#Fastest Way to Buy Home

[ruins-of-gods]

Something that I think Warhammer 40,000 storytellers miss sometimes is the sheer scale of their setting. I mean, don't get me wrong - I love the big, dramatic clashes, the characters you can buy in mini form and their convoluted, interwoven lore, the dramatic combats against unstoppable foes across a thousand ruined worlds. But that's the top of the setting, as it were - the most powerful beings in the universe, all fighting for supremacy. And at ground level, the level of the ordinary person, are so many other stories.

Did you know that a Lunar-class void cruiser has a crew of 95,000? Nearly a hundred thousand people, aboard a spaceship five kilometers long. A city, flying through outer space to wage war. Many of those people are proper trained soldiers, fresh from some academy or veterans of long, grueling campaigns, and many more are pressed into service, begrudgingly laying their lives at their Emperor's feet. But, unless the ship is currently actively involved in a really bloody campaign, most of those people were born aboard that ship. Most of their parents were born aboard it. And their grandparents. And their great-grandparents. Lineages stretching back centuries, so far that the original soldier who came aboard has been forgotten. A lot of those people probably know, on some level, that they're aboard a ship flying through space - but a lot of them probably don't, and I guarantee you almost none of them understand what that means. This ship is their world. To look out the window means madness so often that they avoid it - not that windows are readily available anyway. Most of them probably barely even understand that they're fighting. All they know is that when the readouts on their analog instruments display like so, when they hurry to obey the blared orders through the klaxon, the Emperor is pleased with them. They were born into that world. When they were children they did smaller tasks the adults couldn't. Their entire existence was winding metal corridors, laid out according to some archaic design, any logic that might dictate their layout long since degraded after millennia of ignorant maintenance, lit only by emergency lights that have long since become the default. They learned how to read an angle readout or how to relay an order perfectly the way another child might learn history or math. When they grew up, their service was flawless, born of pride and ignorance, and when they grew old and died, their legacy was remembered until it was forgotten. Many were killed in battle, but who cares? They gave their lives to the Emperor - a name whose meaning they don't understand, but whose importance they believe in wholeheartedly, all but synonymous with the commanding officers up above.

Sometimes, the klaxons sound a specific command, and every person on board who understands what it means feels a deep, awful dread as they run to their battle stations. They don't know what a warp jump is. They don't understand they're going from one place to another by the fastest way available. All they know is that, for a time, the ship dips into hell. The corridors go wrong. Things and people might not be where or what they were before. Daemons stalk the halls, and must be killed by any who can hold a lasgun. The overcrowded berths, the little nooks that families find for themselves - they are not private anymore. They are not safe. Things drift through the shift that do not care about the laws of physics, but that delight in killing and torturing human beings. Vast energies shake the ship and tear parts of it away - their home, their world, their existence, the biggest thing they can imagine, assaulted by something bigger. Is it the Emperor's punishment for failure? Is this what battle is? What's going on? They don't know, and no one who does can be bothered to tell them. The dread of those who have seen this before is even worse, because they don't know how long it will be. It might be just a few hours. It might be days, or weeks, or months, or years, or decades. It might be centuries, as the captain of the ship goes hunting daemons deep in the warp - the officers live that long, after all, and have little care for those who don't. There will be people born in hell, who spend their entire lives fighting from the day they can stand, and who die in hell, as old age and need catch up to them and they curl up in a corner to perish. To them, it isn't even hell. It's just the world. The world is death and pain and cruelty, an infinite metal box through which monsters stalk, and sometimes you must run to a battle station and do as you're ordered to do. And sometimes, as they reach forty or fifty or even a ripe old sixty, the ship drops out of the Warp, and, for the final years of their life, they are granted a life of relatively safe service better than anything they ever hoped to dream of.

Those are the kinds of stories I want to see more of. Super-soldiers fighting each other is cool, yes, but I want to see this universe explored. I want stories from the perspective of those that keep the Imperium going, or the aeldar, or the tyranids, or anyone, really. There's just so much potential in this setting. It deserves it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A profoundly stupid case about video game cheating could transform adblocking into a copyright infringement

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "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" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's a weird consequence of our societal shift from capitalism (where riches come from profits) to feudalism (where riches come from rents): increasingly, your rights to your actual property (the physical stuff you own) are trumped by corporations' metaphorical "intellectual property" claims.

That's a lot to unpack! Let's start with a quick primer on profits and rents. Capitalists invest money in buying equipment, then they pay workers wages to use that equipment to produce goods and services. Profit is the sum a capitalist takes home from this arrangement: money made from paying workers to do productive things.

Now, rents: "rent" is the money a rentier makes by owning a "factor of production": something the capitalist needs in order to make profits. Capitalists risk their capital to get profits, but rents are heavily insulated from risk.

For example: a coffee shop owner buys espresso machines, hires baristas, and rents a storefront. If they do well, the landlord can raise their rent, denying them profits and increasing rents. But! If a great new cafe opens across the street and the coffee shop owner goes broke, the landlord is in great shape, because they now have a vacant storefront they can rent, and they can charge extra for a prime location across the street from the hottest new coffee shop in town.

The "moral philosophers" that today's self-described capitalists claim to worship – Adam Smith, David Ricardo – hated rents. For them, profits were the moral way to get rich, because when capitalists chase profits, they necessarily chase the production of things that people want.

When rentiers chase rents, they do so at the expense of profits. Every dollar a capitalist pays in rent – licenses for IP, rent for a building, etc – is a dollar that can't be extracted in profit, and then reinvested in the production of more goods and services that society desires.

The "free markets" of Adam Smith weren't free from regulation, they were free from rents.

The moral philosophers' hatred of rents was really a hatred of feudalism. The industrial revolution wasn't merely (or even primarily) the triumph of new machines: rather, it was the triumph of profits over rent. For the industrial revolution to succeed, the feudal arrangement had to end. Capitalism is incompatible with hereditary lords receiving guaranteed rents from hereditary serfs who are legally obliged to work for them. Capitalism triumphed over feudalism when the serfs were turned off of the land (becoming the "free labor" who went to work in the textile mills) and the land itself was given over to sheep grazing (providing the wool for those same mills).

But that doesn't mean that the industrial revolution invented profits. Profits were to be found in feudal societies, wherever a wealthy person increased their wealth by investing in machines and hiring workers to use them. The thing that made feudalism feudal was how conflicts between rents and profits cashed out. For so long as the legal system elevated the claims of rentiers over the claims of capitalists, the society was feudal. Once the legal system gave priority to profit over rent, it became capitalist.

Capitalists hate capitalism. The engine of capitalism is insecurity. The successful capitalist is like the fastest gun in the old west: there's always a young gun out there looking to "disrupt" their fortune with a new invention, product, or organizational strategy that "creatively destroys" the successful businesses of the day and replaces them with new ones:

https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-capitalism/

That's a hard way to live, with your every success serving as a blinking KICK ME sign visible to every ambitious person in the world. Precarity makes people miserable and nuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

So capitalists universally aspire to become rentiers and investors seek out companies that have a plan to extract rent. This is why Warren Buffett is so priapatic for companies with "moats and walls" – legal privileges and market structures that protect the business from competition and disruption:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-explains-moat-principle-164442359.html

Feudal rents were mostly derived from land, but even in the feudal era, the king was known to reward loyal lickspittles with rents over ideas. The "patents royal" were the legally protected right to decide who could make or do certain things: for example, you might have a patent royal over the production of silver ribbon, and anyone who wanted to make a silver ribbon would have to pay for your permission. If you chose to grant that permission exclusively to one manufacturer, then no one else could make it, and you could charge a license fee to the manufacturer that accounted for nearly all their profit.

Today, rentiers are also interested in land. Bill Gates is the country's number one landowner, and in many towns, private equity landlords are snappinig up every single family home that hits the market and converting it to a badly maintained slum:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston

But the 21st Century's defining source of rent is "IP" – a controversial term that I use here to mean, "Any law or policy that allows a company to exert legal control over its competitors, critics and customers":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is in irreconcilable conflict with real property rights. Think of HP selling you a printer and wanting to decide which ink you use, or John Deere selling you a tractor and wanting to tell you who can fix it. Or, for that matter, Apple selling you a phone and dictating which software you are allowed to install on it.

Think of Unity, a company that makes tools for video-game makers, demanding a royalty from every game that is eventually sold, calling this "shared success":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Every time one of these conflicts ends with IP's triumph over real property rights, that is a notch in favor of calling the world we live in now "technofeudalist" rather than "technocapitalist":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Once you start to think of "IP" as "laws that let me control how other people use their real property," a lot of the seemingly incoherent fights over IP snap into place. This also goes a long way to explaining how otherwise sensible people can agree on expansions of IP to achieve some short-term goal, irrespective of the spillover harms from such a move. Hard cases make bad law, and hard IP cases make terrible law.

Five years ago, some anti-fascist counterdemonstrators hit on the clever idea of blaring top 40 music during neo-Nazi marches, on the theory that this would prevent Nazis from uploading videos of their marches to Youtube and other platforms, whose filters would block any footage that included copyrighted music:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

Thankfully, this didn't work, but not for lack of trying. And it might still work, if calls for beefing up video copyright filters are heeded. Cops all over the place are already blaring Taylor Swift songs and Disney tunes to prevent their interactions with the public from being uploaded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas

The same thinking that causes progressives to recklessly argue in favor of upload filters also causes them to demand that web scraping be treated as a copyright crime. They think they're creating a world where AI companies can't rip off their creation to train a model; they're actually creating a world where the Internet Archive can't capture JD Vance's embarrassing old podcast appearances or newspaper editorial boards' advocacy for positions they now recant:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

It's not that Nazi marches are good, or that scraping can't be bad – it's just that advocating for the use of IP to address either is a cure that's not just worse than the disease – it's also not a cure.

A problem can be real, and still not be solvable with IP. I have enormous sympathy for gamers who rail against cheaters who use aftermarket hacks to improve their aim, see through buildings, or command other unfair advantages.

If you want to tell a stranger how they must configure their PC or console, IP ("any law that lets you control your competitors, critics or customers") is an obvious answer. But – as with other attempts to solve real problems with IP – this is a cure that is both worse than the disease, and also not a cure after all.

Back in 2002, Blizzard sued some hobbyists over a program called "bnetd." Bnetd was a program that provided a game-server you could connect to with the Blizzard games that you'd bought. It was created as an alternative to Battlenet, Blizzard's notoriously unreliable game-server software that left gamers frustrated and furious due to frequent outages:

https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

To the public, Blizzard made several arguments against bnetd. They claimed that it encouraged piracy, because – unlike the official Battlenet servers – it didn't check whether the copies of Blizzard software that connected to it had a valid license key. Gamers didn't really care about that, but they did respond to another argument: that bnetd lacked the anti-cheat checking of Battlenet.

But that wasn't what Blizzard took to the court: in court, they argued that the hobbyists who made bnetd violated copyright law. Specifically, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans "circumvention of access controls to copyrighted works." Basically, Blizzard argued that bnetd's authors violated the law because they used debuggers to examine the software they'd paid for, while it ran on their own computers, to figure out how to make a game server of their own.

Blizzard didn't sue bnetd's authors for pirating Blizzard software (they didn't – they'd paid for their copies). They didn't sue them for abetting other gamers' piracy. They certainly didn't sue them for making a cheat-friendly game-server.

Blizzard sued them for analyzing software they'd paid for, while it was running on their own computers.

Imagine if Walmart – one of the biggest book-retailers in America – had a policy that said that you could only shelve the books you bought at Walmart on shelves that you also bought at Walmart. Now imagine that Walmart successfully argued that measuring the books you bought from them and using those measurements to create your own compatible book-case violated their IP rights!

This is an outrageous triumph of IP rights over real property rights, and yet gamers vocally backed Blizzard in the early noughts, because gamers hate cheaters and because IP law is (correctly) understood as "the law that lets a company tell you how you can use your own real, physical property." Hard cases make bad law, hard IP cases make batshit law.

It's more than 20 years since bnetd, and cheating continues to serve as a Trojan horse to smuggle in batshit new IP laws. In Germany, Sony is suing the cheat-device maker Datel:

https://torrentfreak.com/sonys-ancient-lawsuit-vs-cheat-device-heads-in-right-direction-sonys-defeat-240705/

Sony argues that the Datel device – which rewrites the contents of a player's device's RAM, at the direction of that player – infringes copyright. Sony claims that the values that its programs write to your device's RAM chips are copyrighted works that it has created, and that altering that copyrighted work makes an unauthorized derivative work, which infringes its copyright.

Yes, this is batshit, and thankfully, Sony has been thwarted in court to date, but it is steaming ahead to the EU's highest court. If it succeeds, then it will open up every tool that modifies your computer at your direction to this kind of claim.

How bad can it be? Well, get this: the German publishing giant Axel Springer (owned by a monomaniacal Trumpist and Israel hardliner who has ordered journalists in his US news outlets to go easy on both) is suing Eyeo, makers of Adblock Plus, on the grounds that changing HTML to block an ad creates a "derivative work" of Axel Springer's web-pages:

https://torrentfreak.com/ad-blocking-infringes-copyright-ancient-sony-cheat-lawsuit-may-prove-pivotal-240729/

Axel Springer's filings cite the Sony/Datel case, using it to argue that their IP rights trump your property rights, and that you can only configure your web-browser, running on your computer, which you own, in ways that it approves of.

Axel Springer's war on browsers is a particularly pernicious maneuver, because browsers are the best example we have of internet software that serves as a "user agent." "User agent" is an old-timey engineering synonym for "browser" that reflects the browser's role: to go out onto the web on your behalf and bring back things for you, which it displays in the way you prefer:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Want to block flickering GIFs to forestall photosensitive epileptic servers? Ask your user agent to find and delete them. Want to shift colors into a gamut that accounts for your color-blindness? Ask your user-agent:

https://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/15/dankam/

Want to goose the font size and contrast so you can read the sadistic grey-on-white type that young designers use in the mistaken belief that black-on-white type is "hard on the eyes"? That's what Reader Mode is for:

https://frankgroeneveld.nl/2021/08/24/most-underused-browser-feature/

The foundation of any good digital relationship is a device that works for you, not for the people who own the servers you connect to. Even if they don't plan on screwing you over by directing your user agent to attack you on their behalf right now, the very existence of a facility in your technology that causes it to betray you, by design, is a moral hazard that inevitably results in your victimization:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

"IP" ("a law that lets me control how you use your own property") is a tempting solution to every problem, but ultimately, IP ends up magnifying the power of the already powerful, in contests where your only hope of victory is having a user agent whose only loyalty is to you.

The monotonic, dangerous expansion of IP reflects the growing victory of rents over profits – income from owning things, rather than income from doing things. Everyday people may argue for IP in the belief that it will solve their immediate problems – with AI, or Nazis, or in-game cheats – but ultimately, the expansion of a law that limits how you can use your property (including your capital) to uses that don't threaten neofeudalists will doom you to technoserfdom.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

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/2024/07/29/faithful-user-agents/#hard-cases-make-bad-copyright-law

[loveemagicpeace]

🍸Saturn in Houses🍸

A lot of people ask me about Saturn in houses so I decided to make a new series about Saturn in houses in general.

☕️Most important thing about Saturn is that Saturn represent time , age ,reward , growth but in some kind of different way than Jupiter. Also represents your way of coping with life,things that you are more serious about and more responsible with. It also represents holidays. The planet is known for its reality and practicality, but also for its tendency to excessive strictness. His expectations may be too high. A strong Saturn in chart can indicate that we want to control everything in our life to the point that we consider ourselves a failure if we fail to reach the goals we have set for ourselves. However, Saturn provides the desire for we develop the areas in which we feel weak and this weakness can therefore become our greatest virtue. Strong Saturn connection between two charts in relationship (especially if saturn is in aspect with the moon or the sun) indicates a serious long-term commitment that can last forever (whether we like it or not). Saturn can also be cruel sometimes because it is the planet of hard reality but it also the planet that help us the most to achieve something much more greater than that.

🫧Saturn in 1st house- in your early age you can have problems with yourself image ,with your appearance ,confidence & energy. It can also be hard for you to express yourself. With Saturn here you can feel weak sometimes. You can feel like you don't have that much power that other people do have or you can feel like you are not good enough. Many people may underestimate you. Many times you can give off a very different energy than it really is (especially when people meet you for the first time). You are a more closed person and you only give energy to those who deserve it.

✨Saturn in 2nd house- maybe it's hard for you to find your value or set boundaries for yourself. You have very strong and serious approach to money you will never buy something that it's like I don't know some random thing. Also a lot of people think that you cannot work with money or things related to money maybe people don't trust you with that but this is all because they don't really know how smart you actually are. Low self-esteem is a characteristic trait of this placement in astrology. Self-confidence doesn’t come easy to you, though.

⭐️Saturn in 3rd house- many people underestimate your thinking, expression, intelligence. U can usually get insecure about the way you speak or the way you say some things. I think the fear in this house is that you are afraid that you will say something wrong. You have to be confident in whatever thing you say and you should say confidently because you are intelligent ,you're smart. You can also be a good writer & speaker. Many people can pass their driving test late, but that's exactly why they drive much better than others. You can get along better with your siblings later in life. You are capable of seeing things in depth.

🎧Saturn in 4th house- you can have a lot of rules in your early years. You grow up with rules at home that you can stick to. Your parents are more strict with you and allow you to do certain things later. I just feel like that parents will buy you a phone later in life or something. People usually come from a family where they weren’t emotionally nourished. But it's not always like that because when it comes to family the Moon is great indicator for how you feel at home and how you vibe at home. So saturn doesn't mean that your family cannot be good. You can also be the person who grows the fastest in the family.

❄️Saturn in 5th house- dating life can be very serious topic for you. You cannot date people with whom you don't feel that you can have committed relationships with. Saturn brings a strong desire for fame, recognition, and success but may result in delays and disappointments in love life and artistic creations. U can also struggle to find love. You can also have very high standards when it comes to love because 5th house represent dating ,represent meeting people and flirting and falling in love so usually people who have Saturn in 5th house are very serious when it comes to that. In some cases, your partners are older than you. Often, your love life significantly improves after the age of thirty. Your best relationships will probably come later in life. As you become more carefree and spontaneous, you become more attractive to others.

🍃Saturn in 6th house- you can have a lot of struggles in the work. You feel that working is just anxiety for you or when you work, people are just rude or mean to you. You are always in the shadow at work. People find you like you are not good enough or you don't do the job good enough. You can also stress a lot about your health and you can also be obsessed with being in the some kind of routine or having some lifestyle. Being healthy all the time.

🐚Saturn in 7th house- there can be issues with your relationships. You can have relationships in your early years or you don’t have for a long time. You usually have many karmic relationships from which you can learn a lot. Saturn helps you to choose the right person for yourself and to be happy in the end. You are a person who is serious when it comes to a relationship (when you find a person, then that person is the one and only for you), you hate cheating, and when you decide to leave then you leave. Saturn can also bring a sense of responsibility and duty to relationships. The individual may take their relationships seriously and work hard to maintain them.

☁️Saturn in 8th house- there can be a lot of family secrets that family kept from you. People with Saturn in this house usually feel very lonely or alone in their soul. They have this mindset that you are all alone in this world. You are aware of the hard truth in life that people don't. You can fear the death of loved ones. If you overcome the challenges of your Saturn in the eighth house, you will be able to understand people very well. You can develop a talent to see into the soul. Saturn here gives you a deep understanding of life, death, crisis, transformation, and sometimes a talent for healing.

⚡️Saturn in 9th house- Saturn gives you a deeper view of the world in which you live. Saturn in ninth house people have very strict moral code. This placement indicated a religious person, someone who either follows the set rules or makes their own views. You meet new people and experience new activities that make you see the world from a new perspective. You can also meet a lot of people that change your perspective and your mindset. But there can also be a deep fear of new views. Maybe you don't feel like you're not smart enough or that you're not educated enough.

🖤Saturn in 10th house- You usually go over many obstacles to finally achieve what you really want. Many people have problems with whether they will ever be successful or achieve it. But in the end, they achieve even more. Many times people don't believe in you and see you as a person who will never be that successful and then you surprise them all. You can learn a lot from your father and your father can be your role model or a person who helps you through life. The best advice will give you your father.

🫐Saturn in 11th house-you can have a lot of karmic friendships and you can change a lot of friends in your life. Every friend that you have is the friend that you have to learn something from them. Your hopes and wishes are another important life area associated with this house. It shows everything that comes into your life and how your dreams can come true. Saturn in eleventh house suggests that you are quiet and reserved when in a group. Sometimes you feel invisible: it feels like no one hears you out in a group. In this lifetime, you have to learn how to have a healthy relationship with groups and how to behave in your social circle.

🥃Saturn in 12th house- The individual may experience a strong sense of responsibility towards charitable or behind-the-scenes work. Sometimes you don’t let even those the closest to you to see your weaknesses. As a child, you had to learn to hide your feelings, especially the negative ones. You absorb all the energies around you, and if you are surrounded by negativity, it can affect you badly. It can happen that you have a job that requires you to be isolated in some way. Maybe you work in a hospital or prison. You are often unaware of the reason why you are in pain. If you have planets in the twelfth house, you can benefit a lot from psychotherapy. But when you have Saturn return you can benefit a lot from it and you can become very spiritual opened and you can have a lot of blessings.

🎸For personal readings u can sign up here: https://snipfeed.co/bekylibra 🎸

✨Ig-bekylibra✨

-Rebekah📀💘☁️

[struwberrii]

haikyuu!! boys date night 𝄞⨾𓍢ִ໋

here are my cute headcanons on where i think haikyuu boys would take you on dates!! hope you guys enjoy (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ*.ﾟ

characters: kageyama, tsukishim, kuroo, kenma, bokuto, akaashi, oikawa, iwaizumi

˚⊱🪷⊰˚

kageyama

movie date!!

he would def pick you up super awkwardly but try his best to show that he’s excited to be with you

pays for all your snacks, also buys himself snacks even though he’s not hungry so you don’t have to eat alone

would probably watch a rom-com with you

leaves the movie in tears because he thought it was cute but he tries to hide it (╥﹏╥)

wins you a plushie at a crane machine on your way out

walks you home too :)

would shyly ask you to be his partner at the door to your house

tsukishima

arcade date!!

meets you there

smokes you in every game, shows no mercy (¬_¬")

wins you prizes though

gets you drinks/candy

if you actually do beat him in a game he says he let you win (he totally did NOT let you win!!!!!)

would probably want to stop and get fast food on the way out

walks you home and thanks you for letting him take you out

probably gives you like a keychain or something as a gift lol

kuroo

escape room!!

he picks you up from your house

you guys stop and get food before you get there

he catches onto most stuff pretty fast but slows down so you don’t feel bad if you don’t catch on as fast lol

still teases you a little if you don’t get something

gets super into it when he’s trying to solve a puzzle

genuinely stressing out if you can’t solve something ᯣ.ᯣ

when you guys escape he gives you a kiss on the cheek

like hes so happy he was taking it so seriously

walks you home and says next time he takes you out it’ll be as your boyfriend (>_<)

kenma

lego building date!!

i don’t see him as the type of guy who would want to go out if he doesn’t really have to so he’d probably invite you over

he picks you up from your house and walks with you to his for your date

also wants to play video games with you

he buys a lego for you guys to build together

you guys have really good convos :3

hes honestly kind of shy (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

also orders you food for you guys to eat together

not much to it;

he walks you back home at the end of it

bokuto

amusement park!!

def tries to talk you into going on all the tallest and fastest rides and almost passes out on all of them

he still gets back on the scary rides though

buys you funnel cake and ice cream

probably carries you on his back if youre tired

buys you guys matching hats too

makes you take pictures of him with all the mascots (˶˃⤙˂˶)

you guys take the cutest photobooth pictures and he ends up kissing your head in one of them (such a cutie pie ♡)

your amusement park pictures are his lock screen

brings you home too

akaashi

home cooked dinner!!

hes really awkward and anxious so i think he'd avoid somewhere super crowded but still would want to talk to you

you guys watch an online cooking class and make food for eachother :)

you guys have super good convos all night

he romantically wipes food from the corner of your mouth at some point (idk guys sorry)

hes super sweet all night and cracking jokes awkwardly (っ- ‸ - ς)

you guys build a puzzle together :D

probably end up watching a movie together too

oikawa

mini golf date!!

probably only takes you there since hes pretty decent at it

kind of shows off but still praises you for your for your skills (or lack there off)

takes so many pictures of you guys

he probably cheated behind your back and kicked his ball into the hole

gets you food and drinks after obliterating you in mini golf (he didnt he actually went easy but still didnt let him beat you)

carries all your stuff for you when youre finished

takes you home after and asks if he can kiss you ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

iwaizumi

hiking date!!

doesnt take you down a crazy path but its still a bit of a workout

def picks a route with nice scenery

takes a picture of you in front of the view and cant shut up about how pretty/handsome you look (cutie patootie ♡⸜(˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝

constantly pushing you to keep going (hes literally so fit its hard to keep up!!!)

he probably ends up having to carry you back (its ok guys i couldnt keep up with him either)

takes you to a cute sandwich shop after (healthy king)

brings you home and kisses you goodnight <3

[nonotnolan]

Stories I Love (Part 2)

Again, nothing personal with the order listed here, it's mostly chronological. Tumblr doesn't like a ton of hyperlinks, so the list is in two parts. Here's Part 1.

Though, now is a good time to point out a few major gaps in this list. One, I don't care for celebrity, sports, or sweat/fart transformations very much, so that eliminates a few prolific authors. Two, some authors have much bigger websites elsewhere, like @2xskin or @takeovertales, and I haven't been consistent about favoriting works that could be found in two places. Three, a special shoutout to @piosantaibhseil's very long body swap series which would be tricky to link otherwise.

Also, a special shoutout-- I don't think my blog would have nearly as much of a footprint without @bodyswap-possession-shapeshift's valuable reblog contributions to this community. He remains one of the fastest and most consistent about showing support to all creators on his lists, and I hope he knows how much that support has been appreciated over the years.

By @deviantknight25 : Implanted Mutual to Cover Medal and Leaf Surfeit Changes Partner in Crime

By @transformhim : Learning His Lesson Fun with the Mimic Changing Work Roles The Devil Next Door Sauna Shenanigans

By @tfmybody : The Intern A Fortunate Theft

By @tf-lover : The Homo Bomb - Lewis Ashton 12th Hour The Way You Look Tonight

By @bodyhopper-files : Just A Dream Untitled 12/26/22 How I Transformed My Dad's Life Make Me

By @0ng0ingw0rk : Morning Adjustments Paradise

By @verus-veritas : Slipping Out The Halloween Costume Love Thy Neighbor Untitled 9/24/20 Hard Work Pays Off

By @shootingstarwritings : Beach Bummin' It Back Home Couples Therapy

By @swap-and-possessions : Passed Out Suit Cleaning Buy Low, Sell High

By @kylecrusoe-captions : Untitled 4/15/23 Untitled 10/21/22 Untitled 11/24/19

By @exploratorytfs : Power Exchange Special Weekend Swap Need to Study Free Market Series: Debts, Repossession, Ladder The Swap Booth From Twink to Daddy Swap Kink Accepted On Site Family Gatherings Join Them

By @noface-phantom7 : Possession: BEyond WILLing Bodysuit: Superior Dominic Bodyswap: It Only Feels Right Bodyswap: On Second Thought Bodysuit: Skin Salesmen Demons, Suits and Faces

By @fantasyvessels Don't Waste Your Youth Or Else Project Personal Drones III

By @joshslater : Very PT The Lost Year of Gain My Bully Manhood Exchange Foreign Exchange Another Kyle Eastern Tennessee Golden Years Untitled 6/10/19 Flesh Limited Equal Exchange Partystick Urgent Message Final Answer Wanted Crossdressing

[lastoneout]

I was too high last night to formulate this into proper words but something plagiarists(and by extension AI techbros) don't get about people who make things out of a love for that thing is that they are, consciously or not, doing it because they enjoy the process itself. Yes, it is easier to have a machine make a mug or painting or essay for you, or to steal someone else's, but again, people who actually like making stuff don't want someone else to do it for us because you have fully removed the thing we enjoy: the process of making a thing.

Like sure it would be nice to have a finished Gundam model or a trainset, but people who build gunpla kits and trainsets don't WANT someone else to do it for them, they want to do it. The sculptor or painter doesn't want a machine to just give them finished works of art, they want to MAKE that art themselves. The home gardner can just buy fresh food at the store, the tailor or knitter can buy a finished shirt or sweater whenever they want, but they don't because the act of gardening and sewing and knitting itself is what they enjoy.

Plagarists and AI techbros don't get that because they do not enjoy these processes. They enjoy making money and having social clout, and so they are perfectly happy stealing and automating things so that they don't have to do an ounce of real work while still getting all of the benefits of having created something. It really is all about finding the fastest and easiest way to get someone to hand you money or elect you god-king of the internet.

And the reason these two groups have such a hard time understanding each other is because of that fundamental disconnect. People who create things can never understand someone just wanting to press a button or copy-paste their way to having art because we want to indulge in the joy of creation itself, and those plagarists and AI dudes can't understand artists because to them it's just a means to an end so ofc it's in their best interest to make it as easy as possible. They don't get why someone would do this, or anything, if not for the social capital and/or actual capital it brings. Ofc it's better to automate it or steal it from someone else, that means you can make money faster and spend your time enjoying actual meaningful things like being wealthy and looked up to or w/e.

Plus creators(for lack of a better word) know keenly what it's like to BE stolen from or at least know people it has happened to, and so we are generally anti-plagarism by default.

Anyway yeah thats why to anyone who creates the other group seems so soulless and empty. It's because they kinda are. Because they don't value art or artists or care about creating things, and they certainly don't have any ammount of respect for the people they're hurting, they just want money and for "lesser" people to bow down as they walk by, and they are perfectly fine stealing to get there. It's the same mentality you get from people who pressure you to monetize your hobbies, they only see skills as an opportunity to make money. And it's really fucking sad.

[godmadeaterribleerror]

Calling Your Name - No Love Lost Bonus Chapter

Series Masterlist

Read on A03!

Author's Note: This one’s very sad, and very horny. I’m pregaming for Chapter 21. Title from I Don't Want to Live Forever by Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik.

Word Count: 1.3k

Summary/Warnings: Ben's first birthday awake isn't great. Takes place in Chapter 19. Usual warnings, with extra emphasis on smut.

Tags: Soldier Boy/Supe!Female Reader, canon divergence, angst, smut

The last birthday Ben had celebrated was his 68th. Big fucking party, with lions and champagne, where women who Ben couldn’t remember the names of had thrown themselves at him, and men he’d never met in his life had congratulated him on turing 27.

It had been his eighteenth 27th birthday party. In another twelve years, he'd be 28. 

The event had cost a small fortune. Likely the GDP of one of those tiny fucking European countries that had been forming as the Soviet Union fell apart. Vought had rented him a castle—Ben hadn’t even known America had castles—and flown thousands of people Ben didn’t like out to celebrate.

Today he was 106, and alone in a haunted apartment as Her voice in his head called him old.

Did you take your meds this morning, grandpa?

No. Mallory still won’t just fucking give me drugs.

He could picture Her teasing pout. Woe is you, Pretty Boy. 106 and nobody to buy you cocaine.

He sighed into the empty room, and a small part of him still hoped she’d just appear. She’d walk out of the bedroom door or in from the hall, and she'd throw herself into Ben’s arms. She'd call him a grumpy cunt, and he’d get to kiss Her until she moaned and pleaded, and tell her he loved her. Maybe she’d get on her knees, or let Ben fuck her right here on the sofa. She’d smile at him. She taunt him and ask if Social Security had an expiration date, but she’d be smiling at Ben the whole time so he’d just scoff and let her.

She hadn’t told Ben her own birthday. He’d asked, once, all the way back in the safe housem, and She’d laughed. Told him she stopped celebrating her birthday when Homelander kidnapped her. 

“It loses the magic, Pretty Boy.” Her voice had been amused and bored, but there had been something hollow in Her eyes. “Being legally dead makes birthdays seem kind of pointless.”

He’d dropped it then. Now he wished he hadn’t. Ben wanted to know so that he could be a pain in everyone’s ass about it. He’d make them throw a party, and someone would provide a cake—homemade, chocolate, with a disgusting amount of frosting and ice cream just in case She hated cake—and everyone would sing that stupid birthday song in a voice worse than Hers until She felt loved. 

He’d make sure she felt loved. Ben would buy her a gift—he wasn’t sure what, but he’d figure it out—and it would make her feel seen. Then he’d stand silently behind Her while everyone celebrated how fucking perfect she was, and cut the cake so he could make sure she got the largest piece. 

Then he’d fuck Her. He’d carry her home, into this same apartment, and up the stairs into the bed so he could fuck Her. Romantically. If Ben got to do this, it would have to be romantic. In this perfect world he was creating for himself, they’d been fucking for a while now and he’d already told Her he loved her, so he’d know all the things she likes in bed, and which of them made Her come apart the fastest. Ben would be able to use that knowledge to throughly wreck Her—turn her into a sweaty, moaning work of art below him—and remind her that he loved Her the whole time.

That was what he wanted for his birthday. Her, home, in Ben’s arms so he could fuck her and tell her he loved her. So he could get some proper fucking rest tonight, and wake up with Her at his side. So everything could finally be good again.

He didn’t have a cake. He hadn’t told anyone it was his birthday, because it didn’t really fucking feel important. They had work to do, and no one on the team was going to jump out of their chair to celebrate one of Ben’s infinite birthdays. So he grabbed a candle from the cabinet—Balsam and Cedar, Her surprisingly aggressive purchase—went to light it, and realized they didn’t actually own a lighter. She was a walking lighter, so neither of them had bothered to purchase one.

It was almost midnight. This dogshit fucking day—where he’d eaten dinner with the team and combed through Vought records and tried not to think about how She was here, wasn’t home—had been the same as yesterday. Would be the same as tomorrow. All the days would be the fucking same, numb, thoughtless shit until She was home.

She’d tell Ben her birthday when she got home. He’d figure out a way to get Her to tell him. He wouldn’t be able to trick it out of her the way she was always somehow getting Ben to say what she wanted him to. If he asked, she’d ignore him or tell him to shut the fuck up.

He could fuck it out of Her. That was the only field between them where Ben seemed to have the slightest advantage. She wasn’t as fucking excellent at hiding how much she wanted Ben as he was at hiding how much he wanted Her. But he had months of practice. Weeks and weeks in the safe house of fucking his hand to the thought of Her without her catching on. And every time Ben had touched her she’d whimpered his name and fallen apart and fucking begged, so that’s how he’d figure out Her birthday. He’d make her cum on his face once—just because he wanted to—then he’d fuck Her into the mattress until Her perfect, insane, brilliant fucking brain was empty and she was molding into Ben’s body.

He’d lean down, lips against Her ears, and hiss the question.

“When’s your birthday.”

She wouldn’t answer immediately. She’d just moan and stare at him with lust-blown, pretty eyes. So Ben would pull all the way out of Her until she whined, and slam back in hard enough to break the bed before asking again.

“Tell me your birthday, beautiful, or you don’t get to fucking cum.”

It would be a bluff. She was a goddamn force of nature when she came, and Ben wasn’t strong enough to deprive himself of watching Her lips part and head throw back, feel Her back arch off the bed and her cunt squeeze around his cock like it had before on his fingers, hear Her scream his name. Maybe She’d squirt. Ben had felt how fucking wet she could get, maybe if he fucked her right, She’d squirt.

And She’d call the bluff. Even in the haze of Ben’s  body over hers, between moans and begs, she’d call him on his shit.

“Fuck,” she whimpered when he repeated that same move again. “Fuck you, Ben-“

“Birthday.”

It would take a while, likely several minutes of that exact dance, but he’d get it. Ben would lean down to Her mouth and kiss Her, sloppy and deep, fucking her faster, and tell Her he loved her. 

Then She'd tell him, and cum.

This was a foolproof fucking plan. Ben was a goddamn genius.

Maybe I don’t have a birthday, Benjamin. Have you considered that?

Everyone has a fucking birthday.

Well, what’s yours?

Ben frowned into the air. She was a figment of his imagination, she should know his birthday. Today.

Oh. The room was silent for a second. I forgot, I guess. Sorry. 

Don’t apologize. If you want to do something for me, come home.

It wasn’t really worth saying. This wasn’t Her, and even if it said, of course, Pretty Boy. For your birthday. The real her would still be across the river at Vought tower. And Ben had to be okay with that.

I want to. You know I want to, but I can’t. I miss you and love you, Ben, more than anything, but I can’t come home.

He sighed. I miss you and love you too.

Stop saying that-

Shut the fuck up. If you’re allowed to say you love me, I can say it back.

But-

No. It’s my birthday, no telling me I can’t say that I love you on my birthday.

Silence, then okay. For your birthday. Old man.

I love you, brat.

I love you too, Benjamin. Happy birthday.

End Note: I made Ben a Taurus, and I stand by that.

If you like this story, reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3

If you want to be tagged, just ask!

Taglist

@manicjk @lordofthunderthr @artemys-ackles @brtodd

[howlingday]

Goodnight, Father

"Jaune, are you in here?"

"Over here, Weiss!" Jaune waved next to his team. Some would say he was taking advantage of his girlfriend's hospitality in using her family's ballroom for dance practice. However, those close to the couple would know better and that the room had been unused since it's reconstruction, save for the occasional charity dinners that were held once in a complete moon. "Take five, guys."

Oscar and Nora collapsed to the floor, both panting and groaning from their stretched limbs and aching lungs. Nora wasn't used to the former while Oscar was unaccustomed to the latter. Ren rolled his eyes with a chuckle.

"What's up?" Jaune asked, wide toothy shark grin on his face.

"It's a letter from your mother."

"Mom?" Jaune took the letter. Sure enough, his mother's name and address were written hastily on the outside of the letter. Slipping his finger under the sealed flap, he made a tear in the paper. Digging in, he hooked and tore more and more of the envelope until it was open.

"You do know we have a letter opener, right?" Weiss said with a hand on her hip. The smile that accompanied it fell as she noticed Jaune didn't have a response. He pulled the contents free and opened the folded message. Then Jaune made for the door. "Jaune?!"

She picked up the letter unceremoniously dropped to the floor and read the words meant for Jaune. She gave a small gasp, matching the small message delivered to Jaune.

'COME HOME'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jaune didn't buy a boat ticket. Heck, he didn't even pay for a cab! The clothes he wore to arrive at his home in Ansel were the same as when he left New Atlas three days ago. He ran across three continents and swam through both the icy and temperate seas that surrounded them just to reach home. How he wasn't dead could be attributed to his aura, but no one could really explain.

The only surprising thing that happened was when he found his team, and his girlfriend, waiting inside his home. In his panic, he forgot that air travel, as much as he hated it, was the fastest and safest way to get from point A to point B. Still, he arrived, soaking wet from sweat, rain, and sea, right into his mother's arms.

"And you haven't seen him since?"

"No." His mother poured another cup of coffee for him. He hated the stuff growing up, but he's since relied on it after his departure for Beacon. "No message. No mention. Nothin'. It's not like your father to just leave like this."

Jaune furrowed his brow. It's true that his dad wasn't the kind of guy to keep secrets. If he didn't like you, he told you to your face. In fact, he told Jaune it was a stupid idea to leave for Beacon on a whim. Still, his father loved him and supported his choice. He even said he hoped Jaune did it sooner, at least so he could get some training in.

'Ancestors'd be proud either way.' His father shrugged.

Jaune sipped his coffee. "Hey, Mom?"

"Yes, Jaune?"

"Was Dad... dying?"

The room got really quiet. Nora and Weiss, who were playing with Adrian, stared at him. Ren looked around and noticed the rest of the family wasn't looking in Jaune's direction. Oscar excused himself and stepped outside.

"He was, wasn't he?"

His mother nodded. "Said it was something in his blood. He said it got harder for him to sleep."

"And... he didn't tell me?"

She shook her head. "You deserved to know. I've been wanting to tell you for a while, but he said it wasn't something for you to worry about."

Jaune gripped his mug a little tighter. "Somebody should've told me."

"You're right." Saphron said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "The CCT network is still being worked on, but letters can obviously still be sent. Seven sisters and nobody could tell you."

"Why?" Jaune stood up suddenly, surprising his sister. "Because it's okay for everyone else but Jaune the crybaby to know? Because he'd just cry his little eyes out over every little thing?!"

"Hey, I wanted to tell you-!"

"Enough, both of you!" Their mother yelled. She sighed and pressed a hand to her face. "Twenty years and I'm still breaking up fights." She sniffled. "Oh, ancestors, don't make me do this alone..."

Suddenly, Jaune felt like punching himself. Since he came back home- heck, even before that -he was thinking only about himself. He gritted his sharp teeth, flaring his nostrils as he looked away. Years later and Jaune was still a spoiled brat, on the verge of tears because he wasn't getting what he wanted. His mind began to fill with memories of his lifetime in the Ever After, far away from home, like he'd always-

A hand touched his. It was a delicate and soft hand, one with slender fingers that were guided by a tender heart. He looked up and saw the worried look of his love, Weiss. His self-loathing began to fade as he looked into her eyes, entranced by the icy blue that belied a warm and caring soul.

Another hand rested on his shoulder, belonging to his brother, Ren. Attached to him and looking with a smile, trying to cheer him up, was his sister-in-arms, Nora. Entering the room, offering a weaker smile was his friend, Oscar. In his gloved hand, he held a small bit of foliage.

"I... think I found something." He offered.

"Alright," Jaune gave a smile and nodded, "we've got a mission, guys. I know it's late and you all want to go to bed, but I'm not going to let this one get away. We're not getting paid more than room and board, but if you'll help me, I'd really appreciate it. Are you with me?"

"You got it~!" Nora cheered.

"To the end and back." Ren nodded.

"Wherever, whenever!" Oscar agreed.

"I'm not exactly part of this team," Weiss patted Jaune's arm, "but you still helped mine all the same. I'm with you for as long as you'll have me."

Jaune smiled at his team. Looking to Oscar, he nodded. "Where'd you find that grass, Oscar?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a long walk through the rain for Jaune and his team. The winds blew in their face, pelting rain hard enough to soak through their ponchos. Following the clues left behind, they picked up on a trail leading through the nearby woods, over a stream shifting to become a river, before finally reaching an enclosure, and beheld the beautiful sight before them.

As if untouched by the storm, a blue lake rested undisturbed in the midst of the raging storm outside of the treeline. There was enough light for them to see, despite being so close to midnight in the midst of a huge thunderstorm. Jaune crept low and touched the water with his finger, bringing it to his lips.

"Salt."

"What?" Nora asked. "Are you that hungry?"

"No, it's saltwater." Jaune said, taking his poncho off.

Taking a deep breath, he plunged his head beneath the surface. His eyes adjusted to the change in light and nearly bulged at what he saw. The lake, despite its size, was much deeper than he'd ever expected. He couldn't even see the bottom. More surprising to him, though, was what lined the walls of the lakebed.

Swords. Shields. Axes. Crossbows. All white with gilded trim, each embedded into the muddy walls of the undersea cliffs. Pulling his head up, he shook his head. He couldn't believe his eyes.

"It's..."

"A graveyard." Jaune whirled to see a man, well-aged beyond his years (even by Ever After standards), with a thick, white beard and eyes as blue as the ocean itself. He held himself upright with an alabaster cane with gilded trim, much like Crocea Mors and the weapons located underwater. "It's the Arc Graveyard, Jaune."

"Dad..." Jaune stood to his feet. Meeting his father for the first time in what could have been years, he saw how tall the man really stood compared to his progeny. At his full height, he was six foot even. Now, hunched over, he was just a few inches shorter than that, and even shorter than Jaune. Still, the gaze he held was something Jaune was all too familiar with.

Oh, sure, there was love in his father's eyes, for despite their tiffs now and again, Jaune was raised and taught by a man who did his best to teach him everything he could. Did he succeed? Jaune felt like he did, since he was still alive, and happy, and had found love with a beautiful and wonderful woman in Weiss. None of this would have happened if not for the man in front of him.

"You've come a long way, Jaune." The old man smirked. "And you reek, too. Did you bathe before coming here?"

"Technically." Jaune chuckled. "To be honest, the last time I had a bath, or even slept, was about three days ago."

"Stinky." Jaune's father chuckled. He then coughed, making Jaune drop his smile. "Your nephew loves that word. Giggles every time he hears it."

"Dad..."

"Jaune, you are my one and only son, so I know you feel like you have this idea of what you're supposed to be. Like you're supposed to be some kind of big, damn hero with forty wives and a hundred kids. And as cliche as it may sound, I never wanted you to have such an extravagant lifestyle. Or, at least, I didn't want you to feel like you had to. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy, and ready to be the man you had to be when someone tried to take away your happiness. And my son," a wide, toothy shark grin spread across the man's wrinkled face, "you are that happy man."

Jaune swept the man into a hug, tears pouring from his eyes as he heaved sobs into the man's shoulder. The man chuckled and wept a few tears of his own. Off to the side, watching the spectacle, the rest of group were each weeping along with the men. Finally, however, the time came for Jaune and his father to part.

"It's time, Jaune." Slipping into the water, the eldest Arc swam a few feet to the center. From there, he dove beneath the surface. Bubbles came up as he dove deeper. His shadow disappeared a few yards down. Jaune stood on the shoreline, watching, waiting, hoping that this was some elaborate hoax, as if to play a cruel trick on him. But nothing came up.

"Goodbye, Dad."

---------------------------------------------------

Fun Fact! In 2022, scientists discovered a "shark graveyard". At first, as they dragged nets across the ocean floor, they thought what they pulled up were just rocks when, actually, what they were pulling up were shark teeth. HUNDREDS of shark teeth, including recent sharks like Great Whites and more ancient sharks like, yup, MEGALODON! Since sharks are cartilaginous, only their teeth are tough enough to make it through decomposition, while the rest is consumed by scavenging wildlife.

[denwritesandcries]

Heart Stealer – S.S

Pairing: shauna shipman x fem!reader

Summary: In which Shauna Shipman steals not only your favorite pen during class, but your heart too.

Word count: 3,4k.

Content: no crash!AU, cursing, suggestive, fluff, mutual pining, making out, weird teenagers who don’t know how to communicate, everyone hating on jeff (as they should).

Note: This is basically 3,4k words of reader simping over Shauna.

English is not my first language.

You're not sure when exactly you started noticing her, like really noticing her, but now you can't stop. It's like there's a part of your brain dedicated to cataloging every little detail about Shauna Shipman that you can find.

Maybe it was that time in english class when she turned to the side and shyly asked you to borrow a pen without looking in your eyes. Until then, you had never paid enough attention to your surroundings to know that she always sat next to you.

Anyway, you give her your favorite blue pen without giving it much thought, but when class is over Shauna just puts her own things away and leaves without giving you a second glance.

A week passes and it's as if she hasn't spoken to you; Shauna doesn't give your pen back, which is a bit rude, but you buy a new one – it's not the same, that pen was really good – and start paying a little more attention to her after that.

‘Cause damn, she's a really pretty pen thief.

You don't quite understand why she keeps it, she doesn't use it; That's one of the first things you notice, that she doesn't write with blue ink, just basic black.

Whatever, you won't bother her for that, admiring the way her hair falls over her shoulders during class is much more worth it.

That's probably when it was then, because after that you start to notice her everywhere you didn't before, red flannels catching your eye in the hallways. You find yourself learning things without even realizing it, recording everything you come to adore about Shauna Shipman; the way she wrinkles her nose when she doesn't understand a question on the test, how she always keeps her voice low when talking to people or how she's the first to raise her hand to answer what the english teacher asks in class just because she wants to show that she knows.

You swear you're not a stalker at all. The fact that she probably doesn't even know about your existence isn’t relevant. Are you a little obsessed, though? Yes, definitely.

It was just a silly crush then, that is, until your cousin Jeff started dating the captain of the football team, Jackie Taylor.

Jackie is good, great in fact; too good for Jeff who could be extremely clueless most of the time, but that doesn't matter, they are together and everyone at school knows that wherever Jackie Taylor goes Shauna Shipman is right behind, you can't have one without the other. So you start hanging out with both of them by extension, because as much as an idiot Jeff is, he manages to be a pretty bearable cousin – most of the time –, as well as being your ride home.

The four of you end up forming a little group with a really weird dynamic that works to a certain extent; with Jackie-Shauna being Jackie-Shauna, you and Jeff annoying each other every chance you get, Jeff and Shauna ignoring each other's existence, Jackie being really sweet to you – not really a change since she's your lab partner since the beginning of the year – and you and Shauna hardly ever speaking, but still side by side so you don’t third wheel whenever Jeff and Jackie go out.

That last part doesn't work well as much as the rest, not for you, at least.

You all end up hanging out a lot, which means Shauna is now everywhere, not just in the hallways or the class you share, she's really everywhere and boy, you are fucked.

You go with Jeff to the football games so he can cheer on Jackie – it sucks having to rely on the ride – and Shauna, of course, is there. She's the fastest of the Yellowjackets, you can tell, because your eyes can't stop searching the field for a second when you're in the stands. She is the fastest and is not afraid to face when someone from the other team says or does something stupid during the game, her face red and sweaty from the activity.

One day Shauna curses the game referee who dares to give her a red card for punching – and breaking – the nose of a girl who made fun of Jackie for committing a foul during the second half. She manages to do this without screaming at any point, which ends up being the thing that surprises you the most.

She doesn't look guilty at all as she puffs out her chest and lifts her chin at the girl with the bloody nose and makes her way back to the locker room; all you can do is stare at the whole thing with your jaw dropped because no one should have the ability to look that good after beating someone like that.

Shauna must feel your stupefied gaze on her, because when she turns around, her brow is furrowed and her big brown eyes stare at you with a mix of irritation and confusion: “And what are you looking at?” she asks.

You immediately steps back, because Shauna Shipman may be hot, but she's also scary as fuck. “N-nothing!”

If she didn't think you were weird before, she certainly does now.

You were right about that, now Shauna is the one staring at you. She stares a lot, all the time. You think she doesn't care that you know that, but she looks away whenever you look back at her anyway. It's strange and makes you nervous in a somewhat humiliating way, because she remains quiet and with a serious expression staring into your head even when you're just at school simply talking to some friends she doesn't know.

What ends up being embarrassing is how you're learning that you like her being so shameless like this. It's one more thing to learn about her. Your brain simply registers automatically: ‘Things to adore about Shauna Shipman’; She’s not shy about tackling whatever interests her – and look, it’s you! –, until they face her back, then she becomes shy as if she was actually being subtle; she’s good at fighting but avoids confrontation; she has an opinion on absolutely everything but generally lets people decide for her. You want to know more, more and more.

You work part-time at a pet store after school and Jeff usually leaves you there when he’s not busy, accustomed to your commute. On the days he can't, however, he tells you and you go walking, it's not that far.

Now, one day he just doesn't tell you that he won't be able to take you and you're left waiting for him like a fool on the curb in the school parking lot, damn it, Jeff.

Until Shauna's voice takes you out of your inner despair.

"Do you want a ride?"

When you lift your head there she is, her arm resting on the open car window, a dark red flannel folded up to her elbow and oh my god.

Oh, I want more than a ride, you think.

“Yeah,” you say and give her a small smile as you approach the car, “That would be good.”

She nods in acknowledgment without meeting your eyes as she reaches over to open the passenger door for you. That's another thing you noticed: Shauna doesn't tend to keep much eye contact and in your case she seems to avoid it completely.

You don't bother trying to fill the silence, there's not much to talk about when Jackie isn't around, Shauna doesn't seem to like it when you talk to her, so you don't expect this time to be any different.

But it is.

“Want to pick a song?”

“Huh?” You blink.

“A song,” She repeats, pointing with her chin to the glove compartment without taking her eyes off the road for even a minute – Shauna has always been a responsible driver.

Occurs to you why it's different this time. It's not the first time Jeff has left you in the parking lot, that idiot, but it's the first time Shauna has come to your rescue, even though she's seen you in this situation before. Now she's giving you a ride and trying to talk to you.

Which means, holy shit, Shauna Shipman is talking to you because she wants to.

"Of course!” You rush to open the glove compartment to check the small selection of CDs in there, not giving much thought when Shauna takes the exact route to your job without even asking.

You choose one and put it on the radio, leaning back in your seat waiting for the first song starts, then Shauna straightens up in her seat and says to you smugly:

“Oh, you probably don’t know this band, they’re very underground, but I really like it.” She nods with a smile.

An amused snort escapes your chest, “Queen's underground for you?”, you tease with a raised eyebrow.

Shauna lets out an outraged squeal and tightens her grip on the steering wheel: “They were!” she insists, “At least until they became trendy.”

"Right." You laugh because you're not going to upset her when she has the most adorable pout on her face.

You spend the short trip listening to the most unknown Queen songs that Shauna's CD brings together – these are the good ones! – and for what seems like the first time, you and her actually talk and the happiness you feel is greater than you could have imagined. When the road comes to an end, Shauna seems extremely disappointed at having to leave you and you try not to think too much about what that means.

This small event seems to turn a key in your relationship and you and Shauna seem to get closer all of a sudden, not that you're complaining.

She takes on the responsibility of being your personal chauffeur after school, taking you from one place to another with no hesitation as if it had always been that way.

“What if that asshole forgets you again?” She asks with those sad eyes staring at you – that's another change, now she looks you in the eye! Which ends up not being so good when it comes to denying her things.

“Shauna, that asshole is my cousin.” You scold weakly.

"So?"

Well, you can't question that.

You show up to her training when you don't have to work and you don't miss the way she seems to brag about it to her teammates, which only makes you show up more and more, even though you know nothing about football; you study together in the library, even if you only share one class; you, her and Jackie walk together between classes in the hallways and even stand side by side waiting to leave when Jackie disappears with Jeff at some stupid party.

You learn new things about Shauna every day and reading her is better than any other book you've ever tried. At some point, in your head, 'Things to Adore About Shauna Shipman' becomes 'Things to Love About Shauna Shipman' and it feels right.

She likes practically any food that contains meat and puts barbecue sauce on absolutely everything, leaving you horrified when she does this to a steak that is bleeding from being so rare when you have lunch together; She likes the warm, expensive beer that Lottie Matthews serves at her parties, she doesn't like getting drunk, she likes the taste, Shauna is weird like that and you're even weirder for finding it endearing. Sometimes, when you're outside smoking with Natalie and her sad emo friend, Kevyn Tan, Shauna comes over with a cup of beer in her hand – just one, she insists, because she's going to drive later – and sits down next to you quietly with one hand casually placed on your thigh while enjoying the drink; she lets Jackie dress her for these same parties, but she always chooses a piece of clothing that stands out, usually one of her flannels, she seems to have thousands of them; Shauna likes to read, but she loves classics, 'real books' as she calls them, with long words and old vocabulary, the second you pay attention she talks about them for hours and hours. You learn to like it too and Shauna seems to completely melt when you're the one who makes a Virginia Woolf or Emily Brontë reference when you talk.

One day, the team practice happens earlier and Shauna apologizes profusely for not being able to leave you at work, you dismiss her worries with a quick hug before leaving – not noticing the way she freezes in her place – and Jeff quickly agrees to take you there, he won't admit he missed you, but you know he did.

Later, the bell on the store's door signals someone's entry and when you turn from your spot at the counter, Shauna is there.

You tend to serve some Yellowjackets quite often, mainly Misty Quigley buying cat food; sometimes Van and Tai buying food for the abandoned dogs near the trailer park, Mari buying a hamster every two weeks – you have no idea what she does to make them all die or run away so quickly –, Nat showing up simply to hangout and smoke from time to time. You get along relatively well with all of them, but Shauna had never appeared until now.

She's still in her blue and yellow uniform, hair pulled into a ponytail and face softly red. The sight makes your throat dry.

Shauna looks a little like a lost puppy when she comes up to you at the counter.

“Hey,” she mumbles.

“Hey,” you reply, a smile playing on your lips. And then, just because you can't resist: “Did you run here after practice just to see me?”

Shauna seems like a deer caught in the headlights, “No!” She denies it, as if she hadn't been caught doing just that, "I just realized I leave you here all the time and I've never been in the store before."

You don't say anything and she simply shrugs innocently before starting to circle the place and you watch her with an amused snort.

She's not a pet person, you might say, but she apparently finds a fascination in staring at the colorful fishes in the aquariums when you come from behind the counter to restock and organize missing items on nearby shelves.

It's a small store and it's a pretty slow day with just you and another employee working in the back, so you and Shauna get into a relaxed mood spending time together when she decides she's going to stay until your shift ends without saying anything.

The company is good. At some point you jokingly say that since Shauna is here she could help you move the food packets because they are too heavy for you and she just goes there and does it. The way she lifts a bunch at once makes your breath hitch and you want to run your hands over her flexed biceps and you notice how Shauna hides a smile, as if she knows.

After that it's like there's a very thin line waiting to be crossed between you. Maybe it's always been there and you never noticed.

There are things about Shauna, things you like to think she says or does only to you, that your brain catalogs more than others, especially in moments when you're alone, like now.

Things to love about Shauna Shipman, you think; the way she subtly gasps when you need to rest your hand on her waist to pass through the store's narrow aisles; the fake annoyed look she gives you when you say something so stupid you just know she's pretending not to like it; the way she ends up snoring with laughter and scaring a customer you were serving after something you said and then she refuses to talk to you for the next fifteen minutes – the long that she can – giving you a dirty look because It's your fault, dammit.

But Shauna doesn't leave, no matter how angry she claims to be with you.

Things to love about Shauna Shipman, you think again, when your shift is over and she simply grabs your hand and leads you to her car, stating, "Let's go get ice cream."

She hates her middle name as much as she hates cute nicknames – you think it's just because she doesn't have one – and she won't tell you what it is because she doesn't want you to use it on her one day; her favorite color is blue, dark blue, but she usually wears shades of red because she says the football uniform is enough; she marks her books with lots of post-it notes of different colors, to remember her favorite chapters, phrases and quotes and revisits them almost daily; she keeps a hand on you whenever you're near, on your shoulder, your hip, your thigh. One day you left her reach when she had an arm around you at a party to get more drinks and when you came back she asked what she had done wrong, looking at you with those sad brown eyes.

Shauna takes you out for ice cream even though it’s already dark, an anxious air hovering between you. She grabs your favorite flavor without you having to tell her which one it is and you sit on the hood of her car, shoulders brushing together.

“You…” Shauna starts hesitantly, eating the bitterest chocolate ice cream she could find, “Do you wanna come to my house?”

You've been to Shauna's house before, but only with Jackie and Jeff. Never alone. Is different. You both know it's different.

"Yes." You say, hoping you don’t sound as desperate as you are, “I’d really like that.”

The smile she gives you makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

You only have time to unbuckle your seatbelt when Shauna parks in front of the house before she's on top of you watching you with dark eyes.

“Are you just going to stand there and watch me?” You scoff with more confidence than you actually have, your hands finding her waist.

Shauna looks completely outraged and in a second her lips meet yours without permission just because she knows she doesn't have to ask.

Her mouth is still cold and slick against yours from the ice cream, but her entire body is hot as dough ready to be molded in your hands. She wraps her arms around your neck, hands pulling your hair tightly and you feel her smile against your lips when she hears your low moan.

“Is that enough action for you?” Shauna asks mockingly, breathing fast, her practice uniform clinging to her body.

“Hm-hm,” you deny, a drunken, passionate smile painting your face, “Not as much as I’d like.”

Shauna looks like she wants to reply to what you've said, but then you're leaning in again, lips meeting hers with more urgency, tongue pleading for passage at the seam of her mouth, and it's all heat and electricity as she pulls you against her body. Your hands separate her t-shirt from the uniform shorts quickly and slide underneath it, short nails scraping the happy trail softly across her toned stomach and Shauna whines.

You can't help but break the kiss, Shauna follows your lips with a needy expression.

"What?" She asks, frustration bordering on her voice.

You shake your head and bite your bottom lip, “It’s really good,” you say. Shauna arches an eyebrow. "It's perfect. Touching you– it’s perfect.”

The way her hips thrust into yours and her face turned completely red tells you that she liked what you said a little too much.

And then Shauna is opening the car door, hurriedly sliding out and pulling you with her, mumbling an anxious “let’s go” as you stumble your way into the house.

You laugh when she fumbles with the key in the lock and she gives you an annoyed look, cutting off your laughter when the door opens and she presses you against it, pupils completely dilated, hands shaking to touch you.

It occurs to you then that maybe Shauna was just as obsessed with you as you were with her.

She looks at you, big brown eyes needy and asking and you don't hesitate to kiss her again and it's all heat and skin and it's right.

Another thing to love about Shauna Shipman: the way she gasps in surprise and pleasure when you turn her around and press her against the door.

[lowkeyrobin]

MCYT with an S/O who fosters kittens? :D

OH MY LORD YESYESYESHDNSKDNDN I had sm inspo w this bc I have 5 cats (cats are one of my favorite things ever I swear) and yeah dkkdkd THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST

MCYT ; you foster kittens

includes ; tommyinnit, ranboo, badlinu, nihachu, quackity, foolish gamers, & slimecicle

warnings ; language, talk of harm towards animals

masterlist

TOMMYINNIT

genuinely feels so bad when you have to let the cats go

like he tears up nearly every fucking time

he watches some of these poor cats go from aggressive and distant, barely able to eat because they don't trust you yet, to warm, loving and cuddly little creatures

he literally watches them grow and he gets so emotional cause like why can't you keep all of them???

he'll be off to the side when you're handing them away to a new home wiping his tears

he's more emotional about it than you

he gifts you like new cat food bowls and cat towers and stuff once they get all beaten to a pulp

if you're fostering more than like three at a time, he'll have a gang of them on his lap while he's editing, recording, or lounging around

his hands are always covered in scratches and scars because he'll fuck around and find out even after you warn him about them being feisty at first

"this one got ran over by a car and he's blind now"

"can we keep him?? :("

RANBOO

like tubbo, it warms his heart to see you care so much about the poor babies that just need a little help readjusting and understanding that not all people are bad/you're there to help them

absolutely loves when you bring back like little feisty babies that barely know how to walk but know how to hiss

they can't help but laugh like "awe oh my god, this is so sad but it's so cute"

when I tell you all those cats are so spoiled by them

it's sweet though, he really cares about all the cats you take in too, you honestly foster them together at this point

you guys end up keeping this tuxedo cat with one eye and name it Jellyfish (as per chats vote)

the amount of fanart of you two with jellyfish 💔💔💔 so cute

jellyfish becomes the mom of all the new fosters and looks over them and shit, that way they ease into the new environment a little better

buys all the fosters outfits. there's a barbie sized closet for all the clothes

FREDDIE BADLINU

it's like there's a new cat every week considering he brings back street cats as well LMAO

these mf cats are SO SPOILED but they deserve it

he gets so attached to the disabled ones because he loves having to help them out

he loves teaching them how to eat from his hands too

it's so funny, like they'll nick his fingers and he'll be like "fuck, that tickles, Mr. Peanut!"

gets so emotional when you have to give them to better homes

like hugs and kisses them goodbye 4 times

he genuinely thinks your magic, watches those cats go from shy and trying to stay away from you to like being attached to you by the hip and all wagging their tails

he's constantly running around the house playing with them too

he loves seeing them pop up on 2 legs like meerkats when he's serving them wet food or treats LMAO

NIKI NIHACHU

she couldn't care less that the house is loaded with cat stuff and a whole room is filled with cat towers, shelves and toys for them

loves making new little puzzles/mazes for the cats with the shelves, making a little competition to see who can get to the top fastest

she names the cats because she's gonna get attached either way, but after a while they become more and more silly

like they go from Sebastian and Pixel to Tater Tot and Simon From Alvin And The Chipmunks so quickly

she learns how to make homemade cat treats as well

she also, like ranboo, gets a little barbie closet and fills it with cat outfits

some cats like the outfits and others don't, but the ones who do, good god it's like britney manson on the runway

absolute ws in that house, photoshoots for days

QUACKITY

"AH WHAT THE FUCK? Y/n! come get Jessie and Walter, they've invaded my stream!"

he genuinely names most the foster cats characters from meme shows/movies/memes in general

actually named one Badass Grandmas Meme ; also named another Hurricane Tortilla after that one vine

always taking .5s of the cats once they've accepted that he exists as well

sometimes they hop on his desk and join the stream

"Oh, look! it's Goldfish, she's the newest foster that y/n took in"

constantly taking pictures of you and the fosters throughout the stages of rehabilitation

from hissing and scratching to cuddling on the couch and lazy naps

no cat leaves without a little pair of sunglasses

he's genuinely inspired to make quackity cat merch because most of the fosters you take in LOVE clothes LMAO

FOOLISH GAMERS

literally treats these mfs as babies

you'll walk in and see him holding one of the elderly cats you're rehabiliting from a bad home whom just got rescued and he's holding this poor girl like a literal infant

she loves it though, most the cats do

the fosters love playing with his hair too, and he plays into it, always bends down to their level and wobbles his hair around for them to smack around and try to chew on

he has such a soft spot for them

if you're having one of those rare moments where you might give up on a cat, he's right there to try and help you

flea baths on kittens are always done by him, he feels so bad for each of them, meanwhile you're on cat-drying duty and giving them a lil medication to kill any remaining fleas

he's 50/50 on names at first but gives up with trying to not name them bc he gets attached anyways

"Oh, lookit! this is Evergreen, she's been chilling with us for like, 3 months I think"

he loves when they interrupt his streams bc they're so cute and explorative and curious LMAO

CHARLIE SLIMECICLE

he's the most supportive of you fostering cats like ever

loves fucking around with them and sliding them around on the floor, if there's any long hair cats, he loops very loose bows and clips around their fur and shit

cradles them like babies to sleep

and then slips them into the cat tower or on the couch/bed etc

even covers them with a little blanket

"Oh shit, they've invaded, they're raiding! the axe weilding brothers are here!"

gives them the most dumbass names like Microwave Popcorn and Toaster Strudle

he frames pictures of every cat in the hallway once they leave

[jackthepeeper]

Content under the cut is strictly 18+

MDNI

English is not my first language, I have very limited experience in writing fanfiction.

Antonio (Violinist) x GN!Reader

CWs: NSFW, readers anatomy is referred to as chest + h*le/entrance/s*x, reader may or may not wear makeup, reader wears tight clothes, reader drinks alcohol and gets intoxicated, reader perceives situation as dangerous, now that I think about it it can possibly be viewed as dubcon although not intended

Word count: 1903

You do this because you love yourself.

Of course that's the case. You doll yourself up before you go to the bar, a good long hour of preparation always includes a fragrant shower that leaves your body soft and well-moisturized, makes you feel like a divine being, a manifestation of raw beauty itself. After your skincare routine you settle in a plush chair in front of the mirror to do your makeup. It might not be much, just a small touch-up to accentuate your natural beauty or hide an aggravated pimple, it might be a lot if you're feeling fancy, a dramatic look feels like a fun bit of masquerading. You might skip this step altogether. You deserve it.

You do this because you hate yourself.

Every time you go there it starts the same and ends the same, too. You buy your own drink first to get in the mood, something you know will knock you out the fastest. It's been a while since you've last chosen your alcohol by taste instead of percentage. The glint of intoxication gives your eyes a catty appearance that few can resist, gives your spine a curve you rarely see in the mirror - an inviting shape, the small of your back begging to be caressed by a knowing palm. You can't afford it sober, with all your responsibilities your body's mental image contorts into a creature most resembling Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. No room for a hug at all.

Soon your figure finds itself in a sardine can of wet breaths, skin rubbing against skin through the skimpy outfits people usually wear to such places. The pheromones work you better than any substance you could ever try. You've been bought enough drinks by now to fit right in with the dancing crowd, your whole being traveling through it like plankton through the thick of the sea, hardly paying any attention to the way the jerky moves of someone against your flesh get replaced by a thoughtful sway of hips, a gentle touch that stops your slow drifting, slender hands gluing the bottom of your stomach to a muscled set of abs. You feel a pulsing vein where his bare skin dips under the rough fabric of his pants, the speeding heartbeat and a dishonest smile pulling tightly on his cheeks sober you up just enough for disgust to settle. You deserve it.

"What is a bella like you doing in a ditch like this?"

The smell of his sweat, tinged with woody cologne that's nearly overshadowed by the stench of smoke and a rich dry rye aroma - you write it off as him having drank a particularly strong unfiltered beer - all get into your head, and he gladly takes your laughter for an answer. With him having already taken your body in his arms you have to ask yourself what else he is planning to take from you. You deserve it, in any case.

The next however-long-he-wants you spend tightly pressed against his chest, barely able to keep up a simple dialogue, let alone count the time between him laying eyes on you and him taking you home. Your arms find his long hair, and something cracks in your fingers as you pass the locks between them, smooth strands turning into what feels like dry grass, and you furrow your eyebrow when you feel a spikelet somehow stuck in there as well. You don't pay much attention, though, as he quickly draws your thoughts elsewhere, asking if you like the music here. You press your cheek against the well-worn decorated leather collar of his coat and admit that you hate it, describing roughly what you actually enjoy. He picks a two-word description for the genre quicker than you're able to recall the name for it, and you're sure that he's just made it up. You laugh, because it's still spot-on.

"I'm a musician, you know. Maybe I could write you something you'd actually like?"

Do you really deserve it?

You still allow him to take you back to his place so he could play you something. The cold night air turns into chills slithering down your spine as you watch him pull his rusty motorcycle off the road to a non-distinct farmland, and his honeyed whisper in your ear promising that he "knows a spot" sounds less like a good prospect and more like finding yourself in 10 separate bags by the dawn. For now, you get comfortable as your back meets a cushy haystack and your vis-a-vis shuffles closer to you, trying to squeeze against and under your body so you're practically in his lap. Did he always have a violin with him?

You watch his adam's apple move in sync with his hearty laughter as he throws his head back, his warm fingers sliding up your thighs, a tender gesture coming to a sharp end as his claws dig into the flesh around the ridges of your ilium. You suppose it's the blinding white pain that illuminates your dark corner of the hayloft when the bow touches the strings, but as you open your eyes after wincing your vision is captured by the way his fiery fingers operate the violin, the whole left side of his face drowning in golden light. In your enchanted state you almost wish to be it - right until the moment his other set of arms digs deeper under the warm safety of your clothes.

Your ears work slower than your eyes, and the sound of him calling you a galore of Italian diminutives gets drowned in the melody he plays, your thoughts follow the notes as the man dives to pin you against the fragrant haystack. "Tesoro" as he presses his foxy smile against your neck, sharp teeth sliding along your vein in a silent threat until he decides to grace your nerve endings with an open-mouthed kiss that starts under your ear and wraps around your jawline towards your throat, where he bites. "Cara mia" as the bow rips the song off the strained strings, and the sound drips down your legs that now hug the musician's waist, licking your shaking body, laying thick in the bottom of your belly and the back of your clouded mind. “Amore” as the fabric of your skin-tight top is peeled off your body, the violinist catching the galloping goosebumps in his warm hands, his hot breath snaking its way down your sternum giving you enough heat to not even shiver against the cold night air. "Dolcezza" as he uses both of his real hands to rip apart your underwear.

Deep in the sensory overload you barely register the “ding” of his belt buckles sliding against each other as his nimble fingers work his jeans open. You are, despite everything, painfully aware of his cock easily reaching all the way up to your navel when he lays himself against your body, clearly showing off. His hips buck expectantly, waiting for your eyes to dart upwards to meet his gaze, see how he licks his lips that stretch in an impossibly wide smile, accentuated by his facial hair. He wants you to maintain eye contact as he positions his tip to slide effortlessly against your hole, lingering there to rub between your legs just to make you shiver, to let you feel the twitch of him against the most delicate parts of you. As a cold breeze licks your stomach, you can feel the trail of pre he left while withdrawing from you, and a pulsing vein wrapped around his shaft, his speeding heartbeat rubbing against your heat further confirms that he's been dreaming of this moment for quite some time. You gasp as he finally pushes in.

He makes sure to go slow enough for you to feel every detail of his shape, down to the texture of his skin as he presses his cock deeper into you. The ridge where his glans ends teases your opening just right, the spread open muscle at the entrance tightening while your body obediently wraps itself around his shaft. He gets impatient quickly, indulging your hole with a slow thrust that pulls him in over the halfway mark before he withdraws just to dive in the next moment, hips bucking faster than he can get a reign of himself. His rhythm is flawless, though, toned hips working perfectly to stuff you with a dick that massages your every spot, pulsing veins meeting nerve endings in engorged walls. His mouth is glued to your chest, teeth digging into soft flesh just to sharpen your senses without quite leaving a mark, wet kisses cut off by desperate gasps and Italian curses as his cock twitches inside of you, thick shaft buried to the hilt in smooth muscle. He counts your ribs with a light touch of slender fingers that would dig into the plush flesh of your thighs the very next moment if you didn't feel one of them slither downward along the curves of your torso, dipping past your navel and traveling further south until he can massage your sex, the pad of his thumb rubbing against the most perfect spot in the most perfect rhythm. You see stars when his hand falls in sync with his thrusts, you turn to mush when the frequency deliberately fluctuates to create a symphony on the strings of your nerve endings. A drop of sweat peels off his chest to fall onto yours, and you can swear it evaporated on contact. There's a tight knot where your bodies connect.

“Sing for me, bella.”

You feel too many hands snaking around your body, your blood freezes when smooth bone wraps around your wrists, a moment of hesitation more than enough to pin you down. You're in no place to fight, though, as the musician quickly maneuvers your lower half, palms hooked under your knees until they're pressed into soft hay just next to your shoulders. He thrusts triumphantly, hissing when he sinks impossibly deeper, just half a centimeter enough to knock a pathetic whimper out of your lungs. He bites his lip while he bullies your hole, a heated whisper of inaudible Italian words crawling inside of your mind as the violinist presses his lips against your ear is enough to nearly push you over the peak, a deliberate thrust that drags a thick vein against your soft spot finishing the job. Your body sucks him in as it raptures, a slew of noises from your swollen lips is music to his ears as his cock twitches hard before spilling, pressing thick cum against the muscle he was fucking into just now. There's enough seed for a drop of it to escape your body while his hips are still practically glued to your ass, more so as he withdraws just enough for you to relax, sore joints creaking almost audibly. He doesn't pull out, though, even as he settles against your chest, long brown hair falling onto your torso to cover the glisten of sweat on your skin. Even in the dark of night you can see his eyes, half-lidded and full of admiration as he nuzzles against you, love seeping from every pore of his body.

“Don't know what you were doing there at the bar, bella, but you deserve so much better. Stay away from hell-holes like that, promise? Do it because I love you.”

[justagalwhowrites]

Yearling - Ch. 14: Time

You and Joel go on your first overnight patrol. A continuation of Yearling ch. 1-13 found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: Violence against animals (not thoroughly described); canon-typical violence; canon-typical torture. No use of Y/N. Minors DNI 18+ Only 

Length: 7.4k 

AO3 | Chapter One | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

September 15, 2023

Time. 

What you needed was time, that’s it, you had to buy time, enough time for any of it to matter. 

Hercules was your largest horse. Your fastest but the hardest to control, the one with the biggest stride, the one you thought it would take more than one shot to take down. So you’d taken him.

Time, you just needed more fucking time. 

You whistled and Ruger howled back. You shifted Hercules, going for the sound. She’d have at least some of them in her sights. You pushed the horse faster, harder, feeling his heavy breaths from your position on his back. 

He was running full tilt when the gunshot cracked through the air. It was sharp and clear and you could hear the bullet as it passed you. You slung your rifle from over your shoulder and shifted the horse with your legs and body weight, the reins falling to his neck. A bullet whizzed past where your horse had been just a moment before but it was enough to give you an idea of the source and you caught a glimpse of him, a man in forest green and brown but the white of his skin caught your eye. You lifted the gun quickly and shot. He dropped and you whistled again, another howl from Ruger in response. You followed it. 

Your dog wasn’t far, tracking a group of about a dozen men from the trees. Her muzzle was bloodied which didn’t surprise you. You’d been tipped off to the attack by her sister, Gattling, running to the cabins with a chunk of flesh dangling from her jaws. 

It felt like you hadn’t breathed since then, jumping into action to do everything you could to protect your home, protect what mattered. 

But there was only so much you could do against numbers like this. All you could really hope to do was buy time.

“Ruger,” you kept your voice low, the men just 100 feet away through the forest. You doubted you’d even see them if you didn’t know the area, didn’t know how to hunt and stalk through the brush. Her head snapped toward you. “Heel.” 

She slid obediently alongside the legs of your horse and you pressed Hercules quietly forward. You turned your horse so you could push him in another direction as soon as your shot was clear, took a deep breath, and fired. 

The men reacted quickly, but you were faster, not waiting to see if your shot found its target. staying low on your horse and pushing him back behind the group. They didn’t see you cut around behind them and you were able to line up your shot more freely that time, taking aim at a man toward the center. 

“There’s gotta be two!” One yelled as you took off around the other side. 

“Nah, just the bitch,” another man said. The leader, you were pretty sure, the man who had showed up at the edge of your land just days before on a horse, asking to trade for more. But he rubbed you the wrong way, the way his eyes ranged over you, his entitlement. You weren’t going to invite him closer to your home, you weren’t going to trade with him. 

You hadn’t expected him to come back with this many others. 

“She’s a feisty one,” he said. “Ain’t ya, Texas?” 

You ground your teeth, lining up for another shot. 

“Don’t want us getting any closer to whatever set up you’ve got back there, do ya?” He called, taunting. You pulled the trigger. A man on the end dropped. “You really think you can outlast us? You moved too quick on those first two shots so you’re one in three and I got more men, Baby Doll. We’ll get ya, don’t you worry that pretty little head.” 

“Fuck you!” You bit out, shooting another man, not bothering to move this time. The men were changing position, turning to face you, taking cover. You looked down at your dog, still glued to Hercules’ side. “Ruger, Attack.” 

She launched forward, a bullet from the gun that was her namesake, snarling and racing for the man who was closest. She hurtled herself against him just as you got off another shot, dropping another man. 

The man Ruger attacked screamed and you watched him go down. 

“Someone get this fucking dog!” He shrieked. 

“Ruger, kill!” You yelled to her, aiming again. But when you pulled the trigger, it jammed. You tried to force it again and again but it wasn’t going.

It was an old gun, you’d had it since the earliest days of the outbreak and it was hardly new then. You weren’t surprised that something had gone wrong. You just wished it had picked any other time. You hadn’t taken your handgun or shot gun. You were down to this and your knife.

You adjusted your hold on the weapon so the butt of the gun was facing out and roared, charging forward on Hercules as you heard the bloody gurgle of Ruger finishing her victim. 

“There!” A man yelled, someone finally getting a bead on you through the brush. 

“Want her alive!” The man in the lead yelled. “Just shoot the fuckin’ horse!” 

You plowed forward anyway, you didn’t have much choice, landing a hit on a man with the butt of your gun, sending him flying with the force of it as you tore past on Hercules. 

For half a moment, you wondered if maybe - just maybe - you could pull this off. Their numbers had taken a hit, if you could get through the group, send Ruger after another one or two, draw them to you on your terms… 

And the first shot hit Hercules. 

His steps stuttered and he let out a pained cry but he kept going as you raised your gun to strike another man. Then another shot caught him, right in the chest near the base of his neck, and his legs buckled, sending you flying forward over his head, tumbling onto the ground.

It only took a second for hands to be on you and you shrieked and kicked and swung blindly with your gun but it was quickly wrested away. 

There was a vicious snarl and Ruger tore into the fray, latching her teeth around a man’s forearm. He released you and screamed, the sound earsplitting, followed by the crack of a gunshot and a sharp whimper. 

“No!” You shrieked, trying to throw the men off you but they held you in place so you couldn’t even see her, just hear her pained, afraid sounds. “It’s OK, you’re such a good girl, it’s OK…” 

The man who had showed up days before prowled forward and grabbed your chin, smirking as he leaned over you. Even in the dim light of the forest at dusk you could see the sickening look on his face. Like you were something he was about to consume. 

“You’re even prettier up close,” he said. “Think you’ll be lots of fun.” 

“Try it,” you hissed through your teeth. “Bite your fuckin’ dick off.” 

“How about you cooperate,” he said. “Or we go see just what it is you’re hiding up at that homestead of yours.” 

You just panted for breath glaring at him. 

“That’s what I thought.” 

You tried to think of how long it had been since Gattling ran up to you, part of a man’s body dangling from her teeth. 

You just hoped you’d bought enough time. 

August 3, 2026

“You really don’t have anything to be worried about.” 

Ellie was perched on a rail as you worked with the last of the feral horses, Artemis. You’d gotten her to dumb broke but she still needed a little time to get her the rest of the way. 

“I’m not worried,” you said, guiding Artemis in a zig-zagging pattern through the paddock. 

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Ellie rolled her eyes. 

“Shut it, kid,” you glared at her. “I’m not.” 

“Well, you’re acting fucky,” she said. “From everything I’ve heard about overnight patrols, they’re basically like camping and shit.” 

“The fuck do you know about camping?” You asked, bringing the horse back around. “Didn’t you grow up in a QZ as a sad little orphan?” 

“Ha ha,” she rolled her eyes again. She was such a teenager. “I can read, you know, I know what camping was. And everyone who goes on the overnight patrols make them sound fun and shit. Get out of town for a night, be in the woods, maybe shoot an infected or two…” 

“Sounds like a blast,” you brought the horse around to her. “Want to give her a go? She’s in a good groove.” 

“Hell yeah!” 

You dismounted and held the reins while Ellie got situated on her back. You gave her a quick reminder of the ways to guide the horse, telling her she might need a second to respond to commands or something a little firmer than she was used to giving with Shimmer. 

“I’ve got it, geez Mom,” she teased. You mockingly mouthed the words back at her as you handed her the reins. You stuck close as she took Artemis around the paddock. “You worry too much.” 

“Stop acting like a stupid teenager and I won’t worry,” you replied. 

“Hey, I wasn’t even talking about that!” She said, indignant. You’d yelled at her the day before when you’d caught her climbing on the roof of the stable to get a frisbee down for some kids who’d been playing in the street nearby. She’d acted personally offended that you’d had the audacity to think she might break her neck doing shit like that. “I mean, you worry too much about shit like the patrol. I can tell you’re basically freaking the fuck out…” 

“Am not!” 

“And I’m telling you, you have nothing to worry about,” she said. “It’s cool. We haven’t lost someone on patrol in a long time. You don’t need to worry about that.” 

“You realize that I lived, on my own, in the wild, for longer than you’ve been alive, right?” You asked, brows raised. “Watch your legs, you’re relaxing them too much, you need to keep your knees in closer.” She adjusted. “Being outside overnight doesn’t bother me.” 

“So what’s got you all fucky?” She asked.

“Nothing,” you lied. “Will you focus on the horse, please? Gonna get yourself hurt because you’re not paying attention.” 

“Whatever you say,” she said, skeptical of all of it. 

She was right to be. You were freaking out but not about the patrol part. About being outside, alone, with Joel. 

Things had felt… different with him since the Simon incident. You’d already been close, already took comfort in sleeping next to him when running down the feral horses, already liked having him close by and liked feeling his hand against your back or at your hip. 

But it was different now. It had gone from a comfort to a need. He hadn’t slept over since the night he came back from killing Simon and Ben and you missed him there next to you. It was hard to sleep without him there, your mind kept drifting to what he felt like pressed against you, his hand on your skin. The way you felt when looking at him, wanting to press your lips to his, wanting him to put his hands on you and pull you tight against him. 

Part of you wondered if this is what it had always been like when you wanted someone before. It felt bigger now, headier, more dangerous. How much of that was because it was Joel and how much you cared for him? How much of it was the thrill of fear that ran through you when you thought of your body under the control of anyone but yourself? 

The fear didn’t seem to dull the hot, throbbing want that was starting to take hold of you the moment you gave it a chance to blossom. You’d try to fall asleep and the image of your hands on Joel’s face, pulling him in to more devour your lips than kiss them as he pulled at your clothes was there, ready and eager. He’d look at you to make some silent comment on something, his brows raised, slight smile on his lips starting to make the edges of his eyes crinkle and you’d feel part of yourself get tight and achy and you were suddenly imagining what it would feel like to have his mouth on your breasts, your stomach, your sex. You had to fight the thoughts away, alarm bells ringing in the one part of your brain that didn’t seem to be drowning in want. 

It was easy to picture what you would have done before. Before the outbreak, before Mitchum, before you were who you were now. You’d have gone up to him and made some smart assed remark and asked if he wanted to fuck and he would almost certainly say yes. You’d never had a man turn you down. And then you would fuck him and be at least somewhat sated and you could move on with your life. Or at least have a regular outlet if you weren’t. 

But that wasn’t an option. You weren’t sure it would ever be an option with someone like Joel, someone who seemed so capable of swallowing you whole, of taking your entire being into himself and remaking you into something you didn’t recognize anymore. But it really wasn’t an option now. The thought of throwing yourself at him only to panic once his large hands cupped your breasts, the idea of him seeing the brand at your hip and seeing you like property, the notion of someone you cared so deeply for being the cause of that much fear and it tainting one of the only good things you’d found in the last few years. 

That was too big a risk. 

Your body didn’t seem to understand that. 

Being alone, outside, with Joel, nowhere else to go? It was dangerous. It felt dangerous. But you had to do it. You had no reason not to. You’d just have to figure it out. 

You didn’t sleep well the night before leaving for patrol, something you were sure was going to bode well. At least you’d be too tired by the time you stopped for the night for anything else to sound even remotely appealing. 

“Alright,” you said, riding alongside Joel away from Jackson in the cool morning air. The trees were shrouded in fog, the insects and birds still quiet. “Walk me through it one more time.” 

“We have one path out to the ski lodge,” he said. “We check up on anything we find out that way. We’ll probably run into a few infected this time of year but not much else. Should get to the lodge in time for dinner. We spend the night there. Come back to town a different route in the morning.” 

“Right,” you said, trying to relax as you sat astride Renaissance. “Easy enough.” 

“Specially for a deadeye like you,” Joel teased. “Had to do this route with Tommy before, it’s a wonder we survived.” 

You huffed a small laugh. 

“You telling me he’s not shooting infected from half a mile off after walking to school up hill both ways through the snow?” 

Joel laughed back. 

“Afraid not,” he said. “And he has no damn excuse, not with that scope…” 

It didn’t take long for you to wonder just what it was you’d been anxious about. It was Joel. Just Joel. Your best friend, the person you trusted more than anyone else, the only person you wanted to be around just about all the time. It was going to be fine. 

It was close to ten when you came across a few infected, a group of three. They looked to be recently turned, a man, a woman and someone who couldn’t be any older than Ellie. They looked almost disturbingly human compared to the clickers you usually were taking potshots at. They looked like a family. 

Joel sighed heavily. 

“Hate ones like this,” he said, lining up his rifle. “We need to clear out the ones who are bitin’ folks like this. You take the man, I’ve got the woman and kid.” 

You nodded grimly, taking aim and blowing the head off the man. Joel killed the woman just as she turned to roar and run toward you and she fell, leaving just the kid. He hesitated. 

“I can…” you said quietly. 

“I got it,” he replied, voice gruff. He took the shot and the girl dropped. 

“It’s a mercy,” you said, watching him as he slung his rifle over his shoulder again. 

“I know,” he sighed. “Don’t make it any easier shootin’ a kid.” 

You looked back toward where you knew the bodies were, part of you wanting to dig graves for the people they’d once been. 

You just pressed on, Joel quiet for a while, face drawn. After a while, you started humming Born to Run and he looked at you, smiling just a little. 

“What?” You asked. 

“Springsteen, huh?” 

“Well,” you shrugged. “Tramps like us…” 

He smiled a little bigger, seeming a bit more like himself. 

You stopped for lunch in the early afternoon, tucked against the thick trunk of a tree, the forest floor cool and calm, the sound of birds and bugs on the air. You leaned against Joel’s side, your legs straight out ahead of you so that your foot drooped onto his shin as you ate a peach, wiping the juice on the back of your wrist. 

“Fuck I haven’t been this far out from Jackson like this in so long,” you said, looking out at the plants. Everything was cast in a dappled green hue, the soft light filtering down through the canopy. “It feels… I dunno, different somehow. I’ve done patrol before of course but…” 

“I get it,” Joel said after you trailed off. “Kind of like just going for a hike when you lived in the city before.” 

“Right,” you said. “Like we’re so disconnected from everything back there. Might as well be another world.” 

You pulled the last of the flesh from the pit of the peach with your teeth and sucked your thumb clean. 

“I used to just… live like this,” you sighed, shaking your head a little before you dropped it to Joel’s shoulder. “Seems like forever ago.” 

He paused for a moment. 

“Do you miss it?” 

You thought, turning the sticky stone over in your fingers, feeling the ridges of it against your thumb. 

“I don’t know,” you said eventually. “There are things about it I miss but what I miss most I could just… pick up and move to Jackson. It’s not like I have to be in the middle of nowhere just…” You sighed. “I do miss being this close to nature sometimes. I was never a city girl. Jackson’s hardly a metropolis but every now and then I look around and think ‘fuck there are a lot of people.’” 

Joel was quiet for a bit. 

“But you’ve stayed.” 

It wasn’t a question, more of a statement, but you nodded anyway. 

“Yeah,” you said. “I have. I… I like Jackson. The people are good, it’s quiet, I get to work with horses and help people while doing it. I have you.” 

You glanced up at him for a moment when you said it but looked forward again quickly, not sure that you wanted to see what he’d think of his inclusion on the list. You threw the pit into the brush. 

“I’m glad you stayed,” he said quietly. 

“Just because I’m not about to let Ellie get killed by a horse?” You teased a little. 

He laughed. 

“Doesn’t hurt. But no, definitely not just that.” 

You smiled a little when you heard a twig snap. Your head shot up and Joel all but leapt to his feet, tucking you behind him once you were up, too. 

Your heartbeat got faster. The patrols that had gone out to investigate the X you’d found on the tree couldn’t track any recent paths. There was no way of knowing if it was raiders or just a person or two passing through, looking for a place to settle. After a few days, they’d given up until there was more to go off of. You’d hoped that there wouldn’t be. 

“Joel,” you said quietly, getting your rifle out from Renaissance’s saddle. “Have there been raiders on this route before?” 

“Years ago,” he said quietly. “Could be nothin’ but… Stay behind me, let me do the talkin’.” 

There was another snap and you were able to locate the sound better than the first time, now that you were on alert and your ears were listening for it. 

Joel moved quickly, stepping around you to be between you and the horses you could make out through the trees now. You kept your rifle aimed at the ground and peered around him, watching as the seven men rode up. All middle aged, all large, all armed. They were slow, confident. You adjusted your grip on your rifle and tightened your jaw. 

“Somethin’ happens,” Joel said, not looking back at you, his voice low and quiet. “Take a horse, get back to Jackson as quick as you can.” 

“Joel…” 

“I mean it,” he looked back over his shoulder at you. “Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll buy you time, get the fuck away from here.” 

You leaned around Joel to untie Ares and Renaissance from the tree you’d bound them to, looping their reins over your arm, their large bodies feeling oddly hot at your back.

“Howdy stranger,” the man at the center called out as he approached. “Sure would appreciate you puttin’ that rifle down.” 

“Gimme a reason to and I will,” Joel said. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” 

“Just a group of friends passin’ through,” the man said. You fought to not go plant yourself next to Joel. You didn’t want to leave him standing alone but you knew that, regardless of how capable you were, if these men saw you as a commodity, you would be a liability. You stayed put. “Haven’t spent much time around these parts, know the area well?” 

“Well enough,” Joel said. “There’s a river, about 20 miles east. You’re gonna want to find it, cross it and keep going. It’ll keep you outta trouble.” 

“That sounds an awful lot like a threat for a man outnumber seven to one,” the man’s fake smile was fading. 

“Seven to two,” you snapped, unable to stop yourself. 

The man stood up a little in his saddle to take a better look at you before he smirked and sat back again. 

“Don’t think your little deer there counts as extra muscle,” he said. 

“Seven to one, seven to two,” Joel shrugged. “No difference to me. Like those odds either way.   Head on over to the river and be on your way and we won’t have any problems here.” 

“Seems like there’s plenty of open country for all of us,” he replied. “Unless you’ve got something you’re protectin’.” 

“Something besides your little toy of course,” a different man spoke this time, the sound of heavy footfalls as his horse stepped forward. His voice was familiar, in a way that made your stomach turn. You swallowed and peered around Joel. The man leaned over on his horse and looked you up and down. Joel glanced behind him to you and adjusted again, blocking their view. 

“Not going to tolerate you talkin’ to her like that,” Joel said, his voice strained and rough. “We’ve been around this area for a while. It’s ours. We decide if there’s enough room and there’s not. Move. Along.” 

“You look familiar,” the second man said, adjusting his horse again and you could just see him, frowning down at you. You narrowed your eyes, heart pounding, praying to a god you didn’t believe in that he couldn’t place you. 

“Last chance,” Joel growled. 

The man’s face shifted, from questioning to recognition. For just a moment, it felt like you were going to throw up. 

“I know you,” he said, smirking. “You’re Mitchum’s favorite doll! Oh, he’s been looking for you…” 

“Shut up,” you hissed, teeth clenched. You dropped the reins and raised your rifle, stepping around Joel to get a clear shot. You fought to keep your breathing under control, to keep from devolving into the anger that was licking its way through your veins and trying to swallow you whole. 

“She as good for you as she was for me?” He asked Joel with a laugh. He didn’t wait for a response. “Mitchum’s been looking everywhere for you. Bet he’d let me have another go if I brought you back…” 

“Shut the fuck up!” Your finger moved to the trigger, but the man in the middle of the group rode up in between the two of you. 

“Now now,” he said calmly. “No need for any bloodshed…” He turned his attention back to Joel. “Sure you didn’t mean nothin’ by it, but it sounds like your little… friend here belongs to someone else. We’ll take her back with us and…” 

Joel shot before the man even finished speaking, the bullet catching him in the chest and sending him slumping over and off his horse with a thud. 

The group was still and silent and you gaped at Joel, your gun still pointed in the direction of the man you recognized. 

Joel turned his gun to the next man closest to the middle. 

“She ain’t property,” he said. “I got no problems killing every last one of you. Could use the practice. Get the fuck out or I’ll kill you. Last chance.” 

You looked back at the men, your rifle up, as they looked between each other, weighing their chances. 

The one you recognized’s hand drifted to his side arm before he spoke. 

“Think we’ll take the doll and be on our way.” 

He started moving just as you fired and your shot went wide, hitting the man on the other side of him. Joel shot, too, before screaming at you to run. 

You weren’t going to listen. At least, not at first. Joel threw you behind a tree and followed before he fired again, his shot making contact this time and dropping another man, already moving another bullet into the chamber. 

The man you recognized seemed to change his mind about coming for you, instead turning his horse and starting to take off in the opposite direction. 

You weren’t about to let him.

You shoved the rifle back into its spot on your saddle and jumped onto Renaissance, urging her almost immediately into a gallup to run down the man. 

He had a decent enough head start and, when you were getting close to him again, you could barely hear the commotion behind you, just the crack of gunshots. 

Catching him was going to be tricky. He was riding fast, looking back over his shoulder at you, pushing his horse. There wasn’t a clear route to him, you were having to guide the horse through it all while trying to keep pace. You tried to not let your rage be the only thing driving you, tried to let your logical mind take hold again. 

If you took advantage of a sloping hill you thought was ahead, you’d be able to gain some ground on him. You split off from him and pushed Renaissance toward where you remembered the gentle slope down to be before it got steeper later on, something he’d have to slow up on. 

You were right and you could hear him, not far away, the thundering hooves and the gasping breaths, even though you couldn’t quite see him through the thick of the forest. It was quiet behind you now and you tried not to think about what that might mean. You had to stop this man. If he knew where you were, he’d get more men and come after you. If Mitchum really wanted you back that bad, he’d come for you. 

You weren’t going to let him take you, not again. 

You broke through the trees, just feet behind him now instead of yards and he looked back over his shoulder, his eyes wide. He started fumbling for the gun at his waist but you pulled up alongside him and did the only thing you could really think to do. You jumped, leaping from the back of your horse and into him, slamming into him with all your weight and knocking him out of the saddle, both of you careening toward the earth until you landed with a heavy thud, the two of you tumbling through the undergrowth until you stopped, him awkwardly on top of you. 

He smiled, eyes dark, down at you. 

“So eager to come back home,” he panted. “Don’t think he’ll mind if I take my payment upfront…” 

You roared and thrashed below his weight and he punched you across the face. 

“Think your guard dog’s dead,” he said. “Not so tough are you now, baby doll?” 

He leaned in close to you, so close that you could smell his breath and you slammed your head into his nose. You felt it collapse below your forehead and he yelped and instinctively jerked back from you, his hands clutching his face. 

It was enough. 

You wrenched your body over and he collapsed to the ground, still clutching his face as you all but jumped on top of him. You sat on his chest, ripping his hands back from his face and pinning his arms beneath your legs before you punched him the same way he punched you. He groaned and you smiled. 

“Still think I’m good for you?” You could taste blood in your mouth as you panted for breath. You dug your nails into his cheeks until you felt his skin give and he shrieked and thrashed but your position was too solid, he couldn’t shake you, had no hope of reaching the most vulnerable parts of you as you dragged your fingertips through his flesh, leaving trails of red in their wake. “Am I your baby doll now? Huh?” 

You pulled your hands from him, his skin below your nails, and wrapped your fingers around his throat, squeezing as his eyes went wide. 

“Still think I feel good?” You couldn’t get your breathing to slow down but you didn’t care, your heart pounding against your ribs. “I remember you, you fuck, I remember all of you. Not so tough now that I’m not chained to a wall are you?” 

His hands scratched uselessly against your upper arms, legs flailing behind you. He was gasping for breath, reminding you of a fish on a dock. His eyes were just as wide, his motions just as desperate, his being just as powerless. 

“Bambi,” Joel’s hand appeared on your back, making you jump, loosening your grip on the man and he gasped for breath, sucking in air like a drowning man. You looked back at him, breathing heavy. Ares was at his side, you hadn’t even heard them approach. “Need you to stop.” 

“Why,” you demanded, eyes narrowed, teeth clenched. 

“Need information from him,” he said, kneeling beside you, his voice calm and even. You looked him up and down. He didn’t look hurt. “He’s the last one alive. Just need a few answers, then you can decide what happens to him.” 

You looked at Joel for a moment, his eyes soft and open. 

“Bambi,” he said quietly. 

“Fine,” you snapped and Joel’s hand traveled down your back to your waist, guiding you off the man as he panted for breath. 

“Help…” the man managed weakly, reaching for Joel, but Joel’s hand shot out, snatching his wrist out of the air. His large hands wrapped around the other man’s arm and he twisted until you heard a snap. The man screamed. 

“Not here to help you,” Joel said, his voice almost eerily calm, so calm it sent a chill down your spine. “I’m here to get information and there’s only one way I know how to do it. You’re gonna want me to give you back to her by the time I’m done. So let’s begin.” 

***

Joel dragged the man by his hair to a nearby tree and sat him up before he broke his other arm, too, just to be safe. He didn’t want to waste time tying him up but you knew he couldn’t throw many punches with a broken arm. 

This wasn’t a part of himself he’d ever wanted you to see. It wasn’t a part of himself he was particularly fond of. Not of his willingness to do it to begin with, not of his skills, not of the way he picked it up to begin with. 

But it was effective. And the important thing was keeping you safe. 

Seeing you take off on Renaissance like that scared the shit out of him. Because of course you didn’t take off in the direction they’d been heading or even, really, back toward Jackson. No, you’d taken off after a fleeing man. 

A man who said he knew you, who obviously horrified you. 

Joel was desperate to get to you then. The way that man talked about you… he was not going to let him get his hands on you. If it was the last thing he did, he was going to protect you from him. 

Thankfully, you were relatively easy to find. The man’s screams weren’t exactly quiet and he was able to find you quickly once he’d taken out the rest of the crew, leaving them dead on the forest floor. 

“Look,” the man panted. “I don’t have to take her with me, alright? If you’re attached…” 

“How many of you are there?” Joel cut him off. He wasn’t going to be able to get any answers out of this man if he heard him talk about you like you were nothing but an object, something to be owned and controlled. He’d kill him too fast. 

“What?” He frowned and then winced, the bloody paths you’d cut into his face pulling and oozing. 

“How many men,” Joel asked. 

“I don’t…” 

Joel sighed and freed his knife, thrusting it into the side of the man’s thigh. He screamed, so loud birds took off from nearby trees. Joel gave him a moment to catch his breath before he asked again. 

“How. Many. Men.” 

“About fifty,” he said quickly. “But miles from here, two days ride at least, we were sent out this way to scout…” 

“Anyone else sent this way to scout?” Joel asked. 

The man just looked at him, panting for breath. Joel twisted the knife in his leg and he screamed. 

“Any. One. Else?” He demanded again. 

“No one!” He said. 

“How long was your team supposed to be gone?” He asked. The man hesitated and Joel pressed on the knife. 

“Fuck, please! You can keep her, alright? I won’t eve tell Mitchum I found her, you can have her…” 

Joel punched him across the face, his knuckles connecting with the cuts you’d made in his skin. 

“Jesus Christ!” He managed as he gasped for breath. “Please…” 

“Never understood why men like you think you’re gonna get mercy,” Joel said, grabbing his hair. “God washed his hands of your kind a while ago. I’m what comes for you instead and I don’t know mercy. So tell me, how long were you supposed to be gone?” 

“A week!” He said quickly. “A week, we’re three days in and they won’t come looking for us if we all disappear, they’ll think we got infected or something, I promise…” 

“What were you looking for?” Joel asked. “Lookin’ for her?” 

“No,” the man panted and shook his head, wincing as he did. “No, we were looking for a new place to set up, maybe for the winter, I just know Mitchum’s been looking for her and offering…” 

Joel cut him off. 

“He have any idea where she is?” 

“No,” he shook his head, quickly this time. “No, he has no idea, I swear he doesn’t know and I swear I won’t say anything, I promise I won’t…” 

Joel laughed once, darkly. 

“You’re not leavin’ here,” he said, ripping his knife from his leg. He actually looked surprised at that as Joel wiped the blood on the man’s jeans. “Told you, wasn’t here to help you.” 

Joel looked around until he found you sitting against a tree, your legs pulled tightly to your chest. He looked back to the man for a moment. His legs were too intact. He stood and, for a moment, the man looked relieved. And then Joel brought all his weight down on the man’s shin, stomping on it, the bone snapping as the man screamed. 

Satisfied, Joel went to you, sheathing the knife. Your eyes were wide and doe-like, afraid and watchful. He approached you slowly, keeping his hands where you could see them before he knelt a few feet away from you. 

“Bambi,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and even. “I’ve gotten what I need from him. You can have him now if you want him. He can’t leave here alive but how he dies is up to you.” 

You nodded, pulling your eyes from Joel’s to look at the man. Joel glanced at his bleeding form, whimpering on the ground, before focusing on you.

“You’ve killed before,” Joel said. 

“Yes,” you said quietly. 

“Did it satisfy you?” 

You stared into space for a moment, a dazed look on your face. 

“No,” you said eventually, shaking your head. “I wanted it to but…” 

“Did you like it?” 

“No,” that you answered quickly. “No, it made me sick, I don’t…” 

“Then tell me how you want him to die,” Joel cut you off. “And I’ll do it.” 

“I want it to hurt,” your voice cracked. “I want him to fucking feel it.” 

“OK,” Joel said gently. 

“And I want to watch.” 

“OK,” he said again, straightening up and offering you his hand. You took it and he pulled you to your feet. There was a cut at your cheek and he slowly, gently, reached his hand out and held your face, his palm curving over your wound. You closed your eyes and breathed deep, your hand covering his and holding it to you. “Come on, Sweetheart. Let’s finish this.” 

He held your hand as the two of you went back to the man, who was still breathing heavily, still crying in pain. 

“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “Please, I….” 

“You hurt her once,” Joel cut him off. “She decides what happens to you now. And she said she wants it to hurt.” 

He released your hand and freed his knife again. 

“No,” the man shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean…” 

He didn’t finish begging, Joel thrusting the blade deep into the man’s gut and he screamed. He twisted it before pulling it back out, looking up at you. 

“Short or long?” He asked. 

You looked at the man, examining him. 

“Short,” you said after a moment. “I want to get the fuck out of here.” 

Joel plunged the knife between the man’s ribs then, piercing a lung, and pulled it out before wiping it on the man’s clothes and sheathing it. He straightened up and stood beside you as you watched the man drown in his own blood, a cold and detached look on your face. After a few minutes, he was still and you were still watching him. 

“Sweetheart,” Joel said softly, his hand delicately on your back. 

You spat on the man’s body. 

“Let’s go.” 

***

Joel was right, you weren’t too far from the ski lodge. He helped you clean the blood from your face and quickly found Renaissance - who hadn’t gone far - before getting underway again. It only took another two hours to get there, much faster than going back to Jackson. 

But there was the hot clutch of fear in you now, threatening to strangle you from the inside out, the tendrils of it reaching and threatening to take control. By the time you reached the ski lodge, you could hardly breathe. You jumped off Renaissance and Joel dismounted Ares, frowning as he came to your side. Your hand went to your chest, your neck. 

“I can’t…” you managed, the first words you’d said in hours, fighting to get enough air to keep talking. Your heart was racing. “What’s happening? I… I can’t…” 

“It’s OK,” Joel said, guiding you to a fallen tree and pulling you down onto it next to him. “Think you’re havin’ a panic attack, Sweetheart, you’re gonna be OK. Just gotta breathe deep, you’re OK. I’m going to touch you, alright?” 

You nodded quickly and he delicately pulled you against him, his arms going around you, close enough that you could feel the rise and fall of his chest. 

“Try to focus on my breathing,” he said gently. “Try to match it, OK?” 

You closed your eyes and nodded as he took a deep, slow breath in and you tried to do the same. He held it for a moment before breathing out just as slowly and starting again. 

“You’re OK,” he said gently. “You’re OK, I’ve got you. Not gonna let anything happen to you, you’re safe, you’re OK.” 

You focused on his words, the sound of his voice, the feel of his breathing as you matched it to your own. After what felt like a small eternity, you felt like you could take a normal breath again, your heart no longer threatening to pound its way out of your chest. 

Some part of you was still afraid. Afraid of how close you were to Joel, of how violent you’d just seen him be - violence you never would have thought him capable of if you hadn’t seen it yourself. Afraid of how out of control these feelings you had for him could be. 

But that part of you was smaller than ever, a quiet whisper against the overwhelming sense of warmth and longing that you’d come to associate with Joel. He was so close to you then, he’d pulled you almost onto his lap, your legs draped over his thighs, your head tucked against his chest. In spite of everything that had happened that day, in spite of the fact that he was so big and strong that he could hurt you without even really trying, in spite of that part of you telling you that being this close to anyone was a danger, you felt safer than you had in years. 

You pressed yourself closer to him, your nose buried in his neck. 

“See Bambi?” He said gently, pulling away from you ever so slightly to look down at you. “You’re alright.” 

He was so handsome. Maybe you just hadn’t seen enough people over the last 20 years but Joel was easily one of the most beautiful human beings you’d ever seen and he smelled like safety and home and you couldn’t help but reach your hand up to his cheek, your fingers dipping ever so slightly into his hairline. 

“Joel,” you said softly. 

“Sweetheart,” he breathed, his eyes searching your own. Your grip on him strengthened and you gently, slowly, tugged his face toward yours. 

You couldn’t help it. It was something that was inevitable. Some part of it feeling like it was always meant to happen, like you’d been moving all your life toward specific points of time and this was one of them, a moment that was built into your genetic code. 

You were always going to kiss Joel Miller. You’d been running toward it your whole life. There was no reason to deny it. 

So you didn’t. 

You kissed him then, his lips soft and gentle and warm on yours, his hands spreading wide over you to delicately, carefully, pull you closer.

And you knew, in that moment, your life would never be the same.

Next Chapter

A/N: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

THEY KISSED Y'ALL

FINALLY

IT ONLY TOOK 14 CHAPTERS OF WHAT WILL - EVENTUALLY I SWEAR - BE A FIC THAT HAS SMUT THEY KISSED.

I'M GONNA DIE!

Thank you thank you thank you for riding out this slow burn with me! I hope this felt right for these characters for you the way it did for me.

I do have an updates blog. Follow and subscribe for post alerts to get an alert whenever I post a new chapter! I promise I won't spam ya!

Thank you for reading and for interacting and for being here. I'm so behind on replying to comments but know that I've read them (they're some of my favorite pick-me-ups during my work day!) and I so appreciate them and I'll be getting caught up soon. I love you all so very much, thank you for making sharing this story so fun!

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[sonotkari]

Imagine

NewJeans OT5

[ Synopsis ]

What do you need for your future to have a "perfect life"? It seems that all 6 of you have different wants and needs. But if you had to choose one thing, what would it be?

Fluff, Angst(?)

[ Word Count ]

1.4k

[ a/n ]

Probs the fastest fic I ever wrote which is like in less than an hour. Just got home from school, tired w everything and the idea just sorta came out so I decided to try writing and happened to finish it for some reason lmao enjoy?

Had a tiring day? (me tew we twinnin) dis for u bae <3

Imagine what life would be like if it were perfect. 

It doesn't have to be spending riches every day or living in a big mansion, even tho that would be one of the definitions describing a perfect life to some other people.

But for me, all I ever ask for is never that far to reach. 

Maybe a home with a supportive family who's always there for your back and, maybe a good amount of friends you can chatter your heart out whether it was a good sunny day or a bad stormy one. 

Being your best self always with the best things for you even if it wasn't those highly branded items all the girls were talking constantly 24/7 365―

"Nah I wanna live in a big ass mansion" I quickly looked to my left side to see Hyein with a cheeky smile as she went back to sipping her apple juice. "Are you saying you need new friends??? Are you not satisfied with us???" Sighing, looking at my other side, I saw Hanni dramatically gasping with furrowed brows, placing her hand to her chest as if she had just heard something she wasn't supposed to. I groaned and let out another long sigh "You know that's not what I—" 

"Well, I wanna have a garden at my future home...!" Turning my head back I heard a cheerful voice, Danielle had come our way with a plastic bag filled with sorts of bread for our lunch, and not so far behind her was Minji carrying several bottles of soft drinks she went to buy at the convenience store with Dani. "Finally, I'm starving!" The youngest whined as she stood up, hurrying her way to the plastic bag and searching through it to find the one she had been craving for. 

"Is that what you guys were talking about? The future?" Dani beamed a smile at me as she scooted closer to sit beside me while gazing at Hyein happily opening her food. "Because I'd have a garden, and grow tomatoes, and cucumber, Oh! and carrots we can't forget that!" I chuckled softly at her talking about the wonderful garden she was imagining full of vegetables. It fitted so perfectly to Danielle that I think she's secretly already planned everything in the back of her head at this point. 

"See? That's what I'm talking about when I say, all you talk about is carrots!" Hanni claimed with a laugh as she walked beside Hyein and took her bread, opened it up, and started munching through it like a hamster with seed-stuffed cheeks you see in the videos.

"And all you talk about is bread so you really can't say stuff" Minji reached us each bottle as she took a side glance at Hanni. The girl, still cheeks stuffed had rolled her eyes, playfully hitting Minji, and Minji shrugged her shoulders as she lay her hands out in a confused pose. "What? Am I wrong tho?" 

"I want a cat... no two cats... no actually I want frogs... frogs and cats...?" Danielle cooed an "Awhh" to Haerin who was eating her food while looking up to think about what she wanted for her future. "We can get as many frogs and cats as you want Haerinie" Danielle sweetly says so, hugging Haerin from the side and the girl humming a satisfied response to her. 

"Did anyone even pay attention to what I was saying?" grunting as I looked at the 5 hungry children devouring their food girls who were all looking back at me. 

"Yeah, you were talking about wanting a simple life but, I wanna be richy rich and buy all BTS albums and go to concerts, meeting—" 

"No, you were talking about wanting new friends which is unacceptable by the way because we are the most amazing most best you have—"

"Oh, I thought we were talking about our future home, which definitely should have a garden guys, because we have to stay healthy—" 

"We're going to at least have a cat right? I mean, I understand why we can't have frogs but we gotta have cats if not then maybe a fish tank—" 

"What do you mean we? Are we all gonna live together? Do I have to take care of a hyper toddler, a farmer, a munching machine, and a cat till 60??? No way—" 

Grunting, sighing, smacking my forehead, rolling my eyes in disbelief because what the heck is with these girls I swear to god—

Okay, maybe we were a little too dramatic there. 

"Okay okay okay" Hanni stood up, laying her hands out, gesturing a stopping pose as she thought of something for a while before holding her waist as if she popped up with an amazing idea. 

"Let's just pick one thing and add it all together. Then we can get what we want equally!"

"That's literally perfect!! Okay okay" Hyein squealed excitedly, shifting her position to a more comfortable one as she thought about one thing that she really wanted most. 

"I'm gonna start from our base which is obviously, a mansion because... uh why not???" 

Hearing soft chuckles and giggles, next up was Dani and she was already raising her hand eagerly wanting to say her opinion. 

"Garden! Because we can save and stay healthy which is a win-win" 

"Thought you'd say that" Hanni giggled and pointed out at the person beside Dani which was Haerin.

"I thought about it and... I don't wanna wake up with frogs jumping in my room so, cat it is" 

"Huh?? You were thinking about having frogs inside!?" Hyein gawked at Haerin with deeply furrowed brows and a shocked expression, holding onto her chest like a certain someone a few minutes ago. She learns from the best. 

"All I want is my sanity to last till my very last breath because I feel like I'm going to lose it soon when I'm with you guys" 

Minji shrugged as Hanni loudly booed at her, all acting innocent like they don't either chase each other in the school hallways or give each other piggyback rides and miserably fail. 

"Well, as long as I have enough money to buy bread and all the good stuff I'm perfectly fine" Hanni huffed in satisfaction, probably thinking about all sorts of baked goods she would devour in the future. I'm surprised how she completely didn't say about having a bakery— 

"Or! We could just own a bakery business!! I'm a genius!!" 

Nevermind. 

"How about you? What do you really want?" Dani stared at me with her sweet smile as she asked the question and all the girl's attention where spotted on me once again. 

What do I really want? 

After a moment, I finally made up my mind. No actually, I didn't even have to think about it. I know exactly what I want. 

"You guys are what I want"

Mumbling embarrassingly, I smiled at the 5 girls who each replied with tender smiles and "Aww"s as they all came squeezing each other tightly, sharing a big group hug. 

"You don't have to worry about a single thing" Hanni smiled brightly, her gaze softening at me as she continued

"We're gonna stick together forever and ever!! You always have us anyways so—"

"Miss Y/n L/n?" 

Looking at my left side, I see the nurse with her usual clipboard and pen. What even was her name? Wait no, what were we talking about? Ah yeah, the typical"How are you doing?" questions, right... 

"Nothing much, just same as usual"

I hear the noise of her pen moving, writing my daily medical records, probably handing it over to the doctors later or whatever. I move my hands swiftly, continuing to write as well.

It's always the same person at the same time with the same questions every single day. Looking at the off-white colored walls and the grey-shaded ceiling, I always wonder how long it's been since I got to this ward. More importantly, when will I leave this nightmare ward?

"When do I get to leave this place?" 

The nurse stopped her movements and looked at me with those same soulless eyes. Like she always does. Or maybe it's mine, which was just reflecting all this time. Who knows?

"I'm sorry but, I can't answer those questions" 

Like the questions, it's always the same fucking answers.

Every. Single. Day. 

"So, what were you thinking throughout the whole day, miss Y/n?"

I looked down at my sketchbook, a messy drawing of five girls written on it as I murmured an answer. 

Imagine what life would be like if it were perfect. 

notice how the girls never called your name once?

[traegorn]

My original post on where to buy The Witch and the Rose was getting too long, so instead of reblogging it, I'm making a new one.

For those who (somehow) missed it, my debut (non-graphic) novel The Witch and the Rose is now available for purchase. It's a contemporary fantasy novel. It's got a witch, it's got queer people, it's occasionally a little spicy, it has the occasional bleed through of my witchcraft opinions... it's fun! It's the first book in a series, and I think folks will enjoy it.

So let's talk about how folks can buy it!

For one, it's on Kindle (also, if you pay for Kindle Unlimited, you can read it right now for free), but there's also a dead tree version too. While eBooks are exclusively through Amazon right now, the dead tree version comes in two (identical) forms. First off, there's the version listed on Amazon. This is the fastest way to get it, and probably the version with the cheapest shipping (since it qualifies for Prime).

I know some folks don't like Amazon though, which is why there's a separate Paperback edition done through a different printer. You can either order that directly, or booksellers can order via ISBN 9798869132666.

So, to quote the eminent critic Jay Sherman, "Buy my book!"

Random stuff under the cut:

The Rose House, a Victorian relic in the quaint college town of Parrish Mills, harbors a dark secret. A malevolent spirit haunts its halls, and seeks to claim the home’s newest owner, young professor Riley Whittaker. Riley seeks the aid of the enigmatic Mia Graves, a captivating witch with a mysterious past. Only Mia can stand against the vengeful spirit's spectral grip and the lingering enigma of Lila Rose, another ethereal resident of the haunted mansion. In a dance between danger and desire, Mia must unravel her own darkness to save Riley from the clutches of the supernatural.

Amazon:

Non-Amazon:

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

Hi! What would the main 10 skeletons favorite Thanksgiving activities be?

Undertale Sans - Sans likes Toriel's cooking too much and Toriel doesn't know how to tell his friend is full so uh, Sans eats until he literally passes out on the table, so happy. He can't say no to another plate because he doesn't want to hurt her feelings so... Yeah. He's pretty much in a coma for three days after that.

Undertale Papyrus - He goes to see a football game with Undyne. None of them really understand what's going on but everyone is screaming and they're screaming too! Also, they discovered that apparently, only certain people could run after the ball after Undyne got kicked out for scoring because the players were taking too much time. Human culture is confusing.

Underswap Sans - He participates in a turkey trot and does his best to win because there's no way he's losing. He doesn't mind if it is supposed to be a playful event, he's tryharding until he collapses behind the finish line. He's proud of him!

Underswap Papyrus - He goes to see some parades in big cities. He doesn't like the crowd, but that's fine, he somehow convinced Asgore to come with him and Asgore is so impressive people stay at least ten meters away from him. He's having fun!

Underfell Sans - His brother wanted him to do something with the random turkey he brought into the garden, but Edge was talking too much so Red didn't listen and now he's not sure what he's supposed to do with the bird. So, uh, he freed the turkey hoping his brother won't notice. That's only after the turkey left that a random spot of publicity reminds him he was supposed to cook the turkey. Well, shit. He runs to the nearest shop to buy another lmao.

Underfell Papyrus - Toriel insisted Undyne and him sit down and tell each other nice things because apparently, Thanksgiving is about being kind to others? Obviously, Edge doesn't like that, but Toriel makes sure that Frisk stays in the room so, if Undyne and him starts insulting each other, she will roast them alive instead of the turkey in the oven. Ew. He's disgusted and after a long two minutes of just staring, he tells Undyne she has nice fingers. Pfew. He did it. That was even more painful than fighting against Asgore. He feels sick actually.

Horrortale Sans & Papyrus - They organized a big Thanksgiving meal with all the monsters of the Underground on his farm. They do that each year, and it makes them feel a little better to see they are each year a little more than the precedent year. Monsterkind is slowly rebuilding and moving on. They also celebrate Gyftmas that day so they can all have more gifts at Christmas a month later. What, they're clever, don't be jealous.

Swapfell Sans - He prevents his brother from dying and that actually takes a lot of time. They are invited to share a meal with the Queen, but Rus... Rus thinks it's a good opportunity to tell the old bitch what he thinks of her, and alcohol definitely doesn't help. Toriel neither by the way, especially when she broke one of his brother's ribs because apparently, you have to break a wishbone or something on that day. Nox just wants to go home and sleep for three days, please.

Swapfell Papyrus - After Toriel breaks one of his ribs, Rus says that's ok because Thanksgiving is also about giving back. Then he punches her in the face. After that, he has to run the fastest turkey trot of his life because the Queen wants his head on a spit.

Fellswap Gold Sans - He's before all a business man so he goes shopping on Black Friday. Except he is merciless. Women, men, children, no one will stand between him and whatever he wants to buy. He's biting people's legs, throwing bones, and fistfighting everyone getting in the way. He doesn't need six televisions but he's still going to buy them just because he can!

Fellswap Gold Papyrus - He's all cozy in his room with the pumpkin pie he stole from the fridge, a big plaid and watching cliche Christmas movies in his bed and crying because that's so beautiful how Karen realized Jack-Sexy-Muscles was actually Santa Claus all along. He doesn't need more, really.