#an ADULT thinking Adult Things about ANOTHER Adult

[cafeleningrad]

If it's ok, OP, I would like to add a personal anecdote. (If you feel like it's derailing, please let me know, I can delete my addition.)

So, it took many, many years of development but I ceased being a lonely uncool girl. Not in a "fake it till you make it" way but a mix of circumstances, own behaviours and reactions changed.

For one, the circumstances change. The geographical and social environment, especially school and classmates, that did judge me, did not pick me in sports teams, making it difficult to connect with people because personal background and interest were unusual did change.

Second, I sometimes still feel how I don't cease to be "the weird girl" in other environments. Innate habits like derailed rambling, sometimes lacking tact in preferring pragmatism over feelings, and niche interests that are not common are present in new social environments. But what previously did single me out in excluding ways, at some point became what made me myself, and somehow it does connect to others. I mean sure, I did also learn a bit to rail myself in, how to hold small talk, how to properly sort my arguments but in proper shape it turned out I could hold long talks with other people which were fun and engaging for both parties.

I mean, adults are incredibly varied people. Surely none will get along with everyone but one will find their kin. After years of struggling in school, and my first years in university, I did also make friends along the way who kept in contact over years. The thing is, the interest was mutual. The conversations were kept by a constant exchange of messages or if possible meet-ups, sometimes re-connections after pauses. Or it's meeting acquaintances on the street and having a nice chat - it made me realize, whatever little issues I have, even if for formative years caused isolation, people do remember me more kindly than I possibly think of myself.

By, example a former colleague once straight up told me I was weird, not knowing how deeply it struck. However, he did not mean it negatively. For this one comment, he was also the one helping me as often as possible when I needed help, we talk for hours when I drop by at my old work days, and regularly message each other for life updates. What did render me to self-conscious in my childhood, often being the new girl in class needing to double down on new language skills, evaporated because another friend, and him had been in the exact same situation too. They did survive, and we could share this experience of outsider'ness. Exactly my ramblings is something he seeks out because whenever we discuss social issues my dissection is what he wants to receive a clearer picture, even if we don't draw the same conclusions. In his life I might be the weird girl, but this is the weirdo he enjoys being friends with. I met other friends, and new colleagues at my old work place, and they do recall fun anecdotes from the time we worked together. Again, in which I realize that I'm remembered in a fond way.

Which leads me to third: Self interest. Talking about feeling like the "uncool, lonely girl" inevitably comes with using "I". The frequency of self-reference and limitation is unavoidable... however at some point I needed to unlearn to think of myself when interacting with other people. Granted, food service was personally formative, especially after Covid as guest interactions runs on social protocols. Here I did learn small talk, but also what variation of jokes or formality are apt for each group or person.

To say, social interactions at safe emotional distance can be learnt. More so, at some point I entirely got out of my own head, and primarily thought of: "What do the guests need?" And when guests were nice, I came to enjoy a simple friendly chat was enough to mutually create a lovely interaction in a day. I learnt to simply enjoy the company of someone else. Not "how am I perceived?" which is a feeling I only could formerly only shut-off with close friends or overly pompous internet arguments afforded by anonymity (and not having unlearnt the rage bait of social media attention bait yet...) As I first mentioned in how I got to hold long conversations with others, it came in a bit with learning to learn some etiquette which is all about being a bit more mindful of other people. The don't even need to be strict rules, just a little more consideration in interaction is already a start to not set someone off. Or, even if I still struggle to quickly connect with peers in my age, which were especially lonely years at university first, I did still made friendships that now last for years. These same-age group struggles lead me to connect more easily with older colleagues which was also really helpful. My old colleagues are women who were part of the first generation of women to live on their own, lived through much more sexist times at the workplace. The entire feeling of inadequacy is so far beyond them because there were so many external issues to handle that actions and defiance transformed them. And well yeah, at some age the inverted self-dissection really ceases to be of any matter. When we interact they do judge me what I bring to the table, whom I help, what I say in any given moment. To say, whatever I might feel inside, what one does in correspondence to the people around them is telling much more who they are, than whatever self-image I have.

Some people are really great at reading, and influencing people's perception. I'm not.

But the less I think how I want to be perceived, the less I think about an insecure self-image in fear it gets revealed, or discovered, the more I get to enjoy simply being with people. Experienced taught me: Some people like me, some don't, I know what's proper behavior, so I find my people. The more I get out of myself, the more I simply stay curious for other people, what's new in their life, why are some things going good or not so great at the moment, what do they need, is there a fun topic to share?, the less I do feel lonely, because I'm actually connected.

Uncool is such an irrelevant topic in adulthood.

Only immature, and in truth insecure people care about what's cool as adults. Yes it is a dismissive judgement but I tell you, I've had the misfortune to work with enough influencers, celebrities and their entourage during different catering occasions, whatever they try to represent is a constant gambling for social capital, attention which is for worship, translating into sales for redundant products. Sorry, but the self-contortion of behaviours like entitlement by being careless, very noticeable fake nice behaviour just to keep up good social relationships which can be used for collaboration and association. By all what's good on this earth, witnessing these people was an ideal cure. These people who're considered so aspirational, bombarded with attention and advertisement deals are constantly dancing the line between irrelevance and a possible next deal for income. And that's what their perceived aspiration and coolness is all about. I can tell you, whatever I deemed cool as a child, turned out to be extremely vapid and reckless towards other people. The coolest people who don't know how cool they're to me. Their secret lies in not caring about how they're perceived because they're self-assured in how they act about a certain thing. It's their way and nothing else matters. Sometimes it's having cultivated a self-confidence to do something just the way one does considers right.

Sure, a big Harley Davidson bikes aren't something I consider cool by any means. But anyone who deeply enjoys their ride, working on their bike, telling me about who they met and what they saw on their rides is much more in tune with themselves, are open to the world, and much more interesting as a person than someone who drives a Harley to mark what a tough nut they're. The latter are not really themselves because they're a persona build up with material signifiers.

Getting out of myself was one of the toughest developments possible. It is difficult because my superiority-inferiority complex held up my spine for so long in school, dismantling it meant dismantling the pillars of my self-confidence. In fact, dismantling a big chunk of my self perception. That's not to say we never look back inward for self-reflection we should never do that. However... the isolation that previously protected me, was beginning to suffocate me. By realizing how whatever made me feel singled out negatively, either singled me out positively, or simply wasn't relevant anymore, I also needed to change my outlook on other people. If other people's reactions shaped me before, the people who shape me now are different, so I can't think of them as I did with others previously. I don't have to prove them anything, there is no façade necessary to maintain because the more time I spend on others, the less time I have to think about myself - the more my actions towards the people in my life do prove what matters to me, what I indulge in or not, whom I'd like to help or not. At some point I cannot control how other people see me still they do see what I do in the immediate moment. Whatever I might think of myself, how bad, how brave, how awkward, how self-sufficent I consider myself to be... values are only good when put to test, and this is done by interactions with each other. I might think myself as uncool - to a neighbour I'm the one who helped out with cat sitting and groceries when she broke her arm. To a friend I'm the one who listened when they had relationship problems. What I am, is what I am to other people, small things I do, things I tell.

The worst friendships I had were in retrospect those I made because I was lonely, didn't think I could admit that I was struggling because what gave me a sense of superiority in highschool surely didn't apply in work life, and university anymore. By worrying how I didn't want to be lonely, how I wanted draw people to me by a play-acted off-the-cuffness, I remained awkward because I constantly was re-evaluating myself in interactions, wanted to keep the upper hand, but also needed. Well, in the compensation, I was emotionally at my worst. Further, I wasn't developing. The compensation for the uncool, lonely girl, desperately holding onto connections was grasping onto a friendship that did me no good - in fact I was grinding myself to low energy to prove to myself that I am the friend that always cares. It was not about the friend who took certain acts of helping for granted, if not caring primarily about herself, being flippant, dismissive, and self-righteous in order to maintain her self-image as never getting buttered down. Like, the older I get, the more people I meet, the most harmful behavior comes from people who're stuck on creating/maintaining a self image. Newly rich guests who're extra dismissive to staff because they need to mark how they need to care about other people because everyone submits to the money they pay. Guys who got aggressive when they notice that someone is as smart or smarter than they're but thought of themselves as the stiffest fry in the bag - just to give a few examples how self-curation foregoes actual likeability. In our 20s we're pointed towards many directions: Careerwise, we've new as well as many responsibilities, we should be adults, we should've a social life, be a fully-formed person. As we can see on social media we've many templates/archetypes what certain types of fully fledged people should look like, how they should dress, how they should behave, what the people in their life, and their overall life style should look like. But actually many people are just learning how to live on their own, or to earn their own living, gain an entire new input of ideas, impressions, and responsibilities they've to sort out. None is a fully formed person at this age, even if many feel as if they've figured the world out (they've not). So at this age it is much more important to be actually invested in the world, to go out of one's shell, abandon what they previously believed to be universally true. And by that interest in others, rethinking, rediscovering if you actually like or don't like something, figure out what's important to you yourself, you might discover that you're not the person you believed you were.

Maybe who you were was "lonely, uncool girl" as your environment labeled you this way. Maybe can't easily be someone else however, in a different context, experiencing something else, worrying less that who one is could pose a problem, the easier it might become existing without fearing that one is inadequate.

when you grew up as a lonely uncool girl it will never stop haunting you by the way. you will meet a cool person at a bar or the train station or at a friend's party and you can wear your most stylish outfit and striking eye makeup and you will swear that they can see through all of the facade and see the lonely terribly insecure teenage girl you used to be who desperately wanted to connect and you will swear that they know that there is like an insurmountable gap between you. this will happen forever

[sulumuns-dootah]

Which demons would be down for pegging. If not how would they react?

WHB kings and pegging them

⟡ Masterlist ⟡

A/N: I am back and posting again! (Me and Tumblr hopefully came to a mutual understanding)

‎‧₊˚✧ 18+ Minors Do Not Interact‎ ✧˚₊

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

I actually wrote this one for Satan :D (link here)

So just let me summarise:

Yes, he'd be down but it would take some time to warm him up to the idea

And he'll still try to act like doesn't want to do it (he does, but his pride doesn't let him admit it to himself)

The moment the artificial tip brushes over his prostate, it takes him all the restraint to not start fucking himself on it

    ༺☆༻

Mammon absolutely would

Whatever makes his master happy

And he will even be pretty brave about it, even suggest that you two go shopping for it together so you can pick something that both of you will enjoy

Buuuut when it actually comes to it, he will be a bit intimidated

It's one thing to willingly submit himself in the more abstract way and whole another thing to be actually physically put in his place

And yeah, being the greedy king he is, he will get a bit too ambitious with the size for his first time, despite you telling him

    ༺☆༻

No

What in Hell possessed you to think that he would allow to you to do that

And yes, his H-scene and all that, but I don't think he'd allow you to do that

...just yet

He might be willing to let you rim him after a century or three

    ༺☆༻

Sure, but if you let him pay you back for it

Ooor a good ol' sandwich with one of his clones...? ;)

I actually see Beel as a switch, but you have to do some specific stuff to get him to submit

Funnily enough, he'll enjoy himself the most out of all the kings who said yes

But he wil be testing you in the process like the bratty sub he is

    ༺☆༻

No :/

It's not even about the position or anything

It just takes too much prep and he'll most likely fall asleep during it so at that point it's kinda not worth it if he doesn't even get to enjoy the main act

    ༺☆༻

What would this demon king not do?

He will even beat you to it and ask you himself

Should you also be interested, he can ask one of the Abaddon prisoners to use their magic and give you your own real dick (limited time only tho :( )

If you both sufficiently enjoy yourselves, it might even become a regular occurence

    ༺☆༻

I don't think Lucifer would

It's just not really his thing

But being the sweetheart he is, he'll explain it to you like an adult instead of blowing up at you like some other unnamed king >.>

(Honestly, I just can't imagine him doing it. If there's any Luci simp who can, feel free to lmk)

[whowrotethenote]

𝚂𝚄𝙼𝙼𝙰𝚁𝚈: After a drunk round of Truth or Dare goes wrong, Nani is challenged into getting her first tattoo. The artist in question—an unmoved, cryptic, fine ass stranger. Can she take the pain? Can she take the heat? Can she take him?

𝙿𝙰𝙸𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙶: Roman Reigns (Roman) x Black Fem OC (Nani)

𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙽𝙸𝙽𝙶𝚂: Profanity // Slight grieving // Age gap // Smut // Depictions/descriptions of tattooing

𝚆𝙾𝚁𝙳 𝙲𝙾𝚄𝙽𝚃: 7.5k

Disclaimer // Roman Reigns Masterlist // Join My Taglist // Main Masterlist // Navigation

‧₊ ᵎᵎ 🍒 ⋅ ˚✮ masochism — a sexual or psychological tendency where individuals derive pleasure from being subjected to pain, suffering or humiliation 

“We gotta do a wrap around the block! We can’t park here!” Mercedes yelled to her best friend from the driver’s seat of her 2020 Jeep Wrangler. One finger pointed to the street sign that explained, no parking on weekends from eleven p.m. to two a.m. 

Nani stood on the sidewalk by her lonesome, following the path to where her friend’s finger was trained. They were right smack in the middle of the no parking zone. At twelve twenty a.m, the burnt tangerine colored streetlight cascaded over the entirety of the otherwise dark block—the humidity that only a mid-June night can usher in casting a glow of almost sweat on their skin. 

The air smelled of city fumes and that earthy smell after a mini rain shower. Evidence of such still on the pavement of the sidewalk and the street. Mercedes’s car decorated in tiny droplets of water with wet tires. 

“Just go in! We’ll be right there!” Samantha aided in the passenger seat. 

“We don’t even know if they take walk-ins!” Something of a pout adorned Nani’s square face. She stood on the side walk, separated from them—wishing either had a heart and would just tell her, “never mind, just hop back in.” 

But she knew in her heart that wasn’t happening. No way in hell did they all jump up from Sam’s room, threw on clothes and drove twenty minutes—risking a DUI amongst other things—just for them to change their minds. She knew better than that. Always the closest thing to innocent amongst them—they chose the perfect dare for the perfect girl to shake shit up.

“Sure we do! I know one of the artist! He does walk-ins all the time!” Samantha answered hanging out the window with both forearms resting on the side of the car. Her sand-colored face burned with a red hue from all the shots the trio took throughout the night. That tipsy smirk with lazy eyes just barely hanging on.

That was another reason Nani knew that what she was about to do was a grave mistake. Not one of them was sober enough to make such a permanent, stoned decision. But still, here they were, in the middle of the night, in front of Dragon’s Lair Tattoo & Piercing shop. The only building, with the exception of the smoke shop at the other corner, still lit up to invite patrons. The red neon sign glowing over the back of Nani’s small frame. 

It was supposed to be harmless fun. The night started off perfect. 

All three girls watched each other blossom on the same block since they were missing teeth and waiting for the adult ones to sprout back in. Side by side through all the major milestones—sweet sixteens, prom, losing their virginities, breakups, heartache, graduation, fall outs, family trauma and everything in between. If you saw one, the other two were on their way. And if you saw two, the other one wasn’t too far behind. 

What started as a fiesta—a ceremony to commemorate completing junior year without a scratch, a baby, or an std—took a sharp left turn. Sharing war stories under the purple LED lights of Sam’s bohemian style room, turned into Drunk Uno, making TikToks to whatever sounds they could find, until the roulette of their first night together landed on Truth or Dare.

Nani had racked up on too many jaw dropping truths. The liquor kicked in and carried her impulse. She chose the dare. And the next words that fell from Sam’s glossy lips had her thinking somebody slipped something into her red cup.

“I dare you…to get a tattoo…tonight!”

It seemed as if with every word, they got slower and deeper—like the sound of a chopped and screwed song. 

“He did Cedes tattoo last summer before y’all left for school, remember?” Sam asked. 

Mercedes leaned over and stretched her left arm where a red dragon saturated the caramel skin of her inner wrist. Nani didn’t need an exhibition. She had seen the tattoo a thousand times before. Merecedes last fuck you to her unrealistically religious and problematic mother, before packing it up and hauling back down to Florida A&M for fall semester. 

While Mercedes voyaged down south, Sam stayed home in Philly opting for community college, all while Nani explored UCLA on the west-coast. All three girls connected by an invisible thread, separated for two whole semesters for three years now, and were home again for the summer and clearly losing their heads from the excitement of reuniting. 

This is not how any of them forecasted ending the night, especially Nani— but here they were. If unpredictable was a parasite, it’d be attached to the three of them. Always in the most unlikely situations just to laugh about such for the years that follow. This night was no different. 

Nani whined and stomped one foot on the pavement. “Come on, y’all! This is just cruel!”

Sam smiled wide like a Cheshire Cat, glancing back at Mercedes. “Girl, you’re the one that’s been talking about wanting a tattoo anyway! Just go and get situated at least! We’ll be right there!” The oversized tires swoosh on the wet ground as she puts the car in drive. Sam waved dainty fingers as they took off and violently turned right at the stop sign. 

The dead silence of the night creeping in as she no longer even heard the roar of her friend’s engine. She turned in place, neck craned up as the red glow blinked and welcomed her in like she stood amongst the devil’s playpen.

“Don’t be pussy,” she mumbled to herself before blowing out all the air in her chest.

The bells above the glass door dinged as she pushed to step inside. Everything was everywhere. A thrumming hip hop beat blasted from somewhere deep within the shop, some rapper with a British accent rapping lyrics aggressively—making it hard to keep up with his words. 

After twirling around like a child in a candy factory—studying the art pieces and pictures of clients— she landed on a woman dressed in all black emerging from the back. Hair darker than black if there is a such thing, with long claws for nails. 

“Hey, love.” Her voice was welcoming. Smile warm reaching her eyes with creases on either side of her mouth, that all of sudden looked like they belonged there. A contradiction to her pale  forearms covered in art, accentuated by the septum hook and darkest, thickest eyeliner she had ever seen on a woman. Something about her was still very feminine, sexy and alluring. Nani had to close her mouth, feeling her jaw go slack almost. “You need some help?” She asked. Nani then noticed the beefy accent that she missed before. Australian.

“Uh, yeah. I wanted to get a tattoo,” she answered. Working double time to appear normal and keeping her voice steady.  

“Okay. You made an appointment?” She raised a brow walking around the glass desk. In the clear display, sparkly and lively jewelry for sale along with aftercare products. 

“N-no. My friends said you do walk-ins?”

“We do.” The girl leans forward and back, trying to gauge the space. “Uh, it looks like most of our artists are busy right now. Ro!” The girl’s sudden switch in volume earned a jolt from Nani. Her nerves mimicked the audio meter of the loudest song you could think of. 

“What?” She heard a deep voice from behind after a beat. 

Turning she found a man. Twice the size of anyone in the shop. Skin tanned and glowing under the bright florescent lights. Arms cut and toned—demonstrating the discipline of daily weight training. A very visible vein running along his inner bicep. One arm covered in ink from his wrist until it disappeared under his black tee. His hair—damp, dark and thick, framing his face and stopping just at his shoulders. 

His eyes. They whispered in spells. A deep brown like burnt honey atop high cheekbones. The bottom of his face dressed in the mustache and goatee combo—two plump, pink lips in the center of it all. A touch of feminism in the throws of his hard masculine features. They made her clit jump just imagining his tip the same shade of pink. She snatched her eyes away from him, realizing she was staring with an open mouth. Heat filling her cheeks. He was easily the most beautiful man she had ever been in the same room as.

“This is…” The girl’s eyebrows rose, expecting a name. 

“—Nani,” she blurted. Her social queues completely off track. A product of the alcohol and jitters. 

“Nani,” she repeated averting her gaze back to the stone cold stranger. His gaze never landing on Nani. “Walk-in. She wants to get tatted.”

“Where?” His eyes were on the dark-haired woman, but somehow Nani knew the question was for her. She hesitated, never thinking about where she wanted the damn thing. It had to be somewhere discreet. She didn’t need the attention from family members. Behind her ear? No, she couldn’t even see it. Her hip? Her wrist?

“Um… I don’t know. My rib?”

“You don’t sound sure.” The woman’s face still plastered with a smile as she leaned her elbows  on the desk. 

“I am sure.” She nodded. 

“You heard her. Her rib.”

“Rhea it’s an hour ’til close. I don’t take walk-ins after midnight.”

Nani frowned hearing him deny her without the respect of eye contact or addressing her directly. She felt invisible. Half of her didn’t mind. She could stare at him in peace without the worry of him catching her. Like a moth to a flame she was drawn to him. She didn’t even know why. Obviously, he was beautiful. In the way that everything on him looks like it was placed there strategically. The weight of his muscles fell around him perfectly. He was just perfect. But he reeked of danger. A do not enter zone. The exact kind of man a father would do everything in his power to keep his daughter on the opposite side of the planet and detached from. Thankfully, Nani didn’t carry those problems…

“You can do one more,” she pushed. “Besides it won’t take that long. It’s small, right?” She winked in Nani’s direction.

“—right,” Nani answered catching her drift. “Not even the size of my fist.” 

He stood with all his weight in one leg, and lips in the straightest line. Both women trained on him. The events of the rest of the night in his hands as they waited for his verdict.

“Come on.”

Rhea beamed for Nani, sticking a tongue out. Nani nodded in a silent thank you, before following his towering frame to the back. He wasn’t even walking fast, but his long legs carried him to their destination faster somehow and she struggled to keep up. They passed at least five different open rooms. Two with groups in them. One, more intimate, with just the client seated with their face buried, as the artist went to work on their back. Another where a girl was preparing a bunch of needles for three different piercings to a man’s tongue. And the last one they passed was shut completely. That left one door at the very end of the hall on the left. 

He stopped and threw a hand up signaling her to enter first. The room was medium sized. A dim glow of light blanketed over it, making her wonder how he even did his job in such sketchy lighting. Pictures of his work—vibrant and intricate pieces on all shades of skin, but mostly Pe’a or Malu. His specialty. 

He had historic, cultural figurines and sculptures lined on the window sill of the furthest wall. Everything about this place, since she walked in was so in your face and blunt. Still, everything left a trail of curiosity in its wake. 

“You can put your stuff in that chair.” He nodded to a small emerald love seat in the corner by a window. 

Throwing her bag on his chair she walked along the wall where the pictures were, while he typed away on his phone. Telling the girl he promised to see after work that he wasn’t going to make it. Last minute walk-in. Truth is, Nani was an angel in disguise. He never wanted to link the girl, anyway. She was just a fuck to him. Something to do in the wee hours of the night. But she talked way too much, seeing as it wasn't her conversation that brought the two together. And he couldn’t fucking stand the smell of her cat’s litter box. So, staying at work to do what he was passionate about was the best thing that could’ve happened. He wouldn’t dare show it, though. 

He placed his phone face down and turned to find her staring at him. Hands clasped in front of her in the middle of the room looking like a lost puppy. 

What Nani perceived as him ignoring her was really him avoiding her. He saw that plump ass sitting between two wide hips the minute he rounded the corner, after being summoned by Rhea. His too cool for anything demeanor, almost breaking when she turned and her front was just as satisfying as her back. 

Doe eyes accentuated by long thick lashes. Two full pouty lips, dripping in gloss, making his dick twitch in his sweats. High cheek bones with a beauty mark resting high up on one of them. All of that beauty centered in a head full of honey blonde highlighted curls.

She was fine as fuck to him, but he could tell she was young. At twenty-six he refused to make himself susceptible to the delusions of a young girl and her heart. Love wasn’t on his radar. He was too busy falling for and perfecting his craft. 

He crossed two muscular arms, one over the other with his butt rested on the counter where he kept most of his supplies. 

“I’m Nani,” she informed.

“I’m aware. You said so out there.” She kicked herself for forgetting something that happened not even three minutes ago. “Nani,” he repeated. Her name rolling off his tongue as if it tasted good to him—like he was savoring it. “This your first time getting a tattoo?” His eyes traced her perimeter finding nothing visible. 

She nodded. “Yup.”

“I’m Roman,” he finally told her. 

“Roman…that fits you.”

He squinted. Her face, a flushed hue of red since the moment he saw her. Like she was burning up. It was hard for her to keep still. Fidgeting constantly. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Twisting her hands. 

“You been drinking, Nani?”

“Not a lot,” she lied. “Why? Is that a problem?” In her head, she silently wished he said yes and turned her away. They stood there, eyeing each other before he decided to speak again. 

“My ass.” He called her bluff immediately. “Babygirl, I can smell the tequila from over here.” He turned back to his station. “I’m not supposed to tatt you, if you’re under the influence. The alcohol—it thins your blood. Which means more blood when the needle hits. Which makes it harder to do my job.” The sound of him tossing tools and supplies around overruled the silence in the pause he took. “Might fuck up how it heals. Infections.” He shook his head. “And I don’t really have time for you or your folks coming in here tomorrow because you did something stupid while you were drunk, that you’re gonna regret tomorrow.” He faced her again with hands on his hips. “When you’re sober.”

“So—you turning me away?” For the quickest second, she envisioned the disappointment and disdain plastered on the faces of her best friends as she staggered back to the jeep with news of rejection. They’d think she was lying. “Come on. Don’t make me go back and tell my friends you told me no.” She forced a laugh. His hard exterior displaying anything but amusement. “They’ll be strolling in any minute now. They’re parking.”

His eyes traveled her silhouette again. His face still impenetrable. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking even if he had speech bubbles growing from his head. 

“Sign this.”

She took it and read quickly. Not able to focus long enough, she just hoped nothing crazy was written in black and white. Taking the pen she held the paper against the wall, turning from him to sign it.

“The air don’t work back here. You care if I take my shirt off?” Nani’s tongue went dry at the revealing of his sculpted back as he removed his shirt before she even had a chance to answer. 

One of them bitches slipped me something for sure, she thought. Every thing about tonight was unconceivable. It’s like she was observing the whole chain of events outside of her own body. Nothing about it seemed real—nothing about it felt like it was happening to her. 

He was fucking beautiful. Like God himself told the angels to lay off because he felt compelled to draw the lines and sculpt this one himself. And damn, did he take his time savoring every minute and making them count. 

Just as she thought, the tattoo spread to the vicinity of his back and broad shoulder. He was already built so hard and the tattoo was just a further testament. A story told in the language of pathways, roads and lined patterns, of a Pacific warrior. 

When she thought it couldn’t get any better, she damn near wet her pants at the sight of him shirtless and facing her. Tattoo stretching to his defined chest. Deep lines, mountains, valleys and ridges mapping different routes to his adonis line. Tiny smooth black hairs peaking over the top of his red underwear, only made visible by his black sweats hanging loosely off his hips. 

He stepped up and held his hand out. Confused at first she just stared at his big palm. Then remembering the paper in her hand, she passed it and the pen back to him.

“You wanna tell me what you want?” Dangerous words from an even more dangerous looking man. 

“I want a tattoo—”

“Obviously.”

“I wasn’t finished.” She squinted at him and folded her arms. Something of a smirk dancing on her lips at his discreet playfulness. “I want a tattoo of a sea turtle,” she told him chin up. “With tribal patterns. Maybe some waves mixed with flower patterns too? You can get creative. Do what you want.”

“Do what I want?” He challenged.

“You’re the artist. I trust you.” They sat in silence for a beat before he pushed off the counter.

“Can I trust you to do this part on your own?” He stood expressionless with a paper towel and roll of tape in one hand extended her way. She looked between the items and him. “I just need you to cover yourself.” His eyes shuffled between the outline of her nipples through her pink Skims top, and she finally understood the assignment. “Leave enough space so that I can do what I gotta do.”

“Okay.” And with that he left out of the same door they came in.

Her nipples and the dark shade of her areolas were probably only the size of a pinball. Ripping two medium sized squares, she placed one over her left nipple in the mirror to make sure nothing that didn’t need to, showed. She didn’t have a clue what enough space was for him to do his job. 

Where the hell are they? They’re the ones that pushed her to do this. Trying to simultaneously control her heartbeat and breathing, while appearing sober, was a daunting task on its own. This was the least they could do for her. 

“I think I’m good!” She yelled to him hoping he was only right outside the door. 

He stepped back in. The sound of his sneakers heavy even over the sound of the music playing from somewhere else in the shop. He walked, eyeing her B cups with the paper towel covering the most sensitive parts. Every time she thought he’d stop, he kept coming until he ended up dangerously close. Eye level to his chest she waited for him to say something as her heart picked up a dangerous pace. Doe eyes looking so innocently up at him. 

A low gasp escaped her as she felt the tape above her right nipple, being disconnected from the sensitive skin. She looked down for just a second, feeling air on her exposed breast, as he moved the tape up higher on her chest.

“Rib is one of the worst places. Straight skin. No fat or extra muscle to go through.” His eyes never left hers. A snake in the garden hypnotizing Eve. She feared consequences if she broke the trance. “I think you can take it.” He rubbed the tape to ensure it stuck, right up against the top of her nipple. Her breath got caught in her throat, trying to suppress the moan that threatened to leave her. 

He ripped the tape off her left nipple. Eyes stuck on hers still. Repeating the same motions as he did for the right side. Using his fingers to place it where he needed it, and smoothing the tape down, without a single glance at his handiwork. 

“Lay down,” he demanded. 

She sat, butt first, high up on the leather table, before laying all the way down. The weight of her breast pushing up toward her collar bones. 

She kept her eyes trained on his every move. “Just taking the hairs off,” he explained holding up a razor before shaving the space under her chest. “Vaseline.” He held it up before smearing it smoothly onto the same spot. He found it best to be transparent and explain every little step to the clients that looked like they might run for the hills. 

The sound of latex stretching and snapping caught her attention and she halfway flinched. He blew a sharp breath out of his nose to cover the amusement that threatened to leave him. “It’s just gloves, baby.” He held his covered hands up. Just breathe, she coached herself. Mercedes and Sam wouldn’t be able to control their laughter at this point. She was glad they’d miss this part. 

He flipped a button and the gun stirred up a loud buzz. She thought she might throw up right then and there. “Just relax.” He tried his best to prepare her. The shock of first connection was always the most unpredictable. His hand was warm even through the material of the latex glove as he spread her skin in preparation. Her square face immediately contorted in pain. Jaw clenched down and eyebrows pinched together.

“Mm,” she groaned. 

“You’ll tell me if it’s too much?”

“What if I say it already is?”

He laughed inside. Stretching her skin to get a sturdier canvas. “You’re doing so good already, though,” he lied. 

“Is it supposed to burn?”

“Yeah. If you can’t take blood I wouldn’t look,” he advised feeling her head rise right near his. “I need you lying all the way back, anyway.” He nudged her head back with his knuckles. Nani was now forced to just listen to the machine responsible for her pain, and the blasting of background music. None of it was overpowering enough. The pain won. After what felt like minutes passing, she broke her silence.

“Is it almost done?”

“Nani, it's only been like two minutes.” She whimpered at his revelation. 

“How long did yours take?”

“A full day.”

“Like twenty-four hours?”

His upper lip tugged in a smirk. The first time anything nearing a smile graced his features and  the sight took her breath away. His cheek bone heightened with a flashed dimple. 

“Nah. Like fifteen with an hour break.” He swiped the blood away and repositioned his hands on her ribs. It didn’t matter that the latex separated him from her. It was useless. She could still feel him—still burned with heat. 

“Wow.” She didn’t know what to say. She was just afraid of the silence paired with the electrical buzzing of his tattoo gun, scaring her straight. “That’s a—that’s a long time.”

“That’s right. Just keep on talking to me. You’re doing good,” he encouraged. Even though every time the needle came off and went back on her, she jumped. And with every swipe as he tried to clear the canvas from the mess of blood, she flinched. 

His words. They weren’t supposed to be, but the rasp in his baritone voice accompanied by his large hands on her—made it sexual. Sounded just like the dominant men she read about in her erotica novels on Kindle. Only, he was live in the flesh in place of words etched on a screen. Finer than anything she could imagine while reading. 

“Why the turtle?” He probed noticing her grow stiff. She was swallowing the beast that was her drunken hormones and he thought she was two seconds from telling him to stop. 

“My uh…my grandmother had one just like it.”

“She’s an islander?”

“She’s Samoan—was. She was.” Nani looked in the opposite direction from where the needle punctured her flesh repeatedly. The alcohol enhancing all her emotions. Not just lust. “She passed away a few months ago.”

Roman swiped her skin again, his brown orbs piercing hers. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he told her sincerely. “You two were close?” The last thing he wanted to do was dissect her brain and get deep. Interrogation with personal questions— unlocking doors to emotions she kept hidden. But she was in desperate need of the distraction. More importantly, he needed her to relax. She was way too tense. The best way he knew how to do that, was to keep the client engaged in conversation. He’d halfway listen, only jumping in and asking another question when they grew quiet again, knowing people loved to talk about themselves.

“Closer than close.” Nani smirked remembering Momma Leya. “She raised me. I don’t know my parents,” she confessed. Her deepest lure that everyone she crossed paths with had to earn the awareness of. And she just handed it to him. 

They conversed some more—but fell back into that pit of silence covered in the machinery and music. He had to focus on the patterns and she was too drawn to the discomfort. 

She tried to focus on exactly where the pain was—the constant keen burn like he was lighting tiny little matches to her skin—but for some odd reason the pain almost felt like pleasure. Like something that hurt so good and you didn’t want it to stop. The curiosity of how far your body could go with the inflection of pain weighing on her. 

Her breathing sped up and she wondered if maybe she was just on the verge of passing out. He had already warned her that alcohol and the gun didn’t mix. 

Her gaze flickered to him. The crease in between his brow as he was so close to the underside of her exposed breast. The hotness of his breath fanning her, giving her chills even though she was blazing from the inside out like she had a fever.

He’d turn his head right, angling to get a closer look at the lines he drew. Eyes in slits. A single lock of thick wavy hair fell out the sleek forest that was the rest of his curls, and over his forehead. 

The tension in the sticky hot room was nothing if not sexual. It was so heavy and suffocating, she just knew he felt it to. Theres no way he didn’t. No way he couldn’t see the hardness of her nipple through the think fabric of the napkin.

The easy part was over. He traced the main lines and perimeter. It was time for the shading—the part where even the toughest men cracked. It wasn’t as simple as the needle traveling from just one spot, down to the other. He had to switch needles—a tighter grouping. Lower the speed and the voltage, which meant dragging the pain out. He was going over the same spot repeatedly. Up and down. Circles. 

Nani hissed quietly every time it became too much. That sensation of pain transforming to something foreign, coming back harder with every stroke of his needle. She couldn’t keep still. Her legs clamped together, trying to clam herself from the desperate need of friction. She could feel the wetness pooling. Her whole body heating up a notch a second. 

“You gotta be still, baby. Otherwise it’ll come out jacked up.” He raised a thick brow, eyes bouncing over her face before focusing back down to the turtle. “I’m trying my best to get the job done regardless—but I can only do so much.”

There was a break in the sensation. The needle hovered over her skin. Their eyes locking. “You alright?” He asked the question with his stare unwavering. Deep voice married with tenderness. Nani couldn’t take it. It's the moment when the water in a tea kettle reaches its highest point and it starts to scream. Begging for attention. Demanding relief. And she was no different. 

It's like they had a radio transmission in their heads for a split second—because as soon as she thought it, he heard it and received it. His head turned down just inches from hers, she clamped her thighs tighter. She must’ve been leaking. He could smell her. 

The muscles in his jaw danced as he grit his teeth. Eyes finding the exact spot where that familiar pungent smell was coming from. He hardened to an uncomfortable degree underneath the fabric of his sweats, noticing how tight she had her legs shut. 

The realization of it all hitting him like a city train full speed. He didn’t know what spirit had possessed him, but he didn’t counter it, as it forced him to rip the tape off her right breast. Her chocolate peak right in front of his mouth.

Sticking a flatted tongue out, his eyes were trained on hers as he rolled the hard skin over his tongue before taking it into his hot mouth. Tongue sliding over it after sucking, earning a whimper from her pretty mouth. Catching it between his teeth and pulling until it snapped back. He noticed the rise in her chest with every action. Exhilaration staged on her small features.

She likes pain. 

His tongue still dancing and doing tricks on her nipple—he watched her struggle to keep still. Gasping—mouth wide, but nothing came out except heavier pants. She craved relief of a different kind, in a different spot. Her small hand found its way under the thick elastic band and into her Skims shorts. 

“Ohh.” The moan finally broke free as rubbed that magic button. All the heat transferring down, leaving her hole clenching on nothing and aching. 

As the thought to fill herself with her fingers passed to fruition, he pulled her hand out by the wrist. Undoing the latex gloves and replacing her. His fingers slid over her clit with ease from her juices covering her.

“So fucking wet,” he mumbled. He played in it. Noises of macaroni and cheese before you bake it, violently traveling up to their ears. Sinking two thick fingers in without warning, she grabbed his wrist. Her back arching off the table. Mouth falling open even wider. Pupils blown as he stared down at her from the bridge of his nose. Studying her. “You like pain,” he uncovered to  the both of them. 

Filling her up, he curved his fingers finding that spot. Plunging in and out. The wetness spilling with every rapid thrust. Sliding all the way out, he rubbed her clit again in painfully slow but calculated circles. Nani’s waist winding like a snake to keep up with him. 

Rising up from the seat, his face hovered over hers. He wanted to kiss her—bad. Her full lips begged for his. But he knew what that came with. Kissing was too intimate in his head. It was too romantic-adjacent. He didn’t even dare collide tongues with half the women he’s laid with. 

“Roman,” she whimpered. His name spilling from her mouth like she had said it numerous times before, under the same circumstances. He wanted to free himself and fuck her into the table, until the legs gave out and they ended up on the floor. That’s what the sound of his name on her tongue did to him. Visceral. It was now him that had reached the top of his mountain.

Hooking long fingers in the waistband of her shorts, he yanked them down her legs in a flash. Her panties coming off with them. A thick glob of stringy wetness between her and the fabric of them. His mouth watered at the sight. If he hadn’t already decided before, his decision was set  in stone right then and there. She wasn’t leaving this room until he got a taste. Consequences be damned. 

He found her eyes again, like he was daring her to stop him. She wasn’t that brave. Nani had no more will or energy to fight with the promise of pleasure, even if it came cloaked in danger. She fought enough the first thirty minutes in this humid room, alone with him, with his rough hands all on her body. 

With her clothes still pooled around her ankles, he hooked his hands on the back of her knees, pushing until they were close against her chest, folding her in half. The flesh of her pussy squished together, lips neatly folded—-waiting and ready. 

He bit down hard on the back of her thigh. She hissed from that familiar burning that danced the thin line of pain and pleasure. Sucking until the light skin bruised. He made a trail of them until he came face to face with her pink, aching flesh. 

He latched onto her like velcro. Like his mouth was made for the sole purpose of connecting with her. Nani saw stars the moment his hot mouth made contact with her center. He took her swollen clit into his mouth and sucked hard. No warming up. She was already well past done. Burning up. 

Hips bucking, chasing that feeling that was already at her front door. He barely did anything and her core was wound tight and ready for release. She wouldn’t last much longer. 

Space rendered between her back and the leather bed as she arched. Hips grinding whichever way felt the best in the moment. His lips smearing into her—entire mouth aiding in the mission to make her come undone on his tongue. She didn’t have a care in the world. Her head twisted and she caught the open door that had slipped her mind like the rest of the world outside of this room. 

She hoped the volume of the music was enough to drown out her moans. If not, she didn’t care. Nothing took precendee over cumming in this moment. Even if someone had walked in, she knew she didn’t want him to stop. What she didn’t know is that he wouldn’t. Roman had been caught in this very room fucking numerous clients. Them giving head or whatever other debauchery as payment. The whole shop knew it. This was different though. Never had he ever been on the other end, not as the receiver. His heavy member pulsed harder like the blood from his heart, picturing someone walking in while he was face first in her. 

Nani grew hornier with every stroke, flick, and swipe of his warm tongue. The liquor, the rush of sin, running the risk of getting caught, the room vacant of any fresh air—it was all too much. The thrill of exposing and opening herself so intimately to this stranger. This might’ve been the single most enthralling night of her life. She cursed the moment it had to end. 

“Mmm,” he groaned. Moving with the rhythm she set, grinding on his face, letting her control the show for a bit. “That’s right. Use me. Yesss.” His hand—blood pumped veins—came up to cover her left breast. He pinched and tugged on the sensitive skin. “Fine ass.”

Pulling back a little, he admired the view. Her nub peaked out from two fat lips covered in gloss. “Pretty ass pussy,” he muttered to himself just before spitting harshly and licking the mess up before it got to the destination of her ass. He stuck a long stiff tongue inside. Fucking her with it as if it was his dick he was driving in and out of her.

“Oh my god—don’t stop. Fuck, that feels so good.” 

He needed to hang a PhD along the wall, where the rest of his accomplishments lived—because the head was brilliant. Genius. 

Nani had never felt anything like this before. His speed, the switch in tempo, the pressure—all of it was perfect. He gave her just enough to where she felt like she was on the edge, without falling completely off. Making it last. 

She was working up a sweat now. A thin sheen on her throat caught under the dim light as she threw her head back. It matched the same layer of sweat that glowed on the deep line of Roman’s rugged back. 

Those wet, gushy sounds were music to his ears. She was leaking for him. He slid his tongue through her folds and over every part of her with ease. Smearing his lips in it as it coated him like chapstick. For a man that didn’t indulge often, he was taking full advantage. Reveling in it, like a pig in dirt. She was sweet to him. Moaning and whining so prettily. Her fearlessness turned him on. The complete opposite of him. She hid in innocence while his vileness was on full display. They met in the middle somehow. Playing out each other’s mutual vices. 

“You like the way I eat at this pretty pussy. Don’t you?” He growled.

A swollen lip sunk in between her teeth. She could only moan in response to his filthy uncovering. He didn’t even need an answer. The answer was scribed in the wind of her hips into his mouth. The grip she had on his hands. The breathless pants like a bitch in heat. “Say it,” he demanded still. He got a kick out of turning girls out. Pushing them past their comfort zone and making them say and do things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to without his wicked guidance. “Say, I love the way you eat my pussy, Roman.”

In fear that he would arrest her pursuit to pleasure, she obeyed. “I love the way you eat my pussy, Roman,” she mewled. Twisting and contorting her upper body. Unable to hold still as he rewarded her obedience with lightning speed flicks of his tongue. He took her confession and shoved it in the same basket where the rest of his sexual side quests lived in his memory. 

“Doing so good,” he repeated the same praise as he had when his needle was inside of her. “I want you to come in my mouth, baby.” His cheeks hollowed in as he sucked the life out of her, ready for the explosion. No more holding back. He was ready to knock her over the cliff. “You gonna cum for me? Hm?” He questioned. Mouth still full of her. The hum of his voice sending vibrations all through her body.

Shaking her head frantically like a fiend, she held his gaze, peaking over her legs to watch him eat at her. He could’ve asked for the moon and the stars and she’d run out into the night to bring it to him. He had her in the palm of his huge hand. “Do it. Come on. I wanna see you cum all over this fucking tongue. Do it.” He spanked her left ass cheek and squeezed after the harsh sound rang loud. 

It all sent her into overdrive. All that was in her came crashing out. So powerful she had to lock her fingers with his. The flesh of his hands turning white on his tanned skin, from the pressure of her hold. Legs suspended in the air—shaking. Feet arched to a painful degree. The worst and best was done. 

Roman rose like a fallen angel—wet mustache, stroking his damp hair back and out of his face. Still bonded at the ankles, Nani swung her legs down, unbalanced. Reaching for his sweats to free the unnaturally large bulge. She yearned to see it. She just knew it had to be as pretty as he was. 

He let her get all the way there before he swatted her hand away. “Lay back down,” he instructed. She wasn’t running this show. He wanted nothing more than to buss her down right here on the table. Feel her clenching down on this thickness until he came right on that pretty pussy. 

But the bells signaling her friends entering the shop were drowned out by the noise of rap music blanketing the shop.

Rhea’s head rose from where she was buried in her phone at the front desk. “Hi, ladies.” She beamed welcoming the young girls in. “Just so you know we’re closing in about thirty-five minutes.”

“That’s cool,” Mercedes stepped up while Sam admired the collage of photos displaying the work of their artists. “We’re not getting anything. Our friend should be in here. Same height as me. A little lighter. Curly hair.”

“She was a walk-in, right?”

“Yup,” Mercedes nodded. Rhea noticed the girl’s low red eyes and unsolicited smirk. An effect of nature’s medicine. She smiled to herself and nodded to the back. 

“She’s with Roman. Last door on the left down that hall.”

“Thank you,” both girls slurred. 

They gawked in each room, moving at a sedated pace, taking slow strides until they finally reached the last door on the left. Halfway open, Sam pushed it to reveal inside.

The girls stared in horror almost at the scene in front of them. She had really fucking did it. 

“Oh my god, Nani.” Sam peaked over Roman’s shoulder seeing the near finished product with a wide grin. “We just knew you were gonna pussy out and come back to the car. We didn’t think you’d actually fucking do it.”

“What the fuck took y’all so long?” Nani’s eyebrows hiked up. 

“Well,” Mercedes started, throwing her Kurt Geiger bag to the same couch Nani had hers in. “There was no parking for like two blocks. Then when we finally found one, a little package slipped from your hoodie in the backseat.” Both girls snickered. 

“You bitches did not smoke my blunt.”

“Oh, don't worry.” Sam bit her lip. “We left some for you.” She picked up a clay figure of a man with patterns etched into his skin. Saveasi’uleo—Samoan god of the underworld.

“Please don’t touch that.” Sam flinched at his baritone voice, despite it only being an octave over a whisper. Something about the way he said it felt urgent. The fact that he knew she was touching something without looking her way, was enough to scare her into retreating. It clacked on its landing.

That was enough for both girls to just take a seat. They watched like medical students shadowing a doctor, as he shaded in the last of the tattoo for twenty minutes. 

“All done,” he announced. “You gotta be careful. A lot of friction in this area for women. No swimming for a couple weeks. Wash with non-scented soap here. No gym. We don’t want any sweat.” He ran down as many rules he could think of. His mind still in a frenzy. Hard dick tucked. He kept a firm hold on her hip as he had her stand between his spread legs to cover it in plastic wrapping. “It’s gonna itch when it’s healing, but don’t scratch it. Rhea has some stuff up front for you to put on it.” He nudged her away from him. The smell of her arousal still strong. 

The four of them made their way to the front. The shop now empty and silent. Rhea abandoned her closing task of sweeping and rounded the desk to ring the healing ointment up before looking to Roman.

“How much does she owe you?”

His eyes found Nani’s. Stoic demeanor cracking for a split second, smoldering eyes, as he rejoiced in the way she arched for him. The way she pushed into him to feed him. The curve of her breast into the stiff peak of her nipples. The way she took him with no hesitation or pushback. Begging for more when there was none left to give.

“I’ve already been paid.”

𝙰/𝙽: hey, so i came to the conclusion that as long as Biggest Fan is still in progress, i might as well just release whatever else was in progress for him. i'm not wasting my art. this was like 75% done when that big-eared bitch tried to kill me us. i didn't want it to go to waste.

this is during his NXT days. for purposes of the story let's just pretend his tattoo was finished back then.

i barely proofread. i'm tired, sorry lol

as always, if you read it or even just a portion, i am grateful. feedback is always welcomed. k, bye😘

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[joshujin]

can’t wait no more

🔞 18+, minors do not interact • masterlist • submit a request

your pov • soonyoung’s pov ⇣

soonyoung has been best friends with you for 10 years now—in love with you for almost all of that time. one way or another, those 10 years end tonight.

♫ darl+ing svt pairing: soonyoung x fem!reader word count: 11.6k (i don't want to talk about it) tags: best friends to lovers, idiots in love, a lil miscommunication, angst, happy ending, soonyoung pov, flashbacks cw: smut - possessiveness, unprotected piv (pull-out method. v irresponsible piv. don't be like these two), reader loses virginity, spit, oral f. receiving, fingering, mention of choking, mention of masturbating, soft vanilla smut, probably a little hornier than the other pov bc this is a MAN after all a/n: happy @citruscheol birth!!! ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و to celebrate this momentous occasion, i ofc had to honor her request for a soonyoung pov of we can be all we need. you don’t really need to read that before this one; after all, they are essentially the same fic. BUT! i recommend you do bc it will make this version more enjoyable + easier to understand. and y’know what, i literally had to drive myself bat shit crazy and completely alter my brain chemistry to write this. like. there isn’t enough grass in the world that i can touch to return back to normal. and idk if i can ever look at hoshi the same ever again, so the least you can do is read both ok ㅠㅠㅠㅠ kidding ofc pls do what you want haha. either way, i think you’ll enjoy whichever one you want to read! as far as smut goes, same thing as last time: i marked where the smut starts and ends, but this courtesy is for adults who don’t want to read explicit material. minors should not be interacting at all pls!

soonyoung has been avoiding you. he knows you know it because you’ve asked him multiple times now if anything was wrong, and every time, he’s lied to you and told you everything was fine. everything wasn’t fine. it hardly felt like anything was fine, actually.

because you just blew out your candles, you’re 30 now, and his time has officially run out. he can’t blame anyone other than himself, though, and he knows it. he had seven whole years to tell you, and instead, he foolishly thought if he just continued to love you the way he’s always loved you, you would simply see it yourself. you would see how hopelessly in love with you he is. 

you didn’t. for whatever reason, his showering you with lavish gifts, vacations, and fancy meals didn’t strike you as odd for a friend. or the way he was constantly wrapped around you or leaving kisses on your forehead whenever he had the chance. or the fact that it’s been nine fucking years since he went on a date or slept with anyone. he’s fucking priestly at this point.

and he doesn’t do it just so you’ll get the hint. he does it because that’s how he loves you and that’s how he’s always loved you. but maybe that’s the issue: you think this is just how he is as a friend because he’s been this way ever since he met you. but you couldn’t be more wrong. 

soonyoung has never even felt inclined to treat anyone outside of his family the way he treats you. as far as he’s concerned, everything he does for you are just things he watched his dad do for his mom his whole life. you’re not even aware that the way he loves you is supposed to be reserved for whoever becomes his wife.

and he’s been so happy to give you all of that even if it meant you never saw him the way he longed for you to. it fills him with pride to know that your expectations are higher because he’s loved you so well—that you know exactly what you deserve because he’s always tried to give you exactly that.

at least, up until a few weeks ago, when the horror of the truth really started settling into his bones: you weren’t going to fall in love with him by the time you turn 30. and without even really realizing it, he started distancing himself from you, deluded into thinking it would be easier to let go if he just put a little space between the two of you. he knew it was hurting you just as much as it was hurting him, and he knew you didn’t deserve it.

it’s against his hardwiring to do anything that hurts you, and it’s reflected in how terrible his life has become in just a handful of weeks. his apartment has been filthy; the only reason it was ready for your party was because he paid the housekeeper double to come even though he wasn’t scheduled to clean for another week. his work is fortunately still fine, but he spends whole days with horrible brain fog, hardly understanding or even hearing anything anyone says to him. he hasn’t seen any friends—mutual or otherwise—because he spends all his free time in bed or drinking himself into a sobbing mess.

that’s all he can seem to do these days, is cry over you. 

soonyoung steps out into the balcony attached to his bedroom, leaning against the sliding door once it’s closed. he cranes his neck to look up toward the midnight sky, and takes a deep breath. it doesn’t help keep the tears at bay. he keeps his head tilted up. 

he knows you don’t deserve this. he knows you’re hurting and that you feel him slipping away. he saw it. just now, just before you blew your candles out, he saw the way the joy and life immediately fled your eyes when they landed on him. he wonders what you saw. did you see the apathy he was desperately forcing? did you see how sad he was at all? 

because he is. he’s the saddest he’s felt since you told him you would rather be on vacation with someone you were in love with seven years ago. someone who wasn’t him. maybe he’s even sadder now. at least back then, he was foolish enough to hope you would change your mind. at least back then, he had time on his side.

now, it’s over, and now, it’s time to give himself a fair chance to move on. you don’t deserve what he’s putting you through, and it’s true for him too. he doesn’t deserve what he’s put himself through for the last decade. 

countless nights you fell asleep at his place, countless times he wished he could gather you up in his arms and carry you into a bed you shared. all the times you told him you loved him and he desperately wanted to beg you to repeat it, even if it was just so he could pretend you meant it the way he needed you to mean it. whole weeks spent overseas on all kinds of vacations, time he spent daydreaming that this was what a honeymoon with you could feel like.

it all adds up to a decade of putting his heart on the backburner so he could allow himself to continue loving you.

soonyoung scoffs at himself when the tears refuse to stop welling in his eyes. he shakes his head and steps forward, resting his forearms against his railing and staring at the blackness in front of him.

part of him hates the version of himself from seven years ago that thought making this stupid promise was a good idea. what good can come from not loving you? but the reason he’s stuck to pulling away and holding you at arm’s distance is because that version of himself somehow knew the pain would grow more and more, year after year.

he can’t do this for the rest of his life—can’t just keep making room for more heartache the older he gets. you’re 30 now, and even though you insist you’re fine and have no desire to date, he knows you’ll get restless soon. and when he thinks of you finally deciding you want to have a boyfriend, he wants to vomit. when he thinks of some other asshole’s hands on you, his lips on yours—when he thinks of you sighing anyone’s name but his, he gets near homicidal over something that isn’t even real. at least not yet.

soonyoung doesn’t want to wait for that to happen. he doesn’t want to wait for you to hate him for being unable to share you—and he won’t be able to share you. he also doesn’t want you to have to face the pressure of having to choose between a best friend and a boyfriend. 

instead, he’d rather you start to hate him slowly, over time. he’d rather you allow him his space and not even realize you hate him for slipping away and leaving you behind—not until it’s years later, when you hear his name in passing, and you think, he just left, and you tell yourself it’s fine because your life is better without him anyway.

it hurts you now, but it’ll hurt less later. it’ll hurt less for both of you to endure this silence now, rather than fight until there’s nothing but resentment.

the door behind soonyoung slides open forcefully and slams closed a moment later. he flinches, looking over his shoulder to see who entered his room and ready to tell them to get out. when he sees you, though, he turns back away, trying to discreetly wipe his eyes.

“what are you doing?”

he quietly clears his throat, hoping he doesn’t sound too worn when he speaks. “just needed some air.”

“no.”

you say it in that tone that always scared him a little. it’s when he knew you were about to get your way. he wasn’t interested in doing the whole fighting thing with you; he just gave you whatever you wanted the moment this voice came out of your mouth. it always drew a smile out of you and it made his life easier.

this is about to be the one and only time he can’t let you have your way.

“what are you doing?”

soonyoung squeezes his eyes shut, like that will help him brace himself against the conversation he has to have with you.

this was coming, he tells himself. you knew this was coming. she was never just going to let you go without an explanation.

“why are you ignoring me?” you ask, voice cracking. it takes everything in him to stay where he stands and keep from wrapping his arms around you, apologizing, and begging you to stop crying. “why are you avoiding me? why are you acting like i’m not your best friend?”

soonyoung opens his eyes and almost laughs. best friend. he doesn’t know when the term became so derogatory to him. anyone would be lucky to be in your life, let alone be your best friend. he hates it anyway.

he’s your best friend. you’re not his. he would never dream of calling you that—at least not without calling you the love of his life first. his most beloved. the woman he would give anything to marry. on the totem pole of things he wants to call you, best friend is at the bottom.

“because you’re not,” he says honestly. he immediately regrets it when he hears the small whimper that escapes you. “at least, i don’t want you to be,” he adds, hoping it will soften the blow of what he just said.

“what are you saying?” 

soonyoung feels so tired and sad and heartbroken. he hangs his head a little as he takes a deep breath.

“what are you saying, soonyoung?” you repeat when he doesn’t answer immediately. patience was never your strong suit.

when he’s sure he’s not going to start sobbing upon turning, he finally faces you, and even then, he can’t bring himself to look you in the eye. if he does, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to do this.

“do you remember your 23rd birthday?” he asks, gaze fixed on the stain on his balcony where you dropped a smoothie and he insisted you leave it instead of cleaning it. he forgot to do it himself and now he has a permanent reminder of how whipped he is for you.

“siquijor,” you basically spit at him. he feels your walls coming up. he feels your defenses getting ready, and he knows you’re aware of what he’s about to do. “what about it?”

siquijor. the best and worst trip of his life.

“i think i’m drunk,” you announced, words slurring so badly, soonyoung was convinced anyone else wouldn’t be able to understand what you were saying.

“what?” he asked sarcastically. “no way. what makes you say that?” 

soonyoung loved being sober when you were drunk like this. he loved hearing and seeing all the silly shit you’d never say or do sober. most of all, he loved taking care of you. he loved pretending he meant something more to you and this was just another boyfriend duty of his—making sure his drunk girlfriend was happy and hydrated and safe, and that when she woke up, she had a lineup of hangover cures at her disposal.

you answered with the gnarliest burp. he burst into loud laughter, grateful the beach was far enough away from any rooms that the two of you weren’t disturbing anyone.

after a few moments, he realized you weren’t laughing along, simply leaning back on your elbows in the sand, smiling softly at him. he did what he does best: he pretended. he pretended you were just a lovesick girl staring at someone she yearned for. he pretended you wanted him just as badly as he needed you. he pretended you were in love.

“penny for your thoughts, you drunkard?” 

you giggled, slipping off of your elbows and laying all the way down. he joined you, both of you looking up at the sky. it was different here than it was back home. it was quiet and warm and there was no light to disrupt the view of the stars. he loved that he was seeing something like this for the first time with you.

“my thoughts are worth more than a penny.”

he snorted. even drunk, you were a brat. “nickel?”

“nice try. a hundred bucks, buddy.”

“ha!” he shouted. “never mind, keep your thoughts to yourself.”

“soonie!” you half whined, half burped. he made a face of disgust at you. he thought he did a good job of hiding how endeared he was.

“gross.” soonyoung sighed, turning back to the sky. “fifty.”

you giggled. “deal.” there was no way in hell you were going to remember he owed you $50. “i’m thinking… i am having the best time of my life.”

his heart swelled knowing he did well for your birthday celebration.

he let his head loll to the side, watching you. you had your hands folded politely over your ribs and your legs were crossed at the ankles, your feet swaying side to side like there was a song playing that only you could hear. if soonyoung concentrated hard enough, he thought he could hear it too. it sounded like what he imagined his love for you would if it were a song.

you smiled at the stars like you were talking to them. 

“i’m so happy,” you said. “best birthday ever, soonyoung. best month ever. thank you. i love you so much.”

“you’re welcome, y/n,” he said, voice coming out barely above a whisper. “i love you too.” so god damn much.

you turned to look at him when he said that, your smile fading naturally the longer you looked at him. “i…” you trailed off, frowning a little before you continued. “i think… i think i feel lonely, though.”

he mirrored your frown, immediately bringing his body closer to yours. he rested a hand on top of yours. “what’s wrong?”

you opened your mouth but before you could start speaking, you were suddenly crying. 

“y/n?” he sat up, bringing you up with him. “what’s wrong, baby?” his eyes widened at the slip-up, but you were too drunk to notice, frantically wiping the tears that kept streaming down your face.

“i’m so happy,” you breathed, hand still in his. “this is everything i’ve ever wanted. this is everything i could ever dream of having.” 

your words were still slurred and with the addition of the crying to your inebriated state, you’re hiccuping badly as you speak. 

“then why are you crying?” he asked. “why do you feel lonely?”

“this is what i want from y—from…” you hiccuped again. “this is everything i want from someone i’m in love with.”

he felt his heart drop into his stomach, and he couldn’t help the way his hand stiffened in yours. he pulled away.

“oh” was all he could bring himself to say.

what else was he supposed to say to that?

“i’m in love with you. please let me be the one that gets to give this to you.”

“please love me.”

“please don’t break my heart like this.”

he couldn’t say any of it.

“i want you to want… i want…” you kept hiccuping, and despite feeling like his heart was breaking into smithereens, soonyoung found it in himself to rub your back comfortingly. “i want—” you cut yourself off with another hiccup.

“shhh.” it came out in a daze. the sky looked darker. the stars looked duller. the water wasn’t as bright anymore. “it’s okay. it’s okay.” he didn’t know if he was telling you or himself. “it’s okay.”

soonyoung pulled you into his arms, still rubbing your back as he tucked your head under his chin. he didn’t bother trying to find the right words to tell you; he knew you probably wouldn’t remember any of this. so he allowed himself to feel heartbroken as you wept and hiccuped until eventually, you fell asleep.

and when you did, it was his turn. he silently cried until the sun came up, and when it did, soonyoung gathered you up in his arms and carried you back—only as a friend, to a bed you’d never share.

“it hurt,” he says, tears finally beginning to stream down his face.

soonyoung never shied away from crying in front of you; he did it kind of often. but there’s something especially humiliating about it now. he’s wrapped up in his sadness, and it’s suffocating him, making it hard to speak. he thinks if he does, he might choke on his grief.

“it hurt more than anything i’ve ever felt, y/n,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. he isn’t sure if you heard him, but he can’t bring himself to repeat it.

your hands close over his, where they hold the lapel of his jacket around your shoulders. he doesn’t even know when he took it off to put it on you. loving you was exactly like that—an instinct he didn’t have to think twice about. loving you was just something that happened without his knowledge or permission.

“soonyoung,” you call his name, high and desperate. your defenses have come down. you’re not using that scary voice on him anymore. you’re not bracing yourself. he thinks you should be. “that’s not what i meant. i—”

“it’s okay,” he breathes, so many tears in his eyes, he can barely make out the shape of you. he blinks rapidly to expel them. “i’ve had time to—”

“but if you would just let me ex—”

“there’s nothing to explain,” he interjects softly, eyes coming to you now that he can properly see past his tears. “i stayed around, didn’t i?”

your fight falters and you stop trying to talk over him.

“i stayed for seven more years. if i needed you to explain, i would’ve asked the second you woke up sober.”

your shoulders fall and he knows the rest of your fight has dissipated into the night. the next question you ask almost breaks his resolve. “only seven?”

the question comes out small and quiet and defeated, and soonyoung feels his lips tremble. he rolls them between his teeth to stop himself from telling you something he doesn’t want to say: no, of course not only seven. you’ll have me wrapped around your finger until the day i die.

he takes his hands back from under your hold once he’s absolutely sure he won’t say something that would disappoint the version of him that sat on that beach in siquijor, swearing that he wouldn’t let himself feel that heartbroken in the next decade of his life. 

“i didn’t mind waiting seven more years to see if you would ever return my feelings,” he says instead of answering you, fully aware of how badly his voice wavers as he speaks. “my friends, they told me i was insane for letting my 20s go to waste like that. but to me… if i still got to be around you, still give you experiences and love that made you feel like that’s what you deserved from someone you actually were in love with, then… i can’t see the issue in that. i’d happily wait seven more years. because even if it was seven years of the same longing—and even if it was seven years leading to nothing more, it was still seven years of me being able to show you how well i could…”

he swallows the lump in his throat and fails. he shakes his head and just says what he should’ve told you seven years ago.

“how well i could love you. how much i do love you.”

you look dumbfounded, and if this were any other situation—if soonyoung didn’t feel like he was actually fucking dying—he thinks he’d make fun of you. your eyes are the widest he’s ever seen them, and your mouth is parted like you’re poised to say something but you don’t even know what.

“soonie—” you start.

he doesn’t let you finish. he can’t. he’s so close to ending this—to doing the worst thing he’s ever going to have to do—and if he lets you finish, he’ll lose the courage to walk away.

“i told myself… while you slept in my lap on that beach in siquijor, that if by the time you turned 30, we still hadn’t moved past… this…” he can’t stand the look of horror on your face as you start to process what he’s saying. he looks at the sky behind your head instead. “then, i wouldn’t spend my 30s torturing myself anymore. i’d let you go.”

you don’t let even a millisecond pass before you practically scream: “i don’t want you to let me go!” at him so forcefully, he flinches. “i don’t want you to let me go, you stupid idiot! if that’s what you’ve been doing the last, few weeks, ‘letting me go’—” you make exaggerated air quotes with your fingers and a face that tells him you think he’s ridiculous. it catches him so off-guard, he almost laughs. “—then knock it off!”

you slap his chest to each word to punctuate your point. 

“wh—?” he brings his arm up reflexively to defend himself.

“what i meant to tell you, it came out wrong,” you inform him. his arms slowly fall back to his side as he listens to you as closely as he can. “i didn’t even mean to tell you anything, but if drunk me outed me like that, i need you to know that’s not what i meant.”

the words came out of your mouth in a rush like you thought soonyoung wouldn’t let you say them if you took too long. when he doesn’t say anything in the brief silence, you take a deep breath, obviously trying to steady yourself.

“i was lonely. i was really lonely,” you admit, seeming to remember the feeling more than you did the actual conversation. “and yes, it was because i enjoyed that vacation so much and yes, it was because i wished i could have it with someone i was in love with, but i was having it with someone i was in love with!”

everything in soonyoung’s body tenses, like his own defenses are coming up—like this is some kind of joke and his body is preparing to be laughed at. because you just said you were on vacation with someone you were in love with in the philippines… but you were on vacation with him in the philippines… 

his body braces itself.

“i just meant i wanted it to mean more for both of us,” you continue, hands waving erratically between you to drive your point home. “i wanted to be on vacation with you!” 

your brows furrow and your lips thin as you helplessly fight off a wave of tears he knows is pushing to be released. he knows that when you’re too emotional—whether it’s sadness, joy, rage—you cry, and once you do, you end up blubbering for so long, you usually end up asleep at the end of it.

but still, you bravely fight it off, obviously determined to tell soonyoung what you need to.

“but you as my boyfriend! not you as my best friend! there’s no one else i would’ve wanted to be with, soonyoung!”

he’s glad his body is stiff enough to keep his knees from immediately giving out under him. because all soonyoung wants to do now is fall to the floor and cry. cry because he never thought you’d say these words, because he felt like he was getting back something he lost on the beaches of siquijor, because the two of you wasted a decade dancing around each other instead of just fucking saying something.

“do you think i’ve been single our entire friendship for fun?!” you shriek the question through tears. “do you think it’s fun being the 30-year-old virgin who’s never even kissed anyone?! because it’s not!”

you whined about this often early on in your friendship, but eventually the complaints petered out, and he would drive himself crazy wondering if it was because that changed—if someone else had taken those firsts.

did it happen? 

she would tell me.

right?

no, i’m still a dude. that’s weird, she’d probably tell a girl.

no no, i’m her stupid ass best friend. she would tell me!

oh my god, would she tell me?

what if i just die?

and so the cycle would go. he knows it wasn’t any of his business and that if you had lost those firsts to someone else, that was your prerogative, but still, he feels relieved to hear that isn’t the case.

and he knows he has no right to—not when you haven’t had the proper conversation to hash things out yet—but he suddenly feels an overwhelming possessiveness for you. because he waited for you. no one was ever going to make him stray away from you, so he waited for you—never expecting, just hoping. sorely hoping. and now he knows you waited for him too, and now… now, all he can think about is making you his. all soonyoung can think about now is giving you all the things you abstained from in the hopes you’d have it with him of all people.

it’s what you deserve, isn’t it? for waiting? and isn’t he in the business of giving you what you deserve? his hand twitches, begging him to reach for you and kiss you stupid.

“but i didn’t want anyone else! i wanted you!” you point at him almost violently, and his heart grows too big for his chest. “you waited seven years, but i waited ten! TEN, soonyoung! do you—”

his willpower can only withstand so much. at the end of the day, soonyoung is just a man who’s pathetically in love with you, and hearing you say you wanted him—hearing you confirm you waited your entire friendship just for the chance to have him and be with him and only him—it completely undoes his entire being.

soonyoung’s mouth is on yours before his brain can fully process what’s happening. he feels the shock on your lips for only a moment before you’re moving. despite it being your first kiss, you respond quickly, your body knowing exactly what to do with soonyoung’s like it’s second nature.

you taste like tears and champagne, and even with all the extravagant dinners he’s taken you on and the places around the world you’ve traveled to together, this is the best thing he’s ever tasted. 

soonyoung thinks he’s happy to stand here, kissing you and tasting you and listening to your cute, little breaths against him forever. but then your hands start exploring him—his hips, his waist, his chest, before wrapping around his neck and bringing him in to kiss you even deeper. and he knows immediately that all the strength he mustered up to deal with tonight is gone. the moan that comes up his throat is loud and bordering on obscene, but you smile upon taking it into your own mouth, as if you’re feeding on his desire. as if you love the taste of it.

soonyoung doesn’t wait after that. he can’t wait after that. without letting your lips separate, he guides you back into his room, careful to keep you from tripping over the threshold and all the crap he left on the floor when he was busy having his pity parties.

he lays you in his bed gently, thankful that even though it’s unmade, he at least had the housekeeper wash his sheets. he lays on top of you, trying not to let his weight crush you, but when you wrap your arms around him, you press him to your body as close as it can possibly go, and after he releases his entire weight on you, you hold him like even that still isn’t close enough.

it’s all so much. after spending so long hoping you’d one day want him even a fraction as much as he wants you, tasting the excitement on you and feeling the adoration in your hands as they feel every surface of his body they could reach—it’s so much. 

it wears down his self-restraint. 

you don’t seem to mind, though, because when he runs his tongue along your lips, asking permission for more, you open your mouth immediately. and when his tongue slips in and meets yours, the moan he gets back is so loud and uninhibited and hot, he feels it in his dick.

you giggle a little, and though you recover quickly and continue trying to make out with him after that, the sound delights him enough that he stops to look at you. your makeup is tear stained and your eyes are still a little red, but you look worlds different than you did just a few minutes ago. there’s no tightness in your smile, no devastation in your eyes, no anger furrowed into your brows. when he looks at you this close, he realizes he’s never seen you this happy, this excited, or this light—like you’ve been relieved of a burden that was too heavy for you. but really, the most different thing about you now is that you just look like you’re his.

“what’s so funny, hm?” he asks, resting his forehead on yours. at the start of this night, he didn’t think he would ever hear you giggle again. 

“nothing,” you claim, even though your voice still has traces of amusement somewhere in there. your hand snakes up into his hair and starts scratching his scalp. he hums at the sensation. “i love you, soonyoung.”

he lifts his forehead to look at you. it’s his millionth time hearing you say that. it’s the first time he’s hearing it in the context he’s wished to hear it for the last decade. 

you love him. you love him. you love him.

“i’ve always loved you,” you announce unabashedly. “from the very start.”

in retrospect, the proper thing to do would’ve been to tell you he loved you too—so much that he didn’t even know how to process it well enough to attempt to put it into words. but instead, he pushes himself off you, slightly ashamed that your confession made his dick go from semi-hard to rock hard in record time, but insanely elated (and painfully and obviously turned on) at the idea of you having spent your entire friendship loving him just as much. 

when he sits back, his pants uncomfortably pull against his erection, and he winces, glancing down at it and silently scolding it to stop embarrassing him and have some goddamn decorum. 

he clears his throat and looks back at you, where you’re now propped up on your elbows, smiling at his crotch like it’s already yours. it ruins him.

soonyoung is going to tell you he loves you. and sure, you already know because he already did, but now he gets to tell you knowing you feel the same. so he’s going to tell you, and he’s going to say it over and over and over again, but once he does, he gets the feeling that he won’t want to stop at just kissing you.

he knows it’s probably a lot—to go from what you were to… this, and on top of that, lose your first kiss. and even though you made it clear that he’s the only reason you even remained a virgin, he doesn’t want to assume you’re ready to do something as big as have sex for the first time tonight too.

soonyoung wishes he could be a bigger person than the horny teenager he feels like right now. he wishes he could stop this for the both of you and insist on having a conversation first before things get any further like a proper adult would. but you want him and you love him, and it’s driving him absolutely fucking crazy, and if he gets any harder, his dick is going to start hurting.

“how far?” he asks, his voice so pathetically needy, he wants to die. “i don’t want you to feel rushed or pressured. i just…” he falters, trying to find a way to say this without making it sound like it’s all he wants from you. “we wasted so much time.” not a great start. “and i—”

“all the way,” you say, a coy smile on your lips when you interrupt him. his pants stretch even tighter. 

it’s clear he was worrying for nothing; from the way you look at him, he knows you understand what he’s desperately trying to say and failing. 

he watches you with heavy-lidded eyes as you lay yourself back down and wrap your legs around his torso, doing nothing when your already short dress rides all the way up to expose you. 

“please,” you add on so sweetly, he groans. he won’t be lasting long at all tonight.

soonyoung rests his hands on your thighs, thumbs instinctively rubbing circles into the soft skin there as he tries to take a moment to process everything in front of him. he knows if he doesn’t, the excitement will paint over his memories with zero remorse, and all he’ll remember is that it happened—not what he said, did, or heard. and this is absolutely something he needs to remember. 

he has to remember the way your knees quickly and easily fall apart and away from each other at his touch—almost like they’re sighing in relief at his arrival. he has to remember how your lower back arches and your pelvis wriggles underneath his fingertips before he’s even really done anything to you. soonyoung’s gaze rakes over your figure, taking note of every, little thing he can, when finally, they land on something that lays his fears to rest. 

because there is no way he’ll ever forget the moment his eyes found the space between your legs. he stares at you now—right on the spot where your panties are already drenched with your arousal. soonyoung doesn’t care how overwhelming his excitement is right now; there is simply no possible way his brain will be able to gloss over this no matter how many years pass: the moment he saw physical evidence of just how much you craved him and needed him. how much you’ve deprived yourself of him.

and now, he gets to give you anything and everything you want from him.

his hands begin to travel up your thighs, goosebumps following the trail of his fingertips. he stops just shy of your cunt, trying to breathe deeply enough to calm his thunderous heartbeat. if he gets too lost in this, he’ll cum in his pants, and he will never forgive himself. 

he stares hard at your desire, just barely able to keep from screaming when he realizes the dark spot is slowly growing the longer he sits there, unmoving. you squirm under him, and his hands involuntarily squeeze in response. your thighs are plush in his grasp, so full and beautiful, your flesh is forcing its way into the spaces between his fingers and turning white from hard he grips you.

don’t fucking cum right now, you loser, he thinks hard to himself. you cannot cum before anything happens during your first time with y/n. he exhales deeply and slowly. i will literally kill you if you cum right now.

he’s so tempted to look you in the eye just to see if you’re struggling even a fraction of the amount that he is, but he knows eye contact with you right now will just set his progress back. 

when he’s mostly confident he won’t immediately finish in his pants, he has to swallow the idiotic smile that threatens to take over his entire face. finally, soonyoung gives in and he moves. just one finger, pressed against the part of your panties that sinks just a tiny bit more than the rest—right where he plans to be in the next few minutes, stuffing you full as far as he’ll go. 

as soon as you feel his fingertip brush against your entrance, your hole pulses like it’s trying to clamp around something bigger than his finger that isn’t there. he feels some of the control he has on that pathetic smile of his slip, and as if it’s an avalanche, the rest of his control comes crashing down. without thinking about it, his finger sinks the tiniest bit deeper as he drags it up your slit, the wetness from your panties catching on his skin ever so slightly.

when his finger finds and presses on your clit, you begin uncontrollably writhing and gasping beneath him, and his eyes tear themselves away from your cunt long enough to finally meet your gaze. you look at him with so much lust and love and longing—all of it so loudly desperate—he completely loses track of where his finger is and what it’s doing. all he wants to do is latch his lips onto yours again and say what he should’ve at least ten times by now: that he loves you.

so instead of rubbing your clit until he teases your first orgasm out of you like he planned to, he removes his hand from your center so that he can lean forward and kiss you senseless. but as soon as his touch leaves you, a strangled whine forces its way up your throat and past your lips, making him laugh immediately. 

“what?” you ask, your eyes narrowing at him. it should invoke fear in him, but he’s too endeared for that. “why are you laughing?! did i do something embarrassing?”

soonyoung scoffs as he brings himself over you. “‘embarrassing’? no, baby.” he rolls his eyes. “your neediness is not ‘embarrassing.’ it’s fucking hot.”

you turn the prettiest shade of pink. “shut up.”

he grins. “gladly.”

soonyoung kisses your nose, enjoying the shade of pink it turned under your blush. then, he kisses your lips, just for a moment so that he can lean back and look you in the eye when he says:

“i love you. i love you so god damn much, i thought i was going to die having to leave you.”

he knows it’s dramatic, but he was convinced that’s exactly what was happening to him not even an hour ago. the thought of doing life without you by his side made everything look and feel so colorless and dull and boring and ugly. dead was as good a word as any to describe what his life would look like without you. 

“you’re not leaving me,” you say so matter-of-factly, the smile it brings to his face hurts his cheeks. he was so dumb to think he could; even if he had all the strength in the world to end your friendship, you would’ve never let him off the hook that easily. 

“i’m not,” he says. 

soonyoung gets to work covering you in as many kisses as humanly possible, his lips pressing against your mouth, jaw, neck, collarbone—wherever you have skin, his lips are all over it. your gasps and moans reach a fever pitch, and he figures it’s time to stop making you wait. 

“you tell me if you want to stop, okay?” he asks, lips brushing against your ears as he speaks. “and we’ll stop, no questions asked.” 

you nod so eagerly—so obediently—he can’t help but smirk. his tongue darts out to lick your lobe and bring it between his teeth to nip at before he starts kissing his way down your body. 

“you sound so pretty,” he tells you as you continue to make sure he knows exactly how good you feel. all moans and groans and whispered begging. “exactly how i imagined you’d sound.” his lips graze your already hard nipples through the fabric of your dress and he earns another loud whimper. “fuck, even better actually.”

he pulls your dress down and off one shoulder to expose the breast he was just teasing, and when he sees you bare, he hangs his head, letting his forehead meet your chest as he grunts loudly. 

what is my life? he thinks to himself. this is literally insane.

soonyoung flattens his tongue against your nipple, and you inhale sharply, your hips immediately bucking up. he doesn’t realize his eyes have fluttered closed until he opens them to look at you and make sure you’re okay. from the way your eyes roll into the back of your head and your mouth hangs open in dazed ecstasy, he thinks it’s safe to assume you’re okay.

“soonyoung.”

god, his name sounds so good when you say it, especially when you say it like this.

“fuck,” he grumbles against your tit. he swears his dick is throbbing from how hard you have him.

“lower! please, god, lower!” you order him. 

“whatever you want,” he breathes against your skin. 

but he’s not moving before he has the chance to leave a tiny, little something that can lay claim to you—something only he and you will see. he presses his hand against the side of your breast, groaning at how full you are in his palm. he leans down and bites into the flesh just above your nipple. your hips jerk up as he sucks on the spot just long enough that he knows it will stay a few days. he smiles when he releases you, the hickey already turning a beautiful purple. 

“pretty,” he mutters. he wants to cover you in them. he kisses the mark gently before removing the other strap of your dress. 

with the bottom of your dress completely ridden up and the top half bunched around your waist, you’re almost completely naked, and already, soonyoung can hardly refrain from jumping off his bed and running around the room screaming.

fucking breathe, bro.

he gently lifts your hips up and off the bed so that he can slip both your dress and your ruined panties off your body in one go. once he does, all the refraining he’s been doing tonight comes to a brusque end. 

“oh my god!” he shouts, burying his face into your clothes and groaning into them. “i can’t believe this is my life right now, oh my god.” 

soonyoung presses your clothes against his eyes so hard, he thinks he should see stars, but still, all he can see are your perfect tits and your bare, glistening cunt and the sensual look in your eyes like they’re all forever burned into his retinas. or maybe his eyes are open?

he blinks and brings your clothes down just enough to be able to take a peek at you. nope, the image of your naked body in his bed are definitely just burned into his eyeballs. 

“oh my god, i really have you naked in my bed right now, oh my god oh my god oh my god.” he probably says it 20 more times. he’s not sure. 

“soonyoung!” you berate his behavior the way you always do. he smiles into your dress because even as everything is literally changing before his eyes… nothing has. you’re still his best friend, pretending to get mad at him for being silly. he knows from the fond way you look at him that you aren’t mad at all. “focus! come on, you’re just teasing me now. please.”

“okay, okay!” he says, voice muffled by your dress. “i’m so sorry, i’m not trying to tease you, i swear. i just…” he stammers, unable to stop the whole bunch of nothing that comes spilling out of his mouth. “i’m—just, i—it’s just, like… what?” the question comes out as a laugh. “y’know?” 

you raise an eyebrow at him and he realizes he isn’t really sure what he’s asking you. 

“like, what the actual fuck?” he adds like that will help explain. 

you groan. “it’s crazy how quickly you go from sex god to loser.”

soonyoung feels his face immediately fall into a glare—one you’re used to seeing whenever you two bicker. “you know…” he says, eyes narrowed at you. “my favorite thing about you has always been your patience.”

he throws your clothes aside, hands going to his shirt to begin unbuttoning it. 

“good thing i have a lot of it then,” you claim. your bratty smirk falls right off your face as you watch him slowly undress. 

“right.”

when he shrugs his shirt off and lets it join your clothes on the floor, your eyes widen like you’re seeing him shirtless for the first time. your eyes sweep up and down his torso, your chest heaving as you begin to breathe harder, and it almost makes him shy—almost makes him want to hug himself and jokingly tell you to stop ogling him like a piece of meat. but he also enjoys it more than anything. 

so many times you’ve been half naked together, wearing swimsuits at the beach or at the pool, and although he’s relished having your eyes on him before, this feels different. you stare at him shamelessly now, making no move to avert your eyes the way you used to. this is where he would make a joke to lighten the mood—to give you an out from a situation you might feel caged in by. 

this time, he just allows himself the space to revel in this feeling of being adored. 

“wait,” you say suddenly when he stands up off the bed and his hands start undoing his belt. you crawl over to him, completely naked, and he thinks he might have a heart attack watching you on all fours like this. 

“change your mind? it’s fine if you do,” he assures you, already fastening his belt before his dick can get any more ideas about where the night is going. 

“no,” you laugh as you rest your hands on top of his. “i’m not going to change my mind, soonie.”

you sound as sure as he does about this. it relaxes him immediately. you smile at him before you press your naked body against his, tangle your hands in his hair, and bring his face down to lock lips with you again. he holds you delicately as your tongues slide against each other—different from how he’s pressed, tugged, and groped at you tonight. he forces himself to be gentler. he forces himself to slow down and enjoy the feeling of being in love with you openly. 

he says as much. “i love you. oh my god, i love you. holy shit.”

“don’t start with the loser behavior again, please,” you mutter against the kiss. he wants to laugh, but he doesn’t dare leave your lips. “but i love you too.”

soonyoung doesn’t think he’ll get tired of hearing it. the past 10 years of his life have led up to this moment. it will take so much more than that for him to ever get used to the feeling of you telling him you love him.

he rests his forehead against yours and smiles. “i’m so happy.”

“me too, soonie.”

he watches as your hands leave his hair and travel down his chest, taking their time to trace every line and curve of every muscle. you finish the job of undoing his belt and unbuttoning his jeans, and that’s about all he can take before he decides it’s time to stop holding back. 

before you can even touch his zipper, he grabs your face and kisses you roughly, tongue twisting with yours immediately. he kisses you like he’s held his breath for 10 years and you’re air. you kiss him back the same, exact way. 

he finishes undressing, kicking his pants away and wasting no time picking you up, your legs wrapping around his waist as he does. his cock twitches violently once it’s sandwiched between you and his stomach, and he has you laying back in his bed in mere seconds. 

our bed, a voice in his head reminds him. a bed we can share. if you want.

when you tear yourself away from him to catch your breath, your eyes immediately go south, and he doesn’t have to follow your gaze to know what you’re gaping at. 

“see something you like?”

you don’t even pretend to hear what he said. “uh, what?”

it inflates his ego to unprecedented levels, but he doesn’t gloat and annoy you the way he usually would. mostly because his laughs are cut off with your frantic begging. 

“soonyoung,” you whisper so suddenly and seriously, he freezes. “put it in me.”

the order catches him by so much surprise, he laughs even harder than before. “i can’t just put it in you.”

you shove him and he pushes off the bed to put some space in between you. he looks at you, amused. “what?! what do you mean you can’t just put it in me?” you sound the most offended he’s ever heard you. “is that not how sex works? you put that in me? like… over and over again?

“baby, please,” his laughs are bordering on uncontrollable wheezing. “you’re making this so unsexy.”

“you made it unsexy first!” you complain. “put it in me, soonyoung!”

he wants to keep pretending that this is incredibly unsexy, but this exchange, however goofy, is just making him want to fuck you even more. “stop saying that!”

“why?! you keep making me wait!” 

the way you complain and beg makes soonyoung briefly forget that you’re losing your virginity, and he isn’t letting that happen without proper foreplay first—without getting at least one orgasm out of you.

“pu—”

before you can tell him to put it in you again, he presses his hand against your mouth. “okay!” he says, raising his voice to drown out your muffled pleas. “okay! shhh. relax, and i will. alright?” your eyes widen and he feels a burn in his stomach when he sees the submission in them. you nod. “good girl.”

you moan into his hand and grind your hips up into his. 

“oh, you like that?” he asks, smirking. all you do is squirm more. 

he releases your mouth, and when you stay silent on your own accord—so willingly compliant—he thinks there are a few things he’d like to try in bed later on down the line.

soonyoung plants a wet kiss on your lips before he rests his hand against your neck, eyes watching as you swallow underneath his fingertips. he thinks you look pretty like this: bare throat adorned by his fingers. he has a passing thought to ask you if you would ever be into being choked, but there’s no fucking way he’d do that during your first time having sex. he lets the thought go, making note of it for a later time. 

“so pretty,” he says, finger tapping your lower lip. when you take his finger into your mouth all the way, sucking it and releasing it with a pop, he has to spend a few moments reminding himself he can’t cum already. “jesus christ…” he sighs. he needs to move fast or he will be embarrassing himself tonight. “let me know if i do anything you don’t like, okay?”

you nod quickly—impatiently. your enthusiasm stutters when he doesn’t immediately “put it in” like you’ve been begging. you frown as he pulls away again, but when he settles with his head between your legs, your tune changes immediately. 

“oh.”

soonyoung has dreamed about this moment for so long. he’s had obscene, vulgar thoughts about you—thoughts he would touch himself to. he’s spent an embarrassing amount of nights moaning your name while vigorously grinding into his fist, and all it took for him to cum was the thought of tasting you. he didn’t even have to think about fucking into your pussy or how wet you would be or how warm you would feel—all he thought about was eating you out until you came all over his face, and that would do it for him. 

if he was looking to get a quick orgasm, maybe release some frustration from a day spent hanging out with you, he’d just rub one out in the shower. but if it was one of those nights he was tossing and turning, thinking about how much he loved you and how much he wanted you to be his, he’d throw his blankets off, grab a bottle of lotion, a box of tissues, and sometimes, when he was feeling especially depraved, his favorite photos he’s taken of you. there was something about looking at photos no one else has seen of you—no matter how ordinary or innocent—that turned him on.

his daydreams always started with getting you sinfully wet. yes, with your own arousal, but with his spit too. he’d massage it into your clit, mixing the both of you and your pleasures together until your hips are bucking and shoving your needy cunt in his face. then, he’d give in and lap your clit gently and the first taste would send his eyes rolling into the back of his head. he would try to stay cool and composed, but realistically, he knew tasting you would send him into a frenzy. 

he’d already be close by this point in his fantasies, whining and groaning, his phone and photos of you long forgotten because he has to squeeze his eyes shut to keep from coming before he could finish playing everything out in his head.  

because soonyoung couldn’t cum before his favorite part: when he would imagine shoving his face as far in between your legs as he could, extending his tongue as far into you as humanly possible. you’d say his name the way no one has ever said his name. you’d pull at his hair until he was sure you were permanently damaging all of his follicles. sometimes, he’d immediately cum after this. other times, he’d be able to at least get to the part where he starts fucking you with his fingers. 

on lucky days, he would reach the end of his dreams. by this time, he’d be feverishly tugging on his cock, a mess of sweat and whimpers of your name as he thought about you squirting all over his face. he would drink you up like it’s the fucking elixir of life. you would make the filthiest mess of his face—chin dripping, cheeks sticky, lips swollen and covered in you—and he would thank you for it and beg for more. of course, more would never come because he would make a mess of his own hand after that. 

he always felt like a pervert after—always felt so guilty picturing his best friend like this and doing something so dirty with you in mind—but the next night would come and the next night and the next, and he couldn’t think of anything else. anyone else. 

and as lewd and impure and delicious and downright euphoric as his fantasies were, nothing could have prepared him for how much fucking better the real thing would feel. how much better the real you would taste. 

by the time you cum on his face, not once but twice, he knows this is something he can do for the rest of his life. he would never even need you to fuck him or blow him or give him a handjob; all he literally needs is to devour your cunt any time you’d grant him the privilege to and he’d be a happy man for the rest of his life. 

you’re still panting, chest heaving from your orgasms, when soonyoung climbs up over you once more and wraps his arms around your waist, kissing, nipping, licking, and whispering i-love-yous from your collarbone and up until he reaches your lips. he kisses you lightly just in case you don’t want to put your lips on him after he just ate you out, but when you deepen the kiss and hug him even closer, he thinks you might actually like the taste of you on his mouth. 

“soonie,” you eventually whisper against him. 

“mmm?” 

you say something that he’s been wanting to hear for a decade. you confirm something he’s been desperately searching for signs of for your entire friendship. “i want to be yours. i want to be yours so bad.”

he stops peppering you with kisses and watches you carefully, like this all might still be a hallucination that will fade if he gets too lost in the moment. but you remain where you are, looking at him with as much love as he imagines he’s always looked at you. tears gather in your eyes, some escaping the corners. he catches every single one that does, pressing it back into your skin with his finger. 

when you give him a small smile to tell him you’re okay—that these are just tears of happiness—he leans in, presses his cheek to yours, and promises you, “then i’ll make you mine.”

just being inside you is enough to make soonyoung want to cry. he does his absolute fucking best not to because you already are and he doesn’t want you to think of anything other than yourself and your pleasure during your first time. but he wants to cry as he buries his face into your neck and slowly pushes into you, only moving whenever you say it’s okay to.

when he woke up today, he did it with swollen eyes from a night spent crying over you. he tortured himself all day, thinking about how every last time he had with you was the last and he didn’t even know it—the last laugh he heard, the last smile he saw, the last time you bickered with him, the last time you told him you loved him. he steeled himself to face your tears or your screaming or whatever else you did to him when he ended your friendship. 

at the start of the day, soonyoung was preparing for his life to be over—for you to take every good thing he’s ever had and felt with you when he forced you to walk away.

now, he’s fully buried inside you, forehead resting against yours as you both struggle to adjust to the overwhelming feeling of each other. it’s when you tell soonyoung that after 10 years, there’s nothing that will change your mind about him, that he finally moves. 

“oh fuck,” he breathes as he starts rolling his hips, cock dragging in and out of you in an astonishingly seamless fit. “your cunt is perfect.”

you bloom at the praise, and you don’t shy away from returning it, chanting his name over and over again, whispers of how good he feels wherever you can fit them in between—how good he is for you, how he was made for you. 

“y/n,” he gasps. he tries to tell you that if you keep saying his name like this—like he’s yours—he’s going to cum inside you. but all that comes out is: “oh my god.”

and all you say is “soonyoung” again and again and again. he’s never put any thought into his birth-given name, but tonight, he decides it’s his favorite string of letters. he never wants to hear you say anyone else’s name. he never wants anyone other than you to say his name. it’s yours and yours alone. 

at some point, he can tell you can handle even more, and he pushes up off you, using the headboard as leverage as he pounds into you harder and rougher, rhythm becoming erratic and frenzied. the noises that come out of your mouth are so nasty, he’s on the brim of losing it. 

“oh my god. look at you,” he pants, his sweat dripping from his face, his neck, and his chest onto you. a drop lands on the corner of your mouth, and without hesitating, your tongue darts out to lick it up, and he groans.

it’s too much: your neediness, your obedience, your eagerness. your tits—one sporting his hickey—bouncing wildly as he fucks you at a brutal pace. your unbelievably tight cunt, sucking his cock in so desperately, near-strangling it and refusing to let him go. 

“so fucking perfect,” he tells you. 

you make it clear that you’re not lasting long—that your third orgasm is on the horizon. it’s a bittersweet realization; on one hand, he’s relieved because he’s been holding his own orgasm off since his tongue met your clit. on the other, he never wants to stop fucking you. 

but this is just the start, he tries to remind himself. this is just the first time, and there will be so many more now—now that you’re his and he’s yours. 

your voice rings loudly in his ears again. i want to be yours so bad.

his voice is hoarse when he asks, “do you feel like you’re mine yet?”

you nod frantically, pussy squeezing tightly around him like the thought is pushing you even closer to finishing. “yes, god, yes. yes!” 

“say it,” he demands, eyes never leaving yours. he can’t look away when you look like you would say or do anything for him. 

“i’m yours,” you say immediately. “soonie… i’m yours, soonyoung.” his name comes out in a tortured whimper. 

“i never want to hear another name come out of your mouth ever again,” he declares. “ah, fuck, holy shit. you feel so fucking good, baby. just for me, huh? oh fuck.” his orgasm is begging to be released, but he refuses to let up until you reach yours. “you’re mine. and i’m yours.”

you barely finish agreeing and calling soonyoung “mine” when your pussy is suddenly and violently quivering around him, pulsing and throbbing as you ride through your third orgasm of the night. the feeling of your climax squeezing around soonyoung is unreal, and he pulls out just in time to avoid coming inside of you, painting your beautiful, soft skin with his bliss. 

it feels like it lasts forever, the spurts of white splattering you. he thinks he could get hard again when you let your mouth hang open and catch some of him on your tongue.

“holy shit,” he breathes when he’s tugged himself dry, leaning back and trying to catch his breath. he feels drops of sweat sliding down his body everywhere, his muscles burning deliciously. 

soonyoung looks down at you and is pleased to see you covered with him: his cum, his sweat, his spit. he made good on his promise. if you don’t look like his right now, he has no idea what you look like.

“c’mere,” you whine, reaching for him with grabby hands when you have no energy to sit up and actually take hold of him. 

he smiles and leans in to kiss you, before retrieving a towel from the bathroom to clean you both up with. 

for the rest of the night, you two stay tangled up in each other’s arms and talk about when you fell in love.

you: when you first met him. 

him: when you first walked into the room.

neither of you know if the other is telling the truth or if you’re just trying to win the i-loved-you-first competition (you’re both telling the truth). 

you talk about what the future looks like. you decide you don’t know for sure, but one thing you’re confident about is that you’ll be facing it together. one thing soonyoung is sure about is that he’ll be making you his wife.

you ask if you can make your anniversary two days from now so it doesn’t land on your birthday. soonyoung asks if you can make it two days prior so that he can forget that he was trying to leave you on your 30th birthday. you agree. 

you both run through every big moment either of you can remember being so hopelessly in love with each other, it hurt and what the other person was thinking at that moment. for every memory of yours soonyoung can remember, he’s able to tell you he was suffering just as much as you were. the same is true for you. for every memory he can’t remember, he feels like a kid, giggling and kicking his feet in bed with you hearing about how you were equally, pathetically down bad for him.

your birthday party is long forgotten, traded for an intimate night getting to know each other in drastically different ways than you did as best friends. soonyoung feels like he’s meeting you for the first time again—a privilege he never thought he would be afforded ever again. aside from learning what you liked from your time in his bed tonight, he learns a lot.

like for one, you actually are very into physical affection, something soonyoung thought you didn’t like displaying since you were constantly shoving him away; you just avoided it because it exacerbated your feelings for him and blurred the lines too much for you. in fact, you stay burrowed into his side the entire night, whining any time he moved a tiny bit away, even when it was just to adjust his position or reach to turn off the lamp. you love playing with his hair and tracing little patterns on his chest (he thinks one of the things you traced was your names together). you constantly thread his fingers with yours and when you get tired of that, you still keep your pinkies linked.

he learns you love hanging out at his apartment more than you like the fancy dinners. you feel the most at home with him when you’re actually home with him. you tell him your favorite nights are when you’re in charge of placing a food delivery order at his place while he unwinds from his workday, showering and changing (and unbeknownst to you, probably jacking off in the shower to make sure he doesn’t accidentally get hard while you two hang out). you say it feels like you’re his wife and this is your home too. the sentiment is enough to make him tear up, and you, of course, tease him mercilessly once a fat teardrop lands on your head.

by the time the sun is rising, soonyoung realizes you both have rewritten siquijor in the confines of his bedroom. all the miscommunication (or absolute lack thereof) and the pain and heartbreak have been replaced. from where you two lay in bed, he watches the sun’s rays start to reach into the sky, turning it stunning shades of orange, pink, purple, and blue, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t cringe away from it and the feelings of loneliness it used to bring. he doesn’t feel heartbroken all over again like he used to.

this time, the sun rises, and soonyoung feels so ridiculously happy. you quietly watch the sky with him, and he thinks you know what he’s thinking of as you continuously trace hearts, one after the other, never-ending, into his skin.

“it’s a new day,” you say quietly.

“it is,” he agrees, his heart full. “it’s a new day, and i love you even more than i did yesterday.”

you hug him tighter to you even though there is literally no space between you.

“i love you, soonie.” you yawn. “is it time to say good night?”

“it’s morning, baby.”

“no, we didn’t go to sleep. it’s definitely still night.”

he grins and doesn’t bother arguing with that logic. he moves to get out of bed, but you immediately lock your arms so he can’t. he snorts. “i’m just going to pull the curtains so we can sleep.”

you sigh like it’s still an inconvenience, but you release him all the same. “fine. you should get, like, a remote for them or something. isn’t that what rich people do?”

he rolls his eyes as he gets up and closes the curtains, bidding the sunrise—the best of his life—a farewell for now. “rich people stay rich by not buying things they don’t need, baby.”

“i don’t think so,” you disagree, arms opening again for soonyoung to lay back in.

“you know what, whatever you say,” he says as you kiss all the skin you can reach from where you hug him. he preens at the feeling. “you’re always right.”

you hum, smiling against him. “good boyfriend.”

“soon-to-be husband,” he mutters before yawning.

you giggle the same way you have been every time he’s corrected you tonight. “soonie-be-husband.”

he scoffs. “boo,” he heckles you. “bad! get off the stage!” you laugh harder, and it coaxes a soft smile out of him as he watches you.

“best friend” doesn’t seem like such a bad title in this moment anymore. he thinks he gets it now that he’s able to call you even more than that; it’s such an honor to be able to be both your boyfriend and your best friend now. it’s such an honor to be able to build something more on a foundation of friendship as strong as the one he shares with you.

when the laughter subsides, you both sigh, sinking into the bed further and getting comfortable.

“good night, love of mine,” he says, kissing the top of your head.

“mine,” you repeat like you can’t get enough of the sound of it. “yours.”

soonyoung smiles and his eyes flutter closed with exhaustion, thoughts bleary but still painted with you and the last 10 years as he starts to drift off to sleep. if this is what he gets to have now, whatever pain he withstood and however much time he wasted is nothing to him—just a moot point in the story you’ll both tell for years to come.

he dreams of you two in siquijor that night, this time both of you sober and wrapped in each other and in love, with the rest of your lives ahead of you.

bonus (performance unit group chat):

[alex-verano]

commentary placed below a cut because i’m thinking out loud and i don’t want to necessarily bug OP with my rant, which is hardly unique or original.

what is the point of paying for higher education if you don’t care about learning anything from it? i know it’s the higher paying jobs, but there are easier ways to cheat your way to riches… when i was in college even before chat gpt people were cheating like hell and i was mind-boggled then. i wanted to shake some of my classmates and yell, “just save your money and leave if you don’t want to do this. do something else.”

all the people in my classes or who i tutored who were dead serious were people who had already tried another major. or who had a gap on their education. or who had some life experience that gave them a passion. or who had been seemingly trained since birth for the singular purpose of going to school for their subject. and everyone who was unserious was someone who had just graduated high achool and went to college because that’s the next thing after high school. and a lot of my friends who became serious after changing majors were like, yeah i wasted so much time and money because i came in straight after high school and i didn’t even really realize i was an adult and i didn’t know what i wanted for my future.

i remember being in class and thinking, “a lot of the problems we’re having on the student side wouldn’t exist if there were a mandatory gap year.” i’m sure that would have its own problems, but having emerged into the world and having seen my Friends With Degrees and my Friends Without Degrees have similar amounts of struggles and success, except my Friends With Expensive Degrees Without Rich Parents are laden with debt… i just think a lot of people are encouraged to screw themselves over.

"i don't care if they make their whole way though uni with chatgpt" i think you guys are so internetpilled that you have forgotten there are actual jobs out there that require people to know what they are doing in any way possible or else people die

[tiredandsapphic]

SOFT HANDS

pairing ꩜ adult!lottie matthews x fem!reader summary ꩜ carpenter lottie... builder lottie... handy lottie, yes please an ꩜ just a blurb cuz im facing the lethal writers block

thinking about lottie who builds things around the commune… some small jobs to keep her distracted, or big ones to keep her busy. honestly so talented too, she knows what she’s doing. yeah she's a cult leader, but she's also handy.

and for you? lottie will build anything your heart desires. you don’t even ask her directly, you’ll just utter the words “oh another garden would be nice…” or “a little path there will add to the place…”

"it would be like super romantic to have a little greenhouse by the lake." you mentioned once. "yeah?" "It's a dumb idea though, probably not enough room." and then you forgot about it after that.

two weeks later? its there. full of all your favourite plants, perfectly stained wood, and painted in an accent colour of your favourite, "because it reminded me of you," she'll say.

imagining lottie have notebooks full of ideas and plans. you find her half the time scribbling in them. she'll be writing in it with you nearby, probably while you're sleeping or reading. you peak inside them sometimes, a lot of sketches full of notes like,

'soft cushions for her knees while she gardens' 'sunrise hits at 6:17am—good spot for window for her favourite lighting' 'ask someone to teach me how to build a tub outside??' with frantic underlines.

when you ask her about it someone she gets all bashful and admits "I just... like to see you happy."

imagine just seeing her building something new for the commune, wearing her tank tops and linen loose pants. oh gosh, she's perfectly fit from all the work she does, absolutely obsessed. seeing the way her muscles work when she moves, and how she glistens in the sun, all you can do is stare. her hair all tied back, pencil behind her ear, still looking so ethereal.

being lottie's girlfriend whose kinda bad at all that stuff and still wanna help? yes. you help in your own way. bringing her snacks, drinks and of course kisses for motivation. those are her favourite. sometimes it escalates though...

"okay, so i just hold it here right?" you ask, hands attempting to grip a piece of lumber as she measures. "mmm, not quite baby, let me help," she's so patient, shifting behind you. she wraps her arms around your waist, murmuring how to steady the wood. guiding your hands with her larger ones, "good girl, just like that"

yeah... you're not much help after that, everything just got 10x more hot. you'll just stick to moral support.

she's only human and not totally healed, so she gets trusted sometimes. the mix of the hot sun and a nail not laying correctly? yeah that ticks her off. imagining her breathing a little harder, jaw clenched, brow furrowed. the little murderous sighs she lets out, hehe. you always know how to calm her down though, soft praises and assurance. sometimes through more physical activities...

giving her massages too when she pulls something or is just so sore from all the hard work she does. you live of it, she loves it too much, its a win win. feeling her muscles under the pads of your fingers, working in her commune made remedies. ugh its so intimate. she makes a ritual out of it, having candles and soft scents some nights. your hands are so soft and work in all the right places. maybe getting injured is not as bad as it seems.

and the real reason she does all this? the praise. the recognition she receives, mostly from you. she lives for it, she needs it. when you tell her 'good job' or how much of a 'hard working girl' she is? she's gone. she'll do anything for you and wants you to feel that, because she loves her girl so so much.

[gothicfied]

It's summer love, baby - Jude Bellingham Oneshot

Pairing: Jude Bellingham x Reader

Summary: Seeing you with another guy at a backyard party, Jude knew he had to confess his feelings for you. Quickly.

Warnings: Mentions of drinking alcohol, other than that it's just fluff, best friends to lovers, reader wants Jude badly (who doesn't?), 23/24 Jude, not proof read (english isn't my first language)

Word Count: 1.9k

A/N: kinda hate everything at the moment, school's been stressful, but here you go. Haven't written anything in a while ngl I hope this doesn't suck

Jude Bellingham. Everytime that name left your lips, you could feel your heart skip a beat. What kind of pathetic weirdo are you that you can't even think about him without becoming all giggly and kick your feet. You are best friends. At least, you're supposed to be. But something, ever since he moved to Spain and started playing for Real Madrid, changed between you guys.

You'd say growing up with him being your neighbor was one of the best things about your childhood. Jude and you went to the same kindergarten together, the same elementary school and even secondary school and so on. You used to do track, right next to the big field of grass that his team would train on. Wherever you were, he was there too. Wherever he went, he took you with him. It was like an unwritten rule Jude and you had put up the second you shyly asked each other if you're 'best friends'. That was in second grade.

The player had been home for a couple of days now, and after the loss against the spanish national team in the Euro's, there's nothing that consult him. The wound of it was still fresh, burning with disappointment in himself — It had cut Jude deep, especially because he out of everyone in the team thought they were going to bring it home this time. At least that's what he told you.

You two were sitting in his, very nice, car, driving to one of your mutual friends' house. Since all Jude did was sulk at home, your friendgroup decided to at least throw a summer party, before he left England again for vacation.

"God, it's been so long since we went out together, huh?" Jude flashed you a smile, his stupidly perfect white teeth grazing his lower lip. Oh, how much you missed him smiling at you in real life, Face Time was just not cutting it anymore. It quite literally punched all the air out your lungs as it took you a moment to regain your thoughts. "Well.. yeah, you could've flown me out to you more, you know?" You replied back, returning a smile.

Coming to a halt at a red light, Jude whipped his head to the side to face you, raising his eyebrows like he couldn't believe you: "What? What do you mean? I've asked plenty of times—!" He was cut off by you laughing, waving him off like he wasn't telling the truth.

He was, but sadly life often got in the way of you two. You, and only you, had visited him once or twice down in Spain, but you're obviously also an adult with adult responsibilities and adult things to do.. like pay taxes. Or go to uni. Or get the oil of your car changed. You hadn't quite figured this out yet, and Jude always took the opportunity to make fun of you for it.

"You know damn well it would've worked out better if you wouldn't always procrastinate all your assignments until the last day available.." Jude mumbled as he pulled into the driveway of Danny's house, but you pretended like you didn't hear him.

Danny was actually also a long time friend of his. You only knew him through Jude, regarding him as an acquaintance, nothing more. Sadly, he doesn't accept that — The countless of times Danny had texted you, called you, tried to invite you on a date were actually tiring. He was a nice enough guy, but he just wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.

While you checked your purse if you had brought everything with you, Jude had already gotten out of the car and made a beeline to your side, opening the car door for you like always. "M'lady.." He said in that stupid flirty tone that always got you. Even if you rolled your eyes, even if you pretended like this was the worst thing ever, you always took his hand that he offered and let him help you out of the drivers seat.

"You're a charmer."

"I know I am."

Danny, while being real annoying, had one of the biggest backyards you've ever seen. The party was already at it's peak with people everywhere, just no one you recognized. Jude still held your hand, dragging you closer to him: "Stay close to me, okay?" he had leaned down to talk directly in your ear, "Danny tends to let.. kind of everyone in. I don't want you to be the victim of some creep." You squeezed his hand as a small sign of gratitude and before you could even say something, the other man suddenly started to approach you two, almost like he was summoned as soon as Jude spoke about him.

"Didn't think you'd actually show!" The redhead, yes he's a redhead, yelled over the music, dabbing Jude up. While they held small talk, all you could do is awkwardly stand next to them, inching closer to the english player everytime Danny's eyes lingered on you for too long.

"Real glad you brought her here with you, too. I was kinda startin' to miss ya! How come you never text back?" Due to Danny's scouser accent and the music and all the talking around you, you could barely make up what he was saying, but judging by the way Jude put an arm around you in an instant, it must've been something... weird.

"Bro, you gotta let it go man. You know she doesn't want you like that." Jude laughed at his own words and gave Danny a firm pat on the shoulder, before turning both of you away from him in an attempt to get out of the situation.

He wasn't your boyfriend, you knew that. He didn't like you in that way, you knew that. He's your best friend, you knew that. But, you weren't stupid. His reaction everytime you brought up a boy who's been bothering you was the same since late middleschool: jealous. Right? Yeah.. yeah, jealous. Definitely. You hoped it wasn't just your huge crush on him making you imagine things.

...

After an hour or two, the music had gotten louder, more people kept swarming in like moths to a flame and the taste of alcohol lingered on your tongue. You had promised yourself not to get too drunk, but the fact that you seemed to attract every toxic gym bro or incel nice guy at this party made you wanna down some more tequila shots. You and Jude had gotten seperated about half an hour ago, as some blonde girl swept him away when she realized who he was. That had already kinda ruined your mood for the night, but the guy that has been talking to you for the past ten minutes and who won't leave you alone made it a hundred times worse.

You were leaning against a tree, which was prettily decorated with fairy lights, idly sipping at your drink as you pretended to listen to the man in front of you. He was talking about cars or whatever, something that definitely did nit interest you in the slightest. But, at least from here you had a good view on where Jude was. He was sitting on one of those outdoor sofas, legs spread with his shirt half unbuttoned, talking to that pretty blonde girl from... wherever she came from. You bit down on your cheek everytime you saw her touch his arm or his hand or laugh at his stupid jokes just a tad bit too loud. Come on, he isn't even that funny, what the hell.

You didn't even realize you were staring, not until Jude made eye contact with you, giving you a look of 'Is everything okay?'. So, you snapped out of it, giving him a half-smile and looked back at the person in front of you. Seriously this guy has been talking to basically himself for like 15 minutes now and he's still going.

Now Jude was alerted of your situation, seeing from even afar that you were uncomfortable, felt awkward.. Having caught your eyes linger on him for so long made him forget about his conversation as a whole. If he was being honest, he was probably just talking to this girl to distract himself from you. He felt so stupid, so pathetic that apparently, he could do anything but try to make a move on you.

Why couldn't this just be like in movie or in books? Where you just knew how much he wanted you and kissed him. Because he would, for sure, not be the one to pull back first.

"Excuse me." He promptly cut off the blonde girl, getting up from the sofa. You were so focused on not focusing on Jude the entire time, that you didn't even notice him approaching.

"So, you know, the guy that rammed into me didn't even want to pay for the dama—"

"Heyyyy... sorry it took me so long, ready to go now, babe?" Jude slid beside you, snaking an arm around your waist. Your eyes immediately lit up the second you felt his presence next to you, feeling your heart drop in an instant. You tried your best to go along: "Oh, yeah, no worries," you leaned up to press a kiss to his cheek, "it was really nice talking to you, Tobi!"

Tobi, the guy, took a good look at you two. First at Jude, then at you, then back again at Jude, who was just grinning with pride, basically whisking you away. All you heard was: "Wait, your boyfriend is THE Jude Bellingham???"

...

With a click, you opened the door of the passenger seat of Jude's car. "You really have to stop entertaining guys for nothing." He said, tone more serious than it was before. While the two of you quickly walked out of there, you joked around, poking fun at him for thinking he was some great hero now.

"Dudeee, it was literally whatever. Poor guy, he probably feels so stupid now."

"For what? Flirting with the girlfriend of the best midfielder in the world?"

"Didn't you bring home a silver medal just last week?"

"Didn't I bring you the literal Champions League Trophy?"

Jude came to a stop right in front of you, crossing his arms in front of his chest while trying his very best not to snicker or laugh. You just raised your eyebrow: "I'm not even your girlfriend."

His eyes were probably the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. While gazing up at them in that moment, you didn't even register what had just left your mouth and the kind of reaction he showed to your words.

Yes, you were convinced, Jude Bellingham is a work of art. Everything about him was perfect. The way he delicately cupped your cheek and looked at you like you were the only important thing in his life, the way he smiled at you while moving his face closer to yours and especially the way his lips fit and moved so perfectly against yours, like he was made for you.

He kissed you with passion, pouring years of love and yearning into it, regreting all the times he didn't do this sooner when he realized how sweet you tasted. You kissed him back, telling him all the feelings you had for him in that small moment through the action, but it seemed enough.

And Jude didn't dare to break the kiss first.

[killmeleatherface]

I’m Here Part 2

This is the second part to my ongoing series.

Here’s Part 1

AN: hey yall! Loving Shawn Hatosy and Jack right now. I think this is going to be an angsty, yearning, will they, won’t they, type of thing. I’m not good at writing steamy stuff, but maybe I’ll get back there some day. Otherwise I do love a good Jack Abbot love story :)

TW: medical setting, no procedures, mention of Alzheimer’s (main characters mother has it). I think that’s it? Lemme know!

—

You really had intended to leave for good. You never imagined yourself standing in front of the ivory walls of the sterile environment before you. Pittsburgh Medical Center. Three years away and even seeing the double doors of the emergency department sent you head spinning into visions. Flashbacks. Past memories. Past traumas. Past people.

That fated night on the top of the roof.

You can’t let yourself think about that. What that night meant and what it did. How it didn’t just gradually coax your feelings out of the void, it grabbed a hold and choked it out of you instead. You loved Jack and he loved you, but he was marrying someone else. Married someone else…

That was the last time you’d been here and the last time you’d seen Jack. The last time you worked at the Pitt. After he’d finally let you through to the staircase, you burst into tears, finally letting years of pent up emotions go. By the time you’d gotten to the ground floor you had already decided to take the position at Mayo and quit immediately. You couldn’t work with Jack Abbot anymore. The thought of having to look at the hazel green eyes that used to only softened for you now belonging to someone who had probably long forgotten about your existence. Your mind swirled with endless scenarios.

You assumed Jack Abbot still workers worked here, you could almost bet on it. This place was his drug, his getaway, his home away from home. Everyone knew that. It’d have to take a life altering event to get him away from this place.

Like maybe his favorite resident (Best friend? Confidante? Mistress? All of the above?) not becoming an attending and instead taking a position twelve hours away without notice, or at least a goodbye. Of course Jack had every right to be hurt. But that was years ago. He’d moved on and married Rachel and probably had a had or two by now. That last part makes inside of you feel odd, like something is pulling you deep into an ocean.

“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Welcome back to the ED Doctor Garcia.” The blonde haired nurse says with a smile and her arms thrown up. Dana Evans, the sweet head nurse who had your back a miriad of times. The one who talked you down when you needed it, who talked you up when you really needed it, and the one who knew about you and Jack, even if neither of you admitted it or even spoke it out loud. She was good that way. Like everyone’s mom.

—

She called you before you got on to a plane that night. You had just thrown the last of whatever you could find in your room into a large suitcase, giving a final scan of your room. The room where most pivotal moments in your life happened.

You didn’t answer her.

“Hon, I heard you’re leaving on a plane tonight. Jack just told me some big news, said he can’t get a hold of you and I..well I told him I’d try because it’s important. Call me back sweet kid.” The voicemail you’d finally listened to a week later spoke.

You took another look around your room. You lived here through residency, studying endless nights with a Samara about whatever the other could think of. You became best friends with Samara here. You cried in here. You laughed in here. You lived the best and worst parts of a lot of your adult life in here. And now you were leaving it. You thankfully already had most everything boxed up anyways, your lease end matching up with your fellowship ending. Coincidence.

While zipping up your suitcase due to a yelling Samara announcing the Uber was there, you spotted a familiar piece of black fabric. It was a hoodie, and not yours or your roommates, but someone else - Jack’s. You instantly gravitate towards it, pulling it up to your nose. It still smells like Jack- mint, lime, antiseptic. At another call from Samara you stuff the hoodie in your carry on and bolt out the door.

You had a month off and you were originally had no plans, just thinking you’d unpack and get used to your new place, maybe take a spa day with Samara. You hadn’t thought that far.

When Jack kissed you, it changed everything for you. You had to get out of there. Out of the hospital. Out of Pittsburgh. Out of the state. And when you got home and decided that wasn’t enough you convinced Samara to come with you to Ireland. Ireland turned into a sort of world tour neither of you planned, but thoroughly enjoyed. Thankful for your dads ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you as a kid and your mom and I divorced so spend whatever you want’ credit card. While you were there you’d accepted the job in Minnesota officially. And that’s where you’d been for the last three years.

—

Until your mom needed someone to look after her and when you got back to town and realized that wasn’t the extent of it, you had to put your dear mother in a nursing home. She was deteriorating faster than you thought, and needed to be under constant supervision. Thankfully she’d gotten a spot at Shady Rose and could be with other elders experiencing the same symptoms as her.

“Hi Dana.” You smile back, genuinely happy to see a friendly face. You always loved her, and even got Christmas cards emailed to you every year. Then, throughout the year emails became variations of updates about her, her kids, other nurses, doctors, who was an attending, who wasn’t going to last through residency. Then the emails became “The nurses miss you. I miss you.” Then the emails started mentioning Jack and you stopped paying attention, stopped replying.

“Glad you’re back. Heard about your mom…let me know if there’s anything I can do.” She offers, and you give a head nod in response, choosing to focus your attention on the admit board in front of you, with her passing behind you and putting a friendly hand on your shoulder. She was probably on her way to help someone else who needed it. Dana, the departments surrogate mother, a woman worth a thousand men, the best charge nurse, shoulder to cry on, and friend you could ask for. Damn, you missed her.

As you’re trying to preoccupy yourself with anything else, a loud voice booms, “Rounds!” This causes any and all available staff to staff to gather in the center of the department and listen to the head attending brief the incoming staff on the past shift.

“Okay everyone, last night was pretty tame considering. A11 and D18 need to be continuously monitored for 24 hours but other than that, they can be discharged. But people, that waiting room is packed already. Let’s pick up the pace if you can. I know, I know. You’re all tired and doing your best. Trust me, I know.” Doctor Michael Robinavitch offers. His best friend Jack Abbot looks up at him.

“Let’s do it.” Jack announces, clapping his hands and beginning to walk away.

“Wait, guys! Just another minute!” Robby says loudly, trying to stop the crowd from leaving.

“We have a new attending starting today, everyone. Let’s introduce her, make her feel welcome.” Robby offers.

Huh, a new attending starting the same day you come back? Maybe they’d be someone you could meet and bond with over being the new kid again. You’re in a daze thinking and don’t hear him announce.

“Dr. Garcia, can you come up here just for a second?”

“Dr. Garcia?”

“Uh.” He laughs. “Dr. Garcia, are you here?”

No, no, no. He cannot be talking about you. You’re not new! Well yeah you’re a new attending here, but you’re not a new employee here. This cannot be about you. Robby is calling you front and center, in front of those old and new, and familiar…

The crowd is looking around, not sure who Dr. Garcia is. Suddenly a hand pushes your lower back. “Daphne, honey, that’s you. Robby’s talking about you!” Dana is pushing you forward now. Finally you give and push through the crowd until it opens to the two men in front of you. They both freeze, Robby mid stance, and Jack crossed arms.

Robby immediately clocks what’s going on and who you are. He glances at Jack who is standing with a stone cold expression. Robby walks over to you and motions to the crowd.

“Everyone, this is the new attending, Daphne Garcia. Treat her like you would me or Jack, she’s a good one.” He looks down at you.

You smile and do a half wave to the crowd. How embarrassing. You want to melt into a puddle and disappear into the ground where you stand. And the worst part is, you feel the unmistakable heat of Jack standing behind you. So familiar, but also like lava, so beautiful and mesmerizing with its trance of colors, but toxic if touched.

Again, you’re in a daze of heat, embarrassment and at a complete loss of what to do. You don’t hear Robby telling everyone to have a good day and get to work, the crowd actually dispersing for good. Once Robby steps in front of you, you come back.

“Good to have you back, Garcia. It’s nice to have a familiar face here again.” Robby offers, leaning over the nurses desk to grab a chart. He throws a smiler and heads off.

You still haven’t turned away. You don’t dare, because if you do, it becomes real. The person you tried your damndest to forget, the one you cried endless rivers of tears about, the one who gave you nightmares so vivid you could’ve sworn he was in the bed next to you. When you finally gain the gumption to turn around, there’s a ghost behind you. Nothing.

“Welcome back to the Pitt.” You mumble to yourself, grabbing your stethoscope and starting your shift.

—

[iviarelleblr]

My tags were:

And someone asked, so, here it is:

Art doesn't exist, because everything is art. The broad cultural acceptance that only certain things are art is mostly a result of the privileged (white men) finding ways to get paid for doing specific things. We don't have to keep following their example.

What is art? I put this forth to you: art is whatever moves a person to an emotion.

It's visual art, sure. It's music. It's all manner of stories, printed and told aloud and interactive and static. It's also looking out your window and seeing the first robin of spring. It's getting a message from an old friend. It's giving your pet a treat and being amused at how excited they get. It's a piece of code that's as efficient as it can get, and it's another piece of companion code that's half comments about how nobody understands how it works it just does and edit it at your own risk. It's your racist uncle's latest facebook screed. It's everything you read in the news.

Trying to impose a hierarchy on art is always arbitrary. You can't define art in a way that truly includes only what you want it to include and excludes only what you want it to exclude. Even saying "bad art is the soulless dreck coming out of certain over-large movie studios these days" is going to backfire if you stop and think through enough examples. It's still going to hurt people who are trying as hard as you are to share their hearts with the world, just in ways you don't approve of.

There is no difference between you making a sandwich and a Michelin Star chef serving more expensive versions of each ingredient deconstructed on a plate. There's no difference between you choosing an outfit in the morning and what's on the latest runway in Paris. There's no difference between this rant and the text of War and Peace. There is no difference between the latest movie from your favourite indie studio and the latest movie from the great rodent's palace.

Even the soulless dreck is being made by people, at least some of whom are trying to make something they feel is worthwhile despite interference from the people who want to take no risks. More, there's something worthwhile to be found in every "bad" piece of art. I have a friend for whom Ayn Rand's individualism was the key to escaping a culty evangelical upbringing, which doesn't retroactively not happen just because they know as an adult how awful the message was intended to be and how it gets interpreted by most AR fans. It is never as simple as "good" and "bad".

One of the most rewarding things we can do for ourselves is to learn to stop believing in bad art entirely. There is art that resonates for you, and there is art in which you have no interest, and there's art that does nothing but upset you, but everything means something important to someone.

There is no art, because everything is art, and we could all stand to take a step back sometimes and remember that.

I feel like some of you guys think "bad art" is like someone gluing rhinestones to a water melon, or a guy who made his own armchair out of Ohio license plates, or a trashy romance novel where someone says "the blue-eyed one kissed the brown-eyed one," when in reality bad art is a 1000000 Billion Dollar movie where none of the workers got paid and every single creative decision was market tested to see how lucrative of a profit it could foreseeably make to wow shareholders.

[deerdoeb]

Lets yap about the rtctok fandom again. Kitties

Long text warning

WOO I HAVE A RTC TIKTOK ACC NOW!!! I INTERACT WITH THE RTCTOK FANDOM NOW!!!!

And dear lord, they annoy me so much, I can't💔💔💔

The flopqueenmonique situation is still dragged and talked about, ITS BEEN SO LONG ALREADY SHUT UP. They're brainwashed into thinking the 2016 is the only good cast, no one can beat Gus! Misha am I right?/sarc, other productions are barely mentioned(apart from majestic rep, luv you), and in posts talking about other casts, there are always mentions to the 2016 cast and how theyre "the favorite and best cast!!" THEYRE NOT THAT SPECIAL IS NOT ABOUT THEM!!!(/Not mean I swear))

There used to be so many ship discourse(used to, because the fandom is kinda more dead now), there were so many people who were obsessed with Nisha and hated any ship that had one of them and wasn't Nisha.

I wish more important things also had recognition there, like the save ricky potts movement, I don't see a lot of people talking about it, nor I see people talking about how Kholby was ableist to Yannick. They hate and insult LITERAL highschoolers having fun (not talking only about lowell, but also camarillo, solerbury school, etc), Constance is so forgotten, its a whole mess.

Another thing thats pissing me off its the "movie", I firmly believe its either fake, or a fan project, but ofc, no one cares about ACTUAL important things like how Ricky's disability is gonna be handle, or if they actually have permission to do any of that(copyright exists bbg), no! Lets only care if its the 2016 cast, ignoring the fact Kholby is a bad person because were brain dead!!!/hj/sarc (Mind you, theyre grown adults who are living their lives and have other projects apart from rtc, theyre NOT coming back)

Theres other things that make me uncomfortable but thats a me thing, bye I was feeling annoyed

[futuretimelord-468]

For the ask ship ask game, Thilbo (I wish to understand this ship)

okay omg. there is just so much to say tbh. Thilbo (or Bagginshield or Bilbo/Thorin from the Hobbit) is like currently my number 3 ship of all time. I am obsessed with them and I cannot let them go.

What made me ship them? : When you watch the Hobbit trilogy I really feel that Richard Armitage (Thorin) and Martin Freeman (Bilbo) really took steps to add in subtext for the two. There is just so much there to dig into if you are a 'reading between the lines' enjoyer. Especially after a rewatch now as a full adult there is just so much extra to chew on with how they showed the characters.

I also just really find them adorable together like visually. Theyre the grumpy old man yaoi i love to love and there is so much you can expand on and enjoy in fic/fandom. I really think they are soulmates and it is so fun to analyize their characters.

What are your favorite things about the ship? : I love their character dynamic so much. I am so used to seeing "sunshine character and grumpy character" but both of them are grumpy older men XD. I also love a royalty dynamic as well. Thorin is King Under the Mountain and my favorite happy ending for them is when Bilbo stays in Erebor and becomes Consort Under the Mountain. (We ignore canon in this house, Thorin survived the war and he and Bilbo lived happily ever after)

Another favorite thing with this ship for me is the pleathora of "Culture Shock" "Cultural Misunderstanding" "Courting Customs" type fics. Since Thorin is a Dwarf and Bilbo is a Hobbit. They come from two entirely different races and it is incredibly fun to headcannon what cultural rules/customs are for each and the fanfic sillyness that can occur because of it.

Another, SIZE DIFFERENCE! Dwarves and Hobbits are not alarmingly different in height from what we have seen/know, but dwarves are vastly stockier than hobbits and generally more muscled. I adore this visual difference and it makes for some incredible art/fic.

I could go on, and would be happy to send you more info/supporting documents in DMs if you wish haha. Genuinely I recommend watching the trilogy again with the idea they are falling in love in mind. Richard specifically put in the WORK for Thorin to feel like he was down BAD for Bilbo.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? : This one is a mixed bag. I really dislike "Reshirement". Which is a common situation where Bilbo and Thorin will leave Erebor following the quest and return to the Shire together. Usually with Thorin abdicating his throne to have a simple life in the Shire.

I will admit I like this trope occasionally, especally if it is treated as actual retirement. Meaning that Thorin and Bilbo spend quite a long while ruling Erebor together before they retire to the shire for a peaceful end.

I really dislike it when they leave very soon after the end of the quest and the reclamation of Erebor. I personally feel like that is out of character for Thorin as he had spent around a century dreaming of returning home, and that he fought so hard to reclaim his mountain. It just falls flat more often than not when they leave for the shire right away.

In summary. I love them so much your honor. They're soulmates to me and they should have gotten a happy ending together. (what am i talking about ofc they did haha theyre fine...)

I really recommend giving the movies a fresh watch with the mental image of them being possible in mind.

Thank you for the ask!! 💙💙💙

[wowgrim]

Yes and no? I think this is probably true for a lot of internet dialogue. And I do think that it takes a lot of work to undo this kind of indoctrination. But I think that people who are just casually getting into it and think there is an obvious right side can be swayed. I know, because I used to be one of those people!

I met someone involved in doing relief work in East Jerusalem in the West Bank who likes to throw around the word "apartheid." And since I didn't know much about the situation other than what he told me, I thought, "oh, that makes sense." And I started to use it.

Back then I worked in international aid in human rights. I ended up *going* to the West Bank and found things to be a lot more complicated than he described. Not sure what he was experiencing to make him come to his conclusions about "apartheid," except perhaps he was less familiar with South African history and the nature of apartheid then I was, so he may not have actually known what apartheid was.

Anyway, when I was there, the job was to document human rights abuses by the Israeli government. Like, technically, the job was to document any human rights abuses, but the thing was, while it was very obvious there were also human rights abuses being carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian factions against Palestinians, there were huge barriers to documenting them--language, staffing, people wanting to frame the narrative, and the risk of getting killed by those factions, or my coworkers getting killed, or the group never being able to work in the West Bank again.

(Let's face it. If i wanted to document human rights abuses being conducted by the Israeli government, there might be some challenges along the way, but they weren't going to kill me.)

So yeah. I documented human rights abuses. But there was another issue, besides only focusing on human rights abuses conducted by the idf or Israeli government. It was determining what is actually a human rights abuse. Because my organization basically told me to assume that everybody who got arrested or had their house rated etc etc was a civilian.

That makes a huge difference when identifying what is a human rights violation. Somebody raiding your home to intimidate you is a human rights violation; somebody raiding your home to look for weapons or war plans that you are likely to have is not. And while I could always be fairly certain that a three-year-old living in an apartment was not a Hamas operative, I had to actually have context for the situation to determine whether any of the household adults might be, and that context was not always forthcoming.

So we were reporting things as human rights violations without actually knowing if they were human rights violations. That's a huge problem, and something to think about when you read about human rights violations in the territories.

Okay. There's some of the context for my deprogramming. Now let's get to the particular question of apartheid.

Checkpoints were one of the things that this guy I had met had used as evidence of apartheid. We had a lot of checkpoints to go through in the West Bank. They sucked. Sometimes you'd have hundreds of people stuck at a checkpoint, and just from statistics, you could figure that most of the folks stuck there were just trying to get from point A to point B and live their lives.

But also from statistics, it was likely that somebody was going to try to get through at some point who wasn't just trying to live their life, but has the goal of making sure that others don't. (In case that was too vague, people regularly crossed checkpoints with the goal of killing Israelis, and often succeeded.)

Which means checkpoints are not apartheid. The point of checkpoints was not to keep Palestinians, as a class of people, coralled in townships or to maintain them as a servant class of another ethnic group (two purposes of apartheid). The point of checkpoints was to protect Israeli citizens from being killed.

Because that's the job of the IDF. To defend Israel and the lives of Israelis. That's the job of any government and any military--to protect its citizens. So the IDF is not going to let people into their country or near their citizens without vetting them first.

There is a legitimate security reason to have checkpoints. Is it possible to abuse checkpoints? Sure. But their existence is not evidence of apartheid--a system of discriminating against most citizens for the elevation of a small group of citizens. Both for the reasons I stated above, and also because the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens, and most don't want to be.

Back then, all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank were under the protection of the Palestinian Authority. And most of the Palestinians who spoke with me about this would say that if the PA could clamp down on the people attacking Israel, or if various Palestinian groups would just stop attacking Israel so the peace agreement could move forward, the checkpoints would go away.

Which is interesting. Because the narrative I most often hear in the United States these days is "we can have peace in i/p if Israel stops doing [xyz]." But what I heard from many Palestinians was "we can have peace in i/p if Palestinians and Arab countries would stop attacking Israel." Certainly, these Palestinians would also say "I wish Israel would stop doing [xyz]." But they also realized that Israel was in an untenable situation and would keep defending itself as long as it kept being attacked, and that the real solution to getting Israel to stop defending itself in ways that harmed them was for the attacks on Israel to stop.

Even after all this, I *did* continue to use the word apartheid after returning to the United States. But I knew it wasn't apartheid, which was the first step.

The next step was looking into why people were calling it apartheid. It was thinking critically about communication and propaganda. It was looking more deeply into the history of the conflict and the rhetoric surrounding it. And it was realizing, in part to patient people who pointed it out to me, that Israel was consistently held to different standards than any other country in a similar situation.

From there, it didn't take long to make the connection to antisemitism. Thank goodness, I already thought was a bad thing (I fear for this generation), or it would have been an even longer journey to enlightenment.

I hope this doesn't make it sound like the cure for being in the cult is going to Gaza or the West Bank. I think my mind could have been changed even before I went, if I had done more research and spoken to people with less polemical viewpoints.

And going doesn't necessarily get people out of the cult, at least not in the short term. I have a friend who is a lifelong member of the Catholic Worker movement (lay group of social justice oriented Catholics) who went to the West Bank with an affiliated group once, and now goes back frequently. The work she's been doing with it is, in my opinion, actually good work and generally helpful. But some of the words that come about out of her mouth (keyboard) are insane. And I would really like to get a chance to sit down and talk about it with her, let her decompress, help her unwind what is logic and what is PTSD--but now she's started to go back volunteering with other groups that are doing stupid and harmful things (at least in my considered opinion), so she's never back in the States long enough to actually converse and think about the hard things.

(I see this behavior, and the behavior of a lot of activists, as a PTSD cycle of doing more things and more dangerous things because that's the only way she knows how to give her life meaning now. It's one of the signs of activism tipping into cultiness.)

Well, that was a much longer reblog than anyone wanted or asked for, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately and had the opportunity to barf it up here, so now I've done so. I hope it helps someone, or at least is the start of me being able to put words together in a way that will help somebody someday.

“Israel is a colonial ethnostate that practices apartheid” - tell me you don’t know what literally any of those words mean. It’s easy to criticise a country without just blatantly making up shit.

[mariacallous]

When it comes to online dating, Giovanni Wolfram, a 25-year-old living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, isn’t all too worried about whether his fellow dating app users will find him attractive. Rather, his biggest fear is that he might come off as “cringey.”

“You can get away with being ugly,” Wolfram says. “But being cringey is just like—that's a character that's imprinted on you.” Since he first joined Hinge at 18, he has worked hard to scrub his profile of sincerity. He’s kept his responses to Hinge’s prompts sarcastic and ironic, sort of as a litmus test. Some people take his snark seriously, but those people don’t get a response from him.

“Intellectually, I’m really all about sincerity and earnestness,” says Wolfram, but he worries about “being perceived as one of those guys who is too earnest and too sincere.”

Sincerity, earnestness, irony-free declarations of contentment—these are all things many young adults edit out of their online personas. Much of what Gen Z considers “cringe” might strike others simply as directness and honesty, but one generation’s authenticity is another’s red flag. Young adults’ tendencies toward lightheartedness and jokes in their online self-presentation may point to the way many of them are dealing with feelings of vulnerability and disillusionment.

Jordan Meisel, a New York psychologist whose clientele includes college students and twentysomethings, has noticed the demographic’s reluctance toward sincerity. “I think there's just an awareness that it's far more vulnerable to create a persona that feels accurate to who you are as opposed to who you think you're supposed to be or who you'd like to be,” she says.

It’s easier to make a joke, Meisel says, because when you present yourself seriously, you run the risk of there being laughter anyway—at your expense. “Emotionally speaking, you can't hurt me if I never show myself to you,” she says.

Be Not Cringe

When Wolfram is messaging potential matches in the dating apps, it’s humor or nothing. “A lot of times I will just not be able to think of something funny enough. And the idea of being sincere is so repulsive that I just won't answer,” he says.

Wolfram says he rarely matches with people whose profiles are “too earnest”—for example, if they share that they enjoy “lazy days in bed with a joint.”

I ask Lila Goodwillie, a 25-year-old New Yorker, whether “cringeyness” would repel her from someone’s profile. “Unfortunately, yes,” she says. “I'm not proud of that, because I feel like when I meet people in person, I kind of like nerdy guys. I kind of like guys who are a little dorky and maybe a little bit cringe,” she says.

But on the apps, her taste is distorted. “People are getting more picky,” she says. “People are getting turned off by the cringe factor.”

To illustrate this, she points out some of the famously clichéd, tired tropes she sees in dating app profiles: the guy holding a fish he caught, the “military guy,” the guy who posts shirtless selfies from the gym. Over time, she has identified more archetypes she finds cringe: the guy who writes “ask me about the time I went motor biking across Vietnam,” the guy who uses the “two truths and a lie” prompt, the voice note guy, the guy whose profile includes videos of himself playing guitar. At this point, it’s difficult to escape the fate of being slotted into one of many cringey categories.

To Goodwillie, earnestness also suggests an open-armed—and deeply uncool—embrace of dating apps as a mechanism for finding love. “My mom always says, ‘You’re going to meet someone when you least expect it,’” she says. “I kind of feel like I always have that in the back of my mind when I'm looking at profiles. I'm like, ‘Oh, I'm not taking this very seriously. I'm just going to see what happens and maybe I'll meet someone, maybe I won't.’ So I feel like I tend to gravitate toward the profiles that also seem like they have that same sort of casual attitude about it.”

Will Gray, 26, of Nashville is also put off by profiles he feels are too serious. He’s seen responses to Hinge prompts he interprets as too sincere, like, “What I'm looking for: a man who will always support me through thick and thin no matter what.”

“I'm being very judgmental. I guess that’s part of what the apps do—they make you judgmental,” he says.

He held his distaste for earnest responses in mind when creating his own profile. When it came time for him to answer the app’s prompts, he wanted to come off as sarcastic and lighthearted, feeling the “the threat of being too serious.” He describes his profile “semi-serious” and “somewhat sarcastic.”

“That’s partially just me not wanting to be vulnerable, or being insecure,” he says.

Long-Term Love

Gray admits that this self-consciousness can hinder young people’s ability to get what they likely want out of the apps: love and companionship. “The people bringing that serious and earnest energy, frankly, probably have the most long-term success, because they're being open and vulnerable and earnest and clear about what they want.”

Anabelle Williams, 25 from Brooklyn, agrees with Gray that directness on the apps is probably a significant indicator of success. Her friend who indicated she was looking for a long-term relationship is now in one with someone who also clearly stated that same desire.

But in Williams’ own online dating life, someone stating what they’re looking for is “the biggest red flag I could have ever seen,” she says, describing it as “embarrassing.” “When I would see somebody saying ‘looking for a long-term relationship,’ I was like, ‘OK, you're not looking for me. You're just looking for anyone.”

Similarly, Liam Katz, 24, also of Brooklyn, describes sincerity on dating apps as “unnatural.” He compared an earnest-seeming online dating profile to “a picture of someone alone in front of the Statue of Liberty.”

“When you're at a party with someone, very seldom are you going to be like, ‘Oh yeah, by the way, I don't smoke cigarettes very often, I'm looking for a short-term relationship, and this is my sign.’ That's not how people start talking,” Katz says. He calls that level of immediate disclosure “ridiculous.”

“Usually it starts with you kind of joking around about something,” he says. “That’s kind of lost a bit, where I think dating apps are so, like, ‘I'm looking for someone who's this, this, and this, perfect. This person fits my match, let's go out.’ And I think that's kind of lame and sad.”

The culture of harsh judgment on dating apps makes users hyperaware of how they’re perceived. In the same way Katz finds others’ profiles cringe, he’s conscious about not wanting to come off that way himself. “It's scary because you know how harshly you judge people on the app” Katz says. “We're all doing the same thing.”

Tears for Fears

Meisel, the psychologist, finds that young adults have plenty of pejorative terms to describe sincerity. “For people who are going to college and meeting a lot of new people for the first time, a huge fear is that they're going to come off as cringe, try-hard, pick-me. There's just all of these weaponized terms that really control the social landscape,” she says.

Her younger patients often struggle at first to identify that it’s precisely this fear that’s getting in the way of their happiness. “It’s common that people come in feeling lonely, feeling disconnected, socially anxious, but they’re not quite sure why. And then in our conversations it becomes clear that these fears are playing an integral role in maintaining this distance from other people.”

Meisel thinks this aversion to vulnerability is related to a larger sense of disillusionment with the world. “It is very vogue to be cynical, to be pessimistic, to be an end-days thinker,” she says. “I think taking a protective stance is in line with having a cynical view of the future.”

“Vulnerability, in the form of genuineness, is the opposite of that,” she says.

In some ways, Gen Z is following in the footsteps of their elders—millennial irony was a much-discussed phenomenon of the early 2010s. But that ironic distance has given way to more sincere norms as millennials have arrived in middle age.

Wolfram finds millennials’ sincerity “revolting.” He points to how they respond to dating app prompts in the way they’re intended to be responded to. If the prompt asks the user to share their likes, for example, he often sees millennials “write two paragraphs of lists of everything that they actually like,” he says. “It’s very confusing.”

Gen Z’s fear of cringeyness might be cut from a different cloth than millennial irony. Wolfram thinks his “slice of Gen Z” is “much, much more irony-poisoned” than those just slightly younger or older, in part because the looming threat of being judged online has haunted his cohort from an early age. “A lot of it is learned,” he says. “I remember when I was a kid, I posted on Facebook this really sad-boy meme, and I got made fun of for it.”

Guilty by Association

Fully escaping the accusation of cringeyness in online dating might be a lost cause, because another cringeworthy offense, apparently, is simply being on a dating app in the first place.

“I feel like dating apps in general are already a little cringe,” says 24-year-old Manhattanite Erica Dick. She wants the profile of a prospective partner to reflect her discomfort. “There's absolutely this idea of ‘Let us acknowledge that this is weird.’ I guess I'm looking for someone else who is feeling the same way as me.”

Since dating apps are already a tacit admission of the desire for a relationship, a profile that suggests you’re not taking the app too seriously may be part of an effort to offset the “cringe” inherent in just being there. Multiple people mentioned that, on Hinge, many list their “most irrational fear” or the “riskiest thing” they’ve ever done as “downloading this app.”

But Meisel thinks there’s hope. She sees some of her younger clients rebelling against the fear of cringe. “They’re seeing how that vulnerability and sincerity is necessary in order to create meaningful deep relationships.”

[cloudedflowers]

Arthur is mean.

Yes and no, obviously.

It depends on the player and what they decide to do with him in their play through. Most don't have the heart to antagonize anyone else outside of maybe Micah or Bill but I'd like to acknowledge all the responses the gang gives when antagonized. (I find the gang's reactions most important than other npcs since they know him personally.)

No way am I hating on Arthur! I just think it's another interesting side of him and layer to his character that is worth at least taking a look at.

The responses you often get when antagonizing (keep in mind I collected this through videos) are:

Don't start with this/me / Not this again / Here we go (again) / I should've known I'm next / You're in that mood again / etc.

All points towards the facts that Arthur, at least prior to where the game picks up, has a reputation for being mean or having bad temper (pretty sure he says it himself too but I can't pin point a scene right now.)

For the women he also has stereotypical (and sort of misogynistic) lines like:

Smile more / A smile won't hurt / How are you not complaining/moaning right now?

(He does tell Kieran and Charles to smile too, Hosea to cheer up, but the women are consistently told that. Obviously there's the argument that it's a different time but he's shown himself to be more than decent to the women in game too.)

It also seems with specific characters like for example Swanson, Uncle or Javier, they are used to his ridicule when you choose to antagonize them about Reverend's drug use, Uncle's laziness and Javier's clothing style.

This is exasperated when Arthur is drunk.

Are you drunk/drinking again? / No one likes you when you're drunk / Liquor makes you mean / You're talking drunk again / You're a bad drunk / When will you learn to hold your liquor? / etc.

It's likely he just used to drink as regularly as the other men in camp and this is again player choice. (Although I would classify some members heavier drinkers than others.)

And, again, it shows that he has or had a tendency to be a mean drunk or mean person in general.

(Also would love to point out specific reactions by Dutch and Hosea when Arthur antagonizes them, one being by Dutch: "Are you getting ideas above your station again?" and the other by Hosea: "How about we talk about your problems?".

Another one is Arthur antagonizing Tilly, I know, ouch, by asking her if "he should call her Tilly Foreman" and making other remarks towards her old gang which distress her greatly. Gives the impression they all are veeery familiar with his attitude.

He also has the option to insinuate to Jack that John isn't his father or straight up say to him that he and the other adults lie to him. This shows that he says things just to be mean, even though he knows better because he is very well aware that Jack is John's son.)

All of this to say: I think there's a difference between people who are plain mean (you could think of Micah here) and people who choose to be mean, because you will have a sense of trust and expectation there that they will be nice, only to suddenly switch on you.

-> Many reactions to Arthur antagonizing members are exactly that, confusion: Come on, now / What did I do? / What do you mean? / What's that mean? / Oh, don't start / etc.)

[These are especially common with Lenny and Jack, both being a bit young (no shade to Lenny) and subsequently naive. Lenny might also be confused because he hasn't been very long with them, about a year I think.]

So, Arthur is mean. He can be nice, and he often is, but when he turns mean it's both expected and met with disappointment.

Hosea's reaction strikes me especially because it makes it sound like he knows Arthur is deflecting. And considering the shit he's been through, I imagine most of that anger came from the experiences with Mary and Eliza. Mary is openly despised around camp when her letters come up and I can guess it might stem from the fact that they watched her inadvertently turn Arthur miserable and bitter.

Let me know what you think about it and what you noticed yourself!

I don't doubt anyone forgets that Arthur is a mean guy, even if we primarily love to focus on his goofy, cute sides. I love this more difficult side of him because it fleshed out his character for me way more. He's just a person in the end and it reflects how he struggles to hold his tongue and control his temper. It gives him depth in regards to the years of his development that we don't get to see in game.

Also – just because he's mean doesn't mean he's bad.

There are plenty occasions where the game forces the player to do the good/right thing and even when John reflects on Low Honor Arthur, he calls him confusing but clings to the good parts he still had, which is his life that he owes him.

In the end, the game is about Arthur's (and in turn John's) redemption from their unlawful and cruel ways of life and even a Low Honor Arthur isn't a completely cold and heartless person, he's the product of letting his anger and bitterness consume him while High Honor Arthur looks at the things from the outside and chooses to try and let go of things.

High Honor Arthur can coexist with a mean Arthur - he knows how to do the right thing but he doesn't know how to say it. He can be a man that helps strangers and pays for his actions while simultaneously snapping at his closest companions and hitting them there where he knows it hurts.

My sources/references ig:

[yaoi-hate-machine]

ohhhh god i need some moral support re: animal welfare and having difficult conversations with difficult people

ok basically i feel the need to tell my mom that this foster dog cannot continue to stay here. and things are already Very tense between us and i fear she's going to blow up at me like she usually does when anyone pushes back against her.

i've seen one of our dogs ("my" dog echo) snap at this foster dog twice now. it seems like she's being protective of me. she has also just not been doing well since i was out of town for a few weeks; she stopped eating breakfast which is extremely unlike her and she's been throwing up and having other digestive issues. i attribute this to my mom physically not being able to walk her and not taking the time to go outside with her to play because she's very high energy and gets anxious when her exercise and enrichment needs aren't met.

so like. echo was already not being cared for and ill because of that. and my mom decided to foster this young adult dog who she has sleeping literally right next to echo, who has not been around another dog besides the other dog in the house in at least a year, and there has literally Never been a third dog inside the house before. echo keeps barking at this foster dog and he seems to be afraid of her.

i just 1. personally feel Extremely stressed about being downstairs and worrying that echo is going to snap at him or start a fight, 2. feel that this is so unfair to echo who is already stressed out to the point of being sick because she's not being cared for properly, and now is extra stressed out about a random dog in her space, and 3. feel that this is so unfair to the foster dog who will likely develop some kind of reactivity or fear of other dogs if he continues being around echo.

my mom is likely going to assume that i'm making this up because she hasn't seen echo snap at him and because i've been very upset at her due to the way she failed to communicate properly with me about any of this. i'm also just already having a cptsd emotional flashback bc of the tension between us so i feel intensely afraid of having this conversation and her reaction. she does Not respond well to being wrong or being called out on her mistakes/behavior. but i'm just not willing to stay silent and compliant while literally everyone else in the situation suffers. i can't keep betraying myself by fawning.

i'm torn between being passive or assertive in the convo. my heart is saying that i should be assertive because she has a tendency to steamroll, but my brain knows that esp with the tension that's already between us re: this specific situation, she will most likely register my assertiveness as combativeness and blow up or shut down. so i guess i should probably try to be gentler about it even tho i don't feel like being gentle. idk if i should come right out and say that he can't be here anymore to be clear in my communication or if i should just tell her about echo snapping at him and then saying that i don't think he should be here anymore?

i am also 100% prepared to contact the shelter directly and tell them about this, but i know my mom would be furious about this. i feel like "either you can tell them or i will" is my fail-safe if she's not receptive, but like. she would likely murder me. ok i need to stop saying things like that. she is not going to murder me. there are ways that she can hurt me but none of them are life-threatening. she can make me Feel like i'm in danger, but i am an adult who can protect and advocate for myself.

ok just to help myself i'm gonna do a little scripting below. feel free to lmk how it sounds/if you have any suggestions (basically i'm fucking autistic and having high-stress and urgent conversations like this is literally the bane of my existence)

"so i've seen echo snap at him twice now. the first time was the first full day he was here when i came downstairs in the morning, and it happened again a couple hours ago. it seems like echo is stressed out about him being here, which i can understand because she hasn't socialized with other dogs in a long time and there's never been another dog in her space. And she's clearly not feeling well, it's unheard of for her to refuse to eat and she's been throwing up. and he is definitely nervous around her in the house, he'll tuck his tail and shrink himself down when she's sniffing him. i personally feel really nervous about being downstairs now because it seems like echo's being protective of me. it's very likely that he'll become afraid of other dogs if it keeps happening, and it's also very likely that echo will become aggressive with other dogs if she continues feeling like he's a threat. i really don't think this is a good situation for either of them and i think that if you really want to help this dog, it would be best to call anderson and have them find another foster. i know you really wanted this to work out, but it just seems like bad timing and i'm really worried about their interactions having lasting effects on either or both of them. like i said, i'm also just really stressed about it and we had just talked about how stressed out and overwhelmed i am at home."

[x-v4mp3y3lin3r-x]

I'm gonna clarify a little because I'm not sure it's very obvious but what I mean by "the premise of the sexual acts themselves" was that I don't think it's appropriate to rank the events listed in the trial based on how severe you think they are, because there's no real reason to compare sexual violence like that.

I've been seeing posts emphasizing the incident where he threatened a woman and encouraged another man to urinate in her mouth, and that's huge to me because it's clear that people are reacting more to the involvement of the urine— which is a heavily discussed kink because people like to morally posture about how disgusting they find consensual play between adults— and I don't think that's right. I don't think you should be more appalled by urine being involved in a sexual act than you're disgusted by the fact that this was nonconsensual sexual violence.

If you find yourself conflating piss kinks with sexual violence then you've already lost to the conservative mindset. But this is unfortunately really common with sexual violence scandals— people walk around saying “Oh my god did you know so-and-so had a foot fetish?? He made a woman give him a footjob even though she didn't want to. Having a foot fetish is so disgusting and nasty.” entirely glossing over the sexual assault and instead focusing on a morally neutral kink that vanilla people happen to find unsavory.

There's nothing wrong with recounting the details of the incidents mentioned in the trial, but you should keep in mind that he's on trial for sex-trafficking, racketeering, & transportation for prostitution, not for having an unsavory fetish. And it does the victims of his violence no good to argue about who experienced the "worst" thing, when they all experienced unimaginable violence.

With the Sean Combs trial starting I can only imagine how many posts we're gonna see in the upcoming weeks that are acting like the kinks or premises of the sexual acts themselves are the disgusting bad part, instead of understanding that he's on trial for rape. The heinous, disgusting part of what he did was drugging people, coercing them, and threatening them so that he could rape them.

So no, your takeaway from this trial shouldn't be "teehee fetishes gross,” you should find it abhorrent that this man thought he was above treating people with dignity and that he thought he had the right to rape anybody he wanted. He's not a bad person because he had fetishes, or because he did things with men, he's a bad person BECAUSE HE'S A FUCKING SERIAL RAPIST.