#but why do black and brown people suffer for that.

[prettyshinnythings]

Resurrection Chapter 2

pairings: Sauron x Reader, Adar x reader

Warnings: This is for readers 18+. This chapter contains mentions of smutty activities. There will be smut in the next part if anyone wants that! Please do not read if you're under 18.

This is my first fic on this blog.

Chapter One

Chapter Two:

My breathing hitched in my throat as I stepped from the outside world and into the tent where Adar kept his prisoner king. Inside the tent, there was barely any light, what little light there was came from a dim lamp beside the support beam keeping the tent from collapsing in on itself. Cautiously, I hold my bag to my body, my fingers gripping the sturdy leather of the bag. It had been my idea to bring something to treat whatever wounds the king sustained in Adar’s interrogation. I knew that he could get quite rough whenever he felt the situation called for it. 

Breathing a deep sigh, I take a step further into the tent, allowing the flaps to close behind me, and making the room darker. 

The prisoner doesn’t say anything as I softly walk along the uneven dirt ground. He does not even bother to acknowledge me until I sit on the stool resting in front of the support beam. I set the bag down before sitting on the stool, my eyes finding the man sitting across from me. He has dark brown locks that fall just past his jaw, and his face is handsome, even with the bruising. He lifts his eyes to meet mine slowly, his stubble-covered jaw lifting up in defiance of the pain that I know he’s in. When he looks at me, an undetectable look flickers in his eyes. A moment of recognition that I could not understand. I had never seen this man before, but there was something about him that felt familiar. Even with a cut on his lips, he still manages to smirk up at me. 

“Well, look at you…”

His gaze intensifies as he looks at me over. The dress Adar had suggested for me to wear fit along my body like a second skin. The dark black fabric made me look like I was a member of a lavish court in a wealthy kingdom. The lower cut of the dress seemed particularly interesting to him. 

“... Adar sent in someone pretty to look at. Tell me, love, are you supposed to get me to talk?”

My eyes move from his handsome face to the chain around his neck. Seeing him like that sent a curious shiver up my spine and I was not entirely sure why. Did I like seeing him in chains? I try to shake the thought from my head and force myself to meet his gaze once again. The look on his face has changed slightly, as if he had read my mind. A dark chuckle escapes him as I attempt to remain focused.

“I simply want to ease your suffering, your Majesty. I know Adar can be quite rough when he feels like he is not getting what he wants.” 

My voice is small, and reserved, as I look at him. I attempt to focus on my breathing whilst I do this. Whoever this man was, I felt this pull that I had never felt before. Like the man from my dream. 

My words bring about new amusement on his handsome face. Again, as if he knew what I’d just thought. 

“Have a lot of experience with Adar’s roughness have you? What exactly is an elf doing with a Uruk who is terrorizing my people? Do you love him?”

I feel my stomach turn at his questions. The latter half sounded almost angry as if I was his lover who had betrayed him by being with Adar. I cannot discern what it is exactly that has upset the king, but I do not bite the bait.

“I simply wanted to help you. If my presence is a problem then I will let the guards continue to do what they do to get answers out of you. Though I would hate to bring any more harm to you, your Majesty.” 

Remaining calm, I reach down for my bag and attempt to stand up from the stool. I knew it had been a bad idea to try and get him to talk. But the second that I stand from my spot, he breathes a pained sigh.

“You do not have to go. Forgive me, I am just curious. You do not have to answer if you do not want to.” 

The smirk remains on his face as he says this. His eyes watched me closely to see if I still decided to go. 

Cautiously, I dare to move closer to the king of the Southlands. I sit beside him, placing my bag on the ground near my feet. I do not speak as I reach into the bag and pull out a cloth and a bottle of gin. Opening the gin I take a swig of it and sigh in contentment as I feel the warmth of the gin cascading down the back of my throat. A welcomed sensation that contrasted with the coldness of the tent. I give the king a small smile as I tilt the bottle in his direction, offering him a sip. Hesitantly, he lets me put the bottle to his lips as I pour the gin down his throat. Once I feel like he’s had a few decent swallows I pull the bottle from his lips. 

We lock eyes for only a moment when I pull the bottle away, his gaze seeming to darken at my closer proximity. I feel my breathing hitch and I have to force myself to look away. Turning my attention to the cloth, I pour a decent amount onto the cloth before daring to speak to him. 

“Can I touch you?”

I whisper, momentarily daring to look at him once more. He swallows hard and nods, unable to speak suddenly. With his permission I lean in, my hand holding the cloth on his bloodied lip. He does not flinch when the alcohol touches his skin and I start to clean the spot as gently as possible. I move the cloth from his lip after a few moments before pulling it away from him, the blood almost completely gone. 

“I am sorry that he has hurt your people, my lord. He does not tell me what he does once he leaves the confines of our shared tent. He thinks I am too weak to handle the truth of what he does. What he has his children do.” 

I pour more gin on the cloth and move it to wash his face, clean his face, and softly exfoliate any potential cuts he may have received. Not once does he look away from me, his gaze calculating as he anticipates what I will do next. 

“Adar saved me when I was a younger elf maiden. My parents were both slain and I was the only survivor. He has taken care of me for a long time. I know our pairing seems odd, but he was the first one to care for me and keep me safe.” 

I pour more gin on the cloth and then turn my attention to his hands, carefully cleaning them. He has strong hands. I wonder what they would feel like around my…

I mentally shake the thought from my head before letting it fully form. His voice cut through the silence that had befallen us once again. 

“You look like someone I knew once. You could be her exact copy…”

He pauses as I finish my work. He waits until I put the lid on the bottle and put it back into my bag with the cloth before speaking. 

“... Would you come closer?” 

He asks the question quietly but it is my willingness to comply that shocks me. Without speaking a single word I stand up and move my body to straddle his. Our eyes locked together as I sat in his lap. I am unsure of why his question compelled me to do this, but here I was. Here, mere inches away from his face. 

His eyes move from mine to my lips, the smirk he had worn earlier slowly creeping back onto his face. 

“Show me your chest and torso.”

My breathing hitches as he says this, my mind in a compliant haze. Without any hesitation I pull my arms out of my sleeves. He licks his lips when I pull the fabric down and reveal full access to my exposed breasts. I feel my heartbeat quicken as he watches me pull the fabric further to show the top of my torso. I had been born with scars along my chest and torso. It looked like I’d been cut deeply by something very sharp. My whole life those marks had marred my skin, to the point where I did not wear certain clothing because the scars were so unappealing to look at. 

He seems deeply transfixed by my scars as his bound hands reach out, stopping before making complete contact with my flesh. 

“Can I touch you?”

He asks as I had only moments before. Without thinking twice I nod, watching him closely. Slowly he uses his fingers to lightly trace over the marks on my torso, his brow furrowed as he does. I could not quite understand what the look on his face meant, but there was a pain etched into his expression like I was some ghost he never thought he would see again. 

“I know…” 

I start breathlessly, my body suddenly on edge. I feel a chill move up my spine and my stomach turns in anticipation of what he will do next. A wetness started to form in between my legs. A dark chuckle brushes past his lips, seeming to note the way my body has changed beneath his touch. 

“... I know they’re ugly to look at. I was born with these markings. My parents used to try and cover them up because they are so unsightly.”

His fingertips are light along my body, so light that I almost feel like I imagined them. My comment causes his brow to furrow as his eyes flick up from the markings to my face. His bound fingers lightly move from the marks on my torso to the one on my chest right above my heart. 

“You’re beautiful. Your birthmarks do not take that away.”

My heart skips when he says this and suddenly I am all too aware of how close his lips are to mine. There is an arrogance that moves across his face when he sees that I have fully taken in our current predicament. 

“What do you know of Sauron your majesty?”

I whisper, his lips ghosting over mine. My eyes flutter shut and he chuckles. I am trying to stay on task now that I realized how much I had quickly played into his hands. I was in his lap with the whole top part of my body exposed to him. This was certainly not what Adar had wanted.

Adar.

“Call me Halbrand.”

He rasps and kisses me deeply, my lips are powerless to deny how good he feels against me. I am quick to return the kiss with as much passion as he offers me. I gasp when his bound hands grasp my breast, his thumbs toying with my hardened nipple. He shudders against me when my hips roll against his. My body is desperate for friction. I can feel myself getting caught up in this heated exchange. I would give myself over to this man without a second thought… well until I thought of Adar once again. This time when I think about him I break the kiss and look at Halbrand. My heart is beating so fast that I am surprised that he cannot see the outline of it thumping in my chest. 

“Halbrand… Please tell me about Sauron.”

I pull my head back to look at him, my body’s desire for him reflected in my face. I wondered what he thought of me at that moment. Did he think I was an easy fuck? Or did he feel it too? This strange connection that I could not understand. A dangerous look pulsates beneath the surface of the smile he gives me. He tilts his head back against the wall and I feel the frustration boiling within me at the smug look that overtakes his face. 

“He is closer than you could ever imagine, Sweetling.” 

My eyes widen at the nickname and instantly I remember being called Sweetling before…

In my dream. 

How could he have known about it? 

“Is this funny to you Halbrand? Do you enjoy being locked in here? If you tell me what you know I can speak with Adar. I could convince him to let you go without you befalling any more harm.” 

At this, he looks at me with a raised eyebrow. He looks me over once again, amused that he has given me nothing but I was here partially naked before him. 

“How will you convince him, hmm? Will you suck his cock and tell him how much you love him? Will you let him fuck your pretty little pussy? Is that what you will do? Meanwhile, Middle Earth is suffering, but I bet that does not matter to you as long as you are his whore.”

When he finishes speaking all of the wind in my lungs feels as if it has left my body. Halbrand looked back at me like I had done something awful to him. As if I had betrayed him in some personal way. I cannot stop the tears that form in my eyes at his words. Instead, I get up off of his lap and pull my dress back up over my exposed chest, concealing myself once more. I refuse to look at him as I bend down to pick up the bag, but when I do his hands grasp my arm. I want to pull out of his grasp but find that I cannot. I am too overcome with emotion to push him away. No one had ever said those words to me before. Sure, I knew what the uruks thought of my relationship with Adar. Some loved me, others did not. I knew what people thought of me when they found me standing at Adar’s side. But no one had ever voiced those feelings out loud. 

“Halbrand.”

I whimper, forcing myself to look over at him. The tears in my eyes have softened his expression as he watched me cautiously. 

“What is your name, Sweetling.”

He asks, his tone careful. 

“(Y/n).”

I feel like a child who has been scolded when I speak to him as if I was in trouble. 

“(Y/n), Sauron has taken a new form. I know not where he resides, only that he does not look the same as Adar remembers.”

The information he provides does not have a moment to sink in before Adar’s voice sounds from behind me. 

“Halbrand, do not touch (y/n). She is mine.”

My blood seems to freeze when Adar calls me his. Suddenly, it did not feel as comforting as it had this morning when I had awoken in his bed. Halbrand does let go of my arm and when he does I reach down to grab my bag before walking over to Adar’s side. He peers down at me with an unreadable expression. Almost as if he knew that I had gone too far. As if he felt the shift that had happened the moment Halbrand’s lips were on mine. He pulls me in against him, his hands on my waist. Adar’s lips find the side of my face, but there is no comfort that I feel from the action. 

“She was someone else’s at one point was she not lord father? Or at least someone whose likeness she shares. But you knew that already didn’t you?”

Halbrand’s voice breaks through the uncomfortable tension that had manifested in the room. At this statement, I peer up at Adar in confusion. What could Halbrand have meant? I take a few steps back from Adar, my eyes wide as I look at him. A deep sigh escaped my lover before he glanced past me to Halbrand. 

“During the first age, Sauron had a messenger who became his mistress. The name Morgoth gave her was Thuringwethil. But she was known amongst the uruks who served Sauron as a different name. (Y/n), was the one he loved more than anything. He would have done anything for her, but on the night of his coronation, something terrible happened. He had sent her to take one final message and during that journey, she was killed when she came across the hound of Valinor. Sauron never learned of her passing because I killed him before he was able to learn the fate of his mistress…”

I feel my skin crawl at his words. Not because I was disturbed by them, but because they felt familiar to me. As if my body could recall every memory he recounted. Adar’s gaze finds mine, his lips pulled into a tight line. 

“...When I found you I was shocked by how much you looked like Thuringwethil. Every single part of you is her perfect likeness, apart from the fact that you are an elf. You have her face, her hair, her body, and those same scars that Morgoth had etched into Thuringwethil. When I found you I knew that I had to have you. That having you was the perfect revenge against Sauron and what he put my children through. If Thuringwethil was his true love in his past life then I wanted to make sure that, he would never have her again.”

When he finishes speaking, he takes a step forward, his hand outstretched to take mine in his. I am in shock by everything he has just said, so much so that I just stare at him. My body is unmoving as if I had turned into a statue. Everything I had known to be true had been flipped on its head. Every piece of my relationship with Adar seemed to pass through my mind like a demented illusion. And worst of all, it hurt because I had believed that Adar had loved me for me. Not because I looked like someone he had known. Not because of his anger with Sauron.

“How do you even know that I am her? What if I just look like her?”

I ask in quiet desperation, pleading for some sort of explainable reasoning. Adar gives my hand a squeeze and nods.

“Sometimes, when you dream you say his name. His true name that not many know. You said it this morning when you woke up. I do not believe that is a coincidence.”

My brow furrows as I think back to the name of the man from my dream and I feel my heart stop. Cautiously, I look up at Adar before mumbling feebly. 

“Marion.”

[koredria]

the lil 4 months where i had hope were a welcomed reprieve from the last 10 years and next 4 of horrors. it was nice to have a smidge of hope back, for a little while.

[annie-manga]

So, in light of recent/current events- specifically on the topic of homonationalism, I'd like to bring your attention to this song that came out in 2018:

[kavehater]

I’m a descendant of the prophet (kind of) and all I have to show for it is my obsession with an anime blond guy …

[thevoidstaredback]

It's always graveyards. Why is it always graveyards? They're creepy as hell and, well... that's it. On the bright side, the Protection Spirits watching the gates recognize him and realize the danger he's in. Well, maybe he wasn't in real danger because the Bats and Birds don't really do the whole purposefully harming civilians things, but they are scary as hell! Chasing him down like a bat straight outta hell- obviously he was gonna run! They cornered him! Maybe he'll invest in getting them lessons in how to interact with people in and out of costume?

Honestly, Nightwing, Danny expected better of you. At least Red Hood and Signal know how to treat innocents.

Here's the thing about Protection and Guardian Spirits, though. They don't like intruders. If you're running from something and you don't have time to ask permission to enter, you best say "thank you" and bring them shiny things on your next visit. If you do have time to ask permission, you ask permission. If they think you're a threat or rude, they won't let you enter whatever they're guarding.

"Thank you," Danny said as he slowed to a walk further into the graveyard, the sound of the gates slamming closed behind him confirmation that the Bat and his gaggle wouldn't be following him in.

Wasting no time, Danny pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket. It was a handy little thing he'd picked up during his stay in the House of Mysteries. Draw and door, tell it where you wanna go, open it, and go through! Beetlejuice style. Though, unlike what the Handbook for the Recently Deceased says, these doors won't actually open a door to the afterlife. He fixed that tiny glitch a while ago.

Anyway, a quick few chalk lines on the side of a mausoleum later, and Danny was opening a door to Fawcett, Philadelphia. Probably not the best choice, considering that he was trying to stay away from the Justice League, but it's better than Metropolis.

"Whoa." Damn it! He should've stayed home. "What was that, mister?"

Danny made sure the door closed behind him, praying for strength. Why did he feel like several deities were laughing at him? "Hey, kid. Can you, um, maybe not say anything about that?"

The kid, short brown hair and a red jacket stood out the most to Danny for some reason, seemed very amused. "You're gonna have to buy my silence."

Again, Danny let out a quiet, long suffering sigh. "Coffee is so not worth it." Looking at the kid, he said, "Alright, fine. I was getting coffee anyway, I'll buy ya lunch. Know any good places?"

Grinning, the kid cheered, "Hell yeah! Follow me!"

Resigned, Danny followed after the kid, easily keeping pace. About a block later, he figured he should probably get the kid's name. "I'm Danny."

"Billy."

"No last name?"

"Fae rules, dude. What's your excuse?"

He had to give it to him. "Touché."

Another three blocks of walking, Billy finally stopped at a cafe. It was a quaint place with stained white brick and a dark grey roof. There were metal chairs and tables outside the building surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The table umbrellas and the awning over the black door were light blue, matching the curtains in the inside.

The inside walls were painted baby blue with a white ceiling and a pinewood floor. The tables and chairs were all stained black with light pink cushions and table cloths. The curtains, as observed before, were all baby blue, tied back with baby pink ribbons. The lights were barely yellow, giving the room a warm feel. The counters were white with black paneling on the outside and white granite as the tops.

"Welcome in," the young man at the register greeted with a smile, "What can I get you two started with today?"

Danny envied the man. He'd obviously not been doing this long enough to gain the veteran's shine to his eye. He turned to look at the menu after telling Billy to get whatever he wanted. A mistake he'll probably pay for. "I'd like a large Red Eye, equal parts coffee and espresso, with cinnamon, honey, chocolate syrup, mint, and vodka, please."

The 'newbie' light in the man's eyes dimmed a little bit. "Um, we don't carry vodka." Glad that's the only thing he's worried about. Priorities.

Danny clicked his tongue. "Oh, well, it was worth a shot. I'd like everything else, though, please. Mix it at your own discretion."

"Alright," he was very valiant to go back to grinning, "Anything else?"

Danny motioned for Billy and the kid stepped up. "Can I get a large mocha, three chocolate chip cookies, and two sandwiches?"

The blond entered the order. "Of course! That'll be $25.37." A quick card swipe from Danny. "Thank you very much, we'll have your order out to you soon!"

The two didn't say a word as they chose a table in the corner. Danny let Billy take the seat that was open to the rest of the cafe so he wouldn't feel cornered. He had a good view of the door, though, so he wasn't complaining.

"So, how'd you do that?" Billy asked after they'd gotten their orders.

"How'd I do what?" Danny sipped his drink.

"How'd you walk outta that wall? It's solid!"

"Magic."

"I guessed that much."

"Then why'd you ask?"

"Will you teach me?"

"No."

"You didn't even think about it!"

"Okay," He paused. "No."

"Not fair." he pouted.

Putting his drink on the table, Danny summed as much fake-it-till-you-make-it energy as he could. "Magic isn't a toy and takes years of practice to get a handle on, not to mention you have to actually have an aptitude for it before you can even try. Besides, I don't know you nearly well enough to trust you with anything else."

Billy finished the cookie he was eating. "I can do it! You just gotta teach me!"

Another sigh that Danny had stopped counting. "Look, you seem like a good kid, but I'm not gonna teach you magic."

"Why not!"

"However," he continued, ignoring the demand, "I'm not gonna leave ya fully defenselessness."

"What do you mean?" Billy backed away slightly, his eyes narrowing as he moved to be able to run quickly.

Another sip. "Based off of the dirt you're covered in, the grease in your hair, and the overall poor condition of your clothes, I'm gonna bet that you're a street kid. So," he pulled a small card from his pocket, very aware that Billy was watching his hand aptly, "I'm going to leave you with this."

Slowly, the brunet took it and turned it over. "What it is?"

The white card had the initials DP in the middle, circled by an Ouroboros. The initials were completely solid, but the snake of the Ouroboros was made up of tiny runes of protection and health and healing and good fortune.

"My calling card. If you're ever in danger, hold that to your chest and ask for help. I'll be there."

Still obviously suspicious, Billy took a moment to scrutinize the card. It was cute to watch the kid act like he knew what he was looking at or for. When he seemed satisfied, he shoved the card into the inner pocket sewn into his jacket. "Thanks."

"No problem, kid," Pulling out his phone, Danny saw the time and stood, "I've gotta go now. I assume I've sufficiently bought your silence on the whole magic thing?"

Billy grinned, "I guess, but you gotta come visit me, okay?"

He chuckled, "Sure thing. See ya."

Part 2 Part 4

(I don't drink coffee, so Idk how that shit works)

Tag list: @zaiothe4th

[hannieween]

after dark | city lights series | h.js

It all started with a deal with your next door neighbor, Joshua Hong. A little harmless deal that surprisingly led you to finding love; and a part of yourself that you were still discovering.

✮ pairings: joshua hong x female reader ✮ genre: fluff, angst, smut (18+) ✮ aus: rock singer joshua, boyfriend joshua, ldr ✮ word count: 16.4k

›🎧: habit – i.m | chi-ka – tabber ft. dean | singularity – v ♡ | restless – bibi | smoke sprite – so!yoon! ft. rm ♡

→ previous chapters

› nsfw tags under the cut

✮ warnings: alcohol consumption (no dubcon), smut with plot, obnoxiously long sex scene, hard dom joshua, brat reader, reader is on the pill, foul language, dirty talk, unprotected p in v sex, creampie, messy cumplay, body worshipping, jealousy, oral sex (m, f), multiple orgasms, manhandling, a bit of degradation kink, brat taming: pussy slaps, overstimming and crymaxing; aftercare, pet names: sweetheart, princess, baby, bunny (hers) handsome, baby, babe, baby boy (his)

✮ this is loosely proofread, i could've waited patiently for the brilliant @cvntrlseecvntrlvee to proofread this for me but i am, you guess it, impatient. haha sorry my sweet vee. i love u 🩵

✮ this chapter is for @beckyloveshannie, happy birthday, baby 🩵����

✮ a/n: the obnoxiously long sex scene is for me. it's a self indulgent thing, i won't apologize for how fucking long it is. you suffer with me kekekekek

✮ a/n 2: also, stick around for the announcement in the final author's note!! •⩊•

✮ disclaimer: minors dni this post is intended for 18+ readers ONLY. please have your age stated in your description and try not to look like a bot please 🙂.

part viii — part two

The flight that was supposed to be short ended up extending over two hours in the air because of a weather issue. By the time you reached the airport you felt exhausted, both physically and emotionally.

You felt like you had failed the main purpose of going to visit Joshua. Which, in reality, wasn't your sole intention of visiting him. Mainly, you just missed him so bad it made your heart ache. The second intention was to try and make him clear his schedule for your book release party.

However Joshua couldn't do that. He didn't say why, he just said he was not going to be able to attend.

You tried to see reason within that. Joshua was extremely busy these days, recording session after recording session, meetings, networking, shows, you name it.

But, he said in the past that he wanted to be there with you on the day of the release. And you couldn't help but think that there was no way that he changed his mind in the span of a few weeks. Was recording more important than his words to you?

Again, you tried to give Joshua the benefit of the doubt.

Among all of the people coming and going in the vast space of the airport, you spotted a black haired man, wearing a bright pink sweatshirt, pacing back and forth before deciding to sit down on a bench, phone in hand, the screen so bright it illuminated his whole face.

"Mr. Yoon?" you called faking an overtly sweet voice.

He winced at the sound in surprise and lifted his brown eyes to you. "Oh, grandmaaa," he chuckled, standing up to wrap you in an asphyxiating hug, bringing a hand to your head, running his knuckles on your scalp.

"Jeonghan, stop it," you whined.

"I've been calling you, ever heard of picking up the phone when it rings?" he muttered through gritted teeth, pulling away from you almost aggressively.

"I just landed, Jeonghan. I didn't take my phone off airplane mode," you muttered with some annoyance but couldn't fight the smile that crept on your face when you saw his. "Stop it with the grandma thing."

"Don't tell me what to do," he scoffed, putting a hand on the crown of your head to ruffle your hair. "Come on, hurry, or your present's gonna die from suffocation in the car," he added with a low chuckle.

"My what?" you gasped but he immediately turned to the direction of the sliding doors of the airport. "Jeonghan!"

You had to hop quicker to catch his step. "You know for someone who's recently recovering from an ankle injury, you sure are fast," you said with a tired gasp.

"I'm not fast, you're slow," he muttered, turning to give you a look. "It comes with old age."

"Can you stop with that?!" you whined and felt more irritated when he just snorted with a laugh. "I'm younger than you."

"You might be on paper, but not in spirit," he lifted his pointer finger as if lecturing. "Did you tell your boyfriend you arrived safe?"

Your heart skipped. "Oh, I forgot," you muttered and got your phone from your tote bag.

"It's affecting your memory now," he tutted, getting the key to his black BMW M3 and unlocked the door for you, opening before stating: "And please don't sit on your gift."

"Oh, what is it?" you peaked inside the car before climbing into it. There was a large paper bag on the passenger seat. "Is it this?"

You lifted the paper bag with some reluctance as you slid onto the seat. Before you could turn around and look at Jeonghan, he was already closing the door to his car and going around it.

"Very funny," you muttered with a scoff, opening the bag to receive the smell of fries. "You said my gift was alive."

"I mean it had to be alive at some point," he pointed with a shrug.

"I thought I was going to find a pet or something like that," you muttered. "I hate your pranks."

"If you want that, I can get you a bunny," he nodded at you "Or a goldfish, so it doesn't run away."

"Someone hasn't watched Finding Nemo," you said in a mocking singsong tone.

"Pretty sure that's a clownfish, you clown," he let out a chortle and pointed at the bag with his nose. "I got you your burger."

"Oh! Thank you, Jeongjeong," you cooed happily, grabbing a fry but before you could stuff it in your mouth, it was quickly snatched away by his lithe fingers. "Hey!"

He cackled, chewing the stolen fry as his devious laugh filled your ears. "Put your seatbelt on," he started the car and immediately drove off the parking lot and into the road.

The click from the seatbelt resounded between the two of you, since you were busy munching on fries.

"I assumed you'd be hungry" you heard Jeonghan say calmly now, he maintained his eyes on the road.

"Yeah, I am. Thank you Hannie. Want a fry?" you offered.

"Please," he sighed, leaning to your side as you put a fry in his mouth. "You should try the burger, it's really good."

You nodded, though he didn't catch that. His eyes didn't leave the road until he heard the rustling noise of the paper bag as you took the burger with your hands, unwrapping it to sink a bite in.

"But not in my car!" he protested loudly, sending quick looks at you.

"You smoke in my apartment, I'll eat in your car," you quipped and laughed when you saw his jaw nearly dislocate.

"Those two are not equivalent!" he said with a look of disbelief.

"I decide they are," you said matter of factly, showing him a slight smile as you munched on the burger.

"You little–" he cut himself off with a laugh but he settled back on his seat with a small: "Brat."

You froze for a second, getting an odd feeling. Like an unsettling chill crawling down your spine. But Jeonghan was back with his eyes set on the road, paying no mind to what your reaction was.

"Oh, I forgot to tell Joshua that I'm with you," you muttered, trying to mask the alarming jolt in your stomach.

"Did you ask him about next Friday?" he pried, when he looked at you his eyes drifted to the fry you were holding in front of your mouth.

Jeonghan parted his mouth as you stuffed the fry in his mouth.

"He said he won't be able to make it," you muttered, trying to mask the pain constricting the tone of your voice, but it was too late.

Your heart deflated.

"Mmn," he hummed with some understanding. "Did he say why?"

"Nope."

You finished typing the text and sent it to your boyfriend, locking your phone to concentrate on the big burger that looked huge in your hands.

"This is really big, Hannie," you muttered innocently before taking another bite with a pleased groan.

"Yeah, they all say that," he said with a brief chuckle.

You nearly choked on your food. "Jeonghan!" you squealed, making him laugh harder. "You're gross."

"As if you didn't know me already," he scoffed and you told on his need to change the subject when he grabbed his vape pen from the cup holder as he asked: "So how was it? Were you able to tell him what was bothering you?"

"Uh, yeah," you frowned. "About that."

"Fuck me," he groaned, his arms going slack but his hands were still gripping the wheel. "You didn't tell him?"

"I was... busy," you muttered shyly and looked away. "We talked about other things, but I never got around telling him about my... insecurities."

The car came to a stop in the parking lot of the building and Jeonghan turned the engine off, a hand immediately reaching inside the paper bag to grab some fries.

"And how do you feel now?" his eyebrows lifted slightly.

"I feel like crap," you let out a sigh, trying to mask all of your emotions but the weight was too much, making you drop your gaze to your lap. "And now he's not going to be here when I release my book and it makes me question whether I want a stupid party or not because I know I'll feel bummed."

"Why? No! I'm already scouting a place for the party," he shook his head, grabbing more fries.

Your heart sank a little. "You are doing what?" you asked with a tiny voice.

"I'm looking for a nice place where you can have your party," he shrugged. "I think I found something, but I'm negotiating with the owner so we can have an enclosed section of the restaurant."

"Jeonghan you shouldn't have!" you muttered, your tone quivering with emotion.

"I'm not doing it out of the goodness of my heart. It's your boyfriend's instruction," he looked around aimlessly. "He might not be there, but he is putting the black card."

"You're joking," you scoffed. "Tell me you're joking."

"My jokes are funny," he tutted. "This is not a joke."

"Jeonghan," you said firmly, your head tilting to one side.

"I'm being serious!" he smiled the way he did when he knew he was getting in trouble. "He wants you to have a nice party for your big day."

"A party he's not attending!" you whined and your eyes brimmed with tears almost instantly and you had to look away in shame.

"You're not doing this for your boyfriend, you know that," he reprimanded. "Now quit being a sorry ass and eat."

You pouted and looked at your burger.

"What?" Jeonghan chuckled at the sad expression on your face. "What, why are you doing that face? Please eat that or I will."

At that, you raised the burger and took another large bite, the tears that had gathered in the corner of your eyes ran down your cheeks.

Jeonghan threw you a reproachful look, but a slow and awkward smile drew on his face. "You're unbelievable," he snickered, bringing the vape and tucked it between his lips, drawing a big intake.

"And you're mean," you retorted. "You're not a good friend."

"Now you're just making shit up," he laughed.

"I am," you smiled sheepishly, taking another bite from your burger. "Mmnph this has bacon in it," you delighted with big tears in your eyes.

"Yes, princess, it has bacon in it," he muttered aloofly, unlocking his phone and typing something quick.

"How did you know I liked bacon?"

"Everyone likes bacon," he rolled his eyes and sent you a look again.l "You told me you liked bacon."

"I did?" you squeaked out, mouth full of food.

"You were drunk," he muttered, still looking at his phone.

"Mmn," you hummed, pausing for some thought. "I've been doing that quite a lot."

"What, forgetting things?" he raised his head. "Yeah, that's normal in old people like you."

"Jeonghan, no!" you whined in frustration. "I mean, getting drunk."

"Please," he brushed off. "You get drunk two weekends in a row and start getting worried. You should loosen up more, grandma."

"What do you mean?" you asked in a high-pitched whine.

"I mean... you read too much into things," he dropped his phone between his thighs. "Relax. Don't worry about meaningless things. Eat."

"Pfft," you laughed. "Wow, that's great advice, Jeonghan."

"Yeah, it's not my best one," he looked out the window, biting the tip of his thumb. "Listen, I just don't like to see you like this, okay?"

"How?" you inquired, thinking that he might list emotions he saw on your face. Sad, disappointed, deflated.

"Insecure," he replied with a tone of obviousness. "It makes you irrational. That's why you can't sleep. That's why you turn to alcohol."

You swallowed, uncertain as to how to proceed with this conversation. It seemed hard to believe that in such a short time, Jeonghan has learned how to read you perfectly.

"I'm working on it," you replied with a small pout.

"I know," he replied with a warmth coating his tone, the understanding mirroring in his gaze. "But you're not canceling this."

You breathed out through your nose while you munched on your food. The only sound you heard beside you was the raspy intake of Jeonghan's vape.

"God, I've so many things to do," you said, leaning your head back on the headrest. "I don't even know where to start."

"Do you need help?" he asked promptly. "I can help if I can."

"Thank you, Jeonghan but," you sighed with some frustration. "It's stuff only I can do."

"Let me keep you company, then," he said with a reassuring smile. "Unless you want to be alone and you're too shy to tell me."

You looked into his kind eyes for a second, but it was long enough to make you feel an exhilarating jolt deep in your gut. You looked again, feeling a bit flustered and nodded to him.

"Company is okay."

Jeonghan helped you carry one of the boxes full of freshly printed and packed books and you carried another. He looked excited as you both made your way up to your apartment.

"I haven't read your books yet," he commented, weighing the heavy box in his arms. "Makes me feel excited."

"Uhm," you choked out. "Yeah... about that."

"What?" he raised his eyes at you. The elevator came to a stop and you hurried yourself out and to your apartment door.

"You don't know what I write?" you asked as you opened the door and let your friend in, who looked avidly interested in your books upon seeing your reaction.

"Should I?" he asked curiously.

"Joshua didn't tell you?"

"He just told me that you're a writer, that's it," he cocked his head to one side. "Was he supposed to tell me?"

"No, not at all just," you breathed out, putting the box on the round dining table.

"Why don't you just cut to the point?" he asked, sounding a little annoyed now and with a low grunt, he placed the box on the table too. "That shit is heavy. For someone your size, you carried it like it was nothing."

"The difference between you and me, is that I go to the gym so I can sleep," you huffed, feigning some pride but your joke was broken by your own embarrassed laugh.

"Yeah, whatever, grandma," he nodded with a playful smile plastered on his face. "I've heard your knees crack everytime you get up, so shut up."

"You shut up!" you whined like a child.

"Tell me what your books are about," he retorted while pushing the sleeves of his pink hoodie up to his elbows.

"Vampires," you muttered, but your tone fell flat.

"Tsk. I know that," he said, making his way to the kitchen and freely opening the door of your fridge, pulling out a bottle of soju and a can, which he left one day he stopped by. To keep you company as well.

"Can I get one?" you asked, nodding to the bottle of soju.

Jeonghan stopped, his eyes zeroing on your face and nodded. "You got it," he muttered, deciding not to make a comment about your newer alcoholic tendencies.

You went to your study to get your pencil case, coming back to Jeonghan sitting down on the dining table, popping the can of beer open with eyes on his phone screen, that were dragged to your frame when you entered within his line of vision.

"Do you want to watch TV while I do this?" you offered meekly when his eyes darted down your frame swiftly.

"I was thinking of watching you do whatever it is you have to do," he shrugged, leaning back on the chair, knees spread wide.

"Uhm, okay," you replied, sitting on the chair next to him. "You're going to grow bored."

"That's what the booze is for," he replied, pouring some soju on the pair of glasses, and then poured a bit of beer. His fingers moved the glass in circle motions on top of the table and then lifted the glass to you. "Drink."

"Thank you, Hannie," you whispered, taking the glass and holding it for him to clink together.

"Cheers," he said before drinking up. "Now, about your book..."

"Ah," you nervously opened one of the boxes.

The cover was pretty. Prettier than you ever expected one of your books to look like. Even when you were up all night writing the book, you never got to imagine it would sport a jacket so pretty.

You got a permanent marker from your pencil case and opened the book, to swiftly scribble your author's signature, plus a dedication note that read:

To Jeongjeong. Thank you for being the greatest friend and blessing I never knew I needed.

You closed the book and slided it across the table to his hand.

"What?" he asked, completely clueless, opened the book and quickly read the signature. His bright, sweet eyes lit up as he looked at you. "Aw, princess, thank you."

He turned the page over, his eyes reading over the book dedication, the one that the world would see. Your heart dropped, knowing what his eyes were reading, his expression changed a bit but then he immediately closed it.

"So, tell me what this is about," he insisted, trying to change the subject. "Go on, I'm not gonna read it right now."

"The book is about vampires, magic. It has a lot of blood, drama... and sex," you cleared your throat shamefully and drank from your glass deeply. "A lot of it."

A moment dragged on, Jeonghan kept the features of his face in check, but then he broke with a wheezing laughter.

"Don't laugh at me," you whined.

"Sorry, sorry," he recovered with a sniff and then drank from his own glass.

You narrowed your eyes and blurted out: "You knew."

"Of course I knew. Joshuji told me what his involvement in the making of your book was," he sent a cheeky look at you.

"Oh," you gulped. "He did? Why... when?"

"Before you guys got serious he... uh," he dropped his gaze, seemingly deep in thought for a second and then he shook his head. "I shouldn't be telling you this, anyway but he told me about you so, it's fair game."

"What are you talking about, Hannie?" you frowned, a deep remorseful feeling settling in your stomach.

"One night I got a call to come pick him up at Cheol's bar. When I got there, he was completely gone," he sighed and looked upwards to the ceiling, much as if he were uncomfortable by the predicament of being both Joshua's friend and now yours. "You had uh... you guys had a fight, or at least he told me you were taking some time to think about what you wanted."

"Hold on, when was this?" you inquired, your heart sank upon hearing this, and desperately wanted to pinpoint the time when this had taken place.

"I don't know, a month ago? Maybe. I know you guys weren't serious yet. I took him into my car, he was crying like a baby, telling me that he fucked up, that he ruined everything with you, blablabla," he rambled, only pausing to drink from his glass, emptying it completely and then started to refill it.

"Jeonghan, stop," you raised a hand. "Slowly, please."

He sighed again, adding a little grunt in the process. "The next day, he woke up in my apartment, hungover as fuck, he almost didn't know where he was, he didn't even remember being at Cheol's bar," he leaned back on the chair again, crossing his arms over his chest. "He told me everything about you because I wouldn't let him go without him explaining what got him like that."

"Did he..." you inhaled deeply. "Did he tell you why we fought?"

"Yeah, he told me," he whispered, nodding with his head and then he smiled at you. "He told me a lot of things. He told me more about you. And I asked him why you guys got into a no strings attached thing in the first place and he told me he was helping you write some scenes for your book."

You had to look away from him for a moment, squeezing your eyes shut to the image running in your mind, causing you a deep pain that sunk into your chest.

"God," you gasped. Your eyes brimmed with tears when you opened them again.

"Look, I know you wanted a fun, snarky response from me but... I'm telling you all of this because I want you to know, he loves you," he placed a hand on the crown of your haid, ruffling your hair in the process. "He's just dumb when it comes to showing it."

"He never told me all of this," you whispered, wiping a tear from your eye with the back of your hand.

"Of course he didn't," he said, shrugging off. "He probably didn't want you to know that he cried in my car, drunk off his ass."

You leaned your head to one side, sniffing loudly. "I've hurt him so much..." you sobbed, your voice was a mere whine.

"And he has hurt you."

He grabbed his glass and downed its contents in one go. He looked at you, chin raised, heavy lidded eyes now from the alcohol working fast in his system.

"But that's what you're getting for when you're in a relationship, right?" he asked, stretching his arms over his head. "Ups and downs."

"Right," you mumbled with some thought, feeling your gaze lose focus in the wall behind Jeonghan.

"Well, we were signing books, weren't we?" he said abruptly,

You scoffed, grabbed another book and opened its lap to sign the first page while Jeonghan watched you carefully.

"Do you have another marker in here?" he asked, rummaging in your pencil case and pulling out another black marker. "Nice."

"Jeonghan, what–," you blurted out, watching him take a new book, opening the first page and replicating your author's signature nearly to the point. "The fuck?"

"Yeah, I'm not proud about this," he muttered as he put another book in front of him on the table. "But it's coming in handy right now, isn't it?"

You smiled, the sound coming from your lips drew his eyes to your face. "Yeah, knock yourself off, you little humbug."

"Hehe."

The week went by slowly again. Slower than before, it felt like.

You continued to be on top of your work, trying to channel those days  when you kept yourself so busy to even think about Joshua, back when he lived thirty seconds away from you.

So your days would look like this: wake up, tend to your needs, turn your computer on, get as much work done without dwelling on the fact that your boyfriend was far away, probably in a city you'd never been before.

Sometimes, he would have the time to call you; and you would talk for a good chunk of time. Sometimes, he wouldn't even return your texts, being so that he didn't have the time and when he did you were already asleep.

The biggest challenge for you was going to bed. But that was almost routine for you. Rolling in your bed, or trying to hold onto the pillow that no longer held the scent of your boyfriend's hair.

When the day of the book release rolled around, you lied in your bed, staring at the ceiling until your alarm beeped. You reached out to stop the annoying sound alarm from your phone and sighed, hoping that the day ahead of you wasn't as bleak as your sleepless night.

But maybe you were just being too much of a pessimist.

You hit off the day by checking your email, texts and such. Apparently your book was one of the most anticipated releases for the Fantasy genre, and the pre-release had also been a success. So you just checked if everything was going alright, not caring to see anything about reviews or anything pertaining to the reception just yet.

So you kept yourself busy towards the time when you had to start to get ready for the party later in the night. Your normal day to day tasks were only interrupted by a call from the smart doorbell ringing.

You approached the small screen and were promptly notified that someone had sent you flowers.

"Come on in," you replied politely and granted them access to the elevator.

The delivery service man was at your door in less than two minutes. The flower bouquet was arranged already in a pretty ceramic vase, a light pink bow wrapped around it, safekeeping a card.

You gently placed the vase in the middle of your dining table. Already knowing the one person who would send you flowers. But you took a moment before opening the envelope to see how pretty the bouquet was.

It was an assortment of all types of flowers and colors, white, yellow, pink, and blue. Then you grabbed the small envelope tucked beneath the bow.

Congratulations, baby! I wish I could be there to give you these in person. But I guess I can give you more flowers every day to make up for it, right?

I am proud of you, bunny. I love you and I miss you every second.

J.

[19:32 PM] you: thank you for the flowers, Josh. I loved them 🥰

You waited for a few seconds in hopes that he would appear online, to receive a text back, a call, anything. But his last message was an I love you, bunny, that he sent more than twenty four hours ago.

Releasing a sigh, you decided to give up your phone, since you had been obsessing over it since Joshua left and it was causing you so much mental stress that you thought you would break soon.

Besides, you would have to be ready soon. Jeonghan had offered to come pick you up himself. More like he just instructed you to be ready, not giving you a chance to pass it up for mere politeness.

But Jeonghan had become your friend, he was no longer just Joshua's friend.

Standing in front of the long mirror, you debated whether to change your dress into a two-piece suit, thinking it might be more in line with the nature of the celebration. But the dress fitted you well, it hugged you in all the right ways. The color of the fabric complimented your skin and the length came just above your knees, legs covered by stockings too.

With a sigh, you grabbed your high heels and went to open the door.

Jeonghan stood there, hand raised in a fist and a startled look in his eye. "How did you know I was already here?"

"Takes me about a minute to get here from the lobby and you just rang the doorbell, so," you replied with a dark and gloomy air about you. "So, let's go."

"Wait," he muttered softly, blocking your way. "Fix your attitude first."

"What?" you grimaced. But he only crossed his arms on his chest, tilting his head to one side. "Jeonghan, I just want to get over this."

His eyebrows pushed up. "This?" he hissed, now looking more serious with a low tone, adding: "This is your party, celebrating your accomplishment. Quit being so hung up on Joshua not being here. This is your night. Come on, let's go."

"Fine," you huffed, following him down the hallway and into the elevator. "I'm so getting drunk tonight."

"Tsk, ah you're so dramatic," he replied, rubbing one eye with the tips of his fingers. "But if it makes you feel better I am in the mood for a drink. Or two."

"It does make me feel better," you muttered awkwardly after the reproachful look Jeonghan gave you, then you feel your face contort into a smile. "You can get really feisty."

"That's the pot calling the kettle black," he muttered and broke into a chuckle himself.

"What," you blurted and his laugh became louder. "And I'm old? You're the one saying the grandpa stuff!"

"It's your influence," he finished chuckling, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. "I gotta stop hanging out with you."

"And deprive yourself of good company?" you mumbled under a breath, chest swelling with pride when you could see him choke on his words, a perplexed look on his face was the last thing you saw as you walked out of the elevator.

"Ah, they learn so fast," Jeonghan said with a long sigh, his tone rising in a sing-song manner as he closed the door to his car, you sitting on the passenger seat, smoothing out the skirt of your pretty dress.

The launch party was meant to be a small gathering between friends. Since you were an anonymous author, there was no point in having a public party or in a big library with readers so this party was just to celebrate the launch.

When Jeonghan pulled up at the drive in, the car doors were opened for both of you and you stepped out to a restaurant. The front was adorned with bamboo trees and low warm lighting.

"Hold on," Jeonghan called from behind you, and you noticed that he looked somewhat jittery, sucking in a breath through his teeth. "Do you think I'm still walking funny?"

You gasped at him in exasperation. "Stop trying to distract me, Jeonghan," you whined, rolling your eyes. "Yeah, you still have a limp, but nobody is going to notice. Now can we go inside?"

"Wait, no," he laughed uncomfortably, motioning you over with a hand. "Come here."

"What?" you asked, your face dropping when you saw the serious look on his face.

Jeonghan appeared to be struggling with the tiny brooch clasped on one side of his silk shirt. "I didn't know what to get you… you don't strike me as someone who likes presents," Jeonghan began to explain, casting a meek look at your face. "And after all, you're the first writer I've ever known to publish a book."

You laughed, and rolled your eyes at his bad joke. "What is it?" you asked with excitedness now as his lithe fingers approached you.

"Can I?" he motioned to the chest of your pretty dress and waited until you nodded at him.

It was a dainty gold brooch in the shape of a dragonfly. As you ran your fingers over its small wings, you felt the small stones embedded in them.

"It's supposed to symbolize good luck," he said with a hint of nervousness.

"Thank you. I love it, Jeongjeong," you showed him a smile.

The wind picked up a little, tousling his long black hair; the fringe tangled his eyelashes and made him blink repeatedly, making you giggle. He mirrored your smile and for an instant you thought you saw something change in his eyes.

But he took a step back, pleased with the view of his gift on you, which he placed on one side of your chest.

"Yeah, it's nothing. You don't have to thank me," he brushed off, putting his hand back into his pocket. "Let's go inside.

The section that was reserved for the party was a bar area secluded at the back of the restaurant. As you approached it, being led by Jeonghan walking in front of you, eyeing you every two seconds as if confirming you hadn't run away.

"Okay, are you ready?" he said, stopping before a sliding bamboo door.

"Yeah," you replied, but your tone was full of uncertainty.

"Just put on your best smile, pretend that all of this is a surprise," he coached you just before sliding the door open, doing a half bow and his arm pointing you inside the small bar area section.

You were instantly received with a loud welcome, some of your friends were there, cheering, clapping. It totally threw a blazing hot blush on your face, but you were quick to act surprised and overly cheerful.

Your best friend, Yena, came running to you to wrap you in a hug that almost had you stumbling backwards. She laughed and bounced grabbing your hands, her joy contagious.

"You made it, you made it, you made it," she chirped with a bright smile, but her pretty eyes dimmed upon reading your face expertly. "Are you not happy? What happened?" she asked and immediately knew: "It's him, right? He's not coming."

But before you could even open your mouth to utter a word, a glass of champagne was slided onto your hand. Jeonghan appeared from behind you, handing you the glass with a meaningful look in his eye.

"Come on, have a drink," he instructed and pressed his lips into a smile at Yena in a polite manner.

You immediately downed the glass in three big gulps.

"Oh, okay," Yena narrowed her eyes, understanding the situation. "We're not talking about it, right."

The room was elegant. The walls were painted a dark color, but the warm lights shone beautifully on the pictures hanging on them, also casting shadows on the high tables.

You assumed that the area was intended for parties such as this. It seemed like an extended part of the restaurant, except it was closed off to the general consumers.

The thing about having a party to celebrate something for yourself was that you had to be the center of attention. Luckily, a lot of your guests wanted to talk about your book, about the process of writing it, about how good it was that it was out, and about making numbers.

There were one or two people from the press, sent by your agency to answer some basic questions for publicity pieces and the like. They didn't take your picture, of course, as that would defeat the purpose of anonymity.

All you had to do was have a smile on your face, be polite, be friendly, but something was off. And you didn't want to think about it, but your fingers itched to grab your phone and check if there were any messages from Joshua.

"Okay, we have like one more hour to go," Jeonghan told you, probably reading in your demeanor that you ached to go home.

"What am I going to do in one more hour?" you said insufferably.

"I don't know, I've never been to a book release party," he shrugged.

"What do you do on opening nights of plays you've directed?" you asked him.

"You mean on closing nights," he corrected, pursing his lips cutely. "It's different because a play is more like a team project. I usually just thank the people that helped me make it happen."

"I don't want to make a speech," you quickly said, seeing the little glint in his eye. "I have nothing prepared."

"You'll figure it out," he muttered before turning to the room and clearing his throat loudly.

Jeonghan grabbed two glasses of champagne, gave you one and then gave you a small encouraging smile.

"Hi, everyone," you started, a chirpy nervousness quivering your tone. You cleared your throat and once you got enough eyes on you, continued. "I just wanted to thank you all for coming, and for sharing this night with me."

You looked to the man standing by your side. Jeonghan's lips were pressed in a smile, he nodded at you and placed a lithe, delicate hand on your lower back, as if giving you his support.

"I uh, refrained from doing this party, feeling like my obligation as a writer was done the minute the first copies were printed but, that's not true," you breathed out shakily. "You're all here because you've helped me throughout this process, even with things you're aware of, or things like just being a good friend to me."

You briefly looked at Jeonghan again, his smile had fallen, but his sweet eyes locked on yours.

"I have to thank Jeonghan here, whom without none of us would be here, because I don't know how to throw a party," you heard some muffle laughter, and continued anyway. "I wouldn't have done this without you, Jeongjeong."

Jeonghan dropped his hand from your lower back, blinked slowly at you, the ghost of a smile painting his pink lips.

"How was it?" you asked nervously afterwards, feeling your limbs trembling slightly, a side effect from speaking in front of a crowd.

"You're good with words. It's almost like it's your job," Jeonghan replied, his soft brown eyes lighting up when he saw you smile and heard you laugh.

"Please," you stammered a little.

"I'm being honest," he shrugged. "You know I can be honest sometimes."

"Mmn," you pushed your lower lip outwards, narrowing your eyes at him. "I find that hard to believe."

"Well," he pondered for a second, drawing in a slow breath. "I'm always honest to you, princess."

"Why do I find that more suspicious?" you jibed at him.

He tore his eyes from your face with an embarrassed smile. "Shut up," he scoffed, raising his glass up to you and you drank with him, hearing some people clinking glasses together, some people cheering and a very distinct voice calling your name,

"Congratulations, bunny."

You instantly turned to see your boyfriend, standing behind you, so close that you just took one step to him, his arms wrapping around your body, hugging you tightly.

Your mind instantly began reeling, a thrill of both excitement and frustration coursed through you, bubbling inside your chest. "How... what are you doing here?" you gasped, holding onto him. "I thought you weren't going to make it..."

Joshua kissed your head while he hugged you, his hands rubbing up and down your back until he heard you sob. He pulled back and cupped your face with his hands, looking at your eyes with a soft expression in his face.

"And miss your big day?" he asked, leaning closer to press a tender kiss on your lips. "Wouldn't dream of it."

All the words you've been meaning to tell him coiled in your throat again. The painful thoughts made you recoil, thinking that it was best to tell him in private. So you returned the soft kiss, pressing your lips on his lower lip, feeling his small smile.

"Thank you for being here, Josh," you whispered, pulling back to take a look at his face.

The bags under his dark beautiful eyes denoted not only a long and exhausting day but weeks of hard work and no rest in between. He even looked a little pale under the warm glow of the lamps on top of both of you.

You suddenly wished you could feel bad for him, for all the accumulated remorse, frustration and sadness of him leaving, for his lack of communication, for making you feel neglected, even if he didn't intend to do so.

Joshua pressed his lips, nodding at you with a knowing look when he understood the discontent on your reaction.

"We'll talk later, okay?" you mumbled, giving him a squeeze on his arm.

"Okay," he replied, his eyes drifting from your face and falling on a figure standing beside you. A tired smile drew on your boyfriend's face as he approached his best friend. "Hannie."

They exchanged a quick hug and Joshua thanked him for helping throw the party for you. With a pang of concern, you wondered then if Joshua had heard your brief speech before he decided to approach you.

Joshua let out a sharp exhale, pulling out his phone from the back pocket of his jeans. "I have to take this," he told you, planting a kiss on your forehead and excusing himself out of the room.

You followed him with your eyes until you lost sight of him, releasing a sigh of your own, coming to grips with what was happening, you turned to Jeonghan.

"Did you know?" you demanded.

He pushed his eyebrows up. "Know what?"

"That he was coming!" you gasped, looking around to make sure no one was paying attention to the whole exchange.

"Of course not," he leaned his head back, eyeing you with a hint of reproach. "I would've told you. You know that."

You caught the certainty in his eyes. You knew that Jeonghan was a crafty liar, but he has shown you that no matter what, he has your back.

"Why do you look like that?" he muttered discreetly.

"Like what?" you mumbled with a tiny voice.

"You're doing that thing with your face when you're about to cry. Oh no–," he muttered quickly and then, his whole stance changed, he took a step closer to you, as if shielding you from the eyes of your guests when you took a sharp intake of breath, your sob resounding loudly.

"Princess, don't cry right now," he said gently, stretching an arm to reach for a napkin on the table behind you and passing it to you.

"I'm so mad at him," you whispered, lowering your head so you could easily hide your tears.

"I don't understand. You wanted him here, you cried for days because he wasn't coming and now that he is here, you're mad at him?" he muttered hurriedly, and you looked up to see his frown.

"He didn't tell me he was going to be here," you sniffed quietly, using the napkin to carefully gather your tears without ruining your makeup completely.

"That doesn't help me understand," he gave you an awkward smile, darting a look up and then back at you. "Listen, he's coming back. You can go to the washroom behind me, or you can confront him now."

You rolled your eyes, seeing the triumphant smirk stretching on his lips, because he knew what you'd choose. "Screw you, Jeonghan."

"I'll cover you. Go," he nodded back to the hallway behind him.

You swiftly walked down the hallway and towards the door of the washroom. Luckily your quick argument with Jeonghan got you heated enough that you composed yourself from the rageful fit towards your boyfriend.

So you just made sure that the makeup you used in your eyes and your lashes hadn't run. Looking in the mirror for any signs that you had cried at your own party and when you were certain enough, you walked back to the table.

Joshua was already there, having a lively conversation with Jeonghan. Your boyfriend's face lit up when he saw you, it was an attentive look he gave you, extending a hand at you as you made your way to his side, and he quickly secured an arm around your waist.

"Everything alright, bunny?" he asked.

"Joshua," you gasped, looking at Jeonghan who was witnessing your pet name being thrown around freely.

"What?" he chuckled, his smile drawing lines on the corner of his eyes.

"Don't call me that in front of people," you whined with a high pitch tone that would instantly send a warm rush of blood to your face.

"Why? You're embarrassed of what Jeonghan would think of it, baby?" he teased and you smashed a hand against his shoulder playfully.

"Yes!" you replied in an obvious tone.

"Don't worry, baby. You can trust that Hannie won't judge," he said, casting a glance to his best friend.

You suddenly felt like you were missing something. Looking at Jeonghan who just smiled at you playfully while your boyfriend appeared to be mirroring his smirk.

"Still, it makes me feel embarrassed," you muttered quietly but it was too late now.

Jeonghan chuckled at the expression on your face, mocking you a bit like he usually does. "While you two lovebirds are tearing at each other, I have to go get something arranged," he said, swiftly making his way to talk to someone from the staff.

You awkwardly turned to see your boyfriend, who broke into a shameless laugh. "Joshua, you can't be calling me bunny in front of Jeonghan."

"Why not?" he asked, shrugging off with some ease. "He calls you princess."

"You," you choked. "You know that?"

Joshua drew in a breath, chest swelling as he nodded with his head. "Yeah, I know that," he replied shortly. "I heard him."

"I thought it was a normal thing for him," you frowned, feeling a little confused.

"It's not," he breathed out, bringing up a hand to pinch your chin gingerly. "We'll talk about it later, okay?"

"Are you sure?" you blurted, reading the features of his face desperately. "I do-don't want you to think that–"

"Baby," he whispered, shaking his head slightly. "We'll talk about it later."

You decided to let that matter rest then, thinking that it was best to start by what was more important to you.

"We need to talk about many things," you said, arching an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I know," he tilted your head back using his hand on your chin, to gently press a kiss on your lips. "Let's enjoy tonight? I have something for you."

Joshua drew a small box from the pocket of his jacket. It was a black velvet box that fit perfectly in the palm of his hand. Your heart almost gave out as he used his other hand to open it, and your hand flew to your chest.

But it was a dainty necklace, a heart locket made of gold. Heart racing, you looked up at his doe eyes, which were smiling softly upon seeing your reaction.

"Do you like it, baby?"

"Yeah," you breathed. "It's beautiful, Josh."

"Turn around," he motioned you over so he could clasp it around your neck. You pulled your hair back to give him access to your neck and placed the necklace around it. You reached for the delicate heart locket with your fingers, feeling something engraved into it.

At that moment, Jeonghan returned with a smile on his face that told you he was up to something. "The cake is here! Finally."

"What cake?!" you gasped, your heart sinking to your stomach when he pulled out his phone and started recording your face.

"Should we sing happy birthday? After all it's your book's birthday," he teased with a mischievous grin and called, "Everyone!"

Then as if on cue, everyone around you, your guests, your friends, your boyfriend behind you started chanting a happy birthday song as a big cake in the shape of your book, was neatly placed in the high top table in front of you.

You smiled when you noticed that the art of the cake was an exact replica of the cover of your book.

As the chorus continued on, you tried to keep a smile on your face, although the blush had started to create a tingling sensation on your cheeks now from the embarrassment and from being the only center of attention.

Jeonghan smiled broadly at you, keeping the camera of his phone steady on your face. He seemed content with his work, with all of the things he planned for this night.

A warm hand parked on your lower back. Joshua gave you a reassuring smile, singing along with all of your guests and friends until the song came to its end. You almost died of embarrassment. But you smiled back at your boyfriend and tried your best to enjoy the rest of the night.

The ride back home was quiet. You didn't mind this until a large and warm hand landed on top of your thigh, squishing your skin over the fabric of your stockings.

It was a squeeze that demanded attention, a look, a word, anything. Though you continued to look out the window, a wave of remorse eating you from the inside.

You fought the need to say something, but being so that the painful thoughts plagued your mind, the best choice was to keep quiet until you got home.

Still, you slid a hand on top of his.

You burned to tell him everything that kept you awake at night, you needed him to know what you felt during the days of his radio silence.

"Is everything okay, baby?" Joshua asked, following you out of the elevator and down the hallway to your door. "You've been very quiet."

The more you thought of an answer, the angrier you felt. You bit on the inside of your cheek as you opened the door for him. The twist in your stomach tightening as you crossed the living room, discarding his leather jacket on the chair placed in one corner of your bedroom.

You had no idea if he was still close behind you, the buzzing in your ears worsening as the first hiccup came.

"Baby, tell me what's wrong," you heard him say, a hint of concern lacing his sweet tone.

"You–," you choked on a sob, turning to see his face, the face you wanted to see for days. "You made me believe you weren't coming! To what end? To surprise me?"

You saw Joshua's mouth parting as he searched for words and just as he was about to start explaining himself, your rage made you spurt out words out of your mouth, tears rolling down your cheeks.

"Do you know how fucking bad I felt the whole time?" you demanded, turning away from him when you saw his face contort into a sad frown. "I thought you didn't care enough to be here, do you know how fucked up is that?"

You were standing in front of your dresser, pretending to take off your earrings but the silence from him was killing you, so you turned around again to see him.

Joshua looked at you cautiously for a second, his throat bobbing as it seemed that he too choked on his own words. "I didn't want to give you any false hope by telling you I'd be here when I wasn't sure myself," he said with a low tone, giving you a guilty look. "I tried to get as much work done as possible so I could come see you."

You sniffed, standing with your shoulders drawn back, feeling yourself guarding up again. "Why didn't you at least say something today?" you uttered, tasting the saltiness of your tears that fell on the corners of your lips.

"I've been working from six in the morning," he said, cocking his head to one side. "And then I was on another flight, exhausted so I fell asleep."

"That's a bad excuse, Joshua," you reprimanded with ire blinding you now, taking your high heels to toss them on one corner of your closet.

"All day I've been checking my phone to see if I get anything from you, do you know how that feels?" you were raising your voice now, from the bottled up emotions, the stress and frustration from today.

"Yes. I do, actually."

Joshua looked upwards, releasing a sigh that made his shoulders go slack. He looked like he hated this, to fight with you. He looked the same way he did that night when you both got angry at each other on the rooftop.

You trapped your lower lip between your teeth in an attempt to stop it from quivering and looked away from your boyfriend's face.

"I'm sorry," he said, now looking at you again, sorrow in his eyes as he took a cautious step towards you. "I'm so sorry, baby. I tried to get here as a surprise, yes. But I just couldn't leave without getting work done first and that delayed everything. I couldn't get to your party on time and I'm sorry for it."

As soon as his arms wrapped around you, you hid your face on the crook of his neck. With a strangled sob, you got the scent of his musky cologne, the very distinct smell of his skin as you clung to the white t-shirt he was wearing.

"I'm sorry too," you whispered.

"Sh, it's okay. It's okay," he shushed repeatedly, grabbing your face with his hands and leaned to look in your eyes, face to face. "You have nothing to apologize for, baby. This is on me, I fucked up and I am sorry."

"I shouldn't have yelled at you," you sobbed and quieted down when he pressed his forehead against yours.

"It's okay, it's okay" he replied, swallowing hard. "Yell at me, swear at me, but talk to me, baby. Don't keep it to yourself."

"I was so mad," you mumbled, grabbing his wrists with your hands.

Joshua pulled back, giving you space to breathe. You saw the remorse in his face, his eyebrows knitting together, his big eyes following your mouth and your eyes as you continued to shed tears.

"I thought that you didn't care to be here," you confessed with a tiny hiccup.

"I'm sorry baby, that was the least of my intentions," he replied softly, but you could see the trouble it caused him to hear you say that. "Believe me, I tried to get to your party on time."

"I believe you, Josh," you replied, feeling like you could start crying again. "But I just wish you'd let me know earlier."

A deep frown appeared on his face. "I never wanted to make you feel bad, baby."

Before you could hold rein to your actions, your head tilted, your heart already giving into the big brown eyes that were pleading for you to forgive him.

"I told you that next time I wouldn't be too forgiving," you reminded him, your tone coated with a gentleness that signified your resignation over your anger.

Joshua's gaze softened, lifting a hand to caress your cheek with his long and delicate fingers. "I know, baby. I'm so sorry" he sighed in relief when you suddenly wrapped your arms around him, burying your face in the crook of his neck. "How can I make it up to you?"

"Just..." you whispered, pulling back slightly, hands encircling his neck lightly. "Kiss me."

He looked unsure for a second. As if he wanted to say more, but quickly obliged to your request, seeing that you were seeking something more than an exchange of words. You needed him.

His hand found your chin, grabbing you gently as he leaned closer, swallowing hard before pressing his lips on yours. Your hands cupped the back of his head, urging him to kiss you deeper, harder.

"Baby," he grunted in your mouth. "Don't you think we need to talk more about this?"

"No," you brushed off immediately, using your hands to press on the back of his head, crushing your mouth on his.

But even if he was returning the kiss, you didn't feel him there. You could almost hear his mind reeling.

"Please, Joshua," you sobbed, something so desperate in you that your voice quivered. "Please, baby, just kiss me."

"We need to talk," he responded. "We've been going around in circles with this. We can't solve this by having sex. You know that."

"What are you talking about?" you pulled back, retrieving your hands from his nape.

He looked at you in disbelief for a second. "I know something's wrong," he frowned. "I've known you long enough to notice when you're deflecting."

"Josh," you sighed.

"Baby, you promised," he insisted, his big eyes reading your face.

"What do you want me to say?" you blurted, digging your grave further.

"What's going on?" he asked gently.

Your heart crushed at the look he gave you. Like a lost puppy, trying to chase you, you tried to ignore the sound of his voice breaking a little.

"It's nothing," you whispered. "I've been a little bummed about you leaving—no, not leaving. I just wish you reached out to me more frequently. We talked about this last time! You've been ignoring me and I feel hurt over that."

"I don't do it on purpose," he said with a tired sigh, but he looked guilty. "I try to get all of your messages but the truth is... I'm tired."

Your heart deflated, but you quickly understood that he wasn't talking about you, or your relationship. Joshua meant his life, his career taking off faster than he or you could comprehend.

"Everything is happening so fast, I feel like I haven't had time to breathe," he said with a strangled tone. "I'm sorry, baby. I never meant for you to be affected by this. By me."

You reached out to hold his hand, making his big eyes look back to you. "Why didn't you tell me?" you asked softly.

"I don't want to burden you, bunny," he muttered, squeezing your hand. "But I realize now that it was better to tell you. None of this would've happened if I had."

You used your free hand to push his hair back from his face. "I should've told you sooner too."

The corners of his lips rose slightly. "I guess we're both learning about this, right?"

"I guess we are," you whispered.

"C'mere," he mouthed, wrapping his arms around you in a tight hug, one arm around your waist and the other across your back, his hand reaching the back of your head.

His kiss was tender at first, his lips brushing yours softly, his tongue caressing your lower lip, once, twice until you moaned helplessly. Then the kiss deepened, demanding more from each other, your breath hitched as his mouth crushed into yours, tongues meeting with hunger.

Your hands searched for the hem of his white t-shirt, pulling it up clumsily.

Joshua pulled back from the kiss, yanking his t-shirt from his body in one movement and tossed it to one side blindly. Then you heard him inhale sharply when your hands ran over his toned pecs, to his lats, feeling the hard muscle, his soft skin.

You kissed his mouth, his cheek, a hand caressing his long hair as you moved to kiss his eyelids, standing on your tiptoes to reach him.

Joshua laughed softly, his hands squeezing your waist with urge. "Sit back, baby," he pushed you to the edge of your bed.

You obediently did so, but hooked your fingers on the belt of his jeans, pulling him towards you. You heard a gasp that resembled the sound he makes when he smiles.

"Oh," he blurted. "Baby, slow down."

You were placing open mouthed kisses on his tummy, a soft moan escaped you when you caught the familiar taste of his skin. Your hands caressed him as your kisses trailed up his pecs, licking one nipple first.

"Mmn," he hummed softly, his hand cupping the side of your head when your teeth grazed the underside of his pectoral, playfully landing more kisses around the sensitive area of his darkened bud.

You took your time doing the same exploration on the other side of his chest. The tip of your tongue lapping on his nipple, tasting his skin, the scent of his cologne.

You suckled on his skin harshly, hearing a soft grunt reverberating on the chest you were leaving marks on.

"Lie back, sweetheart," he urged when you detached your mouth from his beautiful skin, now marked with reddened spots.

You crawled on the bed, watching him follow you, pressing one knee after the other, looking at you with a gaze darkened with lust and love.

Joshua pressed his body against yours, trapped now between him and your mattress. He resumed kissing you deeply, his hand crept from your face, down to your neck, caressing your shoulder, searching for your hand to lace his fingers with yours.

"Joshua," you mumbled into his mouth as he gave you shallow kisses, moaning softly in your lips. "Baby."

"Mm?" he responded, kissing your mouth as if he wanted to melt into you.

"I want you to do something for me," you said, your breath catching when he flipped your body and his on the bed, so now you were straddling him. Some of the seams of the skirt of your dress ripped, and you pulled it upwards, uncovering up to your butt.

"Anything," he breathed, the pads of his pointer and middle finger grazing your cheek, holding you still as he placed feathery kisses on your lips.

You pulled back slightly, looking at the beautiful features of his face. "This is going to sound crazy."

The soft lines between his eyebrows showed when he frowned ever so slightly. "What?" he asked, his eyes reading your every expression.

You fidgeted with the long strands of his hair, looking for the words to express what you wanted without sounding ridiculous.

"Do you want to take control, baby?" he guessed, moving his head to one side while reading your face with his eyes. "Is that what you want?"

"No, no," you giggled a bit from how far off his idea was from yours. "It's quite the opposite really..." you brushed the studded piercing with your thumb, making his eyelids flutter.

"Tell me what you want, bunny," he whispered.

"I want you to be... hard on me, Josh," you asked, positioning your knees firmly on the bed to press your crotch on the hard bulge beneath his pants.

A low grunt coiled in his throat, his hands sliding down your body to grasp your hips. "Why?" he grunted, his frown not relaxing.

"I just want it," you pressed down again, moving your crotch against his hardened cock, the seam of his jeans rubbing against the sensitive bud of your cunt. "Please?"

"Mmn," he hummed seemingly pondering over your request, his hand came up to hold your chin, pressing open mouthed kisses on your lips. "Don't you want me to spoil you tonight, baby?"

"You can spoil me by being a little mean to me," you teased, a grin appearing on your lips, which he kissed right away.

"That's something I never thought you'd say, baby," he admitted with a breathy chuckle that you felt in your mouth.

"Please, Josh?" you pleaded, putting on your best puppy eyes.

"Do you think you deserve it, baby?" he asked, his voice merely a rasp.

You took some consideration over his words and then nodded slowly, mouthing, "Yeah, I do."

"Have you been bad, sweetheart?" his tone had recovered, now waking with the usual tone he uses when he's domming you.

"Yeah, I think I have been," you responded with a sweet tone of your own.

His pretty pouty lips stretched in a small smirk. "Mmn, my baby was bad while I was away?" he purred, his dark eyes glimmering under the soft lights of your bedroom lamps.

"Maybe a little," you replied cheekily.

"A little?" he toyed, giggling a little. "If you were only a little, I don't see why I should go hard on you."

"Mm, because I want you to," you replied, pouting at him now. "Come on, baby. I can take it."

He appeared to be considering your proposition, weighing in your words, the look on your face, the determination he probably saw in you and with a final booping of your nose with the tip of his finger he nodded.

"Anything that you don't like, anything you feel wrong, you can tell me," he promised. "You know that, right?"

"I know, Josh." you smiled meekly at him, caressing his dark locks.

"That's my baby," he whispered, the ghost of a smile on his lips as he met them with your own.

You knew why he said this every time he dommed you. Within all of the nights that you have spent under his control, though not many, you've gotten a sense that he said this because without your consent, none of it would work.

It was simple. Joshua would go as far as you would allow him to go.

His hand left the side of your thigh and found your neck, the pads of his fingers caressing your jawline as he brought your face down so he could kiss you.

"Why have you been bad, baby?"

A deep remorseful feeling settled in the pit of your stomach. You knew he'd try to understand why you wanted him to punish you. By now it was some form of therapy for the two of you, letting it out on sex, talking it out, reconciliations during after care.

But this time, instead of you dodging your answers, Joshua gave it right for you.

"Have you been losing trust in me lately?" he asked, his tone soft and so calculated that you had to pull back to take a look at the features of his face. "Is that how you've been bad?"

"Yeah," you whispered, waiting for his reaction, expecting to see him turning this around and trying to talk you out of the situation. "Are you mad at me?"

"No baby, of course not," he reassured, drawing in a breath as his hand grasping the side of your neck pulled you in for another long, wet kiss.

"But, don't you think I need to be punished?" you asked with an overly sweet and innocent tone.

"Is that why you want me to go hard on you?" he growled as you decided to start grinding on him again. "You want me to, god, slow down, baby."

You immediately slowed the sway of your hips on him, deciding to ease your weight on him, moving your crotch ever so slightly on his. "Yeah," you replied, pressing down on his crotch, angling your cunt against the seam of his jeans.

"Do you feel like you need to be punished, bunny?" he leaned his head in the direction of his shoulder.

"I do, Josh," you mewled with a sigh, pressing your crotch on him slowly.

"Then that's all I need," he growled in your mouth, cupping the back of your head to capture your lips with his own with a gasp, kissing you fervently.

His fingers tangled into the hair growing on the base of your head, fisting it as the kiss turned into a hard, heated one. You felt a hand searching the chest of your dress, then you understood that he was getting rid of the brooch Jeonghan gave you.

Joshua tossed it aside, your gift landing somewhere on the bed. "I need you out of this," he grunted in your mouth, his fist scrunching the skirt of your dress, motioning it upwards.

"Help me with the zipper?" you asked with a nervous whisper.

"Yeah," he replied, fingers swiftly getting zipping down your dress.

You climbed off of him and the bed altogether, removing your dress with a playfulness to your movements. Joshua propped himself on his elbows to watch you reveal a new set of lingerie, the pastel blue contrasting with the thigh high black stockings.

"Do you like it?" you mumbled sweetly, lifting your arms delicately before you did a half twirl for him, showing him the back of your panties, that exposed your buttcheeks.

Joshua sighed in delight, pushing himself off the bed and walked to you. "I love it, baby," he replied.

"Do you want me to leave it on?" you asked, as you reached out to get the rest of his clothes, undoing his belt with shaky fingers.

"For now, yeah," he replied gruffly, watching you zip his pants down, tucking your hands beneath the stretchy fabric of his black boxers to yank them down and he helped you remove them by stepping out of his clothes.

Once he was wholly naked, you marveled in all his beauty, the proud nakedness in which he stood in front of you.

A fingertip dipped gently in his belly button, making him smile fondly at you. But the smile faltered when you trailed down, feeling the soft hairs of the happy trail that led to his pubic hair.

Your fingers encircled around the girth of his cock, already hard for you. The skin of his shaft was soft, interrupted only by the vein on the underside and the ridges before the bulbous, rosy brown head. You pumped him slowly, gently, your thumb gathering the precum gathering in his slit.

You sank to your knees, casting a look up at him. Your eyes locked with his as you pressed a soft kiss on the tip of his cock, licking your lips, tasting his precum in the process.

His hand brushed your hair from one side of your head. "Baby," he rasped. "Oh, god, baby," he moaned deeply when you took his cockhead into your mouth, wrapping your lips around it, tongue pressing on him as you pushed your head forward.

You slowly bobbed your head back and forth, taking him an inch further at a time, swirling your tongue around his cockhead every time you pulled your mouth back on him.

"Fuck, baby," he whispered gruffly, closing his eyes briefly to then use his hands to pull your head back. "Just like that."

You lapped your tongue on his cockhead, running the soft part of the underside of your tongue around him as you moved your head back, a soft smacking noise created by your lips when you kissed his tip.

"Do you want to fuck my mouth, Josh?" you asked using a sweet tone, looking up to his eyes, which darkened with lust and fascination over you.

"Do you still remember how to do this, baby?" he asked, grabbing his drool coated cock with one hand, the other parking firmly on the back of your head, holding you steady.

Your eyes looked up to him, his facial expression controlled, measured as he smirked at you when you instinctively parted your mouth for him. "Good girl."

You pulled out your tongue, letting him rest his heavy cock on top of it. When you heard a soft grunt escape him, you closed your lips around his thick girth, simulating an open kiss, pulling your mouth back and creating a soft, smacking sound on the reddened tip of his.

"I'm going to move on your mouth," he warned with a soft tone, removing his hand from his cock to hold your head now with both of his hands. "Tap on me if you want me to stop."

Your eyes dropped from his face, to the faint film sweat trailing down his neck, between his pecs and onto the hard muscles of his abdomen that clenched softly when he started pushing his cock down your throat.

A moan got muffled by his cock in your mouth. You remembered to tell yourself to relax your tongue under the heavy length of him, giving him access to fuck your mouth freely.

"That's it baby," he whispered when he felt your mouth go lax. "You always take my cock so fucking well."

Your eyes were following the movements of his body, relishing on the way he kept himself controlled, slowly pacing himself, pushing an inch farther with each thrust until you nearly brushed his soft pubic hair with the tip of your nose.

One hand moved from the back of your head to the side of your face, his thumb resting on top of your cheekbone as he commanded your eyes up to his.

"Breathe, bunny," he directed with a gentleness that betrayed his following movements.

With a gasp, he snapped his head back, ramming his cock inside your mouth. Your hands flew to hold onto the hard muscle of his thighs, gagging around his girth, the tip reaching the back of your mouth, hitting the spot repeatedly.

The hand that was still on the back of your head, holding you by your hair forced you back, to give himself ample space to push his cock farther, so that he could hear you gag around him, feel the muscles of your throat constricting around his tip.

"Fuck," he breathed, closing his eyes to the vision of you taking him so obediently. "Mmph," he let out a puff of air.

You responded with a moan of your own. Watching him screwing his eyes shut, forcing himself to keep his pace steady, slow for you instead of tearing your mouth open with his cock. Even though it was exactly what you wanted.

"Oh, god," he groaned, with his head still tilted back, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. "Baby—fuck. Baby you feel so, so good."

You let out a whiny noise, making him lower his gaze at you.

"I'm close," he breathed, a grunt coming out of him as he swallowed hard again. His finger digging on the soft skin of your cheek as he said. "And you are taking it all, bunny."

You moaned in a half confirmation sound as best as you could, still gagging on him, tears running down your cheeks uncontrollably, drool dripping down the corners of your lips and onto your chin.

"Good girl," he gasped softly, closing his eyes with a pleased grin on his face.

Then he lost the grin when his mouth parted, his brow furrowing gently before he moaned deeply. You held in a breath through your nose, swallowing the ropes of cum spurting out of his cock and down your throat.

Joshua had stopped his thrusts, as he came with deep breaths and tiny grunts, keeping you still for him while sighing: "Goooood fucking girl."

But he pulled out too quickly, sloppily. You noticed it was on purpose by his controlled move: using the hand on your face to push back your chin, forcing your mouth open and removing his cock from your throat.

You choked, coughed and breathed in, all within two seconds. Hot tears sprinted from your eyes as you remained on his firm grasp, keeping your head leaned back.

"Breathe. Breathe through your nose," he whispered softly, using the pad of his thumb to gather the cum and drool that you had spat back on your chin, sliding it back to your mouth. "Thaaat's it, baby. Slowly."

You breathed in desperately, heaving almost; vision going blurry in and out as more hot tears kept on falling on your cheeks.

"You did so well, bunny," he muttered, a cheeky grin falling on the features of his face.

His large hand released your hair, sliding on the side of your face, cupping it fully. You closed your eyes, a sigh escaping you because of the tenderness of his touch, feeling it cause your skin to prickle.

"Want me to make you feel good, sweetheart?"

Panting, you raised your gaze to see him. A cold shudder coursed through you when you saw his controlled manner, the enjoyment in his dark glimmering eyes.

"Please?" you mumbled, and upon speaking you had to gulp hard and clear your throat.

"Sit on the bed for me," he nodded behind you and you rose to your feet, quickly sitting on the edge of your bed. A question arose in your mind as to what were your boyfriend's next moves.

"I love it when you use these," he mumbled, running the pads of his fingers over the lace band of your high knee stockings. "You looked so beautiful tonight, baby."

"Thank you, Josh," you beamed at him, the gesture making him cup your cheek, leaning to get a quick kiss from your lips.

His hand slid to your back, skin prickling as his fingers unfastened the clasp of your pastel blue bra. The other hand grabbed your bra by its middle, pulling it from your body with one swift move, leaving your tits bare for his view.

Joshua wasted no time as his hands moved to the band of your pretty lace panties. You propped your hands behind you, leaning back slightly as he slid your panties down your thighs, unhooking one ankle after the other.

Then it was his turn to drop to his knees, your bed was high enough so he only leaned his head between your thighs, motioning them over with his large hands and you placed them each on his shoulders, locking your ankles, feet resting comfortably on his back.

"I've missed you so much, bunny," he muttered, littering your inner thighs with kisses, reaching your mound before angling your thighs open for him, his tongue lapping between your folds, giving them a broad stroke.

"Mmnph, Josh," you mewled, hands flying to tangle your fingers in his hair, following the movements of his head as he gave your cunt generous strokes with his tongue. "Joshua—fuck, baby, yes, yes."

The tip of his tongue swirled around your bud, gently tugging at it with his lips before sucking on it lightly. Your thighs flinched, a moan spilling from your lips when he stuck to flick at your clit with the tip of his tongue.

He continued teasing your clit like this until you came, fast and loud, fingers clenching on his long hair, crying out his name. But he didn't stop there, instead, you felt his lips wrap around your now swollen bud, starting to suckle at it gently.

"Josh," you called, propping yourself on your elbows. "Baby, I need you now," you mewled, but he completely ignored you.

He started to suck on your clit harder, moaning against your clit as you came on his mouth again, writing desperately, making his hands hold you down to the bed.

"Were you bad while I was away, baby?" he asked softly.

You were breathing slowly, coming down from your high with trembling limbs and barely able to utter a word when a firm slap came down your clit.

"I asked you a question," he rasped, ignoring your loud and very lewd yelp. He landed another slap, using his four fingers on your clit.

"Fuck," you breathed, flinching on your bed when you received the intense feeling of his hand clashing with your sensitive clit. "Yeah, I have."

Joshua rose to his feet, and you couldn't help but feast your eyes over his beautiful body. The hickeys on his chest were flaring red, your eyes trailing down to see his cock fully hard again.

"You've been having fun while I was away, baby?" he purred, dipping his fingers on your core to then push the pads of his fingers over your swollen clit, covering it with your arousal.

"F-fun?" you squeaked pathetically.

"Fucking yourself with your toys, with your hands... thinking of someone who isn't me, perhaps?" he cocked his head to one side.

You paused, feeling your heart sink down to your stomach. And before you could grasp at the evident trap in his question, another harsh slap landed right on your clit.

"No, no!" you replied as quickly as you could. "I'd never do that!"

"Mn? Then how have you been bad, baby?" he asked, pinching your clit with his fingers, giving it pulsating pinches over and over before delivering another slap.

The intense feeling your pussy suffered made you convulse. "Fuck! That's too much, baby," you said in a fucked out tone, recoiling when he swiftly slapped your clit again.

"That's not my name, bunny," he growled, a devilish smirk appearing on his face.

"Sorry," you slurred out.

"Did you imagine someone else playing with this pussy, baby?" he continued with his little game of questions, his honeyed voice sending a chill through your body.

"No! I wouldn't—I'd never," you gasped pathetically, your legs beginning to shake from the lack of support.

"Did you wish someone else fucked you?"

The ghost of a smirk crowned his lips, the studded eyebrow twitching up slightly when you didn't answer. You held in a breath when you saw Joshua grabbing his cock with one hand, guiding it to your entrance.

A pathetic mewl spilled from your lips when he sheathed his cock inside you in one go, holding your legs with his arms, hands parked on your hips as he fucked you slowly at first.

"Oh, god," you sighed, the bite of his cock stretching your walls felt mind-numbingly good that you barely had any control over yourself.

"What's that, bunny?" he gasped, the features of his face riddled with pleasure too.

"Josh," you whimpered, rendered utterly useless, all you could focus on was his cock, stretching your walls like nothing else. "Please, faster, fuck me faster, please."

Joshua blinked slowly at you, there was no denying the love in his eyes. But he didn't give you what he wanted, he continued to push his cock inside you slowly, enjoying the pulsating of your walls around him from all the pleasure building up, anticipating another climax.

"Do you want someone else playing with what's mine?" he asked in a hollow tone, his usual sweetness robbed by the strain and the focus he kept over the calculated pace of his thrusts.

You felt your brow furrowing in confusion, a light gasp leaving your mouth before you could even think of a response.

"Did you miss me, princess?" he asked, his movements picking some speed, fucking you with shallow thrusts, testing you before starting to plow on you mercilessly.

The change was so sudden you were snapped from your quiet confusion.

"Yes, Josh! O-of course," you gasped, your hands searching for something to hold onto. His thrusts became so brutal that your entire body was pushed on your bed, making your tits bounce and your breath catch.

"Mmn," he hummed before letting a puffy sigh out of his lips, then he tilted his head back, eyelids fluttering as he moaned deeply. "Fuuuck," he rasped as he came inside you with hard thrusts, his mouth parting slightly.

A chill coursed through you. Joshua didn't care if you came with him, or before him, he emptied himself inside you without a warning, his face torn with pleasure as he did so. And even if you felt close to your own climax, you couldn't care less as well.

Joshua stopped pushing his cock inside you, shuddering slightly when he pulled out of you not a minute after. His cum dripped out of you helplessly, leaving a warm trail as it slid slowly from your entrance.

"God, baby, you're so messy," he reproached with a soft tone.

"Mm?" you cluelessly looked at him. "Fuck!" you gasped when his fingers swiftly picked up his own cum, pushing it back to your core.

Then he took his long fingers between your lips, inserting them into your mouth. You tasted the salt of his cum and your own arousal, making you inhale deeply because of the sudden intrusion of his fingers deep in your tongue.

"Good girl," he whispered, pulling out his two fingers to dip them into your fluttering core again.

"Josh," you mewled, squirming when the pads of his fingers played with the cum dripping out from you.

"Shhh," he shushed you softly, taking his fingers to your mouth again, smiling when you sucked them clean diligently. "You're being such a good girl right now. So good for me."

"Babe," you breathed out when you were able to speak again. "God, Joshua," his fingers were inside you again, pushing his cum back into your cunt, massaging your walls in the process.

"Yes, bunny?" he replied when you called his name. "What do you want?"

"More," you mewled pathetically. "Please."

You had realized that his other hand was working on himself, his fist pumping his cock slowly, getting himself hard at the sight of you dripping in cum, tears, drool, legs shaking, asking for more.

Joshua tilted his head slightly to one side. "More?" he smiled cheekily, introducing a third finger inside you.

"Joshua," you whined over the squelching sounds caused by his fingers plunging in and out of you. "Don't tease me."

But he continued pushing his fingers in, the pads of his fingers pressing on your front walls, making you squirm in the bed, a hand scrunching on the covers of your bed.

"Please?" you gasped lewdly. "Please, Josh, you know what I want, please."

Joshua tilted his head back, cocking the studded eyebrow, looking at you with so much awe, smiling mischievously when you started pleading for more. His fist continued pumping on his cock, picking up some speed that made him take a deep breath, resisting his own pleasure to tease you some more.

"Joshua, please!" you whined, trying to resist the intense feeling that his fingers pushing on your wall caused, thinking that he was aiming to get you to tap out.

But you resisted, though, marveling over the controlled movements of his body, how he kept the pace of his hands steady, without pausing to rest.

"God, Joshua!" you yelped loudly when his fingers shifted, pressing on the right spot, causing you to flinch. Your other hand flew to hold onto your bed covers too.

"Yeah? Right there?" he asked, to then bite on his lower lip, watching you as you continued to writhe desperately, moaning for more.

"Please, please," you mewled over and over, now pleading for him to continue massaging on your glorious spot.

Joshua showed you a wolfish grin when you quickly switched your pleas. "You're gonna come, baby?" he purred with a mocking tone. "Aw, over some fingers? And here I thought you were begging to have my cock."

"Josh, please, god, please," you breathed, your jaw going slack when the plunging of his fingers inside you turned more forceful.

You cried out pathetically, screwing your eyes shut to let some tears run down your temples. A spurt of warm liquid came out of you, making you whimper dramatically and open your eyes to see his hand covered in your mess.

"You're making a mess, baby," Joshua sighed in awe while watching you squirt on his hand.

He grabbed his own t-shirt that was discarded on one corner of your bed and gently pressed it against your skin, cleaning all traces of his and your arousal.

"Mmph," you hummed with a sigh, propping up your body with your elbows on your bed. "Joshua, please. Fuck me, pl-please, fuck me."

He tossed the ruined t-shirt to a corner of your bedroom and nodded at the bed. "Move back for me, baby," he instructed, climbing on the bed after you.

His hands reached out to grab your legs by the back of your knees, pulling your body to the middle of the bed with a yank. Then Joshua pushed your legs up to your chest, thighs squeezing your tits as he leaned over you.

"Joshua, please, no teasing," you pleaded when he grabbed his cock with one hand, running the tip across your wet folds to see the reaction on your face when he pushed the tip in your entrance slowly.

"Tell me you want it," he said, his studded eyebrow quirking up slightly.

"I want it, Joshua," you replied instantly. "Please, I want it."

"Tell me you want me," he growled, pushing his cock inside you, inch by inch, stuffing you full, but ever so slowly.

"Please!" you gasped, sounding pathetic, your hands searching his shoulders to hold onto him, to urge him completely inside you. "I want you, Joshua, please, please."

Joshua pushed his chest against the back of your thighs, slipping his length inside you to his hilt. His hands shifted on your sides, one to support his own weight and the other to grab your chin, forcing your eyes on him.

"Gah,"you choked up, tears brimming in your eyes when he started pushing his cock inside you, his thrusts fucking you deeper than ever before. "Joshua, Joshua..."

"Yeah, baby. That's my name," he groaned softly, his brow furrowing with some strain. His hand left your chin, his fingers curling on the bed covers, as if he were trying with all of his strength not to lose his control on you.

"Hmmn," you mewled when he instantly reached a spot inside you that made pleasure course through your whole body like a bolt of lightning.

"Do you like how I make you feel?" he said through a raspy breath.

You felt the features of your face contort with the confusion that flashed in your mind, but you nodded nonetheless. "Yeah, it's you, Josh," you mewled. "It's all you."

Joshua kept his thrusts steady, fucking you deep and slowly. His eyes trained on your face as you continued to breath out lewd moans, your mouth parted, eyebrows knitted.

"That's my girl," he praised, a grunt coiling in his throat as his thrusts became more desperate. "My girl."

"Yours," you whispered entrancingly. "I'm yours only, Josh."

"You're mine," he blurted with a ragged breath.

You nodded, unable to utter a word. His thrusts were robbing the air out of you, ramming his cock in, plunging inside you so hard that you were reduced to lewd gasps, hot tears spilling from your eyes.

Joshua screwed his eyes shut for a second, a sharp breath leaving him as his hips slammed into your body, for a second that was all you heard, the sounds of skin slapping together combined with your ragged gasps, the sound of your bed creaking as he kept fucking you into the mattress.

A vein had started to pop on his forehead, his eyes were glistening but he kept them trained on yours. The beautiful features of his face went lax with lust, making him moan, the sound reverberating against your body.

For a second, you just looked at each other, so mad for each other, there were no words either of you could exchange to express what you felt.

"Bunny," he gasped with urgency. "Come for me."

You nodded, a hand searching his face, cupping his chin as you slowly gave into the pleasure blooming inside your body. Joshua turned to kiss the palm of your hand, a gesture so tender that betrayed the animalistic pace to which he was fucking you, making you his.

"I'm coming, 'm—Joshua!" you gasped as you came undone under him, pleasure flooding inside you, taking over every part of your body. Your orgasm hit you so hard you even felt it on your face, tingling in your cheeks, making you close your eyes.

Until you heard a gasp, Joshua came inside you a couple of seconds after you, emptying himself with shallow thrusts. But he didn't relent there, he lowered your legs immediately, clashing his mouth on yours.

Joshua eased his body on top of you, pressing his chest against yours to kiss you deeply, moaning in your mouth as he stopped thrusting his cum inside you sloppily.

Chests heaving, you wrapped him in your arms as he appeared to be blinking slowly, dropping his head in the crook of your neck to come down off his high. His weight was almost crushing you, but you welcomed the pressure from it, the warmth, the scent of his hair and his skin.

You ran the pads of your fingers on the line of his back, feeling him shudder hard but didn't protest against it. "I love you," you whispered.

Joshua didn't respond at first, he continued breathing hard on the curve where your jawline and your neck meet, pressing languid kisses on your skin every two seconds.

His hand crept up from your cheek to the back of your head, then he shifted on top of you to give you a shallow kiss on your lips. "I love you too, bunny."

You were a mess, your skin pricked where your tears had left a trail, your limbs were shaking beneath his weight, you felt a wet tingle where his and your body met.

"You were so good, baby," he whispered, his thumb caressing your cheek as he continued giving you shallow kisses. "Let me take care of you now, okay?" he pulled out of you, drawing a small groan from your mouth.

What happened next was nothing out of routine for you. He started the shower and carried you in bridal style, being that your legs were still shaking badly.

When you got back to the bedroom, he offered himself to towel dry your hair after you put on your bunny pyjamas. So you were sitting on the bed, Joshua was carefully pressing a towel around your hair for some minutes until you looked over your shoulder, and told him to stop.

He looked so tired, but focused on drying your hair, brushing it with his long fingers with so much care, sighing deeply.

"Baby, let's go to sleep, okay?" you offered sweetly.

"Yeah, okay," he whispered, getting up from your bed to discard the towel.

"I threw your t-shirt in the washing machine," you informed him as you crawled beneath the bed covers on your designated side of the bed.

You looked at your boyfriend, crossing the bedroom to slide his body beside yours, immediately wrapping his arms around you to pull you closer to him.

"Thank you, sweetheart," he said tiredly.

You pressed your chest against him, reaching his pouty lips with your own for a tender kiss. "You don't have to thank me for that," you sighed, caressing his cheekbones with your fingertips. "Maybe you should consider leaving some clothes here. If you want to, obviously."

He pulled back slightly, eyeing you with curiosity. "O-okay, I will," he smiled softly.

For a second, you marveled at the sight of him and returned the smile.

"Or you could also consider moving in, when you get back from work. If... you want to," you breathed nervously, your eyes shifting from his face, unable to keep them locked with his.

Joshua didn't reply as fast as you initially thought he would. You almost thought you had said something crazy, something so insanely out of place for you that had left him speechless.

But he just looked at you fondly. A small sigh left him when his smile broadened.

"I'd love that, baby," he replied warmly.

"Okay," you whispered, reaching for his lips again.

What you intended for a sweet and tender kiss turned into a deep, hungry one in a matter of seconds. Joshua grunted in your mouth, a hand cupping your cheek as his tongue lapped on your lower lip, making you sigh a moan.

"Marry me," he blurted, his lips brushing yours in the process.

You laughed lazily in his mouth. "Okay."

"I mean it," he breathed, kissing the apple of your cheek, your eyelid, then an eyebrow, littering kisses all over your face.

"Baby," you protested. "You need to calm down."

"No," he growled, cupping your cheek with one hand. "I'm crazy about you. I want you with me in every way possible."

"Sleep first, baby boy," you teased. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

Joshua rolled his eyes at your teasing, but he leaned in, giving you a soft kiss before you turned your back to his chest for him to hug you, fitting his body to the shape of yours.

You exhaled, pleased with the warmth exuding from his half naked body cuddling you, an arm over your waist, his breath caressing your neck, until,

"Baby," Joshua called softly, drawing a breath through his nose that denoted how tired he really was. "Would you feel better if you came along with me? On tour?"

"What are you talking about?" you asked, turning over on the bed to look at his face.

Joshua repositioned his head beneath his fist, lying now on his side. His free hand searched yours to lace his fingers with you. "I know with me being so busy, traveling and working, I've been making you feel a little neglected. I don't want to make you feel like this, I..." he looked to the corner of the room mindlessly, gathering his thoughts. "I want you close to me."

There were dark circles under his eyes, his lips were slightly chapped on the corners. But he kept his gaze trained on your face, there was a gentle calmness in him, just as the night he asked you to be his wife.

"We live very different lives, Josh," you whispered carefully, selecting your words. "I can't move around while writing a book. I kind of need stability to work."

"I don't want you to feel lonely," he said, his voice breaking a little when he uttered the last word.

"Well, then we just have to find a way we can make this work," you muttered softly. "I know that you don't want to make me feel neglected but your actions say the opposite."

"I know," he whispered, nodding with his head slowly. "I'm going to fix it, I promise."

"I'm going to need more than that, Josh," you mumbled, a small, cheeky smile appearing on your face.

His big dark eyes looked worried a second before he caught on your playfulness. "Yeah? And what would that be?"

"I'm going to need about a hundred kisses from you," you replied, your heart crushing over the smile that drew on his face.

"Just a hundred?" he taunted, his hand leaving yours and finding the crook of your neck, holding you gently as he leaned over your face to press a soft kiss, after the other, humming happily.

"Maybe two hundred."

"I can do more," he mumbled with a singsong tone.

"Three thousand, then."

Joshua chuckled breathily. "We're from hundreds to thousands that quickly?"

"Only if you want me to forgive you," you replied playfully between his tender kisses that he pressed against your lips.

"What else do you want?" he mumbled, his sweet voice laced with some raspiness.

"I want french toast for breakfast tomorrow," you said after a long moment of thought.

"You got it, Ms. Hong," he replied with a small smile, looking at you with such tenderness that you almost felt like sobbing. "What else?"

"I want you to take me out for a date," you said, now your tone sounding meek and tiny. "You're all talk with the Ms. Hong thing, but haven't taken me on an official date, yet, Mr. Hong."

"I will take you on a date," he muttered between kisses that were turning into more prolonged ones. "On several dates. For the rest of your life."

You cupped his cheek with one hand, and he ceased his shower of kisses to look into your eyes.

"I want you, Joshua," you whispered, trying to convey all your love into a couple of words.

"I want you too, bunny," he replied, his voice rendered into a mere whisper. "Forever."

✮ LONG AUTHOR'S NOTE READ IT 🗣️

hi there my lovelies!! ε(｡•᎑•`)っ♡

WE MADE IT! so let me tell you all a little story. when i started writing city lights, i only intended to write four chapters. but some of you guys convinced me to make it longer and i could write 8 chapters in total!! and i'm so glad i did cause i love writing long fics (as you probably noticed)

chapter 8 got soooo long and i'm sorry for having to split it haha. i guess introducing another main character into the mix does that huh? but there was sooooo many things i left out from this one! maybe i'll write them in the future!

I WILL BE POSTING A FINAL CHAPTER TO CITY LIGHTS SOON, but i would like you to take this chapter as the wrap up for the main story, given that the next chapter will be taking a turn for the dynamic between joshua and bunny. does that make sense? 👀

okay that's it for me. i love you all, drink water, use sunscreen, take your vitamins, your birth control pills or whatever it is that you do, take care of yaselves, i love youuuuuu ◕⩊◕

toodles

part 9

buy me a coffee? 🩵👉🏻👈🏻

© RIGHTS RESERVED TO HANNIEWEEN I DO NOT ALLOW TRANSLATIONS, CONTINUATIONS, REIMAGINATIONS OF MY WORKS OR THEIR REPOSTING ON OTHER WEBSITES.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Utah’s getting some of America’s best broadband

TOMORROW (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

Residents of 21 cities in Utah have access to some of the fastest, most competitively priced broadband in the country, at speeds up to 10gb/s and prices as low as $75/month. It's uncapped, and the connections are symmetrical: perfect for uploading and downloading. And it's all thanks to the government.

This broadband service is, of course, delivered via fiber optic cable. Of course it is. Fiber is vastly superior to all other forms of broadband delivery, including satellites, but also cable and DSL. Fiber caps out at 100tb/s, while cable caps out at 50gb/s – that is, fiber is 1,000 times faster:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

Despite the obvious superiority of fiber, America has been very slow to adopt it. Our monopolistic carriers act as though pulling fiber to our homes is an impossible challenge. All those wires that currently go to your house, from power-lines to copper phone-lines, are relics of a mysterious, fallen civilization and its long-lost arts. Apparently we could no more get a new wire to your house than we could build the pyramids using only hand-tools.

In a sense, the people who say we can't pull wires anymore are right: these are relics of a lost civilization. Specifically, electrification and later, universal telephone service was accomplished through massive federal grants under the New Deal – grants that were typically made to either local governments or non-profit co-operatives who got everyone in town connected to these essential modern utilities.

Today – thanks to decades of neoliberalism and its dogmatic insistence that governments can't do anything and shouldn't try, lest they break the fragile equilibrium of the market – we have lost much of the public capacity that our grandparents took for granted. But in the isolated pockets where this capacity lives on, amazing things happen.

Since 2015, residents of Jackson County, KY – one of the poorest counties in America – have enjoyed some of the country's fastest, cheapest, most reliable broadband. The desperately poor Appalachian county is home to a rural telephone co-op, which grew out of its rural electrification co-op, and it used a combination of federal grants and local capacity to bring fiber to every home in the county, traversing dangerous mountain passes with a mule named "Ole Bub" to reach the most remote homes. The result was an immediately economic uplift for the community, and in the longer term, the county had reliable and effective broadband during the covid lockdowns:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Contrast this with places where the private sector has the only say over who gets broadband, at what speed, and at what price. America is full of broadband deserts – deserts that strand our poorest people. Even in the hearts of our largest densest cities, whole neighborhoods can't get any broadband. You won't be surprised to learn that these are the neighborhoods that were historically redlined, and that the people who live in them are Black and brown, and also live with some of the highest levels of pollution and its attendant sicknesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/10/flicc/#digital-divide

These places are not set up for success under the best of circumstances, and during the lockdowns, they suffered terribly. You think your kid found it hard to go to Zoom school? Imagine what life was like for kids who attended remote learning while sitting on the baking tarmac in a Taco Bell parking lot, using its free wifi:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/02/elem-s02.html

ISPs loathe competition. They divide up the country into exclusive territories like the Pope dividing up the "new world" and do not trouble one another by trying to sell to customers outside of "their" turf. When Frontier – one of the worst of America's terrible ISPs – went bankrupt, we got to see their books, and we learned two important facts:

The company booked one million customers who had no alternative as an asset, because they would pay more for slower broadband, and Frontier could save a fortune by skipping maintenance, and charging these customers for broadband even through multi-day outages; and

Frontier knew that it could make a billion dollars in profit over a decade by investing in fiber build-out, but it chose not to, because stock analysts will downrank any carrier that made capital investments that took more than five years to mature. Because Frontier's execs were paid primarily in stock, they chose to strand their customers with aging copper connections and to leave a billion dollars sitting on the table, so that their personal net worth didn't suffer a temporary downturn:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

ISPs maintain the weirdest position: that a) only the private sector can deliver broadband effectively, but b) to do so, they'll need massive, unsupervised, no-strings-attached government handouts. For years, America went along with this improbable scheme, which is why Trump's FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave the carriers $45 billion in public funds to string slow, 19th-century-style copper lines across rural America:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/all-broadband-politics-are-local/

Now, this is obviously untrue, and people keep figuring out that publicly provisioned broadband is the only way for America to get the same standard of broadband connectivity that our cousins in other high-income nations enjoy. In order to thwart the public's will, the cable and telco lobbyists joined ALEC, the far-right, corporatist lobbying shop, and drafted "model legislation" banning cities and counties from providing broadband, even in places the carriers chose not to serve:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/

Red states across America adopted these rules, and legislators sold this to their base by saying that this was just "keeping the government out of their internet" (even as every carrier relied on an exclusive, government-granted territorial charter, often with massive government subsidies).

ALEC didn't target red states exclusively because they had pliable, bribable conservative lawmakers. Red states trend rural, and rural places are the most likely sites for public fiber. Partly, that's because low-density areas are harder to make a business case for, but also because these are also the places that got electricity and telephone through New Deal co-ops, which are often still in place.

Just about the only places in America where people like their internet service are the 450+ small towns where the local government provides fiber. These places vote solidly Republican, and it was their beloved conservative lawmakers whom ALEC targeted to enact laws banning their equally beloved fiber – keep voting for Christmas, turkeys, and see where it gets you:

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

But spare a little sympathy for the conservative movement here. The fact that reality has a pronounced leftist bias must be really frustrating for the ideological project of insisting that anything the market can't provide is literally impossible.

Which brings me back to Utah, a red state with a Republican governor and legislature, and a national leader in passing unconstitutional, unhinged, unworkable legislation as part of an elaborate culture war kabuki:

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165975112/utah-passes-an-age-verification-law-for-anyone-using-social-media

For more than two decades, a coalition of 21 cities in Utah have been building out municipal fiber. The consortium calls itself UTOPIA: "Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency":

https://www.utopiafiber.com/faqs/

UTOPIA pursues a hybrid model: they run "open access" fiber and then let anyone offer service over it. This can deliver the best of both worlds: publicly provisioned, blazing-fast fiber to your home, but with service provided by your choice of competing carriers. That means that if Moms for Liberty captures you local government, you're not captive to their ideas about what sites your ISP should block.

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, Utahns in UTOPIA regions have their choice of 18 carriers, and competition has driven down prices and increased speeds. Want uncapped 1gb fiber? That's $75/month. Want 10gb fiber? That's $150:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/15/utah-locals-are-getting-cheap-10-gbps-fiber-thanks-to-local-governments/

UTOPIA's path to glory wasn't an easy one. The dismal telco monopolists Qwest and Lumen sued to put them out of business, delaying the rollout by years:

https://www.deseret.com/2005/7/22/19903471/utopia-responds-to-qwest-lawsuit/

UTOPIA has been profitable and self-sustaining for over 15 years and shows no sign of slowing. But 17 states still ban any attempt at this.

Keeping up such an obviously bad policy requires a steady stream of distractions and lies. The "government broadband doesn't work" lie has worn thin, so we've gotten a string of new lies about wireless service, insisting that fiber is obviated by point-to-point microwave relays, or 5g, or satellite service.

There's plenty of places where these services make sense. You're not going to be able to use fiber in a moving car, so yeah, you're going to want 5g (and those 5g towers are going to need to be connected to each other with fiber). Microwave relay service can fill the gap until fiber can be brought in, and it's great for temporary sites (especially in places where it doesn't rain, because rain, clouds, leaves and other obstructions are deadly for microwave relays). Satellite can make sense for an RV or a boat or remote scientific station.

But wireless services are orders of magnitude slower than fiber. With satellite service, you share your bandwidth with an entire region or even a state. If there's only a couple of users in your satellite's footprint, you might get great service, but when your carrier adds a thousand more customers, your connection is sliced into a thousand pieces.

That's also true for everyone sharing your fiber trunk, but the difference is that your fiber trunk supports speeds that are tens of thousands of times faster than the maximum speeds we can put through freespace electromagnetic spectrum. If we need more fiber capacity, we can just fish a new strand of fiber through the conduit. And while you can increase the capacity of wireless by increasing your power and bandwidth, at a certain point you start pump so much EM into the air that birds start falling out of the sky.

Every wireless device in a region shares the same electromagnetic spectrum, and we are only issued one such spectrum per universe. Each strand of fiber, by contrast, has its own little pocket universe, containing a subset of that spectrum.

Despite all its disadvantages, satellite broadband has one distinct advantage, at least from an investor's perspective: it can be monopolized. Just as we only have one electromagnetic spectrum, we also only have one sky, and the satellite density needed to sustain a colorably fast broadband speed pushes the limit of that shared sky:

https://spacenews.com/starlink-vs-the-astronomers/

Private investors love monopoly telecoms providers, because, like pre-bankruptcy Frontier, they are too big to care. Back in 2021, Altice – the fourth-largest cable operator in America – announced that it was slashing its broadband speeds, to be "in line with other ISPs":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/immortan-altice/#broadband-is-a-human-right

In other words: "We've figured out that our competitors are so much worse than we are that we are deliberately degrading our service because we know you will still pay us the same for less."

This is why corporate shills and pro-monopolists prefer satellite to municipal fiber. Sure, it's orders of magnitude slower than fiber. Sure, it costs subscribers far more. Sure, it's less reliable. But boy oh boy is it profitable.

The thing is, reality has a pronounced leftist bias. No amount of market magic will conjure up new electromagnetic spectra that will allow satellite to attain parity with fiber. Physics hates Starlink.

Yeah, I'm talking about Starlink. Of course I am. Elon Musk basically claims that his business genius can triumph over physics itself.

That's not the only vast, impersonal, implacable force that Musk claims he can best with his incredible reality-distortion field. Musk also claims that he can somehow add so many cars to the road that he will end traffic – in other words, he will best geometry too:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Geometry hates Tesla, and physics hates Starlink. Reality has a leftist bias. The future is fiber, and public transit. These are both vastly preferable, more efficient, safer, more reliable and more plausible than satellite and private vehicles. Their only disadvantage is that they fail to give an easily gulled, thin-skinned compulsive liar more power over billions of people. That's a disadvantage I can live with.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

Image: 4028mdk09 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rote_LED_Fiberglasleuchte.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[darlingbabyboo]

"You're Something Else... "

♡ Synopsis: Megumi had been (sorta) prepared to live with this white weirdo who claimed to be the strongest... what he hadn't been prepared for was his daughter.

♡ Content: Reader is described as a girl and shorter than Megumi and Tsumiki and tiny because I'm tiny, black reader, good dad Gojo, Megumi is deeply repressed

♡ Notes: This is from the vote! Where people said they wanted Megumi x Gojo's Daughter instead of Giyuu x Urokodaki Daughter! Hope you enjoy 😘 Just say smth if I should make a part 2

♡ Inspiration: @ketsuyuki-hibana-typed! Their series Rengoku x Little Sister Figure is so good!

So Megumi was less than excited to live with Gojo (could not be me but this ain't about me so...)

He was only doing this so Tsumiki wouldn't have to suffer under the Zenin's

He was expected more or less of the same thing

Just him and Tsumiki living in a house, being forced to take care of themselves

Yippee

That's why he was so surprised to find you

"And you two, say hi to your other housemate!" The white haired weirdo cheerfully exclaimed

Megumi looked at you with wide eyes, you were hiding behind the tall man's legs and shaking like you were forced to be here

He wouldn't be surprised if you were

"C'mon honey bun, you gotta introduce yourself, you'll be sharing a home with these guys."

He removed you from his leg and squatted so that he was at his level

"Introduce yourself!"

You give a shy wave, curled in on yourself. You say your name through stutters and when you're done, you bury yourself into the weirdo's chest

Gojo smiles at them, stroking your back

"She's a little shy-"

A little, Megumi thinks

"-you two introduce yourself too! Don't be shy!"

"I'm Tsumiki!" His sister happily says besides him, like you're not shivering even if it's spring. "It's really nice to meet you!"

You remove yourself from Gojo a little to give her a small nod before burying yourself in Gojo's chest again

Megumi doesn't say his name, he observes (what he can when you're buried in Gojo's chest). You look nothing like him. He wonders if you've also been kidnapped taken in by Gojo

Does the freak have a habit of taking young children?

You look younger than him, though maybe it's because you're so small. You remind him of a mouse, especially with how much you were stuttering

He certainly hasn't seen someone like you before, maybe it's because of how sheltered he is, but you're different

Your skin is darker then what he's seen before, but the difference makes you even prettier. Your skin makes you glow in the sunlight, like some sort of angel

His stomach twists, even with how little he saw of your appearance, you're beautiful

"Aw are you already smitten with my little girl."

His face burns, "no!" He regrets staring so long when you bury yourself even deeper into the older man's arms, your embarrassment making his worse

Gojo waves off his words, "honey bun, this is Megu-chan, your first suitor!"

"Don't call me Megu-chan." He mutters, not bothering to clear up the other statement when the man is rambling something about your 'love story'. He looks up, sparing another glance at you.

You've removed yourself from Gojo a little, your brown eyes making contact with his blue ones.

Simultaneously, you both hide your faces

It's four people in the house but to be honest, it feels more like two

Usually, Gojo is out settling clan business or off on a mission, it's different than before though, Gojo's not neglectful, always making sure they have double of what they need and bathing them in nice comments

And he usually makes it home by dinner

It's honestly really nice (but never tell Gojo he said that)

The reason you don't count though is that you're really...

Quiet

He doesn't even know if that's the right description of you, you're almost like a ghost

The few times that he has laid his eyes on you, you disappear faster than he can blink

Usually, he would assume it's a him problem, but Tsumiki faces the same issues

"Do you think she hates us?" Tsumiki says one day, fiddling with her fingers.

Somehow, it makes him feel better that Tsumiki has the same struggles.

He shrugs, "I don't know, I thought she was mute, but she introduced herself fine the first time so..."

Tsumiki nods in agreement, she moves from playing with her fingers to playing with her hair, "I hope she doesn't hate us, she seems so nice."

"How would you know?" He mutters, "she doesn't even say anything to us."

Tsumiki frowns, opening her mouth to argues but then closes it in thought, "you have a point..." She reluctantly concedes.

Somehow, the win doesn't make him feel better, stomach twisting at the thought of you not liking them.

Of you not liking him

But one fateful day changes everything

"H-hello." You stutter out, looking at the two of them with wide eyes. Their eyes move from the TV screen to your surprising declaration.

Tsumiki eyes bulge out but she snaps her mouth shut out of fear of scaring you away. Megumi hopes that he doesn't share his sister's surprised look (which makes her look like a fish gasping for breath), forcing himself to remain calm.

He doesn't think he's heard your voice since Gojo introduced you all.

"D-dad won't be coming home today...a-and he said we could order food," You bite your lip, "d-do you guys want pizza?"

Tsumiki nods so quickly that he's scared her nose might start bleeding, "that sounds wonderful!"

When your eyes fall to him, he gives a simple nod. "That sounds really good."

You relax, and Megumi didn't notice how tense you were at the thought of a disagreement.

You poke your fingers through a hole in your shirt. "...C-can one of you order for us?"

Tsumiki shoots up, "I can!" She volunteers, already rushing to grab the landline.

You watch her with relief, and Megumi can already see the cogs in your head turning, you thinking about going back to your room.

He doesn't want you to go

"Do you wanna watch a movie with us?" He blurts out.

You jump at the words, surprise evident on your face. You point to yourself as if to ask Me?

He nods, looking away with embarrassment from how red his face is turning, "yeah, it would be nice to talk to you..."

When you don't respond, he looks to you and god he wishes he hadn't.

You're smiling, a smile that lights you up. Gone is the usual worry on your, eyes soft with joy and crinkled because of how wide your grin is

You're beautiful

"Okay..." You respond, softly, "I-i would like that."

He nods absentmindedly, aware that he's staring but he's under a spell, he doesn't know how to look away.

"Do you guys want garlic knots?" Tsumiki yells from the other room.

"Y-yes please!" You respond back, voice soft even when raised.

You turn back to Megumi and award him with another smile, "I-i need t-to call my dad really quick-- b-but I'll come back to watch the movie with you guys!"

He watches you go, butterflies in his stomach.

He buries his face in his hands.

Oh god

He has a crush

[ilovejeongintoo]

ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕄𝕖

!WARNING NSFW Content ahead! !MDNI!

Genre: Fantasy Werewolf San x Vampire Reader Warnings: sex p in v, biting/marking, mirror Wordcount: 4480 Not proofread at all

People think San is so cat coded, which I obviously agree to but... I think a big black puppy would suit him just as much. -> Puppy Eyes

Summary: If there was one thing you hated more than the boring lessons, it was the smell of dog. Especially one that seemed way too interested in your business.

The boredom of attending all these lessons without even knowing what you wanted to do afterward was hell. Being surrounded by people you didn’t connect with and studying subjects that should never have been part of the school system in the first place only made it worse.

Everything about this place was torture, but the worst was the smell of wet dog that constantly permeated the air. Those damn werewolves—a bunch of dogs. They didn’t just smell like one but also behaved as such, with loud shouts that resembled barks and hyper energy that no one could handle except themselves.

The only reason you were still attending the academy was because your parents threatened to take away your things if you didn’t go. Each year, you contemplated whether the time you spent here was really worth the mental torture of being a student, especially lately, when the whole situation became even worse in the form of a loud, nosy, and most annoying busybody.

He bothered you to no end. He just would not leave you alone. You hurled the usual insults you’d throw at any one of those dogs at him. You’d blatantly ignore him and move spots any time he approached, but he would just follow behind, babbling about his day to you—like you knew each other, or even worse, were friends.

This all started after you helped him pick up his books when he tripped and fell backward. His books were strewn across the dark marble floor, and you just happened to be passing by. You were in a hurry but still helped him, probably why you didn’t notice the scent of a werewolf that clung to him. If you had, you wouldn’t have helped.

You guessed you were suffering the consequences of your actions. Now he was trailing behind you, going on about his day, what he learned, and what he ate. If he had a tail, you were sure it would be wagging like the happy puppy he was.

The annoyed expression on your face was usually hidden behind a cold stare, but now you didn’t even bother. You wanted him to know how much you disliked his mere presence. You were sure onlookers could see the tick on your forehead; you were going to burst a blood vessel any day now. And to top it off, the last few exams were coming up. Making everything ten times worse and your shitty mood even more noticeable in the form of a constant glare.

Your shoes clicked along the floor until you reached the library and entered. This was the one place he hadn’t managed to find you yet. Not surprising, since there was no way he’d actually attempt to study. You sat down at a table more or less hidden by a few bookshelves. Half an hour into being completely immersed in Vampiric History, someone sat beside you. You thought nothing of it, not even sparing them a glance.

The person didn’t move, which caught your attention. It was almost like they were turned toward you, waiting. Your eyes caught sight of familiar brown ones immediately. An annoyed sigh escaped you, and your eyes returned to your textbook, intent on ignoring the constant presence of Choi San.

That didn’t last long because you could practically feel him staring holes into the side of your head. Aggressively closing your book, you looked at him again. “What?”

He had the same smile as always on his face, dimples forming. He wasn’t the least bothered by your reluctance to interact with him. His grin seemed to grow bigger by the second.

He just shrugged as if he didn’t understand what you were saying, his face resting on one of his hands, propped on the table, close.

“You know exactly what I mean: stop following me, stop talking to me, don’t even appear in the same room as me.” You listed off. He just nodded, not taking you seriously at all, it seemed.

You seriously had enough.

Enough of all of this.

Of him.

You grabbed him, pulled him up, and pushed him against the table, almost making him sit on it. Your hands slid to his shoulders, and you got closer. This was bound to get your point across.

He still had that infuriating grin plastered on his face, standing there amused.

“Will do.” What a fucking lie.

From this close, you could look at him closely, take him in, if you will. The chiseled jaw, the dark brown eyes, smooth skin, and pretty lips. Once you realized what you were doing, you locked your eyes back on his just before letting him go with a push.

You grabbed your book and bag and stormed out of the library, out to get some air, to get away from San.

There was no way you were starting to develop any feelings for the dog. Objectively speaking, he was handsome, attractive, whatever. But that was it. You must just be getting too used to him being around. Even the smell of him—your nose must be muted to the stench by now.

You didn’t even show up to the rest of your classes that day. The next day, however, you weren’t so lucky to avoid the menace. First lesson and you were met with his pretty face again.

“No, wait, truce, okay?” Your brows furrowed.

“What?”

“I know you told me not to follow. I mean, I did kinda follow you, but just— I wanted to… give you something back.”

His hands fished for something in his pockets, not finding it immediately. He pulled out a bracelet, a familiar one—yours.

You seized it from his grasp right away. Your eyes turned angrier, not believing he would steal something of yours.

He must have read your thoughts because he defended himself very quickly, arms up and all: “No, you left it yesterday in the library.” He continued before you could speak: “I just wanted to return it. I’ll stay away from you.” You could imagine his ears drooping at that.

Okay, you were wrong—just slightly—about San.

Guilt was already starting to form in your gut like you had actually kicked a puppy. That’s what he looked like, like you just told him he couldn’t have his favorite candy. You gnawed at your lip before sighing.

“No, it’s—thanks, I guess, for giving me back my bracelet. This one means a lot to me.” You dragged your eyes over said piece, then back to his form.

“Look, I just don't like werewolves. Not a single one of you. I’m not changing my mind because of this.”

He looked relieved even though you had just told him you didn’t like werewolves.

“Of course.”

You turned away, not willing to look and maybe rethink your decision of having a puppy follow you around all the time. Before you could get too far, you heard him yell.

“You might change your mind!”

You made sure not to look back and give strength to that statement.

The next few days went by quietly. You didn’t see San much, even in your shared classes. He must be doing some wolf thing. Sometimes, you missed it. You kind of realized what a loner you were. You didn’t even talk to any vampire students—not that you genuinely knew any as friends.

The next time you saw San, he only waved at you and walked off in a different direction. That left you frozen to the marble floor.

He just walked away.

No “Hello,” “How are you,” or anything of the sort. It had become such a routine to have San constantly around you that it felt extremely weird now like you lost something.

It was one thing for him not to come to school because of whatever—you could imagine all sorts of reasons. But seeing him walk off without much at all, right in front of you, left you speechless. Your eyes kept searching for him after that, trying to catch a glimpse of the puppy without much luck.

This is what you wanted, exactly what you told him to do. Despite that, you were coming to regret that decision rapidly.

Well, there was only one way to undo it: you had to bury your ugly pride and talk to him. But there was no way you could just do that—just go up to him and tell him you didn’t actually hate him that much? The thought made you shudder. And where would you even do this? Because there was no way you would willingly embarrass yourself in front of the whole student body.

There was only one place you could think of to have this talk: his dorm room. Admittedly, equally embarrassing, but without any eyes on the two of you. All you had to do was sneak into the wolf dormitory, find his room, wait, and then enter. Easy as pie.

You decided to go through with your scheme when he came back from his evening classes. At least you knew when those ended since he never stopped talking about them. (Something about how they make luminescent potions.)

Getting into the dorm was a struggle, involving climbing a window and almost ruining your pristine uniform. The wolf-printed doorstep carpet and the sign plastered with “Choi San” were hard to miss. The number 13 on the dark oak door made it one of the first rooms; you could even see the front desk down the dark hallway. You chose to hide around the next corner so as not to get caught if the resident assistant were to come by, and to avoid awkwardly standing in front of San's door. All of this was so weird—why were you even doing this? You were okay with being alone before, but now, not anymore.

You’d make San pay for giving you a taste of what friends were—after you became friends again, or whatever your relationship could have been considered before. It didn’t take long for the man of the hour to turn up. He was struggling with the key when you sneaked up. Right after he unlocked the troubling door, you pushed him in. Reaching back to snag the key and step in after him like you owned the damn place. 

His eyes were as wide as saucers. Okay, maybe you could have told him you wanted to talk with him privately. Whoops. “What the hell? What are you doing here? I already told you I won’t bother you anymore”

Oh god, you did not know how to start this. It looked like you broke into his room and were about to turn him into a winter coat by the look on his face.

You sighed. 

“I” and stopped. Fuck

“Alright this is going to sound extremely weird” His brows furrowed. “No I-mean not that kind of weird. I just, fuck this is difficult.” You turned around facing the door. You were not going to say this directly to his face. You took another deep breath to think and come up with an actual sentence this time.

“I might have been wrong about you, you’re not as much of a dog as I thought. And I don’t actually hate you,  and I know it sounds stupid coming from me now. But I…I liked the times that you were around, more than I realized.” 

Your eyes were shut tightly as if that would help you gather the strength to say all of this.

“I was hoping that we could start new and be friends?” You rushed to finish. Now you were waiting for him to say now, open that door and walk out.

It was quiet for a moment. Then you felt his hand pull you back until you had to move your legs to face him. Your head was hanging and your eyes were still shut at this point. 

“Hey, look at me.”

You lifted your head slowly and opened your eyes even slower too scared to find out what was going to happen next. Without the protective darkness, your closed lids brought you. Too scared to hear him reject you straight to your face, the irony really.

The only thing that you were met with was San, with a big smile. Just like you knew him. 

“You’re telling me that you don’t hate me, you honestly don’t? At all?” He looked at your eyes moving his head a little to search for any doubt in them.

“Because sure, I might have been a little pushy, maybe a lot. But I thought it wasn’t bad until you said you didn’t want me to hang around you anymore.”

He looked down at your intertwined hands, recalling the memory. 

“I should have stopped when you gave me the stink eye on the first day of talking to you.”

He looked back up, you noticed his flushed cheeks now just slightly pink. His eyes got bigger and his eyebrows raised a bit in an innocent expression. Hair falling slightly into his face. In that moment he undeniably seemed the most like a puppy, any anxiety from your nerves melted away.

Once the expression was one it disappeared just as fast. He leaned a tad a smug kind of smirk formed with those delicate lips.

His hands coming to rest 

“But now, now you’re telling me you essentially miss me?”

“No”

“You do”

“Say it and I’ll become your lapdog again okay? Easy as that” He had a dark look to him, challenging you but waiting expectantly. Like he knew he was right. 

He was.

“I miss it, I miss you San.” It came out more desperate than you wanted it to. You avoided his gaze out of embarrassment. but he kept turning his head to make you meet them again.

You pushed against his chest slightly in an effort to make him halt his movements.

“Alright Stop!”

His hands automatically found themselves on your elbows not letting go and even pulling you closer. When you noticed the little space left between the two of you, you seized your struggle and instead caught mid-breath. From this close, you could feel his breath and see the almost identical fangs to yours poke out.

“If you really want me to stop”

“Tell me you hate me, tell me how you want me to not even breathe the same air as you, just like before.” 

“And mean it” His grip tightened slightly. His eyes not once leaving yours, pupils blown out. There was no way you could do that anymore not with the discovery you had made, about yourself. You liked Choi San, a werewolf, more than you’d like to admit. Somewhere along all the annoying quips of his you grew attached.

You were grounding yourself a little with the grip on his shirt. “I can’t” Your voice came out more confident than it has been all day.

His lips were on yours so fast after. It was better than you could have ever imagined. There was this addicting smell coming off San now, it felt like you were being dragged into him. It made it feel like you weren’t close enough kissing like this. Your clothes were getting too hot, too suffocating. You took his cheeks into your hands and then up into his oreo-colored hair.

The kiss made the hidden feelings burst up like a broken dam. The push and pull between the two of you had strung up so much tension until this moment. To just release the frustration, sheer annoyance, and most surprisingly of all your denied feelings. You pulled him down further, closer. His grip was just as hard on your waist a possessive feeling to it.

The repulsive scent that used to choke you was now mixed with something else, making it so intoxicating, so San. You were pressing closer in hopes of smelling it more, it just seemed to increase the longer you kissed. The closer your bodies pressed against each other in an almost grind.

Your lips disconnected when San pulled back just enough that your foreheads were pressed against one another his warm breath hitting your swollen lips. 

“So you don’t hate me after all?” There was a smirk evident. A teasing lilt to his seductive voice.

“Shut up.” You pull him into you once again by his collar. Your hands roamed the expanse of his chest through his black button-up shirt. For a more deep and heated kiss. His response was his one hand slipping under your shirt, right below your chest.

You know this is reckless, maybe even foolish, probably the most impulsive thing that you’ve ever done. But in the moment you couldn’t bring yourself to care about the consequences for even a second. Not with him molding so perfectly into you. Your lips detached and you began placing kisses down his pretty neck. You felt a low, almost inaudible growl come from him. It made a pleasant shiver run through your body.

“Careful” He warned, voice deeper and rougher than before, “or I might start thinking you actually like me.” His teasing only made the fire within you burn more, like he was constantly adding gasoline to it. Your fangs lightly grazed the sensitive spot right below his ear, a bolder moan that ended in a low groan escaping him. His nails dig into you a little harder. But it’s not enough. You want him to lose it, to step over that boundary that you still had left, that you could still recover from, and pretend to hate each other again.

There was no way you would let him though. So with more want you dove in interlock your lips once more. Your tongues dragged along in such a sensual motion, it felt so rough and you loved it. His hand that had been buried under your shirt slipped down grazing your waistband. The sensation made another wave of heat course through you, leaving you wetter.

“Tell me to stop,” He murmurs, licking his lips in pause though his actions say the opposite. “Tell me you don’t want this and I will.”

To absolute hell with that. You roughly push him against his couch in answer.

And that's all the encouragement he needs, all hesitation out the window.

He pulls you down into his lap so fast. His hands making quick work of your pants and panties not bothering to unbutton your shirt, he plainly rips it open. A quiet gasp rips through you at the display of strength. He seemed less like a puppy and more like the wolf that you read in books about. Though his hands slow down when they feel the naked skin and his eyes drag along your figure. Like he wants to savor this moment.

Your hands kept tugging at his shirt in question for him to take it off, but he easily complied. Exposing hard taut muscles, smooth skin, and a thin layer of sweat to the desire-filled air around you. You're on him again, planning to get a taste of his skin everywhere. Following his collarbones and down his chest.

Noises leave him every second of the way and his hands move to return the favor. Your body stiffened, the slightest feeling of uncertainty flickering through you in the realization of what you were doing. You’re fighting between the instinct of pushing him away and getting out of here and the unmistakable desire of pulling him closer.

He picked up on it just as fast. A soft and slow hand reaching up towards your face making you meet his eyes. The teasing expression off of his face and replaced with a softer one.

“Hey,” he says low, his tone steady. “We don’t have to do any of this if you’re not sure. I wouldn’t want to if you weren’t.”

But you are sure— in fact you have never been more sure of anything. And maybe that’s what made you hesitate, the realization that this wasn’t going to be just a fleeting lust-filled spur of-the-moment-. It’s something so much deeper, the exact thing you’ve been trying to push to the back of your mind. You’re not sure you can keep denying it so desperately, not with the way he was holding on to you, with the way his eyes focused solely on you.

You shook your head “I want this, I’m sure.” your hand strokes his cheek “I’ve been wanting this for a while.”

This time when the two of you meet it’s more insistent more sure. Clearly over that invisible wall that was holding you back before. His hands cover every inch of your body, pulling your shirt over your head to feel and see your bare.

The next moments were a blur, clothes being thrown off his lips caressing your skin. It’s intoxicating how he moves his hands so smoothly over your skin, how hot just everything is. He’s studying you, memorizing your reactions to hopefully recreate them. Once you're prepped on your hands and knees you register his touches more as they are less rushed and more calculated.

You can feel the warm and big presence of San at your back and you wish you would have looked at what he was hiding under those pants to at least gauge how much you’d be able to take. You weren’t a virgin but you had never been with a werewolf. 

“It’s okay, I’ll make it fit don’t worry” He soothed, and you felt him pour some wet liquid on the curve of your ass and down to your core. You probably didn’t even need all that lube with how wet you felt. You barely responded to San with a whine.

His first finger slipped past your entrance satisfying that burn inside a little. But just after a while when his finger moved back and forth more easily, it burned up more. He entered another finger and shortly after another, they were long but not uncomfortable long and so thick, you felt sufficiently stretched after barely a few minutes.

You could hear San's heavy breathing—he was clearly affected by what he was witnessing. The air was thick with the scent of sex, dirty and potent, mingling with the pervasive smell of sweat. You felt San hover closer to you, his nose brushing against the nape of your neck. He nipped at your skin, leaving a trail of wet kisses in his wake.

He mouthed at your neck more insistently, as if he wanted to bite down but hesitated. Fear held him back—fear of his own wolfish instincts in such a vulnerable moment. He wasn’t ready to face the possibility of you rejecting his mark. If you did, he wouldn’t know what to do. Not when the only mate he wanted was you—a vampire.

“San,” you murmured, reaching behind yourself to thread your fingers through his hair, pulling him closer. You could sense the inner conflict consuming him.

“Don’t stop. I swear to God, if you stop, I will—”

That was all the permission he needed. His final restraint snapped like a thin thread. His fingers withdrew with a wet sound, and you felt him line up his length with your wet cunt before pushing in with one smooth motion. The sensation knocked the wind out of your lungs for a moment. He wasn’t small—not uncomfortably so, but enough to stretch you slightly, making you wiggle to adjust. His hands found your elbows, pulling you back and arching your spine, driving him deeper inside you. As he began thrusting, you couldn’t contain the unholy noises escaping your lips.

He wasn’t holding back at all.

“Oh my God, oh fuck, shit,” you gasped, barely able to keep it together. He felt so right inside you, and the sounds filling the room were nothing short of sinful.

“You’re fucking made for me, wrapping around me so perfectly,” he groaned, pumping harder, going deeper with each thrust. Suddenly, he released your arms, making you fall forward onto your elbows, your head buried in the sofa. One of his hands pressed down on the middle of your back while the other pulled you back onto his length by your ass. It felt like he was reaching up into your stomach.

You turned your head to the side for better air, and your gaze fell upon a mirror reflecting everything happening. The sight of yourself beneath San was as arousing as the act itself. Your hair was a mess, cheeks flushed as if with fever, and both your bodies shone with sweat. You gulped as you watched a drop of sweat slide down his face, hanging briefly at the peak of his chin before falling away. His eyes were locked onto your ass as he ran a hand through his hair for a better view.

San noticed your gaze fixed on the mirror and grabbed your chin, forcing you to keep watching. “See how pretty you are? Now I get to enjoy all of it—just me.” He made sure you wouldn’t look away, his eyes now locked onto yours. He kissed up your neck sensually, never ceasing his thrusts.

One of his hands moved down your stomach, pressing slightly above your pelvis, as if he could feel himself inside you. Your moans grew louder by the second, and San’s brows furrowed in pleasure. His hand moved further down, connecting with your clit and rubbing in slow circles. The stimulation was just enough to tip you over the edge. Your eyes squeezed shut, your legs reflexively clamping around his fingers.

That’s when San took the opportunity to bite down on your neck, his canine teeth sinking into your nape. You shook with overstimulation, the world around you completely blocked out. The roughness of the sofa and the stickiness of your bodies faded into the background. It felt like an electric current was rushing through you. San trembled for a moment, pressing deeply into you one last time before he came, gripping your ass with small thrusts to ride out his high.

It felt like only seconds had passed when San began soothing the small mark with gentle licks. He massaged your hips, anticipating the soreness you’d feel later. When his licks turned into soft pecks, you reached back again, searching for him. Your hand found his hair, smoothing over the damp strands.

“You okay, little doggie?” you asked, pushing the top of his head against your cheek, treating him like your pup. You liked how close the two of you still were, slipping back into teasing now that the intensity had faded.

Your question made him chuckle, his eyes crinkling into crescent moons. “I just fucked you into another universe, and you’re asking if I’m okay?”

He rubbed against you slightly.

“Next time, I’ll really make you rethink keeping me because—” he shifted to whisper directly into your ear—“I’ll fuck you on my knot, pretty girl.”

[justagirlwholikesadam]

His Queen

Summary: Leonidas is growing up and he finally realized the kind of man his so called father, Joffrey is.

Warning: Joffrey is a tag itself, child abuse, Gregor has a part of this story, Sandor trying his best, reader suffers. Sandor x Fem!Reader

A/N: I have risen from the dead, I'm so sorry for not posting lately. please be patience with me because I'm still updating more stories. Enjoy -L

Word Count: 5.5K

Chapter: Two

Leonidas was young in age when he found out how cruel Joffrey could be. He had a bad temper and a vile tongue. Leonidas witnessed Joffrey order Meryn Trant to kill an innocent man for his own amusement. The face of the innocent man plagued Leonidas’s mind. His screams for mercy and the sound of Meryn Trant’s sword slicing the man’s head off taunted him along with his father’s laughter.

The knight standing guard barged into his bed chamber when he heard the prince crying in his sleep. The young prince woke up in tears, Leonidas begged him to get you. A few minutes later, you arrived running. You held your son in your arms as he told you about Joffrey killing that man. After calming Leonidas, you tucked him in bed and sat next to him brushing his thick brown curls out of his face with your fingers. You decided to tell Leonidas what Sandor told you once. Leonidas was now, realizing what kind of man Joffrey was and you had to tell him how things worked. You wanted to wait for him until he was the right age but Leonidas was smart for his age, both of your children were.

“My sweet boy, the world is built by killers. You have to get used to looking at them.” You told him, his brown eyes widened at you.

“One day you will be one too.” You told him.

“What if I don’t want to be one? What if I don’t want to hurt people, mother?” Leonidas told you as he tried to get out of bed. You grew worried, he looked like he was about to cry again. You gently pushed him back down and grabbed his hands with yours.

“Leo.” You called him by his nickname gently. “When the day comes you will. You will kill to protect your family, to protect your loved ones and to protect your kingdom.”

A tear slipped from his eye. “I don’t want to be like him.”

“I don’t want to be like, father. He’s a killer. A monster.” You held his hands and looked back at the closed door of his chambers. You didn't want the knight by his door to listen to your son. Joffrey would punish anyone who spoke ill of him.

“You aren’t like him, my Leo. You never will be.” You told him firmly as you leaned down to kiss his forehead.

“When the day comes that you have to make a decision whether or not to take someone's life. Do it for the right reason.” Leonidas nodded at you, he kept silent when he saw the collar of your robe move as you stood up from his bed. He frowned at the black and blue bruised handprint on your neck.

It was then Leonidas began to see how things were. He noticed how his father acted, how his father ruled the kingdom with fear and with no compassion. He noticed the bruises on you and the way you tried to hide it from everyone. He noticed his grandmother, Cersei, was the same as his father. He was the age of 16 when he came to terms with his father’s cruelty. He finally understood the jokes that were aimed at his uncle, Tyrion. He understood why people were so afraid of Gregor and Sandor but Leonidas didn't mind Sandor, not after Sandor opened up to him about his burnt face.

It was the day he found out about the vile things Gregor had done when Joffrey blurted out his “accomplishments.” He asked Sandor about it. Leonidas didn't see the pained expression on Sandor's face when he told the prince everything and at the end he gave him a choice.

“Being a Clegane comes with a bad reputation, my prince. I understand if you want to stop our training.” Leonidas frowned at his words. Gregor wasn't training much with him since Gregor had his own keep and lands to maintain. Leonidas’ training with Sandor continued very much.

“No, Sandor.” Leonidas shook his head and stared up at him.

“Your brother’s violence and sins doesn't define you. I would very much like to keep training with you. You are nothing like Gregor.”

“My prince, you think too much of me. I have done things I'm not proud of.”

“I know you killed people.” Sandor becomes quiet.

“My father orders you to kill.” Leonidas added with a sharp tone. “I know if you disobey my father then he will behead you. I don't want to see that. I know my sister and mother wouldn’t want that as well.”

Sandor held his breath at the mention of Joanna and you. “Mother told me that the world was built by killers.”

Sandor nodded at him. “She said I will be a killer as well but when I kill, it needs to be for the right reason. To protect my loved one and the people of this kingdom.”

“I know if you had a choice. You wouldn’t kill just to kill but you would kill to protect. People find the Clegane's brothers terrifying but it’s just really one brother that they should fear.” Sandor let out a small smile at him.

Leonidas had your sense of kindness, Sandor had to admit. Same words you shared with him one night were the same words his own son was telling him now. Sandor and Leonidas continued to train and spend time together. Joffrey was thrilled at the fact that his son was bonding with Sandor. He thought that his son could be the exact replica of The Hound, one of the best fighters and killers of the seven kingdoms.

Very often Joanna and you would be the audience of his training. Sandor was happy that he spent time with his son. He was grateful for you being there along with Joanna. His daughter didn’t seem to mind Sandor. She had always tried to grab his hands and try to hold on his hair when she was just a babe. Leonidas thought it was always funny how his sister, who barely spent time with Sandor, was so excited when she was near him.

Whenever Sandor had the chance to hold his children, it would be hidden in the library. You would keep him updated on their life and their likes. Joanna had grown to sleep in Sandor’s arms and with this it created a bit of a problem because she couldn’t go to sleep, unless it was in the arms of The Hound. As a baby and a young child Joanna would smile at Sandor whenever Joffrey came to visit. Joffrey would think that she would be smiling at him but the truth was she was smiling at the man over Joffrey's shoulder, Sandor.

This treatment also applied to The Mountain, Gregor as well. The servants and the council wonder why the small and innocent princess would give the giant the time of day. Joanna would sit on your hip when you came to watch Leonidas training. She would blabbed while chewing on her fingers until she saw him. She would squeal and wave her hands at Gregor. You bite your tongue to hide the giggling bubbling in your chest. The most dangerous man in Westeros looked uneased. Nervous of a little girl greeting him. Joanna would just fuss and fuss until she got her way. You would greet Gregor and ask for forgiveness since you had disturbed the training. He shakes his head and greets you back with no issue.

Sandor would glare at his brother. His hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to pounce in case his brother hurts Joanna or you.

Joanna grew to be a very poised young lady. She was spoiled endlessly by her grandfather, Tywin. Joffrey wasn’t there for the birth of Joanna. He had been away and during that time you had grown fond of Tywin since he was The Hand of the King. Tywin admitted to you one day during your usual walks throughout the castle. He had offered you his arm to hold on as you waddled with him. You were still pregnant with Joanna. It had been two weeks and Joffrey was still absent.

Asking for a break, both of you settled down on a chair and he had the servant bring you some water. While the servant walked away, Tywin expressed his great deal of affirmation for you. You had held up to be a wonderful queen. It was something he had wished his daughter had become when she was queen. You were well educated and had an idea of running a kingdom. Tywin, like most, knew how Joffrey ran the kingdom. You had proven your intelligence and loyalty to Joffrey. You had gotten far to sit with Tywin during court. Sometimes Tywin had asked you to fill in during courts and dealing with the people of King's Landing.

Tywin never admitted to you that he thought you would be just a breeding cow without a thought behind your pretty eyes but oh, how wrong he was. He saw so much of his wife in you. He had cried the day Joanna was born. You had granted permission for the servant to give the baby to him. Tywin's heart grew at the sight of the babe in his arms.

“Her name is Joanna.” Tywin gave you a nod of gratitude. You had given her the name of his late wife.

Sandor didn't mind whenever Leonidas stood for him when it came with highborns. Like him, Leonidas had his smart tongue. Sandor didn't think much of it until Leonidas received his first slap from his father when he stood up for him. Leonidas grew tired of his father belittling Sandor.

“His name is not Dog.” Leonidas told his father. Leonidas stood in the middle of the council room. Joffrey looked up from the table and started to laugh. He looked over at Sandor who was staring hard at Leonidas.

“I own him. He’s my dog. If I want him to bark he will. If I want him to kill he will. One day he will be your dog.” Joffrey told him as he stood up from his seat and walked towards Leonidas. Sandor grew anxious as he stared at the back of Joffrey’s head. Joffrey didn’t mind that Leonidas was now taller than him, he still gave his son a glare as he looked up at him.

“If I want to have my dog beat you up. He will because he’s my dog and my dog obeys me.” Joffrey said harshly. Sandor felt his eye twitch at Joffrey’s words. Millions of thoughts ran through Sandor’s head. What if Joffrey were to command him to hurt the prince? What would he do? He would die. He would die then hurt his own son.

“He deserves respect unlike you.” Leonidas answered him. Sandor flinched when Joffrey slapped Leonidas across the face.

“Be warned, boy. Next time I will have you punished for disrespecting me. I am the king.”

“Leave me be.” Joffrey yelled at Sandor before flinging the door open and stomping away.

Sandor shut the door and looked over at Leonidas. He walked towards him as Leonidas kept staring at the ground in shock by what just happened. His father had slapped him, it was the first time Joffrey had laid a hand on him. Leonidas was used to his father’s cruel words towards him but this was the first Leonidas had experienced this abuse. He wondered how you managed to deal with it.

“Look at me.” Sandor said as he cupped Leonidas’ face with his large hand. Sandor let out a sigh as he wiped the blood trailing down from Leonidas’ right nostril. His eyes were wide and filled with tears.

“Never do that again. Do you hear me?” Sandor yelled at him as he wiped the blood.

Sandor saw the expression on Leonidas’ face. Sandor dropped his hands and took a deep breath. His fingers ached to get his sword and slam it into Joffrey’s stomach for touching his son. Leonidas looked away from Sandor. Embarrassed that he tried to stand up for Sandor but at the end Sandor just yelled at him like his father did.

Sandor called out Leonidas' name but he didn’t respond. He kept looking at the ground. Sandor felt his heart drop when Leonidas flinched when Sandor tried to get closer to him.

“Look at me.” Sandor told him. Sandor bit the inside of his cheek as Leonidas looked up at him.

“I’m sorry.” Leonidas said softly. “Don’t be angry with me.” Sandor shook his head at Leonidas' plea, wiping his fallen tears with his thumbs.

“I didn’t mean to yell at you, Leo.” Sandor continued to wipe his tears.

Leonidas pitched his brows at the nickname. Joanna and you were the only ones who called him that. Sandor was always formal with him but he was glad that Sandor felt comfortable using it. Leonidas looked up at Sandor rather than his own father. He envisioned Sandor as the hero in all his stories. The underdog who saved the princess. Him and his sister had that in common. Both of them have seen Sandor act with their mother. They saw how gentle the guard of their father was with their mother. Opening doors and lending her his arm whenever she would sit down or stand up. Especially during their walks around the garden. Leonidas and Joanna would run and play in the garden while Sandor stood near you, keeping guard when Joffrey didn't need him. They smiled whenever they heard you laughing and talking with Sandor.

“No more standing up for me, you hear me? I’m an old man, being called a dog is nothing. I have been called at way worse things.”

Leonidas shook his head. “It’s not right. It’s not fair.”

“Life is not fair. You need to understand that right now!” Sandor told him firmly. Sandor looked away from Leonidas' gaze. He looked at him like you did. Leonidas wasn’t afraid to look him straight in the eye.

“I know life isn’t fair.” Leonidas spoke as he walked away from Sandor.

“I know that because my mother, a woman who’s amazing and a good queen, has to suffer with a man like him.” Leonidas told Sandor as he opened the door then left before Sandor could say anything.

Leonidas kept his posture. He held his head up as he walked out of the room. The servants greeted him as he passed by. Leonidas made his way to your chambers. He had knocked and heard one of your servants grant permission to come inside. He saw you sitting up in bed with a cup of tea. He smiled at the sight of you balancing the cup on top of your swollen belly.

“Leo.” You called out to him with a smile as you waved your hand to come closer to you. The servant bowed when you told her to leave and shut the door behind her while Leonidas made his way to you. He sat next to you as you placed the cup by the night stand.

“How are you, my love?” You asked as you rubbed your belly, wincing as you shifted. Leonidas was sitting on the edge of the bed near you. He felt your hand on his arm as you rubbed your stomach with the other.

“I wanted to see how you were doing.” He said, looking away from you. You gave him a smile at his sweet gesture.

“I’m doing well. I’m ready for the babe to get out.” You said eyeing Leonidas in front of you. He kept looking across the room instead of you.

“Look at me.” Leonidas didn’t have to be told twice. He did and you let out a small gasp.

“What happened?” You asked as you saw the right side of your son's cheek, it was red.

“Leonidas, tell me right now.” You ordered when he didn't speak up right away.

Sandor knew Joffrey was going to snap. He had walked with him to a council meeting that was being held without him. The blonde king was vivid at his grandfather, Tywin the hand of the king. Joffrey’s blue eyes widened when his grandfather had told him that he wasn’t needed and there was no need for his presence.

After his son told him, his guard demanded more respect than him and his grandfather told him he wasn’t needed. Joffrey’s anger kept bubbling.

“Any news on the Queen?” Joffrey frowned as Varys questioned Tywin. Sandor’s ears perked at the mention of your name.

“Bed ridden until the child is born.” Tywin had announced.

“People are growing anxious. We will have to delay the court date.” Varys said as he looked through the scrolls on the table.

“There will be no need for that. I will handle the people and their needs.” Joffrey said not even noticing the looks the council gave to each other.

“My king, the people in King's Landing would rather prefer the queen.” Tywin spoke out and held his gaze at his grandson who grew angry at this fact. Varys had shown Joffrey the scrolls of the amount of people asking for you.

“This is not up for discussion.” Tywin added when Joffrey started to make threats to the people who were asking for you. Joffrey was going to answer back when the door opened. Sandor frowned when he noticed you waddling inside as your ladies in waiting followed behind you with worried eyes.

“I need to speak to you alone.” Sandor didn’t miss the look of anger on your face.

Joffrey’s chuckle and shook his head. “This is not the time, woman. I’m busy.”

“Right fucking now.” You yelled loudly causing everyone to tense up since this was the first time you had raised your voice.

Joffrey said as he shook his head. “Whatever you have to say you can say in front of my council.”

Tywin watched as you looked over at the men of the group. The angry look on your face never left as you looked at them. Sandor watched as you sighed while placing a hand on your swollen belly.

“I am going to tell you this once. One time Joffrey.” Everyone stood quiet as you got closer to him.

“I tolerated the person you are. I looked away when you torture your whores. I looked away from your childish behavior and learn to deal with them. I have come to terms with your abuse when it came to me.” Sandor looked down at the ground when you spoke. He shut his eyes tightly when you mentioned the slaps, the names being called, the abuse Joffrey had made you endure. Sandor had cleaned the blood from your nose or cheek when Joffrey had wandering hands.

“But I will not tolerate you hitting my children.” The room was silent as you told Joffrey.

“You will not touch Leonidas. You will not touch Joanna and you will not touch this babe.”

The door opened again and they looked to see Leonidas and Joanna. Both of them were out of breath, like they just ran for miles. The room was getting filled when Joanna and Leonidas’ personal servants came rushing behind them.

Leonidas stood at the entrance as his brows knitted together when he saw his mother and father. Joanna held on his arm tight as she looked worried.

“You think you can tell me what to do -. ” Joffrey didn’t even finish his sentence. Tywin stood up as he saw Joanna was in tears and saw the slight bruise on Leonidas’ cheek. He had walked between Joffrey and you who were in a staring match.

“Everyone out.” Tywin announced as he walked towards Leonidas and Joanna.

“Clegane, walk them back to their room at once.” Sandor moved at once towards them.

“Wait, grandfather. If I can speak to my father.” “No.” Tywin said as he touched Leonidas cheek making him flinch.

“This will end now.” He looked over at Joanna who still held on to her older brother as she watched over at Joffrey who was whispering to you.

Tywin looked over Leonidas who kept staring at you, the fear in his eyes that something would happen. Sandor took a deep breath before walking to the children. The room was empty now.

“Come on.” He touched Leonidas’ shoulder. Tywin turned around when the door was shut.

The children were about to walk away as well as your ladies in waiting. Everyone had left except for them, the ladies had told them not to fret when they saw your children. They all looked towards Sandor who remained by the door. They can hear him breathing heavily as he stares at the door. One hand remained on top of his sword.

One of the servants calls out for The Hound but Sandor just ignores her. His shoulders rose up and down. This wasn't good, the children thought. Joanna and Leonidas looked at each other. Joanna steps forward ignoring the warning from the servant and grabs a hold of Sandor’s free hand. Sandor snaps back into reality. He looked down at Joanna, her brown eyes wide as she stared up at him.

“Grandfather won't hurt mother.” She tells him and Sandor doesn't know what to say, he just nods.

He knew Tywin wouldn't hurt you but it was Joffrey that he was nervous of. Sandor swallowed that fear, it hurt. He was ashamed that he couldn't do more, he couldn't do more for you and the children. He felt less of a man every time he saw a bruise on your body and now the sight of his son’s cheek made him feel ill. Joanna held Sandor’s hand and pulled him away from the door. She didn't let go, Sandor didn't as well. His hand dwarf hers and the servants had a small smile on their faces as they watched them walking with Sandor on either side.

Tywin wished he had done more to help you. Joffrey had agreed to not touch the children. He had swore to it in front of you and Tywin but that meant you weren't safe.

Sandor sat with you in the love seat of the library while you told him what happened after he left. Sweet kisses he gave you, when you began to cry. You didn't cry for your own but for your children. Sandor cried for you as he rubbed your belly. His unborn child in your belly kicked him and in the middle of it. Sandor told you what happened as well with Leonidas. A sad smile appeared on your face, you were proud of him.

Sandor left first, he gave you a kiss before leaning his forehead against yours. He promised to look out for the children but you must promise him to stay in bed until the babe is born. He rubbed your belly before wishing you a good night. You waved at Sandor as he shut the door behind him. You were about to push yourself up to leave after a few moments.

You let out a deep breath when you managed to stand up when you heard footsteps behind you. Your hands covered your belly when you turned around. You let out a gasp when you saw Sandor’s brother. He stood between the bookshelves, he was almost as tall as the shelves. His dark eyes stared hard at you and you took a step back.

“Ser Gregor. How are you?” When he did not answer, you began to worry. You looked around, he seemed to be alone.

“Didn't know you were a fan of books. Are you liking the library?” He begins to walk closer to the love seat.

“Never liked books.” He told you as he dropped his sword on the love seat. Showing you that his hands were empty. He held no weapons.

“Sandor was the reader of the family. He liked his books. I see, that hasn't changed.” Gregor walks around the love seat to stand a few feet away from you. His face was hard to read, his eyes just kept looking at your face then at your stomach. You felt petrified. Would you share the same fate as the poor women that Gregor caught? He couldn't though, you were the queen but Gregor is unpredictable.

“He even found someone to read books with.” Your stomach dropped in fear.

“How long were you hiding?” You asked him softly and you were surprised when he answered right away.

“The moment I saw you giving my brother the sign.” Gregor raised his hand up to his chin and scratched it. You couldn't believe he figured it out. Sandor and you were so careful to not be followed. He's been watching both of you for a while.

“What is it that you want from him?” He asks and you frown at his question.

“He's a second born son. He has no land and no money. He's the dog of the king.” You cut him off before he can say another word.

“He is not a dog!” You hiss at Gregor who raised a brow at you “The queen thinks much of the dog.”

You frown at his words. “I love him. I love your brother.” Gregor’s face fell. You held your head high and repeated it to him one more time.

“Then the children?” He knew the answer but he wanted to hear it from you. He knew Sandor would never tell him. You nod at him and look down at your belly.

“All three of them are his. They are your family. The princess is your niece and the prince is your nephew.”

“They will hang you for this. Hang them all including my brother,” Gregor says.

“They won't unless you keep your mouth shut. I know you hate Sandor but you can't hate Leonidas or Joanna”

“Who says I hate Sandor?” You let out a huff at that question and walked to the nearby desk. It was close to the door, you needed to be close to the door in case something happened.

“You burned his face, you pushed him to the coal.” Gregor shook his head. “His bed caught on fire.”

“LIES!” You shouted at him and Gregor’s jaw clenched. “You may have fooled everyone but not me. I believe him.”

Gregor takes a deep breath and it reminds you of a bull. You're frightened but you wouldn't show it. After today’s events, you have had enough of men like Joffrey and Gregor who use and abuse their power.

“Tell me, Ser Gregor. What do you want? What's the price for your silence?” Gregor took a minute to answer. His dark eyes stared down at you, almost trying to intimidate you but it didn't work. You stared right back at him with no fear.

“I want to know..” Gregor stopped in mid sentence and swallowed hard.

“Has Joffrey hurt the children before?” His question confused you. Why was he asking this, you wondered. Sandor has told you that his brother is incapable of feeling. His heart was cold and no love could come from him. All he cared about was killing.

“He has slapped Leonidas.” Gregor frowned deeply. His jaw clenched and his eyes hardened by your words.

“And the girl?” He growled. You shook your head at him. “We have come to a deal. He won't hurt my children. None of them.”

“Exchange for what?” You lower your eyes to the ground.

“I’ll be the one receiving the abuse.” Gregor hums and clears his throat.

“Nothing new.” You look up at him. “He's been doing it already. I have seen the bruising.”

“You're quite the observer, Ser Gregor.” You admit to him.

“Why let him abuse you more for the sake of them?” He asks.

“Because they are my children. They are mine and Sandor’s. I will protect them until my last dying breath and that includes Sandor.” Gregory’s eyes turned into slit at the mention of his brother.

You let out a sigh of relief when the tall man sat down on the loveseat. His elbows rested on top of his knees and he rubbed his hands together. You rubbed your stomach trying to ease your unborn child who was kicking like crazy.

“Does the girl have a knight protecting her?” He asks you.

“No, she doesn’t. She’s always surrounded by her maids and septon.” You answered him and looked at him carefully. He was asking about Joanna. Why?

“I want to guard her.” You shook your head.

“Ser Gregor, I know you are strong and well taught in fighting but your reputation is alarming. You rape and kill woman. Your temper worries me.” He looks away from you. You can’t understand why he’s asking for this. What does he want from Joanna? All the Gods will have to restrain you this moment because you were going to lash out. Why would his man want to guard your daughter, his niece.

“She looks like my sister.” The eldest Clegane brother said.

“Her smile and her hair.” His voice was soft as he continued to speak about her. Sandor mentioned before that her name was Ellie. That was the only thing he knew about her.

“I lost my temper one day.” He shook his head.

“Choked her, it was only for a few seconds but I was much stronger. Stronger than most. All it took was a few seconds. Broke her neck.” Gregor said as he looked across the room at you. He can still recall Ellie's face after he had choked her. Her eyes popped out and her face was red from the lack of oxygen.

“I saw the boy and the girl crying. Then I saw his face, his cheek. I couldn't protect the boy but let me protect her.” You wanted to believe him but you couldn't not after all the horrid things he had done. Not after all the blood he had shed.

“You think by protecting her, everything will be forgiven? The crimes you had committed and the rapes you had done. One day you will lose your temper with her. What would people think when they see The Mountain guarding the princess?” Gregor stood up from the seat and walked towards you. You took a step back and realized your back was against the door.

“I loved my sister.” His voice was strained. “She was the only good thing from my wretched family. Sandor does not remember but mother didn't give a shit about us and father was a drunk who liked to hit. Mother tried to sell Sandor when he was a babe.” Your face fell at his confession.

“I killed her when she came back, she wouldn't shut up about not selling him. Then I killed my father when he told me he wanted to sell Ellie for drinking money. Wanted to sell her to the highest bidder.”

No tears fell but his eyes were glossy. “There was no hunting accident. He simply fell on top of my sword.”

You let out a whimper when he stood in front of you. You were so close to him, you could smell the metal on his armor. You can smell the wine from his breath and he raised his large paw. You thought he was going to hurt you but he placed it on top of your stomach. Your unborn baby seemed to know who it was, your child felt the warmth on their uncle and kicked.

He lets out a small gasp and looks at you with wide eyes. With shaky hands you covered his hands with your own. The baby kicked again.

“Was that..” You nod at him and he starts to rub your belly. “Mother never let me touch her stomach. I wanted to when she was with Sandor.”

His words broke something inside of you. What if Gregor had a good family? A father and mother who cared, would he still be evil and murderous? His eyes remained on your stomach, you moved his hands back and forward around your stomach. A certain kick had you wincing loudly and he quickly removed his hand from your gasp.

“You alright?” He asked and you nod, biting your bottom lip. You were supposed to be bedridden until your pregnancy came to an end.

“Yes.�� You answered him and leaned back on the wall, hoping to find some kind of comfort.

“Your brother’s children are always relentless at the end. Kicking their mother left and right at the end of the pregnancy.” You looked up at Gregor.

“Mother said the same thing.” He said softly. “Kicking to get out.”

You took a deep breath before asking him something that could change Joanna’s life.

“Are you truly serious about taking care of my daughter? She is everything to me, Ser Gregor. Sandor and Tywin adore her. If I accept your proposal and you lose your temper or something happens to her..”

“Then you behead me.” He cuts you off, surprising you.

“If I fail, then I accept death. I harmed my siblings, that I regret but I won’t harm my niece and nephew. That you have my word. Since I’ll be with Joanna, she’s mostly with Leonidas. I’ll keep my eye on him. I fear his tongue will get him into trouble with Joffrey again.”

You nod at him. “Sandor, won’t like this at all.”

“It wouldn’t matter unless Joffrey believes it’s his idea.” Gregor declared.

<-- Chapter One

[dira333]

Not needed - Itoshi Rin x Soulmate! Reader

Requested by the lovely anon who sent in many amazing Requests (You know how you are) - tagging @shoulmate because she's been begging me to write something for Rin - Join My Taglist

“Oh, is that your soulmark?” Bachira leans in, far too close for comfort. 

Rin pulls his shirt down and takes a step back. “Why do you care?”

“Well, duh?!” Bachira tries to pull the fabric back up, but Rin’s hand’s close around his like a vice. “It’s none of your business.”

“Whatever?” Bachira grins and steps back as far as he can, pulling his hands back as soon as Rin’s grip loosens. “I’m sure I will catch it some other day.”

Rin scowls but Bachira just laughs. Looks like a normal Tuesday after all.

-

Isagi hasn’t found his soulmate yet. Bachira’s pretty sure his is the cute girl from his neighbourhood. Reo keeps talking about his even though everyone’s tired of it already - his parents found her right after he was born and made sure she got the best education possible, after all, she was going to be his wife one day.

No one seems to care that Rin’s going to kill them any second if they don’t stop bringing up this topic. Who cares about Soulmates? They’re here to play soccer!

“I don’t need one!” He snaps at Chigiri when the guy has the audacity to point out something about his soulmark. “If I ever happen to meet them, I’ll make sure to let her know.”

-

“Oh no-” Rin hears just seconds before he gets drenched in something ice cold and sticky. Isagi’s sitting across from him, hands pressed against his mouth to keep the laughter in. Bachira has less control over it, his laugh bellowing out and pulling all the attention. Great. Just what he needed on this short break from training.

He turns, ready to rip the head of whoever is responsible - but the words die in his mouth.

You look like you’re ready to cry, wringing a single napkin in your shaking fingers. “I-I- I’m so sorry, I just wanted some… That was my last-”

Somewhere in between your stuttering, he catches on that you’d had a horrible day and this should have been the thing to make it even, a little treat for all the suffering. But said treat is sticking to his skin, turning his previously white shirt an ugly shade of brown.

“Come on,” he barks, moving to pull you away from the guys but stopping at the last second. He can’t just drag a girl around, especially one he doesn’t know. His parents raised him better than that. “Follow me.” 

Somewhere on the short trek to the front, you must have mistaken his grimace for an inviting smile, because you haven’t stopped talking, telling him everything he could have wanted to know about the week you’ve had. 

“Order,” he barks out, softening his tone when your eyes turn wide. “Please.”

Your order is impressively long. He’s only ever ordered black coffee. No wonder his shirt feels this sticky. When it’s time to pay, you turn and blink up at him.

“I spent my last money on that drink,” you point out, nibbling on your lower lip - it’s a little distracting. 

“Fine,” he huffs and pays. 

It’s only when he’s back at his table that he realizes that this went totally wrong. Weren’t you supposed to pay for his drink? As an apology for drenching him in coffee? But he can’t very well get up again, not when Bachira’s pointing out how cute you were and Isagi’s snickering every few minutes. If he’d be here with less perceptive people, he’d dare to turn his head just a little, to look over to the corner of the café where he knows you went. But he isn’t and so he doesn’t.

-

“Oh God!” The words are muttered, but Rin still hears them, curses his good hearing when the words are followed by a shrill squeak only seconds before you tumble down the stairs - and right into his arms.

If he were anyone else, he’d probably admire you - unable to walk down a flight of stairs yet sticking the landing perfectly, arms flung around his shoulders like you’re from one of the movies his mom loves to watch.

“Hi!” You squeak when he lets you down right away, hands burning from where he’d held you. At least no one saw. 

-

Rin doesn’t know how it happened or what’s more surprising about it, but he finds himself in a friendship group that contains not only him but you too. He might have gotten it wrong in his head, but he’s pretty sure you knew Chigiri from before Blue Lock. Or was it Kunigami? He’s never too sure with these two.

Maybe he’s being too poetic about it, has been too influenced by his mother's taste in movies, but you remind him of the sun, warm light flooding every room you step into. He dares to tell you once, embarrassment clamping his mouth shut when your response is a shy smile and wide eyes. Never, never will he tell you that he feels like the moon in your orbit - yes, he knows the moon orbits the earth, it’s a metaphor! - only able to light up the night because he’s been in your presence.

You’re too clumsy for your own good, too good-hearted for being friends with rascals like these. You never catch it when Bachira nudges you into helping him out, don’t realize when Nagi uses you as a headrest or a means to get from one place to the other. More than once Rin has to step in, teeth bared when Chigiri grins and asks “Are you her bodyguard or what?”

-

“Do you have a soulmate?” Isagi asks one day after training when all of them are draped across the tables in the little café down the street, their muscles resembling cooked noodles more than anything.

“Of course!” You smile and wave your straw around, almost taking out Kunigami’s left eye in the process. “Why are you asking? You already saw!”

Rin tenses. He can feel it before it happens, how his spine stiffens and his back turns ram-rod-straight. He forgot. He forgot that those still existed. Isagi throws him a smile that could mean everything and nothing at all. Rin pushes himself up from the table, grumbling something under his breath that could mean “I have to use the toilet,” as well as “I’m going to run the world.” 

He’s en route to the barista when he realizes that he’s left his wallet back at the table. He does the only reasonable thing and walks out of the café.

The cool air lifts some of the tension and the fact that he’s out of sight of his friends - if he can call them that - helps as well. Here, where he can feel like he’s almost alone, he can think.

Not that he wants to think.

Thinking just leads to realizations. Like the fact that you’re not his. That he’d want you to be his. That the stepping stones turned into something he could almost call friends. 

“Rin?” Your voice pulls him out of the moment. You pull the door close behind you, shiver in the cool air. “You forgot your wallet.” 

“Thank you.”

You smile. “It isn’t like you to forget something. Am I finally influencing you?”

“Like you could,” he huffs, but your smile only widens.

“Bachira told me that you’re probably upset because you’re the only one who hasn’t seen my Soulmark yet.”

“I’m not-” He starts but stops when you roll up your sleeve. His mouth’s dry and the words die on his tongue.

There, in the crook of your elbow, is the same mark that sits right above his hip bone. 

Rin can’t help but think of his own words, his own vows. 

He doesn’t need a soulmate. Just like friends, they’re nothing but a hassle, a weight holding him down. Or so he thought.

You blink up at him and he wonders if you know what’s going on inside of his head. 

“Do you wanna get something to eat?” He hears himself ask, his hand reaching out for yours. Your skin is warm under his touch. You take his hand like you’ve never done anything else.

“Are you paying?” You ask, smile doing that little quirk he’s grown to look for.

“What?” He asks back. “Are you offering?”

You giggle, shaking your head. He knows you too well. 

When you pull him forward, he doesn’t hesitate. 

He might not need you, but he sure as hell wants you by his side.

[justice-artblog]

Random thought but, do yall think Saiki would have made a good accidental villain?

Like, bear with me here, a lot of this is just my own headcanons mixing with canon.

But you have a being here that does things on his own whimsy. Teleports things in and out based on price, has a psychic presence so wide that other espers sometimes suffer because they can't see their own things. This being has telekensis string enough to level entire cities, has a power that destroys islands- destroys NATIONS- if he so pleases.

He has a power to infinitely reset time, sending everyone into a neverending loop if he so wants. He can erase and persuade your memory to the point you might not even know what you really want anymore. There was a time where hair was the odd colors of blacks, browns and blondes only- but maybe thats how it was before this being? Or maybe it was always like this?

Like- being stuck in an endless timeloop (and not knowing why) can drive anyone crazy.

And the thought that someone finds out (I'm a sucker for it being his friends) and then just grabs Saiki's hand, desperate and pleading.

Cause while his actions may seem cruel, Saiki is not a cruel person to them

"Please, please let us go."

"You'll die."

The miscommunication of people thinking that Saiki is immortal- and who knows, he could very well be- vs the actuality that he just isnt atrong enough with his limiters to hold back a fucking volcano.

And all he wants to do is keep his favorites alive.

I dunno, this is just brain vomit at this point, but it would NOT leave my psyche (hehe)

[strawhatkia]

luvr boy.

INCLUDES ! izuku midoriya x black!fem!reader

GENRE ! fluff

SYNOPSIS ! general relationship headcanons with izuku !

WARNINGS ! cursing, fem!black! reader, we still in high school y’all, a little uraraka slander (read to understand), edited

WORD COUNT ! 1.6k

A/N ! another repost, i had to break it up bc it was a lot of text - izuku motherfucking midoriya. the blasian himself. isaiah niggadoriya. him with a black female? him with a melanated goddess? i think it god’s greatest gift to give izuku ‘deku’ midoriya a beautiful, melanated, healing black woman and for me to write about it.❤️🥰 also, i hate the way uraraka is written and i will not hold back

reblogs and comments are welcomed and loved, so leave some please ! i will respond ! 🤍

MAIN MASTERLIST | BNHA MASTERLIST | TAGLIST

— ☾⋆⁺₊ 👊🏻 📗✧

pretty boy- the prettiest 

alright!! let’s start with wash day!!

…nigga did not know shit-

 poor baby grew up with inko, bless her straight headed soul, so he had no clue how to probably take care of his hair

all he had was h e a t  d a m a g e

“zuku, how do you do your hair?” “huh?” “like what do you do?” “uh well, nothing really, i just wash it, that’s it.” “…” “what? why are you making that face- IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY HAIR?!?”

everything…everything is wrong…

aight sis, grab yo detangler, rat-tail comb, hard brush, sulfate-free shampoo, co-wash, conditioner, deep conditioner, protein treatment, all your oils, patience, and strength

and for the love of everything that is great- throw away his 3-in-1 before he give me a fucking heart attack

chile- you couldn’t even see his fucking scalp. his hair was so matted and curled up tightly together that it hurt to look at it 

don’t let him go out this house like this no mo, hear me?

but it’s nothing you can’t fix, give the lil boy head some TLC and watch them curls pop!

first wrap that towel around his shoulders, put a pillow on the floor and sit him down in between ya legs and start the marathon of old all might and black people movies you gon’ be there for a while

lil boy would not sit still and he was tender-headed pick a struggle; at this point it was either get popped by you or suffer the pain from his scalp…he chose the latter

mans almost fell asleep while you was shampooing his hair and when you put the hot oil treatment on his scalp- slumber  

after everything, you twisted his hair and gave him a bonnet

“uhm...why are you giving me a hat?” you almost slapped the taste outta his damn mouth

after explaining, he put it on; little did he know it was an expect copy to yours, just a different size

“baby, we’re matching!” ”yes, izu, we are. do you wanna take pictures?” you have just made his night. 

the pictures were posted all over insta and has them pinned on his account you betta bet mina was all in the damn comment section ; later, he would print them out and put them on his desk so he can look at when he sat down or went to bed

when you took his hair down the next day, he went to the mirror and baby had stars in his eyes

“it looks so cool!” “i’m glad you like it, izu”

he talks about you to all might all the fucking time to the point they both know you better than ya damn self

which is really annoying because all might be wanting them "one on one" talks and it will irk you to talk to him because everything will be "but young midoriya said..."

to be honest, he went to all might for love advice....don’t ever let him do that again. mans was using the most corniest lines but since it was izuku, he got away with- tell me you not cheesing thinking about him saying the "roses are red, violets are blue line" with the cutest blush...im waiting

golden hour, his favorite time of the day

this man will drop everything just to see you at golden hour like when the sun is just starting to set, he will rush into ya dorm room just to watch you

it's like therapy for him to see you relaxing under the setting sun and see your brown skin shining, i just feel like this time would be the time he reminds himself that he is incredibly lucky to have you and will literally do anything to keep you relaxed like this

"zuku babes, what are you looking at?" "nothing~" "whew boy you are so far gone" "hm?" "oh! uh...love you !" "hm, love you too~"

side note: ...if you hear a camera click, don't be surprised

izuku loves affection, giving and receiving

his giving love languages is acts of service and a lil bit of quality time; his receiving love language is physical touch and words of affirmation

so it’s important that you meet in the middle and give him praise, shit works like a charm

go up to him, pat and rub his curls and tell him that he did a good job and one of two things will happen

one: he'll tear up a lot and ask if you're sure or two: he'll blush really fucking hard

as for his giving love, he'll just kinda follow you now until he is told to leave. don’t do that. just don’t.

let him leave on his own, you'll make him feel like he's bothering you otherwise 

ask him for cuddles, he’ll drop almost anything he is doing to do so

even if you just drop hints about it, he’ll just smile and just take you somewhere quiet before sitting down or laying down to take a nap with you (nap dates with zuku !)

i think my heart just busted outta my chest i love him so fucking much

if you wanna match his acts of service, when he’s sick or just really busy at hero work studies, take notes for him in class. he will love you forever i promise. 

and best believe, that he wants your attention on him at all times

remember them head pats? let’s say you give them to todoroki or tsu for doing some reason

poor thing is definitely sitting in a corner somewhere sulking

he doesn’t want to get upset because that’s his friends and he's glad that you are getting along but he would be lying if he didn't feel a little salty about it

later on, he will ask for some and if you refuse for any reason, he’ll look at you like you just tore out his heart…cause ya did

and GOD FORBID if you give more attention to bakugo instead of him…it is now in God’s hands

he’s throwing you over his shoulder and walking away from bakugo, not before throwing him a glare which later on ensues another fight between them

he only did it because he doesn’t like you getting too close to bakugo, no matter how much he cares about him being his childhood friend

i would like to think there's always that underlying fact that yes, you can handle yourself, but he also knows just how capable bakugou is and lowkey does not want to risk it

please remind him that you do love him and that he is a good boyfriend with all the hugs, cuddles, and all that other good shit

he loves to write about you in his notes, he has AT LEAST 4 notebooks about everything about you as well as somethings he wish to say to you and a little souvenirs from moments between you two that he found special

he has a special item from the time he figured out that he loved you and wrote down in detail what happened and how he felt about it 

when you find these notebooks, do not, i repeat, DO NOT tell him that you found. just take the damn notebook while you can and run

give it back and you'll never see it again.

but most definitely tell him about all the things you read and watch him turn bright red

“so, you did get jealous when I gave Sero that hug the other day?” “HUH?!?!? H- H- HOW DID YOU FIND OUT!!?” “*holds up notebook marked ‘Y/n L/n’* Maybe because wrote about it…in detail” *cue the screams of embarrassment and horror*

nah but the amount of times the boy has gone off on a tangent about the little things he loves about you in there will get you flustered-

for drama sake, let’s talk about uraraka

short story: you almost knocked that bitch teeth in

long story: yes, deku used to like her and yes, she almost got him but that did not work out and guess who got him first ! tbh, you started out good friends with uraraka apart from the dekusquad but she never told you about her lil crush until it was too damn late !  

and little miss thing was not happy about it; “after all this time…he gets with her!!”

i think you noticed at first her lil sly ass actions and remarks but don’t give in, let her make a fool of herself and watch her run around in circles

be calm and stay two steps ahead, it will work out in your favor ! and it did !

the next person that noticed was tsu, however, she was on your side about this because she hates petty shit and people so what uraraka was doing was not to her liking at all ! 

the other two, iida and shoto, caught on to it (iida wanting uraraka to at least remain civil and shoto just watching from afar) but deku remained oblivious for a while

he just wanted to be friends with everyone so he kinda just...didn't notice or thought she was mad about something else

i feel like uraraka would get beside herself and start saying reckless ass shit to express her frustration but it would only end up with her getting her ass beat and shunned from the group until she got her act together

you can guess what she said but all imma say is….she really lost her god damn mind and paid the price

what's worse is she really did try to make it seem like you stole from her...but dum dum was the one who didn't speak up? until the very last minute? which...sounds like a personal problem? sssoooooo, stay mad?

everyone in class did figure it out and it was just lowkey sad to see her get so messy but in the end !

izuku loves you very much and would do anything for you 

you are his happiness and he’s thinking about spending forever with you

©STRAWHATKIA ━ all rights reserved. all content published on this blog belongs to starsoir. please refrain from copying, stealing, profiting off my works, or using my works for asmr related work. i don’t allow my works to be used or adapted in any way without my permission.

reblogs and comments are welcomed and loved, so leave some please ! i will respond ! 🤍

wanna read more ??

lip gloss, lil mama. | f. | multiple characters

boyfriend. | f. | katsuki bakugo

love you more when the day is new. | f. | multiple characters

taglist : @mypimpademia @sevvnt @cosmiles @megurulvr @miirene

izuku taglist: @cosmiles

[things-arent-what-they-seem66]

Okay you sinners, you asked and I shall give.

Adam swapped.

Contains Mpreg.

Adam groaned as he slowly opened his eyes, there wasn't a lot of light but what little bit there was hurt his vision. Slowly, he got to his feet. "The fuck?"

He knew he was overweight before but this was just insulting! He ran a hand through his hair and stopped when he felt horns there. Adam frantically looked around so that he could get a look at his appearance and what he saw made him sick.

He had fallen from grace. Large black and gold horns on top of his head, his skin grayed, he hand blackened demon hands and his gut was huge! What the fuck. Adam placed a hand on his stomach, somehow it felt..... Different from regular fat.

Glancing around, he started walking. He was in Hell alright. Fuck, this couldn't get any worse. He sniffed the air, what was that smell? Adam smelled himself and nearly puked, he smelled like he had been living in a fucking dumpster.

Adam could hear people whispering as he walked by them, looking him up and down. "That's the Queen of Hell, wheres he been?"

Queen of Hell?

Adam didn't see that cunt Lilith anywhere.

Looking around, it dawned on Adam that he didn't have the first clue as to where he was. Wasn't he killed up by that tacky hotel? How in the fuck did he get down to what was likely downtown in the city?

Adam took in the sights, it was really weird being down here after being up in heaven for so long.

"Papa?" Adam turned to see Charlie looking at him, eyes wide and rimmed with tears. Vaggie was behind her looking at him in disbelief too, like they couldn't believe it was him.

Which yeah, they thought he died so understandable. But why the fuck was this bitch talking about a papa? Adam looked behind him, there was no one else there. He turned back to Charlie, confused. "You talking to me?"

Charlie launched herself forward encasing Adam in a tight hug, he was so shocked he froze. "Oh papa! I'm so glad you're okay! Where have you been, where did you go? Why did you leave? Dad and I have been worried sick and-" Charlie noticed Adams belly when she pulled back, she didn't know how to feel. "Did.... Did you cheat on dad?"

Adam pushed her away non too gently. "The fuck are you talking about? You can't cheat on someone you were never fucking with!" Now that Adam was looking at Charlie, she looked a little different. The only thing that seemed different about her was her hair, no longer golden blonde but now a light brown with blonde undertones.

Weird.

"Charlie, I think there's something wrong. He doesn't sound like himself." Vaggie chimed in placing a hand on her girlfriends shoulder.

Adam glared. "Fuck you Vagina! I'm perfectly fine, other than I smell like a fucking sewer." Vaggie and Charlie's eyes went wide at Adams harsh words.

"Papa, do you know where you are?"

Adam rolled his eyes, what kind of question was that? "I'm in Hell bitch, where the fuck else would I be?"

Charlie tried not to let the harsh words stab her in the heart like they did. "We should get you back to the hotel, you can shower, eat and calm down." Not to mention wait for dad, he's going to flip.

"What!? I'm not going to that tacky two bit hotel of yours! Hey! Get your hands off of me, this is kidnapping you little bitches, heaven will hear of this and you will suffer the consequences. Let me go!!"

It took a lot for both Charlie and Vaggie to get Adam to the hotel, he was now sulking on the couch grumbling under his breath.

Charlie was pacing the lobby, everyone was waiting on her dad. She had texted him a picture of Pa, and she thought he would explode from excitement. He was in a meeting at the embassy but she knew the moment it was over he'd be here.

A portal opened by the front door and Lucifer all but ran in, he looked wild and frantic. "Charlie! Where is he?" He grabbed his daughter looking her in the eyes, she pointed over to the couch. "Adam?" His voice was soft, as if he couldn't believe he was seeing him.

"Dad, there's something I-"

Lucifer went over to his husband and sat beside him, Adam was startled at the King's sudden presence. "Oh love I'm so glad you're okay." Lucifer went to embrace him only to be shut down.

"The fuck are you doing asshole?" Adam seethed, wondering why he would try and hug him. Did he call him 'love'? "What the fuck is wrong with you people?"

"Adam, honey, I don't understand." Lucifer looked to Charlie.

"He says he woke up in an alley way. It seems that his memory is gone and thinks he hates us." Charlie supplied sadly, trying not to cry. Her papa was always so kind and loving, this is so jarring.....

"I do! You freaks let that tiny cunt stab me in the back. Literally."

Lucifer freaked, Adam got stabbed!? He looked him over but didn't see any wounds. He finally noticed his belly.... "You're pregnant?"

"I'm not fucking pregnant asshole, I'm a man!" Adam seethed, he could feel his rage building.

Lucifer gave him a concerned look, he could feel the presence of a soul coming from inside of Adam. "Don't you remember your curse?"

"What fucking curse?"

Lucifer looked at Charlie. " Go get the book, Hun." Charlie nodded and retrieved the Book of Hell, she handed it over to her dad. "Maybe this will help jog your memory."

Adam read the book, curious.

Long ago when humanity was first created in the garden of Eden, there was Adam and Lilith who were made to be each other's equal. That could not have been less true. Lilith wanted to control and dominant Adam, demanding they procreate.

Adam refused, wanting more in life than being a baby machine for a woman he did not love. This enraged the first woman who took her frustration out on Adam in physically harmful ways.

Scared for his safety, Adam fled the garden to escape his wife. This is when he met the archangel Lucifer, who showed him what love and respect was really meant to be.

The two fell deeply in love, though their love was forbidden. In the wake of this, Lilith was granted a new husband by the name of Steve.

Lucifer offered Adam the fruit of knowledge and the first man accepted. With this single act of disobedience, sin and evil found its way to earth.

Angered with the couple, Sera placed a curse on the first man that if he didn't want to fulfill his role of being a father he'd be cursed to be a birth giver and mother. Any and all children he was to bear would result in a painful birth as a reminder for what he did.

The lovers were cast down into the pits of Hell where they could never see the good in humanity.

Lucifer fell into a deep depression for everything that happened, but Adam thrived and empowered the sinners and hellborns of the land with his voice and guitar music.

They had one child together, a beautiful daughter by the name of Charlotte Morningstar.

Adam couldn't believe what the fuck he just read. He fell with Lucifer instead of Lilith? This didn't make any sense! Wait....

"Oh on a fucking minute." He reached around his now obviously pregnant belly to touch his crotch. His eyes went wide. "WHERE THE FUCK IS MY DICK!?"

((Should I continue this??))

[murdrdocs]

hiii! would you be able to write something where the reader and ethan are dating and she knows he is ghostface and lowkey encourages him to kill people to prove his love for her (like guys who talk to her at class or down the street?)

this doesn’t have to be smut but i’d love it to be <3 thank uu

i don't have enough energy (or hormones) for smut rn but i rlly like this universe so maybe in the future !

You were taught never to settle. Throughout your life, you’d been surrounded by people who had their hearts broken by others –– usually men –– who didn’t deserve to have another’s heart within their perceived trustworthy grasp in the first place. 

“Never settle”

So you didn’t. You knew that whoever you were going to give your heart needed to do anything for you. No matter what. 

Luckily you found Ethan Landry. 

At first, it was Finn from your Communications course. He didn’t really do anything. He just stared a little too long and happened to have made a slightly uncomfortable statement about you when Ethan was just a few paces away. 

“You want me to do something about it?” Ethan asked you, his lips ghosting the shell of your ear as he leaned down to ask you the ominous question. You looked up at him, noticing that his brown eyes were staring at Finn’s retreating figure. 

“Something?” You’d asked. Ethan blinked twice, his jaw ticked, and then he looked down at you. 

“Something.”

Two days later, Finn was declared missing. 

Then, it was Brody from your foreign language. 

He was a douche. All around jock, but not in the lovable way like Chad. Brody was pushy, constantly inviting you to frat parties, promising that you would get shit faced with a smirk on his face that told you everything you needed to know. 

“He makes me uncomfortable, E,” you told him, your voice low and soft and delicate. You remember the feeling of Ethan’s warm hand caressing your cheek, you leaned into his touch. 

“Okay.” Was all he said. When he came back with a black eye and a busted lip, you patched Ethan up and peppered his face in kisses. 

You remember asking him one night when guilt had begun to introduce itself to you. You’d asked, “Why do you do it?” 

And Ethan replied, as simple as ever, as if he was asked what color the sky was, “Because I love you.” 

Then, there was Olivia. 

Olivia was everything wrong with the world, according to you. Ethan had never seen her in person, only through forwarded Instagram posts, but he saw the way she riled you up. He watched you pace back and forth in your room, ranting, enraged, about how insufferable she was. 

“I just wish someone would–ugh!” Your hands wrung around an invisible neck and you stopped your pacing, dropped your arms, and just looked at Ethan. 

“Do something about it?” He asked you. 

You stepped forward until you stood between his legs. Your hands cupped his face and you leaned down until you were level, your noses almost touching. 

“Ethan,” you’d said, slowly. “I want you to fucking kill her.” His eyes darkened and then he smiled. “And make her suffer.” 

Ethan’s hands were on the back of your thighs and pulling you into his lap before you could really get a hold of yourself. He kissed you, and kissed you, and ground his hips up into yours, and flipped you onto your back. 

You had to stop him before he continued. “Do it first, baby. I’ll be waiting.” 

And you were. When he returned two hours later, his hands still shaking and that delighted glint in his eyes, you were sitting on your bed watching a show on your laptop. 

Your eyes lifted to look at him when he entered your room, and all you did was smile, shut your laptop, and beckon him over with enough energy to last you the entire night.

[randomuser678]

So Harriet has shown on screen that she is terrified of living a mediocre life on the shadow of her clone mother and that speaks so well to people of color’s pressure into fitting into white definition of success and societal approval and so many things about Harriet’s plot lines reflect that

Harriet is constantly trying to appease Joan and try to sound as friendly and passive as possible.

And then when Harriet makes the slight criticism toward Joan, Joan throws a pity party and Harriet needs to back away for JOAN’s feelings, it feels really implicit how Harriet is trying to live up to white approval, by making a show that would get hollywood’s attention, casting the hot white couple of the school, by TWISTING herself backwards just to please a white woman’s sensibilities.

And as a result Joan just completely disregards Harriet’s art and makes it her own, and makes it way more whitewashed, and set on medieval times for some reason? (You could argue it’s bc Joan of Arc’s real life) but also! The fact that so many art that’s met with prestige is white and old and European, Joan understands these things are “meaningful and deep” but that is only meaningful to a specific set of ppl, as opposed to Harriet’s wide-appeal show. Joan is convinced she’s on a moral high ground but the way she communicates is mainly through a white person’s biases when creating art.

“I know I’m the clone of Harriet Tubman, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun silly stories too!”

Harriet genuinely likes the story she made and how silly and fun she is, but she lives in the shadow of an important social figure and is terrified of failing that image.

Many poc and specially black and brown ppl feel pressured into making their experiences and prejudice they face part of their art, that every black character on something set on the past is either a slave or non-existant, that art of color has to be about pain and tragedy that can spell out our suffering to a white audience, Harriet here wants to escape from the pressures from being a clone but also from being a black artist in 2023 in general.

The conflict between Harriet and Joan’s white womanhood is great bc it shows how Joan lets her feelings and desire to make a “meaningful” musical that is just a bunch of edgy stuff and white people is so well written, specially because it brings to question why do we make art at all? And how does one decide what kinda art they wanna make? Does making something black and white and dreary make it automatically more meaningful and therefore superior to a musical about twister? The answer to the last one is no, and I love how this episode showed these cool discussions.

And I haven’t even touched on the song about white guy confidence, because I think that was a plot b where that theme was the most apparent, and I wanted to show how the same theme of white privilege shows up in the plot a, Cleo, Carver, Sacagawea and Confucius also aim to get a white audience’s approval, that is what these characters all struggle with and it is an ungoing war called living through high school as a person of color