#Sell my coffee machine

[icewindandboringhorror]

On average, what is the total MONTHLY amount that you spend on dining out*?

*(This doesn't only count going out to restaurants, but also stuff like picking up fast food to bring home, getting a coffee on the way to work, getting a premade sandwich from a grocery store deli during lunch, buying a quick snack from a convenience store or food cart whilst walking somewhere, ordering a pizza or any other food to be delivered to your home, etc.)

*(If you often dine out in groups/as a household: calculate and divide the costs so that you get a Per Person average. This is for YOU individually, NOT the total household/group costs)

(I'm sure polls similar to this have been made before (very common topic), I just haven't personally seen one that I can remember, so, I was curious to do my own! I was discussing this with a group of people today and it was very interesting to see how widely the number varied between individuals. :0c )

(Reblog for bigger sample size if you can, and feel free to explain your answer in tags if there's anything extra to add!)

[eddiestattoos]

I don't have resting bitch face I have resting bitch tone. I try to make a simple statement and it comes out snippy

[blowmymongrelmind]

im gonna die right at the table of this cafe, in protest

[fingertipsmp3]

Man, today was absolutely mental. I don’t think I’ve ever come so close to losing it with a customer

[starryhyuck]

under his desk. (m)

pairing: ceo!johnny x afab!reader

words: 7.4k+

summary: you discover your new boss has a secret hidden up his sleeve.

genre: smut, fluff

warnings: talks of violence, reader is jaehyun’s sister, rough sex, slight breeding kink, sir kink, public sex, creampies, multiple orgasms, hair pulling, mentions of throat fucking

“I need a job.”

Jaehyun’s mouth is wide open, spoon hovering over a bowl of soup, inches away from sitting on his tongue. His eyes dart up to see your anxious expression, eyebrows pulled together. He sighs, resting his spoon back down before leaning back in his chair.

“So this is why my sister finally reaches out to have dinner with me,” Jaehyun says, running a hand down his face exasperatedly.

“Come on, Jae,” you plead, fingers twisted in the napkin on your lap. A large chandelier hovers over the two of you, illuminating the disappointment gracing Jaehyun’s face. “You know I would never ask you for a favor like this unless I really have to.”

He observes the serious look on your face. It’s been years since you’ve reached out to him, the two of you losing touch after you parted ways when graduating from university. Your brother set off to a successful career in finance, climbing rank until he was nearly at the top, making an enormous amount of money that he had no clue what to do with. You were the opposite, chasing your dream of writing at a huge publishing firm, only to be met with disappointment by a few odd jobs and barely enough cash to cover the bills. You never asked Jaehyun for help even though you both knew you needed it.

He has a contemplative air cast around him, fingers rubbing at his chin lightly.

“I don’t know anyone in the writing world-“

“It doesn’t have to be that,” you immediately interject. You don’t care if he can smell the desperation across the table. “I’ve given up on that dream. I just need something stable, something I don’t have to make backup plans for if it falls through.”

He sighs again. “There is something, but it’s not easy-“

“I’ll take it, Jae. Please, I promise I won’t fuck this up.”

He stares at you for a while, taking in the hunger in your eyes. He hasn’t seen you like this since you graduated, proclaiming that you would become a best-selling writer before the year’s end. Now, you’re simply a girl crushed by the weight of your dreams and chasing a solid figure in your bank account.

“Let me see what I can do.”

—

You straighten your skirt for the umpteenth time, clutching the clipboard to your chest for dear life. The stiletto heels are digging into your feet but you keep your toes as straight as possible, trying your best to look like you know what you’re doing.

The door flies open and you take a deep breath. Johnny Suh walks by you without a word, taking his seat at his desk before finally sparing you a glance. His eyebrow raises at your appearance but he says nothing else.

“Good morning, sir,” you say with a smile. “I have your morning reports here and your daily schedule. Which would you like first?”

“My coffee.”

You pause, the smile slipping off of your face. “Y-Your coffee?”

He’s not amused in the slightest. “Black, no sugar. I expect it on my desk as soon as I walk into this room.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few beats pass. “Well?”

You stumble, racing for the door and exiting his office. You calculate there is absolutely no way you could make it to a coffee shop and be back on time, instead heading for the break room. You exhale as you place an empty cup under one of the high tech machines, waiting patiently as it brews for you.

“You’re the new assistant, aren’t you?” A voice questions. Another man walks into the room, taking a cup for himself and occupying another machine. He outstretches his hand to you. “I’m Doyoung.”

You shake his hand and smile politely, offering your name.

“Nice to meet you,” he says, watching as you carefully take the brewed cup of black coffee from the machine and search for a lid. “How’s the boss so far?”

You chuckle dryly. “Well, it’s my first day and I already forgot his coffee, so I can confidently say it’s not going well.”

He throws you an apologetic look. Before you can exit, he speaks again. “In my experience, Johnny favors resilience over anything. If you can show him that you’re serious about this without making a fuss, then he’ll reward you for the hard work.”

You smile thankfully. After bidding Doyoung goodbye, you make your way back into Johnny’s office, grateful to have met someone willing to help you navigate this job. Jaehyun warned you it would be difficult since Johnny was a particular man, to quote your brother, but you’ve handled much worse than a snooty CEO. You’re not one to back down this easily.

You slide the warm cup across his desk. His eyes are shifted downwards, shuffling through mountains of paperwork. He doesn’t glance up at you as he takes his first sip, lips twisting in a grimace. He turns his torso and points out the windows covering the back wall of his office.

“You’ll pick up my coffee order from that shop going forward,” he instructs. You have no idea what location he’s referring to as the view is just out of your eye line, but you make a mental note to check it later.

You nod obediently before taking your clipboard back into your hands, reciting his schedule for the day.

“You have a meeting with the board of directors at ten, a one-on-one with the CFO of Kim Enterprises at eleven, lunch at twelve, and back-to-back meetings regarding the Baek acquisition after lunch,” you say, handing him the sheet from your clipboard. He takes it roughly, sighing as he glances over it. “Here are the morning reports as well. Anything particular you’re craving for today?”

He regards you carefully, and you squirm underneath his judging gaze.

“You’re Jaehyun’s sister, is that correct?”

You swallow. “Yes, sir.”

He says nothing else in relation to the topic. “A sandwich from the Kim’s shop down the street will be just fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

—

After a few weeks of trial and tribulations, you can safely say you have found your footing as Johnny Suh’s assistant.

He is particular, yes, but you can see now that it is only due to the success of the business. When sitting by his side during his meetings to take notes, you’ve noticed how fast he is to shut down any propositions that seem like a waste of time and only approve ideas that are carefully constructed and thought out. Employees appear to equally fear and respect him, which Johnny was well aware of.

You can’t quite tell if he’s pleased with your work, but he hasn’t issued any complaints since the first day you joined. You ensure a cup of warm coffee from Min’s Market is on his desk every morning and a warm sandwich from the Kim’s is delivered to him by lunch. You made an effort to reorganize the filing system his prior assistant had tried to keep up with, which made both your and Johnny’s day easier whenever you needed to access an important document. You have his work schedule texted to his phone every morning instead of using the old paper route, which you find a lot more efficient, yet unsure if Johnny expresses the same sentiment.

It’s conflicting. You feel as if you’re doing a good job but your boss makes no effort to display praise. The only thing you keep reminding yourself of is Doyoung’s comment about resilience, and how you can expect Johnny to reward you in due time.

A call of your name disrupts your typing on your computer, and you’re quick to rise on your feet as you enter Johnny’s office.

“Yes, sir?”

“Ten just called me on my personal line. Make arrangements in my schedule for me to meet him today.”

“Yes, sir,” you say, writing down the instructions on your clipboard. “Anything else I can do for you?”

He pauses, staring at you thoughtfully. You hate it when he does this because you can never read what’s swimming in his head.

“You’re going to Jaehyun’s engagement party, I assume?”

You were ecstatic when your brother called with the news a week ago. He had known Miyeon since university and they stayed together through all the hectic chaos of Jaehyun’s career. He told you they were holding a small party at their penthouse this Sunday, and you were happy to attend in celebration.

You smile and nod. “Yes, I’ll be there, sir.”

He bobs his head once before waving his hand, dismissing you. You leave in confusion, but that was a normal emotion you felt around Johnny nowadays. You return to your desk and pull up his schedule, locating an empty slot for his meeting with Ten.

“How are you holding up, champ?”

You laugh when Doyoung approaches your desk, twirling a pen in his fingers. He’s made it a habit to check up on you every now and then. Another tidbit you learned when you began working here is that most people did not envy you for your position as Johnny’s assistant. If anything, they pitied you. Doyoung told you bets had been made around the office for when you would quit, to which you replied, “He’s not that bad.”

Doyoung chuckled and said, “Give it a few more weeks.”

Ever since then, he’s been spying on you for the rest of the employees, trying to see when your resolve would crumble.

“I’m still here, Doyoung,” you reply to his question, raising an eyebrow.

He grins. “That you are. Still having a hard time reading him?”

“Who doesn’t?”

He snickers. “Well, if it lifts your spirits at all, we’re heading out for drinks this weekend to take the edge off. Come and join us.”

You normally decline such an invitation as your weekends are reserved for catching up on some much needed rest. However, now that you’ve gotten a solid grasp on Johnny’s workload, you feel like a night of alcohol is exactly what you crave to wind down.

“You know what, I’ll be there.”

His grin stretches wider, and he’s about to speak again before another voice startles you.

“Mr. Kim, what are you doing?” Johnny’s stern voice asks, standing in the doorway of his office. He scrutinizes the both of you and your shoulders tense.

Doyoung scrambles. “M-Mr. Suh! I was just speaking with-“

“I can see that,” he cuts off Doyoung. Johnny narrows his eyes. “Is there a reason you’ve decided to interrupt my assistant’s work for mindless fodder about after-work events?”

“N-No-“

“It’s best if you return to your desk now, hm?”

Doyoung nods frantically, tail tucked between his legs as he nearly sprints out of the room. Johnny turns his attention to you, lips flattened in a straight line.

“I expect you not to waste time by flirting with other members of the work staff.”

Before you can protest, he’s walking back into his office, slamming the door behind him. You slouch in your chair, scoffing at his behavior.

What was his problem?

—

“I like this drink! Do you think they have tiny umbrellas behind the bar? It’ll make me feel like my life isn’t in shambles!”

You giggle at Joohyun, who is rambling loudly in your ear. It’s evident she’s had her fair share of drinks but she shows no signs of stopping.

You’re grateful Doyoung invited you to this outing because it feels like you can finally get to know your other co-workers without the walls of Johnny’s office blocking you. You feel light for the first time in weeks, and you’re not certain if it’s from the alcohol coursing through your veins or the absence of your ill-mannered boss. Either way, you’re reveling in it.

“Alright, truth or dare?”

You giggle, nearly spilling the shot of vodka in your hands. “Are you kidding me? How old are we?”

“Don’t be a sourpuss,” Doyoung says, nearly throwing his straw at you from across the table. “Truth or dare?”

“Hm, truth!”

“Boo,” Donghyuck from the marketing department yells. You pretend to throw your drink in his face and he ducks, making the whole table erupt with laughter.

“Okay, okay!” Sooyoung snickers. “Would you rather be an accomplice to a high profile murder case or fuck up Johnny’s coffee order?”

You shudder at the thought of delivering the wrong coffee to your boss, and the table is in hysterics over your expression.

“Definitely not the last one! He’ll have my head!”

The rest of the night is a blur, filled with more ridiculous dares from Donghyuck and silly questions from Sooyoung. You all part ways in the dead of the night, stumbling into taxi cabs as you wave goodbye. You elect to walk home since your apartment isn’t located too far from the bar. You shiver as the night chill nips at your arms.

You pass by another dimly lit nightclub, thrumming loudly with the sound of the bass. You know you shouldn’t, but you don’t want this night to end and crush the happy feeling in your chest. It’s the first time since university you haven’t had to worry about bills or how much the drinks of the night cost, and it spurs on your temporary foolish behavior. You enter the dodgy nightclub, convincing yourself that one more drink can’t hurt you.

The area is packed with people, namely older men with large builds and tattoos covering their forearms. You flag down a bartender.

“Hey, what’s going on tonight?” You yell over the sound of the music.

“Big fight downstairs,” he says, pointing to a staircase to the left of the bar. “Drinks down there are free for the ladies!”

Your eyebrows raise, and against your better judgment, your feet find themselves moving down the creaky staircase. The music dies down when you finally make it to the bottom, instead being filled with loud chatter from the bulky men around you.

“You’re insane if you think a newbie is going to come along and take out The Destroyer! He’s undefeated, you idiot!”

“All the greats have to fall sometime. Just watch and see!”

You make your way to the bar, which is a little more tattered and ruined than the one upstairs. The bartender’s eyes widen at the sight of you, which befuddles you until he asks, “Fan of The Destroyer?”

“Who?”

Three loud clanging sounds of a bell echo around the room, silencing the chatter. A man in a crisp tailored suit walks out, microphone in his hand. The crowd of people suddenly shuffle around until an empty square is left in the middle of the room.

“Welcome, everyone!” The man in the suit greets, the curve of his lips twisted into a smirk. “We have a great show for you tonight! For anyone looking to place their last minute bets, please locate Mr. Kim by the bar. Trust me, you won’t want to miss a fight this good!” The statement has the mass hollering while you look on in confusion. “Tonight, we have Payback in the left corner here.” The rallies grow louder as a young, lanky man comes forward, raising his fists in the air and encouraging the crowd. He stands to the left of the announcer, bouncing on the balls of his feet animatedly. “And in the right corner, we have the fan favorite, the undefeated, the legendary Destroyer!”

Your body locks up, breath caught in your throat while the room erupts in a deafening applause. Your hand covers your mouth in shock because the man who walks out, hands wrapped in red tape with his torso completely exposed, is none other than Johnny.

You nearly collapse into the bar from surprise, but the bartender reads your body language as something else.

“Incredible, isn’t he?” He says into your ear. “How much do you have on him tonight?”

You fail to respond, your mind whirling into a frenzy. There’s no possible way this could be Johnny — it had to be his long lost twin brother or you could be seeing it all wrong. From this angle though, it looks exactly like your boss, even as he wears nothing but a pair of baggy shorts hugging his waist. Your eyes drink in the litter of tattoos covering his chest, tattoos that are hidden in the daylight with his blazers and button-up shirts.

The announcer says a few more words that go completely over your head before ringing the bell, signaling the start of the fight.

You should go home. You should go home and pretend you never saw any of this. Staying here only implicates you, and you can’t imagine what Johnny would do to you if he found out you knew about his underground secret. You need this job, and staying here increases the chances of you losing it, so why can’t you move? Why can’t you pry your gaze away from the ripple in Johnny’s muscles as he lands the first blow, nearly knocking his opponent to the ground? Why does your throat go dry when he delivers punch after punch, eyes blazed with fury as blood begins running down the other man’s nose? Why do you stay rooted in place when the announcer declares Johnny’s victory, raising his arm high as the crowd cheers?

Then, he sees you.

His eyes lock with yours across the room, his victorious expression falling and shifting into something more grim.

That’s when you run. You sprint up the stairs and out of the bar, legs aching before you finally make it back to your apartment, shutting the front door and sliding your back down until you hit the floor.

What the fuck were you going to do now?

—

“Thank you all for joining us. This engagement is long overdue, and I’m grateful to Miyeon for sticking by my side even though I never deserved it,” your brother says, which causes Miyeon to bump his hip with hers jokingly. Guests chuckle at the small show of affection. “Please enjoy yourselves tonight and look forward to a Jeong wedding in the new year!”

Applause ensues, jilting you out of your reverie. You slowly clap with everyone else, trying your best to put on a smile.

You’ve been on edge since you walked into this party, and it’s all because of your idiotic actions from the night before. You contemplated showing up after being caught in the act at Johnny’s secret fight, but you knew it would be obvious if you missed your brother’s engagement party. Even though Johnny was here, you were determined to attend, albeit you having to avoid him like the plague.

In all fairness, you were succeeding thus far. You keep yourself on the opposite end of the room from him, never sparing a glance in his direction although you could feel his eyes on you during sporadic times in the night. Your plan is to leave at a time that wouldn’t raise any questions and go into work tomorrow and pretend you were never at the club that night. You hope Johnny would do the same.

For the sake of your job, you really really hope he would do the same.

You’re in the middle of assessing the charcuterie board, eyeing the various fancy cheeses. It’s just like Jaehyun to make this small party as extravagant as he could, knowing it would make no dent in his bank account. All the food is being carried around by various waiters walking around the floor to offer it to the guests.

“Having trouble making a choice?”

Your heart drops to the pit of your stomach. You slowly spin around to see Johnny behind you, one hand stuffed into his pocket while the other holds a flute of champagne. He’s wearing a more casual manner of dress, a silk burgundy button-up paired with baggy slacks. It makes his legs look longer and you swallow as he towers over you.

“S-Sir-“

“Johnny!” You’ve never been more grateful to your brother than at this moment. He approaches the both of you with a smile, clapping a hand over Johnny’s shoulder. “How’s my little sister doing as your assistant?”

Your hands twist around your back nervously. Johnny slips into a smooth, easygoing smile.

“She’s doing fantastic. I was actually coming over to tell her just that, especially since she’s the one carrying all of my secrets to the grave.”

Your heart thumps louder in your chest while Jaehyun laughs, taking Johnny’s statement as a joke even though you know better. Johnny’s eyes analyze you carefully, the dark halo in his orbs making you quake in your heels.

“And how about you, dear sister? How’s the scary boss holding up?”

You throw your brother a tight grin. “He’s wonderful, Jae. No complaints here.”

Jaehyun nods, pleased by your progress before excusing himself to mingle. He leaves you alone with Johnny, who stares at you like a predator assessing his prey. You’re about to bring up a comment about the weather before he says, “Pretty girls like you shouldn’t be lurking on the wrong side of town.”

A shiver shoots down your spine. “I-I live on that side of town.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t pay you enough then.”

You exhale, certain he can hear the loud ringing of your heartbeat in your ears. He sets his champagne glass down on a nearby table before grabbing a bite-sized quiche, holding it out to you.

“I’m okay,” you decline and he hums, placing the treat in his mouth for himself. You can’t help the way your eyes linger on how his fingers graze his tongue, licking off any spare crumbs. You think about how those same fingers were pummeling into a poor stranger the night before. How the fire in his eyes couldn’t be tamed by the outcry of his fans.

You picture the same angry Destroyer hovering over you in bed, telling you exactly what he plans to do to you while his fingers wrap around your throat.

His mouth twists into a smirk and you shake yourself out of your daydream. He flags over another man and they shake hands, laughing as they exchange greetings.

“This is my assistant,” Johnny says, turning his attention to you as he offers your name. “She has big aspirations to work for a publishing company after she gets tired of me. Maybe Ahn Books has an opening?”

Mr. Ahn shakes your hand, telling you how lovely it is to meet you, but your eyes can only focus on Johnny. He’s staring at you with a knowing look in his eye and it takes you by surprise.

Was this a bribe to keep quiet about what you saw?

“Any worker who can handle Johnny is certainly a star in my books,” Mr. Ahn chuckles. “Let me know when this one starts getting on your nerves.”

You laugh anxiously and nod. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Ahn.”

Johnny gives you one last look. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He doesn’t provide an opportunity for you to respond, throwing an arm around Mr. Ahn and guiding him away into the crowd.

You release a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding.

—

Johnny wants to fuck his assistant.

It’s plain and simple, but it’s very much against his wishes. When Jaehyun approached him with the ask to hire his sister, he didn’t hesitate to grant his friend the favor. He had known Jaehyun since they worked at their first company together out of college, and although Johnny had never met you, he figured you would be a good worker if Jaehyun vouched for you. Plus, his last assistant had just quit from being too “overworked.” Johnny thinks they weren’t trying hard enough.

You were pretty, way too pretty to be somebody’s assistant. You deserved to be the main attraction and Johnny is ashamed to admit he’s definitely salivated over the tight pencil skirts you’re always wearing around the office.

He convinces himself to put aside his own selfish desires considering you’re one of the best assistants he’s had in years. You’re incredibly organized and after he warns you once concerning something important, you ensure not to do it again. The only big thing that irritates him is how everyone in this office is clear about their desire to fuck you but you’re wildly oblivious to all of it. Do you really think Kim Doyoung comes to talk to you because he’s friendly?

It fuels him with jealousy and he’s not normally a jealous guy. And Christ, when he saw you in the crowd of his fight, blinking at him warily like a deer caught in the headlights, his heart stopped in his chest. He never intended on letting anyone know of his after-work activity, considering it was inappropriate for a man of his status to be engaged in such a violent act.

When Johnny first got into underground fighting, he had simply been a watcher. He was introduced to the scene by an old colleague and it intrigued him to observe random strangers beat the living shit out of each other for pure sport. He had practiced boxing growing up and the idea of finally discovering a place where he could put those skills to use drew him in. Most of the time, it gave him a spike of adrenaline when he won a match. It normally never gave him gratification to send his opponent home covered in blood, but he kept going because of the reputation he was building for himself.

And seeing you there, watching him win another match and once again being declared undefeated, it makes him feel... proud. Almost like he craves to prove himself to you, to demonstrate that he’s the kind of man that can take care of you.

He’s crossing a clear boundary line but his impulse to have you is overtaking the coherent part of his brain.

So when you walk in on Monday morning and squeak out a “Good morning, sir,” he swallows the need to bend you over his desk.

He greets you with a gruff “Good morning,” which has your eyebrows raising at the response. He normally ignores your attempts at chitchat, especially when it’s this early.

“I texted your schedule to you for today and I have your morning reports here,” you say as you slide over a stack of papers to him. “Can I get you anything else?”

You. Under the desk. On the desk. In the chair. Against the window.

“No, that will be all.”

You move to exit the room, pausing when your hand rests on the handle of the door.

“I-I just want you to know I haven’t told anyone about what I saw this weekend,” you murmur.

“I wouldn’t care if you did,” he replies frankly.

It’s true — he thought about it after leaving the nightclub on Saturday, and he wouldn’t be opposed if you went and told the rest of the work staff. Some sick part of him would actually be smug at the idea of you bragging about his wins to the other employees who so clearly want a taste of you.

“Oh,” you say, slightly startled. “Well, I still won’t tell. It’s your private business, after all. I shouldn’t have even been there in the first place.”

The nagging voice in the back of his head grows louder, desperate to learn what you think of him. “Did you hear what they were saying? How they were betting on The Destroyer?”

You squirm in your spot. “They said you were undefeated, that the newbie didn’t stand a chance.”

He wonders if you’re scared of him, frightened not only by his savage blows but his evident power over you. You must think that he intends to blackmail you to keep his secret, but he could care less what you choose to do.

All he wants is for you to feel the same way he does. He wants you to battle this warmth in your chest, to panic as your mind goes blank when you see him. And he can’t have any of that while you’re his assistant, working under him despite how much he would prefer you directly underneath him.

It’s why he introduced you to Mr. Ahn, an old family friend who owned one of the largest publishing companies in the country. Jaehyun mentioned to Johnny that your real passion was in writing, but the lack of funds drove you to your current spot. Johnny hates that your dreams were crushed because of something as trivial as money, which he carried an abundance of. He would fund your first book in a heartbeat if you asked, but he knows you well enough to understand your pride would never allow you to be indebted to him. He figures a job with Mr. Ahn would be more digestible for you, and it would provide him an opening to make his move.

“Do you ever get worried?” You ask him, chewing on your lower lip. “You could get seriously hurt fighting like that.”

An ache blooms in his chest. Do you care about him getting injured?

“I haven’t been hurt since I started fighting,” he shares with you. “I don’t give them a chance to get their hands anywhere near me.”

You swallow and he wrings his hands together under his desk. Does that turn you on? His office walls aren’t soundproof, but he could lock the door and throw a hand over your mouth to conceal your moans. His cock twitches in his trousers at the thought.

His fantasy shatters when you finally crack open the door.

“I’ll order a sandwich from the Kim’s for your lunch today, sir.”

“Why don’t you make it two and join me?”

You stutter. “I-I’m sorry?”

“Join me for lunch. I could use another pair of eyes on these awful spreadsheets.”

“O-Okay.”

—

Johnny is playing with fire.

He’s very aware of this, yet he can’t seem to stop himself. You’ve eaten lunch together everyday for the past two weeks, munching quietly in his office while he divulges his reasoning to you behind budget cuts and expansion decisions. In the beginning, you would nod and listen patiently. After his encouragement to speak up and voice your opinion, you slowly started coming out of your shell around him.

And he’s very well informed of what the office thinks about your private time together. Last week, he overhears Doyoung mumble to you, “You and the boss are getting close.”

A grin stretches from ear to ear on his face when he listens to your response.

“Oh, I guess we have. He’s been really sweet with me.”

An envious scoff from Doyoung is enough to make Johnny’s entire day.

Late that Friday, you both stay overtime in order to complete the documents required for the Baek acquisition that Johnny has to present to the board of directors on Monday. He insists that you finish your tasks in his office to be more efficient, although the real reason is that he wants to look at your legs while you work.

He watches as you roll your neck, humming when you finally hear the familiar snapping sound.

“Maybe we should call it a night,” Johnny sighs, tired of staring at you for hours without being able to discover what’s hidden beneath that skirt of yours.

You frown. “But we’re only on the seventh page.”

“I’m starting to think you enjoy this work more than I do,” he says with a smirk.

You look down bashfully, avoiding his gaze. “I just don’t think you’ll be ready by Monday if we call it quits.”

“Let me worry about that, hm? I’ll drive you home.”

Your head whips up. “Oh, sir, I couldn’t let you-“

“I want to,” he says firmly.

You smile softly and nod. The two of you pack up the rest of your things, with Johnny storing the paperwork in his briefcase to review for later. He escorts you down to the parking garage and you pile into his vehicle. He observes as you admire the sleek interior, and he’s conscious of the fact that the cost of this car could likely pay your rent for five years. He really does want to offer you a raise to get you into a better apartment in a more decent side of town, but he’s certain you would interpret the gesture as a bribe rather than an act of kindness.

As the vehicle merges onto the busy city road, you pipe up from the passenger seat.

“Are you fighting this weekend?”

The question startles him. You haven’t spoken about his fighting since the moment you told him you would keep his secret.

“Every Saturday,” he replies, sneaking a quick glance over at you.

You have a nervous expression painted on your face. He opens his mouth to ask why before you speak up again.

“Will you be careful?”

The car halts at a red light, and he uses the spare time to fully look at you. You stare back at him, your eyes filled with concern.

It’s completely inappropriate and out of line, but his hand reaches over the dashboard to grab yours. He raises the back of your palm to his mouth, lips brushing over your knuckles. The intimate gesture has you staggering your breath.

“I promise.”

Your words rattle around in his head the following day. He usually doesn’t need any words of encouragement before a fight, his music playlist being enough to boost his spirits. This time, however, he thinks about you tucked away in his car. He pictures your pretty face when he kissed your hand, how your eyes darted away from his in embarrassment.

You’re the reason why he walks into the crowd with a mission, clapping his hands together as he faces his mediocre opponent. When the bell rings, he doesn’t pull his punches as he strikes the first jab into the other man’s face. You’ve awakened something in him and the crowd’s cheers grow louder when he lands blow after blow. It isn’t long before his challenger is stumbling across the floor, falling on his back after Johnny delivers the final thwack against his abdomen.

A hand wraps around his arm and holds it high in the air. The announcer declares his victory, once again proclaiming him undefeated. The roars of the crowd fill his eardrums, but the only person he can think about is you.

His body moves before his mind can convince him otherwise, getting dressed and gathering his things as quickly as possible before exiting the nightclub. He nearly breaks into a sprint in the chilly night air, reaching your apartment within minutes.

When you open the door, your jaw drops open at the sight of him.

“Johnny-“

His hands cup your cheeks, pushing your body backwards until you hit the wall. His nose brushes against yours and your breath hitches, hands reaching up to curl around his wrists.

“Tell me I should stop,” he whispers against your lips. “Tell me I’m crossing a line and I need to walk out that door and never come back.”

He watches your chest rise and fall with each passing breath. Your expression crumbles before you press forward, locking your lips with his.

A frenzy ensues. He shuts the door to your apartment forcefully, almost rattling it off of its hinges. His tongue slips into your waiting mouth, fingers gripping your waist tightly. You’re whimpering against him, basking in the sweat and tanned muscles from his win.

“Sir-“

“Fuck,” he hisses, pushing his body against yours. You whine when you can feel his hardened member against the fabric of your shorts. “Do you know how much it turns me on whenever you call me that? Always parading around in these fucking tight skirts, calling me sir — you’re practically begging me to stretch you open.”

You pant. “I want you to. I really really want you to.”

You both clumsily move to undress the other, with Johnny’s fingers pulling down your shorts and your hands lifting up his shirt. There’s a little dried blood on his torso as evidence from the fight.

“Sorry, I didn’t shower before I came and-“

“Did you win?”

A pause. “Of course I won.”

Then your lips are on his, tongues swirling together. The kiss is sloppy with the two of you mouthing at one another, desperate to grasp at any physical contact you can. You squeak in surprise when Johnny lifts you up, wrapping your legs around his waist before pinning you against the wall.

He trails kisses down your neck, ripping your old university t-shirt in half and discarding it on the floor. Your sports bra follows after, and he gives you no time to complain before he takes your right nipple into his mouth, licking wildly. He shifts his attention between each breast, fingers flicking at the peaked bud if he neglects one for too long.

Your fingers tangle into his hair, whimpering softly.

“S-Sir-“

“Need me inside you?” He murmurs against your skin. “You’re so fucking tempting.”

“Please,” you beg, tugging at the strands of his silky brown locks. “I need you so badly.”

He’s quick to release his cock from the confines of his shorts, tip red and leaking. You whine when you see the evidence of his arousal. Johnny knows he’s bigger than most so he moves your panties to the side and runs a finger through your folds. He groans when he feels you practically dripping onto his palm.

“You really do need me badly, hm?” He remarks with a smug grin. “Tell me what’s gotten you so wet, baby.”

“Y-You,” you choke out. “Ever since I saw you fighting as The Destroyer, I-“

Your words are cut off by a piercing scream when the tip of his cock slides into you. He takes your arms and wraps them around his neck, stabilizing you as he cups his hands around your ass, rutting up into you. He can tell you’re marveling at his strength — his ability to lift you like you weigh nothing. He holds you close as his hips piston deep into your cunt.

“Look at what you do to me,” he bites in a venomous tone. “I can’t think properly when I’m around you. Want to bend you over my desk and let the whole office hear you sing for me.” Another sharp thrust has you tightening your hold around his neck, and he takes the opportunity to dangle your legs over his elbows. The angle fully allows him to fuck you perfectly, balancing you in his arms as he watches his cock disappear in and out of your weeping pussy. All you can do is hang onto him for dear life and take it. “Maybe I should invite Doyoung to come watch us. He’s always fucking chasing after you anyways.”

You unravel around him at a breakneck speed, pushed over the edge by the idea of him claiming you for all of your co-workers to see. He grunts when he feels you clench around him, offering a few more thrusts before he’s following suit. You whimper when he releases inside of you, painting your walls with his cum.

He finally sets you back down on the ground carefully, chuckling when your shaky legs cause you to stumble into him.

“Shut up,” you mumble bashfully, hitting his arm.

He kisses you again, hands resting on your lower back. “Do you think you’d be up for another round?” He whispers, eyeing his cum running down your thighs.

“I think you’re crazy,” you reply, which brings forward another bubble of laughter from him. You draw circles over his arm, admiring the swell of his muscles. Your voice shifts into something softer and lighter. “What are we going to do?”

He brushes his lips over your forehead. “I’ll figure it out. Just let me take care of you, hm?”

You giggle when he scoops you into his arms and carries you into the bedroom bridal style, preparing himself to make you moan for him all night.

—

Weeks after your passionate night with Johnny, you reach out to Mr. Ahn to see if there’s an opening at Ahn Books.

He offers a position as a junior editor and you accept it happily, eager to finally begin your career in the writing world. When you announce your departure from Johnny’s company, you’re surprised by the outpour of love you receive. All of the colleagues you spent a fun night out with bring you various flowers and stuffed animals, requesting for you to stay in touch. Johnny isn’t shocked in the slightest, huffing to himself as he tells you that they’re all in love with you. You simply roll your eyes at his jealousy.

At first, you kept your relationship with Johnny a secret in fear that people would assume you slept your way to the top. It proved extremely difficult to keep your boyfriend’s hands off of you, however. He ached to be near you at all times of the day, and you’re ashamed to admit your last two weeks in the office were mainly spent on your knees or bent over his desk.

“Ungh!”

A hand pushes on your lower back, arching your spine. Fingers tangle in your hair and your eyes roll to the back of your head.

“What do you expect me to do now, hm? How am I supposed to get my fill of this pussy everyday when it’s across town?”

A smack echoes throughout the room when his hand collides with your ass and you bite down on your palm to prevent the mewls from releasing. No matter how many times you warn Johnny that the staff outside could definitely hear you two, he never holds himself back. There could be articles written the next day about the CEO fucking employees in his office and he wouldn’t bat an eye. His only focus is you, how you feel around him, how fast he can get you to whine for him.

One particular push of his hips has you reeling, gasping as you clench around him. He groans when he feels your climax hit, sending him tumbling over the edge before his warm seed fills you.

“Johnny,” you scold, reaching back to hit him lightly. “You know I stopped taking my birth control.”

“I’m aware, baby. Why do you think we’re moving in together?”

You scoff. You were initially opposed to the idea, but Johnny somehow convinced you that it would be much easier for you to move into his million dollar house and let him drive you to work every morning. There were no downsides to his proposal, truth be told, but you didn’t want to make it seem like you were using him for his bank account. He asked if he could fuck your throat to call it even, and you agreed.

He sits back down in his chair, pulling you onto his lap. Various papers and pens are scattered across the floor from the aftermath of your intimacy.

“It’s going to be a really good thing for you that I’m leaving,” you say, massaging the back of his neck as he licks at your collarbone. His cock is still seated deep inside you. “You haven’t been productive at work in weeks.”

“It’s the job for the next assistant,” he says dismissively. “Let’s go out tonight in celebration?”

“Okay,” you hum in contentment. “I really do want to thank you, you know. I was about to hit rock bottom before I started working for you.”

“No need to thank me, baby. I would do anything for you. As long as you keep supporting The Destroyer, I’m happy.”

You frown. “I’ll only keep supporting you if you remain undefeated. I’d hate to see you seriously injured.”

He laughs at the idea, as if the thought of anyone taking his championship title is unbelievable. He squeezes your hips and slowly begins to rock you back and forth on his cock, and you whine when you realize he’s growing hard again.

“Don’t be silly. No one has a chance against me.”

“D-Do you think we need to tell Jaehyun about us?”

Johnny shrugs. “It’s the job for the next assistant.”

Then he throws you over his desk once more, grunting as he claims your body until the sun sets over the horizon.

this fic was posted for early access to the $5 tier on my patreon, which you can access here!

[frownyalfred]

Bruce providing all that paperwork to the Kents to prove he will always make sure Clark is set for life and that marrying him - and in the likely hood of divorcing him - will not hurt him in any way.

The Kents stop him 20 minutes into his power point, grabbing his - surprisingly- trembling hands and make him sit down on their weathered recliner.

They make him look at them, sip the coffee and eat the coffee cake they prepared for him, while Clark was made to run an errand to give them "space".

"Bruce. I'm glad you've...planned for what if's for my son, "Martha starts, weathered hands folding on her lap, "And while we appreciate that you want to make sure the farm will never be bought again by the bank - "

"-I bought the bank, so they can never ask you to sell -"

Mr. Kent held up a hand, "...what I think Martha is trying to get to, is that, while we appreciate Mr. Wayne making sure my son is set for life - in both sets of his life - we simply want to know that you, Bruce , will love and cherish him. Want nothing but the best for him, and will be there for him in his lowest and most vulnerable of times. In the good and bad."

"Yes. Absolutely. I promise."

"Then that's all that matters to us. That Clark loves you and that you love him in return. Now eat up, son."

Clark arrives ten minutes after Bruce powers down the power point machine and looks between them nervously, but both parties look at peace and happy. He sits at Bruce's side and sets the box of groceries down at the floor by their feet.

"Okay?"

"Yes. Ready to marry you any day now. "

"If it was up to me, we could get married right now, out in the cornfield."

"Clark Joseph Kent!"

"I'm kidding, Ma. It would be in the Barn next to Betsy the cow."

🥹🥹🥹

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI art has no anti-cooption immune system

TONIGHT (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

One thing Myspace had going for it: it was exuberantly ugly. The decision to let users with no design training loose on a highly customizable user-interface led to a proliferation of Myspace pages that vibrated with personality.

The ugliness of Myspace wasn't just exciting in a kind of outsider/folk-art way (though it was that). Myspace's ugliness was an anti-cooption force-field, because corporate designers and art-directors would, by and large, rather break their fingers and gouge out their eyes than produce pages that looked like that.

In this regard, Myspace was the heir to successive generations of "design democratization" that gave amateur communities, especially countercultural ones, a space to operate in where authentic community members could be easily distinguished between parasitic commercializers.

The immediate predecessors to Myspace's ugliness-as-a-feature were the web, and desktop publishing. Between the img tag, imagemaps, the blink tag, animated GIFs, and the million ways that you could weird a page with tables and padding, the early web was positively bursting with individual personality. The early web balanced in an equilibrium between the plunder-friendliness of "view source" and the topsy-turvy design imperatives of web-based layout, which confounded both print designers (no fixed fonts! RGB colorspaces! dithering!) and even multimedia designers who'd cut their teeth on Hypercard and CD ROMs (no fixed layout!).

Before the web came desktop publishing, the million tractor-feed ransom notes combining Broderbund Print Shop fonts, joystick-edited pixel-art, and a cohort of enthusiasts ranging from punk zinesters to community newsletter publishers. As this work proliferated on coffee-shop counters and telephone poles, it was visibly, obviously distinct from the work produced by "real" designers – that is, designers who'd been a) trained and b) paid by a corporation to employ that training.

All of this matters, and not just for aesthetic reasons. Communities – especially countercultural ones – are where our society's creative ferment starts. Getting your start in the trenches of the counterculture wars is no proof against being co-opted later (indeed, many of the designers who cut their teeth desktop publishing weird zines went on to pull their hair and roll their eyes at the incredible fuggliness of the web). But without that zone of noncommercial, antiestablishment, communitarian low weirdness, design and culture would stagnate.

I started thinking about this 25 years ago, the first time I met William Gibson. I'd been assigned by the Globe and Mail to interview him for the launch of All Tomorrow's Parties:

https://craphound.com/nonfic/transcript.html

One of the questions I asked was about his famous aphorism, "The street finds its own use for things." Given how quickly each post-punk tendency had been absorbed by commercial culture, couldn't we say that "Madison Avenue finds its own use for the street"? His answer started me down a quarter-century of thinking and writing about this subject:

I worry about what we'll do in the future, [about the instantaneous co-opting of pop culture]. Where is our new stuff going to come from? What we're doing pop culturally is like burning the rain forest. The biodiversity of pop culture is really, really in danger. I didn't see it coming until a few years ago, but looking back it's very apparent.

I watch a sort of primitive form of the recommodification machine around my friends and myself in sixties, and it took about two years for this clumsy mechanism to get and try to sell us The Monkees.

In 1977, it took about eight months for a slightly faster more refined mechanism to put punk in the window of Holt Renfrew. It's gotten faster ever since. The scene in Seattle that Nirvana came from: as soon as it had a label, it was on the runways of Paris.

Ugliness, transgressiveness and shock all represent an incoherent, grasping attempt to keep the world out of your demimonde – not just normies and squares, but also and especially enthusiastic marketers who want to figure out how to sell stuff to you, and use you to sell stuff to normies and squares.

I think this is what drove a lot of people to 4chan (remember, before 4chan was famous for incubating neofascism, it was the birthplace of Anonymous): its shock culture, combined with a strong cultural norm of anonymity, made for a difficult-to-digest, thoroughly spiky morsel that resisted recommodification (for a while).

All of this brings me to AI art (or AI "art"). In his essay on the "eerieness" of AI art, Henry Farrell quotes Mark Fisher's "The Weird and the Eerie":

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

"Eeriness" here is defined as "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something." AI is eerie because it produces the seeming of intent, without any intender:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

When we contemplate "authentic" countercultural work – ransom-note DTP, the weird old web, seizure-inducing Myspace GIFs – it is arresting because the personality of the human entity responsible for it shines through. We might be able to recognize where that person ganked their source-viewed HTML or pixel-optimized GIF, but we can also make inferences about the emotional meaning of those choices. To see that work is to connect to a mind. That mind might not necessarily belong to someone you want to be friends with or ever meet in person, but it is unmistakably another person, and you can't help but learn something about yourself from the way that their work makes you feel.

This is why corporate work is so often called "soulless." The point of corporate art is to dress the artificial person of the corporation in the stolen skins of the humans it uses as its substrate. Corporations are potentially immortal, artificial colony organisms. They maintain the pretense of personality, but they have no mind, only action that is the crescendo of an orchestra of improvised instruments played by hundreds or thousands of employees and a handful of executives who are often working directly against one another:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

The corporation is – as Charlie Stross has it – the "slow AI" that is slowly converting our planet to the long-prophesied grey goo (or, more prosaically, wildfire ashes and boiled oceans). The real thing that is signified by CEOs' professed fears of runaway AI is runaway corporations. As Ted Chiang says, the experience of being nominally in charge of a corporation that refuses to do what you tell it to is the kind of thing that will give you nightmares about autonomous AI turning on its masters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

The job of corporate designers is to find the signifiers of authenticity and dress up the corporate entity's robotic imperatives in this stolen flesh. Everything about AI is done in service to this goal: the chatbots that replace customer service reps are meant to both perfectly mimic a real, competent corporate representative while also hewing perfectly to corporate policy, without ever betraying the real human frailties that none of us can escape.

In the same way, the shillbots that pretend to be corporate superfans online are supposed to perfectly amplify the corporate message, the slow AI's conception of its own virtues, without injecting their own off-script, potentially cringey enthusiasms.

The Hollywood writers' strike was, at root, about the studio execs' dream that they could convert the "insights" of focus groups and audience research into a perfect script, without having to go through a phalanx of lippy screenwriters who insisted on explaining why they think your idea is stupid. "Hey, nerd, make me another ET, except make the hero a dog, and set it on Mars" is exactly how you prompt an AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

Corporate design's job is to produce the seeming of intention without any intender. The "personality" we're meant to sense when we encounter corporate design isn't the designer's, nor the art director's, nor even the CEO's. The "personality" is meant to be the slow AI's, but a corporation doesn't have a personality.

In his 2018 short story "Noon in the antilibrary," Karl Schroeder describes an "antilibrary" as an endlessly deep anaerobic lagoon of generative botshit:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/18/104097/noon-in-the-antilibrary/

The antilibrary is a generative AI system that can produce entire librarys’-worth of fake books with fake authors, fake citations by other fake experts with their own fake books and biographies and fake social media accounts, on-demand and instantly. It was speculation in 2018; it’s possible now. Creating an antilibrary is just a matter of investing in a sufficient number of graphics cards and electricity.

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/after-the-internet

Reading Karl's reflections on the antilibrary crystallized something for me that I've been thinking about for a quarter-century, since I interviewed Gibson at the Penguin offices in north Toronto. It snapped something into place that I've trying to fit since encountering Henry's thoughts on the "eeriness" of AI work and the intent without an intender.

It made me realize why I dislike AI art so much, on a deep, aesthetic level. The point of an image generator is to buffer the intention of the prompter (which might be genuinely creative and bursting with personality) in layers of automated decision-making that flense the final product of any hint of the mind that caused its creation.

The most febrile, deeply weird and authentic prompts of the most excluded outsiders produce images that feel the same as the corporate AI illustrations that project the illusion of personality from the immortal, transhuman colony organism that is the limited liability corporation.

AI art is born coopted. Even the 4chan equivalent of AI – the deeply transgressive and immoral nonconsensual pornography – feels no different from the "official" AI porn churned out by "real" pornographers. "Shrimp Jesus" and other SEO-optimized Facebook slop is so uncanny because it is simultaneously "weird" ("that which does not belong") and yet it belongs in the same aesthetic bucket of the most anodyne Corporate Memphis ephemera:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

We call it "generative" but AI art can't generate the kind of turnover that aerates the aesthetic soil. An artform that can't be transgressive is sterile, stillborn, a dead end.

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

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/#antilibraries

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

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

--

Jake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970s_fanzines_(21224199545).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[flamingo-writes]

A/N: i am back from the dead after months. And it should’ve come as a surprise that I absolutely loved Hobie. Looks like a rockstar and is an absolute punk. My type in a nutshell.

I’m gonna be using some of these headcanon for future

Gal in The Chair — Hobie Brown x Artist!Reader

I think Hobie would be the kind of guy to fall for someone who he’s known for a long while, that being said, you’d perhaps known him all of your life

Having grown together, the two of you shaped a lot of each other’s beliefs. So no wonder the two of you were so compatible.

After the spider bite, you saw the whole journey from Hobie freaking out at first, to him figuring out how to use his new abilities.

He designed his web shooters, being the genius he is with technology. You helped him with his suit, specially his mask.

You became his Gal in the Chair

You liked to fix up and personalise clothes. All of your pieces of clothings came from second hand shops and you gave them a make over doing all sorts of stuff on them to make them unique and yours.

You also did this with a lot of Hobie’s clothes. As well as teaching him how to use your sewing machine.

After graduating high school, you opened a small alternative clothing shop in with unique pieces, doing the same thing you did for your clothes on this one. As well as doing hand made jewerly like bracelets, necklaces and earrings. You also had a talent with plants, managing to almost magically bring plants back to life and reproduce them like crazy, you added selling plants into your small business.

As Spider-Man gained traction, he low key promoted your work to his followers and people who agreed with him. This in order to keep negative attention from falling on you, and keep bad guys from thinking and theorising that maybe you knew Spider-Man.

As a side gig, you educated yourself on coffee making, and learned about the different processes and types of coffee beans there were. It started as a hobby, but soon you also implemented that into your shop.

The fact that you were so versatile, made Hobie feel incredibly proud of you. You seemed to be so independent, and creative and that never ending curiosity and passion made him harvest feelings for you.

Eventually, the close friendship, and companionship grew into affectionate and romantic feelings.

Hobie was always flirty, but it wasn’t until now that you started behaving differently. Normally he played his electric guitar but now you found him playing his acoustic guitar more.

He showed you a song he wrote. And while it was unusual —however, not imposible— to hear a romantic song coming from him, it wasn’t until the first minute that you realised the song was about you.

That’s how he chose to tell you about his feelings.

He didn’t intend for it to be this romantic, he simply one day word vomited the song and used one free afternoon to add the music.

After hearing his song, it was actually you who grabbed him and kissed him.

More than satisfied with the outcome, he kissed you back, put his guitar down and pulled you over his lap.

You two became inseparable since. You already were, but now it was more evident.

You worked at home, doing all the creative things you did, selling them, helping Spider-Man with art shows and gigs.

Those who paid close attention, they were able to determine you were some sort of associate to Spider-Man. However, all of them were also punks and anarchist so of course they kept their mouths shut. Spider-Man was always looking out for those in need. They were going to help a brother back and not tell anyone whenever any authority or weird-looking threat asked if anyone knew Spider-Man, or someone close to him.

You became widely known between Spider-Man supporters, although none of them would ever dare to snitch on you.

After Hobie met Gwen, she brought her over, you two became close friends right away. Letting Gwen crash at your place more often than not. She even offered to help you with the dishes and the groceries as thanks for letting her stay.

“You’re Hobie’s friend, you’re welcome whenever you want,” You’d told her.

Pav was also a frequent visitor. He loved your coffee, he taught you how to make chai. And you had chai ready for whenever Hobie told you Pav was going to be there.

Pav also bought plants from you all the time. Most of them for his mom. He once asked you if you could make a set of earrings and a necklace for his mom.

The set was a success and Pav always told you how much she loved them,

Eventually Miles also came around. And it wasn’t until Miles met you that his suspicions of Hobie and Gwen dating dissappeared.

Miles saw the absolute pure love with which Hobie looked at you. He still made the same sarcastic and cheeky jokes while talking to you. But the way he looked at you was completely different to the way he looked at anyone else.

Hobie convinced Miles to buy a plant and some earrings for his mother.

“Listen mate, this is what my girl does for a living. Plus the world needs to learn to appreciate the handiwork of an artisan,”

Miles was even surprised at how Hobie still looked cool while being mushy and cheesy with you as he hugged you, kissed your head, or played with your hands or hair.

Hobie had zero fucks to give about what people think about him, he doesn’t give a shit about PDA. Gwen thinks it’s gross, Pav thinks it’s adorable, Miles is simply puzzled as to how he is still cool when seeing his parents doing the same thing would make him cringe so hard.

Hobie is amused by the different reactions he gets. Especially Gwen’s grossed out face.

He still loves kissing you every chance he gets. Whether if it’s kissing you passionately. A subtle peck. Sweet kissed on your cheek or your forehead.

[wannaeatramyeon]

Goo Kim x Reader: One Night

G/N. Crazy Stupid Love Emma Stone/Ryan Gosling scene but make it Lookism. Masterlists

"Are you nervous?" Goo murmurs, a smile tugs at his lips when he feels you trembling.

He peers down at you and pauses. His hand, having worked its way under your top and caressing your bare skin - stops.

Tonight, you have aimed for sexy and sensual. It worked well. Fake it until you make it, and you made it when this handsome blonde at the bar invited you back to his apartment for a night of debauchery.

But your mask slips. It's hard to keep it on, y'know. When you are both half naked, about to be even more naked, there's nowhere left to hide.

Your nervousness comes out as a snort, because duh and you think some of your previous sexy and sensual points are deducted.

"Yeah," you respond with an awkward giggle. Then your mouth runs before your single brain cell can.

"- Also, something has been digging into my back all this time," Goo waggles his eyebrows at you suggestively, "No. Definitely not. I think it's a spring or something or I don't know... crumbs? Have you been eating in bed? Either way I think this is the most uncomfortable mattress I've ever laid on. Your silk bed sheets are something else though - who even has silk bed sheets? It's like something from the 80s along with waterbeds but god they feel so fucking great on my legs."

Goo is stunned into silence momentarily before he barks out a laugh.

He rolls off you and onto the left side on the bed, full body wriggling around slightly, experiencing the silk bed sheets for himself and chuckles.

"Sweetheart, you're right. And I've always hated this mattress." He sighs, adding, "I got conned by fucking influencers."

You whip your head towards him and give him a look, "Influencers?! What. Is this those fancy brands that I've been seeing them shill all over my social media-"

Goo turns towards you, a pout on his lips and eyebrows pinched together in a pitiful expression. "Yep. I've hated it since the first night."

"Then why didn't you return it!"

He shrugs and you laugh, your previous nervousness dissipating.

"I always wondered what idiot would fall for those."

"Hey!"

A brief moment of silence then-

"Did you buy these sheets from an infomercial or something?"

"Excuse me!" Goo shuffles, angles himself so he's fully facing you. Head held up by the palm of his hand and resting his elbow on the mattress.

There's mischief, life in his face that wasn't there earlier tonight. "Sue me. I have money to spend, sometimes I can't sleep, and those sales people sell things so well."

You let out another unrefined snort, amused by this guy.

Suddenly finding there's so much personality, a touch of vulnerability revealed in that statement, behind the expensive glasses, his tailored suit and his muscled body.

"Wanna see what other crap I've bought?"

.

.

You both wander around his apartment, which turned out to be a huge fucking penthouse now that he has the light on and is giving you a guided tour, in your underwear. 

Goo, no shame and expanses of skin on show, and you follow closely behind with his silk sheets wrapped loosely around your body.

He gestures at what you assume to be a coffee machine sitting proudly on his kitchen countertop. All sleek and stainless steel with dials and buttons on every surface.

"I can't even use this thing. I've had it for 2 years."

"Look," Goo opens an overhead kitchen cupboard, gesticulating like he's going to perform a magic trick, and dramatically shows you rows and rows of trendy kitchen gadgets, no doubt also purchased during moments of insomnia. Pizza scissors, spiralizer, bread maker, air fryer, pressure cooker.

"Never used."

"This," he points at the far wall, and you squint, barely making out a framed art piece of the ugliest monkey face you have ever seen. But hey, art is subjective, right-

"-is an NFT. I bought that too."

That tips you over the edge.

You cackle and cackle, doubled over and holding onto him for balance.

.

.

There's a dusty segway sitting pitifully in the corner of an unused spare room.

You jump out from round a corner, LED mask on your face and flashing a menacing red - "Boo!"and Goo actually jumps.

A lonely treadmill, placed beneath one of those fancy sit-stand desk catches your eye.  Goo smirks, "Babe, I don't even have a desk job."

Instead of spending all night tangled in his silk bedsheets together, Goo jogs down memory lane of sleepless nights and impulse buys with you by his side.

Your laughter starts to tinge all his memories.

Your good natured ribbing and mocking.

His hyena cackle joins yours, and he wonders when was the last time he was able to laugh with someone. Has he ever spent an entire night talking to someone like this?

"Ask me something personal." He requests, both now lying on his uncomfortable bed. You in his arms, hair tickling his chin.

"What do you want from life?"

"To make money."

"Why?"

"I want to be rich."

"Why?"

"Well, who doesn't want to be rich, sweetheart."

"Yeah but why do you?"

Goo remembers running errands, doing anything to earn some money. Anything for a price. His cousin calling in his services, and he happily beat up some middle schoolers to help him (and who was it again, Tabasco?) out.

He doesn't really know where his thirst for money making has come from. Maybe there's some deep set trauma from his life pre-juvie or some shit he should pay a therapist to decipher but alas.

He tells you this, all this and more. At some point, his head is the one lying on your chest and you absentmindedly stroke through his blonde locks, humming noises of encouragement, listening to his words.

Weird, Goo thinks, when he finally drifts off to sleep with you snoring gently beside him. 

The morning sun already filters through the blinds, and the hustle and bustle of Seoul has started to pick up.

How comfortable this feels. How natural your connection with him is. How this is the spark people dream about, and somehow it has hit him when he wasn’t looking for anything more.

That someone as different to him as you are, that is only ever supposed to be company for a few hours, a night at best, could spell trouble. Raise his hackles, send his alarms blaring.

When he's usually the walking red flag.

Because you’ve got him thinking. A lot. That shrewd brain hidden behind playfulness has been whirring; wondering about what happens if you become a regular fixture.

Maybe you might doom him, in the end. Maybe this will lead to a dead end and nothing more.

But he's curious enough, the spark is shining brightly enough, to see where else you might lead him to too.

[the-labyrinth-of-me]

I don't know if that has been discussed in the past, but I wanna talk about a few things that stand out in the apartment of the Wakes, at least for me. First off, it's absolutely weird that the apartment looks nothing like the one from the first game, neither interior nor floor plan wise. Before Alan was trapped in the Dark Place, the apartment looked drastically different. Photos for comparison:

Seems like a regular home of a best-selling crime novelist, right?

The apartment in Alan Wake 2 has, as already mentioned, a different floor plan and weird structure. Like you leave the elevator and there aren't even any further doors, let alone a hallway. As if the Wake apartment was the only one on the whole floor. Then there's the entrance area with the cameras from Alice that set off once Alan leaves the elevator, with a few paintings on the wall (like graffiti) that seem to have replaced the skyline posters.

Then you enter the actual apartment. It holds a layout that doesn't make much sense. There's also no bathroom / toilet and Alice's studio seems to be missing. Some other paintings of graffiti on the wall mix with really old, outdated, simple furniture. Nothing that displays wealth for the cozy feeling of a real home, it's rather minimalist.

If only the furniture would be outdated, though...

A collection of old files, devices (seriously, who has a telephone like that in the 2010 and upwards years?), and old toys. Since the Wakes don't have children and there wasn't any mention that they, at any point, planned to start a family, one can assume these toys weren't bought for children to be born and they seem to be well-used as well. Maybe Alan's toys from his childhood?

The books all seem to be really old as well.

All that old stuff and the composition, how things are placed and displayed, rather give me the feeling I'm walking through a museum rather than an apartment.

(wtf why is there even an accordion??)

And if we take a closer look at the kitchen...

... we see a weird oven and coffee machine. Stuff we'd expect to find in restaurant, maybe. Or a diner. A very specific diner.

Moving on, what catches the attention in the living room isn't only the lack of a television (although the Wakes had one in the first game), despite the TVs can be found practically everywhere in the Dark Place in the most odd spaces. But not in an actual apartment, of all things? Hmmmm. As if someone deliberately choose not to have one. Maybe the one who is imagining that whole stuff?

Which would be my conclusion to the weirdness of the apartment: dream logic mixed with whatever is left of the apartment in Alan's memory mixed with what is necessary for him to move on. TVs is what he might be kind of scared of, since often he sees another version of himself speaking insane rants. Nothing he could use that close to escape. The old furniture and books and toys could really stem from his longterm memory, his childhood home blended in with his actual one, from his subconscious. His mother seems to have a key role because she was the one who gave him the Clicker. And he never got to know his father. There definitely is some pain in his childhood years. Maybe he has a box somewhere in which he keeps some of his toys?

In dreams our brain processes what we experience throughout the day, sometimes memories mix in, or things we suppress / are in denial about bc we're too afraid to confront them. That could be one explanation of the interior of the apartment. His childhood even gets a small section in the musical since we walk through his old bedroom. So, early memories are covered. Brings us the next subject - striking what isn't necessary to move to. Alice's studio apparently isn't necessary (and something he doesn't have a connection to. Makes even more sense considering her work didn't contribute much to their income, as she says in the video. So her office might be kind of invisible to him. His work being the "more important" one.) Bathroom? Not necessary. Interior replaced with old stuff bc its more important to him, maybe? But what about the industrial oven and coffee machine? That really seems to be a nod to the Oh Deer diner, where his journey (and demise) practically started. Where he got the keys for the Bird Leg Cabin and met the Dark Presence for the first time. It seemed to have left a mark. Rose, the superfan waitress who helps him from the real world. Rusty, the first major Taken he had to fight (iirc Stucky came after Rusty). The Old Gods and their stupid jukebox. I'm not gonna link Coconut here don't worry. There's also a pack of the Bright Falls Blend coffee on a shelf.

Summarized, we can say that dream logic blends all kinds of things together whenever Alan visits the apartment in the Dark Place. Not to mention that it even looks different each time he goes there, during each draft. If I find the time I'll try to draw floor plans of each version. I think it's very interesting.

If you made it this far, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

Edit for additions / stuff from tags (holy shit is this a long post now)

- @taniushka12 yes you're right of course, the bathroom appears later however and not during the first draft. It seems Alan readjusts the apartment due to what he needs to go further, or Alice had a say about this. Idk. The bathroom appears in the next draft I think, with the expedition. He remembers they have a bathrooms yay! But it still looks completely different.

- @omena-perkele thanks for elaborating on that. I was planning to go into more detail about Alan progressively forgetting how his home looks like but only put it in half a sentence lol. It's my interpretation of how empty the apartment actually is, like not much personal belongings, if any. Bedroom is almost empty. There are pieces of furniture he remembers or remembers there should be some at certain walls in the rooms, but many empty spots. The rest is mixed with old stuff and dream logic / dark place fill-ins.

Thanks for each comment on this!

[aetherdoesthings]

hanahaki!reader x arlecchino part 2

forethoughts: i'm aetherdoesthings, of course i don't stick to my schedule. anyways, apologies if the timing of this fic seems wonky. i had specific scenarios in my head when i was planning this, with each stage of filming, which i have no clue about because that is not the path i took, so yeah :]. enjoy early upload!

notes: alocohol mentioned!!! drinking is in this!!! reader does drink!! don't be like reader this was just for plot drink responsibly guys!!! modern setting, arlecchino and reader are actresses, fem!reader, hanahaki au

“So, how’s everything? Still coughing up a storm?” You choked on your coffee when you heard that familiar voice, echoing in your head like a broken stereo. 

“I guess you still are. Wow, an entire year?” Arlecchino chuckled, pressing a few buttons on the coffee machine. “So what did the doctor say? Just a cough? Cold? Colds don’t last for a year. Doesn’t look like a fever.”

“R-Right, u-um, just a cough. Y-Yeah.” You nodded your head, mustering up a smile.

Damn it, Y/N, you’re an actress. Act. You scolded yourself on your performance. 

“Alright then.” Arlecchino gazed at your smile, one finding its way onto hers. “I hope you’ll be okay; tomorrow is all about shooting promotion videos and the day after traveling from studio to studio to do interviews.”

Your face instantly paled at Arlecchino’s words. Shit. Promo week. No rest, non stop smiling, repeating the same phrase over and over again on different networks and platforms. The worst part was that Arlecchino was right by your side the entire time during the shoot, acting all lovey dovey towards you to sell to the audience that the two of you were playing a pair of couples. Then again, you would be lying if you said you weren’t excited to read comments after comments of netizens shipping the two of you together. Your heart fluttered at the thought, the child inside you kicking their feet in the air as you held back a grin. Well, you held the grin back, but not the cough.

Your left hand shot up to your mouth, your body already letting the cough take place, letting the petal travel up your esophagus and into your palm. You didn’t like how your body was already used to the feeling of having a part of a flower regurgitate out of you, muscles immediately jumping into action and making way for the disease in your lungs. Your stomach churned as Arlecchino rubbed her hand on your back, trying to comfort you and make you feel better.

“Oh, Y/N…” Arlecchino’s hand took the hand that was on your mouth, holding it in hers as she made you look at her. It took every single willpower inside you to not blush or let any sort of heat course through your body, biting down a whine as her fingers found its way to your chin. Your bones turned into toothpicks, joints threatening to disappear. 

“Are you sure you are going to be alright? You don’t need to power through all those interviews if you physically cannot-”

“I can.” A surge of stubbornness and pride overpowered your senses. Arlecchino didn’t know you were in love with her, and Arlecchino certainly did not need to know you were in love with her, and that you were a weak little coward that let a disease run your life.

“I can.” You repeated yourself, nodding your head. “I’ll power through. I promise.”

You felt like you were telling yourself that more than you were telling Arlecchino. 

Arlecchino stared at you, those crimson eyes giving you no clue into what she felt. Arlecchino pursed her lips, before removing herself from you. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, darling.”

And just like that, Arlecchino left the room, her hands leaving your body. You let out a gasp at the missing touch, confused and baffled by her actions, cheeks flaring red at her nickname for you. All alarms in your brain all went off at once, your stomach doing a backflip and your vertical toothpicks turning horizontal. You looked at your left hand, noticing the empty palm. That’s strange. A flower petal was always there after your skin turned red and you got lightheaded. Your mind flashed back to Arlecchino’s hand around yours, how you thought her act of intertwining your fingers was supposed to be an effort to comfort you. 

Oh, how naïve you were.

Arlecchino had the petal.

Arlecchino knew.

Arlecchino was going to have the evidence she needed to confirm her suspicions.

How would she even know-

You always coughed whenever she got close or when you talked to her, you idiot, and she’s a fucking genius, so she’ll piece everything together! Your brain quarreled with each other, your body leaving the room as you stood there like a soldier made of stone, palm open and empty.

Maybe there wasn’t a petal this time. One side argued.

There always is one. 

But maybe there wasn’t.

You leaned onto that sentence, clinging onto it as if it was your lifeline. Maybe there wasn’t a petal this time when you coughed. Maybe it really was just a cough. It wasn’t a cough from your stupid crush on the beautiful, intelligent-

She definitely knows.

You stared at the bread knife on the table, stabbed into a piece of baguette. If only that baguette was your heart, perhaps you wouldn’t have to deal with the constant yes or no that battled in your head, no side willing to raise the white flag yet. 

This was Arlecchino. Hollywood star with a hundred million followers. Everybody knew her name. No haters, no drama, just an absolute queen living among peasants. And… you were one of those peasants. 

As if Arlecchino would ever love you back.

As if Arlecchino would ever want to spend time with you, a total D tier so-called actress.

But maybe there wasn’t a petal this time.

Maybe. How that word was able to make hope fill your heart and shatter it into tiny pieces.

Furina was giving a speech. You were amongst the crowd of both cast and crew, a glass of wine in your damp grip. Your finger drummed against your pants, waiting for her monologue to end so you could ditch the party. 

Somehow, you managed to survive through the whole filming process, despite having to cough up petals every day. Yes, people turned their eyes towards you, then towards the other normal people to talk about the freak you were. Coughing and disrupting every other scene where Arlecchino’s character had to be in close proximity with you. The minute Furina ended her speech, you snatched a full bottle of wine from one of the serves, disappearing into the blank hallways before anyone could start a conservation with you. You ducked into a nearby broom closet, the walls managing to drown out most of the sound of laughter and conversations. You closed the door behind you, sinking down to your knees as a sigh of relief passed through your lips instead of a petal. With the bottle of wine already opened, you wrapped your lips around the front, chugging all the wine down your throat, hoping that’ll be enough to make you forget your situation, even better end your predicament for you. If the disease wasn’t going to kill you, alcohol will. And you were a much bigger fan of the latter.

The noise did not die down for the rest of your time you spent in the closet, your head resting against the wood. Maybe no one will find you here, and leave you here to rot. Yeah. No one paid attention to you, even though you were supposed to be the co-star of the movie. After all, it was Arlecchino you were working with. Arlecchino. Everyone loved her, everyone wanted a picture with her. You? You were just there to hold her bags. That was all you were worth.

“Oh, Arlecchino.” You laughed into the darkness, head rolling against the door. “Why must you be like this?”

You despised the feeling of helplessness and dependency on another person.

You never intended to fall in love with Arlecchino. The constant need to see her and hear her voice was never desired.

And now there was a damn disease you were plagued with that forced you to confront something you wish never existed.

There were two options to get rid of hanahaki forever. Either you confess your love to Arlecchino and she says yes, or you confess your love to Arlecchino and get rejected. 

“Like she’ll ever love me back.” You laughed, bringing the glass to your mouth, even though it was empty.

Suddenly, the door swung open, causing you to fall onto the wooden ground, drunken eyes readjusting to the harsh lights, a crimson and white figure partially blocking your sight.

“Hmn. So this is what people stricken by hanahaki is like? They drink themselves out of their misery and hide in a broom closet?” Arlecchino’s voice echoed in your head, that signature snarkiness and mockery in her voice. Though there was a tint of warmth and concern in her voice as well, or maybe you were just hallucinating again. 

Yep, you’re done for.

[babygirlbenji]

Daylight - Ben Chilwell

A/N: phewwwww this one's a big one!!!!! this is definitely going to be a series and i can't wait to get the next one written

Wordcount: 3.1k (she a big gorl)

If there was one thing in life that you could be certain of, it would be that you loved your routine. Doing shift work probably wasn’t what most people would associate with a routine, but your shifts were regular enough that you had your own little routine that you went through every week.

You woke up. You went to work. You worked out. You went home. You made dinner. You lounged in bed watching Below Deck or Selling Sunset or some other variation of trashy yet entertaining TV. You showered. You scrolled on TikTok (and sent a few funny videos to your friends). You went to bed. Repeat the next day.

You would insert a little day trip somewhere or a meet up with friends when applicable, but for the most part, you had your routine and you stuck with it.

All of that changed, however, when a certain footballer made his way into your life.

It was a Thursday. You remember it was a Thursday, because your favourite regular wasn’t in - she didn’t come in on Thursdays as she volunteered at a food bank every week. So you mooched around, made small talk with colleagues and made your little coffees, trying to improve your latte art. So far, you’d managed a heart, a flower, and some sort of questionable circular formation of foam that you swore looked like a dog if you looked at it the right way while squinting. Your colleague, Kendall, who was probably your closest friend at the coffee shop, was laughing when the aforementioned footballer strode his way into the coffee shop.

You noticed straightaway that he was new. Your coffee shop was small, boutique and tucked away in a corner of Cobham you really had to look for it. The majority of customers came from word of mouth, having been recommended a panini or muffin by a friend. It was no Starbucks or Costa, but all your colleagues swore that it was the best coffee in town (you couldn’t really tell, as you didn’t drink coffee). The second thing you noticed was that he was cute. Oh, god was he cute. He had a bit of scruff around his chin that made its way down a bit of his neck, rosy cheeks that suggested he’d been out for a run, and when he made eye contact with you, you saw the most piercing blue eyes you’d ever seen. You tried to ignore the way your heart thudded when you saw him.

‘Uh, hi,’ the young man started. ‘What’s the best thing on the menu here? A mate recommended this shop to me, said the paninis were the best he’s ever had.’ You opened and closed your mouth like a goldfish, struggling for words. Kendall had mysteriously disappeared to the back room, leaving you on the till by yourself.

‘Um, probably the mozzarella and tomato panini. I have it most days on my break, so it’s probably lost a bit of the novelty for me. It’s good, though.’ He sauntered over to the display cabinet to have a look at the goods on offer. You tried not to stare at him, but you couldn’t help but feel like you recognised him from somewhere.

‘I will try one of those, please. Oh, and an Americano with hot milk, please.’ You nodded and rang his order up on the till. He tapped his card on the card reader, which beeped to signify that the payment had gone through.

Your eyes travelled down to his clothes, and you noticed a familiar logo. Now, you didn’t necessarily follow football, but most of the guys you worked with supported Chelsea Football Club (kind of a necessity, given the training grounds were just a mile or so away from the small town), and you’d seen the logo dozens of times on the water bottles or coffee flasks they brought in.

‘No worries, I’ll get those started for you.’ And so, your routine of getting the food started. The coffee machine whirred in the background, while the steam wand sputtered into life to heat up the milk.

‘It’s a nice place, how long have you worked here?’ The man’s question took you by surprise. You tried not to let it show as you answered.

‘About three years now. This job was initially to get me through uni, but I enjoy it and it’s easy, so I guess I just haven’t left.’ You put his panini into a takeaway box and passed him the cardboard coffee cup. ‘Oh, here’s a cup holder as it’s hot, don’t want you burning yourself.’ You nestled the coffee cup into the holder, before passing him a couple of napkins to take away with him.

‘Thanks. What did you study at uni?’

‘I studied English literature with communications, ideally wanted to go into journalism or something but the job market is awful right now. I barely make enough to live on my own but I like the independence. Are you local?’ If his question took you by surprise, yours to him definitely did. His eyebrows raised, before he seemed to check himself and recovered.

‘Oh, I grew up in Milton Keynes and worked up in Leicester for a bit. Moved down here a few years ago and love it.’ Your head nodded towards his jacket with the Chelsea logo.

‘Working for the football club, I take it?’ He smiled bashfully.

‘Actually I’m a player for the first team. Got a game this weekend, but I’m likely on the bench so I don’t need to take the diet too seriously.’ Your jaw dropped. You knew you’d seen him somewhere. ‘My name’s Ben, by the way, Ben Chilwell. What’s yours?’

‘Y/N. Great to meet you, Ben, be sure to come back soon, and good luck for the game.’ He paused in the middle of putting his backpack on, and looked you straight in the eye.

‘Oh believe me, Y/N, I’ll definitely be coming back.’ And with that, he smiled at you before strolling out of the coffee shop. You were momentarily frozen; did he mean coming back to have another coffee? Or to try another panini? What on earth just happened?

‘Girl, you have to tell me what just happened between you and that cute footballer.’ Kendall’s voice made you jump, as she reappeared from the back room.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ you responded, pretending to wipe the coffee machine steam wand. You didn’t want to believe it, but you secretly hoped that he meant he was coming back to see you.

‘It’s supposed to mean that the chemistry between you two was comparable to the chemistry between Glen Powell and Zoey Deutch in Set It Up. He didn’t take a single bite of his panini so he had no idea how good it was, and he ordered the most basic coffee on the menu. And, he didn’t take his eyes off you for more than a second while you were making the coffee. Furthermore, he made small talk with you. He is mega into you, trust me.’

‘I make small talk with baristas and waitresses all the time! I bet he was just being friendly.’ You and Kendall went back and forth a bit more, and then the lunch rush hit, so you couldn’t really talk again. As you closed up the shop and drove home, though, you couldn’t help but think… maybe Kendall was right?

----

The next couple of weeks came and went. Ben came in every now and then, and the two of you made further small talk and got to know each other more and more. You’d taken the time the day you met him to stalk his Instagram profile. He was Chelsea’s vice-captain, loved dogs, family seemed important to him and he seemed to be incredibly valued by his teammates.

September turned to October. The leaves fell, the temperature dropped and the nights were rapidly drawing in. Pumpkin spice was back on the menu, which prompted a daily rush from the students in the area in the morning and mid-afternoon.

You didn’t want to admit it, but you always looked at the door when the bell dinged to notify you that someone had entered the shop. You’d finally admitted to yourself that in between you and Ben’s getting to know each other, you had developed a little bit of a crush on him. His coffee was more often than not ‘on the house’, and you took a bit more time than needed to prep and make his panini. He’d now gone through most of the options of the paninis, but he regularly returned to the mozzarella and tomato panini that you’d recommended - ‘it really is as good as you said’, he’d said on one occasion.

You opened up to each other about life, your stories, what brought him to Cobham, what countries you wanted to visit, his dream dog (‘I love Oscar, but I would love a Bernese mountain dog’), and all manner of other things. Kendall was sure that he liked you, but it had been nearly two months since he first came in, and he hadn’t made the move to ask you out or even ask for your number.

You stuck to your routine. Work, gym, dinner, shower, bed. It hadn’t wronged you once, and you were definitely starting to see the results of your gym sessions.

One morning, a particularly cold and windy November morning, you locked your car in the car park and walked briskly towards the coffee shop. Before you could reach it, however, a voice calling your name made you stop.

‘Y/N! Y/N!’ You turned around, and nearly crashed straight into…

‘Ben! Hi, how are you? How did the last game go?’ Ben looked - ugh - particularly gorgeous this morning. His hair had grown, he’d trimmed his stubble, his cheeks were as rosy as ever and his dimples were on full show as he smiled warmly at you.

‘I’m good, thanks, yeah the game was alright. We’re getting there.’ You nodded; you couldn’t say you watched games, but you’d watched a couple of highlight videos on YouTube and could potentially be persuaded to watch a game. Your personal favourite video was Chelsea’s Champions League win. Ben had clearly played magnificently, having stopped several goals from materialising. ‘How, um, how are you?’ You nodded and returned his smile.

‘I’m good, just on my way to open up.’ You were struck with a sudden idea. ‘If you’re not in a rush to get anywhere, you could wait for me to open and get the first coffee of the day?’ He smiled.

‘I don’t have anywhere to be today. Lead the way.’

The two of you started to make your way to the coffee shop, making friendly conversation on the way. He told you that he was being rested for the weekend, so he was training but wasn’t on the team for the weekend.

‘It’s frustrating, but I know I’m still not quite full fitness just yet,’ he’d admitted.

‘Full fitness? Why, what happened?’ You asked, curious. He ran a hand through his windswept hair.

‘I was tackled by a Juventus player back in November of 2021. It was a bad tackle, and it tore my ACL, and I’ve struggled with injuries since then. Hamstring, calf, knee… it’s been never ending. I try to tell myself that I’m still a good footballer, it’s just a shame that I’ve been plagued by injury, but still… I’m vice captain and I’ve had barely any minutes this season.’

You were quiet as he basically vented to you.

‘Oh Ben, I’m sorry to hear that. That sounds awful. How is your knee now?’ He sighed.

‘It’s okay. I get regular physio and scans, to keep track of progress. I’m just scared it will happen again, I guess. It’s a miracle I’ve come back to playing at all, a lot of players suffer so much damage they can never play again. It was scary for a while, I didn’t know whether I’d be playing again.’ You let him vent. You were never one of many words, but all your friends and colleagues said that you were one of the best listeners they knew, and this was something that Ben noticed straightaway. The way you just let him talk, even though you barely knew him, and showed genuine empathy and concern in his injury… it made him even more sure that he wanted to get to know you more, wanted to get to the bottom of who you were.

The two of you chatted more, and before long, you’d reached the coffee shop.

‘Take a seat, I’ll get things set up and bring you out a coffee. Did you want a panini?’ Your offer was simply too much for him to ignore, and he took a gentle hold of your arm as you made to walk away. ‘Why don’t you make two and have breakfast with me?’ Your breath hitched in your throat. Was he really asking what you thought he was asking? 

You had to replay what he said to you a couple times in your head to assure yourself that you weren’t hallucinating. ‘Uh, yeah, sure that sounds great. I do need to get things done, like checks and things…’

‘I won’t keep you long, I promise. I just want to get to know you better.’ Despite the cold temperature (the heating hadn’t come on yet), your heart melted and your cheeks flushed. After making sure that everything in the shop was ready (in record time, you took heart in noticing), you prepared Ben’s usual panini and rang through a muffin for yourself. You had about an hour before the shop opened, and you were determined to make the most of it.

Ben sat down at a table close to the window, with you following shortly after.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask - how did you find this place? We’re hardly a major chain or on the main street.’ Ben took a sip of his coffee and smiled fondly.

‘Do you know Mason Mount?’ You shook your head, feeling slightly guilty for your football ignorance showing itself once again. ‘Well, he used to play for Chelsea, he’s up in Manchester now, but he used to come here regularly. Here’s a picture.’ He opened up Instagram and showed you a picture of Mason, and your jaw dropped immediately.

‘Oh! Him! He was always so lovely, he was here all the time. I had no idea he was a footballer! He never came across as one.’ You realised immediately what you’d said, and internally face-palmed, hoping that Ben hadn’t caught on. Unfortunately, he had.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ His face was lit up with a bright smile as he teased you. You were sure that your cheeks were a vibrant red.

‘Well - I - um… that didn’t come out well at all… if it’s any consolation you didn’t come across as a footballer at all… it’s just… when I think of footballers I don’t necessarily think of lovely polite young men who always say please and thank you.’

Ben wiggled his eyebrows.

‘So I’m a lovely young man then?’ He teased further, gently knocking your foot with his. You both dissolved into giggles; you couldn’t help it. Ben was sweet, curious and just downright funny.

‘Yes, you are a very lovely young man.’ Your eyes met his, and you knew then and there that this was the man for you.

Although you’d had your routine in life, it had always felt dull. Grey. Cloudy. Being around Ben, it felt like the clouds had parted and you were seeing in colour for the first time. It was comparable to that first fine sunny day after a long winter. You and Ben chatted back and forth for the next hour, finding out things about each other; favourite songs (his was Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen), favourite artists (yours was Niall Horan), biggest fears (his: not being good enough for Chelsea, yours: bridges, which prompted a teasingly heated discussion which ended in you showing the videos of the Baltimore bridge collapsing and how it had given you nightmares).

The clock showed 9:55, which meant you had five minutes to open the coffee shop.

‘I should get my apron on and get this party started,’ you sighed, getting up from your chair. Ben jumped up to stand next to you.

‘Thank you for sitting with me, I had a lot of fun.’ He smiled that beautiful dimpled smile of his.

‘I did too.’ He took a big breath. ‘And I would love to take you out for dinner sometime.’ The world stopped turning for the briefest of moments, during which you made a mental note to send Kendall a message saying that she was right all along.

‘I would like that a lot, Ben.’ He fished his phone out of his pocket and handed it to you.

‘If I have your number I’ll message you the day and time. Dress nicely.’ God, this man was just a walking green flag - planning the date, funny, in touch with his emotions?

You added yourself to his phone as a new contact, before giving his phone back to him. As you did so, your fingers brushed slightly. Electricity coursed through you; it was almost like being given an electric shock, but this felt much more pleasant. In a wild instant, your body craved more physical contact with him. What did hugging him feel like? What did kissing him feel like? If just one small touch felt like this, what would more feel like? You were desperate to feel more, but you knew you had to wait.

‘I’ll see you soon, Ben.’ He swooped in and brushed the lightest of kisses on your cheek.

‘You too, Y/N.’ And with that, he was gone. You watched him walk down the road towards his car, which you presumed was parked in the multi-storey car park down the road. Your phone buzzed with a message:

From: Unknown number Hey it’s Ben, I’ll message you details of our date later today :) just need to plan it ;)

You screenshotted it and sent the photo to Kendall.

To: Kenny❤️ You were right all along…

From: Kenny❤️ WTF DETAILS NOW!!!!

You shut your phone off, grinning. For the time being, you were going to keep the details to yourself. Kendall would know in time, of course, but you had a coffee shop to open and a routine to keep to.

For now, at least. You had a funny feeling that your routine was going to change very soon, and instead of feeling scared, you opened up the shop feeling at peace with the changes that would be happening in your life.

[thisapplepielife]

Written for the @steddieholidaydrabbles December challenge.

Crumb Together

Prompt Day 27: Coffee Shop AU | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: T | CW: Language | Tags: Modern AU, Meet-Cute, Platonic Stobin, Coffee Shop/Bakery AU, Fluff, Steve POV

Steve is carefully filling the bakery case. He's been here since three a.m., and it's still a half-hour until opening, but at least he's on time and not behind schedule for once. 

"Hey dingus, do we need more muffins?" Robin hollers, banging through the double-doors from the back to the front. 

"No, I have enough, thanks so much," he snaps. He's snippy this morning, pretty mad she ever talked him into this whole coffee shop scheme. Sure, they're retail pros, but small business owners? He should have said no fucking way. But she was excited, and he wanted her to be happy. That’s always his downfall.

He's definitely re-thinking that now that they’ve completely lost their social lives by keeping these insane working and sleeping schedules. They only see each other, which isn't the worst thing in the world, other than the fact that he doesn't know the last time he's touched boobies. Or dick. He's not picky. 

He needs to get laid, and he can’t do that stuck inside this coffee shop slash bakery hell with his best friend.

He's about to turn and sass her, when someone taps on the front door and he jumps, throwing a chocolate muffin up into the air, fumbling it around, before finally regaining control. 

He didn't drop it, but it looks a little worse for wear. He can't sell it like this. 

Well, fuck.

If he was a hired hand, he'd ignore the annoying tapper until the official opening time. Which is twenty-nine minutes from now. But as the owner, he puts down his tray and walks towards the door. They could use the paying customer, even if they’ve shown up way too early, like a rude asshole.

He looks, but he can't see anyone out there in the dark. Maybe he should ignore it.

He doesn't, instead he unlocks the door, and there's a guy standing there. 

"Hey, nice catch," the guy says, smiling. 

Steve forces a smile in return, "How can I help you?" 

"I know you're not open yet, but I saw you in there juggling the muffins, and I'm on my way out of town and really need a cup of coffee. My coffee maker decided this was the morning to croak," he says, slashing his whole hand across his neck, making a throat-slitting motion. 

He's rambling, like Robin.

Steve finds it a little cuter on him, than he does when Robin does it at this ungodly hour. 

Steve sighs, and opens the door wider to let him inside, "You just want black coffee?" 

"Please," the guy says. 

"I'll have to brew it. It'll just take a minute." 

"Thank you, you're a lifesaver," he says, and Steve can see that he's looking at Steve's chest, looking for a name tag. But Steve's not wearing one. Because as the owner, he finally doesn't have to. 

Robin is booting up the point-of-sale system, "Black coffee?" she repeats. 

The guy nods. 

"For?" 

"Eddie," the guy answers. 

"Good thing you asked him, I'd never know who to hand it to," Steve snarks at Robin, starting the coffee machine.

Eddie laughs.

Robin doesn't.

When it's done, Steve places the cup on the counter, and Robin immediately picks it up and writes Eddie's name on it. 

Which, that's stupid. They all know it's Eddie's coffee. Then, Robin sacks up the slightly banged up muffin and hands it to Eddie.

"You scared him and caused him to squish it. So, it's yours. On the house!" she says, far too chipper for this time of morning. 

"Thanks, I'll try to drop by and scare him more often," Eddie says, reading his name on his cup, grinning. Then Eddie slides a ten dollar bill across the counter, waving off his change. 

As soon as the bell on the door jangles, signaling Eddie's departure, Robin turns and slaps Steve on the arm. 

"What the hell? That cute boy wanted to flirt, and you totally dropped the ball, dingus!" 

Steve scrunches up his forehead, "Huh?"

Robin just shakes her head, annoyed, and heads back towards the kitchen.

Is Steve so rusty that he missed flirting? Goddamnit. 

Steve has just turned the front door lock, and flipped the sign to closed, when he hears his cell phone ringing somewhere in the distance. He follows the sound, and when he picks it up, it's a number he doesn't recognize. Great. More telemarketer bullshit. 

He goes to swipe the decline button, when Robin shouts, "You better get that!"

He looks back at his phone and cautiously accepts the call, not knowing what the hell she's done now.

"Hello?"

"Is this Steve? From the coffee shop?"

"Yeah, this is Steve," Steve says, suspicious. He has no idea who he's talking to.

"Good, good. This is Eddie. From this morning. The coffee jerk that made you open early."

"Oh, uh, okay. Um…"

"How did I get this number?" Eddie asks, laughing.

"Yeah, that was what I was thinking," Steve admits.

"Well, somehow it ended up written on my coffee cup this morning, with your name and a time to call."

Steve shakes his head, Robin is such an asshole, but Steve smiles.

"Well, I'm not sure how that happened," Steve says, teasing back. Flirting. 

"Big mystery," Eddie teases, "but since I've got you on the phone, would you like to grab dinner or drinks. Coffee?"

"No coffee," Steve laughs, "but yes. To the other two, for sure. But be forewarned, I eat really early. Like an old person. Early bird specials are my jam. And I go to bed by nine. Eight-thirty if I can get away with it. I gotta be here by three to get ready to open this place."

He's learned to get that info out of the way, early. 

"Well, that sounds perfect. I get up at four to get to my jobsite. I'm in construction," Eddie says.

Steve smiles, it's been a while since anyone has understood his schedule.

"So, dinner? Four-thirty or five?" Eddie asks, and Steve laughs.

If you want to write your own, or see more entries for this challenge, pop on over to @steddieholidaydrabbles and follow along with the fun! ☕

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