#as per usual excuse the large delay

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

hey silly question maybe. do you know why cars are so boring now? like im on the wikipedia page for the cadillac eldorado for Reasons and it's a really visually interesting car through all the generations up until like. the tenth in 1979 when it just kinda looks like. every other car (if a bit more square) is this just like, the Capitalism Thing of shit getting more and more boring and samey over the years? or is there like a reason. idk much about cars but this has always annoyed and confused me, i miss interesting looking cars :(

Well, it should be noted that the tenth generation Eldorado's case is a peculiar one. As I've gone over, old American cars tended to be refreshed every other year, and the Eldorado, meant to represent the top of the top of that uniquely American idea of opulence, was perhaps the car most supposed to do so. Hence, as you'll have found, its ninth generation launched in 1971, just 18 years after the first - thats' how long the only generation of Italy's best selling car at the time, the Fiat 500, was sold for.

You wouldn't have expected that generation to stick around for more than four years - no other generation did, and almost all lasted half that. However, 1973 had other plans. Namely, the fuel crisis that completely eviscerated demand for mastodonic fuel guzzlers.

Sales would decline the following years, with little tweaks here and there but no major update, which would have been money down the drain as existing owners could barely afford to fill up the damn things, let alone upgrade, and what were potential customers before couldn't afford to fill up the damn things full stop. So when the new model finally came, this big aspirational car was shrunken down to get on with times of shrinking aspirations.

Nigh on 5.20 meters (for yankees, that's roughly 4/207ths of a Titanic) will hardly seem short to European sensibilities, but let's remember, that's coming from 5.70. You could walk between two walls that far apart. The width, too, decreased by a whole 20cm (for yankees, that's roughly half a rabbit), which in car width terms is massive - like, it's the difference between a Mini and a Mustang.

This to say, the tenth generation Eldorado is oft maligned as a fall from grace, one of the most popular examples of why the malaise moniker stuck to this era of American cars - so not exactly the fairest assessment of how cars changed with time. How about, then, we start our analysis by looking at a car with a much better received update, shall we?

Of course, the Mk1 Volkswagen Golf (for yankees, that's roughly a Rabbit) was a smash hit the world over, so much so that in Mexico it remained on sale as the Citi Golf as recently as 2009(!), and if I didn't think it the best looking Golf that ever was I probably wouldn't own one...

...but unless the only kink you're into is the Hofmeister, I don't see how the second generation's styling is such a downgrade as to bemoan the state of things. And frankly...

...maybe it's just the boiled frog syndrome, but I can't spot a point in which anything 'went wrong', so to speak. Which leads to the all-important question:

You say you miss interesting looking cars, but I do have to ask - when did they ever leave?

Have a browse of my pride post (no, really, go read it, I think it's one of my best ever) and point me to the boring cars within it, because me, I don't see any. And I suspect the reasons are similar to why you see older cars as more interesting.

For one, given the point of the post, all the cars shown are some flashy color, and each is different from every other. This, however, is increasingly becoming an anomaly as greyscale gobbles up an ever increasing share of the market, meaning on average, modern cars are less colorful, and thus less visually interesting. I've written about cause and effect of the greyscalification of cars, and suffice to say I'm not a fan of it - but I feel like that is a discussion separate from car design itself.

Then, of course, there's that those in the post are all cars that I like, so that selection was curated (albeit only by my personal taste). But that is also the case when we look back at older cars: what you see around and what you hear about is what people cared enough about to preserve and to discuss - not just in terms of models but of versions, specs and even colors. If you look at car shows like Radwood or Oblivion, which celebrate 80s and 90s cars, the very time period you referred to as the beginning of the end for interesting design looks like its heyday!

Yes, that trailer is factory.

Unfortunately, it must be said that unique and interesting cars have become fewer and fewer, as the ever increasing regulations make it even more expensive than it already was for smaller brands to emerge and the economic status of things makes it increasingly harder to justify a funky, daring picks for the biggest purchase of the average person's life - let alone the purchase of a second car, which tends to be what more extreme offerings were bought as. A brighter future seems to be ahead, though, with Toyota's incredible GR Corolla/Yaris and 86 apparently about to be joined by yet more spicy goodness and Mazda teasing a return of the rotary engined sportscar. For the twentieth time, sure, but after having seen the Motocompo revival actually happen, I am ready to kick that football.

(because you knew about the new electric Motocompacto, right?)

But there's another thing that post's selection had going for it: variety. Pretty much every car in it was in a wholly different category from all the others, and that is bound to make each car within it seem a lot more interesting than if it had been surrounded by cars of its same segment.

The survivorship bias outlined above also results in far more variety than you would find in normal traffic: even setting aside the halo car dynamic whereby the most special -and therefore most interesting- cars are usually niche offerings with very low sales figures, people tend to remember, discuss and seek out cars that represent some extreme - be it the fastest, the most expensive, the greatest, but also the slowest, the cheapest, the worst... and the tallest, the lowest, the biggest, the smallest, and so on. In short, the cars you'll find the least interest for are the everyday, quietly competent cars that make up the bulk of vehicles on the road.

Although, going far enough back in time, even those appear interesting to us, because their context's norm was so different from ours that even the cars that most adhered to it seem exotic to our sensibilities.

But when actually viewed in their own context...

...that impression tends to be stifled.

Unfortunately, it seems to me as though variety is also being stifled nowadays, with a growing share of body styles on sale becoming SUV/crossovers, and the increase in platform sharing reducing automotive outliers (for better and for worse).

And I should note: as for the other industry shifts I mentioned, the driving force isn't Big Capital or The Evil Economic System or what have you. It's the consumers. Sure, we can blame manufacturers for turning every model into a more profitable SUV, but they couldn't do this if they didn't sell, and they wouldn't do this if people didn't see them as more prestigious vehicles worth paying more for. We can blame manufacturers for killing weird car projects, but usually they get axed because people don't buy the things. Dealerships still order grey cars because no one digs their heels about having theirs yellow. So on.

So in short, old cars have always looked more interesting, because time alters our perception of them in ways that make them seem as much - and it also happens that lately the car industry has gone in the opposite direction to those alterations, causing new cars to seem less interesting. So, in short, the problem is the comparison just isn't apples to apples.

I think this is why that Golf evolution does not show any trend towards boring or away from interesting in my eyes - because it mostly strips those factors away. Here's a bunch of generations of the same car, all silver, all presented with no context bar the version before or after, all in the same body style which, for its entire history, was a common sight pretty much anywhere. (Also helps, of course, that the Golf's evolution had no wacky twists and always nailed the zeitgeist.)

This not to say that I can't complain about modern car designs - but for that, don't compare apple to apple... compare it to Microsoft.

See, I can think of many modern designs I find bland and devoid of personality, not because of a lack of styling effort but precisely due to an overabundance of it: so keen were the designers to put a crease here and a fold there and a kink somewhere to make the brand's seventh SUV set itself apart from the other six that the design became too overburdened with details to have a clear message - like a story with too many events for them to express a cohesive point.

Or, indeed, like this parody of Microsoft packaging in which their design principles are applied to the iconic, nay, legendary packaging of the original iPod.

This is an actual Microsoft video btw. This was made internally by Microsoft's marketing department.

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question: if you liked this post, you might like those - or the blog’s Discord server, linked in the pinned post!

[tmwcs]

His and Her Perspectives - Chapter 3 (18+ Only)

So sorry for the delay. I wanted to get this to you guys before I head out to run some errands, been pretty busy the last few days. This was edited and somewhat partially drafted into completion, however, it is not at all proofread or checked over for errors so please excuse all of that. When i get time tonight, i'll look it over and fix any errors that exist. but for now, enjoy the read!

Pairing: Ooohohohohoho you know who. ;)

Warnings: Yes, this is like pure smut, the whole chapter. Not at all for anyone under the age of 18, so minors please ignore this post. As per usual, the smut is very descriptive, and some curse words. Just the standard stuff. But still a good read if you're trying to get in the mood or an idea of what car sex is like with MGR/MRE/HHP Heeseung ;)

Next chapter is also going to be fully smut-ish so for those of you that live for smut, stay tuned.

The surprise i have in store for you guys will be posted later, i just wanted to get this chapter out because ive been on and off working it for the last few days and I am just ready to get it out so i can work on the next one.

Summary:

Summer was swinging by faster than you could enjoy it. Emily and the girls thought of ways on how to dedicate the remainder of the break to make the most out of the last couple of months and enjoy the season to its fullest. That was when they thought of a nice trip into the valley with the boys, a mass get-together where we could all enjoy each other’s company and have game night at a rental.

It didn’t take long for the girls to find a large home at a decent daily rate, located near one of the famous vineyards in the country. The boys all thought the trip was a good idea and even offered to take charge of the barbeque, much to Emily and the girl’s delight.

You could tell Heeseung liked the idea of the trip, even though he maintained his usual habit of remaining calm, quiet, and sitting with his arms crossed, merely giving a simple nod and half a smirk when Jake turned to ask him if he was excited about the trip.

After a few days, you all had prepared and packed up for an early departure. The drive was long, nearly four and a half hours into the valley, everyone agreed to leave early in the morning while it was still dark out, hoping to mitigate the risk of getting stuck in traffic. Much to the boy’s dismay, the girls dictated that the carpool-maintained gender integrity, mainly so that they could enjoy each other’s company and catch up on daily gossip while they boys spend some quality time themselves.

Witnessing the dictation of transportation assignment, you noted Heeseung’s lowering tilt of the chin as his hat hovered and casted a shadow to cover more than just his eyes. He didn’t like the idea of making a long drive without you being beside him, not because he was the clingy type, it was more so because he had planned on taking the opportunity to rest you on his lap and tightly embracing you.

Though the feeling was mutual, you felt deep down that traveling separately was for the better. Based off the last time you sat on his lap, you both found that it was a prime position for one of your many sexual episodes.

It was on a Friday evening, you and Heeseung decided to go the movie theater. Arriving fairly early, he parked his car near the back end of the lot where it was secluded and sparse, just so you both could have some privacy to talk and freely display your affection without having to worry about exposing yourselves to people passing by.  The windshield overlooked the wide shopping center across the street, with the glittering lights that decorated the shops, and the pleasant view of shoppers mingling from afar, the view produced a wholesome charm of simplistic night life.

Admiring the view, you felt a piece of your hair being tucked away as Heeseung continued to admire your profile. You shyly chucked towards his lovely notion, which only invigorated him more.

Once you both had walked in, found your seating, and watched as the movie began, the moment the beginning credits displayed the main roles was when you lost all interest in the original event. The feeling in your gut proved to be too distracting after the moment in the car. You became stimulated by the act of him moving your hair aside as he peeked at you with one visible eye from underneath his cap.

Making sure to hide it within the hair that framed your face, you glanced over to see that even though Heeseung was facing the screen, you could tell that the sexual tension was building up by the way he kept bouncing his leg. His hat that traditionally covered his eyes, gave his face more shadow from the dimmed lighting inside the theater, it made it hard to tell if he was looking at the screen or possibly gazing at something else while facing it.

His elbow propped up on the arm of the seat, as his face slightly resting against his hand, you took visual notice of the way he had his index delicately placed on his lips, brushing it back and forth gently, occasionally dragging the skin with it as he revealed a subtle display of teeth. Moving your eyes back forward, the tingling sensation grew stronger and even though you tried hiding it by crossing your arms over your chest, the depths of each breath you took was too steep, the inclining rise of your breast was too noticeable. Unsure of how to remedy the situation at a public setting, you both sat there in silence as the movie continued playing. When suddenly you heard Heeseung stand out of his chair.

Two steps in, your view of the screen is blocked by Heeseung, casually standing in front of your crossed legs and extending a hand to you. He doesn’t say a word.

You look up to see that the bill of his cap, along with the effects of the lack of lighting, aggrandized the shadow over his face, leaving only his lips to remain visible, along with the hazy side smirk it formulated. Grabbing his hand, you realized how much the tension was affecting him when you felt the weight of his pull nearly levitated you off your seat. It was so sudden, the way your body lost contact with the cushion as your legs caught up with the movement to keep you from falling over. His grip on your hand was welded.

After straightening your posture, his free hand moves up, and you stood admiring the mask of shadow that his face wore, as he gently fixes your hair with the tips of his fingers. Beginning at your hairline, you felt the light touch of his skin as his fingers pinched a small amount of hair as he delicately relocates it to the side and tucks it behind your ear. The tips gently wrap’s the piece around and behind your helix, where they remained for a second before dragging along the skin behind your ear until they encountered your earring.

He rests the dangle on his index, admiring the butterfly trinket attached. Afterwards, he continues the trailing movement of said finger, letting the earring fall from its rest as he traces your partially exposed jawline inwards towards your chin, where he used his thumb and inner knuckle to nourish a faint hold. Committing to another favorite habit of his, you felt his thumb extend its reach and brush over your lips, from center moving outwards as he rests it on the outer corner, composing small light strokes.

Heeseung synthesized many habits that reciprocated his sentiment towards you, one being his usual and most displayed act in moving, playing, or fixing your hair to amplify the exposure of your face, mainly your eyes, as evident from his showering verbiage expressing his fondness when admiring them. The second habit was the stroking and brushing of your lips.

Of all his habits, there was one that he frequently committed, at least once a day. It was his penchant for facial contact, with or without kissing permitted. Every day when you were on your way to your next class, Heeseung would do the same and walk in your direction. Regardless, it had only been a couple of hours that he hadn’t seen you, it was obvious that you were indefinitely on his mind.

Once you found yourself breaching his presence close enough to ask him how his morning classes were going, he carried his usual trait of withholding a verbal response. Instead, he’d raise a hand to push the bill of his cap up, revealing a raised eyebrow that gave him a confident expression. The tilting of his bill is followed by him placing the same hand on the back of your head, administering a slight grab of hair as he would pull your face in to meet his, nose to nose. The groove of your lips is met with his, but not in the form of a kiss, just touch. He would angle his forehead inward and flutter his lashes against your own, initiating butterfly kisses as he formed his tenacious smirk against your lips, leading to a dual chuckle that you give to each other.

In the theater, you continue to be the canvas of his thumb strokes as he savored every precise detail of your face. Using the grip he had on you, he turns and walks you out of the building, across the wide lot, and back to his car, not a word is spoken from him. With only the view of his broad shoulders, you catch yourself admiring his lethal frame from the back, watching his tall stature as he moves closer to the car with his arm extending backwards as he maintains the grip of your hand, trailing you behind. The wispy length of his hair barely extends pass the nape, faintly touching the back of his collar. No matter the angle you viewed him in, you couldn’t help but find him irresistible.

His pace slows as he reaches the back seat door, opening it, he pulls you by his grip and swings you around to face him. While maintaining the grip, he swings his hand around your backside, bending your arm by the elbow as it is pinned to your lower back, fingers intertwined with each other’s. He pulls you in and kisses you, just a small kiss, but ever so tender like the others. He nods you to get inside the backseat.

Once you slid in, you shift down to the window seat next opposite of the one you had just entered through. He follows in after you, positioning himself on the center seat with his legs widespread, each foot placed behind the two front seats. He faces in your direction, slightly leans over to kiss you once more. You feel his hands roaming from your breasts down to the smallest part of your waist and with utter ease, you’re surprised at his strength as he lifts you, only releasing a single deep moan and breath into your mouth as he picks you up, shifting your backside during movement so that it was facing him as he positioned you on his lap.

The feeling of sitting on Heeseung’s lap became one of your favorite sensations in the world. The moment he rests you on his lap, his hands drag from your waist, and down to your hips as he presses you down against his crotch, enforcing you to feel an overwhelming and pleasurable pressure from the back. As your back arches, your head tilts back against his, you feel him pressing his nose and lips against the soft skin at your nape, burrowing his soft kisses.

His hands that rests on your hips begin to set the pace for your hips to move along with. Pushing and pulling you to a rocking motion, the arch in your back simulates oceanic waves as the back of your head remains resting against his forehead. The soft kisses on your nape transition into a passionate massage as you feel his tongue becomes involved and traces small circles with each wet, and suckling kiss he leaves. You feel him inhaling the scent of your perfume that you applied on the base of your neck, with his face attached to your nape, he enjoys each whiff he takes in. Just as you relish feeling the air he pulls in with his nostrils against your skin, your body slight jolts out of shock at the feeling of his teeth gently nibbling, following by the caressing of his tongue. Concentrating at the center, his oral performance migrates over to the side of your throat as he pulls you in closer, your back fully meets his chest and your head rests on his shoulder as he burrows his face in the nook of your neck.

The motion of your body does not stop, in fact, it continues with a stronger pace as you begin to feel his hips thrusting upwards against your derriere, syncing with the moment your hips roll down on him. His eagerness is evident by his desire to increase the pace, but you use the weight of your hips to suppress each thrust to tease him a little. Not being able to take it, he reaches down and lifts the flare of your skirt up, pinning it to your pelvis with his other hand as he maintains a grip on you. He pulls down your panties, they nearly rip off from his eager ardor had it not been you lifting one leg to feed through it, salvaging the lace material as it drapes and falls on the other leg, collecting in a ring around your ankle.

Accomplishing the goal of getting your sensitive bud exposed, you feel the cold air greeting the skin in between the two folds. The sensation is followed by the pressure of his fingers as he reaches over your thigh and rubs his tips in circular motion against your clit, afflicting gentle taps with his rubbing motion. The moans that rush out your mouth are both soft and harsh as each gasp takes your breath away. The beat of your heart speeds up, pounding against your chest plate, feeling as if it will explode.

Commencing the last rub, he cups you as his middle finger is injected into your opening. Your moves speed up as you feel your mouth drying up from the consistent moaning and gasping, you’re committed to. Once he felt that he has acquired the first phase of your desire, he sticks his index in to join his middle, feeling the fluid of your arousal gushing out, coating each finger.

The arm around your waist tightens, and you feel him pulling you even closer as he thrusts his fingers in and out of you. Each moment they thrust in, you feel him lifting you upwards as the base of his palm pushes against your base, shifting your weight upwards. Your head surpasses his shoulders, and your chest extends higher, nearly reaching his face as you feel his lips softly pecking below your collarbone.

The sound of skin-to-skin contact is promoted by the heavy moisture flowing in and out as his fingers manipulate the pace and your movements. Just when you feel as though you can’t take enough, his fingers thrust in deep, and remain still. You feel them waving inside you as he massages the interior flesh of your cavity, effectuating unanticipated moans to burst out from your lips as your body wallops upwards from the overwhelming sensation.

Slowly, he slides his fingers out. The sound of his zipper and button coming undone, along with your exhausting pants fills the hollowness of the stagnant car. Feeding through the opening of his briefs, you feel the warmth of his shaft and the tip graze in between your thighs. It is soft, dry, and smooth, it feels gentle and similar to baby skin as it rubs against your skin.

Your head rests on his shoulder. Nose, eyes, and lips facing the window as the side of your cheek and neck is decorated by the hair sticking on to the faint bit of sweat that glazed your skin. From the corner of your eye, you watch as his strong, and large hand grabs the base of his shaft. His long fingers wrapped around the thickness of his diameter, which was so thick that in fact, compared to it his notoriously large hand almost appeared smaller in size.

With his firm grab at the base, he extends the length perpendicularly, the tip eyeballing the roof of the car. A shiver travels from your toes, along your spine, and to the back of your neck as the size of his penis intimidates you. It didn’t get much better as you kept gazing at it, the more you had looked, the larger it seemed to appear. You kept your face off to the side and squint them shut as you prepare yourself for penetration, knowing it’s about to come as you feel the skin of his tip inching closer to your folds.

He guides the tip to rub in between the skin, up and down. He coats the muscle with the wetness that escaped you during his earlier performance, and before you know it, the sound swirling sound of wet skin swooshing against one another returns. The sound takes over your gasps as they die down from the break.

The sudden feeling of his face burrowing into the nook of your neck went unappreciated as you didn’t get the chance to apprize the feeling due to his entry that followed immediately after. The combination of his open lips against your neck, breathing out semi-harshly and the tip of his nose pressing into you right below your ear, enshrined the severity of his penetration. You felt the hot air from his breathing coating your neck, it condensates your skin as you feel drips of moisture trinkling down to your collarbone. The sharpness of his entry can’t be ignored, but the feeling of his face on your skin helped in distracting you from the pain, even though it was only slightly.

The sound and feeling of the vibration in his voice as he gasps and grunts into your neck takes you over the edge as he simultaneously thrusts in and out. He starts of deep but slow, going in, pulling out, just as the tip is edging its exit, only for him to thrust back in deeper than before. The feeling of pressure and being filled shrills you, it’s a feeling you’ve never experienced before he came into your life. It was overpowering, both enjoyable and painful.

The movement of your body shifting upwards became more prominent than before when he used his fingers. His hips bucking up into you dramatized the elevation of your weight. The moans were replaced with cries of immense stimulation as each thrust incites your muscles, causing them to contract and shake, ridding more moisture than before as it gushes out, only to be thrusted back in.

The feeling of his chest permanently attached to your back provided a feeling of comfort and safety. He felt so broad and hard, the width of your shoulders was not even half of his. Your hands rest on the sides of his seated hips, desperately trying to find something to latch on to from the excitement of the sting and ecstasy convulsing in your body. All you could feel was the smoothness of the faux leather seat, the flat surface giving you nothing. The feature of the newly modeled car allotted for the seat belt latches to remain hidden and tucked in between seats, to maintain a slick aesthetic appeal, which had ultimately work against you as you couldn’t dig them out with just your fingertips.

Desperate as the quivering sensation takes over your body, you reach up and grab on to his arm that remained steadfast and wrapped around your waist. You felt the muscles of his forearm as he slightly pushed you down each time he thrusted, then lift you when he partially exited. Upon feeling you reaching up and grabbing onto his arm, it propelled him to increase the pace, he burrows his face in deeper to the nook of your neck, causing his cap to fall completely off his head.

His soft hair cushions against the straight edge of your jawline. His heated gasps are now accompanied with soft kisses, the sensitivity of the skin on your neck shivers upon receiving them. The arm around your waist remains steady, even tightened as the pace grew, while his other hand rests on your inner thigh, gently applying pressure to maintain the spread of your legs. His fingertips tapping your skin every so often when your cries became harsh and out of breath.

“Uh! Baby. Fuck!” He states in between his gasps.

“You’re so damn beautiful, I’m so fucking lucky I get to be the one to do this to you.” The more he spoke in his low and calm tone, the more you felt yourself gushing out the natural essence of your body, which only promoted him to thrust in and out with ease.

“Fuck baby, keep getting wet for me, makes it easier to fuck you. You’re so fucking tight.”

He was right, it did make it easier for him to ravish you, the pace of each thrust came in faster, and faster. He was rough, but nowhere near as ferocious as his Ethan. There was still a soft side to Heeseung’s performance that allowed you to maintain some aspect of the setting, whereas his Ethan persona would normally induce you to a state of unawareness and peaked exhaustion.

The pace continued to go faster, unsure of how it was possible, yet all you could do was to take it. It didn’t matter how loud your cries and pleasuring moans were, the car was parked away and at a distance where no one could see, hear, or save you. You were at his mercy, for the pleasure was too great at times, you almost felt the desire to escape his grasp. Whenever you shifted, attempting to close your legs or extend your hips away from his groin, the hand that laid firmly on your inner thigh would hold you down and spread, reminding you that there was no escape, not even from the gentle Heeseung. His vigor remained ever present no matter what side he was taking, himself or Ethan. For both entities, the difference on the achievement didn’t matter, there was one goal that they shared to obtain, and that was to get the both of you to cum.

Suddenly, your body couldn’t take anymore. You felt your muscles violently contracting, the shaking of your body terminates the smooth sail of your body’s movements that had, up until that moment, followed in sync with his thrusts. Your hips jolt, up and down, left to right, only to be suppressed by his grab on you as he forces you to remain steady while he continues thrusting. The feeling was beyond overwhelming, it was too good that it was almost painful. Your body tries to fight it by shifting fiercely, trying to break free, yet the slap of his hand against your thigh as he pushes you down with his arm and strengthens his grab overpowers you, causing you to scream.

“Oh yeah, that’s it baby. Cum for me.” The feeling of his lips moving as he spoke, grazing against the sensitive area of your neck did not help the matter, your mind went into the state of confusion as to trying to configure if the sensation you were forced to succumb to was good or bad, or both.  All of which became null and void when your orgasm kicked in and put you on cloud nine.

His thrusts became heavier, deeper, and dowdy as the speed increased, all the while you became limp and barely out of breath as each weakened moan escaped you. The tingling high you felt in our gut shuddered your muscles as your body began to gradually release a fluid that is different from the natural lubricant it produced before. It felt sour, almost stingy but not at all painful, just overly euphoric. You couldn’t control it as you screamed and dug your fingertips into the arm around your waist, feeling him pushing you down as he felt the flow of your orgasm drowning his tip and trickling down his length.

Three deep thrusts in as you were cumming, you felt the fierceness of his gasps coughed against your neck as he releases into you. His hand that had rested gently on your inner thigh suddenly grabbed hold and just like you, the fingertips dug into your skin, pushing your thigh outwards more in the process while bruising the skin. A series of hard but slow thrusts followed suit, as if he was making sure every drip went deep inside.

What followed suit were everlasting moments of peaceful rest as you both regained your breaths, mainly you. Your raging pants were gently persuaded to calmness as you felt his hand rub and massage your chest, while his relentless kisses on your neck continued.

“Breathe for me. Breathe for me, baby.”

He calmly tells you, all the while his shaft remains in your body, surrounded by your warmth and softness.

[alleycat-arcade]

Temperance's Tinsel Tango(Holiday Event): Start!

(Heyo! Tempo here! This is the introductory post to my Christmas/Holiday event for my multi-fandom blog! As per usual, I'll be writing for Obey Me! Shall We Date?, Tears of Themis, and Genshin Impact. These will be some surprise one-shots, headcanons, and or mixes between the two based off different prompts. Starting tomorrow I'll be releasing them, but for now here's the introductory post!)

It seems the arcade has finally been fully decorated for the holidays! The scent of peppermint and cinnamon sticks permeates your senses as the automatic doors slide open with a cheery and familiar tune. The main floor is a lot more crowded than usual, not exactly packed but certainly full of jovial faces. Oddly enough, you felt as if you knew the other guests, but their names, faces, and personalities stayed rooted in the back of your mind.

"Hey! Glad ya made it!"

You look back to see Temperance breaking off a conversation and going over to greet you. They're dressed far more formally and festive than you've ever seen them, since their usual attire is very much just a sweatshirt and jeans. They cheerily welcome you to the party, their exaggerated hand movements keying you in on just how excited they are.

After chatting with them for a bit, they politely breakaway to welcome some more guests who had just arrived. You mingle to the best of your abilities with the other unknown guests, but you continually find yourself drawn towards the arcade cabinets. Perhaps it was a drain in your social battery or the awkwardness caused by the other guests' uncanny familiarity, but you struggled to hold a conversation for long. Plus, some others present were playing on other games as well, so it wasn't as if you weren't allowed to.

The cabinet that drew you in the most was fairly strange looking. It seemed to be handpainted and lacked any official company logos other than the Alleycat logo that was printed on the other cabinets and the activation bracelets. Upon seeing the title screen boot up, you realized that "Temperance's Tinsel Tango" must've been something created by the owner, likely with the spare parts they had from fixing other machines. The game itself is a simple platformer, but you begin to lose track of time as you continue to play it.

You're unsure when you left the party and returned home, but what you do know is that you're now waking up on your couch to a rather loud racket. You were certain you hadn't had anything alcoholic, so there wasn't much excuse for the dull throb echoing around the room.

Suddenly, a puff of silvery dust covered the room and the lights flicked on. Vaguely, you could see a shape move throughout it, but as soon as it placed a rather tall mound on the floor it disappeared. As the dust cloud cleared away, you were left staring at a large stack of presents, all bearing a familiar black cat with a mischievous grin on its face and a cheeky wink.

Perhaps you should open them?

Day One: Matching Sweaters (Genshin and Obey Me!, Mini-Fics)

Day Two: Snow Ice Cream (Tears of Themis, Artem x Gn!Reader)

Day Three: Figure Skating (Obey Me!, Mammon x Gn! Reader)

Day Four: Nutcrackers (Tears of Themis and Obey Me!, x Gn! Reader Mini-Fics)

Day Five: Polar Bear Plunge (Genshin, Tartaglia x Gn! Reader)

Day Six: Sleigh Rides (Obey Me! x Gn! Reader Mini-fics)

Day Seven: Decorating (Genshin and Obey Me!, x Gn! Reader Mini-fics)

Day Eight: Cozy Blankets (Obey Me!, Leviathan x Gn! Reader)

Day Nine: Hot Chocolate (Tears of Themis, Luke Pearce x Gn! Reader)

Day Ten: Building Snowmen (Obey me! and Genshin, x Gn! Reader, Mini-fics)

Day Eleven: Mistletoe Kisses (Genshin, Tears of Themis, and Obey Me!, x Gn!Reader

Day Twelve: ??? (Event End)

(This list will be updated as each one releases! Starting on the 13th and leading up to Christmas! These are not all Christmas centric, as the prompts are based on holiday traditions from myself and my roommates. I will still be accepting requests, but there will be a bit of a delay in them!)

[bomberqueen17]

we took the wyverns on a tour of the coast by boat

I’m finally caught up-- we didn’t play last night, DF was on the phone with his dad and it was the kind of call where he paced around the entire exterior of the house being really heavily-accented into his phone headset, which alarmed me quite a bit when he walked past the window of the room I was in because I hadn’t expected anyone to be outside. 

So we went to bed early while he was still on the phone but then I didn’t go to sleep, like a fool, but I also wrote a bunch of the next Ancient Sea chapter so that was great. Mixed success. And, he’s on call tonight, so he’ll probably be at work overnight and we won’t play tonight either, so we’ll see. 

BUT. The night before last, we had a good long Witchering session with some fucking around AND some plot, and we drank the cocktail I had invented, the Yennefer. Here’s the recipe, and behind the cut I’ll explain the Saga of Trollololo and also the exciting Adventure of the Magical Towels.

edited to add ok all this was delayed one MORE day, but also DF’s shift went so late we assumed he was working an overnight until at 11:30 the household was awakened by someone opening every cabinet in the kitchen and then he stumbled up to bed, and then had to go in this morning at his usual 7am start time because doctors’ hours fucking suck, so actually I’ve had two extra days to write this and have not. I have no excuses, but you’ll see what else I’ve been working on eventually, I promise. ANYHOW back to the post, with a recipe.

The Yennefer, a cocktail:

1) Cut the blooms off of a lilac bush until you’ve got enough. Pick the little purple bits very carefully off the tiny green stems. (I got about four cups. It took forever.) Rinse them in cold water if you think they might be dusty. I didn’t, I’m a slob. Make lilac syrup by putting two parts of lilac petals to one part sugar and one part water, bringing it to a simmer, turning it off, letting it cool, and letting it sit for 12-24 hours. Then strain it. TheSpruceEats promised me it wouldn’t be bitter if I sat there like a... well, you gotta channel the hyperfocus here, for good or ill... and picked out every tiny green stem, but they lied; the resulting syrup was sweet and flowery and had a pronounced bitter note to it. HOWEVER, this is Yennefer, so that is perfectly copacetic. 2) I bought a container of sweet candied gooseberries at the Asia Mart a while back (when the grocery stores were wiped out and the asian supermarkets were untouched because of racism), these in fact, so I poured boiling water over a bunch of those and the extra sugar that was loose at the bottom of the package, and wound up with a sweet-tart fruity sort of syrup. (Lacking those, I might have used some cranberry juice.) 3) Combine those two syrups until the taste pleases you somewhat and is slightly too sweet. (I added a little unflavored simple syrup.) Then, add a correct amount of either gin, or white rum if you don’t like gin. (My test batch was fantastic with gin, but MM hates gin, so I used rum for this version.) 4) put in a bit of lemon and/or lime juice to make it more tart, as needed.  5) optional: add other herbal/flowery liqueurs to taste. I had this botanical spirit named Hum that’s red, and I had some blue Cointreau that I put a couple of drops in for color, and I had a little bit of creme de violette. 

My Drink Mixing Method is largely that I figure out how many servings I’m making, put in one to two ounces of the hard liquor per serving, and then put in about one part of the combined mixers per one part of the hard liquor, and then I adjust the flavors until it’s the strength I want (I often wind up with much more mixer, up to two parts per one part of hard liquor, but that varies). Most of my drinks are designed to be served over ice to bring them down to the correct dilution.

tw below for assisted suicide, in-game, expressly nothing to do with any real-life things.

We started strong. I poured the drinks, and DF dithered about having any-- he has awful heartburn problems and tries to have only water after 5pm unless he’s prepared to Accept The Consequences, but he decided he’d try a cocktail. He asked if MM would put it over ice for him, so she got out the bag of ice in the freezer and discovered it had sort of bricked. He suggested banging it on the floor to break it up, and she had a reply to that which would be much funnier if I had not explained all this, but I have, so:

“I’m not planning on banging right now,” she said, swanning into the room in her particularly magnificent way of walking, with a drink in each hand. 

(I know I’ve set the setting-scene before but it’s worth mentioning that MathMom is a stunningly beautiful and of course deeply eccentric woman, tallish and solid-built with classic-length (that’s upper mid-thigh) thick wavy pale-brown hair with natural golden highlights which she often wears in a magnificent crown braid across the top of her head held in place with an array of jeweled and tortoise-shell clips, and she has a predilection for lace-bedecked long skirts, lots of embroidery and hand-embellished trims, lily-white bare arms of astonishingly muscular slenderness, and often a headband with lace cat ears when she’s feeling particularly emotionally-drained. Oh and jewelry, she has a lot of jewelry, some of which is expensive shit inherited from a wealthy aunt who died suddenly 20 years ago, and some of which she makes herself out of an exquisite collection of beads, mostly rainbows of opals. So, there’s an image, for you. She’s decided she enjoys the fashions of Novigrad, so there may be some upcoming augmentations of her wardrobe.) 

ANYHOW. Down to Witchering.

Properly lubricated with alcohol, we embarked upon a little tour of the monster nests of Velen, “through the Lands of Difficulty,” as DF termed it-- all the shit he uncovered whilst too low-level to make it worthwhile. Since we were down there, we figured we’d clear all that out, get whatever loot and XP the place had to offer at the current level, and then move on with the Plot Shit. 

We had not really missed Velen’s fight music. See, when Geralt’s involved in a fight, the music changes, and in different places it plays different music, and in Velen it’s this music we call The Hollering, because it has a lot of lyric-less vocal stuff including some stuff that’s kind of hoarse? (Ah, it’s called Silver for Monsters but this is the extended track, the one they actually play really starts at like, the 2 minute mark of the linked video. and like, fine, it’s cool or whatever but after hours of playing you’re kind of like Ah Fuck It’s The Hollering.)

We found a bandit camp based in a half-ruined building that was leaning crazily over. We killed the guys on the ground and then DF got excited to try killing bandits by Aarding them off the top floor, so he ran up there. (There’s an achievement you can get, for killing a number of enemies by aarding them off things. We haven’t got one yet, but there’s time.)

Unfortunately, it wasn’t high enough to kill a level 9 bandit, so Geralt just Aarded him off the building and he was like “ARGH FUCK” and then started shooting arrows up at us. The other one, we just sworded until he mostly fell off but then he died weirdly half-clipped through the edge of the floor and just hung there by his wrist. DF went down to the ground and tried to crossbow him down but that was it, he was just forever going to hang there. It was super weird.

Another scene-setting thing: throughout all of this, DF is treating us to a very professional analysis of the different methods of Coronavirus testing being offered and what they do and do not mean and what they are and are not useful for; his conclusion basically boiled down to that they are useless for an individual and one can make absolutely zero decisions based on one’s own results, BUT they are essential at a population level for analysis and are essential to get-- just, don’t actually, like, rely on them for yourself, they’re not going to do you much if any good. 

Anyway. After the bandits we swung through a cluster of four Nekker nests, just... clearing them out. We needed a single Nekker heart for some potion or decoction or whatever. We wound up with another bushel basket of assorted bits. 

In the middle of this we stumbled across an isolated man who was moaning that the monsters wouldn’t kill him. He was familiar, but hideously deformed by gross pox boil-lookin things. He identified himself: he was the carter we’d encountered aeons ago, carting plague corpses, and Geralt had urgently told him to burn all his clothes and his cart. He’d been unconcerned, but clearly now had caught the plague. He begged Geralt to kill him; he was horribly sick and couldn’t die and had spread plague to everyone he loved. Geralt contemplated it for a moment, and DF said, “you know, this has nothing to do with my medical practice, okay” and agreed to kill him. The man, grateful, gave him a purse of coins, which he’d been saving for his children but now didn’t need. Aww! 😢 Geralt, of course, made it quick, and off-screen mercifully, and then used Igni on the remains. 

As we left, there was-- well, it looked like a person, in a hayfield, and MM cheerfully started singing the chorus of The Gallant Forty Twa [link is to the clancy bros rendition, on youtube]. “Strollin’ through the green fields, on a summer’s day, watchin’ all the country girls workin’ a’ the hay, I really was delighted--” and then the figure in the field straightened up and leapt at us and she was like “AH SHIT THAT’S NOT A COUNTRY GIRL” because, of course, it was yet another nekker, as the countryside was absolutely rotten with them. 

We headed for another question mark which we expected to be probably a fifth nekker nest, and suddenly were confronted with-- what the fuck is-- oh it’s a wyvern we’ve OH NO THAT’S A LEVEL 28 WYVERN RUN AWAY

OH FUCK IT HAS A GIRLFRIEND WHO IS ALSO LEVEL 28

we scrambled down the hill, to an unknown marker, a cave, let’s go in here DF said, and ran into the cave and the wyvern followed us and I was like THAT’S ITS FUCKING DEN and he was like AH FUCK and turned and ran back out dodging like crazy and the thing was following us ARGH

We ran a distance, and the fucking things were following, and we ran some more and they were still following and DF was like “Fuckit I’m a get into the sea” and ran and dove into the water and swam underwater for a while and the red dot was STILL FOLLOWING and in fact we could occasionally see one of the wyverns as it fucking circled overhead. “What the fuck,” DF said, coming up for air and then going back down.

We swam the entire strait underwater, and the wyverns were still following. We got out on the other side. “Maybe these bandits will fight the wyverns,” DF said, harassed, navigating Geralt into the Unknown Settlement. No bandits appeared, but a number of level 11 ghouls came out to play. DF tried to get into the door of a structure but the ghouls clustered around and the fucking door was locked, and the wyvern swooped. “What the fuck!”

He turned and ran back down to the water, where there were some drowners but they were slightly out of range. The wyvern dove angrily but missed. “Well,” he said, “let’s try the boat,” and got into a boat. At first the controller would not let him do anything but swish his sword around, but eventually he managed to figure out how to pilot the boat.

With the wyvern stooping angrily around us, we set off in the boat for a little tour of the coast, and promptly hit a rock, but fortunately didn’t sink.

It took another minute for the wyvern to back off. “We’re taking the wyverns on a tour of the coast by boat,” DF said. Sure enough, we could tell now that it was definitely both wyverns chasing. Miraculously, we had taken no damage, by sheer virtue of not holding still long enough. 

Finally, finally, the fight music turned off, and the wyverns disappeared, presumably back to their nest that we’d blundered straight into. “The fight music,” I said, “instead of The Hollering, probably should have been Yakety Sax.”

“That would’ve been a bit more fitting,” DF said, steering the boat back toward shore. “Uhhh... Okay,” DF said, “so, uh, where are we now and where are the things we were planning to do??”

Well, we’d intended to do The Volunteer. So we pulled that quest back up, it’s near the bridge to Oxenfurt and we weren’t far from that. 

I’m going to cut this post off and finally make it, though, and I’ll do the rest in a later post since this one’s so delayed anyway. ALSO Tumblr just tried its level best to eat this fucking post and i’m super over the way the wifi in this house likes to attempt to murder me.

[jksangelic]

peaches & piercings (m)

↳ rating: M

↳ genre: punk!jimin, e2l, college au, very explicit smut, one-shot, jimin is a whole asshole

↳ pairing: cheerleader!reader x punk!jimin

↳ warnings: explicit sexual content, unprotected sex, sub/dom themes, casual sex, be t r ay a l, alcohol (and weed? idk) consumption, oral sex (male receiving), squirting, thigh-fucking, kind of exhibitionism?, jimin is pierced (that’s all i’ll say), just expect the worst from me tbh

↳ summary: jimin, dipped in hair-dye and pierced in so many places that you just couldn’t keep track, doesn’t think you’re his “type”. you call bullshit.

↳ note: i reallyreallyreally hated this fic. loved the idea, hated how i wrote it. i’ve had this bad boy sitting in my archives for months and months and months and couldn’t gather the courage to post it until NOW! partially because this is an apology fic for my inactivity and more so because i just think i’ve read it too many times that at this point, i’m just being nit-picky and need to move on.

a special thanks to the lovely @14statelier whomst unwillingly received dong pics for the sake of this fic. i’m so glad i found someone as sweet as you to beta for me + become an even better galpal! love u always xx

also thanks to my gal @jungshookz, i’m pretty sure (78% positive) i sent her my idea via snapchat and was probably inspired by her in some way, per usual.

OKAY i’m done you can read now hehehe

↳ words: 11.6k

↳ parts: one | two (complete)

“Jungkook, if you’re not going to throw it then get your grabby hands off my waist,” you warn, eyeing him as he stands behind you and delays in one-manning you into an extension or ogling your ass in your skirt.

           “You’re just so wobbly today, I’m waiting for you to chill out a bit,” he lies with a smirk. You smack his hand but exhale deeply as you firmly grasp his wrists and count.

           “1, 2!” With mutual timing, Jungkook dips down with you before heaving your body above, squatting to catch your heels mid-air, and pumping back up into an extended position. He’s right, you wobble a bit, calling out, “Bail!” and feeling his hands disappear beneath to re-catch your thighs and bring you down safely on your toes. You curse silently under your breath but pat Jungkook’s shoulder as a symbolic “thank you”.

“It’s too fucking early for this, I’m tired,” you say, only making excuses for yourself.

“Well, liven up. The doors are going to open soon and no freshmen want to join a failure of a cheer team.”

“Hey, stop bickering,” the captain, Suzy, orders, “Y/N, you’re fine to just handle the flyers, I’ll stunt with Jungkook.” You squish her into an exhausted hug.

“This is why you’re captain,” you coo.

With that, some of the staff open the gym doors, welcoming an intimidatingly large group of people in with smiles. You fake one yourself, ready to get this over with as soon as possible so you can go back to your dorm and sleep. Within ten minutes, you had a group of girls and a handful of brawny guys already watching Suzy and Jungkook’s exhibition, a mixture of oohs and ahs being rewarded. You handed each of them a thin, poorly-made flyer with pixelated clipart of a girl doing a toe-touch before they scrambled.

After a while, most of the initial commotion dies down and you people-watch each clueless face, thinking how adorable they are, so young and so lost, as if it weren’t you only a few months ago. You’re only a sophomore, but in your head that gives you enough authority to judge the freshmen.

You snap out of your daze upon boots clicking in the distance, soon revealing a man seemingly darting through the crowds to exit across the other side. You would’ve ignored him if it wasn’t for his peachy-tinted hair, long and slicked back atop and close-shaven near his neck, his thin but fit stature dressed in all-black, and the glint of metal, that you soon realized was a septum piercing, in his nose. He has a dark sleeve consuming his right arm and you wonder what eighteen or nineteen year old has a fully-developed sleeve.

Although his eyes were covered with chunky black sunglasses (in the gym, at that), the rest of his appearance sent your pierced-and-tatted-hot-boy alarm berserk. Suddenly awake, you wait for him to head closer to your booth before hopping next to him.

“Hi there, freshie. Care to take a tryout flyer for this year’s cheer team?” you ask with a pitch that’s much higher than your own, kindly handing him one of the shitty-looking papers. He mutters something under his breath that you don’t catch but speaks before you can ask him to clarify.

“Not a freshman. Do I look like someone who cheers? I’m just looking for the counseling center to turn in my transfer papers.

“Also, can you, like, give me some personal space?” he continues in a mock valley-girl tone.

You jump back, completely caught off guard with his sudden hostility and attempting to regain your composure by clearing your throat. Someone must’ve shoved a stick up his ass this morning.

“Oh, uh, sorry. Once you leave the gym, you head right, pass two sets of restrooms, head left, and it’s behind the big statue where the foyer is.” Your voice sounds much better.

His eyebrows rocket upwards over his glasses, completely frazzled by the number of directions you gave him, “Shit, okay. That’s a lot.”

“Here, I’ll just walk you,” you say, not giving him any time for him to probably decline. You don’t even question if he’s following you or not, the obvious clunkclunkclunk of his boots giving it away.

Unsurprisingly, the man doesn’t try to talk to you on the way to the counseling center. At most, he walks side-by-side, at least three meters between you for good measure. And even though it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want to talk, you ring him out a little more anyway.

“So, you’re not a freshman. Underclassman or upperclassman? And you’re a transfer? From where?”

Pass two sets of restrooms and head left.

“Senior. From Busan.” He doesn’t even show a hint of feeling. Emotion. Does this guy even breathe?

Straight until the statue in the foyer.

“Great. Well, it was nice to meet you, senior from Busan. I’m Y/N. If you ever need help or anything, feel free to ask me,” you deadpan, swiveling on your feet to salute him.

He leans on one hip, taking a hand with an incredible amount of rings on it and pushing his sunglasses over his hair like a headband. You certainly weren’t expecting a reveal of the kindest puppy dog eyes you’ve ever seen in your entire life. He almost looks permanently sleepy—eyes drooping flat on the lid. Your trance distracted you from his brief once-over, unpredictably impressed by your looks, if he had to admit it.

“It’s Jimin. Jimin, senior from Busan. See you around, cheerleader,” he says with a sly tilt of his lips before swinging the door open and slithering into the office. Past all the glitter and bright colors that poured out of that hideous uniform of yours, Jimin found you really cute.

Jimin waits patiently for the front desk to call him up, lounging in one of the hard, black plastic chairs that never failed to give his ass cramps. Though he didn’t seem like it to new faces around the campus, he was ecstatic to be starting college again in a whole new atmosphere. He even got to room with another male originally from Korea, Min Yoongi, in a small condo not too far a walk from the area.

He could even prospect cuties like you during his year, undoubtedly positive he could busy himself judging by the attention he’s attracted so far. All it would take is a hungry stare, a lick of his lips, an all-knowing smirk. It was easier here than it was back home, if not child’s play. He could have you in three hours flat. But then he thinks of you choosing the obnoxious cliché of college cheerleader and cringes at the idea of associating himself with such… American-ness. He could at least go for some sort of indifferent, grunge hipster that might actually have some thought to her. Yeah, more his style.

The woman at the front finally calls for him, so he arranges his papers and shoos away any daydream of hooking up with the girl in a tight skirt and ankle socks.

Taking the long route back to the gym, your imagination sputters through all the possible reasons why you should hate that guy, bad-guy radar ringing and shrieking and threatening to punch you square in the eye if you even think about it. Eventually, it comes to the conclusion that he was just new, he was probably having a rough moving-in, and you shouldn’t judge a transfer by their hair. Book by its binding? You don’t really remember how the saying goes in this situation.

“Hey, good job on snaking yourself out of flyer duty. What, did you bang Asian Hot Topic on your way?” Jungkook snickers.

“And did Cait break up with you because you can’t dom for shit? Hand me my jacket.”

He guffaws, practically throwing the clothing at your face, “We didn’t break up, asswipe. How am I supposed to act when she suddenly calls me ‘daddy’ without previous warning? I’m not ready to be a father.”

“Kook, you’re dumb as shit. Maybe I should bang Asian Hot Topic and give you pointers of how a real dom works their magic.”

Jungkook crosses his arms in denial, “Pfft, you don’t even know him. He could be a receiver for all you know.”

One, two, three seconds. You both chortle at the impracticality.

You take one final look in the body mirror, adjusting the slinky grey dress and hanging an oversized burnt-orange corduroy jacket over your shoulders for that final touch of unnecessary, but fashionably-adept, garnish to your outfit cupcake. Not having enough time to do your hair, you sweep it over to one side and leave it as is.

“You look fine and you’re ten minutes late so get out already,” your roommate, Sara, whines. She practically pushes you out, slamming and locking the door for emphasis.

Waving off your discombobulated roommate, you start your trek to the humanities building (which is so far away) with a skip in your step. A new school year meant new people, new classes, more lunchtimes with subpar food and occasional parties that could potentially lead to you getting arrested. Who knows!

A new school year, however, didn’t mean that you would know your way to your new class apparently. Bummer.

It’s only by your fourth circle and a glance at your phone that you panic, fifteen minutes somehow passing in the midst of your scrambling. Pace quickening, you pull out your paper with sloppily written notes of what class room number was at which time, simultaneously half-jogging past classrooms and—

“Oof!”

You land straight on your ass.

“Ow, watch where you’re going stu—oh, it’s you.”

You look up groggily, pain stinging through your legs from the brunt of your fall and lazily making eye contact with a pair of puppy dog eyes. Jimin stands above you, rubbing his chin where, you suppose, your forehead made rough contact with and indiscreetly staring at your bright blue panties where your dress failed to cover.

Hopping up and dusting yourself off, you pick up your fallen bag and paper before glaring at him, “Sorry, I got lost and wasn’t paying attention.”

He scoffs, “Aren’t you the cheerleader? You’re supposed to be, like, the girl scout of the school, right? You shouldn’t be lost.”

You roll your eyes, “Yeah, well. I am,” you mutter to yourself, “I don’t even think there’s a 207 in this building…”

“Oh, 207? Intro to psych, right? That’s where I’m going too,” he admits, eyes blown wide. Welp, certainly not the highlight of your morning.

“Great. By the looks of the current time, we’re both lost and,” you wave around the empty corridor, “there’s no one who’s going to help us.”

“I’m not lost. I just woke up late,” he answers nonchalantly, a warm glow to his face like he couldn’t give two damns about his class.

“W-What? Then let’s go! Where is it?”

Jimin twirls and walks a different direction, mumbling, “I’m not your escort, rich girl.”

You prattle at his comment but follow him anyway. When you find the correct lecture hall, you groan at the fact that you already passed it several times. He opens the door quietly, not even bothering to hold it for you as you scramble to catch it. A couple of the back rows look back at you two, annoyed by the minor inconvenience.

“Well. Welcome to my 10AM psychology class at,” the professor booms through the hall and peeks at his wristwatch, “10:36. Go ahead and take these two free seats.”

Jimin shrugs and walks towards the front of the room, a quiet and embarrassed you tiptoeing behind him. Being this late and having to sit next to this ass wasn’t how you wanted your first day to go at all.

For the remainder of the 24 minutes until the first break, you skim over the contents that you missed in the syllabus and want to ram your head into the closest wall. Participation and attendance by themselves are 30% of your grade, homework and assignments (thank god) being a measly 20%, and the final plus tests and quizzes a hunking remainder of 50%. What even was this system?

During your ten minute break, you silently scroll through your phone notifications, setting it down irritatingly when the hall refused to grant you enough service to respond to any of them.

“Don’t have LTE, princess? Might as well watch paint dry without your phone to entertain you,” Jimin snickers beside you. You scowl menacingly at him and he giggles more.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but back off, Jimin. Sorry I don’t, like, play the electric guitar in my free time or whatever.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, still smiling and blowing bubbles with his gum, popping them quite obnoxiously, and quite intentionally.

“What, do you think I play the electric guitar? Are you stereotyping me as some sort of garage band drop-out punk?” he jesters.

“And do you take me for some sort of pink fuzzy consumerist? You don’t know me. Buzz off.”

Jimin had definitely tucked you into his mental folder of “tough gals”; his aloof tactic of flirting not seeming to penetrate that pretty skull of yours. He could just take the path of least resistance and approach you normally, but where was the fun in that? You were too interesting a specimen to just use-and-discard.

Jimin suddenly thinks you look attractive with furrowed brows and pouted lips. It was most definitely working for you, so he lets it slide for now. When class ends, you all but bolt before Jimin can even look your way, sure he’d find another surface flaw to pick at.

You suddenly think of what all of the adults in your life have said during your upbringing: people that went out of their way to bully you were either jealous or had an embarrassingly crushing “thing” for you. Jimin, on the other hand, was just annoying.

Of course, to your dismay, class isn’t the only time you ever saw him. You weren’t totally stupid. The campus didn’t stretch for miles and you were bound to see him sometime and have to deal with the efforts of avoiding the man at all costs but fuck were you praying to whoever controls your Sim above that they would grant you some mercy.

“Just tell him to fuck off if he’s so far up your ass,” Jungkook argues, crushing his juice box in one gulp and biting his massive cafeteria burrito.

“You don’t get it, Kook. I have. So many times, in so many different instances. Did I tell you about the time I thought he was helping me get a textbook from a tall shelf but he ended up taking that last one for himself?” You angrily rip a bite from your limp sandwich. You really did hate Turkey Thursdays.

“Eh, first come, first serve. Maybe he didn’t know you were trying to grab that one.”

“My ass, Jungkook. He claimed that if I really wanted it, I would ‘do something in fair exchange’ for it. I’m not looking to going into prostitution anytime soon.”

“Respect sex workers,” Jungkook criticizes.

“Oh, no, totally. Sex work just isn’t my forte.” Kook shrugs.

“Okay,” you continue, “how about the time I went to IKEA to buy that ceiling lamp and was obviously struggling to one-trip everything from my car? The dumbfuck passed by and asked if I needed help, so I was like, ‘Yeah! Sure, it would definitely make up for the time you asked for sex in lieu of my psych book,’ but instead of helping me carry anything he took my coffee, drank some, and left.” Jungkook starts a rebuttal but you cut him off short, “Then he showed up to my work the other day, god knows how he even saw me in there, and started taking a video of me when I wasn’t paying attention!”

“What the hell,” your friend sports a face of disgust, “like, he’s stalking you?”

You scratch the back of your neck, “Well, not exactly? I think he was just maybe—see, A$AP Rocky may or may have not been playing on the speakers, and I didn’t know anyone was in the shop! So. I don’t know. I started—”

“Started rapping with a rolled up poster as your microphone,” he deadpans. Finishing your horrid sandwich, you crumple the saran wrap and chuck it at his eye, satisfied when we wails exaggeratingly.

“Maybe that’s just his way of flirting with you, he’ll get bored eventually.”

“I think he just hates my guts and thinks of me as an equal to the gum under his thick, goth boots,” you mumble.

“Does it matter? So what if Danny Phantom doesn’t like you?”

“He’s causing a problem though. Besides, everyone cares if someone doesn’t like them. It’s bullshit if they tell you otherwise; bullshit or a lack of sympathy.”

“So what are you going to do about it? Because I’m totally your friend and all but I don’t necessarily want to hear about your boy problems all the time.” You harrumph at his negligence and slump back into your seat.

There really wasn’t anything you could do about it; it wasn’t bad enough to the point of distressing tyranny. You simply couldn’t befriend the guy, it was obvious he didn’t want that. You would just have to pray to all things good that he would eventually lose interest, stop harassing you out of kindness, or have a change of heart and treat you like the saint you were.

If only it were that easy.

Sylly-week kicked ass, to say the least. Even two days prior the hectic week from hell, your body aches from partying while your wallet cries from all the textbooks and supplies you paid for.

Sara slept beside you, forehead stuck to the desk with her laptop stuck on some sort of half-assed document and you couldn’t fathom a better picture to represent college.

Although it was already around 11, you hop out of bed and throw on your windbreaker from cheer and some spandex, shuffling into a pair of your sneakers and bolting out of your room with your bag. The amount of sodium and sugar you consumed from Cup-O-Noodles and off-brand cookie dough bites made you feel disgusting, and you know running a quick mile at the gym would get your blood pumping enough to make you: 1) feel better about yourself and 2) put your ass to sleep.

The walk is short, the air still a little heavy with heat but cool enough for you to be comfortable in a long-sleeve. Some tired students exit the library, really the only other people you see at this hour. You would’ve thought it creepy if the campus wasn’t so well-lit and played background music through the announcement speakers. If you died or got kidnapped, at least it was to some groovy jazz.

You swipe your card across the sensor beside the athletic building door, waiting for that subtle beep before the gears clank and allow you to heave the door open. Immediately, the smell of sweat poorly masked with air freshener fill your nostrils and your adrenaline builds. You’re no body builder, but a run certainly sounded nice right about now.

You practically skip through the halls, rounding a corner to enter the weight room before you stop in your tracks to see someone in the room across. You squint suspiciously, peachy hair striking a very strong familiarity to…

“Jimin?” you whisper to yourself. You shouldn’t be surprised that he’s at the gym, but you are because he isn’t. He’s in the dance studio. Before you bolt, your eyes glue to his sensual movements, legs gliding across the floor and body free-flowing alongside the bass-filled music. No previous bias could deny that he looks like an angel in his room, dancing smooth as meringue and practically skating across the floor despite those clunky black boots of his; and powerful, hitting every note and beat with intention and vigor. You’ve never seen anyone dance like this.

After a few seconds, you render that you’re spying on him and continue walking, nervously scuffing your sneakers down the linoleum and immediately, and unfortunately, catching his attention.

He first sees you in the mirror. Ignores you. Then realizes it’s you and turns into the most ungraceful bag-of-bones as he scurries to pause the music and chases you down the hall.

“Hey!” he yells, grabbing your elbow.

“Don’t touch me,” you strike back, jerking your elbow out of his grasp and staring him down.

He looks apologetic, genuinely worried for a second before he breathes deep and tries again, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you like that. Um, why are you here?”

“Um, because I can be? I was going to go to the gym, dickwad.”

It takes all of his patience not to insult you, “Okay. You’re right. Were you… were you watching me?”

You give him a sickeningly-sweet smile, “Don’t flatter yourself. I was just passing by.”

He nods solemnly, straightening his tank as if it wasn’t already wrinkled and damp with sweat, “Okay. Okay, cool.” He starts to turn before he keeps going in a 360.

“Can you keep this between me and you? That I was here? That I was here and I was—”

“Dancing?” you ask quizzically, “Why does it matter?”

His eyebrows stitch together in frustration, “Y/N, do I look like I’m a dancer?” He gestures to his piercings and his sleeve, waving his hands about in so many different places that your lewd curiosity wonders what he looks like naked—for the sake of knowing how many piercings and tattoos he has though, obviously.

“I think you look like a dancer. Just not a contemporary dancer. Did you take ballet?” you half-tease, crossing your arms and beaming slyly at him.

Jimin huffs, impatient, “Will you just keep it locked somewhere in that airhead of yours?”

“What’s in it for me, Jiminie,” you pout, “what do I get as reward for keeping your secret?”

He falters a moment, licking his plump lips and walking dangerously close, “You want a reward? I don’t take you as that kind of girl, Y/N.”

He must be delirious, eyeing him so and shoving him away, “Ew, no. I just meant, like, be nice to me from now on. And help me with psychology. That class is nothing but a memory test.”

He blinks dumbly from your rejection; who ever rejected him? He waves it off.

“Okay. I can be compliant. I won’t treat you like the rich bitch you are, and I tutor you on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Deal?”

“I’m not a rich bitch. I have student loans like the rest of the student population, thank you very much. Deal.”

You smile at each other devilishly, ready to part ways before bursting out with an instant, “Wait!”

Jimin looks over his shoulder curiously. Damn, you could really see how toned his shoulders were in that shirt.

“There’re dance majors here, is that what you transferred for?”

He turns all the way, leaning sideways against the wall and sighing, “Honestly, yes. But my family thinks I’m transferring to finish my business degree and that I would have better opportunities here. I really did it because there’s some great studios in the area but—” he catches himself rambling, “I don’t know how they would feel about my grand decision.”

You shrug, “You’re a great dancer, Jimin. Honestly, you could open your own studio here if you wanted to. You do have great opportunities.”

His sleepy eyes stare you down, a half-smile drawing itself out before he can take it back. “Give me your phone,” he orders.

You don’t know why but you do.

He dials into it with his overly-accessorized fingers, giving you a moment to get a closer look at his septum and the abundance of ear-piercings he sports before he hands it back. You’re pretty sure one of them is Gucci and you bite back a chuckle. Rich bitch.

“That’s my number. Text me when you’re free on study days.”

And with that, he re-enters his room and resumes the music.

The first time Park Jimin meets with you at a Starbucks on a Tuesday, like he instructed, you thought you somehow managed to get yourself stuck in the Twilight Zone.

“Hey, it’s Y/N. My last class ends at 3 on both days and there’s already a quiz this Friday. Help.”

 You sent the text without emojis. He didn’t deserve any.

You had barely got to Instagram before he texted you back. With multiple messages.

 “u text like a gramma”

“but ok”

“starbucks at 330? i’ll buy”

 You giggled to yourself at his joke, sending a single “(:” and putting your phone to sleep.

 To your disbelief, he really did buy you a cheese danish and a tall, iced, caramel macchiato. You sip it gingerly while he pulls his things out of his bag: a couple mechanical pencils (the industrial, expensive ones), a 1-inch binder organized by subject with dividers, and notecards. You grab them and hold them up like it’s evidence from a leading murder case.

“Notecards? You are way too organized and functional.”

He snags your pastry before you can grab it and takes a huge bite, “Yeah, but ih’s gonna het you a bedder ghrade.”

Whining, you get it back after his second bite, somehow only half remaining.

“Okay. Let’s get started. It should only be a vocab check because that’s really all he’s asked us to study so far. We’ll start with my wonderful notecards,” he waves them in the air for effect, “and see which ones you do and don’t know.”

You nod, waiting for the chaos to begin. Who were you to tell him that you haven’t actually studied any of the vocab yet? He holds the first one up. Abductive reasoning.

“Uhh… is that like, something detectives use on kidnapping cases?”

“Wh-What? No. Well—are you thinking of ‘abductions’? Abductive reasoning is being able to use the two states of induction and deduction alongside your intuition to reach a conclusion,” he pauses and tilts his head a little, “ I guess the best analogy is giving out a verdict on a criminal case. Without being 100% sure, they use the evidence to tie together as many different points as they can to come to a conclusion. So, I mean, you got it wrong, but you can easily remember the definition with that.”

You’ll take what you get (majority of his reasoning went through one ear and out the other, anyway), wiggling your eyebrows in justified approval. Jimin laughs at you, eyes squinting to slits and shaking his head. He takes notice that you aren’t wearing much makeup today, your cheeks and the bridge of your nose a tad red with irritation and a bit dry where the sun burnt and eyes daintier without so much eyeliner on them. You threw on a tank and some workout shorts and look like the epitome of… comfortable, in your head. Jimin thinks you look effortless.

“Park?” you wave your hand in front of him.

He catches himself staring and jumps out of his seat, chair screeching across the tile.

“Sorry,” he coughs, “I’m going to take a whiz.” Stupid. He practically trips over himself to get to the restroom.

You watch him hurry to the back. He probably had much better things to do than help you study in the middle of the afternoon. A couple of younger girls watch him as he passes, giggling like a pack of fangirls and combing their hair out of their faces. If they only knew.

Did he even have a girlfriend? Most likely not, right? He only just transferred here and despite his well-endowed looks, he was still intimidating. Like a giant “don’t touch, I bite” sign constantly hung around his neck.

He comes back shortly, and before you can deduct that you would rather save the embarrassment than to quench your curiosity, you ask, “Are you dating anyone?”

“Because you get a lot of followers,” you reason, shamelessly pointing out the girls who ogle his tattooed biceps. They giggle again when he looks their way. God, so many giggles.

He rubs the back of his neck nervously and that intrigues you, “No, I’m not dating anyone. I think if it weren’t for my… accessories? And the fact that I’m foreign, girls wouldn’t like me as much.” You find tiny comfort that he’s single but squish the thought away.

“How ‘bout you? Dating that guy on your team?” he retorts.

“Who, Jungkook?” you snort, “No. He has a girlfriend and he’s all brawn over brain. I’m not dating anyone, actually. I don’t like guys that are so competitive to win females strictly for the points, and there’s a lot of that here. S’gross; we’re not animals.”

“We kinda are,” he argues, but smiles understandingly.

“Okay, but not in the way where your possible significant other has to perform an instinctual mating dance?”

He juts up an eyebrow, “Really? Because I could easily arrange that.”

For the first time, you both laugh. At the same thing. Who knew that Jimin could dance of all things? And pay for your food? And actually be a nice guy who’s really smart? Thinking about it, today has gone so polar-opposite of what you expected that you contemplate if this is Jimin’s identical twin that just happens to have the same piercings and ink that bully-Jimin has.

Twilight Zone.

“Okay, let’s continue,” he says, resuming the queue of notecards.

“Define abulia.”

“Hello? Earth to Y/N?” Jimin waved a hand in your face.

“Hm? Sorry, say it again.”

Jimin packed up his supplies, then grabs yours and tucks them into your bag, “I said, ‘Are we going to your place right now?’ You said you picked up Black Panther on DVD so I want to watch it.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Cats and shit.”

You both stand up and stretch, the rest of the students in the lecture hall slowly filing out. Midterms were already approaching, which meant that you and Jimin had known each other for quite some time now. His tutoring was ditched weeks ago after you were finally comfortable with the material and able to comprehend what the professor was saying without Jimin to interpret. At first, meeting up stopped completely. You two would talk occasionally during class break and that’s all, and after a while, you just figured your deal was completed and Jimin finished his case and you both separated onto your different ways.

But then Jimin had asked if you wanted coffee at the same Starbucks you had first studied at, but for no specific reason. Just to hang out. So, you did.

Hanging out once or twice for coffee turned into twice getting lunch turned into four or five times lazing about your dorm, and now, you were just completely, wholesomely, friends. It was hard not to be on edge at the contrast of current Jimin to hell-on-earth Jimin, but you took what you could get.

“Is something on your mind? You’ve been spacing out for a long time,” he prods, taking your bag himself and throwing it over the same shoulder his own bag was on. The

walk to your dorm building was short but you could feel your feet dragging from sudden exhaustion.

“I think I’m just tired? I’m fine. Ready to Black Panther it up and all that jazz,” you chuckle. He takes the hint and resorts to quietly humming to your room rather than talking. That’s one thing you liked about him, he always knew when your mind just needed simple white noise.

Unlocking the door and jostling it out of its stickiness, you make a running jump to faceplant onto your bed. The mattress dips next to you when Jimin sits.

“I know you like cheer and all, but I think you need to take a break,” he says.

“Easier said than done. And I have mandatory captain conditioning in 3 hours,” you groan, propping your head on the palm of your hand to watch Jimin as he eats a stale bag of chips that he found on your nightstand. His face contorts in repulsion and throws the bag away.

“Okay, well, you’re not going. Tell them you’re sick. Let’s watch some DC movies and eat popcorn and have, like, a girl sleepover but I’m not a girl and I don’t want to spend the night,” he says, counting each point on his fingers.

“First of all, you lunatic, it’s Marvel not DC. Second, I don’t have popcorn. I can’t just skip conditioning because if I gain one pound Jungkook will sense it with his nose or something and attack me.”

“What,” he says in disbelief, grabbing your waist with one hand and squeezing a little, “you’re fine. You’re not going today and that’s final.” It’s not very often he touches you and as much as you try not to show it, you feel your face heat and mouth gape open and closed, ready to combust. You don’t particularly know why; guys touch you all the time (not in that way, thank you very much) but when it was Jimin, it was like you had been raised feral and failed to receive any means of human interaction.

He notices, taking his hand away as quick as he placed it and looking at the floor. Despite your lack of proper reaction, you would be lying if you said you didn’t feel a little twinge of disappointment. God, you’re so confusing to yourself.

“How about you? Your vampire ass won’t dance in sunlight so you must be tired too. How long do you normally dance for when you’re in the studio?”

“Well,” he lays flat on his back and stares at your popcorn ceiling (your dorm building was extremely outdated), “I try to workout at the actual gym in the morning before I get ready for class, and then I dance from 11 to whenever I feel is enough during the weeknights. That is, if no one’s there.”

“Why do you even follow this whole path of disliking mainstream trends and ‘rebelling against the world’? Isn’t that tiring? Aside from dance, do you, like, make your own skateboards and go to secret underground bars or something?” you tease. He rolls his head towards you in annoyance and mouths a “ha ha”.

“No, I just. I don’t know. I don’t like people telling me what to do or where to go or how to look,” he showcases his tatted arm. “This is all mine. I don’t want to be another puppet controlled my whole life to consume and work off a never-ending debt just so I can only live comfortably when I’m old but too old to actually live.”

“Wow, bro. That’s deep,” you pretend to smoke a pretzel stick. He continues anyway.

“Recently I made some friends that are in one of my labs. They’re from Korea too. If I’m not studying or working or hanging out with you, I’m probably with them. Partying or something,” he says, stealing away your “cigarette” and crunching on it loudly.

“Woah, you work? How do you find the time to do that?”

“Kinda. Nothing official, I just tutor people sometimes. Charge them by the hour and make some decent pocket change for food or whatever.”

You contemplate. How come he’s never charged you for your tutoring before? You ask him, studying his side profile and admiring his jawline when he talks. Flexing then easing; taut then relaxed.

“Because we had a deal. We agreed that I would help you in psych as long as you kept my secret, in which you did, so I figured that was good enough. Besides, you’re too cute to charge. I look like a bad boy but I’m not evil.” You giggle, resembling a middle-school fangirl and exaggerating a flattered stature.

Jimin laughs again, light and refreshing staccato notes that you could honestly listen to all day. It was therapeutic in its own crackhead way.

You’ve been unintentionally staring at him more and more often, Jimin finally taking notice within the last few minutes. He knew how to read a girl; how revealing they make themselves to impress him or how their eyes dim in any sort of suggestion that his hands should somehow find place on their body. But with you, he has no idea what that stare means. For the most part, you carry yourself so independently to the point of being standoffish and Jimin just can’t figure you out. He sought the day you would give in and beg for a night with him just like most of the other girls in his classes did, and when you didn’t, he wanted to know why. Not out of inflated ego or need to get into your pants—okay maybe because of that initially—but even more so that he just needed to dissect you. Know how to get you going, what kind of person you really are, which was completely different from what he originally imagined.

You were talking amidst his thoughts, not paying attention to the strings of sentences that fell out of your lips and before he knew it, he held himself directly above you, hands on each side of your head and staring right down into your disordered doe eyes.

“What makes you so different?” he asks aloud, more to himself than you. Puzzled and not under the impression that it was a rhetorical question, you shake your head.

“I don’t u-understand. What are you doing, Ji—”

He tucks a loose strand of yours out of your face, causing you to hiccup. “I feel like when I think I know you, I’m actually far from it.”

You don’t particularly know what you’re supposed to say to that.

“You didn’t ever need to get to know me. You just needed to make sure I kept your secret,” you play along. Knowing it wasn’t really the whole case, your own statement stings a little. If it weren’t to save his own ass, would he even be here right now?

Like he read your mind, he answers, “Why would I be here? I haven’t needed to help you in weeks. I’m with you all the time because I want to be. Because I—”

“Because you…?” you trail on, heart beating so hard you swear he can hear it. You wanted him to say it, maybe that’s what was keeping you from confirming your feelings. You needed validation; that this wasn’t just you or that this was some one-sided longing because you doubted someone like him could ever like someone like you.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks instead, so hesitant and delicate and worrisome all in one question and you ponder if this is the same boy you first met at orientation.

“Please.”

He dips down slowly, eyes half-closed in anticipation of what your face looks like so close, pausing an inch away when you shut your own. You feel his warmth near your mouth, waiting for that first touch, any contact, until it seems like it’s been far too long. When you peek, you see nothing but his perfect… cheekbone? He stares, jaw stuck open and eyes fluttering, at the intruder in the door before swinging himself off the bed and coughing awkwardly.

“Oh, Sara. I didn’t know you were coming home so early today,” you squeak out. You sit up yourself, brushing off nonexistent dust from the bed and watching Jimin gather his things in a rush and squeezing past a concerned Sara in the doorway. He doesn’t even turn back, ears stinging red and peeping a quick, havetogotextyoulater. Great, the asshole left you to face your roommate alone.

“Was that Jimin? Park Jimin? The fucking transfer student?”

“Oh my god, Sara, what’re you freaking out about?”

Dropping her stuff in the middle of the room, she shrieks annoyingly and grabs your shoulders, “Are you seriously fucking with the Park Jimin? Y/N. Nuh-uh. No way. Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“Chill out! We’re just friends. He tutors me sometimes.” Not quite a lie.

She eyes you and deadpans, “Yeah, I didn’t know tutoring also included a one-on-one session of how to have sexual intercourse.”

“You’re so dramatic,” you remove her hands, which were digging crescents into your skin, and pretend to arrange your bed, “we haven’t even kissed. You just walked in at an inconvenient time.”

Sara sighs, rubbing her temples and sitting on your bed, “Look, babe. Just be careful. I’ve been to parties with him and have heard some awful things. Shit you expect from a movie where the girl gets fucked over because the guy doesn’t know how to keep his dick in his pants. I just want the best for you, okay? He’s not as sweet as you might think he is.”

He isn’t sweet at all, you said internally. But still, your heart clenches at her words. Sure, he acts like a dick, and you shouldn’t be surprised if he really does get around as much as Sara suspects; but there was just some sort of denial that lingered. If he really was such a player, why would he have stuck around with you for as long as he has, as platonic as it has been until now?

“I… I didn’t know that. I’ll be careful,” you assure her.

All it took was a squinty-eyed smile and a tiny caress to the small of your back on the way into the lecture hall for you to completely melt into his hands. You were simply putty, magically molding into some gross, odd-smelling ball of love just because of the almost-incident yesterday. You can practically feel the radiating disappointment from Sara if she knew how easily you gave yourself up for him.

His face reoccurs in your daydreams for days, all the way up until the weekend comes up from behind and smacks you on the ass.

“Focus,” Jungkook taps you through you skirt again. Oh, or maybe it was Jungkook.

The stadium speakers blared with announcements and you’re brought back to the world of clashing helmets, captain’s orders and Jungkook’s strong hands residing on your waist for partner stunts.

You didn’t need to be reminded, you were much more stable than you were weeks ago. He throws you in the air during the signaling note of the band and catches your right foot with ease above him, keeping you stable as you pull a heel stretch and present a pretty smile. The crowd roars along, inspiring the team and singing along with the cheers.

By the end of the game, you’re exhausted, tearing down paper signs from the concrete walls and shuffling your poms into your bag in a hurry.

“Hey, are you going to the feed after? Everyone’s going, I could give you a ride,” Jungkook offers, but you shake your head.

“I’m pretty beat. I’ll go next time.” He shrugs, finding more interest in catching up to someone who is interested than trying to convince you otherwise. By the time your clean-up is done, most of the fans are gone, the stadium a comparable difference of quiet than how it was only twenty minutes ago.

“You’re sure taking forever,” a sudden voice pipes up. Outside the gate stands Jimin, all-black tank and jeans, per usual. “You looked great out there.”

You smile, suddenly awake and jogging towards him, “What’re you doing here? I thought you didn’t like football.” During all your rushing do you realize that you relax around Park, time always seeming to slow down in his presence and you dissolve into his effect.

“I don’t. Such an American moneymaker. They’re all cons.” He takes your bag like he always does, leaning against the gate and looking excited, “Mind if we stop by my place? I have something to show you. It’s not far, probably only a 5 minute walk from here.”

You nod before he even mentions how long it takes to get there, heart palpitating at the thought that he’s inviting you over. You’re sure you smelled from cheer and you probably looked like the opposing team warmed up suicide runs over your sweaty body, but you nod.

“Were you here the whole time? Or just towards the end?” you ask, slightly insecure towards the fact that he could’ve been watching you cheer.

“Was here since halftime. Got Yoongs to watch with me at the gate where I was before for the most part. He left halfway through fourth quarter though, said he got tired from seeing others exert themselves so much,” he chuckles at the thought, eyes squinting and crooked tooth visible from the side. Your heart swooned, you were even starting to notice the little things. How he acted. His habits. What he did and didn’t like.

You were in fucking deep.

“I did get to see you cheer though,” he answers your unspoken inquiry, “you looked pretty, Y/N. It’s like watching a whole ‘nother person compared to how you act outside of uniform.” You’re still stuck on the word “pretty” and nod along like you’re listening.

“You should see how people look at you,” he draws on, “like they’re entranced. Even when you were just relaxing on the sideline, not doing anything, you stand out.”

“Oh my god, Jimin, where is this even coming from? One more compliment and the world might explode from the paradox you’re creating.”

He shoves your shoulder lightly, laughing at your tomato-red face, “What do you mean? I can’t compliment you?”

“No that’s not—I just mean. You know. You used to hate me and now you shower me with praise like I’m the best person in the world. It’s just crazy how much our relationship has changed. And… And yesterday—”

“Yo, can’t believe you really stayed for the rest of the game,” a raspy voice outbursts. You just realize that Jimin stopped you in front of a house, presumably his house, as a mint-haired ball sits on the porch. He inhales from his cigarette and exhales through his nose before throwing it underneath his boot.

“Hey, Yoongs. This is Y/N. Y/N, Min Yoongi, my roommate. Has a bad smoking habit and have only recently gotten him to smoke outside.” Jimin snickers, offering a hand to lift Yoongi off the step and welcome him into some bro-hug.

“You smoke too, bastard. Just did it ‘cause I knew you were bringing someone home tonight,” Yoongi retaliates, eyeing your figure. Shivers run down your spine at the comment.

Jimin coughs unexpectedly, then anxiously laughs as he pulls your arm behind him and into the house, “We’ll be in the living room. Go sleep or something.” Yoongi only clicks his tongue in response.

“Sorry,” he says once your inside, “he can be a little too personal sometimes. He’s really nice once you get to know him.” You shake your head, giving him a comforting smile that eases the tension in his shoulders.

He settles you on the couch, host-like politeness apparent when he asks if you want anything to drink, tells you where the bathroom is, and hands you the tv remote before disappearing to find his laptop. His home was cozy, minimalist furniture often in gray, black, and an occasional blue spread throughout the rooms. You weren’t sure if the boys were attempting to be modern or if college tuition only allowed them this sort of set-up, but nonetheless, it was way nicer than you expected.

“Back,” Jimin plops onto the couch right next to you, Apple laptop unlocked to a default background. He looks to you briefly before setting up some page on Google, “Have you signed up for your classes for next quarter yet?”

He looks different, your eyes scanning over his face to figure out just what it is, “Basically, just gotta confirm and pay and whatnot. Have you, Jimin?”

It’s his septum, you discover, that he’s taken out. He looks handsome either way. Propping the laptop suddenly on your lap, he beams, “Yeah, go ahead and take a look.”

You scroll through the page, humming to yourself, “Mhm… Mhm… Accounting, business 101, contemporary repertory… God, you’re going to hate sociology with Doyard, she’s a complete psycho!” You trail, giggling at his misfortune. Once you’re done, you meet his discontent face.

It takes a few takes from his face to the screen, back to his face, until oh shit!

“Wait does ‘contemporary repertory’ mean something important?” you squeal in rushed excitement. “Is that a dance thing? Are you taking a dance class here?” Before he can even explain, you shut the laptop and safely place it on the coffee table before tackling the man, withdrawing an oof from his lips.

“Easy, girl. Please don’t break me before I even get to show up on the first day.”

“Jimin, this is amazing. You’re finally doing something you want to do, during regular hours, at that!” You nuzzle into his warm chest, “I’m so happy for you, Jimin. I hope you have fun.” His heart clenches at that; how could you be so fucking caring about him? He knew you’d be surprised, but not genuinely happy for him. His hand glides over the skin between your midriff and skirt, an inkling of a gasp floating out of your throat.

“Sorry,” he whispers, moving his hand higher and locking eyes with yours. Time is always slow with him but now, it’s like it was screaming at you to take the opportunity. Unwinding one of your arms from around his neck, you smooth his hair up so you can see those prepossessing eyes.

“You can touch me,” you confirm just as softly. His features harden and you hope you didn’t read the situation wrong.

“I… I never got to kiss you that night.”

“Then you can kiss me now, if you’d like,” you say, pleading in your voice and it’s all he needs to hear before he burns his lips into yours. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted this,” he pants between suckles to your bottom lip. He kisses like he dances: powerful and in perfect control with his body, molding it to yours and massaging the skin he just apologized for touching only seconds ago.

You cup his face and look down at him with sultry prowess, “I want you, Jimin. I’ve always thought about this, hoping you would just make a move, idiot.” You dive back into him, his moans prominent when you lick and nip at his lip. He lowers his grip to your ass, squeezing and pushing his hips into your own.

“Well, I’ve always thought about fucking you in this cursed uniform,” he growls, forcing a giggle out of you. Grinding down into him for effect, your mouth travels to his ear so you can state a small confirmation.

“I’m flexible, babe. I’m all yours.”

He hums his praise, latching his mouth onto your neck, laving and peppering blues into your skin before he carries you off the couch. You wrap your legs around him instinctively, “Where are you taking me?”

Heading into a hallway and taking a sharp left, he kicks his door open, “I don’t know about you, hot stuff, but Yoongs doesn’t need to see you getting dicked down in our living room,” he jests. When he lays you back onto the foot of his bed, you briefly scan his room and find it hard to believe that it’s relatively clean, the posters on his walls the only thing that seemed cluttered. This guy was your high school self’s wet dream. Scanning him promiscuously, you chuckle.

“I can be into it,” you drawl playfully.

Earning an unimpressed scoff, he fingers the hem of his shirt, “You’re mine,” he sheds it in a swift pull and throws it to the side cockily. Marveling at each detailed divot and curve of muscle, you can’t help but bite your lip in frustrated anticipation. “Unless, you don’t want me,” he finishes with a tilt of his head. He knew what he was doing, simulating innocence to draw you out of your transfixed stupor to hear those three words string from your mouth. You reach out to touch his abs, tracing over linework of ink and watching him shiver from your touch. Knowing exactly what he wants to hear, you gaze into oblique eyes and mouth the words, “I do want you”.

Goading him on, you lay back and extend your legs above you, shuffling your spandex tantalizingly slow over your skin. Jimin whistles at your show, staring at the white g-string you sported under your skirt and wandering his hands over the supple skin you expose.

“Jesus, you fucking tease. Leave the skirt.” Tittering at his request, you dig your heels into his back to propel him down towards you, his ringed hands keeping himself afloat and a winning smile winking down at you. Bless your heart you didn’t faint right then and there.

He kisses you like a man starved, lips burning hot with desire and aching to be bit—so you give him that. Sinking your teeth gently into the flesh, he punishes such action with a slap to the underneath of your thigh, then holding it close to the side of his abdomen and rolling over with you on top. Practically suffocating from lack of air, you dislodge yourself, quite reluctantly, from his mouth and soothe his complaints with brief kisses to his thick neck.

“Why didn’t we do this—ah, before?” he pants. Sucking a particularly tender spot of his jugular, he moans out and bucks into your hips. You continue your way down, leaving no inch of skin untouched until you reach where his skin ends and the nuisance of clothing began.

“You don’t make things very easy for me. Can I suck you off?”

“Fuck, don’t ask. Just do it. Turn around, though, I’ll finger you at the same time,” he offers, propping himself up on his elbows as you readjust yourself with your head towards his bulge and your ass facing him, knees keeping you up on one side of his torso. “Perfect,” he commends.

Unbuckling his ridiculously tight jeans, you hook your thumbs under the denim and whisper a quick, “Up,” to pull them off when his hips lift off the mattress. Your pride inflates at the sight of his bulge resting in the crook of his thigh, adorned by simple black boxers that hugged him in all the right spots. All but drooling at the member, you place a loving kiss where you know his head resides, mouthing at it gingerly and soaking the material with your saliva.

He ruts into your face as he watches such indecency, “You know, I should probably tell you something,” he says rather seriously, shuffling your skirt up above your ass and mischievously prodding at your sex with his thumb.

“Hmm,” you mumble, sliding his boxers down enough to suck at the pink tip that oozed of precum and spreading the liquid around with your tongue. The bitterness that came with it was all welcomed, slightly sweeter than others you’ve ever tasted and you appreciated it much more when a man this good-looking was laid out before you.

He groans, “Ever heard of a Jacob’s Ladder? Fuck, right there, underneath a bit…” You suck and nip at the skin of his frenulum, knowing he was bound to like small dosages of pain mixed with his pleasure—a guess all too correct when he cries out in ecstasy and gives your ass a light spank.

“A Jacob’s what?”

“Just—just look at it. If you don’t like it then I can just take them out,” he sighs, all too impatient to give you a rundown of whatever a Jacob’s hoo-ha entailed. You perk a brow at his vocabulary, halting your mouth and sliding his boxers the rest of the way down.

If you weren’t riled up before, you were hot, ready, and willing to beg on your knees to be stuffed with Jimin and his… accessories. You understand the term “ladder” now, three rungs of metal pierced on the underside of his shaft and glinting up at you with intimidation. You hope Jimin can’t see the now overflowing amount of arousal oozing out of your pussy, squeezing thighs together in a useless attempt of hiding yourself.

“Fuck, didn’t that hurt?” you question, hovering fingers over the balls of silver that protruded on each side in complete awe.

“Of course it did, honey. It’s all worth it, though. It’ll make you feel good too. Need me to take them out?” You shake your head a little too vigorously, earning a chuckle and his middle finger to slide in between your folds unexpectedly. Yiping at the sudden entrance, you cast a glare over his shoulder with his only response being the curve of his digit.

“C-Can I lick it? Can it get infected if you don’t use a condom?” you bombard him with questions, entirely unfamiliar with the subject and entirely enamored by it.

“It’s all healed up, baby. You can do whatever your little heart desires with it. And I would oh so much prefer going bare,” he confirms, and your heart flips at his pet name for you. That, and the thought of his thick, pierced cock penetrating you condom-less.

You wrap your lips around him once more, unafraid to take more and more of his length until you feel the cold metal—your stopping point. Call it your lack of experience, but you prefer not to catch your teeth on those piercings today. You make up for it by sliding a hand back under his scrunched boxers, fondling his balls as you bob diligently. He curses and struggles to keep his body still, digging another digit between your legs to slow your own ministrations. When it works and you moan around his cock, Jimin can’t help but want to play a little game.

“Should I give you a challenge, babe? It’s super simple. Whoever makes the other cum first gets to request something. Anything. Deal?”

“Deahl,” you muffle, swirling your tongue lavishly around his crown. Everything with Jimin was much more… intriguing. Even your first time having sex was turned into some lusty escapade of unexpected metallic embellishments and cheeky gambles. It made you feel something in your veins, wanting more and more of whatever poison Jimin was.

Taking a breath, you lick broadly over his entire shaft and scarcely taste the titanium—more than anything, it was just cold. Jimin shudders at the feeling, punishing you with a third and final finger and pushing downdowndown into a spot all too sensitive for you to focus.

Try as you might, your now pathetic attempts of sucking him off is all forgotten in your own haze of chasing your orgasm. Instead, you rest your head on his hip and writhe against his hand, fucking back onto it while he simultaneously prods your g-spot over and over again until you see stars.

“Giving up already? You were doing so well for a while, you could’ve won,” he lilts.

“Jimin, please make me cum. Oh god,” you wail, legs straining for just that final push…

“Is this what you want?” He slides his thumb across, swiping whatever he could collect and using it to knead at your neglected clit. It’s all you need, pleasure washing over you in tandem of near oversensitivity, a near scream tearing through your lungs that only comes out in ragged whines against his leg.

“Beautiful, sweetheart. Fuck, you’re ruining my sheets over here,” he criticizes, removing his hand with an obscene squelch and moving around in the bed.

The torpor you caught yourself in didn’t render what he was saying, just letting him move you about so your head rests on his pillows while he places himself between your legs.

“Jiminie,” you babble, “fuck me.” He strokes your hair away from your face and smiles, that cute puppy smile that turns his eyes into crescents. The rest of him, though, is purely sinful. Hair sweaty and pieced to perfection as his body taunted you with toned muscles.

“I don’t think you’re ready, honey,” he answers, “even though you’re dripping in your own cum.” He leans back and stares at your pussy without embarrassment, pulling your knees together and watching the juices flow even more. “I should put it to use.”

You peer up at him, curious as to whatever the hell he’s dreaming of over there and inexplicably stunned when you see his dick between your legs. “J-Jimin, what are you doing?”

“Shh, just keep them closed tight,” he orders, fucking himself between the lips of your heat and the warm skin of your thighs. You can’t help but ravish the sight of him as he slicks himself up, eyeing you down as his hips roll into you agonizingly slow. His piercings graze against your nub occasionally, warmth once again growing in your stomach.

“Fuck, you’re so soft and so wet. Who did this to you, hm?” You moan maniacally, angling your hips as to catch him and push inside, but he only laughs degradingly and intentionally misses.

“You think I’m going to fuck you if you can’t even answer this simple question?” he sneers. “Answer like a good girl, then I’ll fuck you into oblivion.”

You scramble for words, initially incoherent and struggling. “Jimin! Shit, Jimin. You made me this way. Ah, you m-make me so wet, so please put it in, put it in and—ha, aah!”

He shoves his length in like it’s all he knew what to do, your ankles to his shoulders so he can drink up your moans with his reddened lips. He was right—the piercings didn’t feel like any dick you’ve received before, it was so much better. This was pornographic, it was so good. He all but pistols into you, his cock grazing places previously untouched. Indulging in his heaven sent strokes, you cry and groan at each relentless thrust.

“Hush, baby, Yoongi’s going to hear your pretty self,” he warns, but you don’t give a shit. If anything, you moan louder with a know-all glint in your eye, testing Jimin’s patience. “Brat,” he spits.

He pounds into you repeatedly, completely removing himself before filling you up again and again and again. Between the pressure to your g-spot and the added stimulation from his Jacob’s Ladder—your stomach heaves, an unfamiliar feeling washing over your abdomen contrary to anything you’ve ever experienced.

“Oh, Jimin, wait!” you sob, halting his hips from another brutal shove a little too late. The second he pulls out, your second orgasm (and first ever untouched orgasm) of the night reigns over, briefly showering his lower stomach in your own wet arousal.

“Holy shit, that’s so fucking hot. Did you just… squirt on me?” he growls, not taking the time to hear your answer as he lifts you into his lap, legs wrapped around his muscular back and arms gripping around his shoulders for dear life.

He sinks back into you deliciously, filling you to the brim with your added weight and rutting up into you to chase his own release. Everything is soaked and sticky, Jimin’s ragged breathing and groans so close to your ear that you’re sure it’ll be engrained into your memory forever, his thrusts so deep inside you wail once more.

Consequently, the banging on the wall next to you comes as no surprise, Yoongi’s angry, “Shut the fuck up!” clear as day. Jimin waves it off.

“Don’t listen baby. Moan louder for me. Tell me where you want my cum.”

The slaps of skin become louder; it wouldn’t be long before Jimin came. “Inside, Jiminie, please. Cum inside me, pump me full,” you squeal, lust sparking inside you knowing that his roommate could hear you getting fucked senseless.

One, two, three more aching pounds before he spills into you, his pretty moans music to your ears. You flop back as soon as he takes himself out, suddenly aching all over from how much he stretched your legs and groaning at the pain.

You slap his eager hand away when he fingers his cum back into your abused lips, “That hurts, idiot.” He smiles and sucks your intermingled cum off his fingers with a pop.

“We taste good together,” he husks. Fuck. “By the way. You came first. Stay the night?”

You oblige with or without the pressure of the bet, dog-tired from your beating and not even fathoming the trek back to your own room. Jimin takes charge in your state of haziness, washing you off in his shower, replacing your uniform with a t-shirt of his own and laying you beside him on his mattress (sheets replaced and refreshed).

“You have piercings in your dick,” you state in the middle of the quiet.

Jimin snorts at the outburst, looping an arm around your side and melding his body to yours, “Yeah, is it weird?”

“… Robot dick,” you whisper, words cracking at the face of your laughter.

“Oh my god.”

“So, when you’re going through metal detectors at airports and whatever, do you have to tell them that the metal’s in your penis? Do they have to check?” Titters are awarded with light jabs to your side, which are then led to screams and kicks to his legs.

Yoongi bursts through Jimin’s door, brows stitched together in heated anger parallel to the flames of hell, “I swear to fucking god, if you two don’t quiet down I’ll mount your heads on my wall, it’ll make a great decoration.”

“What the hell, what if we were naked? Don’t just go busting through—”

“Yeah because you obviously care if I know you two are fucking. ‘Don’t listen, baby! Tell me where you want my cum, baby!’” Yoongi mocks. Pillows are flying and insults are thrown as you watch them bicker sleepily, all fading into white noise as you begin to drift off.

Sleep itself feels like a blink, so exhausted that you don’t dream. Waking in the same position that you were last conscious in, the only difference in picture is the fact that: A) the sun is shining through Jimin’s skylight and B) Jimin is no longer in bed with you.

But before you can even question where he’s run off to, his sly self sneaks back into the bedroom, shirtless and face clean from washing up just now. You don’t even hide the fact that you look down to check out his tight briefs, metal detector in your brain trying to scope it out.

“You’re awake. Sorry if I was loud,” he smiles, crawling on top of you as you stretch out like a mangled cat. You shake your head, combing his hair back with your nails as he dips down into your chest. “I like when you wear my shirts.”

“That’s pretty stereotypical,” you whisper out, voice low and raspy from your slumber. This isn’t fair, you think, he got to brush his teeth already.

He sits up and gives you A Look, making you giggle and giving you the leverage to feel up his abs as he flexes haughtily.

“I can get used to this,” you purr.

“I bet you could,” he mumbles into your neck, nipping at the places he already marked last night. He doesn’t push, just relishes in your warmth and fondles you carefully as you continue to wake up and it makes you shiver.

“I wish you would’ve done this a long time ago,” you sigh.

“You hated me.”

“You didn’t make it easy for me to like you,” you retort, gasping when he bites your collarbone, “Now—Now I like you.”

He stops abruptly and pulls away, landing on his side with an elbow and tilting his head towards you, “Well, I hope you don’t start liking me too much.”

You squint, “W-Why? Don’t tell me this was just a one night stand or anything.”

“No! I mean, not just one night or whatever. I just—this is just casual, right?”

You all but bite your tongue to keep from lashing out, “What do you mean ‘casual’? You didn’t say anything about ‘casual’.”

“Oh, Y/N, c’mon. Did you really think we should date? Look at us, baby. We’re just not… each other’s types, you know?”

It’s about time you get up, shoving aside his warm blankets and grabbing your soiled uniform from the floor, “No, Jimin. I don’t know. I thought you were being genuine with me.”

“Hey, no, don’t leave,” he grabs your arm before you leave his bedroom, “Okay, there was some miscommunication. I’m not trying to be mean. Can I just… I don’t know, think about it? I’m just not used to this.”

Looking into his eyes for some sort of confirmation, your tensions subside. “I’m not a toy. If you don’t want to be with me, just say it.” The hurt he feels in your tone breaks his heart, for once. Would he really be willing to try something he knows won’t work?

For you, maybe.

“I do like you, Y/N. Just give me some time.” He pulls your arm once more, hoping you’ll stay. But you draw the line and pry his hand off politely.

“Of course I’ll give you time. I’ll see you later, okay?” He nods understandingly. He can’t feel butthurt when he’s the one putting you on ice, he knows that. So Jimin watches you leave in his shirt, mind clouded more so than when you arrived.

a/n: yay! you made it through the first part! if you liked it, feel free to let me know or ask any questions to the characters! xx, selene

[heart-eyes-kippen]

Art Class

Hello, here’s a lil fic based on this prompt!!

~

There were many things that Cyrus associated with TJ Kippen. Being loud, being athletic, and being the most unbearably gorgeous guy in their year. That’s why it was always somewhat of a shock walking into art and seeing him alone, completely caught up in his researching, or his essay-writing, or his painting. Their teacher absolutely adored him because of this, and Cyrus would always see him linger behind after class to have conversations with her. 

 Art was a subject he’d been forced into due to timetable clashes, so although Cyrus loved looking at art, especially Andi’s, he just didn’t seem to have an eye for it like his classmates did. In fact, he would usually spend a majority of the time talking to Buffy, who didn’t particularly like the subject either. 

 It was a pleasantly cool spring morning when Cyrus took his usual seat beside the girl, offering her a small smile as he did so. 

 “Good morning, everyone. Today we’re going to start a project that some of you may not necessarily like, but it has to be done as per the curriculum at least once during the semester. It’s a collaborative art piece.” 

 Cyrus and Buffy, in contrast the groans that filled the room, looked over at one another in excitement. If they paired up, then technically they’d have an excuse to talk during class.

 “Of course, I’ll be assigning pairs based on varying factors, including whether or not I think two people can work together well.” 

 Their faces immediately fell. 

 “She could’ve just called us out directly,” Buffy mumbled darkly, which Cyrus couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh at. 

 “I’ll put the pairs up on the board, then you guys can arrange yourselves, hopefully without too much chaos.” 

 The collective sounds of chairs scraping and quiet murmuring filled the room as everyone packed up their things and sought out their partner. Cyrus stayed where he was for a few long moments, looking over at Buffy with a heavy sigh. 

 “Burdening someone else with my total lack of art skills is not what I was counting on today,” he told her, a grimace on his face. 

 Buffy gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder as she stood up. “We can make it through this. Who do you have, anyway?” 

 Cyrus looked up towards the board, almost afraid to see whatever name had been placed next to his on the spreadsheet. His eyes widened slightly, and as he opened his mouth to reply a voice had both of them turning around.

 TJ was stood there, an easy smile on his lips as he addressed Cyrus.

 “I think we’re partners.” 

 Buffy’s eyebrows shot up at that, and she whirled back around again to check. A small scoff escaped her as she turned back around. 

 “I guess I’ll leave you two to it, then,” she said, giving Cyrus one last pat on the shoulder before moving across the room in search of her partner. 

 Cyrus’ stomach was doing somersaults as he looked back at TJ, who had a vague expression of confusion clouding his face. 

 “Uh...are you okay?” 

 He snapped himself out of it, pushing any thoughts about how effortlessly TJ’s hair was swept up, or how nicely his basketball hoodie matched his eyes, or how charming his smile was, forcibly to the back of his mind. 

 “Yeah!” he responded after a moment’s delay, sitting down in his seat again. “I’m fine.” 

 TJ took the spot beside him, clearly amused, and the class fell silent as the teacher issued instructions about what they were to do that lesson. Gentle sunlight was streaming in through the windows, warming Cyrus’ desk, and he could feel drowsiness tugging at his eyelids by the time she was finished talking. 

 It was only when he heard shuffling and movement pick up around him that he managed to break himself out of his haziness and offer TJ a tired smile as the boy turned to him. 

 “Just so you know,” he began, pulling some supplies out from his pencil case, “I’m not great at art and it’d probably be wise to switch partners while you still can.” 

 TJ observed him intently for a moment, with an expression on his face that Cyrus couldn’t decipher. 

 He began to smile. “I keep hearing you say that about yourself, but then I look at some of your art that’s hung up on the wall and I can’t help but think you’re lying.”

 Cyrus felt his face grow hot at that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told him, glancing over at his collage of space, “none of that is good in the slightest.” 

 “What would I have to do to make you realise that it is good?” TJ asked, leaning forward slightly. 

 There was a sparkle in his eyes now that almost made Cyrus want to look away with how ridiculously cute it made him look.

 “Something drastic,” he replied, looking shyly down at his hands. 

 TJ considered this for a moment, before nodding. “Something drastic, huh?” 

 “That wasn’t a challenge,” Cyrus added hurriedly, “just so you know.” 

 He glanced up to find that TJ’s usual smirk had given way to something softer, almost like the grass dethawing outside, and Cyrus’ heart warmed at the sight. 

 “Okay, then. Let’s start planning! Have any ideas for a theme yet?” 

 “...A theme?” 

 TJ let out a huff as he playfully took Cyrus’ pencil away from him, writing something down on the paper they’d been given. 

 “Were you listening?” 

 “Not in the slightest,” he answered truthfully.

 He glanced around at the other pairs around them, brainstorming away, and he couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty. TJ didn’t seem to mind though, if the smile on his lips was any indicator.

 “We have to select a theme for our piece, what elements we’re going to use, and what ideas we want to get across using our theme.”

 Cyrus almost felt inclined to lean back in his chair with a dramatic groan as he always did when confronted with art theory, but he somehow managed to refrain and leaned forward on his elbows instead, trying to at least feign some semblance of art knowledge.

 “Space?” he suggested, and TJ laughed.

 “You really like space, don’t you?”

 He shrugged, blushing slightly, and watched as the boy jotted it down.

 “Dinosaurs? Social media?” 

 TJ raised a playful eyebrow. “Are you just listing things you like?” 

 “So what if I was?” he smiled, taking his pencil back to jot the words down. 

 “What about rain? Or rainbows?” said TJ, eyes flickering between Cyrus and the paper in front of them. 

 “I like that,” Cyrus nodded, writing them down.

 By the time the bell sounded they’d settled on ‘rainbows’ as their theme and came up with a few of the elements they wanted to use in their piece. Cyrus eventually found himself relaxing as he spoke to TJ, who against all odds turned out to be one of the least judgemental people he could’ve been paired up with. He liked cracking jokes and making vine references, but he also seemed to have this guarded intelligence that would come out when he spoke about varying ideas he had about the elements they could use. 

 Cyrus, who usually would’ve recoiled at that sort of thing, found himself clinging onto to every word that left TJ’s lips. His head was rested on his hand as he watched the boy talk, resembling some love-sick puppy pining hopelessly after their crush. For a brief moment, he couldn’t help but think he was. 

 Buffy approached him as they filed out of the classroom, face lit up by an excited smile.

 “I got Libby! She’s a straight-up art goddess. How was TJ?” 

 Cyrus blushed. “He wasn’t too bad.” 

 ~

 “So, dearest Cyrus, I gave it some thought and this was the most drastic thing I could come up with.”

 Cyrus looked down at the paper that had been placed down in front of them, before turning his gaze to TJ. He was sitting down beside him now, with an adorably bright smile on his lips. 

 With a disbelieving huff, Cyrus turned the page and scanned over what was written on it. 

 “You did not do this,” he managed, stifling a giggle with his hand as he read. 

 In TJ’s neat cursive, the words ‘sign this if you think Cyrus’ art pieces are great’ were scrawled at the top, and below it was a large collection of signatures from people in their art class.

 “Have you accepted that you’re wrong yet?” TJ grinned, eyes shining, and Cyrus just scoffed.

 “How do I know you didn’t threaten any of these people?”

 “Bold of you to assume I had the time or patience to do that.” 

 Cyrus’ expression softened ever so slightly, and he tipped his head to the side. “Okay fine, maybe I’ll accept that they’re okay. I still can’t believe you actually did this, but...thanks.” 

 TJ just waved him off. “It was nothing. Now - shall we continue planning?” 

 “We shall,” Cyrus confirmed, leaning forward towards the desk. He laughed slightly when he noticed the small chicken TJ had drawn in the corner of the page, with a speech bubble above it reading ‘i got my red dress on tonight.’ 

 “Have we given this chicken a name yet?” he asked, and TJ immediately stopped writing.

 “No,” he gasped out, “how could we possibly forget that? I vote Greg.” 

 “Generic, but I like it,” said Cyrus, as he grabbed a pen from his pencil case and began drawing another speech bubble. 

 TJ watched in amusement as he wrote ‘greg says: gay rights!’ and leaned over to begin colouring in some of the feathers. 

 Their arms brushed as he did so, and Cyrus tried desperately not to think about the nervousness that bubbled up inside of him at the contact. 

 “So...we’ve created a rainbow chicken who supports gay rights. Or is gay. Or both,” said Cyrus, as he admired their work. 

 TJ laughed and nodded, picking up his original pen. “He’s a king.” 

 “He is,” Cyrus agreed, “I think we should have him be our art piece.” 

 “Okay, that’s where I’ll have to draw the line,” TJ replied, smiling at Cyrus’ responding giggles.

 With that, the pair began deciding the rest of their elements, with the occasional headcanons about Greg finding their way into the conversation.

 ~

 It was another bright blue day on Thursday, with sunlight pouring into the art room that filled it with a gentle warmth. Cyrus felt a rare sense of excitement as he waltzed inside, seeking out TJ immediately and taking a seat beside the boy. He saw Buffy in the corner, chatting animatedly to Libby, and the sight brought a small smile to his face.

 “How’s the greatest basketball player in the world doing after yesterday’s game?” he asked, smile widening when TJ just laughed. 

 “I’m not that gre-“

 “Do I have to get a signed sheet from your teammates?” Cyrus warned, only half-seriously. 

 TJ rolled his eyes at that, but didn’t object further. He was still smiling as he pulled their page out and looked over at all of the things they’d brainstormed so far. 

 “This is our last planning session, so we should probably start visualising what our piece is gonna look like,” he said.

 Cyrus nodded and tore out a separate piece of paper from his notebook. “I had a dream last night.” 

 TJ raised his eyebrows. “Was it about art?” 

 “It was about rainbows?” he offered, and TJ shrugged.

 “Close enough. Hit me, then.” 

 “Okay! It was actually kind of dark, but oh well. I was being teleported to all these different landscapes, I’m talking cities, beaches, forests, cliff-faces, deserts, mountains, you name it. Everything was in full colour except I was always in black and white. I kept looking down at myself and getting really upset because I wanted to be in colour super badly for some reason. Don’t get a dream interpreter on that one. Anyway, there was this one scene with the northern lights where I looked up and began wishing that I wasn’t grey anymore. The tips of my fingers gained some colour, and I got so excited that I woke up.” 

 TJ looked at him for a moment after that, just blinking, before a smile began to spread across his face. “That’s our art piece!” 

 Now it was Cyrus’ turn to give him a blank look. “Pardon?” 

 “A greyscale person looking out at a rainbow scene! We could paint them looking out at a city where everyone is on their phones if we wanted to be super melodramatic about it.” 

 “I love being melodramatic about stuff!” Cyrus cheered, to which TJ laughed. 

 They both began sketching out a rough draft, arms brushing much like they had the previous day, and for some reason Cyrus couldn’t will down the blush on his face. TJ kept sending him all these furtive glances, and he was on the verge of shuffling away so that he wouldn’t be so distracted by them. He remained though, right until the bell sounded, and the boy gave him a smile as they began to pack up.

 “I’m so glad you told me about that dream.”

 “Me too.”

 TJ got up from his chair, smile softening slightly. “I’ll see you next lesson, yeah?” 

 “Yeah,” he breathed out, much quieter than intended, as he watched the boy head towards the door. 

 He sent Buffy a glance, who was still packing up her things, before biting his lip and springing up from his chair, catching TJ as he began to weave his way through the crowds. 

 “TJ - wait!”

 He immediately turned around, eyebrows drawn together in confusion as he approached the boy and pulled him gently to the side so as to avoid the rush. 

 “What’s up?” 

 “I, um...I...” 

 What was up? He knew deep down why he’d chased after the boy, but now that TJ was standing in front of him it was like his whole body had just decided to freeze. He opened his mouth to speak, before proceeding to close it again.

 “Are you okay?” TJ asked gently.

 Cyrus nodded. “Yeah, I'm fine! I was just, uh, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to...um...hang out sometime?” 

 TJ’s face brightened. “Like a date?” 

 “Oh! That’s not what I...I mean, yeah! A date would be great. If you want, obviously.” 

 The boy just smiled, taking out his phone. “We can text about plans later tonight.” 

 After exchanging numbers, he gave TJ a beaming smile. “I’ll message you later then!” 

 “I’ll be waiting,” he replied, voice soft in the most heart-melting way possible. Cyrus might’ve swooned a little. 

 As TJ walked towards his basketball friends, who all began shoving him playfully and asking him ‘who the hell that cute boy was,’ Buffy approached him from behind and came to a stop beside him. 

 “Something tells me that having TJ as a partner isn’t just ‘not that bad,’” she teased. 

 “Oh hush,” Cyrus told her, blushing crimson as they began to make their way to their lockers.

[writeanapocalae]

Tooth and Stitch Part 1

They had known that she was coming, of course, father had sent a letter well in advance and another to see that she was received as she ought to be. Yet there was no retainer waiting for her, no one to open the door to her carriage and lead her to the door, nor to Lord Miller. She thus opened the carriage door herself as her driver would not touch it for her and the entire journey had been a long anxious wait through silence. He almost sped off before she was able to get her luggage out of the back end as well.

Then she was alone, in the twilight and courtyard, before a foreboding estate that looked as if it belonged in one of the novels she had stolen from her father's library and was later given by her pack. It was dark and crooked, with heavy curtains protecting the outside world from a view of the inhabitants. The stone was all deep grays and there was damage in places, what looked like they could be claw marks too high up for some animal to reach. Some of the glass in the windows didn't match the rest, having been replaced after breaking.

At the top, in the center most window, there was a silhouette. Tall enough to be a seated man, back lit with candlelight. She was certain that he was Lord Miller. She was also certain that he was watching her.

The courtyard itself wasn't too bad. It was lush, but she could tell there had been no gardener here in a long while as most of the plants were overgrown and riddled with weeds. There had been a plan there at some point but it had lost its path long ago. Still, it all looked far healthier than such a menagerie of plant life would usually allow. The flowers were all extremely fragrant and they helped to cover the smell of vinegar, smoke, and formaldehyde that was coming from somewhere, though she couldn't pinpoint it.

She dragged one of her suitcases up to the door, which was a deep dark wood with a large brass knocker in the shape of a roaring boar. Hanging above the door were herbs and charms, she noted the silver crucifixes and rosaries among dried rosemary, sage, and garlic. Lord Miller was a superstitious man and her father had been right to send her here instead of to some other master or asylum. This was  a man that she was certain knew at least a modicum of her plight.

Before she was able to knock the door opened and a man, or what she assumed to be a man, stood before her, bowing, and holding the door open for her. She couldn't be certain of him though, as he wore a heavy black veil, the kind that was worn by women in mourning. The smell of chemicals and preservatives grew and she crinkled her nose against it.

"My apologies for the delay," he said, his voice like golden syrup that had dripped and caught on the lip of the stove. "You must be Miss Zhu."

She hefted up her suitcase at him. He was dressed in a manner that may have been nice once, in a dark brown waistcoat and a high colored shirt, an olive cravat loosely tied around his neck. The clothing, however, was old and had been repaired in interesting ways, the sleeves looking almost bunched around his elbows and then tight cuffs reaching to his wrists. His pants were completely at odds with the rest of his garments, black and loose, they looked like they'd come from India with their low crotch, though they were also tightly cuffed around the ankles. He must have been the butler, although an odd one.

"You can call me Xie," she corrected, "Lord Miller is still awake I presume? We were delayed on the road for a while, hence my own tardiness."

"Yes, though he is, as per usual, inundated with his work and will not be down for the rest of the evening." He took her bag by the handle and then tipped forward, letting the leather of it clunk against the floor. His back lurched straight as he tried not to let go of it entirely and when he spoke his voice was shaky, quick and quiet. "My apologies. I didn't intend to damage anything."

"There's nothing in there you can damage," she promised, hoping to calm him. He was shaking his head and muttering something under his breath. She prided herself on her excellent hearing but even then she couldn't understand what it was he was whispering. "There are two other bags. I'll take this one if you wish."

He shook his head more vigorously. "No, no, I couldn't allow you to do that miss. It is my duty to take care of those residing in this estate and I will not hear of you carrying your own luggage." Now that he was expecting the weight he was able to lift it far more easily and he brought it into the foyer.

She couldn't stop herself from putting her hands over her nose upon entering. The smell was hair curling. It was as if every surface had been wiped down with vinegar and formaldehyde, but it had done nothing to help with the dust. Even if this place had a butler he must not have been working there long and there couldn't have been more than just him working in the estate. There was a mirror against one wall, as well as many portraits, but they were stained and buried under gray so deep that there was no way that they could be recognized. There was a rug, expensive and once plush, but she didn't dare step on it as it seemed to have soaked in that smell. The candles in their sconces were the only things that looked new and the light that they gave were enough for her but her guide was struggling to see through the darkness and the veil at the same time.

"Excuse my bluntness but has Lord Miller fallen ill?" she asked, sticking to one side of the stairwell so that she could keep her feet on the hardwood. Each of them creaked terribly and she knew that, if she had to, she would not be able to sneak out of the building.

"He has been ill all the years I've known him," the butler huffed, yanking the suitcase up the stairs. "I presume you are concerned about the state of the place and for that I truly am sorry. I have tried to ask him for assistance in keeping up with the grounds but he will not have it and he worries greatly about having too many people here. You are quite lucky that he's taken an interest in your case, for aside from myself he has been alone here all this time."

"What do you know about my case?" she asked, a spark of anxiety climbing up her back like a cat's fur being brushed the wrong direction.

[benjaminjofaiho]

The Captain Next Door Ch.5

Summary: You’re a doctor who also just so happens to be a fan fiction writer. You love lots of fandoms but Captain America is by far your fave, so what happens when you get a new job, move to Brooklyn and realize that the brownstone you bought is right next door to Captain America? Obviously shenanigans ensue.

Warnings: Swearing.

It’s worth noting that I do not care for or abide by the timeline, there are some people mentioned that haven’t technically been brought together yet [ As per Winter Soldier ] but I did it anyway.  P.S. I do not currently have a beta and the ‘f’ and ‘u’ keys on my keyboard are messed up so incase you see repeating letters anywhere they aren’t supposed to be feel free to let me know.

AN: I had so much fun writing this chapter. Please reblog and share. Your feedback is always welcome and I love hearing from y’all.

You looked at his back muscles and not to mention nice ass as he walked up the steps to your house. Yeah. This was definitely going into a fic. The world needs to know about this physique. He turned back to you and asked you if you were ready with that milliwatt smile. You were ready alright. Ready to jump his bones. Just as he was about to turn his keys into his house your phone started to ring. You lifted it to see The Bone Man’s smiling face.

           “Boner, what’s up?”

           “Hey babe, Do you got time for a couple consults?” A couple? Usually it was just the one or two.

           “What do you mean a couple?” You hesitated, putting your finger up to Steve, you were completely taken out of your flirty and laid back mood it was work time. He turned to completely face you and lean on his front door.

           “Yeah I know you’re not working today but there was a freak accident on the highway. I have about 10 patients that need to go into surgery but I need your okay and the on call doctor isn’t answering his phone.”

           “Fucking Daniels. I bet he’s golfing with members of the bboard. I’ll be there, gimme 20.” Ending the call and biting your lip you looked at Steve. You were going to get to go into CAPTAIN AMERICA’S house but Dr. Daniels was in absentia so you were the next call.

           “Listen I’m really sorry but I have to go, there’s emergency at work.” Looking at your watch you absent-mindedly said “I told him 20 but it’ll be more like an hour, I totally forgot it’s rush hour. Alright Captain, duty calls.” Turning and running to go to your brownstone and get your workbag and change your clothes you heard Steve calling out for you.

           “Y/N! Wait!” You turned to see him jogging up to you “Where do you work?”

           “Mount Sainai. Why?”

           “It doesn't have to take that long.”

           Scrunching your face you told him “ I know about the subway,  but I don’t know it that well and I don't want to risk getting lost. Plus I heard the MTA is really unreliable and I don't have time for any delays right now” Spinning back around your continued to your house but you were stopped by an arm around your bicep. It felt as if your body came alive. Usually when you were thinking about work you had a really one track mind. Work was still on your mind while your bicep burned, it just wasn't at the forefront. You looked down and saw a large hand that you would have imagined was very rough but was actually soft and then looked up to Steve’s face. For a moment he was staring down at his hand too. Snapping out of whatever haze he was in he let you go.

           “Sorry.” His hand shot up. “I can get you there in 15.”

           “15 minutes?” You asked, confused. It took 20 minutes to get to work without traffic. How was he going to get you there faster than that? You decided to voice that particular concern.            

           “Just trust me, Go get your stuff and I’ll be waiting for you when you get out.” Knowing you had no time to argue you just turned and ran up the steps into you home. Within ten minutes you were back with your hair up in a bun and jeans with a blouse. All signs of Saturday rest and relaxation were off of you. And there he sat. Atop a fucking motorcycle. You almost tripped over nothing and your eyes were bugging. You were sure of it..

           “Absolutely not.” You began.

           “You’ll be fineeeee” He started to persuade. “ Think of all the people you could save. And potentially loose if you call an Uber. Come on. Get on.” Realizing he was right you were about to get up behind him and then you stopped again.

           “What’s up Doc?” He smiled. Under normal circumstances that would have gotten a light chuckle out of you. But aren’t weekend Y/N. Weekend Y/N had checked out and Work Y/N was here and in complete control despite her faltering 10 minutes ago.

           “I can’t get on that death trap without a helmet” You shrugged pulling out your phone about to open the Uber app.

           “Hey” He said and he was in front of you in an instant. “Of course I would get you a helmet. We have to protect the precious cargo.” Handing you an all-black helmet. How many times would he alone you make you grateful for your melanin that a blush you could feel was creeping up behind. He took your bag from you while letting you put the helmet on.  He sat on the bike and waited for you to get on. This was the closest you’d been to him in your almost 3 months of knowing each other and you weren’t touching him but you might as well have been. You could feel the heat radiating off his back. Flipping the face shield up you asked how you wouldn't fly off. Was there some sort of mini motorcycle seatbelt or something?

           “Yeah of course look at the end of your arms” He laughed. “You can either wrap them around me or hold on to that little railing on either side of the back.” You looked back and indeed there was a little railing, then opting to respect his boundaries; hold on to those. The engine come alive beneath you and you let out a little squeal you hoped he didn't hear.

           “Ready? He shouted.

           “Yeah” You shouted back trying to sound as normal as possible. You were off and zipping through your borough and were on the highway in 4 minutes. Shortly after you pulled up behind a sedan where you stayed for almost a full minute. Traffic was no joke and you started to think maybe it would have been better for you to take the subway. Moving  closer to Steve so he could hear you began to shout over all the engines around you.

           “Traffic is worse than I expected! I think I should have gotten on the subway”. In lieu of responding he just shook his head. You heard him saying something from behind the screen shield of his helmet. After asking what several times, he annoying flipped up his visor and said “I said hold on!” You were the closest you'd ever been in your months of knowing each other.  You were able to see his eyes weren’t all the way blue actually, they had a bit of gold flecks in them. Only being able to manage a strangled ‘okay’ he flipped his visor down.

           Grabbing the handles behind you and clenching your teeth you closed your eyes and prepared for the worst. But you weren’t prepared for what happened. The world started to fly by you and all you could see the back of Steve and the your blurred surrounding. Before you knew it you were screaming and found your arms all the way wrapped around Captain America. Boundaries be damned, this man was trying to kill you. Did you he know you belonged to people? Did he know you were someone’s child? You both made it to the hospital in 9 minutes and you got off the back of his bike with shaking knees.  

           “Steven. It feels like my esophagus dropped through my chest knocking my heart into my stomach causing a ripple effect that made my uterus fly out of my asshole.” Before being able to stop yourself your hands shot up to cover your mouth. “Excuse my language. I appreciate the ride but that was crazy.” Meanwhile Steve was keeled over his handlebars laughing enough for the whole island of Manhattan.

           Between fits of laughter he managed “Y/N, you know to call me Steve come on. And plus it was my pleasure, you've been feeding me well for months so this was honestly the least I could do. By the way what time do you get off work?”

           “Oh Steve, you don’t have to do that-” he cut you off immediately.

           “I’ll  be in the area. I was supposed to come down here during the week but since I’m already here I might as well get stuff done. Plus, I’ve been hearing a lot about global warming, and that its my generations fault and how we can help emissions by doing communal rides and such which, so I’m picking you up because it’s my civil duty, and to collectively lower our…carbon footprint?” you couldn't help but smile. You were had no idea the great Captain America was a rambler.

           “Okay.” And you both looked at each other smiling small and you turned to walk away. Turing back around “Oh! By the way, if you happen to finish your…stuff before I’m done take Sonia’s number. She’ll be able to direct you to my office where you can wait and if you’re hungry she can grab you something to eat as well. There’s a TV in there so you can watch the news or whatever old men do” You ended laughing and his smile got bigger as well. Turning around and walking through the automatic doors of the hospital Work Y/N was back. It was game time.

           After quickly changing into your scrubs and lab coat you paged Boner and were able to find him near intake with a patient.

           “Bone man, talk to me” You began. You heard a patient laugh and question Bone man?

           “Excuse me ma’am, Dr. Y/L/N. knows my name is Dr.Siriboe she just likes to joke.” He leaned in close to her like he was about to reveal a top secret and put his hand up to the side of his mouth. “You know I heard she wanted to be a comedian at first, but she didn’t have the chops so she settled for being a doctor. Not as funny but I guess it keeps the lights on” He ended with a shrug. The patient began to laugh. You knew Boner was funny but he wasn't tears in your eyes funny. This was because he was a handsome surgeon. You were woman enough to admit his good looks. Keeping it as professional as you could with someone you’d known for so long, you got started.

           With a smile still on your voice you asked “So, what do we have here?”

====================Steve’s POV=======================

           He had nothing to do. Absolutely nothing. But when he felt her arms wrap around him like that? He knew he was hooked and was looking for any way to get a fix. So he pulled up to the place he would always go when he needed time to think. The Met.

           The Met served as a sort of mental relief and motivation/inspiration, depending on his head space when he decided to visit. But as of late, he hadn’t needed to visit because. He didn’t know he just felt, satiated. He looked around at various exibits and found himself staring at a portrait of an open field of flowers. Physically he was staring at that painting but in reality he was looking through it, and thinking of you. He spent the next few hours wandering around the Meuseum for hours. Around 6 he decided to head back over to the hospital to see if she was ready to go.

           Upon arrival he texted Sonia and got the instructions to your office. Finally walking in he saw the smile on your assistant’s face welcoming him and asking him if there was anything he needed.

           “I’m fine thank you ma’am, although, would you be able to help me turn the news on in Dr. Y/L/N’s office?”

           “Of course Sir.” she replied. “And please, Sonia is fine.

            After a few minutes of silence with her setting up the TV for him he asked “Please don’t take this the wrong way. But why aren’t you acting more nervous? Not that I want you to or anything…just curious.” Sonia let out a light laugh.

           “To be honest I kind of know of you a bit. I speak with Sam a lot and you’ve come up in conversations plenty of times seeing as how the both of you are in some type of love affair” She began to audibily laugh and then absentmindedly added “Plus I can’t the good Doc to shut up about you, so I sort of feel as if I know you already.” She continued to search for the right channel. Before he could stop himself he found himself asking

           “Really? Y/N talks about me? What does she say?” All he heard was a distracted ‘hmm?’ in way of response.

           “Excuse me, Sonia” He began again. “What does she say about me?”

           “I’m sorry what?” Sonia turns her face in his direction with her eyes still glued on the screen. It was clear she was responsive but not present.

           “Sonia?”

           “Yes! Oh I’m so sorry! I always get confused by this TV.” She said landing on BBC and finally turning to give him her full attention. “What was your question again?”

           “Y/N? What does she say about me?” He’d never thought it would be possible to see the color drain from a person with such a rich complexion but he was witnessing it.

           “I don't think I said that, Captain”

           “Oh yes you did. You said, and I quote ‘To be honest I kind of know of you a bit. I speak with Sam a lot and you’ve come up in conversations plenty of times seeing as how the both of you are in some type of love affair. Plus I can’t the good Doc to shut up about you, so I sort of feel as if I know you already’ Actually. By your words it seems as if she talks about me a lot. So, what does she say?” Sonia started backing out of Y/N’s office.

           “ You know the usual…nothing unscrupulous…You know her, shes a sweetheart. Only good things and you can believe me about that” She answered nervously.

           “Can’t you give me any specifics?” He turned the Captian America charm on 3000. Who was he becoming? Since when did he imagine doing sinful things to beautiful women and it was getting out of his control. Since when did he try to do anything possible to get closer to a woman ? Physically and otherwise? Since when did he draw the same subject over and over for God’s sake? He was a disciplined, responsible, respectable man. Who was Y/N turning him into? Even in the midst of this mental crisis he knew she wouldn't be able to refuse the Charm.

           “ Nothing much. You’re really friendly and helpful, and brave because of your job and all that ya’know? And that you have a nice smile but your eyes. Good lord when she starts on your eyes I know to take a seat because we are gonna be here for a while.” She began to playfully mimick your accent “Oh my God Sonia, I’ve never seen eyes so blue” and then as if noticing she was spilling all the beans her hand shot up over her mouth. “You never heard that! You never even spoke to me! In fact I’m just the pretty lady with the beautiful accent to you!”

           He couldn't help but laugh. And he was happy for it because before her little outburst he was feeling something that he was sure other people would deem as shy? Or was he blushing? He had no idea but he didn’t like the feeling one bit so laughter was a nice change of pace.

           “Hey” He said grinning as he shot his hands up “ No one will ever get a word out of me.”

           “Thank you” she breathed a sigh of relief  “That would have been my ass.” With that she left him in the office. He had a little while to think to himself it didn't last long because he could see the profile of a man talking to Sonia out in the little reception and shortly he turned and walked into her office.

           “Hello Sir, it’s such an honor to meet you. I’m Dr.Siriboe, I work in a different department than Dr. Y/L/N, but when Sonia told me you were here I couldn’t pass up the chance to meet you. Thank you for all your service and sacrifice. My grandfather fought in WW2 so I grew up hearing stories about the front line and I know the tax it takes on a person. Your hard work does not go unnoticed, Captain.” He smiled. Steve smiled back

           “It’s good to meet you, Dr. Siriboe. I’m just a guy that decided to put on a uniform one day but you, decided to put on a white coat and save lives. That is an equally if not more taxing and hororable carrer so the pleasure is mine.” Simling widely Dr.Siriboe gave a small nod in way of accepting the comment and asked the captain to sit down with him.

           “So” He began “You like 2k?”

           “Love it!” Steve replied with a big smile.

           “Wanna play? You know what matter of fact I can’t do that to you. I’m sure whopping your ass would be considered treason or something.”

           “To be commit treason you would have to be in possession of some type of threat.” Looking around the office Steve continued “But I don't see anything threatening in here.”

           “Ohhhh Cap’s got jokes!” Kofi said laughing with Steve. “But its not gonna be so funny when I decimate you in this game. Then Imma be the only one laughing.”

           “Now son, If I go in on you it would be considered heroism in defense of our great nation”           Steve snapped back laughing. “You don’t want these problems.”

           “Son? Sir. Sir. Excuse me, sir. If I were to really get started by the time I was done witcha they’d arrest me on elder abuse and I’m liable to catch a case.”

           Before he knew it they had been playing a game of madden for about 30 mintues and between the little conversation and a whole lot of shit talking he really took a liking to Kofi. He enjoyed his company and he was always looking for new friends that weren’t attached to S.H.E.L.D. in any way possible. He seemed down to earth, and a happy go lucky fellow. Obviously he was smart to be able to become a doctor so he had that going for him as well.

He seemed like the type of guy that would already had been Steve’s friend if they hadn’t just met, he had a friendly personality. Then he wondered why he had never heard of this man before. This is the type of man Y/N should hang around, not that Boner fellow. They seemed as if they would be good friends and he decided then, that he would introduce the two. As if she was a genie and manifested though her doors.

           “Oh! Hey! Steve! You’re here!” She said looking winded.

           “Yeah I am. I’ve been here for a little under an hour just chilling with-” turning behind him to gesture to Kofi “Dr. Siriboe. Dr. Siriboe officially meet Dr. Y/L/N, Dr. Y/L/N, meet Dr, Siriboe, he works in…well actually I didn't even get his department. I’m sorry what department do you work in? You never really mentioned it.”

           “He’s in ortho” She said, cutting him off. Kofi and Y/N stared at each other for bursting out laughing leaving Steve uttlerly confused.

           “Steve, this is the Bone man!” Steve felt something sour in the back of his throat. This? This was dR. bOnEr? THE dr. Boner? That she wouldn't ever leave out of important decisions? The one that helps her when she needs it and doesn't know who to call? This is the guy she was referring to as ‘sort of her work husband and sort of her husband husband?’

           “Oh.” Was all he could manage. He was sure if he could see his own face in that moment it would look something like a 6month old who was constipated. He’d been on the couch fraternizing with the enemy?! Why would he be the enemy? Why would he even think of that? Why had he been internally monologuing this whole day? Again what the hell was she doing to him?

           “Well” He began trying to recover “Are you ready to go home?”

           “Oh! You came to give her a ride? I thought we were gonna split an uber and Rate the Pache as usual and maybe pick up some Thai?”

           “Shut up about Rate the Pache boner! Damnit that's supposed to be between just me and you!” She whisper shouted. He couldn't help himself and asked.

           “What’s rate the pache?” He asked turning to Kofi knowing you wouldn't give him an answer.

           “Well,-” Kofi started

           “Traitor!” She shouted and to be honest it startled Steve a little. He had never seen this playful and mischievous side to her before. He’d seen glimmers of it with Sam but never this full out and raw. He assumed it was because of their old friendship, but that didn't stop the little green monster coming to life within him. Who was he becoming?

Laughing Kofi continued “Rate the Pache is something we started doing back in med school. At the end of the day we get together and rate the patients we worked with on that day. Who would we bone, if there was no repercussions to our careers.” Looking over to you he saw your hands covering your face with what he thought was embarrassment. The practice was a little iffy admittedly, but he couldn't help thinking that she just looked so damn cute acting shy like that.

           “Anyway!!!” She shouted and turned to him. “Steve, I just have to get a couple things done here iff you don't mind waiting like 20 minutes and then we can head home.”

           “Sure, no problem” He said.

           “Well, we can try to finish this game” Kofi said interrupting his train of thought.

           “Ahh I didn't know you were open to public beat downs Kofi, lets do it!” Steve laughed.

           After about 15 minutes of playing, she asked Sonia for a cup of tea and Sonia told her it would be ready in a few, however the next person to open her door was not Sona, but a man instead.    

           “Dr. Daniels” She started, “How nice of you to answer your page” looking at her watch “hmmm… 6 hours too late. People could have died.” The room went silent and everyone turned to look at the late doctor.

           “Dr. Y/L/N, I’m terribly sorry. It started off with me trying to just have a meeting with some of the board members and then they refused to let me leave without playing a round. But I promise the meeting was worth while. I was able to get cardio 3 million dollars for research!”         She let out a squeal.

           “Really?! Damnit Daniels! I was really prepared to rip you a new one but I can’t be mad at this. This money will change so many lives and help preventative care so much. Thank you.” She ended quietly.

           “Of course. Meanwhile I swung by my house and got you something.”

           “Is it what I think it is?”

           “Your blueberry tea leaves as requested. And I threw in some blueberry scones just as you like them. Try one now. I added something new and I want to know if you can taste a difference.”      

           Biting into one she moaned which was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. If he weren’t so busy being something in the neighborhood of jealous he might have actually started to feel aroused. Why the hell was she surrounded by all these…Men? Men who had eyes just like him to see how wonderful she was. Men who had dirtier minds than him imaging all sorts of things.

           “Is this lemon glaze drizzled overtop?” She asked.

           “Good pallete! I call them blueberry lemonade.” He replied.

           “I mean this with all repect daniels, if things don't work out here in the hospital and I fire your ass for something you do to annoy me, you could definitely make it as a baker.”

           That pulled a laugh for a quiet Kofi which made this Dr. Daniels aware of his presence as well as Steve’s as well as if he didn’t notice the both of them before.

           “Kofi, what’s up man? Sorry I missed the pages.” Daniels said nodding to Kofi.

           “Don't worry about it man. You know Y/N zoomed in to save the day as usual.” Turing to face Steve it was then he noticed who he was. Steve could always see the change in people when they recognized him. He noticed the Dr. stood up a little taller, and cleared his throat lightly. Oh, he was a fan.

           “Hello, my name is Dr. Gerald Daniels, It’s a pleasure to meet you Captain America.”

           “Nice to meet you Dr. Daniels, likewise.” Steve said giving a patented smile. “Congrats on your new research money by the way.”

           “Thankyousomuch” Daniels rushed out. Then zipping back to her “Enjoy the tea and deserts. See you Monday. I’ll go round on the patients you had today, so you can get home.” With that he was out of the office and left a bouncing Y/N at her desk happy as could be.

           After she finished her scone, Steve watched her walk out of her office and go talk to Sonia. He watched her throw her head back in laughter and couldn't help but imagine yanking her hair back and burying his face in her neck taking in her sweet smell. He wanted to bury something else in her too but then he heard Kofi aggressively clearing his throat.

           “You like what you see?” He started.

           “Sorry?” Steve decided to play stupid.

           “ I mean any other day, I would let you be distracted and continue to score on you while you look in a completely oppsite direction just as I have in the last 2 mintues already scoring 3 times but...” He paused the game “ That’s Y/N. I’m protective over her.” He said seriously.

           “I really don’t know what you think you-” Steve started but Kofi interrupted him.

           “Listen man, I’m not blind. What are you trying to do with her? You know what? That’s none of my business. Whatever it is, make sure you’re clear about it and don't hurt her. Because at that point you’re gonna have more to worry about than aliens falling out of the sky.” With that he unpaused the game and continued to play as if nothing happened between them. Steve turned back to Y/N and Sonia to see Sonia walking out of the office and Y/N looking out the big window. All of a sudden she turned and looked directly at him and gave him a small smile that felt like an ember lighting a fire.  It was a smile he returned.

           “Alright people.” She started after walking back into her office. “I’m just about ready to go and Sonia’s gone for the day, apparently she has a date to get to.” She said wiggling her eyebrows and laughing. Kofi stood.

           “Okay I just got a page myself, so I have to run.” He stretched his arm out to steve. “Nice to meet you man.” Kofi had that easy go lucky smile but his grip was telling another story. It said if you fuck this up I fuck you up. Steve didn’t know where he stood with Kofi. Thiking of him as boner he didn’t like him at all but getting to know him as Kofi he knew he was someone he could befriend plus him sticking up for Y/N like that really won him points in Steve’s book as much as he hated to admit it. He sorta liked the guy.

           Turning to Y/N kissed her cheek and jogged out the door and she looked after him. What the hell was going on with those two?  He couldn’t place his finger on it. Was she maybe into him? Before he could even think of the situation further. She sat on the couch next to him while putting her feet up on the table and let out a big sigh.

           “So how was your day Steve?”

            “Well” he began mentally scrambling. “ I finished those errands I told you about but I ended up at the Met as I usually do.”

           “Usually? What do you do there usually?”

           “I look through Picassos stuff, they’re permanently on display. Then I go through the current exhibits. I like looking at things from all over the world and from varying time periods. Sort off broadening my artistic palette if you will” He said with an easy smile.

           “I’ve never been to the Met! It’s on my list of to-dos before I officially become a New Yorker.”

           “Then I have to take you down there one of your free days. We can. Make a day of it. Remember, doing my civil duty and all.”

           “Sounds good, I’ll let you know” She said quietly. Off course. She was back to her normal self now, trying to let him down easy. He didn't want to make her any more uncomfortable than she already was and suggested they go home.

           She turned off her light in her office and her stomach let out a noise that demanded for attention and she let out a laugh.

           “I’m a little hungry, can you tell?”

           “Right!” Steve said snapping. “Kofi mentioned something about Pad Thai? I know the best Thai restaurant in all the boroughs.”

           “I have to stop ya there chief. If it’s not New Saigon then you are sorely mistaken. Me and boner have been eating there since I used to visit him here in the city and lived back down south. He’s something of a foodie and I’m inclined to believe him.”

           “Hey! I know something or two about food as well. I promise you you’ll like it.” He stared at her while she stared at him and the both of them had a silent battle of wills.

           “Fine! But if I don't like this place, I get to choose where we eat from now on.” Now on? Does that imply that we’ll be doing this more often? Steve decided not to over think it and just live in the moment. He told her wait at the front of the hospital while he pulled the motorcycle around. He couldn't help but notice a pep in his step and it all began with him thinking of having her arms wrapped around him again. Pulling up to the hospital he saw he nervous face in view and let out a little laugh. She was the cutest. He handed her the helmet.

           “Where are we going anyway?” She said taking the helmet from him.

           “It’s this little hole in the wall called Jai-Yen.

           “Jai-Yen” She repeated quietly. “I’ve never heard of it.”

           “Well you have now.” Steve smiled. “Let’s get going.”

           “Alright, take me on your devil machine” She said putting on the helmet. Steve laughed and shook his head. As soon as she was stable on the back of the bike they were off.

Taglist: @champagnesugamama@smooth-sunflower@queenwinchester27 @hamilboots @trees-are-friends

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

In trying to build a forecast model of the Democratic primaries, we literally had to think about the entire process from start (Iowa) to finish (the Virgin Islands on June 6). Actually, we had to do more than that. Since the nomination process is sequential — states vote one at a time rather than all at once — we had to determine, empirically, how much the results of one state can affect the rest.

The answer in the case of Iowa is that it matters a lot. Despite its demographic non-representativeness, and the quirks of the caucuses process, the amount of media coverage the state gets makes it far more valuable a prize than you’d assume from the fact that it only accounts for 41 of the Democrats’ 3,990 pledged delegates.

More specifically, we estimate — based on testing how much the results in various states have historically changed the candidates’ position in national polls — that Iowa was the second most-important date on the calendar this year, trailing only Super Tuesday. It was worth the equivalent of almost 800 delegates, about 20 times its actual number.

Which states will produce the biggest bounces?

Expected bounce magnitude according to FiveThirtyEight’s primary model

Relative bounce magnitude Date States Based on delegates Early state bonus Combined Feb. 3 Iowa +3 +20 +23 Feb. 11 New Hampshire +2 +10 +12 Feb. 22 Nevada +3 +5 +8 Feb. 29 South Carolina +3 +5 +8 Mar. 3 Colorado, Alabama, Utah, Oklahoma, Vermont, Texas, Tennessee, Maine, Virginia, North Carolina, California, American Samoa, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Arkansas +30 +30 Mar. 10 Mississippi, Michigan, North Dakota, Washington, Missouri, Idaho, Democrats Abroad +12 +12 Mar. 14 Northern Marianas +1 +1 Mar. 17 Ohio, Arizona, Florida, Illinois +16 +16 Mar. 24 Georgia +5 +5 Mar. 29 Puerto Rico +3 +3 Apr. 4 Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, Louisiana +5 +5 Apr. 7 Wisconsin +4 +4 Apr. 28 Rhode Island, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Pennsylvania +18 +18 May 2 Guam, Kansas +3 +3 May 5 Indiana +4 +4 May 12 Nebraska, West Virginia +3 +3 May 19 Kentucky, Oregon +5 +5 June 2 New Mexico, New Jersey, South Dakota, Montana, District of Columbia +8 +8 June 6 Virgin Islands +1 +1

Everything was a little weird in Iowa this year, however. And there were already some signs that the Iowa bounce — which essentially results from all the favorable media coverage that winning candidates get — might be smaller than normal. Iowa was bracketed by an extremely busy news calendar: President Trump’s impeachment trial both before and after the caucuses, the Super Bowl on Sunday, the State of the Union address on Tuesday. There was not the usual climactic uptick in media coverage around Iowa. From initial indications — to the extent any information at all is reliable at this point — Democratic turnout there wound up being fairly low.

But we weren’t prepared for what actually happened, which is that — as I’m writing this at 3:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning — the Iowa Democratic Party literally hasn’t released any results from its caucuses. I’m not going to predict what those numbers will eventually be, although early indications are that Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and perhaps Elizabeth Warren had good results. The point is that the lead story around the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses is now — and will forever be — the colossal shitshow around the failure to release results in a timely fashion.

Maybe there will eventually be a decent-sized Iowa bounce despite all of this. But there’s a good chance that the candidates who did well in Iowa get screwed, and the candidates who did poorly there get a mulligan. To repeat: There’s very little importance in a mathematical sense to who wins 41 delegates. Iowa is all about the media narrative it produces and all about momentum, and that momentum, whoever wins, is likely to have been blunted.

Who might this help? Let’s pretend for a moment we don’t have any hints about how the results might have turned out. In fact, let’s pretend that Iowa didn’t happen at all. I re-ran our forecast model as though the Iowa caucuses were canceled.1 Here’s how that changed each candidate’s chances of getting a delegate majority:

How Iowa’s presence affected Democrats’ odds

Chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates per FiveThirtyEight forecast model on Feb. 3 (pre-Iowa), compared with a version of the model that skips the Iowa caucuses

Candidate As of our final PRE-IOWA SIMULATIONS ON Monday night In A HYPOTHETICAL SIMULATION WHERE Iowa didn’t exist Biden 43% 50% Sanders 31 24 Warren 5 5 Buttigieg 4 <1 Other <1 <1 No one 17 20

The presence of Iowa was helpful to Bernie Sanders, whose chances of winning a national delegate majority would have been 24 percent without Iowa — as compared to the 31 percent chance that he had with Iowa, as of Monday afternoon. Iowa was hurtful to Joe Biden, however, whose chances of a delegate majority would have been 50 percent without it, rather than 43 percent with it.

And Iowa was extremely helpful to Buttigieg, whose chances of winning the delegate majority were fairly low even with Iowa — keep in mind that he had slipped to third in polls of Iowa and fifth in national polls — but would have been virtually nonexistent (less than one percent) without it.

By giving the winning candidates a boost, the presence of Iowa also reduced the chance of an unstructured race and a potential brokered convention. The chance of there being no delegate majority was 17 percent without Iowa, but would have been 20 percent with it.

Granted, none of those changes — say, 24 percent versus 31 percent — are necessarily that large. But that’s partly because, as of Monday afternoon, four or five candidates appeared to have a shot at winning Iowa. For the candidate who actually won Iowa, it would have been a much bigger deal. We estimate that Sanders’s chances of a majority would have shot up to from 31 percent to 58 percent with an Iowa win, Warren’s from 5 percent to 32 percent, and Buttigieg’s from 4 percent to 22 percent.

And in some ways that still discounts Iowa’s impact, because several of the campaigns — for better or worse — built their entire strategy around the state. Would Buttigieg have been a major player in the race without Iowa? Considering his lack of support among black voters, probably not. Would candidates such as Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Julian Castro have dropped out so soon? That’s a harder call, since Harris, Booker and Castro weren’t polling particularly well anywhere. But the Democratic field might have remained a little more diverse.

So we’ve arrived at a point of some ambivalence. On the one hand, candidates such as Buttigieg, who seemingly did well there, are liable to be injured by the muddled storylines in Iowa following the results-reporting disaster on Monday night. On the other hand, it’s not clear why Iowa was afforded so much importance in the first place, and Buttigieg possibly owed his entire presence in the campaign to this quirk in the nomination process. Nonetheless, these were the rules of the game, as every candidate understood them. So if Iowa turns out not to matter very much because of the results-reporting snafu, they have every right to be upset.

To be even more blunt: the Iowa Democratic Party’s colossal screw-up in reporting results will potentially have direct effects on the outcome of the nomination process. The failure to report results will almost certainly help Biden, assuming that indications that he performed poorly in Iowa are correct, as they won’t get nearly as much media coverage. And they’ll hurt whichever candidate wins the state — mostly likely Sanders or Buttigieg. (Although if Sanders winds up finishing in second place or lower, he also might not mind a reduction in the importance of Iowa, especially with one of his best states, New Hampshire, coming up next.)

Furthermore, Iowa is typically a state that winnows the field. But with every candidate either having performed well there, potentially having an excuse for a disappointing finish there, or somewhere in between, it might not do that. Delaying the winnowing process would tangibly increase the chance of a contested convention.

It’s not a good situation for the Democratic Party. And it’s already too late for the damage to be entirely undone, even if Iowa eventually gets its act together.

[mild-lunacy]

Complaining (is a great hobby)

More random things I hate (or just really don't like) enough to complain here, even though no one cares. Or maybe it's *because* no one cares. But yeah, this is why I don't read most YA.

- YA plots that depend on really weirdly structured post-apocalyptic societies that somehow involve groups of teens fighting for their life in increasingly unlikely ways. Oh man, Katniss, you've created a monster. I haven't actually read the books, but the Hunger Games movies worked because they just kind had that combination of implicitly artificial reality TV and the excuse of a dictatorship ordering atrocities that don't need to make sense. But without that fake reality TV aspect, you're left with the fact that reality doesn't, you know, have teams. Yes, not even in high school. Maybe more to the point, after the first few times, it's no longer cool to say the whole world can be high school no matter what your specific plot is. It's just stupid.

- YA plots that depend on magical schools that-- once again-- exist and operate both autonomously and recklessly, in ways that have no obvious reason. Which is funny 'cause, of course, HP started it. In my opinion, HP worked primarily because it's so heavily on the satiric side in terms of world-building. Things in Hogwarts are so over-the-top because the entire world is. The HP world is consistently wacky and dangerous. When you take the 'dangerous magic school'  thing super seriously, suddenly, yeah-- it's just stupid.

- Maybe this doesn't need to be said, but I consider most love triangles to be tiresome and obvious rather than exciting. Usually the endgame is all too obvious, and is only delayed by unnecessary misunderstandings and angst. This doesn't mean you have to write unrealistically stable and mature teen romance. More books should try what Maggie Stiefvater did, and simply have interesting and helpful relationships that involve good character development and then simply end, particularly with the characters as friends. I know she hadn't written it for that purpose (probably), and I don't necessarily think YA needs to be didactic, but I think showing how to have temporary but respectful relationships would, you know, be useful to actual teenage readers more than yet another pointless triangle.

- I'm a huge fairy-tale retelling fan. So it means something when I say there's such a glut-- so very many-- that I have no idea what to read and so I read none. It's gotten beyond saturation to simple exhaustion.

- This goes beyond YA, but I definitely think the focus on large-scale plots revolving around whole organizations and huge casts is off-putting. It wouldn't bother me as much if their purpose didn't inevitably involve fighting bad guys. I've said this before, with fantasy and the idea of The One, but this applies just as well to YA-- human-scale plots matter more. Human stakes just mean more. And most of the time, evil is just an excuse to kill people you don't have to feel sorry for. The main reason the HP books' breadth worked for me is 'cause everything was focused through Harry and his friends. Voldemort wasn't really front and center until the last book, and even then, I wouldn't say it was about killing Voldemort, really. The story is about Harry and his friends growing up, and that's what I like. In the end, it's that narrow focus that works for me with The Raven Cycle and Six of Crows, too.

- This also goes beyond YA to many genres, but I consider endless series to the point of barely any stand-alone books to be pretty off-putting. I generally think twice and then again before making the commitment of a ten-book plus series. It's funny 'cause people used to complain about the preponderance of trilogies, but now I'd say a trilogy is nice and neat. 🙄 Anyway, I don't think it's a coincidence that HP, at seven books, is the longest YA I've read by far. And I only consider that remotely appropriate because it was a book per school year, rather than an exercise in 'let's see how long we can extend the plot'. Anyway, I don't think it's a coincidence that most book series I'm into are trilogies and under (thanks, Leigh Bardugo). There should be a lot more books like 'The Scorpio Races'.

[dmgqs17]

Why to start the Canada Immigration Express Entry process in 2021?

Canada has fix out to invite at least 401,000 immigrants yearly opening this year, with over one-quarter set to reach over the Canada Immigration Express Entry system.

The immigration section is at present opening the year off tough. On Saturday, IRCC held a historically large Canada Immigration Express Entry draw with a generally low CRS necessity. There were 27,332 value candidates invited, who only required a CRS of at least 75. These applicants required to be qualified for the Canadian Experience Class in order to be welcomed.

In addition to CEC precise draws, IRCC has also believed draws guiding applicants who accept a submission from a Canada Provincial Nominee Program. Later the February 13 draw, the quantity of ITAs delivered was more than threefold what it was at the similar period in 2020.

It drives without saying that Express Entry is random, but we do distinguish that Canada has dedicated to inviting 108,500 beginners through Express Entry-managed agendas in 2021. Travel limitations are upright in the way of attaining this determined aims, but the immigration minister has said that labors will be absorbed on finding trails for provisional residents in Canada to changeover to permanent residence.

If you are in Canada, currently is the phase to update your profile in the Express Entry, as lengthy as you are qualified. Though your profile is in the pool waiting for an Invite to Apply (ITA), you can continuously take phases to progress your CRS score, like stand up to new language test results or Educational Credential Assessment.

What if you are not in Canada?

IRCC will invite more skilled employees from overseas when travel limitations are lifted, permitting to a media announcement.

Travel limitations are in place as a community security amount, and they will be detached when the government chooses that the advantage of friendly immigrants overshadows the risk of increasing COVID-19. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recurrently assured that everyone in Canada who needs a vaccine will be talented to get one by the end of September, 2021. This is not to say that limitations will finish at this time, but it is aim to be hopeful for extensive immunity in Canada.

When conclusive on the greatest period for you to submit your profile into the Express Entry pool, deliberate that the procedure can take months from the period you decide you need immigration to Canada from India when you are essentially accepted for permanent residence.

In instruction to arrive to the pool from the FSWP, the greatest mutual way for those overseas, you require your language test grades and an Educational Credential Assessment, which can both proceeds a some months to finish.

If you receive an ITA, you drive to have 90 days to submit for permanent residence. Later you stand up to your submission, IRCC’s handing out average is six months.

If your request is accepted, you acquire your Confirmation of Permanent Residence, which is lawful till your health examination or passport expires. This is the phase of the procedure that is presently delayed by travel limitations. COPR holders who were accepted after March 18, 2020, are usually not permissible to come to Canada. In instruction to cross the border and complete their landing, they obligation to be excused from travel limitations for some additional aim, like coming for essential work, or to reunite with family. They might also be permitted in if they are arriving to Canada from their home-based in the U.S. Though, they cannot travel through the U.S. from alternative country.

These are the things to deliberate when decisive if you require to twitch the Express Entry process from overseas. Canada has a massive potential to hold, so we can guess to see more large Express Entry draws that might even have lower CRS desires— depending on how many persons are in the pool and how large the draws are. Canada is showing it clear that currently is not the phase to arrive, but with injections being moved out all over the world it is fair a stock of period before borders regenerates.

When limitations renews, the FSWP will show a important role in succeeding Canada’s immigration objectives, as it was the prime class of Express Entry immigrants previous to the pandemic, and has been the principal class of skilled workers to Canada meanwhile the FSWP was hurled in 1967. Under its 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan, Canada purposes to invite over 400,000 immigrants per year with a normal of 110,000 yearly set to reach through Express Entry.

[duncepatrick92]

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What Can I Do To Help Premature Ejaculation

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[quranreadalong]

ARMED CONFLICTS OF EARLY ISLAM PT 5

By the summer of 628 AD, Mohammed is out here feeling like Alexander the Great, sad that there are no more worlds to conquer. He’s dealt with pretty much all of his enemies, barring a few incidents of stamping out dissent. Around this time he is also finally let back into Mecca, courtesy of the treaty, to perform the pilgrimage. And then he looks north, south, and east, and remembers that there is, in fact, a big world out there, and he wants all of it!

This period (late 628-mid 632 AD) begins a dizzying series of raids and conquest expeditions--it’s not clear what the exact chronology here is, because so much happened in such a short span of time. Ibn Ishaq says there were 38 “expeditions” in total from 623 to 632, with most occurring in the second half of that time period; Mohammed personally fought in nine of them.

To avoid overwhelming ourselves here, let’s start with the usual crap: the attacks on various clans in the Hijaz and Najd. In the twenty months or so leading up to the conquest of Mecca, Mo sent some of his top fighters out with forces of a few dozen men each to “spread Islam” far and wide. Umar was sent to harass a Hawazin clan of Turbah (~100 miles east of Taif), who fled before he got to preach the good news to them. Abu Bakr was sent into Najd to deal with some people who persisted in their disbelief. A raid finally took down our spunky Banu Thalaba underdogs.

Some more Ghatafan clans were raided; as per usual, the evildoers fled and the Muslim army grabbed their shit. An attempt to convert the Banu Sulaym with 50 fighters went slightly awry when the clan showered the armed missionaries with arrows. An attempt to convert the Banu Murrah clan near Fadak went similarly awry, resulting in another force coming back later to slaughter everyone they could get their hands on and steal everything they could find. One guy tried to save himself by converting under knifepoint, but was killed anyway, which displeased Mohammed. Some poor Hijazi clan called the Banu al-Mulawwih got murdered to shit for no stated reason. Al-Tabari:

After they had milked the camels, set them to rest by the watering trough, and had stopped moving around, after the first part of the night had passed, we launched the raid on them. We killed some of them, drove away the camels, and set out to return. ... The battle cry of the companions of the Messenger of God that night was "Kill! Kill!"

Al-Tabari’s volume on this time period is called the “Victory of Islam”, and that is really what it is. This whole section is really the beginning of solid Islamic control of Arabia. A few more raids similar to the ones above followed throughout 628 and 629, and during this time period you also begin to see the first clans outside Mohammed’s immediate vicinity start to convert to Islam and ally themselves with Mohammed. The Muslims are seen as the top dogs now, and people think it might be a good idea to join them to avoid the whole Kill! Kill!ing thing.

By the second half of 629, Mohammed’s men had established a pretty firm grip on the entire Hijaz and Najd. It was time for the Muslims to expand their vision. Mohammed began sending letters to various leaders, both Arab and non-Arab, and sent his men to deliver them. Some went to the Gulf coast in eastern Arabia; some went north to the Byzantines and Sassanids; some went across the sea to East Africa. Unfortunately, we do not know what the letters said, as all alleged copies of them have been found to be inauthentic, and the traditions around them are pretty obviously legendary. But the letters themselves evidently were sent.

According to the colorful al-Waqidi, one such letter was given to the leaders of the Ghassanids, who were the northern Arab allies of the Byzantine Empire. They were unenthused by its contents and chopped the head off the individual who gave the letter to them. Ibn Ishaq does not mention this event, but he does mention what happened next: the Muslims tried to attack the Ghassanids and it was a miserable failure. Mohammed’s ex-adopted son (...long story, we’ll see him later in the Quran) Zayd and his cousin Jafar both died in the battle. That was called the Battle of Mutah, which is comically exaggerated (100,000+ people! Including the emperor of Byzantium!) in Islamic sources. More on that later in the surah.

The northern Arab cities, allied with the Ghassanids but living outside their protection, would soon pay for this. Mohammed sent some troops to attack an ally of the Ghassanids, the Banu Quda, who lived north of Wadi al-Qura. Most fled, the others died. Ibn Ishaq also records Mohammed sending a force to attack the northern city of Dumat al-Jandal, instructing his men to “fight everyone in the way of God and kill those who disbelieve in God”, excluding children. Amr ibn al-As, one of the late-arrival opportunists, led an attack on a place ten days north of Medina called Dhat al-Silasil in order to “convoke the Arabs to war on Syria”. (Tabouk, the large conquest expedition, was the following year.)

Other attacks in late 629 involved a comical chase of a coastal Bedouin tribe, wherein the Muslim army lost sight of the fleeing enemy and ended up almost starving to death, only surviving by eating a beached whale; the assassination of a random clan leader accused yet again of “planning to attack Medina” (truly remarkable how many people plotted to attack the city yet none ever did beyond one nigh-bloodless siege); and yet more attacks on Ghatafan clans, convincing many of them to “embrace Islam”.

One event in this era was far more important than anything else. Having firmly established Muslim supremacy in the entire area, Mohammed turned his thoughts to Mecca. Things were fairly peaceful at the moment and the Quraysh were clearly the submissive partner in the relationship, but the issue was that Mohammed was not in charge of Mecca, and this was a problem. He began amassing forces to take the city as quietly as he could, diverting the attention of spies by having his men attack random other targets.

In late 629, the attacks between the Khuzaa and Bakr clans that we talked about in #59 were used as a pretext by Mohammed to accuse the Meccans of breaking the Treaty of Hudaibiyya. Mohammed himself had already broken the treaty several times, of course, and the Quraysh went to Medina to try to settle the matter peacefully, but it was too late. Mohammed wasn’t interested in maintaining the treaty, and he finally had his excuse to get rid of it. He assembled a massive army, said in Muslim sources to be 10,000 armed men strong, and marched on Mecca in four columns, one through each of Mecca’s points of entry.

Abu Sufyan, the Meccan military commander, tried in vain to convince Mohammed not to take the city, knowing that a military confrontation would be unwise. The largest force the Quraysh had ever assembled was smaller than Mohammed’s army, and that included their now-vanquished Jewish allies as well as now-defeated Ghatafan clans. The Quraysh do not seem to have had a standing army of even a third of their enemy’s numbers. The situation was hopeless and the Meccans knew it. They had held out as long as possible, but this was the end of the line.

The conquest of Mecca was fairly anticlimactic for this reason. Minor skirmishes did occur, but by and large the Muslim army simply marched their way to control of the city. When confronted with this inevitability, Abu Sufyan surrendered and “embraced Islam”. Mohammed’s first enemy had been brought low. Mohammed’s home city was now in his hands.

The first thing that Mohammed did after taking Mecca was to purge the Kaaba of all signs of polytheism, destroying its idols. Temples devoted to polytheistic gods were shut down and destroyed. He then executed those few brave, dumb old enemies of his who did not throw themselves at his feet and convert to Islam on the spot, including a slave girl who mocked Islam in songs and an apostate named Abdullah ibn Khatal, who was found clinging to the Kaaba. Ibn Ishaq:

He [Abdullah] had two singing-girls Fartana and her friend who used to sing satirical songs about the apostle, so he ordered that they should be killed with him.

(The other one begged for her life and converted.)

The conquest of Mecca was a big deal. It wasn’t just that Mohammed’s last real enemies were now completely defeated, it was that he won. The Quraysh had always been Enemy #1, even when Mohammed turned his attention elsewhere, and now they were at his feet. That was it--there was no other force in the region able to stand against Mohammed’s men, and everyone knew it. Conversions skyrocketed thereafter.

And the 'Arabs (other than Quraish) delayed their conversion to Islam till the Conquest (of Mecca). They used to say "Leave him (i.e. Muhammad) and his people Quraish: if he overpowers them then he is a true Prophet. So, when Mecca was conquered, then every tribe rushed to embrace Islam

By the time Mohammed marched his men into the downtrodden, half-starved, and frankly pitiful city of Mecca, his ranks were already pretty swollen from the converted and/or conquered tribes. He gained a couple thousand new soldiers from the newly-converted Quraysh and their allies, and various delegations soon came to pledge their loyalty to the Hijaz’s new top warlord. Others resisted, but it was futile. They were beaten down without a second thought until everyone got in line. Dilly-dallying was no longer acceptable; it was the Islam Train or the Death Train for Arab polytheists.

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: 'I have been commanded to fight the people until they testify to La ilaha ill-allah (none has the right to be worshipped but Allah) and that I am the Messenger of Allah, and establish regular prayers and pay Zakat.'

And that is the very unhappy ending to our tale and the end of the beginning of the Islamic conquests. Hunayn was shortly after Mecca’s conquest, then more raids and sieges (including the siege of Taif) in an attempt to cleanse Arabia of polytheists, going all the way into Yemen and into northern Arabia. Tabouk was after that. By this point, so many people had been made to “embrace Islam” that a significant portion of Mohammed’s troops genuinely didn’t give a shit about the religion and were just going along with this because the alternative was being conquered by him, and these are some of the people he whines about when he talks about the fighters who didn’t go with him to Tabouk. This whining makes up the remainder of surah 9.

After Mecca was taken, Mohammed sent his men out to neighboring areas to destroy polytheistic temples and encourage people to “embrace Islam”, with the first temple to be destroyed being the temple to the goddess Uzza in between Mecca and Taif. Temples and shrines to various other gods, including Suwa and Manat, were destroyed in short order. Mohammed would send his merry men to destroy temples straight through until the end of his life, with the large Dhul Khalasa temple  (halfway between Mecca and Sanaa in Yemen) being one of the last. He sent 150 men to take down the temple and kill anyone they found inside of it. The surrounding tribes tried to defend it, but were defeated. A poetess of the crushed people memorialized the incident in a depressing poem, according to Ibn Ishaq:

They came to defend their shrine, only to find Lions with brandished swords clamoring for blood. The women of the Khath'am [local tribe] were, then, humiliated By the men of the Abmas [a Muslim clan], and abased.

Al-Tabari offers a typical account of how the remaining holdouts were brought into the loving embrace of Islam:

The Messenger of God sent Khalid b. al-Walid in the month of Rabi' II, or Jumada I, in the year 10/631 to Banu al Harith b. Kab in Najran and ordered to invite them to Islam for three days before he fought them. If they should respond to him [with the acceptance of Islam], then he was to accept it from them, and to stay with them and teach them the Book of God, the sunnah of His prophet, and the requirements of Islam, if they should decline then he was to fight them.

Khalid departed and came to them, sending out riders in every direction inviting them to Islam and saying, "O people, accept Islam, and you will be safe." So they embraced Islam and responded to his call.

The demolitions of polytheistic places of worship are summarized in depressingly straightforward sentences in works like the Book of Idols, written around 800 AD:

The Quraysh as well as the rest of the Arabs continued to venerate Manah until the Apostle of God … he dispatched ‘Ali to destroy her (idol). ‘Ali demolished her, took away all her [treasures], and carried them back to the Prophet.

Allat continued to be venerated until the Thaqif embraced Islam, when the Apostle of God dispatched al-Mughirah ibn Shu'bab, who destroyed her and burnt her [temple] to the ground.

Ruda was a temple which belonged to the Banu Rabi'ah … It was destroyed by al-Mustawghir.

When the Apostle of God captured Mecca and the Arabs embraced Islam, among the delegates who came to pay their homage was Jarir ibn ‘Abdullah. He came to the Apostle and embraced Islam before him. Thereupon the Apostle addressed him saying, “O Jarir! Wilt thou not rid me of Dhu al-Khalasah?” Jarir replied, “Yea.” So the Apostle dispatched him to destroy it … he was met by the Khath'am and the Bahilah, who resisted him and attempted to defend Dhu al-Khalasah. He, therefore, fought them and killed a hundred men of the Bahilah, its custodians, and many of the Khath'am; while of the Banu Qubafah ibn ‘Amir ibn Khath'am he killed two hundred. having defeated them and forced them into flight, he demolished the building which stood over Dhu al-Khalasah and set it on fire.  

The Apostle of God had, after the battle of Tabuk, sent Khalid ibn al-Walid to destroy [the shrine of Wadd]. But the Banu ‘Abd-Wadd and the Banu ‘Amir al-Ajdar resisted Khalid and attempted to defend the idol. Khalid, therefore, fought and defeated them, and then destroyed [the shrine] and demolished the idol.

Al-Fals continued to be worshipped until the advent of the Prophet, at which time 'Ali ibn abi Talib was dispatched to destroy [the shrine].

There are no records indicating that Arab polytheism survived the seventh century. It was entirely destroyed by Islam, and those who resisted its destruction were killed.

During Mohammed’s lifetime, the conquests reached all the way east, into the Gulf island of Bahrain; to the south, into Yemen; and to the north, right against the border between Arab territory and the Byzantine Empire’s lands and vassal states. With the majority of Arabia in the grip of Islam when Mohammed died of illness in 632 AD, the rest of the Divine Mission was left to his successors. Abu Bakr came first, and half of his brief tenure involved beating down various other self-proclaimed prophets and getting breakaway apostasized tribes back in line. When Umar took over two years later, the Islamic armies were able to fully dedicate themselves to the Out Of Arabia conquests, and.... well, you know the rest.

So, that’s it for our depressing history lesson. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I sure haven’t...  ☹

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛ 

[thesearebobsthoughts]

March 29, 2020

I don’t know how much longer paramedics can keep this up. Via The New York Times:

One New York City paramedic described responding to a suicide attempt of a woman who had drank a liter of vodka after her cancer treatments had been delayed, in part because hospitals were clearing their beds for coronavirus patients.

Another paramedic said she responded to so many cardiac arrests in one shift that the battery on her defibrillator died.

“It does not matter where you are. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. This virus is treating everyone equally,” the Brooklyn paramedic said

***

Three weeks ago, the paramedics said, most coronavirus calls were for respiratory distress or fever. Now the same types of patients, after having been sent home from the hospital, are experiencing organ failure and cardiac arrest.

“We’re getting them at the point where they’re starting to decompensate,” said the Brooklyn paramedic, who is employed by the Fire Department. “The way that it wreaks havoc in the body is almost flying in the face of everything that we know.”

In the same way that the city’s hospitals are clawing for manpower and resources, the virus has flipped traditional Emergency Medical Services procedures at a dizzying speed. Paramedics who once transported people with even the most mild medical maladies to hospitals are now encouraging anyone who is not critically ill to stay home. When older adults call with a medical issue, paramedics fear taking them to the emergency room, where they could be exposed to the virus.

***

The husband frantically explained that he had tried to stay home and tend to his ill wife, but his employer had asked him to work because their facility was overrun with coronavirus patients.

Grudgingly, the man told the medics, he went to work. When he returned home after his shift that day, he found her unconscious in their bed. For 35 minutes, Mr. Almojera’s team tried to revive the woman, but she could not be saved.

Usually, Mr. Almojera said, he tries to console family members who have lost a loved one by putting his arm around them or giving them a hug.

But because the husband was also thought to be infected with the coronavirus, Mr. Almojera delivered the bad news from six feet away. He watched the man pound on his car with his fist and then crumble to the ground.

“I’m sitting there, beside myself, and I can’t do anything except be at this distance with him,” Mr. Almojera said. “So, we left him.”

Speaking of poor, non-white people getting the toxic end of this lollipop: 

The numbers in the above map represent positive tests. The next one, showing the differences in deaths from COVID is going to be truly grim and absolutely divided along race and class lines, because America. Specifically, because poorer, browner New Yorkers have less access to well, everything: heath care, information, jobs that can’t be performed from home. All those people working in supermarkets and making deliveries, the “essential workers” are disproportionately poor. Social distancing? Sure, try that when you’re living on the streets or still trapped in Riker’s or even a huge public housing project with one or two goddamn working elevators. 

Even those who do have insurance are about to be royally screwed. “No insurer, no state, planned and put money away for something of this significance,” Peter V. Lee, the executive director of Covered California, an state exchange that’s part of the ACA, said. Well then, maybe the insurance providers shouldn’t have eaten so much avocado toast at brunch. Ha ha. Just kidding. The current admin has decimated the ACA, which was a laughable excuse for a healthcare system to begin with, and has only grown worse since. 2010

Here’s a fun/funny story. I was running low on Juul pods and with the next shipment not scheduled to arrive till Monday I had to do something. So, scribbed my hands raw, I put on clothes that I’d feel comfortable incinerating if need be, strapped on a pair of brown leather gloves, and tied a scarf around the entirety of my face as if I were a Black Bloc anarchist. And then I stepped outside the front door for the first time in... ten days? I’m going to say ten days. It was stressful and enraging with some light terror tossed in for variety’s sake.

I scoped out the block for people like I was on a goddamn recon mission, and let me tell you, wealthy-ass Brooklyn Heights residents were not maintaining social distancing. Dads breezily lazily walking their dogs, unconcerned (somehow) if someone trotted right by them. Gaggles of people, laughing, chatting, shooting the shit as if nothing had changed. On more than one occasion, I had to sprint across the street to maintain proper spacing. At my local bodega—the only bodega anywhere within walking distance of my apartment which sells pods—a hand-drawn sign had been taped to the shelves containing cigs and e-cigs. “Please make your selection and leave as quickly as possible,” the sign read. 

I did so, bolting back out, ticking off the seconds till I was back at 108 Pierrepont. My neighbor was idling at the front gate, trying to coax her large labrador retreiver up the steps. I waited till she’d gotten to the front door and asked how she was feeling. 

My neighbor said “better.” Which, sure. The dry cough of hers seemed to echo through our shared (thin) wall less frequently now. Oh and her sense of taste and smell was slowly returning. 

You have got to be fucking kidding me. I tried to gently explain that she fucking has it without flipping my shit at her for not immediately telling everyone in the building. I sent out a mass email the instant I started feeling under the weather and unlike her, I’ve never had two of the most common fucking symptoms. Standing outside the building, paralyzed, unsure how long I needed to wait to sprint into the building and up the spiral staircase. She wasn’t even wearing a scarf, let alone a mask. Every exhale was flooding the lobby with infection but somehow using a Clorox wipe to open and close the door was enough of a preventative measure in her mind. 

So grabbed all the packages that were waiting for me and galloped up the staircase. (Stalling for two days before going downstairs to pick up my deliveries accomplished nothing, what with the co-op’s own personal Typhoid Mary going outside twice a day to walk the dog. I’m still livid, two days after the fact. It’s insanely irresponsible of her. ) l kicked off my shoes outside the door, then stripped naked and deposited every item in a plastic garbage bag, tying it as tightly as possible. After scrubbing down my hands like Hawkeye Pierce, I then scoured the packages themselves with a wipe, followed hard upon by every surface they’d touched. I washed my hands a second time, belting out two consecutive particularly antic versions of the Happy Birthday song. Then I opened the packages, wiped down the contents, and washed my hands for a third time before jumping in the shower. 

70 percent of the tests run by Northwell Health are coming back positive, and thousands of people will likely die. "I don't see how you look at those numbers and conclude anything less than thousands of people will pass away," the Governor said on Sunday. Vulnerable parts of the population will be hit particularly hard. "I hope its wrong, but..."

This is the Jacob K. Javits Center now. Soon, the beds will all be full: 

In the hopefully not-too-distant future, someone’s going to write a book detailing the ongoing failures at every level of the Federal government. (Who am I kidding? Everyone is going to write that book.) At least one will probably toss in a bit of color about the Javits Center: It’s where Hillary Clinton was on the night of November 8, 2016, getting ready to deliver her victory speech. The one that never came. Once the election was called, she sent John goddamned Podesta out instead. Ha ha. 

On Wednesday, I spent a frantic afternoon getting epidemiologists on the blower to talk about ballplayers going under the knife and feeeling generally flu-ish and tired while doing so. [Editor’s note: stop trying to sound like you’re not incredibly fucking privileged and have less shit to deal with than the vast bulk of people in this city alone. You blogged whilst sick. Hero-type stuff, truly.] 

It’s not in the article, but yeah. All these high-paid orthopedic specialists should be barreling toward the front lines and turning their top-shelf sports medicine facilities into something fucking useful. 

Per Mom, on Facebook:

It doesn't just "look like" special privileges for the rich and powerful, it is just that. Doctors, nurses, technicians, and other healthcare resources are currently being diverted to parts of hospitals and other locations where they are needed. They are being called back from retirement to help fill the need. These resources could be used with urgency elsewhere and are not when such elective procedures are being done instead. Excellent article, Bob.

Thanks, Mom. 

Mike Francesa has been radicalized. Back afta this.

[yessadirichards]

WHO declares coronavirus crisis a pandemic   GENEVA

Expressing alarm both about mounting infections and inadequate government responses, the World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic but added that it's not too late for countries to act.

By reversing course and using the charged word "pandemic" that it had previously shied away from, the U.N. health agency sought to shock lethargic countries into pulling out all the stops.

"We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief.

"All countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response," he said. "We are deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction."

Iran and Italy are the new front lines of the battle against the virus that started in China, the WHO said.

"They're suffering but I guarantee you other countries will be in that situation soon," said Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO's emergencies chief.

He added that the agency thought long and hard about labeling the crisis a pandemic - meaning a new virus causing sustained outbreaks in multiple regions of the world.

The risk of employing the term, Ryan said, is "if people use it as an excuse to give up."

But the benefit is "potentially of galvanizing the world to fight."

Underscoring the mounting challenge: The case count outside China has multiplied 13-fold over the last two weeks to over 118,000, with the disease now responsible for nearly 4,291 deaths, WHO said.

With officials saying that Europe has become the new epicenter, Italy's cases soared again, to 12,462 infections and 827 deaths - numbers second only to China.

"If you want to be blunt, Europe is the new China," said Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Italy considered imposing even tighter restrictions on daily life and announced billions in financial relief Wednesday to cushion economic shocks from the coronavirus, its latest efforts to adjust to the fast-evolving crisis that silenced the usually bustling heart of the Catholic faith, St. Peter's Square.

In Iran, by far the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, the senior vice president and two other Cabinet ministers were reported to have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. Iran reported another jump in deaths, by 62 to 354 - behind only China and Italy.

In Italy, Premier Giuseppe Conte said he would consider requests from Lombardy, Italy's hardest-hit region, to toughen the already extraordinary anti-virus lockdown that was extended nationwide Tuesday. Lombardy wants to shut down nonessential businesses and reduce public transportation.

These measures would be on top of travel and social restrictions that imposed an eerie hush on cities and towns across the country. Police enforced rules that customers stay 1 meter (3 feet) apart and ensured that businesses closed by 6 p.m.

Milan shopkeeper Claudia Sabbatini said she favored the stricter measures. Rather than risk customers possibly infecting each other in her children's clothing store, she closed it.

"I cannot have people standing at a distance. Children must try on the clothes. We have to know if they will fit,'' she said.

Still, the effectiveness of such measures as travel restrictions and quarantines will likely drop substantially as COVID-19 spreads globally, making it impossible for countries to keep the virus out. Health officials will also need to be more flexible in their coordinated response efforts, as the epicenters are likely to shift quickly and dramatically - as demonstrated by the recent eruptions in Iran and Italy.

Conte emphasized fighting the outbreak must not come at the expense of civil liberties, suggesting that Italy is unlikely to adopt the draconian quarantine measures that helped China push down new infections from thousands per day to a trickle and allowed its manufacturers to restart production lines.

China's new worry is that the coronavirus could re-enter from abroad. Beijing's city government announced that all overseas visitors will be quarantined for 14 days. Of 24 new cases reported Wednesday, five arrived from Italy and one from the United States. China has had over 81,000 virus infections and over 3,000 deaths.

For most, the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for a few, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illnesses, including pneumonia. More than 121,000 people have been infected worldwide and over 4,300 have died.

But most people recover. People with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while more severe illness may take three to six weeks, the WHO says.

In the Mideast, most of the nearly 10,000 cases are in Iran or involve people who traveled there. Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency said they include Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri. Iran's ministers for cultural heritage, handcrafts and tourism, and for industry, mines and business were also infected, the agency said.

In Qatar, cases jumped from 24 to 262. Kuwait announced a two-week shutdown of the country.

For the global economy, virus repercussions were profound, with increasing concerns of wealth- and job-wrecking recessions. U.S. stocks wiped out more than all the gains from a huge rally a day earlier as Wall Street continues to reel.

Wall Street's plunge followed a steep decline by markets across Asia, where governments there and elsewhere have announced billions of dollars in stimulus funds, including packages in Japan and Australia.

Italy's government announced Wednesday it was dedicating 25 billion euros (nearly $28 billion) to boost anti-virus efforts and soften economic blows, including delaying tax and mortgage payments by families and businesses.

Britain's government announced a 30 billion-pound ($39 billion) economic stimulus package and the Bank of England slashed its key interest rate by half a percentage point to 0.25%.

Normal life was increasingly upended, with Pope Francis live-streaming prayers from the privacy of his Vatican library as police barred access to St. Peter's Square, emptying it of tens of thousands of people who attend the weekly papal address. In Denmark, Prime Minister Minister Mette Frederiksen announced that all schools, preschools and universities will close as of Monday.

And in the U.S., the caseload passed 1,000, and outbreaks on both sides of the country stirred alarm. Officials in Seattle announced that public schools would close for about 53,000 students and large gatherings were banned in San Francisco and in Washington state, the hardest-hit U.S. state, with 25 deaths.

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, vying to take on President Donald Trump in the presidential election, canceled rallies Tuesday and left open the possibility that future campaign events could be impacted. Trump's campaign insisted it would proceed as normal, although Vice President Mike Pence conceded future rallies would be evaluated "on a day to day basis."

In Europe, Spain's number of cases surged Wednesday past the 2,000 mark and Belgium, Bulgaria, Sweden, Albania and Ireland announced their first virus-related deaths.

And at a Congressional hearing in Washington Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, sounded an alarm: "Bottom line, it's going to get worse."

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that if the virus is not halted by vaccines and cures, up to 70% of the country's 83 million people could ultimately become infected.

Germany has about 1,300 confirmed infections and Merkel's comments fit a pattern of government officials using sobering warnings to convince people to protect themselves by washing their hands and not gathering in large numbers.

"It's terrifying," said Silvana Gomez, a student at Harvard University, where undergraduates were told to leave campus by Sunday. "I'm definitely very scared right now about what the next couple days, the next couple weeks look like."

[genesisarclite]

Constants and Variables, Pt. IV

And here we are with Part IV. This fic is tagged with its name, so if you missed an earlier part, you should be able to find it easily. Anyway, this chapter has been chewing away at my brain a long time, so it’d nice to have it down. I’m not super happy with the penultimate scene, but it has a purpose, so it stays.

note: I actually took screenshots of the entire crew list from a security terminal in the game so I can refer back to it. every named character except Aislinn in this chapter is taken from that list.

note 2: I’m very happy with the scene in the trauma center, and even more so with the one in Psychotronics.

note 3: still not totally sure how many chapters this’ll have, but I know it at least won’t be epic-length like my other fics.

At the six month interval, it was time for Aislinn to once again undergo her routine examination. On her first day here, she’d found out it was required of every single employee to do one physical per month. Everyone had to do it, and it was sorted by the employee’s last name, meaning she headed in around the middle of the month. Thankfully, Hendrik DeVries had a nice enough bedside manner and kept his poking and prodding to a minimum.

Like all the other women, she had to undergo a female-specific exam every six months. She’d had one already when she had first arrived, and now it was time for the second. They took vitals and small samples of blood and other tissues and fluids, then sent them off to be processed by the lab, and as she sat on the edge of the cot, redressed in her uniform and trying to keep her back straight, she saw shadows move beyond the curtain and the sound of several other employees roving around in the main medical area while an Operator chattered at them.

“You’ve continued to improve,” DeVries told her this time, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve lost... let’s see, a total of four percent body fat and... sixteen pounds since your first physical. Very good. Nice improvement on lean muscle mass, no signs of degeneration in bones or soft tissues. Artificial gravity seems to be playing nice with you. All good things.” He folded his arms. “Just one other thing I see on your file.”

She furrowed her brow. “Okay, what’s that?”

“Don’t look concerned. It’s nothing to worry about. I just remembered you’ve never had a neuromod installed.”

The fingers of one hand flexed. “Not yet, sorry.”

“Every employee on Talos needs to have at least one. It was in your contract. Sometimes, though, we get a backlog of low-rank employees. I have twenty-two others needing them, too.” Sighing, he picked up a folder and flipped through it. “Let’s see... last name Kelly... you’re twelfth on the list, so... hmm.” His lips twisted. “Right, so, you won’t get a neuromod installed for another three weeks at best, barring any more delays. Huh, figures.”

“Yeah, why do I need one, then?”

“Talos is an enclosed area, and we have plenty of sensitive material around here. It’s a general rule. Everyone gets at least one, and people working in higher-level tech and research get more. Didn’t HR tell you about it? Every employee qualifies for them after a certain point.” He sighed. “I’ll put in a request to have the list looked at again, because wow, twenty-two is beyond ridiculous. And after six months, too...”

Knowing how they were installed, she groaned and dropped her face in her hands.

“They numb the area first and have a professional do it,” DeVries told her, completely deadpan. “You’d be fine.”

“Right, of course I’d be,” she muttered. “While I’m bleedin’ out my eye...”

He gave her a light thwack on the knee with the folder. “You should be good to go now.”

Aislinn slid off the cot and rolled her shoulders and hips, working out the kinks from sitting, or lying on her back, for so long. She hefted the curtain and encountered several other employees waiting near the central desk, most of them far too busy to notice her, milling about and talking softly.

A man in the green and white uniform of the sciences division stood near the glass divider, rubbing his hands over one another and looking from side to side in quick, stilted sweeps.

“Mister Boyer, please step back from the divider a moment,” the woman at the desk said. “We’ll be with you soon.”

The man – Boyer – looked at her, but said nothing, and didn’t move.

“Mister Boyer, please take a step back from the divider.”

The man looked at her. “Where is Kohl?”

Aislinn had been walking past, but the sound of his voice made her freeze. It came out mangled, as though it had been shredded, ground up, then poured back into his throat. His flesh seemed to force the words out, tongue not forming them completely properly, while his eyes darted between the woman’s.

The hairs on her arms prickled.

“He’s in his office, seeing to another patient at the moment. If you can wait a few minutes, he’ll be right with you.”

“Need to see him.” The man swallowed hard. “Need to see him now.”

“You’ll just have to wait.” Her eyes hardened. “Step back.”

“Let me see him. Need to see him.”

The woman straightened from where she had been bent at the terminal. “Miss Whitman, please handle this.”

Boyer’s eyes widened as another woman, dressed in the black and blue uniform of security, moved from her post at the side of the room, near the Operator dispenser, and approached him. Boyer took a single, stumbling step back – what he had been asked to do originally, at least – before muttering something.

“Crispin, you need to calm down.” Whitman placed a hand on his shoulder, making him twitch, but she didn’t let go. Her knuckles stretched the leather of her gloves. They shone in the light. “Remember, there’s other people here.” As he stood there, staring at the floor, rubbing his hands across one another over and over, Whitman looked around at the assembly. “Don’t worry about him,” she said. “He’s our issue now. Please try not to stare.”

Aislinn ducked her head and quickly left the trauma center.

Getting a late start to her shift, she gathered up her usual boxes of items and carried them on her rounds. She only ran into one other stocker, who paid her no mind, headphones in and bobbing her head to whatever music she listened to. This time, she had to take a box to the Volunteer Quarters, for the first time in two weeks, which meant hefting it onto her shoulder and descending the stairs from HR to the Neuromod Division lobby, then taking the gravshaft to the upper floor and its bright, but sterile, lighting. No one else was up there at the moment.

She checked her transcribe. She would need to deliver a box to Morgan’s office, then drop one off at the shuttle bay, and then she would get her first break. Then came the next round – she was one of five total stockers for the entire station, which seemed absurd at first, but she had quickly realized the station wasn’t as massive as she’d first thought, and the stockers alternated, so at least two were on duty at all times. The next round took her up to the Arboretum hub, which might give her the chance to check in with Julien.

She followed the wraparound balcony to the far side, passing the whiteboard with its permanent “Welcome Volunteers!” written on it in bright markers, and entered the Volunteer Quarters. She’d never made it past the foyer in all the times she had come here, the rest of the area not visible due to a short hall that turned sharply left and out of her sight. If she tried to get closer, she was always called back, so she had long ago stopped trying.

“Only one box today?” The man at the desk looked at the object in question as she lowered it to the floor. “It’s small.”

“That’s all they gave me, sir,” she said. “No other boxes inbound.”

“Strange. I know I requested m–” He stopped, looked at her, and nodded. “Thank you, Miss Kelly.”

It was a clear dismissal, so she nodded in response. “Okay, I’ll ju–”

The sound of heavy footsteps drew her attention to the short hallway. A pair of men in security uniforms walked in lockstep on either side of a tall, broad-shouldered man in a green and white, two-piece uniform – odd, considering everyone was supposed to wear a pressurized suit. Neither of the security guards looked her way, but the man in the middle did, looking her over with large, light brown eyes, skimming her from head to toe.

Whatever interest he’d had vanished in an instant, though, and he kept going without another glance back.

Aislinn looked back at the man, puzzled. “What was th–”

“Just a volunteer for testing, likely taking him to Psychotronics.” His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t.

A few seconds too long she spent on absorbing that expression before nodding, turning her back to him, and hurrying out onto the upper level once more.

Still walking swiftly and in step, the two security guards accompanied the volunteer toward the gravshaft. Aislinn followed at a distance, trying not to look obvious, but feeling her curiosity boiling over. The uniform alone was enough – no one was supposed to be on Talos I without a locking suit in case of sudden depressurization or other problems. Either it was a simple oversight, or they didn’t care he wasn’t wearing one. But why wouldn’t they?

They entered the gravshaft long before she did; she stopped and looked down, watching them cross the balcony, go around the fountain, and exit. Aislinn frowned, then made her way to the shaft to descend as well.

She crossed the threshold and followed the hall, deep in thought.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

She made a small sound in her throat and jerked her head up. One of the security guards stood at the entrance to the central lobby, hands behind his back. “Wh– yes?”

“John Haskins, Neuromod Division Security.” He looked her in the eye. “I apologize for that intrusion into your duties.”

“N... no, it’s not– wasn’t a problem. I just th–”

“Good to hear. One notice for future reference: if you come across an escort, please do not interfere or pursue. Volunteers are bound for classified projects and can’t be mentally disturbed.”

She opened and closed her mouth.

“That’s all I needed to say. Have a good rest of the day.” He gave her a quick bow of the head and turned away, walking briskly back toward the Neuromod Division. Aislinn gawked after him, bewildered and knowing she wouldn’t get any more answers anytime soon. Certainly none about the uniform.

Curiosity still roiled within her; she flexed the fingers of both hands, closed them into loose fists to stop the tic, and turned away. She could query the central repository and try to find out more, but she doubted her clearance allowed her access to anything more than the most basic information. Digging into Psychotronics would be unfathomable, and if she tried too hard to find much of anything too far above her pay grade, she’d probably trip an intrusion detection system somewhere and get hauled off to spend a few nights in the brig.

And Morgan certainly wouldn’t tell her jack. He’d already shown that.

With effort and sheer force of will, she managed to strangle her curiosity and stuff it in a pit, where it mewed and clawed and pleaded with her to yank it back out. She picked up her next set of boxes, placed them on a cart, rolled them to the foot of the stairs, and grabbed the two small boxes bound for Morgan’s office area.

Jason was at his terminal, a common sight, but barely glanced her way with a “hi”. Aislinn set both boxes down and carried one into the offices nearby. Both were vacant. She set out the items and collapsed the now-empty box, then walked over to the keypad at the office and entered the code. The panel cycled, then returned to a lock icon.

“Uh... Jason? Can you tell me what the code is?” In all these months, the code never changed, kept confidential, for use only by Morgan, herself, Jason, and a select few others she didn’t know about. To find it had changed made her feel even more curious and bemused than before.

“It’s thirty-three twenty-five. But that box isn’t going in there.”

She looked at him, deciding to save the code question for later. “Then, where’s it go?”

“Morgan requested you bring everything down to Psychotronics. Pullin’ a long shift this week, and he wants it there.”

Then he wasn’t getting the neuromods uninstalled on time? “I can go down there?”

“Yeah, the security foyer is sealed. You’re good.”

A chill crept down her limbs to her fingertips. Psychotronics. An impenetrable black box, mysterious as TranStar felt like making it, from which people just didn’t emerge the same.

But she wasn’t sticking around, right? What could going down there one time really hurt?

“Al... right, if it’s... okay.”

“Morgan was the one who okayed it. See, as VP, he can overrule anyone except Alex. I guess he’s not really supposed to, but when Alex doesn’t stop him...” Jason, who normally looked at least a little cheerful, just seemed tired now, looking at her with eyes underlined by pale shadows. “It’s no biggie. Just head down and introduce yourself. Normally, they have a stocker of their own, but he’s out on PTO or something, and Morgan requested you specifically.”

The chill was quickly replaced by warmth. “...He did?”

“That’s what he said in the email he sent me. Either he trusts you, or likes you.” Now a tiny smile touched his lips. “Or maybe it’s both. Anyway, you better get down there. And stop looking so weirded out. It’s not the first time we’ve needed to pull a stocker to run down there. It won’t take more than... maybe ten minutes, tops.”

Aislinn looked down at the box, then back at Jason. He lacked the enthusiasm of the previous months, and there were small creases in his brow she couldn’t ignore.“But...”

“Seriously, just go. You’re fine.”

Still not feeling certain, she nodded and turned away, going back downstairs. She had to check her transcribe for the exact location of the Psychotronics foyer, then felt stupid when she realized it was tucked underneath the stairs leading back to the Neuromod Division. The door slid open when she approached.

“Are you Aislinn?” A man stood behind the desk, looking up from the terminal, instead of the receptionist she was used to seeing in the few times she’d been in this ara. “We’re expecting you.”

She looked at him and said hopefully, “Am I supposed to give you this box?”

He was already shaking his head. “No, you’ll need to take it downstairs to the main security office. It’s a secure area, but Morgan cleared you for it.” The man’s expression twisted a little. “He’s not supposed to do that, but since the foyer is completely sealed off from the labs, nobody really cares.”

“Keep hearing that, him not supposing to do things.” She tucked the box a little tighter under an arm. “Why?”

“Not my place to say, ma’am,” he said. “Christopher Smith, Security. Can’t leave this desk right now, so wait there while I page someone up. Have a seat if you like.”

She didn’t, and a few minutes later, another man, also dressed in security colors, came up the stairs and through the door to the reception area. “Cory Richard,” he said, by way of greeting. “I’ll escort you down to the main foyer. Stay close and don’t touch anything. If you hear anything weird, just don’t question it.”

That did nothing to soothe her nerves at all.

He led her out of the reception area and down three flights of metal stairs to a bulkhead door. He tapped his keycard on the central red lock, turning it green, and it clanked open.

The scent of the air that rolled through was completely different from the rest of the station. It was cold and stale, with a hint of antiseptics, cleaning agents that stung her nostrils, the unmistakable hint of exposed metal, and a trace of something acrid that nearly curled her lip. Richards walked on, though, at a steady pace, forcing her to quicken her steps to keep up with his longer strides, as he was taller than her.

They passed through another, massive door that clanked and groaned as it opened, entering a cylindrical atrium with a strange orange light in the middle that somehow only added to the gloom. The air grew colder the further they went, raising goosebumps across her skin, making her shiver. The place felt like a cage, threatening to drag her down into its nightmarish depths, and each step only made her want to turn and run more.

Immediately through another door was a security station, a booth tucked on the right side of a metal tube. The gaps between the tube and the walls were covered with metal grates, rolled into place and locked. Richards led her to the booth, raised a hand, and rapped on the glass. “Ruby,” he said, “Aislinn’s here with the box.”

The woman, short-haired and bright-eyed, looked up from the terminal at the desk in the office and nodded. “Ayzlinn?”

“Aislinn,” she corrected. “Got a box of goodies here.”

“Morgan gets babied way too much.” Ruby sighed. “Don’t tell him I said that. Hang on, gotta dig up the sign-in sheet. We don’t bring it out much.” Humming softly to herself, she turned away from the desk and began rifling through drawers, her back to Aislinn and Richard.

Aislinn shifted her weight, subconsciously moving closer to Richard, and though her shoulder bumped his, he didn’t seem to mind. The feeling of him – solid and human – made her feel better.

And she needed all the comfort she could get. Unlike the organized chaos that was the Arboretum, with its soft sounds of nature and swaying trees and plants, this place was little more than a dimly-lit metal box choked with cold light and deep black shadows. Lacking the refined taste of the upper levels, it felt claustrophobic and efficient, with little wasted space. Even the light spilling out from the two prep rooms, one for each sex, did nothing but amplify the gloom. The walls stretched up to a maze of metal panels and covered pipes as though pushing up the ceiling with all their might. The floor felt hard, made entirely of metal with the occasional smattering of paint.

Through it all, the acrid scent and bitter, chilly air cycled through her lungs, over and over, like some sort of toxin.

She swallowed, clenching the muscles in her torso to still her nerves.

“Here we go.” Ruby straightened and smiled, sliding a clipboard through a gap in the glass. “Mark your name, what you’re doing here, and the time, please. I’ll inventory the box when you’re done.

Aislinn picked up the pen, noticed her hand trembling, and shook it. It stopped.

She began to write, the ball of the pen scraping across the paper, making soft crunching sounds amplified by the metal walls. The pen glinted in the light – not a fancy design, but a simple silvery one with black stripes and the TranStar logo printed on it. No one said a word as she worked.

In the distance, she heard a clang, someone shouting, and a series of thunks, but they were too far away for her to pay any real heed... or to want to.

Her name stood out in thick black cursive on the sheet. Thin shadows on pristine white. Aislinn Kelly.

She checked the clock. 0943. Wrote it down.

Another, quieter clang. She began the reason for her visit, knuckles hurting as her grip tightened.

Then came another shout, much closer this time; she whipped her head around, barely managing half a question of what exactly was going on, when shadows appeared in one of the prep rooms. The shadows didn’t last long; a man came running full speed out of one, nearly crashing into the wall before he pivoted to go around it, his steps stumbling.

He wore the uniform of a volunteer, dangling off his frame like shed skin.

It was the same man she had seen earlier.

Richard left her side, hefting a sidearm that glimmered silver, covering the distance between the booth and the entrance in a few long strides; in one smooth movement, he raised the weapon and held the trigger.

The man, wild-eyed, stumbled around the corner and sprinted toward the tube. His chest heaved, mouth open, sharp sounds escaping his throat with each step. One foot hooked a metal step, sending him sprawling forward, but he pushed himself back up as though it hadn’t happened, clawing madly at the floor until he gained purchase.

He jerked his head up. Richard released the trigger.

The sting of ozone and sharp stench of a powerful electrical discharge on organic material filled the air, at the same time as a loud pop echoed through the chamber. One flash of blue-white light later, and the man fell to his back, hard, groaning, a smoking hole in the center of his uniform, the flesh beyond blackened by the impact. A spiderweb pattern of scored cloth spread out from the impact site. Wisps of smoke trailed into the too-still air. The acrid scent grew stronger.

Aislinn managed a halfhearted curse.

Richard lowered his sidearm before tucking it away, face a perfect mask of calm but for the furrow in his brow. Two more men appeared from the clean room, one dressed in the sleek lab overcoat of Psychotronics staff, the other in a distinct red uniform, his gait one she recognized instantly.

The scientist knelt at the man’s side and felt for a pulse as he moaned. “Hit hard,” he said with a shake of the head. “Left a nasty burn, damage to the uniform. Richard, you could have charged it halfway instead.”

“I found it more important he not escape.”

“You might have overdone it,” was Morgan’s muttered response. “Take him back to the cages. I want him looked over good. Tell me if we can pull any data and if he can still be used for the tests. Pull his neuromod if you need to, but be ready to put another one in.” He placed both hands on his hips as he surveyed the immediate area, eyes finding hers, and he lingered a few beats, expression briefly softening. “Capture what data we got, scrub it, and send it up to me. Who can we bring down for the next round of tests?”

The scientist looked over his shoulder at her and Richard, eyes unreadable, and straightened. “V-010655-32 is next on the list, looks like. Testing for... multiplicity based on, ah, aging processes.” Again, he looked at Aislinn. “Doctor Yu, if you don’t mind, I think we shouldn’t have such conversations here.”

“Noted,” Morgan said. “Send Thirty-Two down right away and tell Kelstrup to meet me in his office. We need to talk about the state of our ‘security’.” The last words came out dripping with disdain; he didn’t waste another second before turning and heading back through the prep room.

Aislinn somehow remembered to finish the sign-in sheet. In silence, Richard took the box from her, handed it to Ruby, and escorted her back upstairs, not responding to her few meager attempts to question him. The moment she reached the upper reception area, he immediately turned and headed back downstairs.

Aislinn rubbed her wrists with her fingertips, over and over, trying to stop the faint trembling in her bones.

Do you really want to know what he does down there?

Her mind swirled with questions and boiled over with long strings of profanity she managed not to voice. The creepy atmosphere had been plenty bad. Watching a crazed man run in terror out of the depths of that cage of metal, heading for a semblance of freedom, made her blood feel like ice water.

Maybe he’d already been insane.

But that thought was only small comfort, as she moved on to continue her rounds.

-

The following day, Aislinn got an early start and performed her rounds like an automaton. The memory of the terrified man haunted her, making it difficult to focus. The previous night, she slept only after spending several hours lying awake, deep in her own thoughts, until she’d had to go to the Arboretum and pace to soothe her mind.

But the man alone wasn’t enough to completely disturb her. The consummate calm with which Richard downed him. The wariness of the scientist, his too-deep eyes, the accusatory look he had given her when she dared stare too long. And Morgan, not looking at all concerned, standing over the prone body and examining it like a specimen in a Petri dish. How he had looked at her, as though, for a moment, she’d been the only one there.

The parasite nipped at the back of her mind and sunk tendrils of shadow into her thoughts, tangling them up until they whipped like a hurricane. Curiosity. Lingering horror.

Fear.

Before she knew it, the end of her shift had come. She stuffed the boxes in the nearest recycler and headed back to Crew Quarters. Tonight, the Arboretum held no comfort. The stars felt cold, distant, and even the Sun’s warmth only barely grazed her exposed skin. For the first time since she’d been here, the reality of the station, falling through the vacuum of the cosmos, cold steel and glass enclosing her like a gilded cage, struck her, really struck her, and she shivered.

“Aislinn?”

The voice sent a jolt up her spine. Morgan.

He approached her with his usual sturdy strides, but his hair had fallen out of its usual manicured shape, falling across his forehead in waves of brown that fell below his brows. Darkness tinged the skin beneath each eye.

“Thought you were pullin’ a long week.” It came out stiffer than she’d intended.

A brief tightening of the skin around his eyes very clearly told her he’d heard it. “Yes, I apologize for the... ‘incident’ in the labs yesterday. I’m reviewing out containment procedures with Kelstrup to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We have many tests to run and plenty of volunteers, and we can’t–”

“What kind of tests, Morgan?”

A faint curve came to his lips. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

She studied his eyes once more, searching for anything that could help her understand. But those eyes, so cold, unreadable, and so beautiful, revealed nothing to her – or she couldn’t read them yet. Beneath the furrow of his brow, above the soft smile on his mouth, they were simply part of his endlessly-shifting puzzle.

His eyes were, just for a few moments, so inhuman.

“Don’t worry about the volunteer, by the way,” he said. “We do our best to make sure they’re well taken care of. Many are criminals who exchanged long sentences, or far worse, for the tests. There are benefits to choosing this path.”

She considered this. “So... they were here on their own will?”

“They were. Aislinn, try not to let it bother you. Nothing that happens down there is ever going to affect you, or anyone else on this station. We have measures in place to protect everyone.”

Morgan’s voice was soft, and the words reassuring, but despite her efforts, she still wasn’t sure exactly how to feel about any of it. Knowing the man might have been an awful criminal made it better, but she still couldn’t get his expression of horror out of her head. “Psychotronics seems like a... an interesting place.”

Now he sighed through his nose, looking tired again. “You haven’t a neuromod installed yet, have you?”

Of course he knew about that. “No, haven’t. Doctor DeVries has me on the list.”

“I’ll place a request to have your install pushed up. Then, I can tell you more about what’s going on.” A wry smile touched his lips. “A little more, anyway. You aren’t cleared for work in Psychotronics, but... I would like to set your mind at ease about what’s going on down there. I will tell you this: everything we do eventually, somehow, gets run through me.” He lowered his voice. “That alone should help you understand the importance of all this.”

She frowned at him. “You’re testin’ neuromods, but why?”

His smile widened. “Can’t say.”

“Right,” she said, punctuating that with a grunt.

He looked at her a long moment before raising one hand and extending it toward her. Every few inches, he stopped a beat, but she didn’t object, just gazing back at him. After a seeming eternity, his hand found her upper arm, resting there with his fingers loosely following the curve of the lean muscle. Not minding the contact, she just kept looking at him.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said, fingers lightly squeezing her arm. “Really. Everything we down there is perfectly legal and won’t harm anyone else on the station. I promise you that.”

After a few moments, she finally nodded.

The hand fell away. “It’s good to have someone to talk to who isn’t Alex,” he muttered.

“Yeah? Why then?”

“Because Alex worries too much.” The smile had vanished a while back, but returned in the form of a faint smirk. “He’s my big brother, and he always worries.”

“Sounds like my sister. Old enough to take care of myself, I am, and she worries. At least, sometimes. Mum too.”

“I’m almost thirty, and our mother still worries.”

At this, she cracked a small smile. Almost thirty? Younger than she’d expected, then. Younger than her, though not by much. Yet, here he was, with both a doctorate in the sciences and an esteemed position as vice president. Everyone said he was smart, but maybe he was even more intelligent than anyone gave him credit for. Working on mysterious projects, keeping his secrets, testing neuromods, managing to keep his mind intact despite it all, and helping run a multinational corporation.

“Younger than I figured you’d be,” she said.

“You’re not the first to say that.” She saw his gaze shift to quickly look her over. “You seem tired. Were you about to go back to Crew Quarters? I can leave you be.”

“Ah...” Now she didn’t really want to. “...no, not right now.”

The lines of his face softened. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said, but there was something in the quirk of his lips that made his cool and controlled expression seem far less so than usual. “Walk with me?”

A bit of warmth crept across her cheeks. Something prickled in her fingertips. His eyes stayed on hers, searching, waiting for her response. There was no force there. Nothing – not the way he spoke, nor his body language – told her he would make her go with him. He left it up to her, to choose to stay or go, and did so openly.

The mysterious vice president, many of his layers peeled back by her own hands, once again giving her all his attention.

It was immensely, sickeningly flattering, making her feel ashamed, and elated.

Seriously, she wasn’t this pathetic, was she?

“Sure,” she said. Keeping her face neutral except for a polite smile took a lot of effort. The parasite in her head could go die in a fire, as far as she was concerned. There was nothing wrong with enjoying his company, or his appearance, as long as she didn’t act on either, and no way would she risk her job by doing that.

The central path that encircled the stone walls in the center branched off in several directions – to little alcoves housing benches, or picnic areas close to the glass and its spectacular views of space. For a minute, they walked side by side in silence, ignoring the occasional curious onlooker and the amusingly dismayed face of one woman in an orange uniform, enjoying the Arboretum’s gently quiet.

The peace returned, and she forgot about the gilded cage.

“I’ll finish out the tests this week and do the uninstall then,” he said, once they were out of earshot of anyone. “There’s big plans coming with this next round, or so I’ve been told. Of course, I’ll forget all about it.” He made a face. “If I didn’t make so many notes and transcribes, I swear I’d forget my own name sometimes.”

“And that’s how you remember people, too.”

“Right. I try to take down as many detailed notes of different people as I can in each trial. Jason’s in there, Mikhaila, you, and a few others, people I interact with regularly.” At his sides, he shook out his wrists, raised his arm arm, and rubbed his fingertips over the joint, top and bottom, pressing hard into the leather of the gloves he hadn’t yet removed. “Have you heard of that new film, Onlookers?”

Her lips briefly peeled back from her teeth. “Oh, you bet I have.” Talos had its own version of the internet, run through a central proxy array known as the “.talos” domain, giving everyone access to slightly delayed, but accurate, content from the web on Earth. She’d watched trailer twice already. “Looks terrible.”

“It does. I’m sorry, but the idea of a person becoming a telepathic gelatinous blob just to save the planet is... awful.”

“I know, but could be fun, though, at least to laugh at. They bringin’ it up here?”

“Probably. We have our own theater here.”

“That’s right.” One more amenity she constantly forgot about. “When it comes up here, I’m gonna see it.”

“I’ll happily go with you. Wouldn’t mind throwing something at the screen.”

She chuckled. “Can the screen take it?”

“You’re on a station with over three hundred people, crammed together in space.” He faced her, walking backward, and spread his arms wide. “Trust me, they built the projection areas very tough.”

The thought of a dozen disgruntled employees throwing things at the screen – bits of eel skin, maybe, or what passed for popcorn up here – made her grin.

“There is one that’s out now,” he said. “It’s called Transgressions. Heard of it?”

“Uh... in passin’, I think. Looks interestin’.”

“It plays once a week. If I forget next trial, remind me to meet you there.”

In the next trial, he might not be nearly so friendly with her. She might be a complete stranger to him altogether. But she smiled and nodded anyone, in the small hope that wouldn’t be the case. Morgan was one of the only people she interacted with regularly, she realized with a twinge of guilt, and the only person who seemed genuinely interested in her. Danielle asked questions sometimes, but she and the others were always wrapped up in projects they couldn’t talk about.

Morgan made her forget she lacked the privileges of the higher ranks.

They walked in silence for a time before she said, “Why’d they change the keycode to your office?”

“Hmm?” He looked briefly puzzled. “I’m... not sure. Wait...” A frown creased his brow. “There was... a reason, I know there was. I can’t remember what it was at all.”

“Must not have been important enough to write down.” A yawn punctuated that sentence. “’Scuse me.”

“Tired, are we?” His lips quirked at the corners. “So am I.”

“Maybe we should call it an evenin’, then.”

“That... might be best.” He stopped and faced her. “Aislinn, don’t worry about Psychotronics. Take comfort in the fact that you aren’t cleared for any of it. Just think, if you knew, you’d be awake long into the night, or worrying about things that will never affect you. Rest easy tonight. That man will be fine, and the other volunteers will be taken care of.” A smile formed on his mouth, making her feel better. “That’s all that matters, right?”

“Right, right,” she muttered. “Whatever you say.”

For a brief moment, his lips parted in a grin. “We’ll talk again before the week’s over. Sleep well.”

“You too, Morgan. Actually sleep, okay?”

She waited on the path until he had disappeared around the corner, heading for Crew Quarters, before turning to look up at one of the trees. Lacking the advanced botany knowledge of second-year and beyond students, she couldn’t identify it, and its strange shape – bowed trunk and voluminous boughs – made it seem like a wholly alien plant to her.

At least it helped soothe her still-roiling thoughts. A little.

-

Aislinn woke up the following morning to an email transcribe from Angela Diaz in the Neuromod Divison, telling her she was scheduled for an appointment in three days at fifteen hundred to have a neuromod installed. We will have an escort waiting for you in the main lobby, it said at the end. It was no threat, but the idea was clear: get it installed, or else.

She clicked off the transcribe, stomach twisting as her nerves got to her.

It was going to be a very long three days.