#bar bloc

[brendanx]

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

POV: you live in East Europe

[xpuigc-bloc]

Carl Randall

Mr.Kitazawa's Noodle Bar, Tokyo

Oil paint on canvas

97 x 162cm.

2011

[dinnickhowellslikes]

[likeapromises]

Patio - Concrete Pavers An example of a sizable minimalist backyard patio made of concrete pavers.

[antgione]

Natural (New York)

[druitts]

Raleigh Outdoor Kitchen Outdoor Kitchen

[3liza]

I'm glad western streamers have been gettinto indie games from Russia and Asia, especially horror games since horror is such a communicative genre and says so much about cultural mores, but I wish these cavalier white dudes would have a little more curiosity about the foundations of the imagery and neuroses the games are communicating with. whenever I see or play games from outside my home culture I'm always desperately curious about what I'm MISSING as a white American and it's always so satisfying and educational when I am able to have it explained to me or if I can look it up, even though I know I can only perceive it as an outsider. just stuff I'm ignorant about, like for some recent examples I can remember, stuff like Buddhist funeral objects or symbolism, Japanese vowel order, Russian Orthodox convent history, apartment layouts and community organization in Soviet housing blocs, uhhh let's see what else. candle and food symbolism around death and traditional forms of ghosts in the Philippines. customs and uses of, and gender issues around, communal bath houses in rural Japan. that kind of thing. i really really miss the few years where you really could type any of those topics into the Google search bar and usually get some kind of factual information written by humans. it's not impossible to look stuff up anymore but I can't express how easy it used to be.

[deathblacksmoke]

this modern love | part 1

Pairing: Nick Folio x OFC (Natalia/Nat)

Summary: Nat heard all the stories about Nick long before she ever knew him. Though she tries her best to steer clear, things complicate themselves when she finds herself beginning to fall for him.

Word Count: 1.8K

CW: college au, friends with benefits, friends to lovers, annoying college gossip, p in v sex, mention of f receiving oral sex (content warnings will be updated by chapter)

Author's Note: @caitcoreeeee and an anon requested smutty folio friends to lovers and i went a little overboard. thank you to my dearest sweet baby angels @darksigns-exe and @circle-with-me for their endless support (read: hand-holding) as i navigate through this.

dividers by @saradika-graphics 🩵

title from “this modern love” by bloc party.

She’s heard it all: the whispered half-truths in locker rooms and study groups. They’re all so shameless, exchanging their stories like they’re not even talking about a human being. They make him sound like a blast, a character — it’s almost enough to pique her curiosity about what a night with Nick Folio is really like.

It’s an accident when she stumbles upon him, a chance meeting when she’s on shift driving the campus shuttle. It’s the end of her shift but still early in the night, and he’s the only one needing to be picked up from the bar at 8:30, seemingly still sober. He insists on sitting up front, stealing the aux for the 8 minute drive, and swiping her phone to put in his number. She finds herself dumbfounded when he skips up the steps of his dingy off-campus house moments later, his laugh still echoing in her head.

When she finds herself lying in bed, unable to sleep, she can’t say what it is that makes her dial his number. She’s more surprised than she should be when he arrives not 30 minutes later, snacks and drinks piled high in both arms.

It’s easy with him — easier than she’s ever found it with anyone else. They overlap on so many things, like marching band, though he’s still on the drumline and she gave it up after her junior year of high school. Their love of sports, their taste in music, their favorite silly tv shows. They sit chatting for 3 hours before she notices time passing. It’s so easy with him.

She can’t help herself when he pleads so sweetly to get between her thighs. It’s barely even a question when she tells him of course; his mouth feels so nice on hers that she wants to feel it absolutely everywhere. She decides early on that she’ll let him inside of her another time, probably the moment he asks. Until then, she finishes on his tongue with a garbled groan of his name.

They’re curled up in bed, sleeping on and off, when he gets a frantic call from his roommate: drunk as fuck and lost his keys and no one else is answering their phones. He wavers for a long moment, his gaze shifting to her and back away, and ultimately leaves her with a lingering kiss and a promise to text. Like a gentleman, he does, the moment he arrives back home.

It’s only when she opens Instagram the morning after that she makes the connection — nick_folio has requested to follow you, and he has the same sweet face as the boy who she fell for the night before. She thinks back to all the filthy, overshared, overheard stories she’s heard in the locker room after rugby practice, connects them to the cute and sweet boy from her van and her bed, and she feels her heart sink.

She decides to cut her losses — his follow request goes unaccepted, his good morning text unanswered.

“Nat!”

She’d successfully avoided him for 3 days. She’s only steps away from where she’s going, and could easily pretend not to hear him, take a turn, and lose him. Honestly, there’s a bubbling excitement in her tummy the moment she hears his voice. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t be able to keep herself from stopping in her tracks and turning to greet him with a smile.

His jog slowed as he sees that she’s staying put. He stops in front of her, hangs on his sides and winded, and she’s never felt more endeared towards someone in her life. She’s completely fucked.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says with a laugh. She can’t decide whether an apology is the correct course of action. Luckily, he doesn’t give her the opportunity to respond. “Come get lunch with me?”

She considers it for a long moment — having lunch with him is the exact opposite of her plan, and she’s missed enough hours of her lecture that another absence will set her further behind than she likes. Just as she’s about to make an excuse, her tummy grumbles, an effect of her skipped breakfast. He smirks. He knows he has her.

“Come on, we can use my dining dollars,” he proposes. It’s a silly offer, considering she has plenty of her own, but she finds herself giving him a shy little grin and accepting his hand anyway.

Completely. Fucked.

She spends the next few weeks wary, but ultimately unable to keep herself away from him. She meets him in the library to study when he asks, they have a standing Tuesday lunch date, countless movie nights, and chats into the early hours of the morning. More often than not, he takes the passenger seat when she’s working a shuttle shift alone.

He’s so smooth with his answers when any of his friends pile into the van and spot him next to her. Every now and again, his words turn her stomach.

“Spending a lot of time with Natalia, aren’t ya, Foli?” they ask, an edge of taunting in her tone that makes her feel sick, less than.

“Of course I am. Nat’s the best,” he responds earnestly and without pause. There’s no room for it to be laughed off or interpreted as sarcasm or teasing. He isn’t ashamed at all, although their jabs have clearly been made with that intent. She can feel her cheeks burning with unease.

The way he looks at her after always soothes her, equips her with a bravery she doesn’t normally possess — the way that even in front of his friends, he’s proud to be seen enjoying her company. He grazes a finger over her forearm and it calms down her kicked up nerves, disappears her uneasy feelings. She’s proud to be seen enjoying his company, too.

It’s almost an accident the first time they sleep together. To his credit, he keeps his hands to himself, never pushing anything. It’s clear he’s waiting for her to make the first move, but she never doubts that he’s still interested.

She can see it in the way he looks at her, the way he seems to go out of his way to make her comfortable. They’re sitting on his bed watching a movie when she feels a chill — his housemates like to keep the AC lower than she likes. It’s almost instinctual when she tucks herself into his side, her head resting on his shoulder. He doesn’t pause before wrapping an arm around her and pulling her closer.

“Do you want me to get you an extra blanket?” he asks, rubbing a hand over her arm and shoulder to warm her up. She feels warm from the inside out, in a way a blanket could never give her. It’s him.

“Is this okay instead?” she responds — in place of a reply, she feels his shoulder move as he nods, pulling her closer again.

She catches the faintest glimpse of him when the movie switches scenes, the screen going black for a moment. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

She chances a look at him, lifting her head from his shoulder and meeting his pretty brown eyes, the faintest smile. He doesn’t look away embarrassed, or seem to care that he’s been caught. His smile only grows, and she can’t help it. With a gentle hand on his jaw, she brings his face down to hers, pressing their lips together.

He breathes a sigh of relief into her mouth, turning his body to face her and curving a gentle hand around her waist. She didn’t realize how much she wanted this the whole time, to be close to him like this.

It’s dizzying, the way everything goes at her pace. She isn’t used to it, knowing that she can have everything drawn to a stop at any moment, because nothing is happening without her explicit permission.

There isn’t a second thought in her mind when she lays herself back on the bed, pulling him with her. A buzzing erupts beneath her skin when he wraps her leg around his waist — he’s impossibly close.

“I can’t be in a relationship right now,” she pulls away to say, an impulse she almost immediately regrets, but can’t bring herself to retract. There’s a flash of disappointment over his face, only there for a moment before it disappears.

“This can be whatever you want it to be, Natty,” he says, an earnestness in his gaze and in his tone that twists her stomachs and wracks her with guilt. He doesn’t deserve to be treated this way, but she can’t bring herself to push away what she knows, what she’s heard. She can’t keep away from him, either.

She settles, for both hurting him and having him.

“I want you,” she confesses, her hands moving to his belt, gently tugging. She looks up at him, a chance for him to put a stop to everything, put the distance back between them and end it. “Please, Nicky?”

He only pauses for another moment before leaning back down to capture her lips again, unbuckling his belt and sliding out of his jeans and boxers with an ease that seems practiced. She doesn’t let herself focus on it, only removing her sweats and panties, discarding them somewhere before drawing him back in.

She reaches blindly behind her, fishing around in his nightstand and hoping he’s the responsible type, relieved to feel the foil packet beneath her fingers.

Everything moves so quickly, she barely has time to breathe. Her focus is shot by the finality of crossing this line with him, the realization that they fit together like puzzle pieces when he’s sheathed inside of her.

She hadn’t noticed her tears falling, not until the gentle rock of his hips slows to a stop, his thumb brushing the wetness away from her cheeks.

“You okay, Natty?” he asks, concern lacing his normally cheerful tone. She finds herself nodding, though the tears don’t stop to match her assurance. “Promise? Do you want me to stop?”

She shakes her head immediately, reassuring him with a please don’t stop. She tries to push away her fears, let herself be present in the moment, lose herself to the feeling of him and his scent flooding her senses.

Even as he draws her orgasm from her effortlessly, her anxiety still remains the overtone of everything.

“Are you going to hate me now?” she asks him after, when they’re lying together. She feels rigid, unable to relax into his hold. His hands are unsure, shaky where they settled on her warmed skin.

“I could never hate you, Natty,” Nick responds, a gentle kiss placed to her temple. “Okay? Not ever.”

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[tropes-and-tales]

Sweet Like Candy

Day 5:  Sex pollen (Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event that I created on my own because I am boring and basic and am trying to keep it simple this year...found here!) 

CW:  Dub-con due to sex pollen trope; smut (PiV, unprotected); 18+ only.

Word Count:  4990

AN:  This was requested by an anon with an excellent memory who remembered when I mentioned a sex pollen Carrillo piece in passing! Also, not edited. I'm sick and barely ran it through spell-check.

It’s Carrillo’s fault, this entire terrible situation.

If he hadn’t been so severe when he first met you, he could have a genial working relationship with you.  You wouldn’t have been afraid of him from the start.  You would have been willing to work directly with him, handed off your lab reports directly instead of filtering them through Peña and Murphy, through Trujillo.

He wouldn’t have gotten grief from Peña to try and make peace with you.  He wouldn’t have gone to visit you, a play at being a softer, kinder Carrillo who perhaps smiles and says thank you for all of your exemplary work.

He wouldn’t have found himself in your lab on this day—the day you’re running tests on a separate case for the Medellín police, separate from the Search Bloc and its pursuit of Escobar. Not testing cocaine at all:  a scatter of innocuous-seeming candy in your workspace.  Supercoco—chewy caramel with coconut pieces folded in. 

Any Colombian recognizes the green wrapper.  Carrillo smiles to see it, slips a couple of pieces into his pocket when you turn away for a moment.

Only this isn’t Supercoco.  It’s a version infused with the distillation of a plant found in the Amazon, then wrapped in the familiar green paper.  A powerful love drug, an aphrodisiac, passed on the sly in the bars and night clubs of Medellín.

It’s Carrillo’s fault.  He’d been so severe when he met you, he tries to make amends now by being casual.  You stare at him as though he has two heads as he asks you about your day, how you’re settling into your apartment, if you’ve had a chance to explore the city yet. 

You answer his questions with your brows furrowed.  Confused.  He’s hardly the same man who barked at you on your first day in Colombia.  A timer in the lab goes off, and you turn to one of your complicated pieces of lab equipment to read the ticker tape being spit out of the machine.

Your back turned, he snags another piece of candy and eats it.  He’s trying to be Casual Carrillo, not the flinty version of himself with a cold gaze and a grim set to his mouth.  He takes a second piece, chews it, feels a million memories from his childhood resurface at the taste.  But then you turn around, see what he’s eating, and your face—usually guarded and wary when he is around—turns to pure horror.

“No!”  You bridge the distance between the two of you, and you’re touching him before he can even register it.  Your hands are on his face, pinching the corners of his mouth, trying to force him to spit out the candy.  It’s pure instinct, like a mother forcing a toddler to spit out something poisonous.  You move on instinct, manhandling his face, and he moves on instinct too.

He spits out the half-chewed candy.

Which doesn’t help with the piece he already ate.  The piece already in his stomach, being digested.

“Shit, rinse out your mouth,” you order him, and you dart to the sink, pour him a glass of water.  You thrust it into his hand, and his heart starts to hammer at your panicky reaction.  What has he eaten?  Poison?  Some terrible, addictive drug?  Something that’ll do permanent damage to him, leave him with a weakened heart or a compromised liver?  Something that’ll shave years off of his life?

“What—” he starts to ask, but you gesture at the glass, so he does as he’s told.  He takes a mouthful, swishes it around.  Spits it out in the sink, then does it again and again.

“It’s some sort of love drug,” you tell him once he’s done.  You sag in relief against the counter.  “Medellín police found a bunch of it in a bust the other day.  The DEA contracts my lab out to the local force, so I’ve been running tests.”

“Love drug?” he asks, his stomach sinking.  “What does that mean?”

“Tests reveal organic compounds from a plant.  Like maca root, only…times a thousand.”

He swallows hard, and you catch the audible gulp, misunderstand it.

“You’re fine,” you tell him, and you gift him a rare smile.  “You didn’t eat it.  And anyway, there’s no long-term side effects if you had.  It just makes the user really, uh, friendly.”

“How friendly?” he asks, using your cutely prudish American adjective for horny, and you give him the anecdotal evidence from the Medellín police about spontaneous orgies in local clubs, and then he tells you the bad news about how he ate a first piece before spitting out the second, and the way your eyes go wide and your mouth forms a perfect “O” of horror would make him laugh, if he weren’t so nervous about what is about to happen to him.

-----

You drive him home in his own car.  There’s no point in taking him to the hospital—the only treatment is to ride it out.

It’s hard to describe the way it feels when the drug starts to affect him.  Carrillo has little experience with any drugs beyond the morphine he was prescribed when he was shot and had surgery.  He remembers the morphine, even years later:  the warm, syrupy calm that spread through his limbs, erasing the pain of his wound.

This…is not that.

Twenty minutes.  Half an hour after he eats that fucking laced candy.  He feels it in his stomach first, right under his rib cage:  warm, but not calm.  Warm, but…alert.  Aware.  If the morphine put his senses to sleep, then this wakes them up.

Wakes all of his senses up, then as the warmth spreads—up into his chest, down into his gut—wakes his senses up even more.  Carrillo’s senses dialed up to a thousand.

Not just smelling your delicate perfume, but smelling the soap from your laundry detergent, the shampoo you used that morning.  The faintly chemical smell of your lab that clings to your hair and clothing.

Not just hearing you—your cautious questions of how he’s feeling, where you should turn next to get him home.  He swears he can hear your heart beating, the pulse and slush of your blood as it moves through your body.  Swears he can hear you breathing, can hear the quiet creak of your jaw as you clench it in worry.

Not just seeing you, the mousy little scientist that he managed to scare shitless her first day in Colombia.  Put the fear of God in you after the last DEA scientist got caught skimming Escobar’s cocaine from the bricks confiscated by the Search Bloc.  His own fault, how he barked at you that first day, and this is his fault too—not following the rules of your lab.  Now he’s not himself.

Now he sees you with the drug roaring in his veins.  The tight clench of your hands on the steering wheel.  The worried set of your jaw, the way you study him out of the corner of your eye.  He sees more, now, too:  the delicate shell of your ear, the tiny pinprick in the lobe of a piercing but no earring because of your lab protocols.  The way the line of your neck disappears into the neckline of your shirt, the curve as it meets your shoulder.  The thin silver chain around your neck, a locket, and Carrillo wonders if you’ve got some sweetheart back home who gifted it to you before you left for South America.

The thoughts rise in his head like carbonation, rapid-fire.  Usually so logical, so cool-headed:  now his thoughts are gummy, sticky.  He wants to lean against the seatbelt and put his mouth on your neck, follow the line of it into your shirt, then pull it aside and keep going.  Tasting you.  Such a sweet, mousy little thing—he wonders if you taste sweet, or if he’d taste the salt of your skin, maybe a bitter spot where you daubed perfume that morning—

“Shit.”  It comes out a groan, pained.  He lifts a hand and presses it over his eyes, and he feels how hot his palm is.  This is bad.  It’s so bad.  He’s not himself; he’s losing who he is:  Horacio Carrillo, the man who is always so staid…that man is fading into the background.  That Horacio is going quiet, ceding control to this other Horacio who is ruled only by want, by feeling.

-----

You manage to get him home, and he is still enough of himself to thank you. 

He’s also enough of himself to bark out that you need to leave:  take his car and go, leave him alone.

But Carrillo never really got to know you.  He put the fear of God in you that first day.  You’ve been ducking him ever since.  He has no way of knowing the type of person you are.

He has no way of knowing that you are the caring sort.  You’re soft-hearted.  You worry for people when they are hurt or sick; you check in on them.  You take care of them.

He has no way of knowing that while you are brilliant at your job and largely level-headed, your heart often drives you and your brain often follows.  Which is why you ignore his orders and follow him into his house:  your soft heart driving you to help a person in distress, when your brilliant mind is perhaps warning you to stay away.

-----

You follow him into his house, and Carrillo is still enough of himself to try and force you to leave.

“You gotta go,” he says, and his usually-crisp English comes out slurred, slushy and rounded off with his Colombian accent.  “Gotta leave.”

He curls his hands on your upper arms, pushes you backwards but not meanly.  Pushes you towards the door carefully so you don’t stumble or trip, but it’s another sense dialed up to a thousand—the feel of you under his hands.  The warmth of your body underneath the crisp cotton of your blouse, the way his fingertips bite into the surprisingly firm muscles there. 

“If you don’t leave, m-might not be able to stop myself.”  He pushes you towards the door, but already that driving want is roaring in him, and he doesn’t stop to open the door and push you through it.

He keeps it closed and pushes you against it. 

He traps you between the door and his body, so close to touching you.  There’s hardly any space separating you.  Millimeters.  Molecules.  Close enough to feel the heat of your body, the magnetism the fucking drug is convincing him is there—

Carrillo stares down at you; you gaze back with those widened eyes.  Nervous.  As scared as you’d been that first day, and it chastens him just a bit.  You probably think he’s a monster.

You take a breath, and the motion makes the locket around your neck move.  It catches the light and draws his eye.  Carrillo takes a hand from your shoulder and lifts the locket from where it lays against your chest.  He holds it between his thumb and forefinger, considering it.

“Your boyfriend give you this?” he asks.

You blink at the question, shake your head faintly.  “It was my grandma’s.”

A dumb thing, but the thought of you having a grandmother—of course you have two, as most humans do—reminds him that you’re a person with an entire history.  A family back home in the States.  Likes and dislikes.  And Carrillo knows none of it.

“You need to go,” he says in a low voice, ignoring the wave of lust that sweeps through him.  “I can handle this alone.”

You shake your head again.  “It was my lab.  My responsibility.  I can help.  I can get a cold shower going and then—”

He silences you.  He puts his finger over your lips, stills them.  The wrong thing to do:  now he knows how your mouth feels, and Carrillo grits his teeth and breathes shallow through his nose.

“If you don’t go, I’m going to want to—Dios, I already…you need to go.”

The last vestige of the sensible, stoic Carrillo wants to open the door, shove you out of it, throw the bolt.  That Carrillo wants to stagger deeper into the house, alone, and strip out of his clothes.  He wants to lay on the cool tiles and relieve the tension as best he can.

That Carrillo is gone.  Silenced, tucked away into a corner of his mind.  This Carrillo doesn’t push you away:  instead, he shifts his hand, traces his finger over the plump curve of your lower lip, and your eyes widen at his touch—

This Carrillo remembers something.  With his other hand, he reaches down.  Into his pocket, where a few pieces of the laced candy are.  The ones he pocketed on the sly and forgot.

He pulls one out.  Unwraps it clumsily with one hand while the other hand remains on your mouth, stilling your words.  Once it’s unwrapped, he holds it up for you to see, like a trainer teaching a dog with a treat.  Then he removes his hand from you, takes a step back.  It takes every single bit of his resolve to stop touching you, but he does.

He’s giving you a choice:  leave, as he’s ordered you to do more than once.  Or stay and join him.

In this moment, Carrillo still doesn’t know anything about you.  He doesn’t know what you’re thinking.  He knows so little about you, only knows that you avoid him, are frightened by his tough colonel of the Search Bloc routine. 

There will come a time in the future when he will be able to guess, with startling accuracy, what you are thinking.  He’ll know you better then.  He’ll know that as mousy as you seem, you have sudden surges of bravery.  Sudden moments of nerve.

That comes later.  Right now, when Colonel Horacio Carrillo gives you a choice, you startle him.  You don’t turn and flee. 

You shift your eyes from the laced candy in his hand to his own eyes, and you seem to see something there that informs your decision.

You don’t flee.  You open your mouth and allow him to lay the laced caramel onto your tongue, a perverse sort of communion.  It’s one of your sudden moments of nerviness, and you never blink once, never look away from him while you chew carefully, then swallow.

*****

It’s morally grey, at best.  The man is not himself.

It’s utter madness at worst.

There will come a time in the near future when he will ask why you didn’t leave.  Why you ate the candy.  You’ll tell him a half-truth:  that it was professional curiosity, how taking the drug would feel.  You’ve never tried the drugs you test in your lab; you always rely on your equipment and anecdotal evidence from those who do inject or smoke or eat the various drugs.  But there is always the curious part of you, the most essential part of being a scientist, that wants to know how it feels.

Why not try it?  It isn’t cocaine or heroin or LSD. 

There will come a time in the further future when he will ask again, and that time, you’ll tell him the whole truth:  that yes, you were curious about the drug.  But more than that:  you were curious about him.  You were terrified of him and attracted to him in equal measure (you blamed the fact that he was usually in uniform), which made for a weird combination of emotions every time you had to deal with him.  The sinking fear in your gut that he’d turn his flinty gaze on you…paired with the fluttery swooping in your gut of burgeoning infatuation.

That all comes later.  Right now, there’s nothing but the sweetness of caramel lingering in your mouth, almost cloying, and Colonel Carrillo staring at you like he wants to devour you.  You inch around him, move away from where you’re trapped between him and door. 

You make your way deeper into his home, and you sit on his couch and wait.  He follows and sits beside you, but he doesn’t touch you.  He clenches his hands into fists in his lap, his knuckles white with the effort, but he doesn’t touch you.

That means something, you think.  Says something about his character, even when he’s drugged.

Fifteen, twenty minutes after eating the laced candy:  you’re ready to be devoured.

*****

Carrillo doesn’t know exactly how the drug works—if it affects men and women differently—but he can guess when you start to feel it.

Your face twists into an expression of concentration, as if you’re surveying how you feel.  Like you’re checking in on your pulse, your breathing, your temperature.  You narrow your eyes, and he wonders if you’re making mental notes that you’ll later print in your small, neat handwriting in the little notebook you keep.

Carrillo?  He’s in hell.  Twenty minutes of waiting for you to sink to his level, and every cell of him aches for relief.  He’s not in any physical pain—whatever formula the chemists use for their so-called love drug, it’s meant to be fun, not painful.  But it’s like pain, the endless want he has, the lust that’s sunk its claws deep into his gut.

The twenty minutes pass like twenty years.

Then you swipe your palms along the thighs of your jeans as if they are sweaty, and you breathe out a shaky, “holy shit,” and he knows you’re finally in the same place as him so he pounces, damned near:  a graceless move, quick, that bridges the distance between the two of you.  He presses himself against you, cages you against the arm of the couch, and when he bends his head to kiss you, you raise up to meet him more than halfway.

He knows it’s just the drug, but you kiss him with a passion he’s never experienced before:  not with his now-ex-wife, not with the handful of girls before her.  Every other kiss before pales in comparison to the heat behind your kiss now:  the fierce way you slot your mouth over his, how eagerly you slide your tongue against his without an ounce of the shyness he associates with you.  He can taste the sickly-sugary laced-candy, but he swears he can taste you too, and when he groans in your mouth, you answer with your own whine.

There’s only a small sliver of him that is still him, and that tiny shred of the sensible Carrillo manages to break away.  You’re both tearing at each other’s clothing—your shaky hands fumbling at the buttons on his shirt, his hands tugging the hem of your blouse out of your jeans.  But he breaks away with every remaining bit of his inner strength, and he gazes down at where you’re awkwardly splayed across his couch.

“Not here,” he pants.  All of this will shame him when he’s sober, he thinks, but he can try to be a gentleman, can claim you on a proper bed and not on an uncomfortable couch.

He stands up, and a wave of dizziness washes through him.  He staggers, and you sit up and reach out to steady him.  You wrap a hand around his wrist and stare up at him.  Your eyes glitter black because your pupils are so wide that the color of your irises is little more than a crescent—but he thinks he sees concern there underneath the lust.

“You okay, Colonel?” you ask, confirming his suspicions.  Even now, under the influence of the drug, he’s seeing your caring nature that he’s never been privy to before.  It sobers him up just enough.

Carrillo nods.  He twists out of your light grip and takes your hand in his.  He tugs you to your feet and feels how you sway against him too.

“N-not here,” he repeats.  A fresh wave of lust courses through him, nearly knocks him to his knees like the incoming tide.  “I don’t…not here, okay?  C’mon.”

You nod and allow him to lead you back to his bedroom.  He keeps his hold on your hand, unwilling to give up the tame touch, and when you squeeze his hand—maybe you’re nervous—he squeezes yours back in reassurance.

-----

That small, quiet voice that was sensible Carrillo is silenced the minute he gets you in the bedroom.  The drug takes him over completely, and he’s almost relieved to cede all control to it.  He’s always so tight-laced, so straight-edged. 

This Carrillo is nothing but id:  driven by desire, chasing pleasure.  He feels like little more than an animal, and he finds that he likes it. 

Your clothes don’t survive him.  He tears at your blouse and the buttons ricochet across the room.  He’ll find them for weeks afterwards; he’ll send you home in one of his plain white T-shirts the next morning, and the sight of you in such a tame outfit will make a curling wave of lust course through him, though the drug will have worked itself out of his system by then.

He tugs at the clasp of your bra, fumbles it but then unlatches it, and he pushes it off of your arms to reveal your breasts, and Carrillo sways closer to you.  He touches you there first, cups the soft roundness of you, and he feels how diamond-hard your nipples are.  He bends his head and puts his mouth to you—suckling, nipping, licking at you, and he feels your hand thread through his hair to hold him there.  He hears the keening whine you loose, the throaty way you say his name.

Not his name.  You whine out Colonel, his stupid fucking title, and he lifts his head.  He stares into your dark, unblinking eyes.  He reaches up a hand and grips your chin, firm but not hard, because even underneath the raging animal lust burning through him, he doesn’t want to hurt you.

“Horacio,” he tells you.  “Say it.”

You do, and it’s no mousy whisper.  Your tongue darts out and lays a wet line on your lower lip. 

“Horacio,” you reply.  You say it carefully like it’s a new word for you.

“Say it again,” he demands, but you only get the first two syllables out before he’s muttering a curse at hearing his name in your mouth, the intimacy of it, and he seals his mouth over yours in a fierce kiss.

The rest of your clothes—your jeans, your panties—fall away as he strips you.  There’s no art to it.  No seduction, because you strip him just as fiercely.  You tug at his belt and undo it, pull it from the loops of his pants with a snap as the leather whips against the air.  You get him out of his uniform shirt and t-shirt underneath it but then he pushes you back against the bed and you fall, naked and gorgeous. 

Horacio pounces.

There is a part of him, terribly small and far away, that worries you don’t want this.  The straight-edged part of him despairs that this is just the drug, that you’ll be horrified in the morning. 

His worrying will be needless.  He’ll wake before you in the morning—the consequence of being in the army so long—but when you finally wake too, you’ll only be a little shy.  You won’t have any regrets, and you’ll prove it to him by climbing onto him, by riding him slowly in the pre-dawn Medellín morning.  And neither of you will be drugged when you do.

Now, he stretches the length of his body over yours, feels the feverish press of his skin to yours.  You open your legs to him, but when he settles between your spread thighs, you hook your feet onto his pants, reach down with your hands, and clumsily try to work the rest of his clothing off of him.

“Eager,” he mutters against your mouth, and your lips are slick, swollen from how much he’s already kissed you.

“Please,” you reply.  You gaze up at him, blink as if you’re trying to clear your head.  “Please, Horacio.”

Then you shift the hand that is already reaching down, and you touch him—your hand slips under the low-slung elastic of his boxers, and your warm hand is on his cock, and the sudden touch makes him jump and twitch in your palm as you grasp him firmer, start stroking him.

“Fuck,” he chokes out.  “F-fuck, cariño.”

If he can be grateful for anything, it’s that he got dosed in your lab and managed to get home before this moment.  You told him this drug was circulating though Medellín clubs and bars, and Horacio cannot imagine succumbing to this sharp, all-encompassing desire in public.  He’s grateful he got you to his bed, where you have privacy.

The first time he fucks you, Horacio gets no further than freeing his cock from the confines of his pants, shoves his uniform slacks and his boxers down just enough for his aching length to spring free.  You moan as you stroke him—he’s slick with pre-cum—but he breaks free from your grip and shuffles forward.  He pushes forward until he’s touching your slick folds, and then he pushes into you, unable to stop himself, but your hands reach down and grasp his ass and pull him into you, and once he’s buried to the hilt, you wrap your legs around him.

The first time he fucks you, Horacio can’t manage intelligible words.  Not in English, not in Spanish.  He can only grunt like an animal, can only breathe harsh, ragged breaths as he thrusts into you.  You’re unbearably wet, unbearably hot.  It’s like fucking some tight, searing thing, and the heat is everywhere—your cunt, your bared skin, your panting mouth, your hands gripping his shoulders.  The heat sinks into his skin, into his tense muscles, into the very bones of him.  It’s like he’s being unmade at the molecular level, broken down into base elements, and his grunts turn to snarls as he fucks you harder, deeper. 

You?  You take it.  You take it eagerly.  You wrap your legs around him.  You wrap your arms around him, and even if he wanted to stop, he’d have to untangle himself from your limbs.  Each jarring thrust where he’s completely buried in you makes you groan, and even you have an animal quality to the sounds he’s pulling from your perfect lips.  When the crown of his cock hits the end of you, you groan, but it’s throaty—almost a growl.

A moment later, he feels a sting of fire on his back where you dig your fingernails into him.  Where you scratch long lines of burning into his skin, like a brand.  He’ll carry those marks for days, feel how they burn under the spray of his shower.

Then you aren’t just taking it anymore.  You start to fuck back against him, lifting your hips an inch off the bed, tilting your pelvis enough to grant him more depth to you.  You find his rhythm and meet him thrust for thrust, until you’re moving not as two people but one.

The first time he fucks you, Horacio has no clue how long it lasts.  It goes by in a blink.  It lasts for hours.  It’s nowhere near long enough before he feels the burning tension at the pit of his belly snap and spill over like molten metal poured out of a crucible.  He can’t even warn you that he’s about to come because it happens so quickly—a particularly deep thrust where he swears he can feel himself breeching the entrance of your womb, where you hiss in his ear some phrase he won’t remember.  The tension snaps, and he breathes out your name, and he comes inside you, brands your perfect cunt with his spend.

But the feeling of him filling you must be the last bit of stimulation you need because you come a beat later too, and the sensation of your cunt rippling against him when he’s already so sensitive nearly makes him cry.

It gives you each a moment of reprieve.  Horacio’s burning lust recedes just enough that he gazes down at you.  He feels a sting of guilt—you’re disheveled, your hair wild and your eyes leaking tears down into your temples.  Your lips are swollen as you struggle to catch your breath, and you look so gorgeously, thoroughly fucked that he leans down and kisses you gently on the corner of your mouth.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

You nod.  You reach out a gentle hand too, curl it into a loose fist and run your knuckles lightly over the side of his face.  It’s an oddly sweet gesture, soft, and when Horacio tilts his head into your touch, you uncurl your fist and cup his face.

This is the moment, he will realize later, where love takes root.  This simple, intimate moment between the two of you.  Eye of the storm, where he kisses you sweetly and you cup his face.  The love won’t blossom or fruit for a while yet, but this is where it reaches its tender shoots into him.

But the realization won’t come until later.  For now, the receding tide of lust reverses, comes rushing back in.  He’s still buried in you, still hard as steel, but everything is getting warm again.

“You okay?” he asks again, but he’s already pulling out a fraction, pushing back into you, his hips making small movements.

“Again, Horacio.”  Your thumb strokes along his stubbled cheek, and you nod up at him.  “Again, please.”

You ask so nicely.  He pulls out long enough to finally strip out of his clothes, but then?

Then he obliges.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

by Betsy Ladyzhets

She is part of an administration that many advocates believe turned its back on COVID-19. Still, some see more hope in a potential Harris presidency.

In early August, the newly minted Kamala Harris campaign posted a job opportunity: disability engagement director. The director would meet with disability communities across the United States, build relationships with disability advocates, and help people participate in campaign events.

Some Long COVID advocates expressed excitement for the role on social media, and hoped that it would be filled by someone familiar with their disease. For these advocates, the disability engagement director is part of a broader opportunity presented by Harris’ move to the top of the ticket: to make their case for national recognition. For others disillusioned by the Biden administration’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, however, the campaign has a higher bar to clear before they will support Harris.

Advocates say that people with Long COVID, a potentially debilitating chronic disease that can impact all parts of the body, represent a growing voting bloc in this year’s presidential election. Leaders from Long COVID advocacy groups and the broader disability community are considering how to make their case to Harris’ staff, with a particular interest in Anastasia Somoza — a disability advocate who was hired for the engagement director role — and Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate who has championed Long COVID research as governor of Minnesota.

“VP Harris is part of an administration that has turned its back on public health,” said Karyn Bishof, founder and president of the COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project, in an email. However, Bishof added, Harris’ “track record suggests that she could prioritize the well-being of those most affected [by Long COVID], particularly women and marginalized communities, and perhaps push for more honest and accessible education and care.” Bishof pointed to Harris’ experience supporting health care and women’s rights and her selection of Walz as reasons for optimism about Long COVID organizing under a potential Harris administration.

One recent review paper found over 400 million people have developed Long COVID worldwide, costing an estimated $1 trillion to the global economy. About 18% of U.S. adults have experienced the disease, with higher rates among women and LGBTQ+ people, and 1 in 4 people currently living with it experience “significant activity limitations,” according to surveys from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Many can no longer work, attend school, or engage with their communities. And the numbers grow with every new COVID-19 wave.

Some people with Long COVID have shared these experiences with politicians and in the media as they organize for scientific research, health care, and social support. At a Senate committee hearing in January, Long COVID advocates packed the chamber and encouraged senators to attend with phone campaigns. The hearing contributed to new legislation introduced this summer that would provide over $10 billion in funding for research and health care.

Scott Hugo, a housing justice attorney with Long COVID, wrote an open letter to the Harris campaign asking it to recognize this growing population. In an interview, he explained the connection he sees between the campaign’s message of supporting vulnerable members of society and the struggles people with Long COVID face to find medical care, access government services, and educate their loved ones about the disease. By publicly discussing Long COVID, Harris could inspire people in this community to vote and organize when they were previously apathetic about the election, he suggested.

“None of us are disposable, and I think that’s what the Democratic Party understands,” Hugo said. His message to the Harris campaign: “You want us in your coalition, and you need us in that coalition to win.”

Somoza and the campaign’s press team did not provide comments for this story.

[galatiul-e-un-oras-de-basm]

Hai să facem o lista cu denumiri amuzante sau mai deosebite din orasele voastre; uitatz aici câteva din Galatz:

La cățeaua leșinată (gen e o cofetarie din spatele unui bloc);

La scânduri multe (fost bar de pe vremea lui Ceau', actualmente un magazin "Pret fix");

Și Ultimul Leu (la inelul de Rocadă);

Aștept și de la voi va pup

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

Also if you're an American who is rightfully disillusioned with the two-party system and perpetual "lesser of two evils" cycle, I would highly encourage you to get involved in movements for Ranked Choice Voting.

While not perfect, and I would personally prefer a complete overhaul to introduce a parliamentary system with a form of proportional representation, Ranked Choice is a bit more realistically achievable within the current framework that exists in the United States.

With the a first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system like the US currently has, third parties are always going have an incredibly small chance of success, barring major disruption or the internal collapse of one of the two main parties. The fact is that it is always going to be difficult, if not outright impossible, for a third party to pull enough voters from one of the existing main parties to actually win.

Because of this, it is difficult to convince people to support third parties because they will fear splitting the vote of their voting bloc, leading to the party they want least to win.

Ranked Choice Voting helps eliminate or mitigate some of these problems by allowing voters to rank the candidates in order of preference. If there are 4 candidates, the voter assigns them each a number in order of preference, 1-4.

The counting method then usually promoted in the US for single-member districts is the instant run-off method. In this case the votes would be counted and if no candidate won over 50% of 1st preference votes the candidate with the lowest number of votes would be eliminated. The 2nd preference votes from the eliminated candidate are then redistributed to the remaining candidates. This continues until someone wins over 50% of the vote.

This way, people can safely vote for third parties without worrying about splitting the vote, because the system takes into account their preferences.

Here's a sample scenario:

There is an election and 4 candidates run for election in a particular district and their vote percentages are as follows:

Candidate 1 for the Republican Party: 30%

Candidate 2 for the Democratic Party: 25%

Candidate 3 for the Libertarian Party: 21%

Candidate 4 for the Green Party: 24%

Using the existing FPTP system, the Republican Party candidate wins, even though 70% of voters did not vote for them.

But with Ranked Choice Voting, the Libertarian candidate is eliminated and their votes redistributed. Let's say that most of them put The Republicans as their 2nd preference (12 points) but 6 points go to The Green Party and 3 to the Democrats:

Candidate 1 for the Republican Party: 42%

Candidate 2 for the Democratic Party: 28%

Candidate 4 for the Green Party: 30%

Since still no one has over 50% of the vote, the Democratic Party Candidate is eliminated and their votes redistributed. Let's say those voters overwhelmingly voted for the Green Party Candidate as their 2nd preference, or their 3rd (in the case where their 2nd preference was the Libertarian Party Candidate, who has been eliminated).

The new vote totals are thus as follows:

Candidate 1 for the Republican Party: 44%

Candidate 4 for the Green Party: 56%

This time, the Green Party Candidate wins because the system accounted for the preferences of the voters, the majority of whom did not want the Republican Candidate to win.

TLDR: Pushing for Ranked Choice Voting is something tangible you can do to slightly improve the shitshow that is American Politics and I would strongly encourage everyone to educate themselves on it and to push for it in all elections that you can. There are some active Ranked Choice Voting campaigns out there, but even educating the people you know on Ranked Choice Voting and how it is a better representation of the desires of the electorate is a good start.

Disclaimer: This post is not intended as a lecture on why you should or should not vote for a third party candidate in the upcoming election. Please do NOT try to start arguments on my post about whether or not it is morally acceptable to vote for third parties. That's not the point of this post, this post is intended to inform people about Ranked Choice Voting and how First-Past-The-Post is a terrible system that screws over the American people.

[himbeereule]

(please excuse my language. normally i don't swear, but i'm really not well right now.)

tomorrow is my birthday (fuck)

i also have a presentation tomorrow (i haven't started on it yet, and i don't have any powerpoint-esque software to begin with. fuck)

i also have two exams tomorrow (i wasn't present when we learned the stuff that'll get asked there, i haven't started trying to catch up, and there is no script or comparable materials to do that to begin with. fuck)

i went outside and there were too many people and my brain went "seems like a good time to start a major depressive episode!" (fuck)

i'll call in sick to school tomorrow because otherwise i'll 100% unalive myself (i already have trouble with my boss because of too many sick days - they were all during school blocs. idek why he cares as long as my grades are fine, but i might end up losing the job once my contract runs out. fuck)

i mean, i'm aware that i'm just whining, but seriously. how fucking unfair can the world be. with my set of issues, i should be dead or in a closed psychiatric facility. but because i happen to be really good at most things, people expect me to constantly overperform. which i can't. i barely function at all. i lost my last job because of too many sick days; two days later, they hired me back because the whole department fell apart without me. when my boss at my current job warned me about the number of sick days (even though almost all of them were during school blocs which i'll be done with next year anyway) he told me i only have a chance still because if i'm there 80% of the time i'm still way more productive than others who are never sick.

don't know where i'm going with this - again, just pathetic whining, feel free to ignore - but the bitterness has to go somewhere i guess. i stumbled through the entire school system, every single teacher/professor i had was like "oooh, you're really good, i expect great things from you" and then did EXACTLY NOTHING to help with that - on the contrary, they actively hindered me by insisting on petty bureaucratic bullshit. so now i'm stuck with a mediocre upper-level graduation paper that makes me a "specialist worker" but also bars me from studying any of the things i actually could get through despite my issues; and i can't keep any job, because, despite outperforming pretty much everyone in productivity in all my jobs, i can't get consistent attendence rates, and HR shift planners hate that.

welp, i'll try to work on the project(s) at least. don't want to disappoint everyone here as much as i'm disappointing myself and everyone else.

(also, it feels so fucking weird to add tags to this, like... my immediate reaction is "huh? i'm not writing this to get attention, i don't need tags!"; but then i realize i am absolutely doing this for attention, because note number go up makes brain give dopamine shot like one of these early 2000s coin machines where you'd get grimy 10 year old candy if you tricked the mechanism into working... still not adding all the diagnosis tags though this time, the guilt i'd feel over this isn't worth the potential extra readers)

[deathblacksmoke]

the gentlest feeling

a dramamine story

pairing: nick ruffilo x noah sebastian

summary: shortly after the conclusion of the original dramamine series, nick and noah move into their first home together.

cw: fluff <3, boys in love, domestic bliss, brief mentions of the afterlife & guardian angels

word count: 825

author's note: it might be a little bit too fluffy but i just wanted a soft thing and i missed writing these sweet boys. minimally proofread.

title from "blue light" by bloc party.

masterlist | taglist form

As he flits about the house — their house — he can’t help but count his blessings that they were able to get here. That Noah didn’t give up on him.

He places their dishes in the cupboard, their spices in the pantry, their toiletries in the shower, their linens in the closet. He makes the bed — their bed — the new queen-size they saved up to split. They’ll wind up squished to one side most nights, because Nick hates to have distance between them, even now, when the Virginia nights are hot and humid. Noah still likes to sleep with a window open and the fan blasting so he can hear the crickets and see the lightning bugs.

They’ll wake up sticky and warm but he wouldn’t want anything else than to wake up like that in the morning — every morning — with the sunlight flickering through the open window and stuck to his sweet boy, an excuse to huddle together in the shower before breakfast.

As odd as the idea feels passing through his mind, he can’t help but think that Jasmine would be proud of him, that she would see him and feel thrilled that he allowed his life to be turned around.

He doesn’t know if he believes in God, but he knows that he still finds her everywhere. She’s in the disembodied laugh he hears bellowing through the bar, the one that can only be traced back to her. When he gets a Jeopardy question right and Noah’s smiling wide and nudging him, they’re back at trivia night at The Rabbit’s Foot, Jasmine whispering the answer in his ear so he can get all the glory. She’s tucked in the corners of every bit of his life and while sometimes the reminders sting, leaving a deep ache in his gut, they usually wrap themselves around him like her warm hugs always did.

He didn’t always believe in Heaven, but for her sake, he hopes she’s somewhere lovely, listening to her favorite records. He feels guided by a gentle hand and knows that it’s her doing, one way or another.

He’s taken out of his thoughts by Noah beckoning him into the living room, a distant Nicky that always sends him excitedly rushing in its direction. He finds his love sprawled on the green velvet chesterfield they plucked off a curb, the perfect find.

“How’s it look?” Noah asks him. He doesn’t have to look around him to know it’s perfect — he blindly trusts Noah’s eye — but he makes a show of doing it anyway. Their listening station has been set up in the corner, and at the sight of their collections mixed, he feels his heart clench. Somehow, that’s what makes this the most real.

What catches his eye the most, though, is the shelf of framed photos that Noah set up in the entryway. Photos of them, of Noah and Autumn, of Nick and Jolly, of Noah and Folio — among all of the little memories they’ve made together in the past 6 months, an old one stands in the middle, drawing his attention the most. The photo from Autumn’s 30th, Nick and Jazz, still happy.

Without asking, and without being asked, Noah carved out a space for her memory in their home. If Nick didn’t know any better, he would think Jasmine sent him.

Holding back tears and nearly failing, he turns his attention back to Noah, who’s lounging on the sofa and looking up expectantly. His feet take him on their own accord, dropping himself on top of him and blanketing Noah’s body with his own. He wraps himself around him, happy to save the remainder of the unpacking for later.

“It’s perfect, sweetheart,” he speaks into the side of Noah’s neck, peppering his skin with delicate kisses. “Thank you for being here with me.”

“Thank you for paying the security deposit,” Noah responds with a laugh, tightening his arms around Nick’s middle. He settles further into the sofa, bringing Nick with him.

He used to believe in one true love. He believes it less and less every day.

He struggles to imagine anything less true than the love he had with Jazz, the safety he felt there and the warmth of her delicate touch. He can’t think of anything less true than the love he has with Noah, the laughs they share, the peace he feels, the warm glow that encompasses everything.

He feels relief, again, for the privilege of a mind gone quiet. He never thought this was something he could have, the freedom to build a home again, the two of them and all of their things — their grief, their memories, and the people that will stay with them.

He runs a hand under Noah’s shirt, a comfort in the feeling of soft, bare skin beneath his fingers. Noah places a kiss to the top of his head, and everything blurs around the edges.

He’s safe again.

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[defrostedvertebrae]

i hate travelling anywhere it's not middle-of-nowhere in nature. Unless it's my home city everything feels like i'm in a swerving bus that has no bars or seats or anything. A peanut in a rattling can.

Where are my commie blocks? no not those, those that look like my [home town]. This town center looks too much like western europe take me out of here. What, it's still the same country? not enough so apparently get me outta here!!

I won't even mention what it's like actually exiting the commie bloc area of europe because in that case i'll just hole up inside.