#DO NOT PICK A FIGHT WITH ME JUST BLOCK ME

[yutarot]

cozy. n.jm

⋆꙳•̩̩͙❅*̩̩͙‧͙ childhood bff!jaemin, snowboarding au, fwb, sfw

synopsis. you and jaemin have been inseparable since you were children. when you and a few of your friends go on your annual mountain ski trip, the air grows tense when they find out that you and jaemin have been sleeping together. so what happens when an overnight snowstorm extends your trip, bringing a sudden change of plans and a very unlikely guest to your vacation: jaemins crush. will your friendship survive within the cold presence of snow or will it melt away once the sun rises.

wc: 6.8k

warnings. implied sex, suggestive, language, jaemin sucks, miscommunication (sorry), yn is wayy too nice in this

notes — ty to the anon who gave me this idea hehe i immeeediately thought of jaemin so i had to write it. i hope u enjoy this it was fun to write (also ended up being way longer than i expected butttt oh well)

the trip started 4 days ago. 

you always loved your winter ski trips. you loved the way the snow glistened under the sun, illuminating the sky line in a crisp peach orange. you loved the way you could become carefree, no worries of college or having to pick up extra shifts at the cafe. it was always perfect, a spirited culmination of a frosty vacation. 

like usual, you unpacked at lightning speed, occupying the room directly between jaemin and jisung and opposite chenle. as kids, you and mark used to argue over who got the room that you stay in, it being the only room in the cabin with a double bed, but after many years of relentless fighting, you always managed to beat him.

the five of you have been friends since before you could remember, constant pranks and silliness as kids soon became reliability and comfort as you grow into your late teens. but now that you all attend college together, you’re closer than ever.

admittedly, you’ve always been closer to jaemin than the rest, your childhood homes being next to each other, serving as a reason for you to play out in the street each evening after school. even as you entered high school and eventually college, you stayed close, despite jaemin’s tendencies to sleep around with girls and eventually ghost them soon after.

you would be mad at jaemin’s exploits, but you can’t exactly say that being mad at someone’s past actions is entirely justifiable, especially since his playboy behaviour has recently become less frequent.

the air in the cabin is surprisingly warm, a crisp layer of frost encasing the windows and blocking the breeze of snow as it falls upon the mountain that the cabin rests between. the sky, once blue, is now an iridescent hue of orange, reflecting off the snow on the ground and pulsing through the window and onto the wooden walls around you, making them glow. it is an utterly beautiful place, and you thank chenle’s parents for letting you stay here each winter unsupervised.

as you walk through the walkway and into the main room, you spot chenle upon the sofa, browsing the old vintage tv for any channels that don’t bore him profusely. mark and jaemin are playing a game of chess on the floor, resting themselves upon fluffy white cushions and muttering snarky comments to each other under their breaths. noticing your presence, chenle clears his throat, causing mark to look up at you, and eventually, jaemin to spin his body round in your direction.

“i’m bored.” you say, “that tv looks way too old to function and i don’t know how to play chess.” 

chenle speaks first, “well, i mean, maybe if you actually spend some time with us, you might have some fun.”

“sounds like a blast.” you say sarcastically, “i just think we should go out and do something in the snow instead of just being all cooped up in here for the third day in a row.”

“it’s too cold.” jaemin utters, “usually it’s not this bad.”

“and? just put on an extra layer.” you reply, looking to mark for help.

sighing, mark speaks up to agree with you, and with his help, you eventually manage to convince chenle and jaemin to go and wake up jisung, before layering up and grabbing your snowboards from the shed behind the cabin.

as you all walk across the mountain to the ski area, occasionally partaking in a small snowball fight on the way, you hurl yourselves onto the ski lifts.

you sit in between jaemin and mark, ignoring mark’s teasing as you struggle to get yourself seated.

once the lift begins to climb, you feel an immediate sense of calm. you’ve always enjoyed these trips, a moment of relaxation away from home, all with your favourite people. it is true that you wish you could bring your girl friends along, but they all hate the boys with a passion for multiple, various (and valid) reasons, and so, with their permission, you go without them.

lost in your own thoughts, you don’t notice as you suddenly begin to slip from the ski lift, the bar doing absolutely nothing to keep you in place.

“yn?”, you hear jaemin’s voice beside you, a weird sense of distress lining his voice as he quickly grabs a hold of your arm, attempting to lift you back onto the seat.

but it’s no use, the snowboard beneath you weighs you down and you slip from his grasp.

“mark, she’s slipping.” jaemin urges the other boy beside you.

“shit.”

they both try to bring you up, but as you get higher and higher to the top of the slope, the ground begins to find your feet, pulling you down with it.

you stumble before landing upside down into the snow, luckily not sliding anywhere, but unfortunately feeling a sudden frosty chill as piles and piles of snow seep into your clothing and down your back.

noticing your discomfort, jaemin bends down, lifting your face to his and, with a gentle smile, he brushes your snow-covered hair from your face.

“it’s… everywhere.” you shiver.

“everywhere?” jaemin asks.

you roll your eyes. “not the time for jokes.”

it takes you a while to notice mark standing behind jaemin, but when you do, you tell them both to continue on without you and that you’ll find your own way back to the cabin to change your clothes.

nodding after making sure that you’re okay, mark leaves to snowboard down the slope, leaving you and jaemin as you sit, still shaking, covered in ice and snow.

“i’m gonna-“ you say, getting up.

jaemin interrupts. “let me help you.”

“i don’t need help.” you reply.

there is a moment of silence before jaemin speaks again, as if he is choosing his words carefully.

“i know a better way to warm you up.”

your face lines in an expression of shock.

“we promised we wouldn’t do it here.” you say, “what if one of the others see something?”

“they won’t.” he smiles at you before pointing in the direction of the others, all enjoying themselves drifting down the snow, swerving in all kinds of directions.

it doesn’t take much for you to give in. so when you get back to the cabin, eventually changing into some fresh clothes that will eventually be pointless, jaemin turns out to be right.

he does know a way to warm you up.

his request didn’t surprise you, and you’re unsure if the others finding out that you and jaemin have been secretly hooking up for the past year is an all too bad thing. but at the thought of them having a little bit too much fun potentially teasing you both, you decided to keep it on the down-low.

it was never supposed to happen; you and jaemin are best friends. but after jaemin’s vow to stop playing with girls’ hearts and your fresh break up with your ex, you both decided that the logical thing to do is to use each other when you need it. it was simple.

over the past year, you have established 3 main rules for your ‘friends with benefits’ situation. number 1: you and jaemin can both sleep with other people if you so wish, number 2: no feelings are involved, if one person begins to feel anything for the other, then you must break it off. (this one isn’t and never will be a problem for you two, but you need to add it there anyway; you’ve heard the stories about jaemin the ‘serial heartbreaker’, and you definitely don’t want to be a victim of that) and number 3: no sleeping together during the winter ski trip. right now, you are breaking a rule, and neither you, nor jaemin, seem to care. it does scare you a little, however, considering how easily jaemin was willing to break it, and it has you wondering how strong the other rules even are.

after cleaning yourself up, you make your way to the kitchen to make yourself and jaemin a hot chocolate, sprinkling far too much powdered chocolate on the whipped cream and having to clear up all your mess soon after. jaemin follows you into the kitchen, pulling his shirt back over his head.

“can i ask you something?” jaemin says, reaching his arm past you to scoop his finger into the whipped cream and swiping it onto your nose. you push him away, watching as he giggles at you frantically wiping the cream off your nose in annoyance.

“sure.” you reply, and he leans on the counter beside you.

“when was the last time you slept with someone else?”

if you say the question doesn’t surprise you, you’d be lying. jaemin knows you can sleep with other people, it’s part of your rules. so why do you feel as though you’re in trouble?

“last saturday. that party on joomi’s street. eric sohn.”

jaemin’s face is unreadable. you continue, “if you’re worried you have competition, i wouldn’t worry. it was just one night.” you laugh.

“oh, i’m not worried.” he replies, “especially after the way you were saying my name back in there.”

his head tilts to the side to point in the direction of your room and you look over on instinct, memories of the past 30 minutes flashing in your mind and causing you to forget what you were even about to say.

but when you look over to the doorway, something else catches your attention.

or someone else.

standing at the front door, snowboard in hand and ski mask pulled down to his chin, stands a mortified, and astonished mark lee.

you freeze up, and no longer from the cold chill of snow.

he has heard everything.

you’re completely fucked.

❆ ❆ ❆

pacing around the kitchen and watching as mark looks between you both, you begin to attempt to redeem yourself.

“look, mark, that wasn’t what it sounded like, me and jaemin would never.”

mark looks at you, skeptical, before turning his attention to jaemin, who stands in the back corner of the kitchen, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed as if none of this is bothering him.

mark looks back at you. “yoooo, i mean, i guess i always knew there was something off about you guys.”

you rush towards him, clutching his shoulders. “i promise you, mark, it’s not like that-”

“we’re fucking.” jaemin finally speaks, and yours and mark’s heads both whip towards him in shock. jaemin shrugs, as if it isn’t a big deal.

“jaemin.” you say sternly, “what are you doin-”

“what? he caught us, there’s no point in denying it.”

“this is unbelievable.” mark chuckles, “i gotta go tell the others.”

“no you don’t.” you say, grabbing a hold of his arm.

he rolls his eyes. “alright, but at least give me details, man. how long? when did it start? why?”

you look to jaemin, not wanting to answer for yourself.

“about a year,” he says, “and why not?”

“why not?!” mark exclaims in disbelief, “i don’t know, maybe the fact that you’re best friends? what if you end up catching-”

“not gonna happen.” says jaemin, “we dont see eachother like that, never will.”

mark only continues to laugh, “this is nuts. you guys haven’t been doing it all weekend, have you? i don’t think i wanna hear it if you guys end up getting busy while we’re all meant to be asleep.”

“nope,” you reply. “this is the first and only time we’ve done it here. we sort of made it a rule so that this wouldn’t happen.”

before you can finish your conversation, chenle walks through the door. “so what wouldn’t happen?” he says, scanning his eyes between yours and jaemin’s lack of outdoor wear compared to mark’s.

“nothing.” you reply.

“nothing?” he asks, studying mark and jaemin’s expressions.

there is a second where no one speaks, but that seems to be enough for chenle, because the next thing he says is: “you guys fucked, didn’t you?”

mark can’t keep in his smile as he tries not to laugh and give it away, but jaemin’s stern expression speaks volumes.

chenle shrugs before taking off his coat and making his way to the fridge, “ehh, was sort of obvious anyways.”

“what?” you exclaim, “how?”

his eyebrow raises as he takes a bite of the donut he had taken out its packet, “jaemin swearing off girls the same time as you breaking up with your ex, you constantly ditching our movie nights to ‘hang out with your cat,’ and jaemin suddenly changing from being an insufferable prick to actually being half nice.” jaemin lets out a laugh at the last comment. “i have more if you want me to continu-“

 “thats okay, no thank you,” you speak up, “first of all, jaemin is still an insufferable prick.”

“thanks.” jaemin butts in.

“no problem.” you turn your head to him quickly before you continue, causing the others to laugh. “and secondly, i do actually go to hang out with my cat. i love her.” you say, offended.

“whatever.” chenle replies, a judging expression on his face.

they both took the news a lot better than you thought, so you decide to let them tell jisung, who is undoubtedly the most surprised at the revelation. but jaemin’s silence throughout the whole conversation annoys you. you don’t understand why he was being so quiet about it. but when you hear mark and jaemin whispering amongst themselves while you were meant to be in the shower, your confusion peaked.

“this isn’t like you, man.” it sounded like mark’s voice.

“i know.” jaemin replied.

that’s all you heard.

for the rest of the night, you all wrap yourselves in blankets on the sofa to watch some movie that jisung wanted to watch, the fireplace emitting a radial heat and deep hue of ember, softening you into a state of tiredness, drifting off as your head rests on the hard sofa next to you.

it’s only after you wake up that you realize it is certainly not the sofa that you were lying against, but instead, jaemin’s shoulder.

you hear the melodic birdsong as it fills the air outside, the white of snow lighting up the room. or is it chenle’s hideous singing in the shower that you hear? it’s hard to tell.

breaking yourself from jaemins sleeping grasp, you get up to look out the window. you’re meant to go home today, this is supposed to be your final morning of the trip.

but as you peek your vision out the window, around 3 feet of snow covers the floor all around the cabin, the four wheels of marks camper van not even visible.

“uhm, guys..” you call out, grabbing the attention of a freshly showered chenle, a mid breakfast-making mark, a book occupied jisung and a half asleep jaemin. they all stop their various activities at the urgency in your voice, coming over to you and looking out the window for themselves.

it takes each of them about 5 minutes to process what this means; your trip is going to be extended. you are trapped.

and you may be trapped but yours and jaemins secret is very much free.

it finally hits 3pm and you realise that you have all spent the entire day enveloped in boredom, watching as the snow falls and continues to form on the ground. there is no way all this snow will clear in just a few days.

you are lucky that chenle had brought nearly double the amount of food that you needed originally, meaning all you had to do now was to sit and wait it out. 

lounging on the sofa, you listen to the smooth rhythm of chenles jazz vinyl playing on loop across the room. you’re bored, and you can’t even go outside. you can tell the others are bored too, that same expression of ‘i just want to go home now.’ plastered on all of their faces. 

but their expressions quickly flip when a knock rattles from the front door.

you all look at each other in question before collectively jumping up in sync, running at inhuman speeds to the door. you were about to be saved, removed from the shackles of dullness and provided passage back home. 

being the first to get to the door, you grab a hold of the handle, struggling in attempts to only slightly crack it open to keep the snow outside.

but when you open the door and poke your head through the crack, you’re met with a very familiar face.

hayun. also known as, jaemins long-time ‘secret’ infatuation: his crush. 

your mind shatters in disbelief as you pull the door fully open to let the other guys see who it is, no longer caring about the snow as it comes piling in.

all because the look on jaemins face is priceless.

the others all look to him to see what he’s going to say, and unsurprisingly, all he has to say is ‘hi.’ you wouldn’t expect more from him, he’s never spoken a word that exceeds a greeting to her before.

following jaemins poor attempt at an introduction, you take over.

“what are you doing here? are you okay?” you ask, genuine concern for the girl lining your voice. 

“well, i was here on a ski trip with my friends but, they all abandoned me.”

“what?” you ask. 

“and i remembered seeing a few of your guys’ instagram posts saying you were here so… i thought i’d knock.”

“wow.” mark says, “your friends suck.”

“i know. so, any chance i can stay here? i would go home but the weather isn’t exactly drivable.”

you turn to the rest of your group, concluding the pity in their faces before turning back to hayun. “of course! we don’t have a spare room and the sofa gets cold at night but i have a double bed if you don’t mind sharing.”

“thank you so much!” she grins before stepping inside and pulling you in for a hug. you cringe as you come into contact with the cold casing of her coat, the ice cool against your skin as you try not to push her off of you. 

in all honesty, you feel bad for her and you know that jaemin is about to get relentlessly bullied by the rest of the group. this was about to make your extended trip a whole lot more interesting.

it hasn’t been a long time since he developed a crush on hayun, spotting her across the other side of his lecture hall. he always gives you some excuse as to why he’s somehow never gotten a chance to speak to her, so you presume that he’s happy that he finally has. either that or completely terrified. either way, you’re happy for him.

yes, you are. you’re happy for him.

❆ ❆ ❆

a few hours pass as you show hayun around the cabin, making space for her things in your room. letting her unpack, you make your way to the front room, finding jaemin and mark on the sofa, seemingly midway through a conversation. 

“oh, don’t let me stop you.” you say, urging them to continue their talk after they cease talking at your arrival.

mark turns back to jaemin. “i think you should go for it, dude, what harm could come out of it, huh?” he says.

you’re curious, “you’re gonna ask her out?” you say to jaemin.

he smirks, “maybe, maybe not.”

somehow, something in your heart doesn’t like the idea of jaemin asking out hayun. you’re not sure if it’s the idea of you and him ending this whole ‘friends with benefits’ situation, or the fact that you’re probably going to have to step back from being his best friend, because, let’s face it, there’s no way she would ever let you stay as close as you now are if they got together.

you slap the idea out of your head; he hasn’t even asked her out yet. 

mark notices the internal battle you have with yourself. “something wrong with that, yn?”

if jaemin wasn’t here right now, blocking you from mark by sitting in between you, you one hundred percent would have punched him at that.

jaemin looks over to you, a questioning expression on his face. 

“uh.. no…” you reply, apprehensive.

“oh come on, i saw the face you just made. you’re jealous that he’s gonna be fucking someone else, aren’t you?” mark continues.

you don’t know what to say, caught off guard by the truth in marks words and the cold presence of jaemins gaze on you. 

“im not jel- “ you begin, but jaemin interrupts you. 

“yn.” he says. it’s just your name but it holds so much meaning. “am i not allowed to have a girlfriend?”

“‘course you can.” you reply, shrugging.

mark raises his eyebrow at you and you seriously consider getting up and kicking him. 

jaemin continues, “good. it's decided then. i'm gonna ask her out.” 

mark pats him on the back, laughing, “good luck, dude.”

you smile in acknowledgement as jaemin thanks mark before chenle comes in, completely changing the subject when he starts complaining about hayun’s infiltration of his ‘well organised fridge.’ 

you zone out their conversation to reassure yourself that you truly don't care that jaemin was going to try to get close to hayun, but you can't help but feel like you're about to be replaced. you always knew it was going to happen, that one day jaemin would want to settle down with a girl. but you're just so used to his playboy personality that you just never expected it to be so soon. 

amongst the endless drill of chatter, you feel a sudden glance in your direction, and as you look up, jaemins eyes suddenly divert away from you, as if he got caught looking. you want to ask him what he wants, but the silence in his demeanour tells you that you shouldn't. it's bittersweet; the end of his situation with you, marks the start of one with hayun. its a trade in which you don't want to be part of, but you fear you have no choice – only time can decide.

the rest of the day went by quickly. maybe it was because of your new addition to the vacation or simply because chenle found a cupboard full of dusty boardgames that you decided to occupy yourselves with. naturally, it was you and mark that beat everyone else at your very long, grueling game of monopoly, but that quickly flipped to jisung when you took your turns at scrabble. 

the entire time, you and mark teased jaemin relentlessly, catching glimpses as he (unwilling) took his seat next to hayun, pushed there by chenle and jisung and ending up on her team. you could tell that he was getting annoyed at you both giggling at him, but you didn't care; it only made the entire thing so much more fun. 

by the end of the night, it was time to sleep, so you and hayun took your rightful sides of the bed. it isn't the best sleeping situation, but you’d much rather sleep beside her than have to experience mark’s sweaty feet ever again. (that experience was not one that you want to remember.)

before you can switch the light off, though, you hear hayun sit up. 

“wait, yn, before we sleep…” she says, and you look at her expectantly, “can i ask you something?”

“sure.” you reply. 

she looks down, fiddling with her fingers. “Its jaemin. is he.. single?”

as if you hadn't heard her, you take a pause, processing her question. 

“yeah.” you let a laugh slip, “why? you like him?”

at your question, she giggles and her voice makes you cringe a little. 

“yes. a lot actually, it's sort of the reason why im here..”

you furrow your brow. “what do you mean?”

she takes a deep breath. “my friends never kicked me out.. i just saw that you guys were also here and, well, i thought it'd be a chance for me to get to know him.”

it's as if your ears are deceiving you, the late night tiredness of the conversation urging you to hallucinate. but it's all real, every last word of it. 

“wait, so, you lied?.. to get us to let you stay?”

she nods, and you don't know if you should pity her or hate her guts. 

because you know what it's like to be in love; you know what it's like to like someone so much to the point where you allow yourself to do stupid things. you understand. 

but that doesnt mean that you like her for it. 

“i know you probably think i'm a horrible person.” she says.

“no.. no, not at all.” you reply, and she smiles at your words. 

“thanks yn.”

you laugh back, “so, jaemin huh?”

she looks back down at her fingers, “yeah.. embarrassing right?”

you smile, not just to her, but to yourself. 

“totally.”

❆ ❆ ❆

all night, you debate with yourself over what hayun had told you. on one hand, you can't agree with what she did: lying like that. but her crush on him means that jaemin would be happy, and as his best friend, you can't take that away from him. therefore, amongst your deep pool of thought, her confession swimming in the depths of your mind, you decide that the best thing for you to do, is to hold off telling him that she lied; not only would it ruin their chances of getting together, but therefore, jaemin would only be upset that he never got the chance.

but just because you can't tell jaemin, doesn't mean you can't tell mark. 

“i really don't know what to think about her.” you say, standing in the kitchen over three pans of eggs. mark had asked you to have the task of cooking them, resorting to focus on the rest of the group's breakfast. you know it's because he can't cook eggs to save his life, but he'll never admit that.

“honestly,” he replies, “who cares if she likes jaemin? she’s a sneaky little liar.” 

you laugh, “i don't know, mark. maybe she's just really in love with him.”

“i’m not so sure about that. how could anyone ever be in love with someone who wears a hoodie saying ‘orgasm donor’ in public.”

you roll your eyes and mark continues, “well, i guess we all know who he's donating to now..”

you slap him around the arm, causing him to cackle at your rash response. 

“anyways,’ he continues, “i wont tell jaemin about it if you don't want me to.” 

you nod, “thanks, mark. oh, and you're burning the bacon by the way.”

“oh shit.”

❆ ❆ ❆

deciding that the weather still wasnt good enough to attempt to make the journey home, you all decided to stay another day. although the day was full of indiscriminate party games and full fledged boredom, you somehow managed to make it through to nightfall. 

you’re nearly drifting off to sleep when you hear a tap at the door of your’s and hayun’s room. turning over to see hayun fast asleep, you get up to see who’s there, wondering what idiot buffoon decided to wake you up at 4 o’clock in the morning. 

by means of absolutely no surprise, it’s a disheveled jaemin, hair sticking up in about seven different directions and a crumpled tshirt that rises ever so slightly above his pyjama pants waistline, exposing skin that you do not have the energy to be fawning over. although, that’s exactly what you’re doing.

assuming that he’s here to finally break the news to hayun in some twisted, sensual late night confession, you turn your back to jaemin to call her name. in noticing what you’re about to do, jaemin reaches an arm around your waist, pulling you close enough to him that the palm of his other hand can cover your mouth. 

“will you shut up?” you don't need to see his face to know he's rolling his eyes, “this isn't exactly something i want her to see.”

oh.

he lets go of you, spinning you round to face him by your shoulders. he’s done this before: knocking on your door in the dead of night when he needs you. but you never expected him to do it here. not after your conversation with mark a few days ago, and certainly not whilst his crush was staying in your room. it all seems so bizarre. 

but you weren't going to say no. 

❆ ❆ ❆

the next morning, you realise that you had completely and utterly fucked up. 

the warmth of jaemin next to you remains, his arm slung lazily over the front of your stomach. you expect to open your eyes to jaemins ceiling back at home, but to much avail, you are very much still on vacation.

and you had four pairs of eyes staring down on you both to prove that. 

you jump out of jaemin’s hold immediately, causing him to slowly stir before mumbling something incoherent into the sheets. when he finally realises the situation you’re in, he takes the pillow beside his head, pushing it into his face. 

“you promised you wouldn't do it here, man.” mark starts. but your focus isn't on him, it's on hayun. 

and she's livid.

you turn the attention of your words to her. “im sorry. i should have told you.”

jaemin finally gets up, picking up his discarded shirt off the ground and pulling it over his head before sitting back on the end of the bed. 

hayun eyes him for any form of an apologetic sense, but he gives off nothing, and you fear this only makes her angrier.

your fear is proven correct when she suddenly snaps at you, “you knew i liked him and you still went and did this behind my back?”

at her words, the mood in the room suddenly shifts. what was an atmosphere of laughter and mischief at them catching you and jaemin together, is now suddenly a room of tension, a room that you no longer want to be in. 

but it's jaemins reaction that formulates the world's most unfortunate predicament. 

his head turns to you, a look of disappointment and what seems to be hurt, plastered on his face. “she likes me? and you hid it from me?”

you don't know what else to say, so you just tell him the truth. “yes, but it's not that simpl-”

“i don't care, yn.” he gets up, pushing past chenle to the bathroom before shutting the door behind him. 

fuck. you’ve messed up.

but one thing is nagging at you: jaemin seems to care far more about the fact that you hid the truth from him than what the truth actually entailed. you tell yourself he’s probably just embarrassed. either that or just completely and utterly in denial about it. either way, he’s acting strange; he should be happy, not angry. 

the entire day, jaemin didn’t utter a single word to you. as for hayun, she had been hidden away in your room, not speaking to a single person and avoiding any opportunity to accidentally bump into you. you did feel bad, you should have told her about it the second that she confessed her feelings for jaemin to you. but you had assumed from jaemin’s previous conversation with you, that you were calling it off, jaemin seeming pretty aware about the fact that she was now here. how were you supposed to predict him rocking up to your room at 4am?

anyhow, you spent the day with mark, discussing the ending of titanic and eating way too much chocolate to be healthy. when night came once more, you decided that it probably wasn't the best idea to go back to your room, scared about facing the wrath of the girl who resided in it. instead, after washing up in the bathroom, you make your way to the sofa in the front room. 

your actions are halted when you hear voices coming from the other side of jaemin’s door. you know you shouldn't eavesdrop on a private conversation, but you can’t help yourself. 

you register the second voice as mark as you get close enough to hear them clearer, just enough until you can hear what they're saying.

your heart hurts in your chest when you do. 

“i'm still going to ask her out, even with things the way they are.” you hear jaemin whisper. 

it's like a sudden shot to the chest. this is exactly what you feared from the very beginning, this is exactly what you trusted jaemin enough not to do. 

he’s choosing her over his best friend; he’s choosing her over you. 

trying to remain as quiet as possible, you continue your journey to the sofa, pain causing you to wince with every footstep – he's leaving you behind.

as you lie on the sofa, the chill air of the cabin surrounding you despite the presence of the fireplace, forcing you to wrap the blanket around you tighter, you struggle to bring yourself to sleep. but when you hear footsteps from the kitchen, you peek your head over the back of the sofa to see who’s there. 

at your movement, the culprit looks up from their snack-making and their eyes meet yours.

“jaemin?” you whisper, “why are you awake?”

“hungry.” he turns back, working on spreading the peanut butter onto his bagel. “what are you doing sleeping out here? it's way too cold.”

you stand up, making your way to the kitchen to stand behind him, blanket wrapped around your shoulders as you shiver from the frost. “i don’t think hayun likes me right now.” you say.

jaemin turns to face you, biting into his bagel. “i wonder why.” he says sarcastically, mouth half-full. you hate to admit it, but he looks incredibly alluring, he always does in the middle of the night. 

you hate the fact that he’s acting this way with you, dismissive and persistent, but he has every right, you hid so much from him, and you hurt him in the process. 

you’re at war with yourself, but in all honesty you know that you were in the wrong; for your friendship to work, you need to tell him everything. everything.

“actually,” you start, taking a deep breath, “there’s something you don't know.”

jaemin’s interest in the conversation suddenly spikes, looking for you to continue. 

“hayun… she.. wasn’t actually abandoned by her friends.”

“what?”

“the night she told me she liked you, she also told me that she ditched her friends because she saw that we were here. she lied about them kicking her out so that we would feel bad and let her stay, so that then she could finally get her chance to talk to you.” you pause, attempting to read jaemin’s face but failing, getting nothing from his expression. “i should have told you, but i didn't want you to get hurt. instead… i did exactly that. i'm sorry, jaemin, really.”

when you finish speaking, you notice as jaemin’s lips slightly curl into a smile before dropping back to his cold demeanor, and it makes you question whether you really saw it or if it was just your mind playing tricks on you. 

“yn..” he trails off, whatever he wants to say interrupted by your sudden panic in not wanting to embarrassing yourself.

you ramble, scared that he won't accept your apology. “but like you said to mark earlier, if you still want to ask her out, that's fin-”

“wait, what?” jaemin says, moving from his position leaning against the counter to stand upright. 

“i, um, heard you and mark talking earlier about how you were still going to ask her out despite everything..” you say. 

jaemin laughs to himself and you grow confused. “oh, yn.” he says. 

“what? what’s so funny?”

“you never did get my hints, did you.”

your heart freezes in your throat, the cold weather no longer chilling you but instead the bitter taste of jaemin’s words as they formulate in your brain. 

he continues, noticing your confusion. “it was never her that i had a crush on. it was never her that i was planning to ask out.”

you’re struggling to breath, each intake of oxygen getting caught in your chest. 

“yeah, i thought she was kinda pretty when i first saw her across my lecture a few months ago, but that was long before i fell for who i really wanted.” he smiles, inching closer to you. “and after everyone found out that i was sleeping with you, i decided that there was no longer an excuse for me to hide my feelings.” he takes a hold of your hand, looking down at it as he plays with your fingers. “i was starting to get pretty pissed that you wouldn’t pick up any of my hints, you know? you can’t even imagine how embarrassed i was to find out that it was because you were trying to play cupid for me and someone else.”

your mind is vacant, filled with the epiphany of his words as they resonate in your head, playing a tune of melancholic rhythm as it twists into an allegro.

“but… the rule.” you say. 

jaemin chuckles, “i think we stopped caring about those rules a while ago, yn. i know i did. ”

you’re no longer cold, jaemins warmth radiating against you like the blissful aura of a flame, attracting you and drawing you closer. 

it was then that you realised that you haven't said anything to equate his long speech, but words can do nothing to describe the way that you’re feeling. its as if someone had approached you with a mirror, brutally displaying each of your own hidden thoughts and projecting them back at you. because every single word that jaemin muttered, you found deep within yourself. it all clicks, perfectly and irrevocably, into place. your jealousy, your embarrassment, your stupidity. 

your love. 

instead of attempting to sum up all of your feelings into words, you do the one thing that will live up to the emotions that reside within you. taking not a single moment to prepare yourself, you lean closer to him, his eyes finding your lips. you nod, its small but the gesture means so much. it's an agreement, a sealing of mutual understanding. it's slow and it's incredibly gentle as his lips greet yours, soft in a way unlike ever before. kisses between you and jaemin were always the result of lust, of stupidity. but now, it's the result of something far greater. 

it’s love. 

❆ ❆ ❆

when the sun rises above the horizon, you leap from jaemin’s bed, him giggling at your eagerness. 

“oh my god, it's finally clear!!” you yell, waking up each of the boys with your burst of excitement. you could finally go home. 

the morning consisted of three major revelations. one: you all contacting hayun’s friends, watching as they dragged her into their car to drive her home. two: discovering that chenle had only showered once throughout the entire vacation (you all started placing bids as to who gets to not sit next to him on the journey back) and three: witnessing the boys’ reactions to your’s and jaemins new secret. 

“i knew you’d do it, dude.” mark said, attempting to fist bump jaemin in the most cringe-worthy interaction you’ve ever seen in your life. jisung and chenle however, were completely baffled, and it took about thirty minutes of explaining for them to understand that it was you that jaemin had a crush on, and not hayun. you’re still convinced that jisung doesn't understand.

once you had all packed your things, you grabbed your suitcases, standing in the porch as chenle locked the front door for the final time. 

“im going to miss this place.” mark says, exaggerating an act of sadness as he clutches his chest. 

“im not,” chenle replies, “i’ve never been so bored in my entire fucking life.”

“it’s been fun.” you say, smiling.

jaemin’s voice comes from next to you. “eh, could have been better.” 

you turn to him in offence. 

he continues, “i'm just saying, i never got to actually snowboard.”

“are you suggesting what i think you’re suggesting…?” mark replies, looking around the group and meeting similar grins and looks of hopefulness. 

jaemin shrugs, “i dont know, am i?”

as if on cue, you all drop your suitcases in the snow, laughter and coils of happiness springing between you as you run to the shed behind the cabin for one last time. 

no other winter ski trip ever got near to living up to that one. 

not even close. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Defense (of the internet) (from billionaires) in depth

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

The only way to truly billionaire-proof the internet is to a) abolish billionaires and b) abolish the system that allows people to become billionaires. Short of that, any levees we build will need constant tending, reinforcement, and re-evaluation.

That's normal. No security measure (including billionaire-proofing the internet) is a "set and forget" affair. Any time you want something and someone else wants the opposite, you are stuck in an endless game of attack and defense. The measures that block your adversary today will only work until your adversary changes tactics to circumvent your defenses.

For example, mining all the links on the internet to find non-spam sites worked brilliantly for Google, because until Pagerank, there were zero reasons for spammers to get links to point to their sites. Once Google became the dominant way of finding things on the internet, spammers invented the linkfarm. This principle can be summed up as "Show me a ten-foot wall and I'll show you an eleven-foot ladder."

Security designers address this with something called "defense in depth": that's a series of overlapping defenses that are meant to correct for one another's weaknesses. Your bank might use a password, a 2FA code, and – for extremely high-stakes transactions – a series of biographical questions posed by a human customer service over a telephone line.

I've written extensively about defending a new, good internet from billionaire enshittifiers. For example, in this post, I described how Bluesky could be made enshittification-resistant with the use of "Ulysses Pacts" – self-imposed, binding restrictions on enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

A classic example of a Ulysses Pact is "throwing away the Oreos when you go on a diet." Now, it doesn't take a lot of work to devise a countermeasure your future, Oreo-craving self can take to defeat this measure: just drive to the grocery store and buy more Oreos. This even works at 2AM, provided you live within driving distance of an all-night grocer.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't throw away those Oreos. Depending on how strong your Oreo craving is, even a little friction can help you resist the temptation to ruin your diet. We often do bad things because of momentary impulses that fade quickly, and simply airgapping the connection between thought and deed works surprisingly well in many instances.

This is why places with fewer guns have fewer suicides of all kinds: there are plenty of ways to kill yourself, but none are quite so quick and reliable as a gun. People in the grips of a suicidal impulse who don't have guns have more chances to let the impulse pass (this is also why gun control leads to fewer all-cause homicides). So just because a measure is imperfect, that doesn't make it worthless.

If you're trying to give up drinking, you throw away all your booze, but you also go to meetings, and you get a sponsor who can help you out with a 2AM phone call. You might even put a breathalyzer on your car's ignition system. None of these are impossible to defeat (you can get an Uber to the liquor store, after all), but they all create friction between the thing you want, and the thing your adversary (your addiction) is trying to get. They strengthen the hand of you as defender of the sober status quo, against the attacker who wants you to relapse.

Critically, all these defensive measures also buy you space and time that you can use to organize and deploy more defenses. Maybe the long Uber ride to the liquor store gives you enough time to think about your actions so you call your sponsor from the parking lot. Defense is useful even when it only slows your adversary, rather than stopping your adversary in their tracks.

Scaling up from personal defense to societal-scale security considerations, it's useful to think of this as a battle with four fronts: code (what is technically im/possible?), law (what is il/legal?), norms (what is socially un/acceptable?) and markets (what is un/profitable?). This framework was first raised a quarter-century ago, in Larry Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Code_And_Other_Laws_of_Cyberspace_Version_2_0.pdf

Lessig laid out these four forces as four angles of attack that challengers to the status quo should plan their strategy around. If you want to liberalize copyright, you can try norms (the "Free Mickey" campaign), laws (the Eldred v. Ashcroft Supreme Court case), code (machine-readable Creative Commons licenses) and markets (open access/free software businesses). Each one of these helps the other – for example, if lots of people believe in copyright reform (norms), more of them will back a Humble Bundle for open access materials (markets), and more lawmakers will be interested in changing copyright statutes (law), and more hackers will see reason to do cool things with CC licenses, like search engines (code).

But the four forces aren't just for attackers seeking to disrupt the status quo – they're just as important for defenders looking to create and sustain a new status quo. Figuring out how to "lock a system open" is very different from figuring out how to "force a system open." But they're both campaigns waged with code, law, norms and markets.

We're living through a key moment in enshittification history. Millions of people have become dissatisfied with legacy social media companies run by despicable, fascism-friendly billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and are ready to leave, despite the costs (losing contact with friends who stay behind). While many of them are moving to group chats and private Discord servers,tens of millions have moved to new social media platforms that advertise (though they don't necessarily deliver) decentralization: Mastodon (and the fediverse) and Bluesky (and the atmosphere).

Decentralization is itself a defensive countermeasure (code). When a service has diffuse power, it's harder for any one person to take it over. Federation adds another defensive layer, because users who don't like the way one server is run can move to another server, with varying degrees of data- and identity-portability. That makes it harder for server owners to squeeze users to make money (markets), and gives them an out if server owners try it anyway.

Federation with decentralization is my favorite anti-enshittification defense. It's powerful as hell. It's the main reason I endorse Free Our Feeds, an effort to (among other things) build more Bluesky servers to decrease the centralization and give users dissatisfied with Bluesky management an alternative:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

That said, decentralization and federation are not perfect, set-and-forget defenses. Take email – the oldest, most successful federated system of them all. Email is nominally decentralized, but most email traffic goes through a handful of extremely large servers run by a cartel of companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, and a few ISPs). These companies collude (or, more charitably, coordinate) to block email from non-cartel companies, in the name of fighting spam. This makes running your own mail server so hard that it is nearly impossible (that is, if you care about people actually receiving the email you send them):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

What's interesting about enshittified email is that it didn't start with corporate takeover: it started with volunteer-maintained blocklists of untrustworthy servers that most email operators subscribed to, defederating from any server that appeared on the list. These blocklists of bad servers were opaque (often, their maintainers would operate anonymously, citing the threat of retaliation from criminal scammers whose servers appeared on the list). They had little or no appeal process, and few or no objective criteria for inclusion (you could be blocklisted for how your email server was configured, even if no one was using it to send spam). All of this set up the conditions to favor large email servers, and also had the effect of immunizing these large servers from appearing on blocklists. I mean, once three quarters of the internet is on Gmail, no one is going to block email from Gmail, even if a ton of spam is sent using its servers.

The lesson of email doesn't mean email is bad, nor does it mean decentralization and federation are useless. It doesn't even mean that blocklists of bad servers are evil. It just means that federation and decentralization are imperfect and insufficient defenses against enshittification, and that blocklists are useful, but very dangerous. It means that we should strive to keep our systems federated and decentralized, and watch our blocklists very carefully, and not rely on any of this as the only defense against enshittification.

Likewise, both Mastodon and Bluesky are built on free/open code and standards. That means that anyone can fork them, fix them or mod them. What's more, the licenses involved are irrevocable, making them very effective Ulysses Pacts. No one – not a CEO, not a VC investor, not a court or a blackmailer – can order someone to make their GPL code proprietary. The license is perpetual and irrevocable, and that's that.

Free/open licenses are excellent Ulysses Pacts and great code-related defenses against enshittification, but they, too, are imperfect and insufficient. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have all figured out how to enshittify services that are built on free/open code:

https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/libreplanet-2018-keynote

And then there are all the companies that use free/open code and defeat the freedom and openness by simply violating the license, on the grounds that a decentralized, federated development community can't figure out who has standing to sue, and also can't afford to pay for the lawyers to do so:

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/may/16/vizio-remand-win/

That's not to say that code-based antienshittification measures are pointless – only to say that they need other measures to backstop them, as defense in depth. Let's talk about law, then. Both Mastodon and Bluesky are governed by legal entities that are, nominally, organized by charters that oblige them to eschew enshittification and be responsive to their users (Bluesky is a B-corp, Mastodon's code is overseen by a US nonprofit).

These structures are very important. I've been a volunteer board member for several co-ops and nonprofits (I was even once a volunteer for a nonprofit co-op!) and I'm familiar with the role that good governance can play in defending a project from internal and external pressures to betray its mission. That means I'm also familiar with the limits of these governance measures.

Take nonprofits: nominally, nonprofits are legally bound to serve their charitable purpose, and technically, stakeholders have legal recourse if they stray from this. But you don't have to look far to find nonprofits that have violated their charter and gotten away with it. Take the Nature Conservancy, which has become a key player in the market for fake "carbon offsets" that are used to justify everything from fossil fuel extraction to SUV manufacture:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#greenwashing

Or think of ISOC, who get tens of millions of dollars in free money every year from their stewardship of the .ORG registry, but who decided to hand over control of the nonprofits' TLD of choice to a shadowy cabal of hedge-fund billionaires:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/how-we-saved-org-2020-review

Co-ops, too, are powerful but wildly imperfect. REI is a member co-op that does lots of great things…and also busts unions:

https://prismreports.org/2024/07/17/rei-workers-unionizing-fighting-for-agreemment/

But REI is a paragon of social virtue compared to its Canadian equivalent, Mountain Equipment Coop, whose board was taken over by corrupt assholes who then sold the whole thing to a US private equity fund and change the name to "MEC":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/16/spike-lee-joint/#casse-le-mec

B-corps are far from perfect, too: while they are nominally required to serve a positive social purpose, in practice, they can violate that purpose with impunity, whether that through greenwashing:

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240202-has-b-corp-certification-turned-into-corporate-greenwashing

Or Kickstarter insiders taking a $100m bribe to help Andreesen-Horowitz do a crypto pump-and-dump:

https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/11/kickstarter-blockchain-a16z-crypto-secret-investment-chris-dixon/

None of this is to claim that B-corps, co-ops, and nonprofits are useless. Maybe we should just give up on organization altogether and have some kind of adhocracy? If you're thinking this will help, then you need to read Jo Freeman's "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" and learn how a "leaderless" group is actually led by its least scrupulous, most Machiavellian schemers:

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

At this point, you might be mentally designing a new corporate structure, one that's designed to correct for both the tyranny of structurelessness and the brittleness of co-ops, nonprofits and B-corps. Please don't do this. Rolling your own corporate structure is like rolling your own cryptography or your own free software license. It always ends in tears:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-remove-non-profit-control-give-sam-altman-equity-sources-say-2024-09-25/

I like co-ops, nonprofits and B-corps. They're powerful – but insufficient – weapons against enshittification. They need to be backstopped by other measures, like norms. Normative measures are very powerful! Of course, mass revolts of angry users don't always keep companies from enshittifying:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/30/reddit-moderator-protest-communities-social-media

But sometimes they do. The C-suite of Unity was shown the door after enshittifying their flagship product:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/10/23911338/unity-ceo-steps-down-developers-react

As was the enshittifying CEO of Sonos:

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342179/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-resignation-reason-app

And of course, these defensive measures reinforce one another. The public outcry against the .ORG selloff (norms) led to California's Attorney General stepping in (law), and after that, we more-or-less romped to victory:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/17/icann_california_org_sale_delay/

Markets are the final antienshittificatory force. If a social network is designed to be surveillance-resistant, it will be (very) hard to implement behavioral surveillance advertising. If a network is designed to support a many clients, it will be easy to implement an ad-blocker. Both factors make advertising-based businesses very unattractive to individual server operators, spammers, and VCs who back companies that operate elements of a federated server.

Same goes for systems that allow users to control the recommendations and other algorithmic aspects of their feeds (including switching these off altogether). The fact that Tiktok's users overwhelmingly use an algorithmic feed that they have no way to control or even understand is an anti-Ulysses Pact, an irresistible temptation for Tiktok to enshittify itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

By contrast, it's much harder to pull those shenanigans with services that technologically devolve control over recommendations (code), making it less profitable to even try to attempt this (markets). And of course, if users refuse to tolerate this kind of thing (norms) and can hop to other servers (code), then any system that pulls that nonsense will lose lots of users and go broke (markets).

This defense-in-depth approach to decentralized social media pushes us to analyze both Mastodon and Bluesky through a tactical lens – to identify the weak parts in the defenses of each and shore them up.

Take Free Our Feeds and its attempt to stand up more Bluesky servers. This addresses one of the serious technical deficiencies in Bluesky (the lack of federation), and if lots of Bluesky users try it out, it will normalize the idea that Bluesky is a constellation of independently managed servers (norms). It also creates Bluesky alternatives with radically different commercial imperatives (markets), because the main Bluesky server is backed by venture capitalists, who are notorious for their enshittifying impulses.

But security isn't static – a tactic that works today won't work tomorrow if your adversary can figure out a way around it. Bluesky is a B-corp with an excellent board with some names I have profound trust for, but B-corps can abandon their public benefit purpose, and boards can be fired (and also even people you trust can talk themselves into doing stupid and wicked things, see .ORG).

If millions of Bluesky users flock to a rival service, one run by a nonprofit (markets), Bluesky's investors might be tempted to sever the link between Bluesky and that new server (code). That's what Facebook and Apple did to XMPP, an interoperable, federated messaging system that used to connect Apple users, Facebook users, and users of many other servers. They did this for commercial reasons (markets), to trap and lock in their users (code), and they got away with it because not enough users were outraged by this (norms) that they could get away with it.

When Bluesky's VCs fire the CEO, kick people like Mike Masnick off its board, and then defederate from Free Our Feeds' server, how do we make that more like Sonos or Unity (where the corporation capitulated to its users), and not like Reddit (where the user revolt was crushed)?

With social media, it's a numbers game. Social media grows by network effects: the more users there are in a system, the more valuable it is. It's not merely imperative to create alternative Bluesky servers, it's imperative to make them populous enough that cutting them off from the first Bluesky server will inflict more pain on the company than it inflicts on those other users. That's not a guarantee that Bluesky's future, enshittification-bent management won't go ahead and do it anyway, but it does increase the chances that if they press on, their users will take the hit to defect to free/open servers.

Bluesky has other problems besides its centralization, of course. The reason Bluesky is so centralized is that it's really expensive to run an alternative Bluesky server that provides a home for users who have left the main server (a "relay" in Bluesky-ese). Partly this is down to tooling: because no one has done it, Free Our Feeds will have to invent a lot of stuff to get that server up and running, but people who come later will benefit from whatever Free Our Feeds develops along the way.

But mostly, this isn't a tooling problem – it's an architecture problem. The way that Bluesky is structured demands a lot more of relays than Mastodon demands of "instances" (a loose Fediverse analog to relays):

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/01/21/the-technological-poison-pill-how-atprotocol-encourages-competition-resists-evil-billionaires-lock-in-enshittification/#comment-4253477

This is a code problem, and it's a hard one, but it's not insurmountable. The history of networked tools is the history of developers figuring out how to break apart large, monolithic, expensive services in cheaper, smaller, easier to develop. In other words, our defense in depth of Bluesky militates for more than one project – not just a "Free Our Feeds" but also a software development project to make it easier for anyone to free those feeds.

Which raises some important questions, the biggest being "Why bother?" After all, there's already a perfectly good Fediverse that could sure use the money and effort that Free Our Feeds is proposing to put into Bluesky. My main answer here is that the point of disenshittification is an enshittification-free internet, not a better Mastodon:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

We want to set Bluesky users free because the problem with Bluesky isn't its users, it's the fact that there's no fire-exits those users can avail themselves of if Bluesky's VCs set it on fire:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

But there's another good reason to do this, one that involves people who have no interest in using Bluesky: even if you don't want to use a better Bluesky, you likely have very good reasons to reach Bluesky users. Maybe you want them to help you organize against enshittification! Or maybe you just want to operate a real-world venue where people can gather and have a great time and support performers, and right now you're stuck advertising on Facebook and Instagram, and you don't want to end up being forced to use an enshittified, fire-exit-free Bluesky in the future:

https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/01/13.html

Of course, there's plenty of reasons to want to make Mastodon better. Many of Mastodon's features are absurdly primitive – the lack of threading support and quote-boosting sucks, and the supposedly opt-in system-wide search doesn't work, even if you opt in. Masto could sure use some of the money that Free Our Feeds is asking for to spruce up Bluesky.

This is true, but also irrelevant. Mastodon is stuck at around a million active users, while Bluesky has twenty times that amount. Crowdfunding a couple dollars per user to pursue software development is a reasonable goal, but raising twenty times that much is a lot harder:

https://mastodon-analytics.com/

The money being raised for Free Our Feeds isn't money that had been earmarked for Mastodon development, nor will abandoning Free Our Feeds redirect those funds to Mastodon development.

Which isn't to say that we shouldn't chip in to fund Mastodon development. I donated to the Kickstarter for Pixelfed, a Fediverse Insta replacement that has Meta so scared that they'll suspend your account if you even mention it:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixelfed/pixelfed-foundation-2024-real-ethical-social-networks

Adding Insta-like features to Mastodon is great. Fixing search, quoting, and threading would be great, too. We probably need some kind of governance efforts to keep volunteer-run, good faith defederation blocklists from exhibiting the same dynamics that email went through during the spam wars. There's some Bluesky features I'd love to see on Mastodon, like composable moderation and user-controlled, user-tunable recommendations. We also probably need some kind of adversarial press that closely monitors the governance structure for the Mastodon codebase and reports on process in standardization (I cannot overstate how much fuckery can take place within standards bodies, under cover of a nigh-impermeable shield of boringness).

Breaking Bluesky open is a priority. Keeping Mastodon open is a priority. But neither of these are goals unto themselves. The point is to set people free, not set technology free. Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is." Right now, I'm interested in anti-enshittification measures for Bluesky because "that's where the people are."

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/23/defense-in-depth/#self-marginalization

Image: Mike Baird (modified) https://flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2354116406

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

[drownedinlavender]

⋆｡°✩South Park High School AU Headcanons⋆｡°✩

Mainly written to get out of my writers block lmaoo. This is a guide to all my headcanons in my “Be Nice to Me” fanfic

⋆｡°✩ Kyle Broflovski:

6'2”. Tall with lean muscle. Ginger with emerald green eyes and light freckles. Very curly hair with trimmed sides.

Juggles the debate club, basketball team, student council, and too many AP classes to count.

The first to get his driver's license out of the main 4 + Leopold.

His parents got him a car for his birthday for doing so well academically.

Works and volunteers during the summer.

Gets into detention often due to Cartman baiting him into fights.

Has gotten benched multiple times for playing too aggressively in basketball games when instigated by rival teams.

Has a tight knit study group with Wendy, Tolkien, and Nichole.

They help each other out with their AP classes but also consider each other rivals, trying to beat the other for the title of valedictorian.

Very good at first person shooters, often out performing Cartman.

Knows how to build a PC.

Learned how to program in his free time.

Spends time with his family and has a close relationship with Ike.

Knows Cartman’s schedule better than Cartman himself

Begrudgingly gives Cartman rides to school sometimes. Will leave him if he takes too long though.

⋆｡°✩Eric Cartman:

5'10”. Big, bulky build. A lot of arm muscle + big belly. Soft chestnut brunette hair. Dark reddish brown eyes. Thick eyebrows.

Is both on the football and hockey teams. He likes to use both sports as an excuse to be a major asshole towards others and uses his size to his advantage.

In the board games club. Argues with Nichole a lot for leadership.

Has a hard time studying and paying attention due to ADHD.

Does enough school work to pass. Thinks school is pointless and a big scam.

Would much rather play video games or watch TV instead of school work.

Unfortunately, to his Spanish teacher's demise, outperforms others in Spanish class.

Prefers first person shooters but also loves dress up games. Would kill anyone that found out.

Will trash talk your mom but if someone trash talks his mom he WILL dox them.

Loves reality tv. Big fan of RuPaul's drag race, Love is Blind, the Real Housewives.

Is a menace on reddit.

Has gotten his account reported many times on reddit, discord, and twitter.

Planning to major in business or finance in college.

The last of the main 4 + Leopold(Butters) to learn how to drive. Was genuinely too lazy and constantly bummed rides off the others anyway, specially Kyle.

⋆｡°✩Stan Marsh:

5'11”. Average build. Straight dark black hair. Wears a beanie often since his hair gets oily fast. Dark blue eyes.

Stan loves writing and listening to music. He's very big into metal, rock, and Midwest emo right now.

His extracurriculars are football and the board game club.

He volunteers at animal shelters in his free time and fundraisers for the environment.

He's an average student, usually getting Bs and Cs, and a D if he doesn't study enough.

He's terrible at multitasking. He's a very forgetful person.

Wendy and Kyle constantly have to remind him about deadlines and big projects.

On his 16th birthday, his dad gave him his old pick up truck.

Tolkien comes over often and they do homework together. He helps Stan with math a lot.

Stan and Kyle still consider themselves best friends even if they don't live right next door.

Crimson Dawn meets up often, practicing at Stan's since they can be as loud as they want there.

Sometimes friends like Kyle, Wendy, Timmy, and Tolkien come over to just hang out with the others and watch the band practice.

Stan and Wendy have been off and on since elementary school. It's obvious when they're not dating since Stan sometimes relapses back into his goth phase.

Stan and Tolkien have hooked up on a few occasions when Stan and Wendy broke up.

Tolkien has also dated Wendy on more than one occasion.

Stan is the type of kid that casually gets along with every “clique” in school since he doesn't really have beef with anyone. He's a very chill guy who often reacts pretty indifferently to most things.

⋆｡°✩Kenny Mccormick:

5’8”. Very skinny, mainly due to a poor diet. Wavy dirty blonde hair, tends to grow it out or cuts it short depending on his mood. Purple eyes. Front tooth gap.

Kenny's been working overtime while attending school since middle school. He gets paid under the table for most of it.

He saved up just enough to buy a really run down, beat up, used car. It's a stick shift and requires a ton of repairs.

He learned a lot about mechanics in order to save money and not have to take it anywhere to get fixed.

He learned how to drive stick shift and how to fix a car through YouTube.

He takes and picks up Karen from school. He also pays for all of her school supplies and encourages her to pick up extracurriculars.

Kenny doesn't have to study in order to get good grades in school. He barely has to do his homework either. As long as he listens to the lectures and skims through the material, he’ll pass. If he didn’t work overtime then he would be highly ranked in their year.

Kenny barely sleeps 4 hours a day. 5 on a good day.

He plans to keep working at the same pace and go to a trade school. Once he is more settled and his sister is an adult able to stand on her own, he might go back to school but he doesn't really stress about it and prefers living day by day then worrying about the future.

⋆｡°✩Leopold Butters Scotch:

5’9”. Lanky. Light blonde hair and sky blue eyes.

Works while attending school. Is very good at saving money.

Bought his own car at 16. Very safe driver with the occasional outburst of road rage.

Bought his own gaming PC. It's Hello Kitty themed. His favorite games are Animal Crossing and Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

Does very well in school.

Tutors others in his free time.

Volunteers to read for preschoolers at the community library.

Works as a summer camp counselor during the summers.

Cartman copies his homework when he isn't looking.

Part of the Board Game club and the Cheerleading squad.

Still gets grounded by his parents a lot but plans to live in College dorms soon.

Misc.

⋆｡°✩Clyde is part of the football team and basketball team. Sports are his bread and butter. He doesn't do well academically. Cry baby. Is on and off with Bebe.

⋆｡°✩Craig is captain of the space club. Wants to become an astronaut. Has been consistently dating Tweek ever since getting shipped by the Asian girls.

⋆｡°✩Tweek works at his dad's coffee shop while attending school. It has become a bit of a hub for the kids to hang out so it's doing well and he gets paid well. Is great at saving money. Loves playing DnD and really gets into character. Attends the space club with Craig.

⋆｡°✩Tolkien is a star student. Plays basketball, football, and is in the student council. Has dated Nichole, Wendy, Stan, and Clyde. None of his relationships ever end poorly. Is friendly with everyone. Is arguably the most popular, well liked kid in school.

⋆｡°✩Bebe is bisexual and has dated a few of the girls when off with Clyde. Clyde has no game however and barely dates anyone when they are broken up. She's part of cheerleading, volleyball, and the yearbook club. She's a minor influencer online, focusing on fashion, beauty, feminism, and human rights.

⋆｡°✩Wendy and Kyle constantly compete for valedictorian. She's captain of the debate team, cheerleading squad (Bebe vice captain), and volleyball team (Nichole vice captain). Stan and her have almost consistently dated with some hiccups here and there. They don't break up as often as Clyde and Bebe but when they have, she's dated Tolkien and Bebe briefly. She volunteers in a multitude of different organizations and feels very passionate about every cause she takes up. Has a substantial following on Twitter where she's very vocal about her beliefs.

[mythicalninjas]

Not Just A Miner

Tf.One Orion Pax X Cog!Femme!Cybertronian!Reader

Author's note: I got inspired by a scene from an old brazilian movie called "Ó pai, Ó" (2007) in which the protagonist refutes racist remarks made by his friend. Click here to check it out (I couldn't find the english version, only in my native language). Also, I advise you to watch this movie if you have an opportunity.

Rate/Warnings: NSFW, prejudice, bullying, hate. | SFW, reader defends her friend.

Maybe it would be a good idea to be a prankster in the secret archives of Iacon instead of stealing useless material things. Not that young miner Orion Pax is one. He's just been searching for the truth ever since he became suspicious of the ancient and mysterious story of the 13 Primes. What happened to cause the great protectors of Cybertron to die in such mysterious ways? Why is Sentinel Prime's most beloved government hiding such information? Orion has searched countless files for cycles, and they all end with the same story.

Running from the two angry guards who are twice the size of the cogless miner, Orion's hope is to catch the fast approaching train at the nearest station, which is only 20 meters away from his position.

"Stop, miner!" Darkwing shouted from behind, pushing and dodging bots that were in his way.

KDQ-1, the other guard accompanying Darkwing, flies down from the air and lands directly in front of Orion, blocking his path. "Where do ya think ya're going, miner?" he asked threateningly.

Orion stopped abruptly and raised both arms in surrender. "Wow, hey!" He steps back, but feels Darkwing's sturdy body blocking his path. Their evil giggles make Orion feels shivers.

"So, Orion Pix." Darkwing said sarcastically, pushing Orion toward KDQ-1 "Where were we?".

KDQ-1 laughs. "What do you think, Darkwing? Should we pick him up and throw him from that top?" he pointed at a building next to them.

The brute guard disagrees. "Nah, it would be no fun, dull. Let's rip him apart right here." Both guards laugh.

Orion chuckles nervously. "You guys are creative, huh?"

KDQ-1 grabs the miners' left arm and pull him near. "So, miner. What do you prefer?".

Orion spots the train leaving. Now he's cooked.

Darkwing grabs the other arm. "Why do you want him to choose, KDQ-1? Miners don't have choices or opinion. They only obey." Both laughs again. "They are nothing but-"

"They're nothing but what?" You interjected suddenly, causing both guards to drop Orion in fright and backing off. You took it as oportunity to stand between your friend and the guards.

Orion moves quickly behind you as soon as notice it was you.

You could feel his hands gripping your right leg as if to make sure no one takes him away. How cog-bots can be so foolish to mistreat someone who can't even defend themselves? Even more so in public? Anger boils up your circuits.

"Come on, Darkwing. I want to hear it." you confront. "What were you going to say about him and other miners?"

The brute bot and his co-worker looked at each other. KDQ-1 was the first to speak. "We were just having a warm talk. No big deal."

"I don't think that bullying someone is no big deal." You reply calmly, but firmly.

"This is no of your business, Y/N." Darkwing shouted. "Leave us alone, now!"

"Out of question!" You answered. "You must have power over miners, but not over me. You cannot treat cogless-bots badly just because-"

The brute cut in. "Are you really want to teach me to how be a good chief?" he took a fews steps toward you, making Orion shudder. The young miner doesn't want a hand-to-hand fight to start. He doesn't want his friend to be hurt by the stubbornness of others. Thanks Primus that his brother-in-arms, D-16, is safe in the train going to mines right now.

"It seems you do need." You answered, not taking your eyes off him, ready to fight back.

KDQ-1, sensing that things aren't going well and knowing his co-worker actions, puts his hand on Darkwing's shoulder, trying to stop him, but the mean bot moves it away.

"Well, well. A "hero" protecting weaks bots?" he teased, stopping halfway.

"Don't forget that the weaks bots are those who keep our Energon reserves full. Don't forget you have Energon flowing through you because of them!"

"They are just miners. Damn miners! Nothing but dumb robots!"

"Yes, they are miners, but don't miners have eyes? Huh? Don't they have hands and heads and feelings? Don't they need the same Energon to live?" Your voice grows louder and louder. "Do they not suffer from the same diseases and need the same health care as we do?! When they feel exhausted after countless shifts, don't they need some rest just like us?! When you beat the shit out of them, don't they feel pain?! When they risk their lives down there in the mines, don't they die, too? You take advantage of them in everything because they are treated like slaves in our society, son of a bitch!"

An eerie silence fell over the open space. All that could be heard was the sound of the wind blowing off the huge buildings and the metallic sound of some construction machinery in the distance. Everyone who was passing by and paying attention to the small commotion now remained silent at Y/N's reaction, some jaw-dropped; even KDQ-1.

You were breathing heavily, as if your unimaginable reaction had been an impossible struggle to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. And you are willing to continue this discussion if necessary.

Darkwing glared angrily at Orion, who was still behind you. "Good for you, no-cog." the brute commented, ominously. "If I find you in the archives again, you'll suffer. And so will your little gray friend."

Orion's bright blue optics grew wide by his words. No... He cannot endanger someone he admires the most, someone he considers a brother. Darkwing is far more evil than he could have imagined. Suddenly, he feels you moving and blocking the threatening eye-contact between him and Darkwing.

Darkwing lifted his face up toward you. "And it will be a moment you won't be there, Y/N". He, then, was led by his co-worker through the crowd, away from there. All the other cog-bots returned to their tasks, murmuring about what they had just witnessed.

You sighed with relief that the situation was over without developing into something worse. Turning around, you realize that Orion also feels the same way. "Are you okay, Orion?" You asked softly as crouch down. "Did they do something else to you?".

Orion rubs his arm left arm. "Just a bit sore. Nothing to worry about it."

You lift an "eyebrow". His expression of pain was evident on his face as he try to move his arm with difficulty. "They've made a mess right there. Come along. I'll take you to a doctor to fix it."

"Oh, no need for it. I'm ok-" he grows by pain.

You smiled down at him. "Orion, don't resist. Let's go. And also... Don't put yourself in danger ever again... You know what Darkwing is capable of. Don't underestimate him."

"Yeah, I'm sorry... But, you know why I still insist on it. Something isn't right about Cybertron's past before Sentinel Prime's reign".

"I understand you Orion, but it doesn't mean you have to be chased by the authorities all the time. I don't want to imagine what would happen if they get you in a wrong moment." You sighed and watch the giant concrete jungle landscape. "I won't always be there to protect you."

Orion remained silent for a few minutes while the two of them stared at the cityscape before them. The miner is indeed quite stubborn, and that has consequences, especially for those who are not to blame. Rules and protocols are not even close to something he would follow. Orion doesn't like that, and it is what makes him different. Something that makes him look beyond work.

"I promise." he finally speaks. "I promise to not get in trouble."

You knew that Orion would never stop his extreme adventures.

And that defines him.

Damn, he can't wait to meet up with D again and tell him everything that happened and how brave you were. They knew that you, their best friend, are a hero. Someone they could trust their life with.

☆☆☆☆☆

Reblog to support and let more people read my work 🫶🥰

[howhow326]

If I see another white feminist say "men of every race cost us the election" I'm gonna scream

[lunaticamic]

it’s incredible how hateful and obsessed with sainz are every comments on a big motorsport page on facebook… when the post even remotely mentions him the comments are like “oh yes because his obsession is only leclerc!!” “no top team wants him because his entourage is horrible!!” “oh he’s got a big ego and it’s not a team player. he races for himself only” and others alike…… he’s really rotating in your head. you middle aged italian men would do numbers as twitter fangirls‼️

[swiftfootedachilles]

im just gonna be honest gang obviously its gonna be easy for you to say youre in love with a character and theyre an angel when anytime they do something you don't like you brush it off as out of character

[m0e-ru]

lets think of everyone who had persona blogs and obliterated them off the face of the earth instead of just archiving and keep them in our thoughts tonight. everyone else who directly caused them into doing that go and fucking behave

[wardentabriis]

Here comes the surge of Americans encouraging protest votes again

[blitz0hno]

So after our ermmmmm turbulent first relationship-turned-situationship of 2 years w our ex highschool best friend our longest lasting relationship is <24hrs total and still managed to end w the person saying I'm terrible???? Fuck.

Tough thing is, I did my damn best but every time I explain this shit it'll ALWAYS sound like I'm leaving something out that I did wrong; but I was always the one apologizing even growing up I always had to apologize, is there just something about me that makes my actions more severe? Why do I have to feel guilty over people who never cared to actually know me? Did I not work hard enough to be "known"? I only ever wanted to see them happy and I thought I expressed that.

Why do people think that it's ok to try and gaslight me just so they don't have to admit fault? I know she blocked me and I said I respected that, only for her to try to tell me that I didn't care. Well I admit fault when it's mine, but the minute I ask the same of the other person they just act like I want to be "right." Well am I wrong for wanting to be CONSIDERED? For wanting my perspective acknowledged the way I take theirs into account?

Plenty of people find others that care for them like that. Why do people stop caring about what I need just because I act independent? I don't even ask for much. I had to stop myself from asking for "basic kindness" when she asked me what I wanted in a partner at the risk of sounding pathetic, but I guess I don't even get that. I just upset motherfuckers one way or another, I don't even have to do anything but be myself.

Is it something you really do earn? Something I have yet to lower myself to deserve? I want someone to be fucking honest with me, allow me to be honest as well, and not abandon me for it. Someone needs to tell me what the fuck I'm doing wrong. Is everyone I'm close with just going to freak out and run the other way the SECOND I mess up, just because I normally don't? Because I try so hard not to, I'm just expected not to? Not an ounce or effort of forgiveness that makes me give people chance after chance even when they hurt me?

Don't lie about me.

It's ok for everyone else but not for me.

Why? Hey,

why can't I just get it right?

[ishikawayukis]

tell me why this dude thought it was a good excuse to tell me that he was waiting for someone after i told him to please move his car because he was blocking our driveway

[moviestarmartini]

visca barça at least we aren’t fascists💙❤️

come off anon and say this to my face so i can block you and keep my peace as i have been doing because i don’t like conflict.

i literally abstain of commenting on the disgusting things i’ve heard culers say about us because i simply dislike speaking ill of others and i’m able to respect completely whatever club you support, unlike whoever sent this. and this is probably the last instance i’ll do comments like this.

to have things like this dropped into my ask box when i’ve been nothing but respectful is insulting. this reason why i disliked football in the first place growing up and why im hesitant when barcelona fans follow me. if you follow me, unfollow and stop bothering me. and overall fuck off tremendously.

[pa-pa-plasma]

so this post is definitely about me lol & i just wanna say that

me only having mental illness is a really big assumption

the experiences i talked about were my own & some friends i'd had while going to an alternate school, they weren't secondhand or made up

idk what is wrong with this person but they are super fucking ableist, & going through their blog, it's clear they love to accuse everyone of faking being disabled or needing accommodation for some reason & are obsessed with interacting in bad faith.

just gonna assume they're constantly having a really bad day every day but man if you're gonna make multiple blogs dedicated to speaking about disabled issues, maybe don't alienate a majority of the community & accuse them of not being "disabled enough" for you to fucking listen to them

[tonycries]

F*ck You! (Literally) - T.F.

Synopsis. Of course, you hated your ex-husband. Of course, you found yourself in bed with him on your wedding anniversary.

Pairing. Toji Fushiguro x Reader

Content. MDNI, fem! reader, exes to lovers, angry séx, spítting, degradation, y’all are both mean, rough, jealousy (Toji’s side), bréeding, smackíng, arguíng during it, cúmplay, overstím, oral (female receiving), mentions of Megumi and Shiu, pet names, swearing.

Word count. 4.7k

A/N. Gojo next week because I miss my man smh.

It’s not often that you contemplate something that would definitely end up with a night in jail - but it seems that somehow whenever you did, your ex-husband Toji was always sure to be the cause of it.

Like that time he had the audacity to ask you out to dinner right outside the divorce attorney’s office, mere moments after signing those papers. Or when he “accidentally” sent you some mouthwateringly shirtless photos - through email, of course, because you had him blocked otherwise. Although, you’d saved those pictures - a secret you’d take to the grave.

And now. 

Standing right outside your front door, on the night of what would’ve been your fifth anniversary. His imposing figure filling the frame, that tiny scar you loved and hated so much quirking up ever-so-slightly as he shoots you a sly grin. 

He’s here.

Looking as devastatingly handsome as the day you left him.

“Happy anniversary, ex-wifey.”

And just as irritating, too. 

That snaps you out of your traitorous little reverie, and before long you’re sputtering out a shaky, “Y-you. What do you think you’re doing here?” Not even waiting for his response before moving to shut the door in his face.

“Oh, believe me,” Toji lets out a humorless little laugh, reaching up a sculpted arm to stop the door in its tracks. “I wouldn’t be here even if I wanted to.”

That was a lie - and Toji knew that. He had half the mind to think that you knew that. But it didn’t matter when you’re glaring up at him so prettily. The confusion evident on your face as you grit out a shrill, “Then why am I seeing your stupid face tonight?”

“Chance? Luck? A blessing?” 

Scoffing, “A curse.”

“That mouth’s still as sharp as ever, huh?” He cocks his head in amusement, “Did you not see my email?”

“No, I uh-” you mumble, face burning. And oh you wish you could stop yourself from thinking back to those photos - stop yourself from wanting to smack the smirk off Toji’s face that told you he was, too. “-blocked you on…that…as well.”

“Mhm.” he hums, eyes lingering too long on your comfy pajamas - his favorite ones -  and the way you’re squirming so adorably under the intensity of his gaze. “Well, m’just here to pick up one of that brat’s toys. Won’t take long n’ I’ll be out of your sight, doll.”

And you can’t say anything about that familiar little petname, because it hits you with a pang - oh, how you missed Megumi. 

He’d thrown a tantrum until he was allowed to visit you occasionally, of course. But still, it was nothing compared to how inseparable the three of you were before your relationship with Toji soured. His line of work too dangerous, the fights more frequent until you’d had enough.

“Ah, yes. Megs probably won’t even leave the house without it.” you chuckle, opening the door wider. “I was surprised to find it the other day since he said that lil’ plushie was his best friend. After me.”

“After me.”

“Liar.”

“Gorgeous.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fitting for our anniversary, huh?” And oh how Toji enjoyed riling you up. To spy that little furrow between your brows as he strides inside your apartment like it was his own - he did know it like the back of his hand. “I already know where the bed is, after all.”

“Yeah, and you know where the door is too.” you mutter, acting like it didn’t make your head spin to think of Toji - in your home. With you. You and Toji. In your home. You and Toji in your home. 

You hadn’t seen him since the divorce just four months ago, and here he was looking so unfairly like he fit right in. Taking up much more time than necessary as he walks towards that little wolf toy on your couch. Eyeing up the sappy romance movie paused on-screen, and those familiar photographs on the wall. 

You still had that one of the two of you from that beach getaway two years ago, he noted with delight. 

“Heh, for someone that hates me so much, s’funny you have my face hung up here.” he smirks, words just dripping with that familiar dark tone that has shivers running down your spine. “Knew you were still into me.” Defiant - challenging, even, because he always did like to push all your buttons. 

Don’t fall for it, don’t fall for it, don’t fall for-

“Shut up.” You roll your eyes, walking towards where Toji stood. “I jus’ use it to scare off clingy dates in the morning.” 

And you loved to push his buttons even more. 

“Oh? Dates, huh?” And something about those words make you feel like something’s too-tense. Exciting, even. Especially as he repeats - more to himself than you, “Dates.”

“Jealous?”

“Heh, of whatever scrub took you out? In your dreams, doll.” Maybe it was the way Toji was joking - but didn’t sound like he was at all. Or maybe it was the way he didn’t move as you stepped closer, enough that you’re almost toe-to-toe with him. Probably it was the way he murmurs out a strangled, “M’not jealous.”

Oh. 

You watch the way his body stiffens, darkened eyes flitting between you and the picture and you- Smirking “Good, because m’having one over soon.”

“Oh, you little bitch.” He spits out the words, gaze hardening in a way you knew did not bode well for your - or down there. Hitting it where it hurts, “This is why I’m so fuckin’ glad we divorced.”

“Fuck you,” you tilt your head, anger simmering beneath your skin - and you didn’t know who was pissing each other off more. “So then you can get out before my date gets here.” And the emphasis on “date” isn’t lost on him.

“Such a liar.”

“M’not lying.” You were - but you didn’t care if Toji could tell because it was ticking him off just the same. “You could say he’s an-” Now close enough that you could feel the heat of his proximity. A finger stabbing right in his pecs with each word, “-upgrade.”

Suddenly you’re being pulled to his rock-hard chest, all the dips and curves of his body so sinfully obvious against your skin as he questions, “How so?”

“Well, for starters he’s-” you gasp, casting a sidelong glance at the way the muscles in his arms ripple. And it takes everything in you to try and keep your voice steady, “-bigger.” Thighs pressing together at the tiny grunt of disbelief that leaves your ex-husband, too-aware of the strong hand wrapped around your waist. “And sexier.”

“And?”

“And what?” you gulp, raising your head to blink up at him in confusion and oh- 

Oh, shit. You weren’t going to make it out alive. 

Toji’s eyes were wide, a mirthless smirk spreading across his face, jaw tensing as he leans down to whisper hotly against your ear, words hoarse - stilted, like it pained him to even speak them into existence. “And what other lies are ya gonna make up?”

And you might be a genius - you might just not know what’s good for you. 

Because you’re batting your lashes just the way you knew he liked, the words - saccharine sweet, and falling from your lips faster than your whirling brain could even register them. “And he makes me cum so much harder.”

Toji’s lips are crashing against yours - and you knew it was coming. You wanted them to. Bruising, angry - like he was telling you to just shut the fuck up, another word of your imaginary date and it would kill him. 

He tasted the same as he did all those months ago. Sweet, like those cheap lollipops he would buy you and that absolute sin of his scar rubbing against your lips. 

“Fuck-” he lets out a guttural groan into your lips. Only a sloppy mix of teeth and spit as he kisses you with the collective desperation of a little over four months. “Hate how you’re-” Like he didn’t even care if it left your poor lips swollen and bruised - at least that might give whatever loser coming here a hint. “-still addictive.”

With that, he picks you up like it’s just nothing, your traitorous legs easily wrapping around his toned waist. Letting you pull off that sinfully snug t-shirt to feel the smooth planes of all his muscles. Soft. Warm. 

You gasp at how he manhandles you so that your thin pajama pants are just above his achingly hard cock, throbbing, and so so angry against your core. Trousers already so damp with- precum? Your slick? 

“Hah- not jealous my ass-” you hiss, grinding down on his bulge.

And Toji’s parting mere millimeters, chuckling darkly at the disappointed little whine that escapes you. “Yeah, well, does he ever get you like this?” He presses hot, open-mouthed kisses down your neck, purposely not giving you what you want. “Does he ever get you this-” Grinding you against his straining erection, two fingers sliding down, just teasing the drenched front of your shorts. “-this fuckin’ wet?”

“Nah,” you pull on Toji’s silky locks, nipping at his collarbone. “He gets me wetter.”

“You little-”

It’s like something snaps - whatever’s left of Toji’s sanity, your patience, possibly you by the end of this. Anything but the thick, suffocating - tension in your living room. Now too small. Too hot. 

Before you can react, your back  is hitting the soft cushions of your couch. Bouncing at the sheer force of the throw as Toji looms over you. 

“Thought you knew where the bed was?” you manage to get out, in the heat of it all. 

“Thought you hated me?”

“Gonna kill you if you break this cou-” but the rest of the retort on your tongue dies as Toji’s hands are suddenly everywhere.

Groping your breasts - your waist - your ass. Barely giving you time to even think before fisting your shirt in one hand. Too impatient - too starved - to do anything other than pull down, down, down until it-

RIP!

“Oh you fuckin’ slut.” Toji’s jaw drops into a soft little oh! at the sight of your heavenly breasts before him. No bra - exactly how he liked it. “How I missed these.” Massaging them under his hands, “Is this for him or ya really had no idea I was coming?”

“You’re t-too fuckin’ hah-” you whine as he immediately takes one into his mouth, swirling his tongue around your sensitive nipples. “-full of yourself.”

And you don’t even know if Toji registered the insult - looking like he was on cloud nine as he rolled your other nipple between two fingers. Pulling off with a lewd pop! only to say, “Wonder if you’re the same down there.”

You are - Toji discovers, with wonder. 

Hooking a finger underneath the hem of your already-soaked shorts to pull them off. And, hey, Toji hasn’t had this view in months - so he really can’t help himself from bringing them up to his face. Your jaw drops at his pure audacity as he breathes in the scent of your dripping pussy with a strained, “M’keepin’ these, doll.”

“You’re sick.” 

“And you’re soaked.” strong hands spread your legs so shamefully. You can’t fight it - how fucking wet and glistening you were for him under the dim-lighting. Toji grins cockily, “Who’s she this wet for, huh? Me or him?”

“Not- not you-” you whine, despite how your sloppy cunt was leaking all over your legs - such a mess. A mess that Toji was shifting down the couch to lick up. Slow, lazy circles right at your inner thighs. Sweet - so sweet, his favorite. Eyes rolling to the back of his head at your taste and oh, how Toji missed this. 

Missed teasing you until you broke. 

Which, it turns out, happens fairly early.

“Y-you’re just fucking talk.” you hiss, but it comes out more breathless than you intended. Your voice betraying how badly you wanted him. Needed him to do something - anything. “He-”

Toji doesn’t even let you finish your sentence - and you don’t need to - because without another word, he’s surging forward until he was nose-deep in your messy cunt.

Licking one, long stripe up your swollen folds - up and down, up and down, up and- He murmurs into your cunt, “Do ya still like when I-” Hot tongue flicking roughly against your clit. Just barely, and you’re bucking wildly underneath him. “Ah, you do. Old habits die hard, huh?”

Of course, the only response that Toji gets is a wet, pathetic murmur of something - maybe a plea, probably a curse at him to shut up. 

But it’s something that has all the blood rushing to his aching cock, something that has him biting down lightly on your inner thigh - just a little punishment. 

“What was that?” he purrs, “Didn’t seem to hear you right, wifey.”

It takes everything in you to gasp out, a barely-audible determined little, “I-I said-” fingers threading through Toji’s hair, pulling up his face. Hard, so that he’s forced to meet your eyes instead of admiring your pretty lil’ cunt. “-fuck you.”

And you don’t know what you expected - maybe an insult back, maybe for him to get up and leave you all high and dry right then and there.

But oh you should’ve known your ex-husband better, because he has the audacity to throw his head back and laugh. Laugh, more to infuriate you than anything as he promptly spits on your quivering pussy. 

Once. Twice.

You flinch as some splatters against your thigh, and you both know it’s on purpose. Because Toji Fushiguro always had perfect aim - but when it comes to you, well, he had to knock his bratty lil’ wife down a few pegs. 

Throwing your legs over his shoulders to lick all over your sloppy pussy once more. “Fuck me, huh?” he groans out little profanities into your cunt, “Fuck me fuck me fuck me-” 

Smack!

You register that delicious little sting on your ass far before the realization that Toji smacked you - and even later do you realize that you liked it. Slick beading through at the painfully good feeling.

Liked the way his rough palm was soothing over the sting, words strangled and slurring together as he smacks his lips against your swollen, sensitive ones. “I’d rather you fuck me than some hah- other loser.”

“S-so fucking mean-” you moan.

“So what?” His thumb draws tight little circles on your throbbing clit, the other hand looping around your waist - bruising - as he drags your sloppy pussy all over his hot mouth. “No one else could do this.” Soft tongue going all the way up from your base, “Get you this wet-” Just dipping into your clenching hole. “-taste you like this.”

“Hngh- fuck-” you groan, as he alternates between flicking your clit so mean and squeezing his tongue into your tight cunt. “Fuck fuck fuck- s’too much-”

Too much? Toji wanted to laugh - if he wasn’t so addicted to the feeling of your gummy walls stretched out so obscenely on his tongue, anyway. He knows you can take it - you always did. 

And he tells you that - a little over ten times, actually, as the hand on your waist arches you deeper and deeper onto Toji’s tongue. Fucking you so harshly - merciless. Unrelenting. Like he was taking any and every shred of anger out on your ravaged cunt.

Bucking your hips wildly, you tipping your head down to look at the sight below you and oh-

You gasp at how sinfully blissed out Toji looks between your thighs. Eyes glassy and hooded, strands of dark hair sticking to his forehead. Your slick glossing his lips so prettily - and if you angled your head just right you could catch the way it drips down his jawline. Yeah, maybe you really did like his face between your legs. 

“Always knew ya did, doll.” he echoes against your glistening lips and shit, did you say that out loud? 

It doesn’t matter, because Toji has his lips smushing against yours, such a filthy mess of spit and fingers and tongue - everywhere. Like he couldn’t decide where he wanted to taste more. “Knew your pussy missed me, even when you’re such some other bastard. She’s still so sweet.” Thrusting in and out faster past that first, feeble ring of resistance. “So messy f’me. Fuckin’ my tongue so good for s-someone that hates me.”

And you have half the mind to wonder whether it hurt - how his fingers weren’t cramping up yet, lips aching. Letting you push his face deeper into your pussy, ankles locking around his broad shoulders in a desperate attempt to shut him up. Close. 

“Y-you talk ngh- too much.” Blood roaring in your ears, feeling his smirk against your cunt. “Do you ever shut the fuck up?”

“Nah, I know you ah- love it.” Smack! Another handprint on your ass that has you stuttering and jolting on his face. “Can feel you clenching all around me because I-” Toji gives you such an infuriating wink from below,  “-eat this pussy the best.”

 And you would be mad at how cocky he was being - if you weren’t cumming all over his pretty face. 

Stars behind your eyes with each little lick of Toji’s tongue as he fucks you through your high, lapping up all your sweet sweet juices. 

“W-wait oh-” you were letting out such delirious little whines. “S’too sensitive- too- hngh-”

“No-” he grits out, voice shot. “No no no no- wan’ it. Need it.” Scrambling to pull your hips back onto his mouth. Fingers just bruising on your skin. 

He was like a man possessed, and you can only lay there and take it as Toji tips his head back to let your slick slide, down, down, down his throat. Voice shot, as he grits out, “Oh fuck, been holdin’ out on me.” Eyes unfocused and miles away as he comes up to squish your cheeks together in an embarrassing little pout. “Open that fucking mouth.” 

And you barely even realize it when you are - tongue lolling out so sinfully. The only thing jolting you back to whatever senses you have left is Toji spitting in your mouth. 

A steady, angry stream of saliva before his lips are clashing once more with yours. Purposefully letting your juices smear all over both your lips, tasting yourself and him and how desperate you were on his tongue-

“O-oh my god.” you break the kiss at the feeling of something so hard against your cunt. Delicate strings of spit snapping as you whirl down to look. Shit, when did he even take off his-

Ah, how Toji loves the breathless little whimper that leaves your lips at the sight of his too-tight boxers, the insults failing you now. Humming, “Like what ya see?” 

As if to prove his point, he tugs them down just enough that his rock-hard cock springs free. Fuck, you think you’ll never get used to it, even after so long - Toji was so fucking massive. Flushed red, soaked in beads of precum that drip down, down, down all the way to the tufts of black at his toned pelvis. 

So thick and angry that your legs were clenching together just at the mere sight. And Toji notices - how could he not?

“Yeah…” he murmurs, as if continuing a conversation from before. Muscled arms pushing your thighs apart to watch how your sloppy pussy was drooling all over the couch. “She definitely missed me, look how much she’s gushing.” Pooling your juices on his fingertips, “Clean your act up, doll”

“Shut up.” you squeal, embarrassedly, giving Toji a glare that makes his balls squeeze so painfully. Smirking, “You’re not even as big as him.”

Oh. 

Well, Toji didn’t like that - not one bit, in fact, as he shoves his dripping wet fingers in your mouth - pressing right at the back of your tongue in a way he knows will have your pretty eyes welling up with tears.

“Then why aren’t you with him, you little bitch. Think I like you better when you’re f-fucked dumb.” he spits dangerously against your lips. Fisting his cock to lazily drag up and down your puffy folds. “Don’t you hah- agree?”

He doesn’t get to find out if you agree - and he doesn’t care, either. Besides, you wouldn’t be able to give an answer even if you wanted to. Because his swollen cock was too thick, the stretch too sinful, too dizzying as Toji splits you apart on his unforgiving cock. 

“Mmmpf- fuck! Hah-” you mewl, torn between running away from his cock and bucking down for more more more-

“More?” he laughs, “Ya ask him for more like this too?”

And oh how so very cute and pliant you were being stuffed full. He barely gives you the time to adjust because - why would he? Toji has his mouthy wife all breathless and splayed out so shamefully, desperately trying to milk his cock for all he’s worth. 

Barely even halfway in, yet he rocks into you in shallow, teasing little grinds just to fit himself inside your tight pussy. So mean. Not giving a fuck about those teary whimpers leaving your mouth.

“They ever ngh- fuck you like this?” he rasps, dropping his head to leave little bites down your tender neck. “Ever h-having you crying for his dick like ngh- this?” And despite all his confidence, Toji didn’t want to hear the answer - didn’t want to know the truth. “Such a slut.”

Your nails rake angrily down his sculpted shoulders - a warning, and it’s about the only thing you can do as Toji speeds up. Faster. Deeper. 

“Heh, what? Markin’ me up for others to hah- see?” he cooes, mockingly. And you could just cry as his grin widens, finally - finally - pulling his fingers out. “Why don’t you ngh- use your words instead?”

And you should probably breathe, probably tell him to fuck you exactly the way he wants to - to confess to him that this is all you’ve ever wanted on those lonely nights these past four months. But the both of you know that it’s more fun this way.

So instead, you smile sweetly, “F-fuck you. They do - a lot better, too.”

If only your voice hadn’t cracked so unconvincingly at the end - if only you hadn’t let out such a pornographic moan as Toji pulls your face to meet his. Kissing you over and over and his hips-

“I’m the one fucking you, doll.” he bites down on your lower lip, tugging and pushing at a senseless little rhythm - the complete opposite of his hips. “Remember that.” And that’s all that’s said before Tojis finally bottoming out all the way to the hilt. Heavy balls smacking sinfully against your ass, fat head just kissing your cervix. “It’s me. I don’t give a hah- shit if it’s been f-four mouths, it’ll always be ngh- me.”

The couch creaked in protest as Toji fucked you like it was the last thing he’d do. Like he was trying to fuck every thought of whoever came after him right out of you - along with those silly little thoughts about the divorce.

“B-but-” your eyes widen as Toji runs his mouth - as hasty and urgent as his movements now. Fingers snaking up to toy with your still-sensitive clit, not even drawing circles anymore - just messy, little patterns just to get you off. “We’re already-”

“You s-still think we’re oh- nothing but exes?” he questions, sounding as surprised as you felt. “We can’t stay ah- God, we can’t stay apart and you fuckin’ know it. So…”

You gulp, already knowing the answer to the question he was just goading you into asking. “So?” 

“So…” Toji muses, giving your swollen lips a short, chaste peck. Whispering against them, “M’gonna hah- fuck you till everyone knows you’re mine.”

A promise that Toji Fushiguro was well and fully intent on fulfilling. And you didn’t doubt that he’d have any trouble with it, in fact. 

Because he’s rutting into you so animalistically now, so so sloppy. Torn between savoring the feeling of your plushy walls squeezing him to insanity and abusing your poor cervix. Prominent veins making you feel a maddening little thump thump thump as he roams for that one-

“Ah! Hngh- Toji!”

Found it. 

And Toji had everything he needed - you, his wife, spread so sinfully and stuffed to the brim with him. Hitting your sweet spot over and over- 

“No loser’s gonna fuck you like this.” he breathes against your ear. “Have you ngh- feeling this good.”

“I- ngh- fuck fuck fuck, Toji-” you let out, hips mindlessly bucking down in a pathetic attempt to meet his rough thrusts. “S’too- hah- oh my god. S’too good-”

“Shut up.” Oh he sounds so absolutely wrecked. Sanity crumbling away bit by bit every time he’s plunging his cock - so painfully hard - into your wet pussy. “Do you even ah- realize how sexy you look right now?” Toji throws his head back, eyes still locked on you like it killed him to look away. “Never lettin’ anyone else s-see ya like this. They’re gonna look at you and see me-”

You don’t even know what he’s babbling about anymore. Just that his achingly hard cock was making such a mess of you, pulling back only to go deeper. Massaging all the right spots as fucked you harder into the couch. 

“Me-” he gasps. “That date is gonna fuck- know,” Hips stuttering and absolutely filthy, “That cashier d-down the ngh- street that eyes you up every time is gonna know-” Angry. Desperate. So, so needy. “Your fucking lawyer- ngh- s’gonna know. They’ll s-see you and see me me me me-”

At this point you can only nod deliriously, letting out a broken little, “Hngh- yeah, wan’ that, Toji. Wan’ you so bad.”

Toji presses another chaste kiss - this time to your forehead. Whispering a quiet, “Then cum f’me, doll.”

You do - the hardest you ever think you ever have in your entire life. Thighs shaking, vision spotty, sparks of white-hot electricity going all the way from your hazy brain to where Toji was fucking you through it.

Muffling your moans with his mouth as he gives one, harsh thrust. Then spilling into your gummy walls, painting it all an obscene white with rope after rope of hot cum. 

So wet and hot - with him. All him. 

And you look so cute taking it all like the good little wife that you are, that he can’t help but press down on your lower stomach. Awe-struck at how your cunt gushes around him, coating his twitching cock as Toji fucks his seed deeper and deeper into you. 

But, hell, that wasn’t his favorite part - not by a long shot. Instead, it was probably when you pulled him into his arms, whispering sweet little nonsense in his ear about “how you missed this” and “that date wasn’t real anyway” as he fucks the two of you through your highs. Sweet. Familiar. 

“Oh, God-” he mutters into the crook of your neck, slightly calmer now. Much more clear-minded than the two of you were mere seconds before. “We broke the couch.” 

And it was true - one side was sagging much more than the other. Though you can only let out a giggle in response. Doesn’t matter, the two of you’ll pick out a new one tomorrow - he always hated this new one, anyway. “Happy anniversary, wifey.”

---

“Damn kid, that ol’ dad of yours sure is running late.” Shiu crosses and uncrosses his legs with slight nervousness. Eyeing the small, dark-haired boy playing with blocks a few feet away, “Maybe we should-”

“It’s okay. He’ll be back.” Megumi deadpans, sounding like the absolute last thing on his mind was why his dad was taking way too long for what should’ve been a half an hour errand. Shiu - on the other hand - had his mind whirling with imaginations of traffic accidents or murders or- what if the two of you killed each other- “And he’ll bring back mama too.”

You could almost hear the record screech to a halt. The older man stared wide-eyed at a slightly-smiling Megumi. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Wait- no, what did you-”

“Nothing.”

Because, hey, Megumi might’ve had to go without his favorite wolf plushie for a bit - but a magician never reveals his tricks, right?

A/N. So how does it feel to be played by a kid, hm?

Plagiarism not authorized.

[osaemu]

GOJO SATORU: ❛❛ FINDERS KEEPERS, LOSERS WEEPERS! ❜❜

.ೃ࿐ streamer!au: the user "gojoslittleslut" tries to make a move on your boyfriend, but she doesn't stand a chance

contents: fem!reader. it's not too serious, nobody gets angry/jealous (except the comments lol). if u haven't already read the other streamer!gojo works u probably should so u understand the dynamic between satoru and his commenters !

author's note: reader is actually a mature person who doesn't pick fights with random ppl on the internet and i think we should all be more like her ꨄ︎

satoru leans back in his chair, idly chatting with people who pop up in his comments after he finishes his last round of the co-op game. his viewers are eager to chat, and some even shoot money satoru's way to draw his attention. whenever someone donates money, he gives them a quick shoutout and has a small back-and-forth with them, and he does that for everyone.

that is, until a user with a questionable username donates to his stream.

gojoslittleslut has donated $100.00!

gojoslittleslut: notice me pls

"shit, a hundred dollars?" satoru says, raising his eyebrows in mild surprise. "thanks, gojoslittl— oh, fuck, what is that?"

you look up from your laptop and see the way your boyfriend's cheeks have gone bright red. satoru laughs a bit nervously, so you get up and walk over, making sure to stay out of sight of the camera. you sit on satoru's desk beside his computer and peer at his screen curiously.

gojoslittleslut: im ur number one fan~

satoru's eyes flicker to yours for a second before he looks back at his monitor. "ah, well, thanks for the donation!" he replies, completely ignoring the user's advances.

suguru-geto: he has a gf ...

gojoslittleslut: yeah

gojoslittleslut: me

you cover your mouth to suppress a giggle, scrunching up your nose at satoru to let him know that you really weren't taking it too seriously. after all, it's just some random person on the internet—they don't stand a chance with your boyfriend. 

satoru reaches over and takes your hand, twining his fingers with yours off-camera. he ignores the sudden burst of comments that litter the corner of his screen, instead watching you intently. in response, you roll your eyes playfully and blow him a kiss, snickering when satoru pretends to faint.

eventually, he turns back to his screen, cerulean eyes doing a quick once-over of his new comments.

toji-fushiguro: ill take his gf any day

inumaki: we know gtfo

gojoslittleslut: toji i get gojo and u take his girl. deal?

toji-fushiguro: bet

"alright guys, settle down," satoru huffs, rolling his eyes. "for the record, i still have a girlfriend and i don't plan on changing that anytime soon," he clarifies, addressing the current feud going on in his comments. 

satoru's a good streamer—he does his best to keep things cordial and lighthearted with his audience, but he also knows his limits. one of his limits involves people trying to separate you and him, his one true pairing (of course satoru's otp is his own relationship).

your boyfriend leans closer to the screen and scowls good-naturedly, holding up the hand still wrapped around yours. "this isn't gonna change, so don't even think about it!"

satoru says his goodbyes and then ends the stream, turning to you with a sigh. "how down bad do you have to be to name yourself 'gojo's little slut?'" he grumbles, clicking through his stream analytics and finding the user. he opens gojoslittleslut's profile and studies it for a moment before hovering his mouse over the block button.

he leans back in his chair and tilting his chin up at you. "she just gave me a hundred dollars, so i kinda feel bad about blocking her," satoru muses, tapping his foot on the floor. he looks up at where you still sit on his desk, twirling a strand of hair around your finger. "c'mere," he mumbles, slipping his hands around your waist and hoisting you into his lap with a soft grunt.

satoru rests his chin on your shoulder and nudges his face into your neck, breath tickling your skin. "you know that i'm all yours, right?"

"of course i do," you murmur, settling into his arms. he's warm and comfortable, like always. satoru smiles warmly and kisses the side of your face, letting his lips linger.

"good. 'cause no fan account's ever gonna change that."

[lovelivision]

THE COMPLEX ✧₊

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: fushiguro toji/reader

𝐖𝐂: 9.7k

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: after you catch your ex cheating on you in your shared apartment, you run into your mysterious neighbour. surprisingly, you find a friendship in him you weren't expecting. he's especially handy in helping you put together your new bed frame

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: 18+ only, smut, swearing, cheating (not by reader or toji), flirting, dirty talk, cunnilingus, p in v sex, mating press, dacryphilia, fingering, multiple orgasms, slight overstimulation, creampie, cum play, tease!toji, f!reader

Coming home after a long day of work is something that should bring you joy but as you cross the threshold of the apartment you share with your boyfriend; you know something is wrong. The abrupt cut off of what sounded like moans followed by frantic shuffling doesn’t give you much of a chance to think the best of him.

Already knowing what’s coming, you begin looking for your suitcase you have stored away. Checking the linen cupboard in the hall first and pulling it out, dragging it behind you when your – soon to be – ex-boyfriend leaves your shared room.

“You’re home early!” He looks nervous, like he can’t tell if he’s been caught or not yet. He’s about to say something else when his eyes flick to the suitcase you pulled out of the cupboard, “Going on a trip or something?” The chuckle he lets out is awkward and off-putting.

Ignoring his question, you walk past him wordlessly, pushing towards your bedroom, you just want to pack as much of your shit as you can manage and get out of here.

He rushes to get in front of you, stopping you from entering the room, “Why won’t you say anything?”

“What do you expect me to say?” You look at him with nothing but apathy, giving him no chance to pull a fast one on you, “You want me to scream? Cry maybe? Beg you to tell me all the dirty little details?”

“I expect you to care at least a little bit! Ask me why, how long, anything!” His voice raises at you, like he has any right to be mad.

“Those kinds of questions give you hope that I’ll stay,” your hand reaches for the door handle behind him, “And I have no intention of staying,” walking forward in spite of him blocking you, forcing him to either move or stop you.

Acquiescing, he lets you pass him. There is no shock when you’re confronted with the half-naked girl in your bed, the bed you bought – he can keep it. It’s also no shock to see she’s someone your boyfriend works with, what was it again? His work wife? No matter how many times you mentioned that her clinginess and his unwillingness to set boundaries made you uncomfortable he never did anything to make you feel better.

Maybe if you had been paying more attention to him, if you hadn’t checked out of the relationship months ago, you would’ve been able to stop him from cheating. Then again, if you have to stop someone from cheating they aren’t worth your time.

You’d consider saying something to her but there isn’t anything that wouldn’t be a waste of breath, not when she’s sat so smugly wrapped in your favourite sheets. She’s proud of herself and you just can’t seem to comprehend why, the prize she won is some loser who was willing to cheat on his long-term girlfriend.

The suitcase in your hand is thrown onto the bed haphazardly, she startles at the bounce in the mattress, like you were going to hurt her or something. That’s something you find amusing, smile small as you tug open the zipper calmly.

Your boyfriend follows you around the room as you pick up all the necessities you can fit, “Are you seriously just going to leave like this?”

Without looking at him you answer, “Yeah.”

“Why won’t you even try and fight for me?” He sounds desperate and angry.

Pausing, you look him straight in the eyes, “Because I don’t want you.”

“No wonder he cheated on you,” his work wife scoffs from the bed, finally pulling herself out of it, rushing off to the bathroom to change. The speed in which she leaves the room after her comment almost makes you chuckle, like she’s still scared you’ll hurt her.

“Don’t you love me?” He pleads, ignoring her comment.

Instead of answering, you turn it back on him, “Did you love me while you were fucking her?” You don’t wait for his reply, going back to your suitcase.

“Of course I did,” he cements, like he means it, and hell maybe he does but just because he means it doesn’t change what he did.

“Why are you so surprised?” You pull the zip closed and tug everything off the bed, looking at him in exasperation, “I told you that cheating is a deal breaker for me, it always has been, and it always will be, so stop acting so incensed or like I blindsided you with this reaction.”

He glares at you harshly, like he’s the wronged party here, “I thought you would care more.”

“You thought wrong,” it’s taking a lot to continue this façade of indifference, and while you certainly don’t feel as effected as some would, it still hurts, you’re still livid, but mostly you’re tired.

“I never realised how much of a cold-hearted bitch you were,” his tone is cold, words cutting through you sharply.

Sighing at him, you say, “I’ll come back for the rest of my stuff later this week, if any of it’s missing or damaged I’ll be calling the cops.” Grabbing your handbag, you walk to the front door, suitcase rolling behind you, “Just in case this wasn’t clear enough, I’m breaking up with you.”

“You haven’t even let me say anything,” he’s almost frantic, like he’s stunned by your verbalisation of the breakup. “Wait, don’t leave! We can talk about this can’t we?”

Pulling the door open, you don’t look back, “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Your steps in the hallway of the building are rushed, worried that he’s going to follow you. Finger pressing into the elevator call button quickly like that will make it come quicker. It opens just as the door to your apartment does and you feel your heart rate spike, thumb slamming into the ‘door close’ symbol.

Foot tapping impatiently on the floor as you wait for it to reach the lobby, hoping you get there before him. The fact he can switch so quickly between calling you a cold-hearted bitch and begging you to stay is chilling, just who were you living with for all these years.

When the elevator dings you’re so caught up in your thoughts that you jump slightly and then you haul ass, going for the front door before thinking better of it. If he really does intend on coming after you then it might be better to go out the back.

The back of the building is a grimy alley and while you’d really rather not go back there, you’d really rather not run into your ex more, so grimy alley it is. It’s a struggle to open the door with your handbag on your shoulder and suitcase in your other hand. You manage it though, it’s just unfortunate that when you start down the steps you stumble slightly as your suitcase wheel gets caught on one of the stairs, your handbag falls to the floor as you struggle to catch yourself on the railing.

You’re pissed off and grumbly as you pull on your suitcase forcefully, “Just my fucking luck, God, what an awful fucking night. These stupid fucking stairs, always hated it back here–”

A short chuckle sounds from behind and it scares the hell out of you. Spinning around quickly and placing a hand over your racing heart, you see it’s just your neighbour. You’ve seen him in the hall a few times, never saying more than a friendly hello and quick nod of acknowledgement.

He seemed polite enough, you would’ve gotten to know him better, but your ex had told you to stay away from him. Making claims like he was dangerous and bad news; you don’t know if you ever believed him, but he clearly felt some type of way about you being friendly with him, so you kept your distance. Mostly out of respect for your relationship and your partners boundaries but that’s a little bit ironic now, after tonight.

Your neighbour is all too amused when he apologies for obviously frightening you, “Sorry, doll, didn’t mean to scare ya.”

Turning your back on him and leaning down to your bag, you acknowledge his apology, “It’s fine,” you’re trying to be polite but you’re still in a foul mood.

“Need any help?” He offers when he sees you struggling to put everything back in your handbag. Head tilted as he checks out your ass in your tight work skirt before realising he’s staring and looking away before you can notice.

“No.” You answer without looking up, though it comes out harsher than you mean for it to, clearing your throat lightly, you add, “No, I can manage, thank you though.”

His tongue clicks, “What are you doing in this alley, shouldn’t you be going out the front?”

Without missing a beat, you turn the question back on him, “What are you doing in this alley?” Finally standing and raising to look pointedly back at him, handbag placed precariously on top of your suitcase.

Wordlessly, he takes a drag of the cigarette you hadn’t noticed he was smoking, blowing the smoke off to the side, away from you. His smile too big when he notices how your expression twists in slight embarrassment when realising his very obvious reason for being back here.

“You gonna tell me why you’re back here or are you going for some kind of mysterious woman vibe?” He’s glib, annoyingly so.

But attractive, in an irritating kind of way, the kind of way that pisses you off because how dare he be that hot and also be looking at you like that.

Your reply is straightforward, “It’s not a mystery, you’re just a stranger.”

“Cranky little thing aren’t ya?” Smirking to himself when he mentions your bad mood, like it’s so funny.

That pisses you off, you were trying so hard to be polite to him and while you were failing, you were trying, “Listen here mister ‘I’m so handsome I can get away with being an annoying asshole to strangers–’.”

“–Toji.”

You fumble slightly, taken aback by his interruption, “What?”

“That’s my name,” he looks pleased with himself for throwing you off. It’s like he’s trying to win an award for annoying you.

Frowning, you brush him off and continue on your mini tirade, “Right, well, I have had an especially foul evening and the last thing I need after walking in on my boyfriend cheating on me, is some dick telling me I’m awfully cranky. I think I should be crankier actually!”

He huffs out an amused breath at your frustrated rant, “Normally you give your name back after someone’s offered theirs.”

You squint at him, scrutinising his person. Hesitating in answering him but ultimately you give him your name, not seeing the harm in it.

It’s like he mulls it over, smiling to himself before saying unprompted, “A damn shame to see you go, doll.”

“I’m so sure,” you snark back.

Taking a step forward, you go to leave the alley, but he speaks again, “I got one question though…”

Stopping in your tracks, you turn to face him properly, hand propped on your hip, “And what’s that?”

“Why are you the one leaving?” His head tilts at you.

You don’t know why, but you decide to answer him, “It was his place first,” you shuffle from side to side, “Plus I’m not particularly fond of the fact that they’ve potentially fucked in every square inch of that place…”

He barks a short laugh at your statement, “You know… if you were my girlfriend,” he leans in towards you, “I wouldn’t cheat on you.”

“Yeah that means so much to me mysterious neighbour who I’ve never spoken more than a few words to in passing,” you deadpan back at him.

There’s an entertained look on his face as he eyes you up and down, grinning to himself before taking another drag of his cigarette.

Your foot taps impatiently while you wait for him to say more, he looks like he wants to say more but the longer it takes him to talk the more you’re not fully convinced he has anything to say. Puffing, you turn to walk off, only to get stopped by his words, again.

“You got a place to stay?”

Your brow raises at him, “Yeah… I do.”

He shrugs, “That’s too bad.”

“Stop flirting with me! I literally just found out my ex of many years has been cheating on me,” frown prominent on your face as you accuse him adeptly of hitting on you.

His shoulders shake with a chuckle, “The first time I’ve gotten to say more than a few words to you in passing, just making the most of it.”

Something clicks for you, “Now I see why my ex didn’t like you very much.”

“And why’s that?”  He’s smug when he asks.

“He’s insecure and you’re very clearly a flirt.”

Unbothered, he answers simply, “Not usually, you just so happen to be my type.”

You click your tongue, caught between shocked and completely unsurprised by him, “Awfully blunt aren’t you?”

Toji smiles at you as he takes another drag, blowing the smoke away quickly, “If you want someone there when you’re picking up the rest of your shit from that jackasses place, feel free to knock on my door,” he follows up his statement with a wink, dropping his smoke and stomping it out. He’s walking to the door, adding, “Stay safe out there, doll. I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”

How presumptuous of him, he’s such an ass, and just as you go to tell him as such, he’s closing the door and presumably going back up to his apartment. Your face scrunches as you think of all the things you could’ve said to him and at the things you shouldn’t have said to him. He didn’t need to know all about your relationship like that… tonight just keeps getting worse for you.

At least you wasted enough time that if your ex did follow you down like he seemed he was going to, he’s probably left by now.

✮.

Staying with your friends is uncomfortable, they’re dating and happy and you’re sour about it. Their displays of affection are prompting you to get into motion though, finding a reasonably cheap place to live fairly quick. Fuelled by nothing but bitterness and a sickening feeling like you’ve wasted too much time with your ex.

The next step is going back to that apartment and collecting more of your valuables, having left behind a bunch of things that would’ve been too much of a hassle to grab in the moment. Taking a day off work and borrowing your friends’ car is the move, aiming to go while the place is empty.

It’s still going to be a bit of work moving stuff from the apartment down to the car and your friends can’t take the day off to help. As much as you feel uncertain about it, you might ask Toji for help, he offered after all.

By the time you’re finally heading back to that apartment complex it’s been a few days, not having felt ready enough to come back any sooner. It’s funny how everything about the building is the same and yet you feel so different about it all now, it doesn’t feel like home anymore. There’s no warmth here, just another cold place that one day you’ll pass and not feel a tug in your heart over.

Nerves run through you as you stand in front of Toji’s door, uncertainty sitting heavy in your chest. Maybe he wasn’t genuinely offering, or what if he’s busy, or what if he’s not even home. You’re stupid, you didn’t even consider that he might not be home today, feeling flustered you ultimately don’t knock on his door.

Entering your now old apartment feels odd, most of your stuff is still here but you feel detached from the place. Amazing how a few days can change your outlook so drastically. Thankfully it doesn’t look like he touched any of your things, though you never really had all that much to begin with.

It was his apartment first and a lot of the furniture is his or was bought by the two of you together. Aside from the bed but that’s just because he didn’t want to pay for a new one. If you’re being honest, it never even felt like your place. You lived here and you called it home, but it doesn’t look lived in by you. After a while you stopped trying to buy trinkets and decorations for the place, he never seemed to like them. Always leaving you feeling like it was his place first and a shared home second.

You guess, at some point, it stopped being noticeable but as you stand here now and look through your belongings, you’re realising you really do not have all that much. Whatever you take will hardly make a dent in the large ocean of his belongings, poetic in a way. You’re a small part of him but he was a large part of you.

Grimacing at your own thoughts you move on, not wanting to start feeling those emotions in fear of crying. Instead sourcing the boxes you kept from your initial move in, you tape them back into shape. It’s been so long they look weak and old; time has not been kind to either of you it seems.

On your trips back and forth from the apartment to the car, you pointedly ignore Toji’s door, not wanting to linger on thoughts of him either. It embarrassing that you told a stranger that much about your life and then was willing to have him help you move out. Though he had big arms… he’d probably be really helpful.

This whole thing is taking longer than you thought it would, your arms growing tired from each trip. As you look at one of the few boxes you have left, you wonder if it’s even worth it. Most of what’s in these are clothes or the few decorative trinkets you own.

No, he doesn’t get to keep any part of you. Not the parts that were solely you anyways, he can keep those fucking sheets. Picking up the box, you trudge out the door for what feels like the billionth time. Not able to help the frustration in your steps as you stomp out into the hallway.

Just as you’re about to pass by Toji’s door, your box splits underneath and your things spill out. Thankfully it only really has some clothes in it, but you clearly overfilled it, too heavy for the poor old cardboard. Letting it drop to the floor; all you can do is look at the pile of clothes.

A deep sigh pulls from your lungs and your eyes brim with tears, you’ve yet to cry about this all but your box breaking feels like the last straw. Fighting your tears off desperately and failing as they drip down your cheeks.

Your voice is small when you mumble a tiny, “I hate everything.”

A hand on your shoulder makes you jump, apparently out of it enough to not hear someone leave their apartment and approach you. Maybe you shouldn’t be surprised when you look and see Toji, but you are, feeling a little confused at the small amount of relief that runs through you at seeing him.

His tone is careful when he asks, “You okay, doll?” Like he’s actually worried about you.

And maybe it’s because he’s the first person to properly ask you that, or because his hand is warm and large against your shoulder or maybe it’s just because he’s here, you move to hug him. Realising now just how alone you feel, desiring comfort from him.

He doesn’t push you back, instead he wraps his arms around you and lets you soak a portion of his shirt in your tears. A kindness you don’t think you’d expect from someone who looks – or quite frankly – acts like him.

Mumbling in his shirt, “Sorry…” Before pulling back, “I’m okay… sorry.”

“You apologised twice,” he notes.

“Sorry…”

An amused look on his face at your third apology, his thumb reaching up to wipe at the tear on your cheek before speaking again, “Your box broke.”

“I know, it made me cry.”

“Don’t cry over spilt clothes.”

Somehow that poor joke has you cracking a small smile, “Very wise of you.”

“I’m full of that shit,” he moves for your box, letting all the clothes spill onto the floor, “Wisdom.”

“You sure you’re not just full of shit?”

“Ah there’s the girl I met the other night,” Flipping the box upside down, he scoops up your clothes and shoves them inside again.

Realising he’s picking up after you, you tell him, “I can do that.”

“I’m sure you can,” he picks up the box easily, resting it over one forearm as he moves for his apartment door.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re taking my stuff?”

“Finders keepers,” his tone even.

“Hey?!” You call after him, following him into his apartment.

It’s a mirror image of yours, furnishing a bit boring but befitting of what you assume is a single man. Toji drops the box of your clothes onto the floor by the front door, pushing it off to the side.

His words interrupt your snooping from afar, “How many more boxes you got?”

“Uh, only a couple,” you blink up at him, still lost on what’s he’s doing.

He hums at you, “Come on.”

“What?” You’re then following him back out of his apartment and over to yours, he walks in like he’s been invited. Flustered and confused as you hurry along behind him, “Toji, what are you doing?”

“You used my name,” you can hear the smile in his voice, “Almost made me blush, doll,” he teases back at you.

Purposefully not indulging his flirting, “Shut up, why are we over here?”

“Grabbing the rest of your shit, put it at my place before that dick gets home,” he stacks the last two boxes on top of each other, smaller than the box that had your clothes in it. Picking them up with ease, he walks past you, “Could ya get the door for me?”

Mindlessly, you open the door. Why is he doing this for you? “Toji–”

“Do a once over and check you got everything,” he nods back at you, “Don’t take too long though, he gets home from work soon.”

He walks off before you can say anything, so you decide to do what he said. Checking the apartment all over to make sure you got everything you wanted, you were right earlier, your stuff barely made a dent. When you’re satisfied you’ve got everything, you go to walk out the front door, pausing at a note taped to the wall by it.

Not noticing it with your view being obscured by large boxes every time you walked by it, that and you’ve been a bit distracted all day. It’s obviously written by your ex, you’re half tempted to just ignore it but you’re nosy and want to know what he’s said.

It reads a simple: ‘please don’t leave me, it was a mistake. I love you’. Underwhelming to say the least, it doesn’t even move you. If anything, you feel pissed the fuck off. How dare he spit a bunch of bullshit, you’re not stupid, the day you caught them was certainly not the first time they’d fucked here. It was written all over that woman’s face, she was smug, like she’d finally got what she’d wanted by you finding out.

For a quiet moment, you consider writing something back to him, or burning the note, or even just ripping it up. But you’re choosing to leave it there, maybe he’ll wonder if you saw it and maybe he’ll always be unsatisfied as to whether or not you’d have stayed if you had. Maybe he doesn’t deserve closure, maybe he deserves nothing more of you.

You’re getting bored thinking about him, this relationship had already been on its way out, you just didn’t have the guts to leave him for seemingly no reason. Pretending like you didn’t see his shitty note, you lock up the place and take the key off your key chain. Slipping it under the door before walking over to Toji’s.

Looking at his door, you consider if you should knock or walk in. It feels wrong to enter someone’s home unannounced though, even if they did kind of hijack some of your belongings and stash them in their house. Feeling too uncomfortable to simply walk in, you knock, waiting patiently for him to open it.

When he opens the door he leans against the frame of it with his forearm, “I left it open for ya.”

“It’s rude to enter without an invitation,” you say obviously.

He points out, “Didn’t stop ya earlier.”

“You stole my clothes!” You defend.

A chuckle leaves him, “Get in,” he holds the door wider for you.

Pausing, you check first, “You’re not gonna kill me or something are you?”

“A sweet lil’ thing like you?” His smile is big and flirtatious, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of yourself,” rolling your eyes as you walk past him and into his apartment.

The door swings closed behind you, Toji watching you shuck of your shoes, “Nope.”

Standing up and turning back to him, you mumble a small, “Thanks for helping me… and sorry… for crying on you.”

He pouts at you in thought, a hum leaving as an acknowledgment of what you’ve said. “You want some tea?”

You’re taken aback by his sudden offer, “Oh… uh… sure, that’d be nice.”

“Sit wherever,” he waves his hand around aimlessly at the few seating options he has.

Cautiously, you navigate around his apartment, unsure of yourself in here. You’ve only just met him and he’s being so kind, the fact he’s a stranger a more obvious fact when you’re in his home. You hesitate for a moment before taking a seat on his couch, gazing out the window while he clanks around in the kitchen.

Finding yourself wishing you’d put more effort into knowing him, he seems kind, though with how he flirts with you it’s probably better you didn’t. His footsteps are padded as they approach you, his slippers dragging against the floorboards. The tea he’s made for you is placed on the coffee table across from you, along with another he’d made for himself.

With no grace, he flops down beside you, his head leaning back against the couch. He doesn’t seem to have very good manners, his frame spread wide, sitting closer to you than most people probably would.

After a moment, he comments, “All the furniture was still in that place.”

You guess he’s referring to your apartment, “Yeah…”

“Gonna have an empty new apartment.”

“Yeah,” you reach for your tea, “It’ll all be me though.”

His head turns to look at you, “I’d like to see it.”

You smile into your mug, “You trying to say you wanna see my new place when I move in?”

“I think I should be the first person to see it.”

Taking a quick sip, you place the mug back down on the table, still a bit too hot, “And why should you get such a high honour?”

“Because you ruined my shirt by crying into it–”

“I did not ruin your–”

“And because you’ll need someone to help with all your new and big furniture,” he smiles at you like he knows he’s right, all smug and attractive.

Being serious for a moment, you enquire, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Isn’t it obvious,” you shake your head at him and his smile grows, “I’m hoping to get into your pants.”

Your face pulls up at him and you push him away by his shoulder, “You’re pathetic.”

“Yeah, but you’re hot and single,” he barely moves at your pushing.

You continue to frown at him, “You have to help with my furniture now, after being so lecherous.”

You’re only joking but he answers as if you weren’t, “Whatever you say, doll,” he smiles arrogantly, like he knows he’s won you over, even if it’s just a little bit.

✮.

The new place is nice, smaller than your last but it’s a good size for you. It’s only been a few days since you moved in though, so your ‘bed’ has been a mattress on the floor and your living room has a sad looking bean bag instead of a proper couch. It’s strikingly bare in here but it’s all yours and you get to decorate to your hearts content, you just wish you had the funds to buy to your hearts content.

Your first big purchase has been a bed frame, deeming it the most necessary. A couch will probably go second and then a place for eating and a desk and… there is so much more furniture you need. Things that can all wait, nothing will bring down your mood. You’re feeling good, your bed frame came today and you’re going to put it together and have the best sleep ever tonight.

…

Premature optimism will be your downfall, you felt pretty good about assembling this altogether yourself. But now after having tried to put this stupid bedframe together for an hour or maybe more all the confidence you had in yourself has been drained. Sitting on the floor of your bedroom, instructions and bits of your bed in front of you, mattress pushed up against the wall and out the way, you have been defeated.

Happy thoughts, all happy thoughts, you can have it together before it’s time for bed… surely… Maybe this is more of a two-person job, you should’ve asked for help. Checking the time you see it’s late afternoon, is it too late in the day to call Toji and ask for his help. You ponder on it for a second before deciding you’re calling him; you want to sleep in an actual bed tonight. Plus, if you don’t get it together tonight, you’ll be sleeping on the mattress out in the living room and that just feels wrong.

The line only rings a couple times before he’s picking up, “Was wondering how long it’d take ya to call me, doll.”

“Don’t be smug, it makes it harder for me to ask for your help,” you roll your eyes despite him not being able to see you.

It’s scary how accurate he is in asking, “Taking me up on my offer to help with your furniture?”

“Is the offer still good?”

“For you?” he hums, “Always.”

He may be the biggest flirt you’ve ever met, “Then yes… I’d like your help, please.”

His smile can be heard down the line, “Those are nice manners you got there.”

“Shut up, just get here,” you hang up on him and text your address, he’s going to tease you plenty when he gets here, you don’t need sneak previews.

Though you are thankful you have his number, having already exchanged short messages back and forth. Sometimes you’ve even talked on the phone with him, you get a bit lonely and it’s nice to be able to call him. He’s not overly talkative but he will listen to you carry on about nothing and you like that in a man. Embarrassingly though, you tend to bring up just about anything so you can keep talking to him for a bit longer.

By the time Toji is in your apartment, you’re feeling down, having tried for a bit after the call to try and assemble it at least a little bit before he got here and failing. The pair of you look at the mess on the floor of your bedroom, his hands on his hips as his brow quirks at the sight. You feel small next to him, humiliated by just how badly you’ve done.

His head turns to the side, “Doll… what the hell am I looking at?”

“My new bed,” you pout back at him.

“You sure?” He double checks.

You’re glaring at him, “Yes. I’m sure.”

His head shakes at you, “Should’ve just called me from the beginning.”

“Well maybe I thought I could do it myself.”

“And look how that turned out.”

You whine at him, “You said you were gonna help.”

“And I will,” he places a hand on top of your head, leaning down, “I just gotta mock you first.”

“Is it out of your system yet?”

A beat before, “Probably not.”

Ignoring him, you offer, “Do you want a drink?”

He pats your head a couple times, “Quite the little host, aren’t ya?”

Your answer is dry, “No drink for you, got it.”

A laugh leaves him at your quickness, clearly enjoying the back and forth the two of you have. “Alright I’ll have your bed together quick; I don’t even know how you managed to fuck it up this bad.”

“Unnecessarily cruel,” you note.

Throwing a smile at you, he reaches for the instructions and glances over them for a moment before letting them float down to the ground. He’s clearly confident in his ability to put the bed together.

And to be fair, he had good reason to be confident. He gets it all assembled easily, barely needing your help save for a few moments where you had to hold something. Mostly, you felt like you were just there to watch him, and you found yourself not minding at all, he looked good.

As the mattress slides into place on the new frame, he gives you a helping hand in making the bed. Putting all the appropriate linens back on, including fresh sheets. It’s beautiful, all ready for you to sleep in, to think you almost cried about this a couple hours ago. The frame itself is nothing special but you’re feeling so much joy over something so simple.

“Thank you so much, Toji,” if it were physically possible, you’d have hearts in your eyes right now.

“More than welcome, doll,” he winks at you, “Want help breaking it in?”

“Okay.”

“What?” He asks again, like he’s not sure he heard you right.

“Okay, you can help me break it in,” when he doesn’t move, you ask, “Toji?”

“Hold on, I wasn’t expecting to get this far.”

You laugh airily, his surprise cute. As much as you were serious, you don’t want to put pressure on him. Moving to walk past and offering, “Do you wanna eat instead? I can order something; I don’t think I have enough in my fridge to cook–”

Your sentence is cut off by his hand on your upper arm, suddenly being pulled into him. “Now hold on, I’m not passing on this opportunity.”

“You sure? You seemed to get a bit nervous for a second there,” you tease.

“Was taken by surprise is all,” he grins.

“Are you really sure, because–”

He’s cutting you off again, his lips on yours, breathing against you, “–You talk too damn much.”

“That’s just–”

You don’t get to finish; he’s kissing you again. It’s insistent and messy, like he’s been wanting to kiss you for too long. His tongue licking into your mouth, pulling a whine from you at how his hands grope at your hips. Looping your arms around his neck, you pull yourself up into him, craving more of him.

He’s large and warm, so sturdy as you hang off him. Such a good kisser, lips slotting against yours perfectly. The way he’s making out with you has shivers running down your spine, finding yourself obsessing over his lips. You don’t want to part from him, drunk on him and the messy way he’s kissing you.

A hand leaves your hip and grabs the side of your face, his thumb pulls on your chin, getting you to open your mouth more. He wants to kiss you deeper, he wants to kiss you so you never forget what it’s like to be kissed by him. Leading you back, he walks you both to the bed until your legs are knocking on it and then he pushes you down onto it.

“You know,” his smile is suggestive, “I think I am hungry.”

It takes you an embarrassing amount of time to understand what he means, it’s not until his hands are at the waistband of your pants are you catching on, “Oh!” You’re feeling flustered, “I– you don’t– if you want–”

“–Oh, I want,” He returns quickly. “Do you?”

“Yes…” Your voice comes out smaller than you intended.

He can’t help but snicker at how you’re suddenly so much more shy, “Where’d your sharp tongue go, doll?”

“Shuddup Toji,” you snark back.

The breath that leaves him is amused, his hands pulling your pants and panties off in one go. And then he’s a little breathless because you’re so wet and pretty, his hands are keeping you spread apart.

“Keep ya fuckin’ legs open, doll,” he grunts, “Don’t deprive me of the view.”

“How can you be so– hah–”

He drops to his knees and blows cool air onto your clit, interrupting your comment in favour of a small gasp. Enjoying the way you twitch slightly at the action, “What were you saying?”

“F–Fuck you,” you curse at him.

“You’ll get the chance, don’t worry.”

Not able to hold himself back any longer, he’s putting his mouth on your cunt. His tongue spreading your folds, licking from your hole to your clit and back down again, repeating the motions over and over. No real purpose behind his actions, just enjoying the taste of you on his tongue, relishing in the sounds he manages to pull from you. Essentially making out with your pussy, reverential in his actions.

You try grinding down into him, to guide him where you want but he’s too happy to torture you, his arms hold you open and pin you still. Barely able to rut down into him with how his arms are around your legs.

“Toji,” you whine at him, wanting more.

He ignores your call to him, too involved in how he’s lapping at your cunt, making a mess. Though finally switching things up in a show of pity, his tongue slides inside your hole, fucking you with it. Your chest stutters with your breaths and your legs fight his arms, wanting to close around his head. It doesn’t work, he’s so strong and you feel so weak with how he’s turning you into a puddle.

This may be his new obsession, making out with your pussy and refusing to let you get what you want. Your pathetic whines and fruitless struggle against his grip amuses him just about as much as it turns him on. He rubs his nose purposefully into your clit, the moan you let out is shocked and cute. The way your cunt flutters around his tongue has his eyes rolling to the back of his head.

You’re really going to let him fuck you and that thought alone makes him feel giddy. Parting from you in a messy display, string of his saliva connecting him to your wet pussy, “You wanna cum, doll?”

Blankly, you nod back at him.

He smiles evil, “Ask.”

“Toji…”

“You wanna cum or not?”

“Make me cum…” You look at him and it has your heart leaping, his face slick with you, eyes glazed, “…please.”

“‘Atta girl,” he says like he’s proud of you.

All to happily, he puts his mouth back on you. Tongue fucking you with more purpose, nose pressed into your clit. The sounds of him eating you sloppy and obscene, not that you can find it in yourself to give a single fuck. Your high approaching so much quicker now that he actually intends on letting you cum, back arching off the bed as you get closer and closer.

So badly you want to rock down onto him, you want to grind on his pretty face, but he still holds you tight. He’s so mean to you, shouldn’t he want to make a good impression. Then again, he’s making you feel so good right now, orgasm so fucking close and then he does something devious. His finger slips inside your hole, alongside his tongue, never stopping and barely giving you a chance to acknowledge it.

It feels good and you feel the slightest bit fuller and you’re cumming, so unexpected to you that you’re blindsided as you twitch and cum all over his finger and tongue. Toji groans into you, drinking down your creamy slick. Your hearing is dull and you’re involuntarily twitching in his grip, soft whines dying down as you calm.

He keeps licking at you, you’re not able to tell if he’s cleaning up or adding to the mess between your legs but with the way he’s drooling on your pussy you’d have to guess the latter. Your thighs still shake in his grip, he’s going to force you into overstimulation, that or he’s going to have you cumming again.

Reaching down, you pull at his hair, “Too sensitive.”

“Couldn’t help myself, sorry doll,” he smiles lazily at you.

Your hand drops from his hair, he’s so beautiful, all pussy drunk and horny. “Is okay.”

While he waits for your breathing to start evening out, he licks and bites at your thighs, leaving behind so many marks that you will no doubt be embarrassed about tomorrow. Right now though, you can’t be bothered to move away or try and stop him. Jerking every now and again when his teeth nip at an especially soft spot on your thigh.

When you’ve calmed down, he stands up, undressing in front of you, not minding in the slightest the way you stare at him. His dick bobs under the weight of it, all heavy and leaky, precum dripping from his tip down the length of himself. Your thighs rub together at the sight of his incredibly hard cock, caught between worried about taking him and desperate to be fucked open on him.

“Your shirt,” he points at your chest, “Off.”

Pushing yourself up, you go to take off your shirt but before you can Toji’s tugging it off himself. “Someone’s eager,” you tease.

“‘Course I am,” his hands are quick to grope at your tits, “I get to open your little pussy up on my cock, what’s not to be eager about.” He smirks, fingers pinching your nipples.

“Are you always such a relentless tease?”

“Did you expect anything less?”

“Stop– hah– stop playing with my tits,” your scold has less of an effect when you’re pushing into him and fighting off moans.

He hums at you but pulls his hands back, “Shuffle back.”

Doing as he says, you move back on the bed, sitting more centred on it. He crawls onto the bed, pushing you back onto the mattress with a hand on your shoulder. Quick to open your legs again, hooking under your knees with both hands to push back on your legs. His eyes greedy as he watches your cunt closely, grinning when you clench around nothing.

“Toji, stop being a dick.”

“You want this dick, doll,” he returns, glancing at you, “Should ask real nice for it.”

You return a sharp, “Maybe you should ask real nice to fuck my pussy.”

“You got words now, but I doubt that’ll stay the same when I’m balls deep in you,” he grips his cock and rubs his tip between your folds.

“You gotta ask, Toji,” you remind.

Without an ounce of shame, he asks, “Please, let me fuck your pretty pussy, doll. Wanna feel the way she grips me tight when I fuck her open, want her creaming on me, wanna make a real fuckin’ mess.”

“I hate you,” you huff, annoyed that his words turned you on so much.

“She doesn’t feel the same as you,” he notes, humming at how your slick drips down and coats the tip of his dick.

Whining at him, “Toji, stop being such a– hah– insufferable tease.”

“You haven’t asked yet, doll,” the tip of his cock almost pushes inside you before he moves back.

An unsatisfied breath leaving you, almost having got what you wanted, “I thought you wanted to fuck me?”

“I do, bad,” he agrees easily, “What I want more than that though…” leaning down to talk next to your ear, “Is to hear you fuckin’ beg for it…”

Sadly, your resolve is weak, and you break easily, “Please, Toji. Please fuck me, anything, just stop teasing, please.” When he doesn’t move at your pleads, you add another small, “Please.”

Breathless huff leaving him at how quickly you gave in, he wonders how you’d hold up if he weren’t being so impatient himself. Working you up over and over only to deny you pleasure at the last second, making you cry and beg for his dick. The thoughts have his cock twitching, loving the idea of your wet eyes. He’ll just have to make you cry another way.

“What kind of a man would I be if I said no after you begged so nicely?” He asks rhetorically.

Despite his tone, you answer, “A mean one.”

Barking a laugh at your reply, “Never claimed to be nice, doll.” He delights in the way your eyes grow large, worried he’s going to deprive you more and maybe if he weren’t so fucking horny he would but he can’t bring himself to. “Don’t look so worried,” he coos.

Pulling back, he waits for you to open your mouth to talk before pushing the tip of his cock into you. Your face twisting in surprise, mouth dropping open but no words coming. His breathing stutters at the tight grip of your cunt, not quite expecting you to feel so fucking good around only this much of him.

He looks down to your pussy, watching how he’s slowly sinking into you, “Don’t know h– hah– how gentle I’m gonna be, doll.”

You mumble back at him, already out of it, “Ruin me.”

A shudder runs through him at that, just about cumming in you from your small request alone, “You’re a fuckin’ dream.” He keeps sliding inside you, rocking slightly, not able to help himself when you feel this good, “If ya need me to stop, fuckin’ slap me or something.”

“Won’t want you to– hnn– stop,” you gasp back.

“If you do though,” he insists.

Nodding firmly at him, like you want him to just shut up now, “I’ll– hah– slap y–you, got it.”

“Impatient little thing, aren’t ya?”

Though he’s not much better than you, especially when he’s finally balls deep, mouth salivating as his eyes almost roll to the back of his head. Only fighting the urge so he can see your face and watch how your eyes glaze over. A sight he doesn’t regret waiting for, his dick throbbing at the cute expression you’re wearing, your cunt fucked open and full by him, your brain having trouble doing its job.

Already so cock drunk that you can’t get your bearings enough to talk, he can tell you want to though, can see the way you’re fighting yourself. He’s surprised when you grind into him, against his pelvis. Clearly unable to find the words to ask him nicely to start moving, he groans at your shamelessness, enjoying you like this. You’re greedy and he likes that.

“Cute,” he murmurs, watching your pussy bulge around his dick.

Taking a deep breath, you moan out his name. All pitched and ruined, “Toji.”

“I got ya, doll.”

He pulls back slowly, his cock dragging deliciously against your walls. Your back arches as you moan, already trying to grind back into him. Toji bites his lip at the unabashed display, so willing to be openly needy when you’re this worked up. Not even a little bit shy when you whimper and try fucking up onto him.

Giving you what you want, he thrusts harshly back into you, picking up a diabolic pace. The sloppy sounds of him fucking your tight cunt filling the room, lewd mess spilling from your hole onto your fresh duvet every time he pulls back out. A fact you’d surely be bothered by if your eyes weren’t rolling, and your head wasn’t going fuzzy at how he’s fucking you. Managing to rub up against every single perfect spot inside you, your toes curling and legs shaking.

Cruelly, Toji grabs under your legs, pushing them up and back. Leaning into the movement with his weight, folding you in half. The angle new and breathtaking as he drills down relentlessly into you. If you weren’t cock drunk before you sure as fuck are now, your moans loud, the chanting of his name slurred and barely comprehensible.

“Fuck– how are you so–” Toji’s dick spasms inside you, you’re so unbelievably wet around him. Creamy pussy making an obscene mess on him, “Feel so– hnn– fuckin’ good, doll.”

You shake your head at him, “I– ah!– can’t fff–” you give up half way through, unable to say what you wanted.

He chuckles at your inability to form a coherent sentence, heart leaping at the realisation your eyes are brimming with tears. Sitting so pretty on your lash line, adding to the glassy look in your eyes. Moans slip from him when you shed a few tears, somehow, he’s folding you even more in half. The mating press mean and firm, not willing to give you a chance to change anything about how he’s fucking you.

It’s mind numbing how he’s thrusting into you, not realising how you’re drooling over it. Pussy throbbing at the way he slides into you, the feeling of being so full and split open the only thing on your mind. It can’t feel this good, why does it feel this good? The kind of sex that has you forgetting you’ve ever had sex before. Getting dicked down so good that you can’t even think of ever wanting anything but this.

Toji notices how drunk on him you are, “Hah– Good, doll?”

“Ah huh,” you nod deliriously at him, it’s all you’re really capable of.

Skin slapping against skin fills the room, his brutal thrusts echoing throughout your barely furnished apartment. His ego growing tenfold by the stupid look on your face, your pussy leaving a creamy white ring around the base of his cock driving him insane. Fucking you is messy, and he can’t help the fact that he’s obsessed with that. Loving the way you still try to grind up into him. Failing every time with the way he’s folded you, so needy for more that it’s adorable.

You’re hot and wet and so so snug that he feels like he’s dreaming, hooked on the way your pussy sucks him right back in as soon as he’s pulling out. Taking him so well despite the way you’re struggling to fit all of him, not that you mind, so blissed out and greedy that all you do is moan and pull at the sheets.

Cheeks tear stained at this point, orgasm so close if your stuttered breaths and shaking thighs are anything to go by. He keeps his thrusts the same, not changing anything about the way he’s fucking into you harshly, building you up so quickly that you’re dizzy.

Your back arches up into him, your tits presented to him so enticingly that he feels disappointed he can’t put his mouth on them right now.

“You’re s–so cute, doll,” he compliments, “Fuck– so greedy.”

His deep voice and crude praise send you over the edge, cunt clamping down so tight around him that he struggles to fuck you through your orgasm. Cumming around him so divinely that he couldn’t stop the moans tumbling from his lips even if he thought to. The sounds he makes stick inside your head, brain foggy as you cum but distinctly picking up on the moans he lets out. Pretty and arousing, you wish he had made more sounds for you.

Even as you come down, he keeps fucking you, fervent and desperate as he pummels into you over and over. New headboard slamming into the wall loudly as he fucks you, probably has been the whole time and you’re only just now registering it. Your eyes are bleary from the tears you’ve spilt, you want to rock down into him, wanting him to finish inside you so badly that it’s a feral kind of need clawing at your insides.

It’s insane how good he looks while he fucks into you, his lips parted slightly as he watches the way he stuffs his cock back into you over and over. Abs tense with his movements, eyes lazy and blown out, body sweaty from the exertion of holding you in a mating press while fucking you diabolically. His tongue runs along his lower lip, and you involuntarily clench around him, making him moan weakly, eyes rolling to the back of his head.

Glancing up at you, his eyes look wild, “You’re so adorable when you’re crying for me.”

“Toji,” It’s pathetic and pouted back at him, mind too broken to say much else.

He groans at you, “Ohh fuck!–”

The way your lower lip wobbles so pitifully when whining his name has him blowing his load, not even expecting it himself as he cums deeps inside you. When he realises, he slams his hips to yours, wanting it so deep inside that you’ll feel him for days after. His pelvis grinds into you and you practically purr at it, the stimulation against your clit has your cunt fluttering around him.

He's so sensitive he nearly whimpers at how perfect you feel around him, unwilling to move immediately, truly too obsessed with how you feel around him. The only thing prompting him to pull back being the uncomfortable way he’s folded you in half, lifting his weight off you, he allows your legs to drop.

Eyes locked onto your pussy when he pulls out, watching the way his cum leaks from your hole and down onto your bed, adding to the mess already there from the sloppy way he’s fucked you. Compelled by greed and his horny brain, he uses his fingers to scoop up his seed and push it back into you. Fingers pushing into your cunt and relishing in the way you jump at the intrusion.

“Don’t want it going to waste now do we, doll?”

“You’re a– hah– freak,” you whine at him.

“You fuckin’ like it,” he slips his two fingers deep inside and curls them, “Bet if I hadn’t pinned you, you’d be a little freak yourself.”

Your hips grind down into his hand, apparently insatiable and willing to cum for him for the third time tonight. Needy all over again that it’s almost embarrassing how willing to be fucked by his fingers you are. If Toji didn’t seem so keen to give you what you wanted you’d probably feel ashamed of how you twitch down onto his digits soaked in a mix of both your cum.

You gasp at him, “It’s– ah!– too much.”

“See…” he grins, “…You say that, but you’re rutting down into me so needily that I’m not sure I believe you.”

He enjoys the way your overstimulated body jerks at his touch, cunt swallowing his fingers happily. The sight of your overfilled pussy trying to push his cum out only for his fingers to shove it back in making his chest vibrate with groans. His thumb rubs into your clit and you whine pathetically at him, your hand clamping over your mouth as your toes curl.

So soon after your last orgasm that you’re finishing with barely any work from him, your walls gripping him as you whimper into your palm. Thighs trembling from the force of it, you can’t even hear anything, gaze so bleary that you’re unable to see for a few moments. Toji doesn’t stop moving his hand until you go limp on the bed, your breaths heaved as you struggle to collect yourself.

When he groans, you open your eyes to watch the way he sucks on his fingers. Cleaning them of the lewd mess from the both of you, he’s smug when he sees the way he’s flustered you with his actions.

“You’re so gross,” you whinge at him.

He only laughs as he gets off the bed and ransacks your apartment for something to wipe the pair of you down with. Touch gentle as he wipes between your legs with the cloth he’s found. Despite how careful he is with you, you flinch, so sensitive that you feel like you might break.

Once he’s cleaned you enough, he flops down beside you and pulls you to him, “Think we broke it in enough?”

You consider, “I don’t know… we might have to do that all again.”

“Because the beds not broken in or because you wanna get dicked down again?”

“Just wanna see if it’s like that every time.”

“It’ll be better,” he speaks low, “I went easy on you.”

A shiver runs down your spine, taking him for his word, “Then… next time?”

“Next time,” he presses a kiss to the top of your head, “I’m taking you out on a date first.” Not able to leave it as a nice moment, he adds, “And then I’m taking you back to my place to make you properly beg for it.”

“You’re gonna kill me.”

“Maybe but it’ll feel real good,” he chuckles.

You roll your eyes at him, “Fine but you gotta help with all the rest of my furniture.”

“Doll, with the state of your bed before I came over, I almost feel obligated to,” smooth in how he says, “I don’t wanna be visiting such a sad apartment all the time.”

He’s as presumptuous as ever but you don’t feel the need to point that out to him, since he’s right and all.

𝐀/𝐍: this was supposed to be up before christmas but then i had to do things to prep for it UGH... as per usual this fic was only meant to be like... 5k maybe a little less and i got carried away hehe. anyways,, happy holidays all !!! i hope you enjoy !!! <3

[⚠︎] — 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆: do not reupload / repost / translate / plagiarise my works © all works are the intellectual property of lovelivision