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“Disenshittify or Die”

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I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Last weekend, I traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where I had the immense privilege of giving a solo talk on Track 1, entitled "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

The Defcon organizers have earned a restful week or two, and that means that the video of my talk hasn't yet been posted to Defcon's Youtube channel, so in the meantime, I thought I'd post a lightly edited version of my speech crib. If you're headed to Burning Man, you can hear me reprise this talk at Palenque Norte (7&E); I'm kicking off their lecture series on Tuesday, Aug 27 at 1PM.

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

I mean, sure, our bosses were a little surveillance-happy, and they were usually up for sharing their data with the NSA, and whenever there was a tossup between user security and growth, it was always YOLO time.

But Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

There was a time when you searching for an album on Spotify would get you that album – not a playlist of insipid AI-generated covers with the same name and art.

Microsoft used to sell you software – sure, it was buggy – but now they just let you access apps in the cloud, so they can watch how you use those apps and strip the features you use the most out of the basic tier and turn them into an upcharge.

What – and I cannot stress this enough – the fuck happened?!

I’m talking about enshittification.

Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

If you’re Facebook, the users do it for you. You joined Facebook because there were people there you wanted to hang out with, and other people joined Facebook to hang out with you.

That’s the old “network effects” in action, and with network effects come “the collective action problem." Because you love your friends, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass! You all agree that FB sucks, sure, but can you all agree on when it’s time to leave?

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

You’re there because that’s where the support group for your rare disease hangs out, and your bestie is there because that’s where they talk with the people in the country they moved away from, then there’s that friend who coordinates their kid’s little league car pools on FB, and the best dungeon master you know isn’t gonna leave FB because that’s where her customers are.

So you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

Now, sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime, or to buy your Audible books on a monthly subscription, which virtually guarantees that every shopping search will start on Amazon, after all, you’ve already paid for it.

Sometimes, they lock you in with DRM, like HP selling you a printer with four ink cartridges filled with fluid that retails for more than $10,000/gallon, and using DRM to stop you from refilling any of those ink carts or using a third-party cartridge. So when one cart runs dry, you have to refill it or throw away your investment in the remaining three cartridges and the printer itself.

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

You can’t run your Ios apps without Apple hardware;

you can’t run your Apple music, books and movies on anything except an Ios app;

your iPhone uses parts pairing – DRM handshakes between replacement parts and the main system – so you can’t use third-party parts to fix it; and

every OEM iPhone part has a microscopic Apple logo engraved on it, so Apple can demand that the US Customs and Border Service seize any shipment of refurb Iphone parts as trademark violations.

Think Different, amirite?

Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

For example, a platform might poison its search results, like Google selling more and more of its results pages to ads that are identified with lighter and lighter tinier and tinier type.

Or Amazon selling off search results and calling it an “ad” business. They make $38b/year on this scam. The first result for your search is, on average, 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The first row is 25% more expensive than the best match. On average, the best match for your search is likely to be found seventeen places down on the results page.

Other platforms sell off your feed, like Facebook, which started off showing you the things you asked to see, but now the quantum of content from the people you follow has dwindled to a homeopathic residue, leaving a void that Facebook fills with things that people pay to show you: boosted posts from publishers you haven’t subscribed to, and, of course, ads.

Now at this point you might be thinking ‘sure, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.'

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

The people who buy those Google ads? They pay more every year for worse ad-targeting and more ad-fraud

Those publishers paying to nonconsensually cram their content into your Facebook feed? They have to do that because FB suppresses their ability to reach the people who actually subscribed to them

The Amazon sellers with the best match for your query have to outbid everyone else just to show up on the first page of results. It costs so much to sell on Amazon that between 45-51% of every dollar an independent seller brings in has to be kicked up to Don Bezos and the Amazon crime family. Those sellers don’t have the kind of margins that let them pay 51% They have to raise prices in order to avoid losing money on every sale.

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

"But wait! Things on Amazon aren’t more expensive that things at Target, or Walmart, or at a mom and pop store, or direct from the manufacturer.

"How can sellers be raising prices on Amazon if the price at Amazon is the same as at is everywhere else?"

[Any guesses?!]

That’s right, they charge more everywhere. They have to. Amazon binds its sellers to a policy called “most favored nation status,” which says they can’t charge more on Amazon than they charge elsewhere, including direct from their own factory store.

So every seller that wants to sell on Amazon has to raise their prices everywhere else.

Now, these sellers are Amazon’s best customers. They’re paying for the product, and they’re still getting screwed.

Paying for the product doesn’t fill your vapid boss’s shriveled heart with so much joy that he decides to stop trying to think of ways to fuck you over.

Look at Apple. Remember when Apple offered every Ios user a one-click opt out for app-based surveillance? And 96% of users clicked that box?

(The other four percent were either drunk or Facebook employees or drunk Facebook employees.)

That cost Facebook at least ten billion dollars per year in lost surveillance revenue?

I mean, you love to see it.

But did you know that at the same time Apple started spying on Ios users in the same way that Facebook had been, for surveillance data to use to target users for its competing advertising product?

Your Iphone isn’t an ad-supported gimme. You paid a thousand fucking dollars for that distraction rectangle in your pocket, and you’re still the product. What’s more, Apple has rigged Ios so that you can’t mod the OS to block its spying.

If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.

Just ask the farmers who are expected to swap parts into their own busted half-million dollar, mission-critical tractors, but can’t actually use those parts until a technician charges them $200 to drive out to the farm and type a parts pairing unlock code into their console.

John Deere’s not giving away tractors. Give John Deere a half mil for a tractor and you will be the product.

Please, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please! Stop saying ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’

OK, OK, so that’s phase two of enshittification.

Phase one: be good to users while locking them in.

Phase two: screw the users a little to you can good to business customers while locking them in.

Phase three: screw everybody and take all the value for yourself. Leave behind the absolute bare minimum of utility so that everyone stays locked into your pile of shit.

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

That’s what enshittification looks like from the outside, but what’s going on inside the company? What is the pathological mechanism? What sci-fi entropy ray converts the excellent and useful service into a pile of shit?

That mechanism is called twiddling. Twiddling is when someone alters the back end of a service to change how its business operates, changing prices, costs, search ranking, recommendation criteria and other foundational aspects of the system.

Digital platforms are a twiddler’s utopia. A grocer would need an army of teenagers with pricing guns on rollerblades to reprice everything in the building when someone arrives who’s extra hungry.

Whereas the McDonald’s Investments portfolio company Plexure advertises that it can use surveillance data to predict when an app user has just gotten paid so the seller can tack an extra couple bucks onto the price of their breakfast sandwich.

And of course, as the prophet William Gibson warned us, ‘cyberspace is everting.' With digital shelf tags, grocers can change prices whenever they feel like, like the grocers in Norway, whose e-ink shelf tags change the prices 2,000 times per day.

Every Uber driver is offered a different wage for every job. If a driver has been picky lately, the job pays more. But if the driver has been desperate enough to grab every ride the app offers, the pay goes down, and down, and down.

The law professor Veena Dubal calls this ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.' It’s a prime example of twiddling.

Every youtuber knows what it’s like to be twiddled. You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it.

Why? Who knows? The algorithm’s rules are not public.

Because content moderation is the last redoubt of security through obscurit: they can’t tell you what the como algorithm is downranking because then you’d cheat.

Youtube is the kind of shitty boss who docks every paycheck for all the rules you’ve broken, but won’t tell you what those rules were, lest you figure out how to break those rules next time without your boss catching you.

Twiddling can also work in some users’ favor, of course. Sometimes platforms twiddle to make things better for end users or business customers.

For example, Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating toll to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

Why would they do this? Well, here’s an analogy from my boyhood I used to go to this traveling fair that would come to Toronto at the end of every summer, the Canadian National Exhibition. If you’ve been to a fair like the Ex, you know that you can always spot some guy lugging around a comedically huge teddy bear.

Nominally, you win that teddy bear by throwing five balls in a peach-basket, but to a first approximation, no one has ever gotten five balls to stay in that peach-basket.

That guy “won” the teddy bear when a carny on the midway singled him out and said, "fella, I like your face. Tell you what I’m gonna do: You get just one ball in the basket and I’ll give you this keychain, and if you amass two keychains, I’ll let you trade them in for one of these galactic-scale teddy-bears."

That’s how the guy got his teddy bear, which he now has to drag up and down the midway for the rest of the day.

Why the hell did that carny give away the teddy bear? Because it turns the guy into a walking billboard for the midway games. If that dopey-looking Judas Goat can get five balls into a peach basket, then so can you.

Except you can’t.

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: *I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!"

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

But then comes the day when the TikTok Star Chamber decides they need to lure in more astrologers, so they take the heat off that one lucky sports bro, and start heating up some lucky astrologer.

Giant teddy bears are all over the place: those Uber drivers who were boasting to the NYT ten years ago about earning $50/hour? The Substackers who were rolling in dough? Joe Rogan and his hundred million dollar Spotify payout? Those people are all the proud owners of giant teddy bears, and they’re a steal.

Because every dollar they get from the platform turns into five dollars worth of free labor from suckers who think they just internetting wrong.

Giant teddy bears are just one way of twiddling. Platforms can play games with every part of their business logic, in highly automated ways, that allows them to quickly and efficiently siphon value from end users to business customers and back again, hiding the pea in a shell game conducted at machine speeds, until they’ve got everyone so turned around that they take all the value for themselves.

That’s the how: How the platforms do the trick where they are good to users, then lock users in, then maltreat users to be good to business customers, then lock in those business customers, then take all the value for themselves.

So now we know what is happening, and how it is happening, all that’s left is why it’s happening.

Now, on the one hand, the why is pretty obvious. The less value that end-users and business customers capture, the more value there is left to divide up among the shareholders and the executives.

That’s why, but it doesn’t tell you why now. Companies could have done this shit at any time in the past 20 years, but they didn’t. Or at least, the successful ones didn’t. The ones that turned themselves into piles of shit got treated like piles of shit. We avoided them and they died.

Remember Myspace? Yahoo Search? Livejournal? Sure, they’re still serving some kind of AI slop or programmatic ad junk if you hit those domains, but they’re gone.

And there’s the clue: It used to be that if you enshittified your product, bad things happened to your company. Now, there are no consequences for enshittification, so everyone’s doing it.

Let’s break that down: What stops a company from enshittifying?

There are four forces that discipline tech companies. The first one is, obviously, competition.

If your customers find it easy to leave, then you have to worry about them leaving

Many factors can contribute to how hard or easy it is to depart a platform, like the network effects that Facebook has going for it. But the most important factor is whether there is anywhere to go.

Back in 2012, Facebook bought Insta for a billion dollars. That may seem like chump-change in these days of eleven-digit Big Tech acquisitions, but that was a big sum in those innocent days, and it was an especially big sum to pay for Insta. The company only had 13 employees, and a mere 25 million registered users.

But what mattered to Zuckerberg wasn’t how many users Insta had, it was where those users came from.

[Does anyone know where those Insta users came from?]

That’s right, they left Facebook and joined Insta. They were sick of FB, even though they liked the people there, they hated creepy Zuck, they hated the platform, so they left and they didn’t come back.

So Zuck spent a cool billion to recapture them, A fact he put in writing in a midnight email to CFO David Ebersman, explaining that he was paying over the odds for Insta because his users hated him, and loved Insta. So even if they quit Facebook (the platform), they would still be captured Facebook (the company).

Now, on paper, Zuck’s Instagram acquisition is illegal, but normally, that would be hard to stop, because you’d have to prove that he bought Insta with the intention of curtailing competition.

But in this case, Zuck tripped over his own dick: he put it in writing.

But Obama’s DoJ and FTC just let that one slide, following the pro-monopoly policies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and setting an example that Trump would follow, greenlighting gigamergers like the catastrophic, incestuous Warner-Discovery marriage.

Indeed, for 40 years, starting with Carter, and accelerating through Reagan, the US has encouraged monopoly formation, as an official policy, on the grounds that monopolies are “efficient.”

If everyone is using Google Search, that’s something we should celebrate. It means they’ve got the very best search and wouldn’t it be perverse to spend public funds to punish them for making the best product?

But as we all know, Google didn’t maintain search dominance by being best. They did it by paying bribes. More than 20 billion per year to Apple alone to be the default Ios search, plus billions more to Samsung, Mozilla, and anyone else making a product or service with a search-box on it, ensuring that you never stumble on a search engine that’s better than theirs.

Which, in turn, ensured that no one smart invested big in rival search engines, even if they were visibly, obviously superior. Why bother making something better if Google’s buying up all the market oxygen before it can kindle your product to life?

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’re not “making things” companies, they’re “buying things” companies, taking advantage of official tolerance for anticompetitive acquisitions, predatory pricing, market distorting exclusivity deals and other acts specifically prohibited by existing antitrust law.

Their goal is to become too big to fail, because that makes them too big to jail, and that means they can be too big to care.

Which is why Google Search is a pile of shit and everything on Amazon is dropshipped garbage that instantly disintegrates in a cloud of offgassed volatile organic compounds when you open the box.

Once companies no longer fear losing your business to a competitor, it’s much easier for them to treat you badly, because what’re you gonna do?

Remember Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator in those old SNL sketches? “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Competition is the first force that serves to discipline companies and the enshittificatory impulses of their leadership, and we just stopped enforcing competition law.

It takes a special kind of smooth-brained asshole – that is, an establishment economist – to insist that the collapse of every industry from eyeglasses to vitamin C into a cartel of five or fewer companies has nothing to do with policies that officially encouraged monopolization.

It’s like we used to put down rat poison and we didn’t have a rat problem. Then these dickheads convinced us that rats were good for us and we stopped putting down rat poison, and now rats are gnawing our faces off and they’re all running around saying, "Who’s to say where all these rats came from? Maybe it was that we stopped putting down poison, but maybe it’s just the Time of the Rats. The Great Forces of History bearing down on this moment to multiply rats beyond all measure!"

Antitrust didn’t slip down that staircase and fall spine-first on that stiletto: they stabbed it in the back and then they pushed it.

And when they killed antitrust, they also killed regulation, the second force that disciplines companies. Regulation is possible, but only when the regulator is more powerful than the regulated entities. When a company is bigger than the government, it gets damned hard to credibly threaten to punish that company, no matter what its sins.

That’s what protected IBM for all those years when it had its boot on the throat of the American tech sector. Do you know, the DOJ fought to break up IBM in the courts from 1970-1982, and that every year, for 12 consecutive years, IBM spent more on lawyers to fight the USG than the DOJ Antitrust Division spent on all the lawyers fighting every antitrust case in the entire USA?

IBM outspent Uncle Sam for 12 years. People called it “Antitrust’s Vietnam.” All that money paid off, because by 1982, the president was Ronald Reagan, a man whose official policy was that monopolies were “efficient." So he dropped the case, and Big Blue wriggled off the hook.

It’s hard to regulate a monopolist, and it’s hard to regulate a cartel. When a sector is composed of hundreds of competing companies, they compete. They genuinely fight with one another, trying to poach each others’ customers and workers. They are at each others’ throats.

It’s hard enough for a couple hundred executives to agree on anything. But when they’re legitimately competing with one another, really obsessing about how to eat each others’ lunches, they can’t agree on anything.

The instant one of them goes to their regulator with some bullshit story, about how it’s impossible to have a decent search engine without fine-grained commercial surveillance; or how it’s impossible to have a secure and easy to use mobile device without a total veto over which software can run on it; or how it’s impossible to administer an ISP’s network unless you can slow down connections to servers whose owners aren’t paying bribes for “premium carriage"; there’s some *other company saying, “That’s bullshit”

“We’ve managed it! Here’s our server logs, our quarterly financials and our customer testimonials to prove it.”

100 companies are a rabble, they're a mob. They can’t agree on a lobbying position. They’re too busy eating each others’ lunch to agree on how to cater a meeting to discuss it.

But let those hundred companies merge to monopoly, absorb one another in an incestuous orgy, turn into five giant companies, so inbred they’ve got a corporate Habsburg jaw, and they become a cartel.

It’s easy for a cartel to agree on what bullshit they’re all going to feed their regulator, and to mobilize some of the excess billions they’ve reaped through consolidation, which freed them from “wasteful competition," sp they can capture their regulators completely.

You know, Congress used to pass federal consumer privacy laws? Not anymore.

The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.

The threat of having your video rental history out there in the public eye was not the last or most urgent threat the American public faced, and yet, Congress is deadlocked on passing a privacy law.

Tech companies’ regulatory capture involves a risible and transparent gambit, that is so stupid, it’s an insult to all the good hardworking risible transparent ruses out there.

Namely, they claim that when they violate your consumer, privacy or labor rights, It’s not a crime, because they do it with an app.

Algorithmic wage discrimination isn’t illegal wage theft: we do it with an app.

Spying on you from asshole to appetite isn’t a privacy violation: we do it with an app.

And Amazon’s scam search tool that tricks you into paying 29% more than the best match for your query? Not a ripoff. We do it with an app.

Once we killed competition – stopped putting down rat poison – we got cartels – the rats ate our faces. And the cartels captured their regulators – the rats bought out the poison factory and shut it down.

So companies aren’t constrained by competition or regulation.

But you know what? This is tech, and tech is different.IIt’s different because it’s flexible. Because our computers are Turing-complete universal von Neumann machines. That means that any enshittificatory alteration to a program can be disenshittified with another program.

Every time HP jacks up the price of ink , they invite a competitor to market a refill kit or a compatible cartridge.

When Tesla installs code that says you have to pay an extra monthly fee to use your whole battery, they invite a modder to start selling a kit to jailbreak that battery and charge it all the way up.

Lemme take you through a little example of how that works: Imagine this is a product design meeting for our company’s website, and the guy leading the meeting says “Dudes, you know how our KPI is topline ad-revenue? Well, I’ve calculated that if we make the ads just 20% more invasive and obnoxious, we’ll boost ad rev by 2%”

This is a good pitch. Hit that KPI and everyone gets a fat bonus. We can all take our families on a luxury ski vacation in Switzerland.

But here’s the thing: someone’s gonna stick their arm up – someone who doesn’t give a shit about user well-being, and that person is gonna say, “I love how you think, Elon. But has it occurred to you that if we make the ads 20% more obnoxious, then 40% of our users will go to a search engine and type 'How do I block ads?'"

I mean, what a nightmare! Because once a user does that, the revenue from that user doesn’t rise to 102%. It doesn’t stay at 100% It falls to zero, forever.

[Any guesses why?]

Because no user ever went back to the search engine and typed, 'How do I start seeing ads again?'

Once the user jailbreaks their phone or discovers third party ink, or develops a relationship with an independent Tesla mechanic who’ll unlock all the DLC in their car, that user is gone, forever.

Interoperability – that latent property bequeathed to us courtesy of Herrs Turing and Von Neumann and their infinitely flexible, universal machines – that is a serious check on enshittification.

The fact that Congress hasn’t passed a privacy law since 1988 Is countered, at least in part, by the fact that the majority of web users are now running ad-blockers, which are also tracker-blockers.

But no one’s ever installed a tracker-blocker for an app. Because reverse engineering an app puts in you jeopardy of criminal and civil prosecution under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with penalties of a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

And violating its terms of service puts you in jeopardy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is the law that Ronald Reagan signed in a panic after watching Wargames (seriously!).

Helping other users violate the terms of service can get you hit with a lawsuit for tortious interference with contract. And then there’s trademark, copyright and patent.

All that nonsense we call “IP,” but which Jay Freeman of Cydia calls “Felony Contempt of Business Model."

So if we’re still at that product planning meeting and now it’s time to talk about our app, the guy leading the meeting says, “OK, so we’ll make the ads in the app 20% more obnoxious to pull a 2% increase in topline ad rev?”

And that person who objected to making the website 20% worse? Their hand goes back up. Only this time they say “Why don’t we make the ads 100% more invasive and get a 10% increase in ad rev?"

Because it doesn't matter if a user goes to a search engine and types, “How do I block ads in an app." The answer is: you can't. So YOLO, enshittify away.

“IP” is just a euphemism for “any law that lets me reach outside my company’s walls to exert coercive control over my critics, competitors and customers,” and “app” is just a euphemism for “A web page skinned with the right IP so that protecting your privacy while you use it is a felony.”

Interop used to keep companies from enshittifying. If a company made its client suck, someone would roll out an alternative client, if they ripped a feature out and wanted to sell it back to you as a monthly subscription, someone would make a compatible plugin that restored it for a one-time fee, or for free.

To help people flee Myspace, FB gave them bots that you’d load with your login credentials. It would scrape your waiting Myspace messages and put ‘em in your FB inbox, and login to Myspace and paste your replies into your Myspace outbox. So you didn’t have to choose between the people you loved on Myspace, and Facebook, which launched with a promise never to spy on you. Remember that?!

Thanks to the metastasis of IP, all that is off the table today. Apple owes its very existence to iWork Suite, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote are file-compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. But make an IOS runtime that’ll play back the files you bought from Apple’s stores on other platforms, and they’ll nuke you til you glow.

FB wouldn’t have had a hope of breaking Myspace’s grip on social media without that scrape, but scrape FB today in support of an alternative client and their lawyers will bomb you til the rubble bounces.

Google scraped every website in the world to create its search index. Try and scrape Google and they’ll have your head on a pike.

When they did it, it was progress. When you do it to them, that’s piracy. Every pirate wants to be an admiral.

Because this handful of companies has so thoroughly captured their regulators, they can wield the power of the state against you when you try to break their grip on power, even as their own flagrant violations of our rights go unpunished. Because they do them with an app.

Tech lost its fear of competitin it neutralized the threat from regulators, and then put them in harness to attack new startups that might do unto them as they did unto the companies that came before them.

But even so, there was a force that kept our bosses in check That force was us. Tech workers.

Tech workers have historically been in short supply, which gave us power, and our bosses knew it.

To get us to work crazy hours, they came up with a trick. They appealed to our love of technology, and told us that we were heroes of a digital revolution, who would “organize the world’s information and make it useful,” who would “bring the world closer together.”

They brought in expert set-dressers to turn our workplaces into whimsical campuses with free laundry, gourmet cafeterias, massages, and kombucha, and a surgeon on hand to freeze our eggs so that we could work through our fertile years.

They convinced us that we were being pampered, rather than being worked like government mules.

This trick has a name. Fobazi Ettarh, the librarian-theorist, calls it “vocational awe, and Elon Musk calls it being “extremely hardcore.”

This worked very well. Boy did we put in some long-ass hours!

But for our bosses, this trick failed badly. Because if you miss your mother’s funeral and to hit a deadline, and then your boss orders you to enshittify that product, you are gonna experience a profound moral injury, which you are absolutely gonna make your boss share.

Because what are they gonna do? Fire you? They can’t hire someone else to do your job, and you can get a job that’s even better at the shop across the street.

So workers held the line when competition, regulation and interop failed.

But eventually, supply caught up with demand. Tech laid off 260,000 of us last year, and another 100,000 in the first half of this year.

You can’t tell your bosses to go fuck themselves, because they’ll fire your ass and give your job to someone who’ll be only too happy to enshittify that product you built.

That’s why this is all happening right now. Our bosses aren’t different. They didn’t catch a mind-virus that turned them into greedy assholes who don’t care about our users’ wellbeing or the quality of our products.

As far as our bosses have always been concerned, the point of the business was to charge the most, and deliver the least, while sharing as little as possible with suppliers, workers, users and customers. They’re not running charities.

Since day one, our bosses have shown up for work and yanked as hard as they can on the big ENSHITTIFICATION lever behind their desks, only that lever didn’t move much. It was all gummed up by competition, regulation, interop and workers.

As those sources of friction melted away, the enshittification lever started moving very freely.

Which sucks, I know. But think about this for a sec: our bosses, despite being wildly imperfect vessels capable of rationalizing endless greed and cheating, nevertheless oversaw a series of actually great products and services.

Not because they used to be better people, but because they used to be subjected to discipline.

So it follows that if we want to end the enshittocene, dismantle the enshitternet, and build a new, good internet that our bosses can’t wreck, we need to make sure that these constraints are durably installed on that internet, wound around its very roots and nerves. And we have to stand guard over it so that it can’t be dismantled again.

A new, good internet is one that has the positive aspects of the old, good internet: an ethic of technological self-determination, where users of technology (and hackers, tinkerers, startups and others serving as their proxies) can reconfigure and mod the technology they use, so that it does what they need it to do, and so that it can’t be used against them.

But the new, good internet will fix the defects of the old, good internet, the part that made it hard to use for anyone who wasn’t us. And hell yeah we can do that. Tech bosses swear that it’s impossible, that you can’t have a conversation friend without sharing it with Zuck; or search the web without letting Google scrape you down to the viscera; or have a phone that works reliably without giving Apple a veto over the software you install.

They claim that it’s a nonsense to even ponder this kind of thing. It’s like making water that’s not wet. But that’s bullshit. We can have nice things. We can build for the people we love, and give them a place that’s worth of their time and attention.

To do that, we have to install constraints.

The first constraint, remember, is competition. We’re living through a epochal shift in competition policy. After 40 years with antitrust enforcement in an induced coma, a wave of antitrust vigor has swept through governments all over the world. Regulators are stepping in to ban monopolistic practices, open up walled gardens, block anticompetitive mergers, and even unwind corrupt mergers that were undertaken on false pretenses.

Normally this is the place in the speech where I’d list out all the amazing things that have happened over the past four years. The enforcement actions that blocked companies from becoming too big to care, and that scared companies away from even trying.

Like Wiz, which just noped out of the largest acquisition offer in history, turning down Google’s $23b cashout, and deciding to, you know, just be a fucking business that makes money by producing a product that people want and selling it at a competitive price.

Normally, I’d be listing out FTC rulemakings that banned noncompetes nationwid. Or the new merger guidelines the FTC and DOJ cooked up, which – among other things – establish that the agencies should be considering whether a merger will negatively impact privacy.

I had a whole section of this stuff in my notes, a real victory lap, but I deleted it all this week.

[Can anyone guess why?]

That’s right! This week, Judge Amit Mehta, ruling for the DC Circuit of these United States of America, In the docket 20-3010 a case known as United States v. Google LLC, found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," and ordered Google and the DOJ to propose a schedule for a remedy, like breaking the company up.

So yeah, that was pretty fucking epic.

Now, this antitrust stuff is pretty esoteric, and I won’t gatekeep you or shame you if you wanna keep a little distance on this subject. Nearly everyone is an antitrust normie, and that's OK. But if you’re a normie, you’re probably only catching little bits and pieces of the narrative, and let me tell you, the monopolists know it and they are flooding the zone.

The Wall Street Journal has published over 100 editorials condemning FTC Chair Lina Khan, saying she’s an ineffectual do-nothing, wasting public funds chasing doomed, quixotic adventures against poor, innocent businesses accomplishing nothing

[Does anyone out there know who owns the Wall Street Journal?]

That’s right, it’s Rupert Murdoch. Do you really think Rupert Murdoch pays his editorial board to write one hundred editorials about someone who’s not getting anything done?

The reality is that in the USA, in the UK, in the EU, in Australia, in Canada, in Japan, in South Korea, even in China, we are seeing more antitrust action over the past four years than over the preceding forty years.

Remember, competition law is actually pretty robust. The problem isn’t the law, It’s the enforcement priorities. Reagan put antitrust in mothballs 40 years ago, but that elegant weapon from a more civilized age is now back in the hands of people who know how to use it, and they’re swinging for the fences.

Next up: regulation.

As the seemingly inescapable power of the tech giants is revealed for the sham it always was, governments and regulators are finally gonna kill the “one weird trick” of violating the law, and saying “It doesn’t count, we did it with an app.”

Like in the EU, they’re rolling out the Digital Markets Act this year. That’s a law requiring dominant platforms to stand up APIs so that third parties can offer interoperable services.

So a co-op, a nonprofit, a hobbyist, a startup, or a local government agency wil eventuallyl be able to offer, say, a social media server that can interconnect with one of the dominant social media silos, and users who switch to that new platform will be able to continue to exchange messages with the users they follow and groups they belong to, so the switching costs will fall to damned near zero.

That’s a very cool rule, but what’s even cooler is how it’s gonna be enforced. Previous EU tech rules were “regulations” as in the GDPR – the General Data Privacy Regulation. EU regs need to be “transposed” into laws in each of the 27 EU member states, so they become national laws that get enforced by national courts.

For Big Tech, that means all previous tech regulations are enforced in Ireland, because Ireland is a tax haven, and all the tech companies fly Irish flags of convenience.

Here’s the thing: every tax haven is also a crime haven. After all, if Google can pretend it’s Irish this week, it can pretend to be Cypriot, or Maltese, or Luxembougeious next week. So Ireland has to keep these footloose criminal enterprises happy, or they’ll up sticks and go somewhere else.

This is why the GDPR is such a goddamned joke in practice. Big tech wipes its ass with the GDPR, and the only way to punish them starts with Ireland’s privacy commissioner, who barely bothers to get out of bed. This is an agency that spends most of its time watching cartoons on TV in its pajamas and eating breakfast cereal. So all of the big GDPR cases go to Ireland and they die there.

This is hardly a secret. The European Commission knows it’s going on. So with the DMA, the Commission has changed things up: The DMA is an “Act,” not a “Regulation.” Meaning it gets enforced in the EU’s federal courts, bypassing the national courts in crime-havens like Ireland.

In other words, the “we violate privacy law, but we do it with an app” gambit that worked on Ireland’s toothless privacy watchdog is now a dead letter, because EU federal judges have no reason to swallow that obvious bullshit.

Here in the US, the dam is breaking on federal consumer privacy law – at last!

Remember, our last privacy law was passed in 1988 to protect the sanctity of VHS rental history. It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden? Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google? Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics? Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms? Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

A federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems

There's a pretty big coalition for that kind of privacy law! Which is why we have seen a procession of imperfect (but steadily improving) privacy laws working their way through Congress.

If you sign up for EFF’s mailing list at eff.org we’ll send you an email when these come up, so you can call your Congressjerk or Senator and talk to them about it. Or better yet, make an appointment to drop by their offices when they’re in their districts, and explain to them that you’re not just a registered voter from their district, you’re the kind of elite tech person who goes to Defcon, and then explain the bill to them. That stuff makes a difference.

What about self-help? How are we doing on making interoperability legal again, so hackers can just fix shit without waiting for Congress or a federal agency to act?

All the action here these day is in the state Right to Repair fight. We’re getting state R2R bills, like the one that passed this year in Oregon that bans parts pairing, where DRM is used to keep a device from using a new part until it gets an authorized technician’s unlock code.

These bills are pushed by a fantastic group of organizations called the Repair Coalition, at Repair.org, and they’ll email you when one of these laws is going through your statehouse, so you can meet with your state reps and explain to the JV squad the same thing you told your federal reps.

Repair.org’s prime mover is Ifixit, who are genuine heroes of the repair revolution, and Ifixit’s founder, Kyle Wiens, is here at the con. When you see him, you can shake his hand and tell him thanks, and that’ll be even better if you tell him that you’ve signed up to get alerts at repair.org!

Now, on to the final way that we reverse enhittification and build that new, good internet: you, the tech labor force.

For years, your bosses tricked you into thinking you were founders in waiting, temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who were only momentarily drawing a salary.

You certainly weren’t workers. Your power came from your intrinsic virtue, not like those lazy slobs in unions who have to get their power through that kumbaya solidarity nonsense.

It was a trick. You were scammed. The power you had came from scarcity, and so when the scarcity ended, when the industry started ringing up six-figure annual layoffs, your power went away with it.

The only durable source of power for tech workers is as workers, in a union.

Think about Amazon. Warehouse workers have to piss in bottles and have the highest rate of on-the-job maimings of any competing business. Whereas Amazon coders get to show up for work with facial piercings, green mohawks, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don’t understand. They can piss whenever they want!

That’s not because Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy loves you guys. It’s because they’re scared you’ll quit and they don’t know how to replace you.

Time for the second obligatory William Gibson quote: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” You know who’s living in the future?. Those Amazon blue-collar workers. They are the bleeding edge.

Drivers whose eyeballs are monitored by AI cameras that do digital phrenology on their faces to figure out whether to dock their pay, warehouse workers whose bodies are ruined in just months.

As tech bosses beef up that reserve army of unemployed, skilled tech workers, then those tech workers – you all – will arrive at the same future as them.

Look, I know that you’ve spent your careers explaining in words so small your boss could understand them that you refuse to enshittify the company’s products, and I thank you for your service.

But if you want to go on fighting for the user, you need power that’s more durable than scarcity. You need a union. Wanna learn how? Check out the Tech Workers Coalition and Tech Solidarity, and get organized.

Enshittification didn’t arise because our bosses changed. They were always that guy.

They were always yankin’ on that enshittification lever in the C-suite.

What changed was the environment, everything that kept that switch from moving.

And that’s good news, in a bankshot way, because it means we can make good services out of imperfect people. As a wildly imperfect person myself, I find this heartening.

The new good internet is in our grasp: an internet that has the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the greased-skids simplicity of Web 2.0 that let all our normie friends get in on the fun.

Tech bosses want you to think that good UX and enshittification can’t ever be separated. That’s such a self-serving proposition you can spot it from orbit. We know it, 'cause we built the old good internet, and we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve it for the past two decades.

It’s time to stop playing defense. It's time to go on the offensive. To restore competition, regulation, interop and tech worker power so that we can create the new, good internet we’ll need to fight fascism, the climate emergency, and genocide.

To build a digital nervous system for a 21st century in which our children can thrive and prosper.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

Image: https://twitter.com/igama/status/1822347578094043435/ (cropped)

@[email protected] (cropped)

https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/112963252835869648

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.pt

#pluralistic #defcon #defcon 32 #hackers #enshittification #speeches #transcripts #disenshittify or die #Youtube

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knaukey · 2 years

Text

Starting a Non Profit: A Checklist

Meta: How should you go about starting a non-profit? Read about it here and sign up for an event listings app for social service organizations to market your non-profit.

Starting a non-profit sounds exciting. After all, it’s a noble cause and the perfect opportunity for you to step into philanthropy. However, kick-starting a non-profit social service organization requires more than a kind heart and a dream to serve the community. You also need to address dozens of other aspects to ensure your non-profit succeeds in the long run.

Here are a few items to mark off your checklist before officially starting a non-profit.

Do Your Research

Starting a non-profit isn’t something you can do on a whim. Before you actually set up an organization, you need to know exactly what you aim to achieve. This requires extensive research and planning.

Here are a few questions to consider:

Who will you serve?

What social issue are you targeting?

Are there other non-profits working for the same cause?

Is launching a non-profit for this issue feasible?

Is there a need for your non-profit?

How will you structure your non-profit?

Can you commit to this cause long-term?

It’s imperative to do your due diligence before starting a non-profit. This will give you direction.

Write Your Mission Statement

This may sound like a simple thing, but the mission statement is one of the most important elements of your non-profit. It essentially defines what your company does, who it helps, and how it contributes to the growth of your chosen community. In doing so, it serves as the foundation for your non-profit’s current and future endeavors.

You also need a mission statement for fundraising and grant approvals. Your financiers need to know you’re clear about your goals, and a well-crafted mission statement helps do that. It doesn’t have to be lengthy. Even a sentence or two can get the job done, as long as you accurately convey what your organization does.

Moreover, the mission statement also helps market your organization, recruit talent, and motivate your internal teams. It ensures everyone is on the same page and working toward a shared interest (i.e., your cause). Try to incorporate your organization’s core values in your mission for maximum impact.

Take Care of the Legal Issues

The next thing you need to do is file articles of incorporation. This is essentially a formal request made to the state to recognize your organization as a business. Once this request is approved, you can legally operate as a business. You’ll need to determine which department or regulatory body to turn to for this procedure as this varies across states. You’ll also need to thoroughly go over the documentation required as these also differ across states.

Once you’ve filed articles of incorporation, you need to file for tax-exempt status. Your non-profit is officially a business, but it isn’t yet exempted from tax. To achieve that status, you need to clarify the type of 501(c) organization you’ve formed and begin the relevant tax-exempt application process. Make sure you consult a paralegal for this to follow the correct steps and acquire federal and state tax-exempt status.

Market Your Nonprofit

Now that you’re officially ready for business and have addressed legal obligations, it’s time to get the word out. It’ll take some time for your organization to grow and gain momentum, but your marketing efforts should commence from day one. Promoting your non-profit across online and offline channels will help you acquire the talent, resources, funds, connections, donations, and beneficiaries to work on your cause and gradually take it to the next level.

Every non-profit is different. What works for one may not necessarily be the right marketing strategy for another. Take out some time to analyze your marketing needs, set realistic goals, and develop strategies that would help you achieve your desired results. It’s a good idea to establish a social media presence early on to build traffic and create awareness. This will also help you gain volunteers and expand your professional network.

Non-Profit Organizations Listings App

All set to commence operations at your newly launched non-profit? Make sure you register it on an exclusive non-profit organizations listings app.

Knaukey is a digital platform that helps social service organizations grow and achieve their goals. Members can use it for online event registration and listings, volunteer recruitment, and sharing details about their organizations. It allows non-profit business owners to create and expand their digital volunteer network and connect with valuable members.

Set up your account today by downloading the app or visiting their website. For more details, email at [email protected] or [email protected].

#non-profit organizations #social service #online event registration #volunteer #Listings App

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hyunnie04 · 10 months

Text

cat and mouse

summary: your co-worker has been on your case ever since you've started your time at the company. a strange turn of events and circumstance changes all that.

pairing: coworker! lee know x reader

trope: enemies to lovers <3, office au

genre: slight angst, smut, and fluff

warnings: fem-bodied reader, oral, creampie, overstim, unprotected sex, bulge kink, spitting, etc. 18+ mdni

word count: 9.8k

a/n: a little practice piece for you guys, i hope i did well;; so sorry this took me so long to write :( i also hope it's cohesive enough, i keep writing this fic on and off sleep deprived lol

tick…

tock…

tick…

to-

“the clock isn’t going to speed up just because you keep staring at it.” the cubicle beside you chirps in, momentarily shaking you out of your thoughts. by now, you’ve trained to pay him no mind as you keep your focus on the clock that reads 4:56 pm, almost taunting you in a way.

a few more minutes and you’ll be home free for the weekend. maybe you can finally relax and get away from your dreaded paperwork. perhaps look through your shopping apps since you had nothing else better to do for the weekend, or better yet- you could run a well deserved bath with that bath bomb you always wanted to use but never got a chance to. all the possibilities sounded heavenly although all that would have to actually wait until you get home.

one other thing that you had been anticipating all day was having that dinner after work with jeongin- your close friend and coworker from a different department. he had been begging you for ages to finally try that one soba place that opened up nearby with him. you being a good friend, agreed.

“you might actually melt the clock if you keep doing that y’know.” your cubicle neighbor- lee minho smirks, now standing and leaning over your workspace.

"what do you want?" pointedly asking him.

"oh, nothing. nothing."

“you just don’t ever shut up, do you?” you deadpan and tilt your chin up to stare at him, minho just offers a sly smirk in return. he always liked to bother and butt into your business for some odd reason.

minho shrugs, “it’s fun teasing you. you do that thing where you scrunch your nose when you get riled up.” a vain visibly pops up from your forehead, but turn to your computer, hoping to drown him out with your typing.

you knew better than to give him a reaction. if you had a penny for how many times that particular vein popped from your forehead because of minho, you’d probably be a millionaire by now.

“oh, one more thing-” the brown haired man saunters back to his desk, and comes back to yours with a huge stack of papers. he unceremoniously plops it down, the annoying feline-like grin on his face.

“what’s…this?” raising an eyebrow at him, you hope it's not what you think he's planning. you have plans. he crosses his arms and pushes his framed glasses back.

“paperwork, of course.” you wanted to strangle him. “yes, i’m well aware that this is paperwork. why is it now on my desk?”

before you could protest any further, “they want this finished by next week.” he leans to practically whisper in your ear. minho grins mischievously after he sees your pink flustered face take a step back.

the humongous stack was already on his desk, so your boss most likely assigned it to him in the first place. you furrow your eyebrows and turn to him, worst fear coming true.

"ohh no. not in a million years." you get up from your seat, avoiding the offending pile. he starts going back to his desk, neatly placing his things in it's organizers.

“why can’t you finish it? you- what are you doing?” but minho was already grabbing his bag and blazer and looking at his wrist watch.

“would you look at the time- thanks for covering for me!” aaaand he's gone.

plopping down on your chair, you bury your face in your hands, stopping yourself from pulling out hair. frustration creases on your forehead. well, you could kiss that dinner with jeongin goodbye. now you definitely want to strangle him.

lee minho. if you were to find a personification of the word annoying, the brunette would certainly be it. that man has done nothing but annoy the hell out of you ever since you started your time in the company. other people in your department often regarded him as one of the most reliable and polite employees here.

you would inwardly scoff at the frequent mention of minho and his apparent “reliable-ness and politeness” since all he was, was just the opposite. to you at least. it was hard to believe at first.

but then you actually saw the way he carried himself with effortlessness and composure, handled business affairs, and how he mingled so seamlessly with fellow colleagues. it was nothing short of professional.

so you had a theory that he was only like that towards you. a complete dick only to you. you although weren’t quite sure why.

the girls in your department would often talk about him as well, mostly for his appearance. you really weren’t one for gossiping but you would listen in sometimes, curious about what they see in him. it was hard not to when they would gush about their workplace crushes and love lives so openly, a tinge of envy seeps through your bones every time it would be mentioned. you have got to get laid one day.

“he’s totally my type, you think i should ask him out?” your other cubicle neighbor says quite loudly during her break. her friend beside her shakes their head, “no, no you can’t.”

“why not? isn't he hot and available?” she asks absentmindedly. you start to zone out for a minute, only catching bits and pieces of their conversation. but you contemplate about what she said for a second, you would be lying if you said that lee minho was unattractive.

far from that actually. distinctly remembering catching a few glimpses of him from your first day, intrigued and interest piqued. his sharp nose and cheek bones, features were like sculpted by michaelangelo himself, his toned and lean figure accentuated by the perfectly well fit suit that he always seem to wear.

you definitely found him attractive at first.

that was until he started annoying you, so all of that was quickly out the window.

but you would probably end yourself before admitting that to anyone. you let out a disgruntled sigh, appearance wouldn’t really matter if he wasn’t such a knob to begin with.

as you approached your dimly lit street, all you could think about was that feline faced jerk. what was he thinking, dumping all that work on you last minute? you felt really bad about cancelling on jeongin, texting him earlier about the sudden change of schedule. the dark haired man you've come to know just replies with a little;

'we'll just try again next week lol'

you breathe out a relieved sigh, thankful that he wasn't mad. kicking the pebbles on the side of the road, you imagined that the little rocks were minho's face. you could not wait until you get home.

“stupid paperwork, stupid minho, stupid…”

your muttering fades and you suddenly stop in your tracks as your elderly neighbor waves you over from her front door, grandma lee or just grandma- as she insists you call her instead.

you bowed and greeted her, “hi grandma, did you need something?” you were quite close with the sweet old lady, her gray hair swaying lightly in the wind.

the elder would often check up on you after hearing that you traveled all the way from your hometown to the city, almost taking you in as her own. you were grateful for the company since homesickness would often creep up. she would also often bring you comically large jars of kimchi which you appreciated greatly.

she smiles as she gestures to the multiple bags she was holding, "i just need a little help getting these inside the house, dear." you take the heavy bags from her hands. what were in these, rocks? grandma claps her hands together in remembrance.

“have you had dinner yet? i made extra.”

grandma sets a bowl in front of you, the sight of seaweed soup instantly brings you comfort. your stomach grumbles as you dig in. she watches you intently as you practically inhale the soup, starved from the long and terrible day you had.

you sent her a polite questioning look. “i want to ask you for a favor.” she finally starts, flicking through the channels of her tv. the weather was on, the forecaster droning on about rain happening this week in the same monotone voice for the past 10 minutes. you look at her and nod immediately, she had done so much for you, doing a few favors aren't going to hurt.

“do you have a car, dear?”

blowing on the steaming hot seaweed soup, you nod again at her question, wondering where this conversation is heading.

“i need someone to drive me to my son’s house tomorrow, i'm staying over there for the weekend and my bags are a little heavy. would that be alright with you, dear?” you’ve heard about her family from her stories when she would have you over like now, little bits and pieces. you smile and agree.

a cheshire grin graces your features after a moment. “what’s in it for me?” it was a joke of course, grandma knew it too. having spent a large amount of time with her, your humor must’ve rubbed off at some point.

you didn’t expect her to actually answer but she replies, “actually, i’d like you to meet my grandson as well. i think you two would get along. he's the same age as you too.”

the aforementioned grandson was someone you’ve seen in a bunch of grandma lee’s hallway pictures. you remember that he was an only child, often the only kid and the lone subject in the photos. your favorite was the kid in red with a toothy grin. he must’ve been 5 when it was taken.

"it was a joke, grandma. i'm sure your grandson wouldn't want a stranger suddenly coming to meet him." she shakes her head,

"nonsense. that boy doesn't know what he wants." you laugh at her persistence. getting another bowl of rice, you ponder her offer for a second. maybe this could finally cure your dull and dry love life, it couldn't hurt to try. if worse comes to worst, you could just pretend it never happened.

“but of course, i’ll drive you there. i have nothing to do anyways.” you say with a mouthful of rice. grandma pats you on the back and continues to flick through the channels once more.

“thank you dear.”

the sunset blears through your windshield, sun rays momentarily blinding you. it was clear as day. the ride to her family’s house was relatively quiet, the elderly lady in your passenger seat preferred to sleep the whole ride through after handing you the address, giving you a moment to leave you in your thoughts.

pulling up to the neighborhood, you let out a low whistle. the house was at the end of the street, steep and uphill. it was surely going to be a struggle to get the car way up there.

you get to the curb, reverse and try to park your car as best as you can. the house was really pretty, you thought. it looked pretty lived in too, but in a cozy way. vines was sprawled all over the brick exterior and flowers had bloomed all over the property.

you wake up grandma and start to haul her luggage up and out the car.

"you go up, grandma. i'll catch up."

after struggling to get the multiple bags of luggage up hill, you finally waddle to the front door. the door was left slightly ajar, probably for your convenience. you took a quick peek around, hoping for someone to let you in.

calling out before entering, you were met with silence. you figured they were too busy catching up so you eventually let yourself in.

the furniture adorning the hallway and rooms were made out of wood, the handiwork and craftsmanship was evident, intricate carvings on each and every one of them. it must’ve been made by grandma lee’s son as you’ve heard from her many stories.

a ginger cat with white stripes greets you as you enter the front door, it strides over to you in intrigue. leaning down and dropping grandma's bags gently, you let the feline sniff your hand before allowing itself to be pet. soon enough it starts rubbing its body on your legs and purring loudly. adorable cat, you thought.

silence fills the house, aside from the soft chatter coming from the other side of the wall. the cat leaves it's spot, not wanting to be pet anymore. you sit up and observe the house again, noticing a myriad of family photos adorning the walls and some of the tables.

coming closer to one of the pictures, again, you encounter the same young boy in red but this time he was wearing a cap sideways and a puffer jacket that seemed to be way too big for him.

"hello! you must be y/n!" a feminine voice suddenly calls out from the living room. you straighten your back from the mention of your name, hoping she didn't catch you closely staring at their personal and probably private photos. grandma lee comes out from the living room as well and walks towards you with a younger and kind looking woman in tow. she had another cat in her arms, this time it's coat was gray with dark streaks.

you smile and greet her politely, exchanging pleasantries. you quietly pick up the neglected bags and place them near the guest room. they continue their conversation with each other from before, you now awkwardly standing in the middle. looking at your wrist watch, you figured you should probably head on home.

"i suppose i'll get going now, it was really nice meeting you." mrs. lee looked startled at your sudden announcement.

"why don't you stay for a while? it must've been a long drive here, you're probably hungry." these two women weren't related by blood but they practically were, having the same idea when it came to hospitality.

"well, i don't want to overstay my welcome. i'm just here to give grandma a ride." smoothening out your non-existent clothes wrinkles in apprehension.

she waves her hand in dismissal, "but you must stay, you're already here anyways." she grins and pats your back. mrs. lee didn't seem to budge at your refusal.

you relented, finally accepting her offer. "my son is in the kitchen whipping something up. he's a great cook." you totally forgot about her son being actually here. the joke offer from yesterday completely forgotten and flew out of your mind. slight embarrassment runs through you, realizing that the offer was somewhat serious. you would surely need to mentally prep yourself for more socialization than you've anticipated.

but you instantly believe her claim that her son was a great cook, the amazing and aromatic smell of what seems to be steak and multiple herbs and spices from the kitchen wafts through out the entire house.

"okay- while we're waiting," mrs. lee gestures for you to take a seat, "you should go sit on the couch, y/n. i've been dying to meet you."

she hands you a mug of hot tea and sits down next to you. "mom here talks about you all the time, thank you for keeping her company."

"it's no problem at all, i like her company too." and with that, the three of you fall into a smooth and comfortable rhythm of conversation. the younger of the two women across from you continues to poke and prod into life, not that you minded. she would ask you about your life, where were you from, where you went to school, and where you went to work and among other things.

she offers you stories of her son gleefully in return, laughing about a particularly embarrassing story when he was younger. you learned that he was quite fond and talented in dancing, loves cats, and loves to cook. oddly enough mrs. lee never mentioned his name at all, you didn't want to pry. now that you've thought about it, grandma hadn't mentioned his name at all either. all you had for a lead was initials you remember seeing etched on one of grandma's photos. you figured you'd meet this person soon enough anyways.

after a while, grandma lee retreats to the guest room they've set up, assuming that she'd want to fix her belongings. mrs. lee starts to drag you around the house, urging you to help her set the plates up and talk more while doing so. midway through placing the chopsticks on the table, the sound of pots and pans clanging from the other room shakes you out of your thoughts.

"mom?" a voice calls out from their kitchen. it must be her son. you slightly raise your eyebrows, he sounds oddly familiar but you can't place your finger who he might've sounded like. you quickly brush it off.

"yes?"

"have you seen the slow cooker?" the man finally reveals himself and pokes his head through the entryway to the kitchen.

you lift your head and lock eyes with the said person. shock freezes your movements, dropping the utensils that you were holding. blinking owlishly in surprise, you weren't sure if what you were seeing was real.

you feel the wind knock out of your lungs. this was not happening. the brown eyes, brown hair, and cat like face from work that you've come to dislike stared back. you must be hallucinating.

standing across from you was lee minho, the lee minho. grandma lee’s grandson. the same one that's been tormenting you all year round. you just couldn't believe it, wondering what kind of luck you had to end up here.

you think back to when you looking (--more like snooping) at grandma lee's framed hallway photos, the kid- that was him all along? you're really bad at recognizing faces, you thought to yourself. well, she certainly made him seem like a complete angel from the stories.

"oh! this is y/n. your grandmother invited her to eat dinner with us." mrs. lee pulls your figure closer into a side hug and beams at her son.

he furrows his eyebrows at you, glancing back and forth at you and his mother. he must be as confused and shocked as you are. "hi." minho says, nodding at your direction. you purse your lips and shuffle uncomfortably in place.

minho again asks where the slow cooker was since the first time he asked was ignored. he was wearing a loose fitting shirt, his broad shoulders looking more prominent. you realize you've never seen him outside of his work attire before. he looked comfortable, domestic even.

his mom says to check the cupboards, paying him no mind and continuing to set the table up. minho nods slowly, eyes not leaving yours and heads back to the kitchen. a little shell shocked about your little encounter, you clear your throat and go back to the task at hand. you'd just have to deal with this for the evening and then you could go home.

when the table was done, mrs. lee turns to you, "y/n? would you mind helping minho over there with bringing the side dishes to the table?" you freeze at the realization that you would have to interact with him alone.

"sure." you say meekly. she thanks you and goes to the guest room to presumably get the older lady for dinner. psyching your self up before entering the kitchen, his broad back facing you. he senses your presence and chuckles.

you were sure he was going to make this whole night unbearable.

"well, this is a nice surprise."

"what are you doing here?" stupid question from you seeing as this was his own house. mentally face palming your head, he hums smugly and starts dividing the side dishes onto smaller plates. you notice his very toned arms flexing as he puts the tubs away.

"i should be asking you that. i didn't expect you to be here." he says nonchalantly, but you could feel a sly smile forming on his face as he speaks.

"neither did i." you grumble and lightly shove him aside, wanting to get the side dishes out to the table already. you ignore the way he looks so domestic right now.

you stare at him from directly across the table, hoping he would keep his mouth shut. he smirks while he eats, purposefully riling you up and glancing at you with a knowing grin.

do not lose your cool, y/n.

silence rings out the dining room aside from the quiet clattering of utensils on plates.

"y/n?"

"i'm sorry?" you snap out of your little less than friendly staring contest with him.

"do... you know each other?" his mother finally breaks the silence and here eyes flickers back and forth between both of you.

"yes-"

"no-"

a full on headache is surely forming now, it's going to be hard to hide your annoyance. quick, think of a lie.

"we're coworkers. same company." you grimace as he answers for the both of you. no use in hiding it now. "oh! that's wonderful." the older lady to your right clasps her hands in delight.

"you didn't tell me you worked together." grandma turns to you grinning brightly. you avoid eye contact with her, nodding and forcing out a smile. you wanted nothing more than want the ground to swallow you up right then and there.

"you two must be close." his mother says, sipping at her drink. you were about to open your mouth to say that you really aren't actually, but minho beats you to the punch.

"we kind of are." minho rests his elbows on the table and turns to you. he's enjoying this. the bastard was enjoying this. resisting the urge to roll your eyes, you turn back to finish your meal.

hatred for the man aside, he really was a great cook as mentioned countless of times. you actually find yourself enjoying the meal he had prepared.

"tell me what you two get up to at work, i want to hear all of it."

you shift uncomfortably in your seat, being honest wouldn't be the best idea. you didn't want these two lovely women to know how much of an unpleasant man their son and grandson is. and it was his house after all, the best decision might be to at least be civil with him.

so you play along with his facade, not wanting to disappoint them even if it was probably going to bite you in the ass later.

minho starts cutting the meat up into bite sized pieces while the conversation between the two ladies continue. he places it on your plate without saying anything. this takes you by surprise, looking at his face for an answer.

the two audience members among the dining table seems to have noticed your little exchange. a wrinkly hand touches over yours catches your attention.

"oh, so are you two..." she trails off, implication heavy on her tone.

"no- no, grandma. i told you i wasn't seeing anyone." you shoot a discrete glare towards minho.

"ah, i see..."

you shrink down your seat for the remainder of the hour, embarrassment flooding your being. why did he have to do that? you were already practically fighting for your life not to get too involved with all this, and he pulls that?

after that very eventful dinner, it was already nearing 8 pm. you figured that you should probably get out of their hair, not wanting to disturb them than you already had. that bubble bath and movie marathon you had planned in your head sounded amazing right about now. maybe that would help you forget about this crazy night.

"grandma," she turns in response, "i think i better get going." you smile at her, digging through your pockets for the car keys. a different cat from the other two that you've met takes long strides, stopping by your feet. you greet it by petting it's head gently. you wondered how many cats they have.

"now? look at the weather dear," you look briefly at the window nearest you, surely enough it was heavily pouring. you deflate at the sight.

"i don't think it's a great idea to drive out in a storm." she looks at you in concern. crap. the conversation at dinner must've carried you away, not even noticing the angry rumble of thunder that came from the sky. she was right, you don't think you could drive out there immediately.

the last time you drove into hard pelting rain, you couldn’t see through the windshield and almost crashed your car in the process. you could still remember how your car swerved and screeched when you couldn't control the way the tires' direction.

reluctantly dropping your hands to your side in defeat, "i guess i can wait it out for a bit." you finally say.

"yes, please do stay. we made extra dessert!" mrs. lee chuckles, seemingly enjoying your presence. glancing at minho, he was leaning on the side of the couch watching the exchange between you three, uncharacteristically silent and expression unreadable.

you reckon he wasn't all that thrilled about the whole thing either.

"the storm isn't letting up." minho sighs next to you, observing the dark and heavy rain pelting the window. it continues to pour down, filing in the silence.

"great." you mumble lowly, crossing your arms. a loud cackle of thunder makes you jump from your spot. he just laughs in response. you could feel your heart pounding out of your chest, anxiety quietly eating at you. damn weather man. you should've paid more attention to the forecast.

the smart watch on your wrist flashes with a notification. it was 11 pm now. "you should stay until tomorrow, dear."

you feel a comforting hand on your back, it was mrs. lee. it was only her staying with you two right now since grandma had already retired back to her room.

"tomorrow? oh, i- uh... i don't want to intrude." you stutter and look down, unsure how to accept her offer. but as much as you wanted to turn her down, you knew deep down you don't really have a choice in the matter.

another strike of thunder confirms your pitiful situation.

"i know what you're thinking, you can take minho's room." her words take you aback, that really wasn't what you were thinking. but she wasn't serious, was she?

at the mention of his name and apparent lending of his own bed, he whips his head towards his mother. he points to himself silently and gawks in disbelief.

you try to stifle a laugh at his ridiculous face. it wasn't often that you see minho all flustered.

realizing that mrs. lee might actually kick minho out of his room if you don't say anything, you decide to spare him. "that's okay, i'll take the couch."

"are you sure? the couch isn't the most comfortable..."

you reassure her that the couch is fine and not to worry. mrs. lee takes this as a confirmation that you'll stay for the night. she beams and grabs her son's shoulder,

"minho, do you have clothes that you can lend to y/n?" she catches you about to protest at the unnecessary offer, "don't worry about that, you're going to end up uncomfortable if you sleep in your clothes right now."

she leaves not long after with a quick good night to you both, also not leaving any room for any counter arguments. minho nods after registering what she said, hesitantly gesturing you to follow him towards the room at the end of the corridor.

he was quiet these past few hours, you observed. the annoying minho that you have gotten used to was no where to be found. putting yourself in his shoes, you understood. having a person that you dislike come into your home and spend the night would irk you as well.

the unexpected warm lighting and a subtle citrus scent with notes of jasmine and sandalwood welcomed you upon entering. it instantly brings comfort. not really expecting anything coming into his room, it was truly a pleasant surprise.

you stand awkwardly in the middle of his room, not wanting to touch or disrupt any of his space or belongings. he heads straight to his closet near his bed.

"it's alright, uh..."

minho ignores your attempt to refuse and starts digging deep for clothes that he could lend.

okay, nevermind.

you quietly glance at the homey decor that adorns the wall of his bedroom. multiple pictures of what you assume to be his friends were strewn all across the room. some of them seemed to be taken when he was in high school and some more recent. there were doing various funny and serious poses, minho seems to be really well liked.

"alright,"

he starts handing you a pair of black jogging pants and a plain white t-shirt. you reluctantly take the pile of clothes from him, your fingers momentarily brushing. you were certain you could hear your pulse thump in your ears. it confuses you greatly.

"this is the smallest one i have, sorry."

he coughs and rubs his neck, "the bathroom is over there, if you wanna change."

awkwardly shuffling on the way to the bathroom, a sigh of relief leaves your mouth as you lock the door behind. why were you so affected by a simple touch of his fingers? this was minho. you quickly shove the odd feeling down.

you hold the white shirt up to your torso, it was definitely too big. the hem of the shirt reaching your thighs and sleeves reaching your elbows as well.

peeling out of your clothes, and hold up minho's large shirt to finally wear. as you put it on, you could faintly smell the cleanness of detergent and a faint musky patchouli scent. your cheeks burn with the realization that you were really going to spend the night here.

when you return to the empty main corridor, the leather couch was already set up with a cozy looking blanket and multiple plush pillows. you struggle to hide a smile.

tossing and turning, you struggle to find a comfortable position on the couch. the blanket proving to be too hot right now, you push it off. you check your phone out of boredom and the led screen lights up.

1:19 am. it was in the middle of the night and the rain continues to pour outside. the occasional rumble of thunder once again evoking anxiety in you. sighing, you don't think you will be getting any sleep tonight. it's just you and your thoughts for now.

thinking back to this afternoon, the whole situation seems so absurd and surreal. who would've thought that you and minho would pretend being friends even if it was just for one night. it was a strange chance of circumstance.

the door from the end of hallway opens, a scruffy and disheveled minho rubs his eyes to get rid of his sleepiness. you sit up in curiosity to observe his sleepy state. he pads over the wooden floors to the kitchen looking for water, not sparing you a second glance.

when he was out of sight, you start thinking of ways to distract yourself, wanting to already succumb to slumber.

“oh, it’s you.” he says after coming back, finally noticing your slumped figure. "didn't sleep yet?" minho ruffles his hair haphazardly, trying to smoothen it down. you shake your head,

"insomnia. it's the thunder."

"ah."

"the couch is making your neck hurt isn't it?"

"yeah, that too."

he opens his mouth to hopefully offer another solution, but shuts it immediately. he wasn't sure if it would make you comfortable so he just stands there quietly.

"i'll go get you more pillows." he places his cup down on the coffee table before going to his room. minho stops in his tracks when he feels your fingers tug on his shirt. another strike of thunder flashes outside making you flinch.

"stay." you catch yourself saying before even realizing. it's selfish to ask but you don't think you could stand the thunder alone. watching him stare into your eyes, as if looking for an explanation- you offer him no words.

minho takes a seat at the end of the couch silently joining you, sipping at his mug. to fill the awkward silence, you clear your throat and fiddle with the ends of the cotton blanket.

you start thinking of ways to justify your selfish request of making him stay.

"i finished that damn paperwork you dumped on me. dick move by the way." you chortled to try to lighten the mood. he seems to notice your attempts to distract yourself and indulge your sudden desire to chat.

he folds his hands on his stomach, grinning. his bunny like teeth poking out. you always thought it was endearing. "it's fun seeing you all grumpy."

"sadist." you simper, the anger you felt from a yesterday dwindling at the surprisingly pleasant banter.

quietness takes over again. he stares into the celling, pondering. "i didn't know you were close with my grandmother." he says after a while. he avoids your gaze and places his mug back on the table.

"neither did i. it wasn't deliberate," you reply. he turns to you, curious about the story. so you explain to him how you met, for how long and that you didn't even recognize him despite seeing the photos.

he chuckles, "i bet it was this pose, wasn't it?" minho imitates the very same pose that he did in the photo, eliciting another laugh from you. it was exactly the same.

minho shuffles a little bit closer to you, now propping his arm on the back of the couch. you straighten up, now being hyperaware of his presence and proximity. he looks really different without his glasses.

a furry tail suddenly brushes against your exposed leg. you lean forward to check what had just rubbed past you, it was one of the cats. it meows for attention, pawing at the base of the couch.

"your cats are really cute." you watch him pick the orange haired feline and place it on his lap. one by one, two of the other cats that you've seen this afternoon start padding over to where you and minho were seated, jumping on the couch.

"that's dori," he points to the gray furred kitty. "doongie," an orange cat with a predominately white underbelly, "and soonie." the last one who's also orange but more so than the other. minho raises soonie's paw, waving it at you. cute.

"this one looks like you."

you scratch soonie's chin, the low purring getting louder the longer you do it. minho stares longingly at your eyes with an unreadable expression at the comment. you're not paying any attention to him.

after a while, the cats start to get tired of the two of you. they walk of to the end of the couch, now ignoring you and minho. you fold your arms and relaxing into the back of the couch, falling into a deep and comfortable silence that would be sorely missed.

"why do you hate me?" you say abruptly. the curiosity finally won, anxiety gnawing at your every fiber of your being. it was finally starting to be peaceful between you two and actually talking like normal people, your sudden comment might've affected it's chances of becoming true.

his head whips towards your direction in what you assume to be disbelief, furrowing his eyebrows. "since when did i hate you?"

you struggle to not scoff at his blatant charade, "minho, you have it out for me." this was strange and ridiculous. was he really being serious? how could he not be aware of the months of months of his incessant attitude towards you, and only you.

you remind yourself to be calm, to be civil. but he continues to feign ignorance. it was starting to get difficult.

"you don't treat me like the others, you constantly make my life harder by teasing me, and you dump your own paperwork on me. only me. the only time you talked to me normally was just a few minutes ago." your voice rising with exasperation.

"what did i do?" voice ultimately faltering, tired.

"i-..." minho refuses to meet your eyes, offering no solace.

instantly feeling vulnerable by your little outburst and by the lack of response on his end, you hug and bury the plush pillow for comfort. you wanted to go home. you wanted to go home and pretend this conversation did not happen. confrontation wasn't your strong suit.

after a long while of silence, he at last utters a low, "i'm so sorry."

"that was very, very stupid of me." minho's eyes are now trained on the hardwood floor, unable to even glance at you.

"what? the paperwork?" you scoff, "no, not just that. all of it."

you furrow your brows at him, "i just find you really really cute when you're mad." he continues. you stare at him, incredulousness and anger painting your features. before you could give him a piece of your mind, he speaks.

"and i realized i didn't know how to actually approach you normally without the teasing." he purses his lips, the cup on the table long forgotten. minho is staring up the celling now, still refusing to look to your direction.

"would you also believe me if i said i was jealous?"

you don't know what to say in return, heavily processing what he just said. what was happening? your mouth runs dry, confusion knocking the wind out of you.

"of your friend." he says, emphasizing the last part. you try to rack your brain of who he was referring to.

"jeongin?" you tilt your head. he says nothing, confirming the assumption. "i overheard him talking to his friends, bragging about how he was gonna take you out to this restaurant that he wants to drag you to." you couldn't possibly think of a reason why he would be jealous, you and jeongin are just friends. and why was he jealous in the first place?

"why are you so worked up about it? he's just a friend, minho."

"i'm not even sure myself," minho shakes his head in exasperation and turns to you. "but i like you, y/n."

standing there, paralyzed at his unexpected confession. minho likes you? he was giving you crap all year round, and yet he likes you? you shoot him a perplexed look, "wait, what?"

"let me get this straight," you hug your legs, trying to decipher what he was saying. "so your plan was to annoy the hell out of me, dump your paperwork seeing that you don't want me hanging out with jeongin because...you like me?"

"well, now it sounds stupid when you put it like that." he huffs, crossing his arms and pouting cutely.

deafening silence falls between you two, unable to say anything meaningful without stuttering and fumbling through your words. you just sat there, not really saying anything and staring at the floor. realizing that you probably don't feel the same, he sighs. its about time he went back to bed too.

"it's late. you should probably get some-"

before you knew it you felt your pulse roaring in your ears, grabbing his wrist and stopping him from standing up. you were going to regret it if you let him go.

"i like you too."

a magnetic pull causes you both to inch closer together, wordlessly gazing into each others eyes. you make the first move to lean into him, slowly placing an experimental peck on the side of his lips. you unsurely place your hands on his chest, "is this okay?"

his eyes flickering down to your lips and then back to your eyes. he licks his lips, still staring intensely- lovingly at you. he softly grins, tucking a lock of hair behind your ears and returns the kiss on your lips.

eyelids fluttering shut, you feel him press against you with much enthusiasm, deepening the kiss. you cup his cheeks as a reply, roughly pulling him towards you.

you already forgot about the rain outside.

he hoists you up his lap, a hand on your waist as he trails desperate kisses on your neck. minho pays his attention back to your lips, sloppy and open mouthed, saliva stringing from your mouths. urgency and eagerness was reflected in the way you both tangle your arms around each other, touching and caressing every part that you could reach.

all of the unresolved tension was slowly slipping away, replaced by desire.

a sudden meow breaks the two of you out of your trance. the green eyes of soonie stares up at the two of you, sitting quietly and their tail swishing side to side.

you loosen your arms around his neck, you two bursting out in laughter at the interruption.

"do you want to maybe take this to my room?" minho asks, placing a thumb on your lips. you didn't need to think twice.

your head hit his plush pillow, the cold and crisp linen feeling heavenly against your hot and flushed skin. shuffling up to the headboard, you watch minho with hazy eyes as he inches towards your form and props his knee on the edge of the bed.

he smirks as he sinks down on the mattress, hovering over your feverish body. minho sneaks a hand behind your back, grabbing you by the hips and flipping you over so effortlessly to the top as if you weighed nothing.

"now, where were we?" he murmurs into the column of your neck, his hot breath sending tingling and electrifying shivers down your spine. you respond by trailing your hands all over his clothed chest, wanting to get the offending article of clothing off.

he chuckles and grabs your wrists, halting you from doing so. minho kisses the inside of your wrist, a teasing smile dawns on his face. you look at him with desperate, pleading eyes, wanting to have him already.

minho adjusts his tight hold on you, biting his plush lips in anticipation. with you now towering over his figure, you lean down to capture the lips that you had been fantasizing about all evening and bury your hands into his hair. the kiss was wet and messy, your tongues sloppily and desperately swallowing each other's moans. a trail of saliva strings from both of your lips.

it was starting to get too hot for your liking. you cease your movements for a second to remove minho’s borrowed shirt from your body. minho’s eyes shamelessly rake over your chest, his finger leisurely trailing the middle of your breasts. you let out a low chuckle, finally unclasping the hook of your bra. you release a breathy shudder upon feeling something hard poking you from where you sat. grabbing both of his wrists, you eagerly put them up to your tits, you could feel your sensitive nipples harden because of his cold touch. minho starts pinching at the sensitive buds, prolonging his eye contact with you, clearly enjoying your erratic squirming.

you suck in a sharp breath and almost topple over him in pleasure as he takes a nipple into his mouth, hot, warm, and wet. it was overwhelming, having no one touch you like this before. he continues to lap at your hardening bud. minho groans, closing his eyes and further burying his head in your chest. your tits were covered in spit, glistening under the subtle light of his night lamp.

minho, while smothering himself in your chest, takes a moment to hook his arm over you. his skillful hands trail over to the waistband of your jogging pants and pulls it down. you oblige, leaning closer to him and lifting your hips so he wouldn’t have to leave your tits. you jump in surprise once you feel a light teasing smack on your now semi exposed ass, only covered by thin panties. it elicits a small moan from you, pulling his head closer. you lightly pet his head and thread your hands in his hair affectionately as he continues his sucking, feeling a coiling sensation from your core.

but before you could cum, he detaches from your breasts, leaving his lips glistening with his own spit and his breath raggedy. a sly grin that you have come to love and hate graces his face upon seeing you whimper. the lack of stimulation makes you deflate, heaving frustratedly at his relentless teasing.

the familiar throbbing heat from your pussy suddenly gives you an idea. his hungry gaze watches you in curiosity. the bulge you were currently sitting on now immediately taking all of your attention. you do an experimental hump on it, hoping to relieve the aching heat from your cunt. minho's hands fly to your hips, groaning at the sensation.

"all this time, you made me think that you hated me-" you moan out, the fabric of his pants providing just the right amount of resistance. "when really you liked me?"

he stifles his moans by biting his bottom lip, his pants surely soaked through now.

"i did say i liked seeing you mad." minho manages to grunt out, licking his lips. you almost reel in disbelief but you keep your composure.

"you're confusing." another thrust.

"and i'm still mad at you." you huff out. hips now wildly humping against every ridge and curve of his cock. the sight of him makes you delirious, even more so that you’re humping against him.

"i-i'll make it up to you," he murmurs lowly, hissing the more times you buck up against him. "fu-fuck..."

despite the way that you were using him, it does nothing to quell the horniness you were feeling, in fact, it even spurs you on further. the wet patch from your panties soak and slowly transfer on to the front of his pants, your own wetness spreading messily every time you grind on his delicious dick, the ridges providing the needed friction that you've been so desperately craving. minho watches you, your tits bouncing up and down- he feels like drooling. "i love it when you use me." he finally breathes out, hands still on your hips, his nails making crescents on your skin. and finally, you cum, his words sending you over the edge.

it tremors through your body, white hot cum leaks out from your panties and you can’t seem to hold yourself up any longer, collapsing on his broad chest. you clench your eyes shut in shyness, suddenly embarrassed from using minho so blatantly. he coos and pats your head in comfort, almost like how he pets his cats.

planning to make it up to him and eat his words, you sit up and shuffle down his hips. you admire the wet patch that stains his front, mouth watering. this surprises him, watching you with tantalizing eyes. you make a move to grab at his waistband, pulling it down slowly. he hisses out in pleasure as the waistband runs over his still clothed dick. minho’s boxers were thoroughly wet, you could see a dark patch on the front where you sat on him and where precum leaked out. you lift up a hand to experimentally give his bulge a tight little squeeze, him letting out a little shudder response.

it hardens even more under your touch- so you decide to tease him to test the waters even further, running your fingers over and over his tent causing him to hiss out, sending you a warning look. taking this as a sign, you lift the waistband of his boxers and stare at his eyes while doing so. it springs up immediately after freeing it from its confines. his long and fat cock stands tall, the tip a deep red, and the veins prominently running along the sides. the sight makes your mouth water in anticipation. you place a thumb on his cockhead, running slow circles on his slit causing it to drool heavily on your hand.

his cat like mouth parts in ecstasy once you start teasing the underside of his length with your hand and licking the oozing liquid up. minho’s hips start thrusting at the sensation, forcing you to hold him down. it was admittedly hard to do so, his thick thighs almost the size of your head but you still managed to restrain him from rutting wildly. the groan that leaves his lips sound is absolutely nothing short of sinful when you finally put your mouth on him. every desperate huff from him leaves you light headed, wishing you could record and replay it over and over again. when couldn’t fit all of him, you resorted to pumping the remaining of the shaft were you couldn’t reach. you egg him on even further by running a hand over his abs, seeing how his thighs and abdomen tense up.

you look up through your lashes to watch minho unravel. his eyes were screwed shut, focusing on the stimulation. while it bobs messily in your mouth, you try to pay special attention to his hot and heavy balls, rubbing it back and forth in the palm of your hand, hoping to get him to cum. minho closes his eyes shut again and tenses his thighs, finally cumming. his hands travel down to grasp at his length, taking it over yours, spurting his essence everywhere. minho finishes with a loud relieved groan, slapping his dick lazily against your cheek which you greedily lapped at.

“that might be the best head i’ve ever had, bunny.” he bites his lips, his voice light and airy. you quickly sit up from your position and gawked at him, suddenly feeling bashful at his apparent pet name for you.

minho gives you a mischievous cat like grin in return, feeling absolutely delighted at your expression. he begins to lightly graze your leg, leaving tentative touches and gentle pecks along the stretch of your lower limb. lifting your right leg up, you stop minho from inching any closer towards you by putting your foot on his chest.

"y/n..."

you pretend to think for a moment, stretching this out for as long as possible. he would just have to wait since he had yet to make up for being so mean to you. a little fun also wouldn’t hurt, right? no, you were quite wrong.

minho again grabs your ankle albeit more roughly this time and continues to place chaste kisses with more passion this time, clearly adamant about giving your legs and thighs hickeys. at long last, minho slides the wet and abused fabric off you, the panty is thoroughly soaked and it’s material sticking and clinging to your core.

he hooks ur leg over his shoulder, urging to part your legs apart and spreading them obscenely open. staring intensely into your eyes, minho starts teasing your core with feather light touches. “you like this?” he says his mischievous grin, continuing his ministrations. you offer him no response as he traces figures and shapes on your wet pussy that has you seeing stars. his fingers now erratically sliding up and down your folds. you almost sob at his nonchalant teasing, eyes clenching shut and begging him to put something in.

something about observing his veiny hand treading lightly just the outside of your lower lips leads you to tuck your face into your hands, the sight was like straight out of porn. “no, no. hands up bunny.” minho takes a hold of your wrists, putting them effortlessly above your head.

“you have to look.”

his free hand drags along your legs to pull them apart and starts lowering his chiseled face down to your core. his nose just close enough to feel the small exhaling puffs of hot air on your pussy, causing it to twitch in suspense. the brunette sneaks a peak at your trembling figure before diving right in, the first contact of his tongue on your cunt was searing hot, instantly making jolt out in shock and cry out. minho takes this as a sign to hold down your hips, pressing, flattening, and letting his tongue rampant against you all while avoiding your clit. he hums at the taste, huffing and delving further into your pussy, eating you out with such intensity, placing open mouthed sloppy kisses. he spits to make your pussy wetter so he could languidly and erratically make out with your cunt.

you throw your head back into the heaps of pillows behind you as he starts to pay attention to your clit, softly biting the bundle of nerves. minho then moves to swipe his index up at the large amount of cum and spit trickling from your core, using it as lube for his fingers. he gently prods his index in your entrance all while still licking you up. his long fingers, deliciously stretching your hole, deeper than all those nights you've tried to do so yourself. the bliss you were feeling was overwhelming. minho croaks out a little ‘hah, hah, hah…” every time he would come up for breath, completely drunk off your musky and intoxicating scent. you also don’t miss how he subtly humps the bed sheets he was lying under either. you began to arch your back upon hearing his desperate sounds, your arousal spurting on his face.

minho looks like a cat who got the cream, his pupils blown wide open and wetness trickling down the side of his mouth. he lets go of your hands after you were finished, the numb arm falling on your forehead as you catch your breath. he stands up to re-adjust your form on the bed, pulling you closer to his pelvis.

minho stares at your eyes, asking silently for permission. you look up at him with a toothy- fucked out grin.

the feelings that you couldn't place earlier was now clear, you wanted him.

minho reaches a hand over your face, caressing your flushed cheeks. he wordlessly leans to tenderly place a kiss onto your forehead and on your lips. you reciprocate lovingly, capturing his lips once again. minho without warning, pushes his long and girthy dick into you, the abrupt intrusion making you sob out. the bulbous head of his cock rubs deliciously against your gummy walls, you swore you could feel it in your throat.

“there we go. there we go…”

minho sets a rough pace, his hips thrusting against your pelvic bone. “ah-ah!”

toned and skillful arms cage you in, forcing you to look deep into his dark pools. "you better keep quiet, or else the whole house will hear you." that for some reason makes your cunt even wetter, weeping more than you thought was possible. the sole idea of getting caught with their precious son doing such lewd acts, it seems sacrilegious and absolutely sinful.

he once again reaches for your hardened nipple, tweaking and pinching the bud between his thumb and index. the bed was now creaking with how fast minho was going, you silently prayed that no one in the house suspects anything. the thought mortifies you.

minho leans against your figure and nuzzles up on your chest, looking up at you with an oh so innocent grin while he continues to pound your cunt. his movements start to stutter once he feels your walls clench around him. your mind begins to feel like mush but you still try to make an effort to suppress your groans of pleasure. a strangled sound between a moan and a whine leaves your throat once he hits that one particular spot in you.

“keep quiet, little kitty.”

you start squirming uncontrollably at the huskiness of his voice, not having experienced an intense orgasm like this before. “cum, you can do it.” your rutting hips stop to convulse for a moment, feeling your orgasm rip through the ends of your nerves. leaning back on his chest, you struggle to catch your breath, heaving from the aftermath of your orgasm.

fogginess still clouding your vision, you caught a small glimpse of minho to notice that he still hadn’t pulled out, his hands circling your waist gently. you unintentionally clench on his cock, yep he was still hard, very hard. minho sets his eyes on you, and gives you that look. oh no, you knew that look. the same one that he uses around the office to persuade a higher up to heed to his request. you nibble on your lower lip in excitement.

“one more, you can do one more right?” he coos, lifting your legs and his hips starting his monstrous once pace again. you double over in overstimulation, crying out in pleasure. his breath hitches after a particularly hard thrust, choosing to muffle his own cries by shoving his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling your exhilarating scent. you respond by coyly playing with the hair on his nape, hoping that it would ground you to reality.

minho then sneaks a hand from below you and hugs your figure, pulling you impossibly closer. he swallows your moans, kissing you feverishly and running his hands wildly all throughout. it was so urgent, so intense, like he’s finding a way to meld your bodies together, his erratic and messy thrusts reflecting that.

your fingers clutch his thick bed sheets, euphoria piercing your body every time he drives another rough thrust into you. the lewd noises coming from the two of you echos and bounces off the walls, the conversation tomorrow morning was going to be so humiliating and awkward at the dining table.

you can’t hold it in any longer, and by the looks of it, neither can he. minho cums with a loud groan, spurting inside you. "goooood kitty." minho rasps out. you gape at the warmness, causing you to finish as well. minho reaches his hand downwards to spread your combined release, spreading it messily. it drips out of you obscenely as he pulls out.

you were positively flushed. he was too, sweat still glistening on the wide expanse of his chest and forehead. minho brushes your hair back affectionately before plopping down tiredly next to you. you turn to him, wanting to admire his fucked out features but he looks occupied and staring into space.

“what's the matter?”

"i really am sorry about the misunderstanding. i feel terrible that i made you feel like that. and i do really like you. wasn't lying about that." minho sighs out, closing his eyes for a moment and then faces you. “i want to start over, properly this time.”

"apology accepted. and yeah of course." you say, quite happy with how this whole misunderstanding turned out. "i really like you too." he kisses the top of your head, making you wrap an arm around him to cuddle.

"now you'll just have to figure out how to reject the girl beside your desk. she wants to ask you out."

"maybe we can start by just making out in front of her."

#stray kids smut #skz smut #skz x reader #stray kids x reader #skz scenarios #stray kids hard thoughts #lee know #lee know x reader #lee know smut #lee minho x reader #stray kids x you #stray kids angst #skz fluff #skz angst

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astrocafecoffee · 3 months

Text

Astro observation ( part 1)

🔹For entertainment purposes only, enjoy🔹

♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️

✨ Uranus in the first house individuals may reject authority or traditions that feels restrictive to them.others may seem them as trendsetters or avant -garde in their approach to life.

✨ Venus in the 10th house of natal chart peoples are so workaholic that they prioritise their career, success over personal relationships or self care.

✨ your spouse's name asteroid could fall in your natal 7th house. ( Not necessarily, but it can be).

✨ mercury in the 5th house can indicate a communicative and involved parenting style. This individuals may encourage their children's intellectual development, creativity, and curiosity, fostering a supportive environment that values self expression and learning.

✨ Scorpio mars individuals have a strong sense of loyalty and protectiveness towards their loved ones. They can be fiercely protective of those they care about and may go to great lengths to defend and support them.

✨ regulus in 7th house of Composite chart - your relationship with your person may bring some fame/ recognition.

✨ Astrocartography mc lines - indicates which place may have a significant impact on your career or public life.

✨ Astrocartography Dc lines - you may meet your spouse/ long term partner there.

✨ Saturn in the 4th house individuals are very traditional 🙂

✨ solar return Jupiter/ mercury in 3rd house/ 10th house may indicate favorable year for cracking competitive exams.

✨ Earth dominate individuals may admire partners who take their commitments seriously whether it's in personal relationships ,career or other areas of life.

✨ juno in 1st house of groom persona chart means your spouse may influence how you present yourself to others or how you are perceived in social settings. they could bring out certain qualities in you or play a significant role in shaping your public image.

✨ South node lines in your Astrocartography chart indicates where you lived in your past lives.

✨ Briede conjunct Devine asteroid in synastry - divine/ fated relationship.

✨ Union asteroid in your groom / briede pc can indicate where you will meet your potential life partner/ spouse :

♾️ Union in Aries - dynamic / stimulating environments suggest adventurous activities, sports events, or places that involved risk taking and exploration. Gyms, fitness classes, martial art studios, organizing events , can meet through social gatherings / casual meet ups where people gather for fun or socializing. , Business conferences/ academic competitions.

♾️ Union in Taurus -

Fine dining restaurants , art galleries/ elegant social events. Settings related to finance, banking, investments , or business networking events., Exhibitions , concerts, musical performance, through mutual friends, wellness workshops.

♾️ Union in gemini -

Intellectual or educational events, workshops, seminars, book clubs , social gatherings , parties , online platforms, social media, dating apps, local festivals , neighborhood gatherings , during travel, airport, train station, writing workshop, media production, related to communication and journalism.

♾️ Union in cancer -

Family gatherings , reunions, hospitals , caregiving facilities, charity events , volunteering activities, through mutual friends, at historical sites, museums, art galleries, cultural events, small town festivals, near Lake, river, beaches, cafe , restaurant.

♾️ Union in leo -

Theatres , music venues, art galleries, or during performances and artistic events, parties , weddings, festivals , or grand gathering, acting class, outdoor festival, sports event , amusement park, related to child's education, youth organization, casinos, comedy clubs , gaming centre etc.

♾️ Union in Virgo -

Office , workplaces, professional conferences, networking events, volunteer activities, community service projects, charitable organisations, gyms, fitness classes health food store, wellness center, university, school , educational seminars, pet adoption events, parks , botanical garden.

♾️ Union in Libra -

Social getherings, parties, networking events, through mutual friends, concerts, cultural events, museums, theatre performance, settings related to law, mediation or during discussions that involve finding mutual agreements or resolutions., Teamwork, collaboration, relationship focused workshop,fashion shows, design exhibition, cocktail party, formal gatherings, courtroom, law office.

♾️ Union in scorpio -

Psychotherapy session, support groups, detective work, reasearch fields or in setting that require deep analysis and understanding., Spiritual retreats, metaphysical shops, astrology or tarot classes, tantra workshop, relationship councilling, setting related to investment, joint ventures, estate planning, holistic health centres , transformational workshop, place focused on healing practices.

♾️ Union in Sagittarius -

Travel, airport, train station, in foreign countries, or while participating in adventures such as hiking, backpacking, or exploring new cultures, University, libraries, seminars, religious gatherings, philosophy group, outdoor activities, sports events, camping trips, cultural festival, international events, language exchange program, law, publishing house, that promotes justice.

♾️ Union in Capricorn -

Office, corporate events, buisness conference, while pursuing ambitious projects, leadership roles, ceremony, cultural events, context related to banking, investments, Financial setting, teaching activities , prestigious club , organization, or during events where recognition and achievements are celebrated., Formal dinner etc.

♾️ Union in Aquarius -

Activism, volunteer work, community organization, seminars, conferences, discussion groups, online platforms, social media, tech startups, through mutual friends, social circles, online communities, music festival, Charity work.

♾️ Union in Pisces -

May meet in spiritual retreats, meditation centre, yoga studio, art galleries, theatre, music concert, poetry reading,film screening , volunteer work, charitable organisations, near Lake , beaches , hospital, clinic, wellness center, music festival, dance class, spiritual chants or ceremonies, book clubs focused on fiction on fantasy genres.

✨ Saturn in 1st house people often have RBF / Serious demeanor 👺

✨ Moon opposite/ square Saturn in solar return chart indicates emotional heaviness, feeling of loneliness or responsibilities weighing heavily on the emotions 😭.

✨ Jupiter/ Venus in 2nd house of Groom/ Briede pc indicates rich spouse.

✨ South node conjunct karma in synastry might suggest past life conflicts, power struggles or intense experiences that need healing or resolution in the current lifetime.

My other posts :

🔮 your future spouse's career.

🔮 your past life.

🔮 marriage placement in synastry and composite.

And many more on my page-

See you soon ~

- Piko ✨

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physalian · 6 months

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You don’t have to pay for that fancy worldbuilding program

As mentioned in this post about writing with executive dysfunction, if one of your reasons to keep procrastinating on starting your book is not being able to afford something like World Anvil or Campfire, I’m here to tell you those programs are a luxury, not a necessity: Enter Google Suite (not sponsored but gosh I wish).

MS Office offers more processing power and more fine-tuning, but Office is expensive and only autosaves to OneDrive, and I have a perfectly healthy grudge against OneDrive for failing to sync and losing 19k words of a WIP that I never got back.

Google’s sync has never failed me, and the Google apps (at least for iPhone) aren’t nearly as buggy and clunky as Microsoft’s. So today I’m outlining the system I used for my upcoming fantasy novel with all the helpful pictures and diagrams. Maybe this won’t work for you, maybe you have something else, and that’s okay! I refuse to pay for what I can get legally for free and sometimes Google’s simplicity is to its benefit.

The biggest downside is that you have to manually input and update your data, but as someone who loves organizing and made all these willingly and for fun, I don’t mind.

So. Let’s start with Google Sheets.

The Character Cheat Sheet:

I organized it this way for several reasons:

I can easily see which characters belong to which factions and how many I have named and have to keep up with for each faction

All names are in alphabetical order so when I have to come up with a new name, I can look at my list and pick a letter or a string of sounds I haven’t used as often (and then ignore it and start 8 names with A).

The strikethrough feature lets me keep track of which characters I kill off (yes, I changed it, so this remains spoiler-free)

It’s an easy place to go instead of scrolling up and down an entire manuscript for names I’ve forgotten, with every named character, however minor their role, all in one spot

Also on this page are spare names I’ll see randomly in other media (commercials, movie end credits, etc) and can add easily from my phone before I forget

Also on this page are my summary, my elevator pitch, and important character beats I could otherwise easily mess up, it helps stay consistent

*I also have on here not pictured an age timeline for all my vampires so I keep track of who’s older than who and how well I’ve staggered their ages relative to important events, but it’s made in Photoshop and too much of a pain to censor and add here

On other tabs, I keep track of location names, deities, made-up vocabulary and definitions, and my chapter word count.

The Word Count Guide:

*3/30 Edit to update this chart to its full glory. Column 3 is a cumulative count. Most of what I write breaks 100k and it's fun watching the word count rise until it boils over.

This is the most frustrating to update manually, especially if you don’t have separate docs for each chapter, but it really helps me stay consistent with chapter lengths and the formula for calculating the average and rising totals is super basic.

Not that all your chapters have to be uniform, but if you care about that, this little chart is a fantastic visualizer.

If you have multiple narrators, and this book does, you can also keep track of how many POVs each narrator has, and how spread out they are. I didn’t do that for this book since it’s not an ensemble team and matters less, but I did for my sci-fi WIP, pictured below.

As I was writing that one, I had “scripted” the chapters before going back and writing out all the glorious narrative, and updated the symbols from “scripted” to “finished” accordingly.

I also have a pie chart that I had to make manually on a convoluted iPhone app to color coordinate specifically the way I wanted to easily tell who narrates the most out of the cast, and who needs more representation.

—

Google Docs

Can’t show you much here unfortunately but I’d like to take an aside to talk about my “scene bits” docs.

It’s what it says on the tin, an entire doc all labeled with different heading styles with blurbs for each scene I want to include at some point in the book so I can hop around easily. Whether they make it into the manuscript or not, all practice is good practice and I like to keep old ideas because they might be useful in unsuspecting ways later.

Separate from that, I keep most of my deleted scenes and scene chunks for, again, possible use later in a “deleted scenes” doc, all labeled accordingly.

When I designed my alien language for the sci-fi series, I created a Word doc dictionary and my own "translation" matrix, for easy look-up or word generation whenever I needed it (do y'all want a breakdown for creating foreign languages? It's so fun).

Normally, as with my sci-fi series, I have an entire doc filled with character sheets and important details, I just… didn’t do that for this book. But the point is—you can still make those for free on any word processing software, you don’t need fancy gadgets.

—

I hope this helps anyone struggling! It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Everything I made here, minus the aforementioned timeline and pie chart, was done with basic excel skills and the paint bucket tool. I imagine this can be applicable to games, comics, what have you, it knows no bounds!

Now you have one less excuse to sit down and start writing.

#writing advice #writing resources #writing tips #writing tools #writing a book #writing #writeblr #organizing your book #outlining #shut up and write the book #google sheets #google docs

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pinkcarnatixns · 6 months

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leah williamson | training wheels

synopsis your plan for a romantic date goes downhill when your girlfriend admits she doesn't know how to ride a bike [2.1K] contents pouty! leah, slight injury, slightly suggestive

You really thought that your girlfriend would be blown away by your plans for a romantic date, but you apparently had made a quite significant miscalculation.

Leah, constantly one to sweep you off your feet, had organized a sweet weekend getaway to Amsterdam for your six month anniversary. Since joining the club and hitting it off with the blonde, you hadn’t had much time to explore around Europe like you’d hoped when you first decided to make the move. With the way she hung onto your every word, Leah had clearly remembered this small detail and planned an extremely thoughtful getaway around it, surprising you with the plane tickets after training one day.

You were nearly drunk on the amount of affection you felt for the girl, having been sufficiently pampered with the amount of plans she had made for the two of you. The day before, Leah had arranged a walking tour of the city which, wanting to stay in her own little bubble with you- was guided by the overexcited girl herself. Judging by the exasperated texts you received from a certain Dutch striker afterwards, it seemed that she had really gone all out to impress you, even if it meant she was never allowed to ask Viv a question again. If you hadn’t been completely gone for her by that point, you had arrived back to your beautiful hotel room just to see a new dress and heels laid out on your bed, before you were promptly shooed off to get ready.

When you stepped out of the bathroom that had turned into your holding cell at her insistence, you were pleasantly surprised by the sight of your girlfriend in a suit you had picked out for her during one of your first ‘dates.’ She had been so nervous then, and desperate for an excuse to see you away from your teammates’ teasing remarks, using the excuse of an upcoming event to have you go shopping together. You never did get to see her in it, and when you had started dating, she claimed that it was too precious and had to be used for an incredibly important event.

Apparently, she had deemed her surprise dinner date a special enough occasion, almost missing the reservation due to your appreciation of her attire. After hours of giggling over an expensive bottle of wine and being kindly told to wrap it up by staff, both your stomach and heart were completely full. Stumbling around in the streets hand-in-hand, entirely too dressed up while looking for ice cream with her jacket hugging your shoulders, you could have died happy.

So, after finally collapsing for the night and drifting on cloud nine, you decided you wanted to return the favor somewhat- to make her swoon for once. With a free day tomorrow, and her snoring softly in your ear with your head pillowed by her arm, you sneakily turned your phone brightness down and hatched your plan.

In the morning, even though Leah took so much coaxing to get out of bed that your lips were sore, you had succeeded in getting her dressed and out the door. Not one to enjoy being out of the know, she had attempted many sneaky glances at your navigation app, receiving warning glances every time she tried to distract you from your mission. As you approached, you gave her a deceivingly sweet smile, immediately making her suspicious. “Love, you’re being quite cryptic and we’ve gotten pretty rural. Do I really treat you so badly you’ve taken me to the Dutch countryside to kill me?”

“Leah! Where’s your sense of adventure?” You pout at her with hands on your hips, determined to have your dream realized. “Now can you close your eyes please?”

“Oh, this is really the end for me now. Tell my mum I love her.” She sasses back at you, but does as you say anyhow, putting her hands over her eyes for emphasis. You mock her accent and pouty tone under your breath, but delicately guide her by the crook of her elbow, taking care that she doesn’t trip over anything.

She lets you lead her, careful to keep her eyes shut to avoid upsetting you and whatever has gotten you so excited. You firmly tell her to stay where she is and reinforce that she needs to keep her eyes shut before she hears your steps walk off. She worries you’ve gone and left her abandoned there before she makes out your voice talking to someone quietly, curious at the clanging that follows the conversation. Relieved at the warmth of your hands returning to her, you slowly take her hands away from her eyes. “I’m going to count down! Stay here- ” She hears you scurry off and at your prompt, opens her eyes, letting them adjust to the sunny day.

“Ta-da!!” Her eyes focus on you, before dragging over to what you’re gesturing excitedly to. Hand gestures highlighting two bikes- fuck. Her face goes completely red as you prattle on, “We’ll be so cute! And this path up here goes just past some pretty tulip fields, we can stop and have a picnic!”

Silently and not quite meeting your gaze, she grabs one of the bikes by the handlebars and starts walking it past the stand where you had rented them- nodding in thanks to the old man running it. This leaves you completely confused, and you jog your bike over to where she’s walked off, “Is it horribly cheesy? Do you hate it? I’m sorry I just wanted to do something for you because-”

Once out of range of the little bike stand, she whips around to face you and mumbles something under her breath, only making eye contact with her feet. You tilt your head questioningly, prompting her to try again, and she rushes out “‘m not good at riding bikes.”

As you take a second to actually process her fast words, it’s your turn to be embarrassed, “Leah! You’ve never told me you don’t know how to ride a bike? I dragged you all the way out here trying to be romantic!”

She kicks around the gravel under her Birkenstocks, like a scolded kid pouting, “It’s embarrassing…” You sigh hard and start to speak before being cut off, “-And I know how to ride one I’m just not good at it!”

You raise an eyebrow, and she immediately loses the nerve she had built up, averting her eyes again. Having been too determined to give up something you had been so excited for, you knock your kickstand and trudge over to her. “Well get on! We’re going to get your confidence up!”

She realizes that you’re not giving up anytime soon, losing the battle of puppy-dog eyes that she initiated. You expect her to climb right onto the bike, but instead she also kicks her stand and steps away. You’re ready to protest, expecting that she’s ready to call it a day, but are surprised when she falls into a crouch in front of you. She hastily starts tucking the bottoms of her baggy jeans into her socks and glares up at your shaking form, trying to contain your laugh. “What! You really do want me to die, don’t you? What happened to safety first?”

You shoot her an apologetic glance, still letting some giggles escape as you ruffle her hair. “I’m very flattered that you care so much for some cheap H&M jeans I bought you love, but I think you’re safe. Now stop stalling!”

She shoots you a wary glance, but regardless stands and kicks her leg back over the bike, getting into position. “Now! The hardest part is just getting started and righting your balance so I’ll give you a little push!”

Leaving her side to stand over the back wheel, you grab her hips to steady her as she places her foot on one of the pedals. She stiffens slightly and shoots you a wink over her shoulder at the new position, “Well miss cheeky! I bet this was your plan all along wasn’t it?”

At her teasing, you slightly lean her over to the side she isn’t resting on, crumbling her confidence and setting off her balance- her face paling immediately. “Hey! This is no way to treat someone who is greatly humoring you right now! We could’ve been having a grand old time back in our hotel room at this time!”

“Sorry sorry! Just focus!” You giggle and feel your face get a bit hot at the implications of her words before continuing. “Okay you’re gonna sit up, look up-” She follows your words, and with a hard push from you, “And pedal!”

She wobbles a bit, clearly panicking and forgetting to actually pedal, having to put her feet back down to stop herself from completely toppling over. Catching her breath, she exasperates. “This is horrible! Who does this for fun? Psychopaths?”

You try terribly hard not to laugh at her, but she’s just so cute and frustrated that you can't help yourself, shooting her a big smile at her withering glance. You really do appreciate that she’s trying for you, and lean up to give her a big, exaggerated kiss on the cheek with some words of encouragement. “You really almost had it baby! Just have to breathe and pedal, momentum helps a lot! Now come on, one more time, I’ve got you.”

She nearly hops off, and you rush to praise her so that she keeps at it, “You really are so brave lovie! I nearly had to be shipped off to the hospital when I was being taught!” She puffs up a little at the praise, and so you give her a proper kiss and continue, “My fearless, beautiful girlfriend!-”

“Alright alright, one more time but that is it! I don’t like making a fool of myself.” She backs up a little bit, ready to start again and clearly psyching herself up in her head. This time you’re stationed next to her, holding her handlebar with one hand and the seat cushion with the other. She glares down at the bike like it’s personally out to get her as you count her off, kissing her on the cheek and propelling her forward with all your strength on one.

She gets some really good speed at your push, but once again forgets she needs to do the rest, righting her error as you yell desperately, “Pedal!”

She starts really getting the hang of it with minimal swerving, and you whoop excitedly as she actually manages to turn the bike around and head back towards you, complete with a smug smirk on her face as she passes you.

However, her pride doesn’t last for long enough as her eyes are still glued to you and not on the rock in her way. Before you can warn her, she’s crashing to the ground and you rush over to her deflated form. Luckily, her football instincts had clearly kicked in and she had landed with no injuries, bar some scrapes on her face and hand. You know you’re really in for it at the familiar frown you receive as you help her up.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

The door chime indicating your exit from the small convenience store, you walk over to your poor girlfriend’s pathetic form, a cup of ice in one hand and box of plasters in the other. Sitting on the rough wood of the bench, she allows you to coo over her as you patch her up and hold ice over her thrumming wounds.

You hold her hand in silence, laying your head on her shoulder as you sit side-by-side, watching the sun set over the beautiful tulip fields. You tear up a little bit, emotional at the view and that you were the cause of your girlfriend’s wounds, your plans slightly ruined. You nearly open your mouth to apologize again when she starts, “Thank you for today. I would’ve never thought to just sit outside and enjoy the view like this. And for believing in me, even if it was slightly misplaced.” She chuckles at the last part, placing her head on yours and nuzzling in slightly.

You giggle at her sincere words, squeezing her hand in yours, reveling in the heat radiating off her accompanied by the comforting smell of her perfume. “All these flowers and you still have my favorite two lips in the world. Speaking of, I think I deserve a proper kiss after my act of courage today.”

You laugh at her horribly cheesy joke, but decide to indulge her anyway, pulling off her shoulder and cradling her poor wounded head in your hands as your lips meet.

a/n: thank u guys so much for the love on my last fic!! also terribly sorry if this doesn't make sense to my dutch friends </3 i am american

++ my reqs are open for more leah fics or for other woso girlies!

#leah williamson fluff #leah williamson x reader #leah williamson #woso one shot #woso fanfics #woso imagine #woso x reader #woso community

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