#anyway as for this prompt i like that there are a variety of directions to take it via the various definitions

[silhouettecrow]

365 Days of Writing Prompts: Day 282

Adjective: Whispering

Noun: Branches

Definitions for those who need/want them:

Whispering: speaking very softly using one's breath without one's vocal cords, especially for the sake of privacy; rumored; (literary) (of leaves, wind, or water) rustling or murmuring softly

Branches: a part of a tree which grows out from the trunk or from a bough; a lateral extension or subdivision extending from the main part of something, typically one extending from a river, road, or railway; a division or office of a large business or organization, operating locally or having a particular function; a conceptual subdivision of something, especially a family, group of languages, or a subject; (computing) a control structure in which one of several alternative sets of program statements is selected for execution

[capslocked]

KINKVEMBER DAY: 8

[prompt: phone sex]

male reader x shin ryujin

16k words

The phone rings one too many times, and Ryujin is in the middle of scrunching up the paper slip that Chaeryeong handed her earlier that afternoon when she hears your voice.

The sounds of her scrambling for the receiver and her head smacking against the headboard come through in pretty good quality.

That never gets old.

"Stimulating conversations," you offer smoothly, like it isn't a euphemism and instead some high-brow intellectual pursuit. "How can I help you?"

Ryujin is speechless for an unbearable five, ten seconds until she lets out the kind of low chuckle that probably sounds better than it looks. "Hi," she says, "hello, I, uh- I don't know how all of this works."

"Why don't we start with who you're looking to speak with tonight?" you ask.

Ryujin sighs. She runs a hand through her hair, looking at the messy tangle of clothes on her bedroom floor with mild resentment. She’ll take her chances, figuring a direct approach is the best route when she doesn't really know where any of the lines get drawn or who is allowed to say what and who isn't.

"Um. Okay. Who you got?"

"We have a large variety of operators to suit any taste," you explain kindly. She appreciates that. "Do you have someone specific in mind? A gender perhaps, to start?"

"Well," Ryujin starts, running her tongue along the edges of her teeth. Lia has this thing she constantly says, that there's always a thousand and one reasons not to do something, and Ryujin is the first person to make fun of her for it - but here she is, finally putting that adage to use.

"I was actually calling to, um," she exhales loudly. "A guy? I mean look - girls. Girls are great, but if you - mmm." She clears her throat. Because she knows how she wants to do this, and it's most definitely: "A man."

You wait for a second before replying, and Ryujin allows the stillness to expand over and fill out every corner of her bedroom before a bright, "Alrighty, well," comes filtering out her phone, tinny but as enticing as ever. "That would be me."

"Oh."

"Yeah," you reply, easy and unhurried. You sound exactly like the kind of person whose company people pay handsomely to be around; the professionalism is undeniable, but there's something to be said for your tone. The softness to the vowels, the almost imperceptible upward lilt to the words - Ryujin gets that, maybe.

You're pretty confident in the answer, but you ask anyway, "have you ever done anything like this?"

Ryujin opens her mouth and hesitates for a brief moment.

"Well," she muses. She's tried porn, she's tried her own fantasies, she's tried cranking up the hot water and touching herself with the head of the shower aimed somewhere she's told by other girls: it's there, free of charge. "I haven't."

"But you have a boyfriend," you state. "You have a man, who you enjoy things with?"

Ryujin laughs nervously. "It's...it's been a little while. Not recently. Sorry. I know you don't-"

"No, no, not at all, you're doing fine, it's just that you sound very attractive over the phone. Excuse the assumption."

Ryujin laughs and rakes her fingers through her fringe. She knows it's a line, but she laughs anyway. She could - if she was looking for the deranged fulfillment of it - pore through a billion comments on instagram, on twitter that call her a lot of things: gorgeous, beautiful, hot. The last comment she read before almost deleting her app entirely was someone who decided to textually imitate a dog barking to a picture Yeji had taken of her in a coffee shop. There's a novelty, she thinks, in being charmed by someone who has no idea who she is.

"You have good ears then," she says, smirking into the receiver. "So do you normally do, what, ask questions? I have no idea."

"Yeah, it helps me build a profile," you reply, "but if you had something else in mind-"

"No, please, shoot." She grabs the pillow from behind her back and flops against the mattress, staring up into the ceiling fan.

"Do you feel comfortable sharing your age with me?"

"Twenty," she answers without missing a beat, even though that isn't right. It's weirdly important to her, keeping it private, and she isn't sure why - but then you say something pleasant and complimentary about college and new experiences that she's unable to register, and you ask her for her name so quick she just blurts it out:

"Ryujin."

"Pretty."

"Fuck," Ryujin grins, immediately chewing on her knuckle to bite back a gasp. "Sorry. The name is cute or, whatever. Whatever. Sorry for the curse. God, I don't really have a filter - what about you? Do you have a name, Mr. Operator?"

"I do."

Ryujin lifts a leg up and puts it down again. She doesn't know if she should already have taken off her pajamas or if that's weird. Or if the fact that it doesn't bother her means this is more or less wholesome. She turns over onto her stomach, humming into the phone and now she doesn't know why she's thinking about your face. You could be- well, fuck, you could be anyone, but there's this gnawing compulsion to put something together.

You tell her your name and she scoffs for a second, before quieting down and returning you a, "pretty."

"Ryujin, tell me." There's probably a slightly too long pause from your end of the line before you get on with asking her, "when was your last orgasm?"

She drops the phone right in her face. It bounces off the bridge of her nose before landing in bedsheets beside her and her eyes are welling with tears while she scrambles blindly across her bed, cursing into the receiver and squirming. She pulls the phone to her ear and catches the last couple seconds of you reassuring her that it's okay, that it's completely fine if she's hung up or gone.

"Actually, I have," and she curls her fingers into a fist, "never came in my whole life."

You clear your throat to keep a less than professional sound from coming out. A quiet space she feels necessary to fill: “Not even once.”

"Really?"

"I know. And I've only recently realized that's, uh - er- a pretty un-normal thing." Ryujin makes a waving motion with her hand even though you can't see it, trailing off into silence and blushing furiously. "Sorry," she apologizes. She doesn't know what she’s apologizing for, but she does it again. "Sorry about that."

"I should be the one feeling sorry for you," you rib.

"Fucking tell me about it."

"Hey, this reminds me, would you be averse to the idea of touching yourself?"

The question stutters Ryujin in her tracks, and she doesn't even say no but a drawn-out "nngh" leaks out before she can stumble into something more intelligible. "Isn't that, like, what you're supposed to do on these calls?"

"Every call is different, Ryujin."

She chews on her lower lip, rolling it under her front teeth. You say her name like you know her, and it's throwing her for a loop. The comfort you have with the whole situation - asking her a million questions and not demanding answers, taking cues and reassurances in stride and turning everything into some sort of ploy for getting her naked. Fuck, she'll take a bit of a plunge:

"Should I be touching myself?"

"It's not my place to say."

"Okay, well that's kind of a frustrating answer."

"So you're saying you like being told what to do," you tell her, and you hear the sharp inhale in reply.

"If I knew what I liked, you think I'd be calling a sex hotline and hoping some stranger might take pity on me?"

You laugh out loud, and her response is the quickest, the cutest little, "seriously!" before she chuckles too.

"Ryujin?" you ask.

"Yeah?"

"Are you straight?"

She nearly chokes - because it's like you're able to just read her mind - and if you can do that then there's nothing you can't do, maybe. And here, excitement feels a lot like apprehension. She twists and curls in on herself, thighs rubbing together, the flat of her hand traveling across her stomach.

"I'm-"

"Because no one should have to pretend that they're interested in guys," you interrupt her and, god, for as much time as she's spent dwelling on that, she wishes it were that simple. 

It would be a hell of a lot easier if she knew why she wanted to get her face between Yeji's thighs and drag her tongue all over her clit until that prettier-than-perfect face of hers cinches up in a pleasure that comes with just the right amount of agony - or if she knew why she didn't feel anything like remorse or guilt or envy when her boyfriend came around instead of wanting, you know, to get on her knees with her mouth around his cock too -

Fuck, it's all very complicated.

"Straight," she answers. She likes cock, as much as anyone realistically can, and she knows the body on a man can get her dripping and easy in all the right ways. So, she just swallows. Says, "straight enough."

"If you were to touch yourself, right now, and someone - say, a man - were telling you exactly what to do: what would spring to mind, if anything."

"Mmm. Is this you asking me to touch myself?"

"Again. That's up to you."

Your voice is light. Very pleasant. Very male, Ryujin realizes. She gulps.

"Can you, I mean," she says, running a hand down the length of her thigh, pressing down at the hollow.

"Ryujin,” you say, letting her mull over how it sounds in your mouth. “Take a breath for me, please."

Her exhale leaves her with a heavy push and she tries not to laugh. Nervous tic. She's getting goosebumps, but she feels warmer than before.

"We could say this isn't the first time, you and me, in some very broad and abstract sense. How does that make you feel?"

"Strange." She touches her outer thighs again and arches her back. "Kind of horny," she admits. And it is odd - your words, the things you say - and maybe it's her nerves because the experience is new, and so are you, and so are her feelings, all wrapped in one.

"Do you want to do something about that?"

There's silence between you for what seems like a very long time, your breathing quiet but apparent - a signal you haven't abandoned her in some state of vulnerability. Ryujin inhales deeply. She's shaking in her fingertips. The tension has her taut and waiting, and that's funny, really, because it's what she's been doing for years. The rubbing. The touching.

Her hips rock forward gently and she answers the unasked question with a sweetly husked, "uh-huh."

"What are you wearing?"

"Ah, really?" Ryujin laughs. Her fingers pause at her waistline. "That old, bad porn trope."

"I like hearing about people's clothes, is all," you excuse yourself lightly. "Helps me get a sense of things."

"Yeah, alright. Sweats. Baggy ones." Her lips fall apart. "Shirt."

"Is that all? Nothing sexy."

"What's sexy?"

"Sexy is…"

She listens to you mull it over, listening for a ruffling or two. "For a girl with a nice body - some body - some curves," you continue, and Ryujin has to drop another finger to the hot line of her thigh, her lower belly. "You need lace. Silk. You've gotta leave the best bits a little hidden, at least for a while longer."

"Wow. You sound a hell of a lot like you'd enjoy taking someone's pants off," she half-teases. "Do you make all your calls like this? One sordid fantasy at a time, huh?"

"Something like that," you reply. And then, as if reading her mind, "are you doing anything, right now?"

"I'm touching myself," she exhales. "Are you?"

"Ryujin, not yet. Please be patient."

She makes a face even though you can't see it or taunt her. That's an unfair request - you have an unfair request.

"Just, wait," you tell her. She's drawing lazy, winding circles across her thigh. "Let me show you something, will you do that for me?"

"But, what."

"Tell me everything. All the things you're thinking. Things you want to do."

"Everything?"

"Yes."

She blinks away her initial disbelief and reaches around for her lamp to switch it off. Until it's just the hallway light peeking in through the crack between her door and the door jamb and you, a stranger who won't be seeing her face or hearing her say anything stupid. She shakes out a few more breaths, shuffles against the sheets, and glides her fingertips past her belly button.

Her hand rises up her stomach in one decisive movement, until her fingers curl beneath the bottoms of her bra, trapped in its underwire. "I'm thinking - unh - about, ah. My friend?"

You're quiet and let the silence linger, until she seems like she might not find her way; so you repeat, "Go ahead."

"And a guy she used to like, fuck, she'd show up here, drunk on, ah. A weeknight. Somewhere, fuck, around midnight. Walk past me into the kitchen where we had the - the light. God." Her hips stutter and she grits out the rest through her teeth. "In the refrigerator. Ah, yeah, a midnight snack. Always looked way too fucking good for, um, oh, for a casual booty-call."

"Does your friend have a name?"

"Yuna," she practically pants, and immediately realizes she shouldn't have said that either.

"Did you always know what was going on? Between Yuna and her-"

"Boy-toy, yes - it was so obvious, I always knew, yeah," she said, clumsily grabbing the sheets with one hand as she drifts further between the peaks. "Just - fuck - he'd be picking at, ah, something with chopsticks."

"In your kitchen?"

"My, uh, table. And I'd be working up the nerve to ask."

You sigh over the phone, "ask him what?"

"What it was, like, I knew she was only- shit." She keens high in her throat. "What it was like, fucking taking that cock of his, and bending Yuna's tight little, ah, ass over and, mm, railing her on the side of her fucking bed - and just pumping her full of cum just like that until- Jesus, she would walk around after and sometimes-"

You groan softly. This encouraging little sound.

"-fuck - sorry, I mean. Yeah, he, sometimes he'd make her walk around with his, ah, stuff inside. Down her fucking pants and, it's like, fucking disgusting, I swear-"

"And?" You breathe a heavy edged noise over the line.

Actually okay, so maybe this was more than she bargained for, maybe she bit off more than she can chew - maybe, she feels like her insides are collapsing; all the fire pooling around in her stomach and gathering into a melting sort of weightlessness.

"And it makes me feel fucking-"

"Fucking what."

"Why am I talking about this, why-"

"Talking to me? Fucking wet, Ryujin, answer the question."

She pants down at her phone and then turns her face into her forearm, rubbing and making sounds. She thinks about, oh, fucking Yuna and how she showed up to hang out once, with cum leaking down the crease of her inner thigh, smearing against her skin and down between her legs.

"Wet." She swallows. "How do I-"

"Say that you wish it was you," you tell her. "That you wanted that, to be fucked. To feel a cock inside."

Her head falls back. "That," she manages, "fucking, that."

You drawl so that the question might roll off, easy: "Is that the kind of girl you are? Told not to curse, not supposed to let anyone else play with you - you just need it, don't you? Do you need someone's cum? Just tell me."

"I think so, ah," and she stops moving her hand. "I think I'm gonna go now. This is fucking embarrassing, like. Okay, sorry."

"Don't hang up," you tell her, and the soft edge to it is one she really wants to indulge. "Don't," you repeat, a little louder.

You start talking, about the same sorts of things she's imagined herself: the sex and the sounds and what he can do to her. You build a slow and aching heat between her thighs that has her dripping through her underwear and grinding against her fingers. Telling her how she's the one that needs to be filled, needs a man who can wrap her legs around his waist, get to the deepest parts of her, the parts untouched and willing.

Ryujin gets that - she wonders, half out of it and stroking faster than she usually would be, how much of it has anything to do with who the voice is on the other end of the receiver, and how it could be what a desperate, pathetic, tired part of her has always wanted.

"Are you?" she asks, panting over the phone.

"Am I what?" you whisper back to her.

"Are you," and you hear how she inhales sharply through her nose, a desperate gasp leaving her lips on the exhale, "going to, um. Are you touching yourself right now?"

Your reply is immediate, and her eyes flutter and close the second you tell her exactly what she wants to hear:

"God, yes."

She drags her hand up the center of her body, runs her fingertips over her jaw and presses the heel of her wrist to her neck to feel her pulse slamming hard.

"I'm fucking throbbing, Ryujin; you sound gorgeous like this, like nothing I've ever heard, I'm stroking my cock just picturing you, please-"

"Tell me." She's mouthing into the center of her palm, saying the words, tasting salt and musk. "Fuck, ah," she babbles, "tell me what you would do with me."

"I'd get you on your knees," you tell her without hesitating for a beat.

"Fuck."

"I'd come up behind you and tell you not to be scared, baby. I wouldn't hurt you, I'd just touch you real gentle. Push my fingers past your tongue, slide a little down your throat."

"Uh huh," she moans, her head falling back and rolling, rocking against the mattress.

"Want you sucking on my fingers. Need your hands around my cock, or better, my balls, play with them. You're going to take those fingers - every finger I got, all five, yeah?- all ten of them," you joke, "and open up your tight cunt - like you are now, like such a good fucking girl-"

The girl fucking yelps. Just this honest sound of depravity; it's what she's paying you for. It's a silly line of bullshit, but it makes her bite hard and ache a little around her own knuckles and moan in her palm and dig her nails hard into her flesh. Her thumb fumbles across the top edge of her underwear and you pant again into her ear as if on cue, giving her a small bit of guidance that has her jolting in pleasure. She didn't know that was there, fuck, fuck-

"Like that, Ryujin. Breathe," and she does.

"Please," she whines, trying to find somewhere for her arm to settle, resting finally in her hair - setting the phone to speaker in a foolish moment of lapsed-judgment, just before it nearly clatters off the side of her bed.

Keep going - she's telling you over and over - keep going, and you’re picturing her there: eyes closed, legs spread wide, bent knees quivering and toes curling into the sheets. It doesn’t sound fake - you've heard a million of them, you've learned them in their different tones and accents and you can spot a faker a mile away. And the girl on the phone right now isn't pretending or thinking about whatever's happening somewhere else.

(You don't join in for everyone. You can't. It's an asinine consideration that you'd be rubbing your fist up and down your cock while it's sore and wanting - aching from the neglect or lack of rhythm. You have to remind yourself it's just a job, that the logistics just can't support such selflessness.

But then there's the very fucking premise.

That the girl on the other end of the line is inches from the goalposts, fingering her cunt and sighing into the throes of her first orgasm - first ever, because you did this, you brought her this far - you're the fucking culprit, and no matter how many girls, or boys-pretending-to-be-girls, how many people have gotten off with the help of your voice, your instruction, this one sets a different fucking precedent.

You're not lying when you say, "I'm rock fucking hard, Ryujin," or "there's precum all over my knuckles, baby."

Because there is, and the poor thing chokes out another desperate sound when you tell her.)

"I'm right there, ah, fuck, keep going-"

"I've got my hand around my shaft, just enough that I can fuck it, can't I? The head is getting slick - baby - and my palm is gliding nice and easy. Are you cumming, Ryujin? You better be, you better be cumming right now."

There's a heaving gasp and she calls out for you, babbling curses and "please" and "fuck" in alternating succession, with enough punctuation for you to have to let your lip slip under the hard bite of your front teeth. "Don't stop," she tells you, voice thready.

"You need this so bad."

"Yes," she gasps. "How would you-"

"How would I fuck you?" you finish her thought.

She waits a moment, sucking in shallow breaths and then replying weakly, "I really like... I like doggy."

"On your knees?"

"Yeah," she stammers, "I like when, like- ah, like, pulling my hair."

"Fuck, I love that," you say into her mewling. "Splayed out with your tits against a pillow and getting your pretty, little pussy pounded? I bet that'd feel so good, huh? Hands so rough on your hips, on your throat, squeezing your neck so you'll turn pink. Just to see you smile, I'd probably fucking let you take whatever you want."

You're met with a broken moan, a long string of syllables ending on a note that has your shoulders clenching and cock jumping in your grip.

Tense over the things you can't see: Ryujin biting down into the side of her hand, the other knocking painfully against the wooden side rail on her mattress, her thighs tightening and screaming and clamping around her wrist as she pulls weaker, wilder whimpers out of her chest each time her fingers drag across her slit and the sensitive curve of her swollen clit. She's dying, she thinks, she's going to fucking die - the in and out of her soaked pussy, through all that sticky, satiny skin, slick fingers diving in, twisting until there's nowhere for them to go.

No other recourse than to fuck in, fuck, fuck, like that, fucking god.

There's heavy silence on the line for god knows how long - well, you have to check the log. But for her, it feels like fucking forever. That was - that was it. It's so fucking mind-wracking how good it was, she can't quite wrap her brain around it. Nowhere near. She thinks she'll have a better idea after two rounds, definitely by four. She'll buy something, use the discount, go shopping - an orgasm just to make sure she's not bullshitting herself.

You clear your throat.

She moves sluggishly, away from the side and against the headboard - the heat still unbearably oppressive, her t-shirt clinging and sticking. "That," she stumbles through the afterglow.

"Do I need to apologize to you?" you ask lightly.

"What? Oh god, no - no way. No way. I just."

"Yes?"

"Like I didn't know it was this-"

"Did you just cum, Ryujin?"

She's laying there with the phone pressed to her brow. A hand palmed over her own racing pulse. The faint smell of her own cunt lingering around her face.

"I don't know," she tells you, and promptly hangs up.

-

The darkness in Ryujin's bedroom is punctuated only by the faint, hazy light streaming in from the hall, and her bedroom fan making its creaking little circles, as she waits in her post-nut-high for her breathing to normalize. Her mind is buzzing, and out of all this, she has a hell of a bill and a couple conclusions:

She's a coward and a pervert, but definitely, definitely bisexual.

Or, like. She's in some weird gray area between not liking whenever anyone buys her drinks, but also the girls at least let her dance a little close. That's a strange thing, isn't it? For how often her mouth does stupid shit - you think at least someone would figure it out for her.

But you, oh fuck. You-

She's fucking shaken up, for sure.

-

(It's a home office set-up, actually.

Your desk isn't organized; you're sure the photos on the wall are askew and the paint looks slightly worse for wear if you were to turn the lights on - which you never really do. There's an aging lamp tucked into the back corner, a bottle of scotch next to your handset that's closer to halfway empty than halfway full, and you can't stop imagining it.

Promise, This never happens.

You've got the name stuck to the roof of your mouth even though you know it's fake. Stuck with something so painfully abstract. Imagining this girl that is probably as brash and bawdy as her voice, or more exciting than either - maybe her hair is long enough to brush along her breasts. Or maybe it hangs just over her shoulders. God knows just how that would frame her features.

You can see it, really. You pump a handful of coconut oil into your palm and the details solidify so easily in your head: her pretty mouth, nose, the dimples in her cheeks - eyes glazed and sultry and gazing at you.

Smelling sweet, all the places you need, skin hot, clit swollen-

Just- fuck. Fuck.

Ryujin, huh, imagine that.

Ryujin.

And you jerk off right into the soft embrace of a tissue.)

-

A little more than a week later:

Ryujin's all wrapped up on the couch, with an arm cushioning her head and watching TV when there's a sudden commotion from the front door. Yuna - her friend, her very nice, very male friend who never shows up after midnight unless there's a promise of sex - comes bumbling into the room.

He has no regard for boundaries.

So,

Yuna starts to say, smug, from where the hallway becomes the living room, "Ryujin - look at us. Stuck on a Friday night. You gotta boyfriend or something?"

She's completely unfazed by this interaction. She's pretty sure he has his own key, so like, he should be used to it by now too.

"Kind of." She shuts off the TV to turn her attention towards the topic at hand. "Why?"

Yuna runs a hand through all her long, silky hair and gestures her cock-du-jour on over to the door of her room. "Waiting for a call, maybe." She waggles her eyebrows. "Are you any good, I mean, you never seem to..."

Annoying brat. 

Ryujin smacks the back of her neck and interrupts, "you gonna fuck him? Go ahead and fuck him, Yuna." She checks the lock. The kitchen. Gets up and tries to ignore the heat flaring behind her ears.

"We could pretend," Yuna muses, tugging the waistband of Ryujin's shorts around her fingers before she's out of arm's reach. The elastic flips back into her waist with a dull snap.

"Dumb idea. That's a dumb, dumb idea," she reasons, because she knows Yuna has no self control. None, and it's showing; the second her shoulders sag forward and her eyes dart, craving, Ryujin steps back in. "Don't be stupid."

Yuna's lips are tilted, playful. Ryujin wants to smack that look right off her face. Like she fucking deserves any kind of victory just because she found out she can fuck anyone she wants while lacking the self-awareness to somehow be contented with anyone. She's not going to call her a slut - out of a matter of principle - but god, does she fucking want to.

"Gotta get ready, is what you should do," Ryujin mumbles under her breath.

"Fine." Yuna shrugs and pecks an annoying kiss to Ryujin's temple on her way to the shower, waving a hand over her head with a casual, "If you want something, you've only got a half-hour."

Ryujin pushes her hair out of her face and does what she does best: overanalyze and overthink the situation.

Whatever. Yuna won't give it up regardless, not in any way she'd actually be able to enjoy. Her cheeks go a little redder while she pretends to not be considering it.

God, a threesome in total functional harmony however: her working her mouth on Yeji (Ryujin doesn't know why she's thinking about Yeji, but she is), Yeji working her mouth on her boyfriend, her boyfriend working his mouth on her -

That'd be something, she thinks. Like one of those Escher diagrams, but one where everyone cums at the end.

The thought makes Ryujin wet enough to squeeze her thighs together and stand up a little straighter.

Then she hears the showerhead turn on, and she wonders just why, exactly, Yuna is such a spoiled asshole.

-

Turns out,

The universe just has this habit of providing Ryujin with what she wants right alongside everything she doesn't.

She’s stretched out in her sweats, sat up at the top of her bed again and touching herself beneath the sheet in a pointless attempt to contain the mess. Fucking horny - it's honestly unbelievable - and her left hand's making lecherous, slick noises until it's absolutely gross. Until Ryujin's gasping and panting and sweating from the nape of her neck and the back of her knees.

All because Yuna's the loudest little-fucking-whore of a roommate anyone has ever heard.

She's moaning like she's getting fucking plowed into the next life. And apparently, the cock she's got in her cunt is fucking huge if those little murmuring whimpers are anything to go on. She keeps begging the guy, coy, for a kiss while she's probably folded up like a lawn chair in there, getting railed, and the fact that the boy keeps obliging is as admirable as it is kind of insulting.

"Goddamn," she thinks out loud, because the walls are paper-fucking-thin. The apartments in the area are built in an earthquake-safe way, which in reality, means they can either withstand a magnitude 6.0 and come out without any severe structural damages - or that it's so cheaply constructed the building will go down like a matchbox house before it stands a chance against a tremor of any significance.

They're easier to replace that way she’s told. And Ryujin's apartment is definitely of the latter; she can hear everything.

The skin on skin, their bodies sliding together in the slippery sheets. Her mouth smacking wet around his tongue as he bucks forward and asks her to do a hundred filthy things, asking her where it feels best - that sort of thing, which gets her wound and agitated and frustrated, and fucking horny as fuck. Ryujin's bent-inward and panting when he really gets to work - the creaks and groans, their mingled pants and the constant thudding and swaying of the headboard smacking into the wall.

She doesn't even need to put her ear to the partition like she's sixteen years old all over again, hoping to catch her old brother going at it while her mom was out. Trying to figure out this whole sex thing - what all the fuss was about.

Just the way Ryujin sighs is nothing short of despondent. Slightly pitiful.

And every tight circle she's running over clit feels so fucking good, until she realizes the room goes real quiet for a bit. The stillness - no slapping, no movement, just wet, panted-breaths and muffled speech. She nearly asks aloud what's wrong - but she hears it: Yuna's hushed but totally undeniable,

"Been so long- don't, don't- hold up," she croons in these high, sing-song little huffs. "That - uhn, ah - that's my - that's my good spot, there, keep - yes, harder!"

Ryujin slams her eyes closed, dropping down onto the mattress and wishing she'd slipped her hands into her sweats sooner. Fuck. And as Yuna's back starts banging against the wall - so rhythmic and fucking thorough - Ryujin can feel the heat curling behind the backs of her knees, radiating along her calf and reaching into the smalls of her feet. Fuck. Fuck, she doesn't even get to watch.

Right there. So good, please, so fucking good, is what Ryujin can’t not hear coming right through the drywall.

She’s three knuckles deep in her pussy, all stretched out, and she's practically drooling - "spread me, baby. Hold the, fuck, spread my lips open. See me- unh. Ah - see me? Please, do it-" - the boy groaning about it as he fucks her, and then, Yuna, needling him with a quiet, breathy, "harder, can't you?"

The answer seems to make Yuna squirm and scream.

And Ryujin's nearly rolling - rocking, fucking humping her own fingers because it's starting to ache a little, a cramping in her wrist and arm and jaw that she's trying really hard to ignore, rubbing and fingering and fucking herself closer, the heels of her feet sinking hard against the sheets, throbbing and aching around the flicks of her knuckles, harder, faster - faster -

"Fucking hell-" she seethes and stops moving all at once - because god, Yuna is un-fucking-believable.

The absolute bitch, she's doing it again: squealing and cursing and calling his name into her orgasm and just basking, it sounds like, right in it. Because she always does this, every single fucking time, she acts like it's the best feeling in the fucking world and she fucking loves everything, and that shit just - Ryujin grits her teeth and grimaces and pulls her slick fingers from her body - that just ruins it.

All that build-up and for what?

Fuck, Yuna really has the nerve to go there too. She's talking about sucking her own damn cunt or some bullshit-

Yeah, it's not fucking fair, Ryujin concedes.

Or maybe she's being punished. She could live with that, but god. The unfairness of it all. She tries, for a half a minute, to let her throbbing stop being a goddamn nuisance. But the noises coming from the other room are making her crankier, more angry, more irate - and definitely hornier than she ever really intended, even though she knows Yuna is thoroughly distracted in there.

Ryujin sits up a little straighter. Squares her shoulders, steadies herself and fishes around in her pockets with her uncoordinated, cum-coated hands until she finds her wallet, a credit card, her cell -

And there's an aching, a sore pulse of neglect between her legs; that's all too much. A quick peek down confirms that, yep, she's practically dripped right out of her shorts and even gotten a dark spot in the front of them. How great is that.

Yuna is over there, all, "thank you - ah - can you please do me a favor and fuck my mouth with your big, big, huge, fucking cock-" and this guy, he sounds so patient, telling her how he wants to do exactly that, but he wants to fill her tiny pussy up first, fuck her here, fuck her there, fuck a baby right into her. Wants to get his cum all over her face, smear her mouth and her throat and her cheeks - 

Ryujin inhales through her nose and holds, eyes falling closed in something between misery and anguish.

He's telling her, yeah, of course he'll fill up her throat - give her so much it's leaking out of her fucking nose - and Yuna sounds like she's moaning and garbling an objection to that last part - but it doesn't actually fucking matter.

"Geez," is Ryujin's quiet, little gasped-out response. He just fucking pounds her right back into place; her next orgasm. Fuck-

And there it is: the slew of moans that start back up and just keep on keeping on.

Shin Ryujin is going to lose her fucking mind.

-

Ryujin only lasts a handful more days before she calls again.

It’s another Wednesday night, if only to increase the odds that you’re working. Yeah, she could go with another guy, but another guy might not do everything you did, talking quietly and calmly - so composed while Ryujin was losing some part of her sanity to the thumb she pressed on her clit. 

No, it has to be you.

That's what Ryujin makes herself say when the operator apologizes and explains you're busy.

"Will he be working much longer? Please, I, um-"

"If you give me your number," the operator tells her, "I can add him as a preferred associate. You'll get him next time instead of going to the line."

Ryujin pauses, finger held to her chin. Will he know that? There's all this implication isn't there, that maybe he won't. Maybe you're popular - are you? It's a lot like texting someone for the very first time. And if you did - know, she means - would she be acting like a stalker? It would feel weird, probably, but no worse than some people do it already.

Oh god, this is kind of fucked up.

Maybe a little. Maybe.

Ryujin pauses, finger to her chin. Will he know that? There's all this implication, isn't there, or maybe he won't. Maybe you're popular - are you? It's a lot like texting someone you like-like for the very first time. And if you did - know, she means - would she be acting like a stalker? It would feel weird, probably, but no worse than some of things other people are undoubtedly doing with this service, Ryujin decides, and rattles off the digits so fast the operator asks for clarification.

"If your schedule doesn't open," the line says, "call back and leave a message with when."

Ryujin shrugs and says, "yeah, okay."

-

You make Ryujin sit through forty-five-fucking minutes of on-hold music - this barely audible synthetic noise that signals a connection is still there, truly a genre for no one - all before she just cuts the fucking line and lays down on the couch.

Okay.

Okay, fine.

Whatever.

-

(You are… going through the motions.

Some girl on the other line is barely holding it together; you can hear her thighs making slick noises. God. She sounds desperate, she's holding the phone all tight and saying your name. She's fucking babbling; it's not attractive, not while you're tilted back as far as your office chair will go and staring up in the ceiling.

You're bored, mostly.

"Please, please, I'm-"

"Going to cum, I know, princess." She asked you to call her that. "Mouth all open? Can't help it? Just need to lick it nice and fast?"

The answer comes all choppy: "I can't, ah, a-ah-nymore, no, I, can't, need-"

"Do you have any idea? How hard I'm fucking stroking my cock right now? Sitting right in my lap. Jerking it right for you," you say, and then she makes an embarrassingly wet noise, gasping through a choked whine, "so I'm ready to give you what you really fucking need."

"Yes," she chokes. "There - um, please, I just-"

"The biggest fucking load," you tell her. She has no idea, really, that you've got one hand on the receiver, the other just pinching the bridge of your nose - neither of which are you jerking the cum out of your cock and balls like a fucking hydrant as you’d described. What she doesn't know won't hurt her, and you keep your face turned to the side as she starts screaming. As it starts running into one noise that lasts forever - so unbearable that, this time, you consider going out to the bathroom to grab a glass of water and a handful of painkillers. "Need it deep. Let me pour it in, yeah?"

"Yes," she gasps again, heard on this distant frequency because, yes, yes, you've plugged your ear with a finger.

"That'll satisfy you. C'mon, now, princess - give it right up," you tell her, but your eyes are a little dull when her moan turns out all-gagging and twitchy and spasming through it, until finally:

"Ugh."

You wait a moment for the gasping and hitching to finish.

"Good girl," is your distant reply, followed by a polite, perfunctory, "call back anytime.")

-

Ryujin feels like she's in grade eleven again as she stares at her phone. Boys. Drama. Girls. The drama.

The overanalyzing, the wondering, the hesitating. Fuck. She wishes she knew a way to change this, because she doesn't feel particularly mature and is somehow reduced to this girl, this idiot sitting here all embarrassed and staring and moping about a thousand different calamities at once.

She's looking right at the lock screen: the wallpaper of her and Yeji and Chaeryeong out getting coffee on a random Sunday, all bundled up. Winter. Like three, four years ago, maybe.

Ryujin looks like shit, it's funny.

But Yeji -

How she can make the winter pallor look good is beyond Ryujin's understanding. It's unfair. All the things are. Her brain is back and forth and spinning, spinning like the hands on the old clock hung up on the wall in the kitchen. So stuck on what's not quite normal. Stuck on what doesn't fucking matter - who even fucking cares who the fuck she's attracted to?

She feels it between her legs.

Has been for like a month, or longer, without an outlet. Without anything to give her the hint that maybe she can get back to it - the right it.

She doesn't need to call, she tells herself. She's not some weirdo who's sitting on this for days just in the hopes that her boyfriend is having a bad week with work or whatever. It's only Wednesday, technically. Still way early. Just another few days, she reasons, another few hours - what does it matter?

Wednesday. She can feel the word settle inside of her.

Though only once her bottom lip is chewed to hell, does she pick up her phone and decide she will.

-

(You're in your bedroom this time around, finishing up your own weekday workout - on the bike, fifteen-second sprints - when your phone goes off. A simple dinging. Very unassuming.

The operator comes in with a cool, level, "line two, callback."

Then there's nothing but silence for a few beats.

You towel some of the sweat off your face. It's warm - your skin, flushed. Bouncing your phone in your palm. The same feeling that's been tugging at your throat for the past two weeks starts to flare and swell.

Not quite a hope, not quite expectation: just something close.

"Are they still there?"

The operator confirms. "Shall I put them through?")

-

Ryujin fumbles in her own rush of bravado, hands pressing against the fronts of her thighs in an unflattering, nervous little gesture as the connection clicks and picks up.

"This is him," comes your voice, a little husky and raspy from all the day-to-day talk, but even and easygoing and maybe - just maybe - something she can hang on to. Ryujin gives an acknowledging "Mmmn," like the phone call isn't causing her major inner-turmoil.

"Right, ah." You sound kind of, dare she say, nervous yourself. You clear your throat into the line and ask, "what brings you here, stranger?"

Ryujin pauses at this; the red in her ears reaches her fucking jaw. Stranger. Jesus christ, okay, okay-

She laughs. Stops immediately at how self-conscious she sounds. Clears her throat and tucks some of her hair back - settles herself into it like her life hangs in the balance. "I'm here to get my rocks off."

"It's not usually my place to say," you begin in earnest, "but if you're anything like me, and this is gonna sound completely off-the-cusp, but those two weeks really seem to build up, don't they?"

God.

She pulls her sock off her ankle. There's eczema on her heel, and it's the kind of thing she can imagine Yeji telling her to not scratch - that she's going to fuck up her skin. It's funny the stupid fucking things she can remember and all the things she forgets. Like just now, with your voice in her ear, a little unsure in a way that says you've got other, much more important things you should be doing. But you're here with her.

With Ryujin.

God. She might hate herself a little.

"Um," is how she finds her bearings. "Actually."

"It's a joke. Not that- I mean." She hears some rustling - assumes it's coming through the ear piece. There's an abrupt slamming on her side of the line and it seems like the worst kind of deja-fucking-vu. Her neighbors. She forgets it's even this late into the evening. That other people don't have to work so hard in their free-time.

"Maybe this isn't a good night," she says, not so much as thinking the words.

"What?" you ask. Then it dawns on you. "No, no. If you're there, I'm here." You clear your throat. "Besides, there's nobody I'd rather hear from than a woman so desperate she's signed onto my frequent flier's club."

She stops chewing the insides of her cheeks long enough to give you a tired, irritated sound. "Whatever."

And you nearly choke trying not to laugh.

"I don't, um-"

"What, do I have a nice voice?" You laugh quietly.

Under normal circumstances, that wry edge, the bit of try-hard-humor would have her rolling her fucking eyes clean out of their sockets. So when instead she opens her mouth and a fatal-fucked-flirty-feminine, stop, comes out, the vowel pulled long like a plea or a request - well, Ryujin's forehead drops against her bedspread in immediate regret.

You seem startled by it too, going quiet for a second.

"I-I'm-"

"Cute," you decide.

Her ears are red-hot and her cheeks have to be pinking and god, she hates this. That she's hearing this so soon, and it's making her brain hazy and soft and stuttering through, um's and yeah, well, um's. A part of her can't believe she's paying for this, and then, at the same time, she can't believe she's not actually putting cash down for more right this second.

Because it feels -

Like maybe -

Her shoulders rise. She wants this to be quick; she hates this feeling of embarrassment creeping its way in and grabbing onto her with both hands, like this weird, pseudo-affection. She's a grown fucking woman and here she is, letting all her guard down for someone she doesn't even fucking know.

You can feel the tension, hear it. Your lips purse. You try for something easy.

"Go on and give me the details, Ryujin."

Before you'd even picked up, she'd already half-undone her shirt, the flaps of the collar hanging loose with her hands gently petting her ribcage - so easily giving and pliant that there's a good portion of her, in spite of the doubt, in spite of what seems completely illogical about all this, that has her realizing maybe she wants this more than she can possibly understand.

God, she feels like a fucking fool.

"It's pretty boring."

"Not to me. I've spent the last few weeks talking to a bunch of assholes who don't appreciate what they got in the first place," you reply. She imagines you're a little playful about it. Wonders, momentarily, how good that smirk looks - if your eyebrows are lifting like you've been teasing her since day one. Fuck. 

“Your operator is a total asshole too, by the way."

"Don't say that," is Ryujin's shy reply, practically moaned out. "You sound like someone I'd absolutely fucking hate, jesus, stop that."

"Just because you don't get on with someone, doesn't mean they can't get you off."

"Smooth, or something."

"I'm taking a break, relaxing a little, enjoying an overrated TV show or whatever this is - not really minding my business," you say, but your smile is so audible it's fucking offensive. And she's - she's maybe, definitely into that. Like the fucking embarrassment in this is turning her on. Ryujin puts the tip of her finger in the waist of her shorts, experimentally, gently, this small brush and press to her sensitive lower stomach. And it's true. All she hears is her own breathing in the receiver, a bit labored over the slightest, least indecent touch. It's amazing, how much her body can want even when her head can't seem to catch up.

"What do you like?" she asks. “You’re a person, working bits and all, something’s gotta get you all worked up and flustered, no?”

"Will you believe me if I tell you this is my absolute favorite?"

"Do you always dodge the question?"

"It's just like a courtesy," you clarify, "it's not personal."

"Now I sound like a desperate pervert."

"On the contrary," is your warm, buttery reply, and it is fucking aggravating just how well this works on her. "I think there are much better things people can say about you."

God, that - the thought, the possibility of something about her that has nothing to do with how 'thick' or 'thin' her thighs are, or the silhouette of her ass in safety shorts, or how her voice makes guys want to ask if they can take her home and fuck the answers from her, or any of that; it's kind of liberating, just a tiny bit. That it can be a good thing for some reason. God.

Ryujin rubs herself. "Yeah, well."

She wants it all the same and says nothing, shifting a little until her hips tilt slightly upwards, letting her pull at the drawstring of her shorts, loosening the grip. She's already kind of feeling woozy in all the best ways, soft and feminine in how she slides her hand underneath her shorts. Over panties first, with no clear idea if you can tell and honestly, too distracted to wonder about that, if she should care or not, too caught up with her fingertips over the raised seam in her underwear - where the fabric's wet from her.

A shush comes into the line when Ryujin swallows.

The ache between her legs grows louder.

"You still there, Ryujin?"

"Of course," and then, she finds a little more reassured finality: "fuck, yeah, fuck. Please, I..."

"Ryujin," you say with all the calm and control in the world, "talk to me."

-

(So - truthfully, honestly, factually - you are a total wreck.

You're sitting there in a heap of bedsheets and a cold sweat when Ryujin finally mutters into the silence, "thanks, for that, I, uh- that felt really good, exactly what I needed," and hangs up before you can ask about her day or comment on the weather or suggest calling back tomorrow.

She is just perfect, the way she lets a small "I..." slip when she's close. Perfect, how she groans her little broken, satisfied sigh of a yes, her last, fleeting exhale just a sweet, high, barely there please, her body tensing with every little shudder and moan and pant. How the pace goes fast and then slow - like she's gotta think it out a second, her own fingers bringing her closer and closer until there's nothing but a flurry of movement and ragged breaths - an enthusiastic little mmph noise - followed by Ryujin's wet and slick little laugh that sounds like relief.

Like you did something to help, like she needed you and wanted you.

There's cum sticking all up your torso and along your wrist, the inside of your thigh - everywhere you could manage, frankly - and, shit, it's not fair, you realize:

She can find you, whenever she needs you.

And you -

You're just sitting here. Nowhere near sure she'll even call again.)

-

There's a sizable difference between being lonely and being alone, Ryujin thinks, running the cloth under the stream of the shower and then pressing it damp against her throat, wiping at the backs of her knees.

Lonely means that something's missing - it's something she feels when she catches a glance at the handsome arm reached around Chaeryeong's waist, the way she dances so close to someone she just met, or whenever she tells her that she's thinking about, maybe, probably, definitely, absolutely going home with him if her friends don't stop her from leaving. God, her smile is always so cute when he's near. When someone's calling her over for drinks - hips sashaying like she doesn't know the whole bar is staring at the creases where her thighs flare into her ass - because he gave her a look from across the room, and she's swaying from drink to drink.

Like, of course, they're fucking; it's a known, unsaid thing.

She knows it, he knows it. Chaeryeong fucking owns it.

Alone however, is just what it says on the tin.

That's something else Ryujin has yet to learn - that everyone loves differently, cares for different things. Yuna is still single after all, and she can never shake the feeling that it's simply to spite her for some perceived slight or another; Yuna can't live without company, no matter how brief or short or meaningless, so perhaps it's better she never catches on or finds anyone worth keeping around.

And Yeji?

Ryujin sighs, rakes the comb through her wet hair.

The showerhead is running hot between Ryujin's fingers, and the water coming off of her skin turns to steam instantly, filling the bathroom with a permanent cloud, stuck in flux - rising towards the ceiling. She passes her fingers under it, watches the flow, a quiet hm escaping the back of her throat - and she considers the way it feels beating against her throat and chest.

Down the concave curve of her stomach. How it burns red right over her thighs. The pressure slips and sinks low, lower - and when she puts a palm out for a little stability, her left leg can't help but buckle just so, lifting itself out and off to the side. So she stands, toes pointing against the shower floor, face first into her arm against the cool tile.

Ryujin sees where the rivulets of water have gathered above her clavicle - feels them trail down over the tightness in her breasts and between. A couple images pass through her mind at once - thoughts of fingers trailing a line back up the center of her body and a gentle tap against her chin, turning her face to some perfect all-consuming kiss - a hand squeezing at her calf, rubbing her muscles gently - Yeji smiling into the crook of her neck, the grasp on her hip, wrist flexing. Her back bowed and fingers, broad and experienced -

"Don't need you," Ryujin quietly says to nobody, which -

You're doing so well, Ryujin hears back in her imagination, you're so beautiful, you can keep this up, I know you can. I bet it feels good, doesn't it? Just let go and I'll...

Ryujin whimpers out. She can feel that line deep inside her going taut, buckling in her core, the reverberations down to her wrists and fingertips and toes. If she didn't have the wall in front of her, she knows she'd be on her knees - kneeling to the hot water pulsing around the knots of nerves right behind her clit. The pressure hitting her like the crack of a whip.

"Fuck me," she says to no one, gasping in that way you only can when no one is listening.

Yeji's smile is what's gotten her this close so many times, the smell of the ends of her hair tickling Ryujin's nose. Hell, she can't stop thinking about the way her nose crinkles or her dimples flare just when she finds Ryujin's name in her mouth.

It's not fair.

She's so close to cumming and letting whatever happens happen. The slick of her release pouring right out into the drain of the shower, washed away with the excess. So when her whole hand shifts and catches in just the right, delicious, frustrating way, Ryujin inhales so deep through the end of the sentence that, as a result, her knees wobble.

She feels like fucking crying.

It's that sweet little lilt in Yeji's voice, saying things like: "It's alright. I promise you can keep this up a little longer." And "Oh, god, baby." And, at worst, the way her voice shakes with a "come here, honey. Let me-"

Ryujin has to catch herself when her footing slips a little from under her. Then, your voice, coming in distant at first, grows louder, clearer. Into something catastrophic, right against her throat, like it knows the very inside-and-out of her, "go on. Fuck, please, cum all over me, baby - show me a face no one else gets to see."

And for the first time,

Ryujin gets herself off. Alone.

She moans and sighs out. Gasps, "there you go-" and whispers an, "ah, jesus." She manages the most silent, the least decipherable, fuck, as it leaves her mouth like a prayer. Her left knee twitches, body curling into itself, and her hand moves - fingers closing and her eyes clenched shut, a wave, cresting - she just-

Collapses.

Wanting: Yeji, sure - and she came - but the only thing she can really wrap her head around is the truth that she's so, utterly fucked.

-

"Are you sure there's no one you can bring?" Yeji asks in the middle of slapping the ever-loving shit out of a coffee maker that has, for as far as anyone can remember, never worked.

"Uh," is Ryujin's inconvenienced reaction, the tips of her fingers idly sorting through her credit card statements, which a more-sober, less-horny version of herself is a little out of sorts over. "I'm not sure there's anyone I'd want to bring."

"Uh huh," Yeji replies.

She pauses and rests the bottom edge of the coffee maker on the edge of the kitchen counter, stopping herself mid-smack - leaning away to try and give the stupid thing a once-over.

"Who the hell says it's got to be someone you wanna make babies with? Maybe it's just someone you'd think would look good beside you, smiling at the cameras with. Or."

"Or."

Yeji's lips tilt. "Or someone you wouldn't mind screwing in the bathroom."

Ryujin spins the pen in her fingers and gives Yeji a look that says back off and can you chill out already, in the sort of way it takes years to ferment - the silent understandings, the good-natured naggings, the good-fucking-luck-with-that-buddy's. Yeji knows she's getting on Ryujin's nerves. Knows that has never stopped her before.

"In my defense," Yeji clarifies, "I can count at least a hundred people that would crawl over broken glass to sleep with you and, uh-" She knocks the coffee maker off of its stand and holds it gingerly to her chest like some child, motherly. "-I don't wanna take a bullet for your unintentional chastity, Shin Ryujin."

"First of all, don’t pretend you’re doing me a favor here," she replies. "Second-"

"Can't hurt just asking, right? I could set you up, you know, someone you've never even met - no pre-burnt bridges to maneuver."

There’s a world, and Ryujin imagines it for all of a second, where she stands up and grabs hold of Yeji by her cute little ponytail - if nothing else, just to stop the way it bounces every time she steps - and maybe, she also kisses her on the mouth so hard she stumbles. Or perhaps she could pull that ribbon free of its holdings and unravel it down against Yeji's jaw. Pull a whimper, a tiny little ah that says this was inevitable. Maybe they crash onto her bed. Maybe she gets her fingers sticky with how soaked through the cotton of Yeji's shorts have gotten in those short, heated moments - what a world that would be.

"One of what's-his-name's friends? I’m assuming."

Yeji looks annoyed and proud and beautiful; all at once.

"Yes, and what's-his-name's pillow talk is exceedingly whiny about how my best friend is so incredibly standoffish and abrasive and-"

"Okay. I'll go." Anything to stop the image of Yeji with the comforter pulled up to her tits and hair splayed all over the place; red and flushed. Her lips curling with the curve of the sheets and god -

"Just for an hour?" Ryujin asks.

Yeji finally places the coffee maker back onto its stand.

"I mean, nothing much happens an hour into a birthday party," Yeji reassures. "It'll be fun."

"Uh-huh."

"Trust me."

Ryujin wonders just how far Yeji could go - if she knows that she can snap her fingers together, and Ryujin will be there: ready to do anything.

-

Ryujin is trying to go to sleep, is how she'll explain it if anyone asks. Though she prays to god no one ever will.

She tries books. And she tries scrolling aimlessly through Instagram. And there's this one guy she kinda-sorta-dated's updates: photos of a vacation to Boracay, which seems nice; his chest is a little more defined, more chiseled than when she was seventeen and kind of fumbling her way around a college boy and his stupid fucking preoccupation with who should be paying for drinks at whatever run down establishment was his pick of the night. Ryujin makes a face at the screen, pursing her lips; there's a girl in the photo - she looks too young for how her ass is falling out the one-piece. To the extent that she makes sure to send an unsolicited meme she's tagged herself in - like "here is my past and here are his balls", and gets a block and a report as a thank you.

It makes her feel good. That's what's most important.

And then, with little other distraction and a decent lack of luck, she picks up the phone.

It rings for a while before the operator comes in and says, "You're at number nine."

"What?"

"The queue. This call has you at number nine."

Ryujin slowly leans up from the pillows and squints into her bedroom.

"Huh."

"Would you still like to be connected, miss?

Ryujin thinks it over for a moment. Of course you're popular, a part of her mind comments, because you've got a voice like gravel-slung honey-gold. She's imagining eight other girls just like her, laying in their bed, panties on their ankles and thumbs covered with spit. All desperate for you. All curled up - one right after the other - with no fucking idea.

"Miss," the operator comes back with.

The line goes quiet - a few beats, but not too uncomfortable a silence. Then she gets a soft little exhale out, saying, "can I leave a callback number?"

"If you like." The operator considers the idea. "I can’t promise whether he’ll call you.”

“No, yeah.” Ryujin curls an arm under her chest and plays a finger against the swell of her breast through her night shirt. Gets lost in her own consideration. “Don't think he would anyway."

-

A new day is defined by new possibilities, or something or another you read once stitched into a frame; Something you muse over the rim of your coffee, nose-deep in the laptop at the kitchen counter top.

Last night ended a bit unexpectedly - this not considering the couple's awkward fight which took up two-thirds of the evening. Or the girlfriend-slash-fiancée of that guy, which somehow led you to wonder just how old was too old. But as you were logging your final client session of the night a ping came through the employee portal and let you know that someone had left their number with the operator in the hopes you'd call.

You swig back the rest of your coffee, roll your shoulders and shrug. Oh, there are at least a million reasons not to call a number that randomly, offhandedly arrives in the middle of the night and gets patched through a phonesex hot line under the cover of darkness.

The same number could be out there, defacing the wall of a truck stop bathroom, or inked into the skin of a squat prison convict who's got a brow like the horizon. Maybe, it belongs to that married business man that took your personal phone number as his private line and spent all the time bragging how he was going to quit his wife and make a run for it with you - just you - even though you'd rather stab him with a fork than be involved with that kind of psychopathy and are honestly just looking for that extra bump in commissions every time his wife calls to ask the exact same thing.

Your clients call. You talk.

You take the cash.

The point is: there's more fucking deviants out there than there are stars in the sky. You would know; you talk to a new handful every goddamn day.

Yet it doesn't really matter. You're gonna do it. Because you're feeling restless. Because - and it sounds insane - there's at least some probability, no matter how remote, that you will pick up that receiver and punch in a number and the line will connect with the girl who's been on your mind almost constantly for the better half of two months. That you might listen to the dial tone turn into her answering with a genuinely indifferent, "this is Ryujin," or whatever her name actually is -

You're living in a pipe dream. You're probably reaching, actually. And all you know about this woman, is, what? What does it really, factually, truly amount to, the amount you feel you've come to know about her.

You know more about how she prefers to methodically, meticulously begin, then draw out, and finally end a blowjob to someone that ain't you than you do about any detail in her life story, frankly. You're reaching, and you know it.

You pick up the phone and dial.

-

(It goes straight to voicemail, and get this: that’s her real fucking name.)

-

Yuna has the audacity to ask, as she slides into the booth, "who do you keep texting?"

Ryujin's eyebrow arches.

The younger girl nods towards where Ryujin's thumbs are practically flying over the keyboard.

"No one." Ryujin puts the phone on her lap and crosses her arms over her chest. Then the words seem to echo through the inside of her skull, so she shakes her head a little, in emphasis. "It's nothing, don't worry about it."

She's right though - and maybe that's the problem. Maybe that's why it's hard to answer.

Chaeryeong washes the shot of whisky down with a swallow of lemon-lime. Her eyes slide open to Ryujin as she wipes at her bottom lip. Then she spikes a finger into Ryujin's ribs.

"Spill."

It's a dangerous order, and she doesn't realize it at first. Chaeryeong's bad ideas have an annoying habit of flinging themselves on Ryujin, like a bomb dropped at low altitude - sudden, quick, and more than enough to shake everything up. Chaeryeong will make Ryujin go out dancing - and then she'll lose her clutch purse. Chaeryeong will remember she started the evening with a scarf - so they need to walk out a whole block or two to find it.

More importantly: Chaeryeong is not a great drunk.

So, of course she spills. She relays her findings, carefully and as deliberately as she can muster.

"Does he have a nice voice?" Chaeryeong asks.

"It's kind of deep?”

Chaeryeong snorts. Apologizes immediately.

"Not... deep. Sultry. I guess. Smooth, easy to hear." Ryujin tells the two across the table.

Yuna whistles low. "Romantic as shit."

“Fuck, I don’t know. In, like a sexy sort of way." Ryujin raises both palms in a vague gesture. She clears her throat at the two pairs of eyes staring back at her as though the words coming out of her mouth belonged to a foreign language. "Uh. Sort of raspy, or something, sometimes, like he's... on the phone a lot, and you know," Ryujin flushes, suddenly caught and wondering where all the confidence went, "yeah."

Yuna's leaning forward, chin in her palm. "I'm having a hard time believing texting is a sort of standard operating procedure."

"Well try a little harder," Ryujin snaps, eyes finding Yuna's and making herself fucking clear.

Chaeryeong has this look about her, she's trying to keep it all in, but then there's her eyes, cinched at the corners and dead-fucking-giveaways. She puts an arm against the table and points at Ryujin with an up-reaching thumb. "This is the cutest shit, like ever, and you two are texting like actual lovers instead of two, apparently rando-stranger fuck buddies, or whatever."

Yuna - for whatever reason - feels at liberty to throw gasoline on the fire. "Does that mean you think he's going to get jealous if you bring some dude along to Lia's birthday?"

Ryujin sucks in a breath; the fact that he'd never - well.

"Ryujin's in love," Yuna adds for dramatic effect, for the sake of being the worst fucking person. She can be so fucking petty. It's a side of her no one ever sees, because she's just so sweet all the time. Like right now, she's doing that smile-smirk thing that gets Chaeryeong giggling against her hand and then coughing into it a second later.

"Jesus christ," Ryujin starts gathering her jacket and purse. "He's- not- this is- God, I'm done." She slips her shoulder under the strap. "Thanks for listening to me sound like a teenager."

"Isn't that just normal for you," Yuna quips back, pulling at her straw until there's only air rushing through the bend of it. "Where are you going?"

"I can't stay here," Ryujin says as if it's obvious, as well as her point, the argument she's trying to make. "Besides, Yeji is gonna want me to get my dress and shit all sorted out."

"Don't fall in love with one of the robot voices at the cross-walk on your way home, or anything!" Yuna laughs out, giving a flippant wave goodbye.

Ryujin lets her eyes roll because sometimes, she hates her friends.

-

It still throws you for a loop whenever Ryujin pings your phone with a text that says something like:

have you jerked yourself off to exhaustion or is there one more in you for someone like me?

Or,

my roommate is getting pounded through the springs of her mattress, wanna see if you can hear it?

Or,

are you free? I really fucking need to cum. bad.

Each text is something you tuck into yourself. Save and mark and spend all your time in those long-form responses imagining how her face looked when her brain typed out the words for you. You wonder if she's sighing through her fingers or hiding her lips behind a pillow while the heat coils in the pits of her hips.

As time goes by, Ryujin slips a little more. From one text about whatever book or series she was rereading last and another about the sadism of politicians and how people are more likely to agree with what they've heard someone else say than the facts of a given subject, to texts with a few scattered thoughts to strings of sexting that has you cumming into the palm of your hand and through your sheets and in the middle of a dream in which there's no clothes and a pretty fucking filthy proposition.

"How have you been lately," you decide, and consider, briefly, the very strong likelihood this call is gonna send her right through the goddamn roof.

When Ryujin eventually finds herself able to get out: "fine," there's a tell-tale pause, then an even longer pause, that implies she'd definitely rather say anything else. Then she kind of stutters a, "pretty good. Not too bad. All that stuff, I suppose."

And not to say any part of this has felt like routine. Both of you breathing into the end of a telephone and letting your eyes clench tight while you cum all over yourself - imagining everything she told you she wanted you to do to her, how it'd all go: "fucking with my arms grappled behind my back," she'd hum, "head pushed into the bedsheets, you're smothering me, ah- I'd let you cum wherever the fuck you like, but please-" or maybe a bit simpler: "so my thighs are straddling your face?" is about the gist.

A second goes by, another, a third.

"Hang on," you end up having to tell her sometimes, "I need a fucking towel-"

"You really are, huh, jerking off with me- I get you that hot, is what you're telling me? Or is just too much imagining how you'd fuck your way right into my guts through my pretty little pussy? Ah, jesus," the cadence of her voice climbs high before ending up back where it belongs, "Jesus, fuck."

"Can you imagine," is how it'd start, "how good it'd feel? My pussy, or- anywhere, everywhere. I think you'd ruin me for anyone else - you- with how, god-"

You can hear Ryujin shift on the sheets, licking at her bottom lip. Silently cumming. Cumming for you.

"Okay."

"Okay what," Ryujin quietly says back.

The gears turning.

You press your hand into the side of your neck. "Fuck me. Now, in a second. Tell me the last fucking thing in the world you want me to be or do and-"

"Wait."

There's this half-breath. This hmm that almost trips off Ryujin's tongue. Her eyes squinting open to a new thought. You think she's about to be sly. About to surprise you with an offhand fuck yes I'd ride that face like a bus seat; that she might come back with, yes I'll put you right in the middle of the best part of me, god you'll love it, and I promise not to make you cum if you're nice enough not to let your hands wander. But.

It's funny how things are -

"I have a confession," she says, matter-of-factly.

That's not entirely unusual. You've had more of those come through your line in a year than a confessional grate might get in a lifetime. So it doesn't sound like something special to you; Ryujin and you are in this candid don't-ask-don't-tell in regards to payments and the exchange of goods and services, but here you are, still using lines and bits. Practiced.

"In the name of the father, and of the son, and-"

"Funny." Ryujin gets the hint to backtrack. "Uhm, I mean. Remember the roommate I was telling you about?"

You hum a, "maybe."

"Uh," and now the hushed voice from her throat sounds distant, suddenly out of the scope of the receiver, "can I be totally, honestly- just really, extremely honest here, are you- or?"

You stop thinking about the ebbs and flows of her voice, how it dips down then arches up a little. Because now her voice has become something that is nervous, bordering on uneasy. So you stop, take stock and hold on. You weren't expecting a voice of worry or tension, or not at least while she wasn't thrown back into her bed and rubbing furiously at the ache between her legs.

"Yeah, of course," you offer her up.

"This is so embarrassing," she's saying, and some part of you feels ready to sink - you haven't the faintest idea for what, but there is something. Your chest clenches.

You can't help the worry and reply: "Okay, um. I mean- yeah. Me too, I can admit I feel a bit- and you can, y'know, be a little-"

"I'm not straight," she says finally, with a little quiver of her voice right at the tail end.

A blink comes, another - there's nothing coming out of you and you have no idea why that should be at all difficult, so the silence grows long. A new sort of awkward; the kind that you find out isn't just the rush of cum cooling in a pair of sweat-damp underwear. No - this is embarrassment, the kind that taints you.

"What?" You exhale a strained laugh, almost too-bright. "Are you- is this some sort of-?"

"Nope, no, this is crazy, sorry." She laughs. "Sorry."

"You certainly had me fooled." You sit up straighter in your bed, resting elbows on your knees. The moon is filtering through the windowsill and bathing the room in blue - casting light all the wrong ways. Making your own heart beat just a little too fast. "Fuck, um. Can I ask a personal question?"

"Sure." Her voice sounds uncharacteristically soft.

"What are you into?" and you as soon as you ask, you're laughing - because you've heard Ryujin wax lyrical for weeks, pontificate about every manner and way she'd take a cock between her hands, lips, fingers. Every. Single. Place, she wants one in - and now you can't believe this is what you went with: "I mean, like girls?"

"It's probably safe to assume I have some, y'know- degree of- yeah."

You chuckle a bit. The stiffness in your shoulders settling out.

"I've been in love, I realize - boy, with my roommate - for a while."

It's said with a sad laugh - as if this were a little shameful. Some deep, dark secret no one could ever be privy to; some stain on her soul that might wash out only after one final scrubbing with dish detergent and the cruelest bristles. A thing that keeps her up at night -

“Not the roommate, by the way, who we listen to get fucking railed like she’s on-demand pornography every weekend. Just to be clear."

"Good, jesus, that'd be fucking something."

Ryujin sounds more cheerful when her voice comes back through the line, "right?"

You wipe the perspiration of your top lip. You laugh nervously at this girl admitting to being in love over the phone - a stranger, truly, in all ways - to some fucked up audio-fetish sex line personality. And now - the fuck's wrong with you?

"Are you mad?" she asks, and some part of you is wrung. A small string of tension twisting so hard inside your gut, you're losing touch.

"No," you let her know. "No, not at all."

And that is honest. This is honest. There's this itching little scratch all over the insides of your skin that seems intent on driving a fucking wedge. Right at the center of your chest, tearing you apart. It feels as you've lost - not an object, not a material. Not an idea, nor a concept - but a feeling, that for once, was distinctly, overwhelmingly yours, without your wanting, or permission, or comprehension.

Ryujin sighs, this elongated relief coming in. She sinks back against the headboard.

She tells you everything. How Yeji smiles, and it's like the whole fucking room has gone up in lights, just from her and her alone. How there is nothing that she'd rather spend all her days around. She talks and you sit there, silent and listening. She talks about her. Her name and everything Yeji does and everything she wants.

The more you listen, you realize it's all real; she's not confused, or mistaken, or out to play a game or convince herself of something she believes is inherently untrue. She's not frustrated, or longing. She doesn't have this stomach-rolling pit of anxiety digging a cavern at her center because she just can't go through the rest of her life, living a life like everyone else. Not ever.

Because, all you really notice is-

She loves Yeji. The quiet kind. And she's sitting there, legs curled under her ass, crying. Not sad, or frightened, or wounded, just this beautiful sort of awed: it's the kind that only someone who is too inexperienced at crying should have. Where you just-

Look away.

"I'm not taking my phone into the bath with me," is the last thing she says to you, tears flooding out in her last couple words, before you can only offer her a meek: "anytime, Ryujin, I'm here."

-

(Four, five weeks go by in the blink of an eye. A month where you figure it's best to let her text or call or make it clear she wants your voice.

She never does.)

-

Lia is taking her sweet time to apply concealer over the cut Ryujin earned herself trying to get a stupid thing off a shelf - that's how low and unreasonable her tolerance for anything mildly inconvenient is.

"That fucking hurts," Ryujin tells her, wincing.

Lia ignores her.

She keeps on dabbing at the spot on her temple with the makeup brush until there isn't any trace of bruising, or where the jagged scar of a cut ends and skin begins, not anymore. At this point, she has gotten better, has developed a kind of surgeon's eye: zeroing in and unblinking, until every inch of damage is looking like Ryujin did when she was brought into this world -

(which is not perfect, but what it ought to look like, all things considered.)

Lia holds her hands in place on either side of Ryujin's head. "Stay."

It takes less than five minutes, and during those, Yuna just offers from around the bathroom door, "Ryujin, sweetheart, you’re looking hot tonight."

There's nothing more Ryujin wants to do than set the girl straight - the girl can't not keep a chirp to herself, for once in her fucking life. Because this flimsy slip of a dress around her middle feels too tight, the air choked out of her lungs if she shifts her weight onto the wrong foot. The hem rides way too fucking high up her thighs. So, if anyone didn't want a good long look at her ass tonight, they better come up with a plan B if she has to so much as approach a staircase.

"Have I ever not," she bites.

Yuna snorts.

And luckily for Ryujin, Lia feels the same way:

"Yuna, would it kill you to find something productive to do with your time?"

Yuna opens her mouth like she has something to say (she usually does) before retreating further away, the edge of her hair disappearing around the doorway. Then Ryujin's grinning - eyes taking in how Lia glowers a bit back, silently judging the stupidity in Ryujin's expression and also, admiring how good the girl looks. "Not bad, though, really."

Lia tells her with an underhanded wave of the brush and a wink: "historically, you do always get laid on my birthday, remember?"

Ryujin jerks a little, and the scar above her eye throbs into Lia's thumb. "Thanks?"

-

The party is miserable, but it's not Lia's fault. It's not really Yeji's fault either. They tried, that's really all she can say for them - her and her permanent-plus-one whose face Ryujin wants to both claw at and kiss until it’s swollen-

What she really can't wrap her mind around, though, is the guy sitting right fucking beside her. The idiot.

"Really, I'm telling you," her date - who is about 3.5 out of five stars at best and not so much handsome or hot as he is 'okay in a pinch' - grins up at her with the smarmiest of smiles, "if you'd just have taken me up on dinner, I would've spent all our time talking about you. We’d figure out how to enjoy ourselves."

"Likely story."

This fuckwad has the absolute goddamn gall to look wounded when his arm starts circling its way around the space where her dress is suffocating her at the waist, and Ryujin starts to shimmy her way out of hot water - again. God, she thinks, god save me-

"I think," she manages with a stilted grin, "I'm going to make myself useful- drinks, no?"

When he leans forward to grab her hand, it's only so she doesn't leave.

"You're not going to ask for my order?" he presses. The only reason Ryujin hasn't knocked out a couple of his front teeth is because Lia would be the one hearing Yeji whine about cleaning up the fucking mess.

"Just scotch. Neat."

Ryujin's a natural when it comes to smiling fake; it's part of her goddamned job. "Of course," she says, like she's not absolutely loathing him.

"Try the oakier, single-barrel variety, alright," he explains, because what's hotter than a man who's an expert in alcohol and being an insufferable tool? Nothing of course. She hopes he knocks back a few too many and his liver explodes - the painless way out. If god would ever fucking allow it.

She barely manages a half-strangled laugh over the blare of the music before he finally releases her wrist. 

The absolute fucking prick.

-

Here's something Ryujin never thought she'd come to appreciate:

Being alone.

It's just her and the breeze through the open doors of the rooftop garden, which is something every bit as refreshing as it is teeth-chatteringly cold. The wind picks up in gusts and billows, until it starts nipping up the fabric around her knees, like it's any one of the drunk, stumbling guests milling about and looking for a noncommittal lay.

Her left foot slips a step outwards, the uncomfortably tall heel bouncing on the edge of her toe and tapping a tune against the brick. Ryujin slouches on the railing that encapsulates the entire terrace, arms pressed over it, hands folded one-over the other - letting the night sky caress her bare shoulders with its wind-brushed kisses. This, is okay. It's better.

Maybe not ideal, but better.

And all it really took was a few fucking moments where she isn't smiling with pursed, stressed lips; where the pressure in her jaw finally settles out enough for the knot in the back of her teeth to fall loose and for her mouth to actually feel, y'know - good.

Not forced, is what. Not fake, or not real, or whatever-

Ryujin almost fishes her phone from her clutch. Almost. Almost texts to tell you that: this fucking night, like all the others in the past month or two or year, has left her feeling particularly done for, and yeah, no, it isn't helping that she'd take whatever would be the alternative if it meant a face like yours came in handy to lean against, or your shoulder or thigh to use. Like some pillow - that's all.

And you are, like. An option. But not, she sighs out, exactly the right one.

An errant chill shudders through her and down her spine.

"Shin Ryujin."

She'd recognize the tilt of that voice anywhere; even if her ears were pounding and her head filled with static and noise, she'd be able to place Yeji at the end of the world. The truth is easy to see, if only Yeji knew where to look: the corners of Ryujin's eyes screw up tight for a second, an immeasurably long time, in order to not do what they wanted. What it would mean.

She does anyway. "I'd hug you," Ryujin throws behind her with an airy sigh, "but I know where you've been."

Yeji's jaw has set at this point; a twist is still in her lip and she lets out this dry, half-laugh, half-not sound - which is the thing that drives Ryujin a little crazy. Yeji turns her attention from the concrete ground, to Ryujin's profile, her body leaning forward, toes tipping in: "sometimes I wonder if my partner in crime can breathe without saying something incendiary."

"Nope." Ryujin offers no further response or follow-up. Instead, the quiet gush of air makes itself the center of attention and a victim of silence.

"Sorry about-"

"Don't be. Don't give it a second thought." Ryujin stretches, leaning a little over the railing. Her fingers arch before her. Her words sounding the slightest bit cold, "can't win 'em all, right?"

Yeji's eyebrows pull together. "That's not how this was supposed-"

"God, Yeji." Ryujin smiles. Yeji hates that she never knows what that means. "I'm trying, really, I am, but you know - I really, I have tried my best, so can we just lay it to rest?"

Yeji leans over the railing - the fucking moon reflecting in these lustrous pools where her eyes go darker than night - and doesn't say anything for the longest moment. Ryujin chews her tongue, and tries to look as interested in the void of stars and night clouds as possible.

"Fuck's going on with you, lately?"

Ryujin just laughs back.

"Really," and the last word dips in a groan. It's almost childishly tragic how petulantly she insists, "talk to me."

But Ryujin has nothing else to say - no witty, scathing remarks. No deadpan observations or funny asides, not even a morose comment to throw back. There are times and moments and fucking periods of her day where she'd happily chew glass if it meant that Yeji would sit there a second longer, be beside her for a while and smile, just smile at only her, once - for once.

Her only response is the worst kind of lie, this soft: "really nothing."

The moment where it slips and hangs between them, when it lingers the longest -

She could reach out, a hand on her thigh, the small of her back, if she could only reach. And Yeji, she'd listen to her, for once. She'd really, genuinely hear what Ryujin says; like she can see it, plain as day, everything there's in Ryujin's eyes, the thoughts inside her head, written on her goddamn face and across the open night air in neon:

I love you. I'm in love with you, you're too close to me.

The seconds pass. They tick, they stretch and grow thin. Yeji looks at Ryujin expectantly, and Ryujin knows. It is something like being put on the spot and called in. Something like a long, pained whimper caught somewhere in her throat.

She is very much still, unmoving, and feeling nothing at all.

Maybe she can blame the alcohol, the dark, the series of events that saw her hiding away behind a bunch of decorative trees and fighting for breath where the wind blows a little cooler. She can pretend like the stars aren't absent above her, and it doesn't hurt a goddamn bit.

“Yeji, I-” She licks at her lip, ready, willing-

Ryujin grabs at her waist with a hand. Her knuckles white around the black of the railing. And with no further fanfare, she spits it out like venom, with no small measure of shame or guilt or worry for how Yeji will take it - or worse: how she herself would react in the wake of admitting it aloud -

“I love you,” Ryujin says, and it pops out of her mouth as neatly as it had the first thousand times practicing alone in her car.

A blink, and another. The look on Yeji's face is hard and blank, as if she'd understood every syllable, but didn't hear it at all - maybe. Her gaze drops, it trails a path along the long line of Ryujin's pale neck. Of the two ways it could ever go in her head, stuck on loop for as long as she can remember, Ryujin had never considered that Yeji might turn this still and vacant. A sudden feeling, a pull or a grip, starts in the lowest part of Ryujin's guts.

"And not-," she hears her own voice falter, "like-"

Then - it's on the back of Ryujin's head and in her hair, a hand curled at the base of her skull and pulling her head a little downward and her, until their foreheads meet. And before she has a chance to walk it back - to stuff it down where it came from and seal the bottle tight - before she can clench her eyes, shake her head, and spit out anything else like the fact that there was not much that had to change, between them -

Yeji just says plainly: "Yeah, hun. Love you too."

And it's shockingly, the most painful thing - that she just squeezes her hand and pats her back like it's all they could ever be. Without even the wherewithal to reject her properly; to tell her something like "don't ever say that again, god," or "oh shit- Ryujin. Sorry. So, no," or at least to spit back with a scathing laugh: "welcome to the fucking party," like what she always does.

"Yeah." Yeji clears her throat quietly and starts retreating back from the brink - with no apparent aim but to pull away as she draws herself away from the warmth of Ryujin's space, "uh, don't forget to say hello to some of the staffers before they go home, okay?"

Ryujin is left with nothing but the air that follows Yeji's outline; left with her heart sinking into the depths of the night; left trying to make sense of the bitter sting ripping her chest in two.

Left with her own hopelessness - the pining - when Yeji walks away.

To be lonely, to be alone; neither are the same. 

And she hates knowing she is so incredibly both.

-

The worst part is she knows how it looks.

Her pace just on the verge of unsteady, the way her feet come up from the ground: Left foot, the right. The other. Back and back and forth again, faster and then slower and- fuck.

A damsel, severely distressed.

She sits down on the curb. She wants to cry, but even just the way she looks, carrying her heels and struggling with this fucking dress she wishes she'd never bothered with at all - oh, the tabloids would be sure every detail gets pinned under all the wrong lights. A breakdown would only serve to confirm all the right things; it would paint a story for anyone who cares enough to glean from her crestfallen posture and red cheeks that she is yes, a little broken, and that everyone wants to be loved and she's no different - and -

She sucks a breath. This time, when her tears fall, it's a quick, perfunctory action, no show in it.

Her palms rub her face - and she wipes, and wipes, and wipes - smearing at the foundation under her eyes before she takes a long drag of night air. Deep from her core, filling up her lungs until she can't hold anymore. Until it hurts and stings the backs of her ribs - it's enough for a single, fleeting moment. The street is mostly empty; an occasional car will speed by every now and then and it's those few and far between intervals that hurt most, that nearly shatter her: if she can barely do this, alone, how can she possibly be enough for anyone?

Ryujin’s smiling only to hold back her tears, and it fucking stings. She flicks hurriedly past the lock screen of her phone and swipes through the message stream with blurry eyes - there’s a whole host of people that want to know where the fuck she went, if she's safe, why she up and vanished the moment Yeji couldn't keep an eye on her. And well. The girl sighs.

Finds your name in her contacts and puts her thumb right beside it.

It rings exactly three times, and she hates the number. She hates how many things can be associated with that number in those seconds alone.

Four, the pause where you must have had the opportunity, but didn't decide to pick up - just leave it be. Then five - Ryujin is definitely no longer looking forward to any of this.

Six: it stops.

There's this crackle, and through the night -

"Just what brings you here, stranger?"

For an indistinct amount of time, Ryujin drifts in the whirlpool current of that question; it sinks her deeper, into the currents of your voice and the tone and what it's suggesting and demanding from her. All the things your voice is giving her permission to ask of and with and-

Until finally she answers back: "do you ever just, like, wish," a shallow pause for the hitch in her breath, "something, someone was a little more for you- or to- with you-"

The swell of a smile through the receiver; and you can't help your laugh, soft.

"Sometimes," is what you say, "that's just human, don't you think?"

She doesn't understand how something like love or life or desire should be a universal trait.

"Uh, maybe," she shrugs out, and thinks.

"It's pretty normal," you tell her.

Quiet, as if you were right in front of her.

"Look," you start, and you can hear how she sniffs her nose and swipes the pad of her hand right along the side of it, to catch anything stupid and stupid sounding leaking down to her upper lip. "You don't have to. Let's just hang out. Tell me anything."

And for once, she does.

She talks.

-

(The whole story.

From the first time Ryujin realizes the world is never going to be fair - that she shouldn't have to look at herself like she's unlovable because she's seen her friends be held as though they are - or at Yeji like she's completely unattainable or somehow, unlovable, and that someone as amazing as Yeji should have been loved from the moment she was born.

The rest comes through as fragments: the truth of her career. Yeji.

The balcony, the breeze, the bitter-fucking-disappointment.

And what came of that -

When Ryujin isn't a million and one words per minute, it feels, almost, it feels - she'd swear there was less noise in her own head: this thrumming in her brain has settled out; the walls around her and the echo coming off of them - the booming and pulsing - it's, gone.

Because even though there was an indistinct shape for where she had landed, in the aftermath, and nothing much had changed - all that did. You listen, and that alone makes it so you're both exactly where you’re supposed to be, even if this, tonight - you are unsure, if it will actually fix anything - if anything needs fixing at all.)

[rebornofstars]

SEPFEMBER 2024 PROMPTS LIST

HERE WE ARE! AT LONG LAST! THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN (HOPEFULLY) WAITING FOR! GIRL MONTH!

I honestly can't believe this is actually happening. This event was a shower thought a few months ago.

Here's a recap of the event: to participate, make at least one fanwork of any variety during September that features a woman or women from the Zelda franchise as the main character/s. All Linksmeets are welcome in this challenge, as well as general LoZ fans!

Before I drop the prompts list for those who are looking for a little direction, I'd like to mention that I have made an AO3 COLLECTION FOR THIS EVENT. It's open and unmoderated so you can add your works to it freely. And if you post on tumblr, please tag #sepfember !! I'll be scrolling through the tag every day looking for things to reblog and gush about 👀

If you have any questions at all about this event, or you want to chat about it, my askbox is open! I will also respond to comments and reblogs of this post.

Now, onto the prompts. Disclaimer: you DON'T have to use all/any of these prompts, or only create things for certain characters on their featured day. This list is just a GUIDE for those who want it. If you have other plans, go with your heart!

At the end of the day, this is a celebration, and all that matters is that you have fun. I hope some of you will join me next month in giving our girls some time in the spotlight, but if you can't, that's okay! There's no pressure! This is just a passion project of mine, really, and I am overjoyed that people are interested 💛💛💛

(apologies in advance for the terrible quality of these pics and the equally terrible commentary. i thought it would be funny. also, i've never had to come up with a prompts list before and it shows.)

DAY 1: SKYWARD SWORD ZELDA + PURPOSE

(we start at the beginning of course 💛)

DAY 2: MARIN + WASH

(it was SO hard to find a screenshot of her that didn't have link in it. they're both cute but this ain't about him.)

DAY 3: MEDLI + GIFT

(i didn't know she played the harp until i saw this screenshot! i obviously have a lot to learn.)

DAY 4: TWILIGHT PRINCESS ZELDA + FREEZE

(how creepy does she look here?! so awesome)

DAY 5: HILDA + GHOST

(SUCH a good character for real. she has depth!!!! she has a thematic purpose!!!)

DAY 6: URBOSA + LOSE

(two words: LIGHTNING POWERS ⚡⚡⚡)

DAY 7: SPIRIT TRACKS ZELDA + MISTAKE

(babygirl you are 2 entire pixels.)

DAY 8: FI + ORDER

(oh she is everything to me)

DAY 9: MIDNA + SWORD

(she looks so soulful right now)

DAY 10: HYRULE WARRIORS ZELDA + SUMMON

(what a FIRE camera angle??? her armour is so impractically attached but SHE HAS A SWORD‼️)

DAY 11: GODDESSES OF HYRULE + EYES

(hylia, din, nayru, farore, the list goes on...)

DAY 12: ZORA PRINCESSES + TRUST

(mipha, ruto... poor suckers... it can't be fun, falling for link...)

DAY 13: OCARINA OF TIME ZELDA | SHEIK + FATE

(note: I personally hc this character as a trans man, but since this isn't explicitly confirmed in-game and might not be shared with everyone, I've given them a celebration day anyway. you are free to do what you wish.)

DAY 14: MALON + GUARD

(she is adorable. look at her)

DAY 15: IMPA + BOUND

(HOTTEST MOST SEXY MOST BADASS WOMAN IN THE FRANCHISE ‼️‼️‼️ I LOVE YOU IMPA YOU ARE PERFECT. SHUT UP I DEFINITELY DON'T PLAY FAVOURITES—)

DAY 16: FOUR SWORDS ADVENTURES ZELDA + PORTAL

(i loved her in the fsa manga. she's barely in it but STILL. go read it.)

DAY 17: FAIRIES + TIRED

(the great fairies, navi, ciela, tatl, proxi...)

DAY 18: TETRA + LEGACY

(isn't she KICKASS?!)

DAY 19: EPONA + BONE

(our lovely loyal girl 🥰)

DAY 20: A LINK BETWEEN WORLDS ZELDA + HOME

(SHE IS SUCH A GOOD PARALLEL TO HILDA PLEASSSSSE)

DAY 21: SARIA + WISH

(a classic character! isn't this picture so peaceful)

DAY 22: BOTW/AOC/TOTK ZELDA + PEACE

(SHE IS EVERYTHING TO ME. SCREAMING CLAWING CRYING. MY DARLING, YOUR FANARTISTS WERE THE ONES TO DRAW ME INTO THE ZELDA FANDOM. I HOPE I CAN RETURN THE FAVOUR ONE DAY)

DAY 23: CIA + LANA + STUDY

(technically, she's one person. between the two of them they certainly only wear enough clothes for one person... )

DAY 24: ARYLL + HUG

(sister to the hero! but what's her story?)

DAY 25: ECHOES OF WISDOM ZELDA + ARREST

(YEAHHHHHHHHH GIRL MONTH GIRL DAY GIRL GAME!!!)

DAY 26: CD-i ZELDA + HOLIDAY

(hehheehehehe. i bet you weren't expecting her. neither was i tbh)

DAY 27: PURAH + FIRE

(SHE'S CLEVER! I LOVE CLEVER WOMEN!)

DAY 28: ILIA + ERUNE + MEND

(listen. i know erune is a very niche character - she literally only exists in the four swords manga - but consider. i love her)

DAY 29: ALTTP/OOS/OOA/LA ZELDA + MISSING

(she has no canon personality. you know what that means. get the building equipment out fellas)

DAY 30: LINKLE + FAREWELL

(and here we are - LAST DAY!)

THE END! YAY! I CAN'T WAIT FOR SEPTEMBER - CAN YOU?

[muffinsin]

hiya muffin!

i was wondering, if you havent done this prompt before, you would write something about the dimitrescus dating a strongwoman-type reader? Like, big, tall, throw-you-over-her-shoulder typa gal. If you dont write specific genders thats fine too ‼️‼️ Im just very self-indulgent, as someone whos RE8 oc is built like a TANK. 😓

thank you for your time. Stay peachy! 👽

Oh? Absolutely!👀👀! I write for female and neutral readers, so you’re all good! :) I think I’ll have to check out your OC sometime then! Very much of a fan of..buff…women…😋

Kept a lot of littler HCs in these to add a bit variety to it!🙇‍♀️👀

Let’s get into it :)

Masterlists

Bela

With Bela by your side, it becomes very clear that there are two types of physical strength in people at the castle

The type you possess

And the type she wields

Her, wielding unnatural strength gifted by the cadou infecting her

And still, physically speaking, Bela is rather petite, with no visible muscles, only soft skin and an overall rather skinny build, little body fat or muscles seen

You, on the other hand, are almost a direct opposite to this

While being incredibly strong for someone from the remote village, you certainly also look it, unlike your girlfriend

And poor Bela just about melts at this

Feeling your strength and seeing the muscles proving it are incredible exciting to her

She likes to cling onto your arms when you walk

When you suddenly flex them, you often manage to pull a gasp from her

Unfortunately, she manages to stay quiet sometimes, only straightening up adorably and holding on a little tighter

When you cuddle, Bela loves to be held by you, to feel your frame against hers, to hide away from her responsibilities for just a little while

While she won’t ever admit it, she feels so safe around you, extra much so due to your height and strength

Somehow, it helps her feel almost small, looked after

A break from being the coolheaded heiress. The cunning huntress. The eldest sister forced to manage her younger sisters day after day

A break from being the strong one, the responsible one

Simply to be Bela, Bela, who is wrapped up in your arms, held tight, comforted

Often she will hold onto your strong shoulders then, or wrap herself around your upper body all together

Of course your girlfriend enjoys different portrays of your strength, too

When you occasionally quite literally pick her up, you always bring a squeak from her thick lips

Always, without fail. You love it

No matter how long she’s with you, she will never get used to that

You wouldn’t think she is used to it, her tall physique and overall cannibalistic and dangerous nature not quite- well- inviting one to pick her up like she weighs nothing

Funnily enough, you find Bela does weigh very little, being made of a swarm of flies

She’ll hold onto you tight, blush adorably as she’s carried

When she feels particularly comfortable, perhaps even somewhat carefree, she’ll giggle when you pick her up

Often, you find yourself picking her up and slinging her over your shoulder when she overworks herself yet again

She’s whine and giggle, insist she has things to get done

Both of you know it’s a losing battle anyway, for she too craves the comfort you offer her

Another time you display your strength is by purposefully showing off

Such as when she looks around her room for her sickle, usually whenever some foolish maid dared “clean” her perfectly organized room or one of her sisters went through it to find something

You like displaying your strenght by easily picking some of the furniture or items up for her as you help her look

When feeling playful, you pick her up entirely, drawing giggles from her when you claim “nope, not under here!”

You’re happy you’re one of the rare people to make her laugh

Cassandra

Cassandra is considered the strongest individual at the castle, and has been for a long time

Well, aside Alcina, that is

Still, she takes pride in being the strongest among her sisters, the most efficient killer and huntress

You don’t change this, necessarily

But, you easily become one of the, if not the strongest mortals at the castle

And as such, with your height and strength, you stand out

In the beginning, you think Cassandra must hate you

She bothers you each day, digs her nails into you and scratches, bites and giggles your ears off

She’s a nuisance, even reduces the time spent in her precious torture chambers if only to annoy you a little more

Soon, you find out;

No, she does not hate you

In fact, it couldn’t be any more wrong to assume so

No, strong, evil, sadistic Cassie has a crush

Someone to match her, perhaps?

She’s excited at the thought

She tests you, you find soon, seeing just how much she can toy with you before you snap

Ever trying to fluster you with hot, open mouthed bites along your skin and back, you eventually think to even the field

Now, acting against Cassandra can certainly to a quick death sentence and a drawn out, torturous death below the castle grounds

Alas, you know: Cassandra is playing a game

She wants you to join in, to receprocate

Bored of the average staff members surrounding you, the playful brat wants a challenge

One only you can give her

So, the next time she gets near, trails her sharp fingernails along your arms and moves in to bite yet again, you strike

“EAA!”

You didn’t think you could make the fear-inspiring, brutal, nightmarish Cassandra Dimitrescu squeak, but find it’s an utterly adorable sound

Thrown over your shoulder easily, Cassandra hammers with closed fists against your back, squirming and kicking to be let down again

You deny her this

After all, if she truly wanted it, she would free herself from your grasp

You’ve seen it a hundred times before, how she slips from intruders and predators by turning into a deadly swarm of flies piercing its skin

Or her pool of strength, even, which she doesn’t seem to even dip into as she hammers her fists weakly against your back, careful she doesn’t cause any serious damage

It’s a game of play-pretend, her protests loud while a large smile is on her face

You dare interact with her, even dare to push and pull playfully. You indulge her

She likes you

Over the course of weeks, she keeps on doing the same, biting and teasing you only to end up surprised when you push back, grabbing her and throwing her light, but muscular body across your shoulder or holding her and carrying her by your hip as you work

The two of you enjoy your game, the playful bickering, the little wounds inflicted that you know she loves to see on your skin

Soon, she makes the first step, once at last swarming from your grasp to plant her lips against yours

Eager, you reciprocated, not about to let the opportunity pass

Neither of you feel the need to take your time, and quickly a kiss blooms into a relationship of playfulness, affection, pain and pleasures

You find, she enjoys how you catch her off guard when she’s about to fight you and is thrown over your shoulder easily

Even if it does earn you a few bites along your back

While she never quite uses her full strength on you, knowing it would shatter your bones and tear your skin like paper, she does like to bite and scratch, giggling when you reach up to smack her ass or tighten your grip in her as pain rushes through you

This aside, you find she enjoys a show of your strength even much behind closed doors

When you’re wrapped up in one another, she too likes to give you a display of her strenght, laughing in delight as both of you struggle to keep the other down

And lastly, in softer moments, she likes to be curled up on top of you like an overgrown cat, her flies buzzing calmly with your strong arms around her

While having a few muscles herself, she’s still somewhat petite compared to you, her body strong, but unable to sport too many muscles due to her biology

You find, she likes touching up your arms even more due to this, remanding head scratches with one hand while her teeth sink into the arm of the other

Daniela

When seeing you for the first time, Daniela just about throws herself at you

Never has she seen anyone with your physique, finding mostly weak maidens working at the castle whereas anyone of ample strength is often sent to work for Lord Heisenberg or Moreau

You chose the castle, instead

On your first day you encounter the woman already

Daniela’s swarm is all around you, her upper body formed just so she can trail her fingertips up your chest and to your shoulder

“Aren’t you a delicious thing”, she coos, her lips parted, her eyes set on you

She looks ready to eat you, no, not only ready, eager

And while you try to be as polite as possible and not get yourself into trouble with her, Daniela shows clear interest in you

She’s on you each day, trailing her fingers across your skin, shamelessly touching up your arms and shoulders and swarming in the air to lean her head on your back and shoulders, her expression almost dreamily

She’s convinced you love her early on; after all, why wouldn’t you, silly!

And as such, you find she’s very touchy

When you’re working, she’s often pressed up against her back, her shorter frame against you and her breasts pushed into your back causing your own nipples to harden occasionally

Your body and mind certainly responds to her

When you sit, on a break somewhere, you already know to anticipate her coming your way and boldly sitting down on top of your thighs, chatting about this and that

As she does one night, her head rested against your shoulder, her hands in her lap, her body on your lap in turn

She’s talking quietly, but you can tell she’s getting tired by the way her words make less and less sense and she trails off more often before finishing her sentences

Upon proposing she ought to get to bed, she merely whines and curls closer against you

And seeing this, you boldly wrap your strong arms fully around her and lift her

Daniela is up in an instant, giggling and holding onto you as she’s carried to her room

What true princess treatment!, she thinks, and it’s what immediately has her feelings for you double in intensity

You aren’t sure when the two of you got together and started dating, as she’s always been so very touchy and has always somewhat treated you like her girlfriend

Was it when she asked if you’d join her that day? Nestled underneath the warm covers?

Was it when you shared her bed in a different way the first time? When you had her wrapped around your fingers, her smaller, more petite body underneath you?

Or was it when she started regularly pulling you down or swarming up to you for kisses?

When you’d cup her cheeks, lean down and steal some whenever she was on her way out?

Or was it when you started regularly joining her for dinner with her family?

You don’t know, but couldn’t be happier

Being the snuggle bug she is, Daniela loves to be held in your arms

Despite her overall soft and gentle physique, Daniela is very durable and giggles each time you squeeze her hard, completely unharmed

She giggles most when you pick her up and throw her over your shoulder, usually when it’s time for the two of you ought to get some sleep and she’s still sat in the library, reading through yet another romance and fairytale

Both of these things fluster her easily too, though

While Daniela has a flirty personality and a way with words, you manage to reduce her to a blushing, gasping mess when you show off your physique or strenght

When undressing or changing, she’s on you immediately, touching and kissing in almost worshipping fashion, occasionally even biting or scratching when she can’t hold herself back

And lastly, she loves to go hunting with you

Your physique gives you an advantage few others have and allow you to hunt with her

Leaving the castle is a privilege known to little and even should you not hunt with her, you like to accompany her

Often, this means waiting by a small pond for her and ending up bathing together when she returns covered in blood

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Hello! Recently read your latest Rin piece and fell in love with your writing style :)

If you’re up for it, could I request childhood friends with Hiori? Sorry it’s a little vague, but I love the direction you’ve taken other pieces and wanted to leave the details up to you! My only suggestion on a detail would be maybe sprinkling in some light angst about his parents/backstory.

Thank you for considering!

── WHITE BUTTERFLY

Synopsis: You spend the years of your youth with Yo Hiori, in a field that’s almost lonely as the two of you.

Event Masterlist

Pairing: Hiori x Reader

Chapter Word Count: 6.7k

Content Warnings: childhood friends, hiori is vaguely suicidal and also vaguely homicidal, uhh i feel like i know nothing about him as a character so popping that sexy little ooc warning in there jic, open ending, lots of #nature, almost the entire story takes place in a field so idk, hiori is like. madly in love w reader but he’s nonchalant abt it

A/N: thank you so much anon that means a lot!! cherry tree rin and y/n are so silly (<- affectionate) i’m glad you enjoyed that fic 💖 one thing about me i love a good childhood friends to lovers trope especially with angst…hiori is another character i haven’t written a ton for so i hope i interpreted him correctly and that you like what i decided to do with your prompt!! ty for requesting 🫶🏻

Additional: part of my 500 follower event! see the event description and rules to make a request of your own.

The field across from your house was melancholic and desolate, an acre or so of rolling green that bled into trees at the edges. Although by all rights it should’ve been considered a picturesque place, no amount of beauty could take away from the abandoned atmosphere which had long ago settled over the land.

According to your parents, there had been plans for a grand mansion to be built in that location, but before drafts for its construction could be drawn up, the owner had died. The son who had inherited it had no use for the plot, but neither could he be brought to sell the place of his father’s dreams, so the land had sat empty and unused for years upon years. 

People thought the area was cursed, and the general consensus was that it ought to be avoided, but your parents did not believe in things like curses and bad luck and whatnot, so they told you it was fine if you wanted to play there. You were a lonely child, prone to wandering off on your own anyways, and you supposed they must’ve reasoned to themselves that it’d be easier if you were close enough that you could run home should something happen. 

You would sit in the middle of the field, far from any prying eyes, and you’d admire the blooming plants beneath your feet. It was not just grass — there were a million and one varieties of things growing in that wild place, and you would run your fingers along their leaves, doing your best not to frighten the animals and insects which called that field their home.

They grew accustomed to you with time, and instead of shying away, they invited you into their own world. The squirrels and chipmunks would dash out from their trees to scuttle around your feet and splayed hands, while the dormice would peek out of their burrows without fear, nibbling on whatever seeds they had gathered before settling in for the day. The larks would warble to you, and if you were in a particularly cheery mood, you’d whistle back to them, trying to imitate their melodies but always falling a little short.

The third time you went to the field, you found that someone had arrived before you. For a moment, you thought that he must be a ghost, for he stood in such stark contrast to everything you had come to know that there was no other reasonable explanation for it. He was spindly and pale like a skeleton, and his shaggy hair and eyes were the color of winter, such an unnatural shade compared to the viridian he was surrounded by.

You were contemplating running away when he turned around, his eyes widening when he saw you. In his hands was a soccer ball, and resting on the soccer ball was a large white butterfly, its lazily flapping wings shimmering like a whisper in the sunlight.

You were both silent for a moment, a soft breeze rustling through the field and sounding like a song that urged you towards him despite your misgivings. Tentatively, he held the ball out towards you, but the motion startled the butterfly, which abruptly took to the air, fluttering away before either of you could react.

“Who are you?” you said.

“Yo Hiori,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Y/N L/N,” you said. “I live in the house across the street.”

“We’re neighbors, then,” he said. “My house is a few doors down from yours. Do you come here often?”

“Yes,” you said. “Do you?”

He shook his head ruefully. “This is the first time. My parents think I’m practicing soccer right now.”

“You shouldn’t do that here,” you said, frowning at the thought of him kicking up dirt and slamming a ball around carelessly through your sanctuary. “Go somewhere else if you want to play something so reckless.”

“I don’t,” he said. You furrowed your brow. “Don’t want to practice soccer, I mean.”

“I see,” you said. “Well, this is a good place to run to if that’s the case. No one will come looking for you here.”

“Is that the truth?” he said. “Really?”

“Really,” you said. “Everyone thinks it’s cursed, but in truth, I think that that just means it’s blessed.”

“Ah,” Hiori said. “But do you mind?”

“Do I mind what?” you said.

“If I keep coming here,” he said. “When I want to run away.”

“It doesn’t belong to me. I suppose you could say I belong to it, but that’s neither here nor there. No, I can’t stop you, so why would I mind?” you said.

“Are you some sort of woodland fairy?” he said. You laughed aloud.

“I wish. Are you a ghost?” you said. He shook his head.

“Nope,” he said.

“Then I guess our claims to this place are equal,” you said. “Anyways, as long as you don’t disturb it too much, I won’t be angry. I’ll do the same for you, don’t worry.”

“I don’t care what you do to it,” he said. “I just want to go somewhere that’s quiet and I can be left alone.”

This much you could understand, and you thought that perhaps Hiori would grow to be an exception to your loneliness, or an addition to it. Not a cure, because that did not exist, but a person who could relish in his own solitude and share in that inexplicable sensation which was your greatest joy.

You never saw him anywhere but in that field. You weren’t sure if he even existed outside of its context, or if he was like the dormice and the larks, a skittish creature who made his home in those grassy divots and only appeared to greet you before running back off to hide once you were gone.

At first, he was even more reserved than the animals had been. Neither of you spoke, but somehow, it happened that you were always in the same place at the same time, and eventually, little by little, the two of you became dependent on one another’s presence. Your life before meeting Hiori was pale and lifeless in comparison to your life after, and the first time you both spoke as friends instead of strangers, you thought to yourself that you could never go back to the way you had previously been.

No longer did you whistle at birds and play with squirrels; instead, you sat across from Hiori and listened to him explain things like soccer and video games. You were not particularly interested in either of these subjects, but as long as it was Hiori, you didn’t mind hearing about them. It was the cadence of his voice you were concerned with, the rise and fall of his words, the soft inflections of each syllable. 

You had never had a friend before. It was a personal choice rather than a failing; every person who tried to engage with you was met with the same disdain, for you found no appeal in any such clumsy attempts at camaraderie. In your childish mind, friendship ought to be hard-won and delicately kept, and so it remained that of all the people in the world, Hiori was the only one whose honest company you could prefer.

He was a forlorn and low-spirited boy, the winter to your bursting summer, but his coldness was the inviting sort, like a dusting of snow on a cluster of berries or frost on a forgotten bird’s nest. It did not ward you away but drew you in, your breath fogging in the air as you lay beside him and listened to him ramble on and on about whatever topics struck his fancy.

Sometimes he was prone to muteness, and on those occasions you took it upon yourself to intertwine your fingers with his, pulling him along behind you and naming every plant and tree and flower you passed by, greeting the tittering chipmunks and the cooing larks and the peeping rabbits. He would not say anything, but you knew he was listening, for he would smile slightly whenever you pointed at something he found particularly pleasing.

Every day, he would bring the soccer ball with him. He refused to put it down, but neither did he play with it or even acknowledge its existence; you sensed it vexed him, that it was the source or a symptom of the gloomy undercurrent which ran through his life, but he could not let it go, just like he could never truly be happy in any way that lasted.

“Y/N,” he said once, when you and he were lying on your backs in the grass and watching the clouds drift by. “If you could be any other creature, what would you be?”

“I don’t know,” you said, considering the question seriously. “Maybe a songbird. What about you?”

“I’d be one of those,” he said, pointing at a butterfly floating past. It was a common variety, nondescript and plain and white, but somehow made more beautiful by the ubiquity of its kind.

“Why?” you said.

“I’d live a short but carefree life, and then I would die before anyone could demand anything from me,” he said, smiling slightly and closing his eyes. “Plus, if I could be something as small and pretty as a butterfly in our meadow, then I would be able to spend my entire existence resting on your finger.”

Your meadow. You weren’t sure when it had gone from being a place you visited to a place you owned, but yes, the shift had definitely occurred. You and Hiori loved it, and so it was yours by that right alone. You reached out your hand, setting it on his heart and then closing your own eyes in a mirror of his position.

“I wouldn’t prefer that,” you said. Something cool and soft curled over your fingers; you knew without looking that it was Hiori’s own hand, which would always come to rest against yours like a magnet.

“Hm,” he said.

“I’d get used to you being there,” you explained. “And then one day you’d vanish and I’d be alone again.”

“Would you miss me?” he said.

“Very much,” you said. 

“Nobody else would,” he admitted, though he still spoke in an even monotone. “I’d be replaced quickly. Someone just as talented or even better would take my place, and then it’d be like I was never there in the first place.”

“I’d miss you,” you insisted. “I don’t care about talent. You’re someone who’s irreplaceable to me.”

“I see,” he said. “Then I guess, if not a butterfly, I would also want to be a songbird. Like you.”

“We could fly around the world together,” you said. 

“Yes,” he said. “The countries I’ve seen in my video games…we could go to them. If we were birds, we could.”

“Maybe we still can,” you said.

“We can’t,” he said. “My parents would never let me.”

“What about when we’re adults? They can’t tell you what to do then, so we can leave them behind and travel wherever we want,” you said.

“It’s a nice dream,” he said.

“Hold onto it,” you said. “That’s the only way it can ever come true.”

“Okay,” he said. “I will.”

Even as you and Hiori became older and made friends outside of one another, there was a sort of solace which only he could provide you and which in turn only you could provide him, so neither of you ever outgrew that field. The moment you got home from school, you’d drop your bag on the counter and run there as fast as you could, hoping to see him before he had to leave for soccer practice. And every time, without fail, he’d be there, waiting where he always was, his small smile widening when he saw you racing towards him.

The contents of your conversations changed, moving from games and plants to complaining about schoolwork and updating one another about your respective social lives and dramas — he went to a private academy for soccer, while you attended the public school that most kids your age went to — but the familiarity never diminished. If anything, it only increased, as any inhibitions you had had in your youths gradually fell away.

“Hiori! You’ll never believe it,” you said, moving his abandoned soccer ball aside and sitting across from him. He did not look up from the pieces of grass he was braiding together, but he nodded to indicate he was listening. “Remember those two guys I was telling you about?”

“The ones who had a crush on the same girl?” he said.

“Yup, those two,” you said. “They finally got into a fistfight over her! It was crazy.”

“Who won?” he said.

“The principal, because he broke up the brawl and suspended them both,” you said. “Thereby ruining their brief romance-novel-moment entirely.”

“That’s a pity,” he said with a snort. “I can’t imagine what possessed them to do something as stupid as beating each other up on school grounds.”

“Love makes people crazy,” you said dramatically, pressing the back of your hand to your forehead and collapsing backwards into the dirt. “You’ll understand when you feel it yourself, silly Hiori.”

“Huh?” he said.

“I mean, one day, you’ll fall madly in love with someone, and then you’ll be inclined to beat another person up for them,” you said.

“What if I already have?” he said. You shot up with a gasp.

“And you didn’t tell me? Who is it? Who, who? You can’t hide stuff like that!” you said.

“It was only a hypothetical,” he said. “There isn’t anyone. What about you? Are you madly in love with someone?”

“You’ll be the first to know when I am, but at the moment, I don’t find myself able to even tolerate any of the boys I go to school with! They’re all disgusting, immature, and insensitive. Just looking at them is enough to make me gag, so forget about falling in love!” you said.

“That sucks,” he said.

“Maybe I’ll be single forever,” you said. “I’ll live alone, with pets and a porch swing and a backyard just like this field, somewhere faraway where no one can find me.”

“What about me?” he said, taking your wrist and tying the braided grass around it like a bracelet.

“Well, I’ll tell you where I am, of course,” you said. “You’re the only one I would want as a visitor.”

“I’ll come every day,” he said.

“At that point, you might as well just live there with me,” you said, rolling your eyes. “It’d save you the time spent traveling back and forth.”

“Would you like me to?” he said. “I thought the point was for you to be alone.”

“If it’s you, then it wouldn’t be so bad,” you said. “Being with you is even better than being alone.”

The sun hit Hiori at the exact moment that he grinned at you, and in the back of your mind, where things were understood but not known, you recognized that of all the beings in that lovely place, he was far and away the loveliest.

A distant and rumbling thunder portended a storm on the day you learned who Hiori really was. He never went to the field if it was raining — there was no excuse for him to escape his home, and so, though you did not much mind the weather, you tended to keep to your room on those days as well. Today, though, the rain was still only a blot on the horizon, which meant you would have a precious few minutes with him before it began to pour and you had to leave again.

“Hey, Hiori,” you said. In an uncharacteristic move, he wasn’t holding onto the soccer ball; instead, it was on the ground, his foot resting atop it, his head bowed towards it and his hands balled into fists at his sides. He glanced up at you, and you were surprised to see that there was a dead, hollow quality to his eyes, which, though always placid and still, were never this shade of dark and dreary. “Is everything okay?”

“Have you ever wanted to kill someone?” he said.

“No,” you said immediately, taken aback. “Have you?”

“No,” he said. “Yes. I’m not sure. I don’t want to do it, but somehow, I want my parents to die.”

Another crack of thunder. You approached Hiori slowly, like he was a deer that would leap away the instant you were close enough to touch him. But he was not a deer, and he stayed preternaturally immobile, his harsh panting the only signal that he was a person and not a statue.

“Do you mean that?” you said when you were near enough to him that you could’ve embraced him if you wanted. “Is that really how you feel, Hiori?”

“Yes,” he said vehemently. “Yes, I mean it more than anything. Everything would be better if they would just die and leave me alone.”

He drew his leg back and slammed it into the ball. It streaked through the field, leaving a muddy rut in its wake, tearing up the grass and the flowers before crashing into a tree with a groan. You stared at the path of devastation it had wrought, wondering how such an innocent object could create such havoc, how such a simple act could have such irreversible consequences.

“That’s what soccer is,” he said when he had caught his breath and noticed your silence. “A tiring game you play to ruin yourself.”

“I thought you liked playing soccer,” you said. “You always told me how good you were at it.”

“Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I like it,” he said. “I hate it almost as much as I hate the people that make me play it.”

“Then why do you keep going?” you said. “Why don’t you quit?”

“Because I have to,” he said. “My parents gave birth to me so that I could play soccer and be the best at it. That’s the only role I know how to conform to, so how can I do anything but accept it?”

You wrapped one arm and then the other around his torso, leaning your temple against the dip of his collarbone, turning your back to the blight he had caused and holding onto him as lightning split the sky.

“Don’t ruin yourself,” you said. “Don’t betray who you are because other people tell you to. If you don’t want to play soccer, then don’t. Quit and leave it behind. Maybe everyone else will mock you, but would it be enough if I didn’t? If I alone swore not to think any less of you, then would you be able to do it?”

“No,” he said. Something dripped onto your head, and you thought it had started raining early until you realized that Hiori’s voice was catching on nothing, his heart beating as fast as a mouse’s. “No, it wouldn’t be enough. I have to play soccer.”

“Why?” you said.

“My parents,” he said. “If I don’t play soccer — no, if I’m not good at soccer, they’ll divorce. They’ll divorce and it’ll be my fault, so I have to keep doing it, because no matter how much I hate them, I can’t be — I can’t be the reason that they — that anything bad happens to them.”

The droplets came in quicker succession, but with a final clap of thunder, the sky opened to let the rain out, blurring the line between his tears and the natural precipitation which would’ve occurred whether or not you were there.

You didn’t know what to say to him, so you opted to say nothing, pressing into him for as long as you could before you both had to go, leaving one another behind as you were always forced to. Now, though, there was a proof of your existence in the shape of that ugly gash that his soccer ball had torn into the field, an alteration which was directly a consequence of your actions. In a season or two, it would be grown over, but for the time being, it cheered you to think that the world could no longer avoid acknowledging you, acknowledging that you and Hiori were real, that you were alive and belonged.

In your second year of high school, a boy in your class came up to you, stopped you in the hallway in front of everyone and thrust a bouquet of supermarket flowers into your hands. He asked you to read the attached card, and you obliged, though you had a feeling you already knew what it said.

As you had predicted, it was an invitation to have lunch with him sometime. His cheeks were red and his smile was wide as he waited for you to say yes, but all you could think of when you looked at him was Hiori. How would he feel about this turn of events? Would he be amused or jealous or unfazed entirely? Would it even matter to him? Why were you thinking of him at a time like this?

No, that last question was one you knew the answer to already. The reason why you were thinking of Hiori was the same reason you still went to that field to see him, even though you were far too old to play with mice and birds and clovers now. It was the same reason that you recoiled from any other boy who tried to talk to you — because they were not him, they could never be him. It was because — it was because —

Much to the consternation of the audience you had unwillingly gathered, you handed the card and flowers back to the boy, shaking your head as politely as you could. There was a demand for an explanation on the tip of his tongue, but you left before he could make it. The explanation was not one you wanted to share, so you covered your ears with your hands to drown out the insults he shouted after you and strode away before he could say anything worse.

Hiori was always the first to arrive and the last to leave, so it was no surprise that he was waiting for you where he always was. Today, though, you did not bother with formalities or welcomes or lighthearted questions. You paid no mind to his antsy demeanor, instead catching his hands between your own and squeezing them.

“Y/N—”

“Hiori—”

You both called out each other’s names at the same time, with the same urgency, though there was a layer of despair when he said Y/N, just as there was pleading infused into the way you murmured Hiori.

“You first,” he said, though he looked over your shoulder, staring towards the road instead of at you. “Quickly.”

“Okay,” you said. “A boy asked me out.”

“Oh,” he said, and when his gaze slid onto you, you noticed that for the first time, there was something flaring to life in the blank depths of his irises, a veritable maelstrom of unreadable emotions twisting together and blending into something entirely other than the stillness you had come to expect from him. “What did you say?”

“I refused,” you said. “I couldn’t date him, not in good conscience. Not when I like — not when there’s someone else.”

“Someone else?” he said. “Y/N, please hurry.”

“What’s the matter?” you said, letting go of his hands so that you could instead hold his face. “Hiori, what’s wrong? Did something happen? Are you in trouble with your soccer team? Is that stupid crow boy causing you problems?”

“What? No, no, Karasu’s not done anything worse than usual. It’s my parents, I think they’re growing suspicious of me, I’m afraid they’ll—”

“It’s you,” you said, cutting him short, his haste rubbing off on you. You weren’t sure whether it was his anxiety or your own or some sort of divine premonition, but you suddenly felt an impending doom, as if you had to speak at that exact instant or give up the chance to ever say it again. “Hiori, you’re the reason I said no. It’s because I like you.”

Hiori, who had carved his way into your heart on the very first day you met, who was fond of butterflies and songbirds, who was bashful like winter and gentle like dusk. How could you help it? Of course you liked him. That boy who had reached into the lonely chasm of your soul and ripped it out, turned it into something lighter and warmer and whole…how could you help falling for him?

“Me?” he said in disbelief. “But—”

“So this is where you go, Yo,” a stern voice said. Hiori inhaled sharply, and then he yanked away from you, shoving you behind him, though it was far too late. You knew who had finally found the two of you, and furthermore, there was no way she hadn’t seen you. “This doesn’t look like practicing soccer. How much time have you been wasting in this dump, with this fool of a girl?”

You peered around Hiori’s back, holding onto the hem of his shirt. Fear constricted your throat when you saw a woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to him standing before you, her hands on her hips, a dour expression on her face. Whatever had been sparkling in Hiori at your confession had abruptly disappeared, replaced by an even more severe version of himself.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “We just met recently.”

“Not a big deal? Think about how much better at soccer you would be if you actually spent this time practicing instead of messing around! A few minutes every day is the difference between starting for a team and being a substitute, because a few minutes every day turns to hours every week, which turns into days lost every month! You should be ashamed of yourself,” his mother said, marching over and grabbing him by the collar, wrenching him away from you. “From now on, I’ll be supervising your additional practice time. As for you, young lady…don’t even think of coming near him again. He doesn’t need distractions like you getting in the way of his ultimate goal.”

“His ultimate goal?” you said, your audacity surprising even yourself. Without Hiori’s shadow to hide you, you were entirely naked and exposed, but somehow, you found the strength in you to speak up. “What, of being the world’s best soccer player? Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe he doesn’t want that anymore, if he ever did?”

His mother scowled at you. “You are a poison of the worst sort, if you have him doubting what he’s been aiming for since he was young. Stay away from my son. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

She dragged Hiori away before either of you could manage so much as a goodbye. It was the first time since you had met him that you found yourself alone in that field, which suddenly felt so vast that you finally understood why people thought it to be cursed. It had to be, because why else would it have given you Hiori and then taken him away with such a swiftness that it left you reeling?

For a week, you continued to go to the field, just in case he would magically be there, but it was a foregone conclusion that he would not be. Still, you waited, and though the larks sang their songs and the dormice chittered at you sweetly, nothing could set your spirits right when Hiori remained missing.

On the eighth day you spent without him, you didn’t even bother with the field. Instead, you knocked on every door of every house in your small neighborhood, continuing on until the one who answered was the same woman who had stolen Hiori from you. 

She remembered you, her expression turning sour at your appearance, like you had shoved a lemon into her mouth. Shockingly, though, she did not slam the door in your face. She only cleared her throat before speaking in the most abrasive voice you had ever had the misfortune of hearing.

“What is it?” she said.

“Hiori — Yo, is he around? I just want to see him one last time. I’ll leave him alone after that if you refuse to budge, but at least let me say goodbye. I won’t ever distract him again if you give me that chance,” you said. 

“If I gave you even the slightest leeway, you’d pounce upon it, won’t you? I’m not so daft. I’m sure that, if I let you in now, you’d never leave. In the end, though, it’s irrelevant. Yo’s gone,” she said.

“Gone?” you said. “What do you mean?”

“He’s participating in a soccer training camp called Blue Lock,” his mother said. “The way they raise their players is what his father and I been trying to impress upon him from the start, so we’re glad he made the choice himself to go. Now, he can focus on his own self-improvement instead of brief dalliances that would never last.”

Hiori was gone. There was a deep ache in you, and those words were its source, yet nonetheless, for him, you could only muster up pride. He had finally done it. He had flown somewhere free of the burdens his parents placed on him; to be sure, it was defined by the soccer he despised, but nonetheless he had made the decision to do it on his own. It belonged to him, and he had spent so long without anything to his name but a deserted green that you laughed as you sobbed, leaving him behind for good.

A long time passed before you saw him again, though you watched all of his matches on TV. He had become someone different and yet still familiar while in the Blue Lock program — he was sharper now, sharper and quicker, his eyes constantly burning in the same way they had on the day he had left you. Most notably, you thought that that childish love for soccer which he had had and then lost had blossomed again, now into a stable, unshakeable passion which no one, not even his parents, could take from him.

You had probably also changed, though of course it was harder to recognize it in yourself than in another person. But you were not so sparing with your offers of friendship anymore, and neither were you harsh to every boy who approached you. With Hiori gone, the only reservations you had were feeble and pointless, so you stopped saying no quite as often.

Nothing ever came of these school-type romances. Inevitably, you’d walk home and your eyes would stray to the spot where you had spent so much of your childhood with Hiori, whereupon you would pull out your phone and send a formulaic apology message. Sorry, but it’s not working. There’s nothing wrong with you, but I don’t think we’re a good match for each other. Thanks for taking me out. I really appreciate it.

The longer it became, the less frequently you thought about him. He turned into a memory, fuzzy around the edges with nostalgia and tinged with gold. He was someone you claimed to know around those with a more vested interest in soccer, but deep inside, you had accepted that your path had diverged from his a long time ago. You and Hiori weren’t meant to sit beside one another for eternity; he had been there when you needed him, but it was time for you to stand on your own, as he was clearly doing all of the way over in Blue Lock.

“I can’t believe you’ve finally graduated high school!” your mother said, sniffing as she took a million photos of you standing awkwardly, your diploma in your hands, your gown hanging loosely on your body and the pins holding up your cap jabbing into your scalp. “We’re so proud of you, dear.”

“Next stop, Tokyo!” your father said, swiping at the tears which rolled shamelessly down his cheeks.

You had been accepted into the University of Tokyo, and at the end of the summer, you would move into your own apartment, leagues away from everything you had known for your entire life. It was exciting, but it was also terrifying, because the thought of being all alone in the bustling metropolis still made you break into a cold sweat.

Now that you had officially graduated, it all seemed so much more real. Going to Tokyo, attending university, getting a job and supporting yourself…these were not dreams of a distant future but immediate and pressing concerns that weighed on you.

Once you became a university student and then an adult proper, you visited home less and less. You hardly had the time, and anyways there wasn’t much to do in that town, so instead your parents would take trips up to visit you when they missed you terribly — which was often. They would update you on the happenings of your neighbors, and you would take them to your favorite restaurants and attractions, like they were foreign tourists coming to the country for the first time. 

“You know, they finally finished construction on that plot across from our house,” your mother said to you on one such visit, taking a sip of bubble tea to punctuate the outrageous statement. There were streaks of gray in her hair now, and far more lines on her face than there had been when you were younger, but she wore the signs of age with grace and dignity, so that they were weapons instead of faults. 

“You never told me someone bought it,” you said. So that was that, then; the last remnants of your tender friendship with a boy you had not spoken to in years was all but destroyed now. It belonged to another person, who would make their own memories on the land, and the thought of two other people standing where you and Hiori once had caused a lump to arise in your throat. It was as much grief for the idyllic days of your childhood as it was for your former best friend. Both were lost to you now, and both you mourned in equal measure, though you knew no amount of crying would ever bring them back.

Perhaps there had been a window of time in which you might’ve been able to reconnect with Hiori, but the idea hadn’t crossed your mind until it was far too late, and you supposed it must’ve been the same for him. Or maybe he had, upon joining Blue Lock and becoming an international celebrity, forgotten about you entirely. It was a possibility, and no matter how much it stung, it was one you did not resent him for.

“Yes, it was a while ago. Apparently, he lived in the area when he was younger, but he left to pursue some athletic career? Anyways, now that he’s rich, he wanted to invest in some property close to home, so as soon as the previous owner died, he swooped in and bought the entire field up. You know, considering how much money he has, the house is downright quaint in its design,” your mother said, shaking her head. She had a penchant for gossip, and you could not count on two hands the amount of days you both had spent giggling with each other about silly, inconsequential matters. This, though, crossed the line — it wasn’t dumb gossip but legitimate news.

“Athletic career? Do you…do you happen to remember what sport?” you said. 

“No idea,” your mother said. “Why?”

“Was it soccer?” you said. She choked on a pearl of boba. Absently, you leaned over and slapped her on the back to help dislodge it. She coughed and dabbed at her face with a napkin before nodding.

“Ah, yes, that sounds familiar!” she said. “I think that might be it.”

“I’m going to take the next few days off and visit you guys,” you said. It was a spur of the moment decision, but you could afford it, and something told you that what you would find would be far more valuable than another day at your boring, if not well-paying, job.

“Really? That’s wonderful! You’ll love how things have changed. The place has really come to life in the past couple of years,” she said.

The train ride home from Tokyo was just over two hours, and it ran through a familiar countryside, which you watched for the entire journey, smiling slightly whenever you rushed by a landmark you recognized. By the end, however, it seemed every sight was a landmark of some sort — not the nationally important ones, but the type that was personally significant. The many little places you had visited when you were young…even now, you recollected them with startling clarity.

Your father was delighted that you had returned home with your mother, and the whole house smelled like his cooking when you walked in through the front door. He must’ve begun preparing as soon as you had mentioned that you were coming back for a bit, and the grumble of your stomach warned you that you would regret it if you did not hold off on your investigation until after dinner.

You sat in the same chair you had once sat in and ate the same food you had once eaten. It was your favorite as a little girl, and your father served it to you personally, his lower lip trembling as he ladled two portions onto your plate instead of one. Hardly even a month had passed since he had seen you last, but he had always been an emotional man, bawling like a child at every reunion and separation alike.

The sun was setting when you excused yourself, placing your dishes in the sink and ducking outside under the pretense of needing a walk to digest your food. Well, it was only half a pretense — your father truly had fed you until you thought your stomach might split open, as was characteristic of his affection. You really did need to walk around so that your insides could settle, but more importantly than that, you wanted to confirm the theory which had been brewing in your mind since your mother had brought it up.

As she had said, there was a brand new house across from yours. It was nothing like the grand mansion that the original owner must’ve intended to sit on the land; it had a winsome yet unassuming charm to it, and it only took up about half of the field, while the rest of it had been left entirely alone, still green and wild like you recalled it to be. You were sure that if you looked close enough, you would find the dormice and the squirrels and the chipmunks and the larks exactly where you had left them as well, but you did not have the time nor the patience for that at present.

When you climbed the porch steps, you noticed that to the left of the door was a cushioned swing, atop which a tortoiseshell cat was dozing. At the sound of your footsteps, she opened one champagne-colored eye, but she did not seem to regard you as worthy of her attention, for she promptly closed it and returned to her rest.

Your fingers hesitated on the doorbell, resting on the button, too scared to press down. You didn’t know what you had to be afraid of, but for some reason, you were nervous, a pit forming in your stomach as you deliberated over what to do. Before you could make up your mind, the cat meowed at someone in greeting, jumping off of the swing with a light thud.

Spinning around, you saw that the owner of the house was standing at the bottom of the steps, the cat rubbing against his legs as he beamed up at you. Any lingering doubts of yours dissipated into nothingness at the instant you once again made eye contact with Yo Hiori; like a reflex, the corners of your mouth curved upwards in a fond greeting.

Like always, in his hands was a soccer ball, though more prominent than the ball itself was the butterfly which lay on it in repose. Its white wings were thin and quivering, but curiously, when Hiori held the ball out to you, it did not fly off, instead remaining stationary, waiting for you to reach out and take it.

[a-killer-obsession]

Congratulations on the follower milestones! I can't believe how quickly you went from 250 to 300!

giving two options so you can pick whichever inspires you more, and so I don't spend 3 hours trying to pick between the prompts when it's already 3:30am

gender neutral or he/him for AFAB reader if possible

F13 (FZ13 if that's more comfortable) or W17

please and thank you <3

Laid Bear

Prompt: Mink Reader + First Time Additional Tags: afab reader, she/her pronouns, virgin!bepo, naturally a bit omegaversey since they're bears, oral (giving and receiving), masturbation, p in v sex, breeding kink, cockwarming WC: 3.8k

Event Masterlist

🔞 Minors DNI 🔞

You could smell him before you could see him, that special scent unique to predator type minks, the scent that played to your instincts the most and made your nose twitch, ears perking up under your hoodie, tail wagging excitedly under your skirt against your better judgement. It was just as well you were seated in a corner booth, hiding away at the edge of the derelict bar where you hoped nobody would bother you. It'd been a long time since you'd smelt another mink, even longer since you'd left home to explore the world. You'd begun this journey with the goal in mind of finding your ancestral homeland, having been born far away from the mythical Zou, which at this point you weren't even sure existed as none of the minks you encountered seemed to know anything about it. Not that you'd met a great deal of them, they seemed rare even in the New World, which is why it always got you so excited to catch their scent.

You had no doubt they could smell you too, and you hoped they would be friendly, and handsome, they certainly smelt like a fertile male. You had no doubt they could smell you too, but you let out pheromones of your own anyway, advertising yourself as a fertile female predator mink. Specifically, you were a grizzly bear, but the type of mink that looked more like a human hybrid than a bipedal animal, as females of your kind often were. Your skin was a deep rich brown to match your hair, your nose was a cute little button at the end of a shallow muzzle, and you had two cute little fuzzy ears on your head, usually hidden by a hat or hoodie. You also had sharp claws and a fluffy tail, forcing you to wear fluffy skirts with petticoats to hide it. When your ears were visible, the skirts made you look like you were just a very dedicated lolita with a preference for bear themed outfits, which to be fair did make you look very cute.

The main door to the bar opened and your eyes were wide with curiosity, a tall man with a fluffy white hat and large sword resting on his shoulder entering first, scanning the room carefully. You caught a mischievous grin on his face as he caught your eye, turning to his companions yet to enter and whispering something you couldn't hear over the noise of the bar even with your very sensitive ears. Two men in white boiler suits entered behind him, pulling someone along with them, a fluffy white paw in each hand as they dragged in a large polar bear mink, of the more bipedal animal variety. You'd never even met another bear type mink outside of your parents, and your thighs pressed together unconsciously as he stood at his full height and scanned the room, at least seven feet tall and impressive even from across the room. He looked shy though, the claws at the tips of his index fingers tapping together as his friends released his paws, his fluffy ears flattened against his head as he caught your eye and blushed, the pink visible through his white fur. It made you blush in response, and you pulled down your hoodie, letting him see your own ears, almost identical to his, save for the colour. His ears perked as he saw yours, realising you were also a bear mink, a sweet smile forming on his face that told you perhaps you were the first he'd met as well.

The man with the sword pointed in your direction, and the men in boiler suits set to work forcing the mink towards you, one of them pulling on his arm while the other pushed him. He was wearing a matching boiler suit but in orange, and you noticed now the matching smiling icons embroidered on the suits, a jolly roger perhaps? Looking at the man with the sword again he did look vaguely familiar, perhaps you'd seen him on a bounty poster, you'd never been good at remembering human faces. They seemed friendly enough though, so pirates or not you didn't let it bother you. He approached you first, giving you a friendly smile before helping the other men push the hesitant polar bear into the booth seat opposite you, the bear letting out a nervous little whine that made you giggle, your giggle making him blush further.

“This is Bepo,” the man said, gesturing to the bear, “he's a little shy but I think you'll enjoy his company. And you are?”

“[Y/n],” you offered your hand, and he gave it a firm shake before turning to the bear, leaning with his arm against the bear's shoulder, giving him a reassuring slap on his chest. “Bepo, this is [y/n]. Just like we talked about, okay? Just be yourself, we'll be on the other side of the bar if you need us, but do your best to be brave”

He gave you another kind smile before he and the other two men left, the one with a funny hat that looked like a whale giving Bepo a playful smack on the shoulder before the three of them took up residence in a booth on the opposite side of the bar, making you feel a little like teenagers on a chaperoned date. Bepo was clicking his index claws together, looking anywhere except at you, so you took it upon yourself to get up and move to his side of the seating, forcing him to shuffle over. This wasn't your first time with another mink, you'd laid with a few humans as well, but he was giving off a nervous energy that told you he was just a sweet little virgin, and you wondered if he'd ever even kissed. You decided you would need to take the lead here, if you wanted to get a taste of the bear who was letting off such an alluring scent. He probably didn't even know how good he smelled.

“Hi there, big guy,” you smiled, “what's got a big strong bear like you so nervous? Little ol me? I won't bite, unless you want me to.” The suggestive comment made him squeak, and you couldn't help but let out a playful giggle, the sound music to his ears, making them twitch.

“Sorry,” he said shyly, his voice a lot higher pitched than you expected, “I've never met another mink, not since I was a kid… this is all very new to me”

“Really? That's quite surprising, I thought you were a pirate,” you hummed, “surely you see all kinds of people in your travels”

“I like to stay on the ship,” he replied quietly, “people make me nervous”

“That's okay sweetheart, I understand that. The hairless minks are so very strange, aren't they?” You smiled, “I'm very glad you ventured off the ship today then, what convinced your handsome self to make an exception?”

He blushed heavily at the compliment, his eyes flicking to you for just a moment before returning to anywhere else as he sunk into his chair. “I could… I could smell you from the ship. You smelled so pretty…”

“Do I live up to my scent, sweet thing?” You purred, running a claw under his chin and forcing him to look at you, “you're so very handsome, you certainly live up to your scent. Do you think I'm pretty?”

“Y-yes,” he mumbled, you could hear his heart racing in his chest, “you are… so very beautiful”

“I can feel your friend's eyes burning the back of my head,” you hummed, letting your hand fall and resting it against his thick leg. He jumped a little at the motion, looking down at your hand and back up at you, a cloud of arousal wafting from him in his scent at the small touch. “I have a room upstairs, you wanna come hang out? Have some tea?”

He looked past you to his presumably captain, who gave him an encouraging thumbs up, before turning back to give you a shy nod. You stood and took his paw in yours, and you could hear the cheers of his friends over the crowd as you led him upstairs. You held his hand all the way to the room, it was shaky in yours, you could tell how nervous he was, the poor sweetheart. At the very least you hoped he would be more comfortable away from the crowd sipping some soothing tea, and you wanted a chance to talk to him better without having to shout over all the drunk voices.

The bed bowed and creaked under his weight as you led him to sit on it, not having any other good seating options, while you made him some tea with the small kitchenette. It was really just a cabinet and mini fridge with a tray of complimentary teas and coffee, and a small box of milk, the water in your jug fetched earlier from your small attached bathroom. “Milk and sugar?” You hummed.

“Ah- just two sugars, sorry,” he replied.

“No need to apologise, my sweet,” you smiled as you stirred in sugar and brought him the tea. He immediately took a sip, scalding his tongue and sticking it out to cool it, making you giggle. You could see his eyes light up at the sound, and he gave you a shy smile that made your heart flutter as you sipped your own tea, sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him. “So, you said you knew minks when you were a kid though, right? Do you know Zou?”

“I was born there,” he replied, making you excitedly discard your tea on the side table and raise yourself on your knees to pull at the clothing over his shoulder.

“What's it like? Is it paradise for minks like the legends say? Are there lots of minks there? Can you take me there?” You shouted in quick succession, making the poor bear flinch. “Ah, sorry!” You let yourself fall back to sit on the balls of your feet, “Got a little carried away…”

“I don't really remember it much,” he replied sadly, “I left when I was eight to find my brother, it's been so long”

“Is it true it's on the back of an elephant?” You asked curiously.

“It is!” He smiled, happy he could at least answer one question.

“That's so cool!” Your eyes were practically glittering.

“I take it you were not born there then?” He asked, sipping more tea.

“No, my parents never explained what they were doing away from Zou, but I've been searching for it ever since they died,” you hummed. Your hand fell idly to his thigh, stroking it without thinking as your mind was deep in thought. You didn't even realise you were doing it till he made a little squeak, arousal hitting your sensitive nose, though his body was notably tense and stiff. “Oh, sorry,” you mumbled, removing your hand, “I won't touch you if you don't want me too. I guess I get a little handsy at times”

“Most minks are like that, I think,” he replied, “I was wondering if… ah, no, I don't think I can say it, sorry…”

“You're so cute,” you smiled, “do you want me to touch you, Bepo? I can, if you want me to. I'd like to. You're very handsome, and you smell nice”

The blush on Bepo's face was back as he gave a quiet nod, your hand quickly returning to his thigh. “Perhaps we would be more comfortable without our clothes, I for one feel like my tail is being squished”

“Oh, okay,” he agreed innocently. The two of you stood and undressed yourselves, and you stretched pleasantly as you were freed of the suffocating clothing, twitching your tail happily. Minks didn't really need clothing, you had a thin layer of fur over most of your body, only really hairless at the centre of your torso from your belly up to your neck and face, and also your inner thighs. Your nipples were covered by fur, your genitals tucked away between your legs just like a human female, while male minks like Bepo had a sheath that hid their genitals. As a less human-like mink, Bepo's entire body was covered in thick fur, visible now that he let his boiler suit pool on the floor. Without clothing you both looked far more like bears, and you smiled fondly at him.

The thing with minks was that they were far more intune to their instincts than a human, especially the instincts of the animal they were modelled after. This was especially true of minks during mating, though with experience they were able to get more control over their instincts. Bepo lacked any experience, from what you could tell, which meant he would be entirely at the whims of his instincts if you wished to mate with him. This worked in your favour, being that grizzly bears and polar bears sometimes got together in the wild, the mating rituals of each species being relatively similar. You stepped towards him and brushed your muzzle against his neck, nipping at it to signal your interest, before fleeing playfully to the other side of the room. You could hear his heavy foot falls as he chased you, successfully having activated the more feral part of his brain and initiating the play that was the bear equivalent of foreplay. It would be a difficult balance, weighing what his instincts wanted versus what would make the more human part of him feel good, but it was a challenge you were more than interested in pursuing.

He caught you as you scrambled across the bed, pinning you down as you turned to face him. Your muzzle met his and you kissed him hard, his mouth immediately opening so you could chase his tongue with yours, feeling his cock unsheathing against your stomach. You reached down between your bodies and wrapped your hand around it, rubbing your thumb over the head to collect his precum and using it as lubrication to stroke him. His head fell against your shoulder, making excited barks and chuffs as you stroked him. Like many minks, he had a sort of hybrid cock; long and supported by a bone like a polar bear, but thicker and with a more bulbous head like a human. If you were a human female he would be far too large for you, his cock proportional to his massive body, but with your bear anatomy you were well suited to take him, though it would be quite a delicious stretch.

You were a little surprised in truth at how quickly he had unsheathed for you, he was certainly eager to mate, the air now thick with your joint arousal, making your noses twitch as you both made little growls. You nuzzled and chewed on his neck, making him whine, and you pushed a hand against his chest to indicate you wanted him to roll off you. He laid back against the mattress, his chest heaving, and you kissed him hard again as you straddled his thick legs, running your tongue over his sharp teeth and smoothing the appendage against his.

“Is this okay Bepo?” You asked him, lowering yourself down the bed until you were laying between his legs, your breath brushing against his cock as you stroked it, “can I taste you? You smell so nice, I'd like to taste you”

“Ah- yes-” he whined, covering his face shyly but watching you with one eye that peeked between his fingers. You giggled at his adorable shyness and ran your tongue up the long length of his cock, still stroking the base with your hand as you took the tip in your mouth. His tongue was clicking to indicate his pleasure as you bobbed your head, mixed with little whines as his paw came to rest against the back of your head, not putting any pressure but playing occasionally with your ears and scratching at the base of them, at the sensitive spot only those with ears like yours knew about.

You couldn't hope to take all of his cock in your mouth, but what you managed was more than enough for him anyway, the hot warm feeling of your mouth around him being entirely unfamiliar and making him squirm cutely. “Ah- ah- [y/n],” Bepo whined, “I feel strange- hnng-”

“Let go, Bepo, cum for me,” you said sweetly, the bear immediately mewling as thick cum dripped from his cock, which you eagerly lapped up, letting the rest spurt directly into your mouth. He was panting hard as you let him go with a pop, licking cum from your hand and running your tongue over your muzzle to clean it.

“That- that was incredible,” he huffed, “can I make you feel like that?”

“You can,” you grinned mischievously, “come put your head between my legs, I'll guide you”

Shyness entirely lost as he became dedicated to making you feel good too, he quickly repositioned himself, the two of you finding a comfortable position that accommodated his large body by seating yourself at the edge of the bed while he knelt in front of you on the floor. He looked up at you eagerly from between your legs, and you pet his head lovingly, scratching behind his ears the same way he had for you. He stuck out his dark tinted tongue and ran it up your thigh, before using his large paws to hold your legs open, claws threatening to pierce but he was careful to not let them. Your own hand came between your legs, spreading your labia for him to see, playing with your clit and occasionally dipping a finger inside yourself. Your scent was driving him wild as you masturbated for him, so close to his nose, and he couldn't help but press his muzzle against your cunt and take a deep inhale, chuffing as your slick coated his nose and caught in his fur before his tongue came out again to take a wide swipe from asshole to mound.

“There you go,” you praised as his licks became more focused, lapping at the dripping honey at your entrance and rolling his tongue over your clit, “that feels nice Bepo. Your tongue feels so nice and rough against my pussy, why don't you suck on the bump part a little?”

You moaned as he enthusiastically followed your guidance, focusing harsh sucks and flicks of his tongue against your clit while your hands buried in the thick fur on top of his head. “So good,” you moaned, “you can- hnng- you can put your tongue inside me if you want”

His eyes were dark and hungry as he looked up at you, tongue dragging down to where he'd seen you finger yourself and pushing the wet appendage in, ignoring the resistance as he bullied the thick muscle inside you. You screamed but the way you held his head against your cunt told him it wasn't a pained scream, so he started licking at your inner walls, chuffing and growling deep in his chest as he drank up all of your slick greedily, making messy and inexperienced motions until he accidentally brushed against your g-spot and felt your entire body tense. He zeroed in on it instinctively, making you moan and writhe as he abused it with his tongue, until you pulled his fur hard and came without warning on his tongue. His eyes widened as he felt the gushing release and he lapped it up greedily, making you squirm at the overstimulation, unable to keep yourself upright anymore as you twitched helplessly against the bed until he was satisfied he'd drunk up everything you had to offer.

His instincts were in full play now, and you could smell his precum as his cock unsheathed again, standing tall over you in a way that made you shiver at just how big he was. He looked entirely the dangerous predator that he was, that shy little polar bear you met earlier now entirely gone. Knowing exactly what he wanted, you rolled over and put your ass in the air, tail twitching invitingly. He wasted no time in draping himself over your back, nipping at your neck and making deep growls that vibrated through your chest as he gripped your thighs and rut his hips towards you. As soon as his cock made contact with your dripping pussy he was burying himself to the hilt, the air knocked out of you as he immediately began a merciless pace as his instincts clawed at him to breed you.

He continued to nuzzle and nip at you as he slammed into your much smaller body, your pussy stinging from the sudden stretch before it melted to pure pleasure, moaning and clawing at the sheets below you, making tears in the fabric and mattress; you definitely weren't getting your deposit back. Fucking worth it though, as the polar bear slammed into you on pure instinct, his motions sloppy and aggressive with no real goal other than cumming inside you. He didn't even register as your cunt clamped down around him and you went silent from the intense pleasure as you came hard on his cock, letting out a long relieved moan as your body relaxed again, Bepo still slamming into you relentlessly and overstimulating you. All you could do was whine helplessly as he used your body, until his claws sunk into your hips, blood drops matting the fur as he stilled inside you, teeth breezing against your shoulder as he huffed and filled you with his seed.

It took a lot of gentle convincing to get him to roll to his side instead of crushing you, his cock still inside you, the bone keeping him erect and plugging you to keep is cum deep inside your cunt as he slowly came back to reality. “Ah, sorry, sorry,” he mumbled against your back, breath tickling your fur. “I can't- I don't wanna-”

“It's okay, my sweet snowbear,” you took his paw and curled your fingers between his digits, holding it against your chest, your abdomen visibly bulging from his cock still deep inside you. “You don't have to move, you're just doing what your instincts want you to. It's always like this the first few times for minks, just do what feels right, kay?”

“Okay, sorry,” he mumbled, nuzzling against your back, “did I do good?”

“Yes baby, you did good,” you smiled, bringing his paw to your mouth to kiss it. “So good,” you purred, a contented chuffing coming from the bear behind you.

[vykio]

Jeandrew, cinema

The challenge was to write 500 words (I wrote more...like 530 LOL) in 1 hour! Just to get in some writing exercises so I did not tweak it too much. Still, I'm happy with how it came out, this mundane little thing.

Jane gave me the prompt: some combination of jean andrew or neil in cinema or video rental or arcade or bowling alley

-

“Thoughts on Scott Pilgrim?”

Jean glances over his shoulder and spots Andrew. He’s looking up at the small selection of films playing this month instead of at Jean. Jean frees his hand from behind the soda machine, abandoning the rag he’s using to clean the counter. It’s sticky with sugar and butter from the butter dispenser, accumulated over the week. He’s the only one that bothers cleaning anything up, though his efforts certainly go unnoticed considering how old and dilapidated the town’s cinema is. Still, if he is to suffer long days waiting for someone to find their selection interesting, he should at least do it in a clean space. Every week, Andrew finds him like this; he’s his only regular.

Jean wipes his hands on his uniform pants and almost instantly regrets it. He steps up to the counter and cranes his neck up to see what the other movies are even though they’re the same ones from the beginning of the week: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sherlock Holmes, Zootopia, Prince of Persia. It certainly is a variety.

“Have you seen it?” Jean asks. Andrew looks at him with an unimpressed expression Jean interprets as that’s a stupid question. Jean knows it doesn’t matter anyway if he’s seen it. Andrew comes in, peruses the menu of usually old movies, picks one and asks Jean his opinion on it. Sometimes they compare notes at the end, and Andrew leaves with his second order of Coke. 

Jean searches his mind to say something non-spoilery but he isn’t sure Andrew cares. Grabbing a large bag of popcorn and snapping it open, he gives his honest review. “We would all be better off if we admitted Scott Pilgrim is just an incel.”

The corner of Andrew’s mouth quirks up, which fills Jean with satisfaction. He hands him his drink and his ticket, and spends the length of the movie texting Neil about Andrew’s selection and salvaging the rag he left behind to clean other spots.

Jean knows the movie is over when he hears someone loudly take the last sips of their soda. He stands from where he’s crouched behind the counter and points the dustpan in his hand in their direction. “Obnoxious.” Andrew shakes his cup side to side, rattling the ice, and Jean comes up to pull it out of his hands. As he refills it, he asks, “How was the movie?”

“Fine.” Andrew pulls his folded ticket from his pocket and flicks it open to examine it. “Lots of action, which I love. The sloth scene did take me out.”

“Sloth,” Jean repeats, confused.

“Sloth,” Andrew confirms. He waits, then Jean rips out the ticket from Andrew’s hand. It does say Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on it. He remembers the display.

“You went to see Zootopia.” Andrew’s face shifts with amusement. Jean hates it when he switches theatres without warning. “Stop doing that. You’ll get me in trouble.”

“I’m sure.” Andrew’s voice does carry the right amount of skepticism; no one else but Andrew—and certainly not his boss—is ever here on Jean’s shifts. “Working next week?”

“Yes,” he says, and Andrew leaves Jean to wait for their next encounter.

[red-bat-arse]

I Got a Problem 🎸🎶🎻

AO3

Chapter One

Eddie 'The Freak' Munson, famous for bringing rock to new heights with his band Hellfire, listens to everything but Country. 'King' Steve Harrington, leading light of the new generation of traditional Country artists, has a few thoughts about that.

=<+>=

Eddie Munson did not normally find himself accused of being musically pigeonholed.

He'd played alongside punk bands in his early touring days, and grew up on jazz and the blues from his mum and uncle. His hits on the pop charts prompted a few collaborations with electronic and indie artists, and his sophomore album featured a few rappers who wanted to get experience with rock. Metal was his bread and butter, he had a soft spot for soulful folk ballads, and given his close friendship with Argyle he was more than familiar with reggae and funk and all varieties of stoner music.

Of course, you could probably guess that the exception to all that was the ever contentious genre of country. However that wouldn't be a problem, wouldn't even be on Eddie's radar, if not for the batshit insane decision Hopper made in a diner three blocks away from the studio the week prior.

Eddie scowled and shot Jeff another look when his vocalist snickered at his expense. On the other side of the room this party was happening in, he could see Steve Harrington talking with Dustin and laughing at whatever the kid was frantically gesturing about.

He was dressed in a embroidered beige western shirt with pearls on the long cuffs, blue jeans with a brown belt and a big copper buckle, and honest to god cowboy boots that matched the ensemble. His hair was styled high and his biceps strained the shirt sleeves a little, and when he turned on his heel to follow Dustin's pointer figure Eddie was briefly overcome with lust at the amazing ass in his direct line of sight.

"I don't care," he pronounced finally, twitching as Harrington spun back and ruffled Dustin's hair, grinning wide when the kid squawked in outrage. Jeff outright snorted and Eddie glared harder. "I think doing this before we move to a bigger space is stupid, but all power to the Chief if he thinks we can make it work."

"Don't care at all, got it," Gareth said, coming up beside him. "It's just business concerns. Like, our assets."

"See, why can't you be more like Gareth, Jeffery? He knows exactly what i'm talking about," Eddie slung an arm over Gareth's shoulders -and he must be in a good mood because he didn't duck away. "Business assets."

"More like his ass-et," Jeff muttered, and Eddie valiantly ignored him.

Five days ago Hopper walked into the studio's monthly brunch and introduced them all to one Joyce 'Mama' Byers -which, okay, even Eddie knew who she was -and dropped the bombshell that she signed on with them two days prior. Once the commotion died down she was the one who dropped the next one, informing them all that they'd soon be sharing close quarters with nine other artists from her former label, preeminent among them the one who convinced them all to walk out, that being Steve Harrington.

All ten of them were country artists. Prison Break Records hadn't put out any music that wasn't solely rock or metal in it's entire eight years of existence. To say there was a bit of culture shock going around was an understatement.

"Give them a chance, Ed," Grant passed by with a few cans of coke tucked into the crook of his arm and slapped him on the shoulder, making Eddie stumble. "Half of them are in the middle of doing the bar circuit right now, and it's not like we need the studio space anyway. It's all good."

Eddie huffed, trying not to let Grant's comment sting -he knew he didn't mean anything by it. But at nearly six months to the day, even though the guys would never rush him, maybe Eddie was getting a little bit worried about the future.

"I was talking with the Byers, apparently it's mainly gonna be Joyce and Harrington recording for the next month at least," Gareth piped up again, jabbing a thumb in the direction of country music's leading family -Argyle had somehow struck up a conversation with them and while the younger brother seemed confused, the elder was paying rapt attention to whatever their resident stoner was explaining. "Everyone else is taking a break or doing small shows or one off songs, like Grant said."

"Fine, fine, I get it," Eddie held up his hands in surrender. "But if they start blasting fucking honky-tonk bullshit-"

"Oh come on, Munson, don't tell me you're one of those."

Eddie paused, then slowly turned around, feeling his face heat up only partly in embarrassment to see Harrington standing just behind him, having apparently been abandoned by Dustin in the last few minutes. He had his hip cocked and a hand casually resting with the thumb hooked in his belt, and up close Eddie could see little moles scattered all over his face and neck like flecks of paint. Next to them, Jeff turned and coughed a laugh into his elbow, muffled.

"What, pray tell, are you talking about?" Eddie quashed the instinct to puff up for a fight. Just because Harrington was a good old jock with arms that could bench him didn't mean he had to have his back up, and he reasoned that this was his home turf here. He and Hopper may not always see eye to eye, but if Eddie asked he'd take his side in a heartbeat.

Harrington gave a funny little smirk, the kind you'd give to the family dog who was doing something cute but ultimately futile.

"You're the type who hates Trace Adkins but's never heard of David Allan Coe," he raised an eyebrow, then nodded to Jeff and Gareth, holding out a hand to shake with each of them. "Name's Steve. Good to meet you guys."

"Jeff," "Gareth," his bandmates parroted back, easy as breathing, while Eddie was still stuck on Harrington's little dig about the artists he was or wasn't aware of.

"You do most of the song work, don't you Munson?" he was asked, and Eddie belatedly realized he hadn't actually accepted Harrington's handshake. It was too late now, so he kind of awkwardly answered in the affirmative and watched that hand get pulled back and settled onto Harrington's other hip, so the man was standing almost like a judgy mother hen as he kept talking. "I've been kind of obsessed with Dark Sheep lately -especially the way you captured sexuality in 'Something On Your Tongue'; like how it's all about being confident, and whether it's a stranger at a club or working a job, the narrator's attracted to them in a way that's not gross to listen to. I mean, 'I love the way you dance with anybody' as a line is pretty refreshing when you think about it and... oh. Sorry," Harrington trailed off and turned a little pink, ducked his head. "Didn't mean to ramble on there."

Steve Harrington listened to Hellfire's music? Eddie blinked and the guy was still in front of him, looking earnest as a slice of apple pie or whatever the fuck, and he mentally shook himself. 'King' Steve Harrington listened to his music enough to have an opinion on it, on specific songs from their last record, and he came out the end of it liking his lyrics?

"Dude, get it together," Gareth whispered and elbowed him in the ribs, jolting him out of his fugue.

"Didn't think that was your thing, Harrington," Eddie ran his mouth with the first thought that came to mind, even if it was kind of dickish. "Sexual liberation ain't exactly very prayerful of you," he made the sign of the cross on that last part.

Far from what he expected, that got Harrington to bark out a big, surprised laugh. "Oh, c'mon," he rolled his eyes. "You can't seriously think I'm in with the god squad? They were most of why we left Tiger Studios in the end. Besides," Harrington flashed a charming smile, pearly whites matching the pearl buttons below on his shirt. "It'd be pretty hypocritical of me to preach against sexual lib, considering."

What the hell did that mean? Was it just his brain pulling tricks on him, or did Harrington's eyes flick up and down Eddie's body right then -and where the hell had Gareth and Jeff gone? They were supposed to be his buffer against his least favourite genre, not -ah, there they were -not chatting up the other members of Harrington's little ensemble across the room.

"Consider me told, then. You ain't godly whatsoever, I'll be sure not to disparage your sterling reputation again with that mistake, my liege, cross my heart," Maybe he was laying it on thick here, but there was something about Steve Harrington that got his pulse up; when the other man tilted his head with a baffled smile at Eddie's statement, he had to clench his fist hard so he didn't just -well, he wasn't actually sure. "But I think without the god talk that just makes you a hick, big boy, sexually liberated or otherwise. Is that better or worse?"

Maybe Harrington was just pissing him off with his... everything. His shit genre and his cocky attitude and the way he dressed to impress, it was cringey at best and edging on pretentious at worst. Eddie crossed his arms and scowled, annoyed with this damn situation of having to navigate a whole new set of people in the studio when he was already behind in his work and had no fucking clue how to fix-

"Hicks make some good music, Munson," Harrington said, sounding all kinds of condescending about it. "Especially these days, if you know where to look. Sounds to me like you're a little musically pigeonholed," Eddie went ramrod straight as Harrington threw that accusation in his face, and he felt his cheeks go hot in offense. Harrington smirked, noticing. "But hey, I'm always down to help out if you wanted to explore your options."

Musically. Pigeonholed. Musically pigeonholed!

"Fat chance of that, boots," Eddie swung his foot forward and knocked toes with Harrington, fancy brown tops against Eddie's scuffed workman's. "Sounds to me like the crown's too tight on your head after dropping contract. When you can write a song that's not about beer and trucks and girls, give me a shout, okay? Maybe I'll even give it a listen."

Steve's smirk turned a shade meaner, and he was probably going to say something really nasty -figures -when he got clapped on the back by a big man in a hawaiian shirt and with a thick beard, holding a martini of all things.

"Woah, kids, tone it down a notch. We're here to have a good time," the guy said, part patronizing and part stern -it was a weird combination. "Especially you, Discount Dio. Take it easy on the new guys or I'll ask Wayne to break out the baby photos, tout de suite."

Oh, so this was Murray. Wayne's mysterious drinking buddy who just so happened to be one of the artists who bailed along with Harrington. Eddie had no doubt he'd make good on the threat -not that he needed it, exactly. The interruption seemed to have taken the wind out of both his and Harrington's sails, if the way the guy looked embarrassed was any indication.

"Sorry, Murray," Harrington said, and Murray rolled his eyes.

"Just relax, kid. None of these guys are Hargrove, or even Carver Jr for that matter," he shook Harrington's shoulder a little, and shot Eddie an odd look. "Even the ones that growl and snap at you are just Chihuahuas. And you, puppy," he snapped his fingers in Eddie's face, making him flinch back in surprise. Also, offended -puppy? "I think you've got a hot head right now, so you should remember you know better than to shit on music you've never listened to. Don't you?"

Fuck, damn his big mouth. He felt his cheeks go tight with embarrassment, and he cut a look at Harrington. They were both close to thirty and yet here they were feeling like scolded children.

"Shouldn't have said that, Harrington. Sorry," he offered, ash in his throat. The guy looked surprised, but nodded, accepting, and Murray threw his hands up, sarcastically relieved.

"Thank god! Now come on, join the party," he hooked a hand around Eddie's neck and used his martini arm to bump Harrington forward.

The country boy looked at him one last time before seeming to shrug off their entire interaction, a fake expression of cheer getting plastered on after a flash of disappointment. Why he was disappointed was anybody's guess; maybe he'd thought Eddie would be more repentant in his apology.

Fat chance of that. Musically pigeonholed his ass.

Eddie sighed, flexing his hand, and readied himself to push through a few more hours of socializing. Internally he apologized to Hopper, too -a productive working relationship with the country club didn't seem like it was in the cards for him.

=<+>=

I keep a running list of songs referenced in the notes on AO3 -I don't do tag lists!

[shmaptainwrites]

How about the reader being friends with House and Wilson in the beginning of season 5? Would the reader "choose a side" or would they all have a fight, trying to move on by themselves?

okay anon i had to give this some major thought before answering this cause it’s a very good question

i think maybe you’d end up trying to be the mediator between the two initially, since you can see, even through house’s convoluted way of putting it, that he doesn’t want to lose wilson, but also seeing that some time and space might be good for wilson to gather his thoughts and see where he really feels like he needs to be

but because they are both drama queens and can’t cooperate for the life of them in that situation you just remove yourself completely saying you can’t babysit them and they need to figure this out by themselves

i think that means you’d remove yourself from places where you’d normally interact with them and after a few months of not knowing what’s going on, house obviously has you followed along with everyone else whereas wilson tries to take a more direct way of reconnecting with you because he never really wanted distance from you, you just got caught in the crossfire of his argument with house

so maybe that also prompts some jealousy on house’s side because there’s no way wilson gets to leave and have you, it’s just not fair, the friendship scales are imbalanced but little does he know if he just gets up off his ass and acts like a normal person you’d be more than happy to resume your friendship, but you can’t make that same decision for wilson

i think it would also be really funny that part of the reason why wilson agrees to take house to his father’s funeral is because you’d come along with them and so that road trip becomes the rekindling of your trio friendship through a variety of backwards and odd ways including the whole getting arrested scenario and getting them to shut up because they’re talking in the middle of a funeral (i can see some discreet slaps upside both of their heads, one on either side of you, along with a very pointed look because they’d really done enough and there was no way you were going to awkwardly get in trouble at your friend’s dad’s funeral because of them)

anyways this has a lot of potential for some funny misunderstandings and just general house and wilson tomfoolery x3 which i just love

send me your RSL character x reader thoughts

→ accepting asks for james wilson, cruise, and peter müller

→ i’ve seen up to 5x6 of house — NO SPOILERS PLEASE

[wanted-to-be-nosey]

Hide and seek

AO3 link

Prompt fill: Object Insertion Word count ~2,300 Warnings: nsfw, unsafe insertions, swearing, under-negotiated kinks?, hidden public play, public erections

Peter had no idea what he’d ever done to end up in this type of situation. Honestly, at this point he was kind of scared to ask.

It was supposed to be an easy mission. A boring mission. Barely even a mission at all.

They hadn’t even required their suits – or supersuits anyway. Instead, he’d been given a very expensive two-piece Tom Ford number. Charcoal grey to compliment Tony’s black.

He and Tony had received an invite to a gala held at some old, rich guys mansion in the Hamptons. An old, rich guy who also happened to be a collector of unusual artifacts – especially of the illegal variety. Art smuggling is not something that the Avengers would normally worry themselves about, but they’d heard rumours about a vibranium statue that T’challa was anxious to get back. Something the king had been looking for, for a while and this was the first solid lead they’d come across.

It hadn’t been hard to get an invite to the gala given Tony’s reputation. He was known for being eccentric and an odd art collector himself.

They’d assumed it would be a quick in and out situation. Chat with some people to show face, find the statue and leave. In and out in an hour tops.

What they hadn’t accounted for, was the house to have security pat downs for everyone entering and exiting the building. Very thorough pat downs at that. Even if it was concealed in an internal pocket, they’d be exposed as they left. On their arrival they’d had to pull phones from pockets and even let them examine their watches.

So, it didn’t matter that they’d found the vibranium statue – shaped like a panther sitting upright on its hind legs – within thirty minutes of arriving, tucked away in a quiet backroom.

Finding it, standing staring at it, didn’t mean anything when there wasn’t a way to actually leave the building with it. They could maybe take pictures for T’challa so he could arrange something to retrieve it himself, but it could be moved by then. It’s unlikely that something so rare would stay still for long. It was likely constantly changing hands for security.

They really didn’t want to bring in the authorities since they didn’t want to advertise the fact that Wakanda had statues lying around made entirely of vibranium. The whole idea was to keep this below board. To do this quietly.

Of course, Peter should have known that Tony would find a solution to the seemingly impossible task.

A solution that involved him waving a condom and a packet of lube in Peter’s direction.

“I’m sorry,” Peter spluttered, not for the first time. “You want to do what, now?”

Tony rolled his eyes before stepping forward to grab the vibranium statue.

“I said, that we can just pop it in the condom and tuck it safely away.” Tony weighed the statue in his hand, running his fingers over the curving lines. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Cause that’s insane!”

“Not really. It’s, what? Five inches tall? Yeah, that panthers face and body will probably be an odd shape but even at its widest it’s not much wider than my dick. We both know you can take me."

“That is so not the point here, Tony,” Peter said exasperated. “Number one, it’s not about fitting it, it’s about the walking around and keeping it in. It’s heavy and there’s no base. What if it gets lost?! That’s like anal safety rule one!”

“It won’t get lost,” Tony interrupted. “Besides worst comes to it I’ll dig it out later. Promise I won’t make you go to Cho.”

“Oh my God.... even if I’m ok with that part, I don’t think T’challa is going to want it back after its been up my ass!”

“That’s what the condoms for!”

“Why don’t you do it, if you want it so much?”

“Be serious, Pete. It’s been years since I’ve bottomed. I’d need far more prep than you would. Time that we don’t have.” Tony put the statue down and took Peter’s hand instead, growing serious as he watched Peter carefully. “I know it’s not exactly going to be comfortable, and I wish there was another way, but this is all I’ve got. If you really don’t want to do it, then we’ll figure something else out. But I really do think this would work. However, just say the word and I promise I’ll drop it.”

Peter hated it when Tony made sense. Yes, they could try and come back another time, but this was their best chance. He really did want this not-quite-a-mission-but-definitely-becoming-one to be a success. And despite his reluctance, he couldn’t deny that the idea did excite him. The thought of walking out past all the other guests, his ass full, had his pulse beating faster and his cock twitching in his pants. Especially knowing what it would do to Tony.

Double checking the door was locked behind him, Peter turned around with a sigh and began unbuckling his belt.

“You better hurry up then,” he said over his shoulder, suppressing a chuckle at Tony’s dumbfounded expression. “And you better make this worth my while later.”

His trousers hadn’t even made it past his hips when Tony kicked into action, grabbing everything he’d need and kneeling reverently behind Peter as he worked his trousers and boxers down to his knee.

“Trust me, I’ll be worshipping you tonight for this,” Tony moaned as his hands roamed over Peter’s ass. “My trousers are already tight at the thought.”

As much as Peter was sure Tony would’ve liked to take his time, the older man swiftly got to work opening him up. The lube, and the fact they’d had sex the night before, meant Tony could easily fit two fingers inside and quickly worked his way up to three. Peter was carefully holding the bottom of his dress shirt to prevent him from leaving any marks or unwanted stains as he leant against the wall, panting.

“How’re you doing?” Tony checked, sounding as breathless as Peter felt.

“Good,” Peter breathed, still listening for movement out in the hallway, the voices from the main hall still drifting to him. “You can add another.”

“You sure?”

“As hot as this is, I don’t want to be caught with my trousers literally down,” he chuckled. “So, yeah, go for it.”

Peter’s breath hitched at the stretch of the fourth finger, it was sharper than he was used to. Tony usually stretched him far more than necessary, taking his time and usually resulting in Peter cumming at least once before he was deemed ready, but time was of the essence here. Tony tenderly kissed his ass and whispered reassurances. Once Peter was able to comfortably take Tony’s fingers and found himself eagerly rocking back against them, he turned to speak over his shoulder.

“I think I’m ready.”

Tony watched him for a moment before nodding and slowly extracting his fingers.

“Right. I’m going to pop this into the condom and tie it off. It doesn’t have a flared base so you’re right, it goes against like every safe insertion talk I’ve ever given but it won’t be for too long and I’ll get it out when we get back,” Tony spoke quickly and quietly as he rolled the condom over the statue. “My fingers are going to smell of condom juice for days. Ugh, it’s so slimy and not helping me get a grip to tie it.”

“I’m sure they’ll appreciate your feedback,” Peter smirked. “Clearly they need to improve the texture to aid those individuals looking to smuggle things in their ass.”

“Ha ha,” Tony said drily. “I know your joking, but it’s maybe something SI could look into. I’m sure I could think of a medical application for it if I try hard enough. A way to not make it sound like it’s for purely illegal purposes.”

“I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking right now or not.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Tony smirked, giving Peter’s ass a gentle smack. “Right, you ready for this?”

Peter simply nodded and turned back round; his cock was hanging heavy between his legs, but he already knew he wouldn’t be doing anything about it until they got out of there. The voices from the party were making him nervous and they’d already spent more than enough time at this stupid gala.

The cold press of the statue had him gasping, but he breathed through it as Tony slowly pushed it inside. Applying a bit more lube as the statue widened and he began to give some resistance. He couldn’t prevent a whine at the sharp, almost painful, stretch of the widest part of the statue.

“Breathe Pete, it’s almost there,” Tony murmured, stroking his hip reassuringly. Peter tried to slow his breathing and relax his muscles. He knew tensing wasn’t going to help anything, but it was hard to get his body to cooperate. “Just relax. There we go.”

“Wow,” Peter sighed as he felt his hole finally close behind the statue, the heavy weight of it sitting inside of him. An insistent presence. “Now what?”

“Now, we get out of here,” Tony said, letting his fingers trail over Peter’s crack one last time before pulling up his boxers and trousers, and standing up to allow Peter the chance to get himself sorted.

He could feel the statue within him with every movement. Not necessarily pleasurable, but not not pleasurable either. The weight of the statue made its presence known even when all he was doing was standing. His ass unintentionally clenching to keep it from falling out, despite the fact the size of it would surely add enough resistance that it wouldn’t go anywhere.

“Right,” Peter breathed, turning to face Tony, as he finished buckling his belt. “The cars waiting?”

Tony pressed a couple of buttons on his watch before nodding.

“It will be. How does it feel?”

“Weird. Heavy. I don’t know.” He took an experimental step forward and groaned. “Fuck,” he moaned. “So full. It feels good though. Moving causes it to bump around inside. Not sure I’ll be able to will away my hard-on though.”

“Me neither. Just pop your hands in your pockets and we’ll make a swift exit. Although I’m not sure the car will be the haven you think it’ll be. We’ll have about a twenty-minute drive where you’ll be sitting down and feeling every bump in the road.”

“Fuck, Tony.”

Tony smirked, “I thought you’d like that. Now, c’mon. Car should’ve arrived by now. We need to bid a quick farewell to the host and then I can take you home to ravish you like you deserve.”

“You can’t just say things like that,” Peter groaned, shoving his hands in his pockets to try and disguise his erection pressing against the front of his trousers.

Leaving the room, Peter lets Tony guide him with a hand on his low back as they bid their goodbyes. The leaving pat down was extremely awkward with the pair of them tenting their trousers, but at least it served as an excuse for their early exit. Peter would like to say the knowing smirks from the security didn’t cause his dick to twitch but he’d be lying. Apparently, he had a thing for doing risky things in public. The thought that these men had an inkling over what they were up to was causing his cheeks to flame in embarrassed arousal. But that was something they could explore further at a later date. He had a twenty-minute car ride home to endure first.

Peter jolted as he sat down. Tony had been right. The pressure increased the sensation. Despite there being no base to be pressed on, it still felt like it was being pressed further in as he sat down. Tony’d better be able to get it out when they got back or there’d be hell to pay.

“You good?” Tony asked, as he set the car in drive and slowly exited the gravel driveway, Peter gritting his teeth as he adjusted his trousers.

“Yeah,” he ground out, clenching his hands into fists.

Tony turned on the radio as they joined the main road, speeding along the empty streets. Peter took the time to admire the view outside, anything to try and distract from the ever-present fullness he was feeling. He couldn’t imagine how his ass was ever going to relax enough to get it out again.

They were pulling up to Tony’s own house in the Hampden’s when the realisation suddenly hit to Peter.

“Hey, I just realised, we could’ve just taken it out when we got into the car.”

The twinkle in Tony’s eye as he turned to grin at Peter let him know Tony had already had that thought and chosen to ignore it.

“We could’ve, but this was way more fun, don’t you think?”

“Ugh,” Peter groaned.

“Besides, I promised to make it worth your while. This way you’re just extra ramped up for me and I’ll just have to worship you for longer to make up for your extra suffering.”

“You’re insufferable,” Peter huffed without any real bite.

“Yet, you love me. C’mon, you know it’s always better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. And don’t even try to deny that you weren’t into it. I saw how you reacted to those security guys. Don’t think that’s not something we’ll be discussing at depth later. I have so many ideas. But first, I believe I promised you an extraction so let’s get inside, yeah?”

Rolling his eyes, Peter nodded and exited the car. Small moans escaping him again as he stood up and the statue yet again shifted. T’challa better appreciate the effort that went into this retrieval. It was certainly going to be one he remembered for the rest of his life. Especially if the rest of the night went as well as he was hoping.

[victorluvsalice]

-->And then, pumpkins! :D Because Petey included a couple of pumpkin-carving stations and a special pumpkin display made out of platforms on the second floor, and I wanted the trio to get in on that. Smiler and Alice went first, making a pale orange smiling pumpkin and a white cat pumpkin respectively, while I kept Victor busy looking at the handful of pumpkins Petey had included in the display. He then took over Smiler’s station once Smiler was done (they carved a Masterpiece of a pumpkin! Victor’s and Alice’s were just Excellent, which, still great), while Smiler chatted with Alice and checked out a pumpkin themselves. Once everyone was done, I made sure all the pumpkins were lined up on one side of the display, properly preserved (so they won’t ever rot), and lit up –

Then had Alice take a picture of them all together! :D Which proved to be a BIT tricky, as my initial attempts to get her lined up had her looking at the pumpkins from a very awkward angle, and then when I got her straight on, Victor’s elbow was in the corner of the shot. XD I just zoomed in as much I could while keeping all three pumpkins in-frame and took my wanted snaps, playing around with filters and sizes a bit as I do. (What can I say – I like variety. And the medium picture size.) And once THAT was all settled…

-->It was time to turn off autonomy for a little bit and set up the tripod for some group pictures! :D Which, again, proved to be a little trickier than anticipated – I initially set up the tripod in front of the display I’d made with the mini-cowplant and the falcon, but when I sent the trio over there, the interaction first just canceled out, then the camera just kept beeping for ages while the three lined up around the SIDE of the tripod. And then I accidentally canceled out the interaction AGAIN by accidentally moving the camera trying to get Alice to try the picture again. I decided that they probably didn’t have enough room with the camera facing the side wall display and turned it around so the backdrop would be the specters-in-jars display and the stairs up to the bathroom, prompting Alice to try one more time. Again, the camera timer beeped for AGES, making me worry that something was wrong –

But I did eventually get to take my pictures! Whew! I promptly had fun putting everyone into various poses (silly, romantic, and just plain random) and taking a variety of small and medium-sized pictures. :D Gotta commemorate the moment, after all! And I will never stop loving that the tripod allows me to take group pictures of the three. :D It’s great, it really is.

-->With the final goal of the date (well, sort of – the date ended at Gold level right before the actual picture-taking took place, but it was MY final goal for the date anyway) sorted, and Victor and Alice’s energy flagging a little, I figured it was time to wrap up the holiday. I thus had Alice put away her camera and tripod, directed Victor and Alice to share an intense kiss (since Victor and Smiler had locked lips earlier), then sent the trio back home –

[violettduchess]

Hi Violette....

Sending this to the ask box instead of commenting directly on the post, because;

This is probably going to be too long for a comment

A reblog will probably ping the conversion into a different direction, and I think the conversation is too interesting to redirect.

That said, I will repeat that your potential "1 suitor - 1 prompt" event sounds like fun (and I hope that when a game is voted on, it will be one that I write for so that I can participate).

Maybe it's because the Ikesen writing community is more kumbaya than Ikeprince/Ikevamp, or maybe my blog is just too small to attract anon hate (or maybe people look at my content, and realize it's too chaotic to drag into controversy), but I didn't take your original post/survey as a competition.

I taught a writing class this winter (two classes, a beginner and an advanced - screenwriting, not prose), and I would often give assignments that had this kind of strict parameter (a single prompt, a set location, and set character types). This was not to make the students compete against each other, but because under such strict rules, it forced them to develop their own voice and style, without having to waste time deciding on a story, location, or character. And by doing so, and reading the results out loud (and a single prompt had such wildly varied stories - I got horror scripts, comedies, angst stories, love stories, parent/child stories, and even a historical fiction) the students realized that even if a single idea, a single prompt was the same, their takes on it where fully original.

Anyway, from a somewhat outsider perspective, I didn't see it as a competition. (And this is coming from someone who is extremely competitive... you do not want me sitting at your table on board game night).

The idea for this originated the same exercise you described that I do with my English students and as you very aptly described, it's never come across as a competition in class. You often have such a rich variety of stories that come out of it.

I appreciate your ask and you sharing your perspective from an educational point of view. You have far more eloquently than me have put into words the appealing part of this 💜

[bellysoupset]

Hi Soup~

I'm so behind with my comments, but I don't want you to get bored of me writing basically a novel every time I send an ask to you and flood your inbox. 🙈

So I will try to be "short" (and fit everything into 1 or 2 asks) but no promises 😅

I'm so excited to read about Jonah's (and Leo's) trip with Angie. Angie is a sweetheart. She loves Jonah so much, it comes through your writing so vividly. I enjoy getting to know Matteo and Jackie as well. The whole debate about Jonah going on this trip at all, the brief wedding planning, the worrying, and caretaking in this whole storyline are just amazing. I love that Jackie is acting like a mother hen not only with Jonah but with Leo as well. She knows what she wants, and even Jonah doesn't dare truly arguing with her - it's so nice to see her telling Jonah he is her child in her house and not a doctor, and that she would be taking care of him. And Jonah acting like he doesn't enjoy the attention is just perfect. Plus the whole Leo got sick then John got sick and even while John got sick, he was jealous of Luke taking care of Leo. Pure comedy. I can't wait to read about the rest of the trip.

As for Bell and Luke, I know you already wrote a fic with Bella not believing him when he is sick, but this new one was just so good to read. Poor Luke having that migraine. I'm glad Bell apologised. I just love their dynamic so much.

Plus Luke finally using his full name while working? He has so many opportunities now. What are you planning?👀

Also, I live for Luke being jealous of whatever Vince and Max have going on.

Can't wait to have Wendy join the club (but like, just a little. Max needs everyone in his corner).

The smut? The face time thing between Wen and Vin? Oh boy, you are doing things to me. You are writing these scenes so well, they are 🔥

(I feel like Wendy needs a bit more attention in terms of stories, so I will try to come up with a prompt.)

I don't think I need to say anything about the Vin and Max developing enemy-turned kinda colleague kinda crush dynamic. I absolutely adore it. The birthday fic? Thanks for giving Max a memorable - in a positive sense for once - birthday. Even though he still ended up puking, I'm glad he could enjoy himself. It was so nice of Vince to take him out, and even have back up plan for a back up plan. Max deserves it soo much.

Oh and Soup? Boring and your stories will never ever fall into the same category!!

The variety, the character development, the plotlines? They are one of a kind and always will be. I hope you will be here writing for us for at least a hundred years 🥺🙏🏻

I also hope I didn't miss anything. If I did, just know that I love it anyways.

Sending lots of love and a mountain of self-confidence your way

- 💜

See you're behind commenting (literally not a thing, any comment in whatever story makes my day!!) and I'm behind answering my inbox, I'd say we're even 😂

I'm having a lot of fun writing the extended relations of each characters! I'm going slowly so Jonah, so far, is the one with the most people in his corner, but I do plan to add some secondary characters for the others as well! I think it makes them so much richer and gives me many scenarios to explore! Writing Angie and Jackie has been a blast, since each one of them brings out a completely different side of Jon. I'm planning to have a story in the future with Jasper, we'll see how that goes!

DJSFLKD Wendy joining Luke's club of jealousy! LMAO that would be very funny, just the two of them in a corner glaring daggers in Max's direction. Not very realistic, Wendy is not a jealous girl, if anything realizing Max is crushing on Vince would make her sooo smug, not jelly, but this is a fun scenario.

🙈🙈🙈 I'm soo happy you're enjoying the teasing smut, both Vin/Wen and Bella/Luke, I love writing these sexy little ficlets!

And 💜! Don't you DARE think I'd ever get tired of your comments, not just the compliments, I genuinely love knowing how you are and the little side quests of your lives! How's university, what are you guys watching, I love learning you're well 💕💕

[inventors-fair]

You Came, You Saw, You Innovated

GREAT stuff this week, folks! It was a tough prompt, but y'all knocked it out of the park. I have heard you, and my next one will definitely be a lot less complex, but for now, revel in the glory that you all very much gave me what I wanted to see this week.

Here's the commentary!

Abyssal Rebuttal by @nicolbolas96 **JUDGE PICK**

Starting it off strong with Dandan, a format that has approximately 3 fans worldwide. For those wondering, the format centers around a shared deck with multiple copies of a single creature, and other cards that interact with it. The original version of this deck involved, you might have guessed, Dandan as the central creature. I do think a Dandan set would be a little tricky logistically, but that’s not what I’m judging. This card is simple and clean, but the reason it deserves to be a judge pick is because of how effectively it conveys information. The reminder text is short but every inch of it is crucial and easy to parse, and once you read it you go back to the effect to understand it with new eyes. I also think the strongest design choice here is not limiting “the Dandan” of the deck to only be Dandan, which would allow for a much more healthy variety in play. It obviously brings up questions of “how do players decide what the Dandan is” and “how are those cards distributed”, but this card is a brilliant example of showing AND telling in all the right amounts.

Cathar Challenger by @horsecrash

Horde magic is also a very cool direction to take this week’s prompt, and also makes me realize that I could have simplified the prompt into making a card for a “weird” format. It’s tough to evaluate the power on this one, since Horde can vary wildly depending on what variation of the rules you use. It’s obviously calling to Cathar’s Crusade, but doing it on attack and tacking on the lifegain might make it a touch too strong. On the other hand, it not affecting your own board is pretty big, so it definitely depends how many teammates you have. This one is just really tough to evaluate in a vacuum, I think a cheaper version that scaled less strongly could definitely have been a strong contender.

Deep Water Scavenger by @i-am-the-one-who-wololoes

This is definitely a tricky one, but it’s very fun to parse with the information I’ve been given. This being an uncommon helps contextualise a few things- it does have a mill ability, but fifteen cards is such a low threshold that we’re likely talking draft deck (40 cards), or potentially even smaller. Also, since it’s such a small library, and because there’s an ability that cares about cards leaving your grave without any way to make that happen, I’m going to guess that this format involves you shuffling your grave into library instead of losing when you draw from an empty library. It’s a fun card, though the pieces seem a bit disjointed until you fit them together. The shroud is a bit of a sticking point for me- they don’t use it anymore, and for good reasons. Hexproof or ward would serve this design much better. It definitely makes me curious to see the other cards in this set, so well done.

Dreadraven by @wolkemesser

Ahh, the classic “change the name of the design last minute and forget to update.” We’ve all been there. For what it’s worth, I like dreadraven a lot better. The mana cost almost got me for a sec, I was ready to comment that mono blue doesn’t get deathtouch or lifelink, but that little black pip saves me from being all pedantic. This card doesn’t tell me much except that it’s made for a best-of-three format (or maybe even more), but a draft environment built around snowballing one win into another, or coming back from a nasty game 1 loss could make for some really interesting designs. I would be curious to see if this is something they would allow in black-border magic, since they typically seem to want every game to be a totally fresh start. Anyways, you pushed the envelope, and that’s what I asked for this week, so thanks!

Guardian Seacat by @piccadilly-blue

Whoof. I’ll admit, this one I had to look up, because I spent ages puzzling over what this could be for, and I say this as someone who’s played some Judge Tower. I honestly totally forgot about the “X is always 3” rule, but this takes an interesting spin on it. The main issue I see here is that Judge Tower is fundamentally not a format designed for fun, it’s designed as a training exercise. Add draft to that, plus the aspect of a shared library, and you’re left in a confusing spot. Plus, this just tanks a free loss, which either means there are more cards that do this, or this is the strongest card in the set. It’s definitely one of the most creative designs this week, and kudos to that, but I just don’t see how the format would work.

Hekara, Rakdos Emissary by @deg99 - **JUDGE PICK**

It is interesting that those who submitted for Commander Legends-esque sets all tackled the color identity problem. I mean, it makes sense- that’s the biggest obstacle by far, and it’s fun to see all the different angles on it. Emissary threw me for a loop for a second, but once I grokked it, I saw the possibilities. You can run her as a Rakdos commander, or you can pick up another Emissary and go with pretty much any other color combo except Azorius, Simic, or Selesnya. I also like that you tried to include incentive to play her on her own, but I think the ability comes off a bit awkward and too heavy-handed on the idea. I think the mechanic already takes care of that, as you can’t make her a rakdos deck unless you have a black or red Emissary to pair with her, so already there’s some incentive to play her alone if you’ve been pulling good Rakdos cards. That being said, I like that vein of abilities, I just think they could be a bit more subtle. Also, I don’t love the epithet considering it copies the name of the mechanic, so a shakeup there would improve the flavor immensely.

Imperial Protection by @nine-effing-hells

Ahh, emperor. The solution to “Well, we have six players and eight hours, what are we going to do?” This one is cool, again following the philosophy of not making the card useless if you aren’t the emperor, but making it just a bit better if you are. I do think hybrid is a bit iffy here because white anthems and green anthems don’t really overlap in size or function, but it’s a bend at most, so eh. Just like the archenemy cards though, I’m curious how you envisioned the actual drafting experience. Is it a shared pool like 2HG? Do teams draft 3 at a time or separately? Do teammates sit consecutively or staggered? The fact that I’m asking these questions is a sign you’ve piqued my interest, and now I want to go play more emperor, so... good card?

Isrun, Gravewhisperer by @real-aspen-hours

More identity fixing! Last one was limited to two colors, this one to three, both with a very clever take on how to do it. This one has a more strict limit, but allows you to double up on partners with the same colors, and also allows you (the designer) to put a solid mix of 1 and 2 colour commanders for some mixing and matching. The creative element is going over my head a bit I think, since the mechanic is clearly alara-themed, but the flavor text says Tarkir. Is it a mashup of all the 3-color faction sets? If so, neat, but maybe the mechanic deserves a more general name that isn’t tied to only one of the 4 (or 5) planes you’re giving some love to. The card itself is fun, playing into some abzan graveyard themes and their whole “fury of the small” kinda thing. 

Logistics Accountant by @hypexion - **JUDGE PICK**

Oh man, Coup in magic. That... honestly, I kinda wanna do that now. Seems like a lot of fun. Seems like these are more public roles though, since the treasurer would have to be public information. I want to know how big these teams are. Is there a set number of roles that are distributed? Are they chosen from a pool at random? Do players get to choose their roles before the game begins? Can you have more than one role? The second ability would seem to suggest so, and also that they would have various activated abilities. I can see the Treasurer having an ability that (obviously) lets them spend coin counters, which is very clever. Whatever this format is, I want to play more of it, and if you invented it, I demand a full write-up of the rules immediately. Anyways, uh... yeah. Good card.

Loyal Toadie by @helloijustreadyourpost

Scheeeeeemes. It’s a fun word to say. Anyways, another take on archenemy, and this one comes at a different angle than the others. While the other submissions had one effect for the archenemy and one for the team, this one wraps it up into a single effect, basically allowing you to scry or fateseal, either to pull a better scheme or avoid a nasty one. Unfortunately, I’m not quite sure it works as intended, since “setting a scheme in motion” refers to the act of revealing it and triggering the ability all in one go. That being said, it’s a fairly easy fix to make it just counter the scheme ability in exchange for allowing them to set another one in motion. Alas, nitpicky rules are nitpicky. Apart from that it seems very fun, and I love how this can be a competent henchman who supports your evilest plans, or a bumbling buffoon that ruins your moment of greatness. Excellent flavor. 

Malack, Butcher of Worlds by @certification-wizard

Much like one of our examples this week, this submission implies a long, drawn-out event over the course of multiple days, since it both asks you to defeat five or more players, and it references prize packs that are also drafted, implying that you can add to your pool post-construction- as well as a “campaign”, which carries its own weight. What’s interesting to me is the typal element, and the specific commander callout. This is some form of draft league event with commanders, which sounds like a very interesting premise. However, being so reliant on your opponents to be playing different decks is pretty rough, and the ability is ambiguous enough that I don’t know if it would count defeating U, B, and UB commanders as two or three for the count. Finally, the last aspect here is how heavily typal it is. What does the set environment look like, where you can expect to see two demons per pack? Also, if you’re drafting, that messes up card parity, which is a no-no. See cards like Cogwork Librarian, who always keep the same number of cards in the pack to avoid this issue. This is a really cool idea, but the elements feel a little scrambled, and hard to unify into a single idea.

Mask of Elesh Norn by @lanabutnotdelray

Eugh, who would want that mask? Creepy. Also no eye holes. I’ve already made commentary on the idea of an archenemy set, so let’s look at the card instead. More dual effects like this, where one functions as the archenemy and one functions on the team (and in other formats), are definitely a cool way to address the idea of Limited. However, I... don’t know how this would work? Is it subtracting from each “kind” of token (which I’m not sure is an actually rules term for tokens), or just one overall? If your opponent has a Tireless Provisioner, would they choose which one they make, would you, or would they make none? The idea is really clever, but it seems there’s a reason they haven’t tried to implement this effect before. Definitely a cool premise, and I’m right up there with Maro in my love for token doublers, but this one gives me a bit of a rules headache.

Mercenary Auction by @flightyquinn

Hoo boy, okay. This is WILD, and I think I mean that in a good way. This card reads to me as one that was designed for a specific format, but also made ambiguous so it could be played in other formats, and so I say to that... what the hell happens if I make my commander opponent into my teammate? Is it all of a sudden one 2HG team vs two individual opponents? Do the other two team up? Is this meant to be a signifier with no rules baggage like “friend or foe”? It makes my head spin. For that matter, even in the format this was made for, is that really... fair to your teammate? Like in a social sense? You and your buddy are all excited to go to this new draft event, then your opponent says “nope, you’re with me for the rest of the day, or until I play this again.” It’s possible I might be wildly misinterpreting this card, but teammate does have actual rules meaning, so y’know. As for the rest of the card, I LOVE the bidding aspect, where they’re incentivized to show good stuff so they don’t have to discard. However, you’re likely not gonna have much mana left over after paying 5 for this, so I think you could even play it for free without being too busted. 

Omenpath Reveler by @salamileg

...Funny enough, I am literally about 2/3rds of the way through making a planechase draft cube built around the idea of omenpaths. That’s pretty funny, though admittedly it’s an easy idea to go for. This one is simple, but encourages planechase on a few different levels. It wants you to get chaos, obviously, but also wants you to roll as much as possible first. It definitely wants you to be able to roll at instant speed, but too bad so sad for the poor little satyr. The flavor text is great, though the use of the word chaos is a bit on the nose. Obviously there would be some logistics issues with trying to draft oversized cards, but we can assume the business people will figure that out. Nothing much else to say, this is a solid uncommon with a lot going for it.

Radar Bauble by @sparkyyoungupstart

Okay, so originally I had only a vague idea what this did (and to be fair, the card does a fairly good job of conveying some of the information), but, like a vision from the heavens, my phone saw fit to grant me a clip of TCC playing what I can only assume is the format this was made for. Now I must ask, in your set made for this format- can you only submit cards with the Treasure subtype? Any artifacts? Is there a minimum and maximum submission, or can you just mooch off of your opponent’s artifacts? The rest of the card became fairly clear, though I don’t think that’s quite how the second one would be worded. I think this would definitely be a fun one to explore more, maybe with the classic caveat of “one guaranteed treasure in every pack” for logistic’s sake.

Ranger’s Axe by @bergdg

And so we reach our last commander card. I built something similar to this a while back, but I think mine had a key difference- namely, it functioned like Backgrounds, where you could only run the equipment if your creature commander had the appropriate keyword. This seems to say that you can add green to the color identity of any commander you want, with no downsides, drawbacks or punishments. As you can imagine, that gets pretty scary, and is probably something best to be avoided. However, if we move on and assume that it’s meant to be restricted to a specific subset of commanders, the rest of the card is great! You can run it in the 99 for a decent buff, but if you have it in the command zone, it’ll automatically start by giving +2/+2 and trample, and scales really nicely if you have a cheap commander. I do think it could stand to be a touch cheaper either on the mana cost or equip cost, but dealer’s choice.

Waters of Wisdom by @squeezyboi

Framing it almost perfectly as the first and last cards, here is our second of two Dandan submissions. Normally, I try to avoid comparing cards, but it’s hard not to here. The card itself is a nice functional uncommon, but some parts of this confuse me. One of the key features of Dandan is the shared library, so does your format do away with that aspect? It’s not a terrible idea to make it work in draft, but then it does change the format significantly. In the second half, this card falls into a bit of a trap that the other one avoided- forcing the singular creature to ALWAYS be Dandan means that the decks always have to have blue, there’s no variation in the creature aspects, and it severely limits what the rest of the set can look like. I think to make this design work, you want to give yourself more freedom. 

Yulius, the Protean Shadow by @spooky-bard  **JUDGE PICK**

2 headed giant? In my commander? It’s more likely than you think. This one plays really well, and honestly it was hard to not give it a podium spot. Point is a neat ability, though admittedly not hugely impactful on most designs, and it makes me curious to see what anchor would be. Going off of fighting game terms that my friend had to teach me, the point is the first one you send out, and the anchor brings up the rear. With that in mind, I assume it’s some kind of protection or survivability, but I’m not sure what’s small enough to match up with +1/+1. Anyways, the battlebond-esque flavor is off the charts, the draftplay and gameplay here seem lots of fun (as long as you use the 2HG rules of being able to pick two cards at a time and have a shared team pool), and altogether this appeals to my personal sensibilities quite a lot. Nicely done!

So long, thanks for the engagement, and I'll see you all in a few weeks!

~judge @naban-dean-of-irritation

[commander-goo]

Ask game!! (@needle-noggins here!) 3, 30, 36, 42!

HAI!!!! :3

3. putting people in the torture labyrinth. um anyways i say "nothing at all" and/or "anything at all" at least once per fic and when i noticed that i nearly ripped my hair out .

30. Oh i have a few! I like to try new things with every work usually, so most of them have something that changes how i approach writing fic :) here are some specific ones:

Like a Limb has illustrated scenes!

LOTUS has tailor-made (BUG!!!!)sound bites and some illustrations!

Meryl & Milly's Variety Hour #83 is formatted like a transcript of an interview!

36. All the time! It helps get details of a scene just right- I have that level of imagination where you can visualize the entire house around an apple and spin it around in every direction so I don't have much trouble with it. I could totally draw the layout of every room I've briefly described in a fic if prompted LOL

42. I GET SO MANY NICE COMMENTS ITS HARD TO CHOOOOSEEEE WAAHH

Probably this one I got on a TOTK zelink fic though, it's stuck with me for a while and has spurred me on to continue writing pathetic little meowmeows getting tormented 24/7:

[taeyongfmd]

below the cut is an ash update / overview / plot call for the first quarter, including the base awards event. feel free to like, reply, or message me if you’d like to plot based on this and we can get something going.

mentions of alcohol and poor mental health and ash being ash (derogatory)

overview & schedules

ash continues to live in his studio

he’s at a really busy point of writing/producing/recording for his album with finishing songs and getting no sleep

thinks he’s almost done with the album but he ends up not being happy / feeling finished with it + i think some time this quarter, it gets locked in as his english-language debut and the album process gets delayed

his workaholic tendencies are kicking into overdrive again. though he’s been selective with his solo schedules since returning from hiatus so that he’s not dedicating a ton of energy to stuff he finds pointless (photoshoots, variety, brand deals, etc.), polaris schedules + all of his work in the studio is still tiring, especially considering how unhappy he is with polaris schedules these days

most solo schedules for the next few months will be festivals, so that could be a plot point if anyone was planning a festival stage claim for their muse and maybe ash could perform there as well if it works

is more actively unhappy with polaris’s direction than he’s ever been in his career. that’s not to say he hasn’t disliked it or felt dissonance with it before (i mean he literally debuted feeling that way), but putting so much energy into resenting dynamite and then getting butter to show for it... it certainly encourages him to throw himself into his own music even more

pretty unhappy / low mentally and emotionally. just tired and unmotivated to talk to anyone or leave his house. anyone he’s close to might recognize these signs. they’re free to bring it up. or not. bringing it up probably won’t end well anyway

his next album is going to be his english-market debut so dimensions has been pushing his name out there with lollapalooza, new year’s rockin’ eve, etc. they might throw him into some english-language magazines and maybe some collabs this year after his album comes out too (plus plans of touring post-album release)

there was a point ash would have been happy about this but right now he just feels like it’s an uphill battle against dynamite and butter because he wants to be known for his music in his home country, not those songs

is praying dynamite doesn’t win the grammy and is happy when it doesn’t ngl !

is also feeling irritated because he stopped taking brand deals solo because it made him feel like a sellout and now that’s like half of what polaris does lmao

so overall, he’s just... irritated, unhappy, buried in his solo work

base awards

ash would rather not be there tbh? agrees with the people who say it’s just the companies sucking themselves off lmao. will probably express this with only a little prompting.

he is invested in his solo stage since a lot of his vision for the mito world is in it, but mostly in his self-obsessed ‘you wouldn’t understand’ artist way, not so much in an endearing, fun, let’s talk about it way unfortunately 😭

is nominated for a few different awards. will say he doesn’t care. will probably still get annoyed if he doesn’t win.

not the most fun person to interact with, but he can probably keep it civil (and most likely low energy) with anyone he doesn’t already dislike lmao

he doesn’t want to go to the afterparty tbh, even to get wasted, but i’ll probably say he goes unless i don’t end up having any threads there. he won’t stay for a long time unless he has a reason to since he’s got to leave for la without sleep right after

idk i feel like in every single plot call i’m like ash is irritable he can fight someone but like... yeah... he can. fully possible he’s an asshole even to people he usually gets along with.

but also possible he strikes up an unlikely friendly moment with someone he doesn’t know too well if we want to pretend he has redeemable qualities! especially if they can give each other a space to vent

also possible he shows up to the afterparty smelling like he really committed to pregaming and gaslights gatekeeps girlbosses anyone who tries to point it out (ash vc: snitch) 

can someone make ash cry. idk where. idk when. he needs to feel something

or someone rope him into some kind of drinking game. sounds fun (to me).

plots

anything revolving around music production and ash’s time in the studio is a strong potential point. he’s hesitant to share too much of what he’s working on album-wise right now, but he’d be happy to listen to other people’s work and/or discuss anything around that. he has some internal conflict about self-indulgence vs authenticity, love of music vs force of habit, etc that could be a topic of discussion

like i mentioned already, very willing for him to ruin some friendships / otherwise positive connections this quarter

alternatively, someone kinda doing a little ‘intervention’ or at least expressing some concern about him. either to remind him people still care or to knock some sense of reality into him to get his shit together depending on the tone.

or just a moment where he actually leaves the studio and has some down time spent with someone else (something pretty low energy, just chilling) and he gets closer to them or if they’re already close he gets to enjoy human connection for once

speaking of human connection, ash feeling the touch of another human again for once would make some of the songs on his album easier to write lmao. would need discussion but i’d like to explore ash being willing to open himself up to intimacy again, whether it’s a slow or fast process. honestly this probably works best with someone he’s not super close to (yet?) 

it’d be nice for ash to have a redeeming / positive plot in all of his mess of a newly blossoming friendship he hasn’t fucked up yet as well? again discussion would be needed to find how / why their friendship works, but that little light in the darkness would be good :)