#but why adding to the pile of misogyny this girl is having | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

saccharinesatoru · 5 years ago

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The Girl of Your Streams (m)

- pairing: Taehyung x reader (f) ft. bts

- genre: fuckboy!taehyung / non-idol AU / college AU / cam porn workers + smut

- word count: 16.5k (i got a lil’ carried away with this one...)

- summary: There aren’t many things with legs that Taehyung won’t fuck. And as one of the hottest men on campus, there aren’t many things with legs that wouldn’t beg to be fucked by Taehyung. With his killer looks, enticing ego, sexy voice, and stunning fashion sense, Taehyung has the campus in the palm of his hand. So why wouldn’t a shy, easily-flustered girl like yourself jump at the chance to get fucked by the campus king? What side of herself is she hiding from him? That’s what Taehyung is determined to find out.

- warnings: explicit language (!!), misogyny, borderline sexual harassment, smut: oral (f receiving), choking, dirty talk, hair pulling, BIG DICK!TAE, unprotected sex (pls be careful,,,), cum shot, degradation, cam porn, rude/arrogant taehyung, fingering, dom/sub themes (dom!Tae and sub!Reader), daddy kink!Tae, finger sucking, possessiveness, pantie sniffing/sucking, clit spanking, edging, orgasm denial/control, nipple play, tit slapping, choking, crying kink, masturbation (m/f), voyeurism, fwb!relationship (between jimin and reader), doggy style & missionary positions, implied future relationship between hoseok/yoongi.... okay i THINK that’s it.

- author note: Thank you so much for the support and love for my first ever fic! I legit thought no one would care LMAO. As always, any feedback or suggestions are always appreciated! Please don’t be shy! Sorry for any errors in this! I wanted to get it out asap, so I pulled an all-nighter to finish. I think that’s all from me, so sit back, relax, and let’s get SMUTTY. Thank you!

- Jay (5/12/2020)

---

The day began like any other. Taehyung woke up, chatted with his roommates, Jungkook and Yoongi, over a cup of coffee, worked on his midterm essay, and proceeded to browse his favorite porn site in the comfort of his bed. The daily routine.

Taehyung was a lot of things. A bad fuck certainly wasn’t one of them. And his knowledge of how easily he could get a person to scream his name in pleasure only added to his already massive ego.

So why, you may ask, was a man who got laid at least five times in a slow week browsing through a porn site like a hormonal teen who just discovered what sex was?

Simple. To see her.

@thedevilishangel.

Thedevilishangel, simply called ‘Angel’ by her viewers, was the source of Taehyung’s infatuation.

A while ago, after Taehyung made the mistake of clicking on a pop-up ad, he was taken to a livestream porn site for amateur cam stars. Scoffing at his discovery, he scrolled through the site with mild interest at best.

Hell, who needs porn when you have people of all gender identities tossing themselves at your feet begging for a fuck. Taehyung would much rather bury his cock in one of them than jack off into his hand.

Rolling his eyes, he moves his mouse to exit the site. As his mouse hovers over the button to exit the page, his eyes fall onto one of the most popular accounts on the site. Compared to the other cam stars, this account has at least double the amount of views and likes. And, lucky for him, the account had just started a livestream 10 minutes ago.

“Angel Rides Her Vibrator Until Tears Roll Down Her Cheeks!” the title read.

“Hm,” Taehyung hummed.

Intrigued, he clicked on the video.

Immediately, he was met with a withering girl in a baby pink mask. Her back propped up against pink pillows, and she was frantically grinding her pussy against a vibrator in her shaking hands.

“Oh! Oh my god, that feels so good,” the girl, Taheyung assumed was Angel, whined.

Taehyung hears the chime of notifications as requests come piling in.

“Cup your tits,” @sugardaddy97 writes.

“Gag on your fingers like it’s my cock you’re sucking,” @user69 types.

In the midst of her pleasure, the captivating girl looked at the comments with a fucked out expression on her face.

“Requests go to the highest tipper; you know the drill,” Angel reminded her viewers who are just as desperate to get off as she is.

As soon as she said that, the notifications for tips earned rang immediately. She waited for the tips to increase while she dragged the vibrating toy around her cunt. Taehyung shifted in his bed, his hardening cock resting uncomfortably in his sweats.

+200 coins from @bigcock93!

“Stop teasing. Put the vibrator on your clit and turn it up to the highest setting,” he demanded.

She nodded at his request, “Thank you for your tip. Your wish is my command...”

She quickly moved the device to her clit and yelped when she turned it up. Her shaking hand held the toy to her clit as tight as she could as her body quivered beneath it.

Taehyung’s eyes were wide the whole time while watching her. It’s almost as if he couldn’t turn away. He was afraid that if he even blinked, he would miss out on her show. As a man who always preferred sex over porn and masturbation, he was embarrassed to admit just how turned on he was.

Her whines and moans increased in volume as the vibrator buzzed in the background. Angel shut her eyes tight and balled her free hand closed to form a fist. When she finally opened her eyes again, Taehyung noticed the tears welling up in her eyes.

She was close. Taehyung knew it.

“Right there! I- I’m gonna cum! Please let me cum, I’ve been such a good girl,” Angel whimpered as the tears stream freely down her flushed cheeks.

+600 coins from @sugardaddy97!

“Cum for Daddy,” he wrote.

“Ah, Daddy! Thank you!” she cried and Taehyung knew he was a goner.

Much to the humor of his roommates and friends, Taehyung had a daddy kink. Something about that control and dominance over a person drove him wild. And hearing Angel say word sent an immediate rush of blood to his cock. If he wasn’t hard enough before she said the word, he was beyond stiff now.

Her toes curled, and her eyes rolled back. Her body trembled as she reached her high. Her thighs quaked as her orgasm washed over her. Viewer comments poured in by the dozens as they all complimented her body and praised her for cumming so hard.

When she came down from her high, she shakily tossed the whizzing vibrator to the side of her and leaned forward to address her viewers.

“Thank you for the tips and comments. I’ll be back next week for another stream. I hope you had as much fun as I did,” she winked with smeared mascara on her cheeks and then the livestream ended.

Taehyung was hard as a rock by the time the livestream ended. He spent the next hour scrolling through and watching her most popular videos while jacking off.

That was a month ago. And Taehyung was just as hooked as when he first laid eyes on his mystery cam girl.

Her daddy kink alone was enough to get him hard, but as he started to watch more of her videos, he fell down a rabbit hole of near obsession. As soon as he had finished watching his fifth video from her, he created a viewer account and subscribed to Angel’s page. Taehyung clicked to get notifications every time she’d start a live, and he even went as far as linking the account to his credit card so he could tip her in the future. Maybe he’d be lucky enough to get his requests fulfilled...

Taehyung snapped back to the present when his laptop notified him that @thedevilishangel would start their stream in five minutes.

He shut his door and got comfortable in his bed as he waited intently.

The stream was a mere 10 seconds from starting when his door suddenly opened to reveal a short, fit blonde with an obnoxious push-up bra and a spray tan that she should have gotten a refund for. Taehyung slammed his laptop shut.

“Taetae? Baby? You didn’t forget about our plans did you?” her annoyingly high voice questions.

‘I was supposed to come over to your apartment over an hour ago. But instead of getting the hint, you show up at my place instead? Clingy much?’ Taehyung thought to himself.

“Of course not, Stacy.”

“Stephanie,” the blonde corrected with a pout.

Taehyung nods, “Of course, baby, haven’t you ever been given a nickname?”

The blonde smiles dumbly. Maybe she knew she was just another meaningless fuck to Taehyung, but maybe she didn’t care as long as she gets to be his new toy.

Taehyung gets up from his position on the bed and places his laptop on his desk.

‘I’ll just have to watch her livestream later,’ Taehyung thought, unwilling to pass up the opportunity to fuck a girl with such massive tits.

He walks over to Stephanie, apparently, and tugs her hand, pulling her towards his bed.

“C’mon baby,” he whispers seductively.

----

“OH! OH! OH! OH, THAT FEELS AMAZING, OH! DADDY, OH!” Stephanie’s high pitched voice shrieks.

In the living room, conveniently located right next to Taehyung’s bedroom with the wailing girl, Jungkook lays on the couch attempting to cover his ears with a pillow.

“My god, does that girl ever shut up?” Jungkook questions angrily.

Across from him, sprawled out on the recliner, Yoongi removes his noise-canceling headphones.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” he questions nonchalantly.

Jungkook immediately sits up from the couch wide eyed.

“When did you get those?” he interrogates in reference to the headphones he would kill for a set of.

Yoongi shrugs, “Well, as soon as we all agreed to rent a house together, and I discovered Taehyung has a big dick, I thought they would be a good investment.”

The blunt man places his earphones back over his head and continues scrolling through his phone.

The younger boy groans and tosses himself back onto the couch in despair. He made a mental note to get himself a pair of noise-canceling headphones if he wanted to continue living with Taehyung as his roommate. Jungkook, a typically non-violent, understanding, patient man, was one obnoxiously loud moan away from strangling Taehyung for having such loud sex.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, Taehyung’s bed frame began to thump against the wall.

They must have been fucking for two hours straight now.

Annoyed beyond his wits, Jungkook got up from the couch and angrily stomped over to Taehyung’s bedroom door to tell the two love birds to shut the fuck up.

He raised his fist to knock when the door opened suddenly, and a half-clothed girl stumbled out. She pushed past a shocked Jungkook and made her way to the door.

“You’re such an ass, Taehyung!” she cried, flung open the front door and stormed out.

Jungkook turned to a shirtless Taehyung, surprised, “What did you do?”

The older boy shrugged, “She wanted me to take her on a date, and I kicked her out.”

“Wow, real shocker,” a sarcastic Yoongi quips from his comfortable position in the plush chair.

“Uh, hello?” a voice speaks from the doorway.

The two younger boys turn towards the door to see a confused Namjoon and Jin.

“Hey guys,” Taehyung waves at their mutual friends as he walks into the living room, pulling a shirt over his head.

The confused pair walks in, closing the door behind them.

“What was that about?” Namjoon questions gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder at the scene that happened right in front of them.

Jin laughs, well aware of Taehyung’s arrangements with girls “Ha, like you even need to ask.”

Namjoon just shrugs like he should have known. While Jin gathers ingredients from the fridge, Namjoon plops down on the couch where Jungkook was sitting.

“The noise from Taehyung’s hookups is ridiculously loud! Can’t I just move in with you two?” Jungkook sighs, asking Namjoon and Jin exasperated.

“No,” they answer in unison, unwilling to share their apartment with a recluse like Jungkook.

Jungkook rolls his eyes and moves to sit back on the couch, defeated.

“I’m not that bad, Jungkook. It could be worse. I could fuck girls in the kitchen,” Taehyung offers.

“You have done that,” Yoongi reminds.

Taehyung thinks for a moment before smiling in remembrance, “Oh, yeah. It was that hot redhead who had that twin sister. After we fucked in our kitchen, we drove to her sister’s place and had a threesome.”

Jungkook winces, “That’s disgusting. It’s that like incest?”

Taehyung shrugs again, “Not as long as I’m fucking them, and they’re not fucking each other.”

“Gross,” Jungkook mumbles.

Jin rifles through the fridge, looking through the food Jungkook had gotten from his turn at the grocery store.

“Please!” Yoongi commented sarcastically, “Please help yourself to our fridge.”

Jin ignores him.

“It’s a miracle you don’t have an STD, Tae,” Namjoon points out.

“As far as we know!” Jin shouts from the kitchen.

Taehyung scoffs, “You’re just jealous that I’m getting laid, and you’re all barely not virgins.”

Yoongi laughs at that, “Oh, yeah! I’m really jealous that you’re fucking a different obnoxious, personality-lacking girl practically every day! How did you know?”

The other boys laugh at Yoongi’s sarcasm. Whatever it was Taehyung thought he had that the rest of them didn’t, they didn’t want.

“Oh, yeah?” Taehyung challenged, “So you being bitter about me getting laid has nothing to do with you unsuccessfully pining after that hip-hop dancer in our political policy class?”

Taehyung knew he had a point. Everyone knew he had a point.

“Don’t bring Hoseok into this,” Yoongi muttered.

Taehyung smirks, “That’s what I thought.”

Yoongi scowled at that and went back to scrolling through his phone, mumbling under his breath about how Taehyung doesn’t know what he’s talking about and to stay out of his business.

Things between Yoongi and Hoseok were... complicated to say the least. Hoseok was always hanging out with his friends, and Yoongi never felt comfortable approaching him in a group setting. Yoongi resorted to “slide into his dms”, as Jungkook called it. They had been chatting back and forth for a couple of months now, but Yoongi had yet to successfully make a move and Hoseok had yet to pick up on all of Yoongi’s failed attempts to make a move. Yoongi went as far as joining the dance classes Hoseok instructed before he ultimately made a fool of himself in front of the dancer. Yoongi’s embarrassment in the situation cut whatever little confidence he had and kept him from reaching out to make plans to meet in person outside of their shared seminars.

Taehyung rolled his eyes at his grumpy roommate.

Eager to avoid conflict, Jungkook interjected, “Yoongi, Tae, I’m on my way to class. Do you guys want a ride?”

Taehyung claps his hand on shoulder on the younger boy, “I thought you’d never ask.”

----

You slammed the car door.

“Hobi, we’re gonna be so late!” you whined as you frantically rushed to your shared afternoon seminar.

Hoseok scoffs, “You’re the one who waited too long to finish your cam show-”

You immediately turn around and clap your hand over his mouth with wide eyes.

“Are you crazy?” you whisper frantically, eyes darting back and forth through the clearly empty hallway, “I guess you want everyone to know I do cam porn, huh? Why don’t you just shout it at the top of your lungs?”

Hoseok rolls his eyes at that and slaps your hand away from his mouth, “It’s no big deal. College students do a lot crazier shit for cash these days. It’s better you’re selling your body than selling drugs or organs on the black market.”

You wave away his comment and proceed to drag him to your shared class.

As you predicted, you were late. And not ‘a few seconds late, trailing in with some of the stranglers’ late like Hoseok promised.

The seminar has already started. And you barged into the lecture hall right in the middle of the professor speaking.

Your cheeks flushed uncontrollably, and you turned to Hoseok to mouth, “I told you so.”

“Ah, how nice of you to finally join us. We were just talking about the midterm project that counts for 70% of your grade and determines whether you’ll fail the semester. Interested?” the professor asks sarcastically.

Nodding frantically, you grab Hoseok’s hand and drag him to the nearest seats to unpack your embarrassment and catch up in the instructions of the project.

From what you gathered from the professor’s handout paired with other students’ notes, the project would be conducted by a group of two. The assignment was to create a presentation reviewing in depth one of the many lessons you had been taught this semester so far.

The project sounded simple enough, but from the professor’s handout and strict words, it was your understanding that she expected deep, detailed research on your findings.

Already having some thoughts for your presentation come to mind, you look over at Hoseok.

“You’re free this weekend right?” you whispered, “ You could come over to my place, we’ll order takeout and work on the project.”

Hoseok nodded, “Yeah, I don’t have another class at the studio to teach until next week. Will your roommate be there?”

You pondered for a second.

“No, I don’t think so. Jimin likes to spend the weekends with his family, so I think we’ll have the place all to ourselves,” you smiled.

This class had really been really difficult for you at the start of the semester. You had a lot on your mind and practically no time to work on the assignments.

As soon as you sophomore year in college came to a close, you moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with your longtime best friend, Jimin. Needless to say, you were shocked at how expensive an apartment on campus was. You had been working at a local coffee shop to make ends meet, but it wasn’t enough.

You were making just above minimum wage as a barista. And the customers were lousy tippers at best. You were scared you weren’t going to be able to meet the price of your rent by the end of the month. You were prepared to swallow your pride and ask your parents for cash.

That is, until Jimin spoke to you that night after you both tossed back more than a couple of shots in distress.

“Cam porn?!” you slurred, eyes wide.

Jimin started giggling, “Of course! How do you think I’ve been making so much cash?”

You froze for a minute, you tipsy mind processing what he just told you.

“I- I never thought about that...” you trailed off.

Jimin poured you another drink, “You wouldn’t believe how much horny idiots are willing to pay to see me jack off! Go on; guess how much cash I make in a good week.”

You had a poor enough ability to estimate how much something costs while being sober, but now that you were growing more and more drunk by the second, your brain really struggled to provide a reasonable answer to Jimin.

“Uh... maybe like um- like a lot of money?” you mumbled dumbly.

Jimin throws back his head as he takes the shot, slams down the now empty shot glass, and shouts, “Around two grand!”

Clapping your hand over your mouth, you slap Jimin’s shoulder.

“Shut up! No fucking way!” you shout.

“I know right!” Jimin leaps to his feet, “Let me get my laptop, I’ll show you my account!”

For the next hour, you two scrolled through his account and some of his top watched videos. Although Jimin opted to wear a mask to conceal his identitiy, you would recognize him any day.

Normally, with any other friendship, people would find it weird or uncomfortable to see their best friend naked, jacking off, or even fucking themselves on a long, purple dildo. Yet, oddly enough, this was one of the least strange things that had happened between you and Jimin over the years of knowing each other.

You had been best friends since age 5, and you had been by each other’s side through practically everything. Break ups, family trouble, college decisions, the list goes on. And you and him had both made it very clear that there were no romantic feelings between each other.

However, you didn’t see each other as siblings. In a way, you two almost felt closer than that. And you didn’t feel obligated to spend time with the other because of blood relations, as you would with family.

By the seventh video you had clicked on, Jimin turned to you.

“You know,” he begins with a smile on his face, “you could always quit that barista job you despise and cam with me, You would make way more money...”

You open your mouth to protest, but then you pause.

He was certainly right about two things. You loathe your current job, and cam porn did offer an opportunity for better pay.

Jimin saw the thoughts running through your head.

“You don’t have to make any decisions now. Just know that starting your account is as easy as the click of a few buttons,” Jimin commented with a knowing smile on his face.

Tired and contemplative, you cleaned up your spilled alcohol and bid Jimin goodnight.

Tossing and turning in your bed that night, you weighed your options. You had nothing against sex workers. You just never imagined you would be one.

Sitting up and looking down at your body, you thought deeper.

You knew you had a nice body, and you were far from insecure. You had had your fair share of relationships in the past, and you had learned more about your body and sexiness from your past sexual partners than you were ever taught in high school sex ed.

Tossing the covers off your body, you slipped out of bed and strode to Jimin’s room down the hall.

Knocking gently on the door, not wanting to wake him if he was already asleep, you hear a muffled, “Come in.”

Peeking your head into Jimin’s tidy room, you ask, “So, are you going to help me make an account or what?”

And the rest is history.

The next day, you quit your job and dissed your rude manager on your way out of the store you never wanted to step foot in again. You were elated to say the least.

Ever since that night when Jimin helped you make an account, you were constantly raising your views, subscribers, and likes with each and every video you made.

Like Jimin, you chose to wear a mask to conceal your identity. You were overjoyed to be finally doing a job that paid you well and offered you some fun, but the last thing you wanted to do was give any future employers the chance to turn you away because of your past.

Jimin and Hoseok were the only ones who knew. Jimin knew because he introduced you, of course.

Hoseok, on the other hand, found out the moment he walked in on you naked and fucking yourself on you fingers in front of a camera.

Aside from the fact that in the moment he had shouted, covered his eyes, and totally killed the vibe of your livestream, he was chill about it once you and Jimin finally explained it to him.

After you gained some rapport on the site, you were able to take control of your schedule. Unlike the nonexistent flexibility from the coffee shop you had worked at, your new job offers you more free time in your daily life. With this time, you were able to spend more time studying and completed the backed up assignments that had accumulated.

For the first time in months, you had a good, steady grade in your classes.

And with your improved schedule, you were able to set aside a reasonable amount of time for you and Hoseok to work on your project. No doubt the project would be grueling, but you were glad you had a dedicated student like Hoseok to work with.

“Now that I’ve explained the project,” you professor interrupts your thoughts, “I will be assigning your partners.”

You and Hoseok turn to each other immediately.

Assigned partners? She had to be joking.

“No, I’m not joking with you guys,” she answers in a monotone voice as if she predicted the thoughts of the students. The whole class groans.

The professor rolls her eyes, “Get over it!”

She walks over to the white board at the front of the class and tapes a list to the wall.

“The partner has already been assigned, so there’s no sense in complaining. I promise you I won’t change my mind no matter how hard you beg. Who knows? Maybe you'll end up meeting your future best friend or love of your life through this project...” she trails off.

The whole class shuffles hectically to reach the front of the class to see which partner they have been blessed- or cursed- with.

The professor raises her hand, “You may see the list after class is over.”

The class groans in unison again.

You nervously tap your foot and chew on your nails the remainder of class.

----

“Think deeper about society’s push for civil rights. It wasn’t an effort made by all Americans, the movement was primarily made by the “minority” group that were negatively impacted by the injustice. While we’re on the topic of “minority” groups, let’s discuss how ridiculous that name is considering they make up such a large percentage of the population…” your professor drones on.

In any other circumstance, you would have been fascinated with her lecture. But all that was on your mind was the assigned partners for the group project that would easily make or break the grade you worked so hard for.

The professor glances down at her watch, “Alright, I’ve tortured you long enough. Check the list and work out times you can meet with your partner. Class is dismissed.”

The second she finished speaking, the class rushed to the board to see their fate. Hoseok arrived before you did and nudged other students out of the way to get a good view.

He turns to you with a frown, “I guess it was unreasonable to hope we’d be paired together.”

Unable to accept the bad news, you pushed your way through the crowd and squinted at the list. Luckily for Hoseok, he had been paired with a diligent, quiet, but contemplative, mutual friend of his named Yoongi.

You, on the other hand, were paired with Yoongi’s douche of a best friend. Kim Taehyung.

Eyes nearly bulging out of your skull you tear the list from the board.

“She can’t be serious!” you cry as you reread the partner names again.

Gently placing a hand on your shoulder, Hoseok tried to calm you down, “I’m sure he’s not that bad-”

Whisking around, you slap his hand off your shoulder with your eyes wild, “Not that bad? You got lucky and ended up with someone competent! I ended up with the man who’s most likely too busy killing his brain cells with vaping and fucking a different girl every other day to even think about working with me on this project!”

Running your fingers through your hair, you began to feel overwhelmed with stress. Despite having just been assigned this project less than two hours ago, you were already certain you would fail.

You crumbled the list of partners into a ball and threw it over your shoulder in distress.

You had just climbed out of the hole of late work and anxiety over grades. Hell, you started filming yourself cumming on whatever paid best to stick up your vagina just so you could have the time and money to focus on your classes with no distractions.

“This can’t be happening,” you sighed as Hoseok pulled you in for a hug.

Heavy footsteps sounded behind you, but you remained uninterested as you clung to Hobi.

Your ears perked at the sound of someone clearing their throat to attract your attention.

“Looks like we’re partners,” a deep voice spoke.

Pulling your head from Hobi’s chest, you turned around in disinterest.

“Lucky me,” sarcasm dripped from your voice.

You weren’t going to lie, Taehyung was one of the most beautiful things you had ever laid your eyes on. Even if he was a gigantic ass with an even bigger ego, he did have the face and body structure of a god.

Unlike the rest of the rare selection who refused to sleep with him, you had no problem how many girls he fucked. Who were you to judge how many girls he slept with? You did cam porn for a living.

The only problem you had with his behavior was the way he treated the women he chose to pursue. Before he would fuck a girl, he would treat it like a game of cat and mouse. You had seen it enough times to know.

You suspected he almost liked the chase more than the sex itself. Sure, he would fuck just about anything that moved, but he loved the girls who put up a fight first before they would inevitably fall for his so called “charm” and end up in his bed.

If you weren’t so bothered with his misogynistic ways and self-centered behavior, you probably would have slept with him by now.

His eyes burn into yours, and you hate the way you find yourself on the verge of blushing.

What you despise most about your few past interactions with Taehyung was that you weren’t as immune to his charm as you wish you were. But look at him. Can you really blame yourself for feeling that way?

Well, yes.

But that internalized shame you felt in acknowledgement to the power he has over you doesn’t make him any less attractive.

He must have read your thoughts as your face began to flush, because a hint of a smirk finds its way to his lips.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Yoongi interrupts your staring contest, “there are other people who still need to see who they’re partnered with, you know?”

Yoongi snatches the list from Taehyung who never takes his eyes off you. His gaze descends down your body and falls on your legs. His eyebrows raise as his tongue wets his lips.

You glance down, and you’re met with your bare legs.

Why, of all days, did you choose today to wear a skirt? You couldn’t have worn pants? Jeans? A full body suit? Anything that would keep Taehyung from staring at your legs like you're a full course meal.

Unsure of how to feel under such an intense stare, you rub your legs together.

Taehyung smiles a bit at that.

Not the ‘genuinely happy, innocent’ smile, but rather the sinister ‘you’re falling into my trap’ smile.

Hoseok claps his hands together and breaks silence and tension.

“We’re actually paired together, Yoongi,” Hobi speaks confidently.

Yoongi’s face turns just as red as yours as he takes in Hobi’s words.

“Oh,” Yoongi mutters, too stunned to speak coherently and not willing to try in the fear he would make a fool of himself in front of Hoseok yet again.

“What are the chances, right?” Hobi asks and slings his arm over the older boy’s shoulders.

Yoongi looks like he could collapse at any moment.

Taehyung’s eyes met yours again and this cocky bastard had the audacity to wink.

Taking mercy on his tongue-tied best friend, Taehyung pulls his eyes off of you and turns to Yoongi and Hoseok.

“Well, we gotta get going. Jungkook’s class ended five minutes ago, and he’s not going to wait in the parking lot forever. C’mon, Yoongi,” Taehyung snapped his fingers in front of Yoongi’s face to get his attention.

Yoongi blinked repeatedly, as if just coming out of shock, a trace, or both.

“Y-yeah,” Yoongi stammered.

The younger boy tugs on his hand and leads the older, stumbling, love-struck boy out of the lecture hall.

Taehyung turns to you, “I’ll text you the details for when we can meet up for the project.”

You frown in confusion and shout as he walks out the doors, “Hey! I never gave you my number!”

He just turns and smirks, “I know.”

----

“Ugh, and you should have seen the way he kept smirking and shit. He’s such a dick, I can’t believe I got paired with him. How am I so unlucky?” You rant to Jimin as you angrily scroll through Netflix to find something for you two to watch for your weekly movie night.

“Yep, such a dick,” Jimin mumbles uninterested as he scrolls through Twitter.

You turn to him, “Oh! I’m sorry. Am I boring you?”

Jimin just laughs and keeps looking at his phone, bemused, “You can talk all the shit you want about him, honey. That doesn’t change the fact that you two are definitely going to fuck sometime during this project.”

Your jaw drops.

“Excuse me?” you shout, “I would rather never have sex again than fuck that piece of shit! You know how much I loathe the way he treats women.”

Jimin nods as if he expected your argument, “Babe, you don’t have to give up your feminist ideologies to fuck him. And I already know you find him hot. Hoseok told me about how you two were practically eye-fucking in front of him today, so there’s no point in lying.”

“I-” you stammer, “I was not ‘eye-fucking’ him! He was eye-fucking me! Because that’s how he mistreats girls!”

Rolling his eyes, Jimin turns to face you.

“Look, all I’m saying is that you’re hot, he’s hot, and you both like sex,” he turns his interest back to his phone, “It makes sense that you would fuck.”

Frustrated, you pull Jimin’s phone from his hands, forcing him to face you. He sighs and turns towards you with a bored look on his face.

“Taehyung and I are going to work on the project, and that’s it. We are not going to fuck. We’re not even going to have that moment where we look at each other’s lips like one of us is going to lean in and kiss the other,” you proclaim, “We are going to work on the project, and then forget the other exists.”

You pause for a moment.

“No, let me rephrase that. I’m going to work on the project, and then I’m going to pretend he doesn’t exist no matter what he does,” you finish.

Jimin snorts, “Yeah, sure. Why don’t you explain that to Taehyung later when you share nudes over text.”

You bristle.

“We will not-” you freeze, “Wait, how did you know he had my number? I didn’t even know he had my number until today.”

Jimin smiles, knowingly, “Well, duh, who do you think gave it to him?”

Punching Jimin in the shoulder, you get up from your position on the couch and stomp off to your room.

“Ah, c’mon! Where are you going? It’s movie night!” Jimin calls from the couch.

“Not anymore it’s not!” you yell, slamming the door behind you.

----

Following your skin routine, you stand in front of the mirror.

“Stupid Taehyung. Stupid Jimin,” you mutter to yourself, “Stupid phone number.”

Your complaints are cut short by a notification ping from your phone beside your sink.

Dreading the thought of Taehyung’s reply, you gingerly pick up your phone.

Fears confirmed, you’re met with an unknown number who you only assume could be from the devil himself.

[8:32 pm]

Unknown number: Hey, princess, you miss me?

You roll your eyes and keep him waiting as you wash your face and finish your bedtime routine.

Around half an hour later, you climb into bed with cool skin and brushed teeth.

Looking over at your phone on your nightstand, you groaned. Nevertheless, you leaned over, picked it up, and unlocked it.

[9:04 pm]

You: I have a name, you know, Taehyung. But if you prefer nicknames, I can just call you “stuck-up pig” :)

Convinced that your diss would shut him up for the rest of the night, you dropped your phone on the pillow next to you and turned over in your sheets.

Right as your eyes were able to close, you jolted when a notification from your phone went off.

Letting out a huff, you rolled over and grabbed your phone.

[9:06 pm]

Stuck-up pig: I don’t care what you call me as long as you're on top screaming it

You audibly snorted.

[9:07 pm]

You: excuse me while i gag

Stuck-up pig: gagging on my cock, right??

Your eyes widened. There’s no way this loser could be serious. How could he seriously say that to you?

[9:07 pm]

You: oh yeah all 2 inches :))

That ought to shut him up. If you learned anything about men from Jimin, it was that they always felt insecure when you made fun of their dick size.

You never quite understood it until one of your exes made fun of your boob size and you proceeded to punch him in the nose.

[9:08 pm]

You: look, this whole douche bag persona might work for all you other little fuck toys, but i’m not interested. The sooner we get this project done, the sooner i can go back to pretending you don’t exist

You clenched your eyes in frustration. You should have been happily on your way to sleep now. You could have been having blissful dreams of you and Hoseok being paired together on the project instead of you being paired with the walking, talking STD.

[9:12 pm]

Stuck-up pig: {image}

Stuck-up pig: remind me how many inches did you say again, princess?

You made the mistake of opening the notification.

Your jaw dropped when you were met with a picture of Taehyung’s large hand holding his grey sweatpants confined cock.

He must have been eight inches easy. And that was just an estimate from a low-quality photo with poor lighting. There’s no telling how big his cock was in person.

You could only imagine how pretty it was...or how good it felt... or how your mouth would water at the delicious taste of his cock as he fucked your throat-

‘Stop it,’ you thought, ‘this is what he wants you to think.’

The only thing holding your back from giving into him was the pressure of the project. You couldn’t afford to fail this class no matter how pretty Taehyung’s cock probably was under those sweatpants you desperately wanted to get your hands under.

[9:15 pm]

Stuck-up pig: aw don’t get shy on me now, princess

You were about to explode. Jimin always made fun of you for how easily affected you were by pet names. He never failed to tease you about it, even though you both know it was something you couldn’t control.

Taehyung was hitting all your weak points. He was breaking down your defenses. As much as you wanted to tell him off, throw your phone across the room, and go to sleep, you were growing infatuated with him instead.

You felt yourself growing wetter by the second as you stared at Taehyung’s picture.

It was taking all your willpower not to slide your fingers under the waistband of your panties despite how much your pussy was begging to be touched.

[9:17 pm]

Stuck-up pig: you don’t need to send a pic now, baby. But next time i send a pic, i expect you to be a good girl and share one with me

Next time? Next time? This was going to happen again?

You were barely keeping your composure now. Emphasis on barely.

Feeling hot to the touch, you felt like you could pass out at the power this man had over you.

Fingers shaking, you tried to clear your foggy head and type back a response.

[9:20 pm]

You: Tae we

You stumbled.

You: we need to work on this project

‘Oh, yeah, really handled that one well. Why don’t you just send him a picture of your soaked panties while you’re at it?’ you chastised.

You smacked yourself on the forehead in frustration.

[9:21 pm]

Stuck-up pig: aw, don’t tell me I got you tongue-tied, baby girl

Stuck-up pig: don’t you worry, i’ll break you down eventually. until then, meet me at my place on thursday at 8:30 pm to work on your precious project

[9:22 pm]

Stuck-up pig: goodnight baby girl, dream of me xx

Your brain hurt at this point.

On one hand, you're relieved you’ll finally get to work on the project. On the other hand, you doubt you’d be able to focus on the assignment when all you could think about was Taehyung’s cock from the picture he sent you.

Tension lessened now that the conversation was over, you let out a troubled sigh and dropped your phone on the pillow next to you.

Turning over on your back, you stared up at the ceiling.

How the fuck were you supposed to function when you finally were face to face?

----

The days dragged on as Thursday finally rolled in.

You frantically dug through your closet as Jimin laid sprawled on your bed.

“Jimin,” you groaned, “please help me find what to wear. I have no idea what looks good on me.”

Jimin avoided your eyes and stared up at the ceiling with an amused look in his eye, “You know, you’re putting an awful lot of energy into dressing up for this one man you claim you don’t care for…”

Grabbing a shirt from your dresser, you throw it at Jimin, “I don’t care about him.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jimin waves away your comment, “Are we still on for later tonight?”

You nodded absentmindedly as you held up two different outfits for Jimin, “Which one?”

He just sighed.

“Well, clearly we’re not still on for tonight if you’re going to go to his house in either one of those,” he pointed out, “There’s no way you and Taehyung won’t fuck if you’re wearing one of those. You two already can’t resist each other. Imagine how much more he’ll want you when he sees your ass in those tight jean shorts or plaid skirt.”

Jimin was exasperated.

He didn’t mind that you and Taehyung were most likely going to fuck. He encouraged it, really. He would encourage it a lot more if you two hadn’t been planning tonight’s joint stream for weeks now.

The plan was simple. You two were both successful cam stars with pretty big followings, and you two planned on raising that popularity. Tonight, you two had planned a joint livestream where Jimin would fuck your brains out for the camera.

Normally, a friends with benefits situation was entirely off the table for a friendship that had lasted as long as yours had. But normal friendships didn’t consist of two semi-pornstars.

You and Jimin had talked through it numerous times, and you both explicitly told the other that nothing was mandatory and comfort came before anything else. No matter how lucrative this stream could potentially be for the both of you or how much it would boost your popularity on the site, your friendship was more important than anything else.

Jimin ran a hand through his hair, “Look, if there’s any remote possibility of Taehyung’s dick in you tonight, we should postpone the livestream. I’m sure the fans will understand-”

You clapped your hand over his mouth to silence him.

“The only dick I want in me tonight is yours,” you reassure with a smile.

Jimin rolled his eyes and slapped your hand away, “How romantic.”

Tugging your shirt over your head, you begin to change, “Taehyung’s dick, no matter how tragic it may seem, will stay in his pants. It doesn’t matter how good it looked in that photo last night.”

Jimin shot up, “He sent you nudes?”

You laughed as you finished changing, “Calm down, perv. I didn’t get to see anything. It was still in his pants.”

Jimin chuckles, “Oh, yeah. You guys will definitely fuck. For my sake, can you fuck sooner rather than later? I’ve got a bet with Hoseok.”

Gasping, you turn around after you put on your bra.

Raising his hands in defense, Jimin just shrugs, “Every dollar counts, babe.”

An annoyed huff leaves your lips as you finish getting dressed. You spray some perfume on your neck and wrists. Gathering your things, you head for the door.

Jimin tuts and calls after you, “Better get going! You wouldn’t want to be late for your dick appointment!”

You just raise a middle finger and slam the door behind you.

----

From the comfort of your car, you stare at your phone to check for the umpteenth time that you had the right address.

Taehyung had to be fucking with you.

Students you recognized from campus were stumbling around the front yard, drunk off the asses. The house was filled to the brim with people and the music was blasting so loud, you felt the vibrations in your car across the street. Even with the house completely packed, more people were filing in every couple of minutes.

This is where Taehyung expected you to study?

You were a fool to believe Taehyung would actually care about this project. Anger and disappointment settling in about the thought of you having to complete the project on your own, you get out of your car. Slamming the door, you stomp up to the house party, determined to find Taehyung and tell him off.

Maybe your professor would take pity on you and allow you a new partner. Or maybe the heavens would open up, and she would actually allow you to join Hoseok’s group. Even if she just permitted you and Taehyung would just finish two different projects individually, anything was better than you doing all the work and Taehyung reaping the benefits.

Nudging your way past people, you make your way inside. When you finally enter the living room, you feel the pulsing beat from the speakers and see a sea of drunk students grinding on each other with red solo cups in their hands.

Groaning, you push past people in search of the stuck-up pig himself.

“Hey!” a familiar voice shouts over the bass.

You spin around and find a smiling, drunk Hoseok who pulls you in for a tight hug.

“I didn’t know you were coming!” he yells as he stumbles on his own foot.

A slight smile forming on your face at the sight of your drunk best friend, you reply, “I didn’t mean to. Taehyung told me we were going to work on the project, but he gave me this address. It must be some lame practical joke he pulled.”

Hoseok wiggles his eyebrows, “Or he wanted you here…”

You change the subject, “Where is he, by the way? I want to tell him off and then go home where I can actually hear myself think.”

Hoseok shrugs. “I think I saw him head upstairs with some brunette in a tight, red dress. I’m sorry he’s been such a dick though. I wish you could have been paired with us,” he refers to him and his partner.

He all but drops his drink as he grabs your arm, “Oh, and did you know Yoongi has a thing for me!” His question comes out as more of an exclamation. “He was totally staring at my lips when I was talking about our schedule for the project, and so I leaned over and kissed him! And guess what. Go ahead, guess what,” Hobi slurs.

Rolling your eyes, you indulge him, “What, Hobi?”

This time he doesn’t just almost drop his drink, he completely throws it over his shoulder behind him and grabs both of your shoulders, shaking you, “He kissed me back! I mean, he was nervous at first, but then I put my hands in his hair and pulled him in. And one thing led to another and my mouth was on his cock-”

“Okay!” you interrupt, “I get it! You guys like each other! Hobi, Yoongi’s feelings weren’t exactly a secret,” you scream over the shitty music.

Hobi drops his hands from your shoulders and tilts his head in curiosity, “Really?”

“Really,” you nod, looking around the room, “Hey, I’ll talk to you later. I really have to find Taehyung.”

He nods with a dopey smile on his face, “Alrighty! Just remember to use protection when you find him!”

You shove him lightly, “Yeah, speak for you and Yoongi!”

He just laughs and walks off, you assume to find his new boy toy.

Walking through the crowd of people, you spot the banister to the stairs and begin to climb them.

In your head, you ran through the things you wanted to tell him. When you finally got to the top of the stairs, you looked down the hall. Every door was open except the door furthest from the top of the stairs. Taking long strides, you headed for the door. Not bothering to knock, you fling it open and are met with a topless brunette straddling Taehyung. Seemingly unbothered, he looks up with a smirk on his face.

Meanwhile, the brunette screams and covers her chest with her hands. Taehyung makes no effort to stop her as she picks up her shirt and bra from the floor of the bedroom and scurries out of the room, tossing you a glare on her way out.

You meet his eyes again, your eyes squinted and brows furrowed angrily, “You’re full of shit. You know that, right?”

Taehyung sits up on his elbows and cocks his head to the side, “No need to get jealous, baby. She was just the appetizer. You’re the main dish. I was about to kick her out before you showed up.”

He gets off the bed and makes his way to you. Your eyes fall to his chest. Similarly to the brunette Taehyung was minutes away from fucking, he, too, was shirtless. He notices your gaze and his lip curls upward.

When he’s finally stood in front of you, he reaches out and grasps your chin, noticing the pronounced scowl resting on your face.

“Why the long face, baby?” he tsks.

You slap his hand away, “You ask as if you aren’t the cause of it! You almost had me fooled. What an idiot I was for thinking you would actually take me or this project seriously! I actually came to this house thinking we were going to get work done. And what a surprise to see you haven’t changed a bit!”

Taehyung looks at you indifferently.

Throwing up your hands, you decide to leave considering how you’ll never get through to him.

“You know what? I’m done. Fuck you, Taehyung. I’m going to ask our professor for a new partner first thing tomorrow. I don’t care if you get a bad grade. Hell, I don’t care if you fail the class. It’s what you deserve. And maybe,” you get closer to his face, “just maybe failing this class will actually make you give a damn about anyone other than yourself,” you spit.

His gaze intensifies as you get closer to him. Before you know it, his lips are on yours.

Your eyes widen, and you let out a gasp in shock. Taehyung takes this as an invitation to slip his tongue in your mouth. About to push him away, you feel his hands on your sides, caressing you.

Going against your instinct to knee him in the balls and push him away, you give into the kiss.

The grip on your waist tightens, and you let out a moan. Taehyung’s lips leave your own and move down to your neck. He starts sucking on your neck, and you're certain a mark will be there later. Testing his limits, his hands lower to your ass and begin to squeeze.

You were in bliss. You’d heard the rumors; you knew Taehyung was good. What you didn’t know was just how good he was. His lips were beyond soft, like silk on your neck. And his hands were working all sorts of magic on your ass. It felt so good, you almost forgot why you came over in the first place-

‘The project!’ you thought suddenly.

You opened your eyes and snapped out of the trance Taehyung had put you in. Bringing your hands up to Taehyung’s chest, you shoved him away from you.

Taehyung’s hands fly off you as the space between the two of you increases. Striding to the mirror above his dresser, you see the hickey begin to form on your neck.

‘Great,’ you thought, ‘another thing to explain to Jimin.’

You couldn’t tell who you were more upset with: Taehyung for making a move in the first place or yourself for giving into his shitty, misogynistic antics that for some reason made your brain hazy and knees weak.

Disgust in your eyes, you turn to Taehyung, “Feel free to lose my number. It’s not like I’ll answer your calls anyway.”

You begin to walk out of the room. As you pass Taehyung, he grabs your wrist. Ready to cuss him out with every foul word you can think of to describe him, you see his face. He looks… regretful?

Up until this very second, you weren’t aware Taehyung could feel an emotion like regret.

Taehyung’s eyes shift.

“I’m s-” he stops himself.

After what felt like hours but was a few measly seconds later he finally responds, “I like your skirt. Would have really liked to have fucked you in it,” he speaks in reference to the plaid skirt you chose to wear.

Rolling your eyes, you pull your wrist from Taehyung’s hand and walk out the door, not even sparing him a second glance.

If you had, you would have seen Taehyung’s frowning face watch you walk all the way down the hall and his palm reaching up to smack himself in the head for his ability to always find a way to say the wrong thing to the girl he couldn’t get out of his mind.

----

Pushing the door closed with your foot, you toss your keys on the coffee table and throw yourself on the couch with a groan.

After a few seconds, Jimin strolls into the living room, “You’re late.”

Squinting and cocking his head to the side, he walks up to your lounging form and moves some hair away from your neck.

He just sighs, “Hey, I don’t care if you and Taehyung fuck. I wish you would have chosen to do it literally any other night, but it’s fine. We can just postpone the stream. I wouldn’t want to be “double-dipping” you know,” he makes finger quotations.

You sit up from the couch and finally open your eyes, “We didn’t fuck. Actually, I never want to see that stuck-up pig again.”

Jimin raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth to pester you with questions.

You hold up your hand, “I’m not in the mood to talk about it.”

Instead of elaborating, you stand up from the couch and unbutton your shirt, “I just need your dick in me now, so that I can end this terrible night.”

Your best friend’s brows furrow, but he decides not to question. Jimin has been your best friend for a long as he could remember. He knew everything about you. He knew you liked to shut people out when you were upset, and he also knew that look on your face. And based on the look on your face, he knew you’d bit his head off if he didn’t drop the conversation.

Shaking his head, Jimin also tugged his shirt over his head. He held out his hand for you to take and led you to your room.

Jimin made sure to close the door as you sat on your nicely made bed. As you removed the rest of your clothing except your bra and panties, Jimin got the camera set up. Following your actions, he began to peel off his skinny jeans after he finished setting up the equipment.

He turned to you with a worried look on his face one last time, “You’re sure about this? I won’t be mad if you don’t want to do this.”

You nodded your head with certainty, “I just need to fuck my frustration away. We make some more cash, gain more popularity on our channels, and I get a distraction from that piece of shit named Taehyung. What can be better than that?”

Jimin looks uneasy.

“If you insist…” he trails off as he pushes the button to start the livestream, “We go live in 10.”

He walks over to your bed, handing you your signature mask while putting his on as well. Getting into character, you pull your mask on and tussle your hair.

“Ten, nine, eight…” Jimin calls as he climbs on your bed.

‘Fuck, Taehyung. It didn’t matter how good it felt to kiss him or how amazing his hands felt on your body. He was just a sex-hungry, lazy, inconsiderate dick who never cared about girls unless he could get in their pants,’ you told yourself.

“seven, six, five…” Jimin continues as he gets himself settled next to you.

You knew what you were telling yourself was true. Taehyung was- is- all those things and so many more negative qualities. So, why was he on your mind? And why did a small part of you wish he was next to you right now instead of Jimin? And why, for the love of god, was that “small” part of you not as small as you wish it was?

“four, three, two..”

You shook the thought out of your head. Tonight, you focus was on raking in cash, gaining more subscribers to your channel, and giving Jimin the best fuck of his life. Taehyung had nothing to do with any of those things. Therefore, he doesn’t belong in your mind….

If only it were that simple.

“One,” Jimin finished as the light beside your camera notified you had begun a stream.

Showtime.

----

Taehyung could sense his friends getting worried. After you had left his room and stormed out of the house, Taehyung hadn’t even looked at another girl with interest let alone fucked one.

The frustrated fuckboy sat on the couch in the living room downstairs with his legs spread wide and a drink in his hands. The party, much to Taehyung’s annoyance, was still going strong. If anything, the party had gotten more energetic since Taehyung came back downstairs.

Every ten minutes, a girl with a flimsy top or a tight skirt would come up to Taehyung and sit on his lap, looking for a chance to get fucked by the hottest guy at the party. Taehyung just told them off and remained uninterested. He even went as far as shoving a girl off his lap and onto the soft couch beside him when the girl refused to leave and tried to kiss his neck. The girl angrily huffed and walked away, the clicking of her heels following her footsteps.

Taehyung couldn’t believe how stupid he was. He was always a dick to girls, always down to fuck them into oblivion and getting bored after they dropped their panties for him.

And then you came along.

And for once in all his time in college, he actually felt something. And not because you put up a fight or made it a “challenge”, but because you were smart and passionate. He had barely talked to you, and he could already tell what he felt for you was different than the feelings he had for his fuck toys.

It had been so long since Taehyung actually felt feelings for someone beyond sexual attraction, he couldn’t tell if he was overreacting or not. He knew deep down that even if, by some chance, he was overreacting, the feelings he felt for you were too strong to ignore.

Unbeknownst to practically everyone, Taehyung had grown tired of his fuckboy antics. Sure, he kept fucking a different stranger nearly every night, but the feeling lost a lot of its appeal.

Part of him felt that he only kept up his persona, because he was worried of how it would make him seem to everyone else.

Taehyung had built his reputation as a sex god since the second he stepped foot on campus. He had been hiding behind that mask for so long, he had no idea who he really was. He knew people, especially women, would never be able to see him differently if he did give up his fuckboy attitude. Whether women wanted to fuck him or punch him in the nose for disrespecting them, they would never see him in a different light.

That’s why Taehyung kept up this act for so long. But if it was going to make him fail a class let alone miss out on the opportunity to feel real emotions with you, then why would bother living this way? Who was he trying to please? Because he certainly wasn’t pleasing himself...not emotionally, anyway.

Namjoon, Jin, and Jungkook all cautiously approached a sorrowful Taehyung on the couch.

Looking between each other, they all silently told the others to initiate the conversation with Taehyung. It was often Taehyung was truly upset, but when he was, comforting him wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. Jungkook inwardly winces at the time Taehyung had punched a whole in their wall when he thought his parents were getting a divorce.

The three boys all look at each other before they all bring out a fist to play rock, paper, scissors to decide who would confront him first.

Namjoon loses and silently curses the others as they stand beside him.

“Hey,” Namjoon begins as he sits next to Taehyung, “uh- are you okay…?”

Jin and Jungkook mentally facepalm at how ridiculous Namjoon sounds.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Taehyung’s eyes don’t meet his friends’ gaze. He just stares into his drink.

“Well,” Jin interjects, “it’s when a dog doesn’t eat…”

Jungkook rolls his eyes.

Taehyung’s brows furrow and he finally looks up, “What are you talking about?”

“There must have been at least four girls in the past half hour who were looking to get fucked by you, and you turned them all down,” Jungkook explains.

The boy on the couch just shrugs, “I wasn’t in the mood. Is that a crime?”

“We know you’re not in the mood,” Namjoon prods, “considering you’re never not in the mood, that’s what we’re concerned about.”

Taehyung leans back further into the couch, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Silence falls over the group. The three boys want to comfort Taehyung, but they really don’t know how they’re supposed to do that when Taehyung won’t even tell them what’s wrong. They look among each other again, mentally deciding who should say something next.

Momentarily vibrating in his pocket, his phone gets a notification. He takes it from his pants.

@thedevilishangel is live with @busanbaby94!

“Thanks for the talk, guys,” Taehyung stands, “I gotta go.”

Before his friends could say another word, Taehyung rushes up the stairs to the nearest empty room that didn’t already house a couple fucking each other.

He makes it to an empty bathroom and locks the door behind him. He unlocks his phone and opens the app. He’s almost too upset about the situation with you to watch Angel’s stream. Key word being almost.

Although the stream just started, a lot was happening. Much to Taehyung’s surprise, there was another man with a similar mask kissing Angel’s neck. That stunned him, because she had never had a collaboration with anyone. He hated the way he felt envy creeping up on him.

Angel fell back on her pink bed as the toned man eyed her hungrily and climbed between her thighs. He lowered himself down on her, kissing her neck and stomach before trailing his lips down to her panties.

“You won’t be needing these anymore,” the man smirked and pulled the lace panties off Angel.

Even from the view of Taehyung’s camera, he could see just how wet Angel’s panties were.

What Taehyung would give to smell them.

The man, who Taehyung assumed was @busanbaby94, stuck his head between Angel’s thighs and began sucking hickeys as Angel cooed softly at the feeling.

“Chim, baby, please no more teasing,” Angel whines.

“Chim”, as Angel addressed him, tsked, “Be patient, kitten.”

Despite feeling upset less than thirty minutes ago, Taehyung couldn’t help but feel turned on. He pulled his hardening cock out of his jeans. Even when the real action hadn’t even started, Taehyung’s cock had leaked beads of precum into his boxers, creating a wet spot in the grey material.

Without any more delay, Chim buried his lips in Angel’s pussy and she let out a wanton moan. Whoever this Chim guy was, he was merciless when it came to eating Angel out.

Angel fingers dug into Chim’s hair and tugged on tuffs of bottle blond hair, “Oh, that feels so good Chim. Please keep going.”

She whined and moaned as Chim’s tongue worked on her. She withered underneath him, and he slapped her thigh, “Stop moving, and take your punishment.”

Punishment?

“You want to be with other guys, huh?” Chim asks cruelly, “Well if you want to act like a slut, you’ll be treated like one.”

He continues his attack on her clit as the comments pour in.

“She’s such a good little whore,” @sugardaddy97 writes.

“I’d give anything for a slut like that!” @bigdick93 replies.

Taehyung hurriedly types in his desired tip amount and request.

+400 coins from @daeguking!

“Spank her clit,” he demands.

Chim looks up from his place in between Angel’s thighs when he hears the tip notification, singling a request. He smiles darkly, “What a great idea.”

Angel opens her mouth to ask what he’s talking about when Chim delivers a slap to her sensitive clit. She screams from the pleasure fueled by pain. Taehyung groans with her and slowly begins stroking his cock.

“Oh,” Chim notes, “she really liked that.”

Chim resumes his work getting her off on his tongue. Angel’s getting close to her high as she begins to quiver more and more. Her mouth is left ajar as moans spill from her.

“I’m close, Chim, please don’t make me wait any longer,” she whimpers.

Chim sits up, keeping Angel’s clit stimulated with his fingers as he rubs vigorously, “What do you say, audience? Do you think she deserves to cum?”

The replies spilled in, but Taehyung had his mind set. If it were up to him and he was punishing her, she wouldn’t cum until she had been edged to the point of tears.

To the disappointment of Taehyung, the replies and requests from the audience believed otherwise. They all told this Chim guy to get her off. And so he did.

“You got lucky this time, whore,” Chim spoke and proceeded to ruthlessly rub her clit with his fingers until she was screaming.

“Ah! Chim I’m gonna-” Angel cries.

Chim guides her through her oragasm, “That’s right, baby girl, cum for all the viewers. Make ‘em wish they were the one getting you off.”

Angel’s legs shook as she came on his fingers. That Chim guy was right about one thing. Taehyung did wish he was the one making her cum as hard as she did. Although, Taehyung knew he could make her cum harder.

Chim sits beside her and gives his cock a few strokes as he waits for her to come down from her high. Once she has, he leans down and kisses her deeply as he slips his cock inside her pussy.

Taehyung can’t help but smirk as he notices his cock is much bigger than Chim’s.

Angel gasps as the feeling of Chim’s cock inside of her. He waits a few seconds before moving his hips against hers.

By now, Taehyung is fully jacking off. His hand is moving quickly up and down his shaft, and he feels especially hot whenever Angel whimpers or whines.

“You got me so hard, princess. Aren’t you happy you did?” Chim taunts, “You like my cock inside you?”

Angel just nods, so fucked out she struggles to speak coherently.

Chim slaps her bouncing tits, and Angel jolts at the feeling. “Answer me when I’m speaking to you!” Chim yells.

She opens her eyes and whines out, “Yes, yes, you feel so good.”

Sweat forms on Taehyung’s forehead as he moves his fist up and down his cock at a quick pace. He senses his oncoming orgasm, but he is determined to cum when Angel does. Biting his lip, he tightens his grip around the base of his cock, near his balls. He adds enough pressure to still satisfy him but not enough to get him off before he’s ready. It’s his makeshift cockring.

Chim grabs her chin and raises her head so her gaze meets his, “And what do you say?”

Angel’s eyes are completely hazed over with lust, “Th-thank you,” she moans.

Chim pinches her nipples, “Good girl.”

Taehyung is nearing his climax, and he suspects Angel is too.

The man leans down next to the girl and whispers just loud enough for the audience to hear, “Why don’t you put on a nice show for our viewers and cum on my cock like the whore we both know you are, huh?”

Angel breaks at that comment. She cries out as she cums on Chim’s cock. Taehyung regains the quick pace of his fist moving up and down his cock, and within seconds after Angel came, Taehyung is groaning and shooting spurts of cum onto his hand and on the sweatpants in front of him.

Taehyung didn’t have as good of a view of her pussy as he would have hoped, but he could see her clit twitch and her thighs quake. Angel’s eyes are screwed shut as the pleasure washed over her.

Chim grunts and pulls his cock from her cunt, jacking off a few times before releasing all over Angel’s naked body.

Taehyung desperately wished he could be in Chim’s place just once. Taehyung would have given his fuck boy habits up for good much earlier if he could have just fucked Angel once.

Covered in cum, Angel leans up from her place on the bed. She looks into the camera as if she were staring directly into the eyes of the audience members.

Taehyung moans at that alone.

Something about Angel has him feeling like a horny teen all over again. He knew for a fact that if he hadn’t held off his orgasm by gripping the base of his cock, he would have come almost embarrassingly fast.

Chim recovers from his orgasm and leans down one more time to kiss Angel who laughs into the kiss.

‘That laugh sounds….’ Taehyung thought, ‘familiar…’

Chim leans forward and sends a flying kiss out to the audience.

‘What a tool,’ Taehyung criticised in his head, ‘Obviously everyone was here just to see her.’

Taehyung just rolls his eyes at Chim and inwardly cheers when he finally leaves the frame.

How does a guy like that end up fucking a girl like Angel? Sure, he’s toned and attractive from what Taehyung could see from the mask, but a girl like Angel? Deserved much more than just mediocre sex. If she wasn’t being fucked senseless whenever she wanted by someone as sexy as she was, something was seriously wrong with the higher order of the universe.

Angel leans forward with a pleasure-drunk smile on her face, “Thanks for tuning into tonight’s livestream. Be sure to check out @busanbaby94 to see his content. Between you and me, the pleasure he gives in person is even greater than his livestreams.”

Taehyung doubts that, but he continues the video regardless.

“I’ll do another live next week. And, if I get enough requests, I might just have to bring another guest on here with me…” Angel smirks, “Until the next video, I hope you had as much fun as I did,” she gives her signature phrase and ends the live.

Taehyung sighs at the thought of cleaning up his mess. And he’s even more annoyed when he feels the bass of the music practically shaking the house and he remembers that in the midst of him jacking off, there’s a party in full swing downstairs.

Now that the live is over and Taehyung’s mind is cleared, he knows he needs to resolve his conflict with you. He felt bad even thinking about it despite the fact that it happened now over an hour ago.

Taehyung sighs and begins to clean up his mess. He wipes down the counter he was sat on and takes off his dirty sweats completely, balling them up in his hands.

He unlocks the door and begins to walk to the guest room where he planned to spend the night, too tired to deal with the sound and annoying girls that would swarm him if he tried to sleep in his own room downstairs.

Jin comes to the top of the stairs, “Hey, where have you been? We’ve been looking for you this whole time.”

Taehyung pushes past him gently and continues to make his way to the guest room, “Well, clearly you guys weren’t looking hard enough. I was just in the bathroom.”

Jin frowns.

Taehyung’s eyes soften, “I’m sorry; I’m just in a bad mood. I’m gonna sleep it off.”

The older man’s brows raise, “But the party's just getting started. These two girls got super drunk and started to make out with each other. I thought you’d love that…”

Taehyung just shrugs, “Eh, I’m not in the mood. See ya later, Jin. Make sure Namjoon gets home safe, and thanks for looking out for me.”

Not used to Taehyung genuinely caring about others, Jin stands there shocked while the younger boy pats his shoulder, walks into the guest bedroom, and closes the door behind him, effectively ending his night.

----

Needless to say, you were exhausted after your livestream with Jimin.

You barely made it to the bathroom to haphazardly clean yourself off before you collapsed into your bed and began softly snoring as soon as your head hit the pillow. You’d have to wash your sheets in the morning, but right now you were too tired to do anything but sleep for a minimum of ten hours.

You were gently woken up by Jimin around 10 am. He informed you he was headed to the dance studio with Hobi to work on some choreography they had made together. You nodded and tried to return to your blissful sleep.

You must have tossed and turned for ten minutes before you decided your effort was futile, and you couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard you tried.

Silently cursing Jimin, you rolled out of bed and began your morning routine. Remembering last night’s activities with Jimin, a small smile comes to your face as you strip your bed of the dirty bed sheets and toss them in the washer.

‘There’s no way we won’t be in the top ten accounts of the site now,’ you thought as you applied the clean bed sheets to your bed.

Tying a robe around your body, you pad into the kitchen and make some breakfast. As you’re in the process of making coffee and reheating in your microwave some pancakes you had made a couple of days ago, a knock sounds at the door.

You roll your eyes and shout as you walk towards the door, “Jimin, how many times are you going to forget your keys before-”

You open the door and you're met by Taehyung. He tries his hardest not to, but he can’t help but look down at your figure, the robe leaving little to Taehyung’s imagination. You fight the urge to cover yourself more with the robe, unable to explain why, after all he has put you through, his gaze still sends a rush through your body, particularly to the spot between your legs.

“Oh,” you freeze, expecting literally anyone else in the world aside from Taehyung, “I thought you were-”

“Jimin, I know,” Taehyung interrupts, “I need to talk to you. May I come in?”

You look uneasy.

Taehyung rephrases, “I’ll be quick. I just…” he pauses, “I need to set things right.”

Contemplating deeply, you finally nod and step aside to let him past you.

After he’s entered your shared apartment, you return to the kitchen to your coffee machine, your pancakes long forgotten. Feeling awkward and desperately wanting to fill the silence, you wonder if you should grab an extra mug for Taehyung.

“Care for a cup?” you ask, trying to remain calm.

He nods simply, “Sure.”

You mirror his movement, turn, and stand on your tiptoes to reach the next glass.

Taehyung bites his lip at the view. Were you trying to torture him?

‘Stop,’ Taehyung told himself, ‘This is your last opportunity to resolve your issue with her. Don’t think with your dick for once.’

Eager to stop his brain from running wild, he strides forward to help you.

“Here, I got it,” he mumbles.

He comes up from behind you and easily reaches the glass from the shelf. Almost wishing you hadn’t, you feel Taehyung briefly brush against your backside, and it takes all your willpower not to moan.

Blushing profusely, you accept the mug he hands you, “Thanks,” you mumble briskly.

You move through the kitchen, mindlessly grabbing various creams and sugars for your beverage. You will say this, that barista job may have totally sucked, but it did teach you how to make a mean cup of coffee from home.

You finish putting together your cups after you ask Taehyung for his sugar and creamer preference and hand him his mug.

His brows raise after he takes a sip, “This is some of the best coffee I have ever tasted. When Yoongi makes a pot at our place, it tastes like dirt.”

Laughing a bit you reply, “I used to be a barista, and I picked up some skills.”

“I never knew you were a barista,” Taehyung ponders out loud.

Washing the finished coffee pot in the sink, you answer, “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

Taehyung pauses when you say that, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

You wave off his question and decide to change the subject, “Nothing. What did you want to talk to me about? It must have been clearly important if you came over to my place before noon. I would have expected you to sleep in after that obnoxiously loud party you threw last night. It’s a shock you didn’t receive a sound complaint.”

“We did,” Taehyung replies and quickly remembers what he wanted to talk about in the first place, “I- I wanted to say I’m sorry. I knew how important this project was to you, and I was a complete ass about it. I shouldn’t have texted you those things, and I really shouldn’t have thrown that stupid party after I invited you over to work on the project that decides our semester grades. I was a dick, and you deserve better.”

Not expecting his answer, you cock your head to the side in curiosity, “Where is all this coming from? What happened to the fuckboy who saw no problem with fucking a girl right in front of me when I barged into his room?”

Taehyung chuckled, embarrassed, “Call it a change of heart...?”

He rubs the back of his head awkwardly, “Look, I understand if you still want to try to change partners, and I won’t try to stop you. But if by some possibility you’re willing to give me a second chance, I promise I won’t let you down again.”

You thought it over for a second.

If it was any other idiot who had put you through this, you would have kicked them to the curb without a second thought. But this was Taehyung you were talking about. The man who, as much as you tried to deny it, you had been harboring some unexplained feelings for longer than you cared to admit.

You finally made your decision.

“If this is going to work,” you began, Taehyung’s eyes hopeful, “you’re going to have to swear to contribute at least half of the research and theories. There’s no way you can just bat your eyelashes and expect to get off the hook from actually helping me with this project.”

Taehyung beamed, “Yes! Yes, of course. I swear I’ll help.”

Smile forming on your face, you nod, “Alright, then. We can start working in a few minutes. Let me just go and get changed.”

You can’t stop the happiness from flowing. Did Taehyung really just hold himself accountable for his actions and apologize sincerely? Hobi and Yoongi weren’t very close before last night, but even Hobi had been able to tell you that sincerity was not exactly in Taehyung’s nature.

Practically skipping back to your room in joy, you picked out your clothes from your closet. Forgetting the earlier feelings of exhaustion you felt not even an hour ago, you rushed to the bathroom connected to your bedroom and started to get ready. You didn’t want to keep Taehyung waiting for too long.

Raising his cup to his mouth, Taehyung accidentally spills some coffee on his hands and shirt, “Oh, great.”

Taehyung searches your kitchen for napkins, and when he can’t find any, he begins to search for your apartment’s bathroom.

“Hey,” he calls out, “Where’s your bathroom? I spilled some coffee on me, and I want to clean it up.”

Too busy humming to yourself, you don’t hear Taehyung’s voice echo through your hall.

Met with silence, Taehyung opts to find the bathroom on his own. He walks down the hall and smiles at the framed photographs along the wall. Approaching an open door, he peeks his head in, gingerly.

Expecting a bathroom, his jaw drops at the room his finds instead.

Straight from his laptop screen, he sees baby pink bed sheets. Taehyung scans the room quickly, and his suspicions are confirmed when he sees the baby pink mask resting on your nightstand.

‘No way,’ Taehyung thought in disbelief.

There’s now way that the girl Taehyung hadn’t been able to get out of his mind and the girl who fucked herself on her fingers in front of an audience were the same person. Taehyung had really been infatuated with the same girl all from the start. It was too good to be true.

Not believing his eyes, he walked toward the nightstand and brushed his fingers against the soft,velvety mask. This all felt too real to be a dream. Taehyung hoped with all his might that he wasn’t dreaming. He turns and sees the camera setup for the livestreams he watched religiously.

‘I knew it wasn’t a dream,’ Taehyung told himself. Thinking back to the pictures on the wall and the man on your livestream last night, he put it all together. Jimin had to be Chim.

Humming your same tune, you open the door and nearly scream when you find Taehyung in your room looking at your camera equipment.

“W-what,” you stammer, “what are you doing here?”

With the mask still in hand, Taehyung turns with a smirk on his face, “I was looking for the bathroom, sweetheart.”

His eyes darken, “...Or should I call you Angel?”

You face pales.

“I-” you clear your throat, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Taehyung drops the mask on your nightstand and within two steps, he’s right in front of you. Your eyes shift to anywhere in the room except for him.

Grabbing your chin, he raises your gaze to meet his, “Oh, I think you do. I should know your cam persona better than anyone. After all, I am your biggest fan.”

He lets go of your chin and walks around your figure, still robe clad.

“And here I was feeling guilty for being so dirty with you, and yet,” Taehyung steps right beside you, speaking directly into your ear, “you’re just as dirty as I am.”

Eyes widen, you gulp.

“Yes or no,” Taehyung begins, “behind that shy girl act, you’ve wanted me all along,”

When you remain silent, Taehyung shouts, “Answer me!”

“Yes!” you practically squeal.

Taehyung gets closer to you, “And if I lifted up that robe of yours and felt your panties, they’d be even more soaked than they were on the stream last night.”

Face darkening to a crimson color, you mumble quietly, “Yes…”

Cocking his head to the side, Taehyung taunts further, “I’m sorry, little girl, I didn’t catch that. You’ll have to speak up.”

“Yes!” you all but shout.

Taehyung’s eyes meet you one last time for the moment of truth, “Do you want me just as much as I want you right now?”

Without a second to think, you nod your head frantically and speak, “Yes.”

That’s all the confirmation Taehyung needs as he pushes his lips on yours with fiery passion and intensity even stronger than the time he kissed you last night.

You reciprocate the feelings and move your lips against his. Your hands move to his hair and grip his scalp at the nearly overwhelming sensation.

Like last night, his hands drop to your ass before he mumbles, “Jump.”

You do as he says and jump, wrapping your legs around his waist as he brings you to your bed all while never breaking the kiss.

He drops you down on your back gently with a bounce and pulls his shirt over his head. You begin to untie your robe, but you stop and stare at the beauty that is Kim Taehyung.

You always knew he was beautiful, sure, but something about him like this before you made him that much more stunning.

Taehyung notices your gaze, “You know, I’m typically the one looking at you with that gaze.”

“Ha ha,” you say, sarcasm laced in your tone.

He smiles and climbs on top of you continuing your kiss. His slender fingers make their way down to the knot of your robe, undoing it quickly.

Once your robe is undone and pulled apart, he looks at your body. The only article of clothing you’re wearing is your lace panties.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see you like this,” Taehyung groans at the sight.

You lean up on your elbows with a matching smirk on your lips, ‘Well, don’t wait a second longer.”

Taehyung takes your advice and dives into your neck, sucking and biting marks into your sensitive skin.

His hands trail to you your hips and peel your panties down your legs. A trail of wetness strings from your dripping pussy to the panties in Taehyung’s hand. As soon as they’re in his hands, he looks at them like they’re the second greatest treasure after you. What he does next makes your jaw drop.

He lifts them to his nostrils and takes in a deep breath. You swear you could have cum right then and there from how hot he looked.

“You smell ever better than I could have imagined,” he sighs and orders, “Take off your robe.”

You quickly lean up and take off your robe as he said to. And when you’ve finished, you lay completely bare in front of Taehyung as his eyes dilate.

“I’m going to fuck you so hard, you won’t even remember Jimin’s name,” he promises, recalling your joint livestream last night.

You chuckle, repeating his words from last night, “No need to get jealous, baby. He was just the appetizer, and you’re the main dish.”

He looks down at his hands again and catches you off guard by shoving you own panties in your open mouth. You yelp as you taste your own juices.

“That should shut you up,” Taehyung leans back, admiring his work, “If you get uncomfortable with anything I do, tap me three times, and I’ll stop.”

Tongue unintentionally running over the wetness on your panties, you nod.

In awe of your body, Taehyung runs his fingers down your chest. He brushes over your nipples and continues to your thighs. He quirked an eyebrow as he noticed your reaction to his feather-light touch.

“I wouldn't have figured that a slut like you would be so sensitive,” he comments with a chuckle.

You try to reply, but your response just comes out as a muffled moan.

He brings his finger to his mouth, sucking on it gently. Pulling his finger from his lips with a pop, he drops his hand to the spot between your thighs.

You eagerly anticipate his touch after waiting what feels like hours for him to finally give you the pleasure he promised.

His free hand pushing your legs open, he brings his wet finger to your pussy, desperate for touch.

He finally makes contact with your needy cunt, inserts a finger, and begins thrusting slowly.

“Hmph,” you whine, demanding a faster pace.

He reaches forward and slaps your breast, satisfied with the way it jiggles, “Why do you think I stuffed those panties in your mouth, huh? Because I wanted you to shut up and take what I gave you like the good little whore you were for Jimin last night.”

You moan wordlessly as he adds another finger and begins to speed up the pace.

“So, what?” Taehyung questions as his fingers grow to a near brutal speed, “You’re a good girl for him and not for me? That doesn’t make Daddy very happy.”

Whimpering into the fabric, you begin to lose yourself from the feeling of Taehyung’s fingers.

You had heard rumors he had a daddy kink, but you couldn’t believe your luck when he confirmed them just now. You felt your pussy gush at the thought alone.

Muscles tightening around Taehyung’s fingers, he felt your orgasm nearing. He leaned down close to your pussy and spit, his free hand moving to rub the lubricant to your clit.

You felt like you were in heaven with his fingers rubbing your clit and scissoring in and out of you. You were beyond cloud nine at this point. You couldn’t imagine what it would feel like once you actually came.

Drool coming from around your mouth, you moaned and tried to get Taehyung to go faster. To your surprise, he actually listened.

His fingers felt like ice against your burning skin. He smirked as you whimpered and withered beneath him.

About to cum, you clenched your eyes shut, preparing for the bliss.

However, your eyes shot open when Taehyung’s fingers were removed from your pussy the second you were about to cum, effectively denying your orgasmic bliss completely. You looked at him, pissed.

“Oh, you didn’t like that?” Taehyung teases, “Well, I wasn’t overly fond of you fucking another man last night in this the very bed I’m about to fuck you in now. Looks like we’re both disappointed.”

About to pull the panties out of your mouth and tell him off, he flips you over on your hands and knees and groans at the sight of the new angle. Now he can see your juices running down your thighs and your cunt, glistening with arousal.

Taehyung purposefully puts you through a painstaking amount of time to wait for his cock as he takes off his pants leisurely.

Tempting him, you push your ass higher in the air for him to see, wiggling your backside for him approval.

“Very cute,” he delivers a hard spank on your ass and you shriek in shock, “but acting anymore like a slut won’t save you now.”

In the blink of an eye, he’s behind you and rubbing his cock up against your folds. You both let out moans in unison at the mind blowing feeling.

When he finally pushes the head of his cock in, your eyes roll back. If the head of his cock felt this good, you had no idea what the rest of it would feel like.

He hissed through his teeth and bit his lip, “Fuck, have you always been this tight?”

Before you could moan in reply, he shoves the rest of his gigantic cock into you, and your entire body is pushed forward into the mattress.

You practically scream at the feeling.

“Oh, Taehyung, your cock feels so big and good inside me,” you try to moan but instead it just comes out as gibberish.

Taehyung scoffs at your inability to speak, “Feel good, my greedy whore? I assume so with how tight you’re clenching around me.”

Lowering your head and pushing your back out more, you take the bliss Taehyung gives you.

His cock feels so big it could rip you in half. Your eyes droop at the incredible feeling of Taehyung pulling out of you completely and bottoming out again.

Satisfied with the feeling, Taehyung sets a rigorous rhythm of pounding into your cunt. The sound of his body meeting yours fills the room and is absolutely filthy. You love it.

“You’re not getting too comfortable, are you, slut?” Taehyung tsks, “Daddy can’t have that…”

Taehyung reaches out and grabs a fistful of your hair and tugs on it as he fucks into you.

Your body is completely under his control, and you love this feeling. Every one of your senses is overwhelmed with Taehyung, and you have no choice but to lay and accept the pain-fueled pleasure he is giving you.

Grunting, Taehyung leans to whisper in your ear, “Jimin could never make you feel this good. He’s known you for years, and yet he doesn’t know your body like Daddy does.”

Nodding mindlessly, you’re too fucked out to respond with anything even if you didn’t have your own panties shoved in your mouth.

Having grown tired of your wordless responses, Taehyung reaches toward and takes the saliva-soaked panties out of your mouth and tosses them behind him. He reminds himself to take them later.

“Tae-” you begin and are met with Taehyung squeezing your nipples tightly.

“What did you call me again, baby girl?” he asks with a dark chuckle as your body quivers.

“Daddy,” you correct, “I’m not going to last long at this pace.”

Taehyung coos, “Aw, my baby. That’s alright just cum on my cock.”

Not used to Taehyung’s sickly sweet voice, your brows furrow. Although you’re too focused on chasing your orgasm to question his tone.

Grabbing the sheets until your knuckles turn white, you begin to meet his hips with your own as you push back into him.

“I- I’m going to cum, Daddy,” you whine.

He leans forward and rubs your clit with the hand that’s not tugging on your scalp. That’s the push you need to go over the edge.

Your jaw drops again when your pleasure is ripped away from you yet again. Taehyung stills his hips against yours and removes his hand from your aching clit.

Frustrated beyond belief, an irritated huff leaves your lips.

Taehyung lets out a laugh, “Wow, you really thought I’d let you cum so easily? It’s a good thing that the school girl livestream you did was just an act. You’re not that bright are you, baby? You’re just a dumb little slut for Daddy’s cock.”

You turn over on your back and lean up on your elbows to face him, “What the fuck is wrong with you? You talk all this shit about making me feel good, and I haven’t cum a single time!”

Taehyung silences you with a hand on your throat, “Clearly I need to teach you some manners when you speak to Daddy.”

He shoves you down on the bed.

“Lesson one…” he trails off as he shoves his cock into you again.

The movement makes your eyes widen, and you’re even more shocked when he immediately resumes the vicious movement of his hips.

His cock slams mercilessly into your sopping cunt, and all you can do is whine and moan incoherently.

“Who’s making you feel this good, hm?” Taehyung questions as he fucks you.

“Y-yo.” you stammer.

Taehyung raises a hand and strikes your clit with three open fingers, sending a ripple through your body and a scream from the back of your throat.

“Y-you are, Daddy!” You shout as your legs quake.

“Damn right I am,” Taehyung grunts as his hips stutter, indicating his oncoming orgasm.

You’re more desperate to cum than you have ever been in your life. Tears build in your eyes at the blinding pleasure you feel. Taehyung notices this and tightens his grip around your neck at the sight. The restricted oxygen only makes your eyes water more.

“Aw, would you look at that? My baby wants to cum so badly, she’s crying,” Taehyung mocks with a sadistic smile on his face.

Still keeping his hand on your throat, he brings his free hand to your cheek and collects a tear on the pad of his finger. Then, he brings the tip of his finger to his lips, sucking off the salty liquid. Your eyes dilate and your face flushes profusely.

After he’s sucked his finger clean, he drops his hand to your sensitive clit.

“Want more pleasure, baby?” he questions with an evil glint in his eye, “Be careful what you wish for…”

He starts rubbing your clit at a speed that makes you see double.

“Yes! Fuck yes, Daddy. Please, I’ve been so good. Please let me cum,” you cry out.

Taehyung’s brows furrow as beads of sweat drip down his face, “Not yet.”

The tears stream freely down your face at this point. Although you felt yourself embellishing the tears, because you could sense how turned on it made the man on top of you.

“I can’t hold it anymore,Daddy!” you bawl.

Taehyung releases your neck and opts to play with your nipples as he grunts, “Go on, cum for Daddy.”

He feels your cunt squeeze his hard cock as your orgasm crashes on you. You bit your lip so hard, he was sure it would bleed. Similarly to in the livestreams he was obsessed with, you clenched your fists in the bed sheets, and your toes curled.

“Thank you, Daddy! You wept as you reached your high.

You felt euphoric. Never in your life had you cum so hard. Not even Jimin, whose body was also chiseled and sculpted by gods, could bring you this much pleasure. You’d never let Taehyung hear you say this, but you had cum at least ten times harder after he had delayed and denied your orgasms.

Taehyung reaches his high shortly after you, he moans and pulls out just in time to cum all over your chest, some ribbons of cum even landing on your chin.

He groans and falls beside you on the bed. A moment passes, and he looks over at you just in time to see you scoop some cum off your chest with your finger and place it in your mouth, humming at the salty taste.

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” Taehyung concurs, “We just finished fucking, and you’re already determined to get me hard again.”

You let out a laugh and lay beside him, beat.

Turning your head, you look over at him, “You weren’t kidding, right? You are actually going to help me with the project?”

Taehyung nods, “I promise.”

You pause for a second before smirking, “I never knew you watched my shows.”

Laughing, Taehyung’s cheeks turn a bit pink, “Could you blame me? You’re ridiculously hot.”

Scoffing at his response, you gather your strength and straddle his lap, “If I’m so ridiculously hot, then maybe you wouldn’t mind going another round?”

You’re joking, but Taehyung shakes his head, absolute.

“No can do,” Taehyung replies, “We’ve got a project to finish.”

Jaw dropping and eyes widening, you laugh, “Oh so now you wanna work on the project.”

Taehyung clutches his heart, jokingly, “What can I say? You inspired me.”

You two are interrupted by Jimin laughing outside the door and Hoseok groaning.

“I won the bet, Hoseok, you owe me twenty bucks.”

---

there u go <3

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scifrey · 5 years ago

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2019 Writing Round Up

The new year is here, and with it everyone is talking about what they wrote this past year. The last quarter of 2019 was a brutal rollercoaster for me, emotionally and personally, so it’s good for me to have the chance to sit here and reflect on what I accomplished and the good things that happened too.

2019 started with receiving a grant from the Toronto Arts Council for The Maddening Science – said grant went to research materials for the novel, a new computer, printer, and keyboard, and paying off some debts. But 2019 also started in a place of utter burn-out, having slammed through writing, editing, and publishing five big novels in three years, as well as rewriting a feature film and completing the scripts for three seasons of a webseries.

I was also working two dayjobs – one first thing in the morning, for an hour and a half, and then a standard eight-hour shift in the evenings which got me home at around 10pm – so my sleep schedule was a mess and I was having trouble not only making time to write, but concentrating when I did have the time.

I started the year in a place of complete exhaustion and mild frustration that neither of my book series had really caught on, and as my agent once said, “burned out from tried to break out.” I’m not happy to say that I think I still occupy that place a full year later; but I’ve had the opportunity to rest more, and begin to refill my creative well again, and to reclaim my writing space by no longer needing a roommate.

I’m not quite there yet – turns out finishing two series in four years really takes it out of you – but maybe in a few more months I’ll be ready to sit down and begin to spin out a new novel. In the mean time, I’ve got lots of irons in the fire, as you’ll see.

January

The first third of 2019 was dedicated to rewriting The Skylark’s Sacrifice a second time. I’d rewritten it in the last third of 2018 and my editor ended up agreeing that while the rewrite was exactly what she asked for, we should not have gone down that street in the first place. It was what was asked of me, but it didn’t work. So I took it back to the drawing board, and started the re-write all over again.

I also published WORDS FOR WRITERS: The DO-ING Trap.

I finished the edits/polish on A Woman of the Sea, which I had begun in October 2018 and loaded the book onto Wattpad in preparation for serializing it.

February

I spent February rewriting and jobhunting. I tried to write a short story and Did Not Do Well. It’s half done and likely to end up on the Pile Of Unfinished Tales.

At least I got some new words on the page with WORDS FOR WRITERS – Beta Readers.

And I began releasing A Woman of the Sea a chapter at a time on Valentine’s Day.

March

I completed the Skylark rewrites and handed them over to Reuts Publications. I also published WORDS FOR WRITERS – From Signing to Signing.

At this point I tried to start The Maddening Science, the book I received a Toronto Art’s Council Grant for in 2018, and bashed out a few chapters and a few scenes. But something was off about it, and I couldn’t pinpoint why, so I kept going into the file and only put a few hundred words in here and there. I couldn’t really sit down and dig in, and because I don’t believe in Writer’s Block as a mystical magical reason for why people can’t write (there are always reasons), I had to step back to try to figure out why I was struggling. I assumed it was probably because I was in the middle of job interviews and decided to try again later.

April

I started a new copywriting job, leaving my other two dayjobs, and it sucked up all my brainpower and creativity and made it very hard to want to sit down and compose yet more words at the end of the day.

I resumed working piecemeal on The Maddening Science, pecking out what I could one molasses-slow sentence at a time. I realized that the incidents in the news regarding the current political comment and the toxic white supremacist misogyny that is rampant in our society today has made it very hard to figure out how to tell a responsible story about a supervillain as the protagonist.

I’m still working on that. In the mean time, while I figure out how to restructure the tale, the book and the progress blog are on hiatus.

May

Still brain-dead from work, I only managed to bash out WORDS FOR WRITERS: How do social media and writing/publishing work together?

June

There were some final edits on The Skylark’s Sacrifice to be discussed, but I really did nothing this month beyond marketing pushes and watching all the webseries I judged for TOWebfest.

July

The director of my feature film, To a Stranger, was going to start shopping the script around to executive producers, so before he did that I got some actorfriends together to do a table read. The read, and their feedback, revealed some character motivation gaps in the film, and I set about organizing their notes and figuring out how to solve the issues.

I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS – How To Write a Synopsis.

This was also the month of TOWebfest, the festival itself, and I spent a lovely day with fellow creators and spoke to some executive producers about my own webseries to try to garner interest.

I was a guest at Pretty Heroes Con for the first time and LOVED it. It’s great to celebrate strong female leads in SF/F and I loved Sailor Moon as a kid, so I was in nostalgic nirvana. It was lovely to introduce those Girl Power-loving fans to The Skylark’s Saga.

August

I restructured and rewrote To a Stranger, added extra characters and extra scenes to clear up some character motivation in the screenplay. It’s now back with the director and I hope to hear that he’s got a production house and an Exec attached to the project soon.

I appeared at FanExpo Toronto to do some panels, sell some books, and judged the short fiction contest. I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How to Create a Pitch Package.

September

The Skylark’s Sacrifice was published! Yay! I had a wonderful launch party at Bakka Phoenix, and got to simultaneously launch the incredible book trailer for the duology animated by Elizabeth Hirst to a song by Victor Sierra. Friends Adrianna Prosser and Eric Metzloff, and Danforth Brewery made it extra special.

I also got to read at Word on the Street, which was been a career-long dream, reading on the new Across the Universe Stage.

However, September was also the month when I lost the copywriting job. I saw it coming, so I was shocked when it happened and how it went down, but not surprised. I wasn’t fitting in well with the team, the original project I had been hired for had been vetoed by the execs, work was being taken away from me and given to freelancers, and I didn’t have the training they wanted (though that makes me wonder why they hired me in the first place.) In retrospect it’s been a blessing, as the workplace was not at all a good fit for me and was slowly becoming toxic, but at the time it was a devastating blow to my confidence and my coffers.

Just a few days after I was fired, on my 37th birthday, I won a Watty Award for A Woman of the Sea. Happy birthday to me! I was offered a place among the Wattpad Stars program and accepted – and wow, is there a lot of paperwork for that – and I’m still trying to figure out what benefits the program offers. (Though I’m pretty chuffed with my free Canva Premium subscription!) A Woman of the Sea was featured on the home page as an Undiscovered Gem and as of today has about 82k reads. Whoa!

I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How to Plan a Series.

October

I spent most of the month sleeping and crying and working through how I felt about getting fired. When one identifies oneself as a writer, to finally get a job in writing was a thrill and felt like a confirmation that although I was struggling with my next book, I was a writer and I’d get through it. Being fired from the job – even though the reason was an exec decision to eliminate my project and thus my role – felt like a very personal blow. I wasn’t a writer after all. (Or at least, that’s what it felt like).

This had me thinking long and hard. Especially about where I wanted my writing career to go next – as much I’ve been writing in the realm of SF/F the past decade, I’ve begun to realize that was I really am is a Character-Driven Romance writer. Romance set in spec fic and fantasy realms, sure, but Romance and Character Work are my wheelhouse and how I should be selling myself.

This realization has been pretty freeing because it means that the frustrations and roadblocks I’ve been coming up against can maybe be dissolved by reframing my brand and rethinking my career map.

Wattpad added the sample of City By Night that’s on Wattpad to their Halloween Reads list on the homepage and I decided to put the whole novella up on the site for people to read. Read it now, though. It won’t stay up forever as the eBook rights to the novel are signed with an indie publisher. This is just a limited-time promotion.

And knowing that readers were asking what I would be posting next on Wattpad after A Woman of the Sea, I rejigged Triptych for the site and started serializing it from the start. You can read it here. This story also won’t stay up forever, for the same reason.

I also started serializing Words for Writers on Wattpad. I won’t be copying over all 75+ articles I have on my website, just the ones that are specifically useful for Watties.

I also polished a webseries and sent it to a producer with a major broadcaster after our convo at TOWebfest for consideration. I’ve followed up but there’s no reply. I’ll follow up again in January 2020 but I can pretty well assume that No Answer is my ‘No’ Answer.

I am thinking about maybe pitching it as a graphic novel in the future, though I’m going to have to reach out to my friends who write them for publishers to figure out how to put at pitch together.

November

In 2017 I handed over a YA contemporary re-telling of “Northanger Abbey” to my agent, and it was lukewarmly received by both her and the handful of editors she showed it to. It was then shelved for possible future reworking.

In the first part of the NaNoWriMo month, I decided to tackle this reworking, and I was still wrestling mentally with The Maddening Science. This reworking was inspired a lot by reading Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston in October, and realizing that the tone I’d been going for with my narrator hadn’t been irreverent or GenZ-y enough for the story I was trying to tell, and not grounded enough in the technologies and social media that my modern-day Catherine Morland would have access to.

I reworked the Pitch Document for the novel, now currently called “Title TBA”, and got to chapter seven during NaNo. I’ve got some thinking to do about structure for the novel, and how far into using Social Media As A Storytelling Tool I want to go with the idea, but generally speaking I’m pretty pleased with the result of the rewrites.

Partway through NaNo, it occurred to me that there was another story that my Wattpad readers were asking for, and one that would be a lot of fun to write. In A Woman of the Sea, my fictional Regency-era Jane-Austen-analogue authoress Margaret Goodenough writes her debut novel “The Welshman’s Daughters”. As I describe this non-existent novel in A Woman of the Sea, it’s a gothic romance that’s very Elizabeth Gaskell-and-Jane Austen-esque in terms of it being a character study driven romance, with some of the fun high melodrama and gothic tone of Anne Radcliffe. And, in the world of A Woman of the Sea, it’s the first queer kiss in Classic Western Literature.

A handful of readers have asked where they can find this book, or have confessed to going to the library to ask for it, only to learn that it’s not real. I made it up.

And I thought… well, why not make it real?

So I’m working on the pitch doc and the first chapter now, to see if a) this is something I want to pursue and b) this is something that will help me break through my burn-out slump. I hope it will, but I think I still need to take time to rest before I really push into it.

And I still have the “Title TBA” rewrites to complete.

December

I published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How Do I Get An Agent?, and spent the rest of the month just trying to chill. I’ve become a bit of a reluctant reader, so I am trying to push myself to read a little each day, to remind myself why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place.

A Woman of the Sea was turned down for Paid Stories, unfortunately, because of the structure of the romance. The Stars Team explained that romance stories like this one, with one romantic partner in the first half of the book, and a different one in the second (a la Brigit Jones’ Diary) doesn’t tend to do well on Paid because readers are reluctant to shell out for a romance where they don’t meet the HEA partner until later. It’s heartbreaking to hear, because I was really hoping that this might become a viable stream of income for me. At least the team who turned it down were very kind and expressed how much they loved the story in and of itself.

But no matter – onwards and upwards!

What’s ahead for 2020

Well, I’m not sure. This has been a really, really difficult year and I have really, really struggled with trying to figure out who I am and what I want, both in life and as a writer.

Certainly, there will be lot of hard thinking about the future of my writing career. I have ideas that I love and want to pursue, but this post-firing-return-to-the-job-hunt-depression is killing my desire to create. And honestly, the fact that I’ve worked so hard for so many years and haven’t managed to get any sort of break-through or cultural foothold or ability to even really to pay my bills with this job is disheartening. I’m still paying more in marketing every year than I’m making in Royalties.

However, I have some new opportunities on the horizon – conversations happening behind closed doors, as well as Divine Paradox Films still working toward filming To A Stranger, and Alpaca vs Llama shopping The Skylark’s Song as a teens animated series. And the webseries I wrote is under consideration with a new production team, so I can keep my fingers crossed.

Who knows, perhaps the rewritten “Title TBA” might be just the thing to propel my work into a realm where I’m really earning money. Though I had originally envisioned it as the first of a series, the more I work and think on it, the more I feel like it would be best as a stand-alone. I think it would slap a lot harder if it was a one-off.

And I am genuinely liking the plot of The Welshman’s Daughters, and all the research reading and viewing I am doing to get the tone and mood of the book right (please recommend me your favourite Gothic Romances – film, TV, or books!)

But I’m not going to rush anything. It’s nice to be able to remember how to putter with a book and have no looming, razor-blade deadlines hanging over my neck.

2020 will be, I hope, a year of renewed creativity, motivation, and the year where I complete at least one of the three novel projects I’ve started.

For now, I think I’m going to go have a nap.

If you want to stay up to date with my writing and happenings, sign up for my newsletter.

#J.M. Frey #about the author #words for writers #writing round up #2019 writing round up #writing #writing community #writeblr

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gillzilla · 5 years ago

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A Treatise on the aTROSity, Including How Hope Came to Me in the Form of The Lego Movie 2, Knives Out, and Little Women

I will start out by saying that I have never made a real, detailed post on Tumblr, mainly because social media kind of scares me. But the Reylo community's amazing kindness, strength, openness, and willingness to speak the truth in their writing over the last week and a half is honestly what has gotten me through the heartbreak and depression caused by the stabbing in the chest that was this movie. I am one of the people who loves Kylo/Ben Solo because I have mental health conditions and an abuse/trauma history within my family, which is also why the holidays are hard for me, so a big thanks to the people in charge of the story for TROS for making it even harder this year. After a week and a half of legitimate mourning for the butchering of the themes of Star Wars and of all the characters, but particularly the sequel trilogy characters, I am ready to add my two cents to all that has already been written about this movie.

First off, I have not been a Star Wars fan for my whole life. My parents tried to introduce me to the original trilogy as a kid by taking me to see A New Hope in the movie theater for the 20th anniversary screening in 1997. I fell asleep for most of it and was terrified by the trash compactor scene, so you could say the movie did not resonate with me. It actually wasn't until Phantom Menace came out that I started to get attached to Star Wars. So many older fans love to shit on that movie, and it certainly has many flaws, but a lot of us who were around the same age as Anakin when that movie came out and are now adults have started to speak up about how the movie was a gateway into Star Wars for us. Anakin gave me a window into the Star Wars universe that I could understand and relate to. I could relate to Anakin being a kind-hearted kid who wanted to help others and just wanted adults he could look up to, and I liked the podracing scenes. As with every single other sci-fi/fantasy hero's journey story that I loved as a kid, I empathized with and related to a male hero. Now, the wooden dialogue/acting/directing of Attack of the Clones and the tragic ending of Revenge of the Sith that left me so emotionally devastated that I vividly remember calling my friend to tell her I was so depressed I couldn't focus on studying for my eighth grade English final, kind of took me out of Star Wars again. There had been a spark there, but at that point I figured, eh, I guess it's not really for me after all.

I didn't rediscover Star Wars until the end of the first semester of my freshman year of college. This was a very difficult time in my life, as I was in what I would now consider to be a mental health crisis that unfortunately lasted for five years because I was too ashamed and uneducated about mental health to seek out help. I was very, very lonely during that time. It was close to finals week and I was sick, so as I sat in my dorm room I decided, why not pop in those DVDs of the original trilogy that I got at Costco last month. After watching them, I remember thinking, "Why have I not been watching these my whole life???" The original trilogy hooked me after that point and I started watching the movies every year around Christmas in commemoration of my rediscovery of them.

I was just as surprised as anyone when I found out that Disney bought Lucasfilm and that they were going to make a sequel trilogy. I had thought there would never be any more Star Wars, so I was overjoyed, though tentative, because I knew that though I loved Star Wars, it also had a tendency to make missteps that were somewhat endemic to sci-fi/fantasy hero's journey stories, such as poorly written dialogue, emphasis on ridiculous plot points that took away from the deeper overall themes, lack of diverse characters, and objectification/misogyny against female characters (I do not like watching Return of the Jedi because I hate, HATE the Jabba's palace stuff for what they did to Leia, honestly they gave Leia nothing interesting to do in that whole movie basically, but that's a whole nother essay).

So I went into The Force Awakens not really knowing what to expect. But oh my god, was I blown away. I am not lying when I say that I cried for at least an hour after the scene where Rey and Kylo are both reaching out for the legacy saber and it goes to Rey as the music swells, oh my god. I FINALLY realized what it meant to feel seen in the stories that I loved. My whole life I had been attached to and empathizing with male heroes, because they were pretty much the only heroes out there. To see Rey as this amazing female heroine who was not objectified and was a compelling character with an intriguing backstory that I related to as a child with a trauma history who often grew up feeling lonely, and to see that she was going to be the main Jedi in this new trilogy, I was overjoyed. It gave me hope. And then, on top of that, we got Adam Driver. Need I say any more. So many people have written about what an absolutely incredible actor Adam is, and I swear he is the only actor who could have pulled off the role of Kylo/Ben. The first time I saw TFA I didn't catch all the nuances of the character and his dynamic with Rey, but something about him really intrigued me (and made me want to watch everything Adam had ever been in). My love for TFA led me to start investing time in the online Star Wars fandom, which I never considered myself to be a part of previously, as the fandom had always reeked of being a "no girls allowed" type of zone. I found out about amazing, female-led podcasts that I started listening to every week and whose hosts I value just as much as my friends. I also started following the Reylo fandom on Tumblr. Learning more about the mythology behind the sequel trilogy, including how the creators were writing Rey's story as a heroine's journey and her and Kylo/Ben as dual protagonists, added so much to my understanding of what was going on in the storytelling and gave me the words to describe why I was connecting with these stories so much. I can honestly say that Star Wars and the Reylo fandom generally have been instrumental in helping me to get through the last four years, which have been a very difficult and isolating period in my life.

And now I'm up to TROS. As so many have said, the vast majority of it is a steaming pile of trash. People have done such an amazing job of breaking down why this story and how it treated its characters and retconned the beautiful story and themes that Rian gave us in TLJ was so painful for us. Many have pointed out that this movie is a result of catering to the most toxic portion of the Star Wars fandom, the "dudebros." Going further, I want to state that, whether consciously or not on the part of the cis, straight, white, male writers/director/CEO of Disney, this movie is a reassertion of masculinist ideologies. I want to clarify that when I talk about "masculinist" vs. feminist ideologies, I am talking about how our society and culture defines "masculine" vs. "feminine" ideas, traits, etc. Gender has nothing to with biological determinism and is socially and culturally constructed. Masculinist ideologies include beliefs such as extreme individualism, competition, "us vs. them" dichotomies, and power and value being defined based on hierarchy, which necessitates the use of violence to perpetuate the hierarchy. Feminist ideologies include valuing community and collaboration, connection and empathy, the idea that every person has inherent worth regardless of their productivity, actions, mistakes, class, race, sexuality, etc., respect for all people, and an abolishing of hierarchies. Masculinist ideologies are those of the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy, which, as we can see playing out in various ways all over the world, has been rearing its head in a very obvious and ugly fashion the past few years (though of course it has been around for wayyyyy longer than that).

Anyone who has been reading the fantastic analyses of TROS by those in the Reylo community can likely see how TLJ and even the story as it was set up in TFA were communicating feminist ideologies. One big example of this is Kylo Ren/Ben himself as a character. As so many have eloquently described, this is a complex character that commits atrocities, but is shown to be a victim of immense abuse and trauma that was failed by everyone in his family when he needed them most. This is a character that, had he been able to have the full and well-written redemption arc that he deserved, would have had an extremely moving story of how toxic masculinity and masculinist ideology is destroying boys and men by keeping them from being full people who can express all of their emotions, be vulnerable, and be open to love and connection. Reylo resonates so much with me not because it is about Rey supposedly doing all the work to change Kylo in some sort of toxic, co-dependent way, but because Rey and Kylo/Ben were always equals to each other. They both pushed each other to be better, more whole people. The wonderful work that folks have put into analyzing the mythology behind the feminine and masculine symbolism in TFA and TLJ (again, to clarify, "masculine" and "feminine" being culturally defined terms), and even the more obvious original goal of the sequel trilogy for the force to finally be balanced by Rey and Ben themselves becoming balanced between dark and light all relate to these gender issues. Balancing the dark and light sides of the force is also about balancing the "masculine" and "feminine" aspects within themselves.

This is a beautiful message that has so many real world implications. In our world, for lack of a better term, everything "feminine" is basically shat on. Patriarchy hates anything "feminine." This is how sexism plays out, but it also has to do with the ideologies that we believe in, down to our basic understandings of empathy and whether or not people have inherent value. The world would certainly be a better place if the "masculine" and "feminine" were better balanced, specifically if "feminine," and feminist, ideologies were more valued. This is what makes TROS feel like a stab directly in the heart. This was a trilogy that clearly did have feminist messages, regardless of DLF's bullshitting about Star Wars being "for everyone." Star Wars has always been progressive, the original trilogy is about rebels taking on fascists for god's sake. DLF's pandering to the most toxic part of the fandom for TROS is therefore representative of a much larger cultural, social, and political battle that is going on around the world right now. We are at a turning point for humanity in which we are starting to face the devastation that has occurred due to masculinist ideologies being the most highly regarded and utilized by those in power, but those in power are also trying to maintain their power by strongly reasserting those ideologies. So I would argue that this is not just about one movie that I and many other people didn't like. This movie is a small representation of a much larger battle that we're fighting.

Now, that reassertion of masculinist ideology that was the stabbing in the heart of watching TROS has made me super, duper depressed for the past week or so because, as others have pointed out, it communicated to me that no matter how hard we fight, the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy will reassert itself and win in the end. It even re-triggered the pain I've felt over the past few years since our current president came into office in the U.S. However, as I near the end of this long treatise I would like to share the stories that gave me hope over these past few days. I re-watched The Lego Movie 2 the other day, and that story gave me hope. The "bad guy" in that story is a literal embodiment of toxic masculinity/masculinist ideology, and it ends with the male hero realizing that he doesn't need to sacrifice his humanity and connections to other people to be a hero, or even just to be a man. How to Train Your Dragon 3 also told a story about a male hero/leader that rejects masculinist ideology. Additionally, I was given hope by Rian's amazing movie, Knives Out, which I went to see solely because people on Tumblr recommended it (thank you folks!). Rian had a clear theme and vision for this story that was about exposing and dissecting what I would call "toxic whiteness," and what it does to a family and those around them. And lastly, I saw Greta Gerwig's incredible adaptation of Little Women today, and that gave me hope because one of its main themes is about the struggle that (cis, heterosexual) women have in asserting themselves as full humans with talents, dreams and goals for their lives outside of being in romantic relationships, but also wanting to have romantic relationships at the same time. As has been said by so many, "STRONG" WOMEN CAN FALL IN LOVE AND HAVE ROMANTIC/SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS. Feminism is about giving all people the chance to be fully human, and for heterosexual women that includes being able to have a relationship with a man and still be valued and respected for everything that we are outside of that relationship. The above mentioned stories, and others (She-Ra, Dragon Prince, AtLA & Legend of Korra, I'm sure there are others) give me hope that there are creators out there that are communicating feminist themes, even in big-budget movies that lots of people go to see. We need more of this. Tied to this is that THE HEROINE'S JOURNEY OF THE SEQUEL TRILOGY SHOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN/DIRECTED BY A WOMAN/WOMEN. Folks, we need the opportunities to tell our own stories. All of the diverse folks out there, if you are a creator, please keep on creating! We need you out there and we value all of the beautiful, integral work that you do!

So in sum, I'm not going to let what happened with TROS ruin my love of Star Wars or of the sequel trilogy. The story belongs to the fans now, and there are so many of us out there to care for it. You better be sure that I will never stop speaking up about how wronged we were by TROS, that is the hill I will die on. But I am not giving up hope and I hope that you will also join me in not giving up hope. As Poe stated so well in TLJ (with one minor adjustment), "We are the spark that will light the fire that will burn the [patriarchy] down." End of treatise.

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queen-susans-revenge · 6 years ago

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How to Fix Men

I don’t think I’ve posted this here before, but I might’ve: it’s an original ficlet I wrote a few years back. I actually misremembered and thought I’d written it right after the Trump pussy-grabbing tapes came out, but looking at the dates, it was several months before. Anyway the story is an...unsubtle allegorical angry-feminist thing, but it was concerned with (as I continue to be concerned with now) the question of finding a narrative for my sons that will put them on the right path. In the story I invoked four avatars of femininity to deliver four blessings, to steer my sons well. So the title is angry, and to some extent so is the conclusion: Lorelei is meant to be an avatar of sexual selection and the kind of biological arms-race that leads to corkscrew vaginas in ducks--except that Lorelei, as a siren, evolves toward ambush predation and fangs. And it’s hard to blame her, but there’s always the chance in any war that the two sides will negotiate peace, isn’t there? Trigger warnings for all kinds of gender-war related things, including rape, misogyny and misandry

How to Fix Men “And why haven’t we done it sooner? I mean, that’s the question, right? The thing that we’re all not saying.” Lorelei picked at the label of her beer and splashed her fish-tail in the gutter. She was blond and plump and gorgeous, her breasts completely overflowing those two scallop shells she insisted on using for a bra. The effect was devastatingly sexy, but the others were wise to her, and didn’t give her any opening to perform flustered, blushing embarrassment over her own mostly-nudity.

“I don’t think this topic should be off-limits,” said Moira, the moderator, carefully: “but we have to be careful to avoid victim-blaming and derailment.” She said this without looking up from her knitting, which in this context constituted a move as blatantly aggressive as a knife between the teeth would’ve been for the sirens. Moira was the head bitch in charge.

“I’m just saying,” said Lorelei. “The historical subjugation of women could not have happened in the face of an organized and spirited resistance. We’re a little more than half of the population, and we’re their moms. Boys adore their moms, they get tattoos about it.” Moira dropped, or perled, or did whatever it was she was doing. The finished end of her scarf (was it a scarf?) trailed in the gurgling run-off of the street, growing increasingly darkened and tattered. Her skein of yarn twisted down the block and disappeared around the corner. “Do we have a talking stick this time?” she asked mildly. “If there’s a talking stick, somebody pass it to Kore.” “Kore doesn’t talk,” said Orlando tartly. She was the third woman, tall and rangy, her limbs artfully arranged in a tangle as she perched on the sidewalk curb. “You’ve got me, kiddo. You’ve always had me.” The other third woman (she would have been the fourth, except that mythic numbers of women are only allowed to cluster in groups of three, seven, nine, or twelve) said: “I’ll talk.” Lorelei stopped a twig in the gutter with the trailing end of one of her fins, plucked it out and handed it to the other third woman. The other third woman’s fingers were bone, made of shadow and cold wanting. “I didn’t say no,” the shadow-girl said, spinning the twig around her skeletal fingers like a cheerleader’s baton. “I didn’t realize I had to. I thought that he would look at me—stiff a board, silent as the grave, crying a little bit—and he would have cared. But he never even looked. He says he did but he didn’t.” “That’s Eurydice,” said Moira, not unkindly. “You’re Kore today.” The shadow-girl flickered and sniffed. “Sorry,” she said. “There’s too many of me sometimes. I can’t remember.” “Are you sure Kore didn’t want to be carried away?” Lorelei said, and then hastily added—because the others were glaring death—“I mean, I believe you. I do! I just thought, sometimes, the leather biker-type, you know. I wouldn’t mind.” “You would,” said Kore, her chrysanthemum eyes shedding petals from her skull, “if you were just all seized up and scared and waiting for him to notice, and he never did and then it was over. You might pretend for a while that you didn’t mind, but you would. It does a number on you.” Moira looked up. “Why?” she said mildly. “Why should it matter so much? More than a skinned knee or any of the other crappy things that happen to us all.” “Because you feel like you were never even a person to him. Nothing more than a shadow. Maybe nothing more than that to anybody.” Kore turned the twig over in her white-bone fingers, then held it out. “I’m sorry. I’m done. I don’t want this anymore.” After a long moment Orlando took the talking stick, and they all tried to hide their sighs of relief. “Moira’s right, though,” she said in her husky voice. “There’s a lot of ways of being hurt by other people.” “And we still want men,” said Lorelei, anxiously. “Right? We’re not talking about just…” She trailed off. “A clean slate? No,” Moira said without dropping a stitch. “No such thing. Women come from men, men come from women. Women are men sometimes, right, Orlando?” “A person is what a person says they are.” Orlando’s voice was nothing but spun-sugar, and Moira looked discomfited. “I could tell you. I could tell you, but you wouldn’t hear.” “So how do we fix them?” said Lorelei. “There’s got to be a way.” Moira gave a twist of her needles, pulling her knitting out of the sewage. It dripped darkly onto her knees. “Make a wish,” she said. They were all silent, for a moment, as the gutter-river ran on. Then Lorelei pulled out a single iridescent scale and placed it delicately on the dripping fibrous pile. “Be brave,” she said. “Ask for what you want. Protect those you love. Be manly and be brave.” Kore leaned over and let her grave-breath stir the knitted mass. “Be wise,” she said. A single chrysanthemum petal fell from her skull, like a tear. “Listen in the silence. Look into the dark. Be manly and be wise.” Orlando laid a long, lacquered fingernail on the pile. “Be kind,” she said, her voice deep and rich. “You are not lessened by difference, you are not threatened by change. Be manly and be kind.” When she pulled back, a flake of mauve color remained, glossy and perfect. And at that Moira gathered the whole ball up, twisting and wringing out the dirty water. “Be afraid,” she said briskly, “or I will come back and consume your hearts on the battlefield. You have been coddled too long. Be manly and be afraid.” “Moira,” the others said, reproachfully and almost in sync. But Moira merely handed over the thing they’d made to Lorelei–and the gutter mermaid accepted the whole sodden, trailing mess with open arms, pressing it to her shell-clad bosom. “Beautiful one,” said Moira. “All of our hopes go in your hands. Make them worthy of you.” Lorelei smiled, exposing row upon row of shark-white teeth. “I will,” she said. “I always have.”

#fic #original fic #how to fix men #cw: rape #cw: discourse #cw: misandry #cw: misogyny

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lavenderandsage · 6 years ago

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Behind the Scenes - Episode Two

There was darkness at first.

A bleak nothingness if anything.

But then, a slow, sluggish awareness. An ebbing spasm evolving into a stabbing pain in her neck, an achy stiffness in her legs that begged to be stretched out. She blinked, assessing her environment and groaning lowly. She tilted her head back to an upright position and found that she still remained upright against the wall, her lanky legs sprawled out in front of her. Next to her, Jughead slumped over in a heap on his side, his feet pressed up against her thigh and his right bicep used as a pillow. The screensaver on his forgotten laptop changed slide to slide still but remained toppled over in front of him on the floor.

She gasped loudly. It was morning. She didn’t need a watch to tell her she was already late.

The sleeping boy stirred and groaned lowly, pulling his knees into his body and attempting to sit upright. “Oh, god,” he rasped out. “Ow.” He rubbed the back his tender neck.

Sage jumped to her feet hastily, scrambling for her rucksack. “Oh no, I fell asleep. We fell asleep! Son of a bitch! I’m late!” she exclaimed.

Jughead sluggishly looked up at his panicked friend. “I don’t remember falling asleep,” he moaned sleepily, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands. The last thing he remembered, Sage had fallen asleep beside him and he resorted to typing out a few new paragraphs. He watched as Sage located her jacket and threw it on carelessly and swung her bag over her shoulder.

“Neither do I,” she said, frantically, realizing her feet were bare. “Where are my boots?”

He pointed at the end of his makeshift bed, crawling over and picking it up and tossing her one. “Hey,” he said softly.

She froze as she stood on one leg, hands fumbling to tie up her boot. “What?”

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“I can’t be late Jug.” she furiously tugged on her other boot. “I have to go to school and I have a test. It’s part of my agreement with FP. I have to go. Maybe I'll see you around.”

With the mention of FB, Jug’s mouth instantly went dry. He nodded numbly, and before he could get another word out, she dashed out the door.

With a heavy sigh, he closed his laptop shut and got up and began to get ready for another mundane day at Riverdale High School.

For Sage, school didn’t hold much of anything. She didn’t get good grades and she didn’t like being forced to learn. It was simply an obligation and a bargaining chip. Either way, she found herself sitting at the Serpent’s table, munching loudly on an apple, when Sweet Pea and his best pal Fangs, plopped down beside her.

Both boys had food piled high on their trays and wasted no time digging in.

“You end up getting your beauty rest?” Sweet Pea asked through a mouthful.

Sage shook her head. “Not really. It sucks, cause I have a test in English today, that I’m totally going to fail.”

“Skip it.” Sweet Pea suggested, eyeing the table of people across the cafeteria.

Southside High had always been a mixed bag of colorful people. Southside had a strong reputation for drugs, gangs, and thieves which naturally begat, chaos. Anybody born of Southside usually stayed in Southside. Instead of being ashamed of it, most of the people were proud of their heritage. They embraced it and wore it as a badge of honor. For years past, the Serpent's had run the town, but as of late, new threats were encroaching on their territory, and the Serpents were weakened by the events of late. The rope was fraying, strand by strand.

“Stupid ghoulish fiends.” Fangs muttered, catching Sweet Pea’s glance.

“Does FP still have you tailing them?” Sage questioned.

Fangs nodded. “Yea, but so far, I don’t have much on them. I don’t know who or where they’re getting the heroin from. I just know that everyone wants what they have lately, not what we’re offering.”

Sweet Pea’s eyes clouded over, his fist curling angrily on the table in front of him.

“We’ll figure it out,” Sage said to diffuse Sweet Pea, swiping a fry off of Fang’s plate. “We always do. Hey, how’d you make out with the new girl, Sweets?”

Sweet Pea’s face lightened up immediately and he grinned wide, pushing his tray with his half eaten food over to Sage. “Swing and a miss. Toni said that she’s -and I quote, “more into girls.”

Sage and Fangs laughed boisterously. At the same time, Toni made her way over from the cafe line and plopped down with her tray and a pile of books. She looked between them bewildered when Fangs and Sage doubled over in another fit of laughter.

Sweet Pea shook his head. “Ignore them,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Toni, these are my friends, Fangs, and Sage.”

Toni smiled warmly. “Nice to meet you both. I think I saw both of you last night actually. I was there with my grandfather. Can anyone tell me why we’ve been having parties at the Twilight Drive-In of all places?”

“Ah, it’s just been our spot lately. We do a lot of deals there and it’s town property but the town’s given up on it finally. Sheriff Keller has bigger things on his plate, especially now.” Fangs explained.

That was true, but there was more to that statement which Fangs neglected to expand on. An outsider had paid the Serpents good money to trash the local spot, thereby decreasing the value of the land. Decreased value meant it could be purchased at a lower price. It was a win for everyone, except anyone that loved the drive-in.

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

“Toni, we’ll see you at White Wyrm after school? ” asked Sage. She liked Toni immediately.

A smile graced Toni’s lips. “I’ll be there.”

As promised, the four of them sat in a back booth at the Whyte Wyrm.

It was a large, grungy place, with bad lighting and a constant reek of liquor and beer, but it was home for so many of the Serpents.

“So, when exactly did you complete the Serpent’s Dance?” Fangs asked curiously, leaning in. “And how did I miss that?”

“Oh god, Fangs,” groaned Sage.

Toni rolled her eyes. “You mean that outdated and sexist tradition? Back in the summer, like the end of June,” she replied bitterly.

“We’ve all had to do it.” shrugged Sage, although she agreed with Toni.

“Not the boys.” Sweet Pea smirked, flashing a row of his perfect white teeth

“Misogyny dies hard.” murmured Toni, annoyed.

“Seriously, how did we miss that?” Fangs wondered aloud.

“That must have been when we were on that run, dropping off stuff for the Blossom boy to pick up.” Sweet Pea reminded him.

Sage’s ears instantly perked up. She remembered the boy, whose hair reminded her of the red licorice that she used to steal from the Penny Store. He had found his way to the Whyte Wyrm and asked for fast cash. It came at a cost of course, but he was willing to pay.

Did he know it would cost his life?

“Who are you?” Sage asked him from the wooden steps she was sitting on.

“I’m here to see FP,” he stated with false confidence as if he had rehearsed it prior.

“What does a Northsider want with the Serpent King?” she mused, standing up to circle around him. He was taller than her and watched her move slowly until still stopped into the front of him, sizing him up.

Fear and doubt flickered momentarily in his eyes before it was replaced with determination. “I need money and you need runners that don’t look like petty riff rats. I’m here to talk with FP.”

She gnawed on her lip for a moment, slightly impressed.

“Sage, inside. I’ll take care of this.” a voice from behind her boomed with authority. She turned to see the Serpent King himself, standing in the doorway.

“Jason Blossom…” his name rolled off FP’s tongue like honey before he greeted him with a sly smile.

“Let’s talk, boy.”

“Sage!”

She blinked coming back to reality. “Huh, what?” she stuttered, looking up from her drink.

“I asked you if you’re doing the drop with me tonight, or if you’re gonna sneak off to see Jughead again,” repeated Sweet Pea, with a raised eyebrow.

Her mouth dropped open slightly, but she couldn’t come up with a defense.

“Yea,” he continued, running the pad of his finger along the rim of his glass. “I saw you last night.”

“FP’s son?” questioned Toni. “You know him?”

“We all do.” shrugged Sage. “In one way or another.”

“I don’t get it. Where is he? Why isn’t he with the Serpents?”

Fangs leaned forward, folding his arms on to the table “He stays on Northside territory now. It’s kinda a sore spot.”

Sweet Pea made a noise of disgust under his breath. “Traitor.”

Fangs continued, “Things around here have been… tough lately. Gladys moved up to Toledo almost a year ago after FP lost his job and when on a drinking binge. Rumor has it, she started up her own business and it could very well be an extension of the Serpents.” he whispered in a hushed voice.

“But Serpents don’t abandon their own…” Toni trailed off.

“And nobody knows if that’s true,” added Sage.

Fangs shrugged. “I don’t know. Tall Boy and Mustang have been stepping in a lot with these new threats popping up.”

Toni fiddled and ripped her napkin in tiny pieces, scattering them across the table. “Think Jughead will eventually join us?”

“That prick?” scoffed Sweet Pea.

“Hey,” Sage’s head snapped up, her eyes narrowed in a tight glare at him, “Say whatever you want, if he chooses, he’s next in line to lead this club.”

“If he wants it, and he’s made it clear… he doesn’t.” Fangs resolved.

Silence fell among them for a moment.

“To answer your question, Sweet Pea.” Sage piped up, softer this time. “Yea, I’ve got your six on the run tonight.”

Sweet Pea nodded curtly, still sour at the mention of the long-lost Serpent Prince. “Good.”

Sage hated that Fangs was right. Absolutely hated it. Jughead had no interest or intention in getting tangled up in the gang. In fact, since his mother and sister had left, he’d become more brooding and introverted than ever, almost a shell of himself. A tumbleweed, blowing from one side of the town to the next.

Her mind drifted again to the night before. Up until last night, she hadn’t seen him in months. It was so good to see him again. Like a breath of fresh air after inhaling stagnant polluted water.

The long summer months with the Serpents had kept her busy and working long hours. All the while, Jug stayed close to his Northsider friends, buried behind a book, a laptop or a milkshake.

As much as she knew he was never too far away, and as much as she missed her friend, it didn’t change anything. He didn’t want the life she needed and he moreover, he didn’t understand why she needed it. She didn’t understand why he was reluctant to be a part of something that was his destiny and flat out denied it.

But what Sage didn’t know, was how true Jughead’s words from the night before would be.

The worst was yet to come.

Author’s Note: All mistakes are mine. I have other chapters posted on Wattpad and Fanfiction but am slowly re-writing it as I work on sharpening my writing skills. So don’t mind me!

In the meantime, two fanfictions I’ve really been enjoying/obsessing over/binging are @rivendell101 ‘s Focal Point (4 part WIP) and @princesweetpea ‘s I Found. Go give those a read and send some love. And send me some good reads to dive into too! Thank you!

#sweet pea #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale #jughead jones #jughead #southside serpents #tv show #writing #fangs forgery #where the fuck is sweet pea in season 3 #bring back the serpents

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docholligay · 7 years ago

Text

A Stopped Clock: Chapter 9--Tick

Here we are, my pineapple upside down cakes, at the end of this series. I have LOVED writing this, and I hope you’ve loved reading it! I want to give a special shoutout to @katrani who besides being a lovely person I’ve had the fortune to meet in person, made this whole thing possible, and I feel very spoiled and lucky that she let me write this. DOC WITH A HAPPY AND HOPEFUL ENDING WTF (oh please, I do it all the time you big babies)

The entirety of my OW universe, including the first 8 parts of this story, can be found here.

ET FINI

A pause, like a breath, and the sound of breaking laughter, and then, Tracer’s cry.

“Bloody ‘omophobia, this is!” Tracer leaned across the table, eyes sparkling, “‘ere among me own family!”

There was a certain amount of general din that followed any occasion where the Oxton clan got together, and the June occasion of a wedding was more excuse than they had ever needed to drink and dance and carry on. Six months ago, Winston had been sitting alone in a laboratory, sending a pulse out into time and hoping it could be heard, lonelier than he had ever been in his life.

“‘Ow do you figure, Lena?” Her aunt Lily sat across from her, laughing into a cocktail shrimp.

Then, he’d looked sadly into the little bug jar room he’d filled with her belongings--Biscuit, her blanket, a worn and loved Hammers shirt, a few RC planes, a picture of the two of them in London, as if he could coax her home like a cat that’s gone out, tucking a familiar towel into a box--and hoped he could find her again, knowing the odds were against him. Knowing no one believed, not even gentle, kind Mercy, who had brought him coffee every morning.

But no one knew Tracer like Winston did.

“I don’t like it, and it ‘urts me personally!” Tracer exploded in a bright laugh, rocking back into the chair and taking a drink of her beer and tapped Winston on the leg. “Win, defend me ‘ere!”

When she had returned, it had been Winston again, in the little bug jar with her, coaxing her to try to eat, to try to talk, to try to live, while others looked on sympathetically or pityingly or resentfully or those that didn’t look at all, just wrote cold words on forms that sealed her fate. But he sat with her, knowing no one believed, not even generous, soft Mercy, who brought a little basket of Tracer’s favorite foods and smiled sadly.

But no one saw Tracer like Winston did.

“As a fellow ‘omosexual, I ‘ave to tell you--” Her Uncle Mark leaned toward her, shaking his head, taking his arm from around his husband’s shoulder.

“Misogyny!” Tracer laughed again. “Assailed from all sides, I am!”

And now, Winston was in a simple hall on the outskirts of London, glass of wine in his hand, surrounded by the warmth and chatter of Tracer’s family. Of his family, he thought happily--there had been thanks and warm dinners delivered to his house, labor and money supplied in small envelopes and sweaty afternoons, and so many hugs, all with the aim of trying to repay Winston for bringing back their girl, again, for cementing himself even deeper into their lives. His heart swelled when he read the little card that said “Winston Oxton” marking his table, Tracer’s cousin guessing that if Winston didn’t have a last name, he may as well just use theirs.

“Win?!” She looked at him wide-eyed, begging for help in her merry way.

He grinned. “I have to take Lily’s--”

She scowled. “Oh you do not!”

There were still little ways Winston could tell she wasn’t well. She hadn’t worn a tie, just a collared shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, under her jacket. She sat toward the back of the room, where it was quieter, and sometimes her eyes glazed over for a moment before she could shake herself back to the present moment. But she was engaged with life again, and she seemed to be better every day, and it was a joy to hear her laugh again, to see her zip around the kitchen, to find her clothes carelessly tossed into a pile.

Tracer leaned back into the chair, still laughing. “Traitors,” she said softly, “the lot of you.”

She took a sip of her beer again and smiled, and the music continued in perfect time.

“Lena!” Her cousin raced from behind and touched her wrist softly, beaming when Tracer pulled her into a hug. “So ‘appy you could make it!”

“Sorry about,” Tracer indicated to her outfit, “all this.”

“Oh, but you look beautiful!” Her eyes widened in delight. “Winston!” She, too, was one of the hummingbirds of the Oxton clan, and her mind tripped quickly over to him, throwing her arms around him, then turning to the woman behind her. “This is me ‘usband’s--god but that’s nice to say, innit--mum, Addy. Addy, this is me cousin Lena and Winston, there’s me uncles Teddy and Mark, and--Lily, where’s Clive?”

Winston noted the way they always said things, so there was only separation from him being a cousin, a child, an Oxton, if he claimed it for himself. There was always room for one more at the Oxton table, and if you didn’t have a family, well, we have plenty of it to go around, and if Addy seemed surprised that her daughter-in-law’s cousin was a gorilla, she knew enough about the Oxtons to simply extend her hand to him and smile.

Seconds were so long, sometimes, and years were so short. Time didn’t obey its own rules. The time he had spent with the Oxtons seemed more like seconds, and twenty seconds had seemed to take years. He looked down at the aviator’s watch on Tracer’s wrist. She loved that watch. He’d had the battery replaced while she was gone, and he looked down now to see its reassuring tick on her wrist.

He reached his hand out to Addy, and smiled.

No Oxton party had ever been a quick affair, and this was no different, the evening stretching ever on, and they plodded back to the house Winston was making home, whatever it had been in a former life, long before the rest of the family had been ready to turn off the lights.

London took on a haze in the late night hours, times when the fog would start to creep in and Winston could see bits and pieces of why Lena found this city so magical. Why it was home. Lena looked around at the city in its most quiet hours as they walked, the hum of an occasional bus going by, the smell of late-night kebab on the air, and there was a sense of gentle contentment between them.

Winston thought on these things as he stood in the kitchen, making a cup of tea before bed. The news of the last few weeks had been as discouraging as Tracer’s progress was encouraging. The world was changing, and didn’t need them anymore, and he felt them being pushed to the outer edges, with not so much as a thank you for all that they’d done.

Maybe it was the wrong thing, to wish for thanks.

“You’re tired.” Winston tried not to sound too overprotective, as Lena sat on the couch, sipping a glass of water, her jacket tossed over the back of the couch and her shirt unbuttoned to her chest, the bright white of her undershirt near glowing in the strange light of her accelerator.

Tracer nodded, not bothering to argue a point they both knew was true. “I liked it, though. Felt like me old self again.”

There was a moment of silence, and something hung in the air between them.

“Overwatch is gone.” He hadn’t said it out loud before, but it felt like something to tell Tracer, even though she already knew it. Something that had to be shared between them, like every other bit of pain and struggle in their lives. A wound that had to be opened to heal. “The UN disbanded it.”

“Right.” She nodded, looking off at the window. “Did poor Ang up like a kipper, so they did. Should ‘ave been there.”

Winston shook his head. “We couldn’t.” He sat down next to her, looking off into the quiet nothing that contained everything, all their hopes and all their fears. “And they would have just done the same to us.”

And it was true, they would have simply stood with Mercy and been put on trial, browbeaten and forced to account for believing too much in something that had failed them utterly.

Everyone responsible was dead or had slipped the leash. There were only the foolish and the good left.

“She wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad to do it alone.” She scowled a bit, and Winston winced at the truth of it. Tracer paused. “Should send Ang a card, at the least, a bit of choc. SOMEthing. ‘Eard she’s doing something in America, now.”

Winston did not know how to reply that there was no chocolate assortment he knew of that said, ‘sorry you took the fall for all of us on global television.’

Tracer sat for a moment, leaned back against the couch, considering the turn the last six months had taken. “Thank you, Winston.”

“For what?”

She sat up and looked at him in disbelief. “What do you mean, for bloody what? You’ve only taken care of me every need for ‘alf a year, is all.” She shook her head and giggled. “Not many people’d do that, Win. Means something to me.”

Winston placed his hand on her back. “We’re family.” It broke over his tongue, warm and golden, like the yolk of an egg, waiting to feed him.

He hadn’t even known how hungry he was, until Tracer had come into his life. Until she’d given him a home and a family. Even now, he could not articulate to her how much she had given him. How he felt they were equal.

“‘Course we are, Win!” She said, ignoring the emotion in his eyes. “‘Ave been for years! Don’t mean I can’t thank you for everything.” She patted his leg, and looked up at him, “I love you very much, you know.”

He felt himself momentarily overwhelmed, and simply hugged her a little closer to his side, sitting in companionable silence, knowing she would require no answer. Tracer never needed to hear the things she already knew from him.

“What do we do now?” He broke the quiet, but did not quite say it to Tracer, did not quite say it to anyone.

Winston had spent the last months finding Tracer, getting her back and helping her heal and easing her back into the world, bringing her home to London and making a place for her where she could recover. All of that had been his pleasure. All of that had been a goal he was happy to strive for. But now, she was functioning, and though she still needed him, the panic was gone. The fire had been put out, and now there were both left to stare at the blackened plain of what their lives had been, and to rebuild what they wanted it to be.

It was exhilarating. It was terrifying.

Tracer stirred a bit from her half-snooze and looked up at the ceiling. “Not quite certain on that score, Win. Going to get in the air.”

“Lena,” He laughed. “They might not let you keep your license. You can’t.”

“There’s a lot of things they said I couldn’t do.” She grinned. “Get it back, watch me.” She stood up and stretched, scratching under the band of her accelerator. “‘Owever. Think it’s me bedtime. Ready to take this thing off, that’s for certain.”

Winston nodded. “Mine too. Goodnight, Lena.”

“G’night, Win.” She started to walk toward her bedroom, and then turned back toward him. “I do know something, though, and I’ll tell you.”

“What’s that?”

“Whatever we do next, we’ll do together.” She grinned and gave him a salute, whirling off to her bedroom.

Winston shuffled to his feet and slowly climbed up the chains and ropes to his bedroom in the loft, gently removing his jacket and hanging it in his closet, neatly folding his shirt even as he slipped it into his dirty clothes hamper.

Winston had lived in those twenty seconds for six long months.

And now, he felt himself leaving those twenty seconds, like coming up for air from the bottom of a pool, the sun warm on his face.

Winston laid down on his bed, the old clock by his bedside in a constant and beautiful tick, tick, tick, a perfect metronome to the new start of both their lives.

#HON HON HON

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kieren-fucking-walker · 7 years ago

Note

If you're still taking prompts: how Farah realised she's a lesbian

Thank you for the prompt! I found writing this to be so incredibly therapeutic and I can only hope I did it justice.The Farina is mild, mostly pre-slash more than anything, this focuses on Farah first and foremost. I had to put a readmore in as this is longer than I meant it to be.��A huge thank you to @softlygasping who beta’d this for me, you’re awesome

Quick warnings: Some internalised misogyny and homo/lesbophobia, and an uncomfortable scene with a creepy guy in a bar (nothing too bad though I promise!)

(Also on Ao3)

Looking back she thinks it makes sense. There are so many things laid out in her memories that point her to where she is now, what she knows now, that it’s almost laughable that she didn’t notice it before. Hindsight is everything though, and she’s already beating herself up about too many things to add this to the pile, so instead she lets it go. She knows herself now, and that’s enough.

***

Farah knows how to play with dolls, and she knows it’s different to the way the other kids play. She doesn’t use her Barbies to play house, instead she’d stolen a sword for her from one of her brothers’ old toys, and for the story’s sake she’d taken one of his dragons as well. Five years old and already obsessed with saving the world, her princess isn’t getting married like she’d seen the other girls do. Instead she’s a warrior, storming the castle in homemade armour and fighting off dragons with ease. She saves the prince from the tower, of course, but when he’s eaten rather dramatically by the dragon her princess isn’t that upset. Not when there’s a princess in the tower too, much prettier and much, much more capable of fighting the dragon herself. If only the prince had given her the chance rather than making them both wait for rescue.

“Boys are dumb,” the first princess says, and the second agrees with her wholeheartedly.

“We were going to get married,” she says, “it’s gross.” The warrior princess takes her hand, and they watch as he gets mauled by the dragon.

“That is gross. We should be best friends!”

“Best best friends!” The princesses agree between them, flying off on the magical unicorn that also breathes fire, leaving the poor prince to be eaten alive.

When her mother rolls her eyes fondly and asks what happened to them after that, Farah tells them that they lived happily ever after together. Her mother frowns, but doesn’t comment, just tells her to make sure she has her homework finished on time.

***

Farah is ten, and she has a friend. It’s rare for her. She’s found that friends are difficult to make when you’re spending all your free time training and you struggle to talk to people, but Amy seems to have taken a liking to her and will spend hours dragging her around the playground and pointing out trees. Farah hardly minds. She likes the way Amy says “cool” when she tells her all the ways trees can be integral to survival if you ever find yourself stranded in the wilderness.

She likes a lot of things about Amy. The way she tries to catch butterflies, the way she sticks her tongue out when the boys tell her she can’t play baseball. One time she gets into a fight with a girl who tells her she’s stupid, and afterwards Farah shows her how to throw a proper punch without hurting her wrist like she had before. Amy likes to ride the swing too high, and it makes Farah nervous when she lets go at the top, screaming her way down and landing, laughing, on her feet. There are red and orange ribbons tied into her hair and Farah loves the way they dance in the air when she hangs upside down from the monkey bars. She likes the way that she smiles when she drags her back to the swings and dares her to swing all the way up too.

She likes that when she admits it makes her scared, Amy doesn’t laugh. Just holds her hand and says she doesn’t have to.

Her stomach flutters with butterflies, and she wonders if Amy would try to catch them too.

***

“Distracted,” she mumbles to herself, throwing her bag off her shoulder before hanging it up in its rightful place. “Distracted! I’ll show him distracted! I can be focused. I’m always focused. I don’t have anything to be distracted over.” The muttering is for her own benefit. She would never actually talk to her father that way, but god, if it wasn’t frustrating when he implied she was anything less than completely immersed in her task. Farah is fifteen and already outperforming people twice her age in her martial arts class, not to mention at the gun range. Everyone else seems more than impressed; stunned would be a more accurate word most of the time. Everyone but her father.

Her father who assumed she was distracted by the new karate teacher.

Objectively speaking she supposes she can see why people might be. People who aren’t her, of course. She’s not like other girls, something she takes pride in, because if she doesn’t the weight of the added expectations of standard femininity will crush her, but also because she’s just not interested. Giggling over boys was for girls who weren’t focused. Perfect manicures were for girls who weren’t driven enough to complete boot camp training. Caring about dates for proms and formals was for girls who didn’t know how to subdue a group of attackers with only a pen and a piece of string. Farah was not one of those girls, and she wasn’t distracted.

Of course fighting a new person had her thrown! He was different to most of the people she’d fought with before, and while she should be good enough to adapt her style to accommodate that right away, the new experience can only be beneficial. Her father hadn’t seen it like that. The stony silence he’d brought to the car only being broken by; “You can’t let a pretty face distract you. Anyone could be a target.”

A pretty face. She hadn’t even noticed. The only thing she wanted to do to that face was put her fist through it. That would show them distracted. It’s very hard to argue that with her brother and her father, though. To explain that she’s not like those girls. She’s different, has other interests, and doesn’t rate boys as important at all. Marriage doesn’t even factor into her life plan, and if she never kisses a boy in her life it’s no loss. She’d tried explaining that before and had gotten rolled eyes, disbelief, and; “Well then, wait until you’re older.”

Being the only girl left in her family is rough, but it’s even harder when they think of her as being something she’s not. It only leaves her more determined to prove to them that nothing could be further from her mind than boys.

***

When she’s eighteen, Farah joins the Army Rangers. Her father smiles at her for that, at least.

She knows, despite everything, that he’s just trying to do his best by her. He wants her safe, wants her able to protect herself, and he wants her to be the best she can be. She knows all this but it doesn’t stop it hurting. Sometimes she wonders if the reason he’s so distant is because she looks like her mother and it hurts him to see, but not enough to push her away completely. Not enough to stop him making sure she can be strong. The Rangers though, is an experience.

The boys there aren’t at all respectful. The way they talk about her and the other women makes her uncomfortable in a way that goes beyond simple lack of professionalism. She’s used to people assuming she’s incapable, used to proving them wrong and having to do more than them to do so, but being called ‘baby girl’ by a man she’s on patrol with and twice as skilled as is a step too far. When she breaks his nose for it she can’t bring herself to be sorry, even if they make her apologise. When she’d joined they’d said they were strict on sticking to the no dating rule. Farah looks at the group of men surrounding her and wonders why they’d even have to bother; nobody was going to be jumping at the chance to date any of these people. She certainly wasn’t.

The women, though. They were different.

It’s not the first time Farah has been around capable and competent women, but it’s the first time she’s been with so many in one place. They stick together, have each others backs. It feels, for the first time in her life, like a family. A place where she’s understood. Still. She shies away from the general state of undress they like to lounge around in, a few of them laugh and call her uptight but none of them pressure her into joining. She tells them it’s a matter of being prepared for anything, and they tease her indulgently. It’s enough to make her smile, even if it’s not enough to completely relax her.

She can’t help feeling nervous around them. Farah hasn’t felt intimidated by anyone who isn’t her father wearing a disappointed face in a long time, so she doesn’t think it’s that, but there are a few who make her fumble her words. A few that she can’t look at directly no matter how she tries. A few that will make her blush when they nudge her shoulder and tell her to quit worrying.

A few she thinks about long past midnight when she should be sleeping. They stick in her head like honey, and she can’t get rid of them even when she tries to.

***

She’s twenty one the first time she hears the word gay applied to a woman. It twists her face into a frown because it’s not the way she’s used to hearing it. Not that it’s ever been said in a good way when she’s heard it mentioned, and she’s not entirely sure it’s being used positively now, but it’s something. An idea, perhaps. A consideration she hasn’t made before. The moment passes before she can make up her mind.

It’s not long after that she finds out that there’s another word.

She’s standing at the bar, taking her drink slowly because she knows the people she’s out with (she’s not sure enough to call them friends) will need someone with at least a relatively clear head by the end of the night. At this age she’s started to move past the ‘not like other girls’ mentality. She’s aware on some level that there’s something different about her, something that doesn’t fit with them, but she puts it down to the reserved anxiety that prohibits her from interacting with most people. Her inability to connect isn’t exclusive to women. Still, there had only so much time she could spend in the company of women without letting go of the need to differentiate herself from them. She’s seen people in six inch heels with perfectly winged eyeliner be the deadliest person in the room, which makes it hard to separate the two things the way everyone seems to want to. She’s starting to explore gaining back some of the femininity she’d rejected in a bid for her father’s approval, (because she knows now that he’ll never approve,) and while she remains steadfastly practical in her choices there’s something healing in claiming back the right to look how she wants to look without compromising her ability to perform. The worst part of it all though, is that people seem to assume it’s for anyone’s benefit but her own. It comes with side effects, and the man who positions himself next to her at the bar is certainly one of them.

“Whatcha drinking?” he’s resting on the wood top in a way she assumes is supposed to be alluring, but if anything it comes off arrogant.

“I don’t see why that’s any of your business.” She knows it’s not how people want her to respond, she’s been called rude before, but her need for privacy extends to whatever environment she’s in and this isn’t a conversation she wants to have.

“I was only asking, no need to be so defensive,” he holds up his hands and she hopes that’s the last of it. Predictably, it isn’t. “So… What’s a gorgeous girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Farah fights the urge to roll her eyes and instead tips her glass in his direction. “Drinking.”

“Alone?”

“It looks that way.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he leans in. It’s uncomfortably close and she mentally calculates all of his weaknesses, the quickest way to get him to the floor. It’s a public place though, and she’s been working on not acting unnecessarily, so for now she just takes a step back.

“My friends are here, I just prefer not to dance. I like my own company.” It gets lonely at times, she can admit that, but he’s not at all a person she wants to ease that loneliness with.

“Aw, come on now, don’t you want to have a little fun?” He moves to close the space she created, sliding his hand along the bar as he does so. “You seem tense, I’m sure we could work out a way to loosen you up.”

“I’m not interested.”

He grins at her, all teeth, and she wonders if this method ever works for him when he says, “How do you know? You haven’t even asked my name,”

“I don’t need to.” It’s cold, direct, and she picks up her glass making to move. “I said I’m not interested.”

It’s funny, really, how quickly he changes from welcoming to angry in the face of her defiance, but she’d planned for that already. Her hold on her glass tightens imperceptibly.

“What? You think you’re too good for me? You already got a man? You think you’re something special?” He’s waving his hands accusatory, jabbing fingers in an unpleasant way as he slowly turns red with anger. “You don’t like men, is that it? Are you cold? A prude? A lesbian? Because, sweetheart, you’re missing out on what I’m offering here, any other girl in this building would be happy to have me.”

“I don’t think so.” He’s taken a step too close and she doesn’t hesitate to throw her drink in his face, knocking his feet out from under him when he’s distracted and smacking his head into the bar. It’s a kindness that she doesn’t break his nose in the process. It certainly makes dealing with security easier.

The word sticks though, and while she has enough situational evidence to infer what it might mean, she still wants to be sure. There’s a curiosity there that makes her wonder far beyond what she usually would, and she resolves to ask Tricia, who she knows will be too drunk to remember as she’s helping her stumble home that night.

“It’s like… gay. But for girls. Girls with girls, you know? You gotta… guys think it’s hot. But it’s all about girls. Why? You thinking of changing teams? Don’t let that guy drag you down, he was an asshole.” Farah is saved from answering when Tricia promptly throws up on her own shoes. She would be more annoyed, but in the moment she finds herself too preoccupied to care.

Girls with girls.

There’s a thought.

***

It’s a thought she comes back to plenty of times over the years, but if she’s completely honest romance had never factored high on her list regardless of gender, and not much about that changes now. She keeps busy. Training and Rangers and applications, consistently rejected applications as her father likes to remind her. She certainly has no time for distractions when she needs to dedicate her life elsewhere.

Still, sometimes she’ll look at a woman a little too long and she’ll wonder.

A lot of that wonder goes into wondering if she’s the only one. Realistically, she knows that’s not possible, the statistics don’t allow for it, but she wouldn’t have the first idea where to go seeking out other women. She doesn’t know if she’d have the confidence to try if she did know. Not knowing makes for a convenient excuse to hide her fears behind, and sometimes she thinks it’s hard to know anyway if she’s never actually tried. When she gets lonely, or wants something more than her own company, her own pressing responsibilities, boys are easier to find anyway.

It’s not bad, as such, making out with guys. The principles are much the same, and when what she’s looking for is a distraction or a reassurance, it works as good as any. She’s confident enough to feel able to leave if she wants to, and a lot of the time it’s just nice to be close to another person.

It’s different, though.

She’s never kissed a girl but she knows it’s different. There’s something missing, something a little off about the press of their bodies, the way they kiss, where they put their hands. Something different in the aftermath, the way she never wants to stay, the way that even when she knows objectively they’re attractive her eyes never linger on them for too long. It’s not bad, it’s never something she doesn’t want, but it’s never exactly what she does want either. Thinking too hard about why that might be still scares her, and she’s not ready to deal with it yet; but she’s not going to commit herself to unhappiness either, so despite everything she never sees the same guy more than twice at most. It’s easier like that, a clean, efficient break and for now, it’s good enough.

***

It stays enough for a long time. Most of the time she doesn’t bother with it at all, she has a job now, not one her father approves of, but one that has value. Protecting a millionaire’s daughter may not be the most high profile position or realistically the best use of her talents, but Farah cares for Lydia like a younger sister that she will protect with her life. It’s a hard thing to explain to her family, so for the most part she doesn’t, and she finds herself almost content with the situation she’s found herself in. It means she doesn’t go out much, but it also means she doesn’t have to overthink it when she does. No boys means no wondering about girls, and she calls that a win-win scenario.

A week before she disappears, Lydia tells Farah that she likes boys, but that she thinks she might like girls, too. She wonders later on why the overwhelming amount of acceptance and support that she feels towards her isn’t something she has towards herself. When she tells Lydia that it’s okay, that it’s good she’s comfortable being herself she isn’t lying, but when Lydia hugs her and tells her she always knew she’d understand, Farah thinks it goes deeper than being unlikely to judge. It’s not something she knows how to deal with so she pushes it out of her mind, Lydia’s safety and happiness having always been her priority, and that applies to this as well. The last thing she needs is her blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Farah listens to her talk about girls, and wonders how she finds it so easy.

***

When Farah kisses Todd it’s different, but it’s not different enough.

There’s a security there, a depth to it being someone she cares about, a friend. They’ve grown so close in these last few months out on the road, and when they end up kissing in the back end of nowhere it makes sense. Sort of. It’s good at least, a kind of familiar comfort that they both need, something reassuring to hold onto when it feels like they’re ten feet underwater and only sinking deeper. It’s safe to say the search for Dirk is not going well, and she knows sooner or later they’re going to have to talk about what to do next, and she also knows Todd won’t want to do that. They don’t purposefully seek each other out, but they fall into it anyway. One small reassurance of ‘you still have me, we’re still in this together,’ one small distraction from the creeping fear that they’ll never find him. That at some point they’ll have to give up looking, or be made to stop without ever knowing what happened. They’re both a little tipsy, and it feels safe. Like home. It’s the most connected she’s ever felt to another person because there’s no hiding when you’re on the road like they’ve been, they’ve seen the weirdest and worst of each other and still, after all that, Todd isn’t going anywhere. It’s nice.

They laugh about it after, but nothing about the way she looks at him has changed. It’s just comfort, something to take the edge off and it’s a relief that she doesn’t know how to put into words that Todd thinks the same. When she looks back on this moment she’ll see it as the final push she needed, looking at Todd after all that and still only seeing a friend, not wanting to take it any further and knowing that if she tried to it wouldn’t feel right. One night stands with strangers are easy to brush off as meaningless, but making out with one of your best friends isn’t that, and she wouldn’t want it to be, but in this case it isn’t romantic, either. It isn’t anything past physical affection, and she realises that if that isn’t going to happen now; with all this set up, after all this time, then it isn’t going to happen at all. Somewhere she’s always known that really, and she knows why, but fear had always been enough to keep her from looking too far into it.

Now she has people who won’t push her away for that why, people she knows will encourage her to only ever be herself. When she ends up shedding a few tears she blames it on the whisky and Todd asks, joking, if kissing him was really that bad. When she says no she means it, but she knows it won’t happen again.

***

Tina Tevetino is a whirlwind of a person, but Farah is starting to get used to those. What she can’t quite get used to however, is the way Tina looks at her.

It’s appreciative, sometimes verging on awe when she does something Tina finds particularly impressive, but even when it’s not that there’s a weight behind it. It’s lingering. When she catches her looking she doesn’t even look away, usually just waggles her eyebrows and says something suggestive enough to send a hot flush creeping up Farah’s neck because she has no idea how to respond to that.

It shouldn’t feel any different she thinks, the next time she locks eyes with her across the station. She’s had people look at her before in that way and she’s aware that she’s not unattractive, even if she’s never thought too much on it if she can help it, so really it shouldn’t be any different at all. It is though, in a way she can’t quite quantify. There’s something that separates these looks from the way that men had looked at her over the years, and it takes her an embarrassingly long time to work out that it’s mostly because when Tina looks at her, she finds herself looking back.

It shouldn’t surprise her as much as it does, and it shouldn’t make her overcompensate by looking for every reason, purely professionally of course, to spend time with her. Tina’s flirting doesn’t make her uncomfortable, it doesn’t make her cordon off a part of herself in order to feel like it’s okay. It makes her happy and jittery and unsure what to do with her hands. When she finds herself biting at her lip and looking away so as not to smile too much it’s genuine. When their hands brush or they stand too close together, the heat that rushes through her is dizzying. Tina makes no secret of her attraction, and Farah wishes she could get a handle on hers, because if Tina smiles at her like like that one more time she thinks she might just explode.

It doesn’t take long for it all to come to a head.

Farah doesn’t know what it is that gives her the confidence to kiss Tina. Perhaps it’s the love spell, perhaps it’s the certainty that she won’t be rejected, perhaps she’s just sick of waiting for someone else to come along and drag her out of her own head. Whatever it is, she’s grateful. It seems like Tina is too, if the enthusiasm she pours into it is anything to go by, and Farah finds herself laughing against her mouth when she flails her arms for a surprised moment.

“Is this okay?” she asks, hoping it is but wanting to be sure, she’s never wanted to kiss someone quite like this before.

“Wha- okay? Okay? Why are you talking? We could be like, making out! If you wanna make out! I mean, you seemed like you wanted to, but I don’t want to make any assumptions you know? It’s totally-” Farah cuts her off with a kiss that’s more giggling than it is anything else.

“I want to,” she assures her, fingers curling through Tina’s belt loops in a bold move that she has to make quickly before she gives in to feeling too shy to make it. “You’re- This is… nice? I like it. I like you,” I like girls she thinks, but still can’t quite bring herself to say it. Now doesn’t feel like the time anyway.

“Sweet!” is apparently the end to that conversation, because Farah finds herself with her arms full of overly affectionate deputy not a second later. Not that she minds in the slightest.

Kissing Tina is like a revelation, like something in her is bubbling up and fizzing out, tingling all the way down her arms to where her hands are resting on her waist. It’s kissing, it’s just kissing, she’s done it before, but this, this is something she thinks she could do forever. She tastes different, the press of her is different, her energy is different, and it’s all so perfectly right in a way it’s never been. Something slotting into place in her head that tells her this is it, this is what’s been missing. This is what makes sense.

It’s heady and happy and perfect, and when they finally part Tina does that ridiculous eyebrow move and leans in to say, “Not bad at all, Miss Black.”

Farah finds herself grinning through the blush it brings to her cheeks, whatever heat is simmering in her stomach is background noise to the calm relief of having found the last piece of the puzzle, the delight of being able to finally see the full picture.

“Not bad at all.”

***

When life goes back to as normal as it gets for them these days, Farah feels like something has shifted. It’s nothing obvious, at least she doesn’t think so, but she feels more like herself than she has in years.

It’s not just coming to terms with her sexuality, but also learning to let go of all the expectations her father had placed on her over the years. All the ways she’d thought she’d failed him, the ways she thought she’d failed her brother, all the time wasted pretending to be something she wasn’t. That was over now, she’d decided firmly when she’d finally gotten around to visiting her father’s grave. There was a goodbye, a certain amount of grief, but no apology, and while it by no means means that she’s turned her life on its head overnight, it’s as good a place as any to start.

She has a home now, friends, a family. A place where she can be herself and still fit. People who love her for her quirks, and not in spite of them. People who appreciate her both for what she is and what she isn’t. People who are also learning to grow and forgive and move on, and they want to do it with her. It’s enough to move her to tears more than once, but she knows they feel the same way about it too. Dirk, it seems, hadn’t stopped looking misty eyed ever since they’d signed the lease on the agency, and it had surprised both of them when Todd had been the one to break first after hanging the sign up on the wall. It’s good, what she’s found for herself. People who want to know her, finding she wants to let them. There’s only really one thing left to do.

Farah realises quickly that she can’t tell both of them at once. It’s not like she doesn’t want to, but even trying to say the words to herself is daunting, she’s not sure she’s even going to be able to manage saying it to someone else, but she wants to try. It’s important.

It takes her days to work up the courage, thinking it over almost obsessively for hours at a time, and eventually she arrives at what she thinks is the most likely successful plan. What she needs realistically is for it to not be a big deal. She doesn’t want it to become a thing, and while she knows Todd would be supportive and it wouldn’t be a bad experience at all, it’s an unfortunate fact that he’s better with emotional situations than both she or Dirk, and tends to leave her feeling a little overwhelmed with his responses to important situations. It’s nice, usually a good kind of overwhelmed, but it won’t work for this, because there’s the risk of him taking too much care and then it becomes the very thing she’s trying to avoid making it. There’s also the issue of, well, they’ve never explicitly talked about it, but she thinks Todd might be drawing his own conclusions in a similar vein about himself right now. She needs someone who won’t make it a thing, but she also needs someone sure enough of that particular aspect of themselves to know how not to make it one.

She only really has one other option.

***

Dirk is delighted to be invited for pancakes the way he’s delighted by just about anything that involves doing things with other people. He’s quick to assure her that she’s paying, and Farah absently wonders if he’s aware that would be true either way considering she’s the one paying him. She doesn’t point it out.

“Is there a reason Todd isn’t here?” he asks, setting his menu aside after ordering what Farah is sure is going to be a bad idea when he’s bouncing off the walls in a few hours’ time. “You waited until he’d gone before you asked, which isn’t like you.” Even Farah sometimes falls into the trap of forgetting Dirk is, in fact, a detective.

“I… wanted to talk to you. Without Todd. Well, no, I’ll tell him later, or I’ll talk to him later I just- I wanted to talk to you first.” Dirk looks like he’s torn between being excited about being the first to be let in on a secret, and worried about it being something serious. Farah starts systematically shredding her napkin, and wondering if this was even a good idea.

“Has he done something?” He seems to have settled on confused but intrigued, a look that’s incredibly familiar for how often he wears it. “Is it the shredder again? Because I told him that cheese should be grated not shredded, and honestly I’m not sure how he thinks it’s at all hygienic. Not that I’ve caught him doing it, mind you, but the shredder keeps breaking and there’s only one way to shred cheese, if you think about it the clue is in the name.”

“What? I- no? The shredd- He’s not shredding cheese in the shredder, Dirk. It keeps breaking because you keep putting unopened letters in there and they’ve got staples in them. It’s the metal, they can’t-” she realises abruptly that the conversation is getting away from her and shakes her head. “Look. Never mind, we can talk about that later.”

“So it’s not about the shredder. Is it-”

“It’s not about the filing cabinet either!”

“Oh,” he narrows his eyes at her. “You knew what I was going to say before I said it. You’re getting very good at this.”

“It’s personal,” she says before she can stop herself, hoping to call off any more office related worries before he thinks of them. “What I want to talk about. It’s more of a personal nature. I want to talk to you as a friend.” Not that there’s much professional about their relationship in any way, but it’s a clear divide from work concerns.

“Oh,” Dirk repeats, looking a little dumbfounded as if this is a situation he’d never thought he’d find himself in. “Well. In that case, please, continue.” And just like that Farah’s mouth dries up.

She drops her gaze to the table, organising the remains of the napkin into neat little piles to distract herself. “That last case was… crazy.” It’s as good of a place to start as any, she supposes. “So much stuff happened, everything happened and I know we were all running around trying to save the world and stay alive but-” she takes a steading breath, finding she needs it. “Something else happened too, something to me I mean. Or, for me, I suppose. Something that… it’s been a long time coming, I just tried not to think about it before, and then something happened, and now I can’t stop thinking about it and… I think I’m finally okay with it, but I thought- It feels important to tell someone, and I wanted to tell you because, well, I think you’ll… understand.” It’s more than she’s meant to say, but still hasn’t cut to the point of it and it’s starting to frustrate her that it’s not as easy as she thinks it should be.

For his part, Dirk looks concerned but ultimately confused, and he seems to take a moment to pick over his words before he speaks again. “I’m not sure I understand much,” is what he ends up saying, “about this situation, or in fact at all, but I’ll try my best.” It’s the hopeful smile he gives her that helps settle her nerves, if anyone in the world is going to judge her then it’s not going to be Dirk Gently. She finds the thought comforting.

“Okay,” she nods, determined. “Okay. I can- this won’t be so hard.” She’s psyched herself up this way a thousand times before now, thinking about it like a battle plan is only going to help. She knows how to tackle those. “So. Something happened, and I realised… well, no I think I realised a long time ago actually, the more I think about it the more sense it makes in some kind of weird… anyway. Not the point. The point is I’m…” she can’t stop now, not this close. Farah Black does not get to the finish line and quit.

“I like girls. I’m a lesbian.” There. Done. And, god, were her palms always that sweaty? Was her heart beating that fast when she sat down? Had she really just said that? Her thoughts are starting to take on a mind of their own and she’s at risk of working herself up if something doesn’t-

“Oh, thank god!”

It’s enough to pull her out of her head for long enough to look over at Dirk, who looks about as relieved as she’s ever seen him with his hand pressed dramatically to his chest. “What-”

“For one horrible, terrible moment there I thought you were going to say you were pregnant!”

“What? I- no. God no!”

“I know nothing about infant care! And I thought, why on earth would that be something you tell me? Not that I’m saying I wouldn’t support you, because of course I would, and I’m sure babies are lovely when they’re not screaming or dribbling or… anything else that babies do, but surely that’s the kind of thing you’d talk to Amanda about? Or Todd! At least we know Todd has been around a child before!”

Somehow Dirk’s rambling had managed to take away her worry. The fact that she’d gotten such a normal response, for him at least, had deflated the balloon that had filled up with anxiety inside of her and felt just about ready to burst. Suddenly the words didn’t seem as intimidating as before.

“I’m not pregnant, Dirk. I’m just… gay.” Just like that. It’s easy.

“Farah that’s wonderful! Congratulations!” There’s nothing but sincerity in his smile, and she finds herself smiling back, relaxing against the leather seating. “Can I ask, what was it that happened exactly?”

Farah flounders with that question for a moment before admitting somewhat weakly, “Tina.”

“Ah ha! I knew it! I was a little distracted myself at the time but I told Todd you seemed happier, and it’s not like Tina ever took her eyes off you.”

“Shut up.” It’s not as harsh as it could have been; the way she blushes gives her away.

Dirk holds his hands up placatingly, but his smile turns a little more sly when he says, “Did you get her number?”

“Yes.”

“And?” It’s conspiratorial, and she manages to stare him down for a good minute before looking away.

“And… I’m going to call her.”

Dirk’s response is cut off by the arrival of their pancakes, but he beams at her as he pours an ungodly amount of syrup over his stack.

“I really am pleased for you, Farah.” It’s soft, kind, and sincere, not at all something she’s used to yet. She thinks she’ll have chance to get used to it now they’re going to spend so much time together. The thought wells up some unknown emotion in her chest and she smiles, happy and open in a way she hasn’t felt in years.

“Thanks, Dirk.”

***

Later that night when things have settled down and Todd has stopped jokingly offering to coach her in how to talk to women in a show of solidarity, mostly because he’d been shot down by both Farah and Dirk, and had taken instead to sulking on the sofa with his headphones, she takes out her phone. It’s not exactly true to her word, she can’t quite bring herself to call Tina, but she can text. Texting is good. Right now with her palms as sweaty as they are, texting is perfect.

Texting is also difficult. It takes her almost twenty tries to settle on something she thinks sounds good enough to send.

‘Hi, Tina. I was just thinking about you and I was wondering if you would like to go out sometime?’

In the five whole minutes it takes Tina to reply, Farah berates herself for the use of every single word, considers throwing her phone out of the window, and wishes she’d never dared send the message in the first place. When her phone pings with the sound of an incoming message she scrambles for it, thumbs shaking as she reads the reply.

‘Hell yeah!’ is followed by three other messages.‘Go out get drunk?’‘or go out as buddies?’‘orrrr go out on a date?’

There’s a moment where she stares at the screen, wondering if she’d possibly said the wrong thing, or if Tina is just doing what she’d been trying to do and cover all of her bases. She takes a deep breath and types:

‘On a date. If you want?’ This time the reply is almost instant.

‘Yes!!!!!!!!’‘I mean, that’d be cool.’‘Sure thing.’‘Awesome.’

It settles her nerves to know Tina is just as flustered as she is, and the thought of being the person who makes her flustered is enough to give her butterflies in the best possible way. Her grin is illuminated by the light of the screen when she sends off:

‘Great. We can make plans in the morning?’ she feels giddy and silly at the prospect, and Tina doesn’t help that much.

‘Works for me! Sweet dreams, hot stuff xxx’

She hides her face into the pillow for a moment, feeling far far more childish than she thinks she should be at this age. Still, given the circumstances it seems permissible.

‘Goodnight, Tina.’ She sets her phone down, picking it up again quickly to add a hurried follow up ‘x’.

The winky face she gets in reply makes her groan, and she knows she’s going to be harassed into sharing that she went through with it in the morning, but for now she lets herself smile and feel the way her stomach flutters with excitement at the thought of making plans with Tina.

She feels like a teenager, but that hardly matters. Not when she finally feels at home. Not when she feels like she’s finally starting to learn how to be happy.

Not now she knows who she is.

#my writing #prompt fill #this got long #farah black #tina tevetino #farina #dghda #dirk gently's holistic detective agency #coming out fic #this was honestly so therapeutic to write #farah black is a lesbian #i hope i did this justice #I fucking gave up with the breaks because they all align so weird on my theme so they're on the left now #imagine they're central #or read it on ao3

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nihilistsundays-blog · 7 years ago

Text

The Weight of Women.

Sasha Fallon is drowning from the inside out. The only salvation comes in consumption and revolt.

CONTENT WARNING FOR: extreme gore, cannibalism, misogyny, self-harm and character death. The bathroom sink was coated in brown hair. There was the dense center, where most of the curls had fallen to accompany the soft snipping sounds, a small pile of downy, tawny identity. Already, her face was new - framed by short, springy spirals that left round brown eyes and a doll’s delicate mouth defiantly exposed. Her freckles, splashed so generously across her cheeks and sharply upturned nose, could have been mistaken for a tan from a distance. A tan that her boss, Eddie, had more than once suggested would improve her appearance. “Our customers are looking for someone who really represents the nature of our brand,” he’d said to her. “Young, hot, edgy.” The blades of her scissors were edgy enough, she supposed, idly considering the sweet threat of their pressure against her fingers as she lowered them to the edge of the sink. She’d trimmed up, cleaned up, left a wispy mound of herself in the sink, and she smiled down at the mess.

Eddie hated it. She closed the store the next night, her freshly shorn curls proudly pomaded, the excess trashed. “Jesus Christ, you look like a fuckin’ little boy,” he said without preamble or niceties as she’d walked into work in rare form. “Why the hell would you do that to yourself? You’re already too flat to pull off the hot butch thing. Shit, Sasha.” He handed her the closing keys, unabashed in his appraisal of her as he looked her up and down. “Whatever, not my hair I guess. Later.” It was a quiet night, sales low, and she knew even as she swept and counted change that her new haircut would be blamed for it. A bone-deep ache bloomed in her, reverberating beyond the strains of the dance pop nightmare cycle that played on a loop over the speakers.

To unload all of her shed hair onto the glass counter, to show them. Look what I’ve done, more of me gone and every day I get closer to bones, clean bones, stripped bare, perfect bones. Because she’d lost weight, a while back - nearly sixty pounds, working out enough to keep her flesh from getting loose and hanging from those sweet clean bones that waited quietly underneath all of her sweaty, grimy, blood-gorged and porous flesh. She’d mourned then, the fact that she couldn’t see the fat she’d melted into nothing, couldn’t save it in a jar, sickly yellow curds of jiggling humanity, slickly wet and shed for her to lord over. She’d spent hours perusing the contents of pimples that she’d popped, squeezing them out onto her fingertip and turning her phone’s flashlight onto the tiny blobs of oily pus, the satisfaction enormous. More of her gone, the wet and weak parts of her excised.

Her boyfriend didn’t notice her haircut until after their sex that night. His own hair was long, down to his shoulders, thick and lemon-blond. He had Nordic features too, a straight and royal nose, narrow, tea-green eyes that caught the light as prettily as a bit of sea glass, a disarmingly full and feminine mouth that softened the punch of his jawline and thick brows. He was lying on his stomach, the length of his pale back illuminated by the soft glow of the blood moon through her bedroom window. He was a fair to decent lover, generally attentive and largely uninterested in anything too obscene for her tastes, content with missionary mediocrity and light conversation before sleep. “Whoa, you cut your hair?” he mumbled sleepily, rolling over onto his back and reaching out to thread thick fingers through her curls. “I thought you had it in a ponytail or something, guess I wasn’t paying attention. I liked it long.”

His opinion - entirely unrequested and wholly irrelevant - made her smile faintly. Men always assumed that the world was interested in whether or not they approved of something. But because the sex had been good, she shrugged and stayed silent. Her words were another part of herself that she’d recently decided to stop handing out with such mindless generosity. She had a plan, of course. It had come to her as she’d worked that night, and in its simplicity and brilliance it had taken root in her, a stargazer lily rising and opening in her belly and chest. “I guess if it makes you happy,” Ethan added as if placatingly offering her his permission to soothe the obvious sting that his criticism had to have inflicted upon her. He kissed her cheek, stubbing out his cigarette and passing out beside her under a curling haze of male smoke that dissipated up to her ceiling.

Her father bought her makeup for her birthday. “It’s that...that thing all the girls want right now,” he struggled to explain as she’d unwrapped it, her nostrils full of melting-sugar scent from the little round grocery store cake her mother had bought. She was not currently wearing any makeup, she rarely did, but it was a designer palette that she’d seen on the internet that was highly sought after by women with more cosmopolitan tastes than her own, and she knew it was expensive. He’d bought it for the daughter he wished she was, but she kissed his cheek anyway, thanked him and smiled for the family photos her mother took of them by the fireplace. That was a week after her haircut.

“Walking around lately like the cat that caught the canary,” Eddie commented on Friday. “You must have plans for the weekend.”

“Maybe.” Her smile was coy in a way that it never was, and it caught his attention.

“That haircut’s growing on me,” he remarked casually. “Hopefully it’ll grow too, and soon!” He snorted at his own joke, while Sasha only smirked indulgently at him. She was not accustomed to smirking though, and it looked like more of a grimace. Eddie interpreted this as discomfort, and he rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so fucking sensitive,” he instructed her with an abrupt disdain for her perceived female fragility. “I was just joking.”

Ethan, a physics student, had “major cramming to do, babe,” so she had the weekend to herself. She could have helped him - she was an aficionado of the Nova channel and an avid collector of Neil Degrasse Tyson collector’s editions, a shared interest that had been the initial spark to their relationship. He’d kissed her though, explaining that “it’s a little beyond that stuff you watch on TV, babe. I appreciate it though, you’re the best.” Neither the money nor the academic faith had been there for her to major in physics herself - or anything, for that matter - and high school had dissolved like a sugar cube in a warm cup of tea, leaving her in the dregs of retail for the past 5 years. 27 now, watching the Cosmos remake by night with feet sore from hours on a tiled floor.

She cut her fingernails first. Then her toenails, snipping and snipping until the edges of her cuticles began to ooze dark blood, her fingers and toes sore with raw exposure to a world they’d never known. The pain of the loss of the protective layer of her nails galvanized her to do what she knew had to be done, but she gave herself one last night to sleep on it. Caution was always advisable even in the face of an epiphany. The morning couldn’t stop her though, and sleep had not weakened her resolve. That afternoon, the drugstore offered up the supplies she needed - sturdier, industrial shears intended for gardening, an economy-sized pack of gauze and a dark brown plastic bottle of antiseptic, bandages and numbing gel. The liquor store next door kindly outfitted her with a bottle of vodka that was just powerful enough to suit her needs, and she hummed softly to herself as she hauled it all back to her car.

Ethan had texted her. Hey babe, thinking of you, let’s go out on Monday. My class gets out early. This studying is kicking my ass, what are you up to?

She let him wait. Cellos were better company, their music flooding her car as she drove. She’d already laid out the towels, covering a kitchen chair and the floor under it in them. It was definitely overkill, but the Girl Scouts had taught her to always be prepared as a child. More cellos accompanied her endeavor as she set her speakers to drown out the inevitable pain of what she was about to do. Ethan texted her twice more as she arranged everything, but she was busy propping one foot up on her chair and bending herself nearly in half under the kitchen lights, already having cleaned and tied off her pinky toe with a thick elastic band. It was raspberry-red now, thrumming with the strain of bloodflow. She was even wearing a pair of non-latex gloves, a nod to the scientist she’d never become, and she lowered the shears to form a serrated triangle around her toe. It had to be all at once, she knew.

The resistance of the bone surprised her, when she slammed the shears closed - it was such a brittle little bone, in your pinky toe. She’d expected to sever it in one grand slam, but instead there was a crunch and a blinding, blistering pain that shot throughout her entire foot and all the way up to her knee, slicing deeply through the vodka haze she’d drunk herself into about half an hour ago. Her toe hung by a strip of bloody skin and sinew, the bone mostly severed but not quite, and she had to snap the shears closed a second time. Finally it was removed, a bubbling wellspring of blood spurting up from the new stump and soaking the towel on the chair. Her toe rolled off, landed on the floor. Her toenail was still painted a jaunty red, she realized. Ethan had done it for her, the two of them laughing about how clumsy he was with her nail polish bottle last week.

She doused her brand new stump in antiseptic, laughing hoarsely at the new wave of white-hot pain that exploded through her before packing it all in six layers of gauze until it finally stopped bleeding through, and wrapping it in bandages. She’d even bought clean socks - infection wasn’t the goal here. Purity was, safety was. The cellos were still playing, their belly-deep moaning stirring her. She cleaned off her freed toe, dropping it gently into a mason jar for safekeeping and tucking it behind her bookshelf crammed to bursting with books about the stars.

Eddie didn’t notice her limp at work, but he did notice her new swagger. “It’s birth control,” he guessed as they did inventory that night. “That shit fucks with a girl’s hormones and changes her personality and shit. That’s what’s got you strutting around here. Or it’s some feminist shit, bet you started listening to Ani Difranco and decided to lop off all your hair and take charge of your womanhood or some shit, right? Or that pussy-ass boyfriend of yours with the Disney princess hair finally figured out how to use his dick.” He kept talking, teasing, goading, but Sasha only smiled. She’d considered leaving her severed toe in his jacket pocket, hanging in his employee locker in the back room, but in the end she’d known this would have been a mistake. He couldn’t have it.

Her stump healed prettily, more quickly than she’d thought it would. It was about a month before she felt ready to take off more of herself, and it seemed fitting to make it her other pinky toe this time. Her sense of balance hadn’t been terribly affected by the loss of one, but she figured she could make up for any residual issues by taking off the other one just in case. Ethan had invited her to a party with his classmates the night before, explaining to everyone that “my girlfriend is a hobbyist. A wanna-stronomer,” with a fond laugh. The name had stuck, all night. He’d been gentle in bed though, holding her in his arms and kissing her nose, her eyelids. He hadn’t noticed the neat little stump of her toe at all.

It was easier this time. Like a scientist, she had a better understanding through trial and error of how to do this right now, the exact amount of force required to slice her left pinky toe off in one clean snap, and the amount of blood didn’t catch her off-guard anymore. Like a surgeon, she stitched over the new stump - something she’d neglected the first time, leading to more blood loss than had been necessary, but then women were always giving up their blood to the world - and she cleaned and packed it with a brisk efficiency despite the agony. Bearing up under pain was the most ancient gift women had, after all.

This time, she ate it.

Her other toe was too old to eat, by the time the realization had burned into her like a brand, but when the second one came off she knew what to do. Butter in the frying pan, spices, and she sauteed it until it was lightly charred all around. She nibbled the warm Sasha-flesh from the bone like a tiny chicken wing, felt it slide down her throat and into her belly, and she knew she’d found her answer. The bone went into the trash, where her hair had gone, but then she fished it out because her bones were the only clean parts of her and she was owed them. The weight of women was theirs to bear, but her bones belonged. She left it next to her vanilla candle from Bath and Body Works, in her bathroom where her bath and body worked.

Ethan finally noticed. “Fuck!” he said in a burst of unchecked shock when she’d toed off her socks to get into a warm bath with him a month later. “Sasha! What the fuck happened to your feet?” She’d almost forgotten by now, balanced and with about two percent of her safer from the world than it had been, and she blinked down at said feet. “Did you have some kind of accident?”

“No, not an accident,” she said, slipping into the water and resting her hands on his bare, freckled shoulders, but he wouldn’t be distracted.

“You lost your toes! How the hell did you lose both little toes?!”

“I didn’t lose them,” she tried to explain, kissing the side of his neck. He was rising though, dawning horror spreading across his face like an oil slick poisoning Nordic waters. It hadn’t occurred to her to consider whether or not he’d understand, or to care - something was stirring in her, breaking up, ice chunks in a spring-river thaw, and it was only in this moment that she became aware of how completely unimportant Ethan’s opinion of her body was to her. There was a satisfaction in his horror, the knowledge that it stemmed mostly from the fact that she’d done something to the body from which he took his pleasure that he couldn’t control. There was no going back, he could judge all he wanted but it wouldn’t put her toes back on. They were hers now, two tiny parts of her finally all her own.

Ethan was heaving out of the tub, a spray of soapy water falling away from him, nearly slipping and cracking his skull open on the sink in his haste to escape her new freedom. “We need to get you to a hospital! Why won’t you tell me what happened?”

Sasha’s laugh burst out of her, a bark, a siren. “A hospital? These toes came off weeks ago. I’m fine, Ethan.” Idly, she swirled her fingers through the water, the space he’d opened up around her more soothing than his presence had been. “It was just something that had to be done.”

“...Had to be…? Sasha, are you trying to tell me that you cut off your own toes?”

For a physics student, he could be awfully slow on the uptake sometimes. “Why don’t you get back in the tub,” she suggested, but he was backing away, hilariously naked, his wet and limp penis as vulnerable as she’d ever seen him while she lounged in her bath, a queen. He yanked a dry towel from the rack over her toilet and bolted for the bedroom, furiously drying off like a petulant child. She could hear him bustling around her bedroom, pulling on his clothes, muttering to himself about crazy-ass bitches. She closed her eyes, languidly relaxed. Finally, he appeared in the bathroom doorway again, fully dressed with damp hair and flushed cheeks. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on with you, but you need serious help,” he informed her, still convinced even now that his advice or opinions were necessary. “If I had your dad’s number, I’d call him. Just...get help, Sasha. I can’t believe what you did, Jesus Christ. This is too much for me, I’m out.”

And then he was, hauling a small armful of the things of his that he’d left there out to his car - two hoodies, a few DVDs, a shaving kit. Finally, things were quiet, but the water had gone cold. Sighing, Sasha rose dripping from the tub and considered her earlobes in the steam-fogged mirror over her sink. They would be next to go.

People had their earlobes removed for cosmetic reasons, she discovered that night on the internet. To seal up the gaping holes left behind from teenage phases when stretched lobes had been the cool cultural appropriation of the moment for all empty-rebellious white kids. Sometimes older people, whose earlobes were misshapen and sagging from years of heavy earrings, had it done. Straight razors, a sewing kit, and some more hydrogen peroxide, and the world was hers. Two bloody, tiny flaps of flesh weren’t much for her frying pan, but she made it work with some olive oil and seasoned salt. They burned in her belly in bed that night, a soothing amber light glowing brighter and brighter every day behind her honey eyes. Like her toes, no one in her life noticed their absence.

Ethan never tried to contact her again, he’d blocked her from his facebook after posting a vague update about “secretly unhinged” people who may or may not have been lurking in the personal lives of anyone, even his. She supposed it was a lucky thing, considering that her nipples were next, and this was an adventure. The pain nearly drowned her on the night she did it, sawing away at the surprisingly tough and gritty flesh of her own areola until the entire nipple popped off like a tiny jellyfish carrying strings of fatty tissue and nerves that she had to pull out of her own breast to remove it completely. It was a few more weeks before she could bring herself to take the other one off, preserving the first in the freezer until she was ready to consume it. She’d become the Gordon Ramsay of properly seasoning and preparing her own human flesh at this point, having since learned that the best recipes to follow were ones intended for pork.

Eddie hired a new girl at work, who was soft and shy and slim with glossy blonde hair and wide blue eyes, downy lashes framing them in a perfect circle, perky breasts and a whispery voice. Her name was Julie, and Sasha found herself in the habit of hovering over her while she worked, aware of Eddie’s leering. She’d heard him laughing with Mike, another coworker of theirs at the store, about how “might as well give that bitch a raise already, she gives me a raise.” The dull throb of her missing nipples, the scar tissue slowly thickening where they’d been, seemed somehow worse every time Eddie made Julie laugh her nervous laugh, bright eyes darting. Her exhale of relief was only ever visible to Sasha whenever she came over to interrupt Eddie’s advances.

No one noticed anything until she took off a finger. It was a lot like the toes, but she’d bought a paper slicer online to facilitate the process. It had a thick, heavy green tiled platform and a razor blade as long as her forearm. By now the pain was an old friend, and after half a bottle of vodka, it was a simple thing to hack off her own finger. She handed in her resignation at the store, explaining that she’d been in a terrible accident and didn’t forsee the ability to work anytime in the immediate future. Her only regret was leaving Julie unprotected to deal with Eddie, but with any luck she’d soon figure out her own solutions. Hopefully those solutions would be sharp and heavy and soaked with blood too.

Her finger yielded a prettier bone, jointed and pointed, cleaned and gleaming after a stripping bath in her sink made of bleach and brine. She had enough money saved to live on for a while, and so she spent the next several months systematically amputating every finger on her left hand until it was a paw, a dense blunt thing lined with uneven stumps, the meat long since digested in her. She liked to look at it, lifting it to her face and running her tongue over the healing stumps, but now there was a problem. She had no way of taking the rest of her fingers off, especially not if she wanted to move on to a foot or two eventually. She sat up at night, stroking her paw-hand over her comforter, until she came to the answer. At least five fingers had to stay, to keep going, but she could probably remove and eat both legs with enough time and perseverance. Nothing worth doing was ever easy.

Her feet needed hacksaws, which were surprisingly hard to buy. They were distinctly male in the hardware store, lined up on a display as thick and proud as cocks, nearly as destructive and dangerous. They bent to her will that night though, or one of them at least, after she’d cleaned off and tied off her foot at the ankle. She’d watched Saw for inspiration, the first one, and the cellos and liquor carried her forth. The meat of it was gamey, stringy, but she swallowed it down with a sincere pride, after sewing off and bandaging her newest stump. She’d keep cutting until she finished off one leg, she reasoned, then she’d do the other. She had to wonder where, when, how she’d stop, though. How much of her could she protect? How much of her could be saved? This much, at least, she decided, chewing on a gristly cheek-full of skin and muscle tissue in her still, quiet apartment. Just a little more of her that they couldn’t have.

#horror #horror fiction #original fiction #body horror #feminist horror #teagan kennedy

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