#International Living Future Institute

[astrobiscuits]

Astrocartography notes

🌍 Do you want to study abroad? Work abroad? Your MC lines show what domain to pursue:

Sun MC: photographer, actor; check the planet ruling your Sun's zodiac sign for more details

Moon MC: nurse, preschool/elementary teacher, childcare worker/nanny, doula, housekeeper

Mercury MC: librarian, language teacher, speech language pathologist, translator, working in academia, journalist, PR agent, receptionist, secretary, architect, economist, comedian

Venus MC: modelling, artist, fashion designer, hairstylist, makeup artist, art director, interior designer, garden designer, florist, wedding planner

Mars MC: surgeon, firefighter, working at the police, sportsman (the type of sport depends on the zodiac sign Mars is in your birth chart, for ex. Mars in Pisces = football, swimming; Mars in Libra = gymnastics); fitness instructor

Jupiter MC: international driver (driving to your Jupiter MC line brings bonusess💰💰), flight attendant, hotel manager, tour guide, philosopher

Saturn MC: general practitioner, dentist, law, working in the Parliament, working in public institutions, business (CEO), historian, construction worker

Uranus MC: STEM (engineering, ecology sciences, biology), electrician, weather presenter, astronomer/astrophysicist, astrologer, sociology, social worker, advocate for human rights/activist

Neptune MC: choreographer, scenographer, film/theater director, actor, ballet dancer, music composer, rehabilitation worker, bartender, yoga instructor, meditation teacher, reiki practitioner

Pluto MC: adult actor, therapist, psychiatrist, any job regarding forensics (detective, toxicologist, forensic accountant etc.), embalmer, funeral director, loan officer, research analyst

🌍 If you have no astrocartography lines passing through the country you lived for most of your life, you probably don't feel at home in that country and have always wanted to relocate to another country

🌍 When you have atleast 2 lines "conjuncting" each other through a certain country, the planet that is more dominant in your birth chart will have a higher effect in astrocartography

🌍 Mercury IC line can show where one of your siblings or cousins relocate at some point during their life

🌍 If you're a girl and you have daddy issues (hey, we don't judge here!!), travelling to Saturn DSC line will likely bring you lots of opportunities of meeting your perfect partner, but also harsh lessons regarding control in a relationship (this is a good line for you to heal your daddy issues)

🌍 If you want to meet your future spouse and you (personally) find international guys attractive, travelling to Jupiter DSC line is a very good idea. Your future spouse might also be a foreigner in that country, just like you :)

🌍 Sun ASC line shows you where you can find your life's purpose. Also your depression:📉📉 0%, while your happiness:📈📈 100% (unless your Sun is in your 8th or 12th house, then the mental health effect is the complete opposite)

🌍 You could give birth on your Moon IC line😳 or your mom could have given birth to you on that line

🌍 Venus ASC line shows you where you could take lots of pictures (of yourself, of the sightseeings). Also, where you could get diabetes where you will want to try every type of sweets you find there

🌍 You will either get very drunk, consume drugs or smoke some weird shit on your Neptune ASC line (pls take care of your health)

🌍 You could randomly meet an ex or someone who resembles your ex while travelling to your Chiron DSC line

[fairuzfan]

"We have come together as Palestinian academics and staff of Gaza universities to affirm our existence, the existence of our colleagues and our students, and the insistence on our future, in the face of all current attempts to erase us.

The Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings but our universities live on. We reaffirm our collective determination to remain on our land and to resume teaching, study, and research in Gaza, at our own Palestinian universities, at the earliest opportunity.

We call upon our friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine, to work alongside us in rebuilding our demolished universities, and to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions. The future of our young people in Gaza depends upon us, and our ability to remain on our land in order to continue to serve the coming generations of our people.

We issue this call from beneath the bombs of the occupation forces across occupied Gaza, in the refugee camps of Rafah, and from the sites of temporary new exile in Egypt and other host countries. We are disseminating it as the Israeli occupation continues to wage its genocidal campaign against our people daily, in its attempt to eliminate every aspect of our collective and individual life.

Our families, colleagues, and students are being assassinated, while we have once again been rendered homeless, reliving the experiences of our parents and grandparents during the massacres and mass expulsions by Zionist armed forces in 1947 and 1948.

Our civic infrastructure – universities, schools, hospitals, libraries, museums and cultural centres – built by generations of our people, lies in ruins from this deliberate continuous Nakba. The deliberate targeting of our educational infrastructure is a blatant attempt to render Gaza uninhabitable and erode the intellectual and cultural fabric of our society. However, we refuse to allow such acts to extinguish the flame of knowledge and resilience that burns within us.

Allies of the Israeli occupation in the United States and United Kingdom are opening yet another scholasticide front through promoting alleged reconstruction schemes that seek to eliminate the possibility of independent Palestinian educational life in Gaza. We reject all such schemes and urge our colleagues to refuse any complicity in them. We also urge all universities and colleagues worldwide to coordinate any academic aid efforts directly with our universities.

We extend our heartfelt appreciation to the national and international institutions that have stood in solidarity with us, providing support and assistance during these challenging times. However, we stress the importance of coordinating these efforts to effectively reopen Palestinian universities in Gaza.

We emphasise the urgent need to reoperate Gaza’s education institutions, not merely to support current students, but to ensure the long-term resilience and sustainability of our higher education system. Education is not just a means of imparting knowledge; it is a vital pillar of our existence and a beacon of hope for the Palestinian people.

Accordingly, it is essential to formulate a long-term strategy for rehabilitating the infrastructure and rebuilding the entire facilities of the universities. However, such endeavours require considerable time and substantial funding, posing a risk to the ability of academic institutions to sustain operations, potentially leading to the loss of staff, students, and the capacity to reoperate.

Given the current circumstances, it is imperative to swiftly transition to online teaching to mitigate the disruption caused by the destruction of physical infrastructure. This transition necessitates comprehensive support to cover operational costs, including the salaries of academic staff.

Student fees, the main source of income for universities, have collapsed since the start of the genocide. The lack of income has left staff without salaries, pushing many of them to search for external opportunities.

Beyond striking at the livelihoods of university faculty and staff, this financial strain caused by the deliberate campaign of scholasticide poses an existential threat to the future of the universities themselves.

Thus, urgent measures must be taken to address the financial crisis now faced by academic institutions, to ensure their very survival. We call upon all concerned parties to immediately coordinate their efforts in support of this critical objective.

The rebuilding of Gaza’s academic institutions is not just a matter of education; it is a testament to our resilience, determination, and unwavering commitment to securing a future for generations to come.

The fate of higher education in Gaza belongs to the universities in Gaza, their faculty, staff, and students and to the Palestinian people as a whole. We appreciate the efforts of peoples and citizens around the world to bring an end to this ongoing genocide.

We call upon our colleagues in the homeland and internationally to support our steadfast attempts to defend and preserve our universities for the sake of the future of our people, and our ability to remain on our Palestinian land in Gaza. We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again."

[elbiotipo]

Ocassionally you see articles that are like "scientists are trying to hide how bad things are" and I'm the opposite of that. I've done my work on ecological restoration (actually grabbed a shovel and planted trees) and I'm amazed at how fast nature can restore itself. Ecologists used to think restoring tropical rainforests, to give an example of a complex ecosystem, would take centuries to go back if it was even possible -this is why you see all the dystopian fiction of rainforests going extinct- when in fact, it has been proven that without human pressure, ecological succession takes place and rainforests grow back nearly to its original physionomy in a few years, even if diversity does take a time to bounce back. Reintroducing animals might sound harder and it is, but we must remember that animals have faster cycles than humans. Just letting breeding pairs in protected areas is often enough for populations to grow back, as in the reintroduction of jaguars to Iberá in Corrientes Argentina, and many other cases. What is even more interesting and encouraging is how cheap, both in the monetary and the general effort sense, these works are. If a bunch of underpaid biologists, rural people and park rangers can do it, imagine if they had the full support and backing from states and international institutions.

We are at a stage where, besides climate change, we are facing tremendous biodiversity loss and this mostly comes to our methods of land use and food production. But these can be changed. We must assume the fact that nature is not a pristine untouched thing, but humans, in every continent they have lived in, have long managed its resources. The Amazon Rainforest is full of useful plants that hint at silviculture which is still done by its native peoples, the deserts and tundra that seem uninhabited have been home to pastoral and hunter-gatherer peoples. Humans have shaped all habitats on Earth, even the most 'untouched' ones. Just as they have managed their environments and natural resources, other civilizations have managed or mismanaged them. Now that industrial civilization has spread across the globe, we need to find a way to balance our need for food and other products with the need to preserve and take care of Earth. This can be done, we can ensure both a good quality of life and a protected biosphere. We can stop the dichotomy of humans separate from nature, assume our historical role as managers and stewards of natural resources, and do it with our modern understanding of ecology and science.

This does mean that it will take a lot of popular mobilization and change to uproot current interests and create states that uphold these principles. But I'm a marxist. I don't 'believe' in class struggle, I think it's a fact based on observations about society, and I also think that this current form of capitalism will eventually be replaced by socialism, and I believe the future socialist societies will not do the same mistakes as the past. We not only can create new societies that can take care of nature and the general welfare of people, but I also think that as history proceeds, it will be inevitable.

[xcherryerim]

˖⁺ ⊹୨ Love Across Time ୧⊹ ⁺˖

Assistant Josh x (gn) Teacher reader

There's so much trauma in my life. I've been so cold to the ones who loved me, baby. — Out of Time by The weeknd

SMUT ONE SHOT | MDNI | +18

WARNING: Sexual tension | Jealous reader | Voyeurism (?) | oral sex to reader | penetration | in the middle of sex love confession and rambles | Porn with plot | Not proofread (literally did not revised this once so, shitty probably) | ‘funny’ part at the end. | terrible reference to star wars. | no use of y/n. | quicky

Backstory: Josh, a time traveler and savior of the world, has found himself stuck in the early 2000s and has become a teacher's assistant. Despite his best efforts to keep his distance from you, the teacher he is assisting, Josh finds himself irresistibly drawn to you. leading Josh on a journey of self-discovery and romance as he tries to navigate this new timeline.

The classroom was filled with the sound of students chattering. The hum of conversation and your voice fills the air, punctuated by the occasional clatter of papers and the shuffling of chairs. A faint scent of coffee and ink permeates the room, mingling with the soft glow of fluorescent lights overhead.

You were In front of the board, carefully going over the lecture, trying not to leave any detail behind. Next to you, there was your assistant, Josh, seated on the desk.

As usual, he paid attention to the lesson as if he was one of the students. He bit into the base of his pen, eyes scanning the board and its content, eventually landing in your hands. Admiring the softness and delicate moves they made.

Consumed by his pent-up desires, Josh's mind drifted, painting vivid scenarios where your skilled hands explored his body, tracing the contours and caressing every inch he craved.

Is not that Josh didn’t have game, on the contrary, multiple staff members and students flirted with him from time to time, but he fully decided to be celibate.

Did he hate it? Of course, years, or to better say, centuries ago, he was a sex god in ‘Heven’, and now he is forcing himself to not have any type of intercourse. He didn’t want to get attached to someone.

It would be hard to explain the traumas and adventures he gained from saving the world with Wolf and Tiger. He didn’t even attempt to make friends, he was too scared to slip up things from the future to a person living in the year 2002. He was way too fearful of the repercussions. What if he ends up in those TV shows about crazy people, or even worse, a mental institute?

So, he found comfort in spacing out, imagining a retro (to himself at least) suburbian life with you, never daring to get too close.

He shifted his head, the motion accompanied by a deep groan, the weight of his unfulfilled desires bearing down on him. An innocent student's gaze caught him off guard, snapping him out of his reverie, a reminder that the world continued without regard for his internal struggles.

‘Did he notice? Did he… read my mind? Well, that’s embarrassing.’ He thought.

With an awkward cough, Josh stood straight and adjusted his gray polo, trying to remain calm. His eyes drifted to the white clock on the wall and gave you the subtle signal that it was time to end the class.

“Alright class please remember, this is our last lesson. The final is tomorrow, so I beg each of you to study so you can pass the class.”

At your final announcement, you turned your head to the side, seeing Josh’s cheeks turning a rosy shade of pink as some of your students approached him with gifts. Some students handed him letters, and gift bags, while others brought food and candy.

The assistant mumbled his thanks, feeling a mixture of gratitude and self-consciousness as he accepted each gift. His body language was noticeably reserved, with his shoulders hunched and eyes darting around the room as if wishing to disappear into the background. Despite his shyness, he managed a small smile for each student who approached him, clearly touched by the gesture.

As the last student handed over a small gift and bid farewell, you found yourself walking up to your assistant. Your eyes lingered on the array of gift bags, specifically the soft pink one with a bow. A bitter taste filled your mouth as you tried to mask the annoyance you felt.

"Looks like you're quite popular," you quipped, forcing a smile.

“Oh no. They were just being nice.” Josh's index finger tapped into the bag you had your eyes on, filling in the awkward silence as he bit his lip.

Josh wanted to say more, but he couldn't find the words. His dirty mind conjured up fantasies of what he could do to you, right there in the classroom, but he quickly dismissed them. He was just an assistant, after all. Yet, he couldn't stop his eyes from trailing up and down your body, taking in every curve and every inch.

“Well.” You said, “Let’s go to my office.” With that, you cleaned the board, before gathering your things and walked right next to your assistant.

Once you entered your office, he shut the door behind you, the sound echoing in his ears. He couldn't help but notice how the room felt like a shrine dedicated to you. Pictures, certificates, and awards decorated the walls while your desk was clean and organized.

Seated across from you, fidgeting in his chair, the tension in the room clear. A wicked grin spread across his face as he imagined sliding his hands up your thighs, feeling the warmth of your skin beneath the material of your underwear. The thought made his pulse race, and he couldn't help but shift in his seat to adjust himself discreetly.

Professional decorum clashed with the urge to act on his fantasies, but for now, he managed to keep up the ruse. He began grading the papers, nodding to himself as he read through the work.

Ever since the work party he was forced to go to, things have been awkward between you both. That night was the most he ever spoke to you, his drunk self slipping stuff he probably shouldn't have said, but he was lucky enough that both of you were out of your minds that night.

So out of your minds that, you almost kissed before Josh pulled away. Yes, it was bad, and he felt like an asshole, but it was for the better, and you knew that too. However, Josh still holds onto the thought you might like him back, and he's happy with that.

Your gaze lingered on the bags of gifts, trying to guess what they had inside. His eyes followed yours, smirking before you spoke.

“What’s in the bag anyways?”

"Oh, just the usual," he replied nonchalantly, reaching for the pink ribboned bag.

He pulled out a small box, the sweet aroma of strawberries and chocolate wafting through the air. "Strawberries," he began, lifting the lid to reveal the fruit coated in chocolate.

“At that point whoever gave you that should just confess to you already.”

You knew how your comment came across as that wasn’t your intention but who gives a gift like that to an assistant? No one unless they have ulterior motives.

Your snicker and roll of your eyes piqued his interest, and when you suggested that the students could just confess to him, he couldn't help but feel flushed with excitement. Your reactions hinted at something more than just the silent professional interest agreed upon, and he couldn't help but hope that you were feeling something akin to his desires. That this was meant to be, that maybe, just maybe, he will get his happy ending after all.

Josh's confidence soared as he plucked a strawberry from the box, savoring its sweetness, and allowing the chocolate to melt on his tongue. He relished the moment, exaggerating his sounds of pleasure, intentionally teasing you with the sensual display.

As his lips wrapped around the fruit, you couldn't help but feel a surge of heat spreading through your body, your ears reddening with each tantalizing moan. The way he held your gaze, a mischievous glint in his shiny brown eyes, only served to grow your desire.

Leaning closer to your desk, Josh held another strawberry out to you, beckoning you with a grin, "C'mon, you deserve it.”

You hesitated for a moment, shaking your head, the lingering resentment and unease preventing you from accepting the strawberry.

Josh, undeterred, approached you, his steps confident as he took a position directly in front of you. One arm rested casually on your desk, while the other extended the strawberry tantalizingly close to your lips.

His proximity left you feeling uneasy, a mixture of nerves and arousal warring within you. As he offered you the fruit once more, he repeated his invitation, a wicked glint in his eyes. "Enjoy the fruits of your labor," he whispered, his voice a seductive caress.

Your body trembled under the weight of his gaze, the challenge he laid before you clear as day.

"Josh..." You mumbled under your breath, your gaze meeting his, and you could see the hunger in his eyes. It mirrored your internal turmoil, the pull towards him growing stronger by the second.

Your indecision was evident, and Josh could sense your struggle. “C’mon,” Josh smirked, drawing even closer, the chocolate-coated fruit dancing on your lips. "Be good and take it for me."

You swallowed hard, a wave of nerves washing over you, before opening your mouth obediently to accept the offering. You nibbled at the strawberry, trying to eat it slowly and maintain your composure, avoiding direct eye contact.

However, Josh was having none of that. He grasped your chin firmly, tilting it upwards, forcing you to meet his gaze.

"That's it." He encouraged the satisfaction in his voice. His eyes lingered on you, committing the scene to memory, as the evidence of his arousal strained against his pants.

With bated breath, you slowly withdrew your lips from the strawberry, the lingering taste of sweet fruit coating your tongue. A pang of jealousy flared within you, knowing that this delight was originally meant for Josh.

An uncomfortable silence settled between you, both of you unsure of how to proceed. In Josh's mind, he wrestled with the turmoil of his desires, the allure of crossing this boundary he made for himself proving too powerful to resist.

Closing the gap between you, he pressed his lips to yours, the kiss gentle, sweet, and innocent. As your lips parted, you could taste the remnants of the strawberry and chocolate within, a sensory delight that left you breathless.

Josh's hand cradled the side of your face, his touch both comforting and arousing. Simultaneously, he unzipped his pants, his arousal apparent and urgent. The realization of his intentions sent a shiver down your spine.

Just as you began to contemplate what would come next, Josh nipped at your bottom lip, causing a startled, wanton moan to escape your lips. His mouth trailed along your jawline, sending shivers rippling through your body like wildfire.

With trembling hands, you pushed Josh away, your voice wavering as you stammered, "Josh, this is wrong."

His expression blank, he tilted his head, clearly surprised by your refusal. "Because...", you hesitated, exhaling deeply, "we're coworkers and you're my assistant."

Undeterred, Josh leaned even closer, resting his hand on the desk. His doe-eyed gaze bore into you, pleading and disarming.

"I understand that, but...", he began, "there's only a one-year age difference between us. You started teaching here two… or three years ago, and I joined the training program a little over a year ago. It's not a significant gap."

His intensity increased as he brought his face nearer to yours, his hand tracing the collar of your shirt. His gaze flickered between your neck and your lips, laden with a potent mixture of desire and determination.

"And I really want this."

As if reading your indecision, Josh offered a tempting proposition, "You know, since your students think I was so helpful and even gave me gifts... don't you think I also deserve a gift from the teacher?"

Feeling the warmth of his breath against your skin, you were unable to ignore the raw appeal of his pleading gaze. A crippling combination of logic and desire, acknowledging that you were both consenting adults, threatened to break down your defenses.

Despite the fear and accelerating adrenaline coursing through your veins, you found yourself nodding, giving the green light. With unwavering resolve, Josh seized the moment, his lips seeking out the vulnerable expanse of your neck, nibbling hungrily.

As his hands deftly unbuttoned your blouse, you held tightly to the armrests of your chair, feeling the faint sting of the impending. You allowed him to indulge in his desires, silently acknowledging that he had harbored these feelings for quite some time by the way he was acting.

Lost in the spell of Josh's nearness, you were only vaguely aware of the commotion as papers and pens met the floor, the sound eclipsed by the tempest of emotions coursing through you.

Josh's movements, purposeful yet controlled, lifted you gently, depositing you on the desktop with a tenderness that matched the fervor in his eyes.

He stepped back, the hunger in his gaze unapologetic, as if you were the rarest gem in existence, a treasure coveted above all others.

“You are so beautiful.” He breathed out.

Licking his lips nervously, Josh closed the gap between you, his kiss tracing the curve of your shoulder as his hand continued to explore your body. Moving downward, his lips trailed along your chest, and ribcage, and finally reached to your thighs.

Meeting your gaze with a smug, self-satisfied smirk, Josh murmured, "You know... you deserve a good treat too."

His hand trembled as it snaked its way to your waistband, hesitating for a brief moment before liberating you from the confines of your garment. All that remained now was your underwear, a thin barrier between you and the intense desire simmering between you.

A pulse of anxiety shot through your veins. Was this right? The thought of having your hot assistant intimately nestled between your thighs seemed both appealing and alarming.

“You don’t—“

Before you could voice your uncertainty, Josh preempted your concern. "I want to," he whispered, his breath warm against your skin.

"I want to so... so badly," he confessed, his lips dampening the fabric of your undergarments, betraying his eagerness.

You felt the vibrations of Josh's soft chuckle reverberate against your skin through the thin, damp fabric, causing your back to arch involuntarily.

“Stay still, alright?" he ordered, gripping your hips firmly. His teeth nipped at the edge of your underwear, sliding it down your legs with ease.

The overwhelming combination of pleasure and nerves left your body trembling, an involuntary reaction to the intensity of the situation.

Letting go of you, Josh moved to one of the desk cabinets, retrieving a ruler. He lifted the object, bringing it to eye-level with you.

"Told you not to move. Let's try that again, okay?" His commanding tone, paired with the unconventional implement, caught you off guard.

What had once been a modest, shy coworker now stood before you transformed into an irresistible embodiment of sexual desire. Your mind reeled at the sudden transformation, struggling to process how this turn of events came to pass.

"Okay... sorry," you stammered, your voice betrayed by the turbulent mix of excitement and nervousness.

Josh's reassuring words washed over you, "Shhh, it's okay." His lips found their way to the warm expanse between your thighs, trailing soft, wet kisses. The tender intimacy of his actions sent shivers coursing through your body.

Anxiety crept into his voice as he hesitated, "I—," his confession hung heavy in the air. "I haven't done this in decades... I mean years!" He cursed himself under his breath, eyes meeting yours with pleading vulnerability.

"Sorry if I'm not as good as you'll want me to be," he apologized sheepishly before resuming his exploration, his mouth filled with the taste of you.

Arching your back, you reveled in the pleasure of his skilled ministrations. Winding your fingers in his damp hair, you gently tugged, and a moan escaped his lips. Encouraged by his response, you pulled harder, grinning wickedly.

"Mmh, yes, please! Fuck. Pull my fucking hair, please."

The sound of footsteps in the corridor startled you, a surge of panic sending shivers down your spine. Frantic, you forced Josh's head further between your legs, the urgent need for silence overriding any other considerations.

"Shhh, shh!" you hissed, glancing towards the door, pleading for divine intervention to conceal your transgression.

Josh's focus, however, was entirely on the task at hand. His muffled words were swallowed by a fervent desire to savor the taste of you. A trail of saliva clung to his chin, a testament to his relentless enthusiasm. His mouth, lips, and tongue worshiped you with the desperation of a man starved for affection.

His whimpering, praises, and wet, slurping sounds filled the room, each moment amplifying the crescendo of pleasure. The realization of his prolonged abstinence did little to quell the heat emanating from your core.

On the brink of ecstasy, your legs trembled with the strain of resisting the imminent climax.

"J...Josh?" you called out, gently tugging his hair to draw his attention away from his task. His face, glistening with perspiration and droplets of saliva, met your gaze, his eyes gleaming with an intensity borne from devotion.

At that moment, you found yourself smitten by his earnestness. "Can we try something different?" you asked, unable to resist the curiosity kindling in your psyche.

A smirk spread across Josh's face, his hands gripping your thighs tightly as he nodded in affirmation.

Positioning you, he laid your back against the wooden surface of the desk, your fingers fidgeting nervously as you watched him hastily attempt to remove his pants. The task proved more arduous than anticipated, eliciting a small chuckle from you.

Josh's breath hitched, "You're so hot, fuck," he muttered, his hand stroking himself as his lips pressed a searing kiss to your entrance.

Teasing you mercilessly, he moved his hips, the tip of his erection teasing your slick opening. You whimpered in frustration.

"Stop being a tease," you demanded, annoyed and embarrassed by his playful torment.

"You're right, sorry," he admitted, flushing a deep shade of red. "I've, I—" He groaned, cursing under his breath. "Fuck."

Josh's gaze held yours, sincerity etched into his features. "I like you. I don't think I ever liked someone like this before. You're so hot and smart, I love your voice, how you explain stuff to me without making me feel like an idiot and your humor." His smile was tender, genuine.

"I love your laugh too, even if you hate it. And, fuck, I've been... I imagined us like this but not, not like this, like this, you know?"

His brow furrowed, lips biting into his bottom lip. "I ruined it, didn't I?" Concern lurked beneath his words.

You chuckled, reaching out to trace your fingertips along his cheek, "Yeah, and you were so good at keeping the dominant role earlier." Admittedly, you found his vulnerability endearing.

"I like you, and I've thought of this too," you confessed, your heart pounding in your chest with every whispered syllable.

Your tone shifted, growing more serious, "To be honest, that gift pissed me off."

Josh's reaction to your accusation was immediate, a soft chuckle escaping his lips. "The strawberries? Yeah, I could tell."

His admission confirmed your suspicions, and with a playful scoff, you retorted, "Asshole."

You beat his shoulder lightly with feigned aggression, laughter echoing through the room.

"Out of all the gifts I’ve gotten tonight, no, out of all the gifts I’ve had, ever," Josh began, "you're the best one.” He said before thinking deeply. “Well, no, you're the second. The first one was when I got a signed DVD of Star Wars, Episode Seven: The Force Awakens."

Confusion clouded your expression, "Episode seven?"

Josh stammered, realizing you wouldn't comprehend the reference to a film that, for you, was lightyears ahead.

"Uhm... forget it. I was joking since you know." A nervous laugh followed his retreat. "Anyways, where were we? Oh, yeah, fucking! Uhm.”

Time to reveal he was from the future, his adventures, saving the world, and landing in 2000—it was a story better suited for the future.

Josh seized the moment, thrusting into you with urgency. The distraction worked, the sudden invasion of his sizable girth stealing your breath.

It took a moment for both of you to adjust to the sensation, the newfound closeness offering a liberating sense of.

"You're tight," Josh reed with unbridled pride, his hands capturing your wrists in a firm grip. "I'll start," he promised, granting you a brief moment of surrender.

A nod from you signaled your consent, allowing him to begin the rhythmic thrusts that filled you with his length. Pain, sharp and undeniable, punctuated the sensations, but the pleasure outweighed the discomfort.

"Fuck," you cried out, teary eyes meeting his.

"Hold onto me," Josh commanded, his voice raw and insistent. Your nails dug into his skin with a vengeance, and the resulting grunt of satisfaction was the only response he needed.

The intensity of the act, coupled with the nearness of your bodies, left you at a loss for words. "Like that?" he inquired, and though the question seemed redundant, the sensation of his cock stretching you open left you incapable of verbal acknowledgment.

The room was suffused with the erotic symphony of skin slapping against skin, heavy breathing, and the occasional grunt or moan. In this dance of passion, the unspoken understanding between the two of you spoke volumes, every thrust cementing the bond between you.

"Let me go faster, please," Josh whined, craving the release that only complete surrender could offer.

You whimpered, uncertainty lacing your response, "I don't... I don't think I can handle that, Josh." The creaking of the desk mirrored the strain of the moment.

Desperation colored his voice as he pleaded, "Please, please. I'll be good, you'll like it. Please."

In response, you groaned, "Fine. Just because we need to finish grading." Despite the flimsy excuse, the promise of gratification following the completion of your task hung in the air.

A triumphant grin spread across Josh's face, "After that, you can have me as much as you want," he promised, holding you firmly as he thrust deeper, his cock filling and emptying you in a rhythm of pleasure and longing.

The edge of climax ebbed closer, winding its way through your veins. You found yourself pressing your head into his neck, biting him unintentionally.

"Mmh, gonna cum," Josh warned, his orgasm imminent. With a powerful surge, he filled you, the warmth of his release enveloping you.

Exhausted, the two of you stood there, your breaths coming in ragged gasps. Disheveled and sweat-drenched, you looked at each other, the weight of the moments heavy in the air.

Recovering enough to speak, you fumbled for the right words, "Let's uhm..." Your voice trailed off, replaced by an awkward suggestion, "Let's get grading, shall we?"

You climbed off the desk and started gathering your clothes from the floor, Josh following suit as he laughed softly. Dressing hurriedly, you both resumed your roles as teacher and assistant, submitting to the mundane task before you.

…

The day of the final exam dawned, and as you explained the rules and addressed student queries, your concentration wavered. Two students, oblivious to your displeasure, engaged in hushed conversation while you spoke.

In a moment of synchronized understanding, you locked eyes with Josh, who wasted no time in addressing the situation.

He strode towards the offending students, leaning casually on their table. "Guys, please keep it down," he requested softly, the authority in his tone leaving no room for argument. With a single nod, he continued to monitor other students.

Once he moved away, the culprits exchanged glances, one of them whispering, "Did you see the hickey or am I crazy?"

The other nodded, unable to deny the evidence of their own eyes, replying, "I saw it."

The students' curiosity piqued, and their gazes shifted between you and Josh, zeroing in on your choice of clothing: turtlenecks on an otherwise scorching day. The unspoken implications danced in their minds.

“They slept together!?”

Crossing your arms, you fixed your gaze on the offenders, your voice dripping with sarcasm, "Care to share with everyone?"

Embarrassed, they quickly retracted, "No. Sorry." Giggles threatened to escape, but they struggled to suppress them, the cat now firmly out of the bag.

One student voiced her thoughts aloud, "Why does the class get interesting on the last day?" A sentiment echoed in the covert smiles and furtive glances shared by those around her.

[ghoulfuckersincorporated]

Can we get a fic with John Hancock with a shy, innocent virgin f!reader? I feel like he would just go feral with corruption/breeding kink and possessive/jealousy?! Like just wanting to ruin her for anyone else and mark her from other ghouls. Bonus for fluff as well. I love the idea of him falling for her softness and trying so hard to be a gentleman out of respect, thinking she deserves better while internally he’s thinking the nastiest filthiest shit.

(Also maybe you could do a Howard version sometime? I know you get a ton of requests so if not it’s fine, but I'm curious how he would be too) Either way, thank you ❤️ your blogs amazing and I appreciate it!

Carnal Lessons

Pairing: John Hancock x Virgin!Female Reader

Word Count: 19,965 (yes, for real)

Warnings: very sexual pining, loss of virginity, corruption kink, reader's first "real" orgasm, absolutely perverted thoughts, mutual and consensual drug use, shotgunning, discussion of addiction, canon-typical violence and bigotry, descriptions of wounds, mild exhibitionism, finger fucking, mutual masturbation, oral sex (male and female receiving), cock piercings, possessive sex, manhandling, hair pulling, breeding kink, slightly dishonest creampie, jealousy, self-hating John.

Notes: It's finally here! This thing absolutely refused to free me from its clutches, so I'm incredibly happy to have it all finished up. Thanks for the submission, Anon, and thanks for your patience while I worked through the forty-ish page fit it induced in me. I tried SO hard to keep this to a reasonable length (as I said, there's almost never a time when I'm not shooting to keep to around 5,000-7,000 words), I swear, but this idea really needed some room to develop. Please enjoy the first long-form piece on the blog that doesn't feature Cooper Howard in the lead role! As for the idea of doing a version of something like this with him in the future, someone else sent in a very similar ask that's been earmarked for just that.

Reader is a former vault dweller but is explicitly not Nora/the Sole Survivor. Post-Institute destruction.

John McDonough had always been more accepting of vault dwellers than most folks. A certain curiosity towards those who came from such different circumstances than him in youth had slowly grown over the years into some form of sympathy, even pity. There were those who looked down on the people who spent their lives hiding away in those armored chambers, saw them as craven and weak, but John found himself sympathetic to anyone who valued safety and stability for themselves and those they truly cared about. A hard-lived life of barely scraping by and sleeping in the gutter for years had granted him a thankfully varied perspective of the world around him.

When you'd first stumbled your way into his life, he had been very understanding of your plight; after all, you weren't the first poor schmuck that had left their vault, their safe little settlement, only to discover just how truly dangerous the streets and crumbling high-rises of Boston could be. You'd arrived in rough shape, though not the roughest he'd seen by far. Hell, you'd even managed to limp your way into Goodneighbor's front gates before collapsing, a bit of fortitude that had almost certainly saved your life.

Naturally, as the mayor, word of the collapsed, bloodied vault dweller laid out on the ground outside Kleo's had filtered up to him rather quickly, and his innate curiosity had gotten the best of him. Fahrenheit had tucked the information in between a few other pieces of news, seemingly hoping to keep it from garnering too much interest from her friend and boss.

"I think I'm gonna go check it out." he replied, rising from the rickety couch where he'd been perched, taking in his second-in-command's daily brief.

"I know you, Hancock. Maybe you shouldn't." she said, eyeballing him.

"I have no absolutely idea what you mean by that." he retorted haughtily before disappearing down the stairs and out the door. He made his way across Scollay Square, nodding to and greeting a few folks who spoke to him, cutting a wiggling path to the Rex where he'd been told they'd set you up in a room to rest after patching you up as best as they could. Seeking out the room number he'd been given at the desk, he was surprised when he poked his head around the corner to find Daisy still hovering over you a bit.

"Heard we might have a new friend. How're they doing?" he asked, leaning against the door frame with his hands in his pockets. The merchant turned, smiling politely at him and straightening her jacket.

"Hey, Hancock. She's doing much better now, fortunately. Poor thing will probably sleep for quite a while, though. I'm shocked she made it through." she said, taking a half-step back to reveal your unconscious form on the bed. "Tough for a vaultie. Though, I suppose I said the same about Nora."

He hadn't fully heard a single thing she'd said after she'd stepped away, completely distracted by the realization of what Fahr had actually meant. When she'd had told him she thought it was best he didn't come down, he'd assumed it was a joking remark about how he'd disappeared for months the last time a vaultie had popped into their lives, but now he truly understood what she'd been getting at when she'd remarked about how she "knew him".

You were breathtakingly gorgeous, even battered, limp, and filthy like you were. Soft in all the right ways, from your statuesque face to what parts of your body he could see unobscured by the old sheets. Your vault suit was unzipped and yanked down to the waist to expose the dirty tank beneath, the swell of your breasts rising and falling gently as you slept. Your skin and hair were so perfect looking under the sweat and grime that he felt himself overwhelmingly drawn to caress you somehow, his palms itchy. He'd been around the block a time or two, and he'd met plenty of gorgeous men and women, but something about you was immediately captivating, almost haunting.

After a moment, he came back to himself, making abashed eye contact with Daisy once more to find that she was studying him closely. Of course, the older woman knew him well enough to figure he didn't have ill intent towards you, necessarily, but she recognized that glint in his eye as he gazed at you, and it made her hesitant to leave the room before he did, her instincts too strong to be ignored. Hancock, for all his vices and shortcomings, was quite adept at reading a room and quickly picked up on her thoughts.

"Well, I'll let her rest. If you see her up and around later, send her my way so we can chat, yeah? I'm sure she's got interesting stories." he said, trying his best to sound lax and casual. The other ghoul nodded silently, already turning her attention back to you as he turned to leave. Rounding the corner right out of the Rex, he ducked into a narrow alley and lit a smoke, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes with a sigh, trying his best to turn his mind to other topics. It had taken longer than he'd care to admit, but he finally succeeded and returned to the day's business.

When you'd eventually awoken, he'd been very pleasantly surprised to find you chatty and rather accepting of your surroundings for someone who had lived underground their whole life. You were kind, agreeable, though shaken by your ordeal, obviously; he guessed that you'd likely seen plenty of other wild shit on your way in, and that a semi-regular (if a little unsavory) community of folks who mostly just happened to be ghouls wouldn't be that high on the list of things that would trip you up badly. Incredibly thankful for the assistance you'd been given when you'd first showed up, you quickly proved him correct, eager to work, to help out, to find a place where you could fit in.

Early on, you did a lot of running around for Daisy and Kleo, searching for things that had been requested from them, but you'd quickly grown tired of prospecting and shifted to more community-based work, something that only endeared you to him more. You mentioned casually at one point that you'd been something called an "irrigation technician" back home, so it was no surprise that he often found you knee-deep in dirt, picking at weeds, evaluating soil and water quality like it was second nature to you.

Everyone around the neighborhood loved you, almost too much for his liking. More and more, he found himself asking you to do completely made up tasks, or things that were already an assigned job, just to make sure you weren't spending too much time getting close to someone else when he was too busy to hang out with you. It left a bad taste in his mouth to think that he might miss out on the chance to get close to you because of nothing but circumstance when it had been circumstance that brought you into his life to begin with.

Eventually, he'd gotten a bit of that familiar wandering itch, deciding to pack up and make the trip to visit Nora in Sanctuary. He'd invited you to come along with him, both interested to see what his two favorite vaulties would think of one another and hoping for an opportunity to get more personal with you. Besides, he wasn't naive. He couldn't leave you behind and expect you to still be available when he came back, that he knew; Edward Deegan had been in town far more often since the Cabots had left, asking around for you more than once, and he knew that the older man had a certain reputation...not that he had room to judge.

He also knew that he wasn't the only one to worry about.

Thankfully, you'd agreed to come along, openly eager to see more of the countryside and secretly eager to spend more time with John himself. His plan to get closer to you ultimately worked, and far better than he'd expected, but not for the reasons he'd anticipated.

The trip from Goodneighbor to Sanctuary wasn't terribly long, a day or two at most depending on your urgency. In fact, travel times all over had seemingly reduced as the roads had grown slowly safer, busier with the increased presence of the Minutemen and those who felt aligned with them. He had even noticed several trading caravans, though heavily guarded ones, making their way south, something he hadn't seen in years.

Unfortunately, he'd gotten a little lax, perhaps a bit distracted towards the very end of the trip and the two of you had been ambushed just as you'd entered the outskirts of Concord. He hadn't anticipated raiders so close to Sanctuary; in his overconfidence, a small pack of them had managed to get the drop on the pair of you, nailing him with a single round to his shooting arm from some distance before quickly hemming you in from uphill. Fortunately, he was both quick-healing and more than familiar with fighting in pain; his resilience, combined with your own strength and ability to pick several off yourself at a distance, quickly thinned their numbers, leaving each of you dealing with one or two stragglers.

Hancock had been retrieving his knife from the windpipe of the final one standing against him when he saw you fall out of the corner of his eye, your weapon tumbling a few feet away across the split, buckled asphalt. He immediately threw himself towards you, sizing up the burly raider who loomed over you as you attempted to roll out of his reach. The hulking motherfucker pivoted on one foot towards you, crushing the arm that was reaching out for your fumbled pistol under his filthy boot and snapping the bone with a sickening, audible crack. The agonizing cry that left you was sharp and heartbreaking.

Somehow, he'd teleported the ten feet or so that he needed to close the gap between him and the man raising his laser rifle towards you. He couldn't consciously recall a time when he'd moved with such urgency. The blow he delivered to the back of the guy's head with the butt of his shotgun caved in his skull cleanly and dropped him near instantly like a sack of rocks, but John still unloaded two shells into what was left for the satisfaction, his entire body vibrating with adrenaline and worry as he turned to you.

You were either attempting to sit up or curling upwards in pain, neither of which seemed especially comfortable as your mouth laid open in a silent scream. He acted as quickly as possible, gently moving your guarding arm away from the injured one to examine it. Thankfully, the bone hadn't pierced the skin, but the angle your hand sat at made his stomach roll, along with the way you began to whimper and hyperventilate. Wanting to move you out of the open before he administered one of the doctor's bags he kept with him, but distrustful of the surrounding houses, he scooped you up into his arms, wincing along with you as you cradled your limp limb against your chest. Holding his breath almost all the way, he trudged up the hill until he came across the Red Rocket truck stop, settling you gently on the old work bench.

"I'm real sorry, but this is probably gonna hurt, kid." he said, allowing himself the far-too-intimate gesture of pushing your hair away from your face, cradling your wet cheek for a split second. "When we get to Sanctuary, we'll get you something for the pain, alright?"

You nodded, eyes clenching tight as you extended the injured extremity towards him as best as you could. He was as gentle as possible patching you, uncomfortable with the idea of leaving you suffering completely, even for just the short walk across the bridge and up the hill. Eerily quiet despite what he was certain was fairly great pain, you let him do whatever he needed.

It had taken longer than he'd have liked to carry you to the short rest of the way to Sanctuary, his pace encumbered by his fear of jostling or mishandling you.

"It's fine. I can walk the rest of the way." you'd protested halfheartedly, your unmarred arm wrapped tight around his neck as you held yourself up as best as you could. However, you made no move to extract yourself from him. He'd pointedly ignored the handful of inquisitive looks the two of you had received as he'd carried you past the guard posts at the end of the bridge, quickly seeking out the settlement's little clinic building.

Nora, mayor in her own way, had almost immediately heard of your arrival, and found him smoking on the crumbling curb outside, staring off at the old gas station on the horizon absentmindedly.

"Is your lady friend alright?" she asked, lowering herself down beside him and holding out a semi-cool beer.

He smiled at her, almost full-strength, and reached out to warmly shake her hand. His friend looked a little older now, her time in the Commonwealth and her mountain of accrued responsibilities taking their own toll, but she appeared wiser (and more content) for it.

"She'll be fine. If I'm honest, I probably didn't need to rush her up here like that, but, eh. I panicked a little." he replied, cheeks warm as she appraised him with that knowing look. She didn't dig further, thankfully one of his few friends who had ever mastered the art of discretion. John was glad to see her, certainly, and tried his best to focus on their conversation as they caught up a bit, each sipping their drink, but his mind was inside with you.

Soon, she was pulled away, but promised to check in again before disappearing down the street, leaving John as he had been: worrying away on the stoop.

After the doctor had checked you over, fully re-set your arm, and given you another stimpack, along with a sling, the ghoul had helped you to a cot in an empty room at the back of one of the semi-restored houses. He'd offered you Med-X, eager to alleviate the pain he could see lingering, but you'd just shaken your head wordlessly, a nervous glint in your eyes as you sized the syringe up, your breathing still rather shallow and shaky as you sweated lightly.

"You're worrying me here, sister. I'm begging ya to just take something. I know you're healing up, but..."

"I'm fine, John. Really. I just need to rest a few more hours and it'll be healed enough to not hurt so badly." you huffed, resettling your limbs along the bed to allow him some room to sit beside you. You calling him by his real name, the one no one ever called him, didn't even really register.

"I've got some booze." he offered, embarrassed at how desperate he felt to get you to somehow accept what little help he felt he had to offer. "Or weed? Would you try that? I know you're hurting."

There was a different sort of hesitation in your gaze at that, your arm still cradled close in your sling as you stroked over it absentmindedly, protectively with your good hand.

"I really do just need to tough it out a bit longer." you replied, though your tone was a little softer. "Plus, I don't like to drink, and I don't exactly know how to smoke weed."

He chuckled at that, relaxing just a little.

"Not much to know. Inhale, hold, exhale." he said, smiling warmly at you. "I've got a joint if you wanna try it."

You were quiet for a long moment, taking a deep, steadying breath in the cooling twilight.

"Are you gonna light it?" you asked.

And he did, taking a puff or two himself to get the thing burning properly before handing it to you, showing you how to pinch it between your thumb and forefinger and watching with rapt attention as you lifted it to your own mouth.

"Easy!" he said as you pulled hard, the end of the joint glowing bright as it burned. Unsurprisingly, you began to cough wildly a moment later, cheeks wet and shoulders shaking hard as you hacked and gasped, desperately pushing the smoldering little cigarette back at him so you could wipe at your face. Resisting the urge to chuckle at the relatability in your tear-streaked mug, he patted your shoulder gently. Taking another puff himself, he leaned against the wall behind him, giving you a few minutes to collect yourself and find your voice once more.

"Wow." you said eventually,

"Feeling it?" he asked.

"Definitely. Also, that really hurt."

He tittered a bit at your glassy-eyed look, genuine relief washing over him as he took in your relaxing posture and slow, even breaths. Knowing that you wouldn't fess up to still hurting, he didn't ask your status, taking comfort in the knowledge that you were at least somewhat relieved of your pain as he fully settled in beside you, sitting up with his back against the moldering wallpaper.

"If only my friends back home could see me now." you chuckled, playing absentmindedly with your fingers. His stomach dropped a bit at that, always frozen in captivation and fear of stopping you somehow when you got to talking about home in any substantial way, which was so rare.

"Can I ask why you left? Of course, you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to." he asked, each word an uneasy labor to force out as he fiddled with one of his rings.

You were quiet for a moment, just long enough that his retraction was ready to launch off of his tongue when you finally responded.

"They wanted me to get married and I wasn't ready." you explained simply, following up after a moment with a very hesitant "Well, it wasn't just that. They wanted me to get married and start immediately popping out babies and stuff. Had a guy picked out for me and everything. I just couldn't go through with it. It didn't feel right. You know?"

John faltered for a moment, genuinely unsure if he did know what you meant. Sure, he was familiar with the feeling of being expected to fall into a certain role and failing, or rejecting the system that wanted to put you into that box completely. He knew what it was like to feel at odds with those who felt they knew what was best for you. But, through all of that, he'd been able to make his own choices, even if he sometimes wished he could go back and make different ones.

"I know what it's like to feel like you need to just get away, for sure." he replied after a hopefully-not-too-long pause.

You nodded slowly.

"So, uh...did you leave, or did you run away?"

There was a long moment of silence, and you didn't look at him when you answered, your voice just a little bit quieter.

"Closer to the second thing."

He nodded, hesitantly placing his hand on your knee in a gesture of comfort, smiling when you placed your own hand over his.

"Was he ugly?" he joked after a moment, earning a gentle laugh from you.

"Nah. It wasn't him. It was all of them, you know? And me, I guess." you replied, eyeballing the stars through a hole in the roof.

"Yeah, I hear you."

He held the joint out to you once more, but you declined, directing the thing away with a smooth turn of your hand.

"You sure you don't want some more? One hit isn't very much, even if it feels strong right now. Probably won't last long."

"I don't wanna hog all your fancy drugs." you responded facetiously, grinning just a little. "Plus, I think I'll literally hack up my own windpipe if I take another drag off of that thing. It's so..."

"...hot-feeling? I could shotgun it to you." he offered, trying to ignore the way his cock stirred at the confused look on your innocent little face. "It means you inhale my exhale. Makes it way less harsh. Only if you wanna, though."

"And it still works? The, uh, smoke, I mean?"

"Yep." he smirked.

"Hmm. Yeah, let's try it." you agreed, much calmer than before as you sat up a little taller and scooted close to him, your hips touching as he filled his lungs with smoke once more.

"Alright," he explained, words strained as he held his breath, "put your lips to mine and take a deep breath in."

You leaned in closer to do as you were told, you cheeks dusted with a tinge of blush as he closed the short distance between the two of you. Softly, he touched his mouth to your own, holding his lips open as he slowly, steadily exhaled. Hesitating for a moment, you eventually caught on, and surprisingly managed to take a rather generous inhale.

What surprised him more, though, was when he moved to pull away and you leaned in again, only to kiss him in full, your lips wrapping around what remained of his own instead of just sitting there. It began as a lingering peck, but after you pulled back a few inches to exhale, coughing much less this time around, he leaned in again, hand moving to cup the back of your head as he held you tight. You'd slept close to one another before, but that was the first night you'd chosen to sleep in the same bed, cuddled close and both content.

From that moment, things began to genuinely progress between the two of you, your relationship quickly blooming from a warm friendship with occasional flirtatious banter into something that was becoming quite serious, at least in terms of the relationships John had had in the past.

You were a flirt, but not in the forward, raunchy way he himself often was. No, you were a much sweeter, more playful sort of tease, and while he quickly found your affection high up on the long list of things he had a major fixation for, it also hampered him in its own way. It made him feel like such a creep to make more forward advances towards you when your own 'moves' tended to be more romantic in nature; hand-holding, soft kisses, chaste cuddles. Granted, he tried to keep in mind that your lack of experience may have made you less inclined to start or say things, less confident to put yourself out there; you often came across as eager, but nervous. He kept that observation to himself.

You were also a rather remarkable person, driven by how much you wanted to help people and make the world you'd found a better place. He found it almost funny how you tried your best to make it clear that you weren't one of those vault dwellers, though you sort of inherently were. As much as you liked to deny it, to insist that all of the "we must rebuild and lead America when we retake the surface" talk they'd drilled into your head where you'd grown up hadn't taken root, he saw some of it in you, in the way you were so eager to help run things, start up new settlements, provide assistance with improvements that would make life better for everyone.

Perhaps you'd decided to embody those values in a different way than you were taught, but it certainly came across as leadership behavior to him. Nora must've seen it, too, the two of you becoming quickly and warmly acquainted, you eager to help her out in any way you could and her with plenty of tasks that could use more hands. One of those tasks, funnily enough, was deciding what to do with the still-untouched Red Rocket. Too small to really be a proper settlement, it was decided that it would be emptied out and sized up for stability and how easy it would be to wire the place. He also insisted on a new guard tower at that end of the bridge to keep an eye on any Concord stragglers. Though, not too close to the building.

The two of you spent the next week or so cleaning the place out together, hauling away rotted junk and evaluating the old building's guts and foundation, which were pleasantly intact overall, much to his surprise. Nora stopped by when she could patch together any significant time alone from the few minutes here and there that she often had between tasks, offering assistance and extra supplies to stock the place up with. Knowing her, she'd long seen right through him and his feelings towards you; his suspicions were all but confirmed when she remarked that it was "quite the little home the two of you were building together".

Occasionally, she would bring Shaun along with her, introducing him to you after a couple of months of feeling you out. For the sake of his cherished friend, John treated the boy as normally as possible, even playing with him a bit when he requested it. But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't force himself to let go of his lingering wariness of the whole thing. Yes, he was happy that Nora had her son back in whatever form it may be; he had seen firsthand how devastated she had been without him.

After all, that was precisely why he found himself so suspicious when she'd told him about the young synth boy. John had never been a parent, himself, but he knew Nora's heart, knew how deeply her love for her child lived inside her; it was exactly the sort of loss that could be easily exploited. She insisted that the Institute wasn't something they needed to worry about any longer, but he sometimes questioned her confidence in this. The facility itself may have been gone, but there was no way of knowing that all of their plans and orchestrations had been annihilated alongside it. Hell, if they'd been worth their supposed salt, they'd have been smart enough to guarantee that exactly that wasn't possible, that they would still be able to continue their work somehow. Shaun had showed up at too perfect a time, in his mind, and for that, he constantly kept one eye on the child who seemed to genuinely like him, calling him "Uncle John".

It was rather clear to him that you noticed the wall he kept up between himself and the kid, but you didn't prod much into it, and for that he was grateful.

The weeks continued to pass by, the Red Rocket becoming your sort of base; close enough to Sanctuary to be useful, far enough away to have some privacy for yourselves.

"We should really get you some actual armor and people clothes, y'know." he said one evening, reclining back onto the little bedroll he'd been using while you two searched for a proper bed and staring hard at your ass as you rummaged through your things. "That suit might protect you alright, but it's like wearing a target on your back."

And it's way too distracting to me, frankly, he finished silently, perfectly envisioning himself accidentally wandering off a cliff to his demise because he was too fixated on your various assets waggling around in that damn suit.

Fortunately for him, you actually agreed, long past growing tired of the perception of naivete and vulnerability that the suit drew to you. Though, he knew you were rather attached to the thing, one of the few slivers of home you carried with you always. You feared it being stolen if you left it behind somewhere, and he understood, helping you rig up a really good hiding spot in the Red Rocket ceiling tiles. The clothes you eventually started to wear around were, thankfully, less well-fitted than the vault suit, scrounged up pairs of jeans and threadbare tees, old button-ups and road leathers you tried your best to keep oiled and stretched.

However, when you felt truly comfortable (and weren't helping with some of the more intense work around the settlements), you'd often wear one of a couple of dresses you'd managed to trade for or scrounge up in your adventures, button-up things that hung well past your knee, but took the "form fitting" issue the vault suit had and multiplied it. Not only did the things emphasize every one of your sweet curves just the right way, they exposed the soft, strong flesh of your arms and legs, the line of your elegant throat as it disappeared into the swell of your breasts. As much as he loved to see you dressed so nicely, almost otherworldly beautiful in just how much you didn't fit into the dingy, decrepit background, it made it difficult for him to focus on any one task. Frankly, it made it difficult to focus on anything but the thought of hiking the flowing skirt up around your hips and having his way with you.

Simultaneously, it made him hypervigilant of exactly how others carried themselves when they were around you.

It had been irritating enough back home to have to deal with the Neighborhood Watch guys tugging you aside to whisper little bits of info to you, Ham's gaze lingering on you as you two passed into the entrance of The Third Rail, the number of people who had always wanted to talk or dance with you when you got inside. Caravan guards and traders trying their hardest to tail the pair of you on the road, pursuing your attention hard.

But once the two of you had begun spending a great deal of time around Sanctuary, the problem only intensified, increasing directly with the number of smoothskin men around who obviously did not see him as any sort of threat. Though he couldn't quite determine if the way they wrote him off was intended to be more emasculating or generally dehumanizing, John remained on his best behavior, both for your sake and Nora's, unwilling to embarrass either of you by association. Regardless, he was infinitely relieved when the former lawyer began to ask the two of you to start running errands to other nearby settlements. Sure, his patience was often tested again as soon as you reached whatever your new destination was, but the alone time in-between stops was incredibly regenerating for him, eager to get his hands on you whenever he could.

This was particularly true at night.

Often the settlements you were visiting weren't all that far away, but the two of you would usually choose to bed down for the evening somewhere on the roadside before turning up, both of you giddy at the unfettered access to one another, the privacy to discuss and say whatever you wanted. More than anything, though, he was desperate to feel you, to kiss you, to have you cuddled up against his chest the way he liked, and he was too nervous to paint you with the scarlet letter of ghoul alliance to be all that handsy during the day. When the sun fell, though, you were all his.

At no point did you explicitly tell him that you were a virgin. You didn't really need to, frankly; the way your lips and hands fumbled nervously against him, your lack of confidence to lead in this single situation, communicated all he needed to know. He wasn't especially surprised, anyway. The place you came from sounded pretty buttoned-up the way you described it, but you were also just a fairly guarded person in general; warm, friendly, but not overly eager to let anyone too close without a thorough sizing up. Fortunately for him, he somehow fit the specs.

It didn't take long for the two of you to start properly fooling around, much to John's partial chagrin. He hated to feel like he was rushing you, but at the same time, his self control completely evaporated into thin air the moment you stripped down to your skivvies to relax. He'd been hooked on you from that first kiss and the withdrawals were some of the heaviest he'd felt.

The first time he watched you come apart on his fingers, it took every ounce of strength in his irradiated body to not pin you down and fuck you until you literally couldn't handle any more. It was the most erotic display he'd ever taken in, the way your exposed chest flushed and heaved, your big, wide eyes brimmed with overwhelmed tears. As you'd crested into your peak, his hand buried in your panties while the other supported your limp head, you'd cried out so loudly he'd had to cover your mouth, soaking his fingers as your body twitched and jerked tensely.

"Holy cow." you'd gasped a moment later, a light sheen of sweat delicately clinging to your face and chest. "I wasn't aware I was doing that wrong."

"Well, I dunno about wrong..."

"Wrong, not as good as you, whatever." you dismissed, waving your hand at him playfully. "I hope you know that that's gonna be your job from now on."

"Is that right?" he grinned lasciviously, leaning down to kiss you on the cap of your bent knee and forcing himself to not firmly plant his rapidly growing head between your thighs. "Since when do you delegate tasks?"

"Oh, don't be that way, McDonough. We're all taking on extra responsibilities for the good of everyone." you replied diplomatically, your cheeks rosy as you rearranged your limbs to lie along his body.

He laughed genuinely at that, wrapping an arm around you and moving to recline himself. The small tent the two of you had set up was filled with your sweet musk, and he strategically angled his hips away from you so you wouldn't feel how completely stiff he was as a result, petting your hair as you drifted off to sleep. John was no stranger to knocking out for long periods himself, usually to will away a nasty come-down or hangover, but he found himself staying awake longer and longer to watch you, caress you. He thought it a much more worthwhile use of his time.

A while later, you'd been sent to the settlement that'd grown up at the center of the former drive-in theater a bit down the road from the Abernathy place. You were rather enamored with the place, both because of its historical use and because it had a fairly interesting crop setup, attempting to squeeze the most use out of what parts of the ground weren't paved. Personally, he felt less welcome at this place than he often did at other settlements, though other settlements coincidentally also seemed to have more ghouls already living there. However, when you wanted to stick around for a bit, caught up in helping work out some kinks with their crop watering system, he didn't object or complain, happy to see you happy. He'd simply make himself scarce during the day, often scavenging or patrolling the outer edge of the place and leaving you to socialize and play in the dirt, which is where he found you upon his return one early fall evening, the air growing chilly as the breeze blew through the little farmyard.

"How was your day?" you asked as he approached, sitting on the steps of the ramshackle barn the settlers had constructed and knocking mud off of your boots and the cuffs of your pant legs. The sun was quickly sinking behind the ridge at your back, darkness beginning to envelop the edges of the place.

"It was great. Camped out watching the ridge for a while, so I'm pretty stiff. Wanna go for a walk with me, stretch your legs?" he asked, rolling a loose cig in his fingers before jamming it between his lips. Smiling, you nodded silently in agreement, sweeping the remaining dust and debris from your pants after you stood before moving to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, the two of you making your way northwest towards the other end of the paved lot. You chit-chatted a bit about the day's events, what each of you had accomplished. When you reached the decrepit building that made up the old movie screen, he took a pause to lean against the stained wall, finally lighting up his smoke. You busied yourself staring up at the stars quietly, leaving him to study you closely as he puffed away at the thing.

"Have you gone up top yet?" he asked eventually, exhaling the last of his cigarette through what remained of his nose as he tucked the butt into his pocket.

"No. Can you? I thought they had a guard post up there so I've been keeping away. I get so embarrassed when I get in the middle of their patrol routes." you asked, an excited glint in your eyes as you fiddled with the ends of your hair.

"They don't man it at night. Can't hardly see nothin' from it in the dark, strategically, and it's too hard to wire anything up there. Plus, anything happens and you're pretty far away, all things considered. Nor' says they're building a guard tower soon. Wanna take a look? Might still be neat."

You nodded enthusiastically, quickly reaching out to thread your fingers into his and tug him along, the slightly sickly glow of your Pip-Boy flashlight illuminating your way along the mostly intact path. The pair of you climbed the old metal stairs together, hand-in-hand, slowly making your way up to small walkway along the top of the massive screen.

He had been a little surprised that you'd never heard of a movie theater like this before you'd come here for the first time, since even he'd at least read about them once or twice (and vaulties often seemed to know so much more about the pre-war world than people from up-top), but Nora had gotten a kick out of showing both of you what remained of the massive projector in the decayed building at the far end of the lot, explaining to you how the whole place had worked back in the day. The wonder in your eyes had been adorable, and you'd spent quite a while afterwards talking about the few movies you'd watched growing up. It was rare for you to talk so much, so openly about where you came from, even if what you were talking about wasn't necessarily consequential information; he'd spent most of that night holding you in his lap, staring at you dreamily while you mused and remembered until you fell asleep.

"Wow. You can see so far!" you exclaimed quietly as you mounted the final step, pulling away from him by a few feet to look out across the scene. "Well, I bet you could see way further during the day. But still. How cool, John!"

He smiled, watching as you tested the strength of the hand rail before leaning against it cautiously, your head sweeping back and forth as you studied the inky horizon, dotted occasionally with flickering signs of life. There was a melancholic tang to the warmth he felt as he took in your excitement, your joy; this sort of small pleasure shouldn't be so novel to you, and it broke his heart just enough to color the moment.

Letting that feeling fall to the wayside, he leaned back against his own portion of the railing for a minute or two, fishing out the Jet container that sat in his pocket beside his smokes and hitting it quietly a couple of times. The pleasant, buzzing feeling of intoxication wrapping around his consciousness sent his head falling back laxly, lids heavy as he studied your silhouette against the moonlight, the lines of your body and the dancing form of your hair in the slight breeze. The smell of you in the air.

Nuzzling up close behind you after a beat, he wrapped his arms around your waist, pressing his cheek to your temple as he held you close. His heart sped up further, already racing from the amphetamines coursing through him, when you relaxed into his grip, the back of your head resting along his shoulder. The two of you had been enmeshed in whatever your little entanglement could be called for a bit, and you didn't ever seem uncomfortable with him, personally, but sometimes more intimate contact still made you a bit skittish.

For a few minutes, he appreciated the view along with you, rubbing your sides softly, massaging the dip in your lower back where you often complained of tension after a long day. Eventually, however, his hands wandered further, grazing softly over your breasts and smirking at how you sighed in response, lips sliding down to tuck against your throat. Between his physical adulation and the growing chill of the dark, your nipples pebbled quickly, his fingers alternating between playing with each of them, setting you to squirming against him. He toyed along your belt line for a beat, forcing your attention to where his touch was landing as he gently unbuttoned your pants and slid his hand inside.

"It's alright, I gotcha." he assured you, supporting your stiffening form easily as his index finger teased over your swollen peak through your underwear, feeling a growing wet spot that made his core ache.

"I'm dirty, John." you murmured, voice hushed with embarrassment, your face and throat just a bit warmer under his lips.

"You think I'm clean?" he teased in response, nibbling at your earlobe.

The slightly worried fidgeting you were doing continued for another minute or so, but the more the damp patch expanded under his touch, the less nervous you seemed; still high-alert, but drifting further and further into his touch. Soon, you were relying on him to support most of your weight as your hips moved themselves back and forth against his hand. He could feel, see the signs of you approaching your orgasm, but dragged his fingers up and down the length of your slit a few times to tease you, to drag out the moment. The tension made you whimper sharply, teeth closing around your lower lip in an attempt to silence yourself.

"Better keep it quiet, cutie. You'll get us caught." he murmured, low and close to your ear; the shudder that broke down your spine, vibrating through your back and into his chest, was delicious.

His cock was aching against your backside, throbbing with anticipation, and it was unbearable. Head spinning, his hand that had moved to knead absentmindedly at your hip slipped further to press at the back of your thigh, pushing your knee skyward until your foot caught on the lower bar of the rail, balancing your leg there until you took over, bracing it there yourself. This new position granted him more reach, his fingers swiping lower along your now slightly exposed entrance.

"Mm, John." you whispered. A warning.

"Trust me, baby." he breathed in reply, stroking over the velvety soft spot a few more times before moving his fingers back to your needy clit. He wanted to sink his fingers deep inside you, to feel you wrapped around any part of him in that base, primal way, but resisted the temptation, sensing your hesitation.

Your more open stance also granted him easier access to roll your bud between his fingers, and quickly you were dancing along that knife's edge once more, your heat and sounds and smell all overwhelming him at equal speed.

His need had reached a fever pitch, your squirming and whimpering shooting sparks down his spine; this, combined with his already high proclivity for sexual behavior on Jet, was more than enough to send him wrestling his cock free through his suddenly unzipped fly. Your shirt had bunched up in the back, leaving a sliver of flesh exposed that he fixated on as soon as he'd noticed it. Stroking himself a few times in the cool air, he pressed closer, the pierced underside of the head dragging along your smooth, soft skin and making him hiss.

Feeling any part of your body against him like that drove him instantly mad, and he had to focus almost entirely on you to ensure that he didn't blow past you on his way to the finish line. Fortunately, it wasn't an issue, as you moved your hand down on top of his, pressing down hard, and soon stiffened completely against him, burying your face in his shoulder as best as you could to muffle your cries as you came apart; he followed you almost instantly, your sounds overwhelming him as he shot all over the ground.

The two of you savored the bliss of your aftershocks for a moment, clinging to one another, but quickly he felt you attempting to right your clothing, and he allowed you to pull away a bit. Probably smart anyway; neither of you had exactly been silent towards the end, though he couldn't hear anyone ascending the stairs.

"You alright?" he asked as he set to fixing his pants. You nodded silently, smiling shyly at him as you reached for his hand.

"Aht, watch out. Don't, uh, step in that." he murmured, guiding you to his side before you made your way down, passing by a couple people who side-eyed you on your way back to your shared bed, set up at the top of the projector room. Laid down for the night, your cheek on his sternum, he'd assumed you were asleep when you finally spoke up for the first time in a while.

"John." you whispered softly.

"Hmm?" he replied, eyes closed as his hand stroked your back.

You hesitated a moment, blush-heavy and squirming.

"Is your...ah..."

He allowed you some time to try and get your words out, but it was clear you were struggling.

"You don't have to be embarrassed, babe. Whatever it is, you can ask me. I won't be upset or anything." he assured, rubbing your shoulder gently.

"...is your penis pierced?" you finally whispered conspiratorially.

He was genuinely shocked into silence for a few seconds before breaking out in uproarious laughter, his head rolling limply to and fro as you giggled along with him.

"Wow, you could tell against your back like that?" he asked, rather astonished.

"I wasn't sure it's what I was feeling." you replied, sheepish. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be weird about it or anything. I just didn't know that was a thing that people did. Then again, I didn't know people pierced things in their faces until I met that lady at The Third Rail. Remember?"

He chuckled warmly at the memory, at your candor and the pink dusting your face as you sat up a bit, still looking at him curiously.

"You look like you wanna ask me more questions about it." he said.

"Did it hurt?" you asked quickly.

"Eh, it's been such a long time since I got it, I don't really remember all that well." he white lied, fully knowing he didn't remember how badly it hurt for entirely different reasons.

You nodded, the wheels in your mind clearly turning rapidly.

"Does it, uh..." The effort of forcing the uncomfortable words out of your mouth was clear on your face. "...does it have a function, or is it just for looks? Like, do you use it?"

"Oh, yeah." he grinned, ignoring the way he had started to grow stiff again.

You didn't ask for more elaboration on that front, but your mystification was clear, gaze wandering as the very faint smell of your arousal tinged the air. Eventually, you spoke again.

"What made you wanna get it?"

This question, shockingly, was the one that stopped him in his tracks. He'd told you not to be embarrassed when you'd first brought it up, the whole thing rather entertaining to him, but something about this specific inquiry agitated the ugly knot of shame that permanently lived at his core, his own face and chest suddenly feeling flush.

Was there even a way to phrase the truth that wouldn't just be embarrassing? What was the low-key way to say I was incredibly fucked up on Ultrajet at the time and it just felt like the right thing to do, so I did it myself?

There's only one thing he could think to say that wouldn't completely demean himself in your eyes, and it came out on the back of a halfhearted chuckle.

"Don't do hard drugs, kid."

Your face was unreadable in response to that, only for a heartbeat, but long enough to make him physically squirm in discomfort. But you simply chuckled in a satisfied, incurious way, laying a sweet kiss against his cheek before tucking in. He had trouble sleeping that night, but also found it tough to look too long at your sleeping face.

Eventually, you two made your way back northwest, making a very careful sweep through Concord as you went along. Both of you had jokes about what had happened last time; neither of you said a single word until you were turning into the crumbled Red Rocket lot anyway. The very first thing you did after you dropped your pack onto the ground was climb up and double check that your vault suit was still tucked away where you'd left it. When you were satisfied with what you'd found, you unpacked your things and asked if he'd like to go over to "town" and say hello. He agreed, ready for a stiff drink after how tense he'd been on the way back.

You held hands as you crossed the bridge, and it was a real labor for him to not actively gloat at the guards you always passed. After procuring a drink from the fairly well-stocked bar, he noticed you surrounded by the usual flock of folks who wanted to chat and exchange stories, so he stepped outside. Wandering over to where the handful of ghouls who'd taken up residence in Sanctuary usually hung out in the evenings, congregating beneath a little patched-up awning on some decently nice lawn furniture, he easily folded himself into the conversation and made himself welcome.

A few long anecdotes and one too many cigarettes later, the sun was beginning to dip behind the treeline to the west, and he figured it was time to make a reappearance and collect you. However, when he wandered back into the bar, grabbing another beer on his way through, he didn't find you. Exiting through the only other door, he cast his eyes downhill towards the waterfront and found you standing there with someone he never saw you alone with: Preston Garvey.

The Minuteman second-in-command wasn't a bad guy by anyone's report, nor an especially exciting one, as far as John could tell. He was friendly, obviously eager to help out and have a positive impact on things around him, but he was also far too close to you for the ghoul's taste, and his heckles were raised high as he quickly made his way towards you. His sharp ears picked up on the conversation in progress, his steps unconsciously light and quiet.

"...just don't want you to have to deal with that, you know? People can be so awful, and you don't deserve that."

"That's very considerate of you." you replied politely, your eyes seemingly glued to the ground. "But your concern really isn't necessary, I promise."

John had largely closed the distance between himself and the pair of you, lingering about ten feet away, just far enough out that he didn't draw Garvey's eye as he approached. He hesitated to move closer, though, afraid of how he may react if things didn't go his way. The sweating beer bottle in his hand was already clenched tighter in his grip than was likely wise. His entire body felt like it was made of lead, dense and frozen and so heavy that he was sinking into the soft ground beneath him.

"Well, I won't act like I know what's best for you better than you do. I just wanted to say that I think you're great, and that I think you deserve someone who will treat you just as great." the younger man finished up, taking another quarter-step into your bubble and placing his hand against your cheek for a beat. This, alone, was enough to make John apoplectic, but when Preston had the gall to slide his crooked index finger under your chin and lift it your face towards his, he lost it for a split second, the glass vessel in his hand suddenly exploding into a plume of tiny shards, a crumbled, wet, sharp mess remaining in his bloodied grip. Fortunately, you seemed to teleport a few steps back, your hands up in a bit of a defensive gesture.

Every non-existent hair he had stood on end in that moment, his entire body coated with goosebumps as the realization that he was about to make a grave, grave mistake settled onto him. The broken remains of the bottle felt far too useful in his hand, suddenly, and he tossed the whole dripping thing to the ground before turning and pounding sandy soil up the embankment and back across the bridge. John wasn't necessarily one to lose his cool like this often, but he knew well enough that he needed somewhere to direct this anger before it boiled over in a major way.

Shoving the door open, he stomped past the few pieces of furniture you'd dragged in, coming to lean against the old counter top towards the back, the one that you'd told him you'd like to get rid of. However, the two of you had been unable to figure out how to extract the thing because it was welded to the floor. For a few weeks, he'd been pondering how to remove it cleanly to surprise you. He'd been unable to come up with anything thus far.

Something about the presence of the thing only fueled his breakdown, and he delivered a vicious kick to the side of it, the metal and vinyl folding and splintering where his foot met the side. Typically, this little bit of destruction and catharsis would've been enough to quell him into stopping. But seeing the evidence of his anger and his lack of self-control only made him feel like more of a fuck-up, like more of the undesirable, unstable junkie he often saw when he looked in the mirror, and the resulting rage was blinding. Before he knew it, he'd wrapped his arms around the lip of the thing, yanking it once, twice, then a third time with all the strength at his command, until the whole thing broke loose from the base where it had been sealed to the floor. Bits of rusted-out metal and fat splinters of rotted wood clattered to the floor as he swung around, forcing it through the doorway to his right and throwing the thing as hard as he possibly could. It flew further than he'd anticipated, arcing rather high and crashing through the moldy awning of one of the Concord homes down the hill. There was skittering, the flapping of wings in response, frightened creatures fleeing the sudden sound as John stood there in silence, the burning in his muscles and the pain in his hands finally allowing him to focus on something other than his ears ringing in anger. After a long, dizzy moment, he turned and went back into the living room area, slumping against the wall as he studied all the metal shards sticking out of the floor where the counter top had been.

"I thought maybe you'd left." your voice came suddenly from the doorway.

"Nah, I wouldn't do that do you." he replied, trying his hardest to mean it, to not be exactly that type of guy. He couldn't make himself look at you. "Just needed to get away for a bit. Didn't wanna do anything stupid."

"Honey, your hand." you pointed out as you came closer, brow furrowed with worry as he examined himself; the back of his scarred appendage was bleeding somewhat generously, sliced by a nail or something similar in his momentary tantrum. He felt nothing about the wound, any pain he'd felt from what he'd done quickly leaving his body as the smell of you quickly filled the small space, further clouding his already racing thoughts. His beer bottle hand was already healing rapidly.

"It's fine. It'll be fine." he barely muttered in reply, reaching out to grab you just firmly enough by the wrist to pull you close enough that he could give you a thorough once-over.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

You nodded, eyes wide, hair wild and cheeks ruddy as you gazed back at him like a startled doe.

For once in his life, not using the Jet hadn't helped the situation, seemingly. His head still spun with conflicting emotions and thoughts, every muscle still wired with energy from the adrenaline and from your general proximity, making him fidget and grasp for words as his body rebelled, reacting strongly to you. He was drowning in your scent, the tang of your sweat, but it was realizing that Garvey's smell still clung lightly to you from your brief contact that was the final straw.

Your heart raced under your skin, your pulse flying under the press of his fingertips as he pushed you firmly against the decrepit wall. You exhaled harshly through your nostrils, hands coming to knot themselves into his work flannel as his mouth pressed forward with its assault on yours. He expected you to begin to push him away using the shirt for leverage, but couldn't force himself to pull back first through the blinding possessive rage he felt.

John had always been more of a “free love” sort of guy most of his life, jumping from partner to partner without much thought or care, and, because he'd never put much emotional investment or time into any particular partner, had never really cared enough about another person to feel possessive of them. Jealousy was such a negative, ugly emotion that he hated to waste any of his time on it, but the fire he'd felt in his gut from the moment he'd watched that asshole place his fingers under your chin to tilt your face up, obviously angling for a kiss, could not be ignored. This was the final straw.

He'd heard the whispers of the people around Sanctuary, around every settlement and trade outpost; the speculations about why a woman like you would choose to travel with a ghoul as a companion, why you'd spend almost all your time with him, how you were so comfortable touching and being touched by him. Criticism from shitheads about his own actions and choices rolled off of him like water off a mirelurk shell, valid or not, but it stirred him up fiercely to hear these people you'd worked so hard for, given so much of yourself to, judge you, as if they had any room. Some of the more hateful ones called you a fetishist and a freak when they thought no one else could hear, and if it weren’t for you specifically asking him to not start trouble around the settlements unless you started it first, he would have made those people swallow their own teeth long ago.

Preston had added himself to that list the moment he made it clear that he pitied you for your choices.

John hadn’t previously had much problem with the guy, save for noticing the glint in his eye when he spoke with you. He couldn't necessarily begrudge him his attraction to you, though; you were, after all, the most beautiful woman in the Commonwealth, hands down. Beyond that, you were kind, generous, hardworking, and terrifyingly smart. You’d give the clothes off your back to anyone who needed them, and would offer a stranger your shoulder to cry on if they needed. It was nearly impossible to not fall in love with you, just a little. He knew; he had tried and failed as miserably as he'd ever failed at anything.

The guy’s feelings themselves weren't the problem, though; the problem was that he obviously thought himself some sort of contender for your affections. Or, he was trying to make himself one. It couldn't be tolerated. Hell, replace him with Edward Deegan, that rat McCready, or any other random man plucked out of the ether...the conclusion was the same, regardless. If this trespass was allowed, every man in the Commonwealth who fancied you or cut of your under suit would feel comfortable trying to pick you up right in front of him, and it'd be nothing but trouble for everyone involved. John's tolerance for everyone else encroaching on what was his had finally run dry.

His mouth found the side of your throat, placing open-mouthed kisses and sharp nips the way he knew you liked in a beeline from your clavicle to your ear. When you squirmed, letting out an airy moan as you yanked him closer, he latched onto your pulse point and sucked, bathing the skin with his tongue hard enough to leave a spotted, wine-colored mark that you wouldn't be able to hide the next day. You liked that, too, but you’d never admit it out loud.

Well, unless he made you, maybe...

A low, drawn out moan escaped your mouth, your hands moving up to cup the back of his head, pulling him still closer. He obliged you, pressing the line of his entire body against you, making you feel his throbbing need against your belly, and you whimpered in response, your hands finding the top button of his flannel and beginning to work it open.

He paused his ministrations, reaching up to cup your cheek gently, your own fingers stalling for a single beat as he gazed into your eyes, trying to reassure you that he wasn’t upset with you. And he wasn’t. You hadn’t done anything wrong. But he was upset at that guy’s uncharacteristically bold actions, his disregard of his place in your life. The disregard of the others. The disrespect.

He needed to assert his place. He needed to show you how he felt.

Promptly, he resumed his ministrations. By the time you'd managed to undo the last cracked button, he’d left a huge, oblong purple bruise along the side of your elegant throat.

“John,” you whispered in between harsh breaths, your hands moving to yank the thin shirt over your head. “I want you.”

The tone of your voice was sure and clear despite how it trembled. When he fully looked up to your face, you were gazing at him dreamily, your brow furrowed with effort as your hips began to move, trying to find some friction against his. Just like the previous night, like every night, he could clearly see your desire, your trust, in the way you gazed at him. Still, though, a tug of guilt in his chest had him chastising himself as he hesitated; he should protect you and tell you to not do this. Not only because of the societal response you could expect for being with a ghoul, but because he was far from anyone’s ideal man. He didn’t deserve you. He wasn’t sure he could be everything you needed, and wasn’t sure a man even existed on Earth who could be all that a divine woman like you deserved.

Even knowing this, he couldn't pull himself away from you. The overwhelming desire he'd felt since the moment you'd met burned too hot in his gut, long transformed from a deep want to a need.

“John.” you repeated, slightly louder though just as winded, and it sunk in just how much you made it feel like his name again.

His head dropped to your shoulder, kissing across it placidly for a moment. Your hands traveled up his back, eventually moving up to grab the tricorn from his head and toss it onto the counter beside you. He felt the warm bloom of self-consciousness as you pecked along his bald head gingerly, your lips feeling extra plush against his ruined skin.

“This really what you want, sunshine?” he asked, forehead coming to rest against your own as his hands rubbed your sides.

You didn’t respond vocally, but instead reached out to stroke his cheek like he had yours, thumb swiping back and forth for a few moments. There was a silence, but a warm, comfortable one that wrapped you together in your own little bubble. When your eyes met again, he had his answer.

He led you by your soft hand to the next room, ditching his shirt, the two of you dropping onto the mattress in the corner, chuckling at the plume of dust that rose from the thing as you cuddled close. Your hands absentmindedly petted at him, one twiddling at one of the frayed tails of his shirt, averting your eyes. Soon, the unoccupied hand began to move down his chest, stroking the wiry muscle of his exposed torso. Your palm was warm and soft against him as you explored his chest, eyes following your hand as it slowly moved lower. He tensed a bit as your hand swept along his abdominals ticklishly, fingertips dipping below the waistband of his jeans. You hesitated a moment, your fingers retreating slightly to sweep back and forth along the upper seam, toying with the loose threads there.

John was radiating tension at the way you were touching him; you had never been quite this bold before, and his head swam with the overwhelming amount of emotion that he felt as your fingers began to dip below again, shyly. He was proud of you, knowing how much work you’d put into getting over your nerves to get to this point; at the same time, he was beyond touched that he was the man you’d chosen to share these milestones with. Both of these tender feelings made the overwhelming arousal he felt at your soft hands on his body a little embarrassing.

His breath caught in his throat when the tips of your fingers lightly brushed his erection, the sound odd. You froze, eyes moving to his to assess; he gave you a small head shake to convey that you hadn’t hurt him or anything, his usually silver tongue caught in his throat.

Given the green light, you slid your hand just a little further down, warm against the side of his shaft as you gently explored; your ginger poking and prodding was unpracticed, almost clinical, your hand trembling a little as you made him squirm. He was already rock hard, electricity sparking from where you touched him, and his frazzled emotional state didn’t help in the slightest. He gave a little grunt, trying to remain quiet and calm but feeling a mounting need to touch you, to kiss you, to hold you down against the filthy mattress and make you come undone.

He wanted you naked.

Generally, when you two got to fooling around, you were more than okay with him touching you both over and under your clothes, and you responded to him beautifully, making it easy to figure out what you liked and what you didn’t. However, you were often very nervous to fully remove your clothes when he made it clear he actually wanted to touch you. In the past several weeks you’d been so bold as to let him push up the hem of your shirts or open the blouse of your dresses to softly fondle and kiss your breasts, which you held and shielded with your hands when he wasn’t directly touching them, your face dusted with a dusky, embarrassed blush.

It hurt him terribly to see that you doubted your own beauty; if he had his way, he would spend every day from here to the next end of the world showing you how gorgeous you really were. But at the same time, the lingering shyness you demonstrated drove him wild.

A sharp inhale left his mouth when you suddenly wound your index finger lightly around the head of his cock, the softly calloused pad collecting some of the precum that dribbled from the slit and dragging along his piercing. You jumped a little at the sound, but when he looked at you in the dim light, your eyes were wide and the corners of your mouth were turned up ever-so-slightly in an expression of gentle confidence. He didn’t dare interrupt you, not wanting to risk throwing you off whatever wave you were currently on, instead tucking what remained of his lower lip between his teeth as you shimmied a little closer to him, the new proximity granting you a little more length of your arm to slide into his pants.

When your soft fingers curled all the way around his shaft, he nearly lost himself.

He cried out, the sound embarrassing and dragging out as you moved your grip on him up and down, slowly, hesitantly, his face burning with the shameful realization that he’d nearly cum in his pants like a teenager from a single touch from you. He was grateful his blush couldn’t be read on his tarnished skin as he dropped his face to your shoulder once more, placing a series of little kisses across the tan softness there as your blush began to work it's way down to your chest. One of his hands swept down your spine, caressing you softly as it slipped low and came to rest in the small of your back.

“Fuck.” he grunted, his jaw clenched tight as you continued your gentle ministrations, “I wanna see you, baby. Please.”

Your hand paused for a moment, giving a couple more gentle strokes before pulling back. When he lifted his head again, you were looking at him straight-on.

“Only if I get to see you, too.” you replied simply, your voice just above a whisper.

He was surprised at that; John had no real issues being a ghoul, but generally made it a practice to stay mostly clothed during sex for the ease of things (and, you know, just in case someone decides they don’t like what they see). His shirt was already hanging open, exposing his chest to you, but he went shirtless or open shirted frequently, both at home and on the road. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to you. He pulled back from you a bit to straighten up, his hands coming to work the fly of his jeans down as he gazed back at you, lips swollen and throat heavily marked where you sat, leaning back against the moldering wall.

“Deal.”

At that, you sat up more yourself, fingers slowly moving up to work the clasps on the back of your now well-worn bra loose. John stood and busied himself removing his jeans, taking a few extra seconds to fold them before placing them on the floor with his boots. As much as he wanted to stare at you, to fix his gaze on you and savor every moment of your undressing, he knew it would make you anxious or self-conscious, and willed himself to keep his eyes on the floor or the wall for a minute. When he looked back over, you were stripped down to just your panties, your knees drawn up to your chest, obscuring your breasts from his view as you watched him, waiting.

He felt a sudden and unexpected wave of self-consciousness as your eyes traced over his almost-naked form, straining to make out the details of him in the rapidly fading light. He was grateful that night was falling. Following your lead, he left his boxers on and returned to the bed, sitting down gently beside you. You responded by leaning towards him, leaning your head on his shoulder. A few quiet moments passed, the only sounds the creaking of the ancient place's frame and the wind in the trees outside.

"Nervous?" he asked, unable to help himself.

You nodded, but softly; he cupped your face lovingly, kissing you a few times and feeling you relax towards him just enough that he could maneuver you down onto your back. Giggling, your smooth palms ran along his own body in turn, coming to rest along the crown of his head as he laid kisses down your torso. An approving hum escaped you as he let his tongue lathe across one of your nipples, a hand teasing along your mound, but you froze up a bit when he moved towards your stomach. Feeling your tension, he pulled up just enough to look at you.

"I'm sorry. It's not you." you said, eyes avoiding his.

"I know it isn't, honey. It's alright. You didn't do anything wrong. Just relax, okay?"

Your eyes closed, hands petting at his head in soft affirmation as he dragged his lips along your soft skin, minding the few pale scars that decorated it. He could tell you were self-conscious about how soft you were in the middle, but he loved it, resisting the urge to sink his teeth into the plushness. More than once, a simple little peek at your tummy when you were reaching up or changing had been enough to turn him on so badly he'd had to excuse himself for a bit. You'd be incredibly sexy pregnant, he often thought. Moving lower, he switched up and laid some playful bites along the inside of your right thigh, and you let out the most adorable little squeak.

However, when he let his lips ghost over your bare mound for the first time, a heavy shudder broke down your back, your other noises choking down to nothing. It took a great deal of self-control, but he managed to drag out teasing you for a bit, barely letting his breath tickle you before peeking his tongue out to take a small swipe at your folds. He deeply suspected that he wouldn't last long once he finally made it inside you, and he wanted to make sure you were completely satisfied before that happened.

Soon, the temptation to dive straight into you got to him, and he closed his lips around your puffy clit, lapping and bathing it with the tip of his tongue. You cooed at the sensation, grasping at the back of his head and grinding your hips forward. He grinned, delving deeper into your most sensitive place. Quickly, you were trying your best to fuck his face, rubbing your slit along his tongue and nose until he was forced to hold your hips down, wriggling and writhing until you were calling out his name and coating his tongue in your taste.

He was lightheaded from how much blood had rushed to his groin by the time he lifted his head from yours, giving you a second to breathe and regain your vision before pulling himself on top of you. Petting and stroking his favorite parts of you, he found himself lost in admiration for a long second, holding his gaze on your face until you finally looked back at him. There was an electricity in the air between the two of you, a magnetism drawing him in until you were close enough to share breath.

A terse little noise left your throat when the head of him first touched you, just barely laying against you, nestled in the fold where your thigh met the rest of you. Though he’d anticipated it (advancing to a “new step”, as it were, always made you a touch anxious and jumpy at contact, but John’s skin crawled at the idea that he might be doing something to you that you didn’t want), his immediate instinct was to pull away, to hold you and tell you that the pair of you didn’t have to do this, that he cared for you for reasons other than what he could take from your body, and that it would kill him if you didn't feel that. But the way you wrapped your arms around his narrow shoulders, burying that beautiful face against the weathered side of his neck as you tried to pull yourself closer, steadied him. You wanted this, and he wanted to give it to you.

He rested there for a minute or two, not moving, letting you adjust to his presence and listening to your breathing. It was shaky, and he dropped his chin to place a few kisses along the crown of your head, lingering with each. Slowly, he brought a hand to your chest and gently groped your breast, thumb circling your nipple tightly in the way he knew made you crazy, earning a couple quiet whimpers from your lips. You loosened your grip on his neck a little, relaxing back onto the bed enough to allow him to kiss you again, his mouth distracting you while his free hand slipped down to grip his erection, giving it a firm squeeze to alleviate the nearly unbearable pressure he felt as he slid it against you.

He broke away from you before he was aware what was happening, pulling his mouth back to moan as he really felt the silky wet heat of you against him for the first time. Pins and needles of pleasure bloomed up his spine and across his scalp; he was so close to what he’d been fantasizing about for almost a year, what he’d spent so many late nights and hazy jet-fueled afternoons jerking off thinking about. Again, he throbbed dangerously, threatening to blow his load before he was ready.

Forcing himself to focus, to come back into his own body a bit and retreat from the heady pleasure he was slipping into, he braced himself and slid the blunt head along your wet little seam, collecting your lubrication as he stroked over your clit, the swipe of the little metal bar making you shudder. To his surprise, while you were trembling and he could still smell fear pheromones in the air, you let out a moan, your hips shifting to work against his, rubbing yourself back against him. Seeing you growing bolder in your actions, compared to how anxious and tense you'd been before, made his heart and his cock swell simultaneously.

“Fuck, you’re so wet, baby.” he hissed, unable to keep a better handle on his filthy mouth; you responded with a sultry hum, seemingly appreciating his words but unsure how to respond. Your hips continued to cant against his, your breathing uneven, face pulled taunt in concentration. He groaned at the sight, rubbing himself against you a little faster. All the better if you came again before he slid home, he figured.

After another few minutes of continuing to stroke at your hard nub, you shuddered under him once more, moaning low and throaty as another rush of that shiny slick coated him. God, he’d been addicted to a lot of things in his life, but the best thing by far, and the only one he’d never be able to kick, was the sounds you made as you unraveled. No one else had ever heard your most intimate song, your sotto little moans and whimpers as you experienced feelings you'd been convinced you couldn’t feel before.

Pulling himself up from you just a little, his hand left his member and came up to brush your hair from your face once again, gently stroking your downy, flushed cheek as you worked to catch your breath. Never before had he wished he had a camera so badly; between your fully nude state beneath him, your kiss-bruised pout and throat, the wild crown of soft hair, and the way your deep, dark eyes beckoned to him as they slowly slid open, you were the most gorgeous sight he’d ever taken in. Cupping your face with both hands, he leaned in slowly, your eyes lingering on one another as he pulled you gently into another kiss. He wondered if you could taste yourself on his tongue.

For a few moments, he allowed the pair of you to fall back into you usual pattern of kissing; advancing, gently teasing, withdrawing before resurging once more like the sea. Slowly, his right hand pulled itself from your face, softly brushing the side of your breast and rib cage as it slipped further south. Fingers ghosting just barely over your mound, he gripped his aching cock where it hung heavy between you, giving a light squeeze around the shaft as he repositioned himself slightly, lining up. As the head of him nestled against your opening, you gave a small whimper, pulling back just enough to disconnect your mouths, lips brushing his as you spoke.

“John.”

He waited a long moment for you to say more, but you seemed unable to force whatever you wanted to say out.

“You ready?” he asked gently, voice a soft murmur against your mouth. His body was tense as he awaited your response, ready to pull back if needed, but you wordlessly cuddled up to him again and let out a deep sigh, wrapping your legs just a little tighter around his waist. Peppering your jaw and throat with small, distracting kisses, he pressed forward a bit, undulating his hips back and forth a few times until the head slipped fully inside. You tensed a bit, and he set to marking up the other side of your throat, drawing your attention and making you gasp and hum as he worked his way further inside.

When about half his length had been worked inside, he took a pause, sitting up a little higher to check on you, finding you staring shyly at him, worrying away at your lower lip. Your face morphed a bit when he gave a couple of thrusts of equal depth, and he watched you processing the new sensations, bringing his thumb to your clit again. Breathing heavily in response, you shuddered, and he let a low moan slip himself when you started to work your hips back and forth in a crude arc.

The way you were wriggling and clenching already beneath him set his hips to moving further, faster. Every muscle in his back and flanks burned with withheld strength, effort to not literally fuck you through the mattress, but eventually he'd built up to full-length strokes, using whatever bounce remained in the decrepit springs to move you easily back and forth along his length.

Taking in the bruising along the sides of your throat where he'd been kissing and sucking at your skin, John hummed approvingly, nuzzling you and taking a deep lungful of your rich scent. The lingering edge of his own smell that coated you turned him on more than he'd have thought, and he gave a much harder buck than he'd intended.

"Oh, f-" you gulped at the sudden stab before silencing yourself, the word he wanted to hear so badly teasing across his ears and sending him gnawing along your shoulder again.

"Go on, honey." he growled, his hips steadily picking up their pace, body pinning yours just a little harder. "Say it."

You didn't reply, your face as red as he'd ever seen it as his fingers moved to your abused clit again, earning a pitiful whimper as he began to rub at you again.

"Beg me to fuck you. I wanna hear you say it, baby. I need it."

"John...!" you gasped as he flicked the tip of his finger just right; however, he paused completely when you still refused to say the magic words, simply applying pressure near where you wanted it as he continued to pound away at you.

"Mmm." you whined, clenching around him over and over, those big eyes brimming with tears.

"Tell me."

"F-fuck! Fuck me, John! God!" you finally spat, everything tense and twitching and spinning as he fully let himself go, wrenching one of your legs up onto his shoulder and driving as hard into you as he felt he could let himself without splitting you in two, his fingers back at work. You squirmed under him at the almost punishing pace, fingernails digging firmly into his back; the pain made him growl again, and the sound was seemingly enough to push you over that edge, squeezing and fluttering around him fast and firm as you gasped and sputtered his name.

He was able to hold out for a few more strokes, his hips stuttering as the pins and needles creeping up his spine began to fully wash over him.

“God, baby, I love you.” he huffed breathlessly, overwhelmed and not giving you a moment to respond as his mouth crashed into yours once more. He couldn’t bring himself to feel bad or embarrassed for saying it; he did love you. He loved everything about you, and every day he loved you more and more.

Your reply, whether you'd fully heard what he’d said or not, was to throw your arms around his neck and kiss him back deeply as your bodies continued to glide across one another, yours faltering and growing limp as he crested the peak.

John had never really wanted kids before. He felt himself far too unreliable, too unlike someone anyone should look up to as a father figure. However, that didn't stop the most primal part of his brain from whispering to him how perfect it would be to knock you up, for everyone to see you full to the brim with his child and know that you were his and only his.

"Fuck, I wanna cum inside you." he growled, quickly following up with "I can't get you pregnant." when you made worried, bleary eye contact. Your responding whimper made his gut tighten, hot and sharp and so ready, but he also felt a sting of guilt behind his breast at what felt too close to a lie. Still, when you fluttered around him hard once more, it was the end, his head falling heavily into the crook of your neck, his moans filling your ear as he filled you completely, throbbing into you again and again as you clung to him.

He wasn't sure how long he laid there, almost all of his weight pressing down on you until he regained the presence of mind to hold himself up a bit. Both of you panted like you'd been fleeing for your lives, exposing your overheated skin to the cool air while still desperately holding one another. There was so much racing through his mind, thoughts and creeping worries, but his exhausted body rebelled, refusing to allow him to even sit up. You appeared similarly situated, fighting your way into a comfortable position across his chest before letting your eyes close heavily. Quickly, your breathing fell even and gentle, your hair wild as it laid across his ribs. Somehow, you still looked so innocent to him.

Quickly, he followed you into sleep, clutching you close with no shame, his mind fogged with the smell of him all over you.

-

It was the chill of the very early morning air licking at your slightly exposed back that began to rouse you several hours of deep sleep later, a shiver breaking out up and down your spine as you curled yourself up closer to the man beneath your arm, staving off having to pull away and get up for a few more minutes by sapping his ample body heat as he snored lightly, blissfully unaware. You drew in a long, deep breath, stretching your back as best as you could without moving too much as the very familiar smell of him filled your lungs; tobacco, cologne, and that slight smell all ghouls seemed to carry that was somewhat like an old book. It was a great comfort to you, and soon you felt yourself beginning to drift back off into the inky embrace of sleep.

However, just a few moments later you began to feel the nagging tickle of your full bladder beginning to protest your posture, the feeling rapidly becoming more urgent as you laid there, trying your hardest to ignore it. You huffed, cursing your incredibly regular bathroom schedule mentally. Resigning yourself to your fate, you gently rolled onto your back, giving you just enough space from your still snoring partner to slowly sit up and look around the formerly abandoned gas station.

It was early, the night still holding its grip on the room as the sunrise struggled to break its way through the windows. Grasping around, you found your Pip Boy, strapping it onto your arm quietly as you rose from the floor where the two of you had constructed your makeshift bed set, tucking the blanket around your partner’s still snoring form as you gave another shudder, casting a glance around the room again in search of your jacket. When you didn’t locate it immediately, you made your way for the door, grabbing John’s long red coat from the table near the door where he’d left it instead, wrapping it tight around your naked body as you quickly padded outside. It wasn’t worth waking John up early if you didn’t have to just to turn your flashlight on.

Winding your way around the corner of the place, eyes scanning your surroundings for any new threats, you quickly made your way to the tree line in the back yard, picking a concealed spot before bunching the coat’s tails up around your waist to squat.

You hunched there, nose and toes freezing in the crisp air, and closed your eyes, trying to hurry though your task but distracted by your brain’s undeniable urge to run though last night’s events again in your mind, to dissect each moment for meaning and for the ability to store the memory away for later.

There were so many moments you wanted to keep hold of, turning each one over carefully in your mind as you cleaned yourself up, your walk back to the Rocket much less urgent; the way he’d pressed you against the wall, the heat of his insistent kisses and gropes, the sound he’d made as he lost himself deep inside you.

The sound of his rough voice, cogent, but overwhelmed, as he’d told you he loved you.

Your pulse raced as you remembered how those words hit you, how you’d struggled to try to return them against his smothering kiss. You’d loved him for what felt like eons now, and you were indescribably excited to have broached this particular milestone, despite the mild lingering doubts that he’d only been lost in the moment when he said it. The closeness you'd been building ever since you'd been introduced had always felt so easy, so natural, and so foreign to you, that you concluded it could really only be love.

As your bare feet stepped up onto the front stoop of the place you'd begun to see as home, you could hear the familiar sound of John’s lighter striking, your pace picking up as you hurried down the short hall to see him sitting up on the dingy mattress on the floor, tossing the old gold-plated lighter a bit to the side, onto his folded pile of clothes. Gaze lifting to appraise your body lazily as his head turned to face you, freshly lit cigarette dangling loosely between his thin lips, he smirked at you as you hurried across the cold floor, coat drawn tight around you.

“Well, ain’t this a pleasant surprise.” he mused, voice thick with sleep as he took a long drag, his face briefly lit up by the red-orange glow of the burning tobacco as he slowly looked you up and down. “I can’t lie, wearing my coat’s a real hot look on you, babe. Then again, you could wear a tato sack and look just as sexy. You really don’t need to try.”

Your cheeks burned with discomfort at the positive attention you were receiving, but at the same time, you giggled and felt a warm sensation deep in your stomach, standing a little taller as you approached. Shifting down onto your knees as you saddled up beside him, you kissed him on the cheek and leaned against him, seeking warmth beneath the blanket.

“Cold this morning!” you exclaimed, chattering your teeth as you snuggled your head into his firm chest. John wasn’t a large man in terms of his general build, but the muscle tone he did have was deceptively strong due to his ghoulification. He chuckled at your dramatic show of discomfort, slinging his free arm around you to hold you close, leaning back to blow his latest drag away from you.

“Sleep good?” he asked, rough palm rubbing comfortingly up and down your back, making the lightest of scratching sounds against the old wool.

“Oh, like the dead.” you replied, eyes peeking open to look up at him. “Better than I think I ever have before. I only even woke up because I was chilly.”

“You did seem like you were out pretty good. I woke up for a few a couple hours ago to readjust a bit but I was out. Turns out having the most gorgeous woman in the Commonwealth laying naked across your chest is quite the sleep aid.”

You blushed again as he threw a wink at you, giggling as you sank down further under the cover, your head coming to rest in his lap, the bit of blanket over his groin bunching up at the back of your neck. John had always been very flirtatious with you; he was a flirtatious man by nature, sometimes using it to disarm people, but he was also honest, and you knew he wouldn’t tell you anything he didn’t mean. You could see his attraction to you, the affection he held for you in his deep, soulful eyes when he looked at you, too, and it made you feel genuinely beautiful and not just objectified for the first time you could ever remember.

John finished his cigarette above you, discarding the butt by tossing it in the little sack in the corner for trash and junk, before leaning down over you, peppering your hairline, then your forehead and cheeks, with soft kisses, his rough lips brushing you gently. Working his way slowly down your face, he paused when your mouths aligned, bringing one hand down to cup your cheek.

“Think I’ve got a joint already rolled in the right pocket of my coat. Wanna split it?” he asked, voice low and soft, just a hair above a whisper. He was so close that his lips brushed yours and his body heat soaked into your face like you were laid out in the sun.

“Sounds wonderful.” you whispered, leaning up to kiss him. His hand on your cheek slid around to the back of your head, cradling you against him as you smooched one another. In no rush to pull away, you stayed in his lap until he pulled back from you on his own before sitting back up, fishing around in the pockets of the old coat until you felt the little hand rolled cigarette, careful to not crush or bend it as you held it out to him.

“You wanna go first?” he asked, sifting through the pool of fabric beside him for his discarded lighter. “I’ll light it for you if you want.”

You thought for a moment, and then shook your head. You still weren’t confident enough smoking marijuana to not worry about looking silly. “Nah, I’m not sure I’m cool enough for the first hit yet.”

A warm, raspy chuckle met your ears in response as he placed the joint between his lips, hand cupped over his face as he attempted to light it. The slight breeze that danced across the floor kept catching the flame, bending it before snuffing it out. You drew yourself closer once more, bringing your own hands up alongside his, expanding the shield and allowing him to light it. He smirked at you as he drew in the first hit, holding it in deep as he held the smoldering joint out to you; you grasped it between your thumb and forefinger, feeling self conscious as you lifted it to your lips and inhaled a small amount. When you offered the thing back to him, he insisted you have another, so a second little puff disappeared up into the air.

“Taking awfully small hits there.” he teased as he accepted the joint back.

You blushed, looking down to the tattered blanket that covered your bodies haphazardly.

“It’s just really harsh and I don’t wanna die coughing!” you gave a little chuckle as you spoke. You toyed with a loose thread for a moment before continuing. “Do you think you could do that thing again where you, uh, pass it to me? It doesn’t make me cough nearly as much that way.”

He chuckled as he inhaled another hit, his voice strained as he held it during his reply.

“If you want me to kiss on you, babe, you can just ask. You don’t have to ask me to shotgun weed to you as an excuse.” he jested, leaning towards you, chin tilted down as he angled towards your mouth. You smiled at him as your lips met, his parting as you inhaled his exhale. This time, your lungs didn’t burn at all, but you could feel more of a head change as you pulled back, lips pursed for a long moment before exhaling the rich tasting smoke into the cool air, the tendrils dissipating lazily above your head.

Your hands slid further across the floor behind you, leaning back a little, head cocked in John’s direction, watching him as he took another hit. When he tilted his chin at you again a moment later, you accepted another kiss, another puff, your body sinking a few inches deeper into the pool of tingling warmth you were beginning to feel. Your eyes felt weighty, and your lids drifted closed for a moment in response to the general feeling of peace; when they opened again, he was raking his eyes up and down the exposed sliver of your torso and stomach that was revealed by the gaping, unbuttoned coat opening as you leaned back. Briefly, you felt the familiar urge to cover yourself, but you let it pass, trying to bask in your lover’s attention. You liked when he looked at you.

Things stayed like that between you for a while, the deep indigo of the room slowly fading into lighter hues of periwinkle as the warmth of the rising sun outside began to seep in, the world beginning its gradual awakening as the earliest birds began to sing in the distance. You shared more nips between you, the kisses after each stolen breath growing longer, deeper with each pass, tongues tasting one another languidly as you moved closer over time. The joint was growing short in John’s fingers, and you watched him evaluate it from where your head was resting on the point of his shoulder, your arms wrapped around the arm he was using to support himself.

“Probably one good hit left. Want any more?” he asked, taking a long inhale as the little roach lit up bright red.

You nodded silently, shifting up and scooting in more, hip to hip with him as your lips met once more. You kissed again, but this kiss felt different, the air electrified. Your body felt sluggish and heavy in the most pleasant way, a warm thrum building up between your thighs as you felt yourself begin to slick.

He pulled himself up, now free arm coming to wrap around your waist; you anticipated him pulling you a little closer, but instead, he used his strength to lift you with the one arm, gently swinging you into his lap and pulling a surprised little giggle from you, trailing into a slight cough as the last hit you’d shared left your lips and disappeared into the air. After a moment, you’d cleared your throat successfully and settled yourself, feeling your cheeks heat up just a little when the cleft of your ass pressed down onto his manhood through the thin blanket, finding it stiff. Your lower lip drew between your teeth as you slowly allowed your eyes to meet his, your arms winding around his neck as he smirked at you.

You exchanged a few more kisses, his hands slowly moving up your sides beneath the open coat, stroking you softly. Though his skin was rough and whorled, the radiation emanating from within producing an energy all its own, his touch was a great comfort and only made you relax further; there was no pain to be had from his hands, only pleasure, your body told you. Slackening further against his chest, you wound your palms up and down his torso, eyes following them, dipping your fingers lower and lower into the darkness under the blanket each time.

When John’s hands slowly ran back up, passing the sides of your breasts to tuck into the sleeves of the coat and sliding it ever so slightly down your shoulders, you made eye contact once more, his hands pausing as he looked at you, very clearly asking permission in the nonverbal way you’d come to develop. You hesitated for a breath before pulling your hands back, straightening your arms to allow him to tug the heavy garment the rest of the way off, laying it on the bedroll behind you as you leaned forward again, curling up against him as his arms wrapped around your bare back.

You still felt the unease, the trembling feeling in your stomach as you reclined nude in his lap, but to a much lesser degree than you ever had before, more a sensation of excited embarrassment than ashamed embarrassment, and you’d felt enough of the latter to know the difference. Leaning up just enough to look into his face, you smiled a little at him as his hands continued to stroke your back lovingly.

“How’s your ride, sunshine?” he asked after another few quiet moments passed, now stroking your sleep-mussed hair.

Grinning, you closed your eyes and leaned back the few inches you could for a moment. you felt pleasantly weighty and simultaneously floaty, swaying just a little as you hummed.

“I feel great. Good sleep and now this? I haven’t been this relaxed in quite a while.” you mused, bringing one hand up to cup his rough cheek, thumb sweeping along his thin lower lip. “Though, I don’t think last night hurt me on that front, at all. In fact, I have a theory about why I slept so well...”

Despite always feeling a certain degree of nervousness, exposure at your genuine expression of attraction, you tried hard to give the energy John gave you back to him, to reassure him that you wanted and...loved him as much as he did you. You always tried to return his flirtation in equal degrees, something you didn’t think he was quite used to. The hesitation you felt, the tension within holding you back when you wanted to love him loudly, enthusiastically, was a burden of your own and not one that you wanted to saddle him with. You knew that, as much as he may embrace and shield himself with his image as Hancock, wild, free-loving party-time mayor of Goodneighbor, in reality, John McDonough was really a very insecure man. Particularly after yesterday's events, which you were loathe to bring up directly, especially since he seemed to be in such an improved mood.

He smiled at you, wide and bright and genuine, very clear even in the still relative darkness of the room, leaning forward to kiss you again. Your legs wrapped around his hips tighter as the kiss deepened, pulling your bodies flush together as his mouth broke away from yous, trailing across your cheek, down your jaw and the column of your throat, settling in the hollow of your neck, bathing you with his tongue in that way that sent electric shocks down your spine. Combined with the tickling sensation of his heavy breath in your ear as he licked and kissed you, you quickly began squirming in his lap, flushing bright red in your hiding place against his shoulder.

The only thing that separated your bodies now was the thin fabric of the tattered blanket, and as you attempted to press yourself closer to him, you could feel him even clearer beneath you, prodding your inner thigh as you both slightly undulated against one another. To your surprise, you felt none of the typical seizing fear at the sensation, only more want; you buried your face further into his neck and let out a pitiful little whimper, hips grinding down harder.

John grunted in return, arms around you clenching just a little tighter as he throbbed noticeably against you. Your stomach tightened at this, the previously chilly room suddenly way too warm.

“John.”

His name left your lips for the umpteenth quietly, a tiny little huff of sexual frustration so quiet it barely touched your own ears, but seemed to reach his fine, as he squeezed you once more in response, holding you much firmer this time as his hips shifted beneath your own, arcing to rub himself along your increasingly sensitive seam. His lips left the spot they’d been tending to on your neck, nipping and sucking their way back up to your ear, breathless as he spoke to you in the hushed tone of a needy lover.

“Wanna go again?”

The question wasn’t just for show; no matter how insistently he was grinding himself against you, how desperately his hands may grasp you, you could say no if you wanted. No guilt tripping, no anger, no coercion. But knowing that only made you want him more, made you want to push away your option to refuse him even more insistently, even as you trembled in his lap.

Your lips found his throat, kissing at it sweetly and breathing wantonly to him, almost embarrassed by your own needy tone as you replied.

“Yes, please.”

Your body was loose and weighty as he lowered you down onto your back, the wool of his coat warm against your skin once more as he laid you down, the blanket falling away from his body and yours as you readjusted. He was kissing you again, rather chastely this time as his own warm body spread over top of yours, shielding you as he slowly kissed his way down your neck, across your chest, ghosting down across your breasts. As he moved his body further, he uncovered more and more of your own to the room, increasingly bright with the coming sunrise.

Pulling himself up onto his haunches between your feet, his hands stroked you gently as your heavy eyelids drifted shut. Rough palms brushed the sides of your breasts, cupping and groping them almost reverently, his breathing increasingly strained as his palms continued their southward exploration. You flinched a little as he brushed across the expanse of your midsection, which had grown softer during your time in Goodneighbor, but when he dropped his head to lightly kiss you there, you couldn’t help but giggle, gingerly cradling his head as he peppered your belly and hips with pecks.

Distracted by his gentle affections, you didn’t notice his other hand sliding up through the sheets before you felt him softly grab at the back of your thigh, sliding up over and across your hip as he sat up straight, leaving you pretty much entirely exposed. A little shudder ran up your spine, and you peeked at his face through barely open lids, watching him as he watched you. His left hand slid back up to knead and brush your breasts with his fingertips, swapping back and forth between the two as his right hand stroked the sensitive median between your naval and your mound. You bit back a giggle at the slight tickling sensation, instead giving a shudder as his fingers dipped lower, softly petting over the damp, dark curls that framed you.

Ever patient and ready to put in the work to prepare you, to move at your speed, he stayed that way for a while, paying thorough attention to your sensitive breasts while lightly teasing your apex, slowly re-acclimating you to his touch between your legs. As you slowly felt yourself building towards something, you relaxed, letting your thighs fall open further, and John took this as his sign to increase the boldness of his touches, sliding only the very tip of his long middle finger right down your slit. You gasped a little at the electric, but brief feeling of his rough finger pad ghosting over your swollen, sensitive bud.

Your eyes slowly slid back open, fixed on his face as he repeated these touches over and over for a few moments, his own dark gaze pinned on his hand as he stimulated you. Working to slick itself in response to his touch, your body gave a few little clenches around nothing, making you shiver as arousal wrapped around you in a ticklish gossamer curtain.

"I wanna try something." you blurted, garnering a sudden glut of confidence. John smiled at you curiously, pulling back enough to allow you some room to move.

You yanked yourself over him with far less grace than you'd have liked, but he didn't seem to notice in the slightest, his eyes glued boldly to the way your breasts bobbed and swayed with your moves. Peppering his mouth and face with kisses, you gave his chest a gentle push to urge him down fully onto his back. Your lips trailed down slowly, exploring the whorled skin of his chest, and he smirked at you, the tent he was pushing at you twitching. It was only now, this close and lingering, that you'd noticed he only had one nipple, the other simply absent along the plane of scarred muscle.

Pushing yourself further down his legs, your face came to around his navel and you pulled back to look at him, studying his reaction as you let your fingers play gently over his covered erection. A hiss flew from between his teeth, the sound vibrating just right down your spine and pushing you to grip him more firmly through the sheet, stroking back and forth slowly as you lowered yourself down onto your belly.

John was watching you incredibly close as his cock sprung into view, and it only spurred you on to run your tongue up the side of his shaft quicker, drawing a delicious shiver out of him. Your eyes locked with his as you dragged the tip up the underside, but by the time you closed your lips fully around the tip, his had screwed shut, his hands forming balled fists at his sides. Experimentally, you allowed your tongue to drag along the tip, doing small circles around it and tasting the slightly salty precum gathered there.

The piercing didn't feel as sharp against your tongue as you'd imagined it would, though it was an intriguing feeling nonetheless.

But John had other plans, it seemed, pouncing on you when you were most distracted, yanking himself free from your bewitching oral grip and pinning you down on your back once again. His hands were much faster and less gentle than the day before, eager and greedy and excitable as they groped at your breasts and tummy, slid wetly through your soaked folds. You tensed as he toyed briefly with your peak, but tensed more when he slid one, then two fingers inside you suddenly.

"Tease." he growled as he stretched you, his thumb playing harshly with your nub until you were nearly bowled over with a sudden orgasm nearly out of left field. The feeling of you tightening and gripping around his fingers must've been too much for him, as he was filling you for real before you were completely aware.

He wasn't nearly as gentle as he had been the night before, and the thrill knocked the air right out of you. The tempo of his thrusts was increasing with each passing moment, the blunt head of him beating against your tender cervix rhythmically as your body clenched and trembled around him, dancing on the edge of coming undone yet again. There was no hesitation from John as you let out a gasping shriek in response, your breathing uneven and shaky as your eyes struggled to focus. His hands gripped wherever he could reach with bruising intensity, the sharp, pinching pain of his fingertips digging into your thighs as he forced them open for him only adding to the pleasure you was feeling.

You felt his teeth ghost over your shoulder, replaced by his tongue as he seemed to grumble at himself chidingly. You let out a little whimper as you felt the sharp edge of his jaw disappear, your overstimulated brain fixating on the feeling of his teeth on your neck when he kissed you there. For a long time, you’d wondered what it would be like for him to bite you with real force. However, you couldn't ponder on the idea too long, interrupted by John's primal, almost absentminded growling.

“You know, if I were still human, I’d knock you up.” he said.

His words were low and hot in your ear as he drove himself in hard and deep once more, punctuating his statement with a growl. The words themselves frightened you, a threat to strip you of your autonomy in the name of staking a claim, the very thing that you'd given up everything to avoid. However, the fear, as well as the possessive connotation of the words, also brought forth another wave of arousal so intense that you tightened painfully around him, whimpering as he ripped you right to the edge of yet another orgasm.

He smirked at you, free hand moving to cup your sweaty cheek as he teased you with a series of half-strokes, body pushing insistently against your own; your face pressed back against him, leaning into his touch to ground you as you fluttered around him. However, that grounding touch was quickly ripped away as his grip moved to your waist, flipping you off him and onto your stomach so quickly it disoriented you, your grunts muffled into the grimy mattress.

There was a slick sound as he guided his leaking cock back to your entrance, your body tense as the head played across your slit. He bucked towards you wildly, and when he failed to properly catch, the little metal bar along the underside just barely caught against your bud in an unexpectedly delicious manner, once, twice, a sloppy third time. The sensation made you coo enthusiastically, tossing your sweaty hair and arching your back towards him like a cat at the peak of heat.

"Beg me, baby." he said, teasing across your entrance.

You felt an instant wash of heat up your spine and into your face, equal parts pure arousal and the most genuine sort of embarrassment, and the sadistic look in his own eyes didn't help. Though your brain was running on reserve power, distracted by all the amazing sensations and pulled in a hundred different directions by desire, you knew what he wanted from you, and you were just cognizant enough to squirm over it.

"Go on. Tell me what you want."

Another half-thrust, another teasing bump against your clit. You forced your ass as high in the air as it would go, your voice embarrassingly whiny and nasal when it finally broke free.

"Please, John."

He chuckled darkly at that.

"As much as I enjoy your manners, kid, I'm sorta looking for the opposite." he chuckled, letting the hand that wasn't gripping his erection play along your slit again. "Tell me."

He was teasing you as cruelly as he knew how, forcing you to feel the pressure of the leaking head just about to breech you without the satisfaction of actually following through, and that would have been enough to frustrate you into begging. However, his teasing around your clit had also grown in ferociousness, sending your hips desperately searching out his fingers, and it was more than enough to break you down.

"Please fuck me, John." you whispered.

"Sorry? Couldn't quite hear you." he smirked, and it pissed you off more than anything.

"Fuck me, John! Fuck me!" you demanded, voice slowly growing louder out of pure sexual frustration. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

The last word didn't properly land, stuttered by the way he suddenly slammed himself home again and nearly collapsed you completely, but you managed to brace yourself against the bed just as he began to rut into you with wild abandon. His heavy, warm balls slapped against your clit harshly, making you whine even sharper than before. Your own fingers fought their way between your thighs, rubbing tight and fast circles around your abused clit, and it made you quiver around him. The feeling made him growl harshly, and he actually nipped at the back of your shoulder.

"Where do you want it?" he asked.

Confused and partially distracted by your approaching orgasm, you didn't say anything at first, unsure of his meaning until he clarified a stroke or two later.

"Where do you want me to cum, baby?"

You didn't have the brain power to truly string together a sentence, but you did, shockingly, have just enough control to say exactly what he needed to hear to lose himself in you completely:

"Do it inside." you sighed, and it's all he'd needed to hear before absolutely exploding, gripping at you with bruising force and jamming his cock as deep as physically possible inside you. Like the night before, you could taste him filling you up, an electric, almost acidic tang lining the back of your throat as you felt your warm cunt overflow down your thigh.

Again, the two of you clung tightly to one another in the aftershocks, but this time felt different; there were no rivals, no threats to what you had here, only the presence of love and admiration and the pure, unadulterated desire to express those emotions physically. John pretty much immediately collapsed down beside you, his throbbing, softening cock still buried inside you as he held you flush against him, running his tongue along your sweaty, bruised throat and humming.

"Man, you smell sexy like this, all full of me." he murmured, teeth playing along your earlobe. "Y'know, Garvey's lucky his nose isn't as sensitive as mine. I'd take you out there and walk you by him a dozen times just to make a point."

"Oh, John. Don't mention it. It was so embarrassing for everybody involved. He really thought that little chin lift was going to seal the deal and I have to live with the knowledge of that for the rest of my life!" you replied, playfully clamping your thighs on his hand as your cheeks heated.

The smile he flashed you was a warm one, content and confident in a way you didn't often see from the older man. You weren't sure you'd ever known him to be this...gratified.

"I love you, sunshine."

"I love you, too, John." you smiled, settling back against his chest to resume the lazy morning you'd been sharing together before the distraction. Things were quiet again, the only real sound the breeze in the trees, shaking and dancing together joyously as they shaded your perfect hideaway.

[comrade-kimberly]

From Palestine To The World, October 2024 by Queers In Palestine.

Language: Unworded by colonial violence, resisting erasure

After a year of an ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing, attempts of expansion by the Zionist settler-colonial project, and of our ongoing steadfast global revolt, we are delivering a message from Palestine, to the world, while words cannot convey the depths of our collective trauma or the radical resistance we embody. Words collapse as we bear witness to the destruction of bodies, lands, histories, and futures. Language can no longer hold the weight of our suffering, our rage, our endless grief. It cannot do justice to our feelings and experiences. While capitalism and colonialism’s forces of death and destruction are wounding the world, we are still determined to deliver our voice, we are still moved by the force of life, and will always move with and towards it.

Palestine and Lebanon: One land in grief and struggle

The Zionist colonial entity still exists because colonial and imperialist powers are supporting and funding it. These are the same powers that produced the Sykes-Picot colonial agreement that fragmented Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and other Arab nations in 1916 by enforcing borders on our lands. We live with the implications of these systems. We deeply embody the knowledge of this violence, and have been trying to warn the world that these powers neither see our humanity nor respect our sovereignty. The world’s promises of justice and accountability through colonial international laws and institutions only reproduce violence and harm with no transformation. The very existence of these colonial powers is built on the (social) death and exploitation of others. The same tactics of annihilation that have been used in Gaza since last October are now also used in Lebanon. They are reaching us all––from surveillance tools of political repression, to weapons for direct killings. From corporations to other colonial structures, if we do not dismantle these systems, they will continue to consume us all.

Zionism: Threat against humanity

Zionist settler colonialism has been perpetrated against the land of Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. But it does not stop there: Zionism is a global threat. While Palestine is used as the Zionist entity’s testing-ground to develop technologies of oppression (including cyber invasions and technological warfare) to control the people and suppress resistance worldwide, these Zionist inventions are exported and used for state violence to further colonial, imperial and capitalist expansion. The Zionist entity’s influence extends to geopolitics and resource extraction across Latin America and Africa––from mining projects in Namibia, to diamond extraction in Angola, and ‘Cop City’ in the USA–– and its aggression can only be contained through struggle and abolition.

The myth of individualism and separation

Individualism is an instrument of the systems of (neo)liberalism, racial capitalism and colonialism. It is designed to destroy our collectives and community practices through fragmentation and separation––from each other, the land, the planet and universe, and from ourselves. The illusion of separation denies our autonomy, our sovereignty over our bodies and land. We resist this colonial myth of individualism that serves oppressive systems. We are interdependent and our struggles are interconnected and intersectional––there is no such thing as individual liberation. No one is free, until we are all free.

On the path of abolition and transformation

Our reality, and our queer, feminist, radical truths, cannot be quantified. They cannot be reduced to data, to screens, to consumable images. The genocidal violence we face and resist everyday, is not an event to be documented. This deep rupture is a tearing apart of the fabric of life that demands something more than mere speech. It demands action and transformation. And it necessitates abolition. Abolition not just through the dismantling of prisons and the destruction of all carceral systems—but the refusal of all structures that seek to imprison and kill our bodies, our desires, our lands, our futures. Abolition is a direct confrontation with the forces that seek to erase us on the path towards life-affirming and systemic transformation, it is to radically imagine and build a different future from the present.

Hope as a radical practice

Our bodies ache with exhaustion, our spirits bruised by the relentless weight of oppression. In this land stolen from us, where we live the genocide in our every moment, hope is a radical practice. We are warriors, survivors, rebels. We will not be extinguished. The world’s indifference is a betrayal––we know that. We will not allow our disappointment to consume us. Fuelled by our collective rage and grief, we unite and empower us. Still amidst these difficult times, we channel our hope as a collective force of resistance to the very foundation of these unjust systems, in Palestine and everywhere. We will not only survive this genocide, we will thrive––reclaiming our stolen land and building a future free from the chains of patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism and zionism.

Constant transformative struggle towards collective liberation

One year later, we continue to call for the world to:

Be radical, feminist, queer, intersectional, decolonial, and abolitionist in our resistances: fuelled by rage, love and longing for justice, transformation and collective liberation.

Resist the hegemonic colonial narrative: do not stop talking about Palestine with your kin, queer siblings, friends and community. Challenge the colonial and Islamophobic framing of Palestinian and racialized voices as antisemitic.

Escalate all forms of disruption of the colonial and capitalist systems enabling this violence. Rage and strike against the use of your labor and tax money to fund, support, and endorse settler colonialism and genocide. Fight against governments and hold them accountable for their military, diplomatic, economic, and political relations with and support to Israel.

Rage and grieve as radical forces for change: together we channel our anger and grief towards a world free of Zionism and all other systems of oppression.

Radically imagine a different world and put this imagination into practice by organizing to fight current systems and build the future from the present.

Always re-membering: honoring those we have lost, and standing steadfast in resistance by all means possible.

[paper-mario-wiki]

genuine question: is it worth for me(broke) to take out loans for school, knowing full well i'll never be able to pay them off in my lifetime?

like just as a gamble for potential future success?

I'm a bad person to ask this question, I didn't go to school in the US and never took out loans.

Also, no you absolutely shouldn't. If you've got money to apply to an American university, you've got money to apply to some other university in Europe somewhere, countless of which have robust english-speaking international sectors which you can acclimate yourself into for a fraction of the cost.

This is of course assuming a few things, like that you have access to a passport and have the capacity for international emigration, but honestly learning how to do all that shit instead of going to an american institution would do you better I think.

Like for real, this empire we live in is currently on the decline, if you can jump ship in ANY WAY you should, and university is a great way to get a 4-year visa to somewhere else.

This is my answer to you.

[flagellant]

soy sauce question: why do you think the limited information on Blanche Appleton indicates some kimd of conspiracy? It doesn't really seem surprising that there's not more information available about her, since she was one of thousands of mid-level bureaucrats trying to figure out how to distribute scarce post-war resources appropriately. Have you found any other signs of a cover-up or yakuza involvement?

Since starting this research the information has steadily been showing a clearer picture; the finer details of it are still pretty vague and blurry, but I've at least nailed down the foundations.

There was a woman named Blanche Appleton, married to Melville Dickinson, who worked for the GHQ-SCAP and the UNRRA during World War II and lived in Japan during the American postwar occupation. Her descendant that I'm in contact with have told me, quote,

"My grandmother spoke fluent Japanese (among many other languages) and did have connections in the business world there although no one in the family knows of their exact nature."

and

This is the first that I have ever heard of any connection to soy sauce or any particular business venture. There was always a family rumor that she was well connected, but that was attributed to my grandfather's position, not hers.

She was given control over the soy sauce industry in Japan via America--sources here, here, and in the Tokyo Institute for International Policy Studies' 2005 meeting, "Upcoming Changes in Japanese Society and the Future Shape of the Nation". All of these sources not just state that Appleton was involved on the Economics and Scientific team at General Headquarters, they all corroborate and confirm that she, as an individual government worker, was given total control over soy breweries and had power to refuse or grant the materials needed to create soy sauce.

Soy sauce brewed pre-industrialization is considered far superior to the modern techniques which were invented to hasten turnarounds and "waste" less soy beans. From all sources I can find so far, Appleton seems to have had a fundamental disconnect and disbelief about what soy sauce is supposed to be or what it represents, even going so far as to saying that she, quote,

"I want to change Japan's taste preference.”

For the final question regarding proof of yakuza/cover-up, I'm not at liberty to say right now, and I hope you can understand why I might be extremely hesitant and outright unwilling to confirm or deny any of that sort of thing before full publication and complete confidence in something that won't get me sued out of my mind. For legal purposes right now, as I work on this investigation, you can quote me as saying that there is not yet any substantial, non-circumstantial evidence which directly links all three parties of Blanche Appleton, the US government, and the Kikkoman Corporation together in any form of conspiratorial agreement or relationship. I hope that can satisfy you and answer at least some of your questions, just as I hope that you can be satisfied with the reason why I don't feel safe giving anything more than that to the public right now.

[gleamingtempest]

Ming Jeung - [DRDT] Character Analysis #02

Welcome

Hello. : ) This is a part in a series of analysis' by me where I will be individually outlining the negative experience, core belief & stated belief for every main character in the Danganronpa: Despair Time cast. Danganronpa: Despair Time is not a complete text yet so these analysis' will not be exclusively based on text from the project. All segments of these posts which cover parts of a character's story which has not yet covered in the text. Speculation will always be marked by the indicator [X] when it occurs. The purpose of this series is ultimately to provide my own individual thoughts, feelings & speculation on each character with actual text as my basis for building those actual thoughts, feelings & speculation. I hope you are all able to find it useful. Please be well - and enjoy. 🙇🏻‍♀️

*Note: This post was written at the time of 7/9/2024. At this time, the latest DRDT episode release was Chapter 2 - Episode 11. Every post in this series will be redone after the full release of the series.

Negative Experience

Ming Jeung

-> Negative Experience: The most prominent traumatic events or event experienced by the character in their past, which primarily informs their core belief & stated belief in the main story.

Negative Experience Min Jeung was born into poverty, though was not in it for a long enough period to have vivid memories of living in poverty. Submitting herself to the full authority of an institute which commodified her willingness to obsess over competence & diligence as a student before she was old enough to have vivid memories of her life is how Min Jeung managed to escape this circumstance - for both herself and her family. Fatalistically, she accepted this role without question for years because if she did not, there would be future for her or her family. Inadvertently this trapped Min in a role wherein she could not see a future for herself.

Core Belief

Ming Jeung

-> Core Belief: The Core Belief is the unconscious belief held by the character which informs their external & internal beliefs about themselves & the world, or, their "stated belief."

Core Belief

A lack of personal identity or personhood - humanity - is what defines Min's characterization & trajectory as a character. "In order to live I must submit to fate. Resistance is death; not being." Min is not allowed to be human - she lacks substance because substance lacks the ability to reach her. Min is trapped, both by the world and herself. She cannot be allowed to believe there is hope, because the very nature of her role as the Ultimate Student confines her to an identity predetermined before her personality had even fully developed - before her personhood was given the opportunity to exist. Min is nothing because Min cannot be anything. Min is not human.

Stated Belief

Ming Jeung

-> Stated Belief: The external & internal ideology or belief which the character actively & consciously applies.

Stated Belief

Min is able to justify this wretched existence by believing that she is saving her family. For herself and for her family, Min can justify her suffering because the alternative is so awful that accepting is unacceptable. Even if Min cannot be human, she can be more than that - she can be a martyr. "I wanted to save you... I wanted to save them. I can't save myself - so isn't this the best choice?"

The impetus behind Min's choices is that of justification of human suffering because others would be hurt if it was not accepted. "I can be hurt if others aren't, so it's okay." Min does not regard herself as human, so she allows herself to do awful things to herself if it means that she can be a savior. Still, Min is, doubtlessly - human. Even if she can lie to herself, she cannot lie to her humanity. Min's defining action in the story is killing Xander in order to save Teruko - and then, betraying everyone by choosing to fight for her own life in the class trial. Even if she chose to ignore it for her whole life, to justify her own suffering for the sake of others, even if Min chose to be selfishly selfless - in the end, she was human. In the end, she was somebody; Min Jeung.

Design

Ming Jeung

-> Design Philosophy: In order to analyze the designs of the Danganronpa: Despair Time cast I would like to establish my method for identifying significant elements of their design to outline & analyze. -> The order I will look at the designs through will be: [Color] -> [Clothing] -> [Story]. Color will usually consist of discussing three prime colors used for the design however their will be outliers to this rule. Story will often be speculative, since we're early in the text.

Color

The three primary colors in Min's design are red, magenta [pink] & white. The primary color is magenta while white and red are the support colors. Magenta, or pink is futility; death. It is the color of blood in the Danganronpa universe & representative of performance in a cyclical manner - the commodification of humanity for the sake of profit, regardless of human suffering. Min's eyes are pink because at her core she has internalized that she must be the Ultimate Student. She can never be anything more because to be anything more would be to betray her own core belief about herself - that she is not human. Whit is broadly just a neutral blankness, which indicates a subdued, complement nature & silent acceptance of fate without resistance. Resignment. White is hollow & empty - just like Min's day-to-day life. Red is the counter or challenging color of this design - if Min is not human then why did Min act on the most human desire of all, both in the past, to have been put on this path, and in the present, to end her path - try to live, regardless of what that takes. Red is passion, vigor, determination - will to be, and to thrive, and to succeed - humanity. Clothing

Min wears school uniform with a taupe vest over it and a red tie. Her skirt is a darker version of the color of her vest & her vest is a more neutral version of her eyes; this could be considered "taupe." Min's hair is a dark desaturated version of her bright red tie, which rests in the center of her design, between her taupe vest and underneath her face. Min's bangs rest over her eyes, which are vivid and bright but concealed from the world. Min's eyes are white & pink - empty futility. "Despair." Story

Min's diamond pin is the same pin worn by a character from the creators other fangan which they have been working on at the same time as DRDT. This character also has Min's eye color & works for XF-Ture Tech, the company which funded Min's family under the premise that she would become the Ultimate Student.

[X] This is the same agent who told Min she would fund her family if she became the ultimate student. Her involvement in the Mall Killing Game is related to the creation of the Killing Game Show & is the Killing Game Teruko was referring to.

[X] Min & this person are related but Min does not know this.

[X] XF-Ture Tech is responsible for the creation of MonoTV, the Killing Game Traps & the executions.

Final Speculation

Min Jeung

-> I Wanted to Save You

Min Jeung herself will not have any major involvement in the creation or orchestration of the killing game, but her connection to XF-Ture Tech will be significant again.

Min's connection to XF-Ture Tech resulted in the creation of the Killing Game technology.

[imageingrunge]

“Im against all support for murderous hamas” okay well I’m not. No one is born a terrorist they are made, what other course of action is there to take when you see your family members hunted for sport because you are Arab. Where the very government you live under bans all political parties that do not support the existence of Israel as an ALL Jewish state (1), withholds funds against institutions that recognize the forced displacement of 750,000 Palestinians in the establishment of said state (2), places video cameras in Arab only polling stations (3), whose very own citizen laws restrict the ability of Palestinians from Israel to marry individuals from the West Bank or Gaza (4) If your grandparents were expelled from the land after 1948 you cannot legally return nor can any of your future descendants (5). Even the UN described the control over Gaza as nothing short of a “medieval military blockade”. By 2021, Gaza had a 45% unemployment rate and a 60% poverty rate, with 80% of the population dependent on some form of international assistance. (6) What else is there to do? No human being should be expected to peacefully put up with such abuse

[girlactionfigure]

He was born on April 16, 1889. His father was an alcoholic, his mother would be committed to a mental asylum. The young boy would spend his early years at a Workhouse and other institutions for destitute children.

At the age of 14, he decided to become an actor. He started doing plays and vaudeville. In 1914, he arrived in Los Angeles. He started working in film, accepting small parts.

For his second role, he decided to dress himself, wearing baggy pants, a tight coat, a small hat, and large shoes. For the final touch, he added a small mustache.

"The Tramp" character was born, eventually making Charlie Chaplin one of the most popular actors in silent film and an international star.

After Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to prominence, Charles Chaplin wanted to address the escalating violence and repression of Jews by the Nazis throughout the late 1930s.

He would make a daring film, his first true talking picture, which would become one of his greatest films - "The Great Dictator".

It was an act of defiance against Hitler and Nazism. Chaplin played 2 characters, one a Hitler parody, and the other a look-alike Jewish barber persecuted by the regime. In the conclusion, the Jewish barber as Hitler would make a speech. It is said that during filming, Chaplin actually drops out of character and speaks his mind, denouncing dictatorship, greed, hate, and intolerance, in favor of liberty and human brotherhood. It would be called one of the greatest speeches:

"I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible- Jew, Gentile, black men, white…

"We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others’ happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

"Greed has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind...

"We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness...."

In the speech, he urged people to unite, to "fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security . . . To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance!"

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

[trashmuseum]

LETS HELP A FELLOW GAZAN ARTIST!

"Hello, my friends, this is Amr Al-Najjar, a 27-year-old from Gaza.

I am an interior designer and singer, I have my own band, and I am a theatrical and dramatic actor.

I find passion in spreading culture, arts, and music through musical artistic works in a private studio or through the theater.

I spent 12 years forming and building myself artistically and socially until I became a shining name among artists and engineers. I participated in the production of many musical and theatrical artistic works with local community institutions and international institutions.

I even established my own engineering office for decoration and design, and I used to design beautiful places and homes for every person who loves life.

But all of this was gone in the blink of an eye, in a few minutes, and in a moment of silence, it was October 7, there was nothing left, only rubble and ashes.

My dream, my passion, and my aspirations for the future were all gone.

I took refuge in Rafah, the safe area, and was surprised by the number of children who needed psychological support through music and theatre. I want to continue to provide support for them with my talents.

I hope that you will help me rebuild my home and my life, and achieve my dream- to put a smile on the faces of children and to restore artistic and musical works in Gaza.

All the musical instruments were destroyed and I lost some of my wonderful colleagues.

I need support from you in order to rebuild everything and achieve my dream.

My dream:

I need to buy new instruments and equipment. The cost of rebuilding is prohibitive, and I can't do it alone. Your support means the world to me and the kids. Your donation, no matter how small, would make a huge difference in my life. This will help me continue to pursue my passion for music and provide for my family. It would give me hope for a brighter future. Thank you for taking the time to read my story. Thank you for your generosity and kindness. Together, we can rebuild everything - music, theater, and my office - and keep the creative flame alive in Gaza."

How his house is now and how it was before being bombed (1ts picture). And where they're living now (2nd picture):

Please take a moment to appreciate his beautiful and talented voice.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by susan abulhawa (@susanabulhawa)

Thank you very much, everyone!

[dovesmelodyproject]

Among their demands, the multi-fandom HYBE divestment campaign calls for the removal of Braun and other figures associated with the company who express Zionist ideology, a commitment not to collaborate in the future with artists or companies who have expressed support of Zionist ideology, and a general commitment to take these concerns seriously and to do thorough research before future collaborations. They have communicated these demands through tactics such as email campaigns, sending protest trucks to HYBE office in Seoul, organizing an in-person protest at the HYBE America office and calling for a boycott of HYBE products and services until the divestment demands are met. Boycotts are one of many tools in the collective action toolkit, and they can take many forms. Often, they manifest in an organized commitment to not buy from a company as a way to communicate disapproval and/or to demand structural change. “History has proven to us that divestment and boycotting of entities that support and fund these ideologies plays a major role in dismantling apartheid and colonialism,” says Deeja, using the role boycotting played in the end of South Africa’s apartheid as an example. “This also goes for cultural boycotts.” This cultural boycott is an act of solidarity with those who are living amidst the injustices of a regime or state who is not adhering to international law and human rights. The BDS-affiliated Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) “urges international cultural workers and cultural organizations, including unions and associations, to boycott and/or work towards the cancellation of events, activities, agreements, or projects involving Israel, its lobby groups or its cultural institutions.” While a HYBE group has never performed in Israel, film projects put out by HYBE have been screened in the country. In April, when HYBE and theatrical film distribution company Trafalgar Releasing announced that D-Day: The Movie, a concert film of BTS rapper Suga’s 2023 tour, would include screenings in Israel, more than 12,000 people signed a petition asking them to reconsider. They did not. “We’re asking HYBE to take a stand and be on the right side of history because we are their long term fans and consumers, we have been loyal to their artists for years and have helped build the empire that HYBE has become,” says Deeja. “We want to consume art knowing we’re not giving money to a company that supports genocide and apartheid. We deserve to feel safe in our fandoms. HYBE is a globally influential company and they have the responsibility to respect human rights, to be on the right side of history, and to take proper measures to do so.”

[marskid11]

PLEASE REBLOG THIS!!

I just heard about the flour massacre in gaza. over 112 people were killed in such a short period of time. I feel even more sickened that I'm kind of numb to it now. I feel just sad. it's how I felt when I saw the video of Sidra Hassounsa, who was found hanging from a building, dead from a bomb. I was eating food at my desk and I just am thinking of all the people who can't eat there.

I drew this when I first saw the news of her death, and I hesitated to even post it. I guess I felt like even if I drew her, it would mean nothing if I couldn't draw all of the other children and people who have been murdered. But I realized that it's ridiculous to hesitate rather than to at least try. I remember Sidra Hassouna, and I do my best to remember all that have perished too. I'm going to link a post I found that lists gofundmes for a lot of families I found recently, plus some other links as well. WE HAVE TO DEMAND A CEASEFIRE FOR THEM PLEASE!!!

I REMEMBER SIDRA HASSOUNA

I REMEMBER THE VICTIMS OF THE FLOUR MASSACRE IN GAZA TODAY

Here are some links I found on a post- I don't trust the copy and paste thing on my computer to keep all the links intact so I'm just putting the post here

eSims for Gaza

Direct aid for Gaza

Care for Gaza

Women for Women International

Institute for Middle East Understanding

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Palestine Children Relief Fund

Muslim Aid USA

Direct Aid for Gaza

Palestinian American Medical Association

Urgent support for medical professionals in Gaza

Emergency Relief for Gaza

Anera

Taawon

here is the fundraiser I recently donated to + links borrowed from @smashingorpassing

#free palestine

[covid-safer-hotties]

By Michael T. Kelly

On June 12, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul expressed support for a mask ban on subways and at protests while other politicians in New York City, Los Angeles and North Carolina are considering or have already passed laws that ban masks in public spaces. Disability, civil liberties and other activists have raised alarm regarding how mask bans, even with formal exemptions for health and religious reasons, offer no guarantee of fair enforcement and can stigmatize masking in general during an ongoing pandemic. This said, I argue that we should oppose mask bans due to two vital functions.

Firstly, banning masks will enable easier surveillance of oppressed groups. Surveillance technology to catch protesters has increased around the world in light of the visible outpouring of support for the pro-Palestine movement. Additionally, activists have used masks to protect themselves from repression, surveillance and doxing by right-wing provocateurs.

To quell campus movements, police and administrators have threatened protesters in Florida, Ohio and Texas with arrest for wearing masks. Students at several colleges face code of conduct charges for pro-Palestine protests, and there has been explicit targeting on prospects for future employment and student loan forgiveness. Indeed, these acts are consistent with the United States’ long record of state surveillance against Black, Indigenous, civil rights and anti-imperialist groups.

Secondly, mask bans downplay COVID-19 and thus avoid its social and political lessons. COVID-19 has been a world health crisis, taking the lives of at least seven million people globally and 1.2 million people in the U.S. COVID infections have risen in 38 states this summer, and some hospitals and venues have even reinstated mask mandates. Long COVID remains a widespread illness, affecting 6.8% of U.S. adults with fatigue, blood clots, lung, heart and neurological issues.

The first lesson of COVID some politicians are eager to bury is that combatting a contagious, airborne respiratory virus is inherently collective and interdependent. It requires a state-directed public health response. Discourses of individual responsibility, “choice” or risk assessment are ill-suited: Is the choice to not mask based on accurate information? Does this choice impinge on other people’s freedom to inhabit public space? Would a mandate affirm a social right to protect oneself and others from illness and make spaces more accessible?

While many people in the U.S. may have had COVID and been asymptomatic or recovered, this is simply not the case for many immunocompromised people, who have suffered isolation, hospitalization and death at significantly higher rates. As disability justice authors have long pointed out, people with disabilities always face the burden of adjusting their lives against an assumed, ableist normal. No assurance of masking effectively endangers many immunocompromised and high-risk people. Under the social model of disability, institutional neglect to enforce COVID mitigation is what creates disability as a form of social oppression.

The activist movements some politicians now condemn have led the way in public health practice. Participants at the Columbia University student encampment wore masks, while people with disabilities and activists have engaged in education and tough conversations regarding the importance of masking, even in leftist spaces.

Also, because COVID is a world-scale problem, it requires international cooperation that would weaken U.S. military, economic and geopolitical hegemony. In 2020, the U.S. and European Union blocked a proposal at the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property (IP) protections so Global South nations could begin building productive capacity for vaccines and medical technology. Intellectual property regimes and patents have been a mainstay of U.S. policy since World War II through trade agreements and multilateral banking institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Patent holders can hoard technology and resources that Global South nations might otherwise access freely or more cheaply. This financial power allows the U.S. to impose unilateral economic sanctions on official enemy states – Venezuela, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe – which block medicine, food and technology, harming the population. Moves away from masking and COVID awareness further downplay the ongoing urgency to end IP and sanctions regimes for the sake of global public health.

Thus, structural changes to U.S. society are needed to address the underlying social conditions that spread illness. We can learn from the 1951 Civil Rights Congress’ We Charge Genocide petition that defined genocide as the “willful creation of conditions making for premature death, poverty and disease.”

On housing, failure to extend eviction moratoria in 2021 – a gift to landlords and real estate capital who treat homes as financial assets or sources of rent revenue – led to over 10,000 additional deaths. On criminal justice, there were calls to decarcerate as prisons are incubators of COVID, and continue questioning the social function of prisons at all. On employment, vulnerability to COVID in the workplace helped catalyze a wave of labor organizing. By downplaying COVID and banning masks, its most visible reminder, politicians help bury these important lessons.

Universities remind students and staff that their policies are consistent with county, state and CDC legal guidelines. But adherence to the U.S. Government’s public health orders is not sufficient when laws are inadequate or unjust. We can and should define our own ethos around disability, national and social liberation. Mask mandates, political education on who is vulnerable as well as public health measures to provide masks can enlist, educate and organize people toward that political project. Legislation that does not protect the vulnerable needs opposition. People should be enabled and encouraged to think for themselves when it comes to contemplating the extent to which lawmakers have the responsibility to protect their constituency.

[nessatwene-art]

The summer before junior year Robyn enrolled into a high school program at The Union Institute for Unnatural Research (UIUR for short), the leading laboratory studying the supernatural creatures known as unnaturals.

The program was for hs students seeking early hands on learning in stem for college credit. Near the end of the program Robyn audited the college interns after finishing the hs program earlier. She was very eager to show her hard work and knowledge of unnaturals, standing out among her peers and the college interns.

This capture the attention of Nick Reyes, the co-director of UIUR. Since Robyn’s work during the program was quite exceptional Nick wanted to offer an after school position as an intern (paid of course.) He saw a lot of potential in her, knowing it’s worth giving Robyn a chance for a bright future.

Robyn was beyond excited!! Honestly couldn’t believe it! Even as a lab intern she dreamt about the knowledge she could learn. All just before junior year starts! Funnily enough then Nick mentioned having a son who’s the same age as Robyn. He was in Nick’s office earlier but ran off somewhere. Robyn asked if his son was interested in his work. Nick replied, “Not exactly…😅”

Nick asked if theres a particular study or project she would like to pursue. Robyn knew it could be asking a lot but she wants to investigate some of the unnaturals and cases about them that have been ignored by the Unnatural Hunting Association. The idea puzzled Nick. Robyn explained she wants to investigate how unnaturals experience living in their world on a more personal level, field research! And help the local community whenever they cause problems. Nick was still unsure. Robyn then showed her ability to construct a bow and arrow, attempting to reassure him that she can protect herself if any monsters got hostile.

Nick decided to let Robyn pursue her idea on one condition, that she find other interns to join her between now and the start of the school year. Then they can discuss the logistics of her investigation project.

Robyn left feeling ecstatic. Getting closer and closer to her dream. But the realization finally hit her. The most difficult obstacle she has the hurdle over, finding someone who wants to meddle around Union with her.