#a lot of it is just personal love and weepiness more than analysis

[twilightakiishi]

chika is so beautiful

[formashimataichi]

I mean I love tchy and their growth throughout the series and as that person said that even if they had to get together it'd still be a deconstruction of unhealthy romance tropes bcs they have learnt/are learning from their past experience but I also agree with you on rest of the things like if I didn't love taichihayarata and accept chrt I couldn't imagine enjoying it to the extent I do as of now,and in the end i'd just want him to get a worthy conclusion after developing amazingly all this time (sorry if I said too much,I still really like your blog,your unbiased-ness in reading amazes me I hope to reach that level of tolerance one day/pos)

No worries, I understand what you're saying! That's precisely what I love about Taichi and Chihaya's relationship, is the thing, and what still makes it one of my favorite relationships explored in the entire manga despite the fact that I don't ship it anymore. I think it's very rare to see a narrative so dedicated not just to deconstructing the development of harmful behaviors within a relationship like theirs, but also emphasizing on how people can change for the better and ensure the survival of their relationships with the people they care about if they address certain behaviors. There's been so much time and effort put into helping Taichi and Chihaya move past their codependency on each other while staying true to the fact that they're always going to be supporting each other, even from afar, and it's incredibly endearing to me. It's so often in shoujo / josei that we see "second love interests" fade away into the background because their importance outside of the romance is irrelevant, but what Suetsugu seems to really solidly establish with Taichi is that he's not just important to the narrative because of his feelings for Chihaya. He's important for being his own person with his own problems and with his own dreams, and we get to see those explored at length because he's an integral part of the story in aspects beyond one subsection of genre. Even more gratifying is that, past all of that, his relationship with Chihaya is still important and shown as worth maintaining. They don't suddenly disappear from each other's lives, and the narrative doesn't give up on their friendship. It's allowed to persist and help them grow even while it's evolving into something better than what it used to be, and that's something really refreshing to do in a genre that often doesn't know how to reconcile unrequited love between friends without making one party or the other permanently disappear. Obviously, it's painful to have to transition from that state of loving someone romantically and accepting that they'll never feel the same way about you, and it's definitely something that Taichi is still in the process of, rather than it being resolved within him completely; but I find it to be very hopeful that Suetsugu insists on the importance of believing in our relationships and caring about people and recognizing that romantic love and platonic love do hold equal, if distinct, ground in our lives. In general, her entire perspective on human relationships is very hopeful, and I think that can be a bit jarring for readers who expect otherwise. People need people. That's something she's worked hard to emphasize from the beginning of this tale to its end.

[theminecraftbee]

may i make suggestions for the empires playlist?

Tongues and Teeth by The Crane Wives is a good song for Xornoth and Joey and Sausage. its got like "you knew what you were getting into" vibes

Obsessed With You by The Orion Experience also fits Joey pretty well

Dam, Damn by Päter is also a good Xornoth song, but more focused on him terrorizing Jimmy and Shelby

I just think Lotta True Crime by Penelope Scott is a Lizzie song in any context

ex best friend by suggi is a great song for the ex-wither rose alliance

Word Spins Madly On by The Weepies could be a Pixlriffs song (what with his candlelight vigil)

To My Enemies by Saint Motel has Sausage vibes

you can ABSOLUTELY make suggestions. i was inviting suggestions. i am so happy to see suggestions. and you made a lot of suggestions for me to think about! now i've gotta turn on analysis brain,,, i'm going to put this under a cut because i need to ramble on all of these song ideas

ALRIGHT. first. tongues and teeth. it's a song i really like already! it's an interesting choice for xonorth i think...? it would give the demon a very, very specific sort of characterization, as i always interpreted the singer of that song as... almost regretful that she feels as though she will hurt anyone she gets close to? both regretful and bitter at the idea that someone might try to change her ("i am not a vessel for your good intent"). so applying the characterization of that song to xonorth creates a really interesting character for him, mr. "love, hate, same thing". i like this in concept. i will think about it a lot

it's also worth noting before we go on that at least part of that sense that this person is resentful of being treated like someone she isn't and regretful that she's hurting the person she's singing to comes through in the performance; lyrically alone it's a lot more "hey loving me will hurt you". the performance of the song is what suggests the more emotions to it. so WHO KNOWS.

obsessed with you is next. and, may i say. you have very good taste. orion experience good. i don't have much to say to this one other than "the idea of this being a joey song is very funny to me, even if it's accurate", because this song is just. it's so bouncy and bubbly. and also a little stalker-ish. joey are you okay,

....another interesting choice in my mind is you saying that dam, damn is a song for shelby and jimmy being tormented by xonorth, because if you take the lyrics really literally, that can absolutely work! it just requires taking the lyrics of the song almost entirely literally. my instinct listening to this song is that the demons are metaphorical, not literal, but if they're literal, they definitely fit the scenario you described.

i am going to propose that this is still a shelby song, actually, like. just straight-up a song for her. trying to build her new life after running to this dimension. no longer taking chances. (holding back the parts of her that are still hurting.) especially this verse:

Got a team of builders gathered round Got a little sunshine in my town Got a lot of time since shit went down I ain't gonna take no chances now Not now, not now

so yeah. definitely a shelby song. also a good song throwing it on all my playlists now i like it a lot.

lotta true crime is another song i already knew. (continued good taste.) it's a bubbly song about a kinda dark subject matter, which i think fits lizzie pretty well. i also like for her how the lyrics are pretty strongly stating that the singer doesn't believe that killers are somehow smart or better than other people, they're just full of themselves. this feels like a lizzie sentiment to me. good song. quietly goes to throw this on a third life playlist somewhere,

ex best friend doesn't have many lyrics but. the almost mournful and betrayed nature of the lyrics. yeah. ex-wither rose alliance. man. this is one i don't have much to add to other than "it fits i think".

alright. so. the world spins madly on is an interesting pix pick. it's a song about a destroyed relationship, but the song itself sort of fits in the sense that pix is on his messy redemption arc (redeeming himself for something he considers himself to be his fault). songs like this do sort of fit his vibes. and, if you subscribe to the immortal pix thing? "the whole world is moving and i'm standing still" i see. and that first line hurts a lot. and thanks, now i'm hurting.

like, okay, this definitely works as a pix song. you have to do a little interpreting but it definitely works as a pix song, it just also hurts me. it's a song about the world moving on as you try to cope with something that's gone and hurting you, and if you take this to be about the dragon fight, about the mistakes pix has made? yeah this works. interesting song choice i can see it i can see it.

okay. and finally. your song choice that's hurt me most. to my enemies by saint motel for sausage. i don't... i don't think i need to actually analyze this one to make you understand why i am now crying. let me just post some lyrics.

To my enemies Those were the best days of our lives When our hate made us feel so alive So wrong it's right So wrong it's right, all right

I still miss the pain It's never felt the same You took more than my dog when you ran off with my dog (Did you know that? Did you know that?)

Blood and sweat and tears We learned each other's fears and God, I'll miss the way you cry Did you know that? Did you know that?

HAHAHA. YEP. SAUSAGE SONG. FUCK ME RIGHT,

thank you SO MUCH for all of your suggestions these are excellent!

[dovechim]

a remedy for mondays 02 (m)

➾ 12.6k

➾ please read part 01 first!! 

➾ summary: all you wanted was just one day off work. but for that to happen, you need to invent a plausible reason. and then somehow, somewhere along the way, things get out of hand, and now people think you’re having a baby with your co-worker Park Jimin after a one-night stand. confused? join the club.

➾ warnings: SMUT, risky unprotected sex (pls be safe!), one night stand, oral sex (m&f), cum fetish/ cum eating (m), creampies, public bj, impregnation kink, baby making dirty talk, switch jimin. 

➾ a/n: happy monday (at least for me)!!!! the smut is finally here u guys... i feel like im making up for lost time lmaooo ok but real talk there’s a lot more to come in the future. once again, i wanna express my undying love for @jimlingss. without her, half of what's in this fic would not exist c: 

love you guys. have a good week ahead 💓

The notifications are pouring in like crazy. Before this you didn’t even realise you had this many friends, but it seems like now everyone wants a piece of the congratulations-pie, everyone wants to share in on your good news.

Your sister has been calling and texting you non-stop to ask when your next checkup is, and if she can come along to see the ultrasound. Your mother has been leaving long, weepy voicemails begging you to call her back.

It’s all just too much, and its Monday again.

“Your performance has been awfully sub-par lately,” your manager sighs as she flips through your report. “I thought we went over this the last time we met? Where’s the analysis for the datasets I gave you last week?”

“I’m sorry, I’ll work harder,” you mumble under your breath, swallowing back the unfairness that tastes bitter in the back of your throat. Even though you’d spent what was remaining of your weekend churning out all the reports, it’s still not enough. Nothing will ever be enough for your slave driver of a manager.

“See that you do. You may go for now,” she dismisses you, and you leave her office.

You plop down at your desk with a heavy sigh, looking at your emails with no real motivation to do anything. Between the pressure at work and the whole mounting scandal of your supposed pregnancy, you are caught between a rock and a hard place. There’s no real solution to any of this. All you have to blame is yourself.

No, actually, your asshole boss is to blame. She sent you a set of painfully incomplete datasets last week, expecting you to get a full analysis out of them. When you wrote back to her that some data was missing, hence making it difficult for you to analyse, she just ignored your email.

Feeling your anger surge through our entire body, you pick up your mug and shove yourself out of your chair, muttering under your breath.

“What the fuck does she want me to do, magic the data out of thin air? Pull the data out of my ass?” Luckily everyone around you is too absorbed in their work to notice that you’re walking around and talking angrily to yourself.

You wash your cup with more vigour than necessary, scrubbing extra hard as you imagine that the surface of your cup is your boss’s face. You get back to your seat and set your cup down, breathing hard both from the exertion and the annoyance.

“I hit 200 mentions this morning,” Park Jimin remarks casually as he drops his briefcase on his desk and sinks into his chair. “I’ve never had this many notifications before.”

You shoot him an annoyed glare. “Not here!”

Gesturing for him to follow you, you scope out an empty meeting room and close the door.  He comes in and sits on the desk with his arms crossed.

“So what are we going to-“

“Let’s have a baby.”

Park Jimin gapes at you, and if the situation weren’t this dire, you’d laugh about how someone so handsome can get caught off guard too. You run your eyes over his body, from the way his thighs look thicker as he perches on the edge of the desk, his slim biceps that show through his white dress shirt, and his dashing good looks. Why nothave a baby with Park Jimin? At this point, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to you.

“You’re not thinking straight are you?” Jimin cautions with his hands up, as if trying to ward off a raging, charging bull. “What happened? Did your manager give you hell again? You’re always cranky on Mondays.”

“I’m cranky, am I?” Your voice has a slight edge to it. “I’ll tell you why I’m cranky alright. My sister is texting me every two seconds asking if I’ve set up an appointment with the doctor yet. My mother is calling me every four seconds to tell me what she thinks our baby’s name should be-“

“Wait- really? But you haven’t gotten a single call in the whole time that you’ve been here…”

“I’m not getting a moment’s peace,” you whirl around on him with a slightly manic look on your face, and Park Jimin’s eyes widen even more, and he gulps in fear. “Let’s just have this fucking baby already.”

Jimin knows well enough not to engage someone when they’re in full on panic mode, so he lets you take a few deep breaths before speaking. Over the past few months, he’s grown pretty familiar with what your likes and dislikes are, particularly your preference for drowning your sorrows in alcohol. So maybe the next thing that he suggests is not the most rational, but fuck it, at this point, does it even matter anymore?

“You know what? Let’s ditch work early today and go for drinks.” Jimin watches your expression change immediately, and his heart seizes in relief.

But then a frown crosses your face. “Oh but I can’t, I have that fucking dataset to analyse…”

“Fuck it.” You’re shocked when the expletive leaves his lips; the normally reserved Park Jimin who always does all his work and makes sure to cross his ‘t’s and dot his ‘i’s. “It’s Monday. Who wants to work on a Monday?”

*

It feels like the two of you are doing something illegal when you lean to the side and catch Park Jimin’s eye at exactly 5pm on the dot. You already decided that leaving at the same time from your seats would be far too inconspicuous, so the plan is for you to pretend to go to the ladies’ washroom, which is in one direction, and for him to leave for the men’s about 10 minutes later, then meet at the taxi stand and hail a cab to get the hell out of this place.

It’s a whole rendezvous, and since you left earlier, you reach the taxi stand first; panting even though you haven’t done that much physical exercise to justify it at all. The minutes are ticking by; any time now any one of your coworkers could walk by and see you waiting for a taxi and immediately know that you’re leaving work early. But it’s even worse still if they happen to catch you and Park Jimin hopping into a cab together, so you only pray that your brainless coworkers are tied to their desks.

Not a second later, Park Jimin appears, his hair ruffled and his eyes shining behind his glasses with mirth. His lips are quirked into an excited smile as he waves down a cab, opens the door for you and gestures you in. The simple act of his, done without much thought at all, actually makes your heart skip a beat as you get in.

You can’t help but obsessively check over your shoulder to see if any of your co-workers just so happen to be around. It’s only when you clear the near vicinity of your workplace that your shoulders sag with relief, and even more so when the cab screeches to a stop, signalling that you’ve arrived. Jimin pays the driver without a word, refusing to accept your money as you clamber out of the cab after him.

It’s not the typical scene you would have found yourself at in your younger days. This bar is a lot more lowkey, the lighting is dim despite the fact that they haven’t even reached happy hour yet. It’s hard to make out anyone’s face inside, and you nearly lose sight of Jimin were it not for the fact that his hand is tightly grasping yours.

“What would you like to start off?” Jimin asks as you reach the bar. He turns to see you struggling to get on the high chair in your skirt and heels, and he reaches to steady the back of the chair so that it doesn’t tip over.

“Shots.” You declare. “I need to get wasted, and fast.”

Giving you a raised eyebrow, but not protesting in the least, Jimin turns to order and in that moment, gives you a really nice glimpse of his side profile. Somewhere along the taxi ride he had taken off his glasses and pushed his hair back, and unbuttoned his dress shirt a little more. You have to tear your eyes away from him when the bartender presents you with a tray of tequila shots with salt decorating the rim, and some finger food to go along with it.

You grab one and he follows suit.

“What should we toast to?” Park Jimin asks.

“To our baby,” you say with a slight laugh, and though you can feel the slightly weird look that the bartender gives you, you don’t really give a fuck. All that matters is that the only other person in here who knows the truth is Park Jimin, and he gives you a shared smile as you clink glasses.

The alcohol burns as it slides down your throat, and you immediately reach for another to chase it down. The tray clears out pretty quickly as Jimin matches you shot for shot, and every time you put down your glass, reality gets further and further away, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

“So tell me,” Jimin says as he reaches for the ketchup bottle and uncaps it, pulling the bowl of truffle fries closer to him. “Was this always your dream?”

You stop him as he’s about to pour ketchup all over the top of the fries like a savage instead of doing it the normal way, on the side. “Dude, order your own fries if you’re gonna ruin them like that!”

“What, how is that weird? I’ve always done that!”

“You belong in a mental institution,” you fix him with a glare. “Anyway, was whatalways my dream?”

Jimin just shrugs and gives in as he takes a few fries from the bowl to dip, like a civilized person. “This job.”

“Was working at a desk job for 9 hours straight always my dream? Uh, I think not,” you chew on your fries. “Which child ever had a dream like that? Did youhave a dream like that?”

“Me? I wanted to be a policeman,” Jimin grins as he raises his clenched fists. “You know all that idealistic shit children believe in. Making a difference in the world. Catching all the bad guys. Things like that.”

“So you don’t believe in those things anymore?”

“No, I still believe in them,” he raises another shot to his lips and downs it with a grimace. “I just realised that things aren’t so black and white. There are bad guys everywhere, but sometimes you just can’t catch them. Sometimes they’re the ones in positions of power over you and you gotta live like that.”

You reach for another shot, but the tray is empty. Jimin signals the bartender to bring you a second round of drinks; a gin and tonic for you and a coke with vodka for him. The alcohol has your senses buzzing pleasantly, it feels like there’s a disconnect between your brain and your mouth, but you don’t actively object to it either. It feels nice to be able to tell someone things like this.

“I gave up on having a dream long ago. Not everyone is lucky enough to do what they like in life, and I already accepted that I’m not one of those people. And it’s okay.” You turn in your chair so that you are facing Jimin directly, though you have a bit of trouble because it seems like your body is disconnected from your brain.

Jimin helps you with a hand on your thigh that sends shockwaves through your entire body. His daring touch makes your heart speed up, and when he positions your chair so that his thighs are on the outside of yours, you can barely breathe as you look him in the eye. And then he leans forward, slowly, bit by bit, until you think he’s going to kiss you, but then he only takes a whiff of your alcohol laden breath.

“Come on. I should see you home. We still have work tomorrow.” His words brook no resistance as he helps you off the chair with an arm around your waist, and the alcohol seems to have taken effect on you faster than usual today, because you’re only capable of sinking into him, feeling his firm body against yours.

A cab pulls up to the entrance of the bar, and Jimin shields your head as you get into the car, barely having control over your limbs. You mutter your address to the driver, and over the ride home, the bumps and turns actually help you to sober up a little, but then you begin to notice the little things like how Park Jimin’s thighs are actually pretty thick.

And when he stretches forward to pay the driver again, you notice how nice his biceps are.

When he walks in front of you leading you with one hand, you notice how tight his ass looks in his pants.

As he waits for you to unlock your door, you feel his breath on the nape of your neck, and just the feeling of having his body this close to yours is just-

“So um, goodnight, it was fun, I guess,” Park Jimin is stuttering and stumbling over his words as he scratches the back of his neck. “We should do it again sometime. Ditch work, I mean.”

Oh fuck it all to hell, you think to yourself as you grab Park Jimin by the collar and pull him into you, your lips meeting and immediately, you taste the sweetness of the coke on his tongue. Park Jimin lets out an adorable little grunt of surprise, but his hands still wrap around you anyway, one around your waist and the other inching down towards your hip.

“We- shouldn’t be doing this,” Park Jimin pants in between kisses as you bite his lips roughly, and watching them become swollen with your kisses gives you a strange satisfaction that you’ve never experienced with anyone else.

But his rationality is impeded by the alcohol rushing through his bloodstream, but even more so than that, the feel of your soft body against him. So Park Jimin forgets what he was going to say next as you make him walk backwards in the direction of your bedroom.

“But we’re doing it anyway,” you tell him with flushed cheeks, and his hands agree with you as they climb up your body, reaching for the zipper on the side of your skirt.

He pulls your skirt off impatiently, but you won’t let him get away with it so easily as you fiddle with the buttons of his dress shirt, finally prising them apart to get a good look at his sleek chest muscles and his toned abdomen.

“Shit,” you swear under your breath. “When the fuck did you get those?”

Park Jimin looks smug as he pushes his shirt off his body, feeling his abs tense as you straddle his lap. “What do you mean? I’ve always had these.”

“I thought you were just some skimpy little nerd,” you huff at him in slight annoyance. It’s almost a little rude of him to spring it on you like this, suddenly turning from the computer geek nerd into a hot walking sex god.

“A nerd hot enough for you to have a one-night stand with,” Jimin throws back at you with a proud smirk, and irritated with his sudden overconfidence, you shut him up by grinding against the bulge in the front of his now too tight dress pants.

“That doesn’t count, I was panicking,” you try to defend yourself weakly, but Jimin ignores you in favour of mouthing against your neck, kissing his way down to your bra cups, which he pulls down with his teeth. As if to prove his point that you are having a one-night stand with him right now.

Jimin is fumbling with your bra at the same time you are trying to undo the button of his pants, and the whole affair is desperate; the two of you are half-sober and everything is a blur. All you know is, the next thing his pants are off, his cock is leaking on his stomach, and the desire to take him in your mouth is undeniable.

Your hand grasps him at his base, and he bucks his hips into you immediately, curses falling from his swollen lips. A few good strokes, and then you can’t wait anymore, your lips close around his head and the saltiness of him spreads across your tongue.

“Ahhh, fuck,” Jimin’s hands tangle themselves in your hair. “I- gu-ess we’re not co-workers anymore?”

Your mouth is too full of cock to respond as you sink down on him deeper, loosening your throat as your tongue teases the underside of him. Saliva is already dripping from the corners of your mouth to run down your chin, and you belatedly realise that your bra is still on; Jimin hadn’t managed to get it off. With one hand you reach behind you and undo the clasp, shrugging the bra off in a single movement as Jimin swears as if he just witnessed a miracle (he’s never actually seen any of the girls he’s been with do this.)

You pull yourself off his cock for a moment to give yourself a breather, resting the head of him against your chin as you look up at him. “Just ask yourself, Park. Would a co-worker be sucking your dick like this?”

And then your mouth is back on him; you feel his hands in your hair and his thighs trembling beneath you. His cock is leaking in your mouth, it is thick in your throat as you bob up and down, the sounds of you choking around his cock are filthy and wet.

“Stop!” Jimin sounds out with a gasp, his abs trembling from the amount of effort it takes him not to blow his load. “It- it’s been a while. I don’t wanna cum yet, please.”

His pleading, whiny voice that’s filled with desperation makes you reconsider. Maybe he isn’t a sex god after all; he just happens to have a good body. You pull away from his cock and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, and Jimin pulls you forward to sit on his lap. His cock brushes against your stomach, and he can’t seem to keep his eyes off your breasts.

“Have you even done this before?” You mean it as a joke, but Park Jimin’s eyes widen in panic.

“What?! Of course I have!” He says defensively. “Let me eat you out and I’ll show you.”

He reaches for the waistband of your underwear, but you swat him away impatiently. “That’ll take too long. Just let me ride you and we can both cum.”

You push down your underwear in a single movement, not missing the way his eyes are drawn to how your arousal clings to the material. He helps you situate yourself on him with his hands around your waist, and you grab the base of his cock to start to guide him into you. But then, Park Jimin stops you.

“Make sure you’re wet enough?” He asks as he runs his fingers against your slit, though he pretty much already knows the answer just from seeing how soaked your panties were. He just wants to feel the evidence of your arousal for himself. His fingers come away sticky and soaked.

While Park Jimin is busy marvelling at how wet you are just from sucking his cock, you position the head of his cock at your entrance, and then you sink down slowly onto him. The stretch of him against your walls makes you dig your fingers into his shoulders, and likewise, Park Jimin’s fingers dig themselves into your waist as he moans out your name.

“F-fuck, you’re tight,” Jimin barely manages to get out as you stop with a few more inches to go. “You didn’t answer my question earlier on.”

“What is it?” You grit your teeth as you position yourself on your knees, trying to work yourself into taking his entire cock. It had been a while since you last had dick, let alone one as thick as Park Jimin’s, but you aren’t a quitter by any means.

“We- we aren’t co-workers anymore, huh?” Jimin groans again as you squeeze his cock with your walls.

“For fuck’s sake, Park,” you growl at him as you start bouncing on his cock, each slap satisfying as he bottoms out inside you. “We stopped being co-workers the minute I publicised our one-night stand.”

Your hands are on his chest for better leverage as your hips grind on his cock to get him as deep as possible, alternating between up and down movements and side to side movements. Park Jimin has his hands on your hips to help guide you, but he realises you don’t need guidance, so he just sits back to let himself enjoy the visual spectacle that’s unfolding in front of him. You, with your cheeks flushed and breasts loose and bouncing because of his cock, riding him as if your life depends on it. Jimin looks down to where his cock disappears inside you, where your sweet thighs are flexing and working to get the both of you off. But it’s not quite enough.

“Turn around,” he begs. “Wanna see your ass too.”

“God, you’re so fucking weird, Park,” but you do it anyway, letting his cock slide out of you as you turn around and fold your knees under you so that your back faces him.

Jimin spreads his thighs just enough so that they frame your ass perfectly, his hand pressing against your lower back so that you arch and press your ass against him even more. Then he spreads your cheeks with one hand and guides his cock back into your warm depths with the other, groaning when you push back onto him and sit on his cock fully. Now every time you bounce on his cock, your ass jiggles deliciously, and as an ass man, Jimin appreciates this view so much that he tries his best to take a mental picture of this whole view with his mind.

His cock sliding into your pussy so easily since you’re so wet, the fleshy globes of your ass against his thighs as you fuck yourself back onto his cock.

“I-I’m gonna cum,” he warns you with his cheeks hot and abs tensing.

“Just cum already,” you huff in impatience as you turn your head to catch a glimpse of his already fucked out look, lips swollen and his hands on your ass as his cock twitches inside you.

With your permission, Jimin lets himself go as he feels his balls tense, cock releasing inside your sweet, warm pussy and filling you up all the way with his cum. He continues to watch your ass bounce on his cock to milk him dry of every drop, his hips thrusting upwards in an effort to prolong his pleasure. Once he can feel that he’s given you every drop of cum in his body, he places his hands on your ass and pushes you forward with cheeks spread so he can see how well he filled your pussy.

His softening cock starts to slide out from you, and Jimin can see his cum start to leak from your pussy almost immediately. To your benefit, you are giving him the fucking show of his life as you arch your back and lean forward, guided by his hands as you lower your upper body to the bed.

“Shit, oh fuck it,” Jimin mutters to himself as he pushes himself into a sitting position, then with both hands grasping the back of your thighs, he flips you over till you are on your ass, then pulls you with legs spread closer to him. The sight of your cream filled pussy is just too tempting to resist, and Jimin licks through your soaked folds as he savours your taste mixed with his.

He barely hears you squeak out his name in surprise as he continues to devour your creamed pussy, tongue around your clit in circles and fingers dipping into your cunt to tease out more of his cum from your depths. To his pleasure, his cum leaks from you in an ever steady stream as he eats you out; your thighs are shaking around his head as you cry out your pleasure till you lose track.

When you beg him to stop, thighs quivering from overstimulation and clit raw and abused, he raises his head and gives you a quick kiss to your inner thigh, collapsing onto the bed in pure exhaustion. Post high, you are both wiped out, and that’s how the two of you, who are most certainly notco-workers anymore, fall asleep.

*

Everything is too bright. And everything hurts, your throat is dry and again, everything hurts. You forget that you aren’t in your prime time anymore; that drinking is a night of fun followed by a morning of regret.

Though this morning, you have a lot more to regret than just alcohol.

You wake up with an alien arm around your waist, and frustrated by the unwanted physical contact, you toss it away with an annoyed grunt. Your elbow strikes out in the same direction, only to hit a solid, warm body beside you, and then your eyes shoot open as you sit straight up in bed.

Only to find a very naked, very passed out Park Jimin sleeping beside you.

“Holy fucking shit,” the realisation of exactly what happened last night hits you, and dread punches you in the stomach.

“Is it morning already?” Park Jimin buries his face into your sheets, his blonde hair sticks out in every direction. “Five more minutes, mom.”

Irritated that he’s yet to come to his senses, you kick his stupid, bubble butt, and he jerks awake, opening his eyes blearily. Once he takes in your expression, he closes them immediately.

“Can’t say that’s the best thing to wake up to in the morning,” Jimin says with his face buried in the sheets again, his voice muffled. “Nothing kills my morning wood faster than-“

“Get the fuck up, Park,” you hiss at him, clutching the sheets to your chest. “Come to your fucking senses!”

At the tone of urgency in your voice, Park Jimin finally shakes himself awake; he blinks slowly until he takes in the whole situation: you and him, supposedly co-workers, waking up together in the same bed, naked.

“Holy fuck, did we just…” Park Jimin glances down at his cock that lies limp against the side of his thigh, and the sticky, dried essence left behind. “Oh my god. We fucked.”

“We arefucked,” you correct him.

*

It seems as if whoever is running things up in the divine realm really has it out for you. Nursing a hangover as you walk into work, you try your best not to make eye contact with Park Jimin, which is easier said than done considering that he sits right opposite you.

So this is how it feels when two colleagues actuallyhave a one-night stand.

You run a hand through your hair in frustration, unable to focus on any of your tasks this morning.

“Hey, _____- whoa, are you feeling okay?” Kim Taehyung does a double take as he passes by your desk. “You look a little, um… under the weather. You feeling alright? Is it… how’s the baby? How many months are you again?”

Your face only pales even further as he brings up the non-existent baby, and with that, a realisation that the both of you didn’t use protection last night. Park Jimin seems to have arrived at the same realisation, because he makes eye contact with you for the first time that morning as he peeks out the side of his computer.

“I’m- I’m alright,” you manage a forced smile, wanting nothing more than for him to just fuck off already so that you can begin to process all this in peace and figure out exactly how screwed over you are.

“Well, if you say so,” Kim Taehyung says with a doubtful frown. “You know, _____, we actually have really great benefits for mothers. Even unwed mothers. I’d love to sit down and go through them with you one day if you could spare me the time. Wait actually, can I see your baby bump? I always thought they were the cutest-“

“I have to throw up,” you say without hesitation, and you stand up and push past him on your way to the restroom.

It’s not entirely a lie, since you do spend a good ten minutes praying at the porcelain altar, but no one has to know it was because of alcohol intoxication. When you finally flush and then rinse out your mouth at the sink, you open the door of the restroom to find Park Jimin waiting with a worried look on his face.

“Are you okay?” He starts, but then Jeongguk walks by you and shoots you both an admiring look.

“Lovebirds alert!” He sings out in that highly irritating voice of his as he dances down the aisle.

“No, I want to fucking die,” you mutter under your breath as you stare daggers into Jeongguk’s back.

“I need to ask you something,” Park Jimin says urgently as he glances around for any eavesdropping ears. He grasps your hand and tugs you into the nearest meeting room, and once he makes sure that the doors are locked securely, he turns to you again. “We used a condom last night right? We are responsible, working adults. We wouldn’t forget something as basic as that.”

You sink down onto a chair with a glum look on your face. “Impossible. We couldn’t have used a condom. I don’t have any condoms in my house.”

Park Jimin makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Well… then, you’re on birth control right?”

“It makes me gain weight like crazy. The only reason why I’m not a balloon right now is because I went off the pill years ago.”

There is a beat of silence as Park Jimin stares at you as if you’re pulling his leg. Then a random thought occurs to you that you could very well still end up being a balloon precisely becauseyou’re not on birth control right now.

“What about Plan B?” Jimin lights up, literally jumping out of his chair as he suggests it. “You could get it right now. I’ll drive you. We can say we’re going to the doctor’s for an appointment or something.”

The sobering reality sets in as you sit there in silence, and Park Jimin is still looking at you, waiting for your response. Only, you don’t quite know how to respond. The rational part of you should be jumping to your feet now and making him rush you to the nearest pharmacy, but then there’s a tiny voice in the back of your head that you can’t ignore.

This would solve all your problems.

Park Jimin is still waiting for your response, growing more and more antsy as the minutes tick by.

“Do you know how many people know about this baby?” You finally say.

Those were not the words Park Jimin was expecting to hear, and he does a double take. “Wh- what? What are you talking about?”

“Approximately 265 people,” you continue on, ignoring his cautious look. “Your family, my family, the whole company, my friends, my ex-boyfriend and his new wife-“

“You counted? Why would you do that?” Jimin groans as he runs his hands through his hair. “You didn’t have to remind me of how fucked we are and how many people we have to answer to. My Granny dug out my baby clothes from some godforsaken corner in the house and gave them to me last night.”

The mention of Jimin’s Granny fills you with guilt once more, and it makes the tiny voice grow a little louder, and you try to swallow back the awful feeling.

“Exactly. So why don’t we just… leave this up to chance. Just this once.” You keep glancing at Jimin to gauge his reaction, but the blonde haired man only stares back at you with the same serious expression on his face. “Plan B wouldn’t have worked anyway. I already ovulated this month.”

“Shit,” Jimin sighs as he collapses down into a chair. “So there’s an actual chance? That you could be pregnant right now? But I… I ate you out. Maybe I got most of it out from you.”

The both of you know that Jimin is simply grasping at straws now.

You just shrug silently as Jimin takes some time to let the reality of the situation sink in. Just then, your phone buzzes and you open the text from your sister who’s asking if she can accompany you to your ultrasounds. You groan audibly, and Jimin takes a peek over at your phone screen.

“Just this once,” he says, as if he’s really considering it as he watches the messages from your sister flood your screen. “But… will you be okay? If it really does happen, I mean. Are you okay with that?”

“I mean, I hate kids and all, if that’s what you’re asking.” You lock your phone and put it face down on the desk just so you don’t have to deal with that for a hot second. “But that aside, if it’s a cute kid, I guess I don’t mind. I mean… if the kid looked like you. I guess I don’t mind.”

You don’t know why it’s taking you so long to say what you really mean. It’s not like you to beat around the bushes like this, nor is it like you to be tripping over your own words like an idiot. But the gist of it still gets through anyway, by the look on Park Jimin’s face.

“I… I guess I wouldn’t mind either. Kids are cute.” Jimin says hesitantly, eyes constantly darting away from yours. “I mean, I’mcute. Obviously my kids would be cute.”

“Um. Okay then,” you say awkwardly, getting up and skirting around him to get to the door. “I guess… um… so… I’ll let you know. If anything happens.”

Jimin gets up with a resolute look on his face as he follows you to the door. “Yeah. Sure.”

*

The next Monday, everyone is off work for the afternoon because it’s the quarterly Healthy Lifestyle Day, where a poll is sent out to everyone to vote for the healthy bonding activity that their team should engage in. In actual fact, the poll is a scam since bowling wins every time, all because it’s well known that Bae Joohyun’s favourite pastime is bowling.

You endure the awful scents of sweat as you squeeze into your awful rented bowling shoes, grimace as you cram your fingers into the holes on the bowling ball, try not too hard to embarrass yourself as you bowl gutter after gutter. Your back is aching, face is sweaty and you are straight up not having a good time.

Bae Joohyun, on the other hand, is nailing strike after strike in her own lane, with her team of personal cheerleaders making a huge fuss every time she finishes her round. Those are the very group of people who are aiming for a promotion that year; the rest of you are just kind of milling about the other lanes and pretending to enjoy yourself.

You finish your round and plop down on the seat with a sigh, watching as Jeon Jeongguk takes his turn after you with a flourish as he launches his ball down the alley. It’s no secret that he too loves bowling, and he’s pretty good at it too, until Seokjin, one of those vying for a promotion, had to come over and tell him to tone down lest he beat Bae Joohyun’s score.

God forbid if that should happen.

Jeon Jeongguk is trying very hard to do his worst, and it’s actually kind of hilarious because you can literally see the veins in his neck as he strains, his body tensing as he shifts his posture so that his ball rolls into the gutter. The utter disappointment on his face as he strolls back, looking as if he’s about to cry.

“Better luck next time, Jeon,” you call out, feeling a little sorry for the boy with the bunny smile since it seems as if he really does enjoy bowling.

“Yeah, better luck next time!” Kim Taehyung yells out as he takes his time choosing his ball. He holds it in front of him and glances at you with a strange look on his face that immediately warns you to be on guard. “Hey, _____...”

“Yes?” Your voice is raised in suspicion, already not loving where this is going.

“I wanted to ask you this last week, but where is your bump?” Taehyung strokes the bowling ball with a reverence that makes you want to roll your eyes. Why the fuck do you work with weirdos? Taehyung eyes the bowling ball he’s carrying before he looks at you again. “Shouldn’t you be around this far along by now?”

You glance nervously at Jimin, who is in the other lane paired up with the Parenting team, laughing and smiling with this other girl who has long wavy hair that comes down to the middle of her back. But he’s currently too occupied with making her laugh, even helping her out with her bowling posture, to help you out of this hole, so you have to deal with this one yourself.

“The doctor said it’s a small baby,” you shrug as nonchalantly as you can, secretly marvelling at your own genius. “Some people don’t show until the 8thor 9thmonth, you know. It’s perfectly normal. Every pregnancy is different.”

You even sound knowledgeable to your own ears. Taehyung looks convinced by your story, but then he decides to put the bowling ball under his shirt for some inane reason, drawing more attention to himself as your coworkers start to notice.

“Hey Park! Look, I’m your girlfriend!” Taehyung yells and you stand up in horror.

“What the fuck, are you fucking high?” You hiss at him, trying to get him to take the ball out without dropping it on his own foot. “Stop fucking around! Bae Joohyun is here!”

Her name gets him to sober up a little, though it’s already too late because Namjoon from HR is strolling over with an amused look on his face, having sat out the bowling because of his injured finger (he’s always injuring some part of his body because of his clumsiness).

“Hey _____, how’s the baby? Don’t mind if I feel the bump? Is the baby kicking yet?” He says with an excited look on his face. “My sister felt her kicks early. It was the most magical thing.”

“Uh… no, not yet,” you laugh weakly and wave his hand away. “It’s a very small baby for now, so…”

“Oh come on, I’m sure there’s been a flutter or two here and there!” Namjoon insists with his eyes bright, and Taehyung nods vigorously.

“C’mon, just let us feel the bump?” Taehyung begs with his hands clasped together, and you glance around furtively. The two of them won’t seem to stop going on and on about this baby, but if you just let them touch your stomach maybe they’ll be satisfied. It can’t hurt, it’s not like they have ultrasounds for hands.

“Fine,” you sigh as you tense your stomach a little. You don’t have the flattest stomach, but it’s certainly not as pronounced as it should be this far into pregnancy. But it’s harmless, they won’t be able to feel anything, and-

“Oh my god, I think the baby just kicked!” Namjoon exclaims with his hand on your lower abdomen, and you frown in distress. “There! Right there! I felt it! Taehyung, did you feel it too?”

Namjoon removes his hand and urges Taehyung to take his place, which the latter does without hesitation. You’re just about to protest that this touchy feely session has gone on for a tad too long, but then Taehyung’s face lights up.

“You’re right! I felt it too! Oh my god ______, your baby kicked!”

He says this last sentence with a booming voice that echoes throughout the bowling alley, and you wish the ground would just open up and swallow you whole. More and more people are turning to look at you now, including total strangers not from your company, and even Jimin and the pretty girl he’s with are turning to you.

Namjoon and Taehyung are absolutely wrecking you today. Luckily Jeon Jeongguk doesn’t seem to be in the mood to join in, seeing as he’s seated on the far end of the sofa soaking up his own misery.

Your cheeks are burning as you feel the burrito from lunch announcing its presence, but you paste on a shaky smile and add on to your credibility with a nervous laugh. “Oh wow… um, that’s the baby, y-yeah it is! The kicks have been so tiny I barely noticed!”

Namjoon is literally clapping his hands with glee. “Where’s Park? He needs to witness this moment! He’s your baby daddy!”

Taehyung glances around till he catches a glimpse of Jimin and the pretty girl with the wavy hair, and then he grimaces. “Woah, looks like you got some competition huh? Better up your game, if you know what I mean. I saw them getting pretty up close and personal just now. Park was teaching her how to hold a bowling ball. I mean, who the fuck needs to learn that?”

“She can hold my balls if she wants,” Namjoon snickers, but then his face straightens when you glare at him. “It was a joke. Sorry. Please don’t report me to HR for sexual harassment.”

Sometimes you just want to quit your job. Not because of Bae Joohyun, but because of your fucking idiotic coworkers.

“Namjoon, you areHR,” you hiss at him with barely concealed patience.

Taehyung continues as if you’d asked for advice on your sex life with your non-existent baby daddy. “A little pregnancy sex never hurt anyone.”

You can’t quite concentrate on what he’s saying as you glance over at Jimin and his new girl turning their attention back to bowling, him picking out a ball and handing it to her, their hands brushing and the girl giggling. Your attention is focused on them, how Jimin stands behind her as she gets ready to bowl, the way she bends over and practically flashes the whole alley in her short skirt.

Meanwhile, Taehyung is still going on as if you’d asked about his sexual preferences. “Some men find it hot. I, in fact, would love to knock a chick up and then keep fucking her after. Something about that primal instinct, you know?”

When the girl hits five pins, she turns to Jimin with a squeal and raises her hands for a high five. Jimin returns it with a happy grin, but then somehow the whole affair escalates into a hug, and you frown.

“Shut up, Taehyung,” you are taking out your anger on him, but this stupid punk sure as hell deserves it anyway.

Taehyung holds up two hands at your sudden burst of anger. “Woah, I was only giving suggestions. Trying to help here.”

You leave him, still fuming and wanting nothing more than to get out of these fucking uncomfortable shoes. In actual fact, you have no idea why you’re this worked up. It’s not like you and Park Jimin have this exclusive agreement together. He’s free to flirt with anyone he likes.

But really, her? With the flippy hair and obnoxious voice? And while you’re supposed to be pregnant with his baby too? He’s practically cheating on you openly!! Never mind that you aren’t actually knocked up with his kid. It’s the principle of it all.

By the time you reach the counter to exchange your token for your locker key, your expression must have evolved into something truly frightening, because the poor girl manning the counter squeaks at you in fear when you bark out your locker number at her.

When you’re done changing your shoes, you head into the washroom for a bit to splash some water on your face so that you can cool down, and also to check if your period is here, but it’s not. A few minutes later when you leave, you find Park Jimin waiting outside, still in his bowling shoes, his cheeks flushed with exertion and his hair ruffled out of place.

“Are you okay?” He asks, then clears his throat. “I mean; did anything happen? While you were in there? Did your period come?”

You feel the urge to brush past him in annoyance. The whole of last week, the two of you had avoided each other; on one hand you were completely swamped with work, but on the other hand, there is also this awkwardness in between you that hadn’t existed before that fateful night. You still hadn’t directly addressed it yet, only skirted around the topic in hems and haws.

“No it didn’t,” you say, your voice small all of a sudden. “Who’s that girl in your lane?”

“Oh, Seulgi from Divorce Support,” Jimin says. “I was just teaching her how to bowl.”

There’s another awkward silence as the two of you avoid eye contact, and then you hear Seulgi’s high pitched voice calling Jimin’s name, asking him to come back and help her score another strike. Jimin is just about to respond back to her, but then you grab his collar and pull him into the secluded space just behind the female toilets, shutting him up with your lips on his.

His protests soon turn to muffled moans against you, and his hands come to circle your waist somewhat hesitantly, but the intention alone is enough for you. Breaking apart for air, you finally get a glimpse of how sinful Park Jimin looks, and flashbacks from that night revisit you once more. Plush, swollen lips parted mid gasp, cheeks red and flushed and his eyes that can’t stop devouring you whole.

“You should be teaching mehow to bowl,” you push him up against the wall for added emphasis. “I’m the one you knocked up, not her.”

Jimin gulps nervously as he feels your body press against him, and all the blood rushing down south that will soon make itself known against your lower belly. He tries to put a little bit of space in between your bodies so that he won’t embarrass himself, but you are relentless, pressing your breasts into his chest as your hand makes its way to the front of his pants.

“Yo-you aren’t really knocked up,” Jimin tries to protest weakly as you grab a handful of him, and he hardens immediately.

“I could be,” you shoot back. Aware that you don’t have much time, you pull down the zipper on his dress pants and reach inside to grope him lewdly over his underwear. “You knocked me up with your cock right here. Came inside me and filled me up so good.”

“Shit,” Jimin is panting harshly against your neck now, his hips twitching involuntarily as he feels himself soak the front of his underwear. “Wh-what’s got into you?”

“Your cum,” you say simply, watching his eyes widen again as you sink down to your knees, pulling his underwear the rest of the way down to expose the leaking head of his cock. In your previous one-night stand (the actual one), you regrettably didn’t have a chance to admire him properly, but now you’re going to make up for it.

His cock is thick from base to tip, the head of it already red and angry. You can feel your jaw ache just with the thought of deepthroating him all the way, yet you don’t even care if it’d make Park Jimin feel good.

Pushing his cock to lie flat on his belly, you give the underside a long, salacious lick that has Jimin gasping and sobbing already. You start from the bottom again and maintain eye contact as you kitten lick your way to his head again, and then you take him whole into your warm mouth, suckling him as his hands find their way into your hair.

“We- we can’t do this, we’re at work,” Jimin pants, his actions contradictory as his hip surge forward to chase the warmth of your mouth. All it does is showcase his less than ideal willpower when it comes to you.

“What would your Granny say? If she saw you flirting with another girl while the one you knocked up watches?” You squeeze his cock hard, causing Jimin to buck his hips with a groan.

“Pl-please don’t talk about my Granny when you’re sucking my cock,” Jimin protests as he pushes your head further down on his cock.

You let him push his cock down your throat, relaxing and breathing through your nose as you take him for a few seconds. Then you pull back with a wet, sloppy sound, his cock covered in your saliva and precum that drips onto your blouse as you swallow and breathe. “We aren’t at work right now. We’re at a bowling alley.”

And then your mouth is back on his cock, bobbing up and down as you give him the suck of his life, his taste salty on your tongue. One hand wraps around his girthy base as you suck the rest of him, and the other hand comes up to play with his balls. Jimin is all curses and breathy pants above you, his thick thighs trembling with pleasure as he struggles not to lose his balance, nor his load.

“Like it when I play with your balls like this, hmmm?” You pull yourself off his cock to watch the effect your words have on him, tugging on his balls that feel tight and heavy as you jerk him off with the other hand. “When was the last time you came, Minnie?”

The pretty column of his neck is drenched with sweat as he throws his head back against the wall, cock twitching in your grasp as Jimin struggles not to cum. The nickname makes his knees go weak and his voice is lost somewhere in his chest.

When he still doesn’t answer you, you turn and sink your teeth into his fleshy inner thigh, causing him to whine sharply.

“I’m waiting for an answer, Minnie.”

“L-last week,” he gasps out. “Wi-with you.”

“Someone’s been a good boy,” you resume your strokes of his cock as you lick his balls, causing his thighs to clench in response. “Are you sure you haven’t cum since? Didn’t stroke your cock like a dirty pervert and make a mess of yourself with your cum?”

“I-I promise, I didn’t!” Jimin peers down at you in the haze of his desperation and lust, only to see his precum coating your chin, red lipstick smeared all over, but yet you’ve never looked prettier.

Satisfied with his answer, and also how fucked out he looks within such a short span of you getting your mouth on his cock, you wrap your lips around his head again as you jerk the rest of him off, still cradling his balls with your other hand.

“I’m gonna cum,” comes Jimin’s half plea, half warning.

You double your efforts at jerking him off, opening your mouth to show him the head of his cock as it rests heavy on your tongue. That’s all it takes for Jimin to lose his load, his balls pulsing under your grasp as pretty white ropes of cum shoot decorate your tongue. Jimin can’t quite keep his eyes off the way your mouth fills with his seed, and the way you swallow down every drop of him, licking and cleaning his cock as if to make sure you get all of his cum.

When you make sure he’s clean, you press a light kiss to his oversensitive head. “Just remember. I was the one who sucked your cock and swallowed your cum today. Not Seulgi.”

Jimin reaches to tuck himself back into his pants, hands shaky and thighs still trembling. When you stand up and start to walk off without another word, he reaches for your waist to pull you back into him, wanting a taste of your lips after you swallowed his cum.

It’s bitter and sweet at the same time, and Jimin’s sinful moans only make your thighs clench together harder. When you pull apart, Jimin doesn’t let go of his arms around your waist.

“You have a thing for cum?” You raise an eyebrow at him, remembering him eating you out after he came inside you the last time as well. Most guys you’d been with in the past had no problem kissing you after eating you out, but turn it the other way around and they’d be utterly disgusted.

“It’s hot,” Jimin mutters as his eyes slide away from yours.

Recognizing the telltale signs of his embarrassment, you place your thumb on his chin to stop him from looking away. “It’s hot when you do it.”

Hearing you validate him makes him visibly relax in your arms. “What are we? I don’t think we’re coworkers anymore.”

There’s a brief pause as you are aware of how intimate this is, feeling the arousal still pooling in your underwear and feeling Park Jimin’s body warm against yours. There’s something about being in his arms like this that makes the rest of the world disappear.

“No, we aren’t,” you admit. “We… we could be something more. If you want.”

It’s your turn to be nervous now and you can feel your heart racing in your chest, already anticipating for the handsome golden boy to turn you down. Why would he want to be something more with you after all, when there are so many other pretty girls in the office for him to fuck around with?

“I want to. Be something more, that is.” Jimin smiles back, a cute little shy smile that makes your heart skip a million beats.

*

“_____! It’s been so long since I last saw you!” Granny welcomes you with a wide grin and comforting arms as she bundles you into her embrace. “You look so pretty! Glowing, as usual. Has our Jiminnie been treating you right? Hmmmm?”

Her tone rises into a slight warning as she glares over at her grandson, who is currently struggling with both your luggage a few feet behind.

“He’s been good, Granny,” you reassure her with a relaxed smile.

Granny invited the both of you to spend the long weekend at Jimin’s childhood home in the countryside which also now serves as a sort of vacation home for the Parks. You can’t even remember the last time you had a vacation, had the chance to pull out your flowy summer dresses and really let your hair down. Though this time, there’s another reason altogether for you to wear loose and flowy clothing.

You are ushered into the house to meet the rest of Jimin’s family; his parents and his brother welcome you as if you are already part of the family. They invite you to spectate a game of Wii Tennis, and it’s then that you realise that Jimin’s family are a bunch of heathens because they don’t wear the Wii remote strap while playing.

Jimin is paired up with his father, against his mother and brother. You are more than content to watch from the sides, nestled in beside Granny who feels as soft and comforting as your own mother. Her words, not so much, as she urges the Jimin and his brother to do better, why, if she joined the game she’d beat all their asses!!!

When Jimin’s side wins, the whole family claps and cheers as his mother stands up to give his father a kiss, and when they’re done, the whole family turns expectantly to you and Jimin.

“A kiss for the winner, that’s the prize!” Jimin’s mother says with a mischievous grin on her face.

Jimin fidgets on the spot, tips of his ears growing red as he protests. “Ma…”

“Oh come on, don’t be such prudes!” Granny chides the both of you. “You already did the nasty with each other. How else did my grandchild come into this world?”

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Jimin’s brother begins to chant with a shit eating grin on his face that reminds you of a certain co-worker.

Jimin is getting more and more embarrassed trying to fend his family off, but for you, it’s no big deal. It’s not like you and Jimin haven’t said or done more lewd things to each other. In a sense, Jimin’s Granny is right. The both of you already fucked. What is one tiny little kiss?

So with that, you pull a protesting, flustered Jimin closer to you and tiptoe to reach his lips, arms around him as you kiss him deeply, putting on a show for his family. Whoops and cheers celebrate the two of you, and though Jimin is stunned for a moment, he kisses you back just as passionately, letting his tongue meet your own as he tastes you.

When the two of you part for air, Jimin’s brother lets out a loud whoop, and Granny is still clapping. But poor little Jimin is as red as a tomato, and he tugs on your hand, mumbling something about showing you his room and retiring for the night.

You are still laughing and giggling over how embarrassed he is when Jimin closes his door behind the both of you, giving you a cute pout as he crosses his arms in indignance. But he’s too cute too pass up on, and you pinch his cheeks, squishing his face.

“Was my baby Jimin embarrassed?” You coo at him in a baby voice, grin lighting up your face as it gets him even more annoyed at you. Unfortunately for Jimin, (but luckily for you) he’s just that kind of person who gets even cuter when they are angry or upset.

“I’ve never kissed a girl in front of my Granny you know,” he turns his cheek at you as he goes to sit on his bed to continue sulking. “She’s seen me in my underpants when I was a kid!”

“So? I saw you in your underpants too,” you grin lewdly at him, laughing when he throws an arm over his face and groans in embarrassment.

When he hears your laughter, Jimin peeks out from behind his arm to see your face glowing and radiant, hair loose in waves around your face and looking… happy for the first time. Not stressed or worried about work, or in tears because Bae Joohyun humiliated you.

Just happy.

“You look really pretty like this,” Jimin admits in a small, shy voice.

You stop mid laugh to look at him properly. “Like what?”

“When you’re happy,” he clarifies. “When you laugh like that.”

“It’s when you make me laugh like this,” you look down at the pattern on his bedspread, tracing along it with your fingers. “I haven’t laughed like this in a long while. But ever since you came in, I… I don’t know. Mondays haven’t been so bad for me lately.”

The two of you are shy suddenly, and Jimin feels like he’s a teenager again, confessing to his crush in his childhood bedroom. Back then he always dreamed of bringing a girl back to his house and confessing to her, maybe even making out with her behind his parents’ back, but of course back then he wasn’t nearly cool enough to do any of that.

But seeing you look so soft and pretty in your dress that dips down at your neckline, giving him a good view of your cleavage, seeing you beside him on his bed, your attention focused on him solely makes him glad that all his childhood fantasies never happened, because he feels like they’re going to be fulfilled right now.

“Can I kiss you?” Jimin asks.

“Not shy anymore?” You tease him one last time before you lean in and capture your lips with his, and then Jimin is switching positions with you so that your hair fans out over his pillow, he is on top of you in between your legs.

“I want to do it properly,” Jimin scatters kisses down your neck and chest, one hand pinching your nipple through your thin dress. “The last time was rushed. And we were drunk. And we were still co-workers back then.”

Your strap slides off your shoulder sinfully as Jimin pleases himself by worshipping your breasts, kneading them and sucking your nipple through the material.

“I- I told you… we were never co-workers. From day one,” you retaliate against his teasing by pinching his nipple through his shirt with a devious smirk on your face.

“You mean we were fucked from day one?” Jimin grins back as he takes off his shirt in one smooth motion, baring his toned chest and slim abs for your viewing pleasure. Your hands are on him immediately, stroking his firm muscles and running your fingers over every inch of his beautiful skin.

Jimin hikes up your skirt, kissing his way up your thighs till he reaches your underwear. The scent of you is driving him insane, he can already see a wet spot on your panties even though he’s barely touched you. The thought of you getting so wet for him makes him even more eager to pleasure you, so he hooks his fingers into the side of your underwear, pulling it down to expose you to his gaze.

“I still owe you from the bowling alley,” he says when you tug at his hair impatiently, wanting to see his face, kiss his lips. With that as explanation, Jimin gives your core a sloppy lick before he seals his lips to you, French kissing your pussy and making sure he gets your clit with every stroke of tongue.

Your cries and moans are music to his ears; at this point he doesn’t even care if his family hears you anymore. Pulling your dress up to your waist so that you can see in between your thighs, the sight nearly sends you over the edge as you witness Park Jimin eating your pussy like a man starved, his chin glazed with your arousal as he laps everything up. His hands are on your inner thighs, opening you up for him even though your muscles spasm from the pleasure.

“Jimin- fuck! Please,” you are already begging as he assaults your clit with his tongue, circling it relentlessly. “Want your fingers. Please.”

“Want to feel me stretch you for my cock?” Jimin gives in with one finger first, slowly inserting it into you with care until you whine and thrash under his grasp in protest. “My baby wants more? What a greedy pussy you have.”

He embellishes this with a sharp spank on your clit, and your thighs twitch again as you cry out. Jimin gives you two fingers now, and the burn feels so good as he pumps in and out, his tongue occasionally flicking at your clit. Your arousal coats his fingers and his palm messily, starting to drip down onto his sheets, but Jimin figures that the both of you are going to get a lot messier before the night ends.

As you watch Jimin pleasure you with his fingers and tongue, all traces of the shy boy who was embarrassed to kiss you in front of his family are gone. The submissive side of him that gave in to your demands so easily at the bowling alley is also gone, in its place is a gentle but firm dominant who takes charge of your pleasure, and you love that he can switch between the two.

“Cum for me, let me see my baby cum on my fingers,” Jimin coaxes you as he speeds up his fingers, curling them to try and find that one rough spot inside you. “You made such a mess already.”

You can feel the edge right there, the knot so tight in your lower belly and just ready to burst. But words escape you, and all you can do is whine Jimin’s name. In response he wraps his thick plush lips around your clit, maintaining eye contact with you as he sucks,and then you come undone, legs going boneless as your back arches, clenching hard around his fingers as you ride out your orgasm.

Jimin helps you to calm down as he withdraws from your pussy, stroking your legs gently as he admires the glow on your face, your fucked out expression as you breathe deeply. His own cock is straining against his jeans, and he is dying to feel your pussy wrapped around him.

When you finally regain your senses and open your eyes, you see the uncomfortable looking tent in Jimin’s jeans, reaching for it immediately to give him his own release. Jimin shifts his body so that his thighs can fall open, and you pull his jeans off, revealing his thick thigh muscles that you straddle as you get his cock out of his soaked boxers.

“Wait,” Jimin stops you with a hand on your waist. “We need a condom. We still don’t know if… if you’re pregnant. From last time.”

Your cheeks heat up as you swallow back the guilt. After bowling, when you went home that night, your period had come, just one day late, but you didn’t tell Jimin. Upon the sight of blood staining your underwear, there was a strange sense of disappointment that bloomed in your chest, and it confused you so much that you didn’t have the bandwidth to even think about telling Jimin what this meant. You had to take time to process both the consequence of not being pregnant, as well as the unprecedented feelings of disappointment that came with it.

“Um… actually, my period came last week.” You say after taking a deep breath.

Jimin raises an eyebrow as he takes in the news. “So it means… you’re not pregnant.”

“I’m not,” you agree with him, and you want to keep going, but the words are just stuck in your chest.

“The first time we were risking it, but I was just thinking…” Jimin picks up on your hesitation, his own words coming out slowly. “If we should… if we should start trying. For real.”

Jimin is completely serious as he returns your gaze, biting his lip in uncertainty.

“You mean… try to get pregnant? Intentionally?” You’re aware that you’re just repeating his words, but some part of you needs to confirm it.

“Yeah,” Jimin says as he strokes your waist, and you’re fully aware of his cock twitching as he says his next words. “I want to have a baby with you.”

Your breath is sucked out of your chest as the impact of his words hit you, and arousal aside, you feel your stomach fill with butterflies.

“That is… if you want to as well,” Jimin scratches the back of his neck nervously. “I mean, I don’t want to pressure you into anything-“

“I want to,” you interrupt him, reassuring him with a grind of your hips. “I want to have your baby. We’re about three months late, but I think if we start trying real hard now, this baby will get made and we won’t be too far behind.”

Jimin’s cock twitches again, giving away how aroused he is, but he doesn’t give a fuck anymore. Hearing you say that has awakened a fantasy in him that he didn’t even know existed. No longer is he going for the low hanging fruit of just kissing a girl in his childhood bedroom. No, he’s going to make a baby in his childhood bedroom.

You pump him with a few strokes, watching the precum bubble up from his head and run down his girthy length, admiring how hard he is for you. His length feels so heavy in your palm, and your mouth waters as you remember how much better he felt in your mouth, how salty and thick his cum was as he released down your throat.

Just as you bend down to give yourself a repeat ride, Jimin stops you with a hand on your cheek, his own cheeks rosy and embarrassment creeping back in as he says, “You’ll get a mouthful of cum if you do that. As much as I want you to swallow my cum, you’re not getting pregnant that way.”

And then he’s back in charge as he flips you over, spreading your legs wide and resting them on his shoulders as your pussy leaks your arousal. Jimin uses the head of his cock to collect all your juices, teasing your clit before he prods at your entrance. The blunt head of him nudges in slowly, and the stretch makes the both of you moan.

Your legs are trembling, hands reaching out for something to hold on to as Jimin bottoms out inside you. You don’t remember him feeling so big inside you, stretching you out so good and going so deep that you can feel him at the base of your lower abdomen. When you look down, you realise that there is a small bump there, and Jimin is watching that exact spot as well.

“Feel so good and tight, my baby was made to take my cock,” he praises as he intertwines his hands with yours, forcing them above your head as he begins to thrust. His cock slides in and out of your drenched pussy easily, and your walls grip him so tightly that Jimin never wants this moment to end.

Jimin leans forward so that your thighs are pushed to your chest, making the fit even tighter around his cock. Your pussy is already clenching around him, and your breasts are bouncing, cheeks flushed red and lips swollen and shiny from his precum and saliva.

“Harder, fuck me harder Jimin,” you groan as he punishes you with his thrusts, every slap of his thighs against yours reminds you that the both of you are fucking to make a baby. Just watching the sweat drip off his chest, his abs tense and feeling his ass flex as he fucks into your pussy with the full intention of giving you a baby, hisbaby, makes your pussy cream uncontrollably around his cock.

“Does my baby like this?” Jimin gives a harsh thrust and bends your legs back till he can feel your cervix. “Fuck, you’re driving me fucking crazy. Wanna give you a baby so bad. You’re fucking asking for it, asking to get filled with cum.”

“I want it, Jimin,” you gasp as you feel him against the entrance of your womb; Jimin is giving you no mercy as he continues to aim his thrusts deep as he can go. “Want your baby. It’s all I ever wanted.”

Jimin lets your legs fall off his shoulders as he wraps his arms around your waist to pull you into him, as his thrusts increase in power and speed. Your legs wrap around him tightly as if to keep him from pulling out, so all Jimin can do his grind the head of his cock against your cervix, feeling himself twitch as his orgasm draws near.

“I’m not gonna last, cum with me please,” he begs, mouth open and kissing your neck as he buries his face in the crook of your shoulder.

“I’m close, just a little more, fuck,” you loosen your thighs a little so that Jimin can thrust a little more, and the movement of him brushing against your clit sends you into an orgasm, clenching hard around him as you cry out his name and your walls milk him dry for every drop.

Jimin groans as he feels his balls tighten up, filling you up with cum as he thrusts to get every drop right where it should be. “Take it all, take my cum and give me a baby. That’s what my girl wants right?”

“Yes, yes!” You whine as you feel the warmth of his cum in your pussy, his frenzied thrusts as he rides out the last of his orgasm, making sure he gives you everything he has.

Jimin’s face is still buried in your neck as his hips continue to fuck his cum into you, hearing the filthy squelch as he tilts your hips up so that not a single drop can escape. The leisurely thrusts feel intimate as you hug him close to you, feeling his soft breaths against your skin as your legs wrap around his waist, feeling him finally still with his cock still deep inside you. Everything is warm and sticky, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

A few minutes pass before you realise that Jimin is perfectly content to have his cock plug your pussy up with cum, and while the thought kind of turns you on, he’s heavy, and you nudge him off you with your knee. Jimin pouts as he settles beside you, still drawing you closer to him as he lifts one of your thighs to get a better look at the mess he made of you.

“It’s all coming out,” he says in a disappointed whine as his fingers scoop out the frothy white cum that spilled out of you because of his fucking, gently pushing it back into you. But he can’t resist a little taste, bringing his fingers to his lips for a second.

“Jimin! Stop stealing my baby batter,” you grab his wrist to stop him, shoving it back toward your thighs.

“That’s the least sexy word for cum I’ve ever heard,” he frowns disapprovingly at you. “Stay there, don’t move. You need to keep your hips up.”

Jimin pushes a pillow under your hips, and whilst you’re rendered immobile, he takes the chance to sneakily lap at your inner thighs, cleaning up some of the cum that he didn’t manage to push into you. You glare at him, reaching down to tug at his hair, but then-

“Stay safe, kids!” It’s his father’s voice from down the hallway.

“Why do they need to stay safe? She’s already having his kid!” You hear Granny’s voice a second later, and your cheeks heat up in embarrassment. “No need to stay safe, Puppy! You heard me? It’s good for the baby!”

You glare at Jimin, then push your chin toward his door, expecting him to answer his Granny.

Jimin mouths a ‘what’ at you in exasperation, his lust filled brain unable to think of a single appropriate response for this situation. Finally, he forces a cheery tone as he shouts back, “we will, Granny! Night Granny!”

Your head falls back into the pillow with a groan at how lame he is.

You’re most definitely not looking forward to breakfast tomorrow.

[everyone-needs-a-hoopoe]

I wasnt sure to brother u with this. I dont see many analysis of asriel on this site. Can u make a post on the lil goatboy

hehe brother

a pretty big ask, but sure, i’ll give it a shot! i’m lazy so i’m not going to bother with screenshots. i’m going to try to keep away from headcanon and only talk about what canon supports.

we don’t have a lot on asriel himself prior to his death but we DO have a pretty nice amount on his family, and that’s very handy for getting an idea of how he might’ve been. asriel’s birth marked the date his parents began to die. we don’t know how aware he was of that, but i’m sure he can’t have been totally oblivious. he was marked from the beginning as the eventual sole leader of a deeply, deeply hopeless group of people, and that’s a whole lot to heap on a little kid’s plate! no matter how much toriel and asgore tried not to make it weigh on him too heavily, there’s no way he could totally avoid the awe, respect and hunger of his to-be subjects. if asgore “you are the future of humans and monsters” dreemurr treated asriel anything like he did chara, asriel was very aware of how much rested on his shoulders. 

but we also have some less heavy stuff from toriel and asgore! toriel loves reading so much it’s very likely she fostered a love of it in asriel as well. (it’s very good to me imagining flowey on the service trying to live in the local library because he’s so excited about all the new books.) “a perfect day for a game of catch” is likely asgore thinking about how he used to play with his kids, so it’s possible that asriel was pretty active as well. there’s no computer or tv in home or new home, so he’s probably not very familiar with technology.

we know from the tapes that asriel was very keen on making home movies - he’s probably an aspiring director! the tapes have a lot of other fun details to them, like the fact that asriel is the one initiating play in each of them, not chara - asriel was never a passive follower after them. if anyone was a follower in their relationship, it would’ve been chara! i’m of the opinion that they were on more equal terms than that, but i think it could go either way.

from this it’s easy to extrapolate that asriel is generally a pretty confident person. he knows his position in the world, and it weighs on him, but also makes him feel powerful. you could take that further into bossiness and egotism and it would make perfect sense, i think. he’s a twelve-year-old prince, it makes a lot of sense for him to be a lot brattier than most people give him credit for.

it’s very common to portray asriel as a very soft and weepy sort, but i’ve come to disagree with that interpretation a lot. that comes from how he is at his absolute lowest point, after frisk has just turned him into a god and torn him down to mortality again, wrenched him out of his endless loop of torment and thrown him back into reality. he’s quiet and solemn and mournful because his entire world has come crashing down around him. he’s just properly processed for the first time ever that he’s a serial killer. this is how he gets in that type of situation, but it’s not a fair assessment of his general demeanour.

flowey’s behaviour doesn’t just come from nowhere. the mischievousness, the brattiness, the superiority complex, the curiosity - it all already existed, and was warped and blown out of proportion by a deeply traumatic situation. asriel threw away his old name and the persona of the prince who would save the world, and decided he would be the god of it instead, and play with it as he pleased. 

once, he thought he could kill for his people, but in the end he was just a child and he died thinking he’d failed them all - and his parents, and his sibling, who died for nothing. guilt must weigh so heavily on this kid.

i got a little off track there, but i’m running out of steam so i’ll leave off with a pet peeve. one reason i really don’t like “resurrection” AUs for undertale is that, not only is asriel still around, i can’t imagine it being healthy for him to return to his old identity anyway. to him, the name and body of asriel is tied to so much trauma and failure and pressure - he wouldn’t be able to escape how his parents used to treat him. i think he deserves to move on from that, not be forced back into it. my ideal post-paci situation for him is getting a new body with hands and a new name, and being allowed to move forward rather than go back.

i don’t think he needs a soul either. trauma did a bad to him. he’ll be fine without empathy.

[joy1579]

Hi there!! I love your hc so much! I was wondering if you could write hc of rva+v and saeran with MC who’s really sensitive?? Like she will cry if you raise your voice, and when she sees cute stuff. Its fine if you don’t want to, thank you tho!!

okay so thing is i don’t write V he hits a bit close to home for me so rather than put myself through the ugly self analysis i just regulate that to my councilor sorry! that being said I am more than happy to write the rest of the characters for you. I hope I did your request justice and you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it!

The RFA + Saeran with super sensitive MC

Jumin

-        It took him some getting used to which isn’t to say he disliked it. It was reliving that he never had to guess how you were feeling. You wore your heart on your sleeves.

-        He doesn’t raise his voice often. More often than not what gets you is the ices in his voice when he’s frustrated. The curtness of his words and the cold calculation in his eyes.

-        He notices your shaking hands first and how watery your eyes are second. The first time it happens he shuts down completely frozen by the thought that he had hurt you, or scared you.

-        Slowly he notices this happens often and he learns what to do to calm you down. He learns that your tears don’t all mean the same thing. Sometimes you cry when he gives you the perfect gift or when you are introduced to the kittens you foster.

-        He falls in love with your happy tears and vows to hold you when the sad tears come.

-        Look he has no self- control when it comes to buying you things and I absolutely think he has a silk handkerchief dedicated to drying your eye’s

-        You have to admit its soft and cute (royal purple with a small Elizabeth the third on one corner)

-        His comforting is gentle and calm. Slow and methodical. He hushes you his thumb rubbing soothing circles into you hand as you pulled yourself together. He was ever patient and loving. A strong and stable force you could rely on.

-        Honestly your sensitivity helps him soften up considerably since he learns to be more connected and aware of things that may hurt your feeling (and by extension other peoples)

Yoosung

-        He gets it. Sorta. He understands tearing up when people fight or fling mean words like mud. he gets that way too and he definitely sympathizes with you when you mention people teasing you for being so sensitive.

-        The parts he doesn’t understand is why you cry when your happy. The first time he saw it was when you met lisa. She was so small and cute and she was yours, well yours and yoosung’s but that just made it more emotional!

-        He rushes to you searching for anything he could do to help he’s talking a mile a minute asking you a string of nearly unintelligible questions to find out what was wrong. Once you explained that they were happy tears he looks a little lost but definitely relieved.

-        He can get a bit carried away when he gets jealous and while he doesn’t technically yell his voice gets darker and rougher. He doesn’t do it one purpose of course and the second he hears your breath hitch.

-        When you get down like that wipes away your tears with his thumb and apologizes he works hard to make his voice quieter and gentler as he whispers an endless string of reassurance and love. Anything to make up for making you cry.

-        He has an entire YouTube playlist of your favorite “faith in humanity restored” videos to make you smile after bad days since being sensitive can make the world seem harsh sometimes.

Saeyoung

-        When he’s frustrated he tends to snap at people and that can sometimes include you. In the beginning he was so focused on his work he didn’t notice your sniffles and soft breath catching on the knot in your throat

-        The first time he saw you cry because of something he said was through CCTV when you left with tears in your eyes. he was sure you’d never come back. When you did come back he apologized quietly guilt clear on his face as he refused to make eye contact.

-        Those days were rough on you as he tried constantly to push you away only to apologize stiffly when he saw you hurt. Once you’ve been together a while it gets better though.

-        He’s perfected the art of spinning your emotions on their head the second he sees your eye’s tear up he starts working to make you laugh.

-        A meme, or well-timed joke can have you laughing even as the tears stream down your face and he truly believes that kind of duality is simultaneously divine and so utterly human that he prays he gets to see it every day for the rest of his life.

-        “Going from crying to laughing that fast and hard happens maybe five times in your life and that extreme right turn is the reason why we are alive, and I believe it extends our life by many years.” ― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

-        If it’s serious he’ll hold you in his lap and rest his chin on your head so you feel completely surrounded by him. In these moment he lets you cry yourself out simply holding you quietly.

Zen

-        Zen doesn’t yell. Yelling is not a strong enough term for it. This man is used to projecting his voice through entire theaters so when he gets worked up enough to lose control of the volume of his voice it can be legitimately frightening

-        Your covering your ears and squeezing your eyes shut just to stop yourself from outright sobbing even though his screaming isn’t directed towards you at all. When he hears your choked sob he spins on his heals

-        He kisses away your tears like the hopeless romantic mess he is. Also your kisses fill him with a bubbly sort of warm happiness so he hopes you feel the same way.

-        From then on he tries very hard to keep himself under control around you. He’s a passionate and fiery personality but he never wants to upset you like that. It still happens sometimes but they are fewer and farther between every time.

-        When he sees you crying over a panda cub on a zoo date he can’t help but chuckle at you. Your so cute he’s not sure he can breathe and he certainly can’t see straight because all he wants is to kiss you silly.

-        He compares you to the princess from the princess and the pea saying your sensitivity is proof of how observant and soft hearted you are. It shows how much you care about people. “you really are a princess!”            

Jaehee

-        Is surprised and stiff at first she’s mentioned before that she’s not great with emotions but she desperately wants to help you so she tries. Problem is she’s trying really hard to be a good “friend” and the fact that your clinging to her tightly and crying sniffling into her shoulder is making that difficult.

-        *pat pat* there there (don’t do anything gay don’t do anything gay) *kisses you* (damn it)

-        She’s not sure why she did that really. But your so shocked you’ve stopped crying. She cant decide if that’s a good thing or not until you break out into a giggling smile. You wipe your eyes and say “if I knew crying would be the thing that got you to kiss me I wouldn’t have hid away so much”

-        From that moment on you didn’t run and hide when you felt yourself getting a bit weepy because every time she noticed your tear glazed eye’s she’s smile fondly and use her apron or sleeve to wipe away your tears

-        She asks you what’s wrong and listens patiently as you explain holding your hands in hers. When you’ve worked through all the emotions she gives you the smallest peck on the lips and makes sure to fix whatever she can.

-        If she can’t fix it then she’ll offer what advice she can and remind you that it’s okay to take a break if you need one. After all you are the one that taught her the importance of breaks after all so she wants to return the favor if you ever feel overwhelmed.

Saeran

-        Your sensitivity drew him to you to be honest. It gave you a kinship though after mint eye he was a little hesitant to admit he was cut from the same cloth so to speak. The way you managed to thrive and grow and be strong despite your sensitivity is what gave him the courage to leave mint eye in the first place

-        Listen this boy loves you. So much so the instant he sees you crying he’s fighting tears too. On his bad days this can cause him to lash out. Better to seem angry than weak right. Wrong! now your crying more and he feels guilty. (he’s still got a lot of left over shit to sort through okay but he’s working on it)

-        He swears at himself and pulls you against his chest where he holds you so tight you can barely breath one hand on the small of your back and the other on the back of your head so you can’t pull your face away and see how angry at himself he is. (it would be very counter intuitive right now)

-        He’s not good at feelings okay, but he’s willing to step out of his comfort zone for you.

-        Not to mention he understands the sensitivity to certain things after his childhood and time at mint eye he understands triggers all too well and even though it’s not exactly the same he’s not about to fault you for being sensitive.

[touchmycoat]

23, 31, 40!

HI THANK YOU <3 <3 <3 

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

Mmmh I’ll go with Unethical Consumption / 痴!

My favorite thing to do in fic is to have plot elements interact with canon elements in inexplicit ways. As a reader I get a lot of insider communal joy when I see this in fics, so I try my best to do it myself~

So XXC gives SL his own eyes (without consent!) and then leaves, right? In this fic, through my favorite plot element of ~cannibalism~ they get to have that argument: XXC wants to cut off his arm to feed them both and SL gets to explicitly communicate the fact that he in no way wants XXC to sacrifice his own body for SL’s gain.

Navel-gazey but, I do hope this is establishes more than foreshadowing. Fan works are transformative works, right? Through thinking of plots like this, I get to see songxiao’s possibilities get fleshed out (through cannibalism haaaaah)! They have full lives beyond their short narrative tragedy; their character arcs exist beyond Yi City and its aftermath. Hopefully readers get the same feeling~

ALSO I got to write angry!XXC and fighting words are so much fucking fun to write :D :D :D 

31. What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your writing?

oh god fandom has spoiled me completely rotten TTTTTTT YOU included!!!!! I feel like it’s because I have fandom that I can be self-critical y’know? People are so fucking nice, I get this safety net of readers who are here to enjoy themselves, who have such generosity of spirit that they’re seeing all these good things about my writing. I believe very hard in having faith in my readers, so every. single. compliment is taken to heart. I’m absolutely enamored with every analysis people do, every connection people make, every time someone tells me they laughed at my sTUFPID FUCKING SEX FICS JNDFKDJFNKD

but anyways, the nonexhaustive list: the person who just leaves a series of sweat emojis on all my porn, the person who comments one line that drags me on a fic-specific basis, the people who indulge my sex crack, the people who read my fics & comments within like the hour of publishing, people who take days but always circle back, people who tell me they’ve been saving my fics to read, people who tell me i sold them on a character they weren’t sure about before, people who like my porn lololol, people who like my cute stuff, people who copypaste all their favorite lines, people who flip out in the comments, people who wrote me essays, people who says it got personal for them, people who remember my fics, people who like my language, people who tell me they trust me as an author to write about less normative stuff, more emotionally stressful stuff....

aaaaah i’m getting weepy just thinking about it lolol <3 <3 <3 <3 literally anyone who’s even given my fic a passing try, god fucking bless.

40. What do you struggle the most with in your writing?

oh shit! pacing, probably? It’s the thing I edit the most—but huh, that might be because it’s the thing that requires the largest scale of editing lolol. characterization is something i gotta be constantly aware of? grammar?

!!! mixing metaphors. I love me some metaphors but it’s been a concerted effort on my part to be more consistent about them within the same fic lololol.

((Fanfic Ask Meme!))

[c-ptsdrecovery]

Fanny Price and Emotional Abuse

colubrina replied to your post “Emotional Neglect in Austen”

I would actually love to read your analysis of Fanny Price if you ever had time and inclination to write it out.

Oh my goodness, where do I start?

Fanny Price is abused and neglected from start to finish of that novel. She suffers direct emotional/verbal abuse from Mrs. Norris, bullying from Maria and Julia, excessive criticism from those three AND Sir Thomas, and emotional neglect from Lady Bertram and Tom. She also suffers PHYSICAL abuse and neglect, mostly from Mrs. Norris, who does not allow her to have any heat in her room in the winter and forces her to work beyond her strength in the summer even though Mrs. Norris KNOWS she’s chronically ill (and it’s no wonder, considering the amount of emotional strain Fanny’s under, that she should be chronically ill!). 

The only person in that house who even notices that she’s utterly miserable from the trauma of being torn from her family is Edmund: he’s the only one who treats her like a person and is kind to her. It’s no WONDER she falls in love with him: he’s the only person in the entire family who doesn’t treat her like SHIT. But while Edmund recognizes Mrs. Norris’ behavior toward Fanny to be beyond the pale, he generally does not seem to notice that his more immediate family also treats her horribly. Lady Bertram treats Fanny as a servant, putting her own (Lady Bertram’s) needs and wants before Fanny’s (”You don’t want to go to the party, do you? You want to stay home with me because I get bored if you don’t!”). Sir Thomas is generally so critical and cold that when he greets Fanny kindly on his return from Antigua she is “nearly overcome” by his kindness. Even Edmund himself begins to both emotionally and physically neglect Fanny the moment he gets interested in Mary--leaving Fanny for ages on the bench alone, keeping her waiting too long for her horse when she needs to exercise, etc. Fanny only gets noticed and included as a member of the family when Maria and Julia are both gone and the family is apparently bored without them--the same reason Henry decides to flirt with her.

The result is that Fanny has almost no self-esteem. She has completely internalized Mrs. Norris’s lesson that “Wherever you are, you must be the lowest and last.” At one point she parrots the lessons she’s been taught by the treatment of the entire family:

“I can never be important to any one.” “What is to prevent you?” “Everything. My situation, my foolishness and awkwardness.” “As to your foolishness and awkwardness, my dear Fanny, believe me, you never have a shadow of either.”

She believes she’s foolish and awkward because the family harped on her lack of education and “refinement” when she first came to them, and they have drilled into her, not only that she is not important to them, but that she can never BE important to ANYONE. Classic result of emotional neglect. And Fanny NEVER actually gets over it, throughout the entire book.

She’s nearly silent through much of the book too, mostly because she’s too terrorized to talk. As someone who was similarly brainwashed by emotionally abusive parents, I can tell you that taking any attention under some circumstances feels excruciating and guilt-inducing, because you’ve been conditioned so hard to believe that “being the center of attention” is somehow morally WRONG. Fanny suffers from precisely that false belief (note her distress when she is required, by the social rules of the day, to start the dancing at her own ball--Sir Thomas basically has to SCOLD her into it!).

That said, it’s amazing to note the one way in which she DOES have self-esteem: she believes in her own moral judgment. This is the only basis on which she is able to think and act independently of others. When Edmund treats her badly, she gets seriously annoyed. When she notices Henry’s bad behavior toward Maria, she is indignant. She secretly judges Mary Crawford the whole way through the book. I would attribute this trust in her moral judgment to be the result of the kind of long walks and talks she has with Edmund in the text and has had her entire life: he has molded her to think of things with the same moral judgment he uses and to think herself capable of being superior to others in that moral judgment. Of course, since she has absorbed the moral tone of Edmund, learned from Sir Thomas, she is pretty judgy sometimes, since Sir Thomas clearly feels himself and his moral code to be superior rather than conservative. She certainly feels superior to her birth family (with some reason, honestly lol), because in this one thing she has been taught that the family she grew up in was superior to others. She has imbibed this superiority and acts it out when at Plymouth.

Let me give you an example of Sir Thomas’s conservative moral code. You might think, from reading Mansfield Park, that Jane Austen disapproved of private theatricals, and that they were generally considered too naughty by the Better Sort of Person. It turns out that this isn’t true at all. Not only were private theatricals popular, but Jane Austen enjoyed performing in them and even WROTE some plays for that purpose! One of them involves a gentleman sitting on a lady’s lap!! It turns out that the strait-laced tone of the novel is not so much a reflection of the author’s standards of conduct, but of Sir Thomas’s, imbibed by Edmund and then Fanny. Edmund, Fanny, and Sir Thomas’s dislike of private theatricals would have been a bit PRUDISH at the time, not the obvious standard of Good Breeding.

Another thing the novel has imbibed from Sir Thomas is its insularity. The modern criticism of Mansfield Park talks a lot about the family’s isolation. Now, I don’t hold with the criticism that makes a big deal out of Fanny marrying her cousin and implying that that’s incestuous, because in the 19th century, cousin marriage was not only acceptable but a norm. Marrying your cousin was often considered desirable because it strengthened family ties and kept money in the family. BUT, I completely agree with the observation that the Mansfield Park family seems to shun the outside world. 

One thing that I don’t know if the criticism has commented on is that dysfunctional families often function like cults. Offspring of dysfunctional families tend either to rebel and “run away” (Maria elopes, Julia elopes, Tom rebels) or to fail to establish autonomy (Edmund takes a living in Sir Thomas’s gift and later the house right down the road; Fanny never gets out of the family at all because she marries Edmund). Dysfunctional families also teach their members not to trust those outside the family circle. They don’t tend to socially interact much with others. I can say from personal experience that my parents have VERY few friends that they see outside of work or church, and only one couple that they invite to the house regularly. As a child, I rarely got to have birthday parties with my friends: my parents would instead invite my extended family. I was taught not to establish strong bonds outside the family, to trust the family only to be generous or to help and support me. I find it difficult to establish strong ties of friendship outside the family or to trust those friends to support me the way my family might.

The Bertrams are the same way. Maria and Julia go to local balls, but that happens offscreen, and we never meet any of their acquaintances except Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth (who become family). The family disapproves strongly of Tom’s having such an active social life away from home, and disapproves when he brings home a friend (Mr. Yates) to stay. Even when Sir Thomas holds a ball for Fanny in the house itself, we never actually meet any of the guests except the ones we already know! And the “last straw” that causes Edmund to agree to join the theatricals is when they start asking people “outside their circle” of Mansfield and the parsonage to participate. He also deplores that they might invite in an audience of these personae non gratae. Frankly, it’s amazing that the Bertrams were willing to open their family circle enough to let in, not only the Grants, but the Crawfords.

I’ve gone on for quite awhile, but I’ll close like this. When I first read Mansfield Park, I hated it and I hated Fanny, because she had no backbone and cried all the time. Then I watched the 2007 adaptation with Billie Piper, and realized that although Fanny was so shy and retiring and weepy, she had an iron backbone in that nobody could make her do what she thought was wrong. Mansfield became one of my favorite Austen novels.

At the moment, I don’t feel like I can reread MP. I’m dealing so much with my own history of emotional abuse and neglect that MP strikes just waaaay too close to home (also the reason I can’t rewatch Tangled right now). I’m not sure how much I like MP anymore, frankly. Austen did a fantastic job of accurately portraying a victim of emotional abuse. And she gave Fanny what she wanted at the end, which was Edmund. But I can’t help wondering if Austen herself wished she could have ended the novel differently. She comes right out and says, authoritatively, that if Edmund had married Mary, and Crawford hadn’t run off with Maria, that Fanny would have married Crawford and been happy. She could have escaped from her abusive family, with someone who really sees their abuse: “And they will now see their cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be heartily ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness.” If Crawford and Maria hadn’t run off together, the ending of Mansfield Park might have been entirely different--and it MIGHT have been better.   

[flamingthespian]

Kazuaki for the character thing!! Your choice...

Aaaaaa oh my gosh thank you for sending this! I’m going to do the “original” Kazuaki-kun ‘cause that’s who I assume you mean. Putting this under a readmore becuase it’s long and also I talk about quail boyfriends for a good long while.

1: sexuality headcanon

Tbh Kaz is so desperate for love and attention by the time we meet him that I could see him getting into a relationship with anyone who expressed interest in him, regardless of gender, but I don’t think that’s necessarily his sexuality, per se. With a bit of therapy and self-introspection this boy would discover he’s a big gay bird, imo.

2: otp

Q u a i l  B o y f r i e n d s. It’s a problematic ship, it’s a terrible dynamic in main canon, but god is it interesting and they really do love each other!! There are varying opinions as to how much Hitori “really” loved Kazuaki and how much was an act, but I’m of the headcanon that it was a “falling in love with your target” type deal and by the time it all ended Hitori actually was in love with Kazuaki and that made what he did so much harder on him. I have such a deep love for this ship, it’s one of my OTPs forever. And in the Shrine AU, while not entirely perfectly “healthy” per se, the dynamic is a lot better and less…well…murdery. I definitely see them fitting the holes that the other sees in his life. Like, Kazuaki is a needy bitch yes but Hitori needs someone who needs him. I don’t know if he’d be able to handle a completely stable boyfriend, he’s too much of a caretaker type. Again, I’m aware that’s not the healthiest dynamic but it’s what fits them. And as much as Hitori needs to take care of someone, Kazuaki needs someone willing to take care of him. Especially given his self-esteem issues, he needs someone who won’t mind reminding him of how much he loves him. Plus, the idea of Kazuaki joining the Hatoful House family and kind of becoming a bit of a co-parent to Nageki with Hitori is really, really cute. I feel like Hitori can help Kazuaki with some of his self-esteem issues, too, and inspire Kazuaki to get up and face the day when he feels like staying in bed. And likewise Kazuaki can pull Hitori out of a funk. They’re sad boys but they’re sad together and by helping each other out, they both get better bit by bit. I feel like Nageki in the Shrine AU is supportive of the relationship, too, if not just because Hitori has someone else to fuss over and can leave Nageki alone more often, plus I feel like once their relationship develops deeper Kazuaki is more willing to take Nageki’s side on things (“Hitori he’s sixteen he can go to the movies with a group of friends…and we can have a date night :)”) ANYWAY. That was long but I love love love love quail boyfriends and always will.

3: brotp

This one’s hard because we don’t really see him interact much with anyone other than Hitori? Except as The King and then he’s more of a weepy vengeful spirit and less of someone who can form a bromance with anyone. I really, really like the idea of him getting over his jealousy of Nageki when he comes to realize that Hitori can love two or more people at once (wow!! Shocking!) and him loving Nageki doesn’t mean he loves his bf any less, and subsequently becoming like another brother or brother-in-law figure for Nageki, maybe a more chill one than Hitori. Also this is my personal AU headcanons but I hc that in the Shrine AU or at least some version of it Tohri works as a science teacher at St. Pigeonations and I could see him and Kazuaki getting along on some level (“What’s your high score on Birdbie Fashion School Dress Up Master?”)

4: notp

Idk anyone who’s not Hitori? Lol, also, it should go without saying that shipping him with any child character is a no-go. (ESP. Nageki) Also any female character. I also understand shipping him with Shuu is somewhat popular (ok but who HASN’t been shipped with shuu by this fandom at some point?) but I don’t really…like it…I feel like that feels way too, hm, “taking-advantage-of-y” if that makes sense?

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

FLUFFY HAIR. FLUFFY FEATHERS. FLUFFY QUAIL. FLUFFY MAN. Also he is absolutely COVERED in freckles from head to toe.

Also he consistently beats all iterations of Candy Crush (…like myself, I guess) and a bunch of other mobile games like that

Very little impulse control, sometimes his anxiety prevents him from doing things but if it doesn’t? It’s getting done. Again, like me, he’d probably be that guy that eats a rock off the floor for 5 cents.

6: favorite line from this character

“He was my opposite, in every way. He was earnest, and smart. He didn’t mumble when he talked. But despite all that… He understood me, more than anyone else in the world.”

And

“You lied to me.”

7: one way in which I relate to this character

hoo boy

I mean I’m a depressed piece of shit sometimes, that’s for sure. And jealousy is…personally, something I’m bad with. I used to be worse but playing HoliStar the first time, the way the king acted towards Nageki was sadly familiar to me. Oh also on a less sad note I’m really really good at those shitty mobile games he loves so much, and I like to think that my hair is fluffy like his.

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

Definitely how much of a crybaby he is in the preliminary inspection short. But that’s the point, isn’t it?

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Both?? Okay so Kazuaki-kun: cinnamon roll. Once he becomes Ousama: problematic fave

ANYWAY THAT’S MY ANALYSIS ON THE BOY. Thank you for sending this ask I love him so much!

[absentlyabbie]

[@storiesofimaginationation: So... *chinhands*  ...about this Flommy headcanon of yours... *bats eyelashes*]

Hahaha. yes, the flommy romance writer au. nevermind that i have only the loosest grasp on how publishing works.

so i’ve decided it all starts because of Rebecca Merlyn.

when Tommy was little, say 5-8 she’d read him the less racy bits of her romance novels when he interrupted her too-rare reading time to snuggle. and he liked the way everything was so grand and important and it always had a happy ending.

after she died, a few years into being a teenager, he found a box of her old romances malcolm had hidden away somewhere (probably that he meant to trash.) he reread them all, and he loved them.

of course, romances were supposed to be for GIRLS. (and with a father like malcolm in your life, you pick up the vague understanding that for Any Son Of His, “for girls” is bad.) so he hid reading them.

and then, as got a bit older still, he got the itch to WRITE them. (probably because he thought the heroine of one of the books ended up with the wrong guy.)

Well. it started a secret habit. and oh, he was GOOD at it.

(and of course all of this helped magnificently with flirting with girls. helped him understand them better, know what they wanted and liked, more romantic hero than action hero.)

he stumbled into posting a couple of things online, and it went over pretty well. and when more than a couple commenters gushed about how he should publish, well...

he really liked the idea.

but online, he used a name that hid his gender. and when he got in touch with an agent in college, he was told point blank that he could write “dignified literature” romances as a man, or he could write the passionate stuff he liked best under a female penname.

and really, he’d had nervous misgivings about publishing under his own name anyways, for so many reasons. he didn’t want his name to draw more attention than his writing. or to be accused of money buying celebrity and any sales not being about the stories.

and he REALLY didn’t want his father to know.

it was all still a SECRET passion, after all.

(of course, bff Oliver knows, and is disinterested in reading Tommy’s writing, but doesn’t really care except that he knows that Tommy loves it.  Oliver’s just not a fiction guy, and romance just seems like a lot of wordy fluff to him when words are already frustrating when it comes to actual feelings and shit. so Oliver supports Tommy, but mainly in the abstract.)

so fast forward a handful of years and in his late twenties, Tommy Merlyn is a well known and popular romance writer.

or rather, Tammy Arthur is.

so, at the present moment, Tommy’s got shit going on in his life. he’s got a book that’s being difficult and a deadline that’s already been pushed back once and the new one looming, and his father is being a monumental bag of dicks.

because Tommy’s successful career as a writer is a secret, so malcolm believes Tommy is a freeloading, unmoored, useless wastrel and he is trying to manipulate, threaten, and force Tommy into using that mba malcolm paid for to come work at the family company.

(“for the love of god, Tommy, do something with your life. i’m disgusted to imagine the shame your mother would feel if she’d lived to see you wasting the opportunities provided you off the backs of our actual hard work and accomplishments. why not the company? fucking sycophants in nightclubs and screwing around with the queen boy hardly constitute a purpose. It’s not even as if you’d have to earn this on your own merits, questionable as they are.”)

so he’s facing pressure from his agent, pressure from his father, Oliver’s been on a “finding himself” kick after a 20s full of fuckups, so Tommy feels worryingly disconnected from him, and on top of that, his publisher has been making unhappy noises about Tommy’s inability to do book tours or promotion because his pesky secret identity problem.

he’s generally harried and dissatisfied with current affairs and feeling stuck and directionless. writing has always been the safe place AWAY from that shit, and it’s being pulled into the mire, so it’s making hitting this deadline especially hard. he’s frustrated, and it’s affecting his writing. both his output and the quality.

enter Felicity Smoak, copy editor extraordinaire.

Felicity was on track for one hell of a future at MIT until her shit boyfriend used a program she was creating and her laptop to hack a government agency. he went down for the hacking, but it got Felicity’s scholarship yanked and she was forced to drop out.

in a middlingly fortunate twist, her phenomenal typing speed and an acquaintance in the industry opened the door to the unexpected world of book publishing. after all, with half of two degrees and no money and no way to get all the way back to vegas, she needed a job desperately, ANY job.

it was just a stop gap, she told herself. just until she got things in order to go back to school.

years later and Felicity is still a copyeditor, because she’s actually really good at it (it’s pattern analysis and debugging, she’d insist) and it’s job security.

so Felicity transfers from one coast to the next when a copyediting position opens up at the new branch in starling city.

it’s just that it would be nice to be closer to home, make her mother sigh and moan less about plane fare, really.

(she’s not giving up on school, she swears. this doesn’t mean she’s never going back. it’s just for now.)

she arrives at the starling branch to find the copyediting department in a bit of chaos after they’d been too understaffed for too long, and so she’s pretty much thrown right in. her new supervisor desperately needs someone to help with the romance division.

Felicity, who’s mostly worked in nonfiction (and a little mainstream lit and a little sci fi) isn’t more than a little familiar with all of this.

but hey, it’s still just pattern recognition, right? just debugging the code.

so she really has no idea who Tammy Arthur is when the manuscript hits her desk, other than the general knowledge that this is a tentpole name in the publisher’s romance stable.

thing is, she’s handed the manuscript two days before the deadline--and Arthur was told hardline there wouldn’t be a second delay. “she” could make deadline or forfeit the advance and pay the fines.

so Felicity dives in.

and really, it’s not bad. at all.

she finds herself immersing more in the story than she’s used to. normally it’s just a surface, almost trancelike skim.

pattern recognition.

Debugging.

[@storiesofimagination:  bet she loves his sense of humor]

(oh she does. and some of the character moments just... really touch her.)

(and wow.)

(that is some... well executed sex.)

over the first day, there are a handful of perfunctory back and forth emails between her and Tammy Arthur.

completely businesslike, all about the book. (a couple of sarcastic lines of reply do make her snort and smile sympathetically though.)

but then it’s late at night and she’s getting to the end of the manuscript and, well...

how the hell did Arthur miss this?

it’s a big problem. completely fucks the continuity, and now this character doesn’t make sense anymore.

and it’s not Felicity’s purview.

she’s a copyeditor.

she’s on grammar and syntax, format, and punctuation mainly.

content is for the editor.

so she tries to take it to the editor.

only problem--she and the editor assigned to Tammy Arthur were the only ones still in the office at this hour, because of the deadline. (Felicity leapt at the chance for overtime; she’s got new-to-the-city deposits to make up for in her budget after all.)

and when she goes to the editor’s office, she finds it dark, locked, and with a post it slapped haphazardly on the door.

there was an emergency.

“taking my kid to the hospital” emergency.

well fuck.

the only number Felicity knows to call here is for this editor, so she tries to get hold of them, but at first it goes to voicemail.

starting to really worry (she can’t let this manuscript get fucked up less than 24 hours before the deadline, not her FIRST manuscript here), she frantically tries to email Tammy Arthur directly.

she waits.

and waits.

seven emails and half an hour later, there’s still no response.

and then, thank god! her phone rings. it’s the editor.

except the poor person is a desperate, slightly weepy mess on the other end, because the problem with the child might be serious and honestly, they would handle this any other time but they just CAN’T leave the hospital, they can’t.

does Felicity think she could take care of this herself?

Tammy Arthur is local, as it happens.

and though the editor sounds weirdly reluctant (but more desperate than reluctant) they give Felicity Arthur’s address.

just drive the manuscript over, she’s told.

explain the problem.

really, the editor insists, Felicity might not even see Tammy.

bit of a recluse, they insist.

there should be a mail slot in the door at worst case scenario.

just make some pertinent notes.

so Felicity frantically scribbles down the best notes pointing out the problems (and offers a couple of suggestions, just in case, really Tammy probably shouldn’t bother the editor right now, this emergency sounds serious), gets in her car, and lets her gps guide her through the city.

her phone guides her well past Felicity’s own brand new neighborhood into practically another world, finally leaving her in the parking garage of a high rise condo/luxury apartment building.

she has to argue her way past the doorman/security guard (diggle maybe??) for access to so much as the elevator, has to produce her business card with the publishing house logo and namedrop the editor (and even mention the emergency room and child), and really almost cry on the poor man before she’s allowed up.

so she finally gets up to the proper floor, and she’s tired, harried, deeply uncomfortable with this entirely unfamiliar territory in all sense of the phrase, and Focusedly Intent on her purpose.

she locates the correct door.

she knocks.

waits.

knocks again.

finally, worried she’ll have to drop the manuscript through the mail slot, she tries calling through the door, “Ms. Arthur, I’m from the publisher! There’s an issue and I’ve been trying to reach you, Ms. Arthur, if you could just please--”

the door jerks open.

standing on the other side, looking bewildered and a little pissed (and very much shirtless and damp from a clearly recent shower) is a ridiculously pretty man and oh dear god how could this night have gone so wrong, she wonders, when he demands "Who the hell are you?"

oh no.

she assumes she’s gotten the wrong apartment entirely.

“Oh my god,” she says, aghast, “I am in the wrong place and you have a penis.”

he looks utterly taken aback. “Excuse me?”

cue mortification. “Oh my god! I meant--I mean--I was looking for a woman, which you are clearly not--although maybe that’s cissexist?--but I am probably-definitely in the wrong place and I am so sorry I disturbed you and made you put clothes on--I mean to answer the door! Oh my god I need to leave.”

(and see, you can understand Tommy’s confusion and hostility--NO ONE except his agent and his editor know Tammy Arthur is Tommy Merlyn, and it’s an unofficial clause of his contract that it remain that way.)

so Felicity whirls on her heel to make for the elevator--and Tommy finally notices the multicolor post-it flagged manuscript clutched against her chest.

oh god, he realizes. there’s something wrong with the manuscript, and the deadline is tomorrow at 6pm.

“Wait!” he blurts, lurching into the hall, half naked, mildly panicked. “I do have a penis!”

Felicity whirls with wide eyes and enormous suspicion, instantly afraid for her life.

Tommy turns beat red and cringes. “Holy shit, it’s contagious. I meant it’s me, you’re looking for me. Not a woman.” He presses a hand to his chest and raises his brows earnestly. “I’m Tammy Arthur.”

so Tommy declares his identity and instantly swivels shiftily to confirm the hall is empty except for them.

wincing, he takes a step back towards his open door. “Would you mind doing this inside?”

Felicity squints. “Are you for real? You’re not some creep?”

Tommy blinks, taken aback, and deadpan says, “I suppose my creepiness is entirely up to you to determine but I am assuredly for real. You’re holding my manuscript.”

She hesitates.

“Look, obviously nobody knows Tammy Arthur is a guy, and I kind of want to keep it that way so can you please come inside?”

muttering under her breath about how she’s going to get serial killed in a strange city and donna will tell her grave she told her so and then question her in the afterlife about how hot her murderer was, Felicity follows him into the apartment.

once he closes the door behind her (not locking it with a pointed flourish), Tommy folds his arms across his chest (and glances down, suddenly reminded this entire encounter has been carried out in partial nudity) and asks, "What happened to [editor]?"

Felicity explains about the kid in the emergency room, and Tommy goes into concern mode, which Felicity is surprised by, and it settles her a little that this guy is so clearly familiar with the editor and even knows the kid’s name and mutters about texting editor later and sending flowers.

running a hand over his hair (and here Felicity becomes acutely and uncomfortably aware that he is really super good looking, like, should be on the covers of his own books good looking, and also still shirtless in jeans that aren’t even buttoned, which honestly just further enforces the previous book cover notion) Tommy sighs and asks, “So what’s the emergency?”

Felicity stares blankly, then scrunches her face up like he’s being an idiot. “I just told you. Sick child. Emergency room. Are you okay?”

Tommy blinks--and bursts out laughing.

“No, no, I meant,” still laughing, “I meant the manuscript. What’s wrong with it? Why are you here?”

“Oh.” Felicity flushes, and laughs at herself. “Sorry. I’m a little--” vague hand gesture.

Tommy chuckles. “Understandably.” Then, with a twinkling smile, “Would it help if I put a shirt on?"

She flushes a little more--but answers point blank and deadpan faced. “Yes. That,” she makes an open palm gesture at his chest, “is distracting and you have a serious problem.”

Tommy’s smile dies at that, worry about the book and the deadline (and the crowding anxiety about Everything Else pressing up behind it) draining his humor.

He turns on his heel, disappears briefly down a hallway, and returns as he’s pulling a ridiculously soft looking hooded henley over his head (and yes, Felicity definitely does follow the disappearing glimpse of that trail of dark hair leading into his waistband before the shirt covers it because how is he real?)

“Okay.” He folds his arms again and frowns seriously, brow furrowed. “What’s the problem?”

Launching instantly into Work Focus, Felicity strides up close and flips open the manuscript to the main problem, rattling off the gaping plot/continuity hole she discovered.

Tommy is instantly absorbed in the work and the network of plotlines, character arcs, backstories and continuity threads cats’-cradling in his head, frowning down and leaning close as Felicity flips back and forth through the pages, pointing out where the main problem ties backward and forward into the rest of the manuscript.

and when Felicity finishes, Tommy staggers backward, hands diving into his hair, and groans.

"Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh my god I can’t believe this. I just--I forgot. I spotted this problem weeks ago and I just... I spent so much damn time thinking about fixing it that I just..." he stares blankly, aghast. "I just thought I did? And went ahead? Oh my god, the deadline is tomorrow."

Felicity winces--she’s done that with code before.

Tommy buries his face in his hands and lurches around to put his back to her, groaning in frustration into his palms.

“But--you can fix it.”

Tommy turns towards her and drags his hands slowly down his face til he can see her. “I have been trying to fix it for over a month. How the hell am I going to fix a fuckup this massive in one night?”

He slumps heavily against the wall, sighing like his soul is leaving his body. “I’m not going to make it. This book is never going to print and they’re not going to renew my contract. I’ll never be published again. I’ll--I’ll have nothing.” He stares hollowly at the other wall. “Fuck. He was right.”

Perplexed by that last statement (and a little unimpressed by the melodrama in general) Felicity shakes the manuscript to draw his attention. “You’ve just been looking at it too long as this giant, impossible hole. You can still fix it. You just have to untangle the lines, follow the problem back to the root.”

so Tommy gets a little grumpy about how it’s not that simple, and Felicity, frustrated with this whole affair, turned around seven ways and out of her depth (she’s a copyeditor! handholding and writer wrangling are not in her job description!) tilts her head to one side, lips pressed together and says, “Fine. It’s up to you whether or not to give up, but here.” She shoves the manuscript against his chest. “you might as well at least try.”

and then she turns to leave, waylaid momentarily because she doesn’t remember setting her purse down but it is not in her hand, and her car keys are in it.

Tommy means to remind her that she can’t tell anyone Tammy Arthur is a man when he is distracted by the colorful post-its poking out of his pages--and the scribbled words on one catches his eye.

frowning, he flips quickly through several of the post-its.

notes, suggestions.

reminders about things on other pages, with the page numbers included.

this one has a startlingly incisive character insight.

he blinks, startled. “Who wrote these?”

Hand on the doorknob, Felicity freezes, heat flashing across her cheeks. She’s never given content notes before. Did she cross a line? Say something stupid?

Tommy continues, “These aren’t [editor’s] handwriting. Or anything [editor] would say, actually.” He looks up at her, his eyes suddenly clearer and sharper than she’s seen them since he flung open the door, wet and half naked. “Who wrote these? Was it you?”

Her mouth opens, hangs there for a second, and finally she says. “Yes. I did.”

He walks slowly across to her, and Felicity’s heart pounds erratically for no good reason--he is not pinning her against the door, this is not one of his silly books.

He looks from the manuscript to her. “I never asked. What’s your name?”

“Felicity,” she blurts. “Felicity Smoak.”

A crooked smile spreads across half his mouth and he nods at her. “Tommy. Not Tammy. Tommy Merlyn. Felicity... would you mind staying a few more minutes?”

She looks down at the manuscript in his hands, his thumb running along the edge of a post-it.

He’s on deadline.

Which means she’s on deadline.

She just started here and she’s in a strange city and she cannot lose her job.

“Sure.”

A few minutes turns into over an hour as he asks her about her notations, which turns into another hour as she asks her own questions because he’s just Not There Yet.

a pot and a half of coffee later, the Q&A has devolved into a sounding board/writing session in which Tommy plants himself in front of his computer, typing faster than she’s ever seen anyone outside of her field (well. her would-be field.) as he chases the root of the problem--the bug in the code--and prints out scenes as fast as they’re written, turning his back on his desk and watching her sit on his couch (shoes kicked off, hair knotted on top of her head, nibbling the end of her pen) as she parses the patterns--and reads deeper--until suddenly it’s five in the morning, and Tommy jumps out of his chair with a crowing “YES!” and a fistpump more enthusiastic than anything this side of a john hughes movie as he finds the fix.

he turns around, grinning, eager to explain what he needs to do to Felicity--

and she’s on her side on his couch, curled around a throw pillow and entirely asleep.

he considers waking her up, but they just pulled an all nighter and she’s in no condition to drive anywhere, so he eases another pillow under her head, drapes a blanket over her--and brews a fresh pot of coffee and sits back in front of his computer, and writes with more fervor, focus, and surety than he’s felt in ages.

when Felicity wakes up five or six hours later, she’s alone in the study, and the coffee table in front of her is loaded down with two stacks of paper.

one is the original manuscript, her colorful post-its included.

the other is a fresh, neat stack--a thicker stack, at that--leafed through with a handful of plain yellow post-its in Tommy’s handwriting.

the little yellow square stuck to the first page bears just her name and two words.

“Thank you.”

frowning, Felicity gets up--wincing at the creaks and kinks in her joints from sleeping on an unfamiliar couch in her clothes--and pokes around hesitantly, looking for Tommy.

she finds him in the bedroom, in the clothes he was in before, sprawled crooked across the end of the still-made bed as if he passed out after sitting down.

considering the array of coffee cups in the study, Felicity decides against waking him.

she puts on her shoes, gathers her purse--and the new manuscript--and sticks one of Tommy’s own yellow posits in its place, promising to drop the new manuscript off at the office on her way home.

she debates saying something a little more personal, but decides against it. after all, they don’t really know each other at all, do they?

this was just work. weird, but work.

and so she leaves.

she assumes she’ll only ever interact with “Tammy” ever again by seeing the name on a future manuscript crossing her desk.

and so Tommy gets his manuscript in ahead of the deadline because of Felicity.

and of course this shit is right before the weekend.

so Felicity drops the manuscript at work before going home because holy shit she stayed up til five in the morning in some strange man’s apartment helping him write a romance novel and at one point he read part of a sex scene out loud to her and it was entirely unsexy because they bickered for almost ten minutes about alternative words and descriptions for the penis.

and so Felicity goes home to her new apartment about two blocks out from the glades, almost two thirds of her shit still not unpacked, because she’s been here all of two weeks and how is this her life?

she crashes for probably another four hours.

but when she gets up, in the hard light of afternoon, everything about the previous night seems even more surreal and absurd.

and then suddenly it hits her.

wait.

she knows the name Tommy Merlyn.

doesn’t she?

and so she opens her laptop and one pathetically shallow google search later she “knows” more about Tommy Merlyn than she probably ever needed to.

(like, she had to avoid picture proof that he does, as they both stated the night prior, have a penis, because there were like five articles that wanted to show her paparazzi photos of an island vacation like seven years ago where he and some guy named Oliver went skinny dipping.)

she knows he’s born-rich. like, filthy rich.

she knows his mother died when he was young, and there are quite a few articles speculating on his strained relationship with his father, and a truly ridiculous number of mentions on tmz and related websites, usually in connection to Oliver queen. though fewer by far in the last three or so years.

(a little research on barnes and noble dot com confirms her suspicion that Tammy Arthur started publishing more frequently in the last three years as well.)

she has a moment to groan and laugh when it just hits her.

Tommy Merlyn.

Tammy Arthur.

Tommy/Tammy.

Merlyn/Arthur.

his sense of humor is terrible and he has zero sense of subtlety.

or at least, that’s her first head-shaking thought.

and yet… she’s never read much romance before, but she found herself actually reading what she was working on for this book. and his sense of humor was witty, dry, quick. and there was so often such incredible, subtle grasp of character nuance and emotion. it’s a completely different depth.

and besides. nobody would ever think to make that connection, so he can AFFORD to make such an obvious pun.

it helps that he doesn’t include an author photo in his books and the author description of Tammy Arthur is as vague and generic as one could possibly imagine.

before she knows it she’s spent well over an hour internet stalking Tommy Merlyn.

the weirdness of it all hits her, and she’s in her apartment alone amongst the box labyrinth, blushing as if anyone is there to judge her.

she resolves to file it away as a crazy, unexpected experience, one of those curve balls life just sometimes throws at you.

it’s not like she’s ever going to see him again.

after all, it’s a big city, and she’s just one cog in the machine that churns out his books.

but yeah, it was crazy and weird, but it was fun.

and... here, she curls into her couch, biting her lip, eyes unfocused... for those long, strange hours, it didn’t matter at all that they were strangers. they hurdled right over the details, the incongruities, the differences, and connected on a level that was startlingly smooth, fluid.

it was nice.

she shakes her head at herself, daydreaming about the hot romance author she shared a bizarre meetcute with like she’s the heroine in a Tammy Arthur novel.

life, after all, is no story.

it isn’t that neat or optimistic.

it was one weird and shining moment, and it’s over.

really, now that she thinks about it, she imagines that on monday her editor will corner her and swear her to secrecy on the identity of Tammy Arthur. probably even reassign her.

she settles comfortably into the humdrum expectations of bumpy work life, and grumbles to herself over the imagined prospect of getting assigned the technical manuals.

after all, that’s what her life has been since MIT. humdrum. ordinary. full of the little bumps that only ever keep you uncomfortable, but still herd you along the same rutted track.

monday arrives.

there’s an email in her inbox from Tammy Arthur.

before she opens it, she’s shocked by her own visceral reaction.

electric tingles riding up and down her spine, spreading across her skin to raise every small hair with the held breath of anticipation.

she sits at her desk with her finger hovering on the mouse, for some reason half afraid to open it.

she clicks.

...and instantly deflates.

“thanks so much for going the extra mile. great job! look forward to the next project.

-Tammy”

she stares at the screen for just a moment, incredibly disappointed that it’s so... short. bland. and in that same generic, vaguely feminized “Tammy” voice that so neatly hid the secret of his gender and identity from her before friday’s bizarre turn of circumstance.

the disappointment sours her mood for the entire morning, but after lunch, she determines all over again to just file it away and move on. something crazy she can reveal when she’s old and writing her memoirs of being the world’s otherwise most boring woman, maybe.

but she’s barely returned to the office and sat down at her desk when editor summons Felicity to their office.

instantly the weekend’s mundane conspiracy theory clenches at her guts and she speculates wildly about ominous threats to her job, maybe even a nondisclosure agreement.

(hands sweating over being called to her supervisor’s office in a satellite publishing office makes the memory of her college self resolve to hack something just for kicks later that night. when did her conspiracy theories get so... small?)

editor closes the office door behind her.

Felicity braces for impact--and just in time, because editor practically MELTS in an outpouring of gratitude.

editor’s child is fine, it was all just a big scare, but it was so incredible of Felicity to go that extra length to get the job done by deadline. there’s a wink and a grin, and a promise that dedication like that will be remembered, and hey maybe one day soon Felicity will be in an office like this of her own, eh?

a little bit dazed, Felicity awkwardly fumbles through a response--and just as she’s about to leave, editor says, “Oh, one more thing!”

and here it is, right?

the sly threat, the velvet-cloaked knife pressuring secrecy?

“So, you met Tammy.” wink, wincing smile. “‘Tammy’s’ agent only contracts with us under the informal agreement that we keep the author’s identity--and particularly gender--under wraps, so if you could keep mum on that, you’d really be saving my ass.”

“Um.” Felicity blinks. that’s it? that’s the threat, that’s the pressure? “Of course.”

editor gives her a grateful smile. “Knew I could count on you. Oh, and you really did some great work. You certainly made an impression. I gave the new manuscript a couple of reads this weekend, and I have to say I think this is the best Tammy Arthur yet. I think you might have a knack for this editing thing.” editor laughs. “You’re a natural.”

Felicity buries a little twinge of resentment.

what she is is a natural programmer. a natural coder. she’s only good at this because of that.

but she stifles it. if she’d really been made for that path, wouldn’t she still be on it? would it be this hard to get back on it?

so she forces a smile, thanks the editor, and goes back to her desk.

and well… that’s it, isn’t it?

neat and tidied away, the most exciting experience of her last several years, and now the box is on the lid and it’s time to get on with life, boring and predictable.

the same old pattern, carrying along smoothly even despite the occasional minor interruption.

sometimes, Felicity feels like she’s the bug in the code.

little does she know, however, that she’s given Tommy something of a fever.

he crashed out after completing the revisions on friday--well, saturday morning. but when he got up?

at first he felt wrung out, scooped hollow the way you do when you’ve Finished something and given it everything you had.

he hasn’t felt like that in a long time.

it’s not that he’s been phoning it in, but as he drifts through saturday like a ghost, he ruminates on the feeling like he’s shaken off a husk he hadn’t even realized had cocooned him.

and slowly, he realizes that over the last few years, even as he’s gotten more comfortable as a writer, more confident, he’s gotten a bit... lost.

he’s been buried. buried under expectations and his own secrets and the invisibility they require.

he’s a writer.

he’s good at it.

and by god, he loves what he does. it’s the one thing he feels proud of in his life. the one thing he could imagine telling his mother about without any sense of shame or need for apology or excuse.

...and yet it’s the one thing he can’t share with people.

and he hadn’t realized quite how much he’d cut himself off of with that.

back in the days before he was published, when he was just posting little things online, he could interact with his readers. and now, sure, there are reviews, there’s critical publications and there’s bloggers. he even gets the occasional fan letter routed through the publisher.

but he doesn’t respond.

he doesn’t go on book tours.

he can’t do signings.

he can’t even put his own face on the back of his books.

the one thing that feels most like himself in his life... and he can’t own it.

and it’s not just the sense of ownership, of pride and accomplishment he’s missing now.

now it’s that electric, live-wire current of interaction he discovered so stunningly effortlessly that he didn’t even notice it with Felicity.

it’s never been like that with his editor.

that was always a cut and dry back and forth, pure business conducted mostly through email.

the closest he can grasp on it in recent memory was the one time he got Oliver to actually pay attention and listen while he bounced a book idea off of him.

he’s seen other authors do reddit amas, convention panels, twitter q&a’s, signings, so many venues where they interfaced directly with the audience, connecting immediately and intimately with the very people the story was always for.

he’s incredibly envious, he realizes.

he hadn’t realized until last night with Felicity how much life it breathed into the entire process.

he wonders if it was the connection itself that was so incredible about last night...

or specifically Felicity.

the way she listened... the questions she asked... she had a way of turning things over in her head to show him sides he hadn’t discovered for himself, forcing him to shape the characters, the plot, the backstory, the tone, even the prose itself in a fuller, more vibrant way.

he finds himself sitting on his couch, huffing a quiet laugh as he remembers the way she’d wrinkled her nose when he read the word “member” aloud, and the snapping-quick debate that had followed over the connotation various words and descriptions for male genitals evoked.

he wonders, suddenly, if she’s read the new revisions.

if she realizes that everything hinged on one of the last exchanges they had, around 3 in the morning, when he was venting his frustration out loud over the root cause of the entire disaster that had brought her to him, and she’d lain on her back on his couch, eyes closed, and asked in a sleepy, vague voice the question that had unlocked and expanded everything.

it wasn’t even a question about anything in the text.

she’d simply wondered aloud about what made the male lead become the person that made the decisions he did, when the answer wasn’t in any of the big, shaping events Tommy had built into his backstory.

she’d trailed off ticking through the things it wasn’t... and as his mind had chased along after her voice, he found himself filling in the blanks.

and, in a sharp detour, remembering that it wasn’t always the big, obvious markers that sharpened or smoothed a person’s contours.

it wasn’t always, say, a mother’s death, or a father’s scorn and neglect.

sometimes it was the quiet certainty of the best friend at your side--or the sharp skip of the five minutes when they weren’t, even though nothing happened.

most of what Tommy had mined for his character’s history after that question would never come anywhere near even the subtext of the book itself, but it was there nonetheless, supporting through underpinning, solidifying him from a character, a vessel carrying out the necessary demands of the plot, into a person, complex and contradictory and whole.

Tommy is almost embarrassed, after all of that, to realize he never got more of the complexity that was Felicity beyond her name and occupation.

for a moment, he considers getting in contact with her, suddenly consumed with curiosity about what made her whole and contradictory, what big and small life events shaped her mind into one that saw such startling angles.

almost instantly, he’s awkward and embarrassed.

he trapped the poor woman in his apartment for an entire night like some sort of creep. she was there because her job obligated it, not so he could become obsessed.

what would he even say to her if he did get in contact with her again?

you’re incredible? i’ve been sleepwalking through life and you shook me awake? i think you saved my book and i want to know your backstory?

but no, no he can’t say any of that.

hell, if she were a girl Tommy had met a nightclub, maybe then he could say it.

(but more likely he’d open his mouth and some godawful pickup line involving sushi would fall out of it.)

the Tommy Merlyn he puts on at clubs and bars is a smarmy ass, and it’s great for finding someone to fuck, but it’s shit for any connection beyond the physical.

and Felicity Smoak has already seen so far beyond that.

she’s seen him, who he is behind a keyboard, when he’s agonizing over comma placement and tearing at his hair because he’s forgotten the word that means suspicious and curious at the same time.

the idea of walking that back to introduce her to the line-dropping bed hopper makes him cringe.

he never knows how to introduce people to the Tommy that spends weeknights past midnight reading instead of dancing.

the closest he ever got was, well… laurel. and that ended so disastrously it nearly collapsed an entire chain of relationships.

he likes that this Felicity fell by happenstance into meeting the self he actually likes.

best not to ruin that.

it’s something he can hold onto.

that one night, the one time he spent with someone being real.

someone who wasn’t the only one who’d known him since actual infancy.

after all, the likelihood that he could do that right more than one night? abominably slim.

best to leave it as it was.

so he opens up his email. the "Tammy" account.

he gets distracted, briefly, by rereading the handful of emails exchanged with Felicity before last night, the ones where he’d never even read her signature line.

he reads them a little more closely, looking for some sign in them that he missed that said meeting her was going to change something.

but it’s not there.

it’s just perfunctory work emails.

dropped commas, a missing page faxed.

she was no one, and so was he.

so he opens a new email.

for a wild, breathless moment, his fingertips resting on the smooth keys, he almost does it.

almost begins typing without a metaphysical mask.

but he hits the first letter with his index finger, and as the next follows, and the next, he realizes the mask is already there, and he wouldn’t know how to take it off if he tried.

he writes what barely amounts to three sentences, reflexively slipping into the syntax and word choices he long ago crafted to speak as “Tammy.”

he hits send with a cringe, scrubbing his hands over his face, and shuts his laptop almost angrily.

move on.

just move on.

he lets it go with effort. settles into a grim sort of hunker-down and focuses on the last rush of activity that follows a book in final edits and pre-publication.

monday arrives and he even forgets to check for a reply from Felicity (as if there could be anything to say in response to the nothing he wrote to her) until editor calls to enthuse about the revisions, reassure about their child’s health, thank him for the flowers--and finally, at the end, promise ms. Smoak understands the necessity of complete discretion, but if he’s worried, they can always reassign her?

“No, don’t do that,” he blurts, oddly anxious. if they reassigned her... he suddenly imagines the next book, and some other copy editor sending him perfunctory emails about paragraph breaks and font size. the thought is inexplicably excruciating. “That’s really not necessary. She was--she was... remarkable. I trust her, uh, her discretion completely.”

there’s a beat of surprised silence, and then editor says with a smile in their voice, “Well. That’s a relief to hear.” another pause, as if something is considered but then goes unsaid. “I’ll email you about the cover design tomorrow?”

Tommy agrees, deflated that that really is it.

it’s really over then.

and it is over for a little over a month.

Tommy gets over his disappointment (or buries it) and grabs on with both hands to that sense of renewed purpose.

in the meanwhile, his book releases, to better reviews and a bump in sales across his catalog than he’s seen in a while.

(in the meanwhile, Felicity impulsively steps into a bookstore on the tuesday it releases and buys a copy for herself. she gets home and curls up with it--and is arrested by the page before the acknowledgements--the usual acknowledgements that always thank the publishing staff--the page that reads “For F”)

(there’s no way she’s “F”. right?)

in the meanwhile, Tommy is already working on his next book--and working on convincing his agent and editor to take it.

he’s never dabbled much in the subgenres with his romances, preferring to sell his stories on the strength of the characters and the accessibility of their choices and desires.

but aren’t paranormal romance and mystery romances the darlings of the genre right now?

and this is a different take on even that.

he’s innovating a new potential moneymaker.

(they’re not completely sold, he knows, but he’s winning them over. he just needs to convince them with a test chapter.)

superhero romance could be the big new thing.

it was remembering that idea he bounced off of Oliver that did it.

he never wrote that book, but he contrived that story in part to fulfill his own interests and as an attempt to cultivate Oliver’s.

he and Oliver used to read all those comics as kids

iron man and the x men, captain america, all of that.

it had started because Oliver had once again shrugged off the romance genre as just “not for him” and Tommy asking “What if it was like comic books, though? Superheroes, you know? There’s always a girlfriend or a husband, right? That’s a romance.”

and he’d had Oliver’s interest on that premise for longer than Oliver had ever paid attention to what Tommy was writing.

and now, well, now Tommy’s a seasoned author, with experience on what readers want and what will hold their interest, and what they’re willing to entertain.

he’s galvanized anew, remembering all over again how much he’d loved the rough sketch of the characters he’d made up for Oliver.

the tragic, strong-jawed hero, and the unexpected, maverick woman who challenged and brightened him.

he knew better now, of course.

less heroic angsting, more female agency.

so Tommy writes like a man on fire until he has what he feels is one of the best pitches of his life.

and he’s not wrong.

his agent and editor are both skeptical to begin with, but they come up for air from the proffer pages with an astonished gleam in their eye.

there’s really something in there, they tell him.

if this takes off, it could be major.

a series, he challenges. if this book sells, he could write an entire run based on the main pair. maybe even expand it into a universe of miniseries based on side characters and other heroes.

it’s a risk, they warn him.

he wants to take it.

and to his shock and utter delight, so do they.

fast forward another month and Tommy stalls completely.

he’s barely four chapters into the book, his editor is visibly restraining themselves from cursing at him in their emails, and his agent is warning Tommy will be the death of them.

(it’s partly down to Tommy’s crabbiness and frustration. he’s being difficult and knowing it only makes him more of an ass.)

the time has come in the story to get the heroine involved in the super secret superhero business and everything is falling apart.

every rewrite is a false start, falling flat and twanging like a snapped guitar string, discordant and grating and wrong.

at his wit’s end, Tommy breaks down.

he emails his editor.

“forward chapters to Felicity Smoak. ask her to meet if acceptable.”

editor calls him. “This is highly unorthodox. Ms. Smoak is a copyeditor and this is well beyond the scope of her duties.”

“Please just ask her," he pleads. “I need her perspective. Forget meeting for now, just have her read the chapters and email me her thoughts.”

reluctantly, the editor loops Felicity in.

she’s stunned and baffled.

she’s not an editor. she’s not even a romance reader (ignore the stack of Tammy Arthur novels rapidly piling up on her nightstand...)

when the editor tells her the premise of the new venture, Felicity does perk up a bit.

she always did like comic books and superheroes. that’s at least a little more stable footing for her.

still, she’s almost suspicious.

it’s been over two months and she was sure “Tammy Arthur” forgot she even existed. and now he’s demanding her opinions on his new book?

she almost wants to refuse. this is not in her job description.

but then, for a moment, she lets herself go back to that night.

the crackling energy of their back and forth, the urgency of the deadline and the satisfaction every time they parsed through a problem or understood each other.

and on another level, the lightning current energy of something new and strange and interesting interrupting her routine.

when did she become this person? someone who backed warily away from anything that threatened to disrupt a life she hadn’t even wanted and wasn’t even satisfied in?

impulsively, she says yes.

she reads Tommy’s new chapters, and in less than two hours, she finishes, hunched over the pages, fingertips between her lips as she perches cross-legged on the edge of her couch.

it’s still rough but it feels so... exciting. fun. and full of so much potential.

she loves the heroine. she reminds Felicity wistfully of someone she once thought she might become;

and the hero is intriguing, sexy, complex and a little heartbreaking, even if she finds she wants to shake him sometimes.

and then, right as she flips through the last few pages, eyes widening and a grin splitting her face as she whispering urges the heroine onward...

it stumbles.

tangles up in itself.

and by the time she reaches the last paragraph, she’s frowning, baffled and feeling a little cheated.

before she’s even thinking about it, she sets the pages aside and snatches up her laptop, opening her email and typing fervidly, paragraphs of questioning that is nearly interrogation, interspersed with genuine enthusiasm for the things that are so very right.

she hits send almost scowling, feeling personally affronted by the letdown of what should have been a turning point on the cusp of wonder, characters that collapsed from grand and towering figures into flat archetypes that barely resemble who they were only pages earlier.

she flops backward into her chair still frowning, still thinking about the sudden souring of something that had been so fantastic.

moments later she jolts upright and opens another email, firing off another volley of questions and opinion.

almost the moment she hits send, her inbox pings with a reply to the first email.

she opens it as if she could rip open a physical envelope in her excitement, then frowns in confusion as she gets answers that feel incomplete in consideration of her second email.

she’s finishing a response when a reply to the second message arrives. wrinkling her nose in annoyance, she hits send hurriedly and opens the new reply.

she’s in the middle of reading it when another arrives.

exasperated, she skips right to it.

it’s short.

“this isn’t working. can we talk?” he includes a cell phone number.

Felicity hesitates, heartbeat suddenly racing. the high-voltage energy of that first night feels almost at her fingertips again, and she hesitates, biting her lip before impulsively sending back, “can we meet instead?”

                                                       Tip Jar!

@dntpanic42 @nottheopera @jaymee-97 @squidget13 @lfcoffee @felicity-smoak-is-my-goddess @jaspertown @nina2406 @petrandel @karolstrange @theripplingwave @silvainshadows @quietly-wandering @totallyunstablefangirl @amandaleslie24 @loved--and--alive @tosailuponthesea @crazyfool82 @tijats @crankyandbitchy @midnightofthesoul @meog1120 @punkermama @leaflingbags @skcolicity @moneyyhoneyyy @onynia @alalimon @gingerstarlight @oceanmina101 @snidgitmist93 @notahotlibrarian @bifelicitys @lovewillsurviveallobstacles @desikostos @phoenix-173 @hungrytiger11 

[chellyfishing]

How do you know your mbti type thing? Idk if those online quizzes are accurate because I'm pretty sure I'm not intj, but that's the result I usually get from those tests.

rubs hands like a grasshopper OH BOY DO I LOVE QUESTIONS LIKE THIS sit down my friend gonna drop some premium octane knowledge

How do I, personally, know my type? Lots of reading and self-evaluation. I was introduced to it as a child, and I thought I was INFP. Protip: can’t really type young kids, all though you can get a sense of the trajectory they’re on. But then the Internet happened and I would get different results on different tests at different times and each of them sounded vaguely like me but also not. I can remember the first time I got INTP and went “that’s new, the hell is that?” and read up on it and thought oh no... it me........... I still waffled a lot because descriptions oversimplify and stereotype a lot and INTPs are supposed to be these complete stoics and I’m a weepy vegetarian who was forbidden growing up from watching my favorite movie Milo & Otis because I got too upset when they were separated. I was starting to accept INTP especially after talking with other nerdy friends and then I learned about the functions and that sealed it because I am absolutely a walking talking Ti-Ne machine.

I would recommend the same for anyone else, with the most important point here being: trust your understanding of yourself more than an online test. If you don’t think you’re INTJ, you’re probably not. The thing is, Ns are rare compared to Ss. I know that it seems hypocritical of me to say I’m an N but other people aren’t but I can give you a full analysis of not only why I am an N but also why I am not an S. (“No, no, that’s okay, I’ll take your word for it.” -- everyone) NJs in particular are REALLY rare, because they use introverted intuition, which is probably the most rare function to see developed and used well in people. That’s why I’m intensely skeptical of the INTJs and INFJs of tumblr, because there are SO. MANY. and while I do believe fandom spaces would attract introverted intuitors, it’s... too much really. SJs by contrast are by far the most common types in almost any given population, probably because they use introverted sensing, which is an easy and common function.

Anyway my point here is that N/S is usually, but not always, where people get turned around, because 1) there’s a stigma against S types as being, idk, stupid, unimaginative, whatever, and 2) most tests have a bias towards N, because the people who get all nerdy about this junk (me) are usually Ns.

So, no, the tests are usually not really accurate. They can point you in the right direction but they’re definitely not gospel. This test uses functions rather than preference pairs and it encourages you, like I do, to look at your results and see if things line up to your understanding of yourself, so it can be really helpful all though it’s a bit more involved than “I like parties! Agree/Disagree”

Anyway if you really want to know your best fit type, it does take a little more effort than a quick visit to 16personalities. Even just reading a little bit about each type and seeing which resonates with you most is probably going to give you a better idea.