fumble to get your underwear down your legs, Mingyu simply tears them in two to get at you.

His cockhead is rubbing against your soaked folds a moment later, and you let out a whimper of desperation.

“Fuck, Angel, you’re doing so good for us,” Mingyu groans, slipping the head into you.

“Gyu-” you whimper, grabbing at the bed sheets, your eyes rolling into the back of your head from the stretch of his girthy tip.

“You’re so fucking wet,” he tells you, one hand flattening on your abdomen to keep you still. “I could slide all the way in like this-”

“Do it,” Wonwoo says simply. “Bet she’d fucking love that.”

“I would,” you agree, whimpering at the idea of him filling you up with one powerful thrust. “Please, split me open-”

The words no sooner leave your mouth than Mingyu is doing just as you’d asked. In one motion, he sinks the entirety of his cock into your wet, ready hole.

His hips hit flush to your own, and you release something between a cry and a scream. Your inner walls struggle desperately to accommodate the large intrusion that your body is still not used to even after fucking Mingyu countless times.

Before Mingyu, ‘Like a Virgin’ had just been a Madonna song, now, it’s something you understand completely.

Mingyu’s mouth finds your neck as he leans his entire, large, muscled body over your own. His lips are hot as they suckle on your sweet spot, and you grab at his strong shoulders, wrapping your legs around his hips.

He starts slow with his motions, only pulling out slightly. With each small rut, his cock sinks so deep that it hits a spot that makes you go mind numb.

You’re a gasping, wriggling mess for Mingyu, and from the sounds leaving his own lips, you know he loves it.

His pace starts to increase. You can feel your pussy tingling with each thrust, the vein along the underside of his cock stimulating your walls perfectly.

Mingyu draws your lips to his own, and you find yourself in a desperate clash of tongues.

“How cute,” Wonwoo’s voice draws you back to reality. “For the record, baby, I’ve never seen Mingyu this into someone.”

God, why is he being so nice to you?

Why does the thought that you make Mingyu come undone unlike anyone else have your pussy throbbing?

Your hand moves before your mind even registers what you’re doing. It flails out toward Wonwoo’s voice, and you’re pretty sure you make contact with his thigh.

“What are you doing?” Wonwoo asks, tone shifting.

You break the kiss with Mingyu, and his lips find your throat while you address his friend. “Wanna touch.”

Wonwoo is silent, and moments feel like minutes. Then, you hear a belt buckle, and a zipper being pulled down.

“You just wanna touch?” Wonwoo prompts.

Before you can even respond, Mingyu is nipping at your ear. He’s breathing heavily, fucking you faster. “Do you wanna suck him off, Angel? I won’t be mad if you do.”

This is a threesome, it wouldn’t be fair if Wonwoo didn’t get a bit of you too…

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?” Wonwoo prompts.

“Yes, I wanna suck you off,” you clarify, doing your best to make your voice sound confident.

Mingyu groans, and then he pulls off of you. You whine at the loss of him, but he flips you onto all fours, pulling your ass into the air so he can push his cock into you again. You do your best to steady yourself on your hands, and the bed dips in front of you, signaling Wonwoo’s arrival.

“Here,” Wonwoo’s voice is soft, as soft as his touch when he pulls the blindfold off of you. “Wanna see that pretty face when you choke around my cock.”

In the red light from the tiled wall mount, Wonwoo looks insane. Yeah, a little insane in the crazy way, but insanely sexy too.

He’s taken his shirt off, and you’re shocked to find washboard abs that make you drool immediately. His curls are all flouncy and illuminated by the red, like a halo, or even devil horns. His jeans are undone, but he doesn’t have his cock out yet, which you kind of appreciate.

Although you can see his length straining against the black denim, he didn’t immediately stick his dick down your throat, he’s giving you time to adjust to the new position.

You blink up at him, and Wonwoo smiles, cupping your cheek. “You’re doing so good, baby.”

“So good,” Mingyu echoes, digging his fingers into your hips as he begins to fuck you like a mad man.

“Sir,” you breathe.

“Yes, baby?”

“Can I suck you off now?”

Wonwoo’s grin widens. “Go for it.”

You realize he’s not going to help you take his cock out, not yet at least. It’s difficult to hold yourself up with one hand while Mingyu fucks you, your free one reaching for his jeans. You hook your fingers in the fabric, trying to tug them down.

Part of you thinks Wonwoo likes watching you struggle. He’s said he’d be nice, wouldn’t degrade you, and he’s not, but this feels like it’s bordering on humiliation.

Here you are, getting fucked stupid, holding yourself up on one shaky hand while the other tugs desperately at his pants, trying to free his cock so you can have it sink down your throat-

“You’re cute,” Wonwoo muses, finally giving in.

He pushes his pants down, his cock springing up against his abdomen.

He’s long. Maybe not as long as Mingyu, and not as thick either, but that just means you might actually be able to take him fully into your mouth, unlike your boyfriend’s monster cock that you can’t even fully suck halfway.

Even though Wonwoo isn’t as big as Mingyu, he’s confident in himself, and that makes things all the more sexy.

He grabs the base of his length, holding the tip out for you.

Meeting his eyes, you open your mouth, sticking out your tongue.

Wonwoo taps himself along the wet muscle, then he teases the tip just past your lips- you go to wrap your mouth around him, only for him to pull back with a laugh. “Eager, are you?”

You nod, “uh huh.”

He doesn’t even tut at you for your lack of manners, after all, you’re still holding your mouth open for him, unwilling to close it if even for a few moments to say a ‘yes, sir.’

“I guess I can give it to you,” Wonwoo sighs. Although he’s trying to sound unbothered, you can tell from his leaky red tip that he’s just as turned on by this as you are. You can see through Wonwoo now, and you wonder how that’s going to impact your opinion of him.

This man who likes to seem hard and domineering, who likes to appear nonchalant- you wonder what kind of thoughts are swimming in that pretty head of is.

Wonwoo slips his cock into your mouth, and you immediately begin to suck it, twirling your tongue along the tip. He pushes in another inch, testing your abilities. His eyes are fixed on yours, and you stare up at him, wanting to please.

Mingyu fucks you harder, prompting you forward onto Wonwoo’s cock. You take more and more of him, doing your best to relax and focus on the pleasure Mingyu is giving you, rather than the uncomfortable feeling of a heavy dick on your tongue.

You enjoy giving oral, but you’ve always found it easier to have some other stimulus to anchor yourself- Mingyu’s cock splitting you open is just the right amount of distraction. When Wonwoo hits the back of your throat, you hardly choke, too enraptured by Mingyu behind you to carefully about your gag reflex.

“Fuck, that’s good,” Wonwoo tells you, having watched for your limits and reactions.

He begins to thrust now, matching Mingyu’s motions. It’s a push pull, and you kind of love being used like this, having two cock filling you up. They’re almost synchronized, and it turns you on that they’ve done this before, that they’re familiar with each other.

You couldn’t imagine a better pair to lose your threesome virginity to.

Wonwoo’s hand grabs your hair, and you watch as he throws his head bad, letting out a groan.

Fuck, he’s so sexy- they both are. Mingyu’s grip on your hips is even tighter, and you know what that means.

“I’m close,” your boyfriend announces.

“Well I just started,” Wonwoo retorts. “Hold it.”

You’re shocked that Mingyu doesn’t even fight back, his thrusts simply slow down a notch. Wonwoo, meanwhile, speeds up, and you do your best to hollow your cheeks around his cock, sucking on him like you’ve never sucked on anyone before.

“You’re good with your mouth, baby,” Wonwoo praises you.

“She’s so good,” Mingyu agrees, reaching a hand around your body so he can rub your clit.

You jolt at the contact, pussy clenching desperately around Mingyu’s cock.

“Fuck, Woo, we’re both close-” Mingyu groans, resting his forehead against your shoulder, his breath hot across your skin.

“I guess I can make this quick,” Wonwoo grunts, hips shuddering.

Mingyu draws fluid, lazy circles on your clit, speckling your shoulders with kisses while he ruts slowly into your core. You suck on Wonwoo diligently, like it’s your job- after all, it is your job to make him cum in order for you and Mingyu to get there too.

The pressure in your abdomen is getting tighter and tighter, you’re not sure how much longer you can hold off, especially with the sounds Mingyu’s making-

“You two are so needy,” Wonwoo muses, letting out a small chuckle. “Fuck.”

“You gotta let her cum,” Mingyu practically begs. “She’s squeezing me like a fucking vice, dude- this is torture.”

Wonwoo’s hips jolt at Mingyu’s words, the tip of his cock hitting the back of your throat. You feel your muscles constrict around both of them, and they both groan in response.

“You’re too good at this,” Wonwoo tells you. “When I cum, you both get to cum.”

It’s not an outward admittance that he’s close, but you can tell he is. His stomach muscles are clenching with effort as he uses your face, and the small groans of pleasure leaving him are higher in number now.

He fucks your face even faster, and Mingyu takes this as a cue to begin fucking you properly again. “Can you rub your clit, Angel?” he asks. “I need to grab your hips.”

You moan a sound of affirmation around Wonwoo, holding yourself up on one wobbly hand while the other slips between your legs.

“That’s it,” Mingyu groans, straightening behind you and taking hold of your hips with both hands. His pace matches Wonwoo’s now, and you can feel your orgasm so close-

You can almost taste it.

In fact, you can taste Wonwoo’s, a strangled gasp escaping him as he cums down your throat suddenly.

“Our turn, Angel,” Mingyu moans, pace quickening to a speed that would almost be painful if it wasn’t so pleasurable. Your fingers are rough on your own clit, and you do your best to swallow every drop of Wonwoo’s spend.

When he pulls out of your mouth, you breathe in a strangled gasp- only for moans of pleasure to escape you uncensored.

“Fuck, that’s it, Angel, almost there, almost there-” Mingyu groans. “Fuck, cum for me, cum for us- fuck, cum on my cock-”

His words throw you over the edge. You lean forward, resting your cheek against Wonwoo’s thigh while your orgasm overtakes you. Waves of pleasure surge through your body, making you shake- Mingyu’s hands hold your hips steady, keeping you where he wants you while he fucks you through your high, coating your insides with his thick cum.

You’re both moaning messes, completely given over to the ecstasy that you find in each other.

Your hand falls from between your legs, and soon, Mingyu’s motions stop. He keeps himself buried inside of you, trying to catch his breath.

“I’ll get some tissue,” Wonwoo says. He pulls away from you, and you collapse face first onto the bed, shuddering from the aftershocks of your high.

Mingyu’s hands begin to stoke your body, a silent assurance that you did well for them.

Wonwoo comes back with tissues, and Mingyu pulls out. You bring the kleenex to your dripping hole, careful not to get any cum onto Wonwoo’s bed-

Which is when you remember you squirted all over the comforter already.

You lay on your back, giggling to yourself.

“What’s so funny?” Wonwoo asks. Fingers go to pinch your nipple and you flinch, rolling away from him.

“I got squirt all over your bed,” you tell him.

“Naughty girl,” he says, but there’s an inkling of pride in his tone.

“It’s okay,” Mingyu says, reaching to pull you off the bed. “I’m going to go clean her up, you can throw your stuff in the laundry, and we can stay in my room tonight.”

You’re not sure why the idea of sleeping next to Wonwoo feels more intimate than the fact that he just came down your throat, but ten minutes later, when you’re snuggling between the two men, you find yourself almost unsure of how to act.

Mingyu’s already passed out, soft snores filling the room, and it’s Wonwoo who notices your unease as you shift under the sheets.

“Relax,” he tells you, his hands drawing you to his chest. “You’re safe with us.”

For some reason, his words actually calm you down, and after a few more deep breaths, you pass out on the chest of the man you’d ghosted over half a year ago.

Epilogue

It’s been two months since you and Mingyu invited Wonwoo into your bed. Two months of great sex, but it’s even deeper than that.

Mingyu is outwardly your boyfriend, and he loves showing his claim over you every chance he gets, but Wonwoo is still on the fence about where he fits in your relationship.

You’re at the bar where Wonwoo works, it’s a place you’ve been becoming more of a regular at. Mingyu is out with Cheol, but he’ll be meeting you shortly. Right now, all there is to do is wait and try not to flirt with Wonwoo too hard while he mixes drinks.

Wonwoo is chatting with another regular, an old guy who keeps looking over at you. Finally, the man asks, “How do you two know each other?”

You and Wonwoo exchange a look. You wait for him to define the relationship, after all, out of everyone in your odd little throuple, Wonwoo’s the one who likes to go slowest when it comes to relationship milestones.

After a moment of consideration, Wonwoo responds, “She’s a friend. Dating my roommate.”

“Ah, okay,” the man nods.

It hurts for Wonwoo to not claim you the way you wish he would, but at the same time, you understand his hesitancy.

When you’d first started fucking Wonwoo, you’d thought he was a doberman to Mingyu’s golden retriever, but now, you think he’s more of a black cat. If you move too fast or too sudden, you’re afraid of scaring him off, and that’s the last thing you’d want to do.

With a sigh, you lift your drink to your lips. You suppose having one boyfriend who claims you with all of his heart makes up for having another who is still unsure about what to call you.

But it doesn’t mean things hurt any less.

☀️ mlist + an. thank you for reading! I'm happy I was able to get this fic out in time for spring :) when I tell you this shit was five months in the making-

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🔮 preview. Mingyu gives you all the love you’ve ever dreamed of from your romance novels. And Wonwoo gives you all the kinky sex you’ve fantasized about from the erotica you read. It’s the best of both worlds, and as Wonwoo sinks his cock into your wet pussy, you begin to suck on Mingyu.

cw/ tw. Exhibitionism, unprotected sex, sex in an alley, sex over a Harley motorcycle, eiffle tower/ spit roasting, quickie, blow job, deep throating, dirty talk, praise, cum/filling kink, inklings of humiliation, Wonwoo is a little rough, etc… I petnames. (hers) baby.

👹 rating. 18+ explicit I wc. 2.7k I teaser wc. 220

🌙 staring. Wonwoo & Mingyu x afab!reader

bonus

“I’m just gonna head outside with Cheol for a quick vape break,” Mingyu tells you, giving you a kiss on the cheek before he exits the bar with his buddy.

You turn to Wonwoo, who is busy mixing some elaborate drink for a group of cougars a few seats down. It’s a decent night here at his workplace, it’s summer now, so most evenings are good for him.

“Is this seat taken?” You turn to see the regular from a few months ago standing there, and you’re quick to offer him the chair, after all, you and Mingyu will be leaving soon anyways. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” the man asks.

You exchange a look with Wonwoo. “Yeah, I uh… I met you a few months ago,” you try to explain, pointing at your bartender. “I’m this guy’s friend.”

“Right, dating his roommate, now I remember,” the man nods.

Wonwoo has stopped what he’s doing, and he’s staring at you.

There’s a hint of danger in his eyes, and you’re not quite sure why. Then he sets down his drink, coming around the bar, and grabbing your arm. “Come outside,” he instructs.

“What? Now?” you ask in shock, looking around at the bartop that's full of people who need drinks. “You’re working!”

“I don’t care. Come.”

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