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chervbs · 2 years ago

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i was made for loving you — e. munson

pairings: eddie munson x jade west!reader

word count: 5k

synopsis: you’re the new kid at hawkins high-goth, intimidating;a true femme fatale incarnate. and eddie munson is undoubtedly smitten.

warnings: fem!reader, jade west is not meant to be an oc/faceclaim just inspiration for the readers personality therefore reader is kind of rude to all characters including eddie, you probably won’t understand this as well if you haven’t watched victorious, kind of love at first sight but its really just eddie being dramatic, reader is hot and she knows it, slight sexual implications (blink and you’ll miss it), mediocre writing, fluff!

a/n: jade west was one of my many bisexual awakenings and i’ve always wanted to write something with a character inspired by her. like I said in the warnings, this may not make as much sense if you haven’t seen victorious but its still readable! also pls pls pls send requests/concepts about jade west!reader because I wanna write more of her so badly! as always, feedback is treating appreciated <3

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Eddie had noticed the murmurs as soon as he stepped into the school, just in time for his third period.

He was trying to be better this year, he really was, but his late night smoke session the night before had relaxed a little too much, and he’d slept right through his alarm clock. Eddie only woke up once Wayne got home at around 8, yelling at his nephew to get his ass up and to school unless he wanted to go through a fourth senior year. The threat was enough to get him out of bed, stumbling as he attempted to put his white reeboks on while simultaneously hopping into his van.

Now, strolling down the hallway to his locker, trusty black “lunch” tin in his hands, he realized he forgot to grab his denim vest from the backseat where he’d haphazardly thrown it the day before. He groaned and glanced at his watch-9:27, three minutes before he had to be in English. He could risk being a couple minutes late.

Eddie, ignoring the usual dirty looks he received from his peers by just existing, pivoted on his heels, making his way back out to the parking lot. It was then that he initially noticed the whispers as people emerged from the front doors of the school.

Now, Eddie was very much used to such things in his wake, however, these weren’t for him. As he neared the exit, he noticed all of the students that were whispering were also pointing outside. Letting his curiosity get the best of him, Eddie sped up his steps, eyes squinting as he adjusting to the sunlight and looking around for the source of the gossip.

It didn’t take long to find you–you stuck out like a sore thumb.

In your hair were streaks of blue and purple jewel tones, a tight fitting black top that did wonders for your chest, a black skirt that Eddie was sure was far too short for school. Your shapely legs were encased with black fishnets and as his eyes traveled further down your figure, knee high black boots that had silver buckles running down the length of them and a platform that added a good couple of inches to your height sat on your feet.

Murmurs of gossip followed you as you weaved through the parking lot, but Eddie was frozen in his place, certain he’d just seen an angel. An angel clad in all black–a demon, maybe? Either way, he was entranced.

It wasn’t until he realized that you were heading straight towards him that he snapped out of his stupor. He had to say something–introduce himself, right? Eddie could feel his heart racing as you came closer to reaching him. What should he say? And–oh god, you were even prettier close up–

“Hi!” He didn’t even realize he blurted the word out until his ears picked up on it a few seconds too late.

Your steps never faltered as you passed him, but he did see your eyes rake over his figure, the corner of your lips lifting into a smirk. “Interesting.” You muttered, just loud enough for him to hear.

By then, Eddie’s mission to retrieve his vest had long since been forgotten. It wasn’t until the bell rang that the metal head realized he was stood frozen at the entrance, the other kids around him sending him weird looks. He practically floated to his next two classes, little images of you occupying his every thought.

Eddie didn’t even realize he’d left his class until he landed on the hard plastic of the cafeteria seats. The rest of the Hellfire Club was already seated, heads snapping to attention at their dungeon masters abrupt appearance. They were all quick to notice his dazed expression, Gareth taking the initiative to snap his fingers in front of his face.

“Yo, Eddie? You okay, man?”.

He did seem to return back to reality, but the dopey smile on his face stayed put. “Gentlemen,” He spoke indirectly. “I’m in love.”

The boys perked up in interest. “In love? With who?” Dustin asked, nearly pushing his lunch tray aside.

Eddie didn’t get the chance to answer before a hush fell over the hoard of students in the cafeteria. They didn’t know why until Eddie heard the tell tale sound of your boots hitting the floor, the whispers as murmurs picking back up as you passed by.

He could see the moments his friends also laid eyes on you, jaws falling slack as the girl of all of their little metal head dreams walked in. Eddie couldn’t help but smirk.

“With her.” He grinned. He couldn’t take his eyes off you as you walked right up to the lunch line, the queue of teenagers parting for you like the Red Sea. Not a single person protested as you skipped in front of all of them, paying for your lunch without a care in the world.

They watched you make your way down the middle of the rows of tables, only stopping once a letterman clad arm flung itself across your shoulders.

You tensed, eyes narrowing in anger. Jason Carver gave you what you assumed he thought was a charming smirk, jerking his head in greeting. “Hi, there. You’re new, right?”

You glared at arm and then moved your gaze to his. “Hand. Off.”

Jason’s grin faltered, but he was quick to recover. “Oh, c’mon, new girl. Don’t be like that. Why don’t you come sit with me and my buddies, huh?” He spoke while bring his free hand to your other shoulder, attempting to steer you towards his table.

“I would rather slam my tongue in a car door.” You replied monotonously. “And if you don’t get your hands off me in the next two seconds, you won’t have hands.”

The jock seemed to finally realize that you were not going to be relenting anytime soon and scoffed. “Whatever. You don’t have to be such a–“

Jason cut himself off, realizing your glare on him had become deadly and you were practically white knuckling the tray of food in your hands. You tilted your head challengingly. “A what? Do you wanna finish that sentence?”

He clenched his jaw, the only thing keeping the blonde teen from cowering in front of his peers being his pride. Clearly his throat, he stepped away, hands raising in surrender and returning to his table with his tail between his legs.

You hummed in satisfaction, resuming your search for a table to sit at. Most new kids would probably find an empty table or maybe even a group of friendly enough looking kids to sit with. You, however, refused to let anyone think you were some kind of loser.

Finally your eyes landed on a table full of boys. They all wore variations of black clothing, save for the three younger looking ones who had a bit more color on them. Each had on matching white shirts with words you couldn’t read from your spot and a cartoon demon on them. You grew curious, especially after you realized the boy at the head of the table was the one you’d seen this morning.

You remember him standing at the entrance of the school, looking at you like a kid in a candy store. He was quite cute, clad in leather with an attractively disheveled look to him.

Making your decision, you changed course to the group of boys who’d all been previously looking at your until they realized you were staring back, wide eyes shifting to their food.

It’s clear they were a tad bit frightened, none of them looking up to acknowledge your presence when you stopped behind them. Rolling your eyes, you loudly cleared your throat, making them jump in their seats.

“H-hi.” The supposed leader of them spoke, looking just as flustered as his did that morning. “What, um–what can we do for you?”

“I’m gonna sit here.” You announced, glancing down at the blonde boy with curly hair in front of you. “Move over.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He squeaked, shoving at the boy next to him until they had both scooted over a seat.

The spot allowed you to sit next to the long haired boy from that morning. He kept stealing quick glances at you, the skin on his cheeks shifting from ivory to red at your burning gaze.

“Um…m-miss?” Your head snapped to the boy in front of you, curly brunette hair and slightly tan skin clad in a colorful cap and the same shirt as his friends, which you could now see read Hellfire Club.

“It’s Y/N.” You corrected.

The boy visibly gulped. “Right. Y/N. Its um-it’s great to meet you, really. And not that we mind you sitting with us–we really don’t!” He almost yelled, startling when you narrowed your eyes at him. “But, w-why…are you sitting with us?” He asked in a high voice.

You popped one of the french fries from your plate into your mouth. “You losers seem like the coolest people here.”

The oxymoron wasn’t lost on them, but they were admittedly too frightened to point it out.

“What’s hellfire club?” You asked, pointing your black painted fingernail at their shirts.

“It’s a DnD club.” The long haired boy spoke up. There was a tremble in his voice. “Dungeons and Dragons? Ever h-heard of it?”

The beginnings of your eyebrows moved closer together, the fire in your gaze making Eddie feel simultaneously afraid and a little turned on. “Do I look like a nerd to you?”

His eyes widened a bit, the depth of his brown eyes making him resembled a baby cow. “No, of course not! You look like the exact opposite of a nerd, in fact! You’re like the coolest person i’ve ever seen!”

The other boys had never seen Eddie act so flustered, yet they couldn’t blame him. Your presence alone was enough to bring a grown man to his knees, that much was evident. Eddie looked about three seconds away from passing out and they were sure he was already willing to bend to your will.

You only tilted your head curiously at the boy. There was no one at your old school that seemed to be as affected as this guy was. Even your ex boyfriend, who swore up and down that he was in love with you, never had the same twinkle in his eye as the cute metal head in front of you.

“What’s you’re name?”

If you gave credit where credit was due, the boy never broke his stare from yours. That also never happened. You were surprised at how much you enjoyed it.

He perked up, a little grin forming. “Eddie.” You raised your eyebrows. “Munson! Eddie Munson.” He added breathlessly.

The deep berry shade painted on your lips was so alluring that Eddie was practically leaning forward. The younger boys in Hellfire were half surprised he wasn’t drooling.

“I like you, Eddie Munson.” You nodded at your own words, going back to eating your lunch nonchalantly.

Oh yeah. Eddie thought. In love was an understatement.

“You’re in a band?”

Eddie jumped, startled by your voice. He’d made an offhand comment at lunch that Hellfire was held in the Drama Club room, but he hadn’t actually expected you to show up.

You weren’t even sure why you had, truthfully. Maybe it was the his big, chocolate doe eyes, or the way he looked at you like you were sent from heaven, despite the fact that not only had you only had a couple of conversations, but also that you were as far from an angel as anyone could possibly be.

And, maybe, because you had no friends.

Getting ripped from your old school where you were comfortable with your group of friends was difficult, not that you’d ever let it be known. This little group of misfit kids already looked at you like you were their savior, so you feel it’s justified to claim them as your new friends. And you weren’t too concerned about their low position in the social hierarchy of Hawkins–you had enough of a social standing to keep their heads above the water.

You were facing the wall adjacent to the door, staring at one of the many handmade posters throughout the school that read CORRODED COFFIN. There was a picture of Eddie, Gareth, Jeff and Kevin, all posed with their respective instruments and smaller letters at the bottom saying to go see them Tuesdays at The Hideout.

“Uh-yeah. Me and some of the guys from Hellfire you met the other day. Jeff, Gareth and Kev.” He explained, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. Eddie couldn’t fathom why he was feeling embarrassed right now-as if your approval of his band would make or break anything.

You let your lips form a tiny smirk, looking over your shoulder at him. “Sick name.”

Eddie could feel his heart skip, heat rushing back to his cheeks. “T-thanks. Came up with it myself.” He chuckled. “We actually play at the Hideout on Tuesdays.”

He noticed your eyebrow raised expectantly. “The Hideout! It’s a bar just outside of town. The crowds not that big, but you gotta start somewhere, right?”

You hummed in agreement, strolling over to where he was setting up the table. Eddie’s breath hitched as you stopped next to him, standing so close that he could smell your vanilla perfume, almost making him lightheaded. Did you even have a clue of what you were doing to him?

Of course, you did. You’d been trying to get Eddie to take the hint that you were into him for the past week. Five whole days of lingering touches, sultry stares and being extra pleasant just to see his cheeks and the tips of his ears turn red.

You bent over the table to pluck one of the little figures from the game board, ensuring that you back was perfectly straight to feed fuel to Eddie’s fantasies.

Judging by the nearly inaudible groan that escaped him, you’d say you were successful.

“What are these?” You allow the tone of your voice to drop an octave, the sound more alluring than Eddie could handle.

His brain seems to short circuit for a second, glazed over eyes staring back at you blankly, jaw hanging open slightly. Smirking, your lift a finger, pushing up the bottom of his chin until his lips met. The action seemed to pull him back into reality, clearing his throat once he realized what he opened.

“Tho-those? Those are-um…figurines! I made them for my campaign.” He choked out, backing up a little. “Helps the players feel more immersed into the story.”

You held the little figure out for him to grab, making sure to graze your fingers against his palm as you gave it to him. A shiver visibly went down his spine.

“I gotta get going.” You inform, already making your way to the door.

Eddie chased you a few steps. “Wait! Are you sure you have to go? You can always stay and watch us play. Or we can teach you and you can join our next campaign.”

You’d never admit how much the offer warmed your heart. The boys were sweet-Eddie even sweeter. It’s like you could feel them slowly taking an ice pick to your frozen heart.

“No can do.” You tsked. “I have an audition to get to.”

Eddie’s eyebrows furrowed under his curly fringe. “Audition? For what?”

“Spring musical.” You shrugged.

You could almost feel the surprised wafting off of Eddie. “Really?” He asked incredulously. “Didn’t really peg you for a theatre type.”

A chuckle left your lips. “Well, I’m a woman of many talents, Eddie. And you don’t know me.” You reminded him, trying not to let the assumption upset you.

The culture shock of moving from a performing arts high school in Los Angeles to a normal high school in the middle of nowhere Indiana was truly jarring. Not only were peoples differences accepted back home, but they were encouraged. It didn’t matter what you looked like or what your interests were as long as you weren’t hurting anyone.

You’d possessed a gift for the performing arts since you were a kid, so it was a no brainer for your parents to enroll you into a performing arts high school, despite it being an hour drive. Your mother just wanted was your best for you and your father wanted what was best for your families reputation.

They’d split up halfway through your sophomore year, and while your father still sent monthly checks to help pay for school fees, your mother was struggling to pay the rent for your new two bedroom house.

She’d always wanted you to be successful when you got older especially after the divorce. Having to depend on someone else just to live was fine and dandy until you were kicked to the curb, left to fend for yourself with only a couple thousand dollars to your name.

Your incident at school only gave your mother a reason to leave California, choosing instead to move to Hawkins which had both a few family members and a lower cost of living.

Eddie’s chin dropped as he grinned at the floor. “Guess you’re right about that one. We could change that?”

Both of you seemed equally surprised at the suaveness of his offer and the fact that he got through it without stuttering.

You smirked. “We could. Not tonight.”

The heavy steps of your boots echoed as you made your way out of the room, Eddie left to watch your hips sway with flushed cheeks and a racing heart.

You were becoming impatient.

Two weeks had gone by and yet Eddie still hadn’t made a move. It was a bit infuriating, to say the least. You were practically always all over him, and while it was obvious he welcomed the attention, he still hadn’t gotten passed being flustered.

You really didn’t know what else to do, never having been in this situation before.

You didn’t ask people out, people asked you. With past boyfriends, they’d ask you out within a couple of days if you showing interest. But you’d met Eddie’s friends, you’d attended both Hellfire meetings and Corroded Coffin shows, he practically melted into the floor anytime you said his name. What was holding him back?

These questions were constantly on your mind, especially during times like these, when you walked through the school hallways together, so close that your knuckles grazed his as you walked.

Eddie and you share a fifth period, as you discovered on that fateful first day. You’re nearly to the classroom when you both spot a crowd forming in the middle of the hallway, murmurs of ‘cheerleaders’ and ‘hellfire freaks’. It’s enough to send you stomping towards them.

Sure enough, once you’ve shoved your way past the crowd, you spot a trio of cheerleaders cornering Dustin and Mike against the row of lockers. There’s a singular jock standing a few feet away and it takes you a second to realize he’s holding back Lucas by his biceps.

You don’t bother to listen to what the main cheerleader is cackling about before you slide yourself in between her and the freshman.

“Hello.” You interject. Her face calls for a second and you detect a bit of fear before she sticks up her chin with feigned indifference.

“Hi!” She grins back, like she hadn’t just been terrorizing a couple of fourteen year olds. “You’re the new girl, right? I’m Victoria.”

You smirk back and introduce yourself, reveling in the way her cronies seem to tremble in your presence. Even the jock had let go of Lucas, though neither of them moved.

“What seems to be the problem here?” You asked politely. You heard Eddie snicker.

“Oh, nothing really.” She replied, waving her hand dismissively. “Just had to remind the freshman of their place. You get it, right?”

You had no doubt that the confrontation stemmed from a smart remark by Dustin, maybe even Mike. But you’d taken Eddie and his band of losers under your wing, and you were nothing if not loyal.

“Can I just say,” You ignore her question. “You’re really pretty.”

She seemed surprised, but still held a hand to her heart like it was the sweetest compliment she’d ever received. “Oh, my gosh, really? Thanks.”

It didn’t escape you that she hadn’t bothered to return the compliment, not that you needed it. “Totally. And your hair is just so nice.” You say, gesturing to her long, clearly unnatural, blonde ponytail. “It would really be a shame if something happened to it, huh?”

Her face fell. “What?”

“Yeah. Like if someone, I don’t know, took a pair of scissors and just-“ You made a cutting motion with your fingers. “Chopped it all off.”

Victoria scowled, suddenly realizing the insincerity of your kindness. “Are you threatening me?”

You tilted your head to the side, shrugging. “Do I need to be?”

The cheerleader huffed. “Look. I don’t know what your problem is-“

“Oh, don’t worry. We’re getting there.” You assure. “You’re gonna leave these boys alone. Do you understand me?“

Victoria scoffed, looking back to her friends for help. One of them had witnessed your collection of scissors after asking you for a pencil. She rapidly shook her head at her friend.

“And what’s gonna happen if I don’t?” She challenged. The roll of your eyes was almost involuntary.

“Oh, my god.” You groaned. “Did you not just hear me? Did all that bleach in your hair burn the little brain cells you had?” Your face neared hers threateningly. Her eyes widened in fear and you could hear her breathing pick up. “Leave these kids alone, or I will be forced to make good on my promise. Do you understand me?”

She hesitantly nodded. “Good. Now get out of my face.” She seemed frozen in her spot. “Now!” Your voice boomed, startling everyone in the crowd that had gathered around you. Christina sprinted away, her friends not far behind her.

You sighed. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom before class.” You turn to Eddie, amusingly aware of the dazed look in his eyes as he stared at you. “I’ll meet you in there?”

You were walking away before Eddie could respond.

Eddie, along with Dustin, Lucas and Mike watched as you glided away, mouths hung open and hearts in their eyes.

“Eddie?” The metal head responded with a half-assed noise of acknowledgment. “If you don’t make a move, I will.” Dustin said.

“Not a chance, Henderson.”

Eddie didn’t think his day could get any worse.

He’d already bombed his history test, forgotten his money for lunch, had chocolate milk spilled on his shirt, and now his piece of shit van wasn’t starting.

Wayne had been telling him for days to go to the garage to get it looked at after Eddie told him it had been taking a few seconds too long to start up. His uncle had worked there before leaving to work at the plant, but they still gave the Munson’s discounts whenever they came in.

But Eddie had been swamped with homework and his new campaign for Hellfire, and it had just slipped his mind.

Unfortunately, there would be no time for another reminder as his engine pitifully sputtered before eventually shutting down.

“Shit!” Eddie cursed, slamming his hands down on the steering wheel angrily.

He would call the garage to come tow the van, but he didn’t know the number by heart. He’d stayed after school for mandatory tutoring forced upon him by the counselor, so it was well passed 6.

Wayne had probably already left for work, which left Eddie to try and think of literally anyone’s number until he found someone who could pick him up.

Eddie begrudgingly left the van, dragging his feet to the schools outside phone. He only made it about halfway when he heard the double doors open. He was surprised to see you walk out, and he made his surprise known by calling out your name.

“Y/N?”

Your head shot up, eyebrows furrowing when you realized it was him. “Eddie? What are still doing here?”

“Uh,” He chuckled a little, kicking a bit of gravel. “I had to stay after for tutoring, and now my van won’t start, so…” He glanced up, clearing his throat. You were gazing at him with an unreadable look in your eyes, and it was difficult for him not to squirm. “What-um…what are you doing here so late?”

You pointed your thumb behind you, gesturing to the doors that a few other students were now exiting. “Callbacks.”

“Oh, yeah! You had auditions the other day.” He grinned, snapping his fingers in recognition.

You couldn’t help the way your lips turned up, not in a smirk, but a genuine show of bashfulness. You’d be lying if you said Eddie’s presence was beginning to have an affect on you as well. At first it was just nice to have someone so blatantly infatuated with you, but it wasn’t long before you realized just how easy it was to enjoy everything about Eddie.

He was sweet, even when you couldn’t help but snap and say something rude or defensive. Old habits die hard and your abandonment issues made some of them even harder to shake. Still, Eddie never even flinched, and in just a few weeks of knowing each other, he’d easily figured out exactly what to say to calm you down.

Eddie was also deeply misunderstood, which you connected with on a deeper level that most even knew. When you claimed the Hellfire boys as your new friends, you were none the wiser of the rumors of them being a satanic cult. It wasn’t until later that same day that you heard it for the first time and you almost laughed out loud. None of those boys had the capability to hurt even a fly, much less perform a human sacrifice.

“What was the musical again?” He asked, rocking back and forth on his heels.

You chuckled, “Grease.” Neither of you realized that you had both subconsciously moved closer to each other.

“Right! You make it in?” Eddie had yet to hear you sing, but he had a feeling you were most likely extremely talented. You just had that air about you-something he could recognize as a musician himself.

He was slightly surprised to see a genuine smile appear on your face. “Yeah,” You replied, your heeled left foot crossing over your right to hold your weight. “Rizzo.”

Eddie nodded but you could see the bit of confusion swimming in his eyes. Not shocking–Eddie didn’t really seem like the type to enjoy musical theater.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about.” The words came out more like a statement than a question and the two of you laughed a little. The sound that you made nearly made his knees buckle.

“Honestly, no.” Eddie grinned. The little scrunch of his nose and the flush across his cheeks sent a funny feeling floating through your tummy. “But I have no doubt you deserve the role more than anyone. And I can’t wait to watch.”

The amused expression hadn’t left your face and you lowered your chin, eyes slightly narrowed. “You would willingly go watch a school musical?”

Eddie shrugged nonchalantly. “If you’re in it? ‘Course. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

In that moment, it was like a switch flipped in your brain. From the outside, Eddie couldn’t tell that there were a million thoughts swarming around in your brain. Suddenly, any morsel of patience you had left waiting for Eddie to make a move vanished.

“You said your van won’t start?” He looked a little confused at the subject change, but nodded regardless.

“Yeah, that’s what I came over here for.” Eddie told you, pointing back at the schools phone. “Was gonna call someone to come get me.”

You silently weighed your options, before making a decision.

“I could give you a ride.” You said, eyes peering at Eddie with thinly veiled mischief.

Eddie’s eyebrows raised and he smiled in surprise. “Really? Yeah, that would be great, thanks.” He hoped he didn’t look as nervous to be in a small, enclosed space alone with you, even for just the few minutes it would take to get to the trailer park.

He followed you to your car, hesitating a bit to climb into the passenger seat. The first couple minutes of the ride were silent, but not uncomfortable, until he spoke up. “I can get you some gas money. Just need to do a few more sales.”

You frowned and shook your head, waving a dismissive hand at him. “You don’t need to do that. I offered to give you a ride, I don’t need gas money.”

Eddie opened his mouth to respond when you suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. “What are you doing?”

“Speaking of gas.” You say, calm as ever. “Looks like we’re out.”

Eddie looked a little panicked and instinctively glanced at the dashboard. His eyebrows furrowed. “The gauge says you have a full tank.”

“Yeah, try not to talk.”

He didn’t have time to even be confused before he felt your hand grasp his chin, pulling his face towards you and pressing your lips to his. A moan of surprise came from the back of his throat, but his lips were quick to move against yours.

Eddie reluctantly pried himself away, breathing heavily. “I-I’m sorry. Not that I’m like, complaining-because I’m not at all, trust me-but wha-what is happening right now?”

Your thumb softly stroked against where it rested on his cheek. “I’m kissing you, Eddie.”

The metal head nodded rapidly in agreement. “Yeah, yeah, no, I get that.” His hand raised to wind around your wrist. “I’m just-uh…” His chest still raised and fell, lips swollen and tinted with your burgundy lipstick. “Just a little confused, I guess.”

You pressed another searing kiss to his lips before you answered. “I like you Eddie. And know you like me too. I was just tired of waiting for you to make a move.”

Eddie was the one to initiate the next kiss, scooting as close as possible to the center console to lean into you.

You let him pul away briefly, “I’m really sorry about that-“ Kiss. He whimpered. “-I gotta say, though-“ Kiss. “-I’m kinda glad-“ Kiss. “You had to make the first move.”

A content hum left your throat. “Me too.”

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olderthannetfic · 1 year ago

Note

The previous convos about sensitivity readers and purity culture in booktwit types definitely feels familiar. I'll never forget when I was querying agents a few years ago with a novel I wrote, and I was told my writing "caused discomfort," was "problematic" and could be seen as racist/anti-black and having a lot of instances of queerphobia and misogynoir. The novel was a horror-fantasy story that actually was based on the transatlantic slave trade but on a different planet (So, yes, I would hope that this kind of story would be disturbing and cause discomfort in the reader. Mission accomplished). The plot covered several generations of the captured aliens who were enslaved (a la A Hundred Years of Solitude), the fallout of their enslavement, and the mistreatment of the enslaved people as a result. Most of the agents who requested the full manuscript said they liked the story, but I was met with many intrusive questions about my identity, race, gender, and sexuality and urges to work with a sensitivity reader should we progress forward as agent and writer. I am a Black, femme nonbinary, bisexual person. This was all fine and dandy with them, so they wanted to make this information about my identity public for consumers to appease the Twitter crowd and dissuade callout posts from the functionally illiterate. I wanted to maintain my dignity and not disclose any personal information. (They assumed it was because I was in the closet or something. I was not then and am not now. My identity just isn't anyone's business if they want to read a book, simple as that. This was also especially because there are mentions of sexual assault of some characters, and that kind of information definitely isn't anyone's business to know about an author. Period.) I also didn't want to hire a sensitivity reader because they were advertised to me as someone who performed outrage at works for a living (It also didn't help that I was linked to a few sensitivity readers who were very vocal on YA book Twitter and SFF Twitter. No thank you.). This was, apparently, a problem. That was when I decided publishing may not be for me, at least traditional publishing.

Yeah, sadly, I feel there is an audience for that book, but you're going to have to find it yourself. Anything YA adjacent is too outrage-driven without the necessary nuance, but a lot of more oldschool SFF circles are too full of the kind of sensitive, delicate white guys who wouldn't get this book either. Maybe an indie black press? Somewhere with a more literary bent that thrives on controversial books? Depending on how horror-y it is, maybe there's an avenue to pursue there. Horror fans do include a lot of manbabies too, but those circles can be more open to actually dark stuff.

At least self publishing is easy now, but self publishing and then getting a significant number of people to buy and read the book is hard.

I promise that decent sensitivity readers exist, but the ones that crowd is going to send you to are... not equipped to deal with dark horror fantasy, in my opinion.

And as a writer, I wouldn't work with anyone I didn't know pretty well anyway. How are you supposed to evaluate the feedback of a rando? What if they fundamentally don't get your genre?

If you do decide to press on, I think I'd look for like-minded fellow writers to begin with. Start a club. Serialize your stuff in the same place. IDK. There are plenty of grown-ass adults who buy books and who like nuance. There's got to be some way to find your audience.

It would be a pity to give up just because publishing is full of cowards.

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gmbencompetence · 2 years ago

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there is a reason why nix hydra has low ratings on glassdoor, and theyve been known to be scumming for nearly five years now i have no idea why the fandom expects so much and thinks so highly of that shitty company and then get surprised when they do shitty things against what they think they should do. and its funny how people keep fighting on and on for fictif/the arcana even now, like when are yall going to wake up. good on you for leaving when you could!

I should clarify two things:

1) I wrote a very long Glassdoor review of Nix Hydra that was so angry, a loved one convinced me to take it down so that it didn’t cause problems for me or people still working there. I saved a draft somewhere…

2) My anger is entirely at very, very specific people at the company. By and large, the people who made The Arcana and Fictif were not only deeply passionate about making games for women and the LGBT community. They fought tooth and nail for this. Even as Community Manager, I would have long talks with some of the writers and artists about how they made sure to write [Female Character] in a way that validated and welcome queer femme players, or discussions of how characters like [Name] came from a place of empathy and compassion for mental health that was meant to provide comfort. I remember long meetings about very small plot points and not whether they would “make sense canonically”, but what effect they would have on the types of readers we want to provide games for.

It seems relevant to say that I co-led the initiative for sell Arcana posters to raise funds for The Trevor Project. This came from a place of real sincerity from my coworkers and I to leverage the rise in merch sales to do direct Good for the communities that meant so much to us. When I drafted the proposal, the percentage of profits I said we should donate was very low. This wasn’t out of selfishness but out of a fear that “The Boss Folk” would torpedo the project if I asked for too much. The person co-leading the project with me strongly insisted I ask for something significantly higher. Something like 80-90% (do NOT quote me on exact numbers). This felt audacious to my cynical mind, but I pitched it and the management approved it without hesitation. We barely covered costs on the Arcana posters, but it was done because we wanted to make sure we were giving money directly to people that needed support.

My point with this anecdote isn’t to say the company is all saints. I was very sincere that a lot of what happened there left me damaged and upset and hurt. But it is to say that the vast majority of people I got to work with chose to work at Nix Hydra instead of other places because they genuinely believed in the work and getting to make games for communities that don’t often get games made for them. That this was populated by people who cared, who fought for their art, and who wanted to make it for the people they cared about.

It’s been stated that our female-led routes didn’t sell as well. What hasn’t been explicitly said before is that we kept doing them because so much of the company fought with tooth, nail, and blood to make sure that wlw stories were being told.

Also, I was confused about my sexuality all my life, and Muriel’s route is what made me finally accept my bisexuality.

—

What I’m saying is that there are things that I disliked about Nix Hydra in the strongest possible terms. There are things for which I will always, always be grateful.

So I’m always down to complain about what messed me up there. And I’ll always be a little damaged about it. But I’m never going to write off the whole thing as entirely awful. I hope that makes sense and appreciate your reaching out. :)

#nix Hydra #arcana

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sweet-xoxo-thatcares · 3 years ago

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I'm sorry reader, after the night I just had. The flashbacks and the memories all add up.

Jay never did love me. In fact there's so many girls and stuff on their phone as we speak. All while being in love with the only girl who never left them, no matter how much of an asshole they were, Ayunna.

I know I'm not the only they used like that before to get a nut and entertainment. But Jay and that girl is dirty. Both of treat women like whores, cause they're whores themselves. Objectifying them and ordering them like stuff you buy online.

Reader, I felt everything you said but that statement. I'm sorry, but I can't accept that any of that was out of love. Jocelyn broke my heart and my world view 💔

And I'll never see love the same way like that after her.

I've never wanted to die so bad, and it was all because of a girl who didn't treat me right, cause she was in love with somebody else who liked to hurt pretty people and innocent hearts the exact same way as she did.

They deserve each other. Those sick two twinheaded monsters.

I'm out. And I'm done talking about her. She doesn't deserve me. Nor will I ever see her again. Cause frankly I don't wanna see ghosts come back from the dead. She played me too many times like that.

And there's probably many other girls they were talking to at the same time they were involved with me, looking for their next hang up. They're sick, evil, sex addicts and they trick people so they can use them for later. Like spiders catching baby eggs, cause she likes dominating virgins. And also weird old milf ladies to get money from.....she's still hiding her bisexuality. I already knew that one though.

Why else would you make a cute girl, a femme, dress like a stud for you and then tell her she should get an undercut, so she could look more like a masculine stud?

I'm good. You're into dudes too, but you're in denial.

Fuck off, you lying asshole.

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hellomynameisbisexual · 4 years ago

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5 Ways That Bi Erasure Hurts More Than Just Bisexual People

December 2, 2014 by Milo Todd

This year, Bisexual Awareness Day/Celebrate Bisexuality Day was on September 23rd.

That same day, the National LGBTQ Task Force thought it’d be a good idea to post an article entitled “Bye Bye Bi, Hello Queer,” in which leadership programs director Evangeline Weiss said “she is ready ‘to say bye bye to the word bisexuality.’

She said it does not describe her sexual orientation, and she encouraged readers to cease using the word as well as she felt it reinforced a binary concept of gender.

Let me drive that home a little more. The National LGBTQ Task Force not only thought it would be a good idea to publish an article insulting, misrepresenting, and forsaking the bisexual letter in their own name, but did so on Celebrate Bisexuality Day.

Rude.

And a fantastic example of the constant, ongoing erasure bisexual people have to deal with. This one just happened to be incredibly blatant.

What happened as a result of that article? People got pissed.

People got so pissed that the Task Force not only removed the article from their website, but posted in its place this non-apology (it keeps being referred to as an apology, but I’m not so easily pleased): “Having listened to a wide array of feedback on the timing and content, we recognize that this blog offended people. For this we sincerely apologize. It has been removed.”

In other words, “Sorry you got pissed off. Hopefully you’ll shut up if we take it down.” Which, as far as I can tell, isn’t much of an apology for a blatant disregard of an entire community of people.

Misunderstanding of the bisexual community has been the crux of biphobia’s history and the ongoing battle to erase bisexuality from the LGBTQIA+ community.

It’s a scary time to be bi, especially when your lesbian, gay, pansexual, and queer siblings and allies are calling for your blood simply because they’ve fallen victim to the mainstream agenda without realizing it. (Say what?! Jump to #5.)

It’s time for a change.

It’s time for all of us to properly understand one another and to — hope of hopes — become allies for our incredibly similar endeavors. To help initiate that friendship, I ask you, dear reader, to go through the following three steps.

Step 1: Look below. If I’ve played my cards right, virtually every reader should find at least one category with which they identify.

Step 2: Approach your designated section(s) with an open mind, an unprejudiced heart, and a desire to further enhance your own community/ies. It’s difficult for people to learn new things and see different views if they automatically approach them with resistance, which is often the case with bisexual topics.

Step 3: See how bi erasure hurts you as a person and, while you’re at it, likely hurts the people you care about. Because it really is happening.

So here are five ways in which bi erasure is hurting people of layered identities.

1. Female-Identified People and Feminists

Bisexuality is one of the only non-monosexual* identities currently recognized in the English-speaking world. If bisexuality is kept underground, it suppresses our limited, precious resources for open discussion about non-monosexuality. This hurts female-identified people and feminists regardless of their sexual orientation.

To this day, female-identified people can’t get a fair shake. Pay is unequal, birth control access is limited, and objectification is a daily thing. Non-monosexual women in particular are often not taken seriously because they’re seen as sluts, greedy, or unable to make up their minds.

Also, the general fetishizing of women is particularly intensified in the bisexual realm by (straight-identified) men, turning the very act of women’s sexual freedom, empowerment, and self-expression into nothing more than something for male gazes. (This is most often seen through the relentless prompts for female-female-male threesomes and masculine catcalls in bars when two femme-appearing women make out.)

By participating in or casually allowing bi erasure to happen, we’re ignoring the specific plights and abuses of bisexual women, thereby contributing to the ongoing problem of female inequality, objectification, and silence.

As feminists, we can’t pick and choose which women to fight for. The complexities of womanhood — and all of its cultural suppressions — are an all-or-none deal.

*Note: Non-monosexuality usually refers to someone who is interested in more than one sex or gender. (In other words, somebody who isn’t gay, lesbian, or straight.) Another way to say “non-monosexuality” would be “polysexuality” to help keep it from sounding negative.

2. Male-Identified People and Male Liberationists*

Just like with female-identified people and feminists, bi erasure hurts male-identified people and male liberationists regardless of their sexual orientation.

Allow me to make this pretty basic: Men continue to be fed the message that being gay is bad. Being gay means you’re not really a man, which means you lose your dude membership and the bulk of your male privilege. And since gayness equals the slightest shred of attraction to or intimacy with another male, all manners of bromance must be squashed.

In short, many guys live in a state of silent terror in this regard.

Bi men are afraid of being banished from the world of lady-loving, gay men are worried about losing all of their connections to hetero land, and nothing is worse for a straight man than being called a fag.

Constant monitoring, constant filtering, constant stress: Is this really the kind of world we guys want to keep living in?

By being able to talk about bisexuality — remember: one of our only non-monosexual identities — male-identified people can begin to break free from the masculine ideal.

Bi talk helps bridge the gap between being a man (straight) and not being a man (gay) and realizing, hey, having some manner of attraction to or intimate interaction with another guy is totally okay, masculinity unscathed.

Gay men can begin to regain their identities as men, bi men can finally start coming out, and “fag” will lose its strength as an insult from one straight man to another.

*Note: Male liberationists are more or less seen as allies to feminists and vice versa. Both will argue that patriarchy is bad, but while feminists talk of how it’s bad for females, male liberationists talk of how it’s bad for males. Examples include the inability to romantically or sexually love another male, the emasculation of men of color, and the physical, verbal, and mental abuse that comes from society’s expectations to be stereotypically masculine.

3. People Who Identify as Trans Sexual, Trans Gender, Genderfluid, Genderqueer, or Gender Non-Conforming

This one’s pretty easy. Some people on the trans spectrum identify as bisexual. But then they’re told they can’t or that it’s an insult to their trans siblings because bisexuality is believed to be trans-exclusive.

The problem with bi erasure is it adds to the ongoing problem of cis people — LGQ or not — telling trans people what to think. Cis people have a bad habit of thinking they need to speak for people on the trans spectrum even when trans people are quite capable of speaking for themselves. This is even more frustrating when it comes from a community supposedly meant to support them.

Despite the personhood for which they’re continuing to fight, trans people can receive backlash from the lesbian, gay, and queer communities as their identities and bodies are turned into political battlegrounds.

Sometimes, they’re used without consent by some cis individuals so that points can be made for non-trans-specific agendas, and sometimes they’re ironically used in the attempts for cis identities to help better the trans worlds.

For instance, automatically dismissing bisexuality as trans-exclusive and guilting any person on the trans spectrum that wants to identity as bisexual, if I may make so fine a point.

As blogger Aud Traher writes, “If you want to support trans people like me, don’t erase me or speak over me or cause me harm out of self-righteous biphobia. Look into yourself and deal with that internalized biphobia and then help others get over theirs. Don’t advocate for the destruction of a community in the name of ‘saving’ it. And, especially, don’t do it in my name.”

4. People Who Identify as Gay, Lesbian, or — Yes — Straight

Quite simply, it makes gays and lesbians (and straight people) look bad, too.

Bisexual people get a bad rap for apparently upholding the gender binary by saying they love only (cis) men or (cis) women, but isn’t that pretty much exactly what gays, lesbians, and straight people are saying when they identify as gay, lesbian, or straight? That they’ll only love either (cis) men or (cis) women?

But where’s their rampant backlash from the rest of the community for upholding the gender binary? I’m just sayin’.

Even when these groups extend their definitions to include trans people and people on the gender non-conforming spectrum, it’s often still as long as those trans people exhibit some manner of gender representation that falls into the lover’s category of desire.

Now, I’m honestly not trying to rag on gays, lesbians, or even straight people. They have as much right to identify how they want as anybody else. And there’s nothing wrong with feeling primarily attracted to only, say, cis or trans men if your brain simply tells you that you only like guys. That’s fine. Go ahead and do that. I’m not saying you can’t.

What I am saying is you can’t be spewing bi hate or letting bi erasure slide because 1) it’s incredibly one-sided and unfair, and 2) in the end, it’s making you look bad, too.

What do you think will happen if bi erasure is a success? You’ll be next, dears.

*cue Jaws theme*

5. People Who Identify as Queer, Pansexual, or Another Fellow Non-Monosexual

In late October, Lizzy the Lezzy — who I quite enjoy, by the way — shared a photo on her Facebook timeline explaining sexuality in terms of guests at a BBQ.

This would be all well and good if it didn’t include a glaring misconception about bisexual people, especially when compared to pansexuals. While bisexual people were defined as getting both hot dogs and hamburgers, pansexuals were defined as getting hot dogs, hamburgers, “and a salad.” Oops. What year is this again?

I’m going to make something very plain to you, dear reader: Bisexual people don’t just love (cis) men or (cis) women. That’s not how the ballpark definition goes. The “bi” in “bisexual” does not indicate a binary. Well, okay, it does indicate a binary, but probably not the one you think.

Instead of “bi” meaning a love for only cis men or cis women or otherwise putting men and women at two opposite ends of a spectrum, “bi” means a love for identities bisexual people identify with themselves and identities that they don’t.

Or, as the popular Robyn Ochs definition goes: “I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”

Look at that very closely. That’s still a binary. That’s still “bi.” And there isn’t a thing wrong with it, no exclusion to be seen.

When compared with the general concepts of pansexuals and queers, our orientations suddenly sound pretty darn similar: We love everyone.

Bisexual people get a bad rap for apparently being transphobic. While we’ve already seen a little bit in #3 as to why we aren’t, I want to further drive the point home here. A large portion of the transphobic accusations toward us come from the queer and pansexual communities, which in turn seem to derive from some serious misinformation and misdirection by the mainstream.

For the record, queers and pansexuals are cool. I like them. But the fact of the matter is that the misconception of the “bi” in “bisexual” as meaning an attraction to only (cis) men or (cis) women — and therefore upholding the gender binary — was created and imposed upon bisexual people by the mainstream. You know, the people that want the gender binary to stick around.

And some queers and pansexuals ate the propaganda they were fed? That’s terrifying. It starts to show just how large and sneaky the mainstream’s gender binary monster truly is.

By defining and erasing bisexuality on the grounds that it upholds the gender binary, pansexuals and queers are not only reinforcing the binary they so sorely wish to dismantle, but they are losing important focus on where the problem actually resides: the mainstream’s insistence to force the gender binary on non-mainstream groups such as bisexual people.

Further, holding bisexual people responsible for the abuse they’ve suffered is simply wrong. All that’s doing is blaming the victim. But, by recognizing and respecting bisexual people as they truly are, bisexual people can not only help dismantle the gender binary and put a new definition on the concept of the spectrum, but finally be allowed to team up with pansexuals and queers to crush mainstream abuse on non-mainstream identities.

Doesn’t that sound nice? I think it sounds nice.

TL;DR

Dear non-bisexual identities, please stop shooting yourselves in the foot and then wondering why you’re missing toes.

We’re here for the same reasons you are: for the right to love whoever we want and for the right for others to do the same.

So let’s finally be friends. We’re never going to get anything done if we keep spending our time putting each other down.

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staycatcher · 5 years ago

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Cursed 001

Member: Kim Seungmin x Femme Reader (she/her) (Jisung is also in this, we love wingpeople)

Au: (Dorky/Pure) Frat Boy! Seungmin x Baddie! Reader + Unexpected Soulmate AU [in the same universe as Anguish, no need to read it though!]

Genre: Crack, Angst, Fluff? (she’s all over the place, partner🤠)

Rated 14? for too much swearing, kind-of-stranger danger, getting into mentioned kind-of-stranger’s car (don’t do what y/n did!!), suggestive themes & jokes, hangover & leftover tipsiness, cringe, promiscuous bisexual reader, nothing explicit though!! Also, Jisung is too much I’m sorry

Word Count: 4.1k

Notes: special thanks to @staytion-nine for being a bro and reading & critiquing my full shitty drafts and @strayneoculturekids & @hyunjinssmile for thinking my crack parts were good & somewhat funny way back when I wrote them ilyssssm🤗💞💛

ps, I hope you readers liked/found my easter eggs!!🥴

“Your heart began to sing, sing triumphantly as if you broke some sort of curse- Curse? Wait, hold up. Hold the fuck up. I think he’s my soulmate?! But I can’t possibly have one-”

Cursed series 1/?- ~001~ 😈🤓😳~

Growing up, not a single day passed without your single mother reminding you that meeting your soulmate wasn't going to happen for you. The odds were not at all in your favor, not her’s, not your grandmother’s and not even your great grandmother’s mom; being the youngest girl of the youngest in the family made you carry such a burden. The streak that your family had going on for generations was too strong to break at this point. It’d be a miracle and a half if you ever heard of your soulmate for a fraction of a second. You started to accept by the time you learned how to read, that a life with a soulmate was frankly not in the cards for you.

To say you were completely and utterly blind-sighted when you met your soulmate, would be the understatement of the century. You lived your whole life with no fear or any expectations of long lasting relationships whether it’s with a soulmate or not. You lived the life you knew many people with soulmates or obsessions with commitment couldn’t live. You lived a life of freedom, focused on yourself.

Now, it's been three months at this university; three months, and you already have a reputation that precedes you. Contrary to popular belief, you don't like the attention. Yet somehow the spotlight seems to follow you. Though, you would argue you weren’t as charismatic as you were careless. Your carelessness seemed to be your charm and charming you seemed to be.

A groan tore out from your throat when as stretched over to snatch your boots. Jelly legs hobbling all over the place as you scrambled to tug them on, stubbornly not zipping down the zipper which only made it harder for you in the long run. Once on, you trudge on forward, not giving a shit if things were inside out or not, all that mattered to you was going back to sleep in your own bed. You have to remain careful though. You don’t want to go too fast and have stomach acid erupt out of you in aggravation, ruining the Sorority’s carpet and your morning. So, you watched each and every wobbly step as you did your best to navigate your way out of the crowded, trashed halls of the post-party filth. Fortunately, it seemed you’ve risen before anyone else, no conscious creatures for you to deal with.

The clock struck six o’clock as you strut down Greek row, your steps more firm now, waking you up more with each step. However, waking up meant more hangover symptoms, though you weren’t exactly sober. You made it about four more clumsy steps down the sidewalk before a car slows down next to you. This has happened to you more times than you can count, but never when the birds were fucking chirping. You huff out in irritation, walking faster, thus, less firm as you tried to remain calm.

Who the hell pulls up to you when it’s fucking sunrise?! Unbelievable.

You only make it two more steps before the right next to you. Even though you tell yourself not to, your head swivels to look at the driver on instinct. He looks vaguely familiar, you’ve seen those cheeks somewhere but his name is lost on you. You acknowledge him with a questioning look as he rolls down the window.

“Want a ride?” He offers like you’ve known him for ten years and your pets were best friends. You were expecting a catcall but his voice was full of awkward sincerity and a bit of reluctance that couldn’t be faked.

“I thought chivalry was de-ad.” You choked, giving a nudge with your words to test his sincerity.

“I thought you liked girls more and don’t believe in it anyway.” He dished back. Okay, fair. This guy’s a real one.

“Touché... Ohhh what the helll-” You huffed, “I’ll take it.” You vaguely recognize him and he seems to know you too so what can hurt; that’s at least how you look at it in the buzzed moment.

His unimpressive car comes to a smooth stop, you hear the doors unlock and you sluggishly yanked the door open and groan as you slide in, kindly ignoring the mess because you’re not much better.

“Did you not party last ni’?” You blurted, looking over at him with a dry smile. As you do, you can really take him in. His dark, messy hair and his cute over-expressive face, topped with a pair of doughy cheeks. Despite the cuteness, there’s not a doubt in your mind this is some frat boy on the college team, though you’re not even sure what team is in season right now. One thing was for sure though, his guns were proudly out of a cut out muscle-t like a living, breathing fuckboy starter pack. Infuriatingly, he pulled it off, he looked too attractive for this time, on the weekend especially. With all that being said, he seriously looks like the kind of guy that should be as fucked up as you are right now. And yet, here he is, behind the wheel looking as sober as a slice of bread.

“Nah,” He starts, getting his foot off the brake and turning back into the road, “me and my soulmate stayed in ‘cuz coach is making practice earlier than usual.”

Well, that train left the station. “Ahh, that-that's too bad.” You heard yourself pettily trail off.

“Nah, ‘zall good. I think coach is taking it out on us ‘cuz his wife found out he’s doin’ drugs and gambling again-“

“Do ya have any friends like you?” You blurted out again.

“Huh??”

“Do ya got any friends that do things like this?” You grumbled, resisting the urge to facepalm at yourself. Fucking hell, Y/n.

“That go to practice this early? Yehh. The whole fucking basketball te-“

“No!” You hiss, head pulsing, his voice is too goddamn loud. “Gentlemen!” clarifying and sulkily leaned your head against the cool window.

“Ohhh!!~” Then he belts out laughing like a blaring fire alarm, making your entire brain rattle.

“Shhhh!” As you turn to glare at him, you realize your turn was coming up. “Wait!! Turn here!!”

He hissed and stepped harshly on the breaks. “This one?”

“Yeah!!-“ it was already too late when you unnecessarily clarified, so he had to turn around and go turn in again. Thank god the streets were dead at this date and time. You’re sure he broke at least four traffic laws.

“Shit, man!! You can’t say that and then expect me to make the turn, I got too excited!!” He was beaming, far too excited for your dumb question and not at all concerned about his chaotic driving.

“What the fuuck?!?! You’ got a soulmate-“

“No, dumbass!!” He whines like you just missed the best play in the whole game, too bad there aren’t instant replies for day to day conversations. “I have a bro who we’ve been trying to get laid.~” And now he makes the turn, good job buddy.

“Okay, two stops from now you’re gonna turn left.” It is then that you realize the last part of what he just said. “Huh? Li-like frat bro?”

“Yeah, dude. He’s so pissy I don’t think his hand is doin’ it for him anymore.” The dude laughed at his own joke, elbowing you in the side. Normally you would have joined in and punched him but for some reason, your little fucked up heart started to warm up hearing about this cute frat boy.

“Ahhhh.” And then you laughed a little too late, his wingmanning ass didn’t notice.

“Yeah! And he says books are better than pussy so that’s how we know he’s becoming a lost cause. We’re placing our bets that he won’t get it on until he finds his soulmate.”

“What a swee-eetheart.~” You hiccupped with dazed eyes and chapped smile. You had to admit, you were endeared. You never heard about a dorky, innocent fraternity boy before, and you never would have thought that it would appeal to you.

“Is it this one or the next one?”

“This one. So whoo’z this friend of yours-“ Unfortunately you were caught off by a ringtone blasting at the fullest volume making your brain wail in pain, for the second fucking time this morning.

He just snickers. “Sorry, gotta answer this… Yuh~?” You just huffed and closed your eyes, deflating a little bit.

“Seungmin?!?”

For some unknown reason, that name made you jolt back up into your seat. ‘Seungmin’, why does that sound so familiar?!

“Well, speak of the devil!!~” He got too excited and looked at you, and gives you an over-enthused wink. You’re assuming this is the frat bro. “Your car won’t start??~~” This dude, you still don’t quite remember the name of, was really playing this up. For possibly the same unknown reason, him talking to this dude has your full attention. Normally you’d eavesdrop half-heartedly but this time your whole heart started to beat a way it never has before, begging you to soak up as much of this half conversation as possible.

“Of course I’ll drive my wittle brother!!~... -fuck off a few days totally does count!!- Whatever!! Anyway, fair warning, I became a fucking uber this morning, I’m driving this girl too so prepare yourself!!... Shhh, it’s not a joke! And she’s really hot; make sure your heart and dick are ready.”

You were about to beat this dude before you vaguely heard the muffled voice on the other line chew him out for you. You couldn’t hold in your smile before you realized; even though you were abnormally giddy, now is not the goddamn time to meet this kid. You looked like you were run over by three different military-grade vehicles and you’re more than sure you had lipstick marks from last night smeared in various places all over you. But most importantly, you were in a limbo of drunk and hungover. You needed way more rest and sustenance before you should interact with anyone of importance. You opened your mouth to scream at him but you were cut off yet again.

“...Yeah, yeah. Anyways, I’ll turn around now, just for you.~ I’m pretty sure we’re close to her dorm but who cares how late I’m gonna be for practice! I’m making shit happen! See ya in a sec, muah!” If you weren’t high key starting to panic, you would’ve laughed at this dude’s unending ridiculousness. There is no way in hell you’re gonna meet this familiar stranger‘s friend that he’s setting you up with at six fucking a.m. in a frankly disgusting state.

“Do not turn around or I swear to fucking Rupaul-“

“No can do, bro. Besides, you seemed interested in him so why not!?! Be grateful! I’m gonna have to run double the fuckin laps cuz a’ this.”

‘“Why not’?!! I just got outta’ a stranger’s bed and I’m still drunk and somehow hungover too and my dorm is just around the corner-“

“Listen; bros before hoes. Frat legacy.” And with that, he chuckled as he turned the car around for the second time today. You take back the gentleman comment you gave him earlier, he’s a pile shit.

“I’m gonna fucking jump out of the car-“ you groaned with a bluff, tugging at your smeared face and he smugly locked the doors before you could finish. “Cmonnn!~ It’s too fucking early for this shit, man! Why didn’t I just keep walking or just stayed-“

“I'm doing you a favor!~”

“Dropping me off when and where I asked you to is doing me a favor! That’s literally why I’m in your messy ass car that smells like rancid fuckin’ cheesecake in the first place!!”

“Hey, now you’re just being mean!”

You groaned and glared out the window, opting to ignore him now. This argument had you sobering up. This just really wasn’t it. You resisted the urge to pull down the mirror and see how bad you really looked but, you would rather not know how bad it is. Knowing your past morning afters, you’ve looked a hell of a lot cuter every other time.

It seems like you’re just gonna have to grin and bear it and let this one go. There’s plenty of bitches in the sea. Bitches that never made you heart skipped like this before- and without you even meeting them-

All you could think about how embarrassing and fucked up this whole thing he’s pulling is as you glare at the passing sidewalks and cars parked at the side of the roads. You wish the passing textured and crumbly neighborhood sidewalks could swallow you up. It’s not often that you felt so burdened at an awaiting social encounter these days. You hated this.

“And we’re here!!” He stops and proudly puts the car into park. “Okay, Siri, call ‘Noodle Bitchass’.”

The fuck-

-“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Would you like me to search the web for ‘Nude space app’?”-

“Ughhhhh. Fuck you!! I said, ‘Call~ Nooo-DiLL BiiiiTCh AAAssss’~~!!!”

-“Okay. Calling Noodle Bitchass nerd emoji, middle finger emoji in medium tan’.”- You were about to cry in shocked laughter but the guy answered too soon so you had to snort into your hand and curl in on yourself.

“Yah!! Han Jisung!!” Holy mother almighty, his voice is pure sunshine and honey. Your body slowly uncurled back up on its own. Fuck, okay it’s on speaker. Shit, I can’t even breathe, can’t make a sound.

“We’re here, man.”

“Hhhhh… she’s not still with you is she?” Is it possible to be attracted to a voice? I think I’m attracted to a voice.

“Hell yeah, she is! Suck it up, bro. You’re already making me late and she’s fine~!!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Jisung-“ Oh, good lord. Him swearing really just--

“Get in or I’ll leave you here and set her up with Innie instead.” You just heard the guy sigh and the sound of a facepalm, you’re guessing, before the line went dead. And finally. You could finally howl with laughter, or perhaps it was more like manic screaming in infatuation.

You have never, in all your years of living felt like this because of a person. Is this what it feels like to be whipped? Fuck, fuck, fuck- It’s like I’m at a concert- but not really and-

You were still in the thick of it when a door ripped open. When you reflexively looked over, all the air that was left in your lungs pathetically wheezed out of you like a sad balloon.

Then the sensations all hit you.

Wow, okay the drunkenness and hangover is gone? I feel good? I feel alive, I feel the cool late autumn air? I feel feelings; feelings I’ve never felt before? You were light as a mother fuckin’ feather and astounded as all burning hell. You were openly experiencing so many intense emotions, something that hasn’t happened in so many years.

At that moment your mouth and his gawk right open at the exact same time, not that the two of you noticed. Without any volition, your eyes immediately drown in the other. Okay, he’s actual artwork? He was dressed so cute like he was ready to take some cute aesthetic photos for a dumb little blog. Oh god, he smells like a cup of tea in the forest after it rained?! That’s so specific- but. He smells so lovely.

His hair was pure angelic fluff and his skin was a light, silky caramel. You watched before your tired, dry eyes, the caramel in his cheeks rise into the purest shade of pink and his eyes widening into adorable little saucers. When they met yours, they were sparklier than any ring on any finger; you swear to god herself, you felt electricity crackle in your veins like wood to the fire. Your eyes couldn’t pull away, you felt like a giddy little kid again. Whirling with excitement and curiosity as you looked at him all bundled up for the late fall weather. Your heart began to sing, sing triumphantly as if you broke some sort of curse-

Curse?

Wait, hold up.

Hold the fuck up.

I think he’s my soulmate?! But I can’t possibly have one-

That’s when your entire body began to heat up in question. None of this made sense to you.

How is this possible? How is this fucking possible?! The only thing your brain seems to produce in reaction is unending, spiraling questions. For each and every one of them, whether rhetorical or not, you didn’t have a sensical explanation or possible answer. This didn’t make any sense, it went against everything you ever knew to be true.

You couldn’t have a soulmate, your maternal lineage fucked that up for you, it was what you were born into without a choice. A perpetual heartbreak, something that started out as merely coincidental to grow into a family burden that carried on precariously. How can it be that for generations, the youngest daughter in the family never got to meet their soulmate until now, until you? You were on the brink of a fucking existential crisis.

Seungmin seemed shocked as well, though leagues and leagues below the ballgame you’re dealing with right now. He looked shocked; appearing delightfully surprised. Shocked as if he wasn’t expecting to be surprised with a present on a random and unimportant Wednesday, not shocked as if he just broke a generations-long family streak.

Before you can continue these heavy ass thoughts, Jisung blasts out an interruption yet again.

“I CAN’T FUCKIN’ BELIEVE THIS!! I THOUGHT I WAS JUST HOOKING UP MY BOY AT ASS CRACK IN THE MORNING!! BUT NO!! I FUCKIN’ FOUND HIM HIS SOULMATE!! AND IT’S Y/N OUTTA ALL PEOPLE!! Y/N?!? SEUNGMIN?!? THE UNIVERSE REALLY PAIRED THESE PEOPLE TOGETHER?!? OUT OF-”

“Jisung, shut the fuck up.” To your surprise, it was Seungmin who interrupts ‘Jisung’ and not you, as he gets the rest of the way into the messy car. His put-together ass looks completely out of place in this shitty car, it made you try to hold in a smile as closes the door with barely restrained enthusiasm.

Before he turns back, you force yourself to face forward and try to calm the hell down and calmly reassess the situation.

Alright... You met your not plausible-soulmate, out of all places in time and space, in the car of a kinda-stranger who offered you a ride home in the early-ass morning after getting laid at a sorority party.

Okay. Great. This is great.

You cleared your throat and tried to remain cool. “O-okay, awesome. Where ar-are we heading to first?” Okay, that wasn’t entirely cool but maybe you can blame it on literally everything else wrong with you in this situation.

“I don’t know, man. I deadass wanna just skip practice altogether and-” Jisung was interrupted by the sound of a camera’s shutter. You instinctively whip your head around towards the sound, only to be met with Seungmin camera-handed. He has the fucking nerve to take two more in the time it took for you to whip around.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?” Your voice ripped out of you, croaking out like an enraged toad. He then takes the final picture as you’re screeching at him. This just kept getting richer and richer. First, Jisung’s bullshit, then life-altering realizations that you broke some sort of generations long streak of not having a soulmate, and now your seemingly miraculous soulmate taking unexpected, embarrassing photographs of you in the worst state you’ve ever been in?

“Taking your picture.” He grinned with a shrug, no guilt or shame to be seen nor heard. You could not hold in squawks of disbelief. His pride and excitement seemed to only grow at your bewilderment, he had the nerve to do a precious ‘hehehe’, the kind that little kids do after they steal a cookie from the jar.

“Give me that!” You sneer as you go to savagely rip it right out of his perfect hands. However, the two of you seemed to be matched in more ways than one; neither of you would budge, equally as strong as the other.

“No way! You’ll delete them!!”

“Yeah, exactly!! ‘No way in hell will I let you keep pictures of me like this!”

“‘No fuckin’ way will I let you delete them!”

You gritted your teeth. “Then let me take pictures of you!!!” And then you can sneakily delete-

“Yeah and then you’ll delete yours.” How the fuck did he know-

“Seungmin, just give her the goddamn camera so I can drive and drop your hormonal asses off before coach murders me.”

There was a raging fire in Seungmin’s eyes as he slowly and painfully let go of his forsaken camera so you could tentatively take it. Upon retrieving the camera your fingers accidentally grab unto Seungmin’s. Resulting in a little static shock zap, startling you and heating up your cheeks immediately with a jerk and a hiss. Seungmin reacted similarly, blinking like pink dust blew into his eyes to land on his cheeks. Your hand yanks it back towards you before you even realize it. Jisung was far too excited to watch this drama unfold right before his wide eyes.

If this was a normal day for you you’d jump to delete those humiliating pictures of yourself immediately, looking nothing short of the cheshire cat. But this was evidently not a normal day in any sense of the word, so, what you did was unlike you. You huffed out a breath to encourage yourself before slowly raising the camera to your dominant eye and focused the lense as best you could.

At least I can photograph how irritatingly handsome he looks at this hour.

You took the first picture, zooming in on his now grouchy, but still stupidly handsome face. Then you zoom out as far as possible, hoping to take in this entire scene in front of you, his angry posture in an adorably preppy outfit, this messy, disgusting car and how out of place he looks in it.

“Only two more.” Seungmin huffs with an eyeroll and by some divine power (perhaps the same divine power that made this odd miracle happen in the first place), you clicked fast enough to get some of that petty behavior visually documented. You pressed down twice, sadly that was your limit you agreed upon.

You didn’t even look at the pictures you took nor the ones Seungmin took so that you wouldn’t be tempted to delete them. It felt like you were committing a saintly act; as if simply taking his picture like you said you would, without deleting anything made you pure and free of sin. Perhaps this twisted reality of somehow defeating the ancestral odds had you feeling undeservingly self-righteous.

“You better not delete yours either.” You sneered once more, before jabbing the camera back into his sweatered chest. This time you were determined not to turn around again, you couldn’t risk him taking any more pictures. You also aren’t entirely sure you could handle seeing his stupid perfect face once more. This was an outrage and this was your way of protest. Also, an unspoken miracle, but enough of that.

You swiveled your head away from Jisung and Seungmin, fully leaning into the cool window and began to count the street lights and stop signs. As the grueling seconds ticked by the more concentrated you tried to be. Soon enough the concentration turned sleepy and before you knew it, you were knocked out. All your adrenaline fueled energy depleted.

All through your protest-turned-snooze, Seungmin couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off of you. He couldn’t help but find it endearing how you could be an absolute riot only to pass out three minutes later. It hurt how cute he found you, no matter how scandalous you seem to be. You seemed so genuinely shocked, it made him want to cry. And he’s also fairly certain that this isn’t new to you, you not only partied all night and regularly. And judging from the markings on your skin, you might’ve done a little bit more than party last night. In fact, it might’ve even enticed him, might’ve gotten him a little hot under the collar. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that he already whipped and he hasn’t even caught your name.

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hot-tae-with-suga · 6 years ago

Text

This Looks Bad || 3

Summary: Taehyung and I were just horsing around, but someone took a picture, and now everyone thinks I’m cheating on my boyfriend Namjoon with one of his best friends. Which I’m not, because I don’t (let myself) think of Tae that way. And neither does Namjoon. Right?

Reader (1st person unnamed femme OC)/Namjoon/Taehyung

Idol AU

36.2K total || Rated M || Part 1 | Part 2 | AO3 || Masterlist

Genre: fluff / smut / angst with happy ending || Warnings: Misunderstandings, Failure to Communicate, Bisexual characters, Threesome, Smut

Originally Posted 2019-03-29

Thank you so so so much to my editor S, and my wonderful betas from the JAG discord (L, V, and D)

45 Days P.I. (10 days after deciding to give it a chance)

By the next Wednesday, I was a nervous wreck again. This time over my thesis defense, rather than the relationship issues that had been plaguing me for weeks.

I had prepared as much as I could, spending hours memorizing the smallest details of my results and analysis, and practicing answering potential panel questions with Namjoon on the phone. I knew I was as ready as I could be, but I was still pacing outside the door to the conference room when Joon and Tae arrived.

They each had hats, sunglasses, and masks on, which wasn't an unusual look for students, but they both had that confident air about them that drew onlookers’ eyes. Thankfully the mathematics building wasn't a particularly popular destination, so they were unlikely to be noticed.

Namjoon pulled down his mask and gave me a quick kiss, and Tae hugged me with a tight squeeze.

"We're not too late, are we? You haven't gone in already?" Namjoon asked, noting the empty seats that had been set up outside the conference room for participants to wait.

I shook my head. "No, you're just in time. The last student ran a little late and just got their verdict, so my panel just got inside to settle in. They should be calling me in-" I was interrupted by the conference room door opening and my advisor beckoning me inside.

"Are you ready?" she asked as I got closer, and I nodded. "And these two are with you?" Her eyebrows shot up when she realized who I had brought with me. She'd known I was dating Namjoon, but it had never really come up between us, as he hadn't had any reason to visit me on campus before.

The four of us walked into the room and Namjoon squeezed my hand tight before releasing it to take a seat with Taehyung at the far end of the long table, while my advisor and I went to the other end, where a podium had been set up. The panel for my thesis, 4 tenured professors from my and other local universities, plus my advisor, ignored the audience and turned to me, asking if I was ready.

The next hour and a half was a haze in my memory; I only knew it was tough but my nearly obsessive preparation had paid off. I was able to mostly answer every question, and my advisor smiled proudly by the time I was wrapping up.

Once my defense was concluded, I stepped outside with Namjoon and Taehyung so the panel could deliberate and make their decision. I was warned it might take as long as half an hour, or even more, so I returned to pacing the hall.

"Babe, don't worry! You did amazing in there," Namjoon assured me, grabbing me by both hands in an attempt to make me stop walking and start to calm down.

"Yah, noona, you sounded so smart. The guys in there looked super impressed," Tae added. "I didn't really understand what you were talking about, to be fair, but math has never been my strong suit."

"Statistics, Tae-ah," I corrected. "Not math. Well, kind of math, but also sometimes not really?" Between the two of them they pulled me over to the uncomfortable chairs and sat me down with one of them on each side, physically restraining me from getting back up or even from anxiously bouncing my leg.

The panel only deliberated for twenty minutes in the end, and we were all invited back in. We resumed the positions we'd occupied before we'd left, with them seated at the end of the table and me behind the podium.

As soon as I heard the words, "We have determined that you have passed this defense and you will be awarded your doctorate in statistical mathematics," the rest of what the panel chair was saying faded into static. I could see Joon's giant grin and my advisor's proud smile, so I knew he was complimenting me, but I couldn't hear it over the rushing in my ears.

I shook each of the panelists’ hands and thanked them for their time and effort. The last one in the line, Dr. Jeong, a man in his 40's who I had only met once when he was introduced as a member of my panel, stopped me as I moved toward the door. "Don't tell me you'll sneak out before introducing your guests, miss?" he said slyly, and I knew he must have recognized my boyfriends. They'd removed their disguises, since sitting in a stuffy room for an hour and a half was torture enough. Plus, it had made it easier for me to see their encouraging faces as I answered the panel's questions.

I bowed and made introductions, the eldest panelist in the room obviously unaware of exactly who Namjoon and Taehyung were to their endless amusement. My advisor quietly asked them for their autographs, which they added to the page she'd been using for notes during my questioning, a fact that I found strangely amusing.

"You must be very proud," Dr. Jeong said to Namjoon, nodding in my direction. "She's a compliment to your own impressive intellect. I was quite a fan of yours when you appeared on Problematic Man, you know."

The way he said it struck me as strange, and it must have done to Namjoon as well, as he replied with, "She’s smart enough for both of us. I might be able to solve a few problems on a silly game show, but her mind blows me away every single day." He spoke to the professor, but his eyes were on me. "I'm so proud and amazed by what she's accomplished, and most of the time I count my lucky stars that she's with a dummy like me." I smiled at his compliment, and we bid the panel goodbye and took our leave.

As soon as we were out of the hallway and headed for the main staircase, Namjoon started muttering as he put his mask back on. "Can you believe that guy? I was ready to punch him!"

I was shocked to hear him speak that way, as was Taehyung, both of us looking to Namjoon for further explanation. "What do you mean? Which guy? One of the panelists?"

"Dr. Jeong," Namjoon bit out. "I'm pretty sure he was trying to insinuate that I helped you with your thesis or something."

“Yeah, that guy was weird,” Taehyung agreed. “You’ve been working on the background for your thesis project since before you even met Joon-hyung.” He grabbed my hand and quickly kissed the back of it while we were still alone, giving me a proud smile.

I reviewed the conversation in my memory, shaking my head. "I'm sure he wasn't," I tried to placate them. "I think he was just trying to impress you by showing that he knew more about you than just your name, or something."

Namjoon put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer as we approached the doors out of the building. "If you say so, babe. Just, I dunno, don't take a position in his department, if he offers?" I rolled my eyes at his overprotective nature but nodded. "In any case, he continued, "we should celebrate. What do you say we all go out to dinner tomorrow night?"

Taehyung nodded eagerly, bouncing around us as we walked across the thankfully empty quad. "Yeah, let's go out! Maybe we can even go dancing after? We haven't been out in ages."

I rolled my eyes at his exuberance, but nodded. "Sure, if you guys are free."

47 Days P.I. (2 days after thesis defense)

The boys had an event scheduled the day after my defense, but they were able to clear time to take me out on Friday. I hadn't realized that Namjoon and Taehyung had intended to invite all the members of Bangtan, but I was delighted to celebrate with them all the same.

Having the whole group with us meant more security, but also more privacy since Joon had rented out the entire restaurant. Tae pestered all of us through the whole meal, trying to convince us to go out dancing once we were finished. Jimin and Hoseok both joined in his efforts, though Yoongi and Jungkook bowed out, claiming work and rest were more important.

The club we'd chosen for the night was getting crowded by the time we got there, so we mostly stuck to the VIP section we'd been given tables in rather than risking it in the writhing mass on the main floor. The six of us remaining ordered several rounds of drinks, and I lost count of the number of times we raised our glasses to cheer my success.

My head was spinning a bit, both due to the alcohol in my system and the way Namjoon and Taehyung were looking at me, making me squirm with anticipation. They both became bolder when we started dancing near the table, stepping closer to me and to each other, hands lingering on hips and shoulders, and heated glances all around. I was sure one of the members would say something, but when I looked they had all wandered down to the main floor and found dance partners of their own.

We danced and continued drinking for almost two more hours before I finally started whining about my shoes getting uncomfortable, and Namjoon gathered everyone to start heading home for the night. I was all set to grab a taxi back to my place, but Tae and Joon insisted I come back to the dorm with them, and I was too tipsy to disagree. We'd all switched to water before we'd left the club, but the heady floating feeling of the alcohol still ran through my veins. Tae was the closest to sober of any of us, his intense dislike of the taste of booze meant he went hard and fast at the beginning of the night but had stuck to soft drinks and water for the remainder of the evening.

"I'm kind of really looking forward to getting to sleep next to you again," I whispered in Taehyung's ear, the confession making me giggle. I was pressed between my two...suitors? Lovers didn't feel right when we’d hardly touched since our aborted surprise threesome, and while boyfriend was more accurate, it felt like it was too soon.

Tae turned his head and shot me a wicked smile, slowly easing his large hand onto my thigh and squeezing, slow enough to (hopefully) go undetected. I knew Joon had noticed when he mirrored Tae's actions, as well as leaning in to press an open mouthed kiss to my neck. It was all a bit overwhelming and made my head spin more than any amount of booze.

We finally reached the dorm building, and everyone piled out and shuffled upstairs. Hoseok reminded everyone to drink some more water before turning as we all said our good nights and made for whichever bed we were sleeping in.

As soon as the door to their bedroom closed behind us, both boys had their hands all over me. Namjoon reached for the zipper of my dress, but Taehyung pulled me against him before the clothing could slide off. His mouth slanted over mine, tongue demanding entrance as he kissed me so hard I nearly forgot to breathe.

"I've been dying to do that since last week," Tae confessed when he finally pulled away. "You have no idea how hard it is to know you want to kiss me but not be able to do it."

"Mmm," I hummed against his lips. "But it was certainly worth the wait."

Namjoon looked surprised. "You guys didn't even kiss after you talked? Taehyungie was looking so pleased with himself once we got back that I figured he'd at least made it to second base." I turned to swat at him playfully.

"Excuse me, weren't you the one who asked us to hold off because you wanted to be there?" I reminded him.

"Yeah, for the first time you fucked," he clarified, putting up his arms in self defense. "I didn't mean to put a hold on everything, I'm not the sex police."

I pouted. "Maybe it's for the best, I'm not sure I would have been able to stop myself once we got going."

"Mmm, me neither,” Tae admitted, looking a little guilty. He shook his head, as if to clear it. “We’re kinda drunk now, though…”

"I'm not that drunk," Namjoon insisted.

Tae rolled his eyes. "We’re all that drunk, Joon-hyung." I whined in protest; as much as the logical side of my brain agreed with his assessment, I had spent the entire night being intentionally seduced by these two men, and I was ready to pop.

Namjoon also made a noise of protest, his hands returning to the back of my dress and completely lowering the zipper before sliding his hands back up and pushing the straps off my shoulders. "Are you sure about that, Taetae?" he taunted his dongsaeng. "I think our girl needs a proper fucking." His hand followed the fabric of my dress as it slid down, past my bra and over my soft abdomen before resting over my panties. "She's so hot for us, so wet she's practically soaked through her panties."

I moaned, nodding my agreement with the direction Namjoon was trying to lure Taehyung. I reached up to tease my fingers over my own nipples, which were hard and pressing against the thin fabric of my undergarment. "A proper fucking is exactly what I need," I added. Tae groaned, balling his hands into fists and biting one to stifle the sound.

"I want to, you know how much I want to," Taehyung muttered. "So, so badly." He leaned forward to kiss me again, then pulled away and turned slightly to Namjoon, kissing him over my shoulder. I couldn't help the whimper I let out, I was too lost in my arousal to control it.

It was Namjoon's turn to groan in frustration. "Babe, those noises are just making it harder for me," he warned. I grinned and swiveled my hips back into him, feeling evidence of exactly how hard I was making it.

"Noona, pretty noona," Tae's words were sweet but his voice took a harder edge, beginning to sound a bit desperate. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you."

I looked up at the two of them, tall golden god-like mean who both looked back down at me with eyes darkened by lust. I wasn't sure if I should feel threatened or just aroused, but I licked my bottom lip deliberately before rolling my hips between them again.

Taehyung's hands gripped my hips and pulled me along with him as he walked backwards across the room, making me stumble as my foot caught on my dress, which had gathered around my ankles. I felt Namjoon reach down to disentangle me before following behind.

"I'm feeling a little underdressed here, guys," I commented, realizing I was down to my underwear while they were both still fully dressed. Once Tae reached the bed he'd been aiming for, he spun me around and used the momentum to push me down onto it. I didn't care which bed it was we'd landed on, only about the man crawling on top of me and laying a kiss onto my collarbone.

Namjoon hummed his approval of the younger man's move and pulled himself up onto the bed next to me. "I dunno, I'm a big fan of this look," he assured me, trailing fingers up and down my arm, leaving a path of goosebumps. I turned my head toward him and stared into his eyes until he got the hint and leaned forward to kiss me.

"Now," Tae said carefully, pushing himself up so that he could look at both Namjoon and I. "We’re all on the same page here, right? No one’s worried they’re being set up?"

I slapped at him lightly. "Ugh, don’t bring that up any more," I griped. "That has to be the least sexy threesome proposal ever."

Taehyung raised an eyebrow at me. "Hey, last time we were in this position you freaked out because our intentions were unclear. Just covering all my bases here."

"He has a point," Namjoon agreed, and earned another smack from me. "Hey, what's with all the violence tonight? You were never this prone to hitting me before."

"One annoying boyfriend, I could handle," I argued. "Two of them just makes me want to hit things."

Taehyung cleared his throat. "So, uh, is everybody on board? Do we need to grab some condoms or anything, or are we all clean?"

I shot him a look. "What happened to ‘we’re too drunk’, hmm?” I teased. He opened his mouth to answer, but I cut him off. "In any case, I'd really like to get off at some point tonight, and I think you and Joonie would too." I accompanied my bold words with caresses on their still clothed erections, Tae's with my knee and Namjoon's by twisting my torso to reach my hand to his. Both boys gasped at the touches, and Namjoon chuckled.

"That's my girl, straight to the point," ha laughed, giving me a quick kiss to the temple.

"Our girl," Taehyung corrected quickly.

I rolled my hips and arched my back, desperate to remind them of what we were supposed to be doing together on this bed. "Yes, well, your girl has one of the world's hottest men between her legs and another at her side, and she'd really like to suck one of their dicks, if they're interested," I whined.

True to their natures, Taehyung froze in place at my invitation and Namjoon sprang into action, undoing his belt and divesting himself of his clothing as quickly as possible.

"Yeah, babe, how do you want me?" he asked. I sat up, shifting so I didn't push Taehyung off of me entirely, and looked around. There was enough room at the far side of the bed for one of my favourite positions.

"Off the side?" I proposed, scooting myself across the bed until my head was hanging off the side, upside down. Namjoon scrambled to meet me, spreading his feet wide to as to line his cock up with my waiting mouth.

He lost his balance and fell forward a little, his impressive erection sliding across my face as his aim was slightly off. I looked to see what had distracted him and saw Taehyung undressing as well, peeling his designer clothes off carefully and laying them on the other bed for safekeeping. Once he was down to his black boxer briefs, he returned to us, smirking to see us watching his every move. It was like watching one of the large cat species, or a master at work, he knew just how to move, to angle himself, to maximize the impact he had. It was almost unfair (and would have been completely unfair if I hadn't known that body would be on top of mine again momentarily).

Tae looked me over, telling me, "Now you're the one who's overdressed," as he crawled back onto the bed and trailed those long fingers down my sternum, dancing around my belly button before teasing at the waistband of my silky panties. I was glad I'd made the effort to wear a cute matching set of underwear, even though I'd told myself I wasn't going to go home with them. Funny how a few drinks and heated looks will change a girl's mind.

Namjoon "helped" by trying to dig his hands under me and unhook my bra, until I reached up and arched my back in order to do it myself. He did peel it off of me once it was loose, while I was busy lifting my hips to wiggle my underwear down over them, so that Taehyung could slide them down my legs and toss them aside with far less care than he had for his own clothes.

My attention was drawn back to Namjoon, who was kneading my breasts excitedly, as he did any time they became bare in his presence. Exuberant massaging quickly became softer caresses, though, as he knew what I liked in order to turn me on even further. I moaned as he stroked his thumbs over both my nipples simultaneously, letting my head drop back down off the edge of the mattress, and once again faced his weeping cock.

There were several reasons I was particularly fond of this position, one of the biggest being that it softened my gag reflex enough for me to take Namjoon's entire cock down my throat. It was one of the reasons he was also a big fan, despite the awkward splits he had to do to get level with me; that, and the fact that he was able to play with my breasts while I sucked him off. It also left my hands free to play with myself, but this time there would be someone else available to take care of me.

"You have no idea how hot this looks," I heard Taehyung mutter as I reached over my head to pull Namjoon's hips closer, shifting to line him up with my mouth and finally slide his hardness past my lips. I moaned at the feeling, which I knew would make Namjoon thrust deeper and draw a grunt of some kind from him throat as well.

I did my best to concentrate on the task in front of me, but Tae's nimble fingers dipped between my legs, sliding easily due to the arousal slicking my thighs. "She's so wet, hyung," Tae commented. "And sensitive," he added when I twitched at the quick brush of his thumb over the hood of my clit.

Namjoon made a noise of agreement. "I think, between the dancing at the club, and feeling her up in the car, we worked her up real good." He was starting to build a steady rhythm of fucking into my throat, making him catch his breath every few words and reminding me that I needed to sync my breathing with his thrusts, though that was getting more difficult to do when Taehyung's ministrations between my legs had me gasping.

I was aching for those long fingers of his to make their way inside me, but Taehyung was taking his time teasing me, drawing figure-eights over my clit and trailing from there down to my perineum, even ghosting over my asshole a couple of times. It was so hard to keep still as I was twitching every time he hit a particularly sensitive spot, which was more frequently than I'd expected.

Perhaps it was due to the heightened emotions I’d experienced over the past few weeks, or even the alcohol still in my system, but I was beginning to think I'd been missing out during all those years of monogamy. Having two men, two wonderful and generous and talented lovers, concentrating all their efforts on me was nearly overwhelming. Feeling the stimulation to my aching pussy while Namjoon fucked my throat and continued to caress my breasts was driving me to my peak faster than I ever remember.

Taehyung's free hand slid over my collarbone and trailed over my neck, where I knew the bulge of Joon's cock was visibly distorting my throat. “That is so hot," Tae growled, his voice low and husky with need. "How is that so hot?"

"She takes my dick like a champ," Namjoon bragged, starting to pant and sweat from exertion. "Don't you, babe?" I couldn't move my head to nod so I moaned my agreement, which set off a chain of sounds from Namjoon and then Taehyung when he saw how his hyung reacted to the vibrations.

I arched my back and rocked my hips against Tae's hand, trying to encourage him. The hand between my legs, which had paused while he examined my throat, resumed it tortuous path through my arousal slickened folds. This time, however, instead of teasing around the edges, Taehyung finally slid one of his fingers inside me, making me moan again.

"So tight," he commented. "Fuck, you feel like heaven, noona. I can't wait to fuck you, I'm gonna fill you up so good, gonna make you come on my cock." I rocked my hips up against him again, trying to fuck myself on his hand. He took the hint and pumped into me a little faster, but not before adding a second finger and adjusting his angle so that his thumb was able to circle my clit while he moved.

I had lost control of the noises that tried to escape my throat, only to be muffled by Namjoon's cock still fucking it. His rhythm was beginning to falter and I used one hand to caress his balls, which I knew would bring him closer to the edge. "Fuck, babe, fuck- I'm gonna come. Where- Where do you want me?" he asked, as though I'd be able to answer him.

In reply, I used both hands to grab him by the ass and pull him closer to me once more, burying him as deep down as I could, my throat contracting around him in protest. He didn't come in that instant, but he was nearly there, and got the idea that I wanted to swallow all of him down.

He grabbed my upper arms and used the leverage for one, two, three, four more hard thrusts before I felt more than tasted his release. The loud groan he let out was also a good clue.

I started to be able to breathe through my nose as Namjoon's cock softened and I cleaned it off as best I could. I couldn't even properly catch my breath as Taehyung assaulted my pussy and my ears with the most delicious pleasure.

"Yeah, you did so well, noona, you look so beautiful taking his cock like that." The praise falling from Tae’s mouth filled me with pride as I shifted myself to the side a bit, in order to give my neck some support. He moved with me, never taking his hands off of me, still fucking me with his fingers and teasing my clit. He curled his two fingers up inside of me and hit that spongy spot that made me see stars. "You gonna come for me, pretty noona? Gonna come on my fingers and soak the bed, aren't you? I can't wait to be inside you, noona, I wanna be in you while Joon-hyung fucks your throat. Or maybe we should share this perfect little pussy, leave you wrecked after taking the both of us, you won't be able to walk the next day..." The patter of dirty talk continued, Taehyung describing everything he'd ever dreamed of doing to me while dragging me closer to ecstasy.

Namjoon returned, holding a shirt he'd pulled from the laundry basket and used it to wipe himself off, and I realized I'd never registered him stepping away. He nonchalantly reached over with his free hand to pinch one of my nipples and that pushed me over the edge.

My vision went white as a wave of pleasure originating at my core spread through my body in an instant, rushing down each limb and leaving a tingling sensation in my extremities. A wordless cry escaped my already abused throat.

I was able to bask in the sensation for a few seconds before the continued stimulation from Tae started making me twitch painfully. "Enough, please," I begged hoarsely. Taehyung smiled wickedly at me and redoubled his efforts, but Namjoon pushed his hand back.

"Overstimulation isn't her thing," he explained to his disappointed looking dongsaeng, who nodded and leaned back. Namjoon handed Tae the shirt he had used to clean up and Tae wiped his hand clear of my mess before pulling my thighs apart to give him more room to gently run the cloth over my sticky body.

I lay back and let him care for me, until I shifted my leg and brushed up against Tae's stiff cock, still trapped in his underwear. I sat up slowly, leaning forward until I was pressed up against him, running my hand over the hardness that was leaking a wet spot onto his black boxer briefs. "I think I owe you an orgasm," I said huskily. I wrapped my hand around the impressive girth and squeezed, making him shiver against me.

I moved to kiss him, but Namjoon leaned in to stop me. "I think you've each had a turn to get someone off tonight," he commented. "My turn now."

I gasped as Namjoon manhandled Tae away from me, laying him on his back and roughly pulling off his underwear. My eyes widened when I finally saw the cock I'd been squeezing. "You weren't kidding" I breathed, and both men turned confused looks at me. "That's a dick too good to waste," I supplied, making Taehyung roll his eyes and Namjoon only look more confused.

"Ignore her, I think you were saying something about making me come?" Tae encouraged his boyfriend.

I had to stop myself from squealing a little, realizing that Namjoon was also Taehyung's boyfriend, as well as my own. They were both my boyfriends and they were also each other's boyfriends. Which meant they were going to do boyfriend things together. Boyfriend things like give each other blow jobs, and it was totally okay if I watched and even got off on it, since they were my boyfriends.

None of the fantasies I'd ever had involving Namjoon's mouth (of which there were many) were anywhere near as hot as seeing it actually wrapped around Tae's cock. I laid back to get a better angle, unable to look away from the way Joon's soft lips stretched around it, how his tongue escaped from his bottom lip as he came back off of it, the string of saliva hanging from his mouth as be gulped down a breath.

Namjoon's hand continued to pump up and down Tae's erection, spreading the mix of pre-cum and spit over the entire length. "Talk about wet, baby," he teased. "You keep leaking like this, I don't even need any extra lube."

I wasn't able to deep throat Namjoon all the way unless I was in a position like I'd been in earlier to dampen my own gag reflex, and Taehyung was even bigger than Namjoon, so it was not surprising to see Joon use his hand to stroke the base of Tae's cock where his mouth couldn't reach. He was still trying to get as much of it as he could, though, backing off a couple of times until he gagged so hard he started coughing.

"Hyung," Taehyung cautioned, sitting up a bit and using one hand to push Namjoon's head up higher so he could look in his eyes. "Don't hurt yourself, okay?"

Namjoon allowed Tae to push him up, but kept one hand wrapped around Tae's dick, slowly stroking it. He rocked forward, pressing up against Tae's body until he had him pinned to the mattress, and kissed him deeply.

I don't think I will ever get tired of sights like that, of seeing them so intimate with each other, not only physically but emotionally, the warmth in their gazes as they pulled apart striking something inside me. Sure, it made my lady parts tingle, but it also did the same to my heart.

"I think I'm the luckiest woman in the world right now." I didn't realize I'd said the words aloud until they both turned to smile at me fondly.

As Namjoon resumed his position between Taehyung's legs, the younger man said, "Here I was thinking the same thing."

I quirked my head. "You think I'm the luckiest woman in the world, too?"

His sigh turned into a gasp as Joon took him in his mouth again. "You know what I mean," he whined at me. He cried out again at something Namjoon was doing with his tongue, reaching to fist his hand in the other man's hair while beckoning me closer with his chin. "Come here, I want to kiss you some more."

Kissing Tae severely hindered my view of him getting sucked off, but I was able to sneak a glance every time he broke away to praise or plead with Namjoon. It wasn't long before he was grunting at Joon that he was close.

"Hyung," he begged, tugging at Namjoon's hair. "Hyung, I'm gonna- Hyung, please I wanna come-" Tae cried out as he came, hips arching off the bed. Namjoon swallowed once, thickly, and again before allowing Tae's cock to slip from his mouth.

"Easier clean up," he reminded Taehyung. "You know I don't mind."

Tae grunted, sitting up and grabbing the soiled shirt to wipe himself off. "One of these days, I'm going to come all over your face before you expect it, hyung. And I'm going to take a picture. And frame it and hang it on my wall." Namjoon rolled his eyes, apparently accustomed to this point of contention between them.

"Whatever, you can dream about covering me in come some other time. Let's just get some sleep, we've done enough celebrating tonight." Namjoon stood, gave us each a kiss laced with the taste of Tae's cum, and walked to the other bed. He picked up the clothes Taehyung had left there and tossed them back towards us. I scrambled to join him on the clean dry bed, and Tae piled in after me (after making sure that his clothes didn't land on any of the wet spots).

I ended up in between them again, facing Joon with Tae clinging to me from behind. In contrast to the last time we'd been in this position, though, this time my heart felt settled and content, like things were finally where they were supposed to be.

48 Days P.I. (The next morning)

As I regained consciousness, I was significantly less comfortable than I had been going to sleep in the early morning hours. When we'd climbed into bed, I'd been warm, slightly tipsy, and basking in the glow of both physical and emotional satisfaction. Upon waking, I was faced with a pounding headache, gross sticky patches on my skin from the hasty clean up, and one boyfriend sprawled over half the bed, snoring loudly, while the other was trying to suffocate me with his body heat while grinding his morning wood against my ass.

"Ugh," I groaned, trying to extract myself from Tae's clutches and the mess of blankets tangled around us. Finally free, I stumbled around, pulling on a pair of soft sleep pants I kept in one of Namjoon's drawers and a clean(-ish) shirt from the floor.

I padded down to the kitchen, heading straight for the cabinet where I knew they kept a large bottle of painkillers, and was confused when I didn't see it in it's usual spot. I heard a rattle behind me and turned to find Jimin and Jungkook looking words for wear, shaking the bottle I'd been in search of. I hadn't noticed them when I walked in, too hungover to look away from my target, but they seemed to be after the same thing I was.

I accepted the bottle Jimin passed me with a nod of thanks and poured a handful of the little round pills into my hand. Grabbing a big glass and filling it with water, I took a couple of the painkillers and slid the rest into my pocket, to take back for Namjoon and Taehyung.

"I know why you're feeling it this morning," I nodded at Jimin, who looked cranky but adorably rumpled with his over-treated hair sticking out at all angles. "But what has you looking so haggard, Kookie? I thought you stayed home to get some rest." Jungkook's brown hair looked like he'd been running his hands through it all night and the bags under his eyes were shockingly purple.

The maknae grunted, running his hands through his hair again. "I haven't even been to bed yet," he admitted. "I didn't realize what time it was until Jimin-hyung got up." I nodded in sympathy.

"I'm surprised you're walking straight, noona," Jimin finally chimed in, a cheeky grin making his eyes disappear.

I tried not to let my shock show on my face, and tried to think of an innocent reason why I'd be walking funny. "What do you mean? My shoes weren't that bad, I just wanted to come home because I was getting tired."

Both boys laughed. "You know Taehyungie is, like, the loudest person in the world, right?" Jimin reminded me. "And, uh, neither you nor hyung were especially quiet either. These walls are pretty thin.”

I felt my entire face heat up at the implication. "Oh," was all I could think to say.

"Don't worry, noona," Jungkook tried to reassure me. "They told us that the three of you are dating or whatever." I wasn't sure how it was possible, but my cheeks started burning even hotter.

"Yah, you think Jin-hyung or Hobi-hyung wouldn't have teased you, the way you were dancing all over each other?" Jimin added.

I dropped into a crouch, covering my face, I was so embarrassed. I had assumed they'd all been too distracted to notice us dancing, but knowing that not only had they noticed, they'd known exactly what was going on, made me want to disappear.

"Hey, have you guys seen noona?" I heard Taehyung ask from the hallway. No one said anything, but they must have pointed to where I was because Taehyung's bare feet appeared in my field of view. "Noona, are you okay? Did you drop something?"

"No," I said, my voice muffled by my arms wrapped around my head. "I'm just trying to melt into the floor, leave me here to die in peace."

There was a moment of confused silence before Jungkook supplied, "She didn't realize that you'd told us about the three of you."

"Or quite how loud you all were last night," Jimin added.

I felt arms slide around me as Taehyung crouched next to me. "I'm sorry, noona," he apologized softly. "We should have told you that we told the members. We needed to do it before they found out on their own. I promise, we haven't told anybody else." I twisted to hug him back, and he pulled me up to my feet. "Imagine what you would have had to say about last night if they didn't know? You're not that good a liar." I let our a reluctant laugh and nodded into his chest. He hadn't bothered to put a shirt on, so my nose rubbed directly against his soft, honey coloured skin. I liked the sensation, so I nuzzled into him again.

Once I calmed down enough that I felt my face no longer resembled a tomato, I turned away from him and looked at the other boys. "You guys are okay with this? I mean, you don't think two of your members dating each other is going to affect the dynamics or anything?"

Jimin and Jungkook both shook their heads, looking amused. "Of course not. I mean, they've had their thing together for years, and it hasn't affected us. And, I mean, if you think those two are the only ones who've ever fucked-"

"That's enough!" Tae cut Jimin off with a shout, taking me by the arm and dragging me out of the room

"What? We've lived together for more than a decade, with little to no chance of having normal dating lives. We're all young, healthy, attractive men-" The words followed us as I was marched back toward the bedroom.

Tae turned to look at me as we reached the door, noting the dreamy look in my eyes. "Oh no you don't," he practically growled at me. "I know exactly what you're thinking, and I'd like to remind you that you already have two boyfriends to satisfy your every fantasy. Stop thinking whatever it is you're thinking."

***

The three of us went back to my place after we'd all woken up and grabbed showers, since apparently there was even less privacy at the dorm than I'd realized. We still needed to have a serious discussion about the burgeoning relationship between the three of us. We had probably crossed a line the night before, anyway, so the talk was long overdue.

Even though we'd all slept hard, I was exhausted, so I collapsed onto the couch as soon as we all filed inside. Taehyung thought this was a fine idea, so he fell on top of me, effectively pinning me in place. "Mmm, this couch is so comfy," he commended, wiggling and making me gasp in pain as all his sharp points managed to dig into my in the process.

"Let her breathe, please," Namjoon requested, settling into the armchair to watch Tae and I flail around until we were more comfortably seated.

I looked between their faces, my head on a swivel since I managed to take the seat between them. "So, who wants to go first?" I asked nervously.

"Um, do we need to take turns?" Namjoon seemed a bit confused.

I shrugged. "I don't know, I've never done this before. You guys sound like you know what you're doing, at least."

Tae chuckled. "That is...a gross over exaggeration of our competence in this area. I just know that from everything I've read about polyamorous relationships, communication and boundaries are very important, so we should start there."

Namjoon nodded, adding, "Yeah, and since not communicating has already gotten me in trouble, I want to make sure we're all on the same page."

"Well," I said thoughtfully. "We agree on the basics, I think. We're all equal partners in this, right? No primary or secondary partners?" They both nodded. "And both of you are my boyfriends, and you are each other's boyfriend and I am your girlfriend." More nods. "Okay, but what about publicly? We've been lucky that Namjoon and I are public, but I honestly think ARMY would riot if I was dating two of you."

"Yeah," Namjoon agreed. "I don't even know if we can let the managers know. The members do, of course-"

"Yeah, thanks for telling me that, by the way," I interrupted.

"Sorry, babe!" he apologized quickly before continuing. "We thought it best to tell them, in case they caught us or something. So they wouldn't think anybody was getting cheated on."

"No no, I get why," I replied. "I was just a bit embarrassed, especially when I realized they, uh, could hear us last night."

"Yeah, sound carries pretty well in there," Tae said with a shrug. "We're used to it though, we mostly don't mention anything we hear and the others do the same."

"Babe?" Namjoon asked suddenly. "When's your graduation?"

I was a little surprised by his abrupt question, but answered, "Early next month. Why, do you want to introduce Tae to my parents? They'll be coming for the ceremony, but I'm not sure they're ready for their daughter to be dating another idol..."

He shook his head. "Not that. There were just some other things we were gonna talk about after you graduated."

Tae looked confused when I gave Namjoon a sharp look. "Oh? Sexy things?"

I shook my head at the same time Joon said, "Very sexy things, at least I think they are."

"Namjoon," I whined. "Not the time."

Ignoring my objections, Namjoon told Taehyung, "She made me promise to wait until after she graduated to talk about her moving in to my apartment. And to talk about when we can start a family."

I watched Tae's eyes widen and said, "See, Joonie, it's too soon! We should at least wait until we have this whole new relationship thing figured out before we start talking about babies."

Namjoon smiled when Taehyung started shaking his head. "No no, please let's talk about babies," the younger man encouraged. "I'm thinking four or five. Probably an even number so we can each be bio-dads to the same number, so four or six then. Ooh! Can we name one Chi?" My shoulders dropped and I shook my head.

"Never count on Tae to be on the anti-baby side of an argument," Namjoon reminded me in a stage whisper. "He's been wanting kids since before he could grow facial hair."

I looked back up at them and smiled at the joke, but I wasn't ready to let the argument go just yet. "Guys, I haven't even graduated yet, I don't have a job lined up. I didn't go to school for so long to earn a doctorate just to quit and be your...baby factory. I'm not stay-at-home-mom material, or kept woman material for that matter."

Tae wrapped one arm around my shoulders and squeezed me close. "No, noona, I wouldn't want that for you. I just can't help but get excited about the idea of our future together."

"Moving in to my place isn't about you being a kept woman," Namjoon argued. "My place is closer to our dorms, in a better neighbourhood, and has better security. It's more for my peace of mind than anything else." He grabbed my hand and pulled me into his lap, wrapping his strong arms around me. "And we don't have to start a family right away, I just want to be able to talk about it. You didn't want to discuss it when I first brought it up because you were so focused on school, but now I want to be able to start planning."

After a moment of silence, Tae asked, "So, you guys were talking about talking about having kids...were you talking about getting married, too?" The look on his face worried me, so I moved off of Namjoon's lap and cuddled back up to Tae.

"No, Taetae, we talked about it ages ago and neither of us have ever felt the need to actually get married just to prove we're committed to each other," I said with a smile at Joon. "We're both people of our words. And it feels unfair that we'd be able to do something that is denied to so many other couples in the country, just because we happened to fall in love with someone of the opposite gender." When Taehyung's expression didn't change, I climbed into his lap and beckoned Namjoon to join us on the couch. "Besides, at this point I don't think either if us would get married without you being part of it."

"Right," Namjoon confirmed, sliding his arm behind Tae and hugging him. "Especially now, I wouldn't want to get married unless it was to both of my partners."

"I don't want you to deny me," Tae said quietly, pivoting back to the earlier focus of our conversation. "We don't have to tell anybody that we're all together, that's none of their business. But I don't think I'd be able to stand it if I read somewhere that you said you're not dating me."

Namjoon and I exchanged a look, but he was the first to speak. "Sure, we can find something to say if we get asked. Like, 'we are in a happy and healthy relationship', or like, 'we have a great relationship with Taehyung' or something. Something true, even if it doesn't tell the whole story."

Tae seemed to brighten at the thought. "Yeah, that would be better than flat out lying, at least." He sighed again. "I just...I don't want to feel like I'm the third wheel in your relationship. You guys have been together for years now, talked about having kids and how you don't want to get married, and now I'm just- Our relationship is so much newer, and we aren't really ready to be talking about those kind of things yet."

Both Namjoon and I hugged him tight, squishing him between us. "The romantic side of our relationship might be new, but it's not like we haven't had any relationship up until now," I pointed out. "You've probably been my best friend for these years I've been with Namjoon, and I mean, you guys have been together for ages, longer than I've been around." I swallowed, ready to admit my insecurity. "I mean, how am I supposed to compete, physically, when you two literally live in the same room and can be with each other all the time?"

Namjoon spread his arms further to envelop me in the hug along with Tae. "Don't worry about that, babe," he assured me. "If we're too tired or busy to come visit you, we're too tired or busy to do anything with each other."

Taehyung nodded in agreement. "Yeah, and we can, like, call you or something if we do," he offered. "Just, like, so you know it's happening?"

I chuckled at that idea. "I don't want to police your sex life, either," I said. "You shouldn't have to ask permission to be intimate with your partner. I just...if I start feeling like you're not sexing me up because you're already getting enough from each other, I'll say something."

"Promise?" Joon prompted.

I nodded. "I promise. And Tae-ah, you promise to let us know if you're feeling like a third wheel?" He nodded his agreement.

"And I promise to let you know if I start feeling like an old toy you're both done playing with now that you have each other," Namjoon added. I saw the shy sincerity in his eyes. "That's my current biggest relationship-based fear."

I hugged both men close, giving an extra hard squeeze before releasing them and relaxing into the arm of the couch behind me.

"So, just so we're all on the same page, sex doesn't have to be reserved for when all three of us are present, right?" Tae clarified. Both Namjoon and I nodded. "I figure unless someone starts feeling left out, we can just go with the flow."

I added, "I do want to make sure to have time alone with each of you, though. I love all of us together, but we had one-on-one time before, and I don't want to lose that."

"You won't feel left out because Tae and I get a lot more time together?" Namjoon asked softly.

I shook my head. "I think its a bit different with the two of you, since you've lived and worked together for so long," I admitted. "Oh, but the tour is going to be pure torture for me. You two will have each other, and I'll be back here by myself."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Joon promised.

Taehyung looked curious. "Well, what did you do before, other than the sappy love letters? Lots of phone calls and FaceTime and sexting?" His face lit up with a new idea. "We haven't even talked about kinks! What are the two of you into? Do you have any hard stops? I mean, I'm willing to try pretty much anything once-"

Tae was cut off as both his and Namjoon's phones rang almost simultaneously. They each scrambled to answer, Tae informing the person on the other like that Namjoon was talking to Sejin and they could all talk on speaker.

"Okay, have you guys checked your SNS yet today?" Sejin asked once he confirmed both of them were on the line. Both Namjoon and Taehyung confirmed that they hadn't been online yet. Sejin sighed. "Alright, you guys have managed to create the same scandal twice. Someone had a camera at the club last night, which you didn't tell me about going to but we'll get to that later. Anyway, there's another picture of Taehyung and your little girlfriend grinding on each other, Namjoon-ah. We're doing our best to kill the story, but..."

Sejin went into the details of the lengths they were going to and the money they'd have to spend to cover up this new picture, but I tuned him out and went searching for myself. It wasn't hard to find, the picture was all over Twitter, but something about it looked off to me.

"...I don’t think you'll be able to just brush it off this time, you're going to have to break up with her and make a public statement-" Sejin was saying when I cut him off.

"Sejin-ssi? Look for the whole picture," I advised. The man on the line sputtered a bit, apparently unaware that I had been listening as well. "Yeah, whatever, hi. I don't think you'll have to bury this one, jut change the angle. Find the whole picture, cause the one being spread is obviously cropped to cut out Namjoon, who was dancing right behind me. The three of us were dancing all night, there's nothing noteworthy about me and my boyfriend dancing with a friend, is there?"

Namjoon grinned, the darkness and worry that had threatened his expression melting away. "See, Sejin, I told you it's better to keep her around. I guess the three of us are just going to have to go out together a lot, and remind the public what good friends we are."

He squeezed my hand and I squeezed Taehyung's. We'd done this once before, we could do it again.

[Several months later]

I rushed to pack up my computer and shove it into my bag as I wrapped up class. "Remember," I spoke loudly. "No office hours on Thursday, I've got some personal business to take care of."

A few students nodded in my direction, but most of them were already filing out of the lecture hall. I'd have to send an email reminder, though even with that I was sure I'd get at least one annoyed message asking where I was. Teaching first year stats was a thankless job, but I was paying my dues as the newest member of the faculty, only hoping that someone else would be hired next year and it would be their turn.

One of the more engaged students, fresh out of high school with the glimmer of hope still shining in his eyes, approached my desk. "You haven't missed office hours all year, Professor," he said respectfully. "I hope it's nothing serious."

I smiled as I wound the cord of my charger around the power brick. "Honestly, it's not. Its just that my partners' coming home from a long overseas trip and I want to spend some time with them." Thankfully none of my students has yet to connect the dots between their nerdy professor and the woman who was dating Kim Namjoon, leader of the biggest boy band in the world. I could only hope they never did. I waved goodbye to the young man, who looked a little disappointed in my answer, and rushed toward the office I shared with two other younger faculty members.

Once I finally made it back home, I nervously started checking everything I'd set up before I left for campus that morning. I changed from my more formal teaching wear (intentionally chosen to make me look as little like an idol's girlfriend as possible) into a pretty sundress since it was still warm enough to get away with, and even prettier underwear. I knew it wasn't likely to stay on long, but I wanted my boys to know how excited I was to see them.

The apartment Namjoon owned was much bigger than my student housing had been, which meant we had space for a giant oversized bed in the master and a cozy office/library/mini studio in the second bedroom. I'd moved in not long after graduation, finally agreeing that all of their arguments had merit. I did pay rent, probably nowhere near as much as the place was worth, but while I was technically the only person who called it home, the boys were constantly staying over unless schedules interfered.

I had worried, at the beginning, about how Taehyung would adjust to spending so much time away from the other members, knowing how much he loved and depended on their constant company, but he claimed he got enough of that while they worked, and he almost always had Namjoon around when he was staying over with me, so I stopped asking. Admittedly, it gave me hope that at some point, they would actually move out of the dorms and we could live together for real.

They were headed home from almost two months away, though, so I wasn't thinking about moving in together, I just wanted to see them again. Eight weeks was a long time to wait, and it had taken both of them to convince me not to join the throngs of fans who greeted them at the airport. The claimed it would be a recipe for public indecency, so I awaited their arrival at home.

A burst of noise at the front door had me scrambling out of the office where I'd been grading some tests, and running toward them. I threw myself at the first one in, which happened to be Taehyung, and jumped into his arms. He laughed and spun me around, kissing me senseless before releasing me so Namjoon could give me similar treatment.

"What took you so long?" I asked as soon as my mouth was free again. "Your flight landed ages ago."

"Had to drop off our stuff at the dorm, and then Manager-nim was there so we couldn't immediately run off," Taehyung explained. I nodded, knowing that while the managers wouldn't bat an eye at Namjoon rushing off to see me as soon as he landed, it would raise eyebrows if Taehyung went with him. There were already enough rumours about the three of us that the managers had been watching very closely for any hint of truth to them. The other members had been invaluable in helping to throw them off the scent.

Taehyung grabbed my hand and pulled me in the direction of the bedroom, dragging Namjoon along since he was holding my other hand. "How was your trip, are you tired?" I asked in a rush. I was so ecstatic to be with them again; it was the longest the both of them had been away from me since we all started dating, and I was feeling a bit needy, unable to let go of their hands.

"I slept on the flight," Tae assured me, waggling his eyebrows. I checked behind to make sure Namjoon was also feeling rested, and he just smiled. "I don't need any more rest, I need my noona."

My heart and my worry melted, making way for the deep feeling of want that had been bubbling under the surface to come to the forefront of my mind. Being away from them for so long had begun to affect my sanity, so I made no move to protest when Tae collapsed onto the bed and pulled me with him, causing me to let go of Joon's hand.

A moment's kissing quickly turned hot, and soon my mouth was parting from his to follow a trail down his neck and across the sharp points of his clavicle, left exposed by the deep v neck of his shirt. I began fumbling at the buttons, trying to expose more of his skin to my touch.

Taehyung's deep chuckle shook the chest I was pressed against. "Feeling desperate, noona?" he teased. "Did you miss us that much? We sent you lots of pictures to keep you company."

At the mention of the pictures they'd sent, I moaned and changed my focus. Leaving his shirt as it was, rumpled and half undone, I instead backed off the bed and began working at undoing his pants.

I glanced back to check on Namjoon, who had followed us into the bedroom and taken what had become a familiar stance, seated on the cushioned seat of the big bay window. Rather than the jealousy he had feared he'd experience at seeing Taehyung and I together, he'd instead discovered a rather powerful voyeur kink that we had learned to exploit to the fullest. I had found it incredibly convenient that the quickest way to turn on one of my boyfriends was to seduce the other; it made requesting threesomes very efficient. Namjoon gave me a knowing smile with our eyes met, raising an eyebrow as though challenging me to get on with it.

Get on with it, I did, quickly loosening and removing Tae's pants, followed by his black boxer briefs, finally releasing one of the dicks I'd been missing so badly the past eight weeks. "You guys were so mean to me," I complained, leaning over him and running my hands over the tops of his thighs, his hips, everywhere around the base of his cock without actually touching it. "That last video you sent, the one of Joon blowing you? I haven't been able to think of anything else since."

"Noona, that was like, four days ago," Tae moaned. He ran his own hands over his chest and torso when he finished taking off his shirt on his own. When I didn't reply, He angled his head up and looked at me, "Well, now's your chance then. Didn't you want to get a taste yourself?"

I glared at him, but finally wrapped my hand over his erection and stroked it a few times, the precum already leaking out of the tip easing the friction. "Don't get cocky," I warned before licking up the length and sliding my mouth around the tip.

Taehyung's moans and the slick sounds of my mouth were the only noise in the room for several minutes. He wound one hand into my hair, setting a pace he liked and encouraging me to take him deeper with each subsequent thrust. It was a trick he'd picked up from Namjoon, who delighted in sharing all the little things he'd discovered that turned me on, from subtle acts of control like the hand in the hair to the best places to kiss me get get me wet in an instant. In turn, Tae had pushed my boundaries even further than Namjoon had ever dared, striking our own power balance between us.

It hadn't been all sunshine and roses, of course, once we'd officially become a poly triad. Negotiating the new dynamics had taken time, communication, and a lot of patience. We were desperate for each other after the long separation, but I knew that it was likely to bring up old issues, and new ones, between us. That, however, was a problem for the future. I had my boys back with me, and dammit I was going to get thoroughly fucked.

Tae's hand pushed me down far enough to make me gag, and I made a choking noise as tears sprang into the corners of my eyes.

"Careful with our girl, Taehyungie," Namjoon warned, and I could tell he'd moved from the window by the direction of his voice. "Don't want to hurt her on our first day home."

I backed off of Tae's cock long enough so say, "It's okay, I'm all good," before returning to the task at hand. Namjoon's large palm rubbed my back as I bent over Taehyung, but it soon descended over the curve of my hips and tugged my skirt up enough to slip between my thighs.

Joon hissed when he felt the dampness of my panties. "Babe, is this because you missed us? Or because you love sucking his cock that much?" I moaned a response, not really an answer, but that's because I didn't know which it was myself, only that I was absolutely dripping and desperate to get fucked.

Thankfully, Namjoon seemed to be on board with my unspoken idea, pushing my skirt up above my waist where it wouldn't impede his view and ran his hands over my pink lace covered ass. "So fucking gorgeous," he murmured before sliding the panties down just far enough for gravity to pull them down to my ankles where I had to blindly step out of them if I wanted to spread my legs any further. Namjoon's attention was back between my legs, his fingers now covered in my slick arousal and teasing at the sensitive flesh there.

"I can't wait to be inside you, babe," he admitted. "I haven't fucked anything other than a hand or a mouth in way too long, I need to be inside your tight pussy." Dirty talk was something he'd picked up from Tae, and I can't say I minded. Hearing their deep voices telling me exactly what they wanted to do to me only served to turn me on further every time.

He wasn't exaggerating about his need to be inside of me though, as I felt the blunt tip of his cock pressing into my entrance moments after his fingers moved away. Settling his hands on my hips to steady them, he began fucking into me with a slow deliberate rhythm.

The pace Namjoon was setting was still slow enough to be able to continue blowing Taehyung, but the drag of his cock over my g-spot was making me cry out each time. I pulled off of Tae, breathing hard and grunting with every thrust Joon made.

"Damn, hyung," Tae cursed. "How is it that I am getting sucked off my the most wonderful girlfriend in the world, but I am still jealous of our boyfriend?"

I could head the satisfied grin in Namjoon's voice as he replied, "Yeah? Here, I have an idea." He pulled out of me, and a whimpered at the empty feeling.

I stood up straight, waiting to hear what Namjoon's idea was. In addition to his voyeuristic tendencies, sharing the bedroom had revealed a different facet of Joon's desire for control. He was the one who suggested activities and specific positions, which Tae and I were usually eager to comply with. He wasn't forceful in the way Taehyung could be with me, but he always exuded this aura of power that was hard to ignore (and amazing to follow).

"Babe, you lay down like Tae was," Namjoon indicated, and I moved to do so, squeaking when he stopped me to pull my dress off entirely. He had me lay down on the bed one way, then changed his mind and moved me so that my head was on the pillows at the head of the bed. He grabbed a couple extra pillows and put them under my hips, and I started to get the idea of what was coming. Taehyung was directed to join me, and he braced himself on his knees to line up with the angle Joon had put me at.

Namjoon took in our positions, then said, "Okay, Taetae, now fuck her like you mean it." Tae smiled down at me and did just that, filling me with his generous length and making me moan in appreciation.

Joon grabbed a bottle of lube from the dresser and tossed it on the bed before climbing up behind Taehyung. At the first touch of Namjoon's slicked finger against his hole, Tae paused his thrusts until encouraged to continue.

"Fuck Tae, did you prep?" Namjoon moaned, finding Tae already slicked and loose.

"What else was I supposed to do while we waited for Manager-nim to leave?" Tae teased in return, winking at me. The sloppy sounds of Namjoon adding extra lubrication joined the slap of Tae's body against mine, Tae alternating between telling me how good if felt to be inside me and begging Namjoon to just fuck him already.

"Hyung, please, it's been so long," he pleaded. "Two months, hyung, because we promised we wouldn't but please don't tease me any more I need to feel your cock inside me." The way he whined only went to demonstrate how much they'd missed this part of their relationship.

It had been one of the rules, while they were on tour, that they could get each other off, but only with hands and mouths. I hadn't been the one to suggest it, but they felt so guilty about being away from me together for so long that they'd placed their own restriction. Anal may have not been a huge part of their relationship in the past, but once they'd started to explore it within our triad where they had more time and space to enjoy it, they'd both confessed that it was one of their favourite things to do together. Tae was more likely to be the one begging to get fucked, but Joon still couldn't resist the allure of having Tae's giant cock inside him occasionally.

I was certainly reaping the benefits of having Tae inside me, with each stroke glancing against that special spot and making me see stars. I was barreling toward my peak and Joon hadn't even started fucking Tae yet.

"You just gonna play with his ass all night?" I demanded, not wanting to come too early and risk over stimulation if Taehyung wasn't finished yet.

Namjoon chuckled as he finally got into position, using one hand to bend the younger man forward so that Tae's chest was pressed to mine and the other to guide his cock into Taehyung's eager little hole. His hands now gripped Tae's narrower hips and it was Tae who had to find the rhythm between the to partners he was pleasuring.

It was almost like a collapse and expansion, Namjoon's thrust cascading into Tae's which only pushed him into me with more force, and then the slow retraction of them both. This position did not lend itself well to fast frantic fucking, but the power behind it more than made up for the slower pace. It was fascinating, watching Taehyung fall apart between us, each thrust making him shudder and moan. I saw the signs of his impending orgasm, and stopped trying to hold off my own, concentrating on letting the feeling build with in me.

I was nearly there, the edge of pleasure in sight when Tae grunted that he was close. "Inside me," I begged him. "We're safe, please I want to feel you come inside."

I was on birth control, and had no plans of stopping any time soon. The two of them had bugged me repeatedly about when we would start trying, or at least stop preventing, but I'd shot them down. Once I explained that I didn't want to risk having a baby when the two of them were only a year apart and the chances of them being enlisted at the same time were actually fairly high, they stopped asking. I knew it was still something they each thought about, especially any time we were out together and saw a baby or a small child; Namjoon had even bought a pair of ridiculously expensive baby shoes as "decoration" for his studio. But we were still young, we had plenty of time for those things down the road.

Luckily I was able to come just before Taehyung did, or maybe the feeling of me coming around him is what finally pushed him over the edge. Namjoon continued fucking Tae, who actually enjoyed the over stimulation, holding him up when he nearly collapsed on top of me. Joon had always said that seeing and hearing us come, knowing we were experiencing pleasure, was one of the things that got him off, and sure enough he followed soon after we did.

Namjoon stepped away to grab a couple washcloths and returned to find Taehyung still smothering me. Joon cleaned up Tae's backside before helping me to roll him off and wiped down his front, murmuring praises and words of affection as he did so. Once I felt like I wouldn't make a mess, I pulled on a robe and grabbed some water from the kitchen. Upon my return, I saw the two of them already cuddled together, their eyes closed despite their assurances earlier that they were well rested.

"Welcome home, my loves."

Previous (Part 2)

#bts fic #namjoon x reader #taehyung x reader #namjoon x reader x taehyung #ipurpleunet #my fic #bts smut #namjoon scenario #taehyung scenario #idol au #bangtan smut #namjoon au #taehyung au #bangtan x reader #namjoon fic #taehyung fic #bts au #bts au fanfic #fic: this looks bad

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aikainkauna · 6 years ago

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Fic mehm

This was shortish, so might as well post it here. Snurched from the lovely @trelobita .

-What is your total word count on AO3?

-1 421 808. That little?!? I thought I would've gone past the 2 million mark a long time ago. What with Connie whipping me on the way he does.

-How often do you write?

-When the right mood/inspiration comes, and when I'm healthy enough (both mentally and physically) to be in writing condition. Which is not often enough; I hate it when I do want to write, but brain fog and/or physical fatigue mean I can't keep my brain going or my body upright. That's mostly for fiction, though. I can type bloggity waffle like this, and could just about proofread a sex toy review today despite it being a brainfog/tireded day. The deadline for the review was today, so I did it under duress and must've left something out or fucked up some grammar as consequence. Finnish conjugations are hell when your memory is shot to pieces; English is much easier to write because you don't have to remember how to conjugate a word to denote it's in the past tense for a plural with a conditional towards place A, signifying inclusion. No, I'm not joking. Sauvallanikinkos? ("Also with my wand, too, maybe?")

-Do you have a routine for writing?

-My body isn't good with routines and schedules, so no. The only pattern I have is to try and get 1000 words done at least and then to email myself the latest draft after I've finished writing.

-What are your favourite tropes?

-Have you got a month? (This question foolishly asked about your favourite kinks and tropes and pairing types all in the same question, BTW, so I split it up into three questions, because... c'mon.)

Tropes:

-Flawed characters who are still somehow understandable and appealing; not the typical Asshole Protagonist or antihero thing so much but more of an... well, I guess it's just good characterisation I prefer, in the end. Not that kind of squickily obvious macho power fantasy sold as "grittiness" just for the sake of being an asshole (funnily enough, that kind of crap usually comes from the kinds of people who have too much privilege in the first place). So, yeah, good characterisation that's still got some shreds of humanity left is my jam.

-Telepathic lovers. Exactly because it hurts so much when the person who's supposed to love you the most and to understand you the best doesn't, and vice versa. So that's a big RL trauma and squick I prefer to fix, because in fic, I CAN.

-That's a major one, actually. Fix-its not so much on a plot level but on a human level. Especially sexism/gender bullshit-breaking fixes. Fix-its get a bad rap, but that kind of thing, just like the bashing of romance and fanfic, sets off my "ah, this wouldn't be the devaluing of something considered empathic and female/feminine again, now would it?" alarms.

-This overlaps with the pairing thingy, but the Depraved Bisexual is my favourite character type to write. All the Connies, Tennant!Peter Vincent, Captain Renault, Zainab, Laura, etc... YES.

-Male character gives up some masculine privilege he doesn't fancy anyway for the sake of love and empathy/female character gives up stereotypical female things she doesn't fancy anyway in order to be herself and free herself as much as she can from society's chains. Give Torsten all the pwetty dwezzez he wants and for Falcon!Yassamin to remain childfree, dammit!

-Man cuddles and medicates woman during her period and actually empathises/feels how awful it is. As I was saying about the fix-its...

-Funny banter, even if I can't write it as hilariously as I'd want to.

Favourite kinks?

-Poetic prose and Romanticism. It's word porn or nothing, baby.

-Historical detail, accuracy preferred but depends on how the story wants to go (the Barmakids DON'T get butchered horribly by Harun al-Rashid in 803, TYVM).

-Anal! That's almost too obvious to mention.

-Androgynous, genderbending, sex-bending, femme men. Why do you think Connie is the love of my life?

-Lots of arousal-drippage.

-Some way for the bottom to see themselves being banged. Mirrors or telepathy or magic or video camera projecting it before their eyes or whatever. Unfff.

-Orgasms. Always orgasms to complete satisfaction. Orgasm denying or writing it badly or so vaguely that characters/readers can't get any catharsis/release for the arousal is a huge squick. That's a hard limit. Fuck characters who tease and don't let someone get off.

-Psychological/emotional depth. That's such a no-brainer it shouldn't even be necessary to mention (although in these days, it seems to be, because apparently wanting that is now a repressed sexual minority instead of normal human, especially female, sexuality. Oh, fuck off). Yeah, these memes do bring out the pet peeves about internalised misogyny, don't they? Especially the sort that manifests itself in sputter-inducing ignorance. Even my medieval characters and their somewhat dated and essentialist ideas of sex and gender are ahead of Tumblr in the very basics, FFS.

-BDSM that's based very much on extreme care and healing, the sort that uses the intense sexual activities/sensory overload as a kind of way to heal the sub's anxieties and to help the sub let go, achieve catharsis and release. And for the top's love to be the guiding, ravishing, then healing and comforting force that contains the sub and the sub's anxieties in a fiercely loving and protective way and absolutely, so that not a drop spills over. So, yep, BDSM as therapy is my kink in both RL and in fic. Not so much a desire to humiliate or to be humiliated, but on the contrary, to value and to honour the other half. The top finds strength and validation through being the healer, through their power being able to do something good (instead of tearing someone down and having power over them through that). Yes, I know that's not everyone's idea of BDSM, but it's mine and that's what you'll get if it's a healthy relationship I'm trying to portray. (The Barrings and Zainab and Fadl don't have the healthiest ideas of sex, anyhow; Jaffar/Pwinzezz usually do.)

And I'm leaving out so many. You only have to look at my Ao3 pages to see the recurring themes:p

Favourite pairing types?

-Experienced Depraved Bisexual Character/Less Experienced and/or Repressed Character, GIMMIE. Fucking love that shit.

-Similar: Older, More Experienced Man/Younger, Horny Woman.

-Horny couple, usually M/F, seduce someone into a threesome. The Rosesverse and Devilry are full of this, so might as well admit it.

-Do you have a favourite fic of yours?

-I do have a soft spot for the first two fics in the Falconverse. As if you didn't all know that already! They do have some noticeable flaws here and there, especially the first one (I still insist that weird lube choice was HIS and not mine; I do know better and yelled at him at the time), but they still contain my deepest and most profound writing both erotically (and I mean that in the widest sense of the word, encompassing all things Love) and spiritually and character-wise. Defy Not The Stars also turned out better than I expected, considering I had never attempted so much plot and a traditional historical romance novel before. But I guess that Roses, what with its length, has allowed me to explore more aspects of the characters and their lives than anything else I've written. And of course, considering Devilry is my most-read saga ever, I do have a soft spot for that pile-up of a car crash. If only for the sheer intensity of the ride; I was just thinking yesterday how it really was aghori sadhana done through writing. Meditating in a graveyard is for wimps; try spending months in Torsten Barring's fragrant boypussy.

-Your fic with the most kudos?

To no one's surprise, Because The World Belongs To The Devil, at 234 kudos.

-Anything you don’t like about your writing?

-I suck at pacing sometimes. The sex scenes tend to run overlong if I write them in several sessions instead of just one go. It's not that the characters want to try different sex acts and shag more than once during a night, but more that the tension is spread out unevenly ("JFC, why did they change position again? I want them to just fucking come already, damnit!") This is obviously a result of how many things *I* see in my mind's eye during a wank; it's always more of a clipshow of different sex acts and pairings and orientations than one straightforward scenario. I'll be more mindful of that in the future and have been watching out for it in the past few fics already; I don't think the shags in The Guardians of Samarkand overran, for example.

-And sometimes my kinks get too obvious and repetitive for me, too, the way any porn gets tedious and repetitive. But on the other hand, I know very well that fanfic *is* about us imposing our kinks on our darlings, no matter how much we may go on about our dedication to characterisation and such. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: what's key is to get away with your kinks *but* in such a way that they can also engage the reader and that they become interesting and enjoyable not just for you, but for the readers, too. And you need good characterisation for that, and it's a really delicate balance to juggle your kinks and believable characterisation.

-Something you *do* like about your writing?

-I can write immersively and deeply and engage all the senses (sight, touch, scent...) in rich detail, as well as go deeply and profoundly into the emotions. And write some fucking hot porn ;) Those are the things I've had praise for, at least. Maybe my spiritual bits aren't as relatable or something, because people hardly ever remark on those (interestingly, my mum is the only one to have taken up those bits! But I skim over the sex scenes when I read the fics to her, so she only gets the gen). Or then it's the fact that most of the time it's Thief of Bagdad fic, and thus in an Islamic context, and most readers aren't familiar enough with, say, Sufism, to feel like they're qualified to comment without making arses out of themselves. But of course I like my spiritual bits; I'm an ex-religions major!

This had a taggity thing at the end, but I hate doing those because it always puts pressure on them even if you say they don't have to (come, now. The pressure is there, the moment you mention someone by name). I don't own the meme or you, so, as always: do what thou wilt.

#writing #meme #meta #personal #i guess #ao3 #fic

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illbefinealonereads · 4 years ago

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Blog tour! I’m offering you information and an excerpt from Out Now by Saundra Mitchell.

Out Now: Queer We Go Again! By Saundra Mitchell On Sale: May 26, 2020 Inkyard Press YOUNG ADULT FICTION/Diversity & Multicultural | YOUNG ADULT FICTION/Romance/LGBT 9781335018267; 1335018263 $18.99 USD 416 pages

A follow-up to the critically acclaimed All Out anthology, Out Now features seventeen new short stories from amazing queer YA authors. Vampires crash prom…aliens run from the government…a president’s daughter comes into her own…a true romantic tries to soften the heart of a cynical social media influencer…a selkie and the sea call out to a lost soul. Teapots and barbershops…skateboards and VW vans…Street Fighter and Ares’s sword: Out Now has a story for every reader and surprises with each turn of the page! This essential and beautifully written modern-day collection features an intersectional and inclusive slate of authors and stories.

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Saundra Mitchell has been a phone psychic, a car salesperson, a denture deliverer and a layout waxer. She's dodged trains, endured basic training and hitchhiked from Montana to California. She teaches herself languages, raises children and makes paper for fun. She is the author of Shadowed Summer and The Vespertine series, the upcoming novelization of The Prom musical, and the editor of Defy the Dark. She always picks truth; dare is too easy. Visit her online at www.saundramitchell.com.

Author website: wwww.saundramitchell.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Saundra-Mitchell/164136390442617 Twitter: @saundramitchell Instagram: @smitchellbooks Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52172088-out-now

Excerpt:

KICK. PUSH. COAST. By Candice Montgomery

Every day, same time, same place, she appears and doesn’t say a word.

Well, she doesn’t just appear. She takes a bus. You know she takes a bus because you see her get off the bus right in front of 56th Street, just in front of the park where you skate.

You know she takes a bus and gets off right in front of the park at 56th Street because you are always at the park, wait-ing to catch a glance of her.

She—her appearance—is a constant. Unlike your sexuality, all bendy like the way your bones got after yesterday’s failed backside carve.

Bisexualpansexualdemisexualpanromanticenby all bleeding bleeding-bleeding…into one another.

That drum of an organ inside your chest tells you to just be patient. But now, here you are and there she is and you can’t help yourself.

She’s beautiful.

And so far out of your league.

You’re not even sure what she does here every day, but you probably shouldn’t continue to watch her while trying to nail a Caballerial for the first time. Losing focus there is the kind of thing that lends itself to unforgiving injuries, like that time you broke your leg in six places on the half-pipe or the time you bit clean through your bottom lip trying to take down a 360 Pop Shove It.

You’re still tasting blood to this very day. So’s your skate-board. That one got split clean in half.

She looks up at you from underneath light brown lashes that seem too long to be real. She reminds you of a Heelflip. You don’t know her well but you imagine that, at first, she’s a pretty complicated girl, before you get good enough to really know her. You assume this just given the way her hair hangs down her back in a thick, beachy plait, the way yours never could.

Not since you chopped it all off.

That’s not a look for a lady, your mom says repeatedly. But you’ve never been very femme and a few extra inches of hair plus that pink dress Mom bought you won’t change that.

You hate that dress. That dress makes you look like fondant. Someone nails a Laserflip right near where you’re standing and almost wipes out.

Stop staring. You could just go introduce yourself to her.

But what would you say?

Hi, I’m Dustyn and I really want to kiss you but I’m so confused about who I am and how am I supposed to introduce myself to you if I can’t even get my label right, oh, and also, you make me forget my own name.

And in a perfect world, she would make eyes at you. She’d make those eyes at you and melt your entire fucking world in the way only girls ever can.

Hi, Dustyn, I’m in love with you. Eyelashes. All batting eye-lashes.

No. No, the conversation probably wouldn’t go that way. Be nice if it did though. Be nice if anything at all could go your way when it comes to romance.

You push into a 360 ollie while riding fakie and biff it so bad, you wish you possessed whatever brain cells are the ones that tell you when to quit.

If that conversation did go your way, on a realistic scale, she’d watch you right back. You would nail that Caballerial.

Take a break. Breathe. Breathe breathe breathe. Try some-thing else for a sec.

Varial Heelflip. Wipe out.

Inward Heelflip. Gnarly spill.

Backside 180 Heelflip. Game, set, match—you’re finished. That third fail happens right in front of her and you play it off cool. Get up. Don’t even give a second thought to your battle wounds. You’re at the skate park on 56th Street because there’s more to get into. Which means, you’re not the only idiot limping with a little drug called determination giving you momentum.

Falling is the point. Failing is the point. Getting better and changing your game as a skater is the point. Change.

But what if things were on your side? What if you’d stuck with that first label? What if Bisexual felt like a good fit and never changed?

Well, then you’d probably be landing all these 180s.

If bisexual just fit, you’d probably have been able to hold on to your spot in that Walk-In Closet. But it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit which kind of sucks because at Thanksgiving din-ner two years ago, your cousin Damita just had to open her big mouth and tell the family you “mess with girls.” Just had to tell the family, a forkful of homemade mac and cheese headed into said mouth, that you are “half a gay.”

That went over well. Grams wouldn’t let you sit on her plastic-lined couches for the rest of the night. Your great-uncle Damian told her gay is contagious. She took it to heart.

No offense, baby. Can’t have all that on my good couches. You glance up and across the park, memories knocking

things through your head like a good stiff wind, and you find her taking a seat.

Oh.

Oh, she never does this. She never gets comfortable. She’s changing things up. You’re not the only one.

Maybe she plans to stay a while.

You love that she’s changing things up. You think it feels like a sign. It’s like she’s riding Goofy-Foot today. Riding with her right foot as dominant.

The first time you changed things up that way, you ended up behind the bleachers, teeth checking with a trans boy named Aaron. It felt so right that you needed to give it a name.

Google called it pansexual. That one stuck. You didn’t bother to explain that one to the family, though. They were just starting to learn bisexual didn’t mean you were gay for only half the year.

You pop your board and give the Caballerial another go.

It does not want you. You don’t stick this one either.

If pansexual had stuck, you’d introduce yourself to the beautiful girl with a smaller apology on your tongue. Hi, I’m Dustyn, I’ve only changed my label the one time, just slightly, but I’m still me and I’d really love to take you out.

And the beautiful girl would glance at your scraped elbows and the bruised-up skin showing through the knee holes in your ripped black skinny jeans. She’d see you and say, Hi, small, slight changes are my favorite. And then she’d lace her bubble-gum-nail-polished hand with yours.

But you changed your label after that, too. It was fine for a while. Your best friend, Hollis, talked you through the symp-toms of demisexuality.

No wonder holding the beautiful girl’s hand seems so much more heart-palpitating than anything else. A handhold. So simple. Just like an ollie.

You take a fast running start, throwing your board down, and end up on a vert skate, all empty bowl-shaped pools that are so smooth, your wheels only make a small whisper against them.

A whisper is what you got that first time you realized sex was not for you. Not with just anyone. This was…mmm, probably your biggest revelation.

It was like you’d been feeding your body Big Macs three times a day and suddenly—a vegetable!

Tic-tacking is when you use your entire body to turn the board from one side to the other. It’s a game of lower body strength, but also a game of knowing your weight and know-ing your board. You are not a tic-tac kind of girl.

You are not a girl at all. You are just…you.

That.

That one’s sticking forever. You know it all the way through to your gut.

You make one more attempt, which probably isn’t super wise because you are so close to the spot where she’s sitting that not only will she see you bite the dust, but she’ll hear that nasty grunt you make when you meet the ground.

You coast by.

The friction vibrates up through your bearings and you know you’re going too fast because you start to feel a little bit of a speed-wobble, that lovely, untimely, oscillatory behavior that means bro, you are about to lose control.

And you hate that word. Control. You hate that word be-cause it is so very rare that you have any. Over your life, your sexuality, your gender, your pronouns, your heartbeat when you’re around your beautiful girl.

But then you do.

You gain control. And you nail that Caballerial.

And the three guys who’ve been watching you make an ass of yourself all afternoon pop their boards up, hold them over their heads and let out wolf shouts.

And you’re smiling so hard. You get like that when you nail a particularly difficult one. You’re smiling so hard you don’t notice the someone standing behind you.

Beautiful girl. You don’t even want to control your smile here.

“You did it,” she says.

#blog tour #excerpt #out now #saundra mitchell

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nellie-elizabeth · 7 years ago

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Grey's Anatomy: Break Down The House/Get Off On The Pain (14x01/02)

Grey's Anatomy is a soap opera. I mean that's not a surprise to anybody, but every once in a while you see episodes that reminds you - Grey's Anatomy is a soap opera. I don't even mean that in a bad way, actually. This episode had a lot of great moments, and the extreme drama of them is what made them great. It also had just one or two moments that had me on the verge of an eye-roll... let's take a look.

Cons:

To anyone who's been reading my reviews, it'll be no surprise to you that I'm annoyed about Amelia. Owen has his sister back, and Amelia has been avoiding him and acting horribly. Then Owen tries to talk to her about it, since he knows something is really wrong, and she lashes out again. All last season I kept saying that Amelia needed to get over herself, and now we learn, thanks to her participation in a sex study (I'll get to that later) that her erratic behavior is actually because she has a giant brain tumor. Okay... did we not already do this with Izzy? This was the big shocking cliffhanger at the end of the two part episode, and it felt like the most cliche, overwrought thing that could have been done at this point. Amelia has been pissing me off for... well, forever now, and it seems like sort of a cop-out to blame all of her shitty behavior on a medical drama cliche like a brain tumor. A brain surgeon has a brain tumor?! Gasp. How surprising.

Maggie was also getting on my nerves a lot last season, and while she did have some good elements in this episode that I'll get to later, she still had one of her quintessential annoying moments. Nathan and Owen have decided not to tell Megan about Nathan and Meredith's relationship. Teddy thinks this is ridiculous, and Maggie agrees. She says that she was in Megan's position once, in that she found out about Nathan and Meredith and it was weird. Okay. The utter hubris of comparing what happened with her to what's going on with Megan is... ugh. Maggie. Please. I still can't believe how much she built up that whole thing. She had an unrequited crush on a guy. Nothing even happened, and he started dating someone else. How can you even compare the situations? She also spends her time being awkward around Jackson, and he spends his time being awkward right back. I'm convinced that this is perhaps the least interesting potential romantic relationship this show has ever done, right after DeLuca's unrequited thing for Jo. Please stop.

So, Eliza Minnick is gone. She ghosted Arizona and disappeared into the night after being fired. I mean, no particular skin off my back, since she was really annoying. But it's also annoying to see such a clear signal from the show that her presence was an utter waste of time. It takes absolutely nothing for Arizona to bounce back from this, and it takes no time for me as a viewer either. Eliza was such a poorly written character. Oh, and speaking of bouncing back - I'm really happy that Arizona found somebody to hook up with, and I'm actually rather pleased with the new character. But have you noticed that all the lesbians and bisexual women on this show are gorgeous, long-haired femme girls? Callie, Arizona, Eliza, and now Carina? Even Penny didn't have any sort of a butch vibe going on. I'm not trying to say that we need our lesbian characters to look like a cliche, but if they could not all be super hot ultra-feminine, that would be nice. Maybe this is a thing nobody cares about but me, but I apparently care a little bit about it.

Pros:

I'm gonna go through a few subplot elements before we talk about Megan Hunt.

April. Okay, so while I don't think Maggie and Jackson are interesting, I still kind of do think April and Jackson are interesting. They're a couple that I actually root for. I think they belong together. I like that April identified her pain and was honest to Jackson about it. As much as I want these two to work it out, for April's sake I hope she finds a way to be happy, with or without Jackson.

Arizona brings a woman home to her house and they're hooking up on the couch when DeLuca comes in. He sees this woman, and the two of them immediately start bickering in furious Italian. Turns out, this woman is Carina, DeLuca's older sister. She's actually a doctor too, and she goes in to meet with Bailey. Bailey has been having her own sort of internal feminist uprising as she laments the necessity of wearing uncomfortable heels to work, so when Carina suggests a sex study where women masturbate inside the MRI machine to study the effects of orgasms on the brain, Bailey decides to go for it.

This plot thread, setting aside the ending where Amelia has a stupid tumor, was pretty funny and great. Carina seems like a better match for Arizona than Eliza was. She's funny and sexy and the scene where she and DeLuca are yelling at each other while Arizona is shirtless on the couch was pretty hysterical. I also loved how everybody had this girlish interest in her sex study. Female sexuality is a very repressed topic, and it was fun to see it explored seriously. And Bailey getting rid of all her high heels was pretty fantastic. Ben is such a good husband - he points out to Bailey that her sexiest (and most uncomfortable) pair of heels will only hurt her if she tries to stand in them, leading to some fun sexy times.

Richard had the tiniest of little subplots with Maggie that I thought was quite fun. He's impressed with Meredith's bad-ass surgery skills, and tell Maggie that Meredith is just like Ellis. Maggie gets a little competitive and asks if Richard ever compliments her, Maggie, when talking to Meredith. Richard says that while Meredith reminds him of Ellis, he likes to take credit for Maggie's success personally. This was a great moment to remind me that I didn't always dislike Maggie so much. If she could just stay away from the romance plots I think I'd be a lot more cool with her.

Jo and Alex. Another unsurprising fact for my readers is that I'm not super duper happy with Jo and Alex's romance as of late. But in this episode... I don't know. Maybe it was just that I know they're both in so much pain, and as annoying as Jo can be, I really do want Alex to be happy. Also, Alex told the truth to Jo, and the two of them seem like they could really make a good start out of this. Obviously the looming threat of Jo's husband is still out there, but for now I think they might be on solid footing. And kudos to Ben for playing the "new Stephanie" by supporting Jo through all of this craziness. Bailey correctly points out to him that he doesn't get to have an opinion about how Jo, a woman, feels in regards to Alex's violent attack of DeLuca. Ben agrees, but he still manages to help out by going to Alex and telling him the real problem - Jo is afraid of him. With that hurdle jumped, these two can finally move forward with their lives. I think I might like them better together and happy than I did when they were mutually angsting and pining.

Okay. Now for the main event. Megan is great. Admittedly, she's a little too well-adjusted to be somebody who's been held hostage for ten years, but when you hear her story it does make a little bit of sense. She was treated poorly at first, but eventually she was utilized as a doctor, and actually made friends and adopted a Syrian refugee as her son. She wasn't permitted to leave, but she was treated well. Her motivations are entirely about getting back to her adopted son. She has a serious abdominal injury, but wants to go with the quicker, more risky option in order to get back to her child sooner, instead of the safer, more painful option that will take much longer.

Everything about this setup kind of breaks my heart. Megan is really cool, and funny, and doesn't put up with nonsense from Owen or Nathan whatsoever. Meredith is the one who breaks the news to her about her past with Nathan, and Megan takes it in stride. She and Meredith seem to really like each other, and although Meredith's first surgery doesn't go as planned, the second one is a huge and innovative success that will get Megan back to her son in way less time.

Nathan breaks my heart. He's so devastatingly relieved to see Megan again, but obviously his feelings for Meredith can't just poof away. And Meredith is being so cool about the whole thing, stepping in as Megan's surgeon and doing an amazing job. April gives Nathan the advice that he needs to be all in with Megan, and let her know that he's there for her completely. He decides to propose, and we get another very soap opera-y moment when Meredith walks in to tell Megan it's time for her surgery, interrupting the proposal. Turns out, Megan says no, because she thinks Nathan is still in love with Meredith.

This is a love triangle, of sorts, but I love the fact that there's no animosity between the two women. Nathan has pined for Megan and missed her for ten years, but the fact remains that they've both moved on with their lives in big ways. Megan, as difficult as her time has been, has found a new family in her son. And Nathan has clawed his way back to a brotherly bond with Owen, and has found new love with Meredith. They can't just erase that and move back to where they were. And yet... the love is still real.

Oh yeah, and let's talk about Teddy. I didn't realize how much I had missed her until she was there! It was cool to see the scenes of her, Owen, Nathan, and Megan. These four all have a special bond that nobody else at the hospital could understand. I've always liked Teddy, and even though Owen was absolutely wrong to kiss her, I can see how it would be appealing for both of them to give this thing a shot. Of course, it just made me like Teddy even more that she said no. I don't know if she'll be around after this, but I'd love to see her integrate back into the story, even if just temporarily. It was so cute when Arizona saw her and immediately gave her a summary of everything that had happened - Callie left her and took Sofia and she found love again and then Eliza got fired - that's a lot of stuff to blurt out to somebody you haven't seen in years!

I'll end by saying that even though this episode had a lot of dark elements to it, it was undeniably a lighter episode than we've seen in a while. Megan is back and she's going to be okay, and all of the major surgeries in the episode were a success. Jo succeeded despite a med student dropping his glasses into the surgical field, Amelia succeeded with a delicate jaw surgery even against Jackson's disapproval and doubt, and Meredith found a way to help Megan get better quicker so she can return to her son. I'm always glad when we can get a bit of hope from this show, even if it is mixed in with a lot of interpersonal drama.

Well, there you have it. I'm back to writing reviews for this monstrosity of a show. I always forget how long these things take me... it's gonna be an adjustment getting back into it!

8/10

#review #greys anatomy #greys anatomy review #grey's anatomy #grey's anatomy review #grey's #greys

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toriasimmons · 8 years ago

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Jemma and Bobbi

Jemma

sexual orientation headcanon

I agree with what you said, of course, but for my readers who aren’t reading you (are there those? I don’t even know) I’m going to reiterate. Jemma Simmons Likes Girls. I think she prefers girls pretty much always but has dated boys in the past because of life being heteronormative and is dating F!tz because life is heteronormative and also he’s a manipulative jerkface who wasn’t going to let her have a say in the definition of their relationship so she was like “well maybe I could love him, romantically” but that was more because she still has a big weakness for their friendship and wanted it in her life in some capacity. But mostly she likes girls. She hearteyes at so many girls.

gender headcanon

I’m even less the person to answer this particular kind of headcanon oops sorry don’t want to step on toes but please other people who are more qualified answer away I just feel weird getting into anything mostly because neither I nor Elizabeth are anything other than cis girls BUT I will say this: aesthetically Jemma’s got her preppy schoolgirl businesswoman with a hint, just a hint, of androgyny (ffs her newly discovered penchant for loafer-oxford-whatever shoes) and she’s most comfortable getting really hyperfemme for, shall we say, private occasions. I think at this point her style is equal parts “can I do science in it?” and “will other people who do science respect me in it?” and “I am polished leave me alone” and. Yeah.

mental illness / neurodivergent headcanon

Aside from the canon PTSD, which I’m sorry her saying TO A THERAPIST “oh, I don’t have PTSD“ is a pretty clear sign of, I’m pretty sure she’s been on medication for depression/anxiety since she was a young person. And yeah, autism. It’s a thing. I have some Opinions about the dynamic between autistic F!tzSimmons and the world, but I’ll sum it up with this: people shrug and accept F!tz the “eccentric genius” but you best believe Jemma not only has to be sweeter and kinder and more normal for herself, but she has to smooth his edges over too. Oh, and she’s definitely had a couple of bouts of PTSD/anxiety-induced self-harming ideation. Hasn’t really acted on them, but.

3 random headcanons

She’s had various romantic entanglements with various women who may or may not be other parts of the MCU over time. F!tz probably didn’t really notice, given canon.

Wrt the above, I’m pretty sure the autism part of her diagnosis is not official but instead is something she figured out herself through lots and lots of reading. She’s shy about claiming it because, thanks anxiety, she doubts the legitimacy of her own brain. Familiar? Yes. No apologies.

She’s not a totally horrible driver but it’s not her strong suit, and that’s not just an England/America sides of the road problem.

Bobbi!

sexual orientation headcanon

Bisexual gray-aromantic and the Queen Dominatrix. Thank you for making that last part canon, Chelsea Cain.

gender headcanon

Cis girl, hard femme, ASK ME ABOUT MY (intersectional) FEMINIST AGENDA.

mental illness / neurodivergent headcanon

Probably some PTSD here too, friends, but also: she’s also autistic. They’re all autistic. They just are. She’s got the fun baggage of being perpetually told she’s not autistic enough to be autistic… because she’s spent her entire life learning very carefully how to fake “normalcy” and blend in. She MADE herself pay attention to social cues and things like that as a defense mechanism, even before she wound up being a spy.

3 random headcanons

I’m pretty sure that languages are one of her special interests.

Honestly, it’s at least 40% Princess Leia’s fault that Bobbi joined SHIELD. Imagine that little baby nerd watching Star Wars and wanting to kick ass and save the universe too. It happened.

Like I mentioned the other day, she and Natasha and Sharon have an “agents on the run” groupchat going right now, conducted mostly through burner phones and using mostly fake names. They don’t talk about “work stuff” much because it would be suspicious, but they all need friends they can talk to without worrying about anyone’s safety.

#tumblin'#jemma simmons #bobbi morse #incomprehensiblelentils

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femslashrevolution · 8 years ago

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Towards A Darker Femslash by holyfant

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

Hello everyone! I hope your Femslash February is going great so far. I was stoked to be asked to write a little something for I Am Femslash, particularly because while I’ve written bits and pieces about my experience as a young, queer, multishipping and writing young woman in fandom, I’ve never really tried to put any of my thoughts together in a truly coherent way. So, here I go, attempting to write about a topic that is dear to me. Feel free to engage me on any of the points I make in this little essay!

So, hi. I’m holyfant, a 26-year-old ESL fanfic and (aspiring) original fiction writer. I’ve been active in fandom for nearly fifteen years, and have written fic for a lot of that time, picking up English and fannishness along the way. Writing fic gave me a way to connect with other people who had to same interests I did – and only later did I realise it also paved the way to more self-knowledge. At some point during my teens, the question of my own sexual and romantic identity became pressing; maybe paradoxically this first drew me to male slash, and only later to femslash – perhaps because the former was and is more visibly present in fandom than the latter, and perhaps also because reading and writing femslash was still too direct a way to engage with my own identity at that point. I still don’t fully understand this; I remember that when I was first playing with the idea that I might not be straight, it felt safer to read about men in love than women in love. Maybe seeing male characters discover their non-straightness was close enough to my own experience to stir up emotion and feeling, but far enough removed from it that it didn’t stir up panic. Who knows?

Either way, when I was more comfortable with who I was, I returned to f/f and found it infinitely rewarding. I read a metric ton of femslash fic and wrote lots myself – for a fairly long stretch of time I enjoyed deep obscurity in the Harry Potter and Greek mythology fandoms as a niche femslash writer with two or three loyal readers, and it was truly a lovely time. I engaged with femslash in a curious, non-discriminatory way – I shipped everyone. I’d take two minor female characters who perhaps had never even interacted in canon and found a way to put them together. I took prompts for characters that were only featured in throw-away lines, and wrote a lot of fic for the now sadly defunct LJ community hp_rarestpairest, which encouraged the nichest of pairings. Basically I was honing my writing skills, while also representing my questions, hopes and fears about my own sexuality at the same time. In my fics I dealt with women falling in love, being rejected, having sex with each other, coming out to their families and friends, dealing with heartbreak – all of these were things that I was thinking about, was experiencing or wanted to experience, or was scared of. I think it will surprise few queer femslash writers to hear that reading and writing femslash taught me a lot about my own identity and sexuality and gave me a community of queer women that I would otherwise never have found.

Despite the fact that I was mostly a femslash writer in my early times in fandom and the fact that I write f/f in my current fandoms today, it remains a curious truth that my growth as a writer from someone who wrote 1,000-word oneshots in one go to someone who wrote novel-length fanfic over several months coincided with going into a different fandom where my main focus was a m/m ship (BBC Sherlock, where I was sucked into the black hole that was Sherlock/John). I said I “shipped everyone” earlier – it would be just as correct to say I shipped no one, because I had no deep emotional investment in the ships I wrote about, and often wrote only one fic per ship. (Perhaps the only exception was Lavender/Parvati, which I wrote often and regularly gave me the warm fuzzies to think about.) It wasn’t until Sherlock happened that I started to understand what people meant when they said a ship was their OTP, or how people could get so intense about their reading of a relationship. As a result of this increased feeling of investment I read and wrote so much fic that I became a much better writer for it, by pushing myself to write more and more complex stories. This was all fine in itself, but even as it happened I was aware that it was curious that this sudden spur of feeling and craft was because of a juggernaut white dude ship, something that had never held much interest for me before. I felt – even at that heady time when you’re in a new fandom and it’s like being in love – like I wanted to continue to write smaller pairings and explore female characters, too. And I did, but the point remains that when I look at my story stats now, it’s clear that my f/f stories are shorter in word count and are less varied in their plot and execution than my m/m stories.

All this to show that I am 100% part of what I am about to describe: not a problem, per se, but an observation that I think is useful to be aware of and think about. The fact is that femslash, across fandoms, remains a niche category, and that while there are great amounts of people who read and write almost exclusively m/m this is barely ever the case for f/f. A lot of the f/f writers I know have talked at some point about the realisation that f/f in general seems to lack novel-length stories and stories that have the diversity of plotting and thematic exploration that we easily find for m/m ships. Most f/f stories are shorter stories or oneshots that focus on meet-cutes, sex and domestic bliss. Longer fics are rare. Darker themes, such as character death and grief, trauma, relationship issues, adultery, abuse and so on are also rare. I am not the first to notice this and not the first to theorise on it, but I would still like to identify why I think f/f fandom has developed in this direction, and to formulate some ideas as how to diversify our creative experiences a little.

I think there are a lot of possible reasons that f/f writers are in general less motivated to write long stories that explore complex themes, and these will surely differ for everyone. For me, I’ve identified three causes, in increasing order of importance: 1. a small audience, and therefore a smaller possibility of extensive feedback, 2. a lack of variation and complexity in female characters and their relationships in a lot of canon materials, and 3. the awareness that f/f is often rooted in a deeply lived experience for many of its readers and writers, and that it’s therefore necessary to be wary of representing “bad” female characters or negative tropes about lesbian and bisexual relationships. The most complex of these is certainly no. 3, which is why that’s the one I will be writing about a bit more.

Statistically f/f is most likely to be written and read by cis queer women, which of course influences our relationship with the characters we portray, because they refer to our own lived existence. This makes f/f different from m/m – m/m is also mostly written by cis women (straight and otherwise), which creates a certain leeway for “true” realism. Anecdotally I can share what happened when my housemate and my best friend, both cis gay men, delved into the world of m/m fanfic on some of my recommendations. While they enjoyed a lot of the stories I told them I’d liked, they also talked about many of the things they felt were inaccurate about gay sex and romance – for instance, they could name several often-described sexual acts that they said didn’t quite “work that way”, and they were generally uncomfortable with the fannish (certainly often problematic) tendency to label characters as strictly tops or bottoms, especially if this was based on stereotypical characteristics outside of the bedroom. If gay men were to write these stories (which they do, of course, only in much smaller numbers), they might look different – they might be less fictionalised, less genre-specific; the language developed to talk about men in love might be different, there might be different focuses. It’s hard to definitively say what it would be like. Either way, it would seem logical that it follows, from the fact that lesbian and bisexual women overwhelmingly write the fannish stories that we have about lesbian and bisexual women, that we should find it easy to access their spaces and write about many different aspects of their lives. In reality this doesn’t necessarily seem to be so. Perhaps the scrutiny, both internal and external, is larger – perhaps because we are writing about ourselves we put more pressure on ourselves to “get it right”, and perhaps our audience, who is looking to see itself represented, does the same at times. Or maybe we simply perceive our audience as being more critical than it truly is.

What is a “bad” female character? Most people will agree that women often get the short stick of characterisation in most media – to such an extent that there are tropey names for them, like the Girl Next Door, the Femme Fatale, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and so on. Women are still often used as crutches for men; their stories are supporting stories, their pain is used to further a male character’s pain. Writing about women in fanfic is often already a rebellious act in itself, one that reverses harsh or flippant treatment by canon writers. While this is fine in se, and sometimes even lends a pleasant sheen of fannish disobedience to writing female-centric fic, I do believe it has the unintended and unsavoury result of effectively also policing the sort of woman that can be written about. This may seem like a paradox, but in reacting to the one-dimensional representations of women in fiction it can become important to “fix” those wrongs, and this makes it hard to write about women who don’t overtly challenge assumptions about womanhood: unsympathetic women, women who are perhaps weak-willed, petty, bigoted, jealous, aggressive, criminal, highly sexual, or abusive. Considering that, at least in a Western vision on literature, stories derive meaning at their base from conflict, removing the option to write “bad” women removes a lot of possibility for thematic conflict. This might be part of the reason why there are significantly less plot-driven f/f stories than there plot-driven m/m stories; plot usually requires conflict, and conflict often requires flawed characters and flawed relationships.

I know that when I write about women I’m conscious of the fact that I have internalised societal ideas about what it “should” mean to be a woman, but I’m also aware that in trying to combat those ideas it’s easy to get mired in different ones. I know that I sometimes interrogate myself about what it is that I’m saying about women when I write about this particular woman cheating on her partner or being generally secretive and untruthful – doesn’t that reproduce a societal prejudice that women are untrustworthy? It’s very hard to separate a single performance of fictional womanhood from the general performance of womanhood – this is not usually a problem with (white) men, who are allowed to represent only themselves, and not their entire gender.

The above paragraphs talk about “women” – clearly the problem of treatment that I write about becomes many times more pressing when dealing with women who are on other intersections of oppression. Women who love women are more vulnerable to prejudice and abuse than straight women, and wlw of colour are again many times more vulnerable than their white sisters. And when these wlw or woc are not cisgender, again their situation becomes many times more dire. These societal realities are often reproduced in media – 2016 was the year in which no lesbian or bisexual woman on tv seemed to be safe, and their pain and deaths hurt all the more because we are confronted with this pain in real life, too. I remember my tumblr dash around the time that The 100’s Lexa died; the pain there for many queer women who watched the show was very real, because – I think – it echoed a feeling of being unsafe, of being cruelly treated in society. I remember fans writing about how hurtful it was to see a brave female character who loved another woman killed off like this; in their pain many people stated that it was unacceptable that lesbian or bisexual female characters should be killed in fiction at all. Of course, this was understandable considering how hurt fans were, and how often they had been disappointed – still, the typical fannish tendency towards lack of nuance frustrated me. In capable writers’ hands, tragedy can be performed very meaningfully. I wrote a little about this on my blog at the time, because I was starting to feel insecure about my own tendency to prefer darker thematic material – was I complicit in my own oppression, and was I hurting other queer women by writing what I enjoyed? Clearly my own privilege was also part of this question: I am a wlw, but I’m white and cisgender, and I hail from a country where legal equality has been realised for the entirety of my adult life. Obviously homophobia is still a problem, but my close environment has been nothing but supportive and accepting from the moment I first came out as lesbian at 16, and again as bisexual at 24. So I haven’t experienced much of the tension and fear that other wlw might have experienced. Does this make me a part of the oppressive machine that performs queer women’s pain for shock value? I seriously thought about this question before tentatively concluding that I had to have faith that I was a thoughtful enough writer to avoid these pitfalls.

It might seem from this essay that I find writing femslash to be an exhausting trial of constantly having to think about what prejudices I’m reproducing – this is not the case. I love writing femslash and I love my femslash-writing friends. I’ve learned heaps about myself and others by reading some of the stellar f/f stories out there, and with every f/f story I write I become more aware of how much I love to write about queer women – and I remind myself that I should certainly do it more often, and more ambitiously. As I stated above, this is something that I’ve noticed in my own writing practice, so it’s not an accusation leveled at anyone else. It’s simply something that I find worthwhile to examine. Judging by some of the conversation that periodically does the rounds in my f/f-loving circles, I’m definitely not alone in that.

Now how to deal with this in our f/f-writing community? There’s no singular answer to that, and whatever we can do is both blindingly obvious and hard to actually do. One of the possible answers is, as it is with so many complex questions that have complex roots, to simply push through and do it anyway, to try to ignore some of the fear and uncomfortable associations we might feel in writing unsympathetic f/f narratives and write them anyway. Diversifying the stories we write will automatically diversify the stories we feel we’re allowed to write. Audience response is probably important too; I think that there must be plenty of people who feel, like me, that it’s a shame that so much of femslash is short and that a lot of it focuses on narrative happiness rather than also exploring narrative unhappiness and conflict, which (in my opinion, at least) yields more fertile literature. And if we feel that way, then we have to try to reward people who write the things we like to read, through our attention, our comments, our kudos, our podcasts, our recs, et cetera.

I write this mere days before the beginning of Femslash February, and I’m certainly planning to walk the walk that I’ve talked in this talk; I’m absolutely sure that the strong core of people who love to read about women loving women will continue to keep this community vibrant and alive and that there are plenty of new directions our stories can go in. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other voices who are participating in I Am Femslash have to say, and I’m looking forward to all of the new content that will be produced. I’m grateful that as a young teen I stumbled upon fandom and that I found my way towards femslash a few years later; I’m pretty sure my own journey of discovery and creativity would have been very different, and probably more difficult, if I hadn’t found this community. So, to all of us: We Are Femslash! <3

About the author

holyfant is a 26-year-old bisexual woman from Belgium, who’s been writing about women and their relationships since she was a budding young wlw. She loves to think about literature and how it relates to the core of our human experiences: the only thing she really wants to be, in the end, is a storyteller.

Tumblr: http://holyant.tumblr.com

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant

#holyfant #I Am Femslash #Type: Meta #Femslash February #Femslash February 2017 #submission

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