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sweetinsaniiity · 5 months ago

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Sick, Little Games

► 𝙿𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 - psycho!blackmailer!mingi x fem!reader!Y/N ◄ ► 𝚃𝚊𝚐𝚜/𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎 - smut with plot, blackmail, gaslighting, Mingi is kind of a dom!, restraint (via rope), public sex (fingering), semi-exhibitionism, hair-pulling, reluctance, corruption kink, it becomes consensual, creampie, no protection (do NOT do this!), cum swapping/transferring, fluff, falling in love ◄ ► 𝚃𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛 𝚆𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 - MDNI, violence, mentions of rape, sexual assault ◄ ► 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚍 𝙲𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 - 20K (I swear I tried to make this shorter) ◄ ► 𝚂𝚢𝚗𝚘𝚙𝚜𝚒𝚜 - All you wanted was to go home and relax on a Friday night, so you take the subway. There, you encounter a man whose character prevents you from leaving. No seriously, he literally prevents you from leaving by tying a rope on your wrists while holding the other end with his big, strong hands. The rope isn't the only thing those hands will hold tonight. ◄

► 𝙽𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜 - Welp this one is a little darker, let me know if I missed a couple of tags. This is a work of fiction and is not meant to represent Ateez in real life. Join the taglist here. Title from All Time Low. BONUS CHAPTER IS UP! ◄

Home is all I ever wanted to be right now. The thought of my warm, cozy bed with me on it buried under my fluffy blanket is making me walk faster towards my destination - the subway.

I sighed in relief when I noticed there weren't many people, in fact there was literally no one at all except maybe the occasional passing of the cleaners and one man who was standing idly by the edge of the platform, I'm assuming he was also waiting for the next train.

I could feel his eyes staring me down even though I stood ten feet away from him. Maybe he was surprised to see somebody still waiting like him? Either way, when he didn't look away, I knew I had to make small talk to make things less awkward.

"It's finally the weekend now, huh?" I greeted him.

He was tall, maybe at six feet give or take, and he wore jeans partnered with a black blouse underneath a blacker cardigan that hung nicely against his toned frame.

He tilted his head at me curiously and a slow smirk creeped up on his face. "Yes, it is. What's a lady like you doing out here so late at night?"

"Oh, I have a part time job at the restaurant a couple of blocks away from here, shift ended late," I replied cheerily.

He raised a brow up. "You look awfully young to be working."

"No, well, technically I'm still in university."

"Oh? Where?"

"Seoul University, I'm in my third year."

A slight smile tilted his thick lips upward. "Interesting. I graduated there three or four years ago. How are you liking it so far?"

I glanced at nowhere in particular to give it some thought. "I suppose it's okay," I shrugged, "I only have one year left anyway."

He bit his lips and nodded slowly. "Third year's usually the time when you get sick of what you're doing and you end up hating everything."

I giggled in amusement. "Well that's an interesting way to look at it, you've been in my shoes once so I understand."

He stares at me deeper, his smirk growing wider. "Too harsh?"

"No," I shook my head. "You were just telling the truth."

"I suppose I was," he chuckled. "What's your name?"

"Ah, I'm Y/N," I said without missing a beat. "You?"

He hesitated for a couple of seconds before he replied. "Call me Min for now."

I frowned. That was odd. Your name isn't usually something you think about because it's an automatic response.

"Pretty name for a pretty lady," he coolly puts his hands in his jean pockets.

I grinned at him. "Glad I have your approval, Min. Are you always like this to people you see on the subway?"

I saw a small shiver go through him before he pursed his lips. "Maybe," he shrugged. "You never know who crosses your path one day."

Something about his tone and the way he said it made it sound like he hit the jackpot, but I ignored it. Maybe it was just in my head, I mean, I am pretty tired today.

It got silent again after that. I was finally able to stare at him a little better.

He was insanely handsome - hot, actually - he had short, dark hair that was equally messy and slicked back neatly, and it didn't help that he wore these black, thick, squared type glasses, and it made him look so charismatic.

I looked at him again when his deep voice startled me. "I don't mean to bother you, but do you have the time on you?"

A mild shiver passed through me, the good kind. His voice was deep. I cleared my throat. "Uh yeah, sure, give me a second..."

He hummed while I took a glance at my phone. I saw him eyeing the phone. "It's a quarter past 10."

He nodded in response, dragging a heavy sigh. "Getting impatient?" I asked in amusement. He scoffed softly.

"Patience is a virtue," I joked.

His sharp eyes pierce my doe-like ones, darkening significantly. "I am not known for my patience," he smirked.

I frowned at his bizarre choice of words, about to retort something profound back, but the distinct sounds of the oncoming train made me swallow my words.

"About damn time," I muttered.

"Patience is a virtue," he mocked.

He started walking towards me with slow, but long strides. He didn't break eye contact with me while doing so, and my heart started erratically breathing. The way he walked reminded me of a predator stalking its prey.

I brushed my own thoughts off, that was just absurd. I tried to calm myself by breathing in and out and by the time he reached where I was standing, the train was almost here anyway, so I just ignored him.

Suddenly, I felt him wrap his arm around my waist from behind me. I gasped loudly when his hand squeezed the fleshy part of my waist painfully.

"What the hell are you doing, Min?" I growled, turning my head around to scowl at him, but it was no use. Besides the fact that he was tall, his firm chest pushed out and prevented me from looking at him.

"Don't move," he whispered, his deep voice sending shivers down my spine, the bad kind.

He pulled me flush against him and now my back was completely touching his frontal body. It sent my body on overdrive and I thrashed this time to try to get free, but it was no use.

"I said," he put his other hand on my shoulder. "Don't move."

The train stopped, the door directly in front of us. I was petrified at this point. This man can do anything to me and none would be the wiser.

After what seemed like forever, the train finally departed and that's when I snapped out of whatever trance I was in.

"Wait, don't go!" I wailed at the moving train, but it was no use. I despaired, that was the last ride until the next day.

I heard him chuckle from behind me, I felt his chest rumbling at the sound. It all happened so fast; one second he turned me around to face him and the next thing I knew he was tying a rope around my wrists as tightly as he could.

"Should've been louder, maybe someone could have heard you," he paused, looking down on me with his sharp eyes. "Then again, I would have just covered that pretty mouth anyway."

"Wait, please don't do this," I whimpered.

"Why not?" he asked, not stopping from tying a series of complicated knots on my wrists, each tug tighter than before it, but surprisingly, it didn't hurt.

"What do you mean why not?" I couldn't help but snap at him. "You're insane!"

He didn't respond, he unfurrowed his thick brows, once he was done with the last knot. He, then, wrapped the other end of the rope with his own hand.

His face didn't give away any sort of emotion as we stared at each other with what seemed like an eternity. I grew fearful of this man, there was no way I could fight him because he was much, much bigger than me even if I tried.

I tried to back away, but there was only so much I could do because the rope would stop me and tug me back.

"Don't come any closer," I raised my hands, or rather, my fists since my wrists were bound together.

He tilted his head inquisitively, still staring at me impassively. I panicked, tugging my hands as hard as I could and wiggling my wrists to try and loosen the thick rope, but all it did was give me rug burns. He sighed, tugging the rope once, making me pause at my ministrations.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked in a small voice.

Shrugging, he tugged on the rope again, this time a little forcefully, but not enough for me to get dragged to him.

"No, wait, please," I pulled my hands harder, stronger, making his brows rise. "Please take it off, I-I'll give you money."

He smirked. "No."

"But--"

"No offense, angel, but I will probably make what you make in two weeks within a day."

"So you don't need me then," I laughed nervously. "Please, just take it off, I won't tell anybody."

Crossing his arms, he shook his head. "I'm not taking it off."

"Why?" I was scared, nervous, desperate at this point.

Min tugged the rope for real this time, I had no choice but to walk to him begrudgingly.

"Because I don't want to," he whispered. He was so close that I could smell the minty gum he was chewing on. "Come here."

He had the audacity to smile at me as he pulled me against his chest again, this time, facing him with my tied wrists between us. "Much better," he mumbled.

I narrowed my eyes on him. "Is this what you do in your spare time? Do you always have a rope on you?"

He raised a brow in amusement. "No. First time actually."

I tried to wiggle away from his vice grip. "Please don't hurt me."

"Never," he shook his head.

"So let me go," I pleaded.

I swallowed, my blood running cold against my veins. There was only one thing I could think of, then. His eyes roamed over my face, as if he knew what I was thinking.

"I'm not going to do whatever you're thinking," he sighed. "I'm not going to fuck you."

"Kind of hard not to assume you're not going to force yourself on me," I chuckled with no humour, cheeks blushing at his crudeness.

"Only if you want to," he grinned. He sighed when he saw no response on my end. "I will not hurt you so long as you don't fight me."

"Let me go then."

"No. I'm not going to repeat myself." It was a flat declaration and there was an underlying threat in his voice.

"How long are you going to take me captive then?"

"Assuming that I'll even let you go in the first place," he shrugged.

I stared at him in horror. I felt his hand on my arm, the ghost of his touch tickling me, higher and higher up until it reached my hair. He stroked my hair like a parent soothing their child.

I gasped when he slightly tugged on it, I was expecting a sting on my scalp, but nothing. He went back to stroking my hair again, then tugging it ever so slightly. I made the mistake of sighing at his touch.

"You like that?" he murmured.

I didn't respond. I felt confused like I have never been before. Not to say that I'm happy that I was a prisoner in his arms, but my body began relaxing before I knew it.

He started tracing random patterns on my back, rendering me even more confused. Strands of my hair were also tucked behind my ear. "Pretty," he murmured again. "It would be a shame if I just..."

I groaned when he tugged my hair a little harder, enough for me to look up at him, but not enough for him to pull my hair out. "Ow!"

"Stop trying to untie them," he pointed at the wrists. "It's not going to work."

I gritted my teeth aggressively. Damn it, I thought, I thought he wouldn't notice me tinkering with the rope as he played with my hair and touched my back.

My eyes widened when he slowly leaned forward, his face getting close to mine. I panicked, a short burst of adrenaline rushed through me as I pulled myself free from his grasp.

I swung my fists forward, a shocked look passed through Min's face, barely missing his face he quickly ducked down to avoid my hit. I squeaked when he grasped my wrists painfully and pushed me away rather roughly.

"Not bad," he laughed. "That would have been really bad if you actually hit me, yes?"

I ran off in a hurry, but quickly got stopped by the restriction the rope gave me. I hissed in pain, it had managed to dig into my skin a bit and leave red, angry welts on it.

Min frowned at me, his eyes softening as he stared at me trying to soothe the pain. He stood looking at me a few feet apart, his hand outstretched a bit towards my direction as if he wanted to beckon me over.

"You," I exhaled. "You stay where you're at, and stay away from me."

His lips twitched up in delight. "Or what?"

I blabbered like a fish, my mouth agape as my brain went into overdrive. What the hell is wrong with this man? I must've said that aloud, because the way he grinned at me with a look of amusement was making me nervous.

"I'm going to scream," I informed him.

He smiled. "Go ahead."

And so I did. I screamed, I yelled, I shouted, I screeched like a banshee like my life depended on it - well, technically, it does - and I did this for five minutes straight, but nothing.

I wasn't soft at it either, I was yelling. Min was leaning on a nearby wall with his arms crossed, silently watching me and letting me do my thing.

I was extremely frustrated at this point. Now that I think about it, it's extremely abnormal to have absolutely nobody around, but then, I remembered that it was a Friday night and everybody was either already resting or getting drunk out of their minds. It didn't help that the subway was also underground.

"It's just you and me, doll face," he stated, biting his bottom lip and chewing on it a bit. "Save yourself the trouble."

"You can't possibly keep me here forever," I scoffed at him.

He nodded slowly in acknowledgement. "I don't see why that's a bad idea."

"If you think I'm not going to put up a fight with you, then you're sorely mistaken," I sarcastically remarked, pausing when I felt my wrists sting again.

"I'd like to see you try," he chuckled, the sound of his raspy voice echoing all over the station. It further solidified the emptiness of the place.

I thought about my next move carefully. He doesn't want money, and to be fair, I had nothing much to offer anyway. He's calm and collected, that means he knows exactly what he is doing. He has a rope, for God's sake, what else can possibly have?

"I'd really like to go home now, I'm exhausted and I have no time for your games, Min, seriously," I pleaded, hoping to try my luck on the poor damsel distress act.

"You don't really have to do anything," he shrugged. "I'm not going to make you do what you don't want to do."

I raise my brow at him with a sarcastic lift of my tied hands. He laughed a little. "That doesn't count," he laughed, his chest rising up and down.

I scoffed loudly. "What?" I barked. "Are you for real? How deranged are you? Why are you really doing this?"

He watched me intently, staring at me directly in the eye without blinking. His sharp eyes made me so uncomfortable, like he was undressing me from where I stood just by the motion of his eyes.

His lips lift into a smirk. "Because I can."

Steam started coming out of my ears. I don't care if he kills me or does whatever he wants, I was mad. "Really? Is your birthstone crystal meth?" I sassed, rolling my eyes at him to emphasize my point.

Min raises his brows so high his thick glasses couldn't cover them, then he looks down on the floor, but not before I saw the smallest smile on his face. It was probably the most genuine one I've seen tonight. He was trying not to laugh.

"What a mouth you have, you sweet little thing," he chuckled. "How about you come closer to me right now?"

"But you said you're not going to make me do things I don't like," I frowned.

His sharp eyes narrowed, staring into my wary ones. "And I stand by that."

He pointed at my wrists with his index finger. I didn't realize he was wearing a lot of rings on his hands, but this one in particular had a nice black ring. "That looks like that hurts."

I stared down at my wrists. Indeed, they were close to being ugly and painful blisters because of how much friction I was causing them, friction I barely noticed because of the adrenaline rush and survival instinct to free myself of this damned thing.

"It does," I admitted. "Because you're letting me suffer by not letting me go."

He shook his head. "That's a strong word. I can make it better," he offered softly.

"How?"

A sly smirk makes its way on his plump lips. He pats the wall beside him, his stare not wavering a bit. "Come," he said softly.

I rolled my eyes so hard I was surprised they didn't get stuck behind my head. "Absolutely not," I snapped. "I'd rather let my wrists rot."

"You sure?"

He was waving a tube of a familiar generic ointment you'd see everywhere, the cocky twinkle in his eyes palpable. I gulped, the stinging sensation on my skin getting a bit more intense at the sight of what could be temporary relief on my end.

But alas, I chose to turn around and ignore him. I heard him sigh loudly from behind me and the distinctness of his cardigan rustling as he moved from his position.

"Seriously now," he began. When I still had my back turned on him and still completely ignoring him, he sneered. "Alright, whatever, I guess."

I peered over at him and saw him leaning back on the wall with his arms crossed again, staring me down. I hissed loudly when I accidentally angled my arm wrong, causing the rope to dig in a bit and rub against the sensitive parts of my skin.

"Fine," I scowled. I held my hand out in the air. "Toss it."

He laughed, his deep, hoarse voice booming towards me. If he wasn't such a jerk, I might have found that sexy. He grinned, taunting me by wiggling his fingers back and forth.

"No, no, no, sweetie pie," he sneered. "You're going to come here and get it from me."

The colour from my face drained. I bit my lip apprehensively, and I didn't miss the dark and dismal look in his eyes. I don't want to go to him in case he does something shady, but is it better than being restrained?

I scowled at him. Unfortunately, nothing was better than this. My legs felt like lead, heavily treading towards him. He gave me an amused look because I had to crane my head upwards just so I could look at him.

I couldn't help the blush that reddened my ears. Darn this man, he was unfairly good looking. The way he looked at me made my insides flip upside down with anticipation and I did not like it one bit.

"Well?" I asked impatiently.

"Actually," he clicked his tongue. "I don't think so."

My brain had a major explosion. I widened my eyes at him. "That deal has already sailed," he smiled, patting my nose with his finger. "My God, you're cute," he commented when I grimaced at him.

"Please, they really hurt," I whined. I wasn't lying at this point, I had sensitive skin due to eczema and the littlest irritation can lead to the worst flare ups that usually last from a couple of weeks to a month depending on how bad they get.

He stared at me with a blank expression, though it is not to be mistaken with nonchalance, no. I can tell he was already calculating in his head on what he should do next.

He puts a finger on his chin, lightly stroking his thumb over it as his scorching gaze pierced through mine. I gulped when he suddenly brought his glasses lower on the bridge of his nose as his eyes peered from above the thick glasses.

His eyes were much sharper than I thought they were when the glasses weren't obstructing them. I had this urge to fold in on myself when he studied me deeper. I have never felt this exposed in my entire life before and I was fully clothed. Warmth spread on my entire lower groin.

"Hands up," he instructed, pushing his glasses back up. I was told and he held the knots that bound me. "I'm going to untie you so I can apply the ointment."

Before I could celebrate the tiny hope he had given me, he continued. "If you try to run away," he said softly, still looking at me. "I'm going to force you back. I don't want to hurt you."

I nodded. His fingertips trace my whole arm, smirking when he noticed the goosebumps he had caused, all the way down to my wrists. My breath hitched when he blew on my blistering skin to attempt to calm the redness down.

"I know it hurts," he whispered, his tone soothing my ears with tenderness. "Hold still, yeah? I promise I'll be gentle..."

He worked on the complicated knots he had made, tugging at them until they slowly loosened. He gently and carefully lifted the rope off and caressed the sensitive skin underneath, and just like that I was untied.

Then I made a run for it.

I ran as far as my legs could carry me, and before I knew it I had ran deeper into the isolated part of the station, but I didn't care as long as I could get away from that lunatic. I'll find somewhere temporary to hide and wait until he leaves so I can---

I screamed when I felt strong arms wrap around my waist, and before I knew it, I was lifted up and hoisted over Min's left shoulder, my bottom up in the air and my legs flailing around.

"Put me down!" I cried, hitting his back with my fists angrily.

"Behave."

I shut my mouth at his clipped tone. I did, however, let out another scream in surprise when I felt his hand come down my behind harshly.

Spanking my ass was definitely the last thing I thought he'd do in this ridiculous situation. I was tempted to smack his butt back since it was literally in front me, but I decided against it.

"You're being an awfully naughty girl right now, don't you think?" I can practically hear the smirk on his voice as he walked a bit.

I was set down rather delicately, but I can't say the same when he pushed me against a nearby wall because it was rough. I whimpered when he grabbed my hands and put them up and also pressed them against the wall.

"What are you going to do to me?" I whispered.

He was so close to my face, so close that if he only leaned a bit our lips would touch. "What would you like me to do to you?" he asked, his voice huskier than normal.

"Let me go."

"Except that."

"I will report you to the authorities, someone has to find us eventually," I threatened, or at least that's how it sounded in my ear.

He tilted his head in amusement. "With what information?"

He was right. I only have a first name, but not a family name. He laughed, but his grin didn't quite reach his eyes. "You can tell them the name I gave you, if that is even my real name, then yes, by all means, sweetheart."

I mustered up the courage to speak. "So what is it, then?"

"Why do you wanna know? So you can scream it for me?"

I looked at him in disgust. "Seriously," I rolled my eyes.

He chuckled lightly. "Hands. And no running."

This time he actually applied the ointment for real on my hands. The way he spread the soothing balm all over the affected area made me sigh in relief, to which he smiled. If we weren't in the most unusually messed up situation right now, I might have swooned at how sweet he was being.

He was a wolf in sheep's clothing, however. The rope was back on my wrists, albeit looser this time.

"Are you going to tell me your real name?" I inquired as we both sat down on the filthy floor of the subway station, our backs leaning against the cool wall.

He met my eyes, the brown orbs analyzing me. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"You're insufferable."

"What are you willing to give me in return?"

I paused, genuinely thinking about it for a moment. I sighed in defeat when I couldn't think of literally anything. But his smirk told me otherwise.

"What are you doing?" I asked apprehensively at his onslaught.

My eyes widened when his fingers traced my cheeks, down to my jawline, and towards my lips. I was frozen on the spot. "You should moisturize your lips often, love," he whispered.

He pulls on my bottom lip and gently sticks his fingertips in between my lips. "Open up for me."

I put my bound hands on top of his to attempt to push him away, but he was stronger. "Are you being serious right now?" I gaped at him.

"Tick tock, the deal won't be on the table for long," he shrugged.

I glared at him. "You'll give me what I want if I do it?"

His smirk widens. "Yes."

I sighed in defeat, opening up my mouth ever so slightly, but his long, thick fingers forced them to open wider anyway. Butterflies started to form in my stomach and I looked everywhere except him. God, this felt weirdly intimate for some reason.

"Suck."

"Now hold on just a minute," I backed away, effectively swatting his hand away in annoyance. "You did not just ask me to do what I thought you did."

"But I did," he replied cockily.

"I can't believe you!" I exclaimed, incredulous at the ridiculous request.

I was so annoyed at this point and I wanted nothing but to bang my head against the concrete floor after I banged his.

"You know what to do if you want something out of me," he was tracing my lips again with his finger.

I heaved a long sigh, swallowing all the pride I had and grabbed his arm and with that, I put his index, middle, and ring finger in my mouth while I maintained eye contact with him.

He stared at me with hooded eyes, his gaze significantly darkening with every passing second. He let out a deep groan when I made slurping sounds as I lapped his fingers like it was the tastiest thing I have ever had. I swirled my tongue all over his fingers and even gave his palm a lick.

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down repeatedly, especially when I bit his fingers softly. I alternated between that, licking, and as well as sucking. I was definitely being filthy with it, and it was absolutely humiliating to do whatever this was.

His other hand pushes my head off gently and he withdraws his fingers from my mouth. He sighed sensually when my drool dripped down from his fingers to all over his hand.

"Here," his voice was thick. I froze when he traced my lips again, but this time, he coated them with my own saliva. "Now they're not dry anymore," he smirked.

He didn't stop there. I stopped breathing when he put the very same fingers in his own mouth. He chuckled at my dumbfounded expression.

The desire that flashed through his eyes took me aback a little when I realized I was trying to discern his taste by smacking my mouth obnoxiously. I blushed, I wasn't doing it on purpose, he had this salty, sensual taste to him that took my breath away.

"So, uhm, what is it?" I questioned, not missing the tremor my voice now held.

"Oh. It's Song."

I waited a couple of seconds for him to continue, but when I realized that he wasn't going to, my patience thinned significantly. "That's it?" I hissed. "Song what?"

"That wasn't part of the deal, you have to be specific next time," he shrugged with his eyes closed, but I can see a ghost of a smile on his lips.

"Ugh! Have you no shame?!"

He slowly opened his eyes, staring at me intently, then leaned a little closer to my face. "If I did," he whispered, his voice dropping an octave lower. "You wouldn't be here right now."

I instinctively leaned away from him. "At least you're aware ," I mumbled.

It must be closer to midnight now, I can feel it, we've been at this ridiculous game of cat and mouse for a while now. I sighed deeply while I pictured my cat, King, waiting for me home. It's a good thing I overfilled his water and snack bowl today, I just had a gut feeling. Unfortunately, I was correct.

"Penny for your thoughts, water lily?" he asked all of a sudden.

I scoffed, not even bothering to look at him. "None of your damn business," I spat.

"That's too bad," he chuckled. "I was hoping to barter an exchange with you again."

That made my ears perk up and my eyes twinkle, but I wasn't buying it. He's cunning, sly, and manipulative. There was no way in hell I was trusting anything he said at this point.

A certain slashing sound sliced through the air and in my peripheral vision, I saw Min holding something in his hand and twirling it around like it was a toy.

I whipped my head back towards him in curiosity and his smirk grew wider at the small gasp I let out.

"Change your mind yet?" he questioned with a beam.

There was a softness to his appearance in conjunction to his rugged features. Truth be told, he was probably the most attractive man I have ever seen in my life and I don't think I will ever find another one that will come close.

I scoffed. "Not only do you have a rope, but you also have a pocket knife on you like it's the most normal thing in the entire world."

I groaned, swinging my head back and the back of it against the wall in frustration. "What the hell is happening to me lately," I cursed.

I felt something soft instead of the hard wall when I leaned back again.

"What can I say? Having both is part of my work," he muttered, his hand sandwiched between my head and the wall. "Stop before you hurt yourself."

"Work? Well, what are you? A mobster?" I blurted out before I could stop myself.

He blinked at me a couple of times before he burst out laughing. He was actually laughing, and my heart jumped at the pleasant sound. I stared at him as his body vibrated with mirth, his eyes formed into these tiny crescent as they disappeared from his mouth stretched out in a charming grin. Even his laugh was so damn attractive.

"Why?" he grinned, wiping an imaginary tear from underneath his glasses with the same hand that held hy head from the wall. "Do I look like one to you?"

"I don't know," I shrugged, frowning at him. "Are you?"

He surveyed me when he calmed down, gauging I was serious at knowing the answer to my question, but after a moment, he shook his head as he watched me carefully.

"No," he denied with a small smile.

Another laugh escaped him when he saw my irritated expression and amusement was all his eyes showed as he watched me try to cross my arms but failed since my hands were literally bound together and it was borderline impossible to even do anything remotely close.

"Uncomfortable?" he clicked his tongue.

I glared at him intensely. "What do you think?" I hissed, extremely annoyed at the fact that I can't even do anything. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

He nodded in acknowledgement. "I am," he replied, angering me. "Very much so, actually. But I'd enjoy it more if you'd just give in to me."

"Not a chance," I jeered with an aggravated sigh. "So if Min isn't your real name, what do I call you then?"

"Min's good for now," he shrugged, twirling the knife again expertly in his nimble hands. "And what a shame, I can be good for you, you know?"

I wanted nothing but to slap the smug look on his face to oblivion. "I think I can live without knowing what that's like," I snorted.

His brows knit together. "Suit yourself," he shrugged. "I guess we'll be here for a while."

When he saw me glaring daggers, no pun intended, at the small pocket knife he held in his hands, he twirled them faster, tempting me to just stand up and kick his balls as hard as humanly possible so I could get it.

But along that was the underlying fear that I truly didn't know what he truly wanted with me. That, alone, makes me even more terrified of being here.

I gulped apprehensively and his face switched to something else when he noticed. "You're not going to use that on me, are you?" I pointed at the blade.

He shook his head. "No. Not now, not ever. I told you, I'm not going to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you."

"Besides," he continued. "If you come to me by force, then I don't want it."

He smirked at me suggestively, to which I scoffed softly, but loud for him to hear. "I'm too good for you," I rolled my eyes at him.

Well. Not entirely. In any normal circumstances, someone like him wouldn't even be in the same room as me. I couldn't point my finger at it at first, but a man this self-assured and dauntless must be someone of higher authority and money, I was sure of it.

"That, you are, my peach," he agreed. Something surges in his eyes when he noticed the blush that covered my cheeks.

God, his eyes. There was a lifetime of struggle in there that has never been put into words. His face in general, he was out of my league.

He glances at my bound wrists and for a second, I thought he was going to set me loose. My eyes widened when he put the sheath back on the blade and set it aside, instead.

"What?" he taunted. "You don't want to cooperate."

I closed my eyes tightly and took a deep breath in defeat. "I'm at a total loss right now. You want me to exchange you something, correct?"

He nods enthusiastically. "But not the knife?" I quipped.

"I don't want to let you go yet," he shook his head.

"I am aware..."

A small smile forms on his face as his brows shoot up, waiting for me to continue. "But I have nothing more to offer you," I rambled. "I have nothing on me that will interest you."

"And that, my little dove," he hummed. "Is where you're wrong."

Hot, red anger coursed through my veins when he dug into the pockets of his black cardigan and took out my wallet.

"Where did you even get that?" I seethed.

He shrugged. "Take a wild guess."

I wanted to scream in disbelief. He must've gotten his hands on it when he carried me earlier. I had a terrible habit of putting my wallet in the back pocket of any pants I wore.

"Even if I let you go, how would you get home?" he said. "Taking the subway meant you lived a decent distance from here."

He was right. Walking was out of the question because if I did, I would walk three hours. The subway cut the journey into half an hour.

I stared at him, calculating how I would get my wallet out of his claws and taking him down at the same time.

"Don't even think about it," he laughed. "I'm much bigger than you, and you know it."

"What do you want, Min?" I sighed in desperation. "Tell me what is it that you want so you can let me go, what do you want from me?"

He tilted his head to meet my eyes, slowly jutting his arms out to reach towards me and touch my chin lightly. He titled my face gently in his direction, and I was able to meet his eye as well.

"I want you," he spoke softly. "You would think that tying you up would make that very obvious."

I couldn't look away from his burning gaze even if I tried; I could have held it forever. His eyes were dangerously penetrating, he looked pure male at this very moment.

"Tying me up is not the solution, though, you psycho," I frowned at him.

"Humour me this," he uttered, waving his hands in the air as he spoke. "It's almost midnight and when you get to the sub, there's a big, scary man waiting in there, wanting to say hi..."

He paused, waiting for me to internalize the imagery. When it dawned on me, I sighed. "See what I mean, babygirl?" he chuckled.

"Don't call me that," I snapped. "Also your logic is ass."

He smirked, ignoring my statement. "Call you what?"

My scowls deepened when his eyes slowly trailed down from my eyes to my chest. He laughed when I lifted my wrists to attempt to hide them, but there was no point. I growled for him to look away, but of course, he was who he was and he only stared at me, not saying anything back.

His gaze wasn't uncomfortable, rather, there was a hint of wonder in them and it made my breathing constricted and shallow.

I know that look - it was scheming. The lasciviousness in which he stared at me was shamefully making my core ache, the patch of wetness staining my underwear was proof enough.

He sat straighter and his form, especially his upper torso, became bigger. He inched closer to me. "Kiss me," he whispered breathily.

There was a bomb that went off in my brain. I blinked owlishly at him. "Excuse me?"

He bit his lip to stop himself from smiling. "You heard me, Y/N. I want you to want me."

He licked his lips, his eyes clouding over when I shivered involuntarily when his deep, sultry voice said my name like he was praying for me to say yes.

His brows raise and his eyes widen a bit when I start to advance, leaning my face very slowly towards his face. His Adam's apple bobs up and down and his eyes flutter close as he held his breath.

Instead, I went to his ear as closely as possible and whispered, "Go kiss the wall instead, you sick fuck."

I didn't know what else to say, but more so, I didn't want him to see that he was getting to me little by little. He was manipulative, calculating, and conniving.

"God," he let out a groan that sounded like a tortured animal. He closed his eyes tightly as if in pain. "You're such a tease, little tart..."

He banged his head a couple of times on the same wall he stopped me from banging my head down. He rested his head on it for a while.

I couldn't help but stare at his face and how peaceful it looked when his face was relaxed. I couldn't believe this was the cocky and arrogant man that held me hostage.

He suddenly opened his eyes and they were darker than I previously saw, his smirk was dirtier too. "I'll give you your wallet back if you kiss me."

"Are you kidding me? Seriously?" I shrieked exasperatedly. "This is essentially blackmailing!"

"Call it whatever you want," he grinned. "But yes, I do agree."

"Now you're just doing this on purpose! You're going to get what you want anyway, why don't you just do it?"

He paused, his brow raised. "Okay," he shrugged.

Before I can process what was happening, Min lifted me from the ground and placed me on his lap, and now, I was straddling him. His heavy eyes were the last thing I saw before he grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me towards his lips.

"Wait--"

I whined on his lips, trying my very best to push his hard chest with my fists, but all that did was instigate him to wrap his arms around me and pull me even closer.

Surprisingly, he wasn't rough with it, but he wasn't gentle either - just desperate. I felt his tongue lick my lips, pushing them apart. He moaned lowly when I wasn't giving in, and his moan got louder when I unconsciously scratched his chest at those unholy sounds.

"Baby, please let me in," he rasped, his lips giving mine little kitten pecks as he spoke through the kiss. "Here, take this."

He momentarily broke the kiss and put my wallet in my pockets for me. I was frozen, I could feel both of our heartbeats going very fast, and I gasped when his hand squeezed my hips firmly.

"I can't do this," I said breathlessly.

He hushed me, leaning in and kissing my jawline slowly. I tensed under his touch, and he stops to hold my face between his hands.

"Relax," his breath was shallow as he looked me in the eye. His intense eyes lingered on my nervous face. "I'll be gentle, okay? Just give in to me, kitten, please."

He was about to lean again, but his black glasses kept hindering the movement. He cursed under his breath as he tried to adjust it.

"Take it off for me," he demanded, his voice taut.

"How?" I gulped, my brain blank with all the overwhelming sensation he was giving me.

"Use your teeth."

Panic started to take over my body. I could feel it trying to push itself out of my stomach, my chest, my throat, my head. I wanted to throw up. I whimpered when his hand went up to my waist and pressed on it, a jolt of pleasure shot down to my clenching wetness.

I swallowed, leaning towards his face, tingles spreading through my scalp as his eyes never left me as I took the black frame in between my teeth and spit it out.

I gasped when I saw his eyes, not because of how heated and impassioned they were, but because of what they literally looked like - dark, seductive, desperate.

I felt my heart constricting tightly. He was painfully beautiful, and looked so dangerous.

"Come here," he growled, crashing his lips against mine once more.

I gasped in pain when he roughly tugged my hair back. I was so taken aback when he forcefully put his tongue in. I refused to let my tongue play with his, mewling and struggling from his hold.

"Oh," I moaned quietly when he bit my lower lip, suckling it gently with a force that knocked the air out of me.

"You're insane, doll, the woman you are," he voice was thick with lust. "You're turning me on even more."

"Stop!" I squealed in abrupt pleasure when his hips bucked up, his hardening erection suddenly pressing on my clothed mound.

An animalistic growl tore out from his chest when he dominantly grabbed my ass and started pushing me in and out, manually grinding me on his hardness fast and hard.

"Oh my fucking God," he grunted, burying his face on the crook of my neck as he pulled me harder. "Oh, God, oh, shit.."

I was moaning along with him, pathetically savouring the feel of my warm heat dry humping his bulging hardness. I was ashamed of myself, for imagining how big he was based on how he felt.

The only thing to be heard in the empty subway station was our breaths, filthy kissing sounds, and the obscene moans from the both of us. Desire flowed through us, causing our bodies to melt against one another

He pulled away for a moment and I blushed at how red his face was and how bruised his lips already were. "I need to touch you," he croaked. "Can I touch you? I--"

"Hey, did you hear that?"

Cold reality washed over me as if a bucket of freezing ice was poured from my head in one go. I pushed him as hard as I could, as hard as my shame would take me, crawled out of his lap with disgust.

"Wait," he hissed, grabbing me by the arm as he stood up. I whimpered at his demeaning tone, but also how roughly he held my arm.

"Silence," he growled at me. "There's people in here."

The look on his eyes as he stood up and looked around, surveying the area to find the source of the random voice we just heard from the distance was alarming, and they frightened me.

I was disconcerted, I just made out with this man, and how was now compared to what he looked like underneath me was a contrasting difference. His sharp eyes were terrifying, one look will have you submitting to his control.

I paled. I had almost forgotten was dangerous this man actually was - that I was his prey to consume, and he was determined to play with his food before he devoured it.

He pulled me in front of him, pushing me lightly as he guided me to walk until he reached a dark corner that would hide us from anyone. It's not the best hiding spot, but it was the fastest we could find.

But wait a minute, why were we hiding?

It was as if he knew what I was thinking and he covered my mouth with his hand before I could muster up a scream.

"Do not," he warned. "Nobody goes in this area unless they're looking for something," he paused, tensing up behind me. "Or someone."

My eyes widened when it clicked. He was right, this area was a well known spot for mob deals and other shady businesses. It was an unspoken secret that everyone knew, but chose not to comment on. An infamous eight-membered group ruled this area frequently, and while they never deemed terror, their name alone sparked chills on everyone.

Footsteps got closer and closer until there were two people who stood on the spot where me and Min were sitting down. I froze, they were mobsters - the black suits gave it away.

"I could have sworn I heard something in this area," a man with a shorter stature murmured, looking around in the darkness with a stony face.

"'Have' is the keyword," the other taller man with the most intimidating face mocked. "I'm going to kill him when I find him."

"Relax, Seonghwa. Don't get your panties in a twist."

The taller one, Seonghwa, glared hard at his companion. "And I'm going to kill you with him, Hongjoong, if you don't shut your face."

My captor scoffed lightly behind me, his breath fanning my ear. I elbowed him to shut up, and his jerk reaction was to tighten his hold on me. I wanted to scream, I didn't even notice his arms around me.

I felt him lift my hair up and move it to the side to expose my neck. I dug my nails on his arms at the pleasure he gave my sweet spots.

"You smell so good," he whispered sensually, sucking on my neck. I stifled a moan when he bit hard. "I want to hear you so bad," he groaned.

While the two mobsters bickered back and forth, there was me and Min hiding in a dark corner, hoping to not be seen, yet he's making it utterly difficult.

I staggered backwards, my mind swirling with nothing but bliss, my breaths shallow and heavy. His hands slowly trekked upwards..

"Wait no, please, we can't do this here," I pleaded, quickly stopping his hand from fondling my tits.

"We sure can," he pushed my hand away forcefully, but I used my other hand to scratch him.

His body stiffened. "That wasn't very nice of you," he jeered. I gulped.

My paranoia triggered when his other hand wrapped around my throat, choking the words out of me. Whatever false sense of hope I had that he wouldn't hurt me when out the window.

"You've been testing me, little doll, and quite frankly?" He was indifferent, his voice not betraying his emotions. "I am getting sick and tired of it."

"Please," I whimpered when he squeezed the sides of my neck. "It doesn't feel good..."

He chuckled, something sinister lay brewing underneath. "But it does, don't lie to me."

I clawed his hand repeatedly, but he wasn't budging. "You said you wouldn't force me to do what I didn't want," I cried quietly.

"I know," he agreed. "But your eyes are telling me otherwise."

He pulled on the rope, forcing my wrists down permanently, as he went and did whatever his desires told him to do.

"Are you gonna be good if I let your neck go?" he asked in a deceptively soft voice. I nodded apprehensively. "That's a good girl."

He unbuttoned my blouse just enough for my bra to get exposed, and I had to suppress a moan when cold air hit my skin, but not for long as Min's hand hastily pushed my bra down to fully expose my average sized tits.

Soft groans escaped him as he roughly fondled them in his hands and I couldn't help my own groans. "Hush," he kissed my neck. "You don't want them to hear you."

He put his fingers at my open mouth and I used them to plug the sounds of pleasure threatening to spill out of me. God, his rough hands felt too good against my skin.

His mouth was on mine again as he held my stiff nipples with his nimble fingers. It sent jolts of desire all over my body.

"Do you feel good?" he murmured in between the kisses. When I ignored him, he bit my lower lip. "Answer me, love."

"Mhhm," I hummed, and he seemed to let that go for now.

I gasped when he squeezed them hard, the overstimulation of him alternating between rough and tender almost made me want to come undone. All I could do was mewl as he toyed with my body.

"I'll go to the other corner, Joong. Keep looking there," I heard Seonghwa mutter before his footsteps receded. I almost forgot they were still here.

"Doesn't the thrill feel good?" Min smirked, attacking my neck again and leaving pretty bruises on them.

"For you," I sighed. "You're the only one enjoying it. Seriously, how can you do this? How can you take advantage of me while we're supposed to be hiding from the mafia?"

"Ever so sarcastic, my pretty princess," he snorted.

While one hand massaged my tits, the other went south - going lower, lower, and lower until I felt him stop at the hem of my pants. My heart rate picked up.

"You're going to enjoy it too," he said softly. "I'm going to touch you, okay? I want to feel you, I need it so bad..."

The desperation in his voice caught me off guard, it shamefully made my pussy clench onto nothing as wetness covered it entirely.

"A-And if I say no?" I stuttered.

"I will push you out and give you to those two turds out there."

My blood ran cold. "You wouldn't," I gasped. He wouldn't let two mobsters who can kill me take me, right?

"My queen," he whispered, possessively pulling me closer in the tight space we were hiding in. "Remember this, I have never, and never will, given you opportunities where there was no way out of them."

I gulped. He was right, and I hated him for it, but that's what made him manipulative - he would give me these options that he carefully crafted and no matter what I chose, it will always end up with him getting what he wanted one way or another.

These options weren't for me to feel safe; he was merely giving me a chance to do things the easy way or the hard way, but either way, they were still his way.

"You were doomed the moment I laid my eyes on you," he stated darkly. "Oh, my sweet little peach..."

I closed my eyes tightly as he worked his way inside my pants, cupping the throbbing heat of my core. He nudged my legs apart with his foot, but I wasn't giving up.

"I'm not going to hurt you, okay?" he exhaled a sharp breath. "Relax, love, I'm going to make you feel good, I promise."

"I'm scared," I whimpered with raw honesty. Danger was still looming around us with Hongjoong and Seonghwa lingering around the area.

He didn't reply, instead he brushed his plump lips all over my neck and my now exposed shoulders. I couldn't help the tiny moans coming out of me as he worshiped my body gently. I suppose it worked, it calmed me down.

I heard his sharp intake of breath followed by a throaty moan when I leaned my head back against his shoulder so he could have access to my neck. "Stay like this," he groaned.

"Please," I choked when his fingers pushed my underwear apart and gently rubbed my slit up and down.

He grunted deeply, hungrily. "This is for me, yes?"

I whined at the absence of his touch when he pulled his fingers out and quickly reddened at the sight of his fingers coated with my juices within seconds of touching me.

It was obscene and it shouldn't have been so arousing, the wet sounds coming from my pussy when he parted my lips with his fingers again, but this time, he went straight into my clit, rubbing delicious circles on it.

My moans were borderline pornographic when he finally inserted a finger inside me and stars blinded my vision for a bit when he pinched my nipple at the same time. He slid his fingers in and out with a fastening pace, the wet sounds of it echoing all over the corner we were in.

"Shit, baby, your cunt feels so good, oh God," his deep moans kept hitting my ear and he smirked when I became impossibly wetter. "Say you want more, Y/N."

I whimpered in protest when his fingers stopped all of a sudden. "Fucking say it, then. Say you want more," he demanded with a furious growl.

"I want more!" I cried, tears falling from my eyes. "Please, Min, just please, I-I want more---ah!"

He roughly drove two fingers back in me and I could have exploded when he licked my tears. His long fingers were deep inside me, curling them as he searched for that particular spot. I bit his arm to avoid being too loud when he found it.

This angle had my swollen clit directly on his thumb and he applied pressure just enough until I started tightening on his fingers.

"We're leaving, there's nothing in here."

I'm not sure if that was Hongjoong or Seonghwa at this point, but I didn't care to know, I didn't realize how weird it was that they were announcing it at this time, not when Min had finally let loose when he practically dragged me out of our hiding spot.

He hastily took his cardigan off, set it down on the floor, and pushed me down on it so I could lay down on the floor. I yelped when he roughly shoved my pants down, leaving me completely exposed to him as he loomed on top of me.

And just like that, his fingers were back inside me again, sliding them in and out of me. The way his face looked in this light, I will never forget it. He looked more fucked out than me and he was the one getting me off.

"I-I think I'm, uhm," I moaned when his fingers down there got rougher, faster, harder and he just stared at me with lust-filled eyes as he finger fucked me.

"Tell me what you want, Y/N," he groaned.

I feel my orgasm approaching me fast and hard like an oncoming train. He finger fucks me even faster than before as he took in my pleasure filled face.

"I'm so c-close," I moaned loudly. "M-Min, oh shit, Min---"

"Mingi," he grunted, his eyes never leaving mine. "My name is Mingi."

He leans over to kiss me quickly before leaning up again. "I want my name on your lips when you come, okay?"

"Mingi!"

With that, I let go. Wave after wave of pleasure plummet my body and I scream his name, his real name. He was moaning with me and I saw him resisting to close his eyes so he can watch me come until I was exhausted and shaking, until he couldn't.

"Say my name," he growled, leaning down and burying his head on my neck as he slowed his fingers down. "Say my fucking name."

My throat was hoarse by the time I was done wailing his name. I was out of it for a while, Min - Mingi - kept giving me tiny little kisses here and there wherever his lips touched. He shushed me as he let go for a while, pulling out and sucking the fingers he used to make me come.

I watched him put my underwear and pants back on as if he didn't just give me the most mind blowing orgasm. When the ecstasy subsided and died down, I wept.

"You're okay," he would keep assuring, lifting me from the ground and embracing me in his hard chest. "Shh, don't cry. You did so well for me..."

He buried my face on his shoulders as he embraced me, patting my back soothingly as I let my tears fall from the overwhelming feeling my body felt.

I am so ashamed of myself. This was wrong. I wasn't supposed to want my captor, the one who kept blackmailing me. I felt immense guilt and distraught. The pleasure I felt was so good, but it made me feel so dirty.

"I am no different than a harlot," I sniffled against his skin.

He sighed deeply. "You're not."

We stayed like that for a while - me just letting my feelings pass and him patiently waiting for me to finish. He would whisper comforting words as he gave me pecks here and there, wiping my tears away. It felt so wrong.

"So," I cleared my throat, pulling away from him and sitting beside him instead. "Song Mingi, huh?"

He nodded. "How do I know you're not lying?" I questioned, the doubt clear on my face.

Mingi looked a little offended. "My queen," he spoke. "I may have tweaked our deals a little bit, but I never lied to you once."

I hate how right he was. "Stop calling me that," I murmured. "It feels a little intimate. Why do you keep calling me that?"

Mingi smirked at me, taking my wrists in his hand and working on the knots. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

My eyes widened. "No," I rejected. "No more deals, please."

He laughed that deep and attractive laugh of his, concentrating on untying the rope, tugging on it repeatedly, until it became loose, and he guided my hands until I was completely free. I breathe a sigh of relief, pulling my hands to myself and stretching them over and over to make them mobile again.

"What's the catch?" I frowned. He wouldn't just do this for free.

"God, I love how perceptive you are," Mingi remarked flirtatiously. "But no, nothing. I just want to get you cleaned up."

He juts his finger in a random direction. "I have my car outside, we can clean you up there. I have water too. Then you can go."

I was at a loss for words. "Really?"

"Really," Mingi confirmed.

When I gave him the 'go' signal, Mingi proceeded to carry me in his arms, swooping me in one go, and he carried me like a blushing bride. I wasn't a bride, but I was blushing. I knew he was strong, but this was crazy strong. I wasn't the lightest person out there.

I didn't even protest when he started walking out of there, I was too tired to argue, and I saw his eyes twinkle when I leaned my head on his chest as he walked.

"You were never going to ride the train in the first place, weren't you?" I whispered all of a sudden. He had a car outside of a subway station.

Mingi raised a brow as he looked down on me. "No."

"And those two mobsters, the mafia, they were looking for you."

He was smirking this time. "Yes."

"You were going to escape from them, weren't you?"

"Sure."

"What do you owe them?"

"I'm afraid I can't answer that, my queen."

"Please?"

Mingi pauses, staring at me. Then he sighs and relents. "Money."

"Is that what was in your backpack?"

"Do you actually want to get fucked? You're still very sentient, babydoll. Maybe my dick will shut you up---"

"You forgot your glasses inside!" I blurted out, my voice raising by one pitch in embarrassment. I felt my face heating up with his straightforwardness.

Mingi gives me a confused, incredulous look before he opens the door to his car and sets me down comfortably on the plush seats. "I never needed them," he cryptically said.

"Nice ride," I murmured, taking in the luxurious interior and the modern technology attached to it.

He hummed in response, handing me a bottle of water to which I drank greedily. It could have been poisoned, but at the moment, it was the least of my concerns. He lowered the windows so I could also use the water to rinse my face and hands.

"What now?" I questioned.

Mingi gave me a small smile. "You can do whatever you want, go home if you will."

"You sure?" I blurted out before realizing how stupid that was.

He laughed, realizing it as well. "I'm sure, Y/N."

It felt surreal at the moment. It was as if what happened between us was just a figment of my imagination, and it made me even more anxious. It was a little too easy.

"How am I gonna get home at this time," I sighed to myself rather than question it. It was well after midnight and the buses were all gone at this point and I didn't have enough money to get a cab.

"You know how to drive?" he lazily asked, looking at the distance out into the empty city.

"Yeah, I do," I replied, not sure where he was going with this.

Mingi nodded, tossing me the keys, and I caught it in surprise. "She's all yours," he said.

My eyes widened. "W-What?"

"The car, Y/N, it's yours now," he chuckled. "Drive home, and take care of her for me, yes? She was my favourite."

"Hold the hell on, Mingi," I blabbered. "Are you high right now? You can't just say things like that!"

"Think of it as a gift," he shrugged.

I stared at him in confusion when he got out and walked around the car, knocking on the passenger window where I was. I quickly crawled to the driver's seat and pressed the window open.

"H-How about you? How will you go home?" I stammered, genuinely concerned. "I'm just borrowing your car, right?"

He smirked, shaking his head. "No. Don't worry, I have more where that came from."

"You used the money you stole from the mafia?"

His eyes widened a bit before he burst out laughing. "More or less," he snorted. "But seriously, do you not like it?"

I scoffed. "Of course I do, this is a Bugatti, for fuck's sake!"

"Ah," he dismissed. "It's a Centodieci, it's not that much."

Damn right, I thought. I suppose I deserve this after all the crap and assault he subjected me to, but still, it felt wrong.

When he saw me biting my lip, hesitating, Mingi chuckled, and he was about to answer, but headlights suddenly blinded both of us. "Well," he spoke, tapping the car twice. "My ride's here."

My heart lurched out of my chest. The way Mingi was looking at me, I can't stand it. He was looking at me like I was the brightest star in the universe and the best thing he could do was stare at it because he couldn't reach it. Mngi began walking away, straight to the other car, but I stopped him.

"Mingi, hold on," I called out. He paused from his steps, looking back at me expectantly. My words got stuck in my throat, and the only thing I could say was, "I'll see you around."

He chuckled, low and sinister, and I was thrown into a whiplash. "You don't want that, doll, trust me," he shook his head. "Don't tempt me right now."

"W-Why?"

He opened the door of the other car, leaning on it as he stared at me with a dark look in his eyes. "I'm giving you a chance to run," he professed.

Right. I forgot how manipulative he was. "So run, Y/N, run far, far away," he continued, a daunting smirk on his face, "Because you're mine if we meet again."

And with that, he got in the car and it drove away, leaving me to stare at it as it disappeared from my view.

What did that even mean?

I drove away, apprehensively I might add, to get home. It was a breeze, I hate that I am now very in love with it. I got extremely dizzy when I realized it was voice powered too. Out of curiosity, I asked how much this car cost.

Bugatti Centodieci, top of the line, costs $8.8 million dollars as of 2024...

I almost swerved off the lane when I heard it. Was Mingi crazy? I scoffed, laughing maniacally.

Who was he? This can't be right. My insides quivered, no way it was this easy, surely there was a catch in between? He was cunning, what if him giving me the car was a part of his stupid games? I wouldn't put it past him.

And so, I drove home with an underlying guilt and heartbreak.

Mingi filled my thoughts all day and all night for the past month.

He was like a barnacle that didn't want to unstick from me and truth be told, it was getting extremely tiring. No matter what I did, I always saw him. I haven't been on any subway or train stations at all.

The worst part was that I didn't exactly know what this feeling was. At first, I thought it was fear - I was scared that he would come knocking on my door one day and claim me against my will, but no, nothing had happened.

I had so many questions left unanswered, questions that were giving me nothing but grievances, and in hindsight, a part of me wanted to see him again.

"Are you going to go have drinks with everyone tonight, Y/N?"

I paused from walking to turn around and found my co-worker, Wooyoung, at the restaurant where we both worked.

"I'm not too sure, Woo, I'm not really feeling well as of lately," I told him truthfully. This is Mingi's fault.

Wooyoung gives me a worried glance. "Everything okay, Y/N? Are you feeling sick?" he asked with a frown.

I gave him a halfhearted grin. He was always very sweet and I loved that about him. "Don't worry Woo, I'm just going to go home and rest," I twirled my car keys between my fingers and Wooyoung eyes it.

His eyes comically widen. "Wow, Y/N, you drive a car like that?" he says excitedly. "You always rode the bus though..."

I raised a brow. Has he always been this observant? Before I can question it, he snaps his fingers happily. "Can I see it? My brothers don't want me to drive," he pouted.

"Sure," I laughed and I guided him in the parking lot. "I overheard you talking to the others and mentioning that you had seven brothers?"

Wooyoung laughed. "Ah, that. We're not blood related, but we've been together all our lives. Blood isn't always thicker than water..."

We continued talking until I pointed the car to him. I started to go towards it, but I halted when I heard Wooyoung's sharp intake of breath. His eyes were wide as he stared at the black Bugatti, and I was amused.

"Where did you get this?" he inquired, his tone firm, his eyes piercing.

I was taken aback with Wooyoung's shift of attitude. He walked confidently towards the car, lightly trailing his fingers on the hood. Long gone was the cheery boy I knew him for.

"It's you," I heard him whisper.

My heart palpitated faster and faster when he walked towards me. "Stay here," was all he said when he walked away and called somebody.

I was so damn confused, what the hell was going on? Did Wooyoung know me outside of work? Oh God, I hope he didn't think I stole the car! I mean I get it, I earn shit in the restaurant as a server so I'd understand why he would think that.

Against my better judgment, I ran away from the parking lot into nowhere in particular. There was something dark looming over him in that odd conversation and I didn't want to be part of whatever that was.

As I was running hastily, I dropped the car keys. Cursing under my breath, I went back and tried to find where it dropped. I frowned when I realized where I was - in an isolated dark alley.

"Aha!" I exclaimed when I saw the keys and bent down to pick it up, but a foot stepped on it before I did.

I looked up to see three hooligans - tattoos, dank breath, yellowed eyes, you name it - grinning maliciously at me. I paled and it rendered me paralyzed.

"Well boys, looks like we got a jackpot right over here," the biggest man with the ugliest looking face grinned disgustingly. "You're the owner of that black baby in that parking lot!"

They all laughed rambunctiously to themselves. I was frightened, but I wanted to kick myself. Of course, the expensive car would've caught someone's eye sooner or later, but I didn't think it would be like this.

"P-Please," I whimpered, tears springing up my eyes. "I-I'll give it to you, you can have it, just don't hurt me..."

I gasped sharply when a skinny looking man grabbed me by my face and ogled. "You're hot," he leered. I almost threw up but I held it in. "Wanna play with us, doll? We'll give you a good time!

Tears started falling from my eyes. Mingi called me his doll, and it sounded heavenly from his lips. When they said it, I felt extremely insulted and violated.

"No, no, please!" I screamed when one of them held my arms and restrained me. "Stop!"

"Hold still!"

"No!" I bellowed. "I didn't get to where I am just to be manhandled by fuc---"

I choked, a stinging sensation on my right crippling me, the backhanded slap on my face was stronger than I thought and I hit the pavement below me. Was this the end? I groaned painfully when I felt myself being dragged on the ground.

My tears were free falling as I felt hands grope me in places I didn't want them to, but I couldn't do anything, black spots danced on my vision, but I still yelled, hoping someone would hear me.

"Stop it, please, take the car!" I shrieked, thrashing around, but that earned me another slap on the face.

"Damn, bitch, don't you ever shut up?" They laughed disgustingly. I cried out when I felt hands trying to lift my shirt up. "We're going to have so much fun---"

"What's going on here?"

The three hobos paused from their tracks, and froze when they saw the owner of the voice. I was in a haze, I probably had a concussion at this point. I could only hope that the new voice was here to help me...

I lay helplessly on the dirty ground and even though that felt terrible, at least I didn't feel their hands on me anymore, but I could still hear their conversation very well.

"B-Boss, greetings to you and your brothers," I heard them say as they bowed 90 degrees from where they stood.

In the distance, I saw three men standing straight, arms crossed in their chests except the one at the very front. I shrinked onto myself. They were the mafia.

They were Ateez, the 'A' symbol they wear on their suits was a dead giveaway. I panicked when I put two and two together. Were they going to hurt me too?

"Why are you imbeciles disturbing the peace?" a built man with the fiercest eyes I have ever seen sighed. He had this interesting reddish, pinkish hair.

"Wait," the other man with the deeper voice said. This one was handsome, his greenish, blackish hair suited him well. "You fuckers can't get it up so you terrorize a woman?"

"B-But, we know her," the three hoodlums lied. "We swear!"

A sudden panic attack tightens my chest and my breathing turns shallow. I'm so scared, and I am in pain right now. I groaned and everybody turned to look at me, but my haze couldn't make out faces clearly, especially their expressions.

Green haired man smirked. "Yeah?" he pointed at me. "Doesn't seem like it."

"I should kill you sons of bitches here," the pink haired one snarled, grabbing the gun he had and pointing it straight.

"Please, brother, spare us!" they shouted over and over again. I panicked, whimpering my ears to soothe the oncoming migraine I felt. I panicked even more when I realized I had blood, probably from my fall.

"Shut the fuck up---"

"San."

My eyes fluttered open as the world around slowly started to fade. That voice...

"Put the gun down," the third and last person spoke - the presumed boss. His voice was deep, calming, yet it induced fear in me.

"Why?" pink hair, San, growled.

"I won't tell you twice."

I tried, I really did, my best to glance at the tall man with the most lulling voice, at least to my ears. He was familiar, I just know that he was, it was breaking my heart trying to remember somebody who I couldn't at the moment.

I knew one thing - he was painfully beautiful, and the way he looked at me, it was like I was the brightest star in the universe, only this time, he can reach me and not just stare at me from afar.

He stepped forward, his strides powerful and domineering, and his eyes never leaving mine. There was something about him that felt different; he was dominant, compelling, and more dangerous than the other two.

"Step aside, maggots," he stated calmly, but so commanding.

"Boss, n-no offense," one brute interrupted, the one that slapped me to the pavement. "W-We really like t-this one, if you may--"

"Move."

"B-But---"

I saw the head mobster glance to his right. "Yeosang."

Green hair, Yeosang, nodded once and proceeded to roughly shove the thugs, apparently also mafia henchmen, to the side, giving them little punches and kicks here and there.

My head lolls and the muscles on my neck barely keep up with me. I can feel myself slowly slipping away. A shadow covers my view. He was so intimidating. He reaches his hand out, and I cower in response.

"No," I groggily shoved the head mafia's hand away from me. "Don't hurt me..."

He sighed, crouching down and sitting me down despite my protests. "Little dove, you know I would never," he whispered.

My heart started beating out of control as I stared at him closer. He was wearing this bluish suit along with a white dress shirt. Through my blurry vision, I can tell that he was the most attractive man I have ever seen in my life. I don't think anyone would come close...

I frowned. That train of thought. This wasn't the first time...

"Boss, my liege," I heard the ruffians speak. "Why are you forsaking us, your brothers, for some whore?"

I whimpered when I saw him take his sunglasses of, his eyes twitching, a glare of emotional coldness and complete disregard of anyone. It was terrifying.

"You dare call your queen a whore?"

That voice, that deep timbre, it brought a sense of relief to me. "Mingi?" I inhaled, shaking when it hit me.

His facade drops a bit, his eyes shining in relief, before it turns stone hard again.

The world seemed to stop for a moment, and the world never stopped for somebody like me. I was too far gone to acknowledge the sharp gasps.

I felt myself being carried and I automatically leaned into his hard chest. I was supposed to be terrified, frightened, but I was not. Everything seemed right at the moment and even if my head didn't know, my heart did.

I've felt this way before. I've been carried like this before. I've been in his safe embrace, wrapped in his heady scent.

I felt him plant a small kiss on my forehead as he carried me out of the alleyway. "You're safe now," Mingi whispered. "Let's go home, okay?"

I resisted, not wanting to go out just yet, but the tiredness and dizziness was catching up to me. As Mingi was about to completely walk out and go inside a car when we were stopped.

"Min, what do you want to do with them?" San asked. He then turned to me and bowed a bit. "Greetings, our queen."

I frowned, but that quickly turned into aghast when I watched Mingi hand Yeosang a handgun. "Beat the fuck out of them, Sannie, yeah?" he smirked sadistically.

He turned to Yeosang next with a smirk. "Then use that," he beamed darkly. "And use it well. Do not let me down, Yeo."

San and Yeosang look at each other, their eyes glazed with ruthless vigor. "With pleasure," Yeosang smirked.

I kept going in and out of consciousness every twenty minutes or so. I was in the backseat of a car.

And Mingi wasn't helping either. When I would try to shrug him off to just lay on my side to relax, he would possessively grab onto my waist and pull me to him.

"Stop it," I whined. "Thank you for saving me, but that doesn't give you the pass to touch me."

He hummed, not even bothering to respond. I wasn't in the mood for his bullshit today, so I shrug him off harder.

"Enough," he warned, a slight edge to his voice. "A month ago, you couldn't do it even if you tried." I hissed when he grasped my waist tighter. "It's like you never learned your lesson."

I blushed at the memory despite the haze. "Where are you taking me?" I cleared my throat pathetically. "My apartment is close to here."

Mingi stared at me before chuckling slowly. "Oh, you sweet, summer child..."

I shivered both in anticipation and fright. I can't be sarcastic with him like I did the last time I was with him. Song Mingi wasn't a regular person, I know that now. I have a sneaking suspicion who he was exactly, but the matter at hand wasn't that.

"Mingi, please, not now," I pleaded when he leaned towards me, stopping only a few inches from mine.

"You have forgotten what I told you before we parted ways," he murmured with a small smirk on his lips. "Surely, you didn't forget me that quick?"

"How could I forget you?" I glared. "You are the most insufferable person I have ever met."

He smirked. "How could you forget?" I held my breath when he whispered softly. "When your cunt took my fingers so well?"

I inhaled a sharp breath when he gave my lips a small peck. "You're mine now," he whispered. "Don't you ever forget that."

I was about to retort something stupid, but I couldn't when I groaned in pain, clutching my head when a sudden headache stopped me.

"You're bleeding, my sweet pea," Mingi frowned, his fingers lightly touching the dried, caked blood on my forehead. He tutted. "That fuckface. Come here."

My cheeks reddened when Mingi lifted me and placed me on his lap. I instinctively wrapped my arms around him for support. "Jongho," he called, his deep, commanding voice booming all over the car with authority.

"Here," I heard a voice towards the front. I groaned when we hit a road bump.

"Careful, Jjong. Easy on the road," I heard Mingi sigh while he was rubbing my back in a slow manner. It was honestly soothing.

"Sorry," the driver, at least I assume him to be, apologized. "I've been driving for a while now, where to?"

There was a slight pause. "Doll?" Mingi whispered directly in my ear. "You're going to have to stay awake for us, okay?"

I buried my head on the crook of his neck, breathing in his comforting scent. "My head hurts," I whimpered. "They hurt me really bad..."

"Shh, I know, I know. Can you sleep?" he tenderly asked, his arms wrapping around me tighter. I nodded in response.

"That's a good girl," he said. "Yunho's, then. Think you can reach there in thirty, Jjong?"

"Of course," Jongho snorted. "But only if I get to stay and not clean up after Yeo and Sannie. They're brutes."

"Look at you telling me what to do," Mingi raised a brow when Jongho gave him a sheepish smile. "Fine. Wooyoung will do it."

""But I'm worried about her," Jongho glanced at me through the rear mirror. "She might get nauseous."

"I'm fine," I snapped, burying my head deeper into Mingi's neck. "Just fucking drive before my head splits in two. I'll apologize to you later."

I felt bad for cursing at him, given that this was the first time I've ever seen him. My first impression was the least of my concerns.

Both of them laughed for a couple of seconds. "I see you picked the right one," I heard Jongho chuckling at Mingi, his eyes glinting in amusement, but there was that same darkness that he held. "Hang tight, our queen."

Everything was such a blur afterwards, all I knew was that I wanted to rest and forget about everything. The moment my head hit the pillow, it was game over.

When I woke up, I found myself with the most agonizing headache. I clutched onto my head, it certainly felt like my skull was trying to get out of my head.

It took me a while to realize that I wasn't in my own room, rather, I was in the most luxurious room with the plushest king-sized bed, wrapped in the most velvety blanket and surrounded by the softest pillows.

Everything hit me at once - my overnight shift, almost being forced against my will, to being in Mingi's car. I was mad at myself for being so damn weak that I can't even fight back when the need arose. If Mingi and his group didn't come in time, I just know I'd be dead by now.

Or worse, sold off. That was absolutely worse than being dead.

"You're awake."

I looked around to find the source of the voice and there he was. At the foot of the bed, a tall man stood. He was taller than Mingi, and Mingi was damn tall, himself.

"Who are you?" I asked with a frown.

"The owner of this house," he beamed. "My name is Yunho, our queen. Jeong Yunho."

He rolled a cart with antiseptics and more medical stuff out to the side. "You're a doctor," I declared, touching my forehead to find it all cleaned and healed up.

He nodded. "Luckily you didn't need any stitches, just a couple of bandages. Mingi can help you replace them later."

My heart skipped a beat at the name. "Speaking of," I cleared my throat. "Where is he?"

He smiled widely at me. He seemed nice, definitely reminding me of a puppy. "Doing some...stuff."

"I know what he does," I said. "Of what you guys do, more or less."

"I'm sure you do," he chuckled. "Mingi is not a subtle person."

He crossed his arms as he walked closer to my side of the bed. "You're very interesting," he remarked with a smile. "I can see why he's drawn to you."

"What do you mean, Yunho?"

"Well, for one, you didn't freak out when you saw me. The usual response to a random stranger in your bedroom is not nonchalance."

I squinted my eyes at him. I shouldn't conclude my thoughts about these people from looks alone; no one is who they seem to be here.

"You're observant," I commented.

"Yes. He can observe his way out of this room, as well."

Yunho laughed and I scoffed loudly when we both turned around and saw Mingi leaning on the door with his arms crossed.

"No thank you, Mangi?" Yunho approached Mingi with his arms wide open.

"Get out," Mingi ordered.

"Oh, come on now, I just wanted to check up on our queen," Yunho teased.

"Get out," Mingi repeated, raising his voice a little.

"But I want to know how you guys met--"

"Get," Mngi gritted his teeth. "Out."

"Okay, okay, goddamn," Yunho raised his hands out in response and beelined the hell out of the room, but not before waving at me jokingly and laughing on the way out.

The atmosphere was so awkward, it filled the massive room with uncertainty. I couldn't even look Mingi in the eye, for fear of him doing something to me. I was at the mercy of his presence, and in his property. He can do whatever he wants and none would be the wiser.

"I must say, Y/N," he began to speak, making me jump a bit in surprise. "Had I known that the next time I'd you see was being cornered by dead motherfuckers, I would have never let you go that night."

"Dead?" I squeaked.

Mingi smirked, his eyes glinting with something dangerous. "They will be soon."

He was at the very end of the room, but he was so unnerving. But by God, Mingi was the devil wrapped in an angel's grace. I didn't even recognize him at first.

He was wearing this tight, long-sleeved muscle fit shirt that emphasized just how bigger Mingi actually was. He had no glasses on, allowing me to see through his sharp and calculating eyes, and his dark hair was completely down, his bangs covered his entire forehead.

It was such a contrast to the very first time I saw him, and to be completely honest, I wasn't sure which one was worse - him wearing a casual outfit with the same dangerous, murderous aura was deceiving.

"You," I gulped. "You are the devil."

He titled his head in a menacing angle. "How so?"

"You know exactly what I mean, you took me here without even asking for my consent, Mingi!"

He stayed silent, staring at me with the same indifference he always had. It irritated me, more so now I knew who he really was.

"You lead the mob, you own the people," I whispered, hugging a pillow for comfort. "God, it all makes sense. The conniving, manipulative, boorish attitude, the fear you instill on everyone who knew you, and how you found me point blank."

"I didn't," Mingi denied. "Wooyoung found you. He called me. He is a brother of mine."

"You lied to me," I growled. "You lied about everything, you bastard-- don't come any closer."

Mingi began walking towards me, but paused in the middle of the room when I told him to stop. "I asked if you were in the mob," I continued. "You said no. But not only that, hid the fact that you had power. All you ever did was lie."

Mingi narrowed his eyes on me, rage slowly building into them, then it was gone. His self-control had always been worth of applause. "I never lied to you," he said in annoyance. "Everything I told you has been the damn truth from the start, Y/N."

"I own the gang, Y/N. I am the mafia, so no, I am not the mob," Mingi hissed. "I gave you every opportunity to wiggle your way out, I never gave you opportunities--"

"Opportunities that you tailored to suit whatever you wanted?!" I interjected, my voice raising significantly. "As if I had any choice? You assaulted me, Mingi, you took advantage of any weakness I had and exploited it for your gain!"

He smirked, his true colours overtaking the gentleness he put on. "But I do, I do care for you," he remarked. "Your perceptiveness kills me, though. It's not my fault we crossed paths again."

"You were going to give me to the enemy when we were hiding at the station," I accused harshly. "Crossing paths wasn't the issue, you had no problem selling me out!"

"I wasn't going to," Mingi shook his head.

"You wanted to touch me, you were going to push me off to them--"

"Hongjoong and Seonghwa, you mean?"

Mingi sighed, rubbing his temples with both of his hands. "Okay, fine, I might have lied to you with that one," he shrugged. "Joong is my best hunter, and Hwa is my right hand man."

Dread filled my body. Every opportunity that he gave me, even if he had pushed me to Hongjoong and Seonghwa, I would have never been in trouble. I would have ended up with Mingi, regardless.

"You snake," I seethed. "You manipulated me!"

"Remember," Mingi grinned sadistically. "I gave you the option to get away. Hongjoong would have let you go, he's always been soft, you see," he scoffed. "You chose to stay with me."

With that, tears fell from my eyes. Mingi's eyes softened at the sobs that wracked my body. He never lied, everything matched up, but his manipulations knew no bounds. Had I not been blinded by the temporary lust that made my body shake, I would have read between the lines.

"Seonghwa said he was going to kill you, how could I have known?" I hiccuped in between the sobs and tears.

I saw him reach out his hand to me, wanting to touch me, but hesitated when he saw how pitiful I looked. "Please don't cry, little dove," he whispered. "Will you calm down if I explain everything from the start?"

I looked up at him with my tear-stained eyes, nodding apprehensively. "Listen to me, my Y/N," he began. "I never lied to you, and I'm not lying when I say it hurts me to see you cry.

He walked towards the end of the bed and sat on it, far from me. "I was there for a deal with another mob, they screwed me over, so I stole their cash," he explained like it was no big deal. "The rope and the knife was theirs. It was for me."

I winced, the memory of Mingi tying me up making me cringe. "I'll spare you the details. I had to secure the place, why do you think the whole station was empty?"

I stared at him, and he stared back. That look again, I can't stand it. He was looking at me like I was the brightest star in the universe, but this time, I was slipping further and further away from him.

"I am a very thorough person, my pretty girl," he smiled at my blush. "I could have sworn I blocked off every single entrance in there. So tell me, how the hell did you get in?"

My blush deepens, and I lower my head in embarrassment. "I-I saw there was a barricade," I stammered. "I, uhm, jumped over it. I was too tired to go the long way."

Mingi laughed, his deep voice reaching me in places I didn't know existed. "I see," he smirked.

How could I be so stupid? The deserted area should have been a massive sign that something was very wrong.

"The train that came after a little," he continued. "That was my getaway ride. Those two were probably pissed when I wasn't on it, especially Seonghwa."

I was mortified all of a sudden. I groaned and Mingi turned to look at me in amusement. Hongjoong and Seonghwa probably heard us going at it and doing vulgar things in a place where we weren't supposed to be doing it.

"I didn't lie when I said I owed them money," he said, his tone soft and gentle. It was like we were in that train station all over again. It was moments like these when my heart would question itself and its validity.

"Yeah, you just conveniently forgot to mention that it was technically your money too," I mumbled in resentment.

"I got a little carried away with you and forgot to give it to them," he shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know how, you drive me crazy."

"That doesn't give you the excuse to shackle me with you and manipulate me to do your bidding," I glared fiercely at him, my voice breaking with every emotion I had.

"I know, my love, I know," he sighed deeply, shifting uncomfortably on the bed and turning his whole body to face me.

I wasn't going to tell him that I never stopped thinking about him even after he left, and I wasn't going to tell him that he had won - even if I didn't want to, I felt something for him. But I was mad, and he doesn't deserve me.

There wasn't a day where I never blamed myself for feeling the way I did. I really was no different than a whore.

"I didn't think I'd see you again after that night," he admitted.

I was puzzled and confused. "What do you mean?" I frowned. "I was in fear of you, Mingi. Everyday I was paranoid that you changed your mind and would come knocking at my door to take me."

He chuckled lightly. "No, dollface. I didn't even know where you lived."

I stared at him apprehensively. "There was no tracking in the car?" The doubt was clear on my face. "Don't you mafia people do that? GPs everything that moved?"

"You would be correct, but no," he shook his head. "Not that one. That was my personal car. Not the mob boss' car, just regular Song Mingi. It's not connected to the business."

"You're lying," I objected, my chest tightening with how my heart beated.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" Mingi sighed. "Call me whatever you want, a bastard, a son of a bitch, the devil incarnate. I may con my way and twist the truth, but Y/N, you should know by now that I am not a liar."

I swallowed the lump that blocked my throat from breathing in and out. "Not to you," Mingi confessed. "I care very deeply about you."

I couldn't help the shock that resonated onto my face and expression. "You really intended to give me that car?" I croaked.

He nodded without hesitation. "Yes, love. Yes, I did."

Something in my chest exploded, all the emotions and how I felt threatening to bubble up within me. "I hate you," I whispered.

Mingi heard it though. "What?" he frowned.

I was very angry at this point. "Is this part of your games again, Song Mingi?" I spat, tossing the blankets away from my body.

"My love, please calm down," he pleaded.

"No!" I screeched, standing up and inching away from him and the bed. "I don't need your stupid car after you took advantage of me, you slimy little snake."

I began pulling my hair out in frustration. "You could have let me go," I cried out. "But instead, you didn't and you toyed with me and my body!"

"Y/N, stop it," he warned, standing up, himself, and trying to reach for me, but all it did was make me back away more.

"You think the car would absolve everything?" I seethed, making my way to the door, intending to leave. "You could have approached me like a normal person, I might have given you a chance to woo me--"

I grabbed my arms and spun me around swiftly. "Mingi, let go--"

"You don't understand," Mingi hissed, his eyes had the mafia leader's anger in them, scaring me a little. "You don't get it all, Y/N."

"Mingi, please--"

"I had every intention of letting you go that night," he snarled. "When I said I never thought I'd see you again, I meant it. I was really letting you go."

"You asshole, I hate you!" I screamed in defiance.

Mingi scoffed. "Really?" he squinted his eyes at me and pulled me into him, embracing me. It effectively halted me, I wasn't expecting it.

"That car was yours," he whispered. "If you really detested me, you could have sold it and gotten rid of every trace of me."

"And have you kill me for doing so? I think not."

"I wouldn't have known. If it had GPS, I would have tracked it somewhere else."

I cursed under my breath. There was no fooling him. "I wish you sold it," he said. "You could have lived comfortably and I would have rested easy knowing you had enough money so you wouldn't work at night anymore."

I shivered when he tucked my hair behind my ears. "What if someone else got you first? What if they had worse intentions?"

"I want you," he continued when I didn't reply. "I wanted you for myself, to take you and do whatever I damn well pleased."

He tilted my chin gently, forcing me to look him in the eyes. "I wanted to fuck you that night. Hard. Fast. Rough."

That caught me off guard. My face heated up in response.

"But I couldn't," he sighed before I could fully internalize what he said. "I didn't want this life for you. There was too much danger around me..."

He touched my forehead before leaning in and giving the bandaged wound a peck. "I should have come sooner before they did this to you."

I realized that passion was often mistaken for aggression. Mingi had too much of both. "You didn't send Wooyoung to spy on me?" I asked.

Mingi shook his head. "Wooyoung working with you was a sheer coincidence."

"It's not too late, you can still let me go," I tried to convince him. "You can let me go, once and for all."

He shook his head, his hold on me tightening. "No," he flatly said. Desperation swam in his eyes. "I let you go once, and that month was my worst. You're mine now, you hear me?"

The way he looked at me, I was the brightest star in his universe, and he finally had caught up to me. Then Mingi let me go, his eyes darkening into something foreboding; something more sinister.

"Strip."

It took a moment for me to understand what he said, and when I did, my eyes widened. "W-What?"

His eyes never left mine. "You heard me," he said. "Take your clothes off."

I took a step back from him and Mingi's jaw hardened when he saw me. "What are you doing?" he clenched his teeth, his voice taut.

"Mingi, please," I pleaded.

"Please what?" he growled. "Take your fucking clothes off, Y/N. I'm going to fuck you."

My chest fell up and down with how rough my breathing became. Mingi's scowl deepened when he saw me not moving an inch. He proceeded to take his shirt off and throw it randomly somewhere.

I gulped, taking in his physique. I knew he was toned, but seeing him up close made my brain go haywire with want. My brows shot up as I stared at the tattoo I didn't know he had on his left chest. It was an 'A' in a circle - an anarchy symbol, or rather, the Ateez emblem.

"Are you going to hurt me?" I whimpered.

His eyes narrowed in irritation. "No. Come here," he ordered. He had a demanding presence. The suffocating domination he had on me was daunting, but I wasn't going to give in to him.

I stood frozen in my spot for a few more seconds before I backed up again. Mingi slowly crept up to me, he looked like a predator more than ever. I backed up even faster until my back hit the wall. Panic surged through me when Mingi reached me.

He put his arms on either side of the wall, trapping me in. "Where are you going to go?" he sneered.

Before I could respond, Mingi ripped my nightgown off swiftly in the middle and lifted me easily in his arms, tossing me effortlessly on the bed. I screamed for dear life as he hovered over me.

"Song Mingi! What the fuck are you doing to her?!” I heard someone scream from outside the room.

"Fuck off!" Mingi roared angrily.

I trembled beneath him. He looked so much bigger than me when he was on top of me like this. I covered my bare breasts with my arms, but Mingi wasn't having it.

His eyes roamed hungrily over me. "No, babydoll," he smirked, grabbing my hands roughly and pinning them down on the bed. "You do not cover your tits around me, got it?"

I nodded as he devoured me with his eyes. I gasped when he leaned down and began sucking them. The stimulation was overwhelming - he would alternate between sucking and nipping my nipples gently.

"Mingi, please wait," I whimpered pathetically when he let go of one of my hands to fondle my tits.

I shook my head frantically and a choked cry was torn from my when his other hand wrapped around my neck. He lifted his head up to glare at me.

"Stay still," he barked.

I felt his tongue lick my lips, trying to push them apart. I whined in reluctance, trying to turn my head away, but Mingi quickly let my neck go to the back of my head and tugged my hair roughly on his hands. I cried out and struggled when he bit my bottom lip.

I inhaled a deep breath sharply when he pulled away to stare at me as I shuddered. I tensed when he started leaning down again slowly. He let go of my hair to press a thumb on my jaw, smirking darkly as he forced my mouth open.

"You're so beautiful like this," he murmured. "Naked, shaking like a leaf, and all mine."

He ravaged my mouth once more, tugging on my hair a little bit. When I refused to cooperate, he murmured another warning against my mouth, this time with more threat. His tongue played with mine, and he groaned against me, and plunged his tongue deeper.

I felt my body trembling more, the wetness down there was becoming impossible to ignore at his touch, and I was aching for relief at this point.

Tears fell from my eyes at the roughness and tenderness he was making me feel, and I felt nothing but confusion. He wiped my tears away with his fingers.

"Don't cry," he whispered.

"C-Can we do this next time?" I begged.

His penetrating glare left me fumbling for words, and yet submissive to his touch, unsure if I should hate him for doing this, or liking it because it was him.

I knew one thing, I felt undeniably safe with him.

"Darling, please, I'm not going to hurt you," Mingi pleaded when I began thrashing around, trying to get away from his criminal hold, by pushing his body towards me. "You want this just much as I do--"

"Fuck you," I spat on his face. Shock filled his face as he wiped the spit absentmindedly.

His eyes widened before mania and fury fueled his features. "Don't worry, I plan to."

I was expecting something rough and unrestrained, but no, Mingi kissed me softly, lovingly, and I couldn't help but kiss him back with equal emotions. His hands went everywhere - my hair, neck, stomach - until it reached its goal down there.

Panic surged through me and I tried to struggle, but he held my legs down with his and trapped me with his chest.

"Mingi," I wailed.

"Shut up," he hissed, ignoring my pleas.

Something about the way he said it made me extremely wet. It was such a dark arousal, too. Mingi groaned loudly, his fingers felt my damp pussy, rubbing and pressing on it. I bit my lips to stop the moans that were wanting to spill out of me.

"Baby," Mingi rumbled, pulling my bottom lip out of my mouth. "Do not, and I mean, do not hold back on me, yeah? I want to hear your pretty sounds..."

It's not like he gave me a choice, I let out a breathy moan when he slipped a finger in, pushing in deeper until he was knuckles deep. I unconsciously squeezed around his finger and that made him even crazier.

"Oh sweetheart," he choked out. "You are incredibly tight, my angel."

He started stroking in and out, sliding with ease and finger fucked me faster and rougher than he did when he were at the train station. I moaned when he curled his fingers up and started rubbing that sweet spot.

"M-Mingi," I moaned erotically. "P-Please, slow down for m-me."

He kissed my neck, his lips nipping at the soft flesh there. "How?" he groaned against my skin. "Do you not hear that?"

The loud, squelching sound from my wet pussy as he drilled his finger relentlessly in me was driving me crazy. I gasped when his pace got faster, his palms were hitting my clit aggressively and I felt my orgasm slowly approaching me.

"No," Mingi growled. I whined in protest when he pulled out. He grabbed my jaws roughly. "You won't come, not until I say so," he snarled.

He stood and quickly got rid of his pants, his hands shaking with anticipation as removed the last piece of clothing he had - his boxers.

I stopped and watched him stroking his already hard cock, and he looked directly at me, his eyes hazed with lust and madness, his strokes going slower when I swallowed. He wasn't the biggest I've been with, but he was the thickest.

The length of it was veiny, the head of it red with the need to be inside me. I gulped when I realized that he was going to be inside me.

"Look how hard you make me, precious," his eyes were lethal and ferocious. "I'm sorry, but I can't take it anymore."

Before I could say anything, a startled cry left my lips when he mounted me, roughly pushing my thighs apart to let himself in for the invasion he was going to do.

"Mingi--oh!" I whined when he shoved his fingers back in my pussy and stroked in and out like the madman he was. I struggled repeatedly, thrashing my legs and kicking him as hard as I possibly could.

"Resistance is useless, stop it!" Mingi shouted, making me stop in my acts and stare at him dumbfounded.

He tiredly buried his head on the crook of my neck. "I will give you anything and everything you want and more," he whispered in distress and desperation. "Just please give in to me, baby, please ."

The way he was begging broke something in me. "It doesn't work like that," I sighed.

"Then don't hate me," was all he said before he pushed into me in one thrust of his hips, almost tearing me into two.

I choked out a loud moan as my nails dug into his back. "M-Mingi," I gasped in broken moans.

He stayed still inside me for what seemed like a lifetime, shushing me and whispering the gentlest of words into my ears as he gave me little kisses here and there.

I knew he was corrupting me, but the feel of him inside me sent stars in my vision. It was the corruption, the alternation, between him being rough and then into being the most affectionate man.

Mingi withdrew all of a sudden, then thrust deeply, both of us letting out pleasure filled moans that echoed all over the room.

"I'm going to have you now, okay?" he said.

Without waiting for my reply, he thrust into me hard, over and over and over again. I felt my body being filled delightfully, the sensation of Mingi's cock seemingly swallowing all the words I intended to hurl at him.

His thrusts quickened, each thrust making me cry out loud and moaning louder and louder, not caring if anybody heard me from outside.

"Oh, fuck, my love," Mingi groaned, looking me directly in the eyes as he hovered over me. "You feel so fucking good."

He leaned down to kiss me roughly. "You're all mine, okay? You're fucking mine."

It was the moment when I knew that I couldn't hold back anymore. No matter how hard I tried to deny it, maybe I was his, after all. It was fucked up, but goddamn it, I wanted him.

"I'm all yours," I cried out. "Please, please fuck me--ngh!"

He groaned at my sudden surrender to him, reaching down with one hand to rub my clit as he fast as he was fucking into me. He locked his lips into mine in a demanding kiss.

"Your pussy feels so fucking good," his deep voice bought out a different type of pleasure in me. "Wrap your legs around me, my love."

I obeyed him without questions, moaning his name out loud when he reached even deeper than before. He buried his face in my neck as he fucked faster, harder, and deeper.

"Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck..."

"You want me to go harder, baby?"

"Yes! "Well, you better start begging."

“Please, Mingi, please…”

His cock filled my pussy harder until I felt the tip touch the end of my walls. In a moment of complete bliss, I grabbed his face and locked eyes with him. The surprise in his eyes made him buck his hips roughly. "Is my angel a slut, after all?" he smirked.

My body shuddered against him, and I felt a pleasure that intensified with the degrading name - slut.

"I love you," he whispered abruptly.

The sincerity in his eyes made my chest tighten and explode. "Since when?" I croaked out.

"I don't know," he smiled through the pleasure he felt. "I just do."

It was a feeling I knew all too well, as I felt the same.

A surge of bravery passed through me, maybe it was all from the payback and I want to get even. "Prove it," I smirked.

"Oh, you're going to be the death of me," he growled.

I screamed his name over and over again as he fucked his desires into me, until a strangled groan from him made his thrusts more desperate and sloppier.

His moans were getting higher and higher in pitch until he was nothing more than a whining, moaning mess. It turned me on to the highest degree.

"Come with me, love, please," he begged. "I need it..."

It was all I needed to hear, and there was no turning back. He broke an orgasm out of me, stripping me of any plans to defy him ever again.

His groans of pleasure matched his slowing thrusts and with a final plunge forward, hot cum filled began filling me. The little kisses he planted all over my face while whispering the dirtiest things with the most affectionate tone gave me the shivers.

He laid on top of me tiredly, and I was expecting him to stay like that because we were both tired and spent, but no. "Mingi?" I asked in confusion.

I was confused, I whined when he pulled out, going down on me to stare at my swollen pussy. It was so embarrassing, him being so close and personal down there.

"W-What are you doing?" I moaned again when I felt his fingers push back his cum back inside me.

"Can't let all of this go to waste, yes?" he smirked before diving in.

I almost had another orgasm at the sight. I felt Mingi eat me out hurriedly, holding my legs so I don't shut them close. The slurping sounds were so obscene.

Suddenly, he stopped and got back on top of me with the cockiest smirk on his face. He leaned down, forcefully opened my mouth, then opened his.

"Mmph!" I groaned lewdly, wide-eyed, but suddenly wet all over again.

I felt something wet, sticky, go in my mouth when Mingi kissed me - cum. He had just sucked his own cum from my pussy, and spit it out in my mouth.

"That's a good girl," he smirked, wiping his mouth with his hands. "Take it all in for me..."

He leans back at me again and I expectedly open my mouth for him again. His cum dribbled slowly from his mouth to mine and we both groaned at the erotic sight. "Swallow," he said.

I savoured his taste and swallowed, just like he wanted to. He bit his lips at my lewdness. "You did not just do that," I was bewildered.

"And what if I did?" Mingi smirked.

We lay next to each other, not saying a word, and just taking in what transpired between the two of us. I lay on Mingi's chest, tracing the tattoo on his chest.

"What's it for?" I asked absentmindedly.

"That, my love, is a brand that we wear to prove our loyalty," he replied patiently, rubbing my arms up and down. "Hongjoong drew it, himself."

"Does everyone have them?"

"Yes," he hummed. "Yunho has his on his chest too, Wooyoung and San both have theirs on their thighs. Hongjoong on his right wrist, Seonghwa on the left, Jongho on his arm, Yeosang on his back."

"I see," I replied lazily, laying back on his chest and just staying there. It wasn't awkward at all, I just felt relaxed with Mingi like this.

"You didn't reply to me earlier," Mingi's deep voice accused.

"With what?" I frowned, not even bothering to open my eyes.

"I told you I love you, I meant what I said," he sighed. "It wasn't a spur of the moment thing."

"But Mingi, this is only the second time we've seen each other, how can you love me?" I whispered, my tongue burning because I knew I was bullshitting myself with that.

"Don't be a hypocrite, precious," he chuckled. I huffed and he laughed. "You forget I'm the Don, I can see right through you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I rolled my eyes playfully, turning away from him.

He grabbed me gently and gave me a quick kiss. I blushed when he kissed my nose. "Admit it," he pressed.

"Admit what?"

"That you're slowly falling in love with me," he grinned. "Just like I am with you, my queen."

I cursed under my breath. "Why do you keep calling me that?" I frowned, trying to divert the topic.

"I'll take that as a yes," he laughed. "You mean 'my queen'? So you get used to it since I want you by my side when I rule."

"Bold of you to assume I'll agree," I murmured.

"I mean, we already fucked each other's brains out, I'm just saying--"

"Mingi!"

We laughed out loud, and we laughed even harder when all we heard from outside the door were:

'Ha! Woo, you fucking owe me $50, I told you they'll make up!'

'Yeah, but the bet was if they make up before fucking, San!'

'I don't give a fuck. Hwa, you owe me too!'

'Me?! That was Yeosang!'

"Boss!"

I was startled when Mingi suddenly covered my whole naked body with the blanket protectively. Somebody just came through the door without knocking.

"Choi Jongho," Mingi seethed, shaking in anger. "It better be good or I swear I will shoot you on the spot."

"Ah," I heard our lovely driver fumble by the door. "Well, Hongjoong saw somebody steal the car in the garage."

Mingi sighed loudly. "Which one?"

"The white one."

"Well, did they break your legs first?"

"What?"

"I said," Mingi inhaled sharply. "Did they break your legs first?"

I stroked Mingi's thighs to calm him down. Though it turned me on to see him mad - sue me, he was hot - I liked Jongho and I don't want to see him dead yet.

"No," Jongho replied.

"So go and fucking chase it down, then!" Mingi howled. "Did you really have to go to me for that? Get the hell out of my room, out!"

"Hey, this is my house!" I heard Yunho shout from a distance.

"That I gave you!" Mingi screamed back.

I couldn't stop the laughter that erupted from my throat. I suppose it wouldn't be too bad trying to get along with everyone and see where this journey takes us. When Jongho shut the door, I peeked out from the blanket to find Mingi already staring at me.

"So," Mingi cleared his throat. "What now?"

I attempted to stifle a grin, but I failed. "Luckily for you, I like having power as well."

"Good," he beamed. I was in awe, where was the rugged and brusque man I met on the train station?

He bought out documents from the bedside table and began writing on it. "I just have to write your name in the official document so the enemy does not touch you," he explained when he saw me look at him curiously.

"They're eventually going to find out about you," he continued. "You have an English name, love?"

"Why?" I asked.

"For overseas," he shrugged. "Our operations extend out there, believe it or not."

I looked at him apprehensively. When Mingi saw me hesitate, he spoke up. "We'll take it one step at a time, okay?" he tenderly said. "I know this is a lot of change, but I promise you, nobody will hurt you. Hurting you will equate to hurting me as well. Any family I should know of?"

My heart swelled incredibly so. I was scared, terrified even, but I had a good feeling about him and everything that will come next.

"No," I smiled sadly. "I'm an orphan. And it's Rinoa."

He stopped in his tracks and looked up to meet my eyes. "You're very strong," he said with a small smile. "You have me and the boys now, no more worrying alone, okay? Put down your college information too, I'll pay for it from now on."

My eyes widened. "You don't have to," I whispered. "I've been managing on my own for years now."

"I know, love, but part of being mine is letting me take care of you. Let me take this burden off of your shoulders, okay?"

I wanted to tear up. I was confused, but felt very happy. "I hope you don't let me down," I whispered. " Or I'm going to beat you up," I grinned afterwards.

Mingi grinned back, kissing my hands tenderly. "I promise I'll give you everything and make you happy, and I'm sorry for all the stuff I put you through."

"No more lies?" I pointed out.

Mingi shook his head. "No more lies."

"So what's your English name too?"

Mingi chuckled. "I won't lie," he smirked. "But I never said I won't ask for some sort of payment."

I rolled my eyes and kissed him on the cheeks. His eyes widened in response. "That was fast," he laughed. "Look at you already wanting to know things about myself."

"Glad to know you're still the cocky man I met," I laughed. "Would've been weird if you just suddenly changed."

I looked at him expectantly with a cheeky smile. He laughed out loud before responding. "It's Stellan.”

"It suits you," I commented.

We stared at each other, just taking in the other person. Little by little, we'll get to each other, and it starts right here, and right now. "Come here," he began

He lifted me up to put me on his lap so I could straddle him and pulled me towards him until our lips danced in a game of truce.

I fell into his rhythm naturally as his arms wrapped around me and held me lovingly. I had found my lover with Mingi, and I had fallen in love with him.

#ateez #ateez smut #kpop smut #mingi smut #mingi x reader #ateez hard hours #song mingi #ateez one #ateez scenarios #mingi fluff #ateez imagines #ateez x reader #ateez fanfic #ateez au #ateez fic #ateez x y/n #atz #atiny

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astrobydalia · 2 months ago

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September Observations

This post has a TW I do not allow the repost on any others platform

Something I forgot to mention in this post about 8th house synastry!! I've noticed for some reason this overlay tends to manifest more positively when the house person already has 8th house placements in their natal chart (not a guarantee tho). I feel like its because this makes the house person be more naturally in their power and the planet person no longer feels like they can have control over the house person. In these cases instead of envy the planet person feels admiration and "positive" obsession over the house person like "Im obsessed with you, queen!🥰😍🤩" kinda vibe

If Libra Moons didn’t have the ability to detach fast they could easily pass as water moons 100%. They are such hopeless romantics and love having someone to love be that friends or partners. And yes they can be codependent but only to an extent imo. I’ve seen Libra Moons actually detach surprisingly fast specially if they feel like you don’t match their energy

Im sorry but Libra Suns are not people you can count on imo. They have this very elitist/opportunistic mindset when it comes to people. They treat people based on some kind of unspoken social hierarchy they have in their minds like how successful or intelligent or interesting you appear to be for example. They'll be loyal for as long as they see benefit from associating themselves with you, otherwise they'll be distant, elusive and flighty af. Socially they appear to be super chill but they aren’t like at all, they’re very passive-aggressive and extremely judgmental of others

If you have Venusian MC/10th house (Libra or Taurus MC/10th or Venus in the 10th house), I've noticed people care what you think of them and really feel the need to make a good impression on you, specially the sex you're attracted to romantically. This placement makes people feel like your love and affection is a privilege to have, that’s why a lot of trophy wives have venusian 10th house/MC

Jupiterians (Pisces/Sagittarius but specially Sagittarius placements) are just the best people to be around tbh. Even when they have other toxic placements/energies in their charts, I’ve noticed they are ultimately all about the ✨vibes✨. They detach from negativity quite fast and avoid getting too deep into drama and controversy cause really all they want is to chill and have fun. The “no worries, bro” kinda people. The negative side of this tho is they tend to turn a blind eye when they get called out on their own issues and/or have a tendency to be dismissive when it’s time to take things seriously

^^^You’d say Venusians relate to this peaceful description too but tbh I didn’t include them cause Venusians tend to have a lot of repressed shit and are secretly all about drama (but watching it go down from afar tho)

I’ve noticed water mercury tend to be more diplomatic and charming with their words, the way they speak about things tends to be more soothing yet nebulous/confusing/cryptic. However earth mercuries are more direct and critical which makes them more prone to openly talking shit LMAO

There's a lot of posts victimizing and romanticizing Lilith in the 1st house/conjunct the ASC but I've seen this placement a lot in bullies and genuinely fraudulent people?? I've seen Lilith energy is commonly prominent in the charts of criminals too. Like idk why people act like the hate Lilith gets is ALWAYS unjustified 💀 They can truly be really dark and shady individuals that’s literally what Lilith signifies (this does not apply to everyone of courseeeeee)

Furthermore, I'm sorry to say this but prominent Lilith natives have a habit of living too much in the victim mindset and constantly make everyone else the problem as a way to justify their shitty behaviors

What I’ve noticed with Lilith natives who are not sketchy people (so just normal decent individuals) is that they have huge self-destructive and self-derogatory tendencies. They tend to become very cynical of the world, lose hope in their own value and humiliate themselves behaving in ways that are rebellious to them but make other people think the native has no self-respect

Libra/7th house Lilith tend to assume the worst in others. Envy placement. They struggle finding genuine and healthy relationships

I've noticed MC ruler in the 12th house is common in the charts of sex workers since 12th house is related to bed pleasures, secret affairs, etc

The sign that actually behaves like a child irl is Gemini. That’s why I've noticed Gemini placements always want to be the 'cool and fun parent' just like Phil Dunphy

TW: mentions of c**** abuse and s******.

I've noticed Cancer energy (Leo too but mostly cancer) is very common in the charts of p*dos, gr**mers and s*xual predators. No placement will determine someone being this way!!!

Chiron in the 1st house/conjunct the ASC/Harshly aspecting chart ruler is common in the charts of people who have or have tried to commit s******

End of TW

An underrated god complex indicator is Sun-Mercury conjunction. I can't stress enough how much these people's ego revolve around their intellect. Their entire personality to them is being the smartest person in the room

When it comes to pride and ego (Sun) fixed and mutable suns are the most likely to have a superiority complex

Mutable Suns take the most pride on their own knowledge and judgment, deeply believe they know better or have most if not all the answers. They have a tendency to often dismiss, correct or contradict others

Fixed Suns take pride in their own ‘essence’ if that make sense. They LOVE the idea of being special and irreplaceable. Feeling like there’s something intrinsically unique about them

Cardinal Suns are okay tbh. They can have other negatives but when it comes to ego theirs is usually pretty balanced I noticed. They usually take pride in their ability to level-up and improve themselves which often makes them rather competitive or in extreme cases have this heavily predatory mindset when it comes to what they want

This will not be accurate for everyone of course but when it comes to future children if you have Water/Earth moon you are most likely to have girls whereas if you have Air/Fire moon you're more most likely to have boys

Air Venus people are the most open-minded when it comes to taste in general. I've noticed they're the type to enjoy almost every music and movie genre, they can appreciate different aesthetics.... They're also the most likely to date outside their race I've seen cause they can really find beauty in all sort of features as long as it looks overall good/attractive to them. It's not that they don't have preferences, but they're type be open to being impressed and mentally stimulated

EARTH and Fire Venus people are the most selective when it comes to their taste. They know exactly what they want and like. In the case of earth Venus this can be to the point of strong reluctance to try new things. Fire Venus appear open minded cause they have this attitude of trying everything once but the usually have a very hard-set type of things they will actually commit to

Water Venus people aren't that open about their tastes. They hide or repress them cause they really tend to be into obscure or hidden stuff. If you ask them what they like, they'll give you an evasive and generic answer, specially if it's in the context of small talk

I've noticed Capricorn and Scorpio Moons have an innate understanding of the uglier sides of human nature which is what makes them pretty cynical (scorpio) and pessimistic (cap). They are hyper-aware of how most people can be bought and corrupted. This makes them AMAZING business people tho.

Aries ASC natives embody the active, wild and spontaneous stereotype more than the other aries placements. They come across as pretty chill at first but there's actually very little they won't dare to do, they love adventures

I've noticed Venusians can do really good in anything related to sales or business counseling, because they are good at estimating and promoting the value of things

I know we relate Neptune to otherworldly and glamorous vibe but all the people that I've met who made me go "wow, girl, you don't feel real" were people who had air signs in their big 3. They’re not real people, they’re concepts, I swear that’s the vibe they give me💀💀

Also, air signs in the big 3 is an underrated fame/success indicator imo. Nowadays networking is everything in order to succeed and these natives naturally attract popularity and connections SO easily. They effortlessly use their charm and likeness to gain opportunities

I once saw an observation that said Gemini risings give off dumb blonde energy and Im here to confirm it’s true, specially when Mercury is also in an air sign. This happens cause they're up in their minds all the time but this makes them appear VERY disconnected from their environment so they really just be looking like this 24/7 😀😃😄😁😆🙂 and that's why they come across as empty-headed. They also often have this manic pixie dream girl energy which results in people not taking them seriously. This is enhanced when you see that they have a tendency to get talkative about superficial or random topics but their more intelligent or deep thoughts they keep to themselves for some reason.

Taurus Moons actually are actually very very very strategic??? Other earth moons look messy af beside them. They're so grounded that they know exactly what they want, how they wanna get it and they are so sure of themselves they have no issue taking their sweet ass time with it. Every single step they take is so intentional and "organized" if that makes sense, but they pull it off as natural and spontaneous??

Also this is an obvious thing to say but Taurus Moons are so emotionally stable. They work extremely well under pressure, will literally be the calm person admist a chaos or extreme situation. I've seen Cap/Virgo moons getting triggered many times but Taurus moons???? I've known some of them for years and I've never seen them triggered EVER no matter happened which as a water moon that's fucking insane to me 😭💀💀 Like sure depending on their personality they can be more or less expressive of their feelings but its always on their own terms, they don't let other people or situations just get reactions out of them if that makes sense

I've noticed Mercury in the 4th house creates a divided and scattered family. Just like Mercury in the 10th house indicates traveling for work, Mercury in the 4th indicates traveling because of your family. The people I've seen with this placement have all of their family members scattered around the world living completely different lives

Sun-Neptune harsh aspects are very impressionable people and very easily influenced

Also, a lot of people point out Sun-Pluto aspects have like a hidden dark/toxic side to their personality but I've seen it's actually Sun-Neptune that match this description

Libra placements can potentially be very disciplined and do well in demanding and/or serious occupations like corporate, military or athletes since Saturn is exalted in Libra.

Venus in the 1st house can tend to only value the superficially good things in them (lovable, likabale, beautiful, etc) and are more concerned with the image they present rather than building a real personality deep down. This make them ignore or downplay their flaws thus not reacting well to criticism and/or when someone does not like them.

All the men that I’ve met who were actually providers and had this involved father and husband vibes always had VIRGO, taurus and cancer placements

Men with capricorn placements aren’t providers, they’re just controlling af😭😭 They will also be emotionally distant and manipulative af too if they do not have other energies in the chart to balance it out

Honestly water suns (sun in a water house natives too) fascinate me. They just go around life casually hiding who they really are like they don’t have the most intricate personality deep down. All of them have mysterious and intriguing vibes it's not just scorpio!!!

5th house placements (including vertex) will stay behaving like teenagers regardless of their age. The song "forever young" by alphaville really describes them

Neptune in the 1st house/asc are prone to attracting lots and lots of creepy individuals because they have this aura where people project all sorts of delulu and twisted shit on them. Mentally and/or emotionally unwell people feel very attached to these natives unfortunately

Leo MC/10th house really does indicate a career where you're some kind of performer. That’s why many celebrities (specially ACTORS and singers) are Scorpio risings. This can also apply to careers like politics, public speaker, standup comedian, etc. All of these involve some level of fame ofc

Cancer MC/10th house indicates being some kind of creator (cancer=birthing something new, bringing something to life). This a lot of times relate to some art form of course but it can be other things for example a friend of mine has this placement and she works in science and she told me she works in a lab with substances and materials she created herself (idk how it works but you get the idea)

Pisces Suns have a major in gaslighting from the university of never taking responsibility. This can be the case for any unevolved pisces placement but I’ve noticed the lying to your face and twisting reality is much more blatant in Pisces Suns for some reason. They make arguments in such a way that you can tell something of what they’re saying is off but you can’t exactly prove them wrong either so 🤷🏽‍♀️💀

Mercurial placements (Gemini/Virgo) and Venus in the 3rd house may really love wearing rings or lots of bracelets, big watches, etc. Accessories that bring attention to the hands essentially

Libra placentas may or may not want to be "liked" but Libra Moon is a placement I've seen is genuinely liked by everyone. They have this calming and loving energy to them. Celebrities with this placement are generally unproblematic (Anne Hathaway, Emma Stone) or if they are problematic they can easily recover from backlash (Ariana Grande, Leo DiCaprio)

#astrology #astro #astro observations #astro notes #zodiac #birth chart #astrobydalia #astrology observations #astro community

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feverdreamjohnny · 1 month ago

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"Why There Will Never Be a Peeb Adventures" otherwise known as "The Peeb Adventures Pre-Mortem"

Since 2020, I've made a good chunk of games. Hell, even though I've been doing this for 10 years to date, the majority of my progress as a creative began over the course of this 4 year period.

Out of all the games I've made - or otherwise had a hand in - there is only one that's apparently struck a chord so deeply with people that to this day I still get messages and comments asking when it will come out.

The title of this post already explains the whole deal so I'm not gonna be dramatic about it right here. As per usual, I will instead get heart-clutchingly dramatic about the subject by the end of this story.

I felt the idea of a "Pre-Mortem" might be a fun way to talk about games that will never be finished. Maybe I'll make more of these down the line for other old games, who knows.

"The Incredibly True Origins of Peeb Adventures" or "Wow! I Hate It!"

Peeb Adventures began as a gift game for my long-time friend Aaron. It was simple, mostly functioning as a fun little gag that stemmed from a 3D model I made of a character he doodled during a drawpile session. I gave Peeb a grapple hook just because I wanted to experiment with swinging mechanics and felt the gag gift was a great space to toy around in without having to actually ask myself how on earth I'd want to structure a game around a grappling hook. Foreshadowing!

Eventually, the gag gift did that classic thing all developers have experienced before where your game spirals out of control and grows into a hideous monster, and what started as a fairly abstract grappling toy convergently evolved into that dreaded state we call a "3D Mascot Platformer."

I made a very short demo in the summer of 2020. It went absolutely nowhere, and after an idol of mine caught wind and asked to play it (before sending about 3 paragraphs of feedback suggesting how to improve what was, in my view, a trainwreck of baby blocks stacked on top of eachother), I shelved the project.

"The Absolutely Tremendulous HPS1 Adventure of Peeb" or "My Friend Jam Suggested I Revive the Project and So I Did"

Shortly after Peeb was shelved for the first time, I joined a community of game developers called Haunted PS1. For those not in the know, HPS1 was essentially the nexus point for "retro horror games" in the indie sphere, and a lot of the resulting deluge (non-perjorative) on itch.io can find its roots in this community.

HPS1 was a good place. Lots of nice, talented people willing to tolerate the kind of mindless riffing I often do in voice calls, anyway. I made a decent chunk of friends there, some of which I'm still quite close to, even today.

HPS1 has this tradition called the HPS1 Demo Disc that began in 2020, and with the year coming to its end, there was talk of a new one set to arrive in spring 2021.

Unlike the first demodisc, however, 2021's disc required you to submit a game in-progress to a panel of judges. They'd then give their yay-or-nay, and you were either in or out.

One day, I was musing over the fact that I didn't really have anything to submit so I would likely have to sit out of 2021's disc. My friend, Jam, who you might know as the developer of the Heilwald Loophole (or Beton Brutal) suggested I consider reviving Peeb Adventures as my submission to the demo disc.

Why did I follow through on this? I don't know. It's funny to think a scenario this simple was the launch point for my career.

Over the next 6 months, I worked on turning the absolutely horrendous gag game into... Something still kinda trite but at least playable. I had some help from my longtime teammate drurylain, my longtime friend Aaron (the creator of Peeb's original design), and my longtime spiritual uncle Tim, and with our powers combined... A new kind of demo experience where you don't do anything of particular note besides swinging around was born.

Also quite important: the very same drawpile session that spawned Peeb also spawned Orbo, who would also make his own appearance in Peeb Adventures as a recurring side character (since I felt like Peeb needed a friend).

"Go! Incredible Friendship Unites in the Gameosphere! Peeb and Orbo are Born!" or "Peeb Adventures: Coming Never"

So the demo for Peeb Adventures was finished early March 2021, and the demo disc went live on itch.io on the 25th of the month.

The demo disc then proceeded to do a backflip and pick up a LOT of traction online. Which then meant Peeb itself was catching little bits of the traction in its mouth and smacking its lips.

I went from "guy who makes games for nobody" to "guy who makes games for that one very specific brand of teen on twitter who loves the object head show", and I was riding high.

Fanart poured in. People showed a lot of love. I was dazzled by it all, really.

Despite the love for the game and the potential on hand, progress was stagnant. My group of friends and I all got together in a google doc and wrote an entire planning bible for the game. Game mechanics, story beats, twists and turns, the whole thing. Despite having the structure lined up, I had other ambitions and began working on a multiplayer deathmatch game that quickly overtook my work schedule.

Peeb sat on the backburner, but at the time I still wanted to finish it one day. My main excuse was "well, I just need more money! If I'm going to work on this game it's gonna need more than one fulltime person and I can't just ask people to work for free!" That excuse worked on me for a while.

"I Don't Think I Want to Play With You Anymore Peeb!" or "There's Such a Thing as Too Much Love"

A while had passed at this point. My ambitions hadn't just grown, they'd completely shifted. Before long, I found myself working on yet another demo for the 2022 HPS1 Demo Disc, "The Spectral Mall."

Nowhere, MI wasn't just some random toy for me, but the culmination of all my love into one game. Despite its silly demeanor, the game was a product of a lot of pain, and even now I still desperately want to finish it. Except I have to make money to live, so... Oops!

Anyhow, there was a shift in demeanor for me during 2022. You have Peeb, a game that I made on a whim as kind of a joke with friends, and you have Nowhere, MI, a game that meant the world to me during really dark times.

And you know what? There were a lot of people that wanted Peeb. People that never stopped asking me about it.

I realized while working on Nowhere that I didn't really know what I would even do if I ever had the chance to work on the full Peeb Adventures. Not only did I find the nagging kind of annoying, Peeb was also something I couldn't really... Wrap my head around?

It occurred to me that Peeb wasn't really "my" game anymore, it was "his" game. The old Johnny.

I'd changed a lot since the game had come out in early 2021. In a year and a half my world got flipped upside down, and... I don't know, Nowhere was way more reflective of who I was now. Sure the humor was still pretty asinine, but there was a shift. It was hard to picture the "Peeb Adventures" people were actually looking forward to when my own sensibilities had drifted so far.

When the Nowhere demo came out along with Spectral Mall, it did... Alright? People liked it, but it wasn't the same as Peeb's release. Hell, even in Nowhere's release there were people pushing it aside to ask the same question they'd been asking every week leading up to it. "When is Peeb Adventures coming out?"

"Goodbye Peeb!"

It was increasingly harder and harder to not look back at Peeb and kind of hate it. It was rough in every respect, and yet it whenever I met people who'd heard of me online, they always cited Peeb Adventures.

Strangers continue to ask me when it's coming out. On rare occasion I'll get someone asking about Nowhere and I'll feel a bit excited anyone else cares about that game besides me and maybe my friends, but most of the time people just ask about Peeb.

To finally answer this question I've been asked for nearly 4 years: There will probably never be a Peeb Adventures.

"Goodbye Johnny."

I like to believe one of the reasons people are attracted to my body of work is because I make games to reach out to other people. That's probably not the real reason, but it's nice to play pretend and imagine your work has more significance than just "ha ha boner."

I put a lot of myself in my games and I rarely hold back, even if an idea is insanely stupid or strange. The result usually becomes something more like a scrapbook than a game.

It's hard to try and expand on a game like Peeb when the Johnny who made it isn't really with us anymore. If I worked on Peeb now, you'd get some kind of irregular frankenstein that'd never be as exciting as the original vision was.

By the time I get around to Nowhere again, am I still going to be this Johnny? Or will the next Johnny look back at Nowhere the same way I look at Peeb now? Who knows.

Anyway, look forward to more games from me and my friends. Even if it's not Peeb Adventures, it'll still be us.

#premortem #peeb adventures

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19catsncounting · 3 months ago

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I Got Really Into Anti/Proship Discourse And Read +30 Academic Studies - My Findings

(It’s a Yapfest but the whole post is a very long essay and study on morality and fiction and children’s safety and rape culture with a fuckton of freely accessible academic articles and resources on the subject, and I want to talk to other people about it. For a shorter abstract with all the articles and more easily ignored yapping, see my shiny new Carrd:)

It’s been a little shocking lately to have certain discussions with some parts of fandom. I spoke about shipping/harassment and how that contributes to the death of fandom on TikTok assuming that younger folks are just really, really intense about preventing sexual violence, but the more I saw the words “morally wrong” and “disgusting” and “addiction,” the more I thought about this guy-

That’s Jerry Falwell, and I fucking hate this dead guy. You see, Jerry Falwell was a preacher who hated porn, feminism, and homosexuality. And I'm seeing his rhetoric and reworked quotes a lot.

Jerry would say stuff like:

“Pornography hurts anyone who reads it - garbage in, garbage out.”

“Someone must not be afraid to say ‘moral perversion is wrong.’ If we do not act now, homosexuals will ‘own’ America!”

Jerry wanted people to believe that it’s possible to see so much sexual content that it warps your sexuality, because he was gay and wanted to think that was due to thinking about gay sex too much. Jerry did not have a lot of evidence to prove that homosexuality was harmful, so he relied heavily on how “morally distasteful” it seemed to be to suburban Americans.

I spent the majority of my teen years arguing against Jerry’s rhetoric for the right to live as a lesbian online, and I never thought I’d see morality rhetoric in people I’m otherwise very politically aligned with. And I definitely never thought fandom of all things, in all its beautiful subversive glory, would seriously start advocating for censorship, anti-porn, and to consume fanwork with moral purity.

So, I’d like to have a deeper discussion on it, both here on Tumblr and on TikTok, but that does mean checking a few things at the door:

Personal feelings decide your personal life. What you feel is valid for you, not anyone else.

In general, things that do not cause direct and undeniable harm should not be broadly prohibited just because they’re weird or distasteful to the majority of folks. Ex. Loitering does not cause harm and is a tool of systemic oppression.

The discussion of “fictional CSEM” is the most inflammatory fork of this and it is often used to derail these kinds of conversations. This is all I will say on it - the legal status of explicit visual depictions of minors is muddy. In the US, there is just one dude in Utah who pled guilty for possessing explicit lolicon he bought by mail order without also possessing CSEM with real children, and explicit writing about fictional minors has been settled as protected free speech. Dedicated organizations from the NCMEC to Chris Hansen have asked that fictional content is not reported as CSAM as it is not actionable and clogs up finite resources. 90% of NCMEC reports were not actionable last year. There are studies suggesting that virtual CSEM or other non-victim alternatives could reduce actual child harm, but there is need for further research.

We’re all in agreement that untagged NSFW is not cool, and kids deserve kid-only sections of the internet. People who are triggered by or dislike problematic content deserve to be able to not see it. 👍

(I’ve seen the argument that blocking tags/people should not be required - sorry, PTSD still requires that you manage your triggers, up to and including swearing off platforms just as I have sworn off bars/soap brands/etc to avoid my triggers.)

I have found a lot of accessible and free articles and studies that I will link throughout so that we can discuss the fact-based reasoning, in an effort to have a civil conversation.

(Also because we are not flat earthers, we are Fandom, and if we’re going to be annoying little shitheels in an “Um Actually” contest, we’re going to have the sources to back it up.)

Minors and Explicit Material

I’m not supporting minors engaging with explicit material. I have such little interest in the subject that I’m not even going to bring in articles, but you can feel free to. I personally engaged with explicit material as a preteen of my own free will and did not find it to be harmful, and the majority of people throughout human history have been exposed to explicit material at an early age with varying degrees of harm. There are undeniable legal and harm-driven differences between a 12 year old girl looking at Hustler on her own, a 14 year old boy being sent nudes from a grown woman, and a 6 year old viewing PornHub. (And I think the guardians of that 6 year old should be charged with grooming just like the woman, tbh.)

Personal Disclaimer

I’m an adult survivor of CSA and incest. I’m a happily married adult. I don’t personally like lolicon/shotacon/kodocon. I don’t like kids. I don’t like teens. I’m personally not attracted to underage fictional characters. I have family, the idea of fucking any of them makes me want to throw up and die, so I don’t write or read RPF of my family.

I am really, really fucking intense about preventing sexual violence, supporting survivors, and fandom, which is where this all comes from.

I read and love problematic fiction - my favorites are ASOIAF, Lolita, and VC Andrews. The most “problematic” thing I’ve personally written are Lucifer/Michael fics from Supernatural back in 2012. They are “brothers” in CW Christ, not blood. They do not have any blood.

Gen Z and Online Grooming

In 2002, a survey of 1500 minors from 10-17 found that 4% had been solicited for sexual purposes by an adult online.

In 2023, that number increased to 20%.

While the linked 2023 Thorn report suggests that the vast majority of these inappropriate interactions happened on platforms that allow for interpersonal communication, which by and large minors were greatly discouraged from and had less access to in the early 2000’s, a trauma-informed approach does not allow for blame to fall on the children. The guardians of those children have monumentally failed to restrict and educate before giving children the means to access those platforms.

It is my uncited but personal opinion that the increased rate of grooming, as well as an increased interest in combating rape culture, has led to well-intentioned individuals to become digital vigilantes attacking those who they hold responsible for their traumatic experiences in a search for catharsis and justice denied for themselves as well as a desire to make the internet safer for other children, whom they are increasingly aware are entering online spaces unsupervised at distressingly young ages.

Is harassment and bullying bad for perpetrators of it?

Before we get into how ship-related hate campaigns do not affect predation or combat rape culture, we should acknowledge that it’s actually pretty harmful for the people who cyberbully. Not just in the legal/social consequences, but people who participate in cyberbullying and cyberhate campaigns have higher rates of depression, estrangement from their parents, self-effacing habits, social anxiety, lower empathy, and so forth.

One study suggests that the treatment and prohibitive for cyberbullying, which contributes to a culture of cyberhate and a lower likelihood to report or confront other incidents of harassment or toxicity online, can be combatted with media competency to increase empathy along with other important life skills.

Some Common Pro-Censorship Myths

“Pornography is Addictive/Consumption of Pornography Leads to Increasingly Hardcore Imagery And Ultimately Real-World Violence” - The American Psychological Association does not recognize Porn Addiction as real and the DSM-5 does not classify it as an addiction. Additionally, many methods used in articles claiming that porn is addictive or causes users to seek out more hardcore material were flawed or biased. There is actually some evidence that compulsive porn use, the closest you can get to a porn addiction diagnosis, is associated with shame and the user’s belief that pornography is morally wrong, which sex-negative attitudes encourage.

“Jaws caused shark culling” - That's unfortunately a simplification that ignores a LOT of surrounding context. WW2’s modern naval battles with an increase of ship sinkings and thus contact with sharks prompted the invention and use of shark repellant by aviators and sailors in the 1940’s. The most deadly and famous shark attack of all time was the USS Indianapolis sinking in 1945, which led to 12-150 deaths. The 1974 book Jaws by Peter Benchley, which was the entire basis of the movie, was inspired by One Fucking Dude who started shark hunting tours and overall seemed to have a really immaculate vibe. The interstate highways that finished in the 1950’s increased beach tourism in the 60’s and onwards, inspiring the American surf culture, further increasing the cultural desire to purge sharks for the new swath of beachgoers and their fondness for using surfboards which make them look like seals to sharks. Additionally, 1975’s Jaws inspired a huge desire for education about sharks, and the relationship between problematic media and education will be the core of this yapperoni pizza.

“The Slendermen Killings/Other Fiction Inspired Crimes” - The ACLU states that “There is no evidence that fiction has ever driven a sane person to violence.” Inspired crimes are indeed no less tragic, and thankfully rare, but people who suffer from inability to discern reality and fiction do not necessarily need fiction to commit violence. The “Son of Sam” murder spree was not inspired by a book or movie, but instead Berkowitz’ auditory hallucinations.

“Violent videogames DO cause violence” - After a great deal of funding and study, the American Psychological Association has concluded that teens and younger may have increased feelings of aggression and not necessarily physically violent outbursts as a direct effect, but older teens and young adults do not encounter statistically meaningful rates of aggression.

“Your brain can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality” - Factually incorrect. Children as young as 5 years old can tell the difference, and they can even be more suspicious about “facts” that come from sources they know also host fiction, such as TV shows.

“This stuff shouldn’t be online because it can be used to groom a child” - While I could not find specific statistics on how often pornography is used to desensitize child victims, nor how often that is specifically used in online grooming, and especially not how much of that pornography is made from fictional characters - out of a mixed group of convicted offenders with adult and child victims, 55% of offenders used pornography to manipulate their victim. I would never refute that explicit fanart or fanfic could be used to desensitize a child, but that is by far not the only tool (asking about sexual experiences/identity, making jokes, etc is extremely common grooming behavior), and there is no evidence to suggest that it is used to a statistically significant degree. In my own anecdotal experience, normal vanilla legal pornography is used with far greater prevalence, and there isn’t a similar movement to shame its production for that possibility. Nor should the creators of any material, pornographic or otherwise, share blame in the actions of a predator.

The Fiction Affects Reality Carrd

(No hate to the person who made it, in fact I give props to them for trying to find unbiased sources, I just want to point out that their interpretations of their articles are kinda flawed and one of their studies is a kind of a perfect example on small and culturally biased samples.)

Reading Fiction Impacts Aggressive Behavior - (I cannot access the full study but this article is the primary source used in the Carrd and it goes into detail) - A study showed that 67 university students were more annoyed with a loud buzzer after reading a short story about a physical fight between roommates compared to a story with nonviolent revenge. However, this study was conducted at Brigham Young University, the same campus where we got a whole video series of hot ethical takes like “I’d rather shoot a kitten than drink coffee,” so uh. Yeah. Kind of a prime example on why it’s important to have large and culturally varied sampling. (Another BYU study with 137 BYU students being odd about moral ambiguity in fiction, just because I’m starting to add Dr. Sarah M. Coyne to my list of “Sarah’s That I Dislike.”)

Your Brain on Fiction - a NYT article that describes Theory of the Mind and how fMRIs captured how readers’ minds would light up centers of muscle control when reading sentences like “Peter kicked.” The quote “The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated” is speaking of motor functions. Emotional centers of the brain were not included in the study.

How Fiction Changes Your World - a Boston Globe article that actually describes how people who read more fiction are more empathetic and tend to believe in a just world. It does not state that the empathy a reader feels for fictional characters extends to corrupting their moral compass. In fact, there’s such a thing as a “fictive license” to explore taboo themes more thoroughly because it is not real - 123 participants were interviewed after watching two actors play the part of detective and murderer being interviewed, and participants who were told it was fake had more varied and inquisitive responses.

The Social Impact of Books - Actually reuses the previous study about the just world, so point remains. Empathy is understanding, not mirroring.

Is Problematic Fiction Good for Survivors of Trauma?

It absolutely depends on the individual.

Writing expressively about traumatic experiences has been shown to be effective to reduce depression, or more effective in reducing dysphoria and anxiety than talking to fellow survivors, and Written Exposure Therapy is broadly prescribed to survivors of trauma, with one study centering on car crash survivors finding that WET resolved their PTSD symptoms and continued to be effective after a year.

In this study, which sadly is not available online but it is too important to leave out completely, survivors of CSA were given fictional novels about CSA and in closely reading and analyzing those stories, were able to understand their own experiences and were indeed drawn to write about their own experiences as well.

Engaging in problematic fiction, like all fiction, allows for consent as well as control. If at any point a survivor does not feel in control or wishes to stop, they can at that instant. They can even rewrite their narratives and take control of their story in fictionalizing and changing the account. They can even try to understand what their abuser felt through fiction, which is helpful considering that the vast majority of survivors had a relationship that had been positive and even loving with their abusers at times.

Is Problematic Fiction Good for Everyone Else?

It again depends on the individual.

Antis might be a little right that most people don't want to read problematic stories. In a study exploring whether fiction can corrode morals, 83% of study participants stated that they would prefer not to read a short story justifying baby murder if they had the choice, even if that exploration isn’t inherently harmful.

This very small sample study of 13 participants discussed how young women interpreted sexual themes in writing, including explicit fanfiction, and how that was beneficial and informative to explore sexual desire and examine healthy and unhealthy relationships in a safe and controlled environment.

This meta-analysis further discusses how problematic and sexual themes in YA literature are useful to illustrate what sexual violence looks like, and begin educational conversations through those depictions to break down harmful myths such as “if she didn’t scream, she wanted it.”

Empowered by the “Fictive License” previously cited, problematic fiction can be beneficial for anyone who desires and is capable of consuming and analyzing it.

This study analyzing abusive aspects of three films - Beauty and the Beast, Twilight, and 50 Shades of Gray - concluded that these abusive themes should be discussed to increase recognition and awareness, not censored based on those problematic themes.

This study of 53 women were asked to read different versions of fictional intimate partner violence flags, or “toxic behavior” like surveillance, control, etc. In every version of the story, whether the female or male had those behaviors either courting or committed, the women recognized the behavior as wrong.

Another study that reading allows for the moral laboratory to explore morality in fiction without decisive impact to corroding moral permissibility.

Is There Ever Any Point Where Fictional Interests Definitively Speak On Someone’s Morality?

In short - not really. Loving Jason Vorhees does not put you at risk of murdering campers as long as you know he’s not real. Writing Wincest does not mean you look forward to family reunions, as long as you know incest isn’t okay in the real world. The real world, where real people are harmed, is where you find the measure of someone’s character.

This Psychology Today article is the best source I could find for quotes from a fantastic book ‘Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head? The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies’ by Brett Kahr regarding taboo sexual fantasies and how they are not only common, but not inherently harmful.

There are people who enjoy problematic media in an entirely nonsexual sense, of course. I myself don’t get off on problematic media - I think it’s just interesting to explore different experiences, and I think that can be revolutionary.

Additionally, fantasies in general have almost always been in the vein of “things you don’t want to really happen in reality.” In a study of 351 asexuals, more than half reported that they fantasize about having sex, but that doesn’t mean that they actually want to. You can fantasize about dating Billie Eilish - it doesn’t mean that you’d be happy dealing with celebrity culture.

(I personally fantasize about the internet being just for adults, but in practice I think that would be incredibly harmful and isolating for at-risk youth and LGBTQ teens) Fantasies always pluck out only the bits of reality that you want to engage with.

If You Get Off On Fictional Kids, You’re Attracted to Something About Them Being Kids

Not inherently, surprisingly. Wearing a schoolgirl uniform is a pretty common roleplay, and it’s not meant to “fool” the participants into thinking they’re indulging in pedophilia. There’s a wealth of emotional and sexual nuance in that specific kink - innocence and virginity play, tilted power dynamics in ‘scolding’ the uniform wearer for dress code violations, even the concept of a sexually provocative “teenager” can be played with without shame, because the world of fetish and fantasy is separated from condonable actions for the vast, vast majority of adults. (The only study I could find on this is this small study of 100 white guys found on Facebook, which itself states it is not definitive, found that while there might be correlation between attraction to children and interest in schoolgirl uniforms, there is no proof of causation. AKA, the rectangular pedophile might indeed like square schoolgirl uniforms, but not everyone - in fact, the majority at nearly 60% in this very survey - that likes square schoolgirl uniforms is a rectangular pedophile.)

Even sexual age play between adults is not indicative of pedophilia because it exists in a setting between two adults who fully understand that the mechanics are completely fake, allowing the power dynamics that would be abusive between an adult and child to be ethically explored.

I don’t have an official-looking study to cite, but I have asked people who like content about underage fictional characters why they do so. Overwhelmingly, a lot of the ones who like underage age gaps like the fantasy of an older and more experienced character taking a younger one under their wing, to have the opportunity to commit violent and blatantly objectifying harm and yet try to create what inevitably does not truly pass as consent, but seems near enough to the characters. Some think that the characters themselves have an interesting chemistry. Some read underage fic and still imagine the characters as adults. Some like to explore the feelings of shame that the older character must feel and how they mentally compartmentalize to go forward with the relationship, and how the younger character found themself in that vulnerable position - which is exploring a harmful situation through fiction to understand how it could play out in real life.

People who like fictional incest like exploring the shameful components of that taboo relationship - and I have seen a lot of works that compare how bad incest could be to other harms, like the Gravecest route in a game with parental cannibalism. And then there are folks who like analyzing the codependency of having one person fulfill every social need - family, friend, lover, AKA Wincest.

What makes a predator if it’s not just sexual attraction?

90% of CSA survivors know their abuser, discrediting the still-entirely-too-popular Stranger Danger myth. And shockingly, only 50% of abusers are pedophiles.

That means 50% of child molesters do not have sexual interest in children because they are children, but they victimized children because they are more accessible in lieu of adult partners, with increased rates of incest.

While I could not find a specific study on the relation between dehumanization/objectification of child victims and child molesters (and if you find one, please send it to me!), this study speaks on dehumanization as a precursor to adult sexual violence.

This study, conducted on convicted child molesters in prison, showed that child molesters tend to fantasize about children while in a negative mood, further contributing to the theory that child victims are dehumanized prior to abuse.

This very small sample study found that in a mixed sample of internet only/contact crime/mixed offenders, offenders who had contact with children had lower rates of fantasizing about children.

In short, half the time a child predator is someone who wants to offend against a child regardless of attraction to the fact they are a child.

Resources To Recognize Grooming/Abuse Victims/Predators

I would absolutely be remiss to not share my collection of resources to help detect signs of abuse/grooming as well as warning signs of a predator who may be targeting elders/women/teens/children:

Darkness 2 Light is a fantastic resource overall, this page details stages and signs of grooming.

RAINN personally helped me through my PTSD journey, and this article detailing the signs of sexual trauma in teenagers is thorough and non-judgemental

Signs of abuse as well as warning signs of predation that does not use gendered language nor play into the Stranger Danger myth.

Education, not Censorship

I think a lot of the energy against taboo content among young people still has a lot to do with the desire to end rape culture. The tools that we Millennial Tumblrinas gave you Gen Z kids were snatches of leftist theory, deplatforming, and voting with your dollar, so it’s reasonable to think that removing taboo content like pedophilia, incest, rape fights rape culture.

It doesn’t.

Rape culture is fought by education. Comprehensive sex education, education about consent. Talking about what consent looks like, what sex can look like, what rape can look like.

There should be more taboo content to talk about these things, to show all the shades it can look like. From a violent noncon to fics that aren’t even tagged as dubcon yet still are in shades that are hard to suss out, we should talk about it.

A Non-Empirical Example Of Good Media Analysis and Education to Combat Rape Culture

Let’s use the example of Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen’s relationship in House of the Dragon. Canonically, in both the book and the show, they have a romantic relationship that appears for the most part to be positive (the show being more contentious but I dedicated an aside to Sarah Hess and our beef at the bottom of my Carrd, but feel free to ask how I feel about writing producers with any variation of the name ‘Sarah’) despite an age gap, a sexual relationship that began while Rhaenyra was a minor, and incest - the problematic hat trick if you will.

I have seen anti-Daemyra shippers condemn Daemyra shippers for “Condoning grooming, age gaps, pedophilia, and incest.” Which is not just a broad, inaccurate, and harmful statement, it’s not at all constructive or educational analysis.

It would actually be beneficial to say “Daemon is grooming Rhaenyra as a teenager with gifts, devoted attention that takes advantage of her isolation and vulnerability, frequent nonsexual touches, the extreme desensitization to sexuality in the brothel visit,” etc etc. And even so, it is not useful to say that people cannot still ship the relationship and acknowledge those aspects. They might want to further explore the issues of consent in their dynamic in fiction, they may want to strip away some of them with narrative reimagining. Some might want to ignore the taboos completely and indulge in the fantasy entirely, and some might find the actors hot as hell - AKA, anyone who watches the show.

It’s honestly a little similar to me in how Jerry Falwell would tell his followers not to watch or read or take in any media that dealt with homosexuality unless it was condemning it - even Will & Grace was on Jerry’s shitlist. And so, Jerry’s followers missed out on a lot of media that could have educated them about queerness, could have humanized queer people for them - and that did not make queers go away. Just like ignoring or shutting out media about incest, rape, and other forms of sexual violence doesn’t make those things go away - it just tends to make you less informed, and little less capable of empathy towards people affected by those subjects.

So let’s stop shaming those that ship a complicated dynamic - you get less fanworks exploring those taboos, and less of a discussion overall. You shut down the morality lab of fiction, and to be honest, it’s wet sock behavior.

Some FanFiction Specific Studies

How dubcon fanfiction can flesh out the intricacies and messiness of realistic consent

A review of darkfic written about Harry Potter in 2005 (which, I will personally attest has never been outdone in how profoundly taboo those works were)

Interviews with 11 Self Insert writers who wrote on themes of rape, abuse, control, yandere, etc, and how that was beneficial to some who had experienced sexual violence themselves

Conclusion:

H…holy shit, you actually read all of that?? Congrats dude! That is a lot of time and brain power to dedicate to any one thing!

By the way, I am not really gifted at writing articles or any of that junk, and I tried to make my hyperlexic ass a little more accessible instead of bringing out all the $5 words. I am literally just an autistic who took a couple technical writing classes over a decade ago and really wanted to sort out my thoughts and try to have a platform for discussion. Also, I am really fucking bad at math. I failed two different college level statistics classes twice each. Gun to my head, I could not tell you what a standard deviation is, which is why I worked entirely with the percentages.

And I do want to have a discussion! I would in fact like to not report anyone for sending me gore or death threats or any of that stuff! I don’t think everyone will agree with me, in fact I’m certain that you could find studies that contradict some of mine, and I’d love to discuss them!

I’m sure it will still be tempting to throw around accusations of pedophilia because sometimes, confronting your previously held beliefs is incredibly uncomfortable. If you could not do that, that would be great? I don’t like being compared to someone who profoundly abused me just because I have a different opinion on how to combat rape culture and empower survivors. If you can do that, I’ll do my absolute best to be cheerful and welcoming and respectful as well. 😁

PS - I’m also not really going to be phased if you call me weird or cringe - I am. Always have been. Cringe, weirdness, and autism have made me do and capable of doing some fantastically neat and impressive stuff. But if you try to say something like “proshippers are too yucky and weird to be in fandom” - I’m going to have to refer you to your similarity to Kate Sanders of Lizzy McGuire fame, you “prEpz >:(“ - [My Immortal, legendary author unknown]

#disc horse #fandom discourse #fandom problems #fandom culture #proshipping #anti censorship #anti anti

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rosenotactuallyquartz · 2 months ago

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rose & the humans

(a rant about the fandom, by a bisexual woman who relates to rose)

we all know that rose is a complex character, and some people in the fandom have an issue with that. her pain & trauma is overlooked all while she’s oversimplified by many fans as being either a villain or a completely perfect, happy being.

on some platforms, it gets even worse.

“i like the way human beings play, i like playing along.” — rose, we need to talk

for many steven universe fans, i’ve noticed the immediate interpretation is that rose enjoyed sexual relationships with humans. there’s all kinds of jokes about it, yet there’s actually so much more to that line. unfortunately, people like to sexualize rose’s character before they even attempt to empathize with her.

before greg, rose mainly knew how to connect with gems. gem relationships are different from human relationships; they don’t use the same labels & they don’t follow (nor do they understand) the rules & norms of human relationships. that’s why pearl was okay with rose’s previous human connections. these relationships were shallow, and since there were no labels, pearl + rose could both easily see that their relationship was the most important.

greg was different. so different that amethyst & garnet would talk about how nice he was. he was amethyst’s favourite human. his connection with rose was different, too. & some fans love to mention that, before greg, rose disrespected humans and viewed them as fascinating. however, there’s two sides to this. as a gem, rose was likely a mere fascination to humans too. maybe, some of these humans acted much like the ones in the fandom. sexualizing her before even attempting to understand her.

if greg’s call for mutual respect & his effort to connect was so new to her, it suggests that humans in the past never respected her much, either. it’s frightening to think about. she doesn’t know much about humans, so they could easily be disrespectful without her knowing. she thinks everyone is better than her & has low self esteem, struggling to believe that she deserves someone like pearl, who knows about her past & insecurities & the things she’s ashamed of yet gives her such intense affection & care. even if she did feel discomfort around some humans, she would likely blame herself or assume that it’s the treatment she deserves. even the fact that they didn’t care to get to know her is “a good thing” in rose’s opinion, as she tells greg in this very episode that she’s glad he doesn’t know much about her.

“is this… not how this works?” — rose, we need to talk

some fans claim rose "played" with humans before greg. “everything was a game to her.” because they’re so focused on sexualizing & oversimplifying her character, they miss the vulnerability of that line. playing along. as a gem, rose was incredibly naive. for example, in the 90s, she admitted that it took her awhile to figure out that human babies were the same species as human adults.

on another platform, i’ve noticed more discussions (and, of course, ridiculous jokes) about how she got pregnant instead of why she chose to give up her physical form. while the relationship she had with a man throughout her last four years was undoubtedly important, sometimes it gets validated more than anything else. some even imply that she couldn’t love & she had no redeeming qualities until she met him.

it’s just like the way the fandom treats pearl, claiming that her character development is merely about “getting over rose.” they claim that rose’s redeeming qualities are all from greg “changing her.” they’re complex characters who are so much more than their relationships.

they also don’t want to understand her character. sugar said in end of an era that rose revered others, thinking they were better than her. as a diamond, she hated the salute. when pearl chose to live with rose & make her happy, this meant the world to her. fusing with pearl also meant so much to her, as this was an equal connection. she fell for her & trusted her only after pearl became her true self; opinionated, someone who argued with her. this was the type of connection that she wanted, reciprocating her love for the people she was close to, romantically & platonically. when pearl took her hand, she would interlace their fingers. when she connected with people in any way, she adored them and would treat them like they treated her, assuming that was what they wanted. it’s what worked in the very first connection she made… although their connection was always unlike any other, hence why pearl was alright with rose forming other connections. they also felt the same way about each other. some people are different & their intentions are more confusing. it was easier to just assume humans were treating her as they wanted to be treated.

being abused, isolated, & feeling out of place in her early years, as well as dealing with the pressure of being the leader of the rebellion, made all social interactions difficult. she managed to live comfortably with the crystal gems for thousands of years, and she was able to connect with each of them for different reasons. even then, things weren’t always perfect. she struggled with communication & vulnerability & dishonesty & insecurity & codependency. very common for people who have felt unsafe in their early years. nevertheless, these connections were healing and meaningful to her.

connecting with new people, let alone humans? of course that would be difficult.

some fans sexualize the things she says so that they can’t see her perspective when it comes to issues in relationships. they validate her four year long relationship with a human man and then proceed to invalidate everything else. her trauma, her pain, her feelings, her other relationships.

& of course, he changed her life. he taught her so much about the world she loved. as a bisexual woman who unfortunately has a reddit account, i just find it interesting that people will go so far as to claim that greg was the only person who truly loved rose or had a meaningful connection with her, while her sapphic relationship—one that lasted thousands of years—gets ignored or dismissed as bad. i’ve seen people claim rose is straight, often accompanied by insults toward pearl, calling her “pathetic” or worse. pearl’s love for rose is frequently dismissed as “a weird obsession,” with words like infatuation & devotion used more often than the word love. fans will focus particularly on rose enjoying intimate relationships with human men, despite the thousands of years of romantic & implied sexual attraction between her and pearl.

many people refer to rose as greg’s wife, and not in a shipping sort of way, but because they genuinely believe that they were married. there’s so many arguments about this, all while there’s many people who believe that rose never had any feelings for pearl & they never had a relationship.

interesting, right? it implies that rose knew so much more about humanity & that her relationship with this human completely followed the norms of human relationships. it invalidates her other relationship that lasted for thousands of years, despite the fact that pearl + rose is canonically requited, confirmed by creators & incredibly evident, while rose + greg is canonically unmarried, confirmed in gem harvest.

what’s also troubling is the reluctance to acknowledge greg’s flaws or the complexities in his relationship with rose, while pearl’s flaws & her issues with rose are focused on (and for my lovely mutuals who love greg & his relationship, please know that this is not hate, i’ve explained a bit more about my opinion here). when pearl shows traits that resemble a stereotypical pearl from homeworld, she’s labeled a weak follower. when she shows strong emotions, she’s labeled as bad. when she’s expressive & opinionated, the significant growth she underwent to be able to openly express these aspects of her personality often go unnoticed.

when pearl’s relationship with rose seems too difficult for people to analyze, they dismiss it with the word “programming,” failing to grasp pearl’s character development and growth.

it’s interesting how sapphic characters receive so little empathy, while the flaws of male characters are often ignored, praised, or turned into ridiculous jokes on social media.

it’s not just him—there’s the mention of the “men that would come into her life now and again,” as pearl describes in mr. greg. people heard this line & took the chance to call rose disrespectful names, claiming she “kissed everyone.” they didn’t consider rose from a gem perspective & her knowledge about humans, or how rose is in awe of human decency, she had low self esteem & a belief that she didn’t deserve genuine love.

i think this is why we get so frustrated by those jokes about pearl “fumbling” a “bbw.” it sums everything up. rose getting sexualized all while multiple aspects of her character are misunderstood, overlooked, and invalidated.

#pearlrose #steven universe #crystal gems #pink diamond #pearl x rose #rose quartz #su #rosepearl #su analysis #meta su #steven universe analysis #pearl su #su rose quartz

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cowboyellies · 1 year ago

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- Bad Habit | e.w.

were you not not too good for me, my dear?

funny you comeback to me my dear

PART TWO OF "You're Not Good enough"

pairing: college player!ellie x fem college!reader

warnings/themes: angst!!!, ellie is v emotionally unavailable (my type <3), she's a teensy bit manipulative, reader mentions past toxic relationship, slight mention of ellie's past trauma, lots of jealousy, small amount of abby x reader (sorry abby), reader is kind of stupid (just like me fr), slight mentions of violence, small amount of smut (just a heavy make out)

word count: 3.8k

synopsis: you finally end things with ellie and months later you couldn't feel any better. ellie on the other hand is losing her mind without you. when she sees you at a club one night on a date with another girl, she's determined to get you back no matter what cost.

a/n: I didn't originally plan on making a part two but a few people asked so here it is! I hope you enjoy (below I'm tagging everyone who asked for a part 2)

🏷 🏷 🏷: @shortcake22341 @harrysslutsstuff @robinismywifee @gizzzi

you and ellie hooked up three more times before you finally called it quits. for real this time. seriously. you blocked her on all platforms and even started avoiding spaces you knew you would see her at.

the final straw this time for you was the fact that the third time you were hooking up she got a text from another girl during, and she answered it. once she finished sending her text back she rolled over to resume eating you out but you were already grabbing your shit and bolting for the door. that wasn’t the first time ellie williams had humiliated you but you made a promise to yourself that it would be the last.

now it was two months later, the longest you’d gone without seeing her in about a year. you no longer thought of her, for the most part. there were times where you longed to unblock her number and go crawling back. but you didn’t. you finally felt actually single for the first time in forever and it was exhilarating. you now could do whatever you wanted, hook up with whoever you wanted without feeling the weird guilt and shame ellie left you with every time you’d walk out of her apartment. and now that your spring term had ended you were most certainly using this freedom to your advantage.

ellie on the other hand was losing her shit. the night she fucked up again was actually a misunderstanding this time. yes, she did receive a text to hook up while you were fucking each other. and yes she did answer it. but it was only to tell the girl to fuck off. she tried to explain that to you but you had already slammed the door in her face before she could get the words out.

she had tried everything she could think of how to get you to talk to her, even stooping so low as to show up at your door, begging for you to open up. this actually might have worked on you if she hadn’t gotten your apartment number wrong. you two spent most of your time together at her place so she ended up scaring the living shit out of your elderly neighbor mrs. flenderson when she showed up knocking on her door at one a.m. drunk.

now all she could do was sit alone with her feelings which she hated. she hated knowing she cared about you and all this time apart was just giving her more time to think about it, so much so she even began fantasizing how she would confess her feelings for you. she drafted long speeches in her head for different ways she’d make you hear her out.

when the opportunity to actually confess arrives, things don’t go as smoothly as they do in her imagined scenarios.

the night you two finally see each other again you happen to be on a second date. the first second date you’ve been on since you started seeing people again. you had become accustomed to your one night stands but something about this girl drew you in. abby and you had met through a mutual friend and you actually got along really well. she’s funny, kind, doesn’t seem to share the same emotional incapabilities as your exes, and she’s pretty fucking hot.

your night starts out amazing, she brings you to a club where she happens to know the owner, getting you past the entrance right away and straight to the bar, where she showers you in free drinks and many, many compliments. you flirt and laugh and blush like you haven’t in a while and you realize what you really want to do is dance. as you’re on your way to the floor, that's when you see her.

ellie’s at the entrance of the club with her two friends you vaguely know, dina and jesse. you stare at her for a few moments, taking in the features you had tried so desperately to brush from your memory. her auburn hair is shorter and you can tell from the rolled up sleeves of her black button up that she got more detailing done on her tattoo. her head starts to turn towards your direction so you suddenly switch positions with abby, moving so if ellie looks your way she’d only see your back.

“is everything okay?” abby asks, leaning down towards your ear so you could hear her over the loud music. you nod and try to continue dancing as if nothing is bothering you, which is hard to do considering that you suddenly feel the urge to vomit. abby doesn’t seem convinced so she pulls you off to the side of the dance floor, luckily away from where ellie had gone to sit with her friends. “are you sure you’re alright, you look a little green,”

“yeah I’m fine!!” you insist, trying not to give ellie the power to ruin your night like you’d done many times before. “I think I’m just a little lightheaded,” you say, hoping it’ll make her drop it.

“oh shit, let's go to the bar and get you some water,” she replies, frowning in concern, grabbing your hand to lead you back there.

“no!” you suddenly shout, knowing that’s where ellie’s sitting. “no um- I just really like this part of the club! do you think you could just bring some for me over here?” you ask, even though the “area of the club” you’re referencing is just a dark corner near the bathroom next to a trashcan.

abby looks at you questionably but eventually turns and does what you ask, probably figuring you definitely need it now. once she’s gone you start plotting how you can make your escape from here without ellie seeing, hopefully not further ruining your date. you know you’re being immature and that grown ups don’t hide in corners from their exes, but you’re pretty tipsy and you never claimed to be a grown up.

a minute after abby leaves you see dina and jesse make their way to the dance floor. before you can even think to conceal yourself, dina makes eye contact with you and you notice her eyes widen in recognition, which makes you realize ellie had definitely told her something about your breakup. while that made you go into further panic it also made you pause. when you first met dina it was when you and ellie had run into her at a coffee shop the morning after one of your sleepovers. ellie had introduced you to her as “a friend” even though you’d been hooking up for four months at that point. if ellie had gone from that to now confiding in dina about your messy break, it made you think about how much your split had actually affected her.

as you see dina move to go and tell ellie about you lurking in the shadows, abby starts to walk back in your direction, glass of water in hand. now you’re screwed. there’s no way you can convince abby to leave before ellie comes to find you.

while you’re being overcome with sudden doom, ellie from the other side of the room feels her heartbeat pick up in a way it hasn’t in months. as soon as dina had muttered your name she jolted out of her seat. now as she makes her way over to you, confident to win you back, she notices something dina hadn’t mentioned, her.

abby stands next to you brushing a hair behind your ear, gently stroking your shoulder as you down the glass of water she brought you. ellie feels a sudden rage flow through her whole body. just when she thinks she’s getting you back she sees you with another girl. this is different than with the couch girl from the party who was just gonna be a random fuck, she can tell from your body language you’re already getting comfortable with her beyond that. she stops suddenly a few feet in front of you, causing you to choke a little on your water.

as you’re now standing face to face with ellie you notice that familiar jealousy plastered all over her face. as much as you know you have nothing to be guilty about, you can’t help but start to sweat a little as she resembles the look of a rageful girlfriend. you realize that’s exactly what abby might think she is as you look up to see her shocked expression. just as you’re about to explain, ellie beats you to it.

“can I talk to you?” she asks, more of a command than an actual question.

“no!” you shout back over the music, hoping that will send her away but knowing from past experience it won’t.

“who is thi-” abby starts before she’s cut off

“I’m ellie. who the fuck are you?” she yells, turning her direct attention to abby for the first time.

“her date, who the fuck are you? are you two-”

“NO!” you yell, wishing you had opted for the dinner and a movie date you previously discussed. “let’s just go!” you yell, at this point you weren’t even focused on salvaging your date but instead on getting the fuck out of there.

“I need to fucking talk to you please,” ellie begs stepping in front of you, this is different than the last time at the party, you’ve never heard her voice sound so desperate.

“she said no, back the fuck up,” abby shouts, pushing ellie a little on her shoulder. before you can say anything, that small little push turns into ellie flinging her fist into abby’s jaw. you knew she had a temper but have never seen her actually fight someone until now. the two of them begin full on fighting and instead of doing the honorable thing and trying to pull them off of each other, you simply leave. you know doing this pretty much guarantees no third date with abby but you can’t really find it in yourself to care. you’re so over with this night and the constant shit show that is your love life so you find yourself just exiting the club.

they don’t notice you’re gone until a few minutes after, around the same time the security begins showing up to pull the two of them apart. before they can restrain ellie she makes a break for it, bolting after you towards the door.

she finds you a few blocks away sitting on the curb waiting for an uber. you notice her shadow looming over you and you turn your head up to face her, groaning once you see her bruised face.

“ellie you’ve done enough, can you just please leave me alone,” you plead, the weight of the night’s events finally starting to hit you, making you feel exhausted.

“i’m sorry, I can’t,” she replies, lowering her body to the curb next to you. you look at her confused for a few moments, realizing that’s the first time you’ve ever heard her use the words “I’m sorry”

“why?” your voice cracks and your eyes starting to brim with tears on impulse. you aren’t sure exactly why you’re crying but it’s making you feel small and stupid.

“you know why,” she replies, unable to give anymore. after all this time she spent building speeches, she still found herself scared to say the actual words.

“no, I don’t ellie. I have no idea why you treat me like this,” you reply, the tears beginning to spill on your cheeks. “I don’t know why you act as if you don’t give a shit about me but still can’t let me go, you never fucking tell me why,”

her heart is racing now. she knows if she doesn’t say the right thing she’ll lose you for real. this is the last moment she can avoid her feelings or she’ll crush yours once and for all.

“It’s because I-” she starts at barely a whisper, her eyes beginning to water. “its because I fucking care about you!” now she’s almost yelling, the words escaping her mouth like a sob. “and I haven’t felt this way in a long time and it fucking terrifies me,” you look down at her hands and notice they’re shaking. you want so badly to hold her but a part of you stays restrained, knowing after everything she’s put you through you can’t just grant her forgiveness that easily.

“you don’t think I’m terrified too? ellie it took me a long time to get over my ex and you know that. but I didn’t dump you on your fucking ass the second I started to get feelings for you. and I certainly didn’t text another girl in the middle of us fucking!” the memory of that night starts to overcome your sympathy for her, replacing it with anger instead

“I texted her back to tell her not to message me again, and I tried to explain that to you and you wouldn’t let me. I know i fucked up and had shitty timing but you have to believe that I would never hurt you like that,” she was fully pleading now. you had never seen her so much as shed a tear and now here she is baring her soul.

“ellie, you know I want to trust that but why should I? you’ve done nothing but give me reasons to believe otherwise,” you’re sobbing now too, your face turned towards the pavement in front of you watching your tears drip on the floor. you feel her fingers gently pull your chin upwards to look at her again, you notice a complete sense of somberness in her eyes now, this could possibly be the last thing she’d ever say to you.

“I know you don’t have any reason to believe me but you have to know that I…” she pauses for a moment to collect herself. the three words on the tip of her tongue were something she hadn’t said out loud in over five years. “I love you. okay? and I know I have a shitty way of showing it but I do,”

out of everything she could have said to you that was the last thing you were expecting. you had known for a while that ellie had rejected that feeling because of something that had happened in her childhood which she never could fully tell you about, and you weren’t sure if she was even capable of it anymore. it’s at that moment where you know for certain she’s not just saying all this to get you in her bed.

you’re truly looking at her now, the two of you facing each other with tearfilled eyes not able to say anything. this is when ellie finally breaks out the material in her fantasy speeches. “I love how you look when you’re sleeping, you get this cute half smile on your face when you’re having a good dream. and I love how obsessed you are with pickles, even though you refuse to eat a cucumber which I have explained to you many times is what pickles are made out of-”

“they’re not the same and you know it,” you interrupt through your tears. you had always wanted a big love confession like the one she was giving you, filled with specific facts and details, you said so while watching when harry met sally after one of your first hookups, you were shocked she remembered.

“I love how you never let me finish my sentences,” she replies with a smirk, her cockiness beginning to return after the intense few minutes of vulnerability. “I love how you do that thing with your lips when you’re cum-”

“okay you’re done now,” you stop her, a blush beginning to take over your face. you were starting to forget that at the beginning of the night you hated her guts and were likely going home with another woman.

“are you sure? I have a lot more,” she teases, you know the rest are all sexual. you realize after a moment of silence you never told her you love her back, and you realize you aren’t sure if you even do. obviously you still have strong feelings for her, otherwise you’d have already stormed away from her by now.

as you’re about to say something to break the silence the uber you’d ordered earlier appears in front of you. you look up at her and contemplate what it’ll mean to invite her in with you. is it still stupid to fuck her after one night of seeing her again? does the fact that she loves you make a difference in that?

you aren’t really sure and you don’t care. you pull her yourself up from the curb, dragging her along with you towards the backseat of the car.

–

after a tense fifteen minute uber ride which consisted of the two of you trying your absolute best to keep your hands to yourself and spare the sweet little old man driver, you finally arrive at your apartment. you’re now the one dragging her towards the elevator, recreating the same passionate makeout against the metal walls as the time after she cornered you at the party. the only difference being the fact that now you were no longer shoving down feelings of regret and shame.

after you exit the elevator and you’re opening your apartment door you hear her laugh at the unit behind you, mrs. flenderson’s apartment.

“oh my god ellie, stop,” you whisper shout at her, remembering the fear in the little old lady's voice as she told you about ellie’s drunken escapade. “she has heart problems, you could have killed her!”

you feel her arms reach over your sides, gently resting on your stomach as she begins to lean into your neck “are you jealous thinking about me confessing my feelings for another woman?” she teases, the embrace making it harder for you to open your door.

“no ellie, the thought of you trying to seduce my 78 year old neighbor does not make me jealous,” you reply with an eye roll, finally managing to open the lock. as soon as the two of you are inside she’s pushing you up against the door, her lips trailing all over your body, desperate to show you how much she meant what she said earlier.

“you have no idea-” she says in between kisses. “how hard it was-” she’s gripping gently at your hair now, her eyes traveling up and down your body, taking you in fully for the first time in months. “to see you dancing like that with someone else,” you think about what she’s saying for a moment, the memory of abby making you trail your fingers down a bruise she had left on ellie’s cheekbone. you realize then that you could find it in yourself to forgive ellie for using you, because that’s exactly what you inadvertently had done to abby.

you pull her towards you by the jaw, her ear just centimeters away from your lips as you whisper “good.” you figured if you had accidentally used someone to make her jealous there's no harm in using that to your advantage now. you see ellie’s jaw tighten a little and her lips are back on yours in seconds, this time harsher than before.

you make your way to your bedroom, her hands on you the entire time as you’re leading her there. when you reach the bottom of your bed you begin to sit but you feel her pull you up, her hungry hands clinging to the fabric of your dress around your thighs.

“look at this pretty little dress,” she mumbles while running her hands up towards your breasts, the skin tight fabric clinging to you in all the right places. “you got all dressed up just for her,”

you roll your eyes at her jealousy but deep down the pool of heat in your core was growing stronger. she responds to your eye roll by yanking the dress down your arms. she then makes her way to the clasps on your bra, unhooking it and throwing it to your floor. she begins kissing you again, starting at your neck and trailing down towards your breasts, a moan escaping you as her mouth met your nipples. instinctively your hand grasp onto her hair, clinging to the roots as she laps at your skin. your grip on her hair tightens as your pleasure increases when she stops suddenly. “could abby’s tongue make you feel that good baby?”

you’re about to reply when she breaks away from your skin, now firmly pushing you towards your mattress. as you lie back she begins to take off your dress completely, staring down at you cravingly. unable to stand the lack of her lips on you, you’re suddenly sitting up and pulling her down towards you, gripping at the fabric of her shirt as her lips are crashing down on yours.

“somebody’s eager,” she teases, smiling in between kisses. as you’re making out you begin to feel her remove your hands from her neck and pinning them to the bed above you. you lean up towards her to continue your kissing when she pulls back, the sudden lack of contact causing you to let out a small pathetic whimper. she laughs at you and begins to take you in. her eyes linger over your mussed hair and pink lips that are wet from her kisses. “you’re so fucking beautiful,”

this comment catches you off guard. ellie had never said anything like that to you before. yes, she complimented frequently while you were together calling hot and gorgeous especially when you were on top of her, but this was different. this was more intimate. you smile brightly beneath her and use all your strength to lift yourself by your elbows to deliver one frenzied kiss onto her lips, plopping your head back down on the bed afterwards.

you realize then that the hot jealousy filled sex you two were headed towards had begun to change. all thoughts of abby, of any of your collective exes, or anyone else in the world for that matter have disappeared. this is about you and her.

she resumes kissing you, this time gentler, and you think back to the last time you had slept together. after your breakup every time you fucked was more feverish than the last. that sex was a dirty little mistake you couldn’t stop making, and you made sure to make it as quick and emotionless as possible. now as she’s on top of you, slowly stroking your hair as she moves her lips across your neck you are overcome with a sense of closeness for her that you had been trying to repress since the night she broke your heart on her dingy old couch.

“ellie,” you whisper, her mouth slowly detaching from your skin as she adjusts herself to look at you.

“yeah?” she asks, moving a chunk of hair near your face behind your ear.

“I love you too”

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