#and they actually explain everything going on

[lovelytsunoda]

domesticated | oscar piastri

summary: yn comes back from a business trip to find her boyfriend doing the laundry. naturally, it’s this smidge of domesticity that makes her want to jump his bones

pairing: oscar piastri x girlfriend!reader

warnings: 18+, sex in a laundry room (and up against a laundry machine), men that pull their weight around the household are sexy as fuck!

the house was quiet when she came home. almost too quiet.

she left her tumi suitcase by the door, taking off her shoes and blazer before making her way through the foyer.

"oscar?" she called. "babe, i'm back. my flight landed early!"

she and oscar hadn't been living together for long, maybe six months at the absolute maximum. her five-day business trip to the other side of the country had been the longest that the young lovers had spent apart since they had moved in together.

the living room was empty, despite the flat screen tv playing a cricket match to the empty space. there was a mug of tea on the end table, half full and still warm.

"osc?" she called again, drumming her fingers against the wall. where could her boyfriend possibly be?

she could hear vibrations coming from deeper inside the house, a loud rattling, more like. she followed the noise to the laundry room, where she found oscar sitting on the tiled floor, surrounded by piles of laundry, the washing machine rattling away behind him. he had his headphones in, head bopping to whatever it was that he found helped him focus.

she knocked loudly on the door, heart jumping when he looked up at her with nothing but pure love in his eyes.

"hey, baby!" he said excitedly, stumbling over a pile of t-shirts on the ground. "you're back!"

he kissed her softly, hands coming to rest at her waist. "how was the conference?"

"a waste of time." she hummed, pulling him in closer. "what i really want to talk about is your laundry skills."

"oh yeah?" oscar grinned, nodding towards the piles on the floor. "i live here too, i should pull my weight. my race suits are dry clean only, but everything else can go in the machine. i've developed a system."

she raised an eyebrow, but couldn't deny how sexy it was that oscar wasn't afraid of a little bit of housework. "you have, have you?"

"yeah, do you want me to explain it?"

"actually, i would much rather you fuck me against the washing machine."

and who was oscar to disagree?

that's how she found herself pushed up against a running laundry machine, naked from the waist down. her legs were wrapped tightly around oscar's lower half, his sweatpants lying forgotten ono the floor and he kissed up her neck, teasing her entrance with the tip of his throbbing cock.

"christ, babe. you're this wet already?"

"missed you." she hummed, kissing him gently. "that's all."

"well, we can't have that, can we?"

he slid inside with one swift movement, filling her to the brim. he muttered a curse, face buried in her neck as he got settled. all he could feel was her: her warmth, the smoothness of her thighs as she drew him closer, the softness of the skin on her neck, the beating of her heart.

she was everything he could have ever wanted and more.

"fuck me, oscar. please."

keeping in time with the rhythmic churning of the washing machine behind her, oscar's thrusts started out slow but firm, testing the waters. her gentle moans and whimpers were music to his ears, and he bit back a few grunts of his own as he slipped in and out of her warm and welcoming pussy.

"oh, yes. right there, baby. fuck, you fill me so well." she moaned, head thrown back as she rolled her hips in time with oscar's movements.

"that's right, darling. keep taking my cock like a fucking champ."

"faster, oscar." she whimpered, nails digging into his shoulders. "faster."

he kissed her hurriedly, delivering a few more teasing and languid thrusts of his cock before pulling out and slamming back inside. the scream of pleasure she let out was positively delightful, followed by desperate pleas of 'more' and 'kiss me'.

which, of course, oscar was all too happy to oblige.

her body was curled around his, her aching nipples pressing against her lacy bra and showing through the flimsy white dress shirt she was wearing. oscar was transfixed by the sight as her breasts bounced with the effort of his thrusts, pushing her against the machine with each feral pound.

"yes, baby." he grunted. "just let me take care of you." one hand gently tugged at her hair, the other braced on the countertop. the sounds of his balls hitting her skin was almost as loud as the noise the washing machine was making,

"fuck, oscar, i'm so close! wanna come on your thick cock." she pleaded, marking the skin underneath the collar of his white shirt. a shirt that was now completely soaked through with sweat.

"yeah? are you that pent up, baby? you were only gone for five days. you know i'm coming with you next time, right? i mean, my hand can only do so much. it doesn't cuddle with me, or kiss me softly, or smell like fresh vanilla-"

"oscar!" she squealed as he thrusted hard enough to send her body shotting upwards towards the bottom of the hanging cabinet. her fingers scrabbled for purchase, limply clinging to the door handle.

"right, okay." oscar grunted. "i've got you, sweet girl. come on, give it to me. give it to me, angel."

she came with a cry, her body curling around his. this was always the part where she felt the most emotional, and the most vulnerable. oscar pulled her close, running his hands up and down his arms while he tried to gently thrust through it.

“atta girl. you’re so good, baby. I love you so much.”

“you didn’t finish.” she whispered softly, licking her lips.

oscar grinned. “baby, I’ve got gas left in the tank like you wouldn’t believe. what do you say we go to the bedroom and you let me show you just how much I missed you?”

[habken]

On the topic of asking you how to draw things we’re struggling with… how do you handle arms? Specifically arms and their proper connections to the body.

I’ve gotten into this habit of drawing only headshots (shoulders included) and when i try to extend it into an actual full body, I can never do the arms.

Everything else is fine, but the arms are just… no. They stayed pinned to the sides, or conveniently nonexistent, as I don’t know how to draw them proportioned properly otherwise.

I will try to explain but you can definitely find better advice elsewhere

I think first, having a solid understanding of what's going on underneath is important, here's some of the bones/muscles that are the most relevant. Knowing what the understructure looks like and how it all connects will help you figure out the surface stuff

When you move your arm, all those muscles and bones move too, when the arm goes up, it affects your clavicle, your scapula, your pecs, etc. So you're not just moving an arm, you have to think about how the shoulder/neck/chest will go along with it

same kind of deal with the back view

proportion-wise uhhh arms go down to about mid thigh and a persons wingspan is around the same width as their height head to toe

[bringbackmaes14]

My mom has her TV on in her room almost 24/7 and it's always on some news outlet or other. We talk a lot about politics and world/national/local events. And we do have a lot of varying views on a lot of things but we're both adults who are capable of saying "well we've both stated we have differing opinions and it's clear that we're actually arguing at this point and not just talking so let's put away the topic for now." But there are also other times where I'm just too overwhelmed by my own life to think about what's going on in the bigger world around me, so my mom knows to be hesitant to bring up news stuff with me (i.e. she doesn't just start talking about politics/world events with me rather she'll ask if I'm in the mindset to discuss things when she wants my opinion on something). This is all relevant.

We've always been able to talk about nearly everything from the economy to the school system to human rights to human tragedy and we've never tried to censor ourselves around each other (outside of getting too emotional with our language). But about two weeks ago when the United Healthcare CEO was assassinated, my mom, who is in her 50s, came to me and she said "Did you see that the CEO of United Healthcare got unalived?"

And I just sat there and looked at her completely confused and she was like "did you not hear about it? It's all over the news. It happened in clear view on the street." Like the problem was that I hadn't heard of the event not that my Gen-X mother had just in a real life conversation said the word "unalived".

And I told her as much. "Yes I've heard that. Why did you say 'unalived' instead of 'murdered'?

And she told me that she just thought that since I'm touchy about heavier topics sometimes (which is definitely true, that does occasionally happen) she thought it would be better to just not use the "heavy" words. I asked her if she realized, honestly, how stupid that was because regardless of the word she used, she was still talking about a murder, it didn't change the subject matter, she was only making the subject matter seem less significant and severe by changing the word to baseless internet lingo that a bunch of misguided, clout-chasing influencers spread.

She hadn't. She's doesn't use the Internet replacement words a lot, online or otherwise. This was a first. She thought this was a different situation, and a fine one to use it in, and like the above stories people shared, it's still not.

I'm allowed to say there are days where I want to avoid heavier topics because I'm overwhelmed. I'm allowed to not ever really discuss certain topics because they actually trigger me based on my own experiences. But people who are out here living their whole lives like just talking about about difficult or controversial topics, or asking questions about it, or enjoying media where it's portrayed (especially when it's actually portrayed respectfully) are being ridiculous, and they're handicapping themselves. They're never going to learn how to talk about hard things, or how to handle hard things. And honestly I feel bad for them.

Luckily, in my case, once I explained why my mom saying what she said was incredibly weird and honestly devaluing to the conversation, she backtracked and told me that (like I said above) she doesn't talk like that regularly and she has no intention to start; it's just that this was a huge news event and that day had been particularly rough for me emotionally and she wasn't sure how to approach it. So her intentions were good and I'm very lucky that she understands and also agrees that the Internet censorship language is incredibly unnecessary.

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

[crow-quet]

*You tell a joke about two kids who played in a muddy flower garden.

*...

*You tell a joke about a kid who slept in the soil.

[tanadrin]

I would love to hear the rant about social media doomerism and conspiracy

I’m on my phone right now but the summary version is something like:

Humans are bad at integrating information into their worldview accurately bc of various cognitive biases

Social media incentivizes us seeking out content that excites fear or anger or irritation

Social media thus causes us to form negative impressions of the world bc it mediates so much information consumption and discourse these days

This general negative affective impression is subject to high confirmation bias and ppl in general are really bad at divorcing an affective impression of a thing from their dispassionate reasoning abt a thing

(Bc one of the functions of an affective impression is to “cache” our conclusions about a topic to save time and effort later)

(In general if you are a cynic and pessimist you can fall prey to these biases w/o social media but I think social media makes more ppl susceptible to them)

People don’t want to be dupes so they seek refuge in cynicism. We treat cynicism as wise or worldly when in fact cynicism makes you a dupe and an easy mark for grifters. Cynicism and low trust foster conspiracism, paranoia, and antisocial politics

(This is why so many congenitally contrarian folks seem to flit effortlessly between the far left and far right; it’s not horseshoe theory, they’ve just cooked their brains on this stuff)

This is a world where populist anti-social politicians like Trump and the AfD thrive, bc they will lie about how everything is terrible and people will nod along, bc it explains why their social media is full of awful stories of, like, immigrants eating pets and shit

But it doesn’t just have to be insane lies only a moron could believe. It can be any impression about a fact in the world that it is difficult to personally check and which is vulnerable to being swayed by anecdote

This is how we get a word where people think crime rates are higher than they’ve ever been when in fact crime is falling

Or child predators lurk around every corner when in fact children are safer than ever

Or the American economy is in a recession when in fact it’s doing historically well by just about every available metric (now with full employment AND low inflation!)

Because in a big world even where things are in general good and getting better you can always produce infinite individual examples of shitty things and pipe those in a steady stream into people’s eyeballs, and then point to that and leverage people’s low trust attitudes and their cynicism which tells them they are smarter than the experts and go “statistics is just a fancy way to lie! The world is secretly terrible! Every bad thing is even worse than you thought and every good thing is a lie!”

(Nevermind the whole phenomenon where anything that is complicated or that someone does not themselves understand gets treated like it’s actually secret and a conspiracy.)

And here I know I have to include some disclaimer about how this is not to discount individual cases of suffering or struggle, which are real, or that there are indeed some really awful things happening in the world right now, which there are, but you know what?

I’m tired of doing that. People with reading comprehension operating in good faith ought to be able to deduce that general statements do not obviate particular exceptions, and people who cling to their doomerism as a kind of emotional life raft do not generally argue with me in good faith.

Sometimes doomerism is a load-bearing pillar of their politics, which I think is dumb—I think you can be a leftist or a progressive without being a doomer! In fact I think doomerism is antithetical to useful politics!

Sometimes they are just depressed and treatment-resistant. Sometimes they are just angry misanthropes who want to feel justified in their misanthropy. Some doomers are themselves in bad circumstances and feeling hopeless about that—to them I am enormously sympathetic. Though a lot of doomers will admit they personally are doing OK—this does not seem to be most doomers.

But I think in general cynicism and doomerism and a worldview dominated by a general nebulous air of Everything Is Awful and by abstract nouns with threatening auras is not conducive to wisdom or understanding or useful politics or leading a happy and fulfilling life.

[felassan]

David Gaider: "It occurs to me, after reading posts getting it spectacularly wrong, that there are a lot of misconceptions over how game studios organize and, in particular, who makes the actual decisions about what ends up in your game. Much of it is by folks who don't *try* to get it... but not all, surely. I'll explain it a bit, but a big caveat: I'm going to talk in generalities and roles. Actual titles vary (a lot) from studio and studio, and the bigger a studio is the more segmented their departments (and thus management) is going to be. Even so, most studios, big and small, kind of work the same. To start, you're going to break your devs up into at least three groups: design (what is the game? how does it work?), art (what will it look like?), and engineering (making it go). There can be a lot of cross-over and some departments that don't fit into a project structure (QA, Marketing, etc.)"

Rest of post under cut due to length.

"There's going to be someone in charge of these groups - these are usually called "leads" or "senior leads". The actual title varies. The Design Lead could be a Lead Designer, for instance, or it could be a Creative Director and a Lead Designer is what they call someone further down the chain."

"These leads all report to a Project Director, someone who's job it is to manage the project as a whole. Now, this part gets a little dicey. Depending on the studio, this role can be anything from more production-oriented (they control the schedule) to an outright auteur who micro-manages everything."

"More importantly, it's the PD who hands down the project goals to the Leads: the strategic goals, the needed features, the shape of it all, etc. The Leads then figure out how their department is going to tackle those, and work with each other. If the Leads conflict, it's the PD's role to solve it. How much autonomy or ownership those Leads have is, like I said, really up to the individual PD and that studio's culture. Even in the case of a PD who has a lot of authority over the project, however, they still report to the studio leadership (unless it's the same person, like in a small studio)."

"The studio leadership is going to be giving the PD their marching orders, often in the form of those strategic goals. If there's a publisher involved, that's where the studio leadership is likely getting those goals. The PD, then, ends up being the person who has to negotiate with everyone above."

"What does this mean? If the studio or publisher has concerns about the project, they're calling in the PD to explain. If the project needs more time or resources, it's on the PD to explain to them why and how and when. If there are a lot of layers above the PD... yes, it's a looot of meetings. So while the PD is managing up, the Leads are managing down. With big projects, that means managing the "sub-leads"... those in charge of the individual sections of their department. It'd be unmanageable otherwise, and the bigger the project the more of these there are going to be."

"What does this mean? Well, let's look at the way BioWare broke up Design (as of 8 years ago, anyhow). Design consisted of Narrative Design, Level Design, Systems Design, Gameplay Design, and Cinematic Design (who worked in tandem with Cinematic Animation, which actually fell under the Art Lead)."

"The sub-leads are handed their goals by the lead, and work out how they're going to produce their particular corner of the game and also, more importantly, how they're going to work with each other. Conflicts between sub-leads are handled by the lead, as are ANY conflicts with other departments. What conflicts could there be, you ask? Dependencies, for one. "I can't do X until Y is done, but Y is someone else's job". Or scope. "We need 20 doodads but the sub-lead said they only have time to make 10, what now?". Even outright differences in vision. Big projects means room for a LOT of egos. If you think this is easier with a smaller (or indie) project, the answer is "yes, but not really". The roles are still necessary but often get combined into one person. Or outsourced, and someone still needs to manage the outsourcing. Things fall off over-full plates. It's a different kind of hard. Anyhow, the point of all this is: the further you go down the chain, the smaller the box you can play in is. The less you have actual say over, and even then that say is subject to being overridden by ANYONE above... and must still play nicely with the needs and goals of the other departments. You also need to keep in mind that projects are constantly in flux. Problems that were thought solved need re-solving. The team falls behind schedule and scope needs to change. You are constantly in a dance, within your tiny box, trying to figure out sub-optimal solutions that cause the least pain. And there will be pain. Shit rolls downhill, as they say, and when the project encounters big issues that means those high up have the sad job of figuring out how to spread it out and who can afford to take the hardest hit. If you're that one, you take it on the chin and you deal. This is the job. Lastly, I'll re-iterate: not every studio works this way, exactly. The roles exist, sure, but are not divided up so neatly or as easily identifiable. Even so, this should give you an idea what "lead" and "sub-lead" mean... and perhaps help you imagine what it's like existing further down the chain."

[source thread]

[ellecdc]

Matched

Finnick Odair x fem!victor!reader who are constantly introduced to each other [1.2k words]

CW: people trying to introduce Finnick and reader, Capitol behaviours (body modification, eating-purging-eating, no sense of propriety), fluff, a surprise

You’d come to expect a lot of things to happen when attending a party in the Capitol.

There would be people dressed to varying levels of near insanity. There would be people literally eating until they were sick, then forcing themselves to be sick so that they could continue eating. There would be people approaching you, asking you questions, and running their hands over your clothes or hair or jewelry or body as though having seen the most traumatic moments of your life aired on TV from the safety of their homes made you friends.

And there would always be people trying to introduce you to or set you up with their favourite victor; the Capitol’s darling.

“There you are, darling!” A rather reptilian looking woman you knew to go by Komoda greeted you as she approached; arm aggressively interlocked with another’s who didn’t appear to be all that willing to be there. “There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to.”

You plastered on your show time smile and offered your hand to Capitol Darling Finnick Odair who accepted it readily, bowing his head slightly as he met your gaze.

“Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

“It always is in the Capitol.” You volleyed, smiling back over to the Capitol citizen who seemed very excited to be seeing two of her favourite victors intermingling. “Finnick and I have met a few times, actually.”

Komoda seemed rather bemused at the fact that the two of you had met and not immediately jumped each other's bones. “Oh… oh! Really?”

You hummed in the affirmative.

“Every year when we mentor new tributes.” Finnick explained.

Komoda tried to laugh. “Well, I just think that the two of you would get on rather well.”

“We get on fine.” You continued, feigning ignorance.

“The two of you would make a very handsome couple!” One of her friend’s chimed in, earning him nods of approval from the quickly forming group of spectators.

“Well, looks aren’t everything, are they?” You tried, and a few of the more…altered individuals seemed rather perplexed at the thought. “The two of us might not have anything in common.”

“That’s very true.” Finnick agreed. “Let’s see; how do you feel about the beach?”

“Too much sand; I’m shaking it out of everything I own for far too long afterwards. What’s your favourite pastime?”

“Swimming.” He answered.

“I never learned how.” You continued with pursed lips. “Least favourite season?”

“Winter. What’s your favourite holiday?”

“Christmas.”

Finnick hummed in displeasure before continuing. “Favourite animal?”

“Cats. Yours?”

“Dogs.”

You hummed in displeasure. “How do you feel about white chocolate?”

“Love it.” He replied easily; you scrunched your nose at him before he carried on. “What’s a dealbreaker for you?”

“People who like white chocolate.”

He pressed his lips into a flat line and nodded his head in understanding. “Very fair.”

You looked back over at Komoda and her friends to see them all gaping at the two of you.

“Sorry to disappoint, folks.” Finnick apologized with a shrug of his shoulder. “It’s apparently just not meant to be.”

“But…” Komoda started, looking rather crestfallen. “I…I was so sure!”

“You’re not the first to try to set us up.” You placated, placing a gentle hand over the scale-like jewels on the shoulder of her gown. “You probably won’t be the last, either.”

“Maybe the 29th time will be the charm, hm?” Finnick offered you with a wink, causing you to roll your eyes at him.

“Don’t hold your breath, Odair.”

“I can hold my breath for a very long time, sweetheart; I’m a world class swimmer, afterall.”

“Oh, you’re something alright.” You laughed as you turned to walk away, deciding then to begin your rounds of goodbyes before heading back to your suite.

You held the towel to your face for a few seconds, just taking a moment to breathe and enjoy the quiet, warmth, and serenity of your post-party ritual.

You were just about to pull the towel away when you felt gentle hands slide around your waist before you were being embraced between two strong arms.

“Long night?” He murmured into your shoulder before pressing a kiss to it.

You hummed in agreement and pulled the towel away from your face, smiling at Finnick in the reflection of the mirror.

“It always is in the Capitol.” You replied.

He offered you a knowing smile before pressing another kiss to your shoulder.

“Missed you.” He said before reaching around you to grab some makeup wipes to begin removing the work his own stylists put into his appearance tonight. “Anything interesting happen?”

You hummed noncommittally as you smoothed cream over your skin. “Not really. Someone tried setting me up with this guy again.”

“Really?” Finnick asked, feigning intrigue. “Was it a match made in heaven?”

You made a so-so sound. “He was pretty cute,” you allowed, “but I don’t know if it would work.”

“No?”

“No. I mean, for one, he didn’t start drooling the second he saw me. Huge red flag I think.”

With that, Finnick theatrically slammed his hand down on the countertop and levelled you with a disbelieving look. “You mean to tell me that he didn’t immediately fall to his knees in worship?”

“No!”

Finnick shook his head; simply aghast. “You can do so much better, honey.”

Your smile turned soft as you watched him lather some of his face wash between his hands before bringing them to his face. “I think so too.”

By the time he was done with washing his face, you were sitting on the counter with Finnick standing between your legs as you massaged some moisturizer into his skin.

“They don’t know what you deserve anyway.” Finnick states suddenly.

Your brows scrunched in confusion. “Who doesn’t?”

“The Capitol people; they don’t know what kind of partner you deserve.”

You stayed quiet as you finished working the product into his skin, pressing a kiss to his lips to alert him to the fact that you were finished. You felt rather shy when he opened his eyes and you found yourself pinned beneath his sea green gaze.

“They’d be sorely mistaken if they thought Capitol Darling Finnick Odair was all you deserved.”

You smiled softly at him before pressing another softer, lingering kiss to his lips.

“I’m rather fond of this Finnick Odair.”

You relished in the slight pink dusting of his cheeks as his smile grew wider before he pulled you in, cradling you to his chest.

You’d come to expect a lot of things to happen when attending a party in the Capitol.

It would take your stylists three hours to prep you for the party. It would take you forty minutes to disassemble yourself after the party. The outfits and jewelry you wore would cost more than most District families saw in years.

And there would always be people trying to introduce you to or set you up with their favourite victor; the Capitol’s darling.

The best part was that no one knew you and Finnick Odair have actually been dating behind closed doors for four years now.

[rosesdrop]

What do they feel for you ?

(Check out patreon for the extended version)

Pile 1:

There's this immense amount of energy ready to be directed towards a specific goal, the goal is you. They are definitely action takers they don't stay reluctant for long, it's part of who they are, they just like to see energy explode everywhere, they're passionate and so is the way they express themselves, they don't hold themselves back. They feel like you'd hesitate though, it makes them feel discouraged, it's like everytime they try to let you know proudly the kind of person they are you seem to back away, as if you're not so contented with what you see, they believe they're probably not your type, hence the reluctance from yourside. They try to change themselves sometimes to fit your standards, they try so hard to fit in what would seem like your ideal type. They think you're a perfectionist so you always look for people that share the same vibes with you

Pile 2:

This person feels like your business is their business, they're invasive. The reason is, they feel disconnected from you so they're using indirect ways to reach you, even if means spying or meddling in your business. It hurts them deep inside even if they appear rough. They cannot express their emotions for some reason. They feel lonely most of the time. It's hard for them to explain themselves because it seems like everything is not fine with them or they think that you'll see it this way, so they don't even try. Even if you think you know them they won't show you who they truly are. They're contradictory, they wanna know things about you but they won't let you even get close.

Pile 3:

This person is exited for what to come next with you, they talk about you to their friends. They put a lot of hope on you. They give a lot of value to this connection. With you they feel like they can let their walls down, they trust you. They do feel like your presence is important, they don't wanna miss it or make things harder so they try to go with the current to keep things calm. They believe that deep down you actually care for them, they know that you try to hide it from them but it's as  clear for them as the sun. They try to sweep all of their negative emotions under the rug and keep up a good behaviour, they want to let you know that they are a good and reliable person so that maybe you can be more open to them.

[solxamber]

Hi can I have Ignihyde for # 8, fluff or comedy. Thank you!

Anime Boot Camp || Idia Shroud ft. Ortho

For the Holiday Event! || Prompt: "This is non-negotiable" ; Genre: Fluff with Comedy ;

You should’ve known better. You really should have. But Idia had given you one of those rare, half-excited, half-nervous smiles, and you’d been putty in his hands.

“Sure, Idia,” you’d said with zero hesitation. “I’d love to watch the new season with you.”

A seemingly innocent offer. A simple act of camaraderie. And then, Idia had dropped the bomb.

“Great. We’ll start from season one. It’s non-negotiable.”

Season one?

“Wait—how many seasons are there?” you asked cautiously, trying to keep the panic out of your voice.

Idia adjusted his tablet, the glow highlighting his sinister grin. “Nineteen. Not including the movies, OVAs, or the bonus material. But don’t worry, the filler episodes are only about 35%.”

Your soul left your body.

“I—uh…” you stammered, searching for an escape. “Do we really need to watch everything? I thought we were just watching the new season?”

“You can’t watch season 20 without context!” Idia exclaimed, horrified. “You’d miss all the foreshadowing and character arcs! It’s essential to the viewing experience.”

You looked at him, and there it was: the genuine excitement in his eyes, the rare spark of passion that made him absolutely irresistible. Damn your stupid heart.

“Okay,” you sighed. “Let’s do it. Start from episode one.”

Idia’s face lit up, and if you weren’t already melting, his quiet “Y-you’re the best,” would’ve sealed the deal.

That’s how you found yourself on Idia’s couch, sandwiched between him and Ortho, with snacks piled precariously around you.

“This is the start of a life-changing journey,” Ortho said cheerfully, handing you a soda. “Big Brother has been waiting for someone to share this with forever!”

You glanced at Idia, who was trying to hide his blush behind his hoodie.

“You sure we’re not biting off more than we can chew here?” you asked weakly as the opening theme of season one blasted from the giant screen.

Idia waved you off. “Nah. If we watch at 1.5x speed, skip the ending songs, and only take five-minute breaks every eight episodes, we’ll finish in about four days.”

“Four days?”

“Non-negotiable,” he reminded you smugly, tossing popcorn into his mouth.

By day two, you’d developed Stockholm Syndrome for the characters.

“NO, KAZUTAKA, DON’T DO IT!” you yelled, clutching the blanket you’d stolen from Idia’s bed.

“It’s his tragic backstory arc,” Idia explained, completely unfazed by your emotional outburst. “He has to do it for the narrative payoff in season 14.”

You groaned. “This show is going to kill me.”

“It builds character,” Idia said, smirking.

Meanwhile, Ortho was a model of efficiency, pausing episodes precisely for snack breaks and bringing you hot towels like you were at an anime spa. You were starting to think Ortho might be the MVP of this whole operation.

“Ortho, you’re a saint,” you said as he handed you a cup of tea.

“I just want to support Big Brother’s happiness,” Ortho chirped, beaming.

Idia mumbled something unintelligible and pulled his hoodie tighter.

By day four, you were fully invested.

“THE PLOT TWIST! I KNEW IT!” you screamed, nearly knocking the bowl of chips off your lap.

“Pshh, called it back in episode 47,” Idia muttered, though the gleam in his eyes said he was enjoying this more than he’d admit.

“You did not!” you argued.

“I’ve seen this, like, three times, noob,” he retorted smugly.

Ortho, who had already created a mini shrine for your endurance, clapped in delight. “You’re catching up to Big Brother’s level of dedication!”

When the final credits rolled, you leaned back with a dramatic sigh. “We did it. I can’t believe we actually did it.”

“I can’t believe you survived,” Idia said, looking at you with a mix of awe and amusement.

“Maybe a family sometimes,” you said, stretching, “is just you, your crush, and his technomantic humanoid brother.”

Ortho tilted his head. “Does that mean you’re officially part of the family?”

You froze, glancing at Idia. His face was redder than a lava eel, and he was aggressively pretending to read something on his tablet.

“Well,” you said, smirking. “That depends on your brother.”

Idia groaned, burying his face in his hoodie. “You’re insufferable,” he mumbled.

And yet, when you shifted closer to nudge him playfully, he didn’t pull away.

Masterlist

[backinmyphase]

Part 1

Thinking about how obsessed King of Curses Sukuna is with you, you, who was originally just a gift from a village.

Lord Sukuna, who is oblivious to the reason why he treats you differently, who thinks you are just the most intriguing person he had seen in years. He didn't know it was over for him the moment he saw your standing there, anger obvious behind your loosely mask. You looked at him with these challenging eyes and raised your head, making that snappy comment. Normally he would have killed you right then and there.

But he didn't. In fact he doesn't even know why he had burned down that village for you.

And now you were sitting in his estate, always with that scowl on your face.

Why did he allow you to eat with him? Why did he order you to eat with him? He doesn't know. But he didn't want you to eat without him, which he just can't explain to himself.

He couldn't explain why he made sure Uraume was watching over you. Didn't know why he gave you your own chamber, so many new clothes and why he gave you permission to go inside his library. Something inside him was just telling him that was right.

And that something inside of him was so angry to see you falling into yourself. To see you neglecting your health over weeks.

It was evening.

Like always, there was a big dinner prepared for the king and he had ordered you to eat with him. But you didn't touch your food, no you just sat there, looking at your plate to avoid his gaze. Oh, he didn't like that.

He stopped eating, narrowing his eyes on your cowering figure. "Why are you not eating."

"Not hungry." your voice was hoarse but still snappy like always.

"You need to eat."

He glanced at Uraume, who shook their head. A silent note you didn't have any sickness.

You picked at the food, but still no sign of actual eating. And god, did it drive him crazy. You were driving him crazy. Your never leaving scowl and your constant denying of everything he had laid out. He just didn't get you.

He didn't know why he even bothered. But he still spoke up.

"What is on your mind?"

You looked up at him. There was no scowl, like he thought, no there was just a shimmer of exhaustion and maybe frustration.

"What am I even doing here, my Lord?" your voice didn't have any sharp in it. "I'm no servant for you, no concubine, not even a jester or anything like that. Why am I here?"

Silence flooded the room. Because you had just asked the question Sukuna asked himself every day. Why did he even bring you here?

He was clueless. Or that was what his brain was telling him.

He inspected you, your almost pleading eyes and he didn't like how you looked at him. He didn't like the almost hopeless look in your eyes.

"Did you want to stay with these people, is it that?" he took a sip of wine.

"No, we both know it's not that." you muttered, taking a deep breath. "Why do I not work for you? Why are you so -"

He raised an eyebrow at you as you struggled to find the right word. Then you finally shook your head.

"Why are you so nice to me?"

He couldn't help but chuckle, a grin following. "You mean, why has the King of Curses not killed me yet?"

You scoffed. "Yes."

"Well you see," he stopped for a moment, before speaking again. "I find you fascinating. And I like to know what I find fascinating."

You rolled your eyes, another thing he only liked when you did it. "So I'm here to be watched like an animal because the King finds me exotic, how kind."

He started to grow impatient, he didn't know why. "You think I would let a meekly animal into my library and give them their own chambers? You think lowly of me."

You started to blink at him, confusion visible on your face. It was his turn to scoff now.

"You're fascinating because I don't get you. And I want to know you. That's why I brought you here." At least that's what he thought.

You turned completely silent, your eyes now looking down onto your plate again.

"That's why you don't 'work' for me, I don't want you to. I don't need you to." he took another sip. "You just shouldn't get your hands dirty."

He looked at you, waiting for a response. Watching how you avoided his gaze, how you gulped. For a second your eyes flicked up to look at him, but went down immediately as your eyes meet his.

"Stop." you were muttering again.

"What?"

"Staring at me like that."

"Why?" He grinned, lowering his voice. "You know I like to stare."

He saw a faint tint of blush on the part of your face he could see. You were silent for a while until you cleared your throat. "I can't eat with you staring at me like that."

. . .

"Alright, I can leave you alone to eat." he stood up. "But you have to now. Eat."

A small chuckle escaped you. "Is that an order?"

"No, it's a request." With that he turned around, leaving to go to his chambers.

You waited til he left the room to breathe. Your body finally relaxing. You looked at Uraume.

"He sounds like he is in... Does he know how he sounds?"

Uraume shook their head. "No, he has no clue. But he wants you to eat, so please do."

@thequeenofcurses

[saltnsugarbear]

an inch away from more than just friends (18+)

summary: based on the word prompt "I wanted you to be my first" with Carmy!

title from: "Naked In Manhattan" by Chappell Roan

word count: 5.1k

content warnings: beginnings of smut!!! MDNI!! stripper reader (can still be read as gn!), kissing, swearing, teasing Carmy, innuendos left and right, unprotected sex, brief fingering

side note: if anyone wants to yap about Carmy and stripper reader in my inbox after this, please do!!! they're rotting my brain. i love this dynamic <3 I'm actually so excited to post this raahh!!!

Living in New York was expensive.

This is no secret. But the results meant you worked two jobs. One as a bar tender and one as.... An exotic dancer. To put it kindly.

Two night jobs gave you mostly nocturnal habits, but the tips were good. Most of them were in ones and you couldn't exactly pay for everything with a band of dollar bills.

Which is how you ran into Carmy. Outside of a bank. He was lost and you were in a rush to get to the bar.

"Shit- Watch where you're fuckin' goin'!" You hiss as you stumble back, adjusting your bag strap as you steady yourself.

Your first interaction resembled those videos of puppies and senior dogs. You berating him mildly, him knocking you down with a few sentences and you hesitating before going back to nipping his ankles. You're embarrassed now by the way you trailed after him on the sidewalk. You followed this man just because he ran into you on accident.

Carmy has never told you why he didn't yell at you on that day. Why he didn't tell you off for following him through two stoplights. Just like how you couldn't explain why you felt the need to berate this curly-haired stranger in the middle of New York. It also ended up being a pure matter of coincidence when one of your regulars took you to dinner. A dinner that resulted in a kitchen tour that led you back to the man who ran into you.

You stuck around enough to pry a phone number out of him. He was easy to crack, batting your lashes at him and quiet pleading.

He didn't anticipate quite how many notifications you'd wrack up on his phone. He felt obnoxious, being the person whose phone was always buzzing. You were like a labrador chasing at his heels for his attention. Carmy felt bad about when he tried ghosting you. Letting you lead a one-sided conversation for a day.

Just when he thought he'd gotten rid of his distraction, you showed up in the alleyway where he smoked after work. You were already out there when he got outside, leaning against the wall with a cigarette on your lips. That night you managed to convince him to give you a ride to the club after coming all the way out to Daniel to scold him for trying to ghost you.

The first time Carmy pulled up in front of the club, his face flushed bright pink. When you turned to thank him, you couldn't help but tease him over it.

"Aw, Carmen! You didn't tell me you've never been to a club before," You smile at him sweetly.

"Carmy," He says quickly, trying to clear his throat. "Just Carmy is fine."

His words make you hum, watching him as you rest your head against the headrest.

"Wanna come in? Can give you a free dance for the ride," You offer him, smile widening as you watch flush work over his ears and down his neck.

"I uh- I've got to um- I can't I gotta-" He stutters, trying to get out some excuse.

"Fuckin' with you, Carmen," You giggle as you open the passenger door. "You gotta pay for a dance just like everyone else."

You bid him thank you and goodnight after you climbed out of his car, blowing him a kiss through the window as you went inside. And thus started your friendship with Carmy. Although unconventional, you intrigued him. He had never hung out with someone so.... Brazen. Someone so sure about who they were and so different. Someone like you usually trailed after Mikey, fawning over him in hopes he might take you to dinner or to his bed. You were so different from Carmy that it just... Worked.

You brought a different sort of comfort in Carmy. Neither one of you had any expectations for this, and that was enough.

You took to inviting yourself to Carmy's apartment in the beginning before he started asking you over every night. You never expected him to make you dinner but after a few nights of your intrustion, he started asking about your favorite dishes. Started cooking for someone other than himself or a customer.

Which is how you ended up in his kitchen, telling him about your day before work. Complaining about your car that had been acting up and smoking out of the tire well.

"My car's in the shop.." You pout, leaning against the counter, twirling your pen between the surface and your fingers.

"Yeah?" Carmy asks, distantly. He's making you dinner before you have to leave for your shift.

"'S gonna be... Stupid expensive," You sigh, laying your arms on the counter and resting your chin on your forearm. "And Sierra has been askin' for lots of my shifts so I'm not gettin' as much as usual... Gonna be tight between that and rent... 'S my luck though.."

Carmy glances back when you sigh, heart twisting when he sees how your lip juts out with your cheek pressed against your arm.

Carmy tries not to let his thoughts run too wild. Godforbid he messes a good thing up. But it's really hard when you're looking up at him with wide eyes and mouth twisted in a pout. It's easy to let his mind wander to another scenario where you'd look at him like that. Hands resting on your thighs as you sit on your knees, eyes practically begging him to take off his jeans.

He's quick to turn back to the stove, distracting his mind from those thoughts by focusing on what he knew. Food. Not sex and definitely not how you'd look in bed.

Carmy distracts himself with plating dinner. He pulls out two of his pasta bowls and plates up the chicken alfredo you begged him to make for you tonight. Not that you really had to, he would make anything you asked him to. Carmy can hear your hum of excitement as you stand up straight. You've learned to watch Carmy work from the counter instead of trying to help. It just created a bigger headache for the both of you.

Once he's finished plating and puts the bowl in front of you, you give him a quick 'thank you' befire digging in. You carry most of the conversation, making sure to let Carmy know when you wanted his feedback (you learned early-on that Carmy was content to listen, even when you prompted him for a response. He needed to be invited to share his thoughts with you). To anyone else his responses would seem disinterested, but you knew him enough that anything more than a half stuttered few words was good for you.

Carmy does let you help clean up. Letting you pack up the extra food Carmy has started to include so you could take something to your dancer friends or to take home. Carmy focused on rinsing dishes off before putting them in the dishwasher.

You've both fallen into a routine. Once you're both done cleaning, Carmy goes to his room to collect his things for work. You collect your bag from the living room and slip on your shoes and coat.

When you're both ready, Carmy corals you out the door and letting you lead him to the parking garage across from his apartment building. Again the car is filled by your chatter and Carmy's limited input as he drives you to work.

There's a weird vibe when Carmy pulls up to the curb in front of the club. His fingers tap erratically on the wheel and he looks like he's deep in thought. You're about to climb out of the car when he speaks up.

"Y'know, I could um... I could foot the uh, the mechanic bill for ya?" Carmy suggests.

"What?" You ask, turning back towards him quickly.

"For your car... Could pay it off for ya.." He shrugs like it's not a big deal.

"Carm.." You sigh, preparing to turn down what's actually a great offer.

"'S not a big deal promise. You're tight on money and I don't want y'stressin' and risk missin' out on more.." He says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. It's a moments hesitation before you throw your arms around him, leaning over the center console to give him a hug.

"Thanks, Carm," You mutter in his jacket before pulling away. "Means a lot."

You turn back and open the door before turning back to him. Carmy makes a noise of surprise when you place a quick kiss to his cheek, admiring the light lipgloss stain on his cheek. You climb out before he can say anything, ducking down to peer at him from the sidewalk, "Thank you, Carmen!"

You wave him goodbye as he pulls away from the curb, face bright red and stomach full of butterflies.

He's so fucked.

You hope to God Carmy actually picks up his phone. He usually does but you can never be too sure on Carmy's time on his phone.

You're standing in the alley outside of the club, jacket wrapped around you but it's not enough to warm your legs.

"Hey," Carmy's voice is groggy, making your stomach twist with guilt.

"Shit, I'm sorry, Carm.." You sigh, ashing your cigarette.

"No, what's up?" Carmy cuts you off and you sigh again.

"I uh.... I need a ride.. Guy was bein' a major dick and I... I got mad at him and Angie's sendin' me home early.." You tell him. You hadn't bothered changing before you walked out of the club, only grabbing your jacket before you stormed off.

"Give me ten minutes." Carmy's words are final when he says them. He gives you a moment to object before hanging up.

You don't bother to go back inside to grab your things, running on the anger from your customer and manager. It's less than ten minutes before Carmy pulls up to the curb. You climb in the moment the car stops, missing the double take Carmy does when he sees how much of your legs are exposed. You're too busy taking one last hit from your cigarette before dropping it to the sidewalk. When you turn back into the car, Carmy has to tear his eyes away from your thighs, looking for an opening to pull away from the club. He lets you wallow in silence before it hits you.

"Oh, fuck me," You sigh, leaning against your hand on the door and rubbing at your brow.

"What?" Carmy glances at you briefly before flicking on his turn signal.

"Left my keys in my bag and fuckin'- Left my bag at work and I don't-" You sigh heavily, rubbing your hand over your eyes. "I don't have clothes at your place and I can't get home. I'm such a fuckin' mess tonight, I'm sorry.."

"'S okay," Carmy says, taking the gap in cars to pull into the parking lot.

"Carm-" You start.

"It's okay, really. Just give you some of my clothes and I'll uh- I'll sleep on the couch," He says, eyes scanning for a parking spot as if he didn't just invite you to spend the night.

"I'm not gonna make y'do that, Carmy," You tell him while he prepares to reverse into a spot.

"Not makin' me do anything," Carmy tells you once he's parked in the spot. "Now let's get upstairs cause it's fuckin' cold."

You hadn't noticed before but Carmy's only dressed in sweatpants and one of his stupid white t-shirts. You watch as he tucks his hands into his pockets, trying not to stare at the way how his ass looks and how his thighs fill them out.

"Fuckin' stupid f'not grabbing my pants.." You mutter grumpily, bringing the borrowed jacket tight around you. Carmy huffs a few steps in front of you, taking the opportunity to glance at your legs again. Both of you crowd together as you cross the street and enter the apartment building. The building is warmer, making you loosen your hold on the jacket. Being enclosed with Carmy in the elevator makes you open it even more, making Carmy avert his gaze.

You make it more difficult by tucking in close to him, slipping your phone between both of you to snap a quick picture. He still hasn't figured out he doesn't need to look at the screen. When he looks down at your phone, his eyes catch on the deep cut of your top. His breathe catches in his throat at all the skin there, taking in every inch of it.

Within a moment he tears his eyes away, glancing at the numbers as they ding by. Carmy doesn't pay much mind as you hum next to him, bumping him with your shoulder softly. He's gotten used to your casual affections.

Carmy let's you lead him to his apartment door, slipping past you to unlock the door. You still smell like the body spray you showed him. You kept boasting about how it was vanilla and shea and how much you liked it. One of the girls at work had told you about it, and Carmy mentally thanks her for it. Carmy let's you into his apartment, stepping off to the side to toe off his shoes. You sigh as you step in the space, beelining for the island. You drop your phone and cigarette pack before you start shrugging off your jacket. When Carmy looks up from his shoes he feels like he's fucking buffering.

There's so much skin on display and he has to blink hard to fight getting a hard-on. He's not sure what he was thinking, that you had put on a shirt before storming out of work? With the coat off, Carmy can see where your shorts hug your ass, a little bit slipping out of them. He traces up from there to where your top cuts across your skin, breaking up your lower and upper back. There's something else around your middle, a belt of bead strands that clack when you move around and flash refracted light around the room.

You hum as you step out of your shoes, tweaking a strand of hair as you set your jacket on the counter.

"I can sleep on the couch," You tell him, as you turn around to lean back against the counter. He still cringes as you push yourself onto the counter. Carmy's given up on asking you to not. Now he's kind of grateful for it.

"No, it's fine. You can jus' take my bed, not a big deal. Just for tonight, right?" Carmy has to turn away from you to put his locks in place but he can catch your hum as you kick your legs lightly.

"I guess," You sigh. Carmy shakes his head lightly as he walks past the kitchen to his room. You slip off the counter and follow him, beads clacking as you do.

You're not sure why you're surprised that Carmy's room is bland. The rest of his apartment was exactly decorated until you brought things into it. His bedroom was the one room you hadn't seen yet.

"Boring room, Carm.." You tell him, taking it in before your eyes go to where he's digging through his closet. He gives a short hum in acknowledgment but doesn't say anything. While you wait you cross to the bed, sitting at the foot for a moment before you decide to flop back against the mattress.

"What did-" Carmy starts before he turns around. He cuts himself off when he sees you splayed out on his bed, hands resting on your stomach as you trace patterns on the ceiling.

"What did what?" You ask, turning your head so you can see him. Carmy has to clear his throat, folding the sweater he has in half and then in half again.

"What did that uh- that guy from the club? What'd he do?" He asks, setting the sweater on the mattress before he goes to his dresser. He had to buy it when you told him he can't store his extra jeans in the oven. Mostly because he was using it more now that he had you.

You groan loudly, turning back to the ceiling. "Was jus' bein'a dick! Tried coppin' feels left and right, and when I finally told him to stop being a sleazy jackass he got mad and caused a ruckus about me being an ungrateful bitch and then Angie got involved and well.."

You trail off because after Angie had gotten involved you stormed off and called Carmen. You sigh heavily and Carmy turns to look at you before looking back at his dresser.

"I uh.." He clears his throat quietly. "I don't really have... Any shorts or anything, just like uh.. Sweats, jeans.."

"That's okay!" You chirp, pushing yourself up. You lean back against your hands, tilting your head as Carmy turns back to you. You don't miss the way he pushes his back against the furniture, like he's trying to melt into it.

"This'll do," You grab the sweater, running your thumbs over the fabric softly. Carmy nods and you give him a bright grin. "Be back in like... Two minutes!"

Carmy watches as you duck out of his room and make your way to the bathroom. He crosses to the foot of his bed and sits next to where you had been. He squeezes his eyes shut when he hears the door lock click. He tries filling his head with anything he can to keep his thoughts away from you splayed out on his sheets half-dressed.

It turns out that trying not to think about something only makes him think about it more.

Carmy does everything he can think of. Thinks of Chef Daniel, of the dish he was working on this morning. Of Sugar and how he should call her back. Hell, he even let's his mind wander to his mother. But somehow his mind always turns back to you laying back against his bed.

He opens his eyes quickly as he hears you open the bathroom door and the sound of your beads getting farther. He assumes your putting your things with you jacket in the kitchen. It's maybe a minute before you make it back to the doorway to the bedroom.

You look like a vision in his sweater. It's an old navy-colored pullover, 'Brooklyn' across your chest in fuzzy, white letters.

"Very tourist of you," You tell him, pulling at the hem to look at the words. You glance up just in time to find him rolling his eyes at your words, a soft flush dusting his cheeks.

His eyes follow you as you cross to the bed.

"Needed to get some kind of clothes.." He mutters as you climb onto the bed. He doesn't miss the way you huff, shuffling up to the pillows. When he glances back at you he gets an eye full of your baby pink underwear of your work clothes. His eyes widen before his eyes dart quickly up to your face. You're not paying attention, moving one of the pillows over to rest against the other.

"Carmy-" You start, and he feels like he's been caught red-fucking-handed but you didn't even catch him looking. You turn to sit, legs folded out in front of you. He hums for you to continue.

"Lay with me for a little?" You ask him, like you're asking him to hand you something. Like it's normal.

"What?" He chokes out. You huff, the air from it ruffling your hair.

"Lay with me? Stay a little bit before I go to bed?" You cock your head a little, looking at him with wide eyes.

"And do what?" He asks. He doesn't know why he's fucking asking but Jesus Christ you want him to lay in bed with you and his brain is kind of malfunctioning.

You shrug, "I don't know... Sit and talk?"

Carmy seems reluctant, like he doesn't want to be in the room any longer than he has to. Maybe you crossed a line.

"You don't have to," You start, back pedaling on your offer. "Just usually have some sort of like.... Background noise when I go to bed. But my phones gonna die, don't want to steal your charger from you too, tonight."

"Uh... Sure. Yeah, sure.." Carmy sounds hesitant but he gets up and makes his way to the other side of the bed, sitting back against the pillow you left.

You grin at him brightly, curling up against your pillows and tucking your legs under the blanket.

"Tell me about work," You tell him, eyes darting around his face. You always encourage him to tell you about what he does at Daniel, asking questions if you don't know or understand something.

He starts off with reminding you of the dish he did the previous day before coming back to what he did today. You nod along as he describes the menu and the specific dish he had today. You liked watching how animated he could get when talking about a dish.

You let him talk as you rest your head against your hand. You can't help but trace over his features, watching as he licks his lower lip quickly when he pauses. You don't mean to interrupt him.

"Can I kiss you, Carmen?" You ask him softly. Carmy stares at you wide-eyed, mouth open in mid-sentence. His ears are bright pink.

"What?" He blinks a few times.

"Can I give you a kiss?" You say again, like it's the most normal question you could ask him.

"I- Uh- Sure?" He sounds unsure and it makes you furrow your brow.

"Yes or no, Carm," You prompt him gently.

"Yes," He nods quickly, much more sure this time. You give him a quick smile before you're adjusting yourself. You're sitting on your knees now, shuffling forward until they're pressed against Carmy's thigh.

You don't miss how he fidgets and you grab his hand with your left one. "Just a kiss, Carmy."

That's the last thing you say before you bring your right hand to the side of his face and pull him into you. Your lips are soft, is what he first notices. So is your hand. The kiss is chaste and it feels like it's over too soon.

When you pull away, Carmy trails after you, lips ghosting yours as he tries to follow.

"Carm-"

"Please," He cuts you off before kissing you again. Carmy brings the hand from yours to your face, holding you close. You get experimental, turning your head to change the angle. Carmy follows your lead, bringing his hand from his lap to sneak under the hem of your sweater. He pulls at your hip until you get the hint.

Climbing onto his lap gives you the opportunity to deepen the kiss, pulling at his lower lip gently before you slip your tongue into his mouth. His whine is slightly muffled, letting you explore as you please. His grip on your hip tightens as you lower your weight fully on his lap. You don't miss the tent of his sweats pressing against your lower stomach.

You give an experimental roll of your hips, nudging your core just a little over his bulge. He inhales sharply before pulling away, grabbing for the hand that's holding his face.

"I don't um.. I've never..." Carmy trails off. He won't meet your eye, instead focusing on where his hand is holding your wrist.

"Oh! No, that's okay, baby," You coo softly to him, rocking your hips slowly. "Only ever been with like, two people so don't worry.. Pretty new t'this too."

Carmy groans as you continue to drag your core over the tent in his pants. He drops his head to your shoulder, turning his face so he can press soft kisses to your neck.

The kisses are featherlight as Carmy let's himself get lost in the movements of your hips. He groans quietly into your skin when you slowly pick up the pace.

"I uh-" Carmy starts against your skin. You're quick to slip your hand into his curls, guiding his head back so you can hear him clearly. His face is flushed pink as you look at him.

"I want you... I um- I want you to be... Be my first.." He says ths words softly, his eyes are tracing the skin of your neck, mind wandering to how it would look covered in kisses.

"Carm.." You coo softly, bringing your hand from his hair to guide his gaze to yours. "You sure?"

He nods quickly, eyes flicking between yours. "Please?"

Who are you to say no when he asks so prettily?

"Okay," You giggle softly, bringing him into another kiss. This time Carmy tries taking control, prodding gently until you open your mouth to him. He tries to remember how you kissed him, making you huff before you pull away.

"Don't think too hard.." You tell him, placing a gentle kiss to his chin. You nip softly at his jaw before coming back to kiss him. He lets you take back the lead, letting his hands come to rest against your thighs. You bring your hands to his and lead them under your sweater, resting just over your waistband.

Carmy takes the hint, tracing over the skin he glanced earlier. As if to give him some idea, you slip your hands under his own shirt. You let your fingers skim over his abs, following the light trail of hair up his chest. He inhales when you brush your thumbs over both his nipples, pressing his chest into your hands.

You smile against his mouth, pulling away so you can catch your breathe.

However Carmy takes that as the opportunity to kiss at your neck, ducking to nip at your neck. You whine quietly, slowing your hips down to a stop. Carmy groans when you lift your hips but once he realizes why he's less upset. You tug at his waistband, wiggling it as much as you can without his help.

Carmy helps, lifting his hips and hooking his thumbs in his waistband and shoving them to his thighs. You inhale softly when his cock springs free.

Carmy was humble. To say the least.

He didn't act like he had a big dick. He didn't try to boast about it if he ever got the chance. Blush works it's way down his neck at your noise. You're staring transfixed at his cock like you've never seen something like it.

When you look back up you drag Carmen into a sweet kiss. You kiss him slowly, cradling his face as you drag your clothed core over his exposed head. Carmy whimpers into your mouth, taking your lower lip between his.

He lets you go to catch his breath. He can't think of a time he's been more turned on in his life

"Y-You're panties are so- so wet.." Carmy says between pants. He says them like they're not the filthiest thing to leave his mouth.

"Uh-huh," You nod, placing kisses to his jaw.

"Can I please?" One of Carmy's hands has slipped to your waistband, slowly creeping towards your clit. You whine softly into his neck as he ghosts his fingers lower. You can't help but rock your hips into his hand, letting his fingers skim over your entrance.

"Yes, Carmy, yes." You trace a vein with your tongue. He hooks his fingers into your underwear, already prodding at your hole with two fingers.

"Oh my god," Carmy sighs, pressing his mouth against your hair. His breathing ruffles your hair and he has to shut his eyes at feeling of your slick. He dips his fingers into your entrance, making you bite softly at his neck. He pushes until his up to his knuckles. His fingers reach deeper than your own and the heel of his hand presses delightfully against your clit.

Carmy watches in awe as you pull back from his neck and ride his fingers. He gives a few experimental thrusts that make your jaw drop. After a few minutes of this, you bring Carmen into a quick kiss, tugging at his lower lip.

"Need more, Carm," You tell him, lifting your hips off his hand. Carmy mourns the loss as you reach for his dick. His mourning is short-lived when your fingers encircle him, groaning as you angle his head against your entrance. You sink down slowly, and Carmy feels like he could come with just his tip inside you. He won't, but Jesus fucking Christ.

"So fuckin' warm.." Carmy sighs. He holds your hips tightly, keeping you in place. You put your hands on top of his, squeezing them tightly as you sink lower. His jaw drops open at the feeling of your walls around him. You clench around him gently, pulling him into a messy kiss. He pulls back to breathe when you thighs sit flush to his. Having you seated on his cock alone almost makes him come but he has to tense his stomach to prevent it.

Carmy's head falls back against the wall, chest rising and falling heavily as you sit flush in his lap. You can't help but bring your hands to his face, holding him gently as you take in the sight.

"You're so pretty, Carm.." You tell him softly, soothing a thumb over his cheekbone. You're too distracted to notice the twitch against your walls.

"Don't- Fuck- Don't say that..." Carmy mutters, leaning into your touch.

"Say what?" You're confused, tilting your head to one side with a furrowed brow.

"Call me pretty... Make me fuckin'- fuckin' bust b'fore I can move.." He grunts softly as he adjusts his hips. You squeak when his movements justle you, pressing deeper against you.

"Fuck-" You sigh, ducking your head to the side. You can't help the way your eyes flutter shut, soothing your thumb over his skin to keep you grounded. Once Carmy settles back down you pull him into a slow kiss, taking his lower lip between your teeth to tug at gently.

You roll your hips into his, relishing the way he groans into your mouth. The noise trails into a whimper as you clamp your walls around him, making his hands hold on tight to your thighs. The sound makes your head spin, pulling away to catch your breath and hold Carmy's face back as he tries to chase your lips.

You smooth your thumbs over the curls above his ears, while you collect yourself. Carmy ruts his hips up into you, making you squeal softly at the motion.

"Relax, relax," You pull away to catch his eyes. His pupils are blown wide when he gazes at you, blinking softly. You can't help but smile at him.

"Let me make you feel good.."

[luludeluluramblings]

This is a little long and you don't have to acknowledge this, but I have a thought about Pregnant!reader. What if she just doesn't really need that much help during or even after birth? Let me explain, where I am from some of the women are the tough "I don't need help" type of people. A friend, the husband, or they themselves will drive to the hospital, they give birth all natural, doing most of the work while a doctor and a few nurses are there to make sure nothing goes wrong. Then after they're discharged someone brings the baby out to the car, and I've even seen the moms just drive themselves! They are fully capable of doing so and I know that your not supposed to drive for a good while after birth but they just do it anyway, or they have a trusted person drive them. Anyways, women that I know personally that have given birth and go home just don't really need all that much help. They've got it all under control somehow. They got everything they need for themselves and the baby. So what if pregnant!reader was like that? How would the Batfam react to reader just not needing any help from them during and after birth, purely because they don't really need it? (Bonus points if the batfam didn't even know she had the kid till she was already at her place) Sorry that this was so long!

This is giving me flashbacks to my mom coming in my house the morning after I got home from the hospital, came into my room while me and my husband were asleep, and took our newborn (eldest) to make them a bottle because they were fussing. She was trying to be helpful, and everyone got on to her about it and she never did it again, so don't worry! But, the paranoia and mom guilt has stuck with me to this day.

But, I can see Reader doing that out of pure self sufficiency. She couldn't rely on the family for her emotional needs, so why would she rely on them for her baby's physical needs?

In this instance, I don't think even Stephanie could get through to them. That need to do everything yourself is strong.

And, if you show any signs of fatigue or exhaustion, you'd have the family hounding you to let them help. Which just adds to the stress.

Plus, even if Reader is a new mom, the other members of the family hardly have any experience with babies.

The situation would be delicate and like walking on egg shells. Yeah, they can guilt trip Reader into the manor with the offer to help them, but Reader actually letting them help is a whole other battle.

Someone would have to literally do everything to build up the trust and take baby classes and the works. And, even then, I can imagine Reader tearing someone a new asshole if they try to tell them how to do things properly.

God forbid someone like Bruce tell Reader how to hold a baby. Dude will get something thrown at him guaranteed.

[hsnlv]

soft beginnings | s.jy

pairing: dad-to-be!jake x mom-to-be!reader

synopsis: you and jake are getting ready for your baby, but jake’s full of doubts about fatherhood. with plenty of laughter, love, and tiny socks, you learn that even the smallest moments can mean the world.

warnings: fluff!, jake has self-doubt but it’s adorable dont worry >< reader is pregnant if that is not clear (i love pregnant tropes actually because it’s cute hehe)

wc: 1.1k

a/n: ive been writing a lot lately since im currently on semester break but enjoy ^^

jake sat on the nursery floor, holding a pair of impossibly small socks between his fingers like they were some kind of alien artifact. his brows were furrowed, lips pressed into a pout that you would’ve called adorable if he wasn’t so deadly serious.

“okay, babe,” he said finally, holding the socks up for emphasis. “these cannot be for a human. i don’t care what you say.”

you couldn’t help it—you burst out laughing from your spot on the rocking chair, where you were sorting through a mountain of baby clothes. “jake, they’re for a newborn. they’re supposed to be that tiny.”

he squinted at the socks like they might reveal their secrets if he stared long enough. “nope. sorry. these are for a hamster. or maybe a very small rabbit.”

“are you calling our baby a rabbit?” you teased, grinning as you leaned back in the chair.

“i’m just saying,” he continued, waving the socks around like he was making a grand point. “what if their feet don’t fit? what if their toes are too big? i don’t even know what baby feet look like!”

you laughed so hard that tears pricked at the corners of your eyes. “you’re ridiculous.”

“i’m serious!” he insisted, though the twitch of his lips betrayed him. “what if i try to put these on and they just… fall off? or what if i lose one? it’s not like i can run to the store and ask for replacement jellybean-sized socks!”

that did it—you dissolved into giggles, your belly shaking as you leaned forward. “jake, you’re going to be fine,” you said, wiping your eyes. “i promise, putting socks on a baby isn’t as hard as you think.”

he flopped dramatically onto his back, groaning. “i’m not ready for this.”

“you are,” you said, crawling over to him and sitting on your knees by his side. you rested your chin on his chest, tilting your head to look up at him. “you’re going to be the best dad ever.”

he gazed down at you, his expression softening, but you could still see the hint of doubt in his eyes. “you really think so?”

“i know so,” you said, reaching up to brush a strand of hair out of his face. “you’ve got the dad jokes down already. the rest is just practice.”

he groaned again, dragging a hand down his face. “yeah, but what about the important stuff? like… like making bottles. or changing diapers! do you know how many straps and tabs those things have? it’s like trying to assemble IKEA furniture!”

you snorted, pressing your forehead to his chest as you laughed. “it’s not that bad.”

“it is that bad,” he said, sitting up suddenly. his hands flailed a bit as he tried to explain. “and what if i don’t wake up when the baby cries? or—or what if i hold them wrong? what if i drop them? oh my god, what if i don’t know how to swaddle? they’re gonna hate me.”

“jake.” you placed your hands on his cheeks, forcing him to look at you. “take a deep breath.”

he inhaled shakily, his wide eyes locking onto yours.

“you’re not going to drop the baby,” you said firmly. “or hold them wrong. and even if you mess up the first swaddle, or it takes you a few tries to get the diaper right, it’s okay. you’ll figure it out.”

he didn’t look entirely convinced, so you leaned closer, your voice softer now. “do you remember when we first got peanut?”

he blinked, his brows furrowing. “our dog?”

“yeah. you were so nervous about training him. you kept googling everything, and you were convinced he was going to hate you because you couldn’t get him to sit on command.”

jake huffed, his lips twitching into a reluctant smile. “okay, yeah, but peanut was a little menace at first.”

“he was,” you agreed, grinning. “but you didn’t give up. you were so patient and sweet with him, and now he listens to you better than he listens to me.”

jake let out a soft laugh, his shoulders relaxing a bit.

“it’s going to be the same with the baby,” you said, brushing your thumbs gently over his cheekbones. “you’re going to love them so much that none of the little mistakes will matter. and they’re definitely not going to hate you for struggling with a diaper or two.”

“you sure about that?” he asked, his voice quieter now.

“absolutely,” you said, smiling.

he sighed, leaning forward to rest his forehead against yours. “what would i do without you?”

“probably drown in a pile of tiny socks,” you teased, laughing softly.

“you’re not wrong,” he muttered, but he was smiling again.

you both sat there for a moment, the quiet hum of the nursery filling the air. then jake pulled back slightly, his hand drifting to your belly.

“hey, little one,” he murmured, his voice soft and warm. “just so you know, your mom’s the best person in the world. so if i mess up, she’s gonna make sure you’re taken care of. and if you could, uh… maybe go easy on me with the diapers, that’d be great.”

you laughed, swatting at his shoulder. “stop making deals with the baby!”

“what? i’m just saying!” he said, grinning.

he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your belly, murmuring something too quiet for you to hear. when he sat up again, his eyes were brighter, his usual spark returning.

“okay,” he said, grabbing the tiny socks and holding them up like a trophy. “we’re definitely framing these.”

“i knew you’d come around,” you said, smiling as you kissed his cheek.

the rest of the afternoon was spent folding onesies and arranging books on the shelves, with jake tossing out ridiculous questions every five minutes.

“what if the baby doesn’t like my cooking?”

“jake, they’re not going to eat anything you cook for at least a year.”

“what if they cry every time i pick them up?”

“then you’ll hold them until they stop crying.”

“what if they call me ‘dude’ instead of ‘dad’?”

“then they’re definitely your kid.”

by the time the sun dipped below the horizon, the nursery was mostly finished. the crib stood in the corner, draped with a soft, pastel blanket, and the bookshelf was packed with stories you couldn’t wait to read aloud.

you stood in the doorway with jake, his arm around your shoulders as you both took in the space.

“it’s perfect,” you murmured, leaning into his side.

“almost perfect,” he said, resting a hand on your belly. “just missing one thing.”

you smiled, your hand covering his. “they’ll be here soon enough.”

he pressed a kiss to your temple, his voice filled with quiet awe. “soon enough,” he echoed.

and in that moment, surrounded by love and laughter and the promise of something even sweeter, you knew your little family was already complete in all the ways that mattered.

[starspangledbatter]

⭐️ “Dead Wife Rag”???: The Amazing Digital Circus Theory ⭐️

⭐️ About a day or two ago, Gooseworx released the entire soundtrack of episodes 3 and 4. Excited, I went and prepared to explore each and every one of the tracks individually. That is, until something strange caught my eye. This thing specifically, was a name for one of the latest tracks titled “Dead Wife Rag”. ⭐️

Now, this name could simply just mean rag. Rag as in a syncopated rhythm. But what if “Dead Wife Rag” is actually a double entendre? Let me explain…

🌟 You see, Gooseworx seems to title her tracks based off of the scene her tunes takes place in. “Character Quirks” plays during the living room scene where the characters show off what happens when they don’t breathe. “Still Friends” plays during the moment where Zooble comforts Gangle and admits that they are still Gangle’s friend, regardless of what happened at Spudsy’s. ⭐️

Now, knowing this information, the time and place where Gooseworx’s tracks take place seem to hold prominence in the track’s title names. So, knowing this, where exactly does “Dead Wife Rag” play within the series?

⭐️ Here. This is the scene where this track plays. The scene where a dead wife, Martha Mildenhall, explains to Ragatha that her husband accidentally kills her with his gun, while telling her about men and their “silliest priorities”. This scene follows with Ragatha turning to Jax, agreeing with Martha that she knows the feeling of dealing with a man who puts his own feelings over anyone else’s. ⭐️

Now, why does this matter? Well, what if I were to tell you that “Dead Wife Rag” actually means “Dead Wife Ragatha”, and that’s what makes the name a double entendre. This isn’t just my Bunnydoll bias speaking here. I actually mean it. Consider this.

⭐️ Jax’s episode is described as “guns!”. A gun is the thing that Baron uses to kill Martha, resulting in her demise ⭐️

⭐️ Gooseworx has said in the past that she “apologizes to the Bunnydoll shippers”, meaning that there’s something that could happen in the future that may strain their relationship, which could possibly involve abstraction. ⭐️

⭐️ When asked how Jax would react towards Ragatha abstracting or going missing, Michael Kovach responds with a tragic but surprising response (go to the 1:25:45 mark). He states that if Jax realized that Ragatha abstracted, he would be devastated. This is because Ragatha was someone he knew the entire time during his time at the circus. He would then continue to repress these feelings and pretend that everything is fine (like he did with Kaufmo, the stressful aftermath at Spudsy’s etc). ⭐️

⭐️ Jax’s episode (the gun episode) will explore each and every character, showing the audience how their personalities have changed amongst being at the circus. Maybe Ragatha and Jax used to be closer in the past? Maybe they weren’t always at each other’s throats? ⭐️

⭐️ So, where does this all lead to? What does all of this mean? Well, what if Jax does something in the future that hurts Ragatha emotionally. Something irredeemable, something unforgiving. What if Jax causes Ragatha to accidentally abstract, leaving the circus to cope with the death of one of their longest-surviving members? ⭐️

⭐️ Like Kinger said “In this world, the worst thing you can do is... make someone think they're not wanted or loved”. The worst thing you can do to Ragatha is make her feel hated or unloved. She doesn’t want Jax to hate her, despite how she feels about him and his actions. Jax always seems to push away others and constantly uses them for his entertainment. The only time he actually thinks about anyone but himself is during times that lack distraction. Maybe he says something that convinces Ragatha that he hates her. She believes in the one thing she can’t live with acknowledging. ⭐️

The guns aren’t actually guns. The guns are a symbol for a device or an event that leads to the accidental demise of a loved one. Kinger isn’t the only parallel to Baron. Jax is Baron. Ragatha is Martha. She’s “Dead Wife Rag” and he’ll have to live with what he has done. For the rest of his life.

[wat3rm370n]

Jay Bhattacharya is anti-vax.

He's anti-vax for the same reason that Florida Man Ron Desantis is anti-vax even without Joe Ladapo.

https://wat3rm370n.tumblr.com/post/768897389699432448/florida-man-is-anti-vax

Being anti-mandate is anti-vax because vaccination is a community level public health measure. High uptake is what stems transmission. It’s how vaccines work best for everyone. So being against vaccine mandates is anti-vax. Being pro "natural infection" is also anti-vax.

Jay Bhattacharya AND Marty Makary also cavort with all sorts of anti-vaxxers, and someone pro-vax would not do that. If pushed, these people will go with the anti-vaxxers, because they already have, after all.

https://teamshuman.substack.com/p/trucker-convoy-adjacent-symposium

They all seem to be funded by the same big money too. All connected to fossil fuel at the heart of everything on the right and the money could explain a lot of that.

https://heated.world/p/ai-is-guzzling-gas

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ifcx5e6vwjvy2oqoynshleqv/post/3ldppcl2gpc2k

The connections are truly dizzying, and I've spent way way too much time connecting these dots, and most people do not want to hear it.

https://medium.com/@watermelonpunch.com/lefty-zine-promoting-right-wing-pseudoscience-protocols-of-an-expensive-concierge-clinic-f73b758dbbff

https://medium.com/@watermelonpunch.com/vaughn-what-team-is-he-actually-on-c4df1a3a8ae8

Generally eugenics is also anti-vax, because of pseudoscience fantasies about "evolution".

https://chloehumbert.substack.com/p/eugenics-as-an-ideology

The pain point here is that there are MANY Republican politicians and conservative voters who want vaccines and do not buy into anti-vax nonsense and want protection for themselves and their family.

Some of these pro-vaccination conservatives live in my neighborhood in Scranton Pennsylvania in fact. I remember many loud conversations in my neighborhood over hedges back in 2021, in fact. The average Republican who voted for Trump didn't vote to get rid of vaccines, they're not even paying attention to that extremely online crap. They just thought none of it mattered anymore because they're steeped in pro-biz disinfo and didn't think more broadly than "covid is no big deal anymore" (not realizing that it's partly because of vaccines that most Americans got initially but which wane in effectiveness over months and certainly years, and also partly because the entire political spectrum decided grandma had to be sacrificed to the false god The Economy, to appease violent anti-maskers, or at least in order to justify Fridays at the packed nightclub).

https://teamshuman.substack.com/p/journalist-trusts-right-wing-covid-denial

But one of the biggest problems is that the coalition is not so much a coalition of cranks, it's a coalition of high demand authoritarian groups (aka cults), many which favour eugenics ideology, and many that are anti-science unfortunately, and even worse, are run by a lot of people making money on selling quacky products linked to anti-vax disinfo. And these people are clearly ready to to sell their own snake oil.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/trump-fbi-director-kash-patel-vaccine-detox-supplements-rcna182434

MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy - Thinker-Fest: Session 1 - Fireside Chat - How to Fix the “Splinternet” Mar 3, 2023

But as they say, online is not the totality of real life.

People need to start talking about vaccine uptake with their neighbors over the hedges again. We need billboards more than we need tweets or facebook ai slop and interacting with bots on bluesky while trapped in info cocoons and echo chamber silos created by manipulative block and subscribe lists.

https://chloehumbert.substack.com/p/grass-is-not-much-greener-on-blue-sky

https://www.rauhauser.net/p/blueskys-bubble-blues

https://sci-hub.se/10.1086/225469

Trumpism’s healthcare fracture-lines

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/20/clinical-trial-by-ordeal/#spoiled-his-brand-new-rattle

There was never any question as to whether Trump would implement Project 2025, the 900-page brick of terrifying and unhinged policy prescriptions edited by the Heritage Foundation. He would not implement it, because he could not implement it. No one could. It's impossible.

This isn't a statement about constitutional limits on executive authority or the realpolitik of getting bizarre and stupid policies past judges or through a hair-thin Congressional majority. This is a statement about the incoherence of Project 2025 itself. You probably haven't read it. Few have. Realistically, few people are going to read a 900-page group work of neofeudalist fanfic shit out by the most esoteric Fedsoc weirdos the world has ever seen.

But one person who did read Project 2025 was the leftist historian Rick Perlstein, who was the first person to really dig into what a fucking mess that thing is:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual

Perlstein's excellent analysis doesn't claim that Project 2025's authors aren't sincere in their intentions to wreak great harm upon the nation and its people; rather, his point is that Project 2025 is filled with contradictory, mutually exclusive proposals written by people who fundamentally disagree with one another, and who each have enough power within the Trump coalition that all of thier proposals have to be included in a document like this:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/

Project 2025 isn't just a guide to the masturbatory fantasies of the worst people in American politics – far more importantly, it is a detailed map of the fracture lines in the GOP coalition, the places where it is liable to split and shatter. This is an important point if you want to do more about Trumpism than run around feeling miserable and scared. If you want to fight, Project 2025 is a guide to the weak spots where an attack will do the most damage.

Perlstein's insight continues to be borne out as the Trump regime makes ready to take power. In a new story for KFF News, Stephanie Armour and Julie Rovner describe the irreconcilable differences among Trump's picks for the country's top public health authorities:

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/trump-rfk-kennedy-health-hhs-fda-cdc-vaccines-covid-weldon/

The brain-worm-infected-elephant in the room is, of course, RFK Jr, who has been announced as Trump's head of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr is a notorious antivaxer, chairman of Children’s Health Defense, a notorious anti-vaccine group. Kennedy's view is shared by Trump's chosen CDC boss, Dave Weldon, a physician who has repeated the dangerous lie that vaccinations cause autism. Mehmet "Dr Oz" Oz, the TV "physician" Trump wants to put in charge of Medicare/Medicaid, calls vaccines "oversold" and advocates for treating covid with hydroxychloroquine, another thoroughly debunked hoax:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/12/17/hydroxychloroquine-study-covid-19-retracted-trump/77051671007/

However, other top Trump public health picks emphatically support vaccines. Marty Makary is Trump's choice for FDA commissioner; he's a Johns Hopkins trained surgeon who says vaccines "save lives" (but he peddles the lethal, unscientific hoax that childhood vaccines should be "spread out"). Jay Bhattacharya, the economist/MD whom Trump wants to put in charge of the NIH, supports vaccines (he is also one of the country's leading proponents of the eugenicist idea of accepting the mass death of elderly, sick and disabled people rather than imposing quarantines during epidemics). Then there's Janette Nesheiwat, whom Trump has asked to serve as the nation's surgeon general; she calls vaccines "a gift from God."

Like "Bidenism," Trumpism is a fragile coalition of people who thoroughly and irreconcilably disagree with one another. During the Biden administration, this resulted in self-inflicted injuries like appointing the brilliant trustbuster Lina Khan to run the FTC, but also appointing the pro-monopoly corporate lawyer Jacqueline Scott Corley to a lifetime seat as a federal judge, from which perch she ruled against Khan's no-brainer suit to block the Microsoft-Activision merger:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

The Trump coalition is even broader than the Biden coalition. That's how he won the 2024 election. But that also means that Trumpism is more fractious and off-balance, and hence will be easier to disrupt, because it is riven by people in senior positions who hate one another and are actively working for each others' political demise.

The Trump coalition is a coalition of *cranks*. I'm using "crank" here in a technical, non-pejorative sense. I am a crank, after all. A crank is someone who is overwhelmingly passionate about a single issue, whose uncrossable bright lines are not broadly shared. Cranks can be right or they can be wrong, but we're hard to be in coalition with, because we are uncompromisingly passionate about things that other people largely don't even notice, let alone care about. You can be a crank whose single issue is eliminating water fluoridation, even though this is very, very stupid and dangerous:

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-fluoride-debate

Or you can be a crank about digital rights, a subject that, for decades, was viewed as by turns either unserious or as a sneaky way of shilling for Big Tech (thankfully, that's changing):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/18/greetings-fellow-pirates/#arrrrrrrrrr

Cranks make hard coalition partners. Trump's cranks are cranked up about different things - vaccines, culture war trans panics, eugenics - and are total normies about other things. The eugenicist MD/economist who wants to "let 'er rip" rather than engage in nonpharmaceutical pandemic interventions is gonna be horrified by total abortion bans and antivax. These cranks are on a collision course with one another.

This is on prominent display in these public health appointments, and we're very likely about to get a test of the cohesiveness and capability of the second Trump administration, thanks to bird flu. Now that bird flu has infected humans in multiple US states, there is every chance that we will have to confront a public health emergency in the coming weeks. If that happens, the Trump public health divisions over masking, quarantine and (especially) vaccines (Kennedy called the covid vaccine the "deadliest" ever made, without any evidence) will become the most important issue in the country, under constant and pitiless scrutiny, and criticism.

Trump's public health shambles is by no means unique. The lesson of Project 2025 is that the entire Trump project is one factional squabble away from collapse at all times.

[tkomptgoedluv]

watermelon.

icantbelieveiletyougetaway pt.3

pt1. here | pt.2 here | pt.3

joost klein x f! reader

tags: f! reader, non-famous! reader, reader still really needs to see a therapist, established friendship, angst angst and even more angst, did i mention angst?, tooth-rotting fluff, so fluffy it’s honestly a little cringe <3, all characters are dutch and speak in dutch but dialogue is written in english for obvious reasons.

word count: 3,494.

warnings: very brief + vague reference to SA, rpf.

notes: hello!! welcome to pt.3 <3 this is probably the part that i’m most proud of, probably because it weirdly hurt the most to write. a couple fun facts about this part: reader’s coat is heavily based on one i have in real life and absolutely adore. also, i genuinely couldn’t bring myself to touch this wip for two whole days because my personal life started to match up with this storyline and i did not like it! became a little too self-indulgent. anyways — enjoy!! lemme know what you think.

love you all lots 💋

── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ──

in a lot of ways, the whole situation was more or less your own idea of hell — ironic, considering it all started with literally the worst night of your life.

not once did you ever think that you’d be here, that this was how things were gonna go. the fun part? you don’t even know how you got here in the first place. for someone so in the middle of it all, you know surprisingly little about what actually happened, or what you must’ve done wrong.

all that you know is that it’s different now. joost is different now.

you still text everyday, a few phone calls here and there, and you’ll see him in person a few times a month or more, but you can still feel it. the subtle lack of emotion in his messages, the only-ever increasing wait times in between responses, the missing details in his stories that you’d still end up hearing from your friends. something, at some point, shifted and joost just didn’t seem to be your joost anymore.

at first, you tried to think nothing of it. you weren’t exactly a stranger to anxiety; it’s always been just a little too easy for you to get lost inside your own head. this also wasn’t the first time that you had fallen down this rabbit hole, suddenly convinced that someone you love doesn’t even like you because they said something in a slightly different tone once.

but then those weird few days where things didn’t feel quite right turned into weeks, and it just didn’t feel like nothing anymore.

you thought it could’ve been the videos because, as predicted, entire montages of the fight found their way onto each and every little corner of the internet. joost could be seen clear as day swinging for him, landing punch after punch until one of his friends would eventually step in. though somehow, the backlash against joost never came. for every clip there was a ‘story-time’ to go right along with it, and every single one explained how joost was just defending ‘this girl that had been attacked by that guy.’

so instead you exhausted yourself asking if everything was alright, just in case there was something else going on that he also hadn’t told you. but there was only so many times that you could ask the same question over and over again, only to get the same answer back.

joost was fine; great even.

so it had to be you. nothing was wrong, nothing bad had happened, it was simply just you that had repelled him all of a sudden. and that was all you could think about whilst you sat in a room surrounded by your closest friends — joost included.

it was someone’s birthday, a friend of a friend who’s name was still unknown to you and yet somehow you still ended up with an invite. aspon was on your left, deep in a conversation with stuntje about some new anime you’d never heard of, and alanis was on your right, asking to see pictures of daan’s latest art piece.

you, of course, were there in between them all, just staring into space. all of the ice in your drink had melted as it sat forgotten about in your hands, and you were fairly confident that you had memorised each and every scratch in the wooden flooring. you were yet to find a better place to look other than the floor, because of course it was joost that had to be sat opposite you.

he had pulled the short straw really, because by the time he came back in from his cigarette outside, the only seat left was one of those awful, plastic fold-up chairs. like the others he too was wrapped up in a conversation of his own, only his included a girl that you’d never seen before, and he was making her laugh a lot.

you didn’t have a single right to absolutely despise what it was that you were seeing, but still your skin felt hot and itchy, and tears burned behind your eyes. despite arriving together in your group and being seated a measly three feet away from each other, joost was yet to even glance in your direction, let alone talk to you. the blatant avoidance was unbearable; the new ‘you’ that he was talking to was even worse.

but with the anger came the shame, because really, you had no excuse to be feeling like this. two strangers with mutual friends, talking with one another at a house party of all places, wasn’t exactly incriminating. they also weren’t touching or even flirting for that matter — from what you could hear, their conversation seemed limited to small anecdotes about the people in common they both knew.

you weren’t being fair, you weren’t being reasonable; there was no excuse for the tightness in your chest.

without a word, you got up and made a dash for the balcony; desperate for a cigarette. so desperate in fact, that you didn’t stop to grab your jacket despite the rain bashing against the windows. you just needed the fresh air, needed space away from whatever the fuck was going on in there.

the small roof that the balcony upstairs provided did little to shield you from the rain. your hair quickly fell damp around the sides of your face as the wind brought goosebumps to your arms. you really should’ve stopped to grab your coat, you were soaking now.

but the pure, unbridled relief that you felt when you breathed in the smoke of your cig made it all worth it, though. it was something else to focus on, something to help soothe all of your aches and pains. best of all, it gave you a reason to be by yourself for a while — a moment alone to think, to breathe, a chance to get a fucking grip.

you took another drag of your cigarette.

“think you forgot this, schatje.”

over the sound of the heavy-falling rain and the music from inside, you hadn’t heard the balcony door slide open and shut again.

from the corner of your eye you saw joost standing there, clad in a black gilet and the same adidas track-jacket that you had bought for him two birthdays ago. your coat was in his outstretched hands; a big, red furry thing that almost swallowed you whole every time you put it on.

“yeah…thanks.”

you wanted to cry.

the silence that followed was heavy and awkward; neither of you could even look at each other as you took your jacket from him and slipped it on. whilst you focused on looking outwards towards the skyline, blinking away any tears that threatened to spill, joost busied himself with lighting up a cigarette of his own. it felt like you were standing next to a stranger, and not someone who quite literally knew every single little thing about you.

someone who always picked up the phone when you called; someone whose bed you’ve woken up naked in just a few too many times to count.

“you, uh, you doing okay?”

you almost choked on your cigarette.

he’d barely even glanced your way all night, too distracted by other female attention to really care that you were there at all, and now he wanted to know how you were doing? oh he had to be joking.

you stubbed out your cig underneath your shoe and went to storm back inside, shoving past him with your shoulder as you did so. you had almost made it too, before he caught you by the arm and gently pulled you back. it really pissed you off how hurt he looked, like this wasn’t all his fault in the first place.

“hey, can we not just talk for a minute? i wanna know what’s been up with you recently. we don’t really talk anymore.”

as hard as you could you pushed him off of you, and then you pushed him once more for good measure. you couldn’t bite it back anymore, couldn’t keep it all from spilling out when your blood was already boiling. if you were to regret it in the morning, you would just blame it on the few drinks you’ve already had.

“and why the fuck do you think that is, joost? tell me.”

a small part of you that you really couldn’t quite understand, genuinely hoped that he would push you back. that he’d get all up in your face, yelling at the top of his lungs, just as angry with you as you were with him. you wanted him to shout, to scream at you about how wrong you were; you wanted to feel crazy for even thinking that something could ever go wrong between the two of you.

you didn’t want him to just…stand there with his tail tucked between his legs, looking like he had already given up on you a long time ago. you found yourself shoving him again, only hard enough to knock him back a step or two this time.

“tell me!”

now more than ever you wished that you could stay angry, that you knew how to hold onto the outrage instead of always just breaking down into pieces. it made you feel so small the way that your voice was cracking; your shouts quickly shrinking into cries. you felt like a child again, begging to understand why everyone always left in the end.

“i just needed to work some stuff out, okay? none of this was meant to happen. i never wanted to make you cry.”

you pressed the heels of your palms into your eyes, the state of your mascara becoming an afterthought, before raking your fingers through your hair. thin strands stuck to the corners of your face and the back of your neck.

“please, tell me what i can do to make it better.”

joost was panicking now, looking a lot like an old dog that somehow knew it was about to be left behind at the shelter. you could see it in the way his hands were shaking and how he couldn’t quite seem to stand still, shifting from one leg to another.

“you can tell me what happened; what changed or what i did wrong. i don’t care.”

from the look on his face, you never would have guessed that all you’d asked him for was the truth; ‘panicked’ was no longer the right word.

“i can’t. i promise, i’ll tell you later but i can’t tell you here. not like this.”

you laughed — you couldn’t help it. three months ago, when you asked him why he was so insistent on doing anything and everything for you, he gave you the exact same line. either he forgot that he’s already used it once before, or he thought you were stupid enough to fall for it all over again; either way, you knew now that ‘later’ was never coming.

before you really knew what you were doing, you were back inside and weaving your way through the small huddles of your friends. a few stared as you began to tread water through the house, a long line of watery footprints following behind you on your way out. you muttered a quiet ‘i’ll see you guys later’ to whoever was listening and in one smooth motion, grabbed your bag from one of the tables and disappeared through the front door, slamming it behind you.

no one tried to stop you. probably for good reason, too, because you could feel the makeup running down your face.

the only good thing to come from looking so sad and drenched from the rain was that nobody on the street stopped to bother you either. not many people were out in this weather anyway, so at most you felt their eyes on you as they passed, a look of pity on their faces. pity for a girl all dressed up for a nice night out, just to be walking home early in tears.

you didn’t want their pity, you just wanted to go home. you wanted your bed and your pyjamas. you wanted a nice warm shower and to try and forget that today ever fucking happened.

you didn’t want joost to be chasing after you.

you didn’t want to hear your name being yelled from down the street by the one person you didn’t want to see right now.

“cmon you always do this! stop running away from everything.”

that was the thing to get you; the one thing that made you stop and turn on the spot.

“oh i’m the one running away? you’re the one that left!”

you met him halfway with steam coming out of your ears, your hands trembling and nose all scrunched up. you were fuming and it seemed as though he was now, too.

“i never went anywhere! you’re making it sound like i disappeared off the face of the earth or something.”

“well that’s what it felt like! what about that don’t you understand?”

you were each taking turns yelling now, oblivious to how loud you were actually being. people were sticking their heads out of their living room windows, morbidly curious about the scene that was unfolding right outside their homes. those that walked by did double-takes and even contemplated getting their phones out to record.

“but i’m here now! and i was ‘here’ back there and you just ran away like you always do!”

“did you really expect me to just stand there and listen to you lie again? all this ‘oh i’ll tell you later’ crap, it’s just bullshit. ever since that night you’ve been different and if what that guy did to me changed how you see me then maybe you’re right, maybe we should stop being whatever the fuck we are.”

joost physically recoiled at your words, his entire demeanour changing to one of hurt.

“what are you..? schatje no, no, it’s nothing like that. fuck, please tell me you don’t really think that.”

how could you not? it was the only thing left for you to think. it wasn’t like you wanted to come to that conclusion or that it was the first one you jumped to, but joost never gave you any other choice. as much as it hurt, it was better than simply not knowing.

something died in him when you nodded — you saw it in his eyes. tears of his own spilled down his cheeks as he rubbed his hands up and down his face, wiping his nose with the inside of his elbow.

“i…i would never; that guy…that wasn’t your fault.”

“then tell me the truth, joost.”

all that adrenaline, all that energy from before was long gone. you weren’t two people arguing in the rain, full of love and anger like something straight out of a romcom anymore. you were just two people standing out in the cold, soaked to the bone, just trying to hold on for a little while longer.

you were still waiting for joost to say something, trying to prepare yourself for the worst. if he was to say that same shit again, that he couldn’t tell you now but would later on, that would be it for you. you’d walk away and not turn back again, not for anything; just like that it would be game over.

but joost wasn’t saying anything, and you couldn’t decide if that was any better or not. he was silent as he took a couple steps towards you, the palms of his hands suddenly cupping either side of your jaw. the pads of his thumbs wiped away all the tears and rain from your eyes and tucked the odd strands of hair behind your ears. not once did he glance away from your gaze, not once did he say something.

it was driving you crazy.

“joost?” you were pleading with him now, desperate for him to say something — do something. the way he was looking at you, it was like you were the only thing he could see. “say something.”

“i love you.”

you blinked, and all of sudden you weren’t quite sure what to do with your hands anymore. it wasn’t the first time joost had said that to you because he says it to everyone, every single one of his friends. but he had never said it to you like that before, with a look in his eyes so heavy you feared that they might fall right out of his head.

“what?” your voice cracked as you spoke. “i don’t understand…what?”

“i love you. that’s what changed.”

a headache was coming, you could feel it. right behind your eyes, you felt a twinge, and then a subtle thumping that made your eyebrows twitch. you just couldn’t wrap your head around it, and the more you tried to make sense of it the more your head hurt.

“i swear to god if this is a fucking joke, if you’re just making this up -”

he shut you up with a kiss.

it wasn’t exactly for the first time or even close to being so, but it felt as though it could’ve been; all soft, gentle, careful. the hands that held either side of your face did so as though you could’ve cracked and shattered at any second. he moved slowly, almost hesitantly, until he felt you turn into mush beneath him. only then did he pull away, a ghost of a smile lingering on his lips.

but you couldn’t let him have it though, could you? couldn’t just let him have the upper hand, just like that. you had to chase it, had to pull him down to your height by the collar of his jacket until your lips could meet his. by the time you were finished, both shaking and breathless, there were faint smudges of red all across his mouth.

“that was so hot; do it again.”

you laughed at his words for not the first time tonight, but now it was only out of pure joy instead of anything else. you laughed because of how out of it joost looked now, his eyes glossed over and lips parted ever so slightly as he panted. you laughed because of how much you did want to do it again and how you felt giddy knowing that joost wanted you to do it again too.

so you did. only this time joost was ready and pounced on you hard enough to knock you back a couple of steps, almost making you slip on the wet pavement. his fingers lost themselves in your hair, gently tugging at the roots as yours gripped onto the nylon of his jacket for dear life, too afraid to let go and risk letting him slip away.

you would have stayed like that with him all night if it wasn’t for the wolf whistle you heard from one of the windows above, followed by the rumble of thunder. the rain was starting to fall harder now, the storm only growing and you didn’t like knowing that people were watching you now.

“we shouldn’t be doing this here — people are looking.”

with his forehead resting against yours, joost simply groaned as he struggled to catch his breath. his hands still cradled the back of your head and his eyes were still squeezed shut.

“don’t care. need you.”

he may as well have been one of the puddles at your feet, the way he couldn’t even form proper sentences anymore. the things you were doing to him right now were criminal, almost cruel, and you were loving every minute of it. proud of it, actually. you might have been mush in his hands, but he was like putty in yours.

“well…maybe you should take me home then, yeah? then you can need me as much as you like.”

joost groaned again, muttering something about how you were ‘going to be the death of him’, and leaned back in. from your nose to your cheeks, to your chin, every inch was peppered with very sweet, very wet kisses.

“have i told you much i love you yet?”

he had, at least a handful of times by now, but not nearly enough as you would’ve liked. so you shrugged, a shit-eating grin plastered across your face as you did so, and stepped back, lacing your fingers with his.

“it’s okay, you can tell me one more time.”

apparently that was way too far for you to go, because after one singular step you were tugged back again and kissed as though joost’s very life depended on it. ironic, considering you were certain that you were both about to be struck by lightning at any moment.

“i love you.”

you figured if that were to happen by some chance, it’d be worth it if it meant staying here with him for just a little while longer.

“i love you too.”