#Revised Pay As You Earn

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The Biden administration is launching a beta website for its new income-driven student loan repayment plan today, officials told CNN, allowing borrowers to begin submitting applications for the program as federal student loan payments are set to resume in October.

The SAVE, or Saving on a Valuable Education, plan was finalized after the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness initiative in June. It marks a significant change to the federal student loan system that could lower monthly loan payments for some borrowers and reduce the amount they pay back over the lifetime of their loans.

“Part of the President’s overall commitment is to improve the student loan system and reduce the burden of student loan debt on American families,” a senior administration official said, previewing the beta website first to CNN. “The SAVE plan is a big part of that. It is important in this moment as borrowers are getting ready to return to repayment.”

Federal student loan borrowers can access the beta website at https://studentaid.gov/idr/. The enrollment process is estimated to take 10 minutes, and many sections can be automatically populated with information the government has on hand, including tax returns from the IRS, administration officials said.

Borrowers will only need to apply one time, not yearly as past systems require, which officials said would make this plan “much easier to use.” Users will receive a confirmation email once the application is submitted, and the approval process, which can be tracked online, is expected to take a few weeks.

Those already enrolled in the federal government’s REPAYE, or Revised Pay As You Earn, income-driven repayment plan will be automatically switched to the new plan.

The full website launch will occur in August, and applications submitted during the beta period will not need to be resubmitted. The beta period will allow the Department of Education to monitor site performance in real time to identify any issues, and the site may be paused to make any necessary updates, officials said.

The SAVE plan, which applies to current and future federal student loan borrowers, will determine payments based on income and family size, and some monthly payments will be as small as $0. The income threshold to qualify for $0 payments has been increased from 150% to 225% of federal poverty guidelines, which translates to an annual income of $32,805 for a single borrower or $67,500 for a family of four. The Education Department estimates this means more than 1 million additional borrowers will qualify for $0 payments under the plan.

Some borrowers could have their payments cut in half when the program is in full effect next year and see their remaining debt canceled after making at least 10 years of payments, a significant change from previous plans.

With the new plan, unpaid interest will not accrue if a borrower makes their full monthly payments.

But the new plan does come at a cost to the federal government. Estimates of the program’s expense have varied depending on how many borrowers sign up for the new plan, but they range from $138 billion to $361 billion over 10 years. By comparison, Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was expected to cost about $400 billion.

The Education Department has created similar income-driven repayment plans in the past and has not faced a successful legal challenge, officials noted.

The beta site launch comes as borrowers will need to begin making federal student loan payments again in October after a pause of more than three years because of the pandemic.

Since the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s effort to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for millions of borrowers, the administration has taken a number of steps aimed at helping federal student loan borrowers in other ways.

Earlier this month, the Education Department announced that 804,000 borrowers will have their student debt wiped away – about $39 billion worth of debt – after fixes that more accurately count qualified monthly payments under existing income-driven repayment plans.

[gootarts]

as of 8/3, the most recently updated version of this post is here (it's a reblog of this exact post with more info added)

as a lot of you know, limbus company recently fired its CG illustrator for being a feminist, at 11 pm, via phone call, after a bunch of misogynists walked into the office earlier that day and demanded she be fired. on top of this, as per korean fans, her firing went against labor laws---in korea, you must have your dismissal in writing.

the korean fandom on twitter is, understandably, going scorched earth on project moon due to this. there's a lot currently going on to protest the decision, so i'm posting a list here of what's going on for those who want to limit their time on elon musk's $44 billion midlife crisis impulse purchase website (if you are on twitter, domuk is a good person to follow, as they translate important updates to english). a lot of the links are in korean, but generally they play nicely with machine translators. this should be current as of 8/2.

Statements condemning the decision have been issued by The Gyeonggi Youth Union and IT Union.

A press conference at the Gyeonggido Assembly will occur on 8/3, with lawmakers of the Gyeonggi province (where Project Moon is based) in attendance. This appears driven by the leader of the Gyeonggi Youth Union.

The vice chairman of the IT union--who has a good amount of experience with labor negotiations like these--has expressed strong support for the artist and is working to get media coverage due to the ongoing feminist witch hunts in the gaming industry. Project Moon isn't union to my knowledge, but he's noted that he's taken on nonunion companies such as Netmarble (largest mobile game dev in South Korea) by getting the issue in front of the National Assembly (Korea's congress).

Articles on the incident published in The Daily Labor News, Korean Daily, multiple articles on Hankyoreh (one of which made it to the print edition), and other news outlets.

Segments about the termination on the MBN 7 o' clock news and MBC's morning news

Comments by Youth Union leaders about looking into a loan made to Project Moon via Devsisters Ventures, a venture capital firm. Tax money from Gyeonggi province was invested in Devsisters in 2017, and in 2021, Devsisters gave money to Project Moon. The Gyeonggi Youth Union is asking why hard-earned tax money was indirectly given to a company who violates ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles.

Almost nonstop signage truck protests outside Project Moon's physical office during business hours until 8/22 or the company makes a statement. This occurs alongside a coordinated hashtag campaign to get the issue trending on Twitter in Korea. The signage campaign was crowd-funded in about 3 hours.

A full boycott of the Limbus Company app, on both mobile and PC (steam) platforms. Overseas fans are highly encouraged to participate, regardless if whether they're F2P or not. Not opening the app at all is arguably the biggest thing any one person can do to protest the decision, as the app logs the number of accounts that log on daily. For a new gacha such as Limbus, a high number of F2P daily active users, but a small number of paying users is often preferable to having a smaller userbase but more paying users. If the company sees the number of daily users remain stable, they will likely decide to wait out any backlash rather than apologize.

Digging up verified reviews from previous employees regarding the company's poor management practices

Due to the firing, the Leviathan artist has posted about poor working conditions when making the story. As per a bilingual speaker, they were working on a storyboard revision, and thought 'if I ran into the street right now and got hit by a car and died, I wouldn't have to keep working.' They contacted Project Moon because they didn't want their work to be like that, and proposed changes to serialization/reduction in amount of work per picture/to build up a buffer of finished images (they did not have any buffer while working on Leviathan to my knowledge). They were shut out, and had to suck it up and accept the situation.

Hamhampangpang has a 'shrine' section of the restaurant for fans to leave fan-created merch and other items. They also allow the fans to take this merch back if they can prove it's theirs. Fans are now doing just that.

To boost all of the above, a large number of Korean fanartists with thousands of followers have deleted their works and/or converted their accounts from fanart accounts to accounts supporting the protests. Many of them are bilingual, and they're where I got the majority of this information.

[note 1: there's a targeted english-language disinformation campaign by the website that started the hate mob. i have read the artist's tweets with machine translation, and they're talked about in the second hankyoreh article linked above: nowhere does she express any transphobic or similarly awful beliefs. likewise, be wary of any claims that she supported anything whose description makes you raise eyebrows--those claims are likely in reference to megalia, a korean feminist movement. for information on that, i'd recommend the NPR/BBC articles below and this google drive link of english-language scholarly papers on them. for the love of god don't get your information about a feminist movement from guys going on witch hunts for feminists.]

[note 2: i've seen a couple people argue that the firing was for the physical safety of the employees, citing the kyoani incident in japan. as per this korean fan, most fans there strongly do not believe this was the case. we have english-translated transcripts of the meeting between the mob and project moon; the threats the mob was making were to......brand project moon as a feminist company online. yes, really. male korean gamers aren't normal about feminism, and there's been an ongoing witch hunt for feminists in the industry since about 2016, something you see noted in both the labor union statements. both NPR and the BBC this phenomenon to gamergate, and i'd say it's a pretty apt comparison.]

let me know if anything needs correction or if anything should be added.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Humans in the loop” must detect the hardest-to-spot errors, at superhuman speed

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

If AI has a future (a big if), it will have to be economically viable. An industry can't spend 1,700% more on Nvidia chips than it earns indefinitely – not even with Nvidia being a principle investor in its largest customers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39883571

A company that pays 0.36-1 cents/query for electricity and (scarce, fresh) water can't indefinitely give those queries away by the millions to people who are expected to revise those queries dozens of times before eliciting the perfect botshit rendition of "instructions for removing a grilled cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible":

https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-inference-cost-of-search-disruption

Eventually, the industry will have to uncover some mix of applications that will cover its operating costs, if only to keep the lights on in the face of investor disillusionment (this isn't optional – investor disillusionment is an inevitable part of every bubble).

Now, there are lots of low-stakes applications for AI that can run just fine on the current AI technology, despite its many – and seemingly inescapable - errors ("hallucinations"). People who use AI to generate illustrations of their D&D characters engaged in epic adventures from their previous gaming session don't care about the odd extra finger. If the chatbot powering a tourist's automatic text-to-translation-to-speech phone tool gets a few words wrong, it's still much better than the alternative of speaking slowly and loudly in your own language while making emphatic hand-gestures.

There are lots of these applications, and many of the people who benefit from them would doubtless pay something for them. The problem – from an AI company's perspective – is that these aren't just low-stakes, they're also low-value. Their users would pay something for them, but not very much.

For AI to keep its servers on through the coming trough of disillusionment, it will have to locate high-value applications, too. Economically speaking, the function of low-value applications is to soak up excess capacity and produce value at the margins after the high-value applications pay the bills. Low-value applications are a side-dish, like the coach seats on an airplane whose total operating expenses are paid by the business class passengers up front. Without the principle income from high-value applications, the servers shut down, and the low-value applications disappear:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Now, there are lots of high-value applications the AI industry has identified for its products. Broadly speaking, these high-value applications share the same problem: they are all high-stakes, which means they are very sensitive to errors. Mistakes made by apps that produce code, drive cars, or identify cancerous masses on chest X-rays are extremely consequential.

Some businesses may be insensitive to those consequences. Air Canada replaced its human customer service staff with chatbots that just lied to passengers, stealing hundreds of dollars from them in the process. But the process for getting your money back after you are defrauded by Air Canada's chatbot is so onerous that only one passenger has bothered to go through it, spending ten weeks exhausting all of Air Canada's internal review mechanisms before fighting his case for weeks more at the regulator:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-the-wrong-information-now-the-airline-has-to-pay-for-the-mistake-1.6769454

There's never just one ant. If this guy was defrauded by an AC chatbot, so were hundreds or thousands of other fliers. Air Canada doesn't have to pay them back. Air Canada is tacitly asserting that, as the country's flagship carrier and near-monopolist, it is too big to fail and too big to jail, which means it's too big to care.

Air Canada shows that for some business customers, AI doesn't need to be able to do a worker's job in order to be a smart purchase: a chatbot can replace a worker, fail to their worker's job, and still save the company money on balance.

I can't predict whether the world's sociopathic monopolists are numerous and powerful enough to keep the lights on for AI companies through leases for automation systems that let them commit consequence-free free fraud by replacing workers with chatbots that serve as moral crumple-zones for furious customers:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563219304029

But even stipulating that this is sufficient, it's intrinsically unstable. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, and the mass replacement of humans with high-speed fraud software seems likely to stoke the already blazing furnace of modern antitrust:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Of course, the AI companies have their own answer to this conundrum. A high-stakes/high-value customer can still fire workers and replace them with AI – they just need to hire fewer, cheaper workers to supervise the AI and monitor it for "hallucinations." This is called the "human in the loop" solution.

The human in the loop story has some glaring holes. From a worker's perspective, serving as the human in the loop in a scheme that cuts wage bills through AI is a nightmare – the worst possible kind of automation.

Let's pause for a little detour through automation theory here. Automation can augment a worker. We can call this a "centaur" – the worker offloads a repetitive task, or one that requires a high degree of vigilance, or (worst of all) both. They're a human head on a robot body (hence "centaur"). Think of the sensor/vision system in your car that beeps if you activate your turn-signal while a car is in your blind spot. You're in charge, but you're getting a second opinion from the robot.

Likewise, consider an AI tool that double-checks a radiologist's diagnosis of your chest X-ray and suggests a second look when its assessment doesn't match the radiologist's. Again, the human is in charge, but the robot is serving as a backstop and helpmeet, using its inexhaustible robotic vigilance to augment human skill.

That's centaurs. They're the good automation. Then there's the bad automation: the reverse-centaur, when the human is used to augment the robot.

Amazon warehouse pickers stand in one place while robotic shelving units trundle up to them at speed; then, the haptic bracelets shackled around their wrists buzz at them, directing them pick up specific items and move them to a basket, while a third automation system penalizes them for taking toilet breaks or even just walking around and shaking out their limbs to avoid a repetitive strain injury. This is a robotic head using a human body – and destroying it in the process.

An AI-assisted radiologist processes fewer chest X-rays every day, costing their employer more, on top of the cost of the AI. That's not what AI companies are selling. They're offering hospitals the power to create reverse centaurs: radiologist-assisted AIs. That's what "human in the loop" means.

This is a problem for workers, but it's also a problem for their bosses (assuming those bosses actually care about correcting AI hallucinations, rather than providing a figleaf that lets them commit fraud or kill people and shift the blame to an unpunishable AI).

Humans are good at a lot of things, but they're not good at eternal, perfect vigilance. Writing code is hard, but performing code-review (where you check someone else's code for errors) is much harder – and it gets even harder if the code you're reviewing is usually fine, because this requires that you maintain your vigilance for something that only occurs at rare and unpredictable intervals:

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773779967521780169

But for a coding shop to make the cost of an AI pencil out, the human in the loop needs to be able to process a lot of AI-generated code. Replacing a human with an AI doesn't produce any savings if you need to hire two more humans to take turns doing close reads of the AI's code.

This is the fatal flaw in robo-taxi schemes. The "human in the loop" who is supposed to keep the murderbot from smashing into other cars, steering into oncoming traffic, or running down pedestrians isn't a driver, they're a driving instructor. This is a much harder job than being a driver, even when the student driver you're monitoring is a human, making human mistakes at human speed. It's even harder when the student driver is a robot, making errors at computer speed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

This is why the doomed robo-taxi company Cruise had to deploy 1.5 skilled, high-paid human monitors to oversee each of its murderbots, while traditional taxis operate at a fraction of the cost with a single, precaratized, low-paid human driver:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The vigilance problem is pretty fatal for the human-in-the-loop gambit, but there's another problem that is, if anything, even more fatal: the kinds of errors that AIs make.

Foundationally, AI is applied statistics. An AI company trains its AI by feeding it a lot of data about the real world. The program processes this data, looking for statistical correlations in that data, and makes a model of the world based on those correlations. A chatbot is a next-word-guessing program, and an AI "art" generator is a next-pixel-guessing program. They're drawing on billions of documents to find the most statistically likely way of finishing a sentence or a line of pixels in a bitmap:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

This means that AI doesn't just make errors – it makes subtle errors, the kinds of errors that are the hardest for a human in the loop to spot, because they are the most statistically probable ways of being wrong. Sure, we notice the gross errors in AI output, like confidently claiming that a living human is dead:

https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/according-to-chatgpt-im-dead

But the most common errors that AIs make are the ones we don't notice, because they're perfectly camouflaged as the truth. Think of the recurring AI programming error that inserts a call to a nonexistent library called "huggingface-cli," which is what the library would be called if developers reliably followed naming conventions. But due to a human inconsistency, the real library has a slightly different name. The fact that AIs repeatedly inserted references to the nonexistent library opened up a vulnerability – a security researcher created a (inert) malicious library with that name and tricked numerous companies into compiling it into their code because their human reviewers missed the chatbot's (statistically indistinguishable from the the truth) lie:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

For a driving instructor or a code reviewer overseeing a human subject, the majority of errors are comparatively easy to spot, because they're the kinds of errors that lead to inconsistent library naming – places where a human behaved erratically or irregularly. But when reality is irregular or erratic, the AI will make errors by presuming that things are statistically normal.

These are the hardest kinds of errors to spot. They couldn't be harder for a human to detect if they were specifically designed to go undetected. The human in the loop isn't just being asked to spot mistakes – they're being actively deceived. The AI isn't merely wrong, it's constructing a subtle "what's wrong with this picture"-style puzzle. Not just one such puzzle, either: millions of them, at speed, which must be solved by the human in the loop, who must remain perfectly vigilant for things that are, by definition, almost totally unnoticeable.

This is a special new torment for reverse centaurs – and a significant problem for AI companies hoping to accumulate and keep enough high-value, high-stakes customers on their books to weather the coming trough of disillusionment.

This is pretty grim, but it gets grimmer. AI companies have argued that they have a third line of business, a way to make money for their customers beyond automation's gifts to their payrolls: they claim that they can perform difficult scientific tasks at superhuman speed, producing billion-dollar insights (new materials, new drugs, new proteins) at unimaginable speed.

However, these claims – credulously amplified by the non-technical press – keep on shattering when they are tested by experts who understand the esoteric domains in which AI is said to have an unbeatable advantage. For example, Google claimed that its Deepmind AI had discovered "millions of new materials," "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge," constituting "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity":

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

It was a hoax. When independent material scientists reviewed representative samples of these "new materials," they concluded that "no new materials have been discovered" and that not one of these materials was "credible, useful and novel":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

As Brian Merchant writes, AI claims are eerily similar to "smoke and mirrors" – the dazzling reality-distortion field thrown up by 17th century magic lantern technology, which millions of people ascribed wild capabilities to, thanks to the outlandish claims of the technology's promoters:

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-really-is-smoke-and-mirrors

The fact that we have a four-hundred-year-old name for this phenomenon, and yet we're still falling prey to it is frankly a little depressing. And, unlucky for us, it turns out that AI therapybots can't help us with this – rather, they're apt to literally convince us to kill ourselves:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkadgm/man-dies-by-suicide-after-talking-with-ai-chatbot-widow-says

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[lovinpelova]

to be continued | j. fleming

summary; jessie meets y/n at a party after ucla win the ncaa basketball championship. then again, then again and again.

🎵 a new kind of love - frou frou

whenever you told people you went to ucla their first response was always to ask what sport you played, expecting you to be there for division-one football or tennis, but when you told them you were simply just a british exchange-student looking for better educational standards their face always dropped. it's like they thought they were meeting a celebrity and found out it was only a look-alike when they got closer, you found it funny how people couldn't believe you came to the states purely for education.

being british you've obviously played football before and could even join the team if you wanted but you quit before your gcses for a reason; you didn't want any distractions. you'd promised your parents one day that you'd be able to give them a luxury lifestyle with all the money you earned from being a well-paid lawyer, aiming for the higher bracket of pay after learning your cousin was earning £78,000 annually. the number is massive and would be an immense help to your family after all the years of struggle you've gone through together, so you wanted to make sure you had the highest level of education and were definitely not wanting to go to oxford with all the snobby rich kids.

so you chose one of the top law schools in the states, of course!

"hey y/n, come over here!"

you were snapped out of your daydreams by a friend of a friend, one of your classmates taking law as a minor has a major in history, so they introduced you to hailie after you'd met at one of her games since you were dragged there. it's not like you hate football - you love it, and the atmosphere of college soccer is unmatched - but you would have rather been revising for an upcoming final that night instead.

you made your way over to hailie and noticed she was stood with her arm around a rather short brunette, the long-sleeved shirt (with the sleeves rolled up) that had 'ucla soccer' printed across it indicating you weren't going to get away from this football team any time soon - even though you were at a party to celebrate the men's basketball team winning the ncaa championship.

"y/n, this is jessie. one of our midfielders."

"hey, nice to meet you."

the canadian accent she greeted you with was striking, you weren't expecting her to be american but you definitely weren't expecting her to be canadian either.

"you're canadian?"

"i told you your accent was strong jess."

the midfielder nodded with a sheepish grin, hailie suddenly patting her on the shoulder after peering over yours and smiling at someone.

"i'll leave you to it then,"

the defender pulled you into a quick hug as you returned it, feeling her lean down into your ear to whisper something.

"jessie's been eyeing you up all night."

she winked and smiled at your blush, patting you on the back before leaving you and jessie to your own devices. you smiled at the canadian as she grinned in response, your eyes trailing down to see her fingers moving in a way that could only be described as anxiety-ridden.

"do you have social anxiety, jess?"

"er, yeah. is it that obvious?"

the canadian chuckled nervously - either at the fact that you've already given her a nickname or if it was because of her anxiety you wouldn't know.

"do you drink?"

"if it's the right drink, then yeah."

you leaned forwards with a charming smile and softly grabbed her hand, lacing your fingers together to make sure she didn't accidentally let go and lose you. within a couple moments you were back in the kitchen and by a table of alcohol, reaching beside it for two bottles of beer out of the fridge to stay safe. you turned and handed it to the canadian after opening it on the edge of the table, too impatient to look for a bottle opener and resorting to a party trick hailie had taught you the other day.

regretfully letting go of her hand, you leaned against the counter awfully close to her to make up for the loss of contact, both of you taking a swig of your drinks as jessie leaned in closer to you.

"do you play any sports then?"

"i used to play football but quit when i was about sixteen. wanted to focus on my studies instead."

the canadian nodded her head as you fell into a comfortable silence, watching people come and go from the kitchen as they pleased and giving each other knowing looks when couples walked past with drunken giggles or laughing together when someone was so drunk they couldn't even walk.

before you knew it you were both three beers in and completely focused on jessie, the alcohol in your systems making you far more confident than you were when you first met a couple hours ago. jessies hand was comfortable on your waist and yours were on her chest, tugging on the chain she wore as you drunkenly flirted inches away from each other. the canadian leaned down towards you after feeling you pull it more forcefully, your hips pushing against hers.

"you gonna kiss me, fleming?"

"what would you do if i did, y/l/n?"

you smirked up at jessie whilst looking into her eyes deeply, the moment so intense you nearly didn't hear hailie running into you and dragging you away from each other.

"president's here, we gotta go!"

the party was quickly being shut down as you all ran out the house, being caught by campus president was not something you wanted especially if the party was causing noise complaints. you found a couple people you knew and followed them to a safer space, looking behind you to check if jessie and hailie were there - only to find they weren't.

--------

working whilst studying wasn't always too bad, it was far easier if you had a part-time job. luckily for you, a local coffee shop five minutes outside of the ucla campus was hiring over the christmas season and you applied, working there happily for the past seven months. the pay wasn't bad - bi-weekly - and for an international exchange student it was keeping you able to buy the food you needed as well as luxuries when you were on the odd shopping trip with friends or out drinking.

the customers were the greatest part of the job, only regulars coming in daily for their usual orders as you recite them without a problem, the odd newcomer trying it out and either never coming back again or adding themselves to the list of regulars. today you noticed there was a newbie, the door opening at a time irregular to your memorised schedule of customers as you had your back turned to it, in the process of making a regulars order so you couldn't see who had walked in yet. you quickly served their order with a smile and walked back over to the counter whilst brushing off the coffee grounds all over your apron, looking up to see jessie grinning at you awkwardly.

"well, if it isn't the incredibly awkward canadian? haven't seen you since the party fleming."

"i know, hailie dragged me away from you and before i could try find where you'd ran off to the president found us again and started chasing us and then-"

"jess, calm down. it's fine. a party got shut down and we got split up, it happens everywhere. so, what can i get for you today then?"

you gestured towards the menu hung up behind you as the midfielder grinned at your acceptance of her unnecessary apology, looking over the choices of drink.

"erm, i'll just get a shaken espresso please."

"coming right up."

you made the drink as quickly as you possibly could, not wanting to have jessie waiting around for too long as she might have a class to get to or training to attend. you picked up a sharpie when you saw she wasn't looking in the corner of your eye, writing your number on the side of her cup with a smiley face before pouring her coffee into it and sliding it across the counter to her.

"thank you- how much?"

"on the house, jess."

you smiled brightly at her, holding your hand up when she opened her mouth to protest in a silent order for her to stay quiet and let you be nice for once.

"i'm paying next time though y/n/n."

"can't wait to see you next."

the canadian smiled gently, saying goodbye and walking out of the coffee shop whilst taking a sip, spotting a black mark underneath her nose and turning the cup to see your number written on it. without knowing, you'd just made jessies day.

--------

"so this is- like, a big game then?"

you asked hailie as she ran over to speak quickly after her warmup, the crowd you were sat in filled to the brim of ucla supporters, the other side of the pitch filled with usc supporters scowling across at you all.

"no, y/n/n. this is a big, big game. it's against a rival and it's the championship semi-final! have you not been listening to a word i've been saying the past week?"

"er, no. not really- sorry! i just zone out when you drone on about football. you know how much i don't care about sports sometimes."

hailie grunted in response as you smiled down apologetically, reaching for her hand and feeling her squeeze it in a silent acceptance of your apology.

"so how come you're here then? if you don't even know- oh my god jessie!"

"keep your fucking voice down hailie!"

you whisper-yelled whilst covering her mouth with your hand, raising your eyebrows in silent warning so she didn't blurt out jessies name again and make her come over to see why she was being yelled about. you and jessie had been texting non-stop since you gave her your number and she'd asked you to come to her game, hence why you were asking hailie about it. the defender had clicked onto the fact that you were clearly crushing on someone since your phone was making you smile with the odd notification and you suddenly had a very large interest in football- but she didn't expect it to be jessie.

"i knew you liked her! you were basically fucking in the kitchen the other night."

you flicked her on the forehead playfully as she scolded you, your chance to respond being ripped away as hailies coach called her into the changing rooms for a last minute teamtalk.

the game ran by fairly quickly, ucla absolutely hammering usc after a slow start. the first half consisted of one goal from your college rival and after half-time the scoreline just got bigger and bigger; jessie scoring one and assisting two as the end result was a massive 5-1. that meant ucla were going to the final in the ncaa championship against unc, the reigning champions, so you were definitely going to watch that game too.

"hey stargirl!"

you complimented smoothly as your arms opened wide for hailie, tears nearly running down her face as she picked you up into a bear hug.

"final two, baby!"

you cheered with the defender as she put you down and hugged you properly, spotting someone in the corner of her eye and grinning wildly.

"i'll leave you and your lovergirl to it."

you smacked her arm lightly as she walked away to celebrate with her teammates, turning around to see jessie beaming at you. not even giving her a chance to greet you, your arms went around her neck in a hug as hers went around your waist to pick you up, quickly putting you down to look at your broad smile with her usual blush across her cheeks.

"what a fucking game! i've never seen anyone play that well before jess."

"the pressure of knowing you were watching helped me a bit i guess."

the canadian scratched the back of her neck nervously, yourself scoffing at her shy nature as if she wasn't a finalist in the ncaa championship.

"nonsense, you're just amazing on the pitch no matter what. my midfield maestro."

jessie blushed even further at the new nickname you'd given her, smiling to match yours as she hugged you again tightly. when you pulled away you kissed her cheek, laughing at the way she froze up immediately.

"come on, you've got teammates to celebrate with."

--------

ucla had dominated their sports championships across the board. the mens basketball team had won the ncaa championship, as well as the mens soccer team and the womens field hockey team, the womens soccer team and womens basketball team added to that list within a week. the game was incredible, jessie had played another masterclass as usual and had a total of four goal contributions- ucla only scored four goals.

the win obviously called for another celebration, so the mens basketball team had offered to have another party the same place it occurred for their successes, meaning you and jessie were in the same kitchen as before but with a lot more people surrounding you. the amount of wins meant every supporter of each sport and player and friend and classmate (and the odd family member) had attended, so the house was packed.

you stared down at the ring jessie wore with 'ncaa champions' engraved into it, the ucla logo pressed into the middle. without thinking you grabbed jessies hand when she raised her other to take a swig of her beer, gently running your thumb over the engraved words with a proud smile.

"have i told you how proud i am of you yet jess?"

"only a million times y/n/n."

"well i'm making it a million and one. i'm so proud of you."

the canadian smiled down at you and wrapped her arm around your shoulders with your hand still holding hers, kissing the side of your head with confidence you knew she only had because of the alcohol running through her system.

"it's weird how last time we were in here we didn't even know each others last names."

jessie laughed softly with you at your statement, pulling you closer when more people began to flood into the kitchen to find any alcohol they could, everyone just wanting to get as drunk as possible since it was a friday and they had no classes to attend whilst taking care of their inevitable hangovers.

"i'm really happy hailie introduced us. i like you a lot."

the midfielder commented, looking deeply into your eyes when you turned to face her to show you she wasn't talking nonsense, it was just the alcohol letting things slip out.

"i like you a lot too, midfield maestro."

your eyes trailed down to her lips as she licked them carefully, watching the way she slowly began to lean in and torture you with her lips brushing over yours. you quickly leaned forward and closed the gap between you, kissing her passionately exactly the way you'd been wanting to for the past three weeks since you first met, your hands holding her in place so she couldn't move away faster than you wanted her to. eventually you were running out of breath and needed to pull away, smiling at each other after finally having made a move.

"glad the party wasn't shut down early this time?"

"very glad."

jessie responded immediately, pulling you into another kiss before you could even think about moving away from her.

[olivexii]

⁀➷ ┄─ ˑ IV . ☆ ──ㅤ Knee Socks

Joseph Descamps x reader

Chapter 4

Masterlist

Warnings: Smoking

┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐

“What’s going on between you and Descamps?” Simone asked me as we walked to school. The weather was worse than the last couple of weeks, clouds looming over and turning everything gray.

“What do you mean?”

“Some people saw you walking with him after school yesterday.”

“Oh right. I didn’t have an umbrella, so he let me use his. There’s nothing going on.” I reassured her.

“Good. Stay away from him, he’s bad news.” Michèle warned as we neared the school, pupils now flooding around us.

I didn’t respond to them, only focusing on not walking into someone. Simone was looking off towards Jean-Pierre, I guessed she was happy that he only got off with a warning, but there was something else in that look.

“Why are you looking at Jean-Pierre like that?” I whispered so Simone so Michèle wouldn’t hear.

“W-what?”

“You’re looking at him funny.”

“I’m not.” She stuttered out, a mix of happiness and concern on her face as she looked between me and the older boy.

“Do you like him?”

“Do I like him? I’ve barely spoke to him why would I like him!” She whispered.

“You compared him to Alain Delon the other day.”

“Yeah but… Just don’t tell anyone, please.” She turned to look at me, holding her pinky out.

“I wouldn’t do that to you.” I replied connecting our fingers.

“Thank you Y/N.” She smiled.

As we walked past Jean-Pierre and his friends, Simone kept turning around and smiling at him, Michèle completely oblivious.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The previous week we had been doing multiple, beginning of term tests. Revision for it took up most of my time, meaning I hadn’t been able to go out a lot, only rarely for errands.

“Laubrac, some progress. That’s 4.” The teacher said as he handed the marked tests back. Most of the class laughed at this, while some remained silent.

I averaged in most classes, earning between 12-15, which I was proud of considering I didn’t really pay attention in some of the classes.

Annick usually scored higher than everyone, as well as Felbec. They both always came top of the class. Descamps however, didn’t do as well, scoring around 7 or 8 on every test.

The teachers forgave him though, considering he had lost an eye and experienced trauma. The bandage was soon replaced with a brown eye patch, which suited him more.

The next class I zoned out in, watching as the rain dropped down the window and made a soft patting sound.

“You are all going to prepare a presentation, but in pairs.”

My head snapped towards the teacher at this. Presenting in front of a class, especially with boys in the room, is horrible.

“I’m going to be picking these pairs, because if you were to work with your friend, you will get nothing done.” The teacher says as he looks towards Descamps and Dupin, who just laughed in response.

“Every pair of students will then present their work to the class.” I internally groaned at this, anxiety already building up inside of me. The teacher then began listing names off of the register.

“Sabiani and Pichon?” This pair made the class laugh, especially the boys in the back corner of the room, knowing they were going to bully Pichon because of it.

“Hey look, Pichon’s blushing. He’s turned pink like a pig!”

“That’s enough, Dupin.” The teacher called, sounding fed up of them.

“Do we have to work together in pairs, sir?” Annick raised her hand, Pichon looking at her in sadness.

“That’s the whole point of this exercise, and most importantly, your pair’s average, will be your grade.”

He then continued to rattle off some more names. Michèle was partnered with a random boy, and Simone was partnered with Applebaum.

“L/N and Descamps?”

I internally groaned again at this, picking at my fingernails before slowly looking back at Descamps. He had a small smirk plastered on his face, looking at Dupin before turning to look at me.

I wasn’t happy to be working with Descamps, knowing I would probably be the only one getting work done. But I wasn’t disappointed either, this way I get to know him a bit more.

“How does that sound?” The teacher asked happily once he had partnered everyone up.

Nobody replied, some looking at their partner and smiling while others just faces the front, not amused.

The bell rang, and everyone scrambled to grab their things.

“I feel sorry for you Y/N, having to work with Descamps. Surely you can ask to change?” Simone said as we walked down the school stairs, heading for break.

“I’m sure it will be fine. He won’t do any work anyway, so I can do the presentation on whatever I want.” I smiled back.

“Yeah, I guess that’s an advantage.” Michèle shrugged as we went to sit down on the benches outside.

“Me and Simone are going to ask if we can work together. We don’t really feel comfortable working with a boy after what happened a couple of weeks ago.” Michèle said, fiddling with her hands on her lap.

“I don’t blame you, I don’t feel comfortable either but, it’s either Descamps or a random boy I don’t know.” I shrugged and they agreed with me.

Michèle starts talking, while Simone smiles, looking into the distance. I look in the direction she is, and Jean-Pierre is walking towards us, a book in his hand.

“Here, this is yours.” He says to Michèle, holding it out to her, “I put it in my bag by mistake.”

“Thanks.” The girl smiles.

“Bye then.” He walks away abruptly, Simone’s smile fading when he didn’t even glance at her.

“English isn’t the problem for me, it’s maths.” Michelè begins to rant, “I got three out of twenty on the last test.”

“Three out of twenty isn’t so bad.” Simone sighs, still looking at Jean-pierre. I nudge her slightly with my elbow, smiling.

“L/N. Can we talk?” A voice comes from behind. All three of us turn around at the same time. Descamps is stood there, not looking at the other two, just me.

“Uhm sure.” I say wearily, looking at the other two girls, who are just glaring the boy down. He starts to walk away, and I stand up to follow him, leaving my bag with the two girls.

Once we made it a fair distance from Simone and Michèle he turns to me, leaning his back against the wall that we walked towards.

“We’ll have to go to your place, for the project.” He says, not looking at me, just pulling a cigarette and lighter out of his pocket.

“Why mine?” I ask, pulling my cardigan closer to my body, the September air hitting me.

“Because we can’t go to mine.” He blows smoke, looking straight ahead.

“Why?”

“Because. We can’t go to mine.” He says more sternly this time.

“We can’t go to mine either.”

“Why not?” He turns to me.

“My brother, he doesn’t like it when I have boys in the house. My mother is the same.” I cross my arms over my chest and look up at him.

“What? What if you tell them it’s for a school project.”

“I don’t know how they’ll feel.” I shrug.

“Oh well. Meet me after school. We can go straight to yours.” He turns away to take another drag of his cigarette and blow the smoke away from me.

“Okay, by the school gates?”

“Yes.”

I nod at him awkwardly.

“Is there anything else you wanted to say, or is that it?” I ask him, tilting my head.

He hesitates for a moment, before mumbling that he had nothing else to say, and walks off towards his friends.

I stand there for a few seconds, watching him, before turning on my heel and walking back towards the two girls on the bench.

“What was that about?” They asked once I had sat down.

“Nothing, just the project.” I shook my head, still thinking about the interaction.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Like he said, Joseph was sat on a wall by the school gates, smoking again. As I approached him he turned to me and threw the cigarette away, stomping on it once he had came down from the wall.

“Sorry if you waited long, I was talking with Simone and Michèle.”

“It’s fine, had the chance to have a cigarette anyway.” He nodded, “Are we going?”

“Yeah.”

Everyone had left by now. The streets were silent except for the occasional rumble of a passing car.

“So, what did you want to do the project on?” I asked, turning to him as we walked up my street.

“Not sure, you can figure that out.” He replied, looking between his feet and the street ahead.

“Okay. Are you going to do anything in this project?”

“If you tell me to.” He replied, smirking at the ground.

“Descamps you have to do something, it can’t just be me that would be unfair.” I said when we approached my house.

“I will do something. I’ll be emotional support for you.”

“Oh, as if you know what emotional support is.” I laughed, opening the door, “Michael!”

My brother came out from the kitchen as we stood in the doorway.

“This is Descamps. We have to do a project for French.” I told him.

“Why are you with a boy?” He asked, chewing on an apple.

“We got paired up by the teacher.” I shuffled on my feet, gripping my bag tighter.

“Right, okay. Keep your door open and both of you don’t sit on the bed at the same time.” Michael replied, pointing his finger between us as he glared Descamps down.

“Yeah I know.” I sighed and walked past him, Descamps closing the front door and following.

“Door open!” My brother called as we walked up the stairs.

“I know!”

As I walked into my room, setting my bag down on a chair, taking my cardigan off and putting it on the back of the chair as well. Joseph stood in the doorway, looking around.

“What are you doing?” I asked, turning around to him and leaning my hand on my chair.

“You live here?”

“Yes…”

“You look like you do.” He said, taking his jacket off.

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” I took his jacket off of him and hung it on a hook with my cardigans.

“No.” He replied simply, turning around to slightly shut the door, leaving about a 4 inch gap.

“So,” He turned to me, “What do you want to do the project on?”

“Camus?”

“Sounds good.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

After about 15 minutes of me researching books and writing notes, Descamps finally spoke up.

“Why do you hang around with Michèle?” He said, leaning against the headboard of my bed.

“What?” I replied, sitting on the floor and leaning against the bed frame, open books scattered around me.

“I don’t get why you like her so much.”

“She’s my friend.”

“She’s an attention seeker. You don’t deserve to be around people like that.”

“She’s not an attention seeker.” I sigh, looking up at him and putting down the book I was holding.

“Did you see the way she was dressed on the first day.”

“It was a hot day. Anyway you could have ignored her but you decided to pour water all over her.”

“She’ll get over it.” He said, sitting up more and looking away from me.

I continue to look at him before picking up the book and going back to reading.

“He only got off with a warning.”

“Hm?” I hummed, not looking up from my book.

“Jean-Pierre. He only got off with a warning, while I’m stuck with an eye patch for the rest of my life.”

I turn around fully to face him, leaning my arm on the top of the bed by his legs.

“Yeah it’s not fair, I get that. You have every right to be mad at him. Besides, you look cool with an eye patch.”

“You think?” He turns to look at me, smiling and sitting up more.

“Yeah, it suits you.”

He laughs and gets up from the bed, moving a few books to the side to sit next to me on the floor.

“You should sit on the bed for a bit, the floor can get uncomfortable.”

“Won’t you be uncomfortable though?”

“No, I’ll be fine.” He shook his head and looks down at his lap.

“Thank you.” I say, putting my hand on his shoulder to pull myself up and going to lean against the wall, my legs now a few inches away from the back of his head.

“Is there anything I could do?” He says, turning around to look at me.

“Umm… I guess you could make a few notes on the context of L'etranger. I was going to do that next anyway.” I replied, sitting up and leaning down to pick up a book and give it to him.

He takes the book as I stand up. Walking over to my desk to get a pen and some paper for him, I feel his eyes following me. I smile slightly and turn around.

“Here.” I say, handing him the stuff.

“Thanks.” He takes them and opens the book.

I go to sit down next to him on the floor, picking up my own book and carrying on reading.

“Aren’t you going to sit on the bed?” He turned to me.

“I’m making sure you don’t mess the project up. It goes towards my grade as well.” I reply, leaning my head against my bed frame.

“R-right.” The boy says, maintaining eye contact with me but not saying anything else.

“Y/N?” I hear from down the corridor, my mother’s footsteps becoming louder, before she enters the room. “Your brother said you’re working on a project with a boy.”

“Y-yes. This is Joseph Descamps.” I say, sitting up straight.

Descamps stands up and goes to shake my mother’s hand, “Hello.”

“Are you staying for dinner?” She asks.

He turns to look at me questioningly, and I give him a nod.

“If that’s alright.” He looks back around.

“Yes that’s fine. It’s nice to know Y/N is actually making friends and she’s not just hauled up in her room like she always is.”

I feel my face turn red at this and rest my head against the palm of my hand. Joseph turns around laughing at me, putting his hands in his pockets as my mother walks away.

“I like her.” He carries on laughing as he goes to sit down next to me, closer this time.

My face goes even redder at the close distance between us, and I try to distract myself by reading.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

“So, Joseph, have you lived here for a while?” My mother asks, trying to break the silence around the table while we eat.

“Yeah, my whole life, in two different houses though. The first one was just outside of the city, but now I live a few streets down from here.” He replies after swallowing a mouthful of carrots.

“That’s nice. I’m guessing you like it here then.”

“Yeah, sometimes.” He replies, before turning his head to me, asking me to say something so he could get a break.

“How was work?” I ask my mother.

“It was alright, a lot of customers at the shop.”

I nod, not knowing what to say next. My brother, sat across from Joseph doesn’t say anything, just eating his food and staring down the boy across from him, making the whole situation more awkward.

When we had finished eating, I took all of the plates to the kitchen, offering to help my mother clean up.

“Should I go pack away the books upstairs?” Joseph asks me.

“Yeah, thank you. I think we’ve done enough for today.” I smile, which he returns and starts making his way up the stairs.

I clean everything up for a few minutes before making my way upstairs. Descamps is sat down, stacking all of the books neatly at the foot of my bed.

“Thank you.” I smile at him.

He looks up at me standing over him before holding his hand out to me. I take it and pull him up.

“I should probably get going now, it’s getting dark.” He says, walking past me to my door and taking his coat off the hook.

“I’ll walk you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I have nothing better to do.” Walking to grab my cardigan, I notice it’s not in its usual place, placed on the seat of the chair instead of the back of it. Weird.

I put it on anyway and turn to Joseph, who’s stood watching me.

“C’mon.” He says, and walks out of my room. I smile at him behind his back.

Once we made our way downstairs we go to my mother.

“Thank you for the meal madam.” Descamps says as he sticks his hand out towards her.

“You’re welcome. You’ll have to come over again, I have a lot more questions to ask you.” She smiles, shaking his hand as he laughs.

“Let’s go before it’s dark.” I tell him, smiling at my mother as I gently grab the boys arm and walk towards the door.

We exchange goodbyes, and as soon as I close the door behind me I let out a sigh.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m just tired.”

“Are you sure.” He says, stepping towards me.

“I’m sure. Let’s get going, it’s getting dark.”

“Want to get rid of me that easily?” He smiles.

“Yes.” I say sarcastically, laughing as we start to walk.

After a few minutes I notice we had gotten closer to each other, our shoulders almost touching. I look up at him, admiring his face underneath the golden street laps. Why is he so horrible to Michèle, but completely fine with me?

The boy turns to look at me, and I quickly look away, now focusing on my shoes as he laughs quietly to himself.

“This is my house.” He says and stops outside of a brown door. He turns to me, not saying anything.

“Oh, you don’t live that far away.”

He shakes his head, still looking at me.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I start, not knowing what else to say.

“See you tomorrow.” He replies, smiling as he goes to open his door.

Quickly, I stand on my toes and kiss his cheek before quickly turning around and walking away, not wanting to see how he reacted.

After walking a few feet, I turn my head back, and he’s still stood there looking at me, hand on the doorknob, and a blush on his face.

I smile to myself and carry on walking home.

└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘

A/N: how on earth do i put a submission box on my profile i don’t know how to use tumblr 😭

[kakushino]

CONGRATULATIONS ON 1K!! you’ve earned every last one of those followers! For your special event, could I get Number 7 with Itadori? Where you’re on a ramen date together and it seems like you need to leave but he doesn’t want you to. Sfw and sweet romance (itadori deserves some good in his life)

𝖂𝖊 𝖏𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖌𝖔𝖙 𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖍

𝟷𝟶𝟶𝟶 𝔣𝔬𝔩𝔩𝔬𝔴𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔱

AN: Yuuji absolutely deserves the best in life and he WILL get it (manifesting)

The hole in the wall ramen place served fantastic meals, you had to admit. Yuuji had good taste in date locations, you enjoyed yourself immensely at the arcade and now this? He really had your heart in his palm at this point, though you had started dating only recently.

Yuuji really was the perfect boyfriend - he bought you flowers, he opened the doors for you and rubbed your muscles if they were sore, he took you to fun places and cuddled with you if all you wanted to do was nap.

“-and then she said, ‘Oh wouldn't you like to know?’ in the snottiest voice imaginable. I thought the guy would explode with how red his face was,” he grinned and you could only laugh at the retelling of his classmate’s showdown with a tourist. Some people really got what they deserved. 

“Nobara is an icon, I swear…” you remarked. “I wish I were her.”

“What? Noooo,” he whined jokingly. “I love you as you are.” 

You winked at him, “Well, good thing I love you too. Even if you do have pink hair…” 

His hands flew to his hair, trying to hide it. “That’s not my fault…” he grumbled. 

Your phone alarm beeped, making you freeze as you realised the time. Yuuji’s smile faded as you pursed your lips, staring at the phone. You made a point in having a studying schedule when exams drew near, dedicating three nights a week to revisions - and this time, the night unfortunately coincided with a date with Yuuji.

“You have to go?” 

You looked up, an unhappy frown marring your face, and he knew.

“We just got started though,” he whispered, staring at your phone for a moment before dragging his eyes up to meet yours again. The silent plea was adorable, and were this another day, you would have teased him about it, but he had enough stress as it was. 

You bit your lip, thinking if you really had to go. Yuuji’s pout was tugging at your heartstrings, his expression reminding you of a kicked puppy. 

It couldn’t hurt to skip studying for one day… 

You caved in. “Fine, now stop that pout or I’ll-” your face was set aflame by your thoughts. Thankfully Yuuji brightened and gave you his usual sunny grin, you could nearly imagine a tail wagging behind him and sparkles in his eyes. He grabbed your hand and kissed your knuckles one by one.

“You won’t regret it! I promise!”

“I never regret going out with you, really,” you assure him, glancing at his bowl. “How about this, I’ll pay for ramen and you treat me to bubble tea?”

[zepskies]

Never Say Goodbye - Part 3

Pairing: Dean x Female Reader

Summary: The first time you and Dean sensed each other’s thoughts and feelings, you were just kids. It would take years to realize that you both were bonded for life, and even longer to finally meet. [Soulmate AU] (Rated M for eventual scenes – 18+)

Word Count: 4,500 Warnings: Language, fluff.

Part 3: Contact

As it turned out, your life started to get better after you missed that shift at the coffee shop.

Oh, you still got fired. But the experience of nearly getting splattered on the pavement by an oncoming truck gave you some unexpected clarity about your life.

Mainly, you needed to stop wasting it. You were tired of jobs that would pay your bills but not bring you closer to your career. And frivolous thoughts of coffee shop boys and…the hope of running into your soulmate.

Maybe one day, you could dare to hope, but from now on, you wouldn’t let it rule your thoughts. You wouldn’t hope too hard either.

It could save you from the disappointment of never hearing anyone’s thoughts but your own.

So you decided to check the University of South Dakota’s career board for jobs, and you discovered an opening in the history department! A research assistant for one of your favorite professors, who was writing their dissertation on the strange, superstitious, and sometimes down-right disgusting social practices of the Ancient Greeks (including bottling up the sweat of their best athletes, because they thought their musky body oils contained magical properties).

Since you were already majoring in history, you were a shoe-in for the job. And working directly with your professor gave you a great resource for future classes.

Four years later, you had earned your bachelor’s degree in History. You even decided to further your education when you were able to get a scholarship for graduate school.

Now you were just one semester away from finishing your master’s. You still worked in the history department, but you had been able to upgrade—to Executive Secretary to the Dean of Ancient Studies.

It sounded fancy, but really, you were a glorified slave. Or at least, your boss seemed to think so.

“I need you to cancel my meeting at two,” said Dr. Birch. She breezed into your tiny office without knocking, startling you from where you were hunched over your laptop.

“Good morning!” came your reflexive greeting, though it was a bit too loud and sharp. You internally winced at yourself and relaxed your posture, like a bird unruffling its feathers. “Cancel your meeting with Dr. Wells?”

Dr. Wells was a nice man, and an important one. He was the Head Dean of the entire History department. Technically, he was above Dr. Birch. It wasn’t a good look to blow him off, but you weren’t about to say so.

“Yes, I have an important lunch, and I already know it’s going to go overtime. Gary will understand,” she replied. She was looking at her phone rather than at you. For all she cared, you were just a calendar with hands.

Dr. Helen Birch was a brilliant woman. She’d published no less than five books, had won awards for her peer-reviewed articles, and she had been your academic advisor all through graduate school.

She could also rival Meryl Streep for “bitchy-ass boss” in The Devil Wears Prada.

“I also need you to grade the final exams for one of my classes,” she said. “Greek Studies this time.”

You held back a sigh. Again? I’ll never finish my own finals at this rate.

But what you said was, “Sure, I can do that. And I’ll email Dr. Wells to reschedule.”

“Yes, make sure it’s not on Thursday,” she said, brushing a finger through her thin blonde hair. “I have to leave early to get my roots touched up before I go away this weekend.”

“That’s fun,” you chatted while you revised Dr. Birch’s calendar on your computer (and sent an apology email to Dr. Wells). “Where to?”

“Oh, I have this tedious conference in Chicago. But then my boyfriend is taking me skiing in Breckenridge.” She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I simply can’t wait. This semester has been a drain on my psyche, and just terrible for my migraines.”

With the email sent, you took a little breath and gathered some courage as you got up from your desk and gathered a handful of papers you had stapled together. It was a rough draft of your thesis, which was only a bit worse for wear (including a suspect coffee stain that you didn’t remember accidentally putting there).

“Actually, I was going to ask you if you got my email about my thesis. I just wanted to go over some of the feedback you gave me on the draft,” you said, trying to sound more confident than you felt.

Dr. Birch raised a brow. “What of it?”

“Well.” You showed her the front page, which was covered in red ink. “Mainly the part where you crossed out the first three pages and commented, ‘Missing the point.’”

She nodded. “Yes. I’m afraid I have nothing to add about that.”

Well, that didn’t exactly help you. The first three pages was your entire introduction to your thesis, “TV & Film: The Modern-Day Mythology of the Masses.”

You must’ve had a pitiful, lost look on your face, because Dr. Birch finally took pity on you. She sighed.

“You are a creative girl. I’ll give you that, but your degree is not in cinematography. You are a historian,” she said. “And while the ‘Well of Souls’ in Raiders of the Lost Ark may be based on a real historical place in Jerusalem, that does not mean Indiana Jones can, or should be described as a ‘religious experience.’”

My ten-year-old self would bed to differ, you wanted to retort, but you kept your mouth shut and lowered your eyes. Dr. Birch nodded to herself and was about to leave your office, until she stopped short and gave you her Amex card.

“Oh. And get me a coffee, would you, dear?”      

The moment your day ended and you were able to get into your car, you let out a long sigh of relief. While you waited for your car to warm up, you massaged your hand, aching from grading papers for Dr. Birch’s class.

You rubbed your hands together, this time to warm them as the frigid air draining from the car still bit into your skin. A shudder tingled through your body, and not in a pleasant way. Honest to God, I hate the winter.

On reflex, you toyed with the silver ring on your right hand—your mom’s ring. It usually comforted you, but today, remembering her made your heart heavy. Because today was the anniversary. 

You still remembered that snowy day when you were fourteen, could picture it so clearly, like a scene painted on glass.

With one last sigh, you fished out your phone to call your dad. It rang for a few seconds (it always took him an eternity to answer his phone, and it drove you crazy).

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dad,” you said.

“Hey. Just got off work?”

“Yeah, I’m headed back to Sioux Falls. Want to meet at home and go together, or do you just want to meet me at the cemetery?”

The other line was silent for a moment. Longer than you would’ve liked.

“You’re coming, right?” you pressed.

“Look, I’m gonna have to work late tonight,” Jack said. “Don’t wait up for me.”

“Really?” Your voice was terse. “It’s one day a year, Dad. You can’t even manage that?”

“I told you I’m working a case.” He sounded annoyed. You didn’t care.

You were pissed.

“Whatever,” you dismissed. But then, you realized you weren’t willing to let it go just yet. “You know, I just find it interesting. On her birthday, Christmas, today, somehow you just can’t be bothered to visit your wife.”

“Hey, drop it, all right?” your dad snapped back.

“Sure. It’s none of my business, I guess.”

“I don’t need your sarcasm either.”

You silently fumed, but you weren’t willing to hang up the phone first. You didn’t want to look petty, and apparently, neither did he. You both could be stubborn like that, sitting in a tense stretch of silence instead of just…

Instead of just, I don’t know what, you could admit, if only to yourself. Eventually, his voice reached your ears.

“I’ll go when I can,” he said.

“Fine.”

And you really did hang up this time.

What should’ve been an hour drive back into your hometown took almost two with the traffic.

Oh yeah, you still lived at home with your dad. It wasn’t ideal, especially with a long-ass commute every day. But unfortunately, being a full-time student with a part-time job didn’t give you the budget to have your own life.   

At least you had your car—a dark blue Camaro your uncle had restored and gifted you for your twenty-first birthday. You didn’t talk to your Uncle Bobby as much as you would like. Between work and school and taking care of the house for you and your dad, you didn’t have much free time on your hands. You did see Bobby around town sometimes, and occasionally shared a beer with him when your demanding schedule allowed.

Your dad had never liked it, you hanging around your uncle. So you didn��t tell him.

That seemed to work out better for both of you.

In fact…

You reached for your phone again and found your uncle’s number.

“Stop badgering me, Rufus. I’m busy.”

Your lips curved into a grin. “Uncle Bobby?”

“Oh. Hi, darlin’. Sorry, thought you were some riff raff that keeps spammin’ me.”

“What did Rufus do now?” you asked.

“He knows,” Bobby said. The surly edge to his voice made you smile in amusement.

“What’re you doing later? Up for a beer?”

“Usually I’d take you up on that, but I’ve got some people coming in pretty soon.”

You scoffed. “You have people? What people?”

“You’re not the only number in my cell, you know,” he said dryly.

“What, you mean Rufus?” you teased.

“All right, now you’re just runnin’ up my minutes,” he said. “If you really want that beer, you’re welcome to swing by, if you want. I’ve got a stocked fridge full of cold ones.”

You laughed, then you considered his offer. Did you really want to go home and deal with your dad (whenever he bothered to come home)?

“Well, I’m going to the cemetery first, but I could maybe swing by after,” you replied.

“Right, that’s today, ain’t it?” Bobby said. “Give your mom my respects.”

A more genuine smile grew on your lips. “Thanks. Will do.”

You hung up with him just as you got to the cemetery. It was hard not to feel melancholy here, especially in the winter. All the graves were lightly dusted with snow, and it felt like the world came to a quiet stillness here.

You bundled up with your scarf and gloves as you braced yourself for the cold, stepping out of the car. On your way in, you heard the rumble of a car going by. It was loud enough to make you turn your head and see a flash of black speeding away.

You shook your head. People drive like maniacs nowadays.

You were about to continue on your way towards your mom’s grave, when you finally heard it.

Say goodbyeee…never say goodbye-y-aaayy. Holdin’ on we gotta try, holdin’ on to never sayyy goodbyeee.~

Someone was warbling a Bon Jovi song in your mind, and it certainly wasn’t you.

But you did come to a dead stop in your path. Your eyes widened as shock claimed your heart and your brain. Soon enough though, your heart warmed as you became aware of something new. It was like a low hum at first, reverberating inside your chest.

You and me and my old friends, hopin’ it would neeever end. Say goodbye—

The singing continued, but all you could focus on was the thrumming in your skull, the thread of connection you could sense and feel inexplicably. You didn’t realize you were crying until you felt warmth trickling down your cold cheeks. Sniffling, you wiped your tears with the back of your hand and smiled tremulously.

You were finally feeling your soulmate.

Which meant, he was close by…and with that realization came an important question:

What the hell do I do now?

They were in South Dakota again.

Dean knew coming back here was…potentially dangerous. He hadn’t heard his soulmate’s thoughts in four years, since the last time he was in this state.

Truth be told, he hadn’t wanted to come here. After the last hunt though, he could use some R&R at Bobby’s for a couple of days.

This time Dean had his brother with him, albeit the circumstances weren’t…great. Their dad was missing, and Sam had lost his girlfriend in the process of trying to find him.

Sometimes, Dean really regretted going to find his brother at Stanford. Part of him thought, if he hadn’t hooked Sam into coming with him to try and find John, maybe Jessica Moore would still be alive.

A more selfish part of him (one he wouldn’t name) was glad to have Sam with him. Dean was actually having fun hunting with him. And maybe, Dean was having to get to know him again too.

“You think Bobby will have any intel on Dad?” Sam asked from the passenger seat of the Impala. They were about five minutes away from Singer Salvage, the old man’s tow business (and his house).

“Doubt it,” Dean replied, changing the radio station once Bon Jovi turned to REO Speedwagon. He could get down with some pop rock from Jovi, but REO was pushing it.

“Then why are we here?” Sam turned to him with a frown. “We just ganked a poltergeist in our old house and…we saw Mom. You think we should be wasting time right now?”

Dean’s lips pursed. Leaving their old house behind in Lawrence, Kansas was exactly why he needed a minute before jumping into the next case. As much as he wanted to find John, Dean just…he needed a minute to breathe.

Revisiting those old (painful) memories wasn’t easy for him. He wasn’t sure that Sam completely got that.

“Bobby’s got a stack of lore books to Kingdom Come. Who knows, he might have a way to help us find Dad,” he said.

Sam shot him an unimpressed look. “And if he doesn’t?”

Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He got why Sam was so fired up. Really. The fact that the kid was having weird…premonition dreams about the near future was concerning. And he wanted to find the thing that killed Jess, that killed their mom, but this was clearly going to be a marathon. Not a sprint.

“In the meantime, we crack open a couple beers,” Dean said, “get one or two of free nights on actual beds, and then we’re on our way to the next gig. How’s that sound?”

Sam let out a sigh through his nose and faced the road ahead. They both knew he wasn’t happy. Dean couldn’t exactly blame him.

When they finally got to Bobby’s, the old man greeted them with a casual wave, beckoning them inside. He offered them the contents of his fridge—a few beers and a frozen lasagna defrosting in the fridge. Dean scoped it out while Sam dropped off his bag in the upstairs guest room.

“That for us?” Dean pointed to the lasagna with a grin. “Didn’t know we merited the red-carpet treatment.”

“’Cause it’s not just for you,” Bobby said dryly, then he hesitated. “...My niece might be swingin’ by later.”

Dean raised his brows in curiosity. “Didn’t know you had a niece.”

Or any family, for that matter. He knew the old man had a wife, once upon a time, but he assumed she’d passed away. No kids. Bobby had never talked about having an extended family. He didn’t have pictures on the walls, and the shelves only had books and locked boxes.

Bobby took a long sip of his beer after opening a bottle each for himself and Dean. He had one ready on the counter for Sam, who came into the kitchen looking tired. The kid hadn’t been sleeping well for the past few weeks, to say the least. Dean handed him the beer.

“I don’t see her much,” Bobby conceded.

“Why’s that?” Dean asked.

It took a moment for the other man to answer. Eventually, he was honest. “Well, she's grown. Going to school, got a job. But you could say I had a fallin’ out with her dad, a while back.”

“You have a brother?” Sam said.

“Brother-in-law,” Bobby corrected. He didn’t say anything more about it though. Sam and Dean shared a look that said they agreed: There’s something off there, but I’m not gonna pry.

“You still see her though?” Dean asked.

“Every now and then,” Bobby said, sipping at his beer again. “It’s a small town.”

That kind of pissed Dean off. Bobby was a good guy. He’d watched Sam and Dean a lot when they were kids, their dad on a hunt. He’d made sure they had decent food to eat, good movies to watch, and even played catch with Dean a time or two.

So what kind of assholes did Bobby have for family, that they couldn’t be bothered to check in on the old man every now and then? They must’ve been off living their lives, in their own little world. Must be nice.

Dean brought the bottle of Heineken to his lips, only to realize it was empty. Couldn’t have that, could we?

He went to the fridge and opened the cap, only to jump as the beer fizzed and leaked over his hands.

Damn it!

Bobby sighed. “And I just mopped the damn floor.”

“All right, Martha Stewart. Keep your slippers on,” Dean teased. “Sam, get me a paper towel.”

Bobby tried to get by him to get the mop, but beer was still dripping down Dean’s arm.

“Would you move to the sink, already?”

Sam finally cracked a small grin as Dean rolled his eyes. “Fine. Jesus. You’d think Miss America was comin’ into town.”

Damn it.

You heard him again. And this time, you could hear his voice, so you knew the thought belonged to a him. The voice was pleasantly deep, and annoyed. You actually felt his irritation and were able to recognize that the emotion didn’t belong to you.

Excitement bubbled in your throat, almost making it hard to breathe as you drove your car down the road. You had been too worked up to go see your mom, and technically you were supposed to head to your Uncle Bobby’s house, but this was too important.

You needed to figure out how to talk to him—your soulmate.

So you pulled over on the side of the road, and even turned the radio off. Okay, now what?

You didn’t know what you were supposed to do. They taught about this subject in school, sure, but that had been years ago! You’d spent the past six years filling your head with college and work and learning how to be an adult.

Okay, just breathe. You calmed down a bit with some deep breaths, and you closed your eyes. When you first heard your soulmate’s singing in your head, you remembered feeling warmth spread through your body, emanating from your chest. Then in your mind, you’d noticed a…a thread, of what could only be described as energy.

You felt it now. You could almost visualize it with your eyes closed. In your imagination, it was bright and beckoning. You focused on it, and it grew brighter, thrumming and soft.

You thought of what you wanted to say, and you tried it—sending your thoughts and your will through the connection.

Having a rough day?

Dean was still wiping beer off the floor in Bobby’s kitchen when he heard your voice ring through his mind.

Having a rough day?

His entire body tensed, and he paused with a ball of wet paper towel in his hand. Sam had taken the mop from Bobby and was about to finish off the floor, until he noticed Dean blanking.

“Dean?” he asked.

It shook Dean out of his shock, enough for him to look up at his brother. “Hmm?”

“What’s up? You were staring off into space.”

Dean feigned innocence. “Nothing.”

Sam’s brow rose, but he didn’t press the issue and went back to mopping. Dean took the opportunity to toss the wet paper towel in the garbage.

“I’m gonna hop in the shower,” he said, and made his swift exit to the bathroom upstairs, so quickly that he didn’t see Bobby watching Dean curiously from the living room.

“Don’t use up all the hot water!” Sam called after him.

Once again, Dean found himself locking the bathroom door and staring at himself in the mirror. His green eyes were conflicted as he tried to calm down. Maybe his heart was starting to beat a tick faster. Maybe a trickle of nervous sweat was making its way down his spine. Maybe he didn’t know what the hell to do.

His dad’s warning was still clear as a bell in his mind.

“Unless you’re prepared to hang up your gun, and stop hunting, don’t open that door.”

Dean knew why John had said it, and even agreed with him…at least, logically he did. His life was complicated, and insane, and bloody. How could he put someone else through what he went through? What he still went through every day? It wasn’t right.

But his chest was aching. He rubbed at it absently.

He could feel your worry again, he realized. You were anxious, probably waiting for him to respond. Dean could feel you. Having a rough day? you’d asked him.

So as usual, he made an impulsive choice.

You could say that, he carefully replied. He remembered the way your voice sounded, smooth and pleasant in his mind, and he couldn’t help smiling a little. But not for long, I’m thinkin’.

Your relief hit him in a slow, but powerful wave. It almost made him feel guilty for taking so long to answer.

Well, it’s not every day you hear someone else in your head. Maybe you’re going crazy.

She was teasing him. You were teasing him.

It brought an incredulous smile to Dean’s face. You’re one to talk. Maybe you’re just talkin’ to yourself right now.

Hmm. I don’t usually warble to Bon Jovi, but maybe you’re right.  

A beat of surprise, another to remember what he and Sam had been listening to in the car earlier, and then embarrassment prickled at the back of his neck.

You heard that, huh? he asked wryly.

Maybe, you giggled. It was a cute sound, and it cut through some of his embarrassment. He wasn’t used to being put back a step by women. He was good at reading people’s body language, and usually it didn’t take him more than one look to figure out what a woman thought about him, and what they wanted to do with him.

So the fact that he couldn’t see you was a challenge. With that realization, a slow smile spread across his face. He was game for a challenge.

Well, I’m likin’ your voice so far, he said. Think I could get you to sing for me?

He felt you pause, a flutter of warmth through a tendril of shyness. I’ll leave the performing to you, Romeo.   

Come on, it’s only fair.

Who said life is fair?

Dean sobered a bit at that. Ain’t that the truth.

Hmm, so you were having a rough day.

Make it a week, he said.

Yeah, I know the feeling…I wasn’t having a good day today either.

Dean sensed your melancholy and didn’t like the feeling. Well, now you’re talkin’ to me. So it should be smooth sailin’ from now on.

He could feel you brighten at that. It made warmth bloom once again inside his chest, especially because he sensed you were smiling—a bit shy, but genuine.  

…What’s your name? he asked.

It took you a beat, but eventually you gave him your name. It wasn’t what he expected, but he liked it. Your name rolled through his thoughts, and he tested on his tongue.

What’s yours? you asked predictably. Somehow, Dean didn’t anticipate the follow-up.

Suddenly he realized exactly what he was doing: he was talking to you. (Something he’d told himself he wasn’t going to do.) Not to mention, he’d been locked in the bathroom for about ten minutes and hadn’t even showered yet. Pretty soon either Sam or Bobby was going to come knocking to see what the hell he was doing, so he might as well shower for real.

He answered you as he turned on the showerhead and started undressing. I’ll make a deal with you…if you can guess what I do for a living, I’ll come by and introduce myself in person.

Dean felt your shock, so he let you think as he stepped into the shower. Eventually you came back, annoyance coloring your emotions and your voice.

That’s stupid.

Dean smiled. Aw, come on. It’ll be fun.

For you!

Don’t you know, sometimes the best things in life come after some delayed gratification.

You paused for a moment, in which Dean didn’t know if you were in shock again, or just pissed. Maybe a combination of both.

Great, I got a comedian, you deadpanned. …You’re not a comedian, are you?

Sweetheart, I’m hilarious, Dean replied. But no. Good guess, though.

He sensed the equivalent of you rolling your eyes.

Just then, Sam knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hey, you better not use up all the hot water!”

“Twenty minutes of peace, Sammy. That’s all I ask,” Dean shot back. Sam made a sound of annoyance, but he went away, leaving Dean almost alone with his thoughts.

Look, I gotta go, he said regretfully. But I expect you to have some guesses cooked up by the time I get back from work.

You were still annoyed, but you begrudgingly agreed to his terms.

Fine. Just…don’t wander too far off. I can’t win the game if I can’t hear you.

Dean sensed your underlying worry, and your fear. You were afraid he was going to leave.

His heart softened. As a result, he ended up promising things he didn’t know if he meant.

Don’t worry. I’m not leaving town until you win, he said.

He felt your warm smile, along with your excitement.

Goodnight, sweetheart. We’ll talk soon.

Okay…goodnight.

He hung onto the feeling of your presence for a few seconds longer, before he let go of the connection. For now.

Dean caught himself smiling, but it quickly turned to a frown.

“Nobody should be waiting on men like us to come home bloody.”

When he once again remembered his dad’s warnings, that new warmth in his heart chilled, and it sunk like a stone. He leaned against the cool bathroom wall and pressed his forehead against the tile, while lukewarm water beat the side of his face and body.

Shit.

AN: Oh, Dean. What're we gonna do with you? lol

I hope you enjoyed Part 3! I promise they'll finally meet soon lol. What did you think of their first conversation?

To keep reading: Part 4

Series Masterlist

Dean Winchester Masterlist

Main Masterlist

[tomssexdoll]

heyyy so hear me out Tom and reader are dating and he is helping her with something like she doesn’t have good grades from math but he does and so she asks him to help her with homework from math and he is like playful “if you will get it right i will kiss you” and stuff it can be smut or fluff whatever you want

ooo

I called Tom, he was a genius at maths and I was terrible. I was struggling with my maths assignments and homework and needed him to help me since I was so close to failing.

"Hey baby, can you come over? I need help with my math homework" I winced, he chuckled over the phone, "yeah alright liebe, I'll be there in 10"

As he arrived we went up to my room, I layed out everything for him and started to study. Instead of paying attention I'd drift off, daydreaming anytime he'd explain an equation.

He slowly got frustrared and snapped me out of my trance, "baby, how about this, since you weren't listening to anything I was saying" but I was.." I interruped, he gave me a 'really' look, I giggled, "fine fine I wasn't, continue" "as I was saying, for every right answer you get I'll kiss you", my eyes lit up and I instantly turned to him, accepting his idea.

"Yes yes!" I squealed, flipping to the start of the homework. He explained some things to me beforehand and then starting to ask questions. "So what's the square root of 64?", "uhh....8?" he smirked and nodded, "goodjob baby!" leaning in and kissing me softly.

I grinned, a huge stupid smile plastered on my face.

We continued to go through the answers, whimpering when I got it wrong. Sometimes he'd give me the benefit of the doubt if I was close enough and kissed me anyway.

We were through our last set of questions and these were hard, I bit my nails nervously as he read the question, "what is x3+y3+z3=k?" I felt sweat beads form on my forehead, knowing all the revision I learnt but still not being able to add it up.

I decided to take a guess, "uhh..42?" his eyes widened, "y-yeah..fuck.." he stuttered, checking the answer book. "How did you get that? Even I find it challenging!" he chuckled, "I don't know baby I just guessed, it felt like the right number" I shrugged, leaning in and smashing my lips into his.

We pulled back and he whispered softly in my ear, "I think my good girl gets a reward" he smirked, eyes darkening with lust. I bit my lip and layed back on the bed, Tom removing my shorts and panties and laying down, his head in between my legs.

He softly kissed my pussy, parting the folds with his tongue. My hips bucked up slightly, moving into his touch.

"Mm! Tom don't tease!" I whined, grabbing his dreads roughly and tugging on them, "ok ok" he chuckled, finally latching his mouth onto my clit, sucking it softly.

I gripped onto his dreads tighter, earning a low moan from him, the sound vibrating on my clit and making me shudder. He flicked my sensitive nub with his tongue, sliding a finger up and slowly pushing it in my soppy cunt.

"So wet..fuck" he groaned, adding another finger and thrusting in brutally, curling his fingers at my g spot.

I threw my head back, enjoying the pleasure way too much, my grip tightening even more on his dreads. He seemed to enjoy the pain, groaning everytime I tugged on them.

His tongue and fingers were so good, moving in a way that made me crazy. It was literally like taking drugs, I was high off of his touch. He continued to suck on my clit, kissing it sweetly to tease me occasionally.

I felt my high slowly bubbling up inside me, my stomach twisting into a knot. "Gonna cum soon! Keep going!" I whimpered, thrusting my hips into his face, his fingers started to thrust into me harder now, making slight squelching noises from my juices.

"Cum for me, be my good girl again" he grunted, licking and sucking faster now, pleasure waves crashing into me, hitting me like a truck. I felt the knot twist even tighter, my heat burning as I came, legs twitching and slick dripping all over his fingers.

He smirked and pulled his fingers out, sucking everything I gave him off and cleaning me up with his tongue. "Fuck..you taste so good" he climbed up and pulled me closer to him, his chin and mouth glistening with my cum.

I chuckled and wiped it off with a tissue, "you're such a messy boy, can't resist me can you, hm?" I smirked, kissing him softly. "Can you blame me, you're so gorgeous" he flipped me over, hovering over me and kissing me deeply.

tags: @itsmealaiah @tomscumdump @tomkaulitzloverr @tomkaulitzloverr @bkaulitzlover @ballhair @charliesgoodboy @estxkios @ge-billsgf @syylss

[rustbeltjessie]

To what purpose, April, do you return again? (or: finally, a pinned post for April)

Hi all. I'm Jessie Lynn McMains, aka Rust Belt Jessie. I'm an Xennial/Elder Millenial (please don't call me a Geriatric Millenial, thank you) writer/artist/zine-maker/etc. (I wear many hats.) I'm queer and nonbinary/genderfluid, and as far as pronouns go, I’m okay with any human pronoun (they and she are my most-used, but I like he, too, and I especially like it when people switch up the pronouns they use for me). I’m disabled and neurodivergent.

I live with my partner and our two kiddos, both of whom are also neurodivergent, and right now I’m supporting all of us on whatever money I earn. I do freelance copywriting and editing as my main thing, but I also make a decent chunk of my income from selling my zines and books and pins and whatever else I make, so the more I sell, the better able I am to pay bills and take care of my family.

Through my Ko-fi, you can buy my zines and books (I have both poetry and prose available) and pins, as well as commission me to make you a music-inspired mini-collage or hire me to edit your own writing. Or also just throw me a few bucks if you appreciate the content I make available for free.

If you live outside the US (I can only ship within the US via Ko-fi, because setting up shipping for multiple countries is a pain the butt), or just prefer to purchase something or donate via a different platform, I also have PayPal and Venmo (@ JessieLynnMcMains).

I also have a Substack newsletter. I try to send something out at least once a month. Sometimes it's a longer piece about music and nostalgia (I recently started a series called These Fucking Songs, for just that purpose), sometimes it's just updates on what I'm up to, sometimes it's something else. I'm currently working on one about poetry, and my writing process, and revision.

As if that weren't enough, this month I'm doing a 30/30 on the Tupelo Press site, which not only means I have to write a poem every day to be posted the next day, but I am also fundraising for Tupelo Press. My goal is to raise $350 by the end of the month. You can follow along with my daily poems here (the newest is always at the top; scroll down to read previous days), and the fundraising page is here. (I'm also offering some cool incentives for people who donate; more info about all that is available on the fundraising page.)

I'm pro-trans, pro-vaccine, pro-sex worker, pro-abortion, pro-Black Lives Matter. I'm for harm reduction for any drug user or addict, meaning I want them to be able to use drugs as safely as possible, rather than forcing them into rehab or incarcerating them. I'm anti-censorship and anti-fascist. I believe everyone, everyone, should have a safe place to sleep and enough to eat without having to earn it. I consider myself an anarcho-socialist, basically, but I do vote. I'm telling you all that because if you are vehemently against any of those things, we'll probably not get along.

I'm a forever-goth/punk who loves all kinds of music. (Things on heavy rotation for me as I write this are: The Replacements, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Oliver Nelson.) I'm femme but I'm a disaster femme; when I use nailpolish it's always sloppy and/or chipped, when I wear eyeliner it's always crooked and/or smeared, and I am incapable of not ripping a hole or two in every pair of tights and stockings I own. I love art and film and theater and literature and music. I'm a Shakespeare stan, I love growing my own vegetables, I collect souvenir pennies and stick and poke tattoos. I'm always a slut in theory, even when not always in practice. I'm perpetually nostalgic, melancholy, and restless. I spend all my free time posting pictures of myself on the internet and trying to prove I'm punk to anyone that'll listen.

Want more Jessie content? There's my website (still under construction, but it exists). Or you could try searching the my writing, my art, Jessie Lynn McMains, or Rust Belt Jessie tags on this blog. I also have a side blog, where I tend to post more frequently than I do on this blog. If you ask nice, I'll probably give you the URL.

On that note, my DMs and asks are open, and, as of right now, anon is on.

I think that's it! As always, whether you can send any $$ my way (or to my fundraiser) currently or not, keeping this post circulating helps. Thanks much. 🖤

[queer-ragnelle]

interested in reading your own book but i'm not sure where to start? ^_^

Hi anon!

Thank you for your interest! TL;DR is I’m not published yet but very close and you can learn more about my series “Elegy of an Empire” on this other blog. To be more specific, here’s the prologue of book 1: The Moonlit Knight.

Long version is the first book, The Moonlit Knight, which is Ragnelle and Gawain points of view, is almost ready to be published. It sounds ridiculous to still be saying this after discussing this series for literally years, but I’ve mostly written in reverse, so this first book is the last one I drafted. And it simply takes a lot of time to find the right people to beta read, make revisions, send to my editor, revise again, hire a cover artist, and not to mention I pay for all of this out of pocket so it takes time to earn the money to pay them all appropriately.

BUT! I’m very close to publishing for real this time! The Moonlit Knight cover is done and the words are entirely edited. I just have one last beta reader finishing up and then I can take the next step. Indie publishing is a lot of work and but I’m hoping it’ll be worth the wait. :^)

Thank you again for asking. I can’t wait until I can give a better answer!!

[queen-breha-organa]

I wanted to briefly come back online and discuss the WGA and, in turn, the current writer's strike.

I know my opinion matters very little, and I don’t consider myself an expert or a valuable voice in this matter. However, since I talk about Star Wars a lot, I wanted to discuss the strike because these things go hand in hand. I think it’s unfair to ignore the real-world circumstances that shape the media you enjoy. Knowing the context of something is important. And beyond that, this situation has just been on my mind, and I wanted to express my thoughts somewhere. 

Firstly, all workers should be paid living wages. All workers deserve to be treated fairly and compensated fairly. All workers deserve safe, productive, and fair working environments—end of story.

I’ve been seeing a lot of jokes along the lines of “I didn’t even know media had writers these days,” and while I understand the joke and the potential humor in it, I feel like it’s important to realize that this is entirely why the WGA is striking in the first place.

The writer’s rooms are shrinking. Writers are being overworked. Writers are being underpaid. Writers are being dismissed and undercut. These factors lead to poorly written and poorly managed shows because the individuals who write the bones of the shows are exhausted and burdened by corporate interference, unreasonable deadlines (especially in animation), unfair wages, and stale corporate agendas.

Additionally, these writers often aren’t given the opportunity to oversee or manage their writing while it’s being filmed. Instead, companies are acting as if the writing process ends before the filming process so that they can shorten the writer's contracts and pay them less. However, in actuality, the writing process is often most valuable during the filming process. 

Some things work on paper but don’t work on the day. Maybe the joke doesn’t land, or an actor can’t deliver the line as intended. Writers are needed on set to rework and revise these lines, so the process can run smoother without sacrificing story and believability. Now some actors are incredible at improvising and can make these things work. However, overall, without writers on set, you usually end up with awkward/stiff dialogue or scenes that make no sense. Writing doesn’t stop in the writers' room.

Another massive force driving this strike is the evolution of streaming services. 

With “traditional” tv reruns, the network airing the media has to purchase the viewing rights of the episode or the show. This money is then extended to the people who worked on the show in the form of residuals. It makes sense. Something you worked on makes money, so in turn, you get money. 

However, streaming services have broken this mold by allowing consumers to watch whatever media whenever they want. Streaming services claim that it is no longer possible to pay residuals for these shows since they don’t know how often or when the shows are being watched. This is a lie.

Companies will brag privately in shareholder's meetings and publicly in articles about streaming shows that have done well. We’ll read headlines like “Stranger Things’ Was Most-Streamed TV Show in 2022” or “‘Star Wars’ vs. Marvel: Which Disney+ Shows Are Most-Viewed.” These articles and the data within them prove it is possible to know how frequently shows/movies are being watched on streaming services. Still, companies are only willing to shell out this information for bragging rights and not for fair payments.

In 2021, Disney CEO Bob Chapk earned $32 million. In contrast, the WGA website states, “Median weekly writer-producer pay has declined 4% over the last decade. Adjusting for inflation, the decline is 23%.” These writers are merely asking for 3%, while CEOs are given the moon.

This is unacceptable.

If you’re reading this post, if you’re on Tumblr and engaging with fandoms enough to have this post written by me, a Star Wars blog, circulate on your feed, media writing has affected your life. Writers have impacted you and your daily routine and hobbies. 

You should care about this strike. You should be supporting this strike. 

We all want our favorite shows to come back, we all want to reunite with our favorite characters, and we all want to see their stories, their triumphs, and their struggles. 

But the real people behind these stories and behind these characters are far more important than any fictional narrative. 

These writers have crafted the worlds and stories we love, and by supporting them, we can return the favor and craft a better world for them too.

[haechurch]

forgetting me, forgetting you

It's not the way that jeno doesn't look at you the same. It's not the way of him chasing after a girl and leaving you behind in the evening downpour. It's not the way jeno said he didn't even love you that night. It's just nothing but your broken heart.

pairing: idol!jeno x fem!reader

genre: smut, fluff (kinda), angstt

wc: 4.8+k

warnings: minors dni, unprotected sex, oral (m, f receive), spitting, kind of meanie jeno, implied exhibitionist, degrading, praising, spanking, teasing, fingering, tons of pet name, hard and soft sex, etc etc, you know when i said idol and fan relationship its just so unreal as well as how their jobs work lmao ((i had a problem to make this at least a lil bit realistic) also not seem too delusional but- just pls dont @ me, i mean its a fic)

! how embarrassing that this shit got posted accidentally (i hate tmblr) my pupils were literally shaking lol. for those who might accidentally saw this (i know theres not even a soul who cares abt it..) ofc i had this to be revised also its inspired by rv song, in my dreams, (originally the title for this one but i changed it!) i might also have songs recommendation, its [coldplay-yellow > conan gray-astronomy > yoari-dice game > exo-hurt > davichi-forgetting you > red velvet-in my dreams]

Everything was pandemonium from the start. You saw jeno in person for the first time in the concert venue. Yes. He is the singer. That singer. A born-talented, handsome, lovable idol from nct. He didn't even know you were there, in the crowd of audience hyping his band up. Never in your dreams you thought you'd met him in person, but fate brings you two together. It was what you believed until then. Fate brings your jeno who has never been yours in the first place to kindly remind you that he will never be yours even at the end of the time.

You worked hard for your pay. You work as an employee (that mostly work for dreamies) under jeno's company after you earned your post graduate title while studying in korea. That point when you made it out, you never even thought that this was a real chance to finally get him.

That's just insane, to get lee jeno, in a somehow, romantic way. But you tried anyway. Ordinary person with an extraordinary person? Or can you just say idols and fans relationship? That jeno from all the people living on this earth? Mostly impossible. Those who live around you will think you're crazy for wanting someone who literally exists in a different world from you. Even though you're 'coexisting' with him and seeing him from time to time, that would not be enough; so near yet so far.

It's so hard to work under the company and let it flow at first. Without a will, you'll never get what you want. Even though this one is nearly impossible, you attempt to keep the mindset that revolves around you: it will work if you try, try, try and try.

But it's useless. Who do you think you are? You can't even be allowed to speak nor get close to him except if it's necessary. It's hard to work with him like a normal acquaintance. To them, to jeno, you're simply invisible. 

However, you did make it clear enough. No surrendering. That's the least you can keep in mind. 

But again, he didn't even spare you a glimpse.

Then there was this day when you two were put together in the same dressing room, waiting for some interviews coming up. There's actually no reason for you to not share the same room because technically, you're their regular staff. The rest of the members and other staff were nowhere to be found, it was you and him. You and jeno all alone in the same room. You nearly choked yourself when you were about to open your mouth as jeno scooted to where you sat. 

"Hi." He lightly started the conversation. You swear to god you can hear your own heartbeat. Keeping yourself calm and professional, you hum and put the sweetest smile to him. "Hello."

"I'm so sorry if i sound rude, but i believe we're around the same age? I've been seen you around and i just knew you're a regular staff in here," you intensely stared at him, eyes widened in disbelief that he just casually- 

"We can be friends if you wan-" 

"We can?!"

-asked you to be his friend.

Realizing you just replied to him in 0,023 seconds, you covered your mouth and muttered 'sorry' to him. He just laughed. Oh. That laugh.

That's when you feel like you two were 'getting closer' as he asked you to be his friend for some idiotic reason (u really have no idea why the universe would gave you this kind of, miracle, you'd say, but you're fucking grateful).

Of course you can be friends with everyone. Also a staff (fan) and an artist couldn't be an exception, right? But once again who are you kidding, lee jeno is super busy, and you should know it could probably the friendship that only lasts for four hours.

You didn't meet jeno for weeks and you missed him so bad. Sometimes you got to talk to him after he befriend you (tho it happens only if you had that rare chance) but both of you didn't get a long time to properly talk and have a good conversation. And it's been a long time, you just missed him.

Did he perhaps miss you too? Did he ever think about you even just for a split second? You shake your head from the thoughts and scoff at yourself. He probably already erased you from his memory. And that night, you drifted into a deep slumber whilst thinking about how he wouldn't remember you.

―

But you were dead wrong. That day was very hot because apparently, it's in the middle of summer, and you were called for a job in a broadcasting house which happened to be the same place for the band to attend their schedule.

You're standing in front of a vending machine, getting a drink when you hear someone call your name. You turned around and found jeno, looking at you with his smiling eyes.

"Jeno!? What are you doing here?" You can't hide your pearly whites when you see him, so please meet him again after a while.

"We're having some jobs here. How about you?" He asked. 

"Um, me too! But mine's still running, i take a little coffee break right before come back to the site. Have you finished yours?"

"Yes, actually," jeno scratched his nape awkwardly before he continued. "Uhh, do you perhaps want to meet me after you are done? Just for a sec?" He asked.

"Sure! I'll text you when i'm done?" 

Yes, you both are having each other's numbers but can't even communicate a single thing through it. He didn't text you. And you, being the one who shamelessly asked for his numbers which he gladly gave it, never once texts him because as you can see, you're being professional enough to keep your words that it's only for the matter of work.

"Cool." You both smiled to each other and stood awkwardly for a good seconds until jeno left. 

So, did he just wait for you until you're done because he said he just finished his schedule? Is that even possible for him to do that?

The answer is yes. Though with a little bit of delay. He asked you to meet him after you're done, just to have you wait for him in the nearby cafe for nearly 20 minutes.

Jeno: uhh hi its jeno

Jeno: im so sorry for keeping you waiting

You: oh hii

You: nah its okayy not a biggie

Jeno: its the manager hyung, i told him i have to go somewhere but you know its hard to cooperate with them :/

Jeno: look i promise it will just need to b arranged real fast okay

You: okaaay i know youre busy you can really take your time tho

Jeno: so sorry ;(((

You: jeno its fine :*

You: :(

Jeno: thanjk you for the understanding ;)

Jeno: ill be there in.. 5 mins?

You: ill be here waiting!

You were smiling like crazy reading his texts. All you did was blushing and heart skipping while replying to him. He was so cute. And it's the first time you guys exchange texts. And he did it first! (how its a big deal for you)

Then there he is. Entering the cafe with a little skip and making a bee line to your table then sit down in front of you. 

"Right on time." He said jokingly. You just chuckled at him.

"Sooo what's up? What is it that you wanted to talk about in your very packed schedule, busy bee?"

He exhaled harshly before replying. "Nothing. Just wanna get out and have some fresh air."

He averted his gaze to yours before continue, "with my new friend." 

You raised one of your eyebrows at the boy. "Yeah? I thought you already forgot me because i was just simply a girl that worked at your company," you talk as you fold your hands.

"Why would i? I'll remember you anyway. You once fell in front of me when you were about to open some door and that actually was funny as hell. Shouldn't laugh but i can't help it. Oops. Should have not told you this part too..."

Your face heated in a second, and yes, you did that and it was humiliating and you felt very stupid. That time you were about to enter the conference room at the company building, but jeno (also the other members were there) was opening the door at the same time, unfortunately you stumbled on your feet and ended up kneeling at his.

He take a glance at you again then continue. "And you're pretty pretty."

You immediately looked up to him. You can't explain how his sudden confession affect you so much and leave your heart throbbing like crazy. 

Fortunately you can keep your act.

You chuckled and replied, "and what's that supposed to mean."

"I'm just saying that you're beautiful." 

He surely knows how to mess with your heart.

"And i'm getting worried that your eyes might have a problem," you laughed, more to laughing at yourself.

"No. I meant it."

You looked at him again, flustered, and he smiled when he saw you taken aback. A mischievous smile to be exact.

"Are you flirting with me?" Of course you were kidding. Asking that kind of question sounds nonchalant, even have no shame. But you had nothing to lose anyway.

"Would you accept it?" 

You blinked rapidly, your heart beating so fast in your chest, your palms were sweaty. He got you questioning yourself on how you can not fall for him even more? It's getting even deeper every minute you spend your time with him. He's dangerous. 

You were stunned for a moment. You felt like your cheeks burned, they're emitting flame. Your head short circuited for a while yet all you can think about is jeno. Jeno jeno jeno and jeno. The moment you can't hold it back from spilling, you just let it burst.

"I like you." 

Oh, you don't even care anymore about your image. The moment you spit that you felt like the most stupid, dense person alive on earth.

"I know." 

He responded in a heartbeat, and you felt fire burn a hole into you.

"You what?"

"I said i know. I noticed. And i do to."

"I'm so lost." You started to believe that you're out of your mind.

"I'm saying that i like you too."

Your pupils doesn't even falter when you stare at his face. You might just scream or gasp or even cry, but you were too stunned to speak, the way you were so calm also surprised yourself. You shake your head as you doubt your hearing and gave him a bitter smile.

"You're joking."

"Yes." 

Your eyes widen from his answer. He's such a prankster. 

"Jeno!"

He laughed. His laugh is so carefree but feels shy at the same time, that is just screaming lee jeno so much.

"So what am i supposed to say? You already heard me."

"I'm just trying to seek clarity." You narrow your eyes playfully. Now you don't even know where the confidence in you came from.

"You're my clarity." 

Now that sounds straight up came from a song lyric.

This whole time you think that you're crazy for wanting lee jeno, but here you are having a little cafe date and knowing him to have the same feeling as you are.

-

"Ah!" you squeal as your head thud against the hard surface.

"Sorry," jeno apologized as he giggled, then continue to peppering kisses down your neck.

Both of you were alone in a room at the backstage, making out like crazy before he bring you to the nearest table and pin you down. You sigh blissfully, thanking heaven every time your bodies this close, that you finally have jeno for your own and not anybody else. It's not the first time that he finally touched you, but every single one of his touches feels like the first time.

Oh, of course that didn't just happen in a night. He's been so sweet and kind to you that you mistaken his deed as something more than platonic relationship.

He bought you food. He told the manager to drop you off at your apartment at night when the schedule's over. You both go to the staff's cafeteria and eat lunch together. You offer him to go cycling together when he's off, and he did. He lent you his airpods when you lost one. You brewed his morning coffee. He called you one night and said that he's missing you. You asked him if you can do the same, texting or calling him as a normal friend would do despite both of your jobs. And that one night where he sneaked out to your apartment just to say that he wanted you.

That moment you thought everything is indeed possible. 

"Jen! Wait!"

He's currently railing you stupid at the backstage.

Now both of your hands were on the wall, legs spread open for him to easily pound you from the back. 

"Shit, this pussy's so tight." He slowed down, dragging his cock precise and keen, watching how his length appeared then disappeared inside your pussy.

"You like that baby?"

Your ears are buzzing, eyes fluttering, you only mewl and all you can hear is squelching sounds from how wet your pussy is before he sped up, skins clapping resonated all over the room.

When you didn't answered, he stopped and brings your hair to a ponytail then yanked your head up so your back is now against him as he whispered, "i said, am i fucking you good, little slut?" Well he can be cruel sometimes, but both of you know his mouth isn't that dirty on daily basis. He's just having his moment.

"Fuck yes," you finally speak.

Jeno railed into you again, he prop you to stand up, right hand on your hip, clamping so hard it'll leave bruises, and left hand grasping at your jaw to make you face him, his lips ghosting between your ear and lips, heavy breathing and all.

When he brushed against your earlobe, he whispered right onto your ear, "open your fucking mouth."

You obliged, as he bent your neck back and you presented all of yourself in front of him, he spit into your mouth. "Perfect. Keep it there like a good girl you are." 

Jeno started to pick up pace again, this time hitting your spot deliciously over and over, sending you to the cloud nine.

You agape as you moan, all while your mouth full of your and his spit, nonetheless making an effort to keep jeno's words but you're already drooling all over your chin.

"J-jen.."

"Shh, no need to say a thing baby girl, keep your pretty mouth shut."

Jeno suddenly lift you up and prop your back against the table. He's hovering over you, tapping your cheek, oblige you to open your mouth again, and spit another glob into yours.

"Now keep that warm and safe, you could do that, right angel?"

He asked and you only nodded in response. "That's it. Now let me make you feel good."

He spread your dangling legs by pushing on your thighs then dragging his hard and big cock along your slit, making a quite lubrication.

You're a whiny mess, never in your life you thought you'd have sex with lee jeno in a random room on their backstage, and he's pretty wild at the moment.

Before you can process a thing, he's already on his knee, eating you out slowly. You tug at his hair and hoist your hip up, but he's keeping you in place. He's taking his time, kitten licking at your opening with a slow pace, sucking softly at the clit, but it already making you tremble and wanting more. He's keeping the act for a while before the frustrations hit you.

"Jeno, hurry the fuck up."

He stop doing his ministrations, and as he pissed off, he suddenly lift you up again, your front pushed to the nearest wall.

"What did i just say to you? Shut your fucking mouth. Don't fucking speak. Why did you speak?"

He landed a couple of hard slap against your ass, making you yelp and shriek, "i-m sorry, please," your head drooped, your body trembling, but not from fear.

It's excitement.

Another slap on your ass. "Please what? Tell me, angel, what is it?

He kneaded your flesh and put his length between your ass cheek, nuzzling it sensually, and it made you bite your lip hard, can't take his teasing no more.

"Please," you almost sob. "Please, jeno, fuck me."

You beg, and he immediately bend you fully over again, both of his hands were on your hips as he fuck you into oblivion.

"Princess wanna get fucked. What she wants, she gets." 

He kissed his teeth before he rammed into you, hitting that sweet spot precisely over and over again it felt so good. Your hands and legs almost gave up, but he grabbed your hip in place. As you moan and scream for him, he keep chanting that he want you to come for him.

"Jeno, i'm fucking close- fuck," your hair is tangled, you're a drooling mess, your eyes rolled up. He fuck you so good it leave you dumb. Jeno's hips never once falter, he keep fucking into you rapidly as you whine non stop.

"Fuck, come all over me. Come on," he encouraged you.

"Coming!" You're a moaning mess, pussy can't help but tightened around him, making him curse under his breath. He continue to pistoning as he chasing his high, prolonged your own orgasm.

"Fuck, gonna cum," his thrust remain steady until it finally stopped, buried so deep inside you as he fill you up to the brim. Jeno finally pulled out, your hands and elbow propped against the wall as you arched your back while bending over, giving him a full sight of your ass and pussy overflowing with his cum. 

"Shit.." jeno cursed as he ran a hand through his fringe.

You felt your bodies emitting fog from the fever, glistening with sweat.

Just after that, you both heard a knock and someone's shouting.

"Are you guys done there? Jeno, get your loud ass out there right now, we're running out of time." 

You wouldn't miss whose voice it was.

It's fucking na jaemin. You felt embarrassment creep down your spine when you realized he found out, although nothing like the rest of the members doesn't know about the relationship you two have. But still, caught red handed fucking in the backstage with his band mate is a little bit..

"That's embarrassing.." you sigh while covering your face, making jeno chuckled as he patted your head.

"He'll get used to it." He smiled like a puppy, as he not merely fuck you senseless just now.

-

You said that it's embarrassing. But it seems like you're liking how unusual things did give you some thrilling sensations you can't explain. Since then, you've had sex with jeno in the void meeting room when everybody's leaving from work. It's giving you anxiety on what if someone's barge in, or the worst-you'd get kicked out from the company and never ever get the same job even at the different place again-but funnily, you can't resist the good feeling jeno made you and the realization that you were actually enjoying the shit, eventually not giving any fuck if someone know.

Another day of you and jeno spending time together in the same room, giving some different kind of affections to each other. And you're just too afraid to say something; to ask him: 'what are we?' Because you couldn't be more happy with what's happening between you two now. And tonight is a bit different because you feel your heart ache in the way he hold you as he won't let go.

"Jeno.." you arched your back when his tongue trailed from your abdomen up to your breasts while he attempted to unclasp your bra.

After freeing the flesh, he mumbled in awe, "beautiful."

He latched his tongue on your nipple, swirling it with purpose, to make you even wet just for him, and him only, just like the way he liked it.

"Fuck, it feels so good, don't stop," you pulled on his hair, a signal for him to keep going. 

"Yeah? You like that, pretty girl?" Jeno kneaded on your swell as he sucked again on your nipple.

"Louder. Moan louder for me." And that's what you did. Your fucked up sounds is a music to his ears, railing him up to the extent where he just wanted to sink in you. 

Jeno cupped your sex, your panties were damp in arousal. "Shit, look at you. So fucking wet." He slid his fingers up and down your panties before he slipped his fingers in. You whimpered when his cold digit met your folds. He only play with your opening and clit, but it already drive you crazy. You're practically drooling, he's collecting your essence on his fingers before he bring it up to his mouth, tasting your arousal. You huff and puff, look already fucked up before him when he barely did anything.

"So pretty. So fucked up. So needy for me."

All you did is fucking whine. Lee jeno is driving you insane.

"Please," you plead. "Jeno,"

"Hm? What is it princess?" He asked with a sweet mocking tone.

"Fingers. Want your fingers inside me." You sternly told him, but your gaze was infirm.

He chuckled then replied, "of course baby, you'll have it. But later. I have to taste you first. Will you let me?"

He asked for your permission and what on earth is stopping you from letting him eat you out? Of course you would never say no.

"Pleasee," your whiny voice made him smile from ear to ear in satisfaction.

"Love it when you beg."

Jeno get down to eye level with your pussy before dive in. Your hips wouldn't stop thrusting up to him and pulling his hair, his strong hands looping on your thighs. At this rate his face buried deep between you legs and tongue prod into your cunt, exploring your hole, lips trying so hard to swallow you up, open mouthed kiss at your pussy, sucking and lapping. He's eating you out like there's no tomorrow. 

"Fuck, i think i'm gonna cum."

Jeno chuckled, "already? So spoilt."

Jeno bring his fingers down and curled the digit expertly inside your pussy, you're wiggling like crazy when he reached that sweet spot that got your pussy tightening around him, then he sucked your clit hard, made you cum in instant at his doing.

You gradually came down from your high and stared at him in the eye, begging.

"Jeno, please, let me suck you off."

He feels like he's flying up the cloud seeing you prettily begged for him. Then he smiled, "can't say no to a pretty girl like you."

You bit your lip before you kneeled in front of him, taking a hand of his hard cock and kissed the tip. You hold onto his balls while you licked and sucked along his shaft until your tongue met with the tip, then sink into his cock, swallowing him whole. You bobbed your head up and down, sucking in intensity. He groaned and bring his hand through your hair, while he got his head thrown back against the headboard.

"You're doing so good baby, keep going."

He hissed painfully, his muscles clenched and his grab on your hair is getting tight. Your left hand massaging his balls, mouth sucking at the tip, the other hand stroking the rest of his shaft.

"Fuck, i'm not gonna last." He hold your head and thrust into your mouth, chasing his high. Your gagged sound heard all over the room, eyes pricked from tears. His groan went louder and that's when he came all over your mouth, and you swallowed all of his seed like a good girl, his good girl.

You lap all of his fluid, cleaning his cock clean, and lick your own lips.

"God you're pretty." His stare full with admiration, then he caged you between his arms, locked your lips with his in a passionate kiss. Tongue dancing with each other, nipping at one's lip. Both of you moan into the kiss, until he break it first.

Your back arched so high, hips pressed against his own, wanted more just than kissing him, but he pushed your belly down and leaned in.

"Need you now. Need to make love to you."

Once again, your heart sank at his confession. You're already tearing up as he pushed his big cock into you, soon picking up a steady pace to thrust between your wall, all while kissing you out. His kiss felt so soft and sweet, but also fragile at the same time. Your bodies met, no space in between. You hug him tightly, so afraid that he might just run away or disappear in the blink of an eye. He made you feel so good you're crying, can't even think or talk straight, your mind felt numb.

That night, you remembered vividly the last word he said before you passed out.

"I love you."

-

The rainy night made you feel all lazy. You wouldn't get up from bed if you just didn't feel the urge to go to the convenience store and fulfill your craving with some warm food. You're definitely starving.

You take out your umbrella because it's still raining, but as you nearly arrived, it's became a drizzle before it came to a stop.

You fold your umbrella as you walk closer, but before entering the place, you definitely saw jeno at the dark aisle between two buildings; making out with who the fuck you don't care, as if someone could've not just pass by and saw them two passionately changing spits.

You froze in your place, can't even walk any closer to where jeno was. You felt anger bubbling up to your chest and at the same time, you can't help your heart from breaking into pieces.

But as someone's controlling you, you suddenly stomped on your feet, making a way to them with balled fists, and you nearly scream when you call him out.

"Jeno."

The two broke the kiss after couple of seconds as if they're unbothered, both dripping from the drizzle. He turned at you, eyes dark and indicating that he wasn't even surprised to see you there. 

But then he opened his mouth, "how th-"

"What the fuck?" You cut him before he talk, spitting your anger out, voice all husky and spiteful, extremely vulnerable at the same time.

"Who the fuck is that?" Your eyes burned from restraining tears roll down your cheeks.

"What happened with the other days when we literally spent time together? Yesterday, you just- we just- fuck, i- i thought you just said that you lo-"

You can't help but blubbering, can't even say the last word you meant from spilling out. It's too much.

The girl he was making out with tried to walk away, but he grabbed her wrist.

You scoffed, speechless.

Did he just stop her?

Sickeningly, he just walked by you as he made a way out while dragging her with him.

You swear you just felt so fucking dumbfounded. He didn't even say a word since earlier.

When you can't hold your tears back again, you break out and scream his name out. 

"LEE JENO!"

He looked back from his shoulder, but he still put the same blank expression in front of you before he chuckled.

"Well. Looks like i've got nothing to explain since you already saw it."

Still standing with the balled fists, you can't even talk as you were trying so hard to figure things out. Why the fuck did he do this? Did this to you?

"I believe you're capable enough to think with your little brain, princess."

Suddenly, the rain started to pouring again, leaving you all soaked up gradually.

He's giving you the nastiest smile he have ever showed you as he made his getaway with the girl and said,

"Wake the fuck up. I have never loved you."

―

And that's when you wake up from your dreams.

As your eyes fluttered, you felt tears running from the corner of your eyes, making your sideburns damp uncomfortably.

This fucking whole thing is a dream. A dream that's so real.

No wonder that all of it was happening so fast; and absurd.

Now you can't even think of jeno the same way anymore if you see him at work. 

You checked your phone. Of course it's december. You laughed bitterly at yourself when you realized you trapped with jeno in your dreams when it's fucking summer. You swear you can even feel the heat. It just felt so true.

You get up on your elbows then cursed under your breath before muttered to yourself, "never thought you'd love and hurt me at the same time."

And it's not even in the real world.

Is it better because it's just a dream? Or is it not because the real thing is even more an awful truth you need to accept?

That's when you realized that the meaning of impossible is literally as it is. It's the time for you to understand that both of you is poles apart, that he is different.

You'll never ever get him, and you need to forget him; as he might already forget you.

[sugarpsalms]

Ahh, here we are! After much revision (to the point where the only thing that's remained are the graphics [and character icons that @pumpkinspicelatte-art allowed me to use]), I've finally settled on the cast and main story branches this extremely self-indulgent One Piece modern AU.

For personal reference (and for anyone interested) I'll be making the occasional handy info post. Coming up next will be backstories for various cast members, but for now, let's stick with the basics and kick this off with a general run down + main cast corral. Join me below the cut for a silly goofy time!

A beloved nightlife spot in Miami, FL, Golden Hand is packed from open to close. Featuring a sprawling bar, a cozy patio, and three main rooms filled with arcade games, it has something for you, whatever your mood! Come early and you can grab a booth or patio corner; if you like to mingle, the barflies and game floor crawlers are friendly; or, if you’re wanting something a little more thrilling: tell the Bar Manager you came to let off steam. He’ll know exactly what you mean. If that’s what you want, be sure to bring plenty of cash. Once you’re escorted to Golden Hand’s back rooms, you’re going to need it. The drinks are pricier, the smoke is tempting, and—is that a pinball pit? That guy walking around, is he taking bets? Are we gambling? Hey! Stop with all the questions. What are you, a cop?

Crocodile

Owner and founder of Golden Hand, Crocodile is the toast of Miami. Though he’s had several successful ventures, the barcade is by far his most popular. It attracts both locals and tourists and is the pride of the local game design community. Every indie creator from the keys to the panhandle dreams of having Croc scoop their project up! While he’s a busy man, he can be spotted in Golden Hand most nights. Come early enough and you’ll see him chatting at the bar with its manager. After dark though, the only place you’ll find him is the back. If you want to chat, you'll have to drop serious cash.

Mihawk

Bar manager, custom cocktail crafter, and—when necessary—drunk asshole ejector, Mihawk’s is a face everyone knows. Croc may own the place, but Mihawk keeps it running, handling everything from daily operation to public relations. Though his gloomy attitude makes him seem unapproachable at first, regulars and staff alike adore him. Once you sniff his sense of humor out, turns out he’s more witty than scary. Want to charm him? Show interest in his herb garden and never leave with your tab open.

Buggy

Originally a regular, Buggy was ‘offered’ the position of Floor Walker after security footage turned up evidence of him installing card skimmers onto high-traffic games. When confronted, he was given a choice between paying the house a lump percent of his earnings or working off the debt. Chronically broke, Buggy chose the latter. He now spends most nights of the week collecting empty drink glasses and exchanging cash for game tokens. Was this how he pictured ushering in his 40s? No, but he's making the best of it, and as soon as he clears his debt, he's out!

Golden Hand’s various office staff, bartenders, and security

Alvida, Cabaji, Daz, Perona, Galdino, Mohji

Doflamingo

Crocodile’s first and most pesky business partner, Doflamingo is the reason your cup is always full. He’s the owner of several vineyards, distilleries, and micro breweries, and the sole provider of alcohol—among other things—to Golden Hand. Along with his family, he spends every summer in Florida catching up with his old flame, reviewing their contract, and setting up the next year’s shipment plan; as well as making boat trips along the Gulf Coast and straightening out supply lines for… well, back room patrons, you had to know all that smoke came from somewhere.

Rosinante

An ex-marine and Doflamingo’s live-in little brother, Rosi is mostly uninterested in the family business. He has trouble saying no, however, so in exchange for pocket money, he lets his brother keep him on as a kind of secretary. Day-to-day, Rosi fields phone calls, arranges meetings, manages travel plans, and otherwise keeps his brother on track. This last task is critical, as anyone who’s worked with Doflamingo will tell you. No one’s sure how Rosi motivates him, and Rosi isn’t telling.

Law

Former ward of the Donquixotes, Law is enrolled in medical school. Prior to that, he interned with the business. While his job description was vague, he could always be spotted with Doflamingo on his 'boating trips’. Scuttlebutt is, he was a runner, and not the track & field kind. Though no longer an employee, he’s still close with the family. He lives in their house, Doflamingo pays his tuition, and he tags along on their yearly Florida trips—where he still, occasionally, goes boating with Doflamingo as a favor.

Patrons come and go at Golden Hand with the season. Some can be seen every night for weeks, or every weekend for three months; some venture in for special occasions or to impress their out-of-town friends only; and some seem like they've been at the barcade all their life.

Golden Hand appreciates any and all business, of course, but its regulars hold a special place in the staff's heart. There's something nice about knowing what faces to expect... even if some of those faces tend to cause a ruckus.

Shanks

A well-known barfly, Shanks spends 4-5 nights a week in Golden Hand. He comes in early and orders cheap drinks for all of his friends. Despite flirting with both the bar manager and floor walker, he usually goes home alone... and never a minute before closing. He's a very predictable (and unlucky in love) kind of man. He's chatty, an excellent tipper, and surprisingly good at air hockey, making him popular with other other regulars as well as the staff. A few nights a month, he can be spotted in the back rooms smoking with Crocodile. No one knows what they talk about, but these meetings always precede Shanks going out of town.

Smoker

A local cop whose beat includes the streets around Golden Hand, Smoker swings by two or three times a week. Coming off a shift, he'll order a drink to have out on the patio with his partner, Tashigi, before heading to his home outside the city. While he's heard rumors of the barcade's illicit dealings, Smoker isn't in a rush to look into it. It's a popular place, and Croc is friendly with Smoker's chief as well as the DA. Too much trouble, in Smoker's opinion. He's just here to drink.

The Strawhats

A delightfully rambunctious friend group who share a few apartments in Little Havana, the Strawhats can be found in Golden Hand every weekend. The trawl the game floor from open to close, mostly playing with each other, though they've been known to break off in pairs and challenge other couples. When not pestering Buggy for tokens or cozying up to barflies for free drinks, the Strawhats can be found in the back. Their pinball skills are the stuff of local legend, making them the favorites to bet on any evening they happen to be spotted down in the pit.

Recurring background barflies, game floor trawlers, and backroom visitors

Ace, Sabo, Bartolomeo, E. Kid, Killer, Paulie, Icerberg, Rob Lucci

[antisocialxconstruct]

okay hi hello happy Saturday. We are doing this. If it seems familiar, the first scene is one I posted here a million years ago but it's been revised quite a bit for the new setting and everything. And also just to be better.

word count: 5,600

Ghost City

Chapter One

Somewhere in the club, Maksim suspected, there was someone who wanted him dead. He knew why, in broad strokes at least. But he wasn’t planning to oblige.

“Beer here tastes like warm piss,” Chronic griped, voice raised enough to ensure her complaint would be heard over the persistent clamor of mindless dance music being pumped through the warehouse. The thunk of her empty glass hitting the table between them was less lucky.

Maksim snorted and idly twirled a cigarette through his fingers before settling it between his lips. He tucked it into the corner of his mouth to mutter “that’s why I told you not to order it,” as he flicked open the heavy lighter in his other hand. He didn’t have to make the same allowances for the noise pollution, he knew the military-grade surveillance gear in Chronic’s skull was picking up every word he said, and likely a half dozen other conversations in their immediate vicinity. He lit up with a languid lack of urgency, exhaled a thin stream of smoke that caught the alternating pink and turquoise of the LEDs overhead, and let his gaze wander as he scratched idly at his temple, where one of the rows of short keratinous horns that cluttered his forehead disappeared into the chin-length black curls that were currently gelled neatly into place. The stocky woman across from him leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest, and he arched an expectant eyebrow at her.

“Figured that was just ‘cause you’re teetotal and you don’t like fun,” she said with a shrug.

“Eh, сука.” Maksim plucked the cigarette from his mouth after another drag and met her eye with a thin smile. No humor. “Guess you’re an expert now.” The barely-veiled hostility didn’t earn him much of a reaction, but then he wasn’t expecting it to. He was paying Chronic for her eyes, not for pleasant company, which was the only reason he had let the usual mask of performed affability slip completely. This new persona was a bit of an experiment of its own, an extra layer of distant arrogance just to really emphasize his lack of interest in making friends. Still, he couldn’t afford to be too overtly mean. He did need Chronic’s eyes.

Without moving her head, her gaze slipped over his shoulder and behind him, the minute twitches of her pupils the only sign that she was scanning the crowd as she idly responded, “dunno about that… I can’t figure why a guy like you’d come to a place like this.”

Maksim flicked a bit of ash onto the dingy little ashtray on the table. “A nightclub?”

“I mean Chicago.”

A short span of silence, between them at least, as the bone-rattling treble climbed to a crescendo and hung there for a beat, then another. Maksim resisted the temptation to use that lull in the music to comment on her lack of originality. Chronic had never actually accused him of anything, but the words spy and mafia had been swimming around in her head vividly enough that Maksim had never had to do more than skim her surface thoughts to pick them up. She clocked him as ex-military within an hour of meeting him, and between that, his accent, and the fairly conspicuous modifications to his hands and left eye, she drew her own conclusions. There was perhaps a small degree of irony in the fact that, if his life had gone differently at a couple of key points, he almost certainly would have been serving as a covert agent for the Russian state right now. On the other hand, if he’d been a little smarter he would have gotten out of the country faster and managed to dodge the draft entirely. None of that seemed worth explaining to Chronic to dispel any of her suspicions, not when her cooperation came with a straightforward price tag.

At last the bass dropped with an intensity that vibrated uncomfortably through Maksim’s nerves, and with the fresh cover of noise pollution all he ultimately said was, “still on me?”

“Mm,” Chronic refocused on him. “Sure as.”

A low frustrated sound escaped from the back of his throat to be swallowed up by the ever-present electronic beat. Another drag, then he tipped his head back against the booth, breathed smoke up toward the industrial rafters high above and let his eyes flutter closed. He shouldn’t be doing this. He had invested a lot of money into making it materially harder to do this, and he was going to invest more into making it worse. And yet there was that pesky trouble with old habits… “Describe them to me,” he said, and then tentatively, with the lightest touch he could manage, he extended his consciousness out through their immediate surroundings, like running an open hand over wood and hoping to catch a splinter, scanning for any hint of attention or interest angled toward their booth. He picked up a few right away, but they didn’t register as anything other than earnest curiosity, passersby stealing surprised glances when the undulating lights caught on his horns just so. In 2098 it was no less common to meet a variant than it was a natural redhead, but that didn’t always stop people from staring, especially at a mutation as conspicuous as his.

“Big guy,” Chronic was saying, “but like… ‘no gene-tech’ big. Milled around for a while but now he’s sitting at the bar.” Maksim refined his search perimeter, found the little blip of someone side-eyeing them with more intent from halfway across the room. He raked mental fingers through flashes of awareness and fleeting short term memories as Chronic continued. “Leather coat, camo pants-”

“Stop.” The bartender just thanked him for a tip. A couple of people on the dance floor were eyeing him appreciatively from the back. “Brown hair, jack on his left temple, drinking something green… acting like he thinks he’s the star of an action movie?”

Chronic laughed, a sharp bark of a sound that punched through the club’s ambiance. “That’s the one.”

“ID?”

“None to speak of.”

He shouldn’t be doing this. He started to dig, prying experimentally at the edges of the man’s thoughts, trying to pull away the outer layers to get a deeper look. Who are you? Who sent you? Memories and personal knowledge were always harder to read than surface thoughts, but he was just beginning to glimpse discernible shapes-

All at once his perception snapped back into place like a split rubber band and he pitched forward with a hiss and a muttered curse, pressing his palms to the sides of his head. It did nothing much to soothe the kind of directionless, brain-deep pain that had overtaken him. When after a few uncomfortable seconds he dared to open his eyes again, the strobing lights were almost too much to handle. He stubbornly blinked his vision back into focus anyway, and met the gaze of Chronic watching him impassively from across the table, one arm now slung over the back of the booth.

“So what’s the plan, boss?” she asked, wholly unmoved by the display.

“You can’t even get a name?” He didn’t mean for it to sound quite as sharp as it did, but he also didn’t take it back.

Chronic shrugged, pursed her lips. “Could you?” Maksim answered with a withering glare. “Whoever put that shadow on you wanted to stay clean as all hell. Either they went out of their way to find someone untraceable or they sunk some real money into making him untraceable.”

Maksim chewed on his mounting frustration for another moment as he took a last long drag on the cigarette, then stubbed out the remains and rose to his feet. “So no one would miss him.” Chronic’s eyebrows shot up toward her hairline but he was already stepping away from the table before she could make any further comment.

At the very least, the door slamming shut on his mental prying crystalized his focus, woken up his reflexes and centered him inside his own skull in a way no stimulant ever did. A twinge ran down the length of his left arm, the reparative fiber optic mesh knitted into his muscles protesting against the adrenaline-charged tension he was now carrying in his shoulders. He winced and shook it out as he weaved his way through the undulating crowd of clubbers with minimal effort, the carbon-fiber claws in his fingertips extending and retracting with half-conscious anticipation. As he neared the bar he reached up to check the manhunter in its holster at the small of his back, under his coat and out of sight, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of the man tailing him it was like a switch flipped–his demeanor rolled over into the one reserved for dealing with marks, a casual and open saunter and an easy smile. It would have been faster and easier to shoot him from the cover of the crowd and be done with it, and it wasn’t as if this act would trick the man into thinking Maksim was someone else. Not if he was even fleetingly competent. But Maksim had mulled over the situation long enough to decide there might be information to be extracted here, if he could play the game right.

“You look lost, cowboy,” he remarked as he slid up alongside the man, and now he did need to raise his voice just a touch, though the bar was at least a little quieter than the dance floor. His target turned and looked up from his stool, and Maksim took some satisfaction in tracking the array of emotions that flashed across his face in that instant before he set his jaw and straightened his back slightly. Getting ready to play along.

“Not really my scene,” he responded, his voice a hard-edged baritone to perfectly match the rugged-big-screen-hero image he was projecting outward. “Just waiting here to meet someone. You need something?”

Maksim leaned back, braced both hands against the bartop behind him, maintaining his height advantage over his shadow. “Honestly I just wanted to talk.”

Another almost imperceptible hesitation from his counterpart. “Maybe we could move that somewhere more private.”

“I think I’m fine right here.” Maksim flashed him a smile that wasn’t quite mocking. Not openly. An amateur, he thought. Wasting time he could have spent grabbing me. If Chronic couldn’t pull anything on him it’s because he’s nobody, there’s nothing to pull. The shadow sat back slightly, one hand drifting toward the edge of his jacket, and of course Maksim knew the posture of someone going for a gun. “That’s really not necessary,” he continued, gaze flicking pointed but unconcerned from the man’s hand up to his face. “In fact, here. We can be friends.” He pushed one hand away from the counter, drew his own pistol, and set it down on the bar. Then he settled back into his easy stance, not at all primed for a fight. His shadow didn’t seem entirely persuaded, but he didn’t escalate things any further. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Long enough.”

“Yeah?” Maksim’s smile tilted toward indulgent. “So you’ve got stories?”

Something lit up behind the other man’s eyes then, a sudden spark of inspiration. “Everyone does, right?” he began. “Actually maybe you know this one, didn’t happen to me but I heard it friend-of-a-friend style.”

“Sure,” Maksim conceded. “Best source you could ask for.”

The man inclined his head. “You get it. So I heard about this job out in NYC, maybe… a couple months back, real gruesome mess. Team of five go into this big high security warehouse to grab some holy relic, except halfway through one of them just snaps. Turns on the crew, makes mince out of a couple of them before the others can take him out, later he says demons made him do it. And the other two, the only ones who survived, they just accept that and let him walk. Can you believe that?”

As he talked Maksim had gone still, his casual slouch growing a little stiff. The smile never fell from his face, but it felt strained there now. Stale and brittle. “And what do you think should have happened?” he asked slowly.

“Y’know I’ll be honest,” the shadow said, leaning an elbow on the bar and puffing up with the apparent upper hand he had gained in their exchange. “I don’t have a lot of stake in it either way. But maybe there’s a few parties might be holding a grudge against that guy. Maybe one or two willing to spend some money to make sure he faces some consequences.”

That wasn’t good… but it could be worse. Probably. Maksim didn’t know who they had been working for, but if it was someone willing to send cleaners after him for botching the job they’d be more efficient than this, he wouldn’t have been standing there having a pleasant conversation with one of them. Lockjaw and Ziggy probably had friends, but he didn’t know them either. He had hoped none of them would be the vengeful types, but maybe he needed to reassess. Or maybe he just needed to go further west than Chicago.

The shadow shifted in his seat again, opening his mouth to add something else, and without waiting to find out what it was Maksim grabbed the back of the man’s head and shoved hard enough to bounce his face off the bartop. The collision rewarded him with the wet crunch of bone fracturing.

Someone shrieked behind him. In one smooth motion Maksim had the gun in his left hand and the claws of his right locked onto the man’s scalp, keeping him pinned face-down on the bar. He cast a mental net out around them, grabbed every spike of shock or fear he could catch and clamped down on their impulse to do anything about it, digging a little telepathic hole of Nothing To See Here around the two of them. The pain hit almost immediately, driving straight into his skull and down his spine as his vision blurred and the walls of his barrier started to crumble inward like wet sand as soon as they’d been erected. Through a daze his shadow choked out a mangled curse past bloodied lips and made a feeble effort against Maksim’s grip, only to go still again when the manhunter’s muzzle pressed up against the side of his head. Maksim really wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger and paint the counter with this man’s skull, it would certainly resolve this quickly and send a clear message to whoever sent him. But it seemed unlikely Maksim would be able to stop anyone from noticing that.

“I’m going to walk out of this club,“ he bit out through gritted teeth. A chunk of his barrier slipped and he could feel the bartender’s attention drifting their way in a tangle of confusion and concern. ”You’re not going to follow me. Not tonight and not any other night. If I ever see your face again I’ll split it in half properly. Understand?“

No more than two seconds of hesitation, then the shadow nodded–as best he could anyway, smearing blood across the counter under his cheek.

Maksim let the threat hang for another beat, then withdrew and holstered the gun. “You should have a talk with whoever hired you for this,” he said as his shadow lifted his head, cupping the gnarled mess of his nose in his hands. “They di-…” the rest of Maksim’s words died on his lips in a wave of nausea and the barrier finally crumbled. Spots danced around the corners of his vision moments before it began to tunnel, the moment stretching uncomfortably out in every direction.

The voices around him went tinny, distant and indistinct as vertigo gripped him.

He could feel the music boring into him, threatening to vibrate him apart if he stayed there any longer.

Someone grabbed at him and he twisted, shaking them off out of pure instinct, and started moving.

It was all he could do to orient himself, fix his gaze on the high doorway gaping black with the night sky beyond, and shove his way through the remaining crowd as he fought to keep his footing. People became increasingly unconcerned with his presence the further he got from the bar, until at last he crossed the threshold and the cool night air hit him all at once as he staggered to a stop to be sick on the pavement outside.

A chorus of laughs rose up from across the street as he fell back against the club’s exterior wall, and now the music was dulled to a steady thump and buzz through concrete. Someone called out “fuck yeah man party hardy” and earned themself another round of jeering laughter. Maksim grimaced but he didn’t have it in him to pinpoint the source of the comment, much less respond.

He closed his eyes. Okay. So that was a waste of time. Or he had in fact played the game wrong. But if nothing else it was a clear indication that it was time to move on.

He was unsure how long it took to collect himself, for his senses to settle back into place and the piercing in his skull to fade to a level he could ignore. In that time no one followed him out. Not his shadow, who must have heeded his warning, not any of the other patrons, whose attention he had apparently shrugged off against all odds. Not even Chronic, who seemed to have inferred that their brief and unproductive partnership was over.

Fine.

That was fine.

He pushed himself away from the wall with a concerted effort, and started the slow trek back to his apartment. He needed to make some travel plans.

–###–

Ilya Kasharin was already dead.

Figuratively, sure, in the sense that they assumed no one in Boston had really looked for them or spared them much thought at all after they disappeared. Maverick would have made sure of that.

But also literally, in the sense that four years ago they had flatlined on an operating table for a full six minutes, only to be “reassured” after the fact that this did not invalidate the terms of their contract with NervAMP.

This was the one they took some issue with.

The focused clatter of fingers on keyboard was the only sound punctuating the silence of their modest workspace, where they sat folded into a tortured pretzel in their chair. Their eyes were laser-focused onto the screen in front of them, pupils glinting unnaturally in the light any time their gaze darted back up a few lines in their code, catching a missed tag or double-checking their logic as they chided or argued with themself in distracted mumbles.

More than anything, this needed to be thorough. Their last foray into NervAMP’s systems had only been long enough to copy the basic structure of their network and prop open a backdoor, not to exfiltrate any of their data for experimenting. They could throw the worm into the playground of their virtual network as many times as they wanted to see it spread before scrubbing it back out, but at a certain point they would just have to trust that it could do what they wanted and set it free. They were getting impatient with their own iterative testing, and they imagined the worm itself growing restless as well as it unfolded across the screen in front of them, eager to fulfill its purpose.

With a sigh Ilya paused and then sat back, a final assertive jab at a couple keys the only signal the machine needed to compile the worm and inject it back into the virtual network, just to be sure their last round of tweaking hadn’t compromised the basic functionality. Their second and third monitors blinked to life, and Ilya watched intently as the rudimentary visual representation of the network–little more than a sprawling array of interconnected lines and dots–transformed from uninfected green to compromised yellow over the course of about eight minutes.

No changes there, not that they really expected any.

This next step was the one they were least eager to take, and perhaps on some level all the systematic tweaking and troubleshooting had been in an effort to push this off as long as they could reasonably justify. Unfortunately they didn’t feel like they could reasonably justify much more, so they sat forward again, nudged the deck closer in front of them, and combed their fingers through the choppy layers of their auburn hair, flipping it over their shoulder and off the back of their neck. With their other hand they drew out the thick meshjack cable that sat spooled up inside the left side compartment of their deck, then eyed the head of it for a moment, the way one might eye a particularly unappealing morsel of food they were nevertheless about to swallow whole. Then their fingers found the edge of the port nestled at the base of their skull, they locked the cable into place and flicked a switch on the face of their deck, and they had just a split second to feel the electric shudder pass through their body before their consciousness was no longer rooted there.

Ilya was familiar enough with common depictions of the Immersion Mesh in popular media over the years, even spanning as far as a century back when the internet itself was still a fledgling concept. They had only learned fairly recently that those depictions were all, essentially, completely wrong. Pouring your human perception directly into an information network was not really comparable to the things people evoked when trying to depict it, it was not an elegant heads-up display, or a virtual chatroom, it wasn’t rudimentary gridlines and geometry any more than it was an elaborate surrealist landscape. More than anything, it was impressions. The idle half-awareness of a long highway drive, the sustained mental effort of solving a puzzle, the keyed-in focus of a hunt… or the animal anxiety of being hunted. The mind was bombarded with information and then left to make free associations, impose will and desire like any other machine running a script, and while most people’s brains did end up translating this flow of data into imagery in order to make it easier to comprehend, it was a bit like dreaming–amorphous and highly individualized.

It was not an environment just anyone could thrive in, it often required either an incredible reserve of mental focus or a willingness to dissociate at will. Ilya had neither, but what they did have was a very particular goal and a deep well of spite. At first they had simply avoided the mesh as much as they possibly could, instead sharpening their skill in every facet of the process that could be done with eyes and hands and a keyboard. Tactile, satisfying. But when they continued to hit obstacles that couldn’t be cleared from the physical side of the screen, when they had finally overcome their revulsion enough to go under the knife one last time to have a meshjack installed, they did the only other thing that seemed reasonable.

They got fast.

As their mind swirled and readjusted to the change in perception, they imagined cupping the worm in their hands, and knew that it was now within a little pocket of onboard storage inside the jack, ready to be deployed alongside the array of other programs they had loaded there for intrusions. None of those should be needed to begin with, this was a route they had already mapped out specifically so they would not need to linger. Then the nothingness of the mesh fully closed up around them and within a heartbeat they were on the move–in a sense. Navigating the public expanse of the mesh was largely effortless and unremarkable, their subconscious hardly having time to settle on a clear visual translation for their marathon sprint through their previous steps, out of the familiar (relative) comfort of their own system, zig-zagging through a handful of tethered machines to disguise their trace, and finally shouldering their way inside NervAMP’s servers through an unprotected wi-fi enabled conference room light system. It was a hilariously irresponsible oversight (Ilya would make sure it was hilarious in the retelling, even if they felt sick with the discomfort now), and not the first one they had ever taken advantage of. Last time they had been trying to get out.

Once inside, they paused. Their surroundings were beginning to take on shapes and patterns, artificial daylight spread across white walls, long clean lines and tasteful chestnut accents, floor to ceiling glass panels dividing hallways from meeting rooms from offices from employee lounges without any of the rhyme or reason a physical building would demand. Ilya’s mind squirmed and protested against the visual, and they might have shuddered if they could still feel their own body. But they would need to go deeper than this. They were on the administrative level, and while meddling with NervAMP’s employee schedules and canceling their next delivery of office supplies would be amusing, it wouldn’t make the trip worthwhile.

Still. Maybe on the way out.

Ilya strove to navigate the halls with purpose–if they left too many meandering traces in the mesh, NervAMP’s MAID would be on them immediately. They had never been allowed to walk these halls alone before (they had never walked these halls, they reminded themself, and they weren’t walking them now), and there was a nagging irrational fear that someone would catch them and walk them back to Carter, sitting patiently behind his desk in one of these non-Euclidian offices waiting to waste Ilya’s time with more condescending bureaucracy. Their subconscious offered up the impression of people moving around them, bustling footsteps and clattering mailcart wheels and snatches of conversation, though it was always around a corner, across a room, behind a closed door. Ghosts of other people on the network, going about their business. Eventually Ilya began to settle into the flow of traffic, get a picture of where people were lingering and how to avoid them. As they dug deeper into the company’s directories, the architecture began to shift around them. Less glass, less tasteful accents, more thick doors and keypads.

This was worse. The memories stirred up by the upper levels were the ones that left them bitter and frustrated. These were the ones that made their skin crawl and their hands tremble–or would have, if they were still in their body, which only accentuated the distance and added an extra dimension to the discomfort. The halls they were traversing felt strange, somehow too narrow, too constricting, and yet uncomfortably spacious and empty at the same time, and they couldn’t shake the growing sensation of eyes on them. Housekeeping, they thought, sighing internally. The MAID’s attention was on them now. They picked up the pace again, focus darting back and forth as they tried to judge what felt like the best spot in this warren of half-data-half-memories to set off a bomb. Of course they weren’t going to shake the MAID that way, nothing about their behavior now could be interpreted as anything other than an intrusion, even to the most incompetently trained algorithm. So they started forcing doors, cracking passwords and spoofing credentials without much remaining concern for the fingerprints they were leaving behind. It wouldn’t matter once the worm had done its job anyway.

Then they shoved open a pair of double doors and stopped cold. They’d found the spot.

The advantage of meshjack visualizations was that they could translate innate, subconscious knowledge into something immediately comprehensible. An encrypted file became a lockbox, network traces became footprints, an intrusion countermeasure became a tripwire. In this case, Ilya’s subconscious had translated the best layer of the directory to deploy the worm into the one room they would have most liked to torch. The operating theater.

An approximation of it, at least, the surgical table standing cold and impassive at its center like some grim monument haloed by the blaring lights overhead, leaving the rest of the room draped in ambiguous shadows. Ilya took a step forward-

And froze, pain arcing through their nerves. There was a sensation of weight bearing down on them, of a crushing pressure fixing them in place and determined to grind them down into the ground.

The MAID. Locked on, running a final check before it tried to forcefully eject them from the system.

Not fast enough.

They resisted the temptation to glance behind them–MAIDs weren’t programmed to look like anything, they were invisible specters inside the network, and whatever Ilya’s own mind could supply would only serve to further disrupt their focus and make them an easier target. They had a counter-countermeasure for this, they didn’t need to panic. It would only work once, and not for long, but they only needed a few uninterrupted seconds. Probably. They turned their focus inward, called up one of those little executables inside the meshjack storage. The MAID clawed at them with greater determination, certain now that they were an interloper that needed to be removed, and they were grateful for the layers of obfuscation they had wrapped around their signal but no amount of reminding themself that this was all in their head was making it not hurt.

Then their form shuddered, flickered, and a second copy of it stepped away and moved purposefully back through the door. Ilya kept stock still, not even daring to look too closely at anything yet, but they felt the pressure of the MAID’s focus lift slightly, hesitantly, and then pull away completely as it peeled off to investigate the new intrusion.

That wouldn’t take long. The decoy wasn’t programmed to do anything but move up and down through directories in an extremely conspicuous manner, the MAID wouldn’t need more than a few moments to snuff it out. Ilya bolted into the room, fell forward and grabbed either side of the surgical table in front of them, and urged the worm into action. There was the briefest hesitation, a single microsecond just long enough for them to worry that it wouldn’t deploy right–

And then it went to work. Fissures opened up on the surface of the table under Ilya’s hands, splitting and spreading in every direction, pouring over the sides and across the floor and leaving Ilya with the impression of fractures shooting out across a pane of glass from a single impact point, of the room losing cohesion before their eyes. (Of rot.) If it could keep up that pace, they dared to imagine it could eat half the archive before anyone quarantined it. If they’d had a voice inside the mesh, they might have laughed.

Their time ran out before they fully registered what had happened. The MAID came down on them like a hurricane, likely with the same force it had brought to bear against their decoy, leaving them with the sensation of being ripped away by a vicious windstorm as everything cut to featureless white.

Then they were out of the mesh, fumbling with the cable plugged into their brainstem the second they had enough fine motor control to reach for it. Once it was out they flicked it away like a live snake, all their triumph and satisfaction of a moment ago forgotten. Sharp, ragged breaths punctuated the silence–my breaths, they assured themself, as they stared down at hands that felt clumsy, distant and out of focus in exactly the way they had dreaded. They flexed their fingers, straining to feel and notice the bend of each joint as they closed their hands into fists and then opened them again, then slouched forward to press their palms to their forehead as they drew in and then released one long, deliberate sigh. Then another. A half-conscious desire to feel contained wrapped their arms tight and close around their own torso–a mistake, they realized too late, as their fingertips found the subtly raised edges of the inlays that spread across their arms, an elegant metallic map of the contours of their musculature. They shuddered, as the sickening impulse to pick, scratch, dig flared alongside a familiar and inescapable thought.

Those aren’t your hands. Those aren’t your arms.

They abruptly let go again, stretched their arms out in front of them, groaned when one of their shoulders popped. That finally made them aware that they’d been holding their truly horrendous posture for far too long, so they unfolded themself, rose to their feet, and stretched properly, taking a sort of perverse satisfaction in the way their stiff and protesting muscles affirmed to them they were in fact here and fully present inside their own skin. Then another reminder: their stomach growled insistently. They grimaced and peered down at the clock on their terminal. Measuring time in the mesh was challenging but their access log said it had only been about twenty minutes. They must have already worked straight through dinner and into the evening when they went in, because it was coming up on 22:00 now. Too late to go out or order anything in. Too late to cook either, especially with the kind of headspace they were in, but as they wandered out of the glorified walk-in closet that had evolved into their workroom, and through the equally modest rest of their apartment, they figured they could scrounge up something.

[noeou]

COMPETITION ASIDE! —- octavinelle + pomefiore

( modern au! ) when they find out you’ve been working beyond your limit.

. . . ⟢ GENRE: fluff.

. . . ⟢ NOTES: old format for this post ‘cause im finishing this prompt. never got the chance to and i love it <3

[ azul ashengrotto | ceo and personal secretary. ]

as your boss, he was under the impression your day ended when his did. that’s why he didn’t work overtime at the office, so you could go home when he did. sometimes you stayed at his place when you worked late together, but that wasn’t too often.

he was concerned when you didn’t show up to his house at six in the morning, per usual. you weren’t ever late in the years he’s been working with you so he wasn’t mad you weren’t there, sure he was irritated but whatever.

when you don’t respond to his texts and show no signs of having shown up at the office, he gets worried. he drives himself to your place, despite the tweel’s protests that one of them should drive him, to check on you.

when i say he panics when you open the door, i mean he panics. you were in the same clothes you wore the day prior, hair a mess, and eyes deprived of sleep.

he pushes down the guilty feeling when he sees the same feelings occupy your eyes. he pulls you close with a hum of acknowledgment, then dragging you inside.

“you didn’t sleep well, if at all, did you?” azul shook his head, admiring your effort as well as your beauty. “go get ready, i’ll inform jade of our absences— ah, don’t object. you’ve earned a day of rest, i’ll see that you get it.”

[ jade leech | company secretary and employee. ]

made checking up on you apart of his duties, without being aware of it. he always stopped by your division just to see you, even if you didn’t notice him.

he was running late one day, unexpected errands his coworker piled up for him were holding him up. he got to your division at lunch, under the pretense he was checking on your project and he was beyond surprised.

your division was empty, as they probably went out for lunch, except for you; a uniform jacket was draped on your shoulder. jade was yet to figure out what pissed him off more: you not sleeping properly or another person taking better care of you than he was.

regardless, he shot a text to azul and tidied up your desk. when he was satisfied, he folded the jacket with an unknown owner and wrote on one of your post-it notes a thanks and put it on top before carrying you to his car.

you woke up at this point, it took everything in him for jade not to scold you on the spot. somehow he succeeded, letting out an uncharacteristic hum to lull you back to sleep.

after settling you into a guest room; jade prepared water, soup, extra pillows, extra blankets, anything you’d need as if you were sick. “i swear, the anxiety you give me takes year off my life.” you may or may not wake up to him asleep in a chair across from you.

[ floyd leech | employee and division leader. ]

unlike the former two, you’re floyd’s superior (aka his boss.) you worked in the testing division, you came up with food ideas and tested them for production.

you worked the most out of your team. yes they worked hard, but at work you were revising theirs; it’s only in overtime you get a chance to work on your own.

he was very much the attend all division parties type of guy, it’s one of the many things that made the both of you so different.

the recent month has been the busiest for you all, and shock horror— the crew decided to celebrate with a party. you were there as they planned on where to go outside the building, only cause you were looking for your keys and the inner parking lot was extremely dark.

floyd took this opportunity to wave said keys in front of you with a scheming grin.

“celebrate with me, l/n. we can go wherever you want… on me.” while it was uncharacteristic of him to offer to pay, you accepted. mainly cause you had nothing better to do, and also the fact you were his ride home so you wouldn’t here the end of it,

[ vil schoenheit | actor and preforming arts student. ]

allow me to start with you are an adult, in college in this timeline.

vil is an alumni at your school, it’s how you met. actually, it’s more because he was a prodigy that breezed right through the course, leaving you behind for another year or so.

guiding you where he could, vil was able to keep tabs on your well being. while he didn’t really struggle with school, it was quite different for you. having the tendency to hyper focus and forget the outside world, vil’s been the anchor to bring you back.

this weighed on him when he was offered an overseas project. while you reassured him to take care of yourself, he knew he’d be too busy to check that.

nonetheless, he went. it was quite clear within the first week, he’d be busier than you both expected. it was radio silence on his end; but you still made an effort to record yourself do skincare when talking about your day and sent it to him in place of face timing.

but what matters in behind the scenes, something that was meant to be his expertise. returning to your private doctor watching over you while you were on bed rest after fainting at school was most certainly unexpected, but not too shocking,

“what did i tell you about taking care of yourself? did we not make an agreement?” he scolded as your doctor took her leave. it took a while until he moved on from it; had only he knew his silence and exams on top of that caused you to be so anxious you fainted and not your lack of rest.. maybe he would’ve let you off the hook.

[ rook hunt | idol and manager. ]

tries not to bother you unless necessary because his group members can already be a handful, but makes sure to talk to you everyday (if that makes sense.) it doesn’t matter if it’s just hello, he’d prefer have a positive relationship with you.

one night you misdialed him, confusing rook a lot. he was surprised by the tiredness in your voice and your weak laugh when you realized it was him you called by mistake.

he stayed on the phone with you until you fell asleep, talking about random things. he didn’t hang up when you stopped responding, he actually went to go get you, your office wasn’t far away from where they practiced so he’d pick you up before going to the dorms.

it was at this point, being the leader of his group held an entirely different meaning and responsibility. slowly but surely, the other members stopped relying on you for all the trivial things, lifting a large weight off of your shoulders.

not only that, a new maturity settled in rook that you didn’t recognize. you weren’t sure what exactly prompted such a change as your memory of the night was hazy, but you were grateful no less.

“i already have their lunch handled. eat with me again, hm?” how could you disagree, your little lunch days were a welcome addition to your schedule.

[ epel felmier | farmer and baker. ]

you and epel are childhood friends, so knowing you well was something he prided himself in.

recently, you entered a baking competition and he was your partner (an honor, truly.) he couldn’t help but notice how much wasted bread began filling the trash cans in your kitchen.

while he wasn’t as skilled as you in the bread making department, he still made the effort of learning through online tutorials so he wasn’t clueless.

being the man of many talents he is, he seemingly surpassed your skill when you first started, however that wasn’t the point.

his intention was to learn terminology and the ‘baking dictionary’ per say, in an attempt to understand your ranting about your struggle in ‘lacking perfection’ better.

epel did make sure to carve you a special pastry as an reward, regardless of if you won or not. baking isn’t as easy as you made it look and he wouldn’t ignore that.

“each pastry tastes better than the last, don’t worry. you’re not giving yourself enough credit.” before you could protest, epel shoved a piece of the bread in your mouth with a smile, “—ah, i won’t hear otherwise.”

[nerdyrevelries]

Jo March: The Pragmatist

One of the most common complaints I hear about Little Women is the way it ends. Many people think that Jo stifles her creativity and gives up on her writing in order to marry Professor Bhaer, which isn't true. Jo writes a very successful book in one of the sequels, Jo’s Boys, but let's set that to the side because what I really want to discuss is what Jo actually thinks of the writing she’s doing in the latter half of Little Women. 

In Part I of Little Women, we see the type of writing that Jo does prior to selling her work. In “A Merry Christmas,” the family puts on The Witch’s Curse, an Operatic Tragedy, which seems to be a Shakespearean melodrama. In “Jo Meets Apollyon,” the book Amy burns in anger is “half a dozen little fairy tales.” In “The P.C. and P.O.,” Jo writes a comedic poem and a lament for one of Beth’s cats. Finally, in “Secrets,” Jo submits a tragic romance to The Spread Eagle (one assumes that this name was less funny when Little Women was originally published in 1868.) The Spread Eagle doesn’t pay beginners, so we can assume that everything written up until this point is the type of writing Jo does for herself when there’s no pressure to make changes to please an editor in order to get a paycheck. 

Part II begins with the chapter “Gossip,” which catches us up on what’s been happening over the past three years. Jo is now a regular contributor to The Spread Eagle who receives a dollar for each story. She refers to them as “rubbish,” so she doesn’t seem particularly proud of the writing she’s doing, but she’s in the process of writing a novel she hopes will win her fame and prestige. 

In “Literary Lessons,” Jo observes a boy reading a newspaper story illustrated with a dramatic scene of “an Indian in full war costume, tumbling over a precipice with a wolf at his throat” and two men stabbing each other while a terrified woman flees the scene. When the boy offers to share, Jo agrees more because she likes the boy than because of an interest in the story. The story is sensation fiction, which Jo privately thinks is trash anyone could have written. However, when she learns the author is making a good living from her stories, Jo decides to try her hand at this new style of writing. She submits the story to a contest the newspaper is running and wins $100. Jo uses the money to send Beth and Marmee to the seashore. She’s proud of her ability to earn money to help her family, so she continues to write these kinds of stories since they are lucrative. 

She later finishes her novel and sends it to multiple publishers, only one of whom is interested, and only if there are major cuts and revisions. After conflicting advice from her family, she decides to make the requested changes, which earns her $300 and some very mixed reviews that lead Jo to respond, “Some make fun of it, some over-praise, and nearly all insist that I had a deep theory to expound, when I only wrote it for the pleasure and the money. I wish I’d printed it whole or not at all, for I do hate to be so misjudged.” 

In “Calls,” Jo reluctantly joins Amy to return calls to their neighbors with generally disastrous results. One incident involves Jo receiving a compliment on her writing. 

Any mention of her “works” always had a bad effect upon Jo, who either grew rigid and looked offended, or changed the subject with a brusque remark, as now. “Sorry you could find nothing better to read. I write that rubbish because it sells, and ordinary people like it.”

This passage makes it very clear that Jo isn’t proud or fond of what she is writing. The reception to her novel combined with the money she can make from sensation fiction has changed Jo’s primary motivation for writing. She is no longer doing it for the love of writing or because she’s pursuing her dreams. She’s trying to make money to help out her family.

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. We all have periods in our life when we take a job that we aren’t extremely excited about because it will allow us to achieve something that is more important to us. However, it’s a different narrative than is usually spun about Jo who is frequently depicted as continually working towards her dream. There is a role in Castles in the Air that fits that narrative. It’s called the Striver, but I don’t think that’s the role that Jo has. Instead, Jo is the Pragmatist, which is a role about setting aside your dreams for the moment because you have other responsibilities. Both are interesting conflicts, but they lead to very different conclusions when it comes to Jo’s story! 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at “Friend,” which follows Jo in New York. She’s now writing for a newspaper called the Weekly Volcano, which has required Jo to make so many changes to her stories that she decides to have her work published anonymously. That certainly wouldn’t be a good career move if she was truly trying for fame! She’s also come to greatly respect a man staying at her boarding house named Professor Bhaer. One day, he makes a comment about a newspaper that publishes sensation stories like the ones Jo is writing. Her response is telling:

Jo glanced at the sheet, and saw a pleasing illustration composed of a lunatic, a corpse, a villain, and a viper. She did not like it; but the impulse that made her turn it over was not one of displeasure, but fear, because, for a minute, she fancied the paper was the “Volcano.” 

Professor Bhaer notices her look and guesses the truth, but instead of letting her know this, he decides to gently explain his reasoning. After this, Jo goes back to reread the stories she has been writing and decides to burn them. Far from stifling her creativity, Professor Bhaer is the one who sees that Jo is ashamed of her writing and reminds her that she is capable of more.

This is part of a series on the literary inspirations behind game elements for my upcoming tabletop RPG based on the novels of Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery, Castles in the Air. To see a complete list of the posts I’ve written thus far, check out the master post. If you would like more information, visit the game’s website!