#but also unrelated to confessionals

[aquarri]

i really need to start making spread sheets to track confessionals/interviews on my shows, because there is a formula!!!

[elytrafemme]

friendship is cool bc you get to have these funny little guys who make you happy and become a better person or whatever and laugh a lot. but then there’s the horrors (trying to see and message them frequently enough when you know you can’t possibly juggle all of them all at once and never knowing the best answer)

[justchillandshipit]

Allow me to take a moment here. Tim just acknowledged couch theory?

Moving on to Buck and Tommy’s breakup, talk about your approach to it. Why was Tommy sure that Buck would break his heart?

Tommy’s older and Buck is very new to this, and whether Tommy was correct or not, I think what he felt like was exactly what he said: I’m not your last, I’m your first, which is a special thing to be, but as Tommy says, it doesn’t usually end up being the same thing. And I think based on what we know of Buck, he’s maybe not wrong. Buck’s a little impulsive when he’s feeling a certain kind of way. He’s like, move on in, bring your couch. So I just think because Tommy’s a little older and wiser or maybe at some level he feels like he doesn’t deserve Buck, I don’t know. But I think he accurately diagnosed Buck. Buck’s still figuring himself out, and boy, that would be quite risky to move in with that guy as much as you would love to.

---

We have a couch reference.

---

Somewhat unrelated but relevant:

I also think that I have finally caught up on all the articles. In every article, someone says Eddie is straight. I want to say about four articles have a reference or a mention of straight Eddie, and there is one in-canon statement from Eddie. So what do we think about that? I instinctively want to say that to have that many denials is sus, but I also have to acknowledge that the question was asked before the response was offered. I honestly don't know what to believe when it comes to the show's direction. I'm still here though and sticking with my original plan to give them until the end of Seasn 8 to move Eddie out of the closet. I will not accept the demise of this ship a moment sooner. It doesn't help that actors are excellent liars. Oliver always makes me second guess myself. lol For now, I'm still here and still clowning.

Other things to consider in favor of Buddie:

There was one article from TVInsider where the interviewer reminded the reader that Eddie said he wanted a beard. Most of us know the gay coding of that word, and that was promptly followed by the Priest pointing out that Eddie was wearing a mask/disguise. This is all within the same conversation where Eddie assumed the Priest was hitting on him, and he called himself straight.

I'm also low-key wondering about the possible conflict between Eddie and Buck coming up. I need more info on that. What?? These two haven't had beef since Buck sued Bobby in Season 3 and Buck and Eddie argued in the grocery store. We all know how Eddie served c#nt like a professional in that fight. Eddie ended up forgiving Buck soon afterward, but Buck was still apologizing four episodes later. lol

I saw in another post where someone compared the image of Eddie in the confessional with the image of Eddie seeing Buck through the peephole of his door. (Hint, both looked like confessional images.) That has to be deliberate.

Tim's comment above referenced Tommy and a couch in a similar context to Eddie and Buck's conversation when Buck said his last few couches came with girlfriends, and Eddie corrected him to say his girlfriends came with couches.

@stagefoureddiediaz 's color theory is still proving accurate as well.

Updates

Buck looking less than thrilled at seeing Laker tickets. Tommy tells him he can use the gift with Eddie and Buck perking up at the idea, only for Tommy to say nope. Joking. (On a second watch, I think I read too much in to this one, but I'm keeping it on the list as very loose interpretation.)

Oliver admits that Buck looked Eddie up and down when he opened the door and knew something was going on with him, but then the whole sit in silence thing. (I know the breakup was on Buck's mind, but I swear he looked like he was trying not to think about Eddie being half naked beside him.)

Also, Eddie was half naked just sitting beside him. I can't help but think of them sitting there like that. Buck and Eddie are going to the same place, but they are taking totally different paths to get there. At some point, they are going to meet each other face to face and be like, you're here.

(I saw a theory. You always have to take these with a grain of salt, but I can't deny the theory sounds good. there have been a lot of parallels that are relevant for Buck and Eddie with the exception of Eddie's shooting.) I did read one interview, it may have been TVInsider, where the interviewer said they hoped Buck wouldn't be in danger. Oliver hinted that Buck was always putting himself in those situations. I think it might be a hint for what is to come. Also, if Buck is putting himself in dangerous situations again, this might be something that has Eddie angry with Buck. I think there is a lot of room for this theory. We'll have to wait and see on that one.

In a previous interview, Oliver told us there was an upcoming scene where Buck and Eddie sat in silence and that it was a testament to their friendship. In the latest interview in Variety, he talks about the scene again but this time he says "that it speaks volumes about their relationship that they could be going through things and handling it so differently but still be there for each other with little need for words. (This is the same interview where Oliver admits that Buck looked Eddie up and down.) At the end of this question, he reiterates that it speaks volumes that they were in different places and could still be there for each other. He says, "I think it really speaks volumes to the strength of their bond."

[ghulehunknown]

Confessional Smut

Sub!Copia x F!Reader

Day 12 of KINKTOBER is here! 🎃

**WARNING - EXPLICIT, NSFW**

Also available on AO3!

“Cardi Confessions”

Summary: You catch the Cardinal doing a little more than confessing in the Abbey and decide to join him.

CW/Tags: masturbation, mutual masturbation, degradation, subby Copia, roleplay, semi public masturbation

Word Count: 900

Walking along the corridor, you hear some muffled noises coming from the confessional booth in the Abbey. You shuffle your way over, careful not to let your heels click on the stone tiles.

You slip into the opposite side of the booth, and peer through the mesh screen. There you find Cardinal Copia engaging in an act of self-pleasure. His head tilted back, mouth agape, mumbling what almost sounds like your name. “Ah, fuck -!” he mutters.

“Cumming all by yourself, Cardinal? In a confessional?” You tut at him, eyeing him through the screen. “My, the irony.”

He looks up startled, hand on his cock and a look of fear in his eyes. “Sister! Ah - ” He rushes to gather his garments together but to no avail.

You exit and walk around to the other side, then sit down on the bench opposite him. “This is a place of worship,” you say glaring at him, faking a shameful tone.

He purses his lips and pauses, thinking for a moment. He leans forward, placing a hand on your exposed knee, your habit barely covering yourself. “And what if I was confessing my most wicked sins?”

“And what might those sins be?”

“About how I wish to worship every inch of your body?”

“Then I would say I came at the right time - er, sorry,” you reply.

He winces at your pun, but smiles at you all the same.

“Oh my disgusting, perverted Cardinal - whatever shall I do with you?” you ask with a sly smile, cupping his cheek in the palm of your hand.

He blushes, unable to conceal his boner anymore. It’s poking out from the fabric bunched at his thighs. You can see the exposed tip, pink and flushed like his cheeks.

“S-so sorry Sorella,” he stammers, fondling his Grucifix rosary in his gloved fingers nervously.

You lean in and grab his member from between the fabric folds of his red cassock, eliciting a yelp from his lips. “So hard just thinking of me, Cardinal?”

He purses his lips again and nods, eyes closed. “Sì Sorella…the most wicked things.”

You release his cock from your grasp and he exhales, shoulders slumping in relief. “Why don’t you tell me about the compromising positions you were thinking of having me, while you continue what you were doing?”

He pauses for a moment, and eyes you carefully as he begins to stroke himself again. You sigh and lean back on the bench as he spins you a tale of his fantasies. “I was imagining you and me, in my office. I had you bent over my desk…oh Satanas - ” He begins to whimper quietly, closing his eyes as he tightens his grip on himself.

“Lucifer, tell me more,” you whisper as you dip your hand in between your legs, sighing.

“Ahhh, tes-tesoro, how p-pretty you look,” his voice hitches, his mouth opening in an ‘ahh.’ “Uhnnnnmmm,” he mumbles as his eyelids flutter. He leans across the small booth, his free hand reaching towards your breasts.

You place your high-heeled foot on his chest, sliding upwards so the stiletto pokes at his Adam’s apple. “Shhh Cardinal,” you whisper, glancing towards the side of the confessional. “They’ll hear.”

“Maybe I want them to,” he chuckles, glancing down at your heel dangerously close to cutting off his blood supply.

“Mmm, it’s true I did hear you, just innocently m-minding my own business,” you say, circling your clit with your fingertips.

You continue this back and forth banter as if you’d not just been making love in his bedroom yesterday morning. It’s a fun little game you both liked to play, and took turns punishing one another.

Unrelenting in your role this time, he delights in your silly little demeaning words to him, especially when you call him a “pathetic, pathetic little man who is so desperate for pussy he’ll rub himself in the middle of the Abbey.”

“You’re lucky I’m even giving you the privilege of a visual,” you continue through moans as you both continue touching yourselves.

“Ah, sì Sorella - you are qu-quite generous,” he grunts through heady, excited strokes. “Oh Satanas, I’m going to c-cum soon.” The slap of his skin echoes from inside the confessional, and you’re sure anyone who actually came to speak with him turned right around as soon as they heard.

“Ladies first,” you say, flashing him a warning and rubbing yourself more quickly.

“Mmn, of course mistress.” He slows his own movements and watches you, fixating on your open cunt completely exposed to him.

You moan quietly, feeling your orgasm just around the corner.

“May I help, Sorella?” he asks, watching your wrist twitch wildly as if he’s being hypnotized.

“What good could a deplorable cuck like yourself possibly do for me? Ahh, fuck!” You buck your hips as he watches, practically licking his lips. You can’t help it - you cry out his name as you cum - “Copia!”

Of course this asshole smiles as he pumps his cock faster, not waiting for your breathing to return to normal. His moans grow faster and faster until - he paints the palm of his hand with his seed (and a few splashes get the booth wall).

“Satanas Sorella,” he sighs your name on a exhale contentedly.

You get up to head out of the confessional. “Oh Cardinal,” you say, tutting at him while placing your hand on his shoulder and looking down at his lap. “Soiled your good robes, ah ah. Now everyone will know what you’ve been up to.”

[hwan-g]

DAYS OF CANDY. seo changbin

pair. bouncer! changbin x fem! reader (+ seungmin, chan, minho) | genre. slight gang activity, bad boy, infatuation at first sight, angst, smut | warnings. profanity, brief violence, depictions of toxic/abusive behavior, mentions of murder, mental struggle, age gap (unrelated to plot), unprotected sex, dirty talk, pet names, generally flawed characters | word count. 14.9k | in the same universe as route 66 and midnight diner but can be read as standalone.

synopsis. a lot of things happened in motel rooms, even more happened between him and girls like you, girls that ride on his bike and have him by the balls.

It was an ordinary night, when you made the wrong choice.

You’d heard of the reputation Route 66 had built for itself, knew how hard it was to get past the two infamous bouncers at the door, and of that one incident on the 16th of February, the one that made it on the news and forced the club to shut down for a whole month. The owner, Bang Chan, refused to give any statements, and the entire ordeal was soon forgotten, swept under the rug by people that refuse to acknowledge the existence of gang activity in their city.

You had a high school friend that worked there as a bartender, someone you’d been quite close to once, but drifted apart from when you first got together with your boyfriend. Minho still called you sometimes—he hated texts, hated how impersonal they were, and would rather hear your voice instead—just to see how you were doing, if you still worked at the same retail store you started at right after graduation, and that he hopes you’re doing okay, that he’s only a phone call away if you ever need him, and you know you can always just come visit me, right?

You knew that, wished you could say it was easy for you to do that, but that was merely denial talking. You worked a full time job that took up most of your time, and when you weren’t selling clothes, you were washing and folding them, you were consumed by a man that refused to let you take one step away from him, an apartment that felt more like a prison than a refuge. There had been a social life once, but that seemed lifetimes ago now, nothing but a distant dream. There had also been a time where your boyfriend was your whole world, and you’d love for nothing else but to be in his presence always, stuck to him like glue, but that had also withered away somewhere, and died. 

Freedom seemed like paradise now. Being alone, elsewhere—you prayed for it every night before going to bed, even in your sleep. It was detrimental that something gave, and soon. You wanted to call Minho again, wanted to ask how he was doing for once, and not the other way around. No more rushed interactions, or seething looks; hands as fists, skin on skin, anger as teeth—

There was a birthday party at Route, your boyfriend’s brother was turning twenty-eight, and had invited seemingly every person he ever came across. Of course, that wouldn’t run on 66; all who entered that door had to be handpicked especially by the two men guarding it, and that was no easy task. You’d been once, a quick drink with a coworker on a regular Thursday, which turned out to be a confessional session with Minho until two in the morning, at which point he declared you entirely too drunk to return home and left his shift early to take you to his house and let you sleep it off in his bed.

Lee Minho was a good friend. He cared for you like no other man had ever done in your life, and it was not an obvious thing for him. You had to earn his respect, his time; not everyone could do it, certainly not many were willing to, and even fewer actually succeeded. It was effortless with you because you actually tried, you took the extra mile, and you never demanded anything of him. You just were, orbiting around him, once a sun to his planet, now an old survival instinct. He had lost many family members over the years; you’d held his hand as his parents passed away, held him when he cried, stayed on the phone on graduation day as he told you he wouldn’t show up, and could you pick up his diploma for him?

Many times you wondered where it all went, how it came to this. He’d been your closest friend for so many years, but as you stare at your boyfriend already picking a fight with the brown-haired man you’d come to know as Kim Seungmin, you realize that you let him go—let it all go—for a stupid, stupid boy that had sucked the fucking life out of you, and could just not stop doing it to anyone he ever interacted with. You’d been so naive, so incredibly dumb. 

It made sense now, what you really had to do. But how you did it—that was your first mistake. You thought you were destined for a mundane life, an ordinary existence. No one could’ve prepared you for this.

“Say, should I call the cops on you, or fuck you up myself?” An extremely muscled man appeared through the underground bar’s entrance, black locks falling over his forehead, obscuring dark eyes. “I’ll be nice and make it your call.” 

He locked eyes with you for a single moment, before his hard face turned its attention back to your boyfriend currently gripping your arm so tight it felt like all blood circulation had stopped. His strong arms flexed, the skin veiny, rock solid in the white button up, and his chest looked ready to pop out of that black vest with the business tie, all formal, all currently stirring something incredibly dark within you.

If you had a voice, you’d beg him to make that call, plead with him for a chance at freedom. But you didn’t, you couldn’t possibly find it at that moment, as the other man flashed his gun discreetly, a deadly warning to your boyfriend’s ominous words. You had to give it to him, no matter how sick to your stomach it made you—he had ways to hurt people, ways to make them disappear. He liked hurting you the most, his precious girl. Sometimes in ways that couldn’t be visible to the naked eye.

“Time’s ticking, fuckface,” the seemingly older guy threatened, getting closer to his target’s face. You whimpered, looking down to hide your discomfort, but not before you noticed him studying the movement. “Let her go.”

“Fuck out of my face, before you regret it,” your boyfriend snarled back, and shook you forward, yet refusing to release you. “You go inside, find my brother and tell him these two assholes are giving me trouble.”

Brown-haired boy laughed as the other one smirked. “Are we giving him trouble, Seungmin?”

“I don’t believe so, Changbin.” But both guns were glinting in the night sky, their intentions clear.

Changbin stood with both arms crossed in front of him, menacing, terrifying. “We just wanna be your friend, pretty boy. Let the girl go, so we can chat and braid our hair, yeah?”

If he’d only loosen his grip, then you could tug and pull away. Your brain’s autopilot had been turned on since before you left the apartment, there were responses but no reactions, and you were pretty sure both men could tell you’d been through this many times before. You always made it very apparent, in hopes someone would finally help you, someone would dare. It wouldn’t always be like this, but you had to make it happen. The man’s attention on you whispered of many things, but freedom—freedom was the first one promised.

“You’re the funny one, aren’t you?”

The smirk widened, a hand resting on the metal against his rib. “Perhaps we should let the pretty thing next to you decide that one. Last warning.”

You saw the exact moment you vanished from your boyfriend’s mind, his touch leaving you at once, murder written across his face as he got close to the bouncer, a punch ready to land, the violence you were so accustomed to coming to a climax, finally, a firework taking flight, a missile bomb launching—

The sound of clicking, multiple gasps from behind you, and then you saw it. Smooth black underneath his jaw, Changbin’s finger on the trigger, head tilted, smile wicked, sinister, his friend mirroring him, standing a breath away, on the ready—they were going to shoot, they were going to do it, they’ve done it before, you can smell it off of them, the gunpowder, the crime, the sin. You almost reach out, but for what? You wouldn’t stop it, you didn’t care to. You’d let it happen and slip past his caving body to find Minho, to announce you were free, to drink yourself oblivious and swear you’d never again become prey for men to feast on.

The end, so close.

“Walk away before this gets ugly,” Changbin stated, contained anger and ice cold amusement both evident in his tone. “We turned away your entire entourage, there’s nothing for you here.”

“Johnny, maybe you should go—”

The malicious eyes were on you again, once beautiful, holding so much in them, and you remember yourself wishing you could drown in all of it, for as long as possible, until eternity ceased. You loved this man once, with all your heart, but he was nothing short of a stranger to you now, and if he had died just moments prior, the thought of being glad for it scared you to your fucking core.

What sort of person had you become next to him? No more.

“I should go?” he asked incredulously, and his lips curled. “Fuck it, stay here for all I fucking care. No one will ever come back for you, (Y/N),” he spat, pointing a single finger at you, already walking backwards, away from you, forever. “Remember that.”

Both bouncers moved in front of you, hiding you from your, now, ex boyfriend’s view once and for all. You hadn’t even realized how much you were shaking until Changbin reached a hand out to take your fingers in his, his touch warm, the rings he wore cool against your skin, a juxtaposition. The red neon signs above your head made you dizzy, the weight of what had just happened pushing on your shoulders, tearing you from the inside. Three years of your life, given to a man that had left you as quick as a bullet.

Perhaps you should’ve killed him yourself. Now the moment’s wasted, there will be other victims, more misery—and your stuff, all of your things were in that apartment. Who was going to retrieve them, where were you supposed to go?

Was this a bad idea? If you pushed past them, maybe you could yell out, try to reason…until you figured how crazy that sounded. Still, a sick part of you wasn’t ready to be abandoned by him, and could not stand the thought of being alone. Tears blurred your vision, and you squeezed Changbin’s hand one time, eager for direction.

“Is Minho working tonight?” you question quietly, the music from inside the bar slipping through the cracks of the steel door.

Seungmin had gone back to his post, profiling people and opening the door for them once he received their money. Changbin had pulled you to the side so gently you’d barely noticed you’d been moved. The metal was gone, and its owner was searching to meet your gaze, to ask if you were okay, but to no avail. Your eyes were glued on his boots, the leather of it, the shoelaces tying up to black pants that fit snugly around toned thighs. He was handsome, a faint thought that shouldn’t have crossed your mind at a time like this, but you couldn’t look past it, either. He smelled of amber and he’d just popped something in his mouth.

You look up just in time to make out the red of his lollipop. Raspberry. It clicked against his teeth as he sucked on it; you were so near to him the stick of it was grazing your lips. You faltered, and took a step back. He let you, but he never once let go of your hand.

“He’s not, sweet thing,” he replied softly, giving you a curve of a smile. Draped in red, he appeared dreamlike. “No one’s gonna hurt you, yeah? You’re safe with me.”

You nod, but you can barely hold his gaze. He chuckles, sensing your struggle. Your throat is dry, your heart in shambles; you could really use a drink or two, before you made another terrible mistake. You needed to call Minho, let him know of your situation. Perhaps he would understand, and let you stay at his place until you figured what to do with your belongings, and the lease on your name. You couldn’t risk going yourself, but Changbin, maybe, if you could find the guts to ask something like that of him—

It didn’t feel right to involve your other friends, the ones not related to weapons and abuse, the ones that will never know what has happened to you, what will always remain part of your story, no matter if you’ve escaped for the time being or forever. Johnny was the vengeful type, and he certainly would not let it go. Anger had made a monster out of him, and everyone would pay for your insubordination. He didn’t take well to change, certainly not when it involved you. It was simply a matter of time.

You took a deep breath, your chest rising and falling deeply. The bouncer in front of you rested his hands on your arms, rubbing soothingly there, waiting for you to speak, to tell him what to do.

“I have to go, I need to—I’ll—thank you,” you stumble through your words, turning to leave, hysteria bubbling in your chest, anxiety for what would become of you. “How could I ever repay what you did for me…”

“You can start with your name.”

Your eyes snapped to meet his. His mouth was moving, tongue rolling the lollipop around, and his hands dropped from your skin, as if he sensed how overwhelmed you felt. You were grateful for that small action, though a part of you wanted it, no, needed it, back. It felt grounding, real, like if it wasn’t there you’d float away somehow, incorporeal, a ghost. 

Before you can even think about it, your fingers reach for his forearm, and his warmth wraps around your bones at once, the skin there, so human. Changbin seems alarmed, but remains patient with you, understanding. Your mouth is dry, but you try to swallow anyway, and his weight shifts, his gaze never drops, Seungmin is calling him—

“Yes, Kim?” he answers, but the connection is not tethered.

“The boss wants you in the back. Hey, beautiful, can I see an I.D—”

“He can wait,” he grunts, and that’s it. He’s back in your world, the one where your hand on him is the only thing keeping him alive, your eyes staring up at him the only way he’d prefer to die.

Fuck him, he’s the one in trouble, isn’t he?

“Sure, he can,” you distantly hear the brown-haired man mutter to himself sarcastically, after the two girls entered through the door. “He’s widely known for his patience.”

It brings you back to Earth. “You should go,” you encourage, smiling awkwardly, fingers unwrapping themselves hesitantly.

Changbin shakes his head, takes the stick out of his mouth. He faintly smells of red syrup. “I really fucking shouldn’t. Where are you gonna go? Do you have a place to stay?”

“I’ll figure it out, you honestly don’t have to worry about me, I can—” But you could do what? There was no way for you to finish that sentence.

He straightens his back, and it somehow makes him taller, more formidable. There’s something unreadable swimming in his expression, something between anger and compassion, and it knots your stomach, because the last thing you want is for someone to feel sorry for you. This is why no one knew, why you never said anything—you hated the pity, the charity that would come out of something like this.

A victim. You weren’t one.

“You’re with me. I’d be the last person that saw you tonight, and if something were to happen to you, I wouldn’t be able—” he stops, sighs. He looks back to where Seungmin is standing, and brings those thunder eyes back to haunt you. “Just. Please, answer the question. Do you have a place to stay?”

It’s not what you expected. This man cares, he’s like Minho. But unlike him, there’s an edge to Changbin that you’ve never seen on anyone else, like he’d tear himself apart to help you, do whatever was physically possible to make sure you’re safe. It was kindness, pure and unfiltered, and a sense of principle that no one has ever shown you before. It felt warm, like him. So, you accepted.

“(Y/N),” you blurted out, moved by his persistence. He blinks. “My name is (Y/N).”

His smile is a thousand watts. “Nice to meet you, sweetheart.”

“She’s Minho’s ‘special girl,’” Seungmin declares, eavesdropping. “All I know about you has been against my will, darling, know that.”

Changbin smirks, and lights up, digging his elbow in the bouncer’s rib. “He means he’s charmed,” he says apologetically, rubbing his neck.

A smile breaks out on your face, and you wonder how is it possible to feel at home with two people you’ve practically just met? Your heart was beating right out of your chest at the thought of spending more time with them. So much so that you nearly forgot all about the bad.

It still lurked though, waiting for the right moment. For both of you.

“Another one, is it?” Bang Chan commented teasingly, counting money against the counter. “Are we collecting them or what?”

You blushed, as Changbin sprung out to wrestle his boss in your defense. Route 66’s owner laughed a throaty sound, and surrendered, coughing and fixing his black button up. You noticed his square jaw, the sharp gaze—the girl staring at him from up on the stage. There were questions, but for some reason you had no voice to ask them.

“It’s nothing like that, Bang,” the bouncer next to you stated, rather embarrassed. “The party of twenty that we sent off? She came with one of them.”

To that, Chan perked up. There was another girl working the bar, smaller and much quieter looking than the first one, and she smiled at you when she caught your eye. You smiled back politely, and turned back to the man talking to you. The place was dark, drenched in neon, but you could still make out his face, it was so sculpted.

“You’re Minho’s friend, yeah?”

You stuttered, shy. “Y-Yes. I thought he’d be here today.”

Chan measured you. “Personal day,” he explained simply, but his fingers were still moving across the bills. “Why’d you bring her to me?” he addresses Changbin without bothering to properly look his way.

“She has nowhere to go. He was violent with her.”

You heard the hum all the way where you stood. It sounded disinterested, and for a moment you felt yourself questioning what you were exactly doing there, with a bunch of strangers that didn’t owe you anything, but then you remember the black-haired man’s words, and you remain in your place, uncomfortable.

“Take her to 103,” the owner declared. “I’ll contact Lee, see if he answers. The room has been paid for the weekend, so rest, okay? If you need anything, tell Lover Boy here. I’m sure he'll oblige.”

Changbin audibly groaned, slapping his palm over his face. “Can you shut the fuck up?”

“Just saying, baby.”

“I’m going through the back door,” he ignored the pet name, grabbing you by the wrist. “Let Min know.”

Chan was already tuning out, the girl you saw earlier now whispering to his ear. She moved like a cat to you. Or a snake. It felt mystical to watch her.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s already aware,” was his last comment before you rounded the corner to the storage room.

There were two bikes parked in the back. Both a shiny black, though one was longer, vintage. The alley was dark, the bushes along the line of the club’s property well-kept. Your arms unconsciously folded over your upper body.

Changbin mounted the aged motorcycle, turning the ignition switch, the angry roar of the engine and bright lights making you flinch. The chain hanging from his pants dangled, the metallic sound drawing your attention, before your eyes traveled to his biceps, displayed in full force with the way he hunched over the handlebars. You desperately tried to hide it, but your breath was stuck in your throat, your heart jumping at the view.

He was ridiculously attractive, and this wasn’t like that. He’d made it clear, and you— you’d just got out of a messed up relationship. You didn’t need this. And yet—

“Come here, will you? I promise I won't bite.”

Of all things, this was bad in a completely different, yet just as torturous way. You still did it anyway; you passed your leg over the seat, you put your arms around his muscled body, leaning into him, and if your nose caught his burning scent or the berry flavor of his candy you told your silly heart to suck it up and turned your cheek. But ignoring it was futile—there was this intense sizzling between you, and it’d be a flat out lie to say he didn’t feel it, because at every red light, every all-way stop and traffic junction he squirmed and cleared his throat in a manner men only do when they’re rock hard and in need of relief.

“We’re not too far now,” he spoke after a while, taking a left turn and readjusting your hold with one of his hands. His long fingers were cold but sure in their touch. “You okay?” His head turned to show his profile, the soft, dark curls bouncing in the wind, and what was the question again?

“It’s a nice night,” you comment, not able to form any other coherent sentence.

He nods, and takes off again, this time speeding down the road, making passes on cars, taking yellow’s, and never once looking back after that. The sky was pitch black, not a star in the city, and most businesses’ had closed for the day, leaving gas stations and fast food places all on their own, though even those were sparse and far between wherever you were going. There had been a moment, though small, where you doubted his intentions, doubted these people and their words. But these people were Minho’s people, and there was never any doubt about him.

You really wished you had taken your phone with you. It seemed like a good thing to have in a situation like this. The thought of where it is, or rather whom it’s with, made your skin crawl, and your mind wander. What was Johnny doing right now? Had he left the apartment already?

Staring at a spot on Changbin’s vest, you realized he’d just entered a parking lot, a motel named ‘Starlight’ coming into focus, its teal color and neon letters hard to miss. He killed the engine and waited for you to get off, before demounting himself. You lingered a bit as he adjusted the stand of the bike, and cracked his neck. Thin black ink ran down the side of it, lightning or veins, you couldn’t quite make it out from your distance, but before you could analyze it further, he motioned for you to follow him, extending a hand and recognizing what he’s doing.

Your eyes met as his jaw clenched, and his arm fell. It felt like intuition or will, and he was rejecting it all. You should’ve felt glad he was repressing himself, but all you felt instead was empty. You shouldn’t want this, you kept repeating to yourself. He’s just being nice. He’s just being kind. And it was those things, but it was something else, something that was neither your fault nor his; attraction, maybe, or just the simple fact that he felt like the calm sea, enveloping you with the promise of peace. And freedom—he set you free. Call it naivety, and perhaps it was.

You didn’t care.

That was your second mistake.

“It’s not much, but Bang’s family has owned this place for forty years,” he explained to you as he greeted the older man at the reception desk, and got the key that opened ‘Room 103.’

You climbed the rusty metal staircase to the first floor, and followed him closely as he passed the rooms by, all the way until the end of the hall. The breeze was colder up there, but you could spot a tiny star or two. You were far, so much farther that you’ve been in years, and it felt good. Nothing for miles, no one close to you to know where you were, to look for you. No one that cared enough, anyway.

“You won’t kill me, right?” you ask almost absentmindedly, the sky too mysterious, too beautiful to look away.

Changbin unlocked the door and chuckled to himself, forcing his head not to turn your way.

“Not if you behave,” he couldn’t help the suggestive tone, though. “I’m kidding, sweetheart,” he softened up and quickly added when he heard your breath catching in your throat.

He stepped aside to let you walk in the room you’ll be spending the night in, and hesitated to trail behind you. A lot of things happened in motel rooms, even more happened between him and girls like you, girls that ride on his bike and have him by the balls. His dick was so hard it was painful to walk, and there was no excuse for it. He was awful, but there was no intention to go through with anything. He’d bid you goodnight, leave his phone number on the nightstand, and walk out. That’s how it should happen, and that’s how it will happen. You’d been through enough, it was clear to see. 

Changbin was not going to force his own bullshit life on you.

“In case of anything you can call me immediately. I’ll answer,” he told you as you sat on the bed and fingered the phone’s cable. “If you want me to go get your stuff, say the word,” he added, sensing your uneasiness.

Your chest expanded and your lips curved, but the smile didn’t quite reach your eyes. “I don’t want to put you in any more trouble, Changbin. This is enough. Thank you.”

The bouncer shook his head, furrowing his brows in refutation. “You haven’t put me through anything, sweet thing. Let me do that for you, yeah? I’ve dealt with many assholes in my life.”

“Don’t you have to go home? It’s late, I wouldn’t want to keep you—”

“Don’t have one,” he cut you off, and smiled faintly to relieve the tension his words carried. “Tell me where yours is, I want to make tonight easier for you.”

You couldn’t help the pregnant pause after that. Your mind ran, the simple fact that he’d told you something so personal like it was nothing festering into a million different thoughts, all ending with the same question mark. Where did he live, then? At the club? Not possible, right? Then, where? Would he want to spend the night there, with you? You had nothing, even this much was borrowed, but perhaps he could share it with you. If it was allowed. You knew it was risky, and that you couldn’t ignore this for long.

It’d be wiser if he left now and came later when you were asleep. You had to remind yourself this was temporary. If you were to engage in these feelings, they’d take you somewhere you’d have to deal with for way longer than a couple of nights, and you weren’t sure that was a good thing.

He looked like he was thinking the same thing.

The tattoo on his neck was definitely lightning striking, the black of it creeping before cracking down on him, and disappearing underneath his collar—underneath. You wanted to see, run your fingers on it, figure out where it reached. It wasn’t normal, and it certainly wasn’t sane.

But you wanted to, nevertheless. It was a hungry want, an inevitable want. If it didn’t happen right now, it would happen someday, soon, as soon as you both stopped fighting it, a primal instinct. It was because of how he looked and what he’d done for you, how freedom would now seem like a raspberry lollipop and a smooth gun.

“I need to go,” he said, his eyes flitting from yours, body turning away. “I need to go before I do something I regret.”

His pleading tone tugged at you. You put your tongue between your teeth so you wouldn’t respond. He’ll go bring you your clothes and your phone, and he’s going to leave you alone. You ran it over three times in your mind, before it sounded convincing enough to go with.

“You can stay,” you manage to get out, and then you realize it doesn’t sound right. “After, I mean. If there’s nowhere else to go.”

Despite his best intentions, Changbin can’t help but melt at your words. Bless your heart, sweet thing. I was right to help you.

“I’ve had my fair share of Starlight nights, sweetheart. I’m sure you need your privacy,” he leaned by the dresser to write something on the pad by the TV. “You don’t gotta worry about me, yeah?”

It still didn’t feel right with you. “Thank you can’t possibly be enough.”

With a hand opening the door wider, he gave you one last smile and a quick wink, before popping the lollipop back in his mouth.

“It’s enough for me. I’ll be right back.”

Babel is playing on TV, a half forgotten movie about people on vacation, but you can’t even bring yourself to focus on the actors’ faces, much less their words. One line sticks out to you then, ‘Why did we come here?’ but before the weight of it registers, you swing the door wide open, throwing yourself out into the cold night.

The roaring sound that drove you away from your old life. That unique black paint on an expensive, vintage motorcycle you couldn’t stop thinking about. You’d never been on a bike before, had never trusted anyone enough to get near one. It had surprised you; how easily you trusted Changbin, how blindly you followed him into fields of darkness. He could’ve turned out dangerous—he could’ve threatened you. Any sane person would’ve kept their distance, assessed the situation, and gone home. A boring, uneventful life is a life nonetheless. There were bad parts, sure; decisions that were made that could’ve been prevented, people that took advantage of your kindness, but overall—it was fine, it was manageable.

Somehow, you refused to acknowledge the abuse, even then. You protected the part of you that wanted to deny, that wanted to go home and forget about it all. Johnny told you, though, he did—“no one’s coming for you, no one.” Meaning you’re unwanted, meaning you never mattered anyway, silly girl, and what are you talking about? You’ve no home, no returning.

The black-haired man carried a duffel bag across his torso, keys jingling between his fingers. You’d been smothering in that strange room, inked paper on the nightstand, fingers pressing on the digits again, and again, and again. Dialing, then putting the receiver down, a game with no winner. A phone call away, he’d said, but it’d been three tortuous hours and he’d been nowhere to be found. You were stranded in a motel outside of town, no way to escape. Your mind ran, and it ran fast, so to see him walking towards you, to witness him staying true to his word, when no other man had been able to, when nothing was for certain, and fear crept like an ocean wave—it shocked you; shook you, hand over mouth, feet pulling you back to the confines of that space he left you in, door left ajar, only so your lungs could fill with sharp wind, with bright stars peeking their way through.

Changbin was hurt. You saw that, too. He will come to you, face swollen, and you’ll deny, deny, deny.

Because that could’ve been you. Because it would’ve been bad for real, and you will never, ever admit that to yourself. Because that game did have winners and losers, and you were so obviously losing, every.single.fucking.time.

Your love had been a bad love. You don’t blame this man for condemning you.

“Sweet girl?” His voice is rough.

He pushes the thing separating you, and there it is—a cut above his brow, an angry gash on his cheek that will bruise later—you knew this, you did—blood on his white sleeve, scratched up knuckles. You’ve learned to look for the injuries first, but when did that start? Since when have you been covering, hiding, alert, so very sensitive to your own body, to reds and blues and purples?

What the fuck is wrong with you?

The only thing you can say— “I’m so sorry,” head low, quivering.

Changbin finds you on the bed, a reprimanded child, and stares. He looks an ugly sight, that much he knows, but it had nothing to do with you, everything to do with the motherfucker that got to call you his. That apartment had been a mess, beer cans everywhere, smashed picture frames and mirrors—it hadn’t come easy, losing you, it was clear to see, but your ex boyfriend wouldn’t give you up without a fight, and it was far from over.

Still, the bouncer pushed through the door frame, and searched for your belongings. Landed a good punch or two, missed a few, knocked out some teeth. He’d dealt with monsters before, and he wishes he could truly tell you what he’d meant, why he said it. Not much scared him anymore, nothing stopped him. If you have nothing to live for, you go all in. Every moment matters, yet doesn’t at all. An avalanche, a landslide. A suicide mission.

Changbin had seen war, and had returned from it. Retrieving a phone was childsplay to him.

He nears you, drops the bag with your stuff right next to you on the mattress. He crouches in front of you, and despite himself—he grabs your hands. How devastating it is—to know you’re going to lose your heart. How thrilling. He searches for the pretty eyes that looked at him back at the bar. He wants to talk to the girl he freed, the girl that offered what was offered to her. 

The selfless one.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he consoles you tenderly. “Did a good deed for a girl that’s worth it. No tears, yeah?” Your tongue comes out to wet your petal lips, and you meet his gaze. He smiles at you, masking the wince it elicits out of him. He wants to keep smiling for you, nevermind the ache, nevermind the effort.

“You should see the other guy.”

You laugh at that, still half crying, and Changbin can’t help it, doesn’t want to. He wipes the tears away, cradles your face in his big hand. You’re so warm under his touch, so beautiful. He wants to do everything for you, wants to stay beside you as you tackle life. But he’s got nothing to provide, even less to his name—he doesn’t deserve you, doesn’t think anyone does. You’ve been through a lot, your sadness tells him. It ripples through his chest, tightens his gut. He’ll stay if you keep him around, though.

He’ll stay, aware of what he can’t have. He sees himself in you, strangely.

“Does it hurt?” you ask, afraid to touch the liquid fire blazing on his features. “Thank you. Thank you.”

He thinks to tell you he can’t really feel pain, not anymore, but you don’t seem ready for that. Instead, he shakes his head, deflects. He reaches for the bag of food, and doesn’t tell you about the nasty stares he got from the people at the overnight deli, either. They don’t know him, they only see what they want to see. Chan taught him that. And fuck them, anyway—that was Seungmin.

“Eat something. Try to get some sleep,” he balances himself on his boots. “Your phone is in there,” he nods at the bigger bag. Misses your skin on his. “Is there— What else can I do for you, sweetheart?”

He’ll never forget the way you looked at him then. For the remainder of his days. 

Someone who could care for him, like his brothers, but a girl. You. His own girl. He’d seen the others, how easy it’d been for them. Destiny, or fucking love at first sight, that bitch. He saw and waited patiently for his turn, fists clenched, teeth gritted. The possibility knocks at his heart, beats at his scalp. It could be anyone, but it’s you, he’s sure of it. Until you, there’d been no one, no real prospect. He knows this by how much he wants to stay, by how your fingers felt on his own, how your eyes melted into his. There was attraction on both ends, yes, but he was in no rush.

No rush, and yet one touch from you—

“Where are you gonna go?” You don’t make a move to check your phone, or even make sure Changbin had picked up the right clothes. You just stare at the bloody spot on his shirt, and plead for this to happen.

The amount of self restraint he possesses surprises him. He curses it.

“I’ll figure it out. That’s what I do.”

“Stay.”

He can’t help the chuckle that comes out of him. It’s ironic, really; he would kill to spend the night with you, and there’s no reason why he can’t, except you’ve been hurt so fucking deep, the scars are visible to him without even being there, and how is that even possible. He knows because they mark every part of him, similar ones, and they never heal. They just remain open, gushing, pouring out, and what else can he do but repudiate their existence—it’s haunted him for years.

He’s ashamed of his own homelessness now. Embarrassed of what he’s done, how it’s cost him, how it’ll continue to do so, unless he makes a choice. The choice. But how to take your own life?

“You and I both know how that’ll end, sweet thing.”

You’re a dream; you blink, and then you’re moving, up and closer, hand reaching out, attempting to grab, to hold onto, to insist. You’re stubborn, of course you are. There’s a flame in you he likes. You know how to survive, yet your softness is intact. He wishes he could say the same thing. He wishes he could hold you with no hesitation, no doubt in his mind.

But Seo Changbin ruins things, and he does so knowingly, despite himself always. Especially pretty girls like you, girls that don’t know any better. He’s seen it happen, he’s terrified of it happening again.

“It doesn’t have to,” you say, and he desperately wants to believe it. He’ll even wrap his hand around yours, pretend for a moment or two. “It’s just sleep. You’ve done so much for me. Please.”

He sighs, hates himself for falling into your words only because they sound sweet to his ears. He knows you’re wrong, knows his nature, knows what’s taken place in this very room many times before, and even then, even fucking then—

There’s no shame in him, truly.

“Sweetheart…” he studies your face, memorizes the creases, the lines, the smoothness of your cheeks. “You need someone that can take you home. Someone to take care of you good.”

“You did. You have.”

“I’m crooked. You don’t know what I’ve done… what I’m capable of.”

“I trust you,” you press on, squeezing his fingers, and it’s because of that gesture that he caves.

His lips curve sideways, and he’s itching for candy again. Your words are bitter, are syrupy, and clean, ambrosial. It’ll sting like a bitch when you leave, when you find out the truth. ‘Cause you will, sooner or later. You’ll have to.

Changbin nods, admitting defeat to humor you. “You impossible fucking girl. Fine. A compromise, then.”

You’re elated. You’re glad he’ll be safe, at least for tonight. The least you can do for him.

“I’ll stay until you fall asleep,” he states, putting some space between you again, and pushing curly hair away from his face. “But you gotta promise me right now that you’re going to eat.”

You don’t miss a beat. “I promise.”

His voice drops, then. “And that you’re never going back to him. Or to that apartment. Hell, I’ll find you a job, one where he can’t fucking find you,” his jaw clenches, hands busying themselves with the blankets, throwing them on the bed, anything to release the tension building up. “I’m never letting that son of a bitch near you again.”

“He’ll sure as fuck be damned if he ever steps foot on Route, I can swear that.”

It felt strange to think yourself separate from Johnny. To think you could exist without him and him without you. The bad was there, but there’d been good too, once. It never outweighed and it didn’t matter, anyway, it’d settle in your brain someday, but your heart felt uneasy just by the mention of him. You’d spend so much time convincing yourself you weren’t a victim, that you forgot to see it for what it was—a codependent, extremely toxic environment.

You had to remind yourself that the bruises on your side were still real, and that they would take at least a couple weeks to disappear. For some reason, you hoped Changbin would never see them.

You hoped he would kiss all of them better, away.

Changbin had you shower, and change, staying outside the door the entire time, staring directly at your face and nowhere else. He supervised as you ate, and tucked you into bed after you’d brushed your teeth. No one had done any of this for you before, and you kept trying to communicate that to him. He’s plenty capable of taking care of you, of anyone that comes his way; he’s generous, he owns a heart that beats, that bleeds. That’s more than some people can claim, certainly more than what you’ve encountered, and for that you’ll never forget him, no matter if he decides to keep away from you, to land you softly on your feet and disappear without a trace afterwards.

He changed you, in some way, and that will always belong to him. How many people can say that?

There were dark circles forming around his brown eyes, wrinkles on his previously perfectly pressed button down. The tie around his neck was coming loose, like he’d tugged at it a few times already. This man had really fought for your honor tonight. He fought for you like one would for his own country; for freedom, for release. For prideful reasons, and yet so utterly selfless in the act. It was all for you.

But what did he get out of the deal? A transaction had yet to be made. You wanted to give something in return. Even as he turned off the lights, and lowered the volume on the TV, even as he made sure all windows in the small room were locked, you thought and thought. What could he want? What was missing from his life? You wanted to learn more about him. Sleep was not of essence at that point.

Knowing him was.

“How did you meet Bang Chan?”

Changbin lifted his head, a mass of muscle sitting on a tiny chair in the corner, a figure hard to miss, demanding to be acknowledged, to be seen. He held his phone in one hand, the bright screen illuminating part of his rugged face. Who was he texting? Is there anyone waiting for him, somewhere? The knot in your stomach turned and turned. You kept him here without thinking, too blinded by your own feelings.

“That’s a complicated question to answer,” he said a few moments later. You couldn’t make out his expression, but his tone sounded clipped. “He found me, or I found him. We’re both high school dropouts. I was working on cars, bikes, just any… thing, really, trying to get by, and one day he came by looking for a job. Shit happened,” he chuckled at that, but there was no humor behind it. “Yeah, a lot of shit happened. And five years later, here we are.”

“Doesn’t sound complicated to me.”

“Because I saved you the bullshit middle that no one wants to fucking hear, or remember.”

You clasped your mouth shut, immediately turning apologetic. You didn’t mean to assume, only to figure out. He seemed to sense your silence, its reason, and you heard him exhale through his nose in mirroring remorse, saw him lean forward on his forearms.

“I’m sorry, sweet thing,” he half whispered. “You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry.”

You closed your eyes, let his voice wash over you in the silence. “I’m sorry, too.” For this. For things you had no control over that happened to him. For things that will continue to happen.

“Ask me more.” An invitation.

You obliged. “And Minho?”

“At the bar. He was the first person Chan hired.”

“How old are you?”

There was a ghost of a smile in his gruff voice now. “Twenty-seven.”

Your heart fluttered. You put a hand over your chest, above the blankets, hoping, wishing your breathing would even out, your thighs would stop pressing against each other. He said nothing, spoke only when prompted, when so many quiet things ran between you, muttering, electricity through a cable, buzzing, excited, dangerous, eager.

“Changbin…”

A pause. “Sweetheart.”

“Do you— Do you like me?”

Another exhale. Inhale. He looked ready to pounce. To run for the hills. You focused on his face.

“More than I should,” he replied honestly. “More than I’m allowed to.”

Your eyes involuntarily closed again, the tension thick, hovering above you like a cloud full of rain. You wanted it to pour, to smash down on you, to crack you open and overflow you.

You wanted him to come closer. To stay forever.

“I allow you,” you murmur. “There’s nothing holding you back.”

Another one of those signature breathy laughs of his you’d grown to want more of. They stretched his handsome face, widened his molasses eyes. This man didn’t laugh a whole lot, that much was obvious. But when he did—God, was it a sight to behold.

“That may be so, darling,” he mutters hoarsely. “I’m holding myself back. You don’t want to deal with the shitshow that comes with me, and I’d never put you through it for the sake of having you.”

A heartbreaking realization. Perhaps you heard wrong. Tears swell up, chest heavy. You beg for sleep now.

“I’m not worth it,” you assume bitterly.

He taps his boot on the carpeted floor. He’s impatient, a bird taking flight. You truly meant it. You’re not holding him back; nothing is.

“Because you’re worth it,” he croaks, voice full of something you can’t quite pinpoint. “Because you’re laying there, so fucking close, and I can’t touch you. I’m afraid to even get near you.”

You swallow, throat dry, all choked up. What does it mean, that you’ve never wanted anyone as much as you wanted this strange man? What does it mean that you had to come out to the desert to find out?

“Why don’t you have a home?”

Changbin springs up, carrying a terrifying purpose in his stance. He’s going to walk out, he’s going to leave, and it’ll all be your fault. You’ve cornered a lion, and it will show you its teeth.

The truth is he’s suffocating. Jesus Christ, he’s never felt this before in his entire goddamned life.

“I burned it down.”

And no matter what he does, he can’t not want.

He’s out the door the next, phone on speed dial, pressed against his ear.

Minho answers a beat before voicemail. His voice is unassuming, a little drunk, a little slurred. The bouncer leans his temple against the cool of the wall, listening to the wind brush past mountains, past roofs and rock and still awakening man-made trees, and he wonders how helping has ever worked in his favor.

How he does it regardless, all knowing. This has been the worst one yet; worse than revenge, worse than faking your own death. His heart was involved this time. This thing he never compromises, this thing he forgets that exists sometimes, bigger and more fervent than ever.

It came back to bite him in the ass, full force.

“Can’t I have one single fucking day to myself, Bin, what is it now—”

“Take her. I beg you—take her.”

There was background noise on the receiving end. Perhaps he was in one of those parties of his again, the ones Seungmin warned him against. Changbin had no use for caution, no reason why he should be scared. What the bartender was into—he had no interest in it, could care less for it, unless Minho was having a hard time there. Besides that, he had enough to worry about, enough on his plate. Always on the brink of overflowing, yet never quite. 

This was different. This was the almost that could tilt it all over.

“Take who, Changbin? Are you drunk, too?” His friend laughs, he knows nothing. He didn’t answer his phone to Chan.

“(Y/N). She came to Route with her boyfriend. All Hell broke loose, so I brought her to Starlight.”

“You’re fucking serious.”

Changbin rolled on his back, fist against his mouth, staring up at the night sky, at the stars you were so transfixed by. They had no reason being so bright; of reminding him of innocent eyes, and rose petal lips. He searched in his pocket for a lollipop, unwrapping it with his teeth. Cherry flavored, the color of your cheeks getting out of that shower.

Closing the bathroom door behind him, he’d accidentally caught a glimpse of your legs, those silky things that carried the rest of you. He wanted to wrap them around his neck, he wanted to run his hands up and down the length of them, feel the skin there, and up, up, up, to your cunt, to your fucking soul—

“I don’t know what to do with her, Minho. With myself. I’d never seen her before, I never thought—”

“You said Starlight, right? I’ll be right there. Give me about forty minutes.”

“Don’t— Fuck, don’t really take her, Min, yeah? I just… I need you, man. She needs you, too, I think.”

His friend the problem solver. Similar to Bang Chan, but different in texture. Where the owner was rough leather, the bartender was velvety soft, safe to fall on. With Chan you never knew, it was calculated, it was for the Greater Good, it was give and take. You called Minho, he’d rush over, scold you later.

“I’m fairly sure she’s in good hands, Bin. Keep an eye out, yeah? You’re dealing with the Sharks now.”

He saw that. The tattoo on your ex’s neck. Chan knows how to deal with those better, no bloodshed, no mourning. Changbin just keeps them out, turns them away. If they don’t listen, words don’t matter to him, they don’t count. He’s got a shiny gun under his vest for that. It’s best you never find out, that you never know.

But you will. That’s inevitable, too.

He popped the candy in his mouth and waited. Johnny, was it? His threat rang in the bouncer’s head, shit he’s heard a million times before. Only thing was before he had nothing to lose. Now, he has you. He found you or you found him, that’s how people enter his life, so what? Why the fuck would he give you up? Changbin has killed for his chosen family. 

What’s once more? No motherfucker is immortal, himself included.

Only difference is that Seo Changbin doesn’t legally exist anymore. He’s dead. Nothing more than a goddamn ghost.

He won’t dare go back in your room, not without Minho. Your friend will know how to handle you, this, how to better—properly—take care of you. If anything, you’ll choose to go with him, stay over at his place for the time being. Changbin will still trail after you like a surveillance shadow, recording all your steps, memorizing the movements that make you, your nose scrunches, your gentle hip swings. You move like water where he’s nothing but fire. He can only be put out by you, can only diminish himself, evaporate on contact. 

None of it changes the way he feels about you.

He’s not sure how long he stayed out there, awaiting the familiar sound of the MotoTec Cali the bartender owned, but he saw it before he heard it, his thoughts too loud, overwhelming every one of his senses. Minho pulled up next to his own Davidson, taking off his helmet and kicking the stand in place. The motel’s sign shone brightly against his pale complexion, and it took his friend a couple of seconds to make out Changbin’s figure on the balcony, leaned over the railing, candy sticking out of his mouth like usual.

“About fucking time,” the black-haired man muttered under his breath.

“Talking shit?” Minho joked loudly, and climbed the stairs. He was obviously tipsy.

“I’m just glad you made it in one piece, Lee.”

Minho’s face was glowing, but his eyes were dilated, worried. He glanced towards the door, and then back at his friend, at his injured state, assessing the situation.

“Me too,” he agreed, before growing serious. “Is she okay?”

Changbin nodded. “She’s fine, he didn’t hurt her.” He took the lollipop out of his mouth, lip stinging. “He pulled a number on me, though.”

“Yeah, no shit. Johnny owns a boxing gym. Don’t underestimate him.”

The bouncer scoffed, spitting on the ground, a piece of his mind on what he thought about that. “He’s a bitch I left moaning on the floor. I got a few of her things from her place,” he neared his friend, lowering his tone, “I’m not— I don’t want her going back there, Minho. Chan let her stay here for the weekend, but you… can you take her in? Until I find her some place nice?”

The burgundy-haired man furrowed his brows, tilting his head in question. “You’re going to find her a place? What’s it to you?”

“Fuck you.”

Minho smirked, and patted his friend on the back, quietly opening the door. “You better keep her close, Seo Changbin, eh? She’s precious to me.”

You were asleep, hidden under a pile of blankets, stirring momentarily only to turn.

The two men looked at each other, then looked back at you. Should they wake you? Best to let you rest. Minho needed to talk to you, though, despite the bouncer’s disapproval, followed by a backhanded slap on the sternum. They went at it soundlessly, before Changbin shook his head and pointed an accusatory finger the older’s way.

Minho sat by you, fingers tangling in your hair fondly, caressing your head. You hummed, not all there. He tried again, this time shaking you softly, hoping your eyes would open just enough to recognize him.

They did.

“Minho?” You mumbled, unsure.

“It’s me, pet. Wake up for me, will you?”

You sat up abruptly, rubbing at your eyes. Changbin glared at his friend, arms folded over his massive chest, leaning against the window broodingly.

“What are you doing here?” you ask, but wrap your arms around him anyway.

He hugs you back tight, breathing in the fresh scent of your hair. “Bin called me. I got worried.”

“I…” you look at the man by the door. His expression softens upon noticing your stare. “I’m okay, Min, I… I left him. I did it. Changbin helped me.”

Minho smiled encouragingly, pulling back just a bit to look into your eyes. “Did he now? I’m so fucking glad, pet, that’s great news.”

You nodded, but your lips curved downwards, concern spreading across your features. “But it’s  not, really, is it? Johnny’s vengeful, he… well, you see what he did,” you turned towards your battered savior once again, biting on your lip thoughtfully. “I don’t want him coming after you, I don’t—”

Minho shushed you, bringing you into his arms, hand rubbing on your back soothingly. “Trust me, baby, we can take care of ourselves. We deal with people like him more often than you’d think.”

“Don’t we, Changbin?”

The bouncer said nothing, but the smirk on his face was in full effect. His gaze ran down your soft cheeks, to your exposed neck, to the shirt falling off your shoulder, and he felt his blood boiling, his dick getting hard all over again at the mere sight. Cursed to know, but unable to follow through, his body betraying him…

Heaven and Hell were teaming up against him in the form of you; the sweetest thing he’s ever come across, the only thing that could genuinely threaten his very existence.

“He’s going to take you to work tomorrow, okay? Let me make some arrangements, and I’ll come for you Monday. You can stay with me for as long as you’d like.”

His heart shouldn’t have stopped the way it did when your eyes snapped to meet his, full of surprise, questioning, scared. You thought he was getting rid of you; that you’d been a burden to him, and he was gladly wiping you off his hands and onto Minho’s. Couldn’t be fucking further from the truth, but how was he supposed to voice those words?

I’d put you in my pocket if I could. I’d fucking carry you on my shoulders, if it meant I’d be able to keep you. Fuck his damned heart, his sappy brain. Truth of the matter was—you’re his girl now. A dead man claimed you, and once that happens, everything acquires meaning, everything matters.

He’d have to live vicariously.

“Thank you,” you said, and that was that. You were disappointed, your lids heavy with sorrow, and Changbin would have to talk to you, he’d have to explain.

He couldn’t bear seeing you this way. Not when he first laid eyes on you, not now that he knows what that stirring in his chest meant. Your sadness wrapped around his throat like a chain, squeezing, choking.

Minho noticed the tension between you, felt it in his bones. He couldn’t quite understand how the two of you came to be so close in the few hours you’ve known each other, but he won’t pretend to know how a heart works, its inner secrets, the way it just seems to pick and keep picking. He rises from the bed, leaning to kiss your forehead, and he thumbs your chin, smiling down at you one last time.

“Get some rest. You’ve nothing to worry about, you’re cared for.”

You nod only so he won’t insist, and with that he turns to leave. Changbin passes an arm over his shoulder in goodbye, but his eyes never leave your frame. You’re curling into yourself, blanket over your body, trying to shrink, to make yourself smaller so as to not take as much space, so as to not become too much of a responsibility.

He was getting angry for you. Angry that this seemed to be a familiar practice for you, a trauma response. He wanted to beat that fucker’s face in, gauge his eyes out, tear his arms off. Murder came easy, but this? What he was fantasizing about?

You had to be a specific kind of fucked up to do that, and Changbin has never claimed to be a good person. He was the man you went for for your dirty work, the gruesome stuff, the things no normal person could handle. He did it if it was right, if the intention behind it was justifiable. Scum was meant to be cleaned off, and people like Johnny were just that. A smudge on his bike. Dirt under his shoe.

“Keep me updated,” Minho tells his friend, and waves at you, before the door closes and you’re left alone.

You don’t speak.

Neither does Changbin. Not at first.

But your being angry with him? He decides he doesn’t like it. Not one fucking bit.

“You understand why you can’t come with me, don’t you, sweetheart?”

You lay back down, turning away from him.

“I understand.” Soft, weak.

He cracks, scatters to reach you, to not let you slip through his fingers. He wants your eyes on his again. He wants your naked shoulder, the curve of your face imprinting on his palm. He realizes, violently, that he needs you. That if he doesn’t have you he’ll go fucking crazy, insane, absolutely ballistic. The pull you have on him is too strong, the attraction too big, the feeling so intense it makes him want to tug at his hair and scream at the world for shunning him.

You don’t need more than a few hours to fall in love, it turns out. A girl can smile at you and that’s…it—you’re done for the rest of your life, now. No one had warned him about that, but he had witnessed it. In the way Seungmin looks over at the bar, even when the door is closed, like he can see right through it. How Chan doesn’t seem a separate person from that woman; how when she’s around, he’s alert, astute, awake to everything.

Fuck him to Hell, he should’ve paid attention. They don’t call it Route 66 for no reason, he’s sure of that now.

“Don’t make me say it, (Y/N),” your name on his lips sounded important, sounded real. He whispered it again in hopes you’d look at him again, in hopes he’d get to hold your hand once more. “You don’t want someone like me, you don’t need this… Minho knows you better, he’ll—fuck,” he pressed the heel of his hand into his eye, suddenly exhausted. “You’ll be okay there. I won’t have to worry.”

For a while, you left him alone with his words echoing back to him. It scared the shit out of him, how terrified he was of never seeing you again, how each passing second of your silence sliced through him like a knife.

Then, you mercied him. You spoke.

“I didn’t mean to be ungrateful. You’ve done so much for me, and I’m incredibly indebted to you, Changbin,” you kept that same tone from before, and he had half a mind to forcibly turn you, to swoop you in his arms and never let go. 

“I just don’t know how to shut my heart to you. I don’t know why it’s telling me to stay, why it’s pointing to you so desperately…”

He did it, then. Passed his arms right under you and brought you close to him, closing the gap that’s been eating him alive. You gasped, hands clasped against your chest, and looked at him, looked at him, looked at him. He drank you in, nose nuzzled against your neck, taking every inch of you in, strong arms tightening around you, lips on your skin.

Lips on your skin. He groaned, and dug his face at the nape of you, ashamed of his weakness, afraid of his inability to control himself. The last thing he wanted was to scare you away. But you… he had no defenses left. He should’ve left when he had the choice.

There’s no choice now.

“The things I want to do to you, sweet thing…” he gravelly muttered. “I’ve been lonely my whole fucking life. I never expected to find you, a thing like you. A girl for me, just for me…” One of his hands traveled up to your cheek, keeping it there, your body fully placed on his lap now. You were consumed, engulfed in flames you had no intention of extinguishing. “Do you feel how hard I am for you, darling?”

His hot breath fanned across your face, raising goosebumps. You nodded, mind jumbled, words long gone. “Yes,” you managed out. “Yes.”

“You think I’m nice,” he continued, his deep voice reverberating through you. “You think so highly of me, don’t you?” He turned your face so his mouth can face yours, with every thought of kissing you, of tasting you. “Give me permission. Tell me I can,” he whispered, eyes flickering, pitch black with desire.

You whimpered, tears stinging. “You can,” you exclaimed. “Please—”

Changbin devoured you. He grabbed your face roughly, fingers bruising in the best way, and attacked your mouth, tongue pushing past your red lips, conquering, spreading like wildfire. You felt dizzy, able only to hold onto him for dear life, and he held back just as unyielding, a solid body against yours, moving with you.

He came back up for a breath, a drowning man at sea. He swept some hair away from your beautiful face, and stared at your swollen lips, the way they called out to him, but he’d already gone too far. There was nothing more left to do but drown, and just as well. Changbin never much cared for living anyway, he’d gladly die for this.

“What am I gonna do with you, sweetheart, hm?” he tore off the blankets, shamelessly running his gaze down your body, your curves, all the ways you could bend. His cock twitched in his pants, restrained, in need of attention. He wanted you wretchedly, hopelessly.

“Half of me wants to tear you apart, the other half wants to tuck you into bed and leave you alone…” he trailed off, licking his lips, thirsty for anything you would give him. “I know right from wrong, I know this’ll be so fucking wrong—tell me to leave you alone. Tell me to stop, baby.”

You said nothing. He inhaled, steadying himself. He had to get a grip, fast. He was losing his entire fucking sense, his mind. He didn’t want it to be like this, not with you, not here. But you were so soft, you smelled so good, felt so good, your skin warm, his heart beating against yours. It had been so hard to resist you, so hard to pretend… Changbin had never been good at lying, always going after what he wanted.

Habits were hard to break.

“You need to stop this, beautiful, I have no strength, I always fuck everything up,” he rasped, fingers creeping under your shirt already, finding their way up to your breasts—so plump, perfectly fitted for his hand, God, he was so full of you, and how to quit you now, there was no way, no fucking way—

“Don’t,” you whisper to him, and kiss his jaw, the faintest peck. “I want this, Changbin.”

“But you don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I don’t care what you’ve done,” you fight back defensively. “I care about what you did for me, and that was everything. It’s everything.”

He’d never even realized how much he’d been suffering with the weight of his actions. It all came crashing down on him now, all because you were on the verge of unlocking him, of getting as close as possible, and what if he poisoned you? What if he infected you with the shit he’d committed, with the terrible fucking crimes that followed him everywhere?

Not you. Not to you.

“I’ve killed people, sweetheart. I’ve buried them with my own two hands.”

Not the earth shattering, ground splitting, apocalypse inducing revelation he was expecting it to be. And perhaps, somehow, it wasn’t. Because he was telling it to you, the girl made for him, the girl put on this earth for him to find, his girl. And his girl would understand, because she’d see right through it. He hoped she would.

He was right.

“Why?” was the only thing you asked.

So, he told you. He figured might as well lay it all down for you to do as you like. If you hated him and never wanted anything to do with him after it, he’d have to suck it up and live with it. He’d still do as he promised, that wouldn’t change. He would protect you with his life, he was obligated to now.

“Some asshole did a hit-and-run on our friend Felix a couple years back. It left him paralyzed from the waist down. Chan swore to find the guy who did it, to make him pay,” Changbin held you close as he spoke, afraid if he let go you might run off. “I took it personally. I hunted the fucker down, destroyed his car—you don’t need to hear the rest. I knew it’d be a lifetime in jail for me, there was no saving grace if they found me.

“So, I died. I faked my own death, burned the house I’d just bought down. Chan held a funeral for me, with a fake body, a fake death certificate… My family thinks I’m dead,” he chuckled, against his better judgment. This was no time for laughing. “They think their son is dead. Their son is a fucking murderer.”

The last thing he expected—you hugged him. You wrapped your arms around his neck and cried into his vest, gun heavy in its holster, a concealed weapon he’s had to carry ever since he started working at Route, a thing that binds him to the Devil, a thing that has nothing to do with you, that shouldn’t even belong in your world.

Changbin was rendered speechless.

“I don’t care,” you choked out. “You’re a good person that did a terrible thing, and I will never hold it against you. If you’re trying to scare me away, it’s not going to work, Changbin. I dated a killer for most of my adult years.”

“And you want to live with a new one?”

You slapped him. He let you, because he deserved it, but grabbed your wrist afterwards, fiery gaze meeting yours. It was a low blow, a punch to your character, and he regretted it immensely. He just couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Please see this. Please understand why I shouldn’t be the one for you. I never had to be careful with my words, I’ve never cared this much for anyone.

It didn’t matter. You were the one to kiss him this time, hard and bravely.

You kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, and your lips, your soft lips—they were sending him straight to Hell, six feet under and worse, to where he can never find his way out, to where he’d eternally be unable to crawl out. He didn’t need a prophecy for this, didn’t need to navigate through a game to get the girl.

He just had to look into her eyes, learn her name. Make her stay.

Changbin wishes he could say he knew how to be gentle, how to blossom under your hand, open up to your touch. His inexperience messed with him, angered him; he was supposed to treat you differently, he was supposed to take care of you, he’d promised. But you drove him crazy, your every move sliced him, dug into his ribcage and turned. 

Call it an old habit. Or self preservation.

He wanted to see you. All of you. And then he wanted to be the one doing the turning, the slicing.

“You want this?” he breathed down your throat, pulling your head back by your hair. You had a beauty mark just under your ear. He wished to kiss it, wished to lick it. Take it as his.

Your mouth opened, your heartbeat irregular.

“There’s no going back if we do this, sweetheart,” he stated menacingly. “I’m not an easy man—I will burn myself to the fucking ground for you.”

None of it was painless to say. Every second near you required a considerable amount of effort. His own personal Odyssey.

“Changbin…” Pleading. For him. For what you want him to give you.

“No,” he growled, pressing his body on yours. “You need to know this. You need to know what you’re getting into. I don’t get sweet things like you in my life, I have no fucking clue how to deal with something good like you, and it sure as Hell won’t be easy letting go of you, if you choose to leave. Do you understand, (Y/N)? Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”

You whimper, completely surrendered to him, and he can almost smell your wetness, your desire for him. He thrusts his erection against your hip, and breathes deeply through his nostrils, nothing but softness, nothing but heat radiating from you. That’s for him, too. Goddamn it all.

“I’ve never had someone like you before, either,” you confess softly, your eyes wet.

Changbin wastes no time, then. He grabs you by the waist and turns you to sit on him straight, eyes boring into yours, legs on either side of him. You steady yourself on his shoulders, lashes fluttering, mouth swollen. He digs his nails on the soft skin, then drags his hands downwards to your dips, your ass. You inhale sharply, your hips unconsciously rubbing against his growing bulge.

“Show me how you like it,” he mumbles, drawing circles above your pajama bottoms. “Show me what to do, darling.”

Biting your lip, you reluctantly grab one of his big hands, and guide it to your breast. He feels your hard nipple through the thin material, wants it between his lips, his tongue sucking—he wants you in his mouth like his favorite lollipops. Wanted to switch the candy for you. You couldn’t be any worse than sugar, but maybe you were.

Maybe he was screwed either way.

“Unbuckle your belt,” you command, and your sweetness has suddenly turned saccharine.

This is the girl that was begging him to kill her piece of shit boyfriend with everything in her back at the club. The one that wasn’t afraid of the gun pointed.

He wanted to challenge her. That one. “Do it for me.” Let me feel your hands, beautiful girl.

You did. Slowly, carefully. Changbin wasn’t even aware he was holding his own breath, until his chest felt ready to explode. Still, he didn’t dare. Couldn’t, with the way your fingers went for his zipper. He was really fucking about to sink himself into you, after humoring himself he wouldn’t touch a strand of your hair. 

What a fucking hypocrite.

His cock was rock hard, red, and leaking. You run a finger over the head of it, gathering the precum there, and neared it towards your mouth, your eyes lifting innocently to meet his own. Changbin couldn’t look away, you had him completely fucking hooked. Fucking witch. He was scared of himself, then; scared of what he might do to you.

This wasn’t normal. Wasn’t for the faint of heart.

“Taste it,” he rasped, breath bated. “Put me in your mouth, sweetheart.”

Your lips curved, the finger disappearing between your lips. His eyes almost rolled to the back of his head. He wanted to draw blood. He wanted to punch something, and keep punching it until it died.

He wanted to fuck you into the mattress.

“I can think of something better,” you whisper to him, leaning close to his ear. His eyes follow you, cock throbbing, needing you there, needing you on. “Undress me, Changbin.” 

The Devil finally comes to collect.

Your shirt goes first. His hands reach behind your back to unhook your bra, rushed in their ardor, and he feels no more than a mere teenager, creaming his pants for the first time. You have him delirious, raving. Will it always be like this? This spinning, this dizziness with you. He feels like he hopped into a dance he doesn’t know the steps to. Uncharted waters. He hates it.

He shakes off the holster strap from his shoulders, wants that gun as far the fuck away from you as possible, and bends to take your nipple in his mouth, grazing it with his teeth, wanting a reaction from you, anything that would tip the scale back to him. He needed the little control he had before, needed it for what was left of his sanity. You were a dream, spread across his lap, begging him to touch you, to fuck you. No girl had asked before, none had tasted him like this.

Changbin was a giver, but you weren’t letting him give.

“So fucking beautiful…” as he dips his head in between your breasts, as he hooks his thumbs under your bottoms and panties and pulls. You lift for him, and shrug them off, passing your leg over him again once you’re fully naked. “Too beautiful, fuck me.”

He kisses you. Grabs your face and crushes his mouth on yours. He’ll get you to understand, he’ll show you. You moan against him, and it shoots all the way down to his dick. He wants to make the first move; he wants to grab his length and shove himself inside you, wants to bottom out and fuck the shit out of you. It’s an animalistic urge, one he’s not sure you deserve. You’re worth so much more—to be laid down, to be caressed all over. To be made love to. But Changbin wouldn’t know where to begin, and he’d mess it all up. So, he does what he knows and whispers to you, hopes this tether running between you is enough. Hoping his feelings for you are enough.

“Stop me,” he begs one last time, thinking that this could somehow be fixed, could be suppressed, and halted. “You can still run, sweet thing.”

You shake your head and press your fingers on the side of his face. He blinks, heart jump-starting. You actually want this. Him. You want him.

“I’m not going to,” you hush his demons, destroy his defenses.

The room is dark, the TV has stopped its programming. Changbin closes his eyes, listens to the white noise, the static. It luls him, resets him. You reach between you and grab him. He curses, or hisses, and wraps his arms around you tighter. Don’t do this, you don’t understand, you don’t fucking understand, not yet, and I…

You push him inside you, and he groans, forehead falling forward, touching yours. Your breath ghosts over his features, and he feels you stiffening up. He has to move, but there’s not one ounce of strength in his fucking body. So much for all this muscle—it’s useless against you.

“Changbin,” you choke out, hips rolling, demanding friction.

He snaps out of it. “I got you, baby, relax, I have you, I promise.” You meet halfway as he feels you working on his cock, and he thrusts up, hard, slamming you down at the same time.

You cry out and he loses it. Taking in every inch of your euphoric face, he fucks into you forcefully, almost violently, needing to find something in you, to conquer it, to keep it. His dominant hand falls on your ass, slapping, and you bounce down harder, mouth agape, brows furrowed. He loves you like this, this image of you, so free, so eager. Your pussy drowns him, envelops him, a perfectly fitted glove, and he makes sure to graze your walls, to mark his name in there, to have you come back for more, to keep you.

That’s what he’s looking for. To keep you. For you to want him to have you. If you moan out his name one more fucking time… Jesus Christ, has he ever fucked another woman before? You’ve erased them all, you’ve eradicated all memory of them.

You shudder, a thin strip of sweat forming on your chest, and he licks it all his. You taste salty, you taste sweet. You smell like soap, like vanilla. And like him, your juices mixing together, your musks tangling. He won’t last much longer, but he wants you to come first. He wants to watch you cum, coming undone on his cock, on him, while he holds you, while his fingers rub circles on the bundle of nerves between your legs. He wants you filthy, wants you his, wants you forever, like this.

Just like this.

“Look at you, sweet fucking girl, taking my cock so well…” He bites his lip, tastes metal, but doesn’t care. “You ride me so good, baby, let me see you. Fuck yes. C’ mon.”

You’re so warm, half there, eyes shut, focusing on that feeling in your gut, low in your belly, and he can’t wait. He can’t wait for you to flood him, to taste you. You’re loving his fingers, he sees it, as soon as he touched your clit your back arched, your hips loosened. Fuck, he wants to flip you around and take you on all fours. Wants to screw you from behind, have you come like that, too. You’re everything he’s ever dreamed of, everything he will ever need.

“I’m so close, I’m so close, please!” your breath hitches, and Changbin grabs you by the throat, watches how you open your eyes wide, afraid. It sends him over the edge—you send him over the edge. It’s okay, my pretty girl, let it out, it’s okay, goddamn you, let me hear you, listen to that pussy, you’re so fucking wet…

“You’re gonna come for me, aren’t you? I can feel it,” he mumbles over your lips, his fingers tightening their hold just slightly. “You’re gonna make a mess for me.”

“Yes, yes!”

“That’s my girl,” he smirks, and thrusts one, two, three—

Your entire body stiffens and shivers. He blows as you fall limply on top of him, and he shushes you, fingers sliding up to your hair, pushing back, lips connecting with your temple. You make no move to push him off you, to take him out. You really wanted this. You wanted it as much as I did, sweetheart.

He transfers you on the mattress, laying you down gingerly, and is immediately met with cold, with emptiness. What were once old friends, now bitter enemies. He wants to get used to the warmth, to the gentleness you offer. He wants to call these things his, as well.

Most of all, he wants to take you in his arms again. Wants to stick his body close to yours and fall asleep. Something so simple, yet unattainable. Until now. Until you.

Changbin pecks your shoulder as you come down from your orgasm, then presses a hand between your legs, feeling for the stickiness. He slides a finger up your labia, and brings it to his mouth, sucking the clear liquid off. You turn to look at him, knees folding, pulled towards your torso.

You turned shy again. He smiles without meaning to.

“Wanted a taste,” he defends himself. “My fingers will have to do for now,” and he winks at you.

You blush, red spots spreading across your cheeks, and bring your hand over your mouth. Precious. Cute. Changbin lifts your hand from its place and places a kiss on your soft mouth. Thank you, and he wishes you can somehow hear it in his head.

Then, he tucks himself back in his jeans, and straps back up, letting his head fall, his hand rubbing his neck. It wasn’t just exhaustion—his heart was physically hurting. He just had sex with the girl of his dreams. He came inside of her, and laid with her.

She asked him to stay. Twice.

But the truth remained—he had killed, he needed to pay for his crimes. It was only a matter of time before the police pieced everything together, and there was no amount of paying off Bang Chan could do that would keep all of them away. Some people were pure from birth.

Like you. He hoped you would be the death of him so he’d never have to deal with any of it. But that doesn’t sound like Seo Changbin, either. What is there left to do except wait it out, then? He had this golden opportunity to spend some time with a heavensend girl. He couldn’t possibly fuck it up.

He had to take care of her first.

“I have to make a call, sweetheart.”

He didn’t sleep a wink.

Instead, he watched your rib cage expand then deflate, eight hours of it. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to wake you up or not, so he just let you be. If you missed a day of work—well, you deserved a day off after what you went through, didn’t you?

And, either way, it didn’t matter. If they gave you trouble, Changbin had already found you a different job. A better paying one, too, if he was to merely guess. And an apartment, close by to the bar so he could reach you fast if need be. All was ready to go albeit your consent and personal information.

Minho had texted him about an hour ago to ask about you. The bouncer sent a ‘she’s sleeping’ and left it at that. Your friend didn’t have to know about what he’d done, or how you liked it, despite blessing the two of you.

Changbin was regretting it all a little too fucking much. For your sake. If he had no morals, no conscience or basic fucking decency, this would’ve been just another lay, just another poor girl he’d saved. But you weren’t, and this wasn’t.

Wasn’t what? A relationship. A mistake.

Yeah, sleep sure as fuck hadn’t been an option.

Just before the clock struck eleven o’clock, you stirred, stretching your arms in either direction of you, your mouth opening and closing. The sun had been well up in the sky, a warm day with a slight breeze.

Changbin had covered you with multiple blankets, but they had all managed to sneak down to your feet. You were still naked, except for your panties. His cock stirred, and he cleared his throat, messing the mop of curls on top of his head.

Fucking get a grip, asshole.

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

He saw you blink up at the ceiling, before you lifted your head to the sound of his voice. Your eyes met and—your lips curved sleepily at him. He smirked back fondly, but didn’t dare get up from where he was sat the entire morning.

“How did you sleep?” You asked, pulling a thinner sheet over you, your cheeks rosy as you rested your head on your arm.

“Great,” he lied. “How about you, love?”

“Okay.” But your face was positively glowing, your eyes sparkled.

His chest clenched. He rubbed a hand over it, trying to appear casual. There was nothing casual about the way you made him feel just then. He never stayed after sex, he never saw how the women he took to this motel looked the morning after.

And he didn’t want to. He just wanted to keep staring at you. He wanted you to look at him back, always.

“What time do you have work?”

Your eyes widened, hands immediately jumping to find your phone, to check the time.

“Fuck!”

Changbin sat back, arms crossing over his chest, watching you run around the room panicked. He’d never get used to the sight of your breasts bouncing, or the way you tucked your hair behind your ear. It was all very endearing, very lovely.

Lovely. Nothing had been lovely before. Fucking Hell.

“Don’t go,” he teased you. “I can think of a few things we can do here.”

Half way in a pair of jeans, you looked up at him like he’d grown two heads. His laugh was throaty, genuine. Your eyes, though. They betrayed you.

“I still have to work, Changbin,” you retorted with an obvious voice, head going through a T-shirt. 

“Just sayin’, sweetheart. You look fucking hot.”

You blush, but otherwise ignore him.

Fifteen minutes later, you’re mounting his motorcycle, your body pressed against his. He can’t help but think of last night, of the way your cunt squeezed him deeper, how your nails dug into his neck.

How was he going to go without you for a whole day? After knowing what he does. After having had a taste?

He needed a fucking shower. He needed ten minutes without you so he could get his head straight.

Every time he closed his eyes—there you were, your velvet skin, your breathy voice moaning out his name.

“If anything happens, anything at all, you call me,” he says for what seems like the tenth time.”Immediately.”

You all but groan, gaze flitting guiltily to the entrance of the clothing store you worked at. “Yes,” you reply for what, also most likely, is the tenth time. “I will, Changbin. I promise. Please.”

He nods his head towards your workplace. “Go. Be careful.”

You turn to run, but then stop on your tracks like you forgot something. Changbin leans against his bike, eyebrows raising. He has no time to register what is happening, or why possibly—you kiss him straight on the mouth, bruisingly, and grin widely at him.

He’s dumbfounded. Touches his lips to make sure he’s not hallucinating. Yesterday wasn’t a dream, then. You still wanted him. He drops his head so you don’t see him smiling like a fool.

“I’ll see you later!” You call out.

“I’ll be right here, darling.” And he meant it.

From the corner of his eye, a shark out of water. Prowling.

tags. @ughbehavior, @streetlight-s, @cb97percent, @j-0ne25, @danyxthirstae01, @lix-ables, @koorminii, @choinsaw.

a/n. literally no one asked for this to be so long, and yet it is and i’m so sorry. i do hope you still give it a chance, since i worked quite hard on it. i left it as an open ending, in case i want to add a second chapter to it, but as it stands, the story is finished. hope you like it, and as always, thank you for reading lovelies! 💕

[arkhamjack]

Thank you everyone for the reblogs on my "how some of the fandom sees wolfwood vs how I see him" lol I wanted to continue the conversation bc I am very annoying about this stuff and it grosses me out bc I am sensitive or whatever but um yeah 🤓

It's pretty long so TL;DR stop being weird about Wolfwood thanks 👍

I'll talking about objectification, hypersexualisation, and prejudice so a warning I guess --->

The Gaze has been working overtime on Wolfwood's ass (and tits) and it's making me a little nuts. This is not to say his character cannot be presented in a sexy way, or that he cannot perform sexuality without being problematic, it's just... ask yourself: why.

It can be subconscious, you might not even notice it, but media tropes have a way of worming into people's brains to be regurgitated into fan art, especially if the character presents or is coded marginalised in a way you are not. (I do it too!)

It starts from young. I had an adult call me a "hot head Latina" as a child LMAO (I am not even Latin)

Characters and actors that looked like me were worked into typically these roles - If feminine, desired, sexy but crazy, dangerous. If masculine, similarly sexual, either hot or ugly, suspicious.

I feel silly and attention-seeking for speaking up about this kind of stuff, especially as I feel I'm not in a place to cry 'racism' specifically because I'm more 'ethnic' than POC.

I'm a Balkan mongrel - Greek, bits from Turkey, Albania, and fuck knows what else. I've always kept my head down about people being weird to me but it comes to a point like the point of a classmate comparing my hair to an animal's, where I feel I gotta go "ok yeah lets unpack that."

Now about Wolfwood, he's our classic racially/ethnically ambiguous smoky sexy guy. Particularly in the 98 anime, he's pretty bosomy. He's a struggler - swindling Gunsmoke with his charm and portable confessional. This swindler trope, I've observed, tends to go hand in hand with 'suspicious immigrant out for your money'. Again, maybe I've pulled that out my ass and I'm being oversensitive, but I notice things. Tastes left in my mouth. Anyway. Brings to mind the time some other classmate jokingly called me a 'hustler' for *checks notes* making sure my work is submitted on time.??

Now on the subject of NSFW fanart... oh boy I am so uncomfy writing this... I rarely see him depicted.. receiving. You can place the issues here pretty easily. Give him a break. Please. Also I did note this on my original post and also completely my own opinion but PLEASE that man is not bigger than Vash, and I don't mean like not taller, like, thiccer. Calm the fuck down.

I hate having to write this bc it makes me uncomfy and reflects my own experiences of objectification by other people which sounds all very "oh noo its sooo hard being attractive :'((" but I trust y'all smart enough to see where I'm coming from.

The gaze. Othering. Marginalised masculinity (not to mention my intersecting trans identity thats a whole other unrelated convo). Hypersexualisation. Objectification.

But back to Wolfwood!! - are these tropes perpetuated by the original creator? Personally, I don't think so. (Wolfwood's design is based off a Japanese guy btw - musician Tortoise Matsumoto) The 98 anime? Maybe?? Am I reading too much into it? It's hard not to - naturally I'll latch onto the ambiguous guy and go "alright let's see how they do this" so naturally certain things stand out to me.

But when some of that fanart starts rolling out ... Jesus Christ ... MY EYES

On the flipside, I've seen great fanart out there! And I've seen quite a few Latino headcanons for Wolfwood too!(like I mentioned before I am not Latin, I am also not American in general I am a filthy freak Australian with our own colonial racist histories and intricacies) (There is also Latin diaspora here but I don't wanna speak for anyone aaaah)

I'd like to think most of the fandom is cool about him. But um. Yeah.

I said what I said but if I did say anything out of line I am so sorry and PLEASE let me know - I am using my own experiences as reference and acknowledge the intricacies my own privilege

Yap session over 👍

[egcdeath]

pls expand on reality tv patrick

hi anon! i don’t have any good fully formed thoughts other than that he would be entertaining to watch on some sort of reality tv show. i think a fic with him being on one of those “love” reality tv shows like love island or too hot to handle would be hilarious.

but… i also think it would be so funny if he just so happened to be like a background character in a completely unrelated show. like he somehow ends up in a few episodes of real housewives because he knows some people on the show and ends up confiding to the camera in a confessional that he’s having issues with his gf (reader) and he’s like “if you see this I’M SO SORRY.” and the producers are trying so hard to get him to comment on the actual situation in the show but he just keeps talking about you. cut to the show airing and suddenly your phone is blowing up from your friends and they’re like “isn’t this your man?” and you call him and reconnect. you’re thinking everything is all fine and good… but this stupid scene is going viral on social media and people are talking about how funny and kinda sweet it is. then next thing you know you two are getting an offer from a network to get your own show. and it’s something even more stupid like tennis wives or something along those lines 😭

[mcrconfessionzz]

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽🕯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆INTRO!! ⋆˖⁺‧₊☽🕯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Welcome to the My Chemical Romance confessional account!

Feel free to confess anything MCR related! Theories you have, opinions on songs, dreams perchance? Drop it all here boo

With any confession blog there is bound to be discourse. As of writing this I haven’t even gotten any confessions yet but I'm sure that arguments will happen; if this is something that you do not want to see, block this account. Im gonna try to keep it positive to whatever degree I can but I will be publishing the asks I get. I take no offense to being blocked and would honestly rather that if it would help

Feel free to ask me to tag/not tag whatever

I’m not gonna put that many rules, just these

- Do not flame me for any opinion put in the ask box, i’m going to answer them rather indiscrimatly, ill only delete an ask if it seems unrelated or genuinely threatening

- Please, at least try to be civil guys

- Have fun :))

Taken anon sign off emojis (Not required at all but very fun!): 🎸🦇

Tags:

Voice of god - Admin (me) saying something

Confessional - A post where someone submits a confession

Not a confessional - Literally anything else

I'll add additional tags as time goes on!

Im gonna try to keep my own thoughts at a minimum, Im not gonna comment on much unless someone in the ask directly invites me to do so🫶🏼

I want this to be a safe space as much as it possibly can be and I also don’t want anyone to feel judged for their confessions.

*Just in case lmfao this account is not religious at all admin is an atheist I just thought the church confessional theme was too apt an opportunity to pass up what with mcr having constant references to catholicism*

dividers from:

@decor-dump

@ianrkives

@metaphysix

@anitalenia

[librarycards]

How’d you discover you were plural? If that’s ok to ask

of course! genuinely, it's less of a discovery that &i is/are plural, and more that plurality is a meaningful conceptual framework to apply to my/our existence.

to dip a bit into coming-out cliché, &i've never felt, like, singular; we've always been iterative. we hardly even share the same body. actually, the iterations we've been are sometimes tied to particular forms of embodimindment, not unrelated to other experiences i've had - disorderly eating/drastic weight changes/puberty/trans medical interventions/elective body modification/lived experiences of trauma. this, like many things, is something for a while we assumed everyone felt (and perhaps everyone would, if we as a society did not tamp down so violently on our inherent systemhood [we're made of systems]).

then, &i learned that not everyone referred to themselves with different pronouns directed toward different iterations, and that this actually offended some trans people &i tried to like, ~build community~ with. people don't like seeing selveshood as periodized, because that disrupts the narrative of linear progress/growing-up we like to ascribe to "being a person."

so we sat with this feeling of having grown sideways or crossways and learned about multiplicity (beyond harmful media/medical discourse) on tumblr. actually, &i think [S]arah learned about it back when she was knee deep in the whole indigo children thing lmao, because there was also soulbonding stuff etc. [don't bother with those types of sites, they're run by new age antisemitic anti-vaxxers, but obviously 9 year old [S]arah didn't know that].

when we began learning about multiplicity on tumblr, we were under the assumption that alters had to be far more clearly defined and transparently mapped than is true, &i think, for most systems. others have commented on the weird proximity to clinical confessional discourse that fixations on system mapping point toward: not because there's an inherent problem with system mapping, but because the idea that everyone/everymany must do this / leave evidence of their collective (and ultimately, legible) existence, is just bullshit, just like the stories we have to tell to receive "gender dysphoria" diagnoses.

i think what really changed our relationship with multiplicity was/is our friendship with @materialisnt. it's difficult to describe the degree to which mix moss have impacted &my life, both through chaim "formal" scholarship (the formal/informal binary is bullshit ofc) and through several years of deep friendship and unwavering solidarity. &i recognize in hindsight that &my longstanding interest in multiplicity - and alterhumanity writ large, because i am not a human and actually don't think any of us are or were? - was really just, you know. being an egg. many such cases. mix. moss's patience with &my questions & collective excitement at my interventions and thoughts gifted us the confidence to, only recently [and partially pursuant to &my dissertation, which includes discussion of alterhuman digital epistemologies and pedagogies] begin identifying with plurality. perhaps even "as", though that preposition has always skeeved &me out when it comes to identity stuff.

ultimately, &my relationship with plurality isn't a concrete object that we eventually dug up and slapped a nametag on. it's a meaningful, collaborative, and community-based signifier that helps us best situate ourselves in conversations about relationships and love and pain and time and all the important parts of. existing, we guess. it's a choice to generate linguistic and spatiotemporal friction be just kinda existing and not being "one human being". it is also something that feels deeply heart-aligned, something that allowed me to let out a breath we'd been holding for a long time, and free up space to think with more creativity and compassion toward those &i value most: that is, those rejected by the existing conditions we call "reality" and "commonsense" and instead think more capaciously, as ourselves, about different ways of being persons and people together.

[thief-of-eggs]

sorry that people are saying things about your fics, but Imma confess something completely unrelated

So sometimes, when I type Hazbin, I end up going 'Hazbing' and Im always cursed to think 'hazbinga' like bazinga I don't even have dyslexia sorry once again for using the asks as a confessional booth

it is what it is 🫡

hazbing sounds like some sort of online shopping site tbh. i dig it ((also this is so funny, i too don’t have dyslexia but sometimes stuff just happens))

[buckgettingstruck]

haha okay maybe I’ll just clarify my ask from earlier because I also agree with your response. I think the disconnect that some people are having is that when the characters are talking, its not very productive. When eddie opened up about chris to bobby/hen/chim, bobbys response was a joke about the mustache, and hen and chim’s response was like oh thats too bad and then eddie gave advice to chim about not missing stuff with jee. Like do they even know about dead wife doppelganger. And when buck opened up to maddie about what he was feeling about tommy she was pretty unsympathetic, and then when josh gave his speech it was completely unrelated to the issue buck was actually having imo. Its like a lot of characters talking at each other instead of with each other. And thats why I actually loved the henthena scene (crazy copaganda plotline aside) because it was actually productive like hen heard athenas issue and gave her good advice that she applied in the episode. And so far the season just seems to be lacking some of those moments, or is not executing them well. But like I said imo when the narrative wants them to be productive they (hopefully) will be, like madney in ep6 or henthena in ep7

i still dont agree w most of this to be honest. like in 805 the three of them were having a convo about missing milestones with their children and brought different perspectives. like what is hen supposed to say to eddie losing his kid when she just got hers back without it rubbing a sore spot? and the maddie conversation was fine to me. she was saying “you’re afraid he’ll hurt you too?” before josh jumped in and made it weird. i do agree bobby wasnt helpful but when does any of bobbys advice actually help eddie 😭 but theyre letting the storyline breathe. not every conversation needs to end with perspective changing advice. people talk so much about storylines feeling rushed that when they arent people dont know what to do with themselves i feel

also i never want them to bring up the doppelgänger ever again if im being honest i do not care i want that storyline to stay in season 7 outside of absolutely necessary referencing like in the confessional scene. like never referencing it again is even too soon for me

[puckpocketed]

Apartment 1, End Times, and Haunted Focaccia <- if nothing else PLEASE ask me about this one

Well now i GOTTA know!!! Please tell me about this it sounds soooo interesting (Tapedsleeves on main)

@jules-in-deep @dwisp thank u for asking too !!! <3 OUGH. OH. OKAY. People who have followed the Deep Cuts of puckpocketed have seen me reference 'The Manifesto' in my drafts - it's unrelated to my hockey essay writing, in the sense that it doesn't mention hockey (yet); but totally related because ALL of my stuff veers sharply into the realm of the confessional/autotheory/memoir, and thus Themes begin to crop up no matter what genre I'm writing for.

Apartment 1 is some memoir stuff I started writing late last year. It's about... a lot of stuff. It's about learning to bake bread. It's about my dead neighbour. It's me grappling with the ethics of writing real people in my life. It's being 25 (now 26) and realising that everyone around you is waiting for the world to end even though YOU thought we were all joking. It's about direct action and coalition-building and communities of care. It's about practical optimism. It's about the one time I threw a dead pigeon into my neighbour Heather's balcony. It's everything. It's my Manifesto <3

(ALSO: There's a BIG chunk of cut content from my last hockey essay that was basically a very very very long tangent about Hauntology insofar as how it relates to ice hockey narratives and players... I cut it because it was gratuitous and indulgent and Not on-topic for the broader thesis of the essay - and because it was already something I was writing about in The Manifesto.)

Read some of it under the cut if you like!! <3 it is very very long and I'm not really looking to get it published, just hoping to get it all out before I am burned by academia!!!

If I was the kind of person capable of committing to journaling in private this is what I might have written that evening:

April 18th. Got first zine interview done. L’s cool. Think I changed his mind about trans stuff. Come home to find neighbour in apt 1 downstairs passed. Police had questions. Her gate’s still open, they left the lights on too.

I’d be someone who keeps a neat record of things, tucked away in routines and discipline. There’s a dream of this timeline where I figure out how to end sentences and truncate my runny egg thoughts (I play-act this fragment of me when writing emails). I am not that person. I journal in winding truths muddled by vision, by the aesthetic canons of the autobiographers I admire — Joan Didion, and, lately, Elvira: Mistress of The Dark — I journal because despite the nightmarescape of being known — published, seen — I want to be read.

The woman in apartment 1 reads like a bit part given to an ageing starlet who still loves acting (I only feel this way because we never spoke). I rarely saw her out of hot pink fast fashion t-shirts. Her lace curtains hung in defiance of the rest of the building's slate grey blinds, never dusted. Her garden was always well mulched and lush with something green, a pollen bomb waiting to go off in my nose and eyes every year come springtime. She watered it ritualistically. We’d catch each other as I left for uni, sometimes, and I’d think: fuck, this is such a waste of water, aren’t you old enough to have lived through the droughts? The holiday season saw a bedecking of her wattles and bottlebrushes and westringias with Christmas ornaments. Baubles, tinsel, lights, plastic cherries of holly. A ceramic nativity scene. Most memorably, something I can only describe as an effigy of Rudolph.

I know she is not a character, and that by writing this I risk crossing some threshold; that hazy shifting boundary between my ethics and whatever lies beyond. I’m not writing this to ask if it’s possible to be haunted by a woman you never met — I already am — I’m asking if it’s polite. 

Poetry, an old but welcome lover, demands of me:

I feel a truth that doesn’t ask the usual kind of knowing. She is a cracked open vein of ore. Her story a conflict mineral. I refuse to mine it.

The messages I sent to friends that day went something like this:

UM. One of my neighbours fucking died The police are here they took details and asked the last time I saw her

Don’t talk to cops is one of the first, most vital things you learn navigating marginalised spaces. An officer was stationed at the security gate, two more hung about in their patrol car. A fluorescent vest drifted in and out of view in the glass sliding door leading off into my neighbour’s house. The one that spoke to me had a notebook out and leaned against her fence. My experiences with the police up until then, summarised:

They showed up when President Obama visited my highschool.

I served them coffee intermittently during my years as a barista. Most recently, a regular group on my opening shifts at the café.

My neighbours across the hall had the police called on them many times. The one time they responded, an officer pushed past me and into my apartment to ask questions. After, the fights got quieter. The wife stayed.

I’d never been rich but I had lived up until then in relative privilege that rendered me invisible and safe from their violence; and I’d never approached homelessness, or looked like the kind of person who makes trouble (any genre of dark skinned); and I’m outwardly queer, but in a way that reads as eccentric rather than threatening and deviant (I want to be a threatening and deviant fag-dyke one day).

So, not talking to cops was a kind of radical praxis I didn’t get to have. I hadn’t earned it by getting arrested at a protest. It was an inheritance left to me by videos of police brutality, and the memorials to my queer elders who died, and scraps of essays written in blog posts and Twitter threads circulating endlessly on progressive clicktivist socials. At least, that was the post-hoc excuse I fabricated. Mostly, I was just reacting.

“Which apartment do you live in?” He was blank, serious. Too many police procedurals primed me for cops who asked permission before starting on the interrogation, the usual: we have some questions for you, if you’d just step aside?

Here was reality: I pointed, unprepared, and said, “That one.” 

And he said, “When was the last time you saw the woman living here?”

I answered, “I don’t remember. Maybe not long after the holidays?” Because who remembers exact dates, keeps track of the comings and goings of their neighbours, besides some shut-in creature LARPing Notes From Underground? 

“Does anyone else live with you?”

“My mother. She won’t be home for another half hour. Her English isn’t good, if you want to talk to her she can come get me.”

“Can we get your details?” And I was seized by the urge to blurt out: some of my friends don’t even know my birthday.

“What’s going on?” I asked instead, “Is that lady okay?”

He shifted, uncomfortable. “She’s passed.”

“Oh.”

The same way a painter may gather visual libraries of light and texture, a musician samplings of treasured beats, everything I witness is forfeit to becoming material; a potential symbol or phrase or reference point. It goes: that primordial instinct to make art, and then the sum of me, and then the world. That’s the two-way mirror lodged behind my eyes.

A guest lecturer, J, confirmed my long-held suspicions that artists are all the same (wretched) animals by relating her own experiences. She, too, felt the friction of being behind the glass, of seeing something upsetting unfold and watching closely from another room inside her. That observation always has to end, and then you are left with the sum, and you think: that would make an excellent… And then you think: how could I have been scraping that for material?

I walked J to her office, was enchanted by her sparkling grace, her warmth, her command of the language that feels ungainly in my mouth (still) 20 years fresh off the plane. My questions for her were short, shy, barely aperitifs, but underneath them was the plea: solidify these boundaries, I am lost. She answered, more or less: there is an ice shard in my heart, too. For her, it was a fact of the human condition that we would always be doing the wrong thing.

Her questions for me were a banquet: why do you want to do it, who does it hurt, and if it does hurt are those hurts large or small? And, as a garnish, she added that: if those hurts are so small then, well… And then she told me about finding a love letter in the leaves of a book and doing the diligence of tracking down names and histories and then, at the end of it all, communing with beloved friends and writing, writing, writing…

Our walk ended outside the building that housed faculty offices (walkable communities are conducive to this). I never answered her, but here’s the morsel I scrounged up after I collected myself at home: thank you, that was so unhelpful, that's what I needed to hear, I didn’t want to hear that, do you think art is bigger than us, I think I understand.

The woman in apartment 1; I never knew her name. The Canberra Times Obituaries are available online, and for this piece I’ve gone to look, in case some bolt of lightning strikes as I skim the names. I like the idea that she was a Val, or Rosie, or Alma (it’s not my place to think this, I think it anyway). Here, I leave my pickaxe at the mouth of the obituaries section — that’s enough digging.

She died, and no one noticed. I didn’t notice. I walked past her arum lilies every day, saw their faces wilt under our Australian sun, thought wouldn’t it be fucked if she was dead in there, and moved on with my life. The police never told me how long, but I can shoot the memory of those lilies back at least a month. Too long. She was off-putting, never friendly, and her garden — a colossal vanity project which guzzled water like the droughts never happened — assaulted me September through to December.

They left her fucking lights on.

The handful of hours before I came home to patrol cars and blue uniforms I was conducting an interview for the very first zine I ever produced. L and I settled at a table inside The Coffee Grounds somewhere between midday and evening. The floor plan was akin to a misshapen tangram, our table sat in an awkward bottleneck between covers and the end of the bar where drinks were dispensed for staff to deliver. I spent the interview conscious of the space we took up, the familiar hiss of the steam wand to my back a shallow comfort.

With his sandy hair buzzed short and wearing big dangly acrylic earrings — lightning bolts an homage to Bowie — L was painfully 19.

We exchanged small talk, pronouns, and areas of study. Then I started, “You’ve seen the news. Hate crimes, suicides, the culture wars online. Transphobia’s this inescapable black hole, right?”

I mistook his anger for righteousness, his energy as something that was directed at change. “Yeah, it’s fucking awful.”

“So I’ve seen all this, and I’ve seen how it’s been affecting my friends, and I have this assignment…”

The assignment: identify a cultural narrative, devise some social campaign to challenge the narrative, then execute and evaluate. And I explained that I was frustrated and hurt and I’d hung up my ambitions for politics when I realised I’d never have the showmanship for it, and so my only recourse was making art. 

“How much do you know about zines?” I asked. And then, explaining, “They’re, like, underground DIY print media.” My answer was a zine made in the traditions of our punk underground forebears, small press community propaganda to combat the grey tide of transphobia-driven pessimism that gripped so many genderqueer youth.

I asked, “What are the joyful aspects of a trans existence that we could point to?” And it was a mistake to assume he’d have something ready, some beautiful quote I could scribble down onto my notes app. People speak in half-sentences, stutters, ums and ahs. And L was a frustrating mix of leftist sentiments and slogans (trans rights are human rights, eat the rich, time’s up) and a fatalistic what-if-there-is-nothing-else doomerism. It was the same story I’d seen etched between the lines of lectures and conversations with friends, black-pilled and devastating: we are trapped in late stage capitalism, climate change is beyond critical mass, electoralism has failed us, we will eke out a life just short of awful and hold each other until the world ends. 

I was a poor interviewer (still am). We drifted off topic, I forgot to take notes intermittently, and — if you don’t know this about trans people yet, you’re in for a surprise — I challenged him on his notions of gender and presentation openly.

“I feel like a man because I can wear earrings, and despite their femininity I’m comfortable in my masculinity,” he said.

“I think my painted nails and earrings are masculine because I wore them,” I said. “Cis men define their own masculinity, cis women do it too; why can’t the rest of us?”

There are too many conceptions of gender and presentation to describe. The idea is that we come together under the trans and queer labels because our solidarity makes us strong, because you can’t build coalitions with sectarianism, and a transphobe doesn’t distinguish between stargender-queergender catgirls and transmedicalist FtMs. There are a few of us who haven’t gotten that message yet. I hope to welcome them back when their rights are under scrutiny, after the world is done with the rest of us.

“What could we be if we divested ourselves from a world that wanted us dead?” Was not a question he could answer, because he didn’t believe that we could. For him existing within the system was a given, and the system would never be for us. Abolition? Divestment? Decommodification? Pipedreams.

I was asking him and asking myself and asking the world; I was my Global Studies class assignment asking us to analyse vaccine distribution and suggest fixes to the worldwide vaccination equity crisis. 

“What makes our lives happy and meaningful not in spite of, but because of our trans identities?” A few answers. I became a better interviewer as the afternoon progressed (do journalists know all the tricks? Is that what they learn in their classes?).

As a barista, I found it easy — to borrow a phrase from Disco Elysium — to can-open people. If it was quiet enough a given customer could stay a while, and I’d chit chat as I cleaned. All you had to do was find a vulnerable notch and dig, and once you were in it was only a matter of twisting until they popped. With the torque of genuine interest and patience, I could get them to admit to almost anything over a coffee. People spill their secrets to me willingly, happily (maybe not their secrets, but definitely their stories). If you get someone alone and let them talk and let them feel that you’re listening, they become endless wells of experience. I’d heard about people’s messy divorces, their mental health struggles, and I’d seen at least two regulars through the entire lifecycle of several romantic entanglements. And I always thought: these are treasures, mine them.

For example: John (who gets a large cappuccino and two sugars, who went on a diet for eight months because his wife did too, who laughs and makes friends with all the new staff no matter how terrible they are), hunts ghosts. The conversation came up over a game I’d played with my friends called Phasmophobia, whose premise was hunting the supernatural in haunted houses. Once in a while, John takes a few days off of his day job at the ATO. He gathers his EMF readers, his lasers, his tripods, his smoke machines, his infrared cameras and night vision goggles; bundles everything into his car and drives to the most haunted locations in the Canberra region.

On the tip of my tongue: “You hunt them, okay, but how do you escape a ghost that won’t leave you alone?”

And I imagined him laughing, imagined him saying, “That’d make my job easier!”

Right now, I could walk into any given café and be somewhat at home. It’s the same anywhere you go: the rumble-purr of coffee grinders and scratchy sharpie orders running up the side of takeaway cups and exchanges of large mocha, have a good one, thank you.

I’d truly loved making coffee, would’ve contented myself serving regulars their sugared lattes and extra-hot flat whites until I dropped, if not for the pressing reality of wage stagnation. And Kate, a university lecturer, who stumbled into my English class in the last year of my pathways course, overqualified and too sincere, who tried earnestly to get 20 or so barely conscious young adults to analyse fairy tales. (“You don’t have to go right away,” she once said, “I could see you spending more time doing coffee, collecting all sorts of stories for your writing, and you’d do well.” Sometimes being told you have a choice is what gets you over the line.)

The day all these things turn strange will arrive soon, I fear (I hadn’t operated a machine in maybe a month by then; my last being a celebrity shift at the place I quit to go to uni). It’ll pass and I won’t know what the knobs and buttons do anymore, won’t be able to read the rhythm of loading shots and pouring and queueing up jugs of milk. My poor interview skills, I think, are because I’m slowly forgetting how to be a barista. One day I’ll look at an espresso machine, the grinder, the scales, the tampers, and the precise sequencing for a dial-in will have faded; the memory like looking through an oily, smudged lens.

I asked L, “What are your hopes for the future? What makes you hopeful? What’s worth fighting for?” The ambitions I had for the zine were furtively held secrets for a while, things I was too embarrassed to say out loud (you can’t just admit you sort of want to save the world). L’s answer made me embarrassed at my past self.

“That’s a really difficult question,” he said. “I guess your zine is aimed at people like me, because I can’t think of anything.”

The zine was aimed at people like him. Loosely. Theoretically. Execution pending. And confronted with the reality of just how deeply troubled my peers could be; it was crushing. And halfway through the interview I thought; what am I doing here? 

And then he said, “I’m not going to be out when I enter the industry. I don’t want anyone to know. I just want to make my art.” And shattering is something glass does, not people, but there I was. It’s a different kind of closet, to go stealth; to fully transition, to pass, and then to carefully erase all traces of who you were before you transitioned and to pretend you’re cis. Trans Joy Matters is the title of the zine, and it fucking does, because when you don’t spread the message that being trans can be an inherently happy and fullfilling experience, you get 19 year olds who break your heart because they’d rather go stealth than possibly have to deal with their identity being public knowledge.

What do you do when you find out your entire social circle and all your peers and even your mentors have given up the fight, have refused to try because the foe seems insurmountable? What do you do when the bastion of like-minded progressives you expected to meet at university are just as disaffected, just as sure that there is nothing after this?

You find yourself drifting, oscillating in and out of the something-more you’d been building since you pulled yourself free of your adolescent fugue and enrolled. You reflect with a growing apprehension that maybe you are the one who is painfully 25 and naive to the end of the world. You consider half-assing this stupid zine project because, even if you succeeded and produced something good, the impact would be so negligible to the grey tide’s advance that you might as well not try. You think, maybe I can crawl into some warm private place and find small joys with loved ones until it’s all over, maybe that’s the best we can do.

And then you come home and the woman in apartment 1 has died, and you blink awake and think, wow, fuck that.

The lights stayed on. Come evening, I’d step out and they’d greet me by giving her lace curtains new faces: eyes and noses and mouths gaping through the flyscreen. The police had used bolt cutters to break the padlock on her gate. It was set down on a fence column and forgotten. One day, I picked up the corpse and turned it over in my hands. There were bite marks where the teeth had sunk in and severed that arterial silver loop. Underneath was a patch of grey concrete where it blocked the bleaching sun, and around it spread a halo of grime.

Three months after the police came knocking, on the 12th of July, I wrote to a friend:

finally sent cleaners to my neighbours place jesus made very uncomfortable eye contact with one of them as i went in through the security door

I watched from my kitchen window while they packed her life away. I was certain these cleaners moonlighted for shadowy service that would, for a price, disappear undesirables. Or garbage collectors, given how they piled her possessions carelessly into the back of their truck. I imagined that somewhere in the detritus there was a box of tinsel and baubles and her Rudolph effigy, crushed under splintered furniture. Everything that wasn’t nailed down — everything but the kitchen sink, everything, and a thousand more clichés of everything — they took. Though they left her garden, her lilies were black bagged for the crime of being potted.

If you ask academics about hauntology you might get a garbled mess of references and a finger pointed at Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher. The core of it is political according to Derrida, who conceived of a West that would, in the wake of liberal democracy’s triumph over communism, go on to be haunted by the spectre of Marx and the futures that could have been. For Fisher, contemporary music culture’s rolling pastiche of the decades reads as hauntological phenomena; nothing sounds new, all is made in service of referencing something already gone. Fisher diagnoses this as a longing for the future that was promised in these decades that remains unfulfilled (to him it is a false remembrance, one that smooths over the flaws for a mirage of better days). 

The haunting is the essence. We typically think of hauntings as the past coming back to the present, ghosts as temporally bound, but hauntology goes both ways. To say something is hauntological is to say that it is nostalgic for a dead future.

I am haunted by the woman in apartment 1 not because we knew each other, but rather because we didn’t. I am in mourning for the future we can’t have; one where we say hello, and how are you, and I notice she’s missing. Where I realise that industrial agriculture and garment factories take unfathomable amounts of freshwater and turn it undrinkable, and how futile, how unkind it is to condemn any single person for using water to make her garden beautiful. A future where we know each other. Where writing this makes any fucking sense. 

I carried on after she died, cleaving to something new, a hauntological mass, and though I didn’t know it, the force of my yearning for that lost future propelled me. I booked more interviews, more hours-long brunches and video calls and text exchanges. The zine got made. It was good, and the grey tide didn’t stop. But I was okay with that. I had to be.

[later excerpt]

Whoever said guilt is a bad motivator? Incorrect.

It was small as a football, appropriately pigeon-sized. You’ve probably had a close encounter with one before, waddling up to you like nothing would ever touch its pretty grey plumage. As a kid I used to run at them, try to put the fear of God in them. Well, it seemed that day it was my turn. 

The sliding door did nothing for me. Whether the pigeon was between layers of glass and wood and metal or two feet away and rotting made little difference to the lizard hindbrain processes that seized me upon catching sight of its body. I made a guess at the timing, it must’ve dropped onto my balcony and died at some point after I last looked out my bedroom window that morning. Its little feet and wings were tucked, aerodynamic even in death. 

I armed myself with a single thong and crept out onto my balcony like there’d be snipers posted on the roof of my Woollies, ready to gun me down for the thing I was planning to do. I certainly deserved it. With my thong clutched in hand (you know the grip, the one that’s meant for swatting flies), I stretched out and gave the pigeon a nudge. Then another. It rolled away, awkward and slow, over and over on itself. 

It was definitely dead, and there’s no way to say this where I look like the good guy but here goes: I was going to push it into apartment 4’s yard.

It gets worse.

See, it was an irregular shape and my balcony guardrail was not the kind that would permit a clean drop. It got stuck.

Not lodged, per se, just not quite flat enough to fit under the horizontal strip of metal that supported the vertical bars sticking up from it. I rolled it. It rolled back. I rolled it again. It rolled back again. And this time mockingly, like as punishment for the misdeed I was committing, I’d been condemned to a Sisyphean tragedy. Committed was the right word for it, because at this point, I’d sunk at least 3 minutes in and soiled a perfectly good shoe and was definitely going someplace bad when it comes to my turn in the great Beyond. This was the reasoning of a brain in lockdown, of course, and so was the next decision I made.

I wish I could say that what was going through my mind was the notion of fulcrums, leverage, something to do with physics. But no. The demon that gripped me was screaming for blood. PUNT THAT PIGEON. GET IT OFF OUR BALCONY. DO IT. DO IT NOW.

A series of complex scooping manoeuvres. A thump. It was through the bars and in her yard, (aerodynamic even in death!), and my thong would never be the same.

The guilt over this pigeon and for the old woman living downstairs has proven an excellent motivator. It took five years of avoidance before we really spoke. She let me in through her house a year ago when the security door was locked due to a power outage. A few months ago, I gave her something I baked. Last week, I asked her name.

(Heather, if you ever find out it was me, I’m sorry it took so long. I hope you liked the bread.)

[sr-sam-bodypillow]

i have committed a sin again (omg “again”???)

anyways unrelated to said sin, i just had an idea where stan is an amateur ghost hunter who needs them extra money and kaif is a powerful incubus (while we’re on our SR lust demon bullshittery)

i also have maybe two ideas based on that one SR star wars fic on ao3. Might elaborate on a separate ask if you want me to :)

my inbox is basically a confessional at this point be as horny as you want. if you want to tell me that's up to you

and incubus!kaif? oh MY. i have certainly got Ideas for that.

[the following is a small snippet of something i may have started to write after reading you ask]

The man has him pinned against the wall now, his chest firmly pressed against Stan's. He's far too warm for any human, adding credence to his theory that this man's an incubus, but it's not an uncomfortable warmth. It's more akin to the warmth of gentle sunbeams on a cold day, or the comforting feeling of being tucked away under mountains of blankets, something that makes Stan want to pull him in and hold him tight regardless of the consequences.

His hands are firm yet gentle as they roam his body, one slipping beneath his shirt to rest on his back. Stan shivers at the contact, trying his hardest to lean into it without seeming too desperate.

He looks up, the slight height difference between them seeming so much more noticeable, making eye contact with him. There's an odd look in his eyes, a mix between hunger and lust, as he studies Stan. It honestly does feel as if he's undressing him in his head as he licks his lips, revealing razor-sharp canine teeth.

"What's your name, again?" His voice is a smooth, deep drawl, taking his time with each syllable. "I thought you'd told me earlier, but I'm a bit... forgetful, darling." The nickname makes his face heat up in a way that he knows the incubus can sense, judging by the way his lips quirk up in amusement.

The thing is, Stan never shared his name with him. Whatever this is, it's probably a ploy to make him drop his guard- The incubus can surely recognise that he's a hunter of some description. It's not like he hides it. Regardless, Stan can't help but want to go along with this. He knows it's a bad idea, one probably fueled by the incubus' subtle aura of power which is slowly but surely causing pure want to pile up in his gut, clothing feeling too tight for comfort. He knows that if he goes along with this, he'll be destroying any kind of good will or reputation he's managed to build with other hunters and contacts. It's surprising, how much prejudice they hold against people who have had sex with a sex demon and lived to tell the tale, regardless of if it was willing or not.

But looking at his face, with a playful, coy smile handmade to lead people down a path of darkness, Stan can't bring himself to care. Hell, he'd willingly go down that path if it meant that he held him like this for just a moment longer. So, he speaks up.

"Stan." He's only just noticed the complete and utter absence of sound in the room, with the only thing he can hear being his rapid heartbeat and the slow, gentle breathing of the incubus. "M' name's Stan."

"Stan." If he didn't know any better, he'd say that almost sounded like a prayer. The incubus' smile grows, eyes gleaming in the low light. "I like it." He repositions himself, somehow moving even further in, and Stan flushes at the feeling of the man's bulge pressed up against him. He's... well, big would be putting it lightly. The skintight jeans he wears are certainly not helping, but they do make his ass look quite nice.

It's at this precise point that Stan decides that dignity is for pussies, moving his hands around to get a handful of the man's ass. He quirks an eyebrow slightly, grinning wildly, before tilting his head slightly, lips close to his ear.

"I'm Kaif, by the way." The air seems to hum with energy as he says that, lights flickering slightly, something that proves that he's at least a demon. Names have power. And Kaif's seems to have a lot of power behind it, as Stan's never seen the mere uttering of a name have such a notable effect ever before in his life.

He moves his head back, eyes meeting his. Stan can feel his breath on his face as he does, impossibly close to him, yet still not touching. The only warning he gets is Kaif licking his lips again before he smashes his lips against Stan's. He gasps, and Kaif uses this as an opportunity to deepen the kiss, tilting his head slightly. Stan's eyes flutter shut, and it would be a lie to say that he wasn't kissing him back just as passionately.

Kaif tastes strangely sweet, borderline intoxicating, and Stan can't help but want more. Kaif's getting to work at this point, his fingernails having lengthened into black claws as his disguise slowly falls away. With no small amount of expertise, he uses his claws to cut away Stan's shirt, the fabric falling to the wayside and leaving his chest exposed, Kaif's lips still firmly pressed against Stan's. Eventually, he pulls away, with Stan's mouth still hanging open as he pants. Kaif doesn't need to breathe, on account of being a demon, so it's more for Stan's benefit as he gives him a second to recuperate.

His eyes have changed, shifting from a soft blue to a deep, vibrant crimson. His tongue seems considerably longer, ending in a pointed tip, and his teeth have all sharpened as well. He chuckles, and Stan flushes.

Kaif's hands are warm against his exposed skin, pulling him back into his embrace to kiss him more. Stan can feel his pants grow tight as he hardens underneath the incubus, and he knows that there's no way he's going to get out of this in one piece.

But, Stan doesn't care anymore. If he's going to die, then fucking hell.

He might as well die happy.

[acidmatze]

I saw your tags about emo music and now I'm curious, what makes mcr not emo, or I guess what is emo music then? I was never emo and have no idea what the distinction would be, I would love to hear your pretentious thoughts

Im Suuuuuper addicted to genre and genre definitions and sort stuff Strictly by these conventions so... First of all, MCR used to (i dont know about Now) say themselves they dont really want to be associated with emo and dont see themselves as emo. From a musical standpoint they arent emo either. Neither historically. The fashion stuff also isnt there (well, not much.. you could argue they dressed emo-ish in the early 2000s) They are Associated with emo since emos sometimes listened to them, but that was the more.. mainstream leaning bits? At least in my experience... most emos i knew did Not listen to them. In fact i rarely see Any band in "emo polls" on here that was actually considered emo. Just cuz people of Subculture A Listen to a band of Subculture B doesnt mean that band suddenly belongs to Subculture A. Like... if you get a few thousand metalheads together and have them listen to... Insane Clown Posse. That doesnt mean ICP are suddenly metal. Its still hip hop. You just have a large number of people of a certain subculture who also happen to listen to a completely unrelated artist. Cuz.. people listen to music. Some Actually Emo Bands would be Jimmy Eat World, From First To Last, Aiden, Finch, Hawthorne Heights, Thursday and Dashboard Confessional. I think these are the more well-known ones Oh then there was a Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge chunk of bands that are considered Emo even if the music they were/are making is stuff like screamo and metalcore. Earliest Bullet for My Valentine is nowhere near Emo Music but they were still Considered Emo back then (i mean this already changed with Scream Aim Fire but during The Poison they were firmly in emo territory) Theres a fine line between "lots of people from this subculture also happen to listen to this unrelated band" and "this band Musically doesnt belong here but they fit literally every other tick box" but MCR were firmly in the first group.

Simply cuz they said so (well okay there were also other reasons)

And i will gladly die on this hill.

Source: I WAS THERE. I WAS EMO. MY FRIENDS WERE EMOS. Actual Emos, not scene kids, which is an entirely different thing None of them wouldve listed MCR in even their top 10 bands.

[mourningliliesmorningglories]

i've read your substack post! i'm truly baffled at how you manage to write like that? it's almost unbearably honest. it's interesting because your writing is also so distinctive and also varied in the context of what you choose to write about. how do you do it?!

anon, firstly a huge thank you for taking time out to read it! it's always so weird to me that people enjoy what i write about (especially when it's unrelated to fandom)!

you ask 'how do you do it?!' and i think of a quote in an article i read in the cut

What compels you, do you think, to write such deeply revealing material? Being a confessional human being for me is like a defense mechanism. If I can tell you the flaw before you see the flaw, then maybe it’s okay.

my writing started as way of being honest. if i could be honest then maybe i didn't have to acknowledge everything that came with it. i lied a lot when i was younger and i tried to remedy that with over honesty.

truly i am person not many people like. i'm tolerated and i struggle deeply with human connection. through writing i can connect with people who can connect with what i say.

you can also check out my substack here!

[cheekbites-moved]

catherine game... 😬

however

oz vessalius’ va plays the bastard in the confessional in it & she p much uses the Exact voice she uses for oz, just with. like. some evil inflections & i do admittedly go incredibly feral over that. the power in just. having audio of oz being evil. also going feral. i like imagining him ripping isla yura/jack to shreds with the power it gives me :)