#buck and water theming

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Hello new piece of art in Bucks loft that is making me think thoughts! I need to see you in full please and thank you!

There was no art on this wall before - as we can see in 705

its an interesting piece because it looks to be an artists 1/5th scale posable figure, in front of either water or static (I prefer water, but static is entirely plausible!). Water theming around Buck has always been at thing (and around buddie more widely for that matter!) and thats making me think a lot of thoughts.

But the concept of positioning and poses and proportions - because there’s something about painting a 1/5th scale posable figure and having it as the finished piece of art. The figures are meant to help artists with drawing, its a reference item, and points to the beginnings of a painting rather than a complete picture - its the thing you use to create the base markings for your final piece, its not usually the final piece.

So using it here is maybe a reference to Buck and his bi identity being at the beginning stages and that it will look vastly different by the ‘end’ of his journey - and so we might see the art change over the season as things happen to him and he grows and develops. It possibly being tied into the water theme as well is interesting - the idea that water washes away and renews, but can be destructive in the process. It could be a play on the idea that old Buck is being washed away and new Buck is still a work in progress - he's still figuring himself out and forming the full picture.

The fact it's only appeared since tommy started dating Buck - by that I mean after the coffee date, not the first failed date - and that its maybe also a reference to Tommy - that he is being positioned to serve Bucks arc like a posable figure. Like an inside joke from the set department about tommy being a plot device in much the same way those figures are a plotting device for a piece of art!

[astravis]

THEY'RE SELLING HIS UNDERWEAR

I CAN'T

Cowards didn't keep the same design though

Where's "ENERGY" across the cheeks huh??

[lanabuckybarnes]

| A Door Away |

Minors DNI 18+

2 weeks. It’s been 2 weeks of biological warfare in the sense of your heat. When he met up with you in the hall, Bucky knew with just with a glance just how fucked he was, and he needed it badly

✧Pairing✧ Alpha!MilitaryVet!Bucky x Omega!Fem!Reader

✧Warnings✧ Alpha!Bucky, Pining, Fluff, Buck being a cutie, Wet dreams, Oral (M), Rut, Heat, A/B/O Themes, Dirty Talk, Petnames [Omega, Pretty Girl, Baby, Princess], Dirty talk, Confessions - Any other warnings let me know

✧Word Count✧ 3.7k

✧Events✧ Hot Bucky Summer | WEEK 2 | “What should I call you? | Master, Alpha, Pet | @buckybarnesevents

Buckys-wintersoldier 2K followers Bingo | Square: Confessions in a weird situation | @buckys-wintersoldier

James Bucky Barnes was aloof. He kept to himself most of the time, rarely speaking beyond a hello or a soft ‘how are you?’ You had to admit that there was something about the man that intrigued you. Was it his cold gaze that seemed to melt whenever he looked at you, those rippling arms and toned body you’d caught a glimpse of through your peephole one warm day. Or maybe it was the sweet gentle nature he hid behind those layers of hardened emotions. You can always remember the first time you met your neighbour face to face. He held a basket in his hand filled to the brim with household items that you could easily have forgotten with a big move.

“Oh hi” you chirped when you noticed that you’d been taking in the man for a little too long. His scent captivates you, keeping you glued to your doormat. A rich vanilla permeating your nostrils, it was one of the nicest scents you’d encountered around your time with alphas.

He cleared his throat, the tip of his nose and ears darkening to a deep pink.

“My sister…I mentioned to her I had a new neighbour and she made this…for you” his voice dropped off at the end of the sentence, his deep blue eyes unable to hold your own for more than a minute. He was peculiar for an Alpha, most of them reeked of arrogance, treating their subordinates like gum on the sole of their shoe. But here he was, a basket stretched out to you and his eyes pinned to his shoes.

You’d been staring again.

A few months into living in the new apartment, everything was finally settled and you were settling into your little home just great. Bucky helped an awful lot which surprised you beyond belief. When your AC broke and your landlord wouldn’t pick up your calls James knocked on your door, tools in hand. He had it fixed in under an hour.

The same with your shower, sink and that time you bought a bigger bed, determined you could do it yourself only to knock on James’ door with your tail tucked between your legs.

After an offer of his favourite dish and beer, he found it hard to keep the ‘annoyed’ scowl on his face. You were just too cute looking up at him like that, with wide puppy dog eyes, looking so defeated. His animal brain lived for the domestic life you two had accidentally created.

“Today was nice Buck” You turned in his embrace to lean into his side a little more, your legs tucked under you and your face inches away from his. The swans in the water splashed around, courting each other with their pretty dances.

“I’m glad you liked it” he let his hand, the metal one that he’d lost while serving, cup your cheek, the plates clicking softly as he soothed his thumb over the bone.

His eyes dropped to the perfect bow of your lips, how close they were to his. It would take only a slight movement to connect them, swallowing your soft sounds.

“You don’t gotta stare,” you teased. He lurched forward, capturing your lips in a tight embrace, his tongue pressing against your mouth looking for entry which you gladly granted.

There was no fight for dominance in the kiss, your tongues dancing instead. His lungs stung with lack of oxygen but he didn't want to pull away, he couldn’t, your soft floral scent mixing with the dewy air keeping him trapped. When it became too much you parted, his lip captured by your teeth.

There was something so primal in your eyes, a longing that had him twitching inside his jeans in anticipation.

“James” his name came out of your mouth as a breathy whimper, almost like it was excruciating to say his name. The air around you both changed into something humid, biting at him, rearing its erogenous head.

He didn’t even notice the way your hand had drifted down, his breath catching in his throat as you rubbed your palm over him.

“Need you James” you whispered so sweetly in his ear, leaving soft kisses down his neck, completely missing his scent gland. The rhythmic clanks of his belt sounded in his ears and you pulled back with a victorious sound.

You looked like an angel as you pulled him from his briefs, pumping his length until precum beaded at the tip. Your eyes never left his as you sunk, your tongue rolling out to taste him.

You were so close he could feel your hot breath against his tip, your pink muscle drawing ever closer—

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Bucky’s eyes shot open. His chest heaving against his mattress euphoria, evidence of his actions that he’d just imagined soaked his underwear and sheets.

But the dream was more than just a run-of-the-mill thing. It only meant one thing for Bucky. His rut.

To say you were growing concerned for James was an understatement. For over two weeks now you hadn't seen him, hadn’t heard a thing from him at all. It was like he just vanished. It was when he didn’t show up for your weekly meal together that it reached its boiling point.

You couldn’t even eat the food you prepared as you sat, staring blankly at the spot James would usually sit, letting you drag on and on about your day with a soft smile or a little comment here and there. Your heart always fluttered when he did that, even if it was just a small hum it sent butterflies flapping about aimlessly in your stomach.

You went to bed in a sour mood, hangry and entirely terrified for your friend.

You tossed and turned in dreamless slumber, any slight sound shocking you awake, no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t force yourself into deeper rest.

The clock on your bedside table read 3am when you heard a bang in the hallway, a curse following it. You slipped out from under the covers and grabbed the first thing that came into your hand, your dad’s baseball bat he gave to you for good luck—and for a scenario just like this one.

You crept silently down your hall to the front door, avoiding each creaky floorboard that Bucky promised to fix sometime last week. Peaking through the peephole you found the very man that had made your life a living pain for the past few weeks.

You swung your door open quickly, meeting the wild eyes of James, anger bubbling in your chest fighting with the concern you also felt. The concern won by a slim margin.

“James” you whispered, inspecting his body with your eyes. His hair was a tousled mess, and his pale blue shirt was wrinkled. Still the same man and with no sign of injury, except the pained expression across his face.

“Bucky. Call me Bucky” he forced a smile but he couldn’t hide the low rumblings of a growl in his broad chest. His brain short-circuited at the way your sweet voice sounded. It brought him right back into his bed and into that dream. He couldn’t deal with that and he sure as hell wouldn’t force you to either. He wasn’t that kind of alpha.

Then your nose picked up on something in the air around you, that vanilla smell that Bucky had, it swirled with something much more fruity, something suggestive that had your omega brain wrestling with your logical human side.

His rut.

That’s where he was.

His voice rasped as he spoke, lying dormant for too long but your mind was far too occupied with more nefarious thoughts. You couldn’t help but imagine him, legs spread wide on a couch, his naked chest blushed pink, his mouth agape as strangled moans, growls, any sound of pleasure falling from him. His hips fucking up into his hand, or one of those silicone pussy’s you’d seen in porn.

Would he be thinking of you while he called out for his omega?

“Hello?” You shook out of your trance, realising that you’d been staring at Bucky the whole time. You shot him an awkward smile, confusing him further.

“Bye.”

Slam. Your door shook on its hinges as you slid down the other end of it.

Bye? Why the fuck did you say that? You let your head fall backwards, sucking in some much-needed fresh air. Your thighs clenched, your hand wandering between your legs to your soaked panties. And that was only because of his smell.

Bucky was no better, the remains of his rut flaring up at the sight of you, in that tank and panties. You hadn’t anticipated anyone and opened the door in a panic, completely forgetting about your half-naked look. Bucky grunted, mumbling under his breath about how ridiculous he was being. He threw his keys into the bowl and stripped off his clothes, heading straight for the shower. If he left it any longer he didn’t want to think of the ways he’d ruin your tiny body.

His cock throbbed at the notion. God he hated his brain sometimes.

You shot out of bed in a panic at the first twinge. It couldn’t be happening, you hadn’t had one in months. The second twinge had your legs like jelly, your hands slapping onto the nearest surface.

Oh, it was happening, and you had only a little time to prepare.

Throwing on a pair of sweats and quickly doing your teeth you frantically made your way to the car park to grab your car, almost speeding to the shop just so you could be at home in time.

You raided the store of all its protein products and energy drinks. The bags almost burst at the seam as you carried them to the elevator. Your fingers ached and your body cried out. Come on it won’t be that much longer, you reassured that animalistic part of your brain.

Stepping out onto your floor you struggled down the carpeted hall, the bags feeling heavier and heavier. Thankfully Bucky would be at work, you didn’t have any chance of bumping into him.

You fished for your keys in your pocket, grasping them tightly before fumbling with them.

“Need a hand?” Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh yesss. A range of emotions crossed your brain at his deep voice, your logical brain cursing while your omega brain reeled.

Yes. you need a hand, let the alpha know what’s wrong. Your animal brain demanded.

Don’t be fucking stupid, he’s your neighbour and he doesn’t even like you. You’re wanting us to wriggle our ass in his face and beg to be bred, yeah I’m sure he wouldn’t call the cops.

It wasn’t unheard of for omegas to ask alphas for help during their heat, kind of like a friends-with-benefits scenario. But you’d be damned if you were asking Bucky for help. You could get a bit…passionate about sex and it doubled during your heat, you liked Bucky too much to let him bear witness to that, your mind plaguing you with thoughts of him hightailing it and running at the first sight of you.

You’d settle with your little knotted friend that rested neatly in your drawer.

After politely declining Bucky’s offer you for straight to work.

Night drew closer, your nest established on your floor, perfectly poised just the way you like it. Energy drinks and your trusty silicone dildo lay off to the side.

You took your time showering, doing your entire routine. Drying yourself off before lathering your body in lotion, you didn’t even bother to put on some clothing, instead settling yourself into the nest in a foetal position.

Your hips rolled into the air, soft whimpers falling from you at around 2am. Without hesitation you grabbed the rubber cock, squirting some lube on it and running it through your soaked slit. You pushed it in slowly until the knot pressed against your entrance, your pussy not quite ready yet but with the way your wetness rolled out of your body, it wouldn’t be too long.

Bucky could hear your whimpering from the next apartment, your scent wafting through his house and straight into his nostrils. His cock twitched at your soft sounds, your muffled pleading for an Alpha to fill you up.

His mind wandered, were you using your fingers to get off or one of those cocks he knew companies made to exploit little omega’s like you.

“Mmm fuck Alpha hurts so much need your pups”

God it was going to be a long night.

The longer you went on the worse Bucky got, his cock dribbling all over his tight briefs, his skin glistening with a layer of sweat. He sat on the side of his bed, his head leaning against the wall, listening to you please yourself.

2 weeks later your heat was showing no signs of subsiding. Your supplies from your first run had gone long ago and you had to ask your friend to grab you some more. You’d never felt a heat like this, usually they’d last a couple of days and that would be that but you were still riding your dildo a week later.

“Fuckfuckfuck…Alpha please so good” you slurred, a flurry of whimpers slipping out of your mouth as you rocked your hips back and forth, the head of the dildo brushing against your sweet spot. Your pussy gushing more slick around the plastic, smearing all over your thighs and onto the blankets of your nest.

It just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Your orgasms shook through you but you were left unsatisfied and riding the rubber cock desperately. Trying to seek that one good, back arching blissful climax that had you sinking into your sheets in exhaustion.

But it never came.

“Oh fuck Alpha gimme that fucking knot mmmm need your knot so bad, need you to breed me full” your moans mixed with the sloshing of your cunt, your lips stretching around the knot as it sunk into you repeatedly with a sloppy sound, your fingers frantically strumming your clit for anything. You could feel the coils in your stomach tighten almost painfully but no matter what you did they just wouldn’t snap.

“Fuckkkkk” You stopped your movements, sitting on the dildo and catching your breath. You were at a loss, you didn’t know what to do, if you didn’t cum you were going to drive yourself insane but no matter how hard you fucked yourself it just wouldn’t make anything happen.

You were so desperate, so fucking needy. You needed an Alpha.

The dildo fell out of you with a pop as you stood on shaky legs, each step towards your bedside cabinet sending pleasured shocks up your spine. You unlocked your phone, scrolling through your contacts until you reached the one you needed.

‘Bucky 🤭🩵’

For a second you hovered over the call button, unsure if you should do it. But need prevailed and the ringing brought you back to reality.

“Hello?”

You almost moaned pathetically down the phone at the sound of his voice, thick with sleep deprivation and so fucking husky.

“B-Bucky…” you hadn’t thought this far, your brain was so fogged with need that you didn’t even stop to think about how you’d ask him for help. Bucky’s voice at the end of the line was quick to respond. You didn’t need to tell him a thing he could hear just how much you struggled.

“I’ll be over in 5”

You could’ve cum on the spot, your eyes rolling into the back of your head as you bit your lip and clenched your thighs. You looked around your room, a mess of blankets and pillows arranged in a circle on your floor and in the centre, your dildo. You sunk to the floor, no longer able to stand as the waves were just too much. The hardwood hurt your hands and knees as you crawled into the centre of your nest but you couldn’t care.

You were finally getting help and you couldn’t have been happier with who it was.

Your cheek smooshed against one of the pillows as you lay waiting, your hips grinding into the air subconsciously. You were so wrapped up in your trance that you failed to hear the front door opening or the soft knock on your bedroom door.

“Look at you pretty ‘mega” Bucky drawled from behind you, his slate blue eyes boring into your core. A fresh wave of slick trickled from you at the sight of him, his smell infecting the air in a way that had you gulping down oxygen like you were starved of it.

You watched as he slipped his shirt over his head, dog tags jingling before resting on his sternum, his metal hand drifting down to unbuckle his belt. You took him in like he was a cold glass of water on a boiling hot day. He was the magic medicine to your ailment.

He wasted no time in pushing his jeans and briefs to the floor, his thick cock slapping against washboard abs. He was so much bigger than the toy you relied on, your brain fought with itself, wondering if you could even take a cock that size.

You’d come this far.

“How’d you want it pretty girl? Want me to fuck you like you are just now, on your hands and knees presented to me like a little slut. Maybe you want me to flip you over and pound you, let you watch me as I hit every little inch of that hot ‘mega cunt” he spoke, words dripping with lust.

“I don’t care please Alpha” You slipped, pushing your ass back to him, waving it enticingly as more slick dripped from your folds. You needed it now, none of the teasing.

“Alpha?” He questioned with a teasing smirk, sinking to his knees behind you and flipping you with ease onto your back.

Fuck looked beautiful all fucked out, your face wet with frustrated tears, your pupils so dilated you could barely see the colour. Your chest heaving causing your tits to bounce and that sopping pussy, pathetically clenching around nothing, silently begging for him to fill you, make you full with him and only him.

“What should I call you?” You blinked up at him, blushing lightly despite the fact you lay spread wide for him. You’d never called someone Alpha before, it just fell from your mouth in bliss. Insecurity bubbled up at the thought of maybe Bucky not wanting to be your Alpha, even for just a short period.

Your worries were all squashed when he lined his fat head up with your core, sinking fully in a single thrust.

“Alpha’s fine baby, now lemme fuck that omega brain dumb alright. You don’t gotta think anymore, your alpha will do that for you.”

Dominance radiated off him. The kind that made you want to submit, roll your head back and present your neck for him to mark, letting him claim you.

He slid out slowly, letting you feel every inch, every vein of his length until just his head remained buried inside you before he thrust forward again, his tip kissing your cervix.

His thrusts picked up at the sound of your heavenly sounds, your body arching up to meet him, to be as close to him as possible.

“Ohh fuck ‘mega, that pussy ain’t been fucked good in a long time huh, she’s sucking me back in, such greedy little cunt…so fucking tight…that’s alright though, your alpha’s got you now, won’t let that pussy go unsatisfied again” Bucky fell to his elbows, his nose bumping yours as you shared each other's air. Your legs spread underneath him as his hips pushed your thighs open further.

You couldn’t think. he was everywhere. A hand in your hair, his hot breath fanning over your face and neck, his dick filling you up. You were ruined for any other Alpha you just knew.

Sobs bounced off the walls, sounds you’d never heard before falling from your mouth. Your hands clung to him, wrapping around his back, your fingernails digging into his shoulder blades.

Fuck you were so close, those coils tightening deep in your belly again, hot spikes of pleasure rolling up your spine, your cunt spewing your essence around him.

“Fuck ‘mega my fucking knots swelling already ohhh shit, my knot ain’t swelled this fast before” he laughed between guttural grunts, his teeth nipping your jawline.

“Mmmm Alpha” you heave, your pussy clenching him tightly.

“Gonna cum baby? Gonna squirt around my fucking knot yeah? Oh fuck oh shit come on sweet omega, cum on my fucking dick.”

Your world went white when the swollen base of his cock pushed into you, stretching you wide, your preen stuck in your throat as your body convulsed with such an intense orgasm. Bucky rammed his whole weight into you a few more times before following suit, dumping his huge load inside your ruined cunt.

You don’t know when he rolled you over, his arms wrapping around you, your leg hooked over his hip. Your soft whines were the only indication that you hadn’t passed out, along with the look of sheer unbridled joy melting over your features. The softness and domestic nature of it all grounded Bucky. He didn’t feel regret like he thought he would, or guilt that he’d corrupted you

He felt at home.

“You did so good for me, pretty girl, don’t know anyone that’s taken my dick so good. Such a pretty little ‘mega” he praised, nuzzling his nose into your hair.

“Love you alpha” You forced despite your tongue feeling like lead in your mouth.

“I love you too princess, now get some rest alright? I’ll be here when you get up, then I’ll make you feel nice and good again.”

Bucky’s warm embrace and strong scent lulled you to sleep. A deep satisfied slumber that you hadn’t felt for months, a smile on your face.

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Thanks for reading~

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[lilacxquartz]

part 17 of 19 of kinktober: trapped

pyramid head x gn!reader

plot: while exploring the town, you find yourself incapacitated in the worst possible position — themes: warning for non con, dark smut, gender neutral reader, size difference, monster fucking, horror, gender neutral smut — w.c: 700ish

kinktober masterlist • main masterlist • ao3

You were incapacitated.

Trapped in between the barely pried open iron bars, providing just big enough of a gap for your upper body to squeeze through and then… stall. In a way, it was humiliating, but in another sense, it was also terrifying because existing within the town as a whole was a death sentence in its own right. From one little miscalculation—you had potentially doomed yourself.

You tried to dislodge yourself again but the bars were too narrowly placed and you couldn’t push or pull yourself neither back nor forth and in doing so, you only found yourself more stuck than before. Panic quickly swept through your being in violent waves, abandoning all sense of rationality in favour of a hurried escape but nothing was working—but then finally, you heard it—the all too familiar scrape of metal, the thud of staggering footsteps—oh no, no, no… he was here.

You turned your head slightly back to just about catch a glimpse of him filling out the doorway, blocking all gaps of light that otherwise cut into the cell. In an attempt to avoid your flesh likely meeting the blade, you strove to push yourself forward, to at least nullify his efforts to strike you down… but then something else followed suit.

You froze as you felt his calloused hands brush around the soft contours of your exposed flesh; his fingers breaching the torn fabric and tearing away the cloth from the skin, readily exposing you to him. You remained statued in place as you feared for the worst, unable to quite comprehend what he was actually doing to you; almost delicately feeling you up—pushing—spreading your legs apart, ripping away at anything that acted as a barrier between you and him.

You tensed as you quickly understood what was following suit; feeling the tip of something very obvious poke against your most vulnerable parts. You writhed around and squirmed under his grip like a fish out of water, only to remain caught and hooked in his presence, feeling him drive into you in a near hungry pursuit. You gritted your teeth as you felt him force himself inside of you, feeling overwhelmed by his monstrous length that completely filled you out to the brim.

With shuddering, quaking cries, you softly wept as he continued to take in his brutal girth, feeling his cock slide in and out of your insides and stretch you out beyond a recoverable limit. With an unforgiving pace, Pyramid Head continued to hilt himself into your core, feverishly bucking into your body as a radiating, almost scalding pain akin to searing agony settled within the confines of your form. Of course however, he showed you no mercy, pounding into you with a near primal fervour; his hips slamming against your behind with each sawing motion.

Somehow, he grew needier as he continued to violate you—his fingernails digging bleeding crescents into the soft peaks of your ass, kneading against the cushioned skin and spreading you open as far as you could physically handle. It was as if he was trying to force you to accommodate the entire capacity of his impossible length, taking advantage of the limiting position, knowing that you couldn’t just pull yourself away.

Nearing his impending climax; his movements soon became more erratic and maybe even sloppy. He leaned his towering form closer wherever he could press against your bare back—causing the iron bars to crack open further—growling out heated breaths that rolled hot down your spine. Each passing thrust caused for you to shake, prompting you to involuntarily roll your eyes to the back of your head and perhaps even see stars from just how overwhelming it all truly was.

Just as you were about to pass out however, the monster finally came undone with one final violent rut of his stuttering hips. You gasped as you felt a stream of hot oozing warmth fill your senses to such an extent that your stomach nearly bulged from his pent up release.

Thinking it was all over, you tried to close your eyes to recover—but then you were promptly taken out of the cell, readily carried around like a rag doll, to be used and paraded around per each of his passing whims.

In a way you were thankful that he wasn’t going to end you outright.

But then you realised what your life was about to become and that much had otherwise terrified you.

Not quite a mercy after all and worse yet, rather a sentence in the hell you found yourself in.

[merakidoll]

『 ↳✧･ﾟ therapist! chrollo x bimbo! reader ;

warnings : black chubby reader. yandere!chrollo! stalking themes, riding, ALL CONSENSUAL!! soft dom chrollo, he’s just so utterly in love with reader !

mirahnote! : this is for @honeybleed underrated characters collab <3

a man of many talents, and lying just so happened to be his best one. you were someone who he adored. liked- loved even, but you had no clue who he was. chrollo was the man who lurked in the dark, whenever you felt like you saw something but blamed it on your shadow. it infact was him. eyes piercing and watching your every move. licking his lips whenever you did something that made his tummy boil with something he wasn’t so familiar with. you were such a dumb little thing, being so naive to think that you were going crazy for thinking that you had a stalker. it honestly pissed him off how everyone made you think it was you going crazy, making you seek therapy. how ironic, right?

“what made you feel that way?” he faked his concern so well that tears fell from your eyes. he hated seeing you cry, but he dug his nails into his palms to stop from grabbing you and soothing you. “w-well no one believes me” you looked up from your nails, big eyes watery and red. chrollo almost felt guilt, but he couldn’t find it in himself to. he was so close to you, closer than he’s ever been and it all feels so worth it. so with a sweet smile and what you thought was a safe person you let him sit beside you. rubbing his soft palms over your thighs.

“i’m here for you” he said so sweetly that made your heart flutter. what a fool. “t-that’s a good girl” your chest tighted as he paised you, pussy lips closing down on him to keep him secure inside of you. your arms wrapped around his neck, your face barried into his shoulder slob from your moans dripping down onto the expensive fabric. his scent alone had your pussy creaming around him. but the added thick head of his cock, and grit he exuded you were a mess. “chrollo loves you princess” he sounds so sincere. like had been waiting to confess such thing for years

your mind was too foggy to register it tho. so consumed by how stuffed your cunt felt. “y-yours” you whispered so high off the feeling of feeling good. “c-chrollos” you said his name sweetly. and he couldn’t help himself. ropes after ropes let go inside of you. he dug his toes into the dress shoes curseing in his head how he didn’t at least let you cum first. but he was too utterly in love with you to hold that back. when his cock finally calmed but came right back up, he printed his feet down into the carpet and gripped your hips. “who’s are you?” he sat you up from his shoulder sliding down into the couch just a bit.

“y-yours?” you said eyes watering at him going deeper. then he bounced. one, twice, your breast bounced with your body. nipples hard from the cool air, your fingers went to you lips bitting down onto the flesh not wanting to scream and disturb anyone. “thata girl” he smirked bucking his hips into you to meet your bounces. you couldn’t take it. “w-waitttt” you begged. your clit that rubes aginst his hairs making your feel so sensitive. your juices came out quick that neither of you had time to react.

it dripped onto his pants, and down your thighs. some even getting on the leather couch and carpet. you were so dizzy from the orgasm that all you could do was fall into a deep coma. chrollo of course took care of you, putting you on some of his clothes and humming as he wiped the sticky cums off of you.“precious girl” he said some himself softly rubbing your brown skin. you were finally his. and he couldn’t ever let you leave.

[fanaticsnail]

presses the +1 button for write it write it write it re: the vampire post im

🥺🥺🥺

biggest, saddest, wettest eyes pleading sldakjlkgfdjksgkl

got out of work and immediately got smacked in the face with that post im aslkdjkglfd ALSO that gif of law is 👌

@remisloves

Anything for you, Remi! I'll call it a gift exchange for you for your art of my OC, Tobiuo. I also adore that Law gif, so I'm gonna use it again! Thank you for your ask, Remi 🖤🖤

Invitation

Masterlist Here

Word Count: 1,500+

Synopsis: Based on vampiric folklore, a vampire may not come inside a premises without an explicit invitation. The vampire, Trafalgar D Water Law, was now left with a predicament, and you were not playing fair about it.

Themes: Vampire!Law x gn!reader, mdni, 18+, NSFW, smut, prior relationship hinted, penetrative sex (reader receiving), bratty reader, begging, pleading, crying, vampire biting - blood consumption, porn with plot, biting, edging, based on this post.

Notes: Returning to my vampire era again. Oh no. Mini part 2 here.

“Please.”

That small word was the greatest symphony to the world’s most fantastic serenade. The body between your thighs, nestled with his cock deep within your abdomen, and rhythmically bucking up with the crude slap of hips thrusting, was the vampire: Trafalgar D Water Law.

You had been friends for a while, the heart pirates stampeding onto your island and begging to port to resupply from your homeland granted your first meeting. The captain of the Polar Tang had his Were-bear speak for him, Bepo the peaceful mouthpiece for his demands while negotiating the resupply. The winged naga, Penguin, and the fey trickster, Shachi, ensured you were informed of the dire circumstances they found themselves within. Their captain had been inadvertently starved, his grip on his own sanity slipping the longer he withheld his urge to feed on a human.

He was a doctor, and a creature damned, yet deemed savior to the living. His soul was long since departed, yet here he was: stripped down to naught but his essence and begging for you from your position above him.

“No.”

That response alone had him whimpering, his eyes stinging at the corners from the creases where his lashes kissed one another. He looked up at you like you were the lifeline tethering him to the world, coinciding with his desperate bucking, had you feeling superior and empowered.

While you did grant the Polar Tang permission to dock at your port, you did not gift Trafalgar Law, the vampire, permission to come inside your body. With the ‘rules of permission’ induced in with vampiric folklore, come and cum seemed to be interchangeable.

You had been edging this vampire for almost half an hour now. The mixture of your blood from a deep bite against your jugular swirled with the lust he was burying within you. Your body homed his cock with an ease he hadn't experienced prior, and he was easily lost to the feeling of your soul entwining physically with his.

“Please,” he cried out, his cock refusing to spill while his shaft shuddered in pure need, “I-I can't. It won't. The-... Please.”

His sweet babbles falling from your lips had you cooing and preening down at the dark-haired man. His inked fingers dug into your hips dangerously hard, his restraint tested with each slide of his cock dragging into your body.

“Why won't you let me come in?”

His round, glossy eyes darted between yours as his question rang deep within your mind. No amount of vampiric hypnosis could cause a human to invite someone in, and he would never dream of such a notion. He needed you to need him, and he had never been on the precipice of desire for as long as he was with you.

Pleasure had bloomed and crested within your body twice so far, and you had enjoyed each rock and buck from the skilled vampire who coaxed them out of you. Another wave of desire simmered the longer he begged, and your eyes glazed at how easily you sucked him deep inside you. He was lost with you, his heels planted while he encouraged you to pump his cock with your entrance.

“You want to come in?” you gently cooed down at him, cupping his cool cheek beneath your palm briefly before bringing both of your hands to perch on his shoulders. “You could have pulled out at any time, vampire. What held you fixated?”

“B-Better if I-I cum while drinking from you,” he admitted, his voice catching in his throat while he fought off the fatigue marrying his withheld release. “Please let me come in. I n-need to cum, I need to cum, I need to cum-!”

The captain you once met on your shore, stoic in nature and abrasive in conversation, was begging to flood you with his cum. He needed to release deep within you, and his resolve was wearing away at the edges the longer you forbade him.

“You can hold off a while longer,” you pouted down at him, teasing him with a gentle hand tracing his pectorals towards his sensitive nipple, “Show me that vampiric resilience.”

At that coax, a deep growl erupted from his throat while he rolled you immediately beneath him. He chased his high, the sloppy and languid thrusts of his cock prompting him to whimper and whine with each steady motion. You sighed and gasped at the new angle, your voice catching and fluttering in a similar mannerism to the way your body desperately contracted in rhythmic waves clapping against his shaft.

“You want to come inside?” you gently teased him. He cried out, sobbing while nodding his head at your question. His canines retracted over his lips, his mouth parting and gently tracing over the prior bite you first allowed him to puncture and soothe on your mortal flesh.

He was so hungry when you first met him, you could barely begin to escort him to town before baring your neck out for him to feast on. The eyes sunken and drooped, the features hollowed and forlorn of the vampiric captain tugged at your heartstrings, and you allowed him to feed from you to replenish himself.

After that point, you had not once invited him back to your house, nor given him permission to come in. Both of those factors now brought you heightened joy at the control you held above his head. Although you remained friends and grew in deeper infatuation the longer he remained with you, you were yet to take him fully home.

“Please let me come in,” he whimpered in heavy gasps against your neck, his lengthy tongue expelling and flickering over your skin, “I need to cum inside you. Please? I-I need you.” You flung your arms over his shoulders and cradled him in the nook. He didn't make a move to bite down or bully you, but his moans where muffled huffs against your skin regardless.

“Please.”

You hooked your legs over his hips and interlaced your ankles behind his back, digging your heels into his cool skin and spurring him to fuck into your body harder. His desperate thrusts ran sloppy and desperate as he sobbed into your neck. Your hands traced his tattoo before digging your blunt fingertips into his muscle.

“Okay, sweetheart,” you gasped, already feeling on the precipice of another wave of pleasure crashing over you at his sweet begging and pleading.

“You can come in.”

Immediately his sloppy motions sped up, his cum flooding your body with a stream of viscous release. His teeth surged down and punctured your pulse, moaning at your essence of life as it hit his palate. Your body was no better, immediately bowing your back in a perfect arch and giving in to your third release. White split your vision, the pain from his bite dissipating as your body reached a higher realm of bliss.

His rigid body fell forward, his sobs fading into growled huffs and pants while his cock twitched akin to matching his likely initial rigor mortis. His cool skin melted against your warm torso, his ice-like tongue lapping at the wound and healing it with his saliva.

As you felt your high dissipate, you attempted to wriggle away from his embrace to look up at the vampire weighing his body heavily on you. His grip on you was strong, and he seemed far away and withdrawn in his mind while he lapped at your skin.

“Law?” you queried, attempting to nudge him away from his position nuzzled into your skin. He released a sound that was akin to a laugh before slowly withdrawing up to peer down at you. Hips began to move once more, his hard and steely cock once again hitting a spot that shot sparks up your spine and need pooling in your belly.

“You invited me to come in,” he chuckled, pressing his forehead to yours while his he fucked his exiting cum back into your body, “I'm going to use that hospitality to the fullest, and come in over and over again until I deem it appropriate to stop.”

“Law-!” Your cries fell on deaf ears as he held your hips down and rut into you. Cruel slaps echoed within the room, his prior begs turning into feral grunts at each heavy buck. You reached down in a bid to hold onto him for anchorage, an action he slapped playfully away while he continued his animalistic brutality.

“Nuh uh,” he chuckled down at you playfully, “For all that teasing you gave me earlier, I am going to get my revenge by tearing out orgasm after orgasm from you. All you gotta do is lay there and take what I'm giving to you."

Your body gave in, need again returning and flooding your veins with its reignition. Lips parting and jaw slacking, your legs hang limply over his hips and encouraged him to thrust deeper and harder. His hands move to circle your thighs tug them against him to gain leverage for his motions.

“That's it,” Law praised you with a cockiness in his tone, “You just think about what you did to bring this on. Gonna cum in you whenever I want now."

"Thank you for your invitation.”

Tag list: @mfreedomstuff @daydreamer-in-training @since-im-already-here @gingernut1314 @writingmysanity @i-am-vita @indydonuts @feral-artistry @the-light-of-star @empirenowmp3 @racfoam @sunflowersatori @carrotsunshine @skullfacedlady @jintaka-hane @thenotsofantasticlifestory

[rebelliousstories]

Ex Lover’s Lover

Relationship: Cooper Howard x Reader

Fandom: Fallout

Request: No

Warnings: Fluff, Brief Angst, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes

Word Count: 2,093

Main Masterlist: Here

Fallout Masterlist: Here

Part Two: My Baby Shot Me Down

Summary: Cooper Howard gets introduced to a new up and coming actress after his divorce is finalized. What happens when Barb finds out that Janey has been spending time with the two of them?

The sound of giggles and laughter filled the beautiful California ranch home. It was a sound that had almost never existed there again, but that all changed. Two adults were running around their dinning room in just their bathing suits because someone decided to tickle the other one.

“You ain’t gettin’ me, Coop! Not gonna happen!” The sweet accented voice rang through.

“Oh yes I am, darling.” He replied, darting around the table just in time to catch the woman. Wrapping his arms around her, Cooper began to drag her back outside to make use of their hot tub. She giggled the entire way back, and laughed when Cooper picked her up in a bridal hold to set her in the warm water. There was a tray of drinks waiting for them from before they had gotten side tracked.

“Now that we aren’t goin’ to be distracted any longer,” he groaned as he slipped into the warm water. “Here you are, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, hun. Ugh, this is just what I needed. You have no idea the day I have had.” She took a sip of her martini and relaxed further into the water. Cooper squeezed her thigh underneath the water to prompt her into talking about whatever it was.

“So the new Nuka-Cola ads ran today, and I get it, they want the prettiest image out of the bunch. But the retouching they did afterwards made my lips look twice their size. I look like I have clown lips,” pausing to take a sip, “and when I brought up my concerns to John he said, and I quote, ‘that’s what the people want. They want sex appeal.’ I’m selling a drink, not myself for a few bucks for the hour.” She ended her long rant with another sip of her drink.

“Darlin’ why don’t you find a new manager?” He asked, following her lead with his own martini.

“Cause John is a family friend. If I didn’t use him as my manager, my family would freak out. I’m tryin’ to get them out of the slums in Dallas.” Her voice wavered as she thought about it.

“Well, baby. What do you wanna do about it?” Cooper set down his glass on the ledge and turned his body fully towards his lover.

“I don’t know, Coop. I’m just hopin’ this bullshit dies down before the new movie. I’m just so stressed all the time right now. And I wanna go back to when I was actin’ for the love of it. Not just the love of a paycheck.” Downing the rest of her glass, and eating her olive, her hands were relieved of its glass by Cooper. He maneuvered her from her seat to his lap, and wrapped his arms around her middle.

“Darlin’, you can do whatever the hell you want. If you wanna get back into acting for the love of it, you can. If you wanna change a manager, let your family be mad. You’re gonna take over the world one day. I just hope I’m round to see it.” Howard started to press kisses to any and all skin he could get access to. He was briefly interrupted by her hand hitting his own shoulder, and he began to chuckle.

“Shut it. You’re not that old. You’ll still be around to see me reach your level of stardom.” She teased, pressing her lips against his. Their lips moved against each other as hands began to roam. The couple lost themselves in the moment, and did not pull away for anything. That was, until, someone’s stomach growled loudly.

“You hungry there baby?” Cooper teased, rubbing the front of her bathing suit, right over her stomach.

“You know drinking makes me hungry.” She whined, hitting her lover again when he laughed at her.

“If you think it’s so funny, you can go get food to bring out. How about that?” And she scooted off of Cooper to the bench seat of the hot tub. The man groaned, but made the move to get out of the warm water.

“Alright. What you want, baby?” He asked, wrapping his robe around him to make his way to the house.

“Can you get the cheese board from earlier? That sounds wonderful.” She leaned up to give him a kiss as he passed by, before settling back into the water. Cooper walked into the house and quickly found the board that she had made for an appetizer before their dinner. He was about to leave with the board when the phone rang. Setting the food down, Cooper padded over to the phone, and answered.

“Hello?” He asked, waiting to hear the voice on the other end of the line.

“Coop, hey. It’s me.” It was his ex-wife, Barb, on the phone.

“What do you want, Barb?” As much as he tried to sound indifferent, he was worried it came across as rude.

“Listen, I need you to take Janey. I have a big meeting at work tomorrow morning and my babysitter can’t make it. Please, I really need this favor.”

“It’s a Saturday tomorrow, Barb. What the hell you doin’ that’s so important?” He questioned, leaning against the wall.

“It doesn’t matter. Please, Cooper. Will you come take her for the weekend? You guys can start your week early this way.” She pleaded over the phone. Cooper scrubbed a hand over his face while the other held the phone.

“Alright. Alright, I’ll come get her. Be there soon.” He hung up the phone before she could say another word. With a deep sigh, he opened the door to the backyard and made his way over to the hot tub where his lover looked like she was about to fall asleep.

“Darlin’,” he shook her and watched her slowly come back to the land of the living. “Gotta go pick up Janey. Wanna come with me?”

“Yeah. I’d love to. You know I love that little girl.” She stretched and made her way out of the tub where Cooper waited with her robe. They made quick work of getting dressed and ready for the evening drive. The sun was just about to set when they left their house and got in the car.

It was a little over an hour before they arrived at Barb’s new house where the lights were still on. The entire drive over Cooper kept squeezing her hand, thigh, or really and part he could hold. There was something nerve wracking about seeing Barb knowing what he knew. He was not looking forward to it, but she was the mother of his child; that would never be taken away.

Getting out of the car, Cooper ran around and opened the door for his lover, before grabbing her hand to walk themselves up to the door. He knocked, and waited. The door opened up to the face of his ex-wife. She relaxed upon seeing Cooper, but was shocked to see the woman beside him.

“Hey,” Barb turned back to her ex-husband, “thank you for coming to get her. Come in. She’s just getting her things.” The couple walked inside the luxurious home. Everything in it looked like it was from a magazine.

“Cooper, may I talk to you?” Barb whispered, beginning to drag the man into the kitchen. He turned to his girlfriend, and only went when she nodded. Walking into the kitchen, he placed his hands in his pockets, and waited for her to speak.

“What is she doing here?” She just came out and said it.

“What do you mean?” Cooper responded.

“Don’t give me that, Coop. I thought it was just her imagination, but now I can see that Janey wasn’t lying.” Barb continued, placing her hands on her hips.

“The hell do you mean?” He asked once more.

“What are you doing with a girl young enough to be your daughter?” It was finally out in the open.

“Barb,” Cooper began, “she is a wonderful lady and I’m really happy with her. She’s of legal, consenting age. I didn’t coerce her into anything. She makes me happy and she makes Janey happy.”

“But she is so young. What’s gonna happen when she decides she doesn’t want to be with you anymore and leaves? Then you and Janey are heartbroken.” Her stern words caused Cooper to reel back as if he had been slapped.

“Wow. You really think that she is going to leave me just like that? Because of my age?” He watched as Barb stammered and tried to back pedal on her words. But Cooper just held up a hand, and silenced her.

“Listen, we’ve talked about our age difference. Hell, this is not the first time that I’ve thought about that. But every time I try and bring it up, she’s the one that puts me in my place. We love each other, of course I want her to be around Janey. And they love each other.” Cooper had stunned Barb into silence. The sincerity in his words was shocking to his ex-wife. All she could do was nod without a word as she tried to think. But before she could get another word in, footsteps ran into the kitchen.

“Daddy!” Janey yelled, happily throwing herself at her father.

“Oh, hello sweet pea! You been good for your momma this week?” He pressed a kiss to her cheek as he set her back down. She nodded eagerly, and smiled, which prompted her parents to smile. Another set of footsteps came in the room.

“Sorry, I know y’all were talkin’. But she was so excited to hear daddy was here.” Cooper’s girlfriend had made her way into the kitchen. Neither her nor her lover missed the way Barb’s face screwed up at the mere sight of her. Extending her hand, she introduced and gave her name to the older woman.

“It’s very nice to finally meet you. Janey has told me so much about you.” Barb shook the woman’s hand with a firm grasp.

“Likewise,” she turned to her daughter, “alright. You go have fun with daddy and his friend?”

“She’s not just his friend. Daddy loves Cola like he loved you, mommy.” Her words held an innocence that only a child could have. The three adults looked in between each other with solemn looks.

“Come on, Janey. Let’s let momma and daddy finish their conversation. Can I have the keys, please?” She held out her hands, and offered one to Janey while the other waited for the keys to the car. Cooper handed them over and sent a smile towards his girls as they left.

“At least she’s polite. That seems to be a lost skill for this generation.” Barb commented, tapping her nails against the counter top.

“Yeah she is. Listen, she’s going to be a staple in my life and Janey’s for the foreseeable future. So just try and keep the comments to a minimum. Good luck at your meeting.” And with that, Cooper left his ex-wife’s presence.

When he left the house, he felt like he could breathe again. Letting out a sharp exhale, Howard did not notice his ex-wife watching him from the window with a mournful expression. He opened the car door and smiled at the sound of laughter.

“Now what are we laughing about in here, huh?” He pressed, turning towards his daughter and lover. They shared a look and giggled to themselves once more.

“Nothing. Just laughing about the new advertisement that Janey saved.” She replied, showing Cooper the clipped out image. It was the same one that she had been lamenting over earlier in the hot tub.

“Gotta say darlin’. Clown look is a good look on you.” Everyone laughed at that, and Cooper handed the image back to his daughter before driving out and away, back to his house.

“Can we get ice cream?” Janey piped up after a minute. Cooper looked in the mirror to his daughter, and then over to his lover in the passenger seat.

“Well, I don’t see why not. Whatcha say, Nuka-Cola? Want a Nuka-Cola float?” He teased, squeezing her thigh when she slapped his shoulder.

“Maybe a root beer float. Do you know the chemicals in Nuka-Cola?” She quipped back, holding Cooper’s hand tightly in hers on her lap.

“Alright, well, let’s go get something for y’all’s sweet tooth.” They continued driving, talking, and laughing all the way to the ice cream parlor. And it was there,the Cooper realized that he could find a second chance at love and a family.

[chxrryhansen]

𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐁𝐎𝐌𝐁 𝐀𝐔

Pairing; Dark!Club Owner Ari x Shy!Reader

Warnings; dark themes, unbalanced power dynamic, daddy kink, thumb sucking, no smut but the rules still apply, Minors please DNI!!

Summary; Ari visits your home, but how does he know the address?

authors note: this is literally like 1.4k words but i honestly did not want to finish this so i quickly scanned over what i had previously written in my drafts. Unfortunately i have no motivation to write anymore and this will likely be my last piece of work, but due to high demand i tried my best because i owe it to you all❤️ apologies if this does not reach the standards you had hoped for.

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟏

Your head pounded as you rolled over in bed, your greasy hair sticking to the sides of your face, drool crusted around your dry lips, barely any memory of last nights activities. Reaching over to turn on the small clock on your bedside table, the time flashed 1pm. Shit.

Usually on Sundays you and Grandma would go to church, growing up in a Catholic household it was basically mandatory. She would wake you up bright and early before you both took a leisurely walk to the church garden, she had always said connecting with nature was one of the most beautiful gifts life granted us. Panic surged through you, the realisation that she had infact, not, woken you up.

You paused at the sound of voices in the kitchen below, Grandma didn't have many visitors since Pops died, she preferred it that way. For you? not so much. She was always trying to convince you to get out more, find yourself a nice husband, settle down and have kids. Surprisingly, she wasn't against you drinking alchohol, she wanted you to have fun with your friends, while you were still young, and while you still could.

Slowly you sat up in bed, a glass of water and advil rested on table which you hadn't noticed earlier, assuming Grandma had placed them there, you swallowed the pills down gently as you stood, getting changed into a nice sundress, the white and lightpink pattern fitting tight to your figure. Stumbling slightly to the bathroom you brushed your teeth and tied your hair in a ponytail, held together with a pink bow. Giving yourself one last look over, ensuring you looked presentable for your guests, you made your way downstairs.

Your body took a screenshot as you turned the corner, the sight of Ari and a man you hadn’t met before casually floating around in your kitchen caused you to let out a frightened yelp, alerting them of your presence. However, they didn’t seem shocked, almost as if they knew you weren’t in your room anymore…without even looking at you. The men were seated in the small room at the table, both of them turning to face you.

"A-Ari? What are you doing here? H-how do you know where i live? Wh-Where’s my Grandma?" you questioned continuously, your eyes wide in confusion and your body shaking in fear, how could he know where you lived? You must’ve accidentally let it slip last night, which was very unlike you, you didn’t usually share your address with strangers you just met…

The other man turned his waist to look at you, his long brown hair framing his sharp jawline, his physique nearly the same size as Ari's, of course nobody compared to him though. Ari's broad shoulders still towering the mystery mans.

He smirked "My, my, she's trembling already, she almost looks shell shocked."

Ari looked at him with a bored expression "Real funny, Buck." Before he turned to you, pulling out an extra seat at the kitchen table.

"Don’t worry about your Grandma, she’s perfectly safe, Bucky here payed for her to eat at one of his most expensive restaurants, a whole afternoon of nothing but the best services in the city, free of charge. And i thought i told you to call me daddy from now on princess. Take a seat." He smiled, patting Bucky on the shoulders, although it didn't quite meet his eyes, while offering you a seat at your own table…in your own home. His words didn’t bring much comfort yet you let out a sigh of relief knowing your sweet granny was safe and sound, probably having the time of her life.

"Yes d-daddy."

Your eyes flickered to his partners, "Buck's". He said nothing yet his smirk told it all. Before you sat down you tugged at your dress in discomfort, your thighs sticking together due to your tense figure.

"Don't mind him. It'll be as if he's not even here. Now, i got you a gift, baby. Drove all the way across the city to give it to ya' "

"Y-You got me? A gift? Why?" You stammered, hurling more questions at him in anticipation, or nervousness, or both. You couldn't really tell.

"Enough questions, open it." He said in avoidance while sliding a medium size box towards you with his ringed index finger, the wrapping paper a light shade of pink, just to your liking and scuffed around the edges, a clear sign that he had no help.

"You uhm, you really didn't have to do this." You murmered while tearing the paper gently, revealing the newest model of iphone. Your eyes widening in shock at the expense of the gift.

“You like it?” Ari smiled, waiting patiently for your response.

“I-I don’t even know what t-to say. Thank you so much.”

Your eyes began to water at the ‘kindness’ of his gift, nobody had ever bought you something so expensive before, and you never had the money to afford it yourself, your Sunday job at the library not exactly paving your way to wealth.

“You’re very welcome sweetheart. Hey Buck, Why don’t you go wait in the car for a sec.” Ari subtly commands.

“No prob, dog.” Bucky smirks from the doorway on his way out.

You lift your thumb to your mouth and begin biting and sucking. It was a habit of yours, an oral fixation. Sometimes you did it simply out of boredom, others out of nervousness. This was one of those times.

Ari groans under his breath at the sight, his cock straining against his slacks within seconds.

“Here, don’t wanna’ mess up your pretty hands, baby.” he mutters, removing your thumb and replacing it with his own.

Precum leaks from his tip at the sensation of your tongue around his digit, wishing it was his cock your lips were wrapped around instead. You closed your eyes as you suckled on his thumb, it felt much better than when you used your own, you didn’t know why. But you did know that fluttery feeling in your tummy was back. Your juices creating a damp patch in your panties, unbeknownst to you.

The sound of your little whimpers of pleasure caused Ari to let out an almost guttural growl as he watched you squeeze your thighs together, trying to relieve tension you didn’t even know was there.

"Fuck, baby. You don't wanna' know what that shit does to a man like me."

Your eyebrows creased together in a frown, not understanding what he meant by 'man like me'. But you'd learn... soon enough.

“Why don’t you come sit on my knee, baby.” He half asked, knowing it wasn’t really a question, more of a demand.

You scrambled, climbing into his lap, yet the moment your plush thighs met his own you felt something hard and thick underneath your ass, you squirmed trying to move away from the foreign object poking into you. Ari was quick to grip your hips with his free hand, stilling your movements and letting out a deep growl, sending shivers down your spine.

“Daddy i think your keys are poking me.” you whined with a frown on your face.

“That ain’t my keys, pretty girl.”

“What is it then?” You questioned as the uncomfortable object continued to poke the underneath of your thighs.

“Nothin’ for you to worry about, pumpkin.” Ari drawled, desperately trying to hold back from pulling up your cute little dress and fucking you dumb. Suddenly, the door slams open yet again causing you to jolt, Ari’s grip on your thighs tightens.

“Boss, we got a problem.” Bucky calls, peeking his head inside, a serious look on his face.

“Can it wait?” Ari sighs.

“Unfortunately not…it’s the Fowlers.”

Ari’s cool manor drops immediately, his strong arms lift you out of his lap and onto your own chair, you land with a squeak.

His hand reaches for your chin, forcing you to look him in the eyes.

“My number’s already in the phone, you will call me if you need anything. Gotta’ go now princess, i’ll see you soon, yeah?” He muttered, tracing his thumb around your plump lips.

You nod with shaky limbs, the determination on his features sending shocks through your system.

“Good girl.”

And with a kiss on your forehead he was gone.

You let out a breath of air you didn’t even realise you were holding. Oddly, you were sad Ari was gone. A tugging sensation filled your chest, almost as if your body was aching to run after him, to follow him as far as the wind would take you.

But you didn’t.

With a sigh your feet began to shuffle back to bed, knowing your grandma wouldn’t be happy when she got home when she realised you hadn’t done any of your chores. But at that moment you didn’t care.

As you hit the covers and drifted into sleep, you dreamed of him.

You dreamt of the Devil.

[seungkw1]

taste — bsk

♡ pairing: boo seungkwan x afab!reader ♡ theme: smut [18+ mdni], pwp ♡ wc: 0.7k ♡ warnings: dom!sk, sub!reader, oral (m. receiving), cum swallowing, hair pulling (f. receiving), praise kink, degredation kink, degrading petnames, possessiveness ♡ a/n: i have seungkwan brain rot disease and it is terminal.

“Open.”

Obediently you open your mouth, sticking your tongue out. Seungkwan slaps his tip onto it, the salty taste of his leaking precum coating your taste buds. You stare up at him, eyes wide, waiting for his next move. 

“Good girl.”

He drags the head over your tongue, your mouth watering as he teases you relentlessly. You want nothing more than to swallow him this instant, but you know you must wait. You look pitiful, utterly desperate as you kneel before him, pussy aching against the seam of your jeans as you silently beg him to have his way with you. He smirks, pleased at how easily you come undone for him. 

“Look how pathetic you are,” he coos at you, stroking your hair as he taunts you further, pressing his cockhead against your eager lips and then retracting it again. “Pathetic little slut waiting for me to put my cock in your mouth. Is that what you want?”

You nod fervently, your lips brushing against his tip. 

“Answer me.”

“Yes,” you whine. 

“I’m not convinced, princess.”

“I want it,” you grovel. “Please.”

He runs his fingers through your hair, collecting it at the back of your head. 

“Well, since you asked so nicely…”

He grasps your hair in his fist, yanking your head back, tilting your face up toward him as he abruptly shoves his cock into your mouth. You gag as he hits the back of your throat - he pauses for a moment, admiring the sight of your lips wrapped around him, before feeding you the rest of his length. Your eyes water as he starts fucking your mouth - rough, deep strokes, saliva dripping down your chin as he holds your head in place, pushing you down to take even more of him. Muffled cries try to escape you, drowned out by the obscene choking sounds filling the room. 

“What a good girl,” Seungkwan groans as he pulls your head up. “Let me get a look at your pretty little face.” His spit-covered cock slides out of your mouth, revealing reddened puffy lips and tear-stained cheeks.

“So perfect.”

He pushes your face into his erect cock, dragging it across your cheeks, your skin glistening with your own spit. You stick your tongue out, licking the thick veiny shaft.

“Mmmmm,” he moans as he shoves his cock back into your mouth. Your throat stings, aching from this torment as he uses you as he pleases, but you love it. Seungkwan likes to take control, and nothing gets you off more than letting him do whatever he wants to you. 

His grunts and groans escalate, the sounds of pleasure growing louder as his orgasm nears. You look up at him, vision blurry through your tears - his head has fallen back, his mouth resting open as low moans escape his lips. He takes your head in both hands, holding you in place as his hips begin to buck, thrusting into you without abandon. Suddenly he pulls out, taking his cock in his fist as his other hand holds your chin. You stick your tongue out as he jerks himself off, gazing up at his face as you watch him cum. His eyes roll back into his head, eyelids shutting as he releases; hot white ropes fall upon your tongue, your lips, your face. He pumps his length several more times as he finishes, the last bursts of his cum dripping onto his hand. He squeezes his cock, holding it as it throbs in his grip. His eyes open slowly, breathing heavily as he stares down at you, admiring the pretty picture he’s painted on your face. He collects the remaining cum on his hand onto his thumb, then sticks it into your mouth. You close your lips upon it, sucking it clean, swallowing. 

“Fuckkkk, such a good little cumslut for me,” he croons. 

He extends his hands to you, pulling you up to your feet as you take them. You yelp as he immediately grabs you, lifting you into the air and tossing you onto the bed. As you land on your back he’s already unbuttoning your pants, yanking the tight denim off of you to reveal an absolutely ruined pair of panties. You quiver as he lightly traces his finger over your clothed slit.

“Look how wet you are,” he smirks. “All from sucking my cock.”

You nod, biting your lip, pleased with yourself.

He reaches for the lacy undergarment.

“Your turn now, princess.”

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Something something about Tommy ending up at HARBOUR and getting to be his true and full self. Now he’s doing the same for Buck - providing him with a harbour - a safe space for him to find himself and figure things out.

The water theming continues to send me spiralling

[pedrospatch]

family

Preoutbreak! Joel Miller x Reader

summary: You and Joel have some news to share with Sarah.

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. (TW) pregnancy, small age gap (reader is in her 20’s and Joel is 35). fluff, fluff, fluff, Joel and Sarah being the most adorable father daughter duo.

word count: 3.3k

a/n:this is my response to this request right here; a huge thank you to whoever sent this one in!

You let out a small, tired sigh and wiped the back of your hand across your forehead. The early afternoon lunch rush at Moe’s Diner had just ended and you were exhausted beyond belief. Moe’s was one of the more popular locally owned joints in Austin, Texas, and while having a lot of customers coming into the establishment meant earning heftier tips and of course, a bigger paycheck, there was a small part of you that couldn’t help but wish that you could have at least one slow day, just one single day of the week where you weren’t waiting about a dozen tables all at once.

The moment you dropped the last stack of used plates into the plastic gray bin for Hugo, the dishwasher, to come and collect, you washed your hands thoroughly with soap and warm water and then made your way over to the old, electronic cash register behind the main counter to punch in the tips you’d earned after the rush; an hour’s worth of working and you had already made about a hundred bucks to take home at the end of your shift. As you finished logging your earnings, you could feel a pair of eyes watching you from a distance. You didn’t even need to look up to see that it was Joel. He had made something of a habit of coming to join you on his lunch hour. He’d been working longer and longer days lately, and if his only chance to spend time with you was during his lunch break, then that is exactly what he was going to do.

You tossed your receipt into the register and closed it up, turning to your coworker, Melinda. “Alright. All the tables have been cashed out, cleared, and wiped down,” You informed her, sticking your own copy of the receipt for your tips into the crisp, white apron of your uniform. “Mind if I go and take a break now?”

“Go right ahead. Don’t want to keep lover boy over there waiting for too long,” Melinda responded with a teasing wink.

“Oh, shut up,” You snipped at her, although the smile was evident in your tone of voice. You turned around and quickly poured two cups of coffee, a regular for Joel and a decaffeinated roast for yourself. Last week during your doctor’s appointment, your obstetrician reassured you that it would be a while before you really had to start easing up on the amount of caffeine you put into your body, but you figured it wouldn’t hurt to start weaning yourself off of it while you were still in the earlier stages of pregnancy. Better to deal with the withdrawals sooner rather than later. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to help you with the next rush,” You told Melinda over your shoulder. You took the two cups in your hands and walked over towards one of the booths in the far corner of the fifties themed restaurant where Joel had chosen to sit today. You set his cup of coffee down in front of him and kissed his cheek lightly before sliding into the booth across from him. “I am so sorry to have kept you waiting. Two for one lunch special brought in a lot more people than Moe had anticipated.” You rolled your eyes, gently shaking your head. “He understaffed us. Again.”

Joel frowned as he noted, “I can tell. You look exhausted.”

“Which is basically code for, you look like shit, isn’t it?” You asked him teasingly.

“S’not what I meant and you know it,” he replied, rolling his eyes at you as he took a careful sip of his coffee. “You shouldn’t be workin’ so damn hard, y’know. S’not good for you to strain yourself, not in your condition.”

“In my condition,” You mimicked him with an amused little chuckle. It earned you a stern glare. “Oh come on, Joel. I’m only about six weeks along.” You shrugged your shoulders and then leaned back into the seat of the booth. “Come back to me with that bullshit when I’m in my third trimester and waddling around this place.”

Joel snorted. “Well, I’m hopin’ that by that time, you won’t be workin’ at all.”

Your playful smile faded slightly from your face. “What are you talking about?” You asked, crossing your arms stubbornly over your chest. It baffled you that he would even suggest such a thing. “We have a baby on the way. That means that I have to work, Joel. I have to work for as long as I possibly can before it comes. And then after a couple months of maternity leave, I’m going to have to come back and work some more.”

“Wait a minute, what about school?” he questioned, raising an eyebrow at you. “How exactly do you plan to juggle studyin’ while workin’ and bein’ a mom too?”

Stumped on how to answer him without upsetting him, you remained quiet and chewed nervously on your bottom lip. He wasn’t wrong. You hadn’t exactly told him yet, but the reality was that you knew it would be tough to handle all three and there was a pretty good chance that your teaching degree would have to be put on the back burner for an indefinite amount of time.

“You’re not givin’ up on that degree,” Joel asserted, as if he had read your thoughts. “No way in hell, I won’t let you. You only have one year left,” he reminded you firmly. “Look, business has been boomin’ on my end of things. If it stays that way, I can get you out of this place. Let you focus on bein’ a mom and gettin’ your teachin’ credential.”

You bit back a sigh. “Joel, it’s a bit too early to even be talking about all of this, don’t you think?” You said after a moment, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the conversation. “There’s no need to worry about that stuff yet.” Noticing the exasperated expression on his face, you outstretched your arm across the able and held out your hand. “I’m serious, Joel. I don’t want you to worry about it, not right now.”

He smiled warily as he took your hand in his. He leaned over and lifted it to his lips, kissing the back of it gently. “Look, I know it’s early,” he acknowledged. “But I’m just plannin’ ahead.” He paused long enough to press another kiss onto your hand. “I just wanna take care of you, darlin’. That’s all.”

“I know you do,” You replied softly, squeezing his hand. You could see Melinda over behind the counter tapping the invisible watch around her wrist as if to tell you that your time was running out. “What time do you have to be back at the job site?”

Joel glanced down at his watch, but it was useless. The damn thing had stopped working once again, and yet he refused to take it to get repaired. “Probably have to start headin’ back soon, actually,” he realized, the disappointment present in his tone. He hadn’t gotten nearly as much time with you as he would have liked. “Oh, I forgot to mention. Tommy said he’s not gonna be home for dinner tonight,” he informed you. “Said he’s spendin’ the night with a buddy, but we both know what that means.”

You giggled. “Another blonde he met at the bar, huh?”

“Yeah, sounds ‘bout right.” Joel laughed and rolled his eyes. “But anyway, I was thinkin’ that tonight might be the night to finally tell Sarah, seein’ as it’ll just be the three of us. What do you think, baby?”

You squeezed his hand again. “I’m kind of nervous, Joel. About telling her.”

“Yeah, me too.” Joel wasn’t nervous for Sarah’s reaction because he’d thought she would feel negatively about the baby or about you. Rather, he knew his teenager would be horrified thinking about how this blessed miracle came to be seeing as he’d signed a permission slip for her to learn all about the birds and the bees in health class at school last semester. At thirteen, Sarah was in that one stage where anything that Joel did embarrassed her—or grossed her out.

And this would certainly gross her out.

“Jesus, here comes round two of the rush,” You muttered, watching three large parties of people walk into the diner. Reluctantly, you released Joel’s hand. “I should go and help Melinda. Besides, you really need to get back to work before you’re late.”

Both you and Joel slid out of the booth and stood up. He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you against his chest in one of those tight, warm hugs that you’d grown to adore over the last couple of years. “I’ll be home on time for dinner tonight,” he promised you. “If you need anythin’ while I’m at work, you let me know, alright?”

You chuckled. “Yes, Joel.”

He let go of you and stood back, his eyes meeting yours. “I’m serious. You need anythin’ at all, you call me, alright? My phone will be in my pocket.”

“I’ll be fine, Joel,” You insisted, shaking your head as you laughed. “Now go on, get going before your boss chews you out for being late.”

“I am my boss, darlin’.” He grinned boyishly at you before pressing his lips lightly against yours, murmuring gently against them. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Ugh, this is too good.” Sarah let out a small groan of satisfaction as she took another bite of her spaghetti. She turned to you a minute later, dabbing at her mouth with her paper napkin before telling you, “Have I told you that it’s my favorite? Because it’s my favorite and I simply must give my compliments to the chef.”

You lifted your chin slightly, feeling pleased with yourself. “Thank you.”

Joel pouted, feigning offense. “Now wait a damn minute, I thought the spaghetti that I made you was your favorite?”

“Dad, you use the jarred crap,” Sarah reminded him. “Her sauce is homemade. She actually makes it from scratch, like you’re supposed to.” She pointed her fork at him. “Your spaghetti is just one step above Chef Boyardee. And that’s being generous.”

Joel picked a crouton from the salad bowl in the middle of the table and flicked it at her. “Turd.”

“Bigger turd,” she shot back at him with a tiny giggle as she picked up the crouton and popped it into her mouth.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough,” You chuckled, waving a hand. “Settle down you two or I’ll put you both in timeout.”

“Y’see what you do? Gettin’ us in trouble,” Joel joked before biting into a slice of garlic bread.

Sarah stuck her tongue out at him. “You started it.”

You giggled, shaking your head.

You adored the dynamic between the two, although there were times when it could be a bit much. Somehow, you seemed to bring a bit of balance to it all—you had become the calm, level headed presence if and when Sarah and Joel’s antics ever went overboard.

You wouldn’t have it any other way, of course.

Although Joel had been seeing you for about two or so years now, he hadn’t introduced you to Sarah until six months into the relationship. You hadn’t been offended by that in the slightest—you knew that he’d done his fair share of dating around before you came along, and he had made the sore mistake of introducing his young, impressionable daughter to a large number of different women who, in the end, never stuck around. Not wanting to cause any further confusion or strife for Sarah, Joel vowed never to bring another woman into his daughter’s life again, not unless he was absolutely certain it was someone who would actually stay.

That woman turned out to be you.

Joel had met you when he and his younger brother, Tommy, walked into Moe’s one afternoon for lunch. Tommy set his sights on you first, flirting up a storm, but it was Joel who you’d connected with. Joel ended up visiting the diner several times after that, going in for a cup of coffee at least every other day until he’d finally worked up the courage to ask you out on a date. That one date turned into two, two turned into three, and by date number six, you two had completely fallen for each other. Joel realized early on that you were the real deal, but nevertheless, he still chose to wait to introduce you to his then eleven year old.

When the time to meet Sarah finally came, you’d been so nervous; you were in love with Joel, but you knew that if his daughter didn’t like you, it could all come crashing down. Your first interaction with Sarah had been a little awkward, but as you got to know each other, things slowly started to shift in the right direction. The more time you’d started spending around her—with her—the closer you two became and your bond eventually flourished.

A few months later, you moved in with her, Joel, and Tommy.

“It’s going to be so nice having another girl around here,” Sarah had told you excitedly while helping you unpack a box of your things in Joel’s bedroom. “There’s way too much testosterone around here.”

The two of you had become inseparable.

Joel often liked to joke that she liked you more than she liked him.

He wasn’t totally wrong about that.

All you could do was hope that the news of the baby wouldn’t change how Sarah felt about you. You loved Joel, of course, but you’d grown to love Sarah too. They were your family.

The timer that you’d set on the oven started beeping loudly, pulling you from your train of thoughts. “Those would be the cupcakes that I made for dessert.”

“Chocolate?” Sarah asked you with shining, hopeful eyes.

“Of course. What other flavor is there?” You winked as you stood up from your chair.

She punched the air lightly. “Yes! Can I help you frost them?”

“As soon as they cool down,” You promised, touching her shoulder lightly as you walked by her and off into the kitchen.

“Tonight just keeps getting better and better,” Sarah sighed contentedly, picking up her fork.

Joel watched her for a moment in silence, a small smile on his face. “Hey,” he said after minute or two, garnering Sarah’s attention. “You really like her, don’t you, kiddo?”

“Of course! She’s got to be like, the coolest person ever,” Sarah remarked in between more bites of her pasta. “What’s not to like? She’s smart, she’s pretty, she’s fun to talk to,” she started ticking things off her list. “She has amazing taste in movies and music. Oh, and she lets me borrow her clothes.”

He laughed, suddenly realizing that the Red Hot Chili Peppers band tee shirt she was wearing actually belonged to you. “You’re askin’ for her permission to wear her stuff, right?”

Sarah batted her eyelashes innocently at him. “She said that I didn’t have to ask. In fact, she said I could just help myself to her side of the closet whenever I wanted.”

Joel tossed another crouton at her. “I don’t care what she said, it’s still polite to ask, missy.”

“I’m just kidding, dad! Jeez,” Sarah rolled her eyes. “Of course I ask her. You didn’t raise a heathen.”

Joel snorted lightly and leaned back into his chair. “Sometimes I ain’t so sure about that, babygirl.”

After a minute, Sarah’s eyes met his across the table. “Hey, dad?”

“Yeah?”

“You like her a lot too, don’t you?”

“A hell of a lot,” he answered, honestly. “You know, I never thought I’d meet someone like her.”

“Me either,” Sarah admitted. “But I’m really glad that you did.” She paused, offering him a tiny, but genuine smile. “You deserve to be happy, you know?”

Joel’s heart warmed inside of his chest. He lightly kicked her foot underneath the table with his. “Look at you being a big ol’ pile of sentimental goo.”

“And this is exactly why I don’t ever say anything,” Sarah huffed, but she giggled. “You always ruin it.”

“Always ruin what?” You asked as you walked back out of the kitchen. You took your seat and picked up your glass of iced tea looking between the two. “What did I miss?”

“Oh nothing, my dad is just being annoying, as always,” Sarah kidded before she began to polish off the remainder of her dinner.

A long, but comfortable silence fell over the table.

You glanced over at Joel, wondering when it would be time. His gaze met yours and he raised an eyebrow, as if silently asking you if you were ready. Although you weren’t, you gave him a subtle nod.

Joel cleared his throat. “Sarah?”

“Hmm?”

“There’s somethin’ that we want to tell you,” he began to say, earning himself a puzzled look from his daughter. He hesitated, as if trying to figure out the best way to just spit it out. “We’ve been wantin’ to tell you this for a couple of weeks now, but we wanted to find the right moment and well, I think this is it—we’re havin’ a baby.”

Sarah’s fork clinked loudly against her plate as she dropped it in surprise. “What?” she gasped, her wide eyes flicking to you. “Are you freaking serious?”

You nodded, wondering if that was a good reaction or a bad one. You couldn’t quite tell just yet. “I’m having a baby,” you confirmed, lifting a hand and running it nervously through your hair.

Sarah stared at you, her eyes still wide and what looked like a smile threatening to break out across her face. “Swear it?”

You exhaled a breath of relief. “Swear it. I’m six weeks right now.”

Letting out a little squeal, she jumped up from her chair and ran over to you, throwing her arms around your shoulders. “I can’t believe this!” She squeezed you tightly—a little too tightly. “Do you know what it is yet? When will you know? Can we start looking at baby stuff this weekend? Can we buy it clothes already?”

“Sarah, breathe.” Joel shook his head, although he was grinning from ear to ear. “And more importantly, let her breathe.”

“Shut up, Joel. She’s fine,” You waved a hand dismissively at him as you wrapped your arms around her, hugging her back. “I honestly didn’t think you’d be this excited.”

“Are you kidding me?” Sarah exclaimed as she pulled away. “This is the best news ever! I’ve been all by myself for so long!”

“Hey, what are we? Chopped liver?” Joel threw his hands up and then brought them back down onto his lap.

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“No, I really don’t.”

Sarah shrugged. “Well, it’s just been me all these years, dad. But now I get to have a little brother or sister.” She paused and glanced at you. “Is it wrong to say that I really, really hope it’s a girl?”

“Then it would be three against one,” Joel realized, the color draining from his face slightly. “Jesus Christ, I really hope it’s a boy.”

“You have Uncle Tommy.”

“He doesn’t count.”

“Joel!” You snapped at him, causing Sarah to throw her head back and laugh. “Don’t say that.”

“The score is even,” Sarah stated. She pointed a finger at him as she walked back to her chair and sat down. “Two boys, two girls. The baby will be the tie breaker. When will find out what it is?”

“In a few more weeks,” You responded, chuckling at the way her face fell. “Trust me, they’ll go by faster than you think.”

“I can’t wait!” Sarah beamed brightly, looking between the two of you. “Oh man, this is awesome.”

Joel tilted his head curiously at her. “Yeah? You happy, babygirl?”

“I get to have a family,” she murmured, her hand resting lightly on her chest. “A real family, like the ones you see on TV or in the movies." She looked at him, her eyes twinkling brightly. “Happy doesn’t even cover it, dad.”

[hometoursandotherstuff]

I cannot believe that no one bought this elegant little gem of an 1877 2nd Empire townhouse in Minneapolis, MN. It's decorated in grand Baroque style, has 1bd, 2ba, 1,799 sq ft, $989k + $1,029mo. HOA. Maybe it's priced too high? Zillow says it's worth about $935k. The high HOA fee could also be a factor.

Come on, now. NOBODY expects the Baroque Townhouse! Look at the entrance- got some gothic doors, architectural salvage light fixture from a church, and what could be better than a wine rack where you can grab a bottle as soon as you walk thru the door? It also looks like a mini bar. What a way to greet guests.

They really did a lot of work on this place. That's why I think it's priced at almost $1m. The woodwork, alone, is incredible. Look at the delightful dining room that looks like it's under an arbor.

Stone wall with niches. Antique chandelier.

This is a sitting room fit for a queen.

Different areas of the home are done in different styles. The ornate sitting room is Baroque with a massive fireplace and chandeliers.

The custom kitchen has a Frenchy flair and it also has an Aga stove (big bucks) with a mosaic backsplash. Look at the flowers painted on the counters.

You can see the pantry on the left, plus plenty storage in the cabinetry, and another mosaic backsplash behind the sink.

There's a copper ceiling over the dining area. This is an eat-kitchen so you can enjoy it every day. View from the windows looks out toward the city.

Beautiful, cozy den has a door to the garden. Gorgeous wainscoting, wood ceiling, brick wall w/shelves, and stained glass windows.

Your guests get to use this fabulous powder room with an intricately carved sink topped by a marble counter, gold swan faucet, and a cut crystal bowl for a sink.

Down the hall is an Asian-inspired full bath with a carved black marble tub and a huge dragon head faucet.

Look at that thing. Then, right across, behind folding doors, they've got a convenient laundry room.

Check out the pattern of the marble in the shower.

Large bath has a beautifully painted chest-turned-sink, and a private water closet.

The magnificent entrance to the bath is guarded by foo dogs.

The bedroom decor ties in with the theme of the bath.

The doorway to the bath is in the bedroom. The walls look like a teahouse.

The stairs have murals and carved doors. The home has 3 levels and I can't discern what floors the rooms are on, b/c as usual, the real estate photos are completely mixed up.

Impeccably maintained garages.

I wish they would've shown the sunrooms and rooftop terraces. Look at the glass structures on the roof.

That's the Mississippi River going by. The home is actually on a little island called Nicollet Island.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8-Grove-St-8B-Minneapolis-MN-55401/1913645_zpid/?

[ellatoone7]

❄︎ One step at a time ❄︎

Alexia's favourite girls series

You don't know how to swim Warnings: slight smut, suggestive themes.

Alexia has always known you had a slight fear of water, assuming it was just one of those phobias that people have. She honestly found it adorable at how you would cling to her around huge bodies of water. Your girlfriend was more than happy to play the hero when it came to you.

What she didn’t know however was that it wasn’t your fear of water that stopped you from joining her in the sea or in pools. The blonde wanted to kick herself for not noticing sooner. It was your first holiday alone together when your schedules weren’t jam packed.

It has been a very important year for the two of you. You had just bought a shared flat in Barcelona and you couldn’t be happier. Having a place with no interruption was pure bliss for the both of you, as you both relished in your shared intimacy.

Alexia has surprised you with the trip, a two week getaway on this incredibly romantic island to celebrate the huge step in your relationship. It was hard when you were in England, although it was incredibly worthwhile and you had achieved everything you had wanted there, you couldn’t be more happy than to finally settle down with the love of your life.

The few days you had been on the remote island were pure bliss. Free from all distractions and responsibilities as you and Alexia just enjoyed being young. You were quite proud of yourself for being able to keep your secret for so long. You knew she would catch on eventually but you didn’t want her to think any less of you. Your insecurity of not being able to swim, a basic skill that most people had, was at the back of your mind.

It was only a few days in when Alexia started getting suspicious, she had pleaded with you to go for one swim with her but you brushed her if nonchalanty, feeding her some poor excuse about how you had just gotten your hair done and you wanted to keep the fresh looking glow. That seemed to placate your girlfriend and you were more than happy to sit back and watch her from the sun lounger.

A sight she was, toned and tanned arms pulling the rest of her goddess-like body out of the pool. You were surprised your lip hadn't busted with how hard you were biting at it as her abs flexed deliciously. Your girlfriend sent you a cocky smirk as she made her way over to you, “Like what you see?” You huffed at her teasing tone but it didn’t stop you from taking your eyes down her body.

“Just take me to bed, Putellas.” You sighed knowing that’s where you would end up anyway. Alexia chuckled softly before throwing her towel on the empty lounger next to you, catching you with no effort at all as your legs wrapped around her waist. Teeth tugging at your earlobe softly as she husked into your ear, “As you wish Princesa.”

Another added bonus of renting out a private villa was that Alexia could quite literally have you anywhere she wanted, at any time she wanted and she took advantage of that, many times. You thanked whatever god there was that they gifted your girlfriend with the ability to play football because god that woman had stamina for days.

You had gotten away with your secret for nearly half the week before she caught on.

Your soft moans echoed around the luxurious villa, knuckles going white with how hard you gripped the sheets. Your hips bucked up to meet her gentle licks as huge hands slithered out from the covers to cup your breasts. It was your third orgasm of the day which was nothing compared to how many times she made you cum yesterday. You didn’t hear any complaints from the woman as she happily partook in her absolute favourite activity, making you cum.

Once your body stopped shaking and your heart rate slowed down a fraction, Alexia decided to make her appearance. Head popping up from the covers as she begrudgingly wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She was a sweaty mess from being trapped under the sheets, baby hairs sticking to her forehead as she rested her warm cheek against the cool pillow, half lying on top of you.

Her hand rubbed soothingly against your equally hot skin, she turned her body slowly while tangling your legs and cradling you to her chest. She kissed your forehead and then your cheek as you nuzzled into her.

“Ay dios, I need a swim after that.” She breathed, gathering her hair into a ponytail as she slowly pulled herself from the sticky sheets. “Vamos, amor! I’m not taking no for an answer.” Just as you were about to make another excuse, Alexia picked you up and the panic hit you.

“Alé no!” Without noticing the terror in your voice Alexia laughed it off thinking you were just being slightly dramatic. “Bebita, you haven’t swam with me once and your fear of water needs to stop.”

As you inch closer to the pool, your panic rises even further, “Alexia, I’m serious, put me down!” It was her full name and the cry of panic that had her gently placing you on the floor.

“Cariño?” She asked softly as your nails dug into the skin of her forearm, “Que pasa?” You couldn’t even look at her as you fidget with the rings on your finger. You mumbled something under your breath that Alexia couldn’t for her life decipher.

She gave you a knowing look and you sighed before stepping back out of her embrace. The blonde's eyebrows furrowed with worry and you decided that enough was enough.

“I can’t swim.” Alexia’s eyebrows rose in surprise and a soft smile took over her face. “I know, it’s stupid.” Alexia seemed to crash back to reality as she was quick to quell your rambling. She placed a quick but firm kiss against your lips, “Amor, why didn’t you tell me?” You tucked your face in her neck as she wrapped her arms around you protectively. “Amor?” She was coaxing you gently as you muttered shyly into her neck.

“I was embarrassed, it's embarrassing!” You whined softly. Alexia cooed, fingers digging softly into your waist, a small reminder that she was your best friend and you could tell her anything. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” Your hand crept up to cup the back of her neck, any point of contact comforting you.

“So you never had a fear of water.” You giggled into her chest, “No, I’m sorry.” Alexia smiled teasingly, “You need to stop apologising.” You nodded, going to apologise again before Alexia silenced you with another soft kiss.

The day flew by with mild teasing from your girlfriend as the two of you lounged in the hot sun. Alexia was making dinner as you went to freshen yourself up, not liking how sticky the sun made you. Alexia was reminiscing about your earlier confession, hand stirring the sauce repeatedly to prevent it from burning.

That’s when the idea popped into her head, a proud smile sitting on her face. It stayed there as you came down the stairs, clad in one of her Barcelona jerseys and shorts. Alexia’s smile brightens as your smaller body clings to her much taller frame.

You didn’t notice anything weird until you both sat down on the couch with your bowls. You happily accepted the bite she offered you, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to enjoy her meal if she didn’t give you the first bite.

The mischievous smile crept onto her face as you flicked through the channels. You gave her an apprehensive look as she tilted her head, a strong sign that she was about to suggest something that you wouldn’t like.

“Spit it out Putellas.” You raised an eyebrow, “Mi princesa.” She started, grabbing the bowl and placing it on the table so she had your full attention. You knew you really weren’t going to like it when her hand slid down to your bare thigh, fingers playing with the hem of your shorts.

“Let me teach you how to swim.” You were immediately shaking your head, “Here me out!” She guided your leg over hers as she manoeuvred you to straddle her. You didn’t meet her hazel eyes, knowing you would cave. Alexia knew you too well though, hand cradling your jaw to look down at her.

“Ale!” You whined as her lips grazed your neck. “Come on mi amor, I promise we can go slow.” She tried again, knowing that you were gonna agree. Her teeth sunk into the skin of your neck softly, “Fine.” You grumbled as she quietly cheered against the column of your throat.

You didn’t think much of it for the rest of the night, your girlfriend proving to be far too distracting to pay anything else even an ounce of attention. It wasn’t until you were rudely awakened by a piercing screech of whistle, you shot up in bed prepared to make your girlfriend fight the intruder.

The said intruder was your girlfriend. A gold whistle hanging from her mouth and sunglasses covering her pretty eyes. You stare up at her incredulously, “Why the fuck do you have a whistle!” Alexia blew it again, “Do not question your coach.” You scoffed before pulling the sheet above your head, you heard the older girl sigh, smiling happily to yourself thinking you had won until you were swooped up into her strong arms.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, bebita?” You slapped softly at her tanned shoulder defeatedly as she walked the two of you out to the pool. “Can I atleast get a kiss?” You grumbled, cupping the back of her neck, “If I ever say no to that cariño, you can shoot me.” You smile playfully into the kiss, biting at her bottom lip for her effortless display of strength. She didn’t even quiver with the weight of you.

She let you down slowly, stealing one more kiss before going back into coach mode. “¡Vamos amor! Stretch.” You glare at her as she blows her whistle, and you sit on one of the beds, “If you blow that whistle one more time, I swear to god!” Alexia only smirks cockily with the whistle in her mouth, “You love it.” You tried to contain your smile but hers was infectious.

“I’ve just eaten Alexia, I can’t swim.” Alexia sends you a look, “That’s a myth.” You grumbled at her quick comeback, “It’s dangerous to swim when you're tired.” Alecia smirked at this and raised her eyebrows suggestively, “Bebita, You could be a lot more tired if I had my way.” You huffed again, standing up and hitting her shoulder playfully. You dipped your toe into the water and squealed, “It’s too cold!” Alexia sighs incredulously, “You’re just making excuses at this point.”

“Bien, bien. Come here.” She resigned, holding out her hand for you to take, which you did gladly. She picked up on your apprehension quickly, “Hey, I will be right here the whole time.” You stared up at her, “You promise.” She laughs softly, kissing your cheek, “Sí, the whole time.” You nodded, pursing your lips for another kiss which she was quick to give.

You only caught the pile of pool noodles when you looked over her shoulder, “Can I have a purple one?” You asked adorably. Alexia’s shoulders shook in a quiet chuckle, “Of course you can amor.” You let out a happy giggle before running over to grab one.

“Okay you ready?” You looked at her strangely, “Where’s my life jacket?” Alexia laughed as she guided you over to the ladder. It was when she saw your serious expression did she stop laughing. You waited patiently with your arms out. Alexias opened and closed her mouth a few times, genuinely not knowing how to respond.

She descended into laughter again but this time she had to bend over with how much her abdomen hurt from laughing. You crossed your arms and pouted, all you needed to do was stamp your foot and you would be having a full blown tantrum. “Lo siento, lo siento!” She laughed out, trying to catch her breath from her fit.

“You don’t need a life jacket.” You opened your mouth to protest but a slender finger covered it, “ Nope, you don’t need one.” Alexia eased herself into the water, trying to coax you in after her. “Alright, I’ve got you. Don’t worry.” Her smile told you that you could trust her and you knew that but you were still nervous.

You sat down at the edge of the pool, both of your feet submerging in the water. “Good job amorcita!” She waded over to stand in between your legs, a comforting hand sliding up your thigh as you tried to calm down.

“What if I drown?” You ask fearfully, eyes widening as you start to pull your legs out in a panic. Her hands tightened around your legs, restricting your movement and effectively stopping you from your panic. “I’m not going to let you drown.” She muttered softly, leaning up to kiss you reassuringly.

“Besides the water is five feet deep, I’m sure you’re going to be fine.” You giggled softly at her joke, wrapping your legs around her and pulling her that much closer. Alexia kisses your collarbone gently, before her hands slid along your hip bone. She gently lifted your body and eased you into the water. You sighed in relief as your feet touched the bottom comfortably.

“Don’t let go.” The blonde chuckled, guiding you to wrap your legs around her waist again. “Oh, I won’t.” Alexias kissed you deeply, temporarily forgetting what her job was.

After a few more minutes of heated kissing, Alexia decided to show you an example. She deposited you against the edge of the pool that you immediately clung onto. She laughed endearingly before showing you the basics of swimming. She effortlessly glided through the water and you bit your lip at how her muscles rippled with each pump of her arm.

You watched in horror as she ducked underneath the water and reappeared again. “I’m not doing that.” You warned as she shook and swiped a few stray strands of her wet hair back into place. “One step at a time.” She reminds you, holding out her hands for you to grab instead of mauling the wall.

Alexia gently guided you to the deeper end, you had strayed to calm down at her constant reminder that she wouldn’t let go of you for a second. Ever the coach, she had you laying on your back and floating in under three minutes.

The actual swimming part was harder than she had expected but she was so patient. Your legs flailed as you tried desperately to kick, getting more water in Alexia’s mouth than your own. Alexia had to put you in time out for kicking her square in the jaw, twice.

“You’re lethal.” You winced apologetically, stroking the sore spot on her jaw, “I’m so sorry.” She kisses your hand, a smile letting you know she was only teasing. “What have I told you about apologising bebita?”

Alexia convinced you to try again and this time you managed to stay afloat without any stray kicks to the face. You were eternally grateful with how patient she was as she encouraged you every step of the way. You were rewarded with kisses which only prompted you to do better.

Eventually it came the time where she had to let you go. Surprisingly you were determined to do it by yourself, wanting to impress your coach. “Are you sure you’re ready?” She had asked worriedly, “I mean it’s your first day!” You scoffed and prepared yourself, pushing her away softly. “What was it you said? One step at a time. Well I’ve reached this step and now you need to let me go.” Alexia bit her lip before nodding, pride shining in her hazel eyes as she stepped back.

You moved at snail pace but you managed to get to the other side, Alexia’s comforting words getting you there. Once you were safely clutching at the wall you let out a squeal of excitement, looking back at your girlfriend was making her way over with a huge smile lighting up her face. The blonde wasted no time in picking you and parading you around the pool,

“I’m so proud of you mi princesa!” She praised holding you close as she pressed her lips to every inch of your face. “Thank you for teaching me.” You sighed, kissing her soundly.

Once the excitement died down, you felt a little silly for celebrating something so basic. Alexia always read you like a book and this was no different. Instead of forcing it out of you she decided to wait for you to formulate your words, leaving soft kisses to your jaw.

“I feel like this is something I should have known..” You finally admit, fingers playing with the whistle around her neck. Alexia’s eyes softened at your deflated form before lightly scolding you, “Hey, It’s fine. There’s so many people who don’t know how to swim.” You didn’t look reassured so she gently forced you to look at her, “It's the first day, you’re not going to be perfect.”

You continued playing with the whistle as a small smile rested on your face. You were so in love with the woman in front of you, it was kind of ridiculous.

“I love you.” You breathed out, palm coming to rest upon her cheek as you pulled her down to rest her forehead against yours. She smiled lovingly, eyes shining with pure adoration as she kissed you yet again, “Te amo mucho my little fish.” You cringed as she laughed loudly, hand coming up to cover her mouth in pure embarrassment.

“You just ruined the moment Alé.”

All prompts used are from @novelbear 🫶

[scoonsalicious]

Unconscious

Pairing: Bucky x Avenger!Fem!Reader

Summary: You wake up to Bucky having a nightmare, and there's only one thing that will help him go back to sleep.

Warnings: Language, adult themes, violence, mentions of Bucky's trauma, brief mention of sexy stuff.

Word Count: 2.5k

A/N: Another stupid cute drabble based on this idea I had with Bucky resting his head on Pocket's stomach, her playing with his hair, and him asking her to sing a very specific song to put him to sleep. Enjoy!

I do promise that I'm working on other stuff; it's not just these two. Though, in a perfect world... ;)

You awoke from a dead sleep with a backhand to the face. Eyes watering in pain, you struggled to make sense of your surroundings. Your brain knew you should be assessing the area for the threat so you could neutralize it, but your body just wanted to curl back in on itself, pull the covers over your head, and hope the assault would just stop so you could go back to sleep. It was currently a toss up as to which part of you would win. 

A grunt and a knee to your stomach made the decision for you, and you were jerked into full alertness. Next to you, Bucky was writhing and mumbling, a fine sheen of sweat on his thrashing brow. 

You let out a defeated sigh. It had been ages since Bucky had had one of his nightmares, and you had foolishly hoped that he had finally escaped the torment, especially now that you had moved in together. 

“Baby,” you said, gently shaking him. You knew from experience that it was best to wake him slowly, to give his conscious brain time to surface and adjust, to not frighten him. “Buck, wake up.” 

You leaned over him, placing a hand on each of his shoulders. The second you touched the vibranium, his eyes flew open and locked with yours. But they were not the warm, loving eyes you knew so well– they were cold, lifeless balls of ice that looked right through you. You’d only encountered the Winter Soldier the one time, and when you had, he’d looked at you the exact same way. 

In an instant, Bucky had you on your back, his large frame leaning over you as he panted for breath. Under normal circumstances, you loved it when Bucky put you in this position, but this was not a normal circumstance, and this was not your Bucky.

“Buck,” you said, trying to calm your racing heart. “Baby, it’s me. It’s Pocket.” You reached a hand up to touch his face, but that was the wrong move. Bucky snarled and pinned your hand down with his flesh hand, his vibranium one grasping your throat and beginning to squeeze.

“Fuck,” you gasped as you began to struggle against him. You knew it was futile; he was so much stronger than you were. You needed him to wake the fuck up. Using what remained of your dwindling strength, you drew your free hand back as far as you could and socked Bucky across his beautiful, stupid jaw, snapping his head to the side.

The second he turned back to look at you, you could see the change in his eyes, and you knew your Bucky was in control once again. His eyes were wide as he took in the sight before him, an expression of absolute horror on his face when he saw his hand wrapped around your throat. 

“Pocket? Shit.” He pulled away from you like your skin burned him and jumped from the bed, putting as much distance between the two of you as possible while you reached up to gently massage your throat. 

“Doll, I… I…” he stuttered, struggling to speak as his breath came in increasingly ragged gasps. “Fuck, baby. I’m so sorry. I… I could have killed you!”

“Hey–” you attempted to say, your voice coming out in a garbled croak as you stood up. You coughed, trying to clear it before speaking again. “Hey. I’m okay. You were having a nightmare, but I’m okay.” You took a step closer, but he backed away from you, as though terrified he was going to put hands on you again. Eventually, you had him backed into a corner of the bedroom, and you took his hand and placed it over your heart.

“Feel that?” you asked him as his palm pressed against the fabric of his t-shirt that you wore. “I’m okay.” Gently, you reached out and cupped his cheek in your hand. “You didn’t mean to hurt me, and I’m okay.”

“You’re bleeding, Pocket,” he said softly, bringing his flesh hand up to your face. His thumb ran across your bottom lip and came away red with your blood. He must have split your lip when he’d backhanded you. 

“It’s just a little cut,” you assured him, taking his thumb into your mouth and wiping away the metallic taste with a sweep of your tongue. “I’m okay. I want to hear you say it.”

Bucky lowered his head, ashamed to even look at you. “I… I can’t,” he mumbled. “You’re not okay!” His head shot back up, a new rage in his eyes, though you knew he was only angry at himself. “Pocket, I had my hand around your throat and I was squeezing! If you hadn’t woken me up when you did… I don’t even want to fucking think about what could have happened!” 

His eyes were glassy with unshed tears, and your heart broke in that moment for him. You opened your arms, beckoning for him to come to you. “Come here, love,” you gently demanded of him, but you saw the struggle within him as he fought with himself against letting you provide him with any kind of comfort.

“Bucky,” you tried again, “please.” In an instant, he was in your arms, head pressed against your chest as you held him and he sobbed, garbled apologies falling from his lips. “It’s not your fault,” you murmured into his hair. “You didn’t mean it. I don’t blame you.”

“They…” he managed to get out between ragged breaths, “they were hurting me.” They could only mean Hydra, and you sucked in a breath. In all your time together, Bucky had told you little to nothing about the nightmares that plagued him, afraid they might make you think differently, less, of him. It had been a source of contention in your relationship last year, when he’d opened up to her about them instead, and even after all this time, it had still been something he’d chosen to keep to himself. 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, baby,” you assured him as you ran your fingers through his hair. “I don’t want you to feel forced if you aren’t ready.”

He pulled his head away from you and stood up straight, looking you in the eye. “No,” he said as he ran a hand to wipe the tears from his face. “I want to tell you. I want you to know… all the parts of me. Even the parts I don’t like. The parts I hate. I trust you, Pocket. More than I’ve ever trusted anyone, ever.”

You knew it wasn’t the appropriate time, but his words made your heart swell and you felt a few tears break free and slide down your cheeks. Grasping his face in both hands, you pulled him toward you and gave him a gentle, chaste kiss. “I want to know all of you, Buck,” you told him. “And I’m honored that you trust me with this.”

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against yours. “Lord knows you deserve it, doll,” he said. “You’ve put up with enough of my shit, and you’re still here.”

“And I’m not going anywhere,” you assured him. “No matter what dreams you have. You’re stuck with me.”

Bucky let out a weak chuckle, and you could feel some of the tension leave his body. “Could we…” He jerked his head toward the bed, and you instinctively knew what he meant.

“Yeah, of course,” you said, taking his hand. You laid down, and Bucky curled up next to you, his head resting comfortably on the soft flesh of your stomach, his arm draped low over your hips. His was face turned away from you, and you knew it would make it easier for him to talk if he wasn’t looking directly at you.

“Whenever you’re ready,” you said, running your fingers through his hair, alternating between tugging softly on the locks and gently scratching your nails across his scalp. 

Bucky let out an involuntary groan of contentment. “Don’t stop that, okay?” he asked. “It… it reminds me that I’m still here, with you. That I’m safe.”

You brought your other hand up to play with the hair on the nape of his neck by way of response, an additional source of touch to ground him.

And Bucky began to talk. He told you of his dream, which was just a memory, really, of the torture he’d endured. You’d read the files. You knew what Hydra had done to him, the experiments, the ways they’d broken him down so they could rebuild him in their image; you knew it all already. But nothing– nothing– could have prepared you for hearing about it directly from Bucky’s own lips, from his perspective. The pain, the terror, the sheer loss of any and all hope. It gutted you. 

You stayed quiet, letting your tears fall silently down your face, knowing that if he detected even the slightest bit of distress coming from you, he would stop his story so he could comfort you, and you couldn’t have that. Not now, when you were meant to be comforting him. So, you listened. You listened, and you played with his hair as he unveiled the horrors he’d been subjected to.

Somehow. Somehow, this man, who had been tortured, beaten, used, abused and violated, in so many ways, had managed to remain the funniest, most beautiful, caring, loyal, passionate soul you’d ever known. He was a marvel, a miracle, a once in a lifetime wonder, and you were lucky enough to get to love him.

When he finished, you exhaled a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry,” you whispered, afraid to speak too loudly, lest you give away the fact that you’d been crying this entire time. “You didn’t deserve any of it. If I could kill every single person that ever harmed you, I would.”

“I know you would, doll,” he said softly, his fingers teasing up the hem of your shirt to play along the skin of your stomach. “And I love you for it. You have no idea. But… well, there’s nothing to be done for any of it, now.”

“Nope,” you said, shaking your head vigorously. “I don’t accept that. There’s got to be something I can do to help make things better for you.”

You felt him smile into your skin. “You help just by lovin’ me, doll,” he said. “By makin’ me feel like I’m worth somethin’. It makes all the difference.”

“I just wish there was more I could do, though,” you lamented. “More ways I could help you, to keep the nightmares from even happening in the first place. To make you feel as safe as you make me feel.”

The arm around your hips tightened as Bucky held you to him. “You wanna do something for me, sweets?” he asked. “Something that’ll help? Help get me back to sleep.”

You quirked your lip. You had a general idea where the insatiable super soldier was going with this. “Of course,” you told him. “Anything you want.”

“Sing to me.”

“What?!” Well. That had not been what you had expected him to ask of you. 

“Sing to me,” he repeated. “I love when you sing to me; helps me relax.”

You sighed. You had said ‘anything,’ after all. “Alright. What song?”

“You know the one,” he said, and you could hear the smirk in his voice.

“Oh, come on, Bucky!” you said with an exasperated sigh. “All the new music you’ve learned and that’s the song you want to hear?”

“‘S my favorite,” he said. “Love when you sing it. Makes me happy.” You could hear the exhaustion in his voice, and you knew he wouldn’t be awake much longer. After the night he’d just had, this was the least you could do for him.

“Fine,” you said, and he burrowed himself against your stomach like you were his own personal pillow.

“‘S my girl,” he murmured. 

And you began:

“Oh, misty eye of the mountain below Keep careful watch of my brothers’ souls And should the sky be filled with fire and smoke Keep watching over Durin’s son”

Long ago, back when the two of you were ‘just friends,’ and you’d finally made your way through The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Bucky had become absolutely enchanted with Ed Sheeran’s I See Fire. You didn’t understand it, but you didn’t dissuade him. You’d helped him download the track onto his phone, so he could play it whenever he liked, and you’d helped him look up the lyrics so he could sing it himself (though, bless him, he had many fine attributes, carrying a tune was not one of them). 

You’d asked him once, why he liked the song so much, and he’d just shrugged. “Dunno,” he’d said. “It’s a song about everything going to shit. The end of the world, knowing you’re about to die, but… but finding strength in it. Finding peace in it.” He’d looked at you then, that look you couldn’t discern at the time, but now recognized as love. “Not being afraid of it, because you’ve finally found the people who made dying worth it.”

“Now I see fire Inside the mountains I see fire Burning the trees I see fire Hollowing souls I see fire Blood in the breeze I see fire”

“Oh you know I saw a city burning out,” Bucky chimed in, deliciously off key, and you had to stifle a giggle so you could keep singing. 

“And I see fire,” you continued.

“Feel the heat upon my skin, yeah,” Bucky crooned as he crawled up from your stomach to lay his head next to yours.

“And I see fire.”

“And I see fire burn on and on the mountain side,” you both finished together in a peal of laughter. 

You rested a hand on his chest. “You were supposed to fall asleep,” you chastised him.

Bucky tucked a loose strand of hair back behind your ear. “What can I say, doll? Your voice got me going.” He reached down and began trailing his fingertips up your bare leg. “I might have some other ideas that will lull me back to slumber, though.” His grin was lascivious as his fingers danced under your shirt, pulling it up with them over your abdomen and breasts. 

“Oh yeah?” you asked coyly. “Whatever could you mean?”

“Come on, doll,” he teased, “wanna feel the heat upon your skin.”

You rolled your eyes. “You are NOT using Ed Sheeran lyrics in our foreplay, Barnes!” 

“Too late, sweets,” he said as he leaned down and began peppering your neck with kisses. “If this is to end in fire, then we should all burn together.” He paused to slip your shirt over your head. “Don’t you wanna burn with me, Pocket?”

“Fuck,” you groaned as his calloused hand gently massaged your breast. “I did say I’d do anything you want to help you go back to sleep, didn’t I?”

“‘S my girl,” Bucky grinned. 

And this time, when he finally rolled himself back on top of you, you were both panting for an entirely different reason.

[cosyvelvetorchid]

Buck stumbles on a wedding planning folder on Tommy's computer and has all sorts of feelings about it

This was such an adorable prompt! I loved writing this. Thank you!

*****

The second Tommy left the house, Buck pulled pulled out Tommy's laptop. He'd mentioned in passing the night before that his grandmother would make him meatloaf when he visited her. He'd had such a fond look on his face when he recalled the memory that Buck immediately knew he was going to make it for him. He'd opened the laptop with the intent on looking up some recipes to surpises him, and as the screen lit up, he saw the folder that that Tommy had left open.

The folder was untitled, and had multiple other folders inside it. 'Taxes', 'insurance', various car manuals littered the screen. But there was one folder that caught Bucks interest immediately.

'Wedding'

Buck stared at the unopened folder. Tommy had told him he had never been married. Maybe it was photographs from someone else's wedding? His finger hovered over the track pad. It would be wrong to open it, right? It would feel like violating Tommy's privacy. Something inside Buck was curious, though. He double clicked, and the folder opened.

It was filled with photographs but they weren't of somebodies wedding. Well, technically, they were, but they were random images of different peoples weddings, alongside stock photos of flowers, table arrangements, decor.. it was Pinterest for the luddite. Buck smiled.

He clicked on the first photo - a simple, rustic looking, 3 tiered wedding cake with cream frosting - and began scrolling across. An antique wooden table decorated with lit pillar candles of differing sizes, a male model in a black fitted suit that made Bucks mouth water at the thought of Tommy wearing, two men stood at an alter with vines of purple and white flowers hanging down above them, a collage of different coloured orchids, a tungsten wedding band..

Tommy, to the outside world, was very squared away. He was well versed in keeping himself together and rarely, if ever, let himself slip. It was one of the reasons Buck felt so unbelievably lucky that he got to see a side of Tommy that nobody else saw. He saw Tommy giggle like a kid in bed late at night over something ridiculous Buck had said. He got to see him with food spilled down his shirt, or his face when he comes apart when Buck touches him in the way that he likes, or when he's sick and hasn't showered for 3 days because he can't get off the couch without wanting to vomit.

However, Tommy did struggle sometimes with being open about his needs. Buck had learned that Tommy had spent so many years having only himself to rely on. It was hard for him to admit his needs or even his wants. But, over the almost year they'd been together, he had begun opening up more and trusting that Evan wasn't going to see him any differently. He wasn't going to think he was less of a man or less attractive. That Evan loved him, and taking care of Tommy's needs was something that he wanted to do.

Still, knowing that Tommy had this collection of ideas filled Buck with more love for him. Tommy was a romantic, Buck knew that, and he'd seen it many times. The man's favourite move was 'Love, Actually' for Gods sake. But even after almost a year, Tommy's softness still wondrously surprised him.

Buck continued to scroll through the images. More random decor - the overarching theme was very rustic. Lots of wood and flowers. Then, an image slid onto the screen that made his smile even bigger.

It was a photograph of Buck. It was taken at the medal ceremony after the famous cruise ship rescue. He was holding the wooden plaque with a big grin on his face. The next photograph was him again. This one, he was in his everyday blues, playing pool at the station, laughing at something. He continued - a selfie he'd sent Tommy from his kitchen where he was covered in flour while making cookies for Christopher's school bake sale, a selfie of the two of them Buck had taken in bed, where Tommy was fast sleep with his face nuzzled into Evans neck, a picture Hen had taken of the two of them smiling proudly with their medals around their necks, and then a photograph of Evan leaning against the fence of Tommy's deck, looking out at the ocean. Buck hadn't seen it before. The shirt he was wearing he'd only bought two weeks ago, so it was recent.

He clicked across to the last image in the folder, and his heart damn near burst out of his chest. It was a receipt from a jewellery store. For a tungsten band.

Buck shut the laptop, quickly placing it on the coffee table. He'd bought a ring. Tommy had bought a ring.

The first feeling that coursed through him was terror. They were 2 weeks away from their first anniversary. It was too soon. Buck was supposed to be impulsive one - Tommy was the calm, patient, and methodical one. But was it impulsive? A year is a long time to some people. Cap and Athena dated, got engaged, and married all in less than a year, so comparatively, it wasn't that short a time span.

The second thing he felt, which he tried to keep down, was excitement. He would be lying if he said he hadn't allowed the words 'Evan Kinard' to flicker through his minds eyes occasionally. It always created little flutters of warmth deep in his belly. This time, he couldn't stop the images of Tommy standing in front of him, placing that ring on his finger. Those flutters in his stomach raced up to his heart, expanding it to a size that was probably not safe.

The third feeling, the deepest and most all-encompassing, was love. And unfathomable amount of love that he didn't think was possible for a human heart to withstand. He loved Tommy - that had been obvious by the second month of their relationship - but in this moment, it suddenly occurred to him that this wasn't just any love - it was the love. Tommy was it. Tommy was his soul mate. Tommy was the sun, the moon, and every single star in the universe. He made Buck see colours he couldn't see with anybody else, sounds and sights that no gadget or gizmo would be able to detect.

And he wanted to marry Evan.

Once the shock of it all began to disapate, it suddenly occurred to him that he wasn't supposed to know about this. He opened the laptop again and clicked out of the folder before putting the laptop back where it was.

Tommy was going to be back from the grocery store any minute. All he had to do was figure out how the hell he was going to act completely normal around Tommy and not go full Buck. He heard the front door opening and he took a big, centering breath before leaving to couch to meet his future husband at the door.