#cannot stress enough that this is lightly edited

[bengals-barnesbabe]

My Type

~ a blurb I came up with at 3:33 am

TW: suggestive fluff & not exactly a blurb

₊ . ⋆ ⁺ ݃ ✳︎ 𓏸 ˙₊ ❊ 𓈒 𓇬 ⁺ ⋆ . ₊

Hard Knocks, the show surround your favorite team that has either become the bane of your existence or an absolute treasure. Either way, one clip of your personal friend, Joe Burrow, driving a golf cart has yet to leave your mind.

The golf cart itself wasn’t special. Nor were the practice outfits of the four players riding in it. It was just Joe. And the way he drove it.

It was carefree, fluid, and almost too much. Not too much for him, obviously; you haven’t seen anything that’s been proven to be too much for him. It was too much for you.

He just looked so soft. Warm Bengals beanie atop his blonde curls with only the pink-tinted flesh of his earlobe poking out. His strong arms covered a black long-sleeved tee. It was cute.

What wasn't cute was the way his thick thighs filled his grey pants to the point that you could see each muscle in his long legs. Or his defined jawline and cold-flushed cheeks that sit on the border between just hot and ridiculously hot.

You'd never felt this way about the quarterback. In the years of knowing him and being friends, it never crossed your mind that Joey Burrow was seductively handsome. He'd always been handsome but like a picture-perfect handsome. You could tell why he was a heartthrob; you just never felt the intense heart-pumping yourself.

Then you watched him lick his lips while reversing a golf cart, slide his left hand into his pocket, and drive off with one hand on the wheel.

One simple act after another, but done in a sequence with all the additional factors to create a moment that had you dumbstruck.

Dumbstruck and questioning every interaction you'd had with him as you watched the 12-second clip over and over and over again. One video cannot change how you see someone you've known for years with such ease.

And you were right. It wasn't just the Hard Knocks clip; it was the many saved videos of him mic'ed up on your phone, the overwatched and much-appreciated clip of his 47-yard rushing touchdown, the infamous Body Armour ads, the Bose ads, the Alo clip of him just running that take up space on your iPhone 14 Pro and show no sign of being deleted.

You thought you were in the clear because you never saved the videos or edits of him being outwardly seductive and hot. No photos of him shirtless or with sweat dripping down his beefy body as he works out. No, you started away from them, always at arm's length with items of temptation.

Or were you?

"What are you watching?" His deep timbre causes you to throw your phone in the most guilty manner. You both watch wide-eyed as it bounces on the carpet until it's thankfully faced down in the middle of his living room.

Joe turns to you, his face growing red as he holds back his laugh. "Was it really that bad?" He asks, releasing his giggles hostage.

Instead of responding, his cute chuckles fill your ears and warm your heart, making it thump just a little bit harder. Because since when was his laugh so cute?

The sound of your name flowing off his pink, pouty lips and the way your heart skips a beat brings you back to the present.

"Huh?"

"Huh? That's all you can say?" He smirks, looks down at the phone, then at you, then back to the phone.

The next thing you know, you're both diving for the phone. It's almost comedic how panicked your face looks compared to him as he swipes your phone and turns it over like buried treasure. All the dramatics just to see his face fall because you have auto-lock on, which is the biggest feeling of relief off your shoulders.

"I was so close." He sighs.

"Sorry, Joey Wheels, you just weren't fast enough." You chuckled taking the phone from his outreached hand.

He chuckles lightly, "You know, I am gonna figure out exactly what had you so awestruck." As another stroke of luck, his phone starts ringing. "Just not today."

~ Night of Broncos @ Bengals Game ~

You were stressed but relieved following the aftermath of what that game did to you. Especially being at the stadium, it was like every minute that passed would end you. You like being kept on your toes, but not that much. As soon as the game was over and you could relax, you got a simple text from Joe.

MVP: stick around, let me drive you home

It was innocent; it wouldn't be the first time he's given you a ride home after a game, and it probably wouldn't be the last. You always preferred public transport because of how close you live to the city, so his offer was out of pure generosity.

But why did such a simple text reignite that same anxiety and tension as you had during the game?

Was it because of these confused feelings you've kept in for a week?

Or the potential conversations that could be had over the 10-minute ride?

Then you thought back to his pregame fit and visibly shivered, but it had nothing to do with the slight chill in the stadium.

Joe walked into the stadium in an all-black outfit: simple black jeans, black sneakers, a brown and black checkered bottega jacket, and one of his signature black shades. He looked the most fuckable, you have ever seen him- and this was after his slim shady tank top look.

Now you're imagining sitting next to him in his sleek Porsche, his jacket unzipped to the middle of his chest, definitely exposing his sexy-ass idea not to wear a shirt underneath it. But that's not even the worst part; you can keep yourself calm enough by just not making eye contact.

No, the worst part is now, his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, the shades sit on his head, and his fucking hand is inches away from your thigh.

Your exposed thigh, because after hearing how nice the weather would be for the game, you decided to put on some heavily distressed black skinny jeans. His fingers are practically causing their own electrical current as they graze your soft brown skin. And to top it off, he's wearing his signature smirk.

Because he always knows exactly what he's doing and how to get a reaction out of you.

"Out with it, Bur- His hand slips, and he grasps your thigh during a sharp break at a red light, then he looks over at you.

"Sorry about that," He smiles, lying through his perfectly pearly teeth. "Didn't want anything to happen to you, pretty girl."

You stared at him in pure disbelief. “You did that on purpose.”

“Now why would I do that?”

“Because you know something.” He looks away, but you catch the light chuckle he lets out. “I don’t appreciate you torturing me just because you don’t feel the same way.”

“I never-

“You didn’t have to, just-

Before you know it, his lips are on yours. Here you are, sitting at a red light, surrounded by the oddly quiet city, with Joe’s pillowy soft lips melting against your own.

When he breaks away, the light is green but the only thing moving is his hand against your cheek.

“I do feel the same way. I always have. It’s you who’s been taking over a year to figure it out.” He says softly brushing his thumb over your lips.

You lean in almost closing the distance between you. “I really like you, Joe.”

The light turns red again, effectively blending with the bright blush across his face. “Thank god, cause I’ve been dressing like a complete slut to games trying to get your attention. I was debating just showing up to your place just sweaty and shirtless.”

The car turns into a bubble of laughter as you lean back against the window trying to clam yourself down with the coolness from the outside. The two of you sit in a comfortable silence for the rest of the ride. You’re watching the city lights pass by while he drives safely down the streets, slow enough because he knows how much you love the view and so he can unashamedly glimpse over at your beauty.

Minutes later you’re walking hand in hand up to your apartment. “You know…” You bite back a smirk as you reach the door.

“What?” He raises a brow, pulling your hand to his lips.

The simple act warms your skin in a way he wouldn’t be able to notice unless you were grinning like a fool. Which you were.

You can’t help but giggle your next words out. “Your plan of showing up sweaty and shirtless would’ve worked too.”

He lightly scoffs with a timid smile on his face. “Same goes for you, princess. If I had known me driving one handed turned you on so much… well you wouldn’t have thrown your phone across the room a few weeks back.” He smirks cupping your jaw and placing a light kiss on your forehead.

“You’re such a tease.”

He chuckles darkly, tilting your head and leaning down until you’re sharing one breath. “That’s the whole point, sweetheart.”

⤜♡→

main masterlist

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Disenshittify or Die”

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Last weekend, I traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where I had the immense privilege of giving a solo talk on Track 1, entitled "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

The Defcon organizers have earned a restful week or two, and that means that the video of my talk hasn't yet been posted to Defcon's Youtube channel, so in the meantime, I thought I'd post a lightly edited version of my speech crib. If you're headed to Burning Man, you can hear me reprise this talk at Palenque Norte (7&E); I'm kicking off their lecture series on Tuesday, Aug 27 at 1PM.

==

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

I mean, sure, our bosses were a little surveillance-happy, and they were usually up for sharing their data with the NSA, and whenever there was a tossup between user security and growth, it was always YOLO time.

But Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

There was a time when you searching for an album on Spotify would get you that album – not a playlist of insipid AI-generated covers with the same name and art.

Microsoft used to sell you software – sure, it was buggy – but now they just let you access apps in the cloud, so they can watch how you use those apps and strip the features you use the most out of the basic tier and turn them into an upcharge.

What – and I cannot stress this enough – the fuck happened?!

I’m talking about enshittification.

Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

If you’re Facebook, the users do it for you. You joined Facebook because there were people there you wanted to hang out with, and other people joined Facebook to hang out with you.

That’s the old “network effects” in action, and with network effects come “the collective action problem." Because you love your friends, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass! You all agree that FB sucks, sure, but can you all agree on when it’s time to leave?

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

You’re there because that’s where the support group for your rare disease hangs out, and your bestie is there because that’s where they talk with the people in the country they moved away from, then there’s that friend who coordinates their kid’s little league car pools on FB, and the best dungeon master you know isn’t gonna leave FB because that’s where her customers are.

So you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

Now, sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime, or to buy your Audible books on a monthly subscription, which virtually guarantees that every shopping search will start on Amazon, after all, you’ve already paid for it.

Sometimes, they lock you in with DRM, like HP selling you a printer with four ink cartridges filled with fluid that retails for more than $10,000/gallon, and using DRM to stop you from refilling any of those ink carts or using a third-party cartridge. So when one cart runs dry, you have to refill it or throw away your investment in the remaining three cartridges and the printer itself.

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

You can’t run your Ios apps without Apple hardware;

you can’t run your Apple music, books and movies on anything except an Ios app;

your iPhone uses parts pairing – DRM handshakes between replacement parts and the main system – so you can’t use third-party parts to fix it; and

every OEM iPhone part has a microscopic Apple logo engraved on it, so Apple can demand that the US Customs and Border Service seize any shipment of refurb Iphone parts as trademark violations.

Think Different, amirite?

Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

For example, a platform might poison its search results, like Google selling more and more of its results pages to ads that are identified with lighter and lighter tinier and tinier type.

Or Amazon selling off search results and calling it an “ad” business. They make $38b/year on this scam. The first result for your search is, on average, 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The first row is 25% more expensive than the best match. On average, the best match for your search is likely to be found seventeen places down on the results page.

Other platforms sell off your feed, like Facebook, which started off showing you the things you asked to see, but now the quantum of content from the people you follow has dwindled to a homeopathic residue, leaving a void that Facebook fills with things that people pay to show you: boosted posts from publishers you haven’t subscribed to, and, of course, ads.

Now at this point you might be thinking ‘sure, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.'

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

The people who buy those Google ads? They pay more every year for worse ad-targeting and more ad-fraud

Those publishers paying to nonconsensually cram their content into your Facebook feed? They have to do that because FB suppresses their ability to reach the people who actually subscribed to them

The Amazon sellers with the best match for your query have to outbid everyone else just to show up on the first page of results. It costs so much to sell on Amazon that between 45-51% of every dollar an independent seller brings in has to be kicked up to Don Bezos and the Amazon crime family. Those sellers don’t have the kind of margins that let them pay 51% They have to raise prices in order to avoid losing money on every sale.

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

"But wait! Things on Amazon aren’t more expensive that things at Target, or Walmart, or at a mom and pop store, or direct from the manufacturer.

"How can sellers be raising prices on Amazon if the price at Amazon is the same as at is everywhere else?"

[Any guesses?!]

That’s right, they charge more everywhere. They have to. Amazon binds its sellers to a policy called “most favored nation status,” which says they can’t charge more on Amazon than they charge elsewhere, including direct from their own factory store.

So every seller that wants to sell on Amazon has to raise their prices everywhere else.

Now, these sellers are Amazon’s best customers. They’re paying for the product, and they’re still getting screwed.

Paying for the product doesn’t fill your vapid boss’s shriveled heart with so much joy that he decides to stop trying to think of ways to fuck you over.

Look at Apple. Remember when Apple offered every Ios user a one-click opt out for app-based surveillance? And 96% of users clicked that box?

(The other four percent were either drunk or Facebook employees or drunk Facebook employees.)

That cost Facebook at least ten billion dollars per year in lost surveillance revenue?

I mean, you love to see it.

But did you know that at the same time Apple started spying on Ios users in the same way that Facebook had been, for surveillance data to use to target users for its competing advertising product?

Your Iphone isn’t an ad-supported gimme. You paid a thousand fucking dollars for that distraction rectangle in your pocket, and you’re still the product. What’s more, Apple has rigged Ios so that you can’t mod the OS to block its spying.

If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.

Just ask the farmers who are expected to swap parts into their own busted half-million dollar, mission-critical tractors, but can’t actually use those parts until a technician charges them $200 to drive out to the farm and type a parts pairing unlock code into their console.

John Deere’s not giving away tractors. Give John Deere a half mil for a tractor and you will be the product.

Please, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please! Stop saying ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’

OK, OK, so that’s phase two of enshittification.

Phase one: be good to users while locking them in.

Phase two: screw the users a little to you can good to business customers while locking them in.

Phase three: screw everybody and take all the value for yourself. Leave behind the absolute bare minimum of utility so that everyone stays locked into your pile of shit.

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

That’s what enshittification looks like from the outside, but what’s going on inside the company? What is the pathological mechanism? What sci-fi entropy ray converts the excellent and useful service into a pile of shit?

That mechanism is called twiddling. Twiddling is when someone alters the back end of a service to change how its business operates, changing prices, costs, search ranking, recommendation criteria and other foundational aspects of the system.

Digital platforms are a twiddler’s utopia. A grocer would need an army of teenagers with pricing guns on rollerblades to reprice everything in the building when someone arrives who’s extra hungry.

Whereas the McDonald’s Investments portfolio company Plexure advertises that it can use surveillance data to predict when an app user has just gotten paid so the seller can tack an extra couple bucks onto the price of their breakfast sandwich.

And of course, as the prophet William Gibson warned us, ‘cyberspace is everting.' With digital shelf tags, grocers can change prices whenever they feel like, like the grocers in Norway, whose e-ink shelf tags change the prices 2,000 times per day.

Every Uber driver is offered a different wage for every job. If a driver has been picky lately, the job pays more. But if the driver has been desperate enough to grab every ride the app offers, the pay goes down, and down, and down.

The law professor Veena Dubal calls this ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.' It’s a prime example of twiddling.

Every youtuber knows what it’s like to be twiddled. You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it.

Why? Who knows? The algorithm’s rules are not public.

Because content moderation is the last redoubt of security through obscurit: they can’t tell you what the como algorithm is downranking because then you’d cheat.

Youtube is the kind of shitty boss who docks every paycheck for all the rules you’ve broken, but won’t tell you what those rules were, lest you figure out how to break those rules next time without your boss catching you.

Twiddling can also work in some users’ favor, of course. Sometimes platforms twiddle to make things better for end users or business customers.

For example, Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating toll to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

Why would they do this? Well, here’s an analogy from my boyhood I used to go to this traveling fair that would come to Toronto at the end of every summer, the Canadian National Exhibition. If you’ve been to a fair like the Ex, you know that you can always spot some guy lugging around a comedically huge teddy bear.

Nominally, you win that teddy bear by throwing five balls in a peach-basket, but to a first approximation, no one has ever gotten five balls to stay in that peach-basket.

That guy “won” the teddy bear when a carny on the midway singled him out and said, "fella, I like your face. Tell you what I’m gonna do: You get just one ball in the basket and I’ll give you this keychain, and if you amass two keychains, I’ll let you trade them in for one of these galactic-scale teddy-bears."

That’s how the guy got his teddy bear, which he now has to drag up and down the midway for the rest of the day.

Why the hell did that carny give away the teddy bear? Because it turns the guy into a walking billboard for the midway games. If that dopey-looking Judas Goat can get five balls into a peach basket, then so can you.

Except you can’t.

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: *I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!"

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

But then comes the day when the TikTok Star Chamber decides they need to lure in more astrologers, so they take the heat off that one lucky sports bro, and start heating up some lucky astrologer.

Giant teddy bears are all over the place: those Uber drivers who were boasting to the NYT ten years ago about earning $50/hour? The Substackers who were rolling in dough? Joe Rogan and his hundred million dollar Spotify payout? Those people are all the proud owners of giant teddy bears, and they’re a steal.

Because every dollar they get from the platform turns into five dollars worth of free labor from suckers who think they just internetting wrong.

Giant teddy bears are just one way of twiddling. Platforms can play games with every part of their business logic, in highly automated ways, that allows them to quickly and efficiently siphon value from end users to business customers and back again, hiding the pea in a shell game conducted at machine speeds, until they��ve got everyone so turned around that they take all the value for themselves.

That’s the how: How the platforms do the trick where they are good to users, then lock users in, then maltreat users to be good to business customers, then lock in those business customers, then take all the value for themselves.

So now we know what is happening, and how it is happening, all that’s left is why it’s happening.

Now, on the one hand, the why is pretty obvious. The less value that end-users and business customers capture, the more value there is left to divide up among the shareholders and the executives.

That’s why, but it doesn’t tell you why now. Companies could have done this shit at any time in the past 20 years, but they didn’t. Or at least, the successful ones didn’t. The ones that turned themselves into piles of shit got treated like piles of shit. We avoided them and they died.

Remember Myspace? Yahoo Search? Livejournal? Sure, they’re still serving some kind of AI slop or programmatic ad junk if you hit those domains, but they’re gone.

And there’s the clue: It used to be that if you enshittified your product, bad things happened to your company. Now, there are no consequences for enshittification, so everyone’s doing it.

Let’s break that down: What stops a company from enshittifying?

There are four forces that discipline tech companies. The first one is, obviously, competition.

If your customers find it easy to leave, then you have to worry about them leaving

Many factors can contribute to how hard or easy it is to depart a platform, like the network effects that Facebook has going for it. But the most important factor is whether there is anywhere to go.

Back in 2012, Facebook bought Insta for a billion dollars. That may seem like chump-change in these days of eleven-digit Big Tech acquisitions, but that was a big sum in those innocent days, and it was an especially big sum to pay for Insta. The company only had 13 employees, and a mere 25 million registered users.

But what mattered to Zuckerberg wasn’t how many users Insta had, it was where those users came from.

[Does anyone know where those Insta users came from?]

That’s right, they left Facebook and joined Insta. They were sick of FB, even though they liked the people there, they hated creepy Zuck, they hated the platform, so they left and they didn’t come back.

So Zuck spent a cool billion to recapture them, A fact he put in writing in a midnight email to CFO David Ebersman, explaining that he was paying over the odds for Insta because his users hated him, and loved Insta. So even if they quit Facebook (the platform), they would still be captured Facebook (the company).

Now, on paper, Zuck’s Instagram acquisition is illegal, but normally, that would be hard to stop, because you’d have to prove that he bought Insta with the intention of curtailing competition.

But in this case, Zuck tripped over his own dick: he put it in writing.

But Obama’s DoJ and FTC just let that one slide, following the pro-monopoly policies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and setting an example that Trump would follow, greenlighting gigamergers like the catastrophic, incestuous Warner-Discovery marriage.

Indeed, for 40 years, starting with Carter, and accelerating through Reagan, the US has encouraged monopoly formation, as an official policy, on the grounds that monopolies are “efficient.”

If everyone is using Google Search, that’s something we should celebrate. It means they’ve got the very best search and wouldn’t it be perverse to spend public funds to punish them for making the best product?

But as we all know, Google didn’t maintain search dominance by being best. They did it by paying bribes. More than 20 billion per year to Apple alone to be the default Ios search, plus billions more to Samsung, Mozilla, and anyone else making a product or service with a search-box on it, ensuring that you never stumble on a search engine that’s better than theirs.

Which, in turn, ensured that no one smart invested big in rival search engines, even if they were visibly, obviously superior. Why bother making something better if Google’s buying up all the market oxygen before it can kindle your product to life?

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’re not “making things” companies, they’re “buying things” companies, taking advantage of official tolerance for anticompetitive acquisitions, predatory pricing, market distorting exclusivity deals and other acts specifically prohibited by existing antitrust law.

Their goal is to become too big to fail, because that makes them too big to jail, and that means they can be too big to care.

Which is why Google Search is a pile of shit and everything on Amazon is dropshipped garbage that instantly disintegrates in a cloud of offgassed volatile organic compounds when you open the box.

Once companies no longer fear losing your business to a competitor, it’s much easier for them to treat you badly, because what’re you gonna do?

Remember Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator in those old SNL sketches? “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Competition is the first force that serves to discipline companies and the enshittificatory impulses of their leadership, and we just stopped enforcing competition law.

It takes a special kind of smooth-brained asshole – that is, an establishment economist – to insist that the collapse of every industry from eyeglasses to vitamin C into a cartel of five or fewer companies has nothing to do with policies that officially encouraged monopolization.

It’s like we used to put down rat poison and we didn’t have a rat problem. Then these dickheads convinced us that rats were good for us and we stopped putting down rat poison, and now rats are gnawing our faces off and they’re all running around saying, "Who’s to say where all these rats came from? Maybe it was that we stopped putting down poison, but maybe it’s just the Time of the Rats. The Great Forces of History bearing down on this moment to multiply rats beyond all measure!"

Antitrust didn’t slip down that staircase and fall spine-first on that stiletto: they stabbed it in the back and then they pushed it.

And when they killed antitrust, they also killed regulation, the second force that disciplines companies. Regulation is possible, but only when the regulator is more powerful than the regulated entities. When a company is bigger than the government, it gets damned hard to credibly threaten to punish that company, no matter what its sins.

That’s what protected IBM for all those years when it had its boot on the throat of the American tech sector. Do you know, the DOJ fought to break up IBM in the courts from 1970-1982, and that every year, for 12 consecutive years, IBM spent more on lawyers to fight the USG than the DOJ Antitrust Division spent on all the lawyers fighting every antitrust case in the entire USA?

IBM outspent Uncle Sam for 12 years. People called it “Antitrust’s Vietnam.” All that money paid off, because by 1982, the president was Ronald Reagan, a man whose official policy was that monopolies were “efficient." So he dropped the case, and Big Blue wriggled off the hook.

It’s hard to regulate a monopolist, and it’s hard to regulate a cartel. When a sector is composed of hundreds of competing companies, they compete. They genuinely fight with one another, trying to poach each others’ customers and workers. They are at each others’ throats.

It’s hard enough for a couple hundred executives to agree on anything. But when they’re legitimately competing with one another, really obsessing about how to eat each others’ lunches, they can’t agree on anything.

The instant one of them goes to their regulator with some bullshit story, about how it’s impossible to have a decent search engine without fine-grained commercial surveillance; or how it’s impossible to have a secure and easy to use mobile device without a total veto over which software can run on it; or how it’s impossible to administer an ISP’s network unless you can slow down connections to servers whose owners aren’t paying bribes for “premium carriage"; there’s some *other company saying, “That’s bullshit”

“We’ve managed it! Here’s our server logs, our quarterly financials and our customer testimonials to prove it.”

100 companies are a rabble, they're a mob. They can’t agree on a lobbying position. They’re too busy eating each others’ lunch to agree on how to cater a meeting to discuss it.

But let those hundred companies merge to monopoly, absorb one another in an incestuous orgy, turn into five giant companies, so inbred they’ve got a corporate Habsburg jaw, and they become a cartel.

It’s easy for a cartel to agree on what bullshit they’re all going to feed their regulator, and to mobilize some of the excess billions they’ve reaped through consolidation, which freed them from “wasteful competition," sp they can capture their regulators completely.

You know, Congress used to pass federal consumer privacy laws? Not anymore.

The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.

The threat of having your video rental history out there in the public eye was not the last or most urgent threat the American public faced, and yet, Congress is deadlocked on passing a privacy law.

Tech companies’ regulatory capture involves a risible and transparent gambit, that is so stupid, it’s an insult to all the good hardworking risible transparent ruses out there.

Namely, they claim that when they violate your consumer, privacy or labor rights, It’s not a crime, because they do it with an app.

Algorithmic wage discrimination isn’t illegal wage theft: we do it with an app.

Spying on you from asshole to appetite isn’t a privacy violation: we do it with an app.

And Amazon’s scam search tool that tricks you into paying 29% more than the best match for your query? Not a ripoff. We do it with an app.

Once we killed competition – stopped putting down rat poison – we got cartels – the rats ate our faces. And the cartels captured their regulators – the rats bought out the poison factory and shut it down.

So companies aren’t constrained by competition or regulation.

But you know what? This is tech, and tech is different.IIt’s different because it’s flexible. Because our computers are Turing-complete universal von Neumann machines. That means that any enshittificatory alteration to a program can be disenshittified with another program.

Every time HP jacks up the price of ink , they invite a competitor to market a refill kit or a compatible cartridge.

When Tesla installs code that says you have to pay an extra monthly fee to use your whole battery, they invite a modder to start selling a kit to jailbreak that battery and charge it all the way up.

Lemme take you through a little example of how that works: Imagine this is a product design meeting for our company’s website, and the guy leading the meeting says “Dudes, you know how our KPI is topline ad-revenue? Well, I’ve calculated that if we make the ads just 20% more invasive and obnoxious, we’ll boost ad rev by 2%”

This is a good pitch. Hit that KPI and everyone gets a fat bonus. We can all take our families on a luxury ski vacation in Switzerland.

But here’s the thing: someone’s gonna stick their arm up – someone who doesn’t give a shit about user well-being, and that person is gonna say, “I love how you think, Elon. But has it occurred to you that if we make the ads 20% more obnoxious, then 40% of our users will go to a search engine and type 'How do I block ads?'"

I mean, what a nightmare! Because once a user does that, the revenue from that user doesn’t rise to 102%. It doesn’t stay at 100% It falls to zero, forever.

[Any guesses why?]

Because no user ever went back to the search engine and typed, 'How do I start seeing ads again?'

Once the user jailbreaks their phone or discovers third party ink, or develops a relationship with an independent Tesla mechanic who’ll unlock all the DLC in their car, that user is gone, forever.

Interoperability – that latent property bequeathed to us courtesy of Herrs Turing and Von Neumann and their infinitely flexible, universal machines – that is a serious check on enshittification.

The fact that Congress hasn’t passed a privacy law since 1988 Is countered, at least in part, by the fact that the majority of web users are now running ad-blockers, which are also tracker-blockers.

But no one’s ever installed a tracker-blocker for an app. Because reverse engineering an app puts in you jeopardy of criminal and civil prosecution under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with penalties of a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

And violating its terms of service puts you in jeopardy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is the law that Ronald Reagan signed in a panic after watching Wargames (seriously!).

Helping other users violate the terms of service can get you hit with a lawsuit for tortious interference with contract. And then there’s trademark, copyright and patent.

All that nonsense we call “IP,” but which Jay Freeman of Cydia calls “Felony Contempt of Business Model."

So if we’re still at that product planning meeting and now it’s time to talk about our app, the guy leading the meeting says, “OK, so we’ll make the ads in the app 20% more obnoxious to pull a 2% increase in topline ad rev?”

And that person who objected to making the website 20% worse? Their hand goes back up. Only this time they say “Why don’t we make the ads 100% more invasive and get a 10% increase in ad rev?"

Because it doesn't matter if a user goes to a search engine and types, “How do I block ads in an app." The answer is: you can't. So YOLO, enshittify away.

“IP” is just a euphemism for “any law that lets me reach outside my company’s walls to exert coercive control over my critics, competitors and customers,” and “app” is just a euphemism for “A web page skinned with the right IP so that protecting your privacy while you use it is a felony.”

Interop used to keep companies from enshittifying. If a company made its client suck, someone would roll out an alternative client, if they ripped a feature out and wanted to sell it back to you as a monthly subscription, someone would make a compatible plugin that restored it for a one-time fee, or for free.

To help people flee Myspace, FB gave them bots that you’d load with your login credentials. It would scrape your waiting Myspace messages and put ‘em in your FB inbox, and login to Myspace and paste your replies into your Myspace outbox. So you didn’t have to choose between the people you loved on Myspace, and Facebook, which launched with a promise never to spy on you. Remember that?!

Thanks to the metastasis of IP, all that is off the table today. Apple owes its very existence to iWork Suite, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote are file-compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. But make an IOS runtime that’ll play back the files you bought from Apple’s stores on other platforms, and they’ll nuke you til you glow.

FB wouldn’t have had a hope of breaking Myspace’s grip on social media without that scrape, but scrape FB today in support of an alternative client and their lawyers will bomb you til the rubble bounces.

Google scraped every website in the world to create its search index. Try and scrape Google and they’ll have your head on a pike.

When they did it, it was progress. When you do it to them, that’s piracy. Every pirate wants to be an admiral.

Because this handful of companies has so thoroughly captured their regulators, they can wield the power of the state against you when you try to break their grip on power, even as their own flagrant violations of our rights go unpunished. Because they do them with an app.

Tech lost its fear of competitin it neutralized the threat from regulators, and then put them in harness to attack new startups that might do unto them as they did unto the companies that came before them.

But even so, there was a force that kept our bosses in check That force was us. Tech workers.

Tech workers have historically been in short supply, which gave us power, and our bosses knew it.

To get us to work crazy hours, they came up with a trick. They appealed to our love of technology, and told us that we were heroes of a digital revolution, who would “organize the world’s information and make it useful,” who would “bring the world closer together.”

They brought in expert set-dressers to turn our workplaces into whimsical campuses with free laundry, gourmet cafeterias, massages, and kombucha, and a surgeon on hand to freeze our eggs so that we could work through our fertile years.

They convinced us that we were being pampered, rather than being worked like government mules.

This trick has a name. Fobazi Ettarh, the librarian-theorist, calls it “vocational awe, and Elon Musk calls it being “extremely hardcore.”

This worked very well. Boy did we put in some long-ass hours!

But for our bosses, this trick failed badly. Because if you miss your mother’s funeral and to hit a deadline, and then your boss orders you to enshittify that product, you are gonna experience a profound moral injury, which you are absolutely gonna make your boss share.

Because what are they gonna do? Fire you? They can’t hire someone else to do your job, and you can get a job that’s even better at the shop across the street.

So workers held the line when competition, regulation and interop failed.

But eventually, supply caught up with demand. Tech laid off 260,000 of us last year, and another 100,000 in the first half of this year.

You can’t tell your bosses to go fuck themselves, because they’ll fire your ass and give your job to someone who’ll be only too happy to enshittify that product you built.

That’s why this is all happening right now. Our bosses aren’t different. They didn’t catch a mind-virus that turned them into greedy assholes who don’t care about our users’ wellbeing or the quality of our products.

As far as our bosses have always been concerned, the point of the business was to charge the most, and deliver the least, while sharing as little as possible with suppliers, workers, users and customers. They’re not running charities.

Since day one, our bosses have shown up for work and yanked as hard as they can on the big ENSHITTIFICATION lever behind their desks, only that lever didn’t move much. It was all gummed up by competition, regulation, interop and workers.

As those sources of friction melted away, the enshittification lever started moving very freely.

Which sucks, I know. But think about this for a sec: our bosses, despite being wildly imperfect vessels capable of rationalizing endless greed and cheating, nevertheless oversaw a series of actually great products and services.

Not because they used to be better people, but because they used to be subjected to discipline.

So it follows that if we want to end the enshittocene, dismantle the enshitternet, and build a new, good internet that our bosses can’t wreck, we need to make sure that these constraints are durably installed on that internet, wound around its very roots and nerves. And we have to stand guard over it so that it can’t be dismantled again.

A new, good internet is one that has the positive aspects of the old, good internet: an ethic of technological self-determination, where users of technology (and hackers, tinkerers, startups and others serving as their proxies) can reconfigure and mod the technology they use, so that it does what they need it to do, and so that it can’t be used against them.

But the new, good internet will fix the defects of the old, good internet, the part that made it hard to use for anyone who wasn’t us. And hell yeah we can do that. Tech bosses swear that it’s impossible, that you can’t have a conversation friend without sharing it with Zuck; or search the web without letting Google scrape you down to the viscera; or have a phone that works reliably without giving Apple a veto over the software you install.

They claim that it’s a nonsense to even ponder this kind of thing. It’s like making water that’s not wet. But that’s bullshit. We can have nice things. We can build for the people we love, and give them a place that’s worth of their time and attention.

To do that, we have to install constraints.

The first constraint, remember, is competition. We’re living through a epochal shift in competition policy. After 40 years with antitrust enforcement in an induced coma, a wave of antitrust vigor has swept through governments all over the world. Regulators are stepping in to ban monopolistic practices, open up walled gardens, block anticompetitive mergers, and even unwind corrupt mergers that were undertaken on false pretenses.

Normally this is the place in the speech where I’d list out all the amazing things that have happened over the past four years. The enforcement actions that blocked companies from becoming too big to care, and that scared companies away from even trying.

Like Wiz, which just noped out of the largest acquisition offer in history, turning down Google’s $23b cashout, and deciding to, you know, just be a fucking business that makes money by producing a product that people want and selling it at a competitive price.

Normally, I’d be listing out FTC rulemakings that banned noncompetes nationwid. Or the new merger guidelines the FTC and DOJ cooked up, which – among other things – establish that the agencies should be considering whether a merger will negatively impact privacy.

I had a whole section of this stuff in my notes, a real victory lap, but I deleted it all this week.

[Can anyone guess why?]

That’s right! This week, Judge Amit Mehta, ruling for the DC Circuit of these United States of America, In the docket 20-3010 a case known as United States v. Google LLC, found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," and ordered Google and the DOJ to propose a schedule for a remedy, like breaking the company up.

So yeah, that was pretty fucking epic.

Now, this antitrust stuff is pretty esoteric, and I won’t gatekeep you or shame you if you wanna keep a little distance on this subject. Nearly everyone is an antitrust normie, and that's OK. But if you’re a normie, you’re probably only catching little bits and pieces of the narrative, and let me tell you, the monopolists know it and they are flooding the zone.

The Wall Street Journal has published over 100 editorials condemning FTC Chair Lina Khan, saying she’s an ineffectual do-nothing, wasting public funds chasing doomed, quixotic adventures against poor, innocent businesses accomplishing nothing

[Does anyone out there know who owns the Wall Street Journal?]

That’s right, it’s Rupert Murdoch. Do you really think Rupert Murdoch pays his editorial board to write one hundred editorials about someone who’s not getting anything done?

The reality is that in the USA, in the UK, in the EU, in Australia, in Canada, in Japan, in South Korea, even in China, we are seeing more antitrust action over the past four years than over the preceding forty years.

Remember, competition law is actually pretty robust. The problem isn’t the law, It’s the enforcement priorities. Reagan put antitrust in mothballs 40 years ago, but that elegant weapon from a more civilized age is now back in the hands of people who know how to use it, and they’re swinging for the fences.

Next up: regulation.

As the seemingly inescapable power of the tech giants is revealed for the sham it always was, governments and regulators are finally gonna kill the “one weird trick” of violating the law, and saying “It doesn’t count, we did it with an app.”

Like in the EU, they’re rolling out the Digital Markets Act this year. That’s a law requiring dominant platforms to stand up APIs so that third parties can offer interoperable services.

So a co-op, a nonprofit, a hobbyist, a startup, or a local government agency wil eventuallyl be able to offer, say, a social media server that can interconnect with one of the dominant social media silos, and users who switch to that new platform will be able to continue to exchange messages with the users they follow and groups they belong to, so the switching costs will fall to damned near zero.

That’s a very cool rule, but what’s even cooler is how it’s gonna be enforced. Previous EU tech rules were “regulations” as in the GDPR – the General Data Privacy Regulation. EU regs need to be “transposed” into laws in each of the 27 EU member states, so they become national laws that get enforced by national courts.

For Big Tech, that means all previous tech regulations are enforced in Ireland, because Ireland is a tax haven, and all the tech companies fly Irish flags of convenience.

Here’s the thing: every tax haven is also a crime haven. After all, if Google can pretend it’s Irish this week, it can pretend to be Cypriot, or Maltese, or Luxembougeious next week. So Ireland has to keep these footloose criminal enterprises happy, or they’ll up sticks and go somewhere else.

This is why the GDPR is such a goddamned joke in practice. Big tech wipes its ass with the GDPR, and the only way to punish them starts with Ireland’s privacy commissioner, who barely bothers to get out of bed. This is an agency that spends most of its time watching cartoons on TV in its pajamas and eating breakfast cereal. So all of the big GDPR cases go to Ireland and they die there.

This is hardly a secret. The European Commission knows it’s going on. So with the DMA, the Commission has changed things up: The DMA is an “Act,” not a “Regulation.” Meaning it gets enforced in the EU’s federal courts, bypassing the national courts in crime-havens like Ireland.

In other words, the “we violate privacy law, but we do it with an app” gambit that worked on Ireland’s toothless privacy watchdog is now a dead letter, because EU federal judges have no reason to swallow that obvious bullshit.

Here in the US, the dam is breaking on federal consumer privacy law – at last!

Remember, our last privacy law was passed in 1988 to protect the sanctity of VHS rental history. It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden? Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google? Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics? Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms? Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

A federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems

There's a pretty big coalition for that kind of privacy law! Which is why we have seen a procession of imperfect (but steadily improving) privacy laws working their way through Congress.

If you sign up for EFF’s mailing list at eff.org we’ll send you an email when these come up, so you can call your Congressjerk or Senator and talk to them about it. Or better yet, make an appointment to drop by their offices when they’re in their districts, and explain to them that you’re not just a registered voter from their district, you’re the kind of elite tech person who goes to Defcon, and then explain the bill to them. That stuff makes a difference.

What about self-help? How are we doing on making interoperability legal again, so hackers can just fix shit without waiting for Congress or a federal agency to act?

All the action here these day is in the state Right to Repair fight. We’re getting state R2R bills, like the one that passed this year in Oregon that bans parts pairing, where DRM is used to keep a device from using a new part until it gets an authorized technician’s unlock code.

These bills are pushed by a fantastic group of organizations called the Repair Coalition, at Repair.org, and they’ll email you when one of these laws is going through your statehouse, so you can meet with your state reps and explain to the JV squad the same thing you told your federal reps.

Repair.org’s prime mover is Ifixit, who are genuine heroes of the repair revolution, and Ifixit’s founder, Kyle Wiens, is here at the con. When you see him, you can shake his hand and tell him thanks, and that’ll be even better if you tell him that you’ve signed up to get alerts at repair.org!

Now, on to the final way that we reverse enhittification and build that new, good internet: you, the tech labor force.

For years, your bosses tricked you into thinking you were founders in waiting, temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who were only momentarily drawing a salary.

You certainly weren’t workers. Your power came from your intrinsic virtue, not like those lazy slobs in unions who have to get their power through that kumbaya solidarity nonsense.

It was a trick. You were scammed. The power you had came from scarcity, and so when the scarcity ended, when the industry started ringing up six-figure annual layoffs, your power went away with it.

The only durable source of power for tech workers is as workers, in a union.

Think about Amazon. Warehouse workers have to piss in bottles and have the highest rate of on-the-job maimings of any competing business. Whereas Amazon coders get to show up for work with facial piercings, green mohawks, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don’t understand. They can piss whenever they want!

That’s not because Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy loves you guys. It’s because they’re scared you’ll quit and they don’t know how to replace you.

Time for the second obligatory William Gibson quote: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” You know who’s living in the future?. Those Amazon blue-collar workers. They are the bleeding edge.

Drivers whose eyeballs are monitored by AI cameras that do digital phrenology on their faces to figure out whether to dock their pay, warehouse workers whose bodies are ruined in just months.

As tech bosses beef up that reserve army of unemployed, skilled tech workers, then those tech workers – you all – will arrive at the same future as them.

Look, I know that you’ve spent your careers explaining in words so small your boss could understand them that you refuse to enshittify the company’s products, and I thank you for your service.

But if you want to go on fighting for the user, you need power that’s more durable than scarcity. You need a union. Wanna learn how? Check out the Tech Workers Coalition and Tech Solidarity, and get organized.

Enshittification didn’t arise because our bosses changed. They were always that guy.

They were always yankin’ on that enshittification lever in the C-suite.

What changed was the environment, everything that kept that switch from moving.

And that’s good news, in a bankshot way, because it means we can make good services out of imperfect people. As a wildly imperfect person myself, I find this heartening.

The new good internet is in our grasp: an internet that has the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the greased-skids simplicity of Web 2.0 that let all our normie friends get in on the fun.

Tech bosses want you to think that good UX and enshittification can’t ever be separated. That’s such a self-serving proposition you can spot it from orbit. We know it, 'cause we built the old good internet, and we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve it for the past two decades.

It’s time to stop playing defense. It's time to go on the offensive. To restore competition, regulation, interop and tech worker power so that we can create the new, good internet we’ll need to fight fascism, the climate emergency, and genocide.

To build a digital nervous system for a 21st century in which our children can thrive and prosper.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

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/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

Image: https://twitter.com/igama/status/1822347578094043435/ (cropped)

@fak3r@mastodon.social (cropped)

https://mamot.fr/@fak3r@mastodon.social/112963252835869648

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.pt

[normalgirlnextdoor]

Alpha 141! X Omega reader??

Hii! I don't usually post my writing, but I had this idea and wrote up a draft/demo of and idea i have. Let me know what yall think and if you want to see it continued! Reblog if you like it please! Also I didn't really edit it, sorry lol!

You tapped away on your mechanical keyboard, the clicky sounds saving you from the quiet boredom that came with running your base's front desk. Running it of course was your punishment for.. Well lets just say when tensions get high you struggle to keep your mouth shut. And it just had to be today that you get dished this punishment. The day one-four-one was assigned to come in, you know to check the place out, see if there was a ‘missfit’ to take on their team. 

You see, you unfortunately work at a special “military”' base, military used lightly as it's not really used for the government to have soldiers willing to fight, but actually to protect the government from lethal beings that could be useful military weapons. You and everyone else, including your current captain, have very dark reasons for why you’re in here. The only way you specifically could get out of the hellish base was if your true mates, yes mates with an “S”, came for you. Legally the government cannot keep anyone from their true mates, but considering you definitely had four, you had a snowball chance in hell of them coming to you. 

Letting out a loud dramatic sigh you looked over your writing. Paperwork was the bane of your existence. Rubbing your eyes you go back to typing the latest mission report; only to be interrupted by the large military doors swinging open with a slam. In came five different, clearly not impressed people. Four out of the five are men, built like true military muscle heads, while the fifth was very fit female. Taking a deep breath you slip into profession mode, choosing to address the women instead of the four intimidating alpha males.

“Hello! Can I please get your names, ids, and the reason why you are here?”  Your voice was overly sweet, sweeter than it usually was.

“I’m Kate Laswell with one-four-one. John-”  she tossed her head to the side.

“Oh, of course you are,” You dropped the cute assistant act, pulling back into a neutral look. Blowing air through your nose you started to type a quick check in for the special operation group one-four-one. Laswell gaped at you.

“Okay,” You flicked your head up rather fast, causing your dog tags to clink with your military issued scent blocking collar.

“You guys are good,I’m Bite risk by the way,” you inform them that you yourself are on the team they will be montering, before telling them where to go. Laswell smiled at you, tipping her head in thanks as she strutted down the hall. One-four-one on the other hand, took their time analyzing you as they passed by. As the last and largest one, the one with the warm looking skullmask, passed by you rolled your eyes, going back to your mission report. 

“Sir, I’m aware that you want to see your daughter and I am deeply empathetic to what you're going through right now. But unless you show me your Id, I won't be able to even let you into the security system for public visit days, which as I said are: Saturdays, Sundays and specific holidays,” your absolutely fed up. Your team including one-four-one, who are currently coming down the hall to collect you, could even tell just by the stressed undertone of your voice.

“I’m not going to show some barracks bunny my id! I want to see my daughter! Now let me in! I served in world war two! I don’t deserve this disturbing treatment from some omega floozy! You have no idea what it means to work in the military! You're just some whore-” A loud crash.  Your captain quickly ran into the lobby, quickly ripping you off the disrespectful older man. Thankfully she was quick enough to prevent him from leaving with a deep bite scar. Your eyes glowed red as you tried to throw her off, but she kept her hold on you, even as you dug your elongated claws into what skin you could reach. 

“Fang! Get him out of here!” She commanded one of your team mates. As he was being escorted out your captain shoved your face into the crook of her neck, letting out a strong calming scent. You drank it up, forcing your feral omega down. Meanwhile task force one-four-one silently watched. Genuinely surprised how quick things escalated in only the first three hours of their two week observation. 

“Well, this is going to be interesting,” Price said, his thick British accent quickly catching your omegas' attention, red eyes looking over to the entire team. Interesting indeed you thought. 

[lilgoblinbitch]

r.g. crm head canons

18+. first time writing headcanons, and first edit i ever made below (please do not steal or copy) ☻

MDNI

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆

imagine sergeant major rick grimes training you, how he places his hands on your waist which would inevitably send shivers down your spine. he lightly grasps your arms as he positions your body in the right stance. every time he did this, your knees wobbled.

"good work, soldier." you'd blush from hearing him praise you after getting his instructions right. eventually the longer you trained the more skilled you became, and rick didn't have a reason to guide you anymore. you ended up missing his hands on you, and the proximity of his body behind you. but you know that physical touch from rick wasn't gone forever, because at least three times a week he'd come over to your apartment and touch you in much more intimate ways than he did during training...

you are always wet for this man. it's like he has some sort of spell casted upon you. and he was invariably aware of his effect on you. sly bastard.

but you also had a strong effect on him; the way you wrapped around him when he pounded into you, the melody of your sweet moans like a siren song pulling him in, how you always invited him into your apartment just from that look in your eye — he truly couldn't get enough of you.

when you're a good girl for the sergeant, he would gift you with his tongue dancing around your sweet hole and his finger flicking your throbbing clit. he would plunge two fingers into your hole and hit that same spot every time. "so good for me, sweetheart," he'd coo after you came on his lips.

if you 'misbehaved,' as in snap at him or misread his orders, your nights of loving turned into nights of rough fucking. "you need to learn how to follow orders;" or, "you can't be behaving like that, in front of everyone. fuckin' slut, bending over like this-" to which he'd fold you over the table with his stiff crotch pressing against your ass. regardless of the incident, rick just had to reiterate how serious he was about his authority over you.

i cannot stress this enough — rick is an ass man. he's always finding a chance to sneak a gander at your ass. whether you're purposely bending over in front of him at training or when he's fucking you from the back, his eyes are glued to the way your ass ripples with each thrust of his hips against it. and he absolutely loves giving it small smacks any chance he gets.

sometimes during missionary he likes to hold both your wrists above your head. he loves watching you squirm beneath him, fiending to anchor onto him while he fervently plunges into you.

nothing but sex fills the room, always; skin on skin and breathless whimpers from you, and rick would repeatedly mutter pure filth to you; "this pussy is mine," or "go 'head, sweetheart, let everyone know how good i make you feel." it always brought you closer and closer to climax.

rick loves grabbing your neck, too. something about the way you melt into him just from the feeling of his hand lightly squeezing your neck — made your head mushy in the best way. it was like his way of making you submit to him immediately.

whenever you are close to climax you mewl: "rick, 'm close," or when you can barely let words out from how overwhelmed your body is feeling from pleasure, your moans switch to more urgent whimpers.

rick will let you cum first if he's rewarding you for hard work that day: "that's it, baby. let it all go, sweetheart." otherwise if it's one of those rough nights he tells you: "hold it f'me, i know you can."

when rick is in a shitty mood, or if he's overly stressed that day, you are at his service. you can tell by how he paces the room or always places his fingers on the bridge of his nose that it may be time for you to bring him back to life by sucking his cock. his groans when you bob your head back and forth and how you confidently tease his tip which elicit strings of "fuck" and "my good whore".

[gravehags]

our little remedy - the beatrice edit

Pairing: Aether x f!OC x Mountain

Rating: Explicit

18+ ONLY MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Tags: threesome, PinV sex, anal sex, weed smoking, ghouls being tender as always, cumulus and dew cameos

Words: 2,482

Summary: Two ghouls at once was unprecedented for Beatrice. But she loves a challenge.

a/n: god, and i cannot stress this enough, i wish that were me

~~~

“Mm…’Lus…I have kitchen duties.”

The ghoulette smiles against Beatrice’s lips and pushes her further into the doorframe. Clearly she pays the sister’s concern no mind as she slides her hand into her copper hair, claws scratching lightly at her scalp. 

“Not finished with you yet, my love,” she purrs, hand sliding down to cup Beatrice’s ass. A low wolf whistle comes from the hallway and the two of them part, brows furrowed. Dewdrop is leaning against the door opposite Cumulus’, wearing the biggest shit-eating grin Beatrice has ever seen. Cumulus lets out a little growl that makes her breath hitch.

“We’re busy, fuck off,” she snarls at him, gripping Beatrice’s hips and frowning.

“Oh I know,” he says slyly, “Heard you both loud and clear last night. And you didn’t invite me?” His lips slide into a faux-pout and Cumulus looks like she’s going to launch at him. 

“Dew, fuck off,” Beatrice says simply in an effort to de-escalate the situation, “And mind your business. ‘Lus, I have to go.” She looks so damn sad, tail flicking lowly behind her. Squeezing her hands Beatrice leans over and gives her two kisses on her cheek and one achingly sweet one on her plush lips. Dew at least has the decency to look away as she gives the ghoulette a meaningful stare. She sighs and relinquishes Beatrice’s hands.

“If you must,” she says, giving Dew a sideways dirty look.

“Bye, love,” Beatrice murmurs. “Goodbye, Dewdrop,” she says, brushing his shoulder affectionately as she passes.

She hurries down the hall to make sure she doesn’t witness any ghoul-on-ghoul violence. It’s still too early in the day for that.

—

A week passes, filled with duties both tedious and enjoyable, and Beatrice finds herself heading to the common room on her floor. She’s earned the ire of her fellow siblings after the invasion of ghouls in the space but quite frankly she couldn’t care less. She walks in and immediately registers a conversation.

“I don’t think she can handle it.”

Mountain is sitting on the couch, joint in hand speaking to Aether, who sits in a chair opposite with his feet propped up on an ottoman. Beatrice loudly deposits her bag in a chair and sidles over to them.

“Who can’t handle what?” It’s not like Beatrice to be this nosy but she and the ghouls had become close over the past few months and they seemed to prefer bluntness. Plopping herself on the couch next to Mountain, she gives them both a look. Mountain takes a deep drag from his joint and passes it to her.

“Can’t handle us,” he says simply, exhaling smoke.

Beatrice doesn’t have to ask for clarification - she’s picked up on what he means.

“Took Cumulus’ strap,” she says, not without a little pride. Aether grins wickedly and winks at her.

“We heard,” he chuckles, watching her take a hit. “Been thinking about those sweet noises you made that night for days now.”

Beatrice coughs a little on her exhale, making Mountain smile. Her cheeks are burning from the way they both look at her.

“Do you want it?” Mountain queries, accepting the joint back from her. “Both of us?”

Lust simmers low in Beatrice’s stomach as the weed pulls through her system.

“Yeah,” she breathes, biting her lip. Aether’s eyes fly to where her teeth tug on flesh and she sees his fists clench. Mountain stands, positively towering over her and she cranes her neck to look up at him. Aether follows suit, looming, and she turns her gaze to him.

Oh absolutely, Beatrice thinks.

As if reading her mind, Aether extends a hand and pulls her off the couch.

“Yours?” he asks Mountain as the three of them walk towards the door.

“Yeah. Bed’s bigger.”

–

Once again Beatrice finds herself in the ghoul den, standing at the threshold of Mountain’s room. He’s right - his bed is massive. The room is decorated with crawling vines and beautiful blooms and idly she wonders how he cares for them in such a dark space. Aether slides his hands around her waist from behind her as Mountain closes the door, making her jump a little.

“Easy,” he purrs, leaning forward to inhale deep at the crown of her head. When she turns in his arms to face him he’s gazing down at her with a soft expression, even with his pupils blown. Suddenly gripped with desire, Beatrice slides her palm along his jaw and raises herself on tiptoes to capture his lips. She whimpers against him as he deepens the kiss, sliding his tongue against hers. As he devours her, he guides her backwards towards the bed, where Mountain is sitting. Upon their approach he stands and Beatrice slips from Aether’s grasp to enter his. He’s too tall for her to reach so she grabs the front of his shirt, pulling him down to her level. When he slides a hand down to bring her hips against him, she moans at the feeling of his hardened cock resting against her. 

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Aether asks from behind her as he strips himself. She wants to turn to look at him but Mountain grips her chin in his hand, forcing her to look up.

“She’s perfect,” he murmurs. Beatrice’s flush continues to spread across her body and she’s filled with such emotion not only for the both of them, but for all the ghouls. They’ve been so kind to her, so loving - more so than anyone else she’s met during her time at the abbey. Mountain must see the tears welling in her eyes because he sits, bringing her back to eye level with him.

“You’re perfect,” he repeats, and Aether echoes him before wrapping his arms around Beatrice once more. She’s finally distracted from emotion by the feeling of Aether’s lips on her neck as his hands slip the buttons of her habit loose. Mountain helps his effort, sliding the garment down and off her body until she stands before the both of them in her bra and panties.

“C’mon, Mountain,” Aether says, lips on her shoulder.

“Your turn,” Beatrice smiles at him as he begins to remove his shirt and pants. As he is occupied with that task, she feels Aether unhook her bra and a shiver runs through her as his large hands slip down her body to remove her underwear. When she’s finally nude, she turns to face him and gasps. He’s gorgeous - big, strong, dusted with hair and his cock juts out proudly. He’s nowhere near as long as Swiss but he’s thick - so thick her body aches at the thought of being filled by him.

“You like it?” he asks, bringing a hand down to idly stroke himself.

“Mmhmm,” Beatrice responds, stepping towards him and sliding a hand into the hair on his chest. 

“Look at that,” Aether murmurs, a grin toying at his lips as his eyes dance along her bared skin, “Those freckles go everywhere, huh Mount?”

“And–” Out of the corner of her eye, Beatrice sees Mountain tilt his head a little and spots the glint of his razor sharp canines in the low light, “--red down there too. Pretty little thing.”

Aether purrs contentedly in response as he moves his hand to her breast, teasing her nipple into hardness. She leans into his touch, thoroughly enjoying the feeling of him fondling her when she realizes Mountain has gone untouched. Beatrice turns to face him and her jaw hangs open. He’s already reclined on the bed, slowly stroking his (unbelievably big, she thinks) cock.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he says with a grin as the two of them make their way towards him.

“Didn’t want you to feel neglected,” Beatrice says as she kneels on the duvet. Slowly, she climbs over him and swings her leg to straddle him. Leaning forward, she kisses him slowly, letting his cock drag between the two of them as she works her mouth over his. When she shifts forward to drag him through her folds, Beatrice hears Aether moan behind her. She turns to beckon him and he kneels onto the bed behind her, mouthing at her shoulder blade. With every roll of her hips Mountain’s gaze darkens, and he grips her hard.

“Gonna fill you up,” he growls, making a surge of wetness slide out of her. “Both of us.”

Unable to handle the teasing drag of his cock against her clit any longer, Beatrice sits precariously up on her knees and takes him in hand. She can barely wrap her fist around him and she feels a swoop of anxiety. Mountain seems to sense her nervousness and slides his hands to her waist, gazing up at her. When she positions herself above him, she takes a deep breath before slowly lowering herself on him. The stretch is divine, and Beatrice hears herself whimper as she continues to ease him inside her. She finally takes him to the base, and Mountain’s eyes roll back in his head. Beatrice is content to sit there for a moment, mouth hung open, simply enjoying the feeling of being full, when she feels Aether behind her sliding his hands up to her breasts.

“Look at you take him,” he breathes, pinching her hardened nipples. “How does it feel?”

Gently, Beatrice rolls her hips a little and moans at the sensation.

“Good,” she says breathily, head falling back against Aether’s shoulder as she repeats the motion, “So good.”

She lifts herself up enough almost for the entirety of Mountain to slip out of her and then brings herself down. His hips jerk upwards to hit that beautiful spot inside of her. Slowly, she begins to ride him and he grips her hips, claws digging into her.

“Fuck, that’s it,” Mountain growls, thrusting up into Beatrice with every roll of her hips, “Just like that.”

Aether continues to play with her tits, breath hot in her ear as she arches backwards against him. When he pulls away for a moment to grab something on the dresser behind him, Beatrice whines at the loss. He returns, murmuring sweet nothings in her ear as his hand drifts down her body to rest on her ass. He spreads her open and she leans forward, arching her back. Gently, he brushes his thumb over her asshole and she bucks backwards into his touch. She’s stopped riding Mountain, too distracted by Aether, but Mountain continues to fuck into her at a steady pace. Beatrice hears a small pop from behind her and when Aether’s fingers return to brush over her hole, they’re warm and slick. Biting her lip she lets him gently probe a finger into her and he coos in her ear.

“Feel good?” he asks, teasing her hole open until he’s knuckle deep.

Too full to think, Beatrice nods her head dumbly, pushing her hips back on his hand so his finger is completely inside of her.

“Good girl,” he purrs, making her cunt clench around Mountain, “Can you take another?”

Mountain thrusts up particularly hard, causing Beatrice to cry out.

“Yes! Please, Aether.”

Slowly, Aether adds a second finger and she moans brokenly. He eases into her, lightly scissoring his fingers and the stretch makes her clit throb. Aether continues like this for several minutes as Mountain steadily thrusts into her. But it’s just not enough.

“Need you,” Beatrice whines over her shoulder. “Need your cock, Aether.”

When Aether slides his fingers out of her she lets out a pathetic noise, only to have her cunt clench at the sound of Aether slicking his cock up behind her. When he presses the head against her hole, Beatrice arches back into his touch. Slowly he slides into her and her jaw hangs open as he stretches her. 

“So tight,” Aether hisses. “Isn’t she?”

Mountain grins from beneath Beatrice as her eyes roll back. The feeling of both of them inside of her, making her feel so full, practically makes her drool. When Aether begins fucking her ass at an unhurried pace, Mountain joins in. She can barely bring herself to move, let alone think, as her body hunches over in pleasure. 

“Fuck, love,” Aether groans, as his pace begins to pick up. Mountain matches his speed, making Beatrice throw her head back and moan again and again. It’s somehow both too much and not enough as she works their cocks, drinking in the desperate and hungry noises they make.

“Mountain,” Beatrice pants as her breasts bounce, slick with sweat. “Aether!”

“Fuck I’m gonna cum,” Mountain says breathlessly. “Don’t stop fucking her.”

Aether’s lips are on her shoulder as he obeys the other ghoul’s command. Mountain’s thrusts become frantic as she continues to ride him, despite the burn in her thighs. When he cums, it’s with a shout and Beatrice moans at the feeling of his seed pulsing into her and spilling out. She doesn’t stop after he’s finished and softening inside her, determined to chase her own high. Aether’s own thrusts are becoming haphazard and he reaches around Beatrice to cup her mound, fingers sliding through Mountain’s cum to rub her clit.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Aether pants, “Cum on our cocks.”

Beatrice whines, desperate to reach her peak and feel Aether finish. All of a sudden, her orgasm hits her like a freight train and she’s crying out over and over as she clenches around Mountain’s softening cock and Aether’s hard one. It’s exactly what Aether needs to hear because he lets out a broken moan and cums into her hole in drawn out spurts. A moment passes, the only sound in the room being the collective panting of the three of them. When Aether slips himself out, Beatrice lets out another, far smaller moan at the feeling of his seed sliding out of her and down her cunt to where she’s still joined with Mountain. Gently, Aether urges her off Mountain and picking her up, lays her down on the duvet. Beatrice barely registers Aether leaving and heading towards the bathroom but when he returns and slips a warm, damp rag between her thighs she makes a sweet sound of thanks. Mountain shifts himself over to make room for both them and Aether and Beatrice both sigh contentedly.

“Well done,” Aether says in her ear.

“Thanks,” she says breathlessly, running her hand over Mountain’s chest. Both ghouls are purring and the sound sets her immediately at ease. Suddenly, Beatrice thinks of something that makes her laugh out loud. Both of them cock their heads at her quizzically and she rubs her eyes.

“Dew,” Beatrice says, grinning, “Dew said he wanted to watch me take both your cocks. He’s going to be so disappointed he missed it.”

Aether loudly snorts and Mountain rolls his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Aether grins against her shoulder. “There’s always next time.”

They don’t stop teasing Beatrice about her blush for a while.

[librarianrafia]

Aug 2024)

Today's links

"Disenshittify or Die": My speech from Defcon 32.

Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023

Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

Recent appearances: Where I've been.

Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.

Colophon: All the rest.

"Disenshittify or Die" (permalink)

Last weekend, I traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where I had the immense privilege of giving a solo talk on Track 1, entitled "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):

The Defcon organizers have earned a restful week or two, and that means that the video of my talk hasn't yet been posted to Defcon's Youtube channel, so in the meantime, I thought I'd post a lightly edited version of my speech crib. If you're headed to Burning Man, you can hear me reprise this talk at Palenque Norte (7&E); I'm kicking off their lecture series on Tuesday, Aug 27 at 1PM.

==

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

I mean, sure, our bosses were a little surveillance-happy, and they were usually up for sharing their data with the NSA, and whenever there was a tossup between user security and growth, it was always YOLO time.

But Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

There was a time when you searching for an album on Spotify would get you that album – not a playlist of insipid AI-generated covers with the same name and art.

Microsoft used to sell you software – sure, it was buggy – but now they just let you access apps in the cloud, so they can watch how you use those apps and strip the features you use the most out of the basic tier and turn them into an upcharge.

What – and I cannot stress this enough – the fuck happened?!

I’m talking about enshittification.

Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

If you’re Facebook, the users do it for you. You joined Facebook because there were people there you wanted to hang out with, and other people joined Facebook to hang out with you.

That’s the old “network effects” in action, and with network effects come “the collective action problem." Because you love your friends, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass! You all agree that FB sucks, sure, but can you all agree on when it’s time to leave?

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

You’re there because that’s where the support group for your rare disease hangs out, and your bestie is there because that’s where they talk with the people in the country they moved away from, then there’s that friend who coordinates their kid’s little league car pools on FB, and the best dungeon master you know isn’t gonna leave FB because that’s where her customers are.

So you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

Now, sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime, or to buy your Audible books on a monthly subscription, which virtually guarantees that every shopping search will start on Amazon, after all, you’ve already paid for it.

Sometimes, they lock you in with DRM, like HP selling you a printer with four ink cartridges filled with fluid that retails for more than $10,000/gallon, and using DRM to stop you from refilling any of those ink carts or using a third-party cartridge. So when one cart runs dry, you have to refill it or throw away your investment in the remaining three cartridges and the printer itself.

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

You can’t run your Ios apps without Apple hardware;

you can’t run your Apple music, books and movies on anything except an Ios app;

your iPhone uses parts pairing – DRM handshakes between replacement parts and the main system – so you can’t use third-party parts to fix it; and

every OEM iPhone part has a microscopic Apple logo engraved on it, so Apple can demand that the US Customs and Border Service seize any shipment of refurb Iphone parts as trademark violations.

Think Different, amirite?

Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

For example, a platform might poison its search results, like Google selling more and more of its results pages to ads that are identified with lighter and lighter tinier and tinier type.

Or Amazon selling off search results and calling it an “ad” business. They make $38b/year on this scam. The first result for your search is, on average, 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The first row is 25% more expensive than the best match. On average, the best match for your search is likely to be found seventeen places down on the results page.

Other platforms sell off your feed, like Facebook, which started off showing you the things you asked to see, but now the quantum of content from the people you follow has dwindled to a homeopathic residue, leaving a void that Facebook fills with things that people pay to show you: boosted posts from publishers you haven’t subscribed to, and, of course, ads.

Now at this point you might be thinking ‘sure, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.'

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

The people who buy those Google ads? They pay more every year for worse ad-targeting and more ad-fraud

Those publishers paying to nonconsensually cram their content into your Facebook feed? They have to do that because FB suppresses their ability to reach the people who actually subscribed to them

The Amazon sellers with the best match for your query have to outbid everyone else just to show up on the first page of results. It costs so much to sell on Amazon that between 45-51% of every dollar an independent seller brings in has to be kicked up to Don Bezos and the Amazon crime family. Those sellers don’t have the kind of margins that let them pay 51% They have to raise prices in order to avoid losing money on every sale.

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

"But wait! Things on Amazon aren’t more expensive that things at Target, or Walmart, or at a mom and pop store, or direct from the manufacturer.

"How can sellers be raising prices on Amazon if the price at Amazon is the same as at is everywhere else?"

[Any guesses?!]

That’s right, they charge more everywhere. They have to. Amazon binds its sellers to a policy called “most favored nation status,” which says they can’t charge more on Amazon than they charge elsewhere, including direct from their own factory store.

So every seller that wants to sell on Amazon has to raise their prices everywhere else.

Now, these sellers are Amazon’s best customers. They’re paying for the product, and they’re still getting screwed.

Paying for the product doesn’t fill your vapid boss’s shriveled heart with so much joy that he decides to stop trying to think of ways to fuck you over.

Look at Apple. Remember when Apple offered every Ios user a one-click opt out for app-based surveillance? And 96% of users clicked that box?

(The other four percent were either drunk or Facebook employees or drunk Facebook employees.)

That cost Facebook at least ten billion dollars per year in lost surveillance revenue?

I mean, you love to see it.

But did you know that at the same time Apple started spying on Ios users in the same way that Facebook had been, for surveillance data to use to target users for its competing advertising product?

Your Iphone isn’t an ad-supported gimme. You paid a thousand fucking dollars for that distraction rectangle in your pocket, and you’re still the product. What’s more, Apple has rigged Ios so that you can’t mod the OS to block its spying.

If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.

Just ask the farmers who are expected to swap parts into their own busted half-million dollar, mission-critical tractors, but can’t actually use those parts until a technician charges them $200 to drive out to the farm and type a parts pairing unlock code into their console.

John Deere’s not giving away tractors. Give John Deere a half mil for a tractor and you will be the product.

Please, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please! Stop saying ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’

OK, OK, so that’s phase two of enshittification.

Phase one: be good to users while locking them in.

Phase two: screw the users a little to you can good to business customers while locking them in.

Phase three: screw everybody and take all the value for yourself. Leave behind the absolute bare minimum of utility so that everyone stays locked into your pile of shit.

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

That’s what enshittification looks like from the outside, but what’s going on inside the company? What is the pathological mechanism? What sci-fi entropy ray converts the excellent and useful service into a pile of shit?

That mechanism is called twiddling. Twiddling is when someone alters the back end of a service to change how its business operates, changing prices, costs, search ranking, recommendation criteria and other foundational aspects of the system.

Digital platforms are a twiddler’s utopia. A grocer would need an army of teenagers with pricing guns on rollerblades to reprice everything in the building when someone arrives who’s extra hungry.

Whereas the McDonald’s Investments portfolio company Plexure advertises that it can use surveillance data to predict when an app user has just gotten paid so the seller can tack an extra couple bucks onto the price of their breakfast sandwich.

And of course, as the prophet William Gibson warned us, ‘cyberspace is everting.' With digital shelf tags, grocers can change prices whenever they feel like, like the grocers in Norway, whose e-ink shelf tags change the prices 2,000 times per day.

Every Uber driver is offered a different wage for every job. If a driver has been picky lately, the job pays more. But if the driver has been desperate enough to grab every ride the app offers, the pay goes down, and down, and down.

The law professor Veena Dubal calls this ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.' It’s a prime example of twiddling.

Every youtuber knows what it’s like to be twiddled. You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it.

Why? Who knows? The algorithm’s rules are not public.

Because content moderation is the last redoubt of security through obscurit: they can’t tell you what the como algorithm is downranking because then you’d cheat.

Youtube is the kind of shitty boss who docks every paycheck for all the rules you’ve broken, but won’t tell you what those rules were, lest you figure out how to break those rules next time without your boss catching you.

Twiddling can also work in some users’ favor, of course. Sometimes platforms twiddle to make things better for end users or business customers.

For example, Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating toll to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

Why would they do this? Well, here’s an analogy from my boyhood I used to go to this traveling fair that would come to Toronto at the end of every summer, the Canadian National Exhibition. If you’ve been to a fair like the Ex, you know that you can always spot some guy lugging around a comedically huge teddy bear.

Nominally, you win that teddy bear by throwing five balls in a peach-basket, but to a first approximation, no one has ever gotten five balls to stay in that peach-basket.

That guy “won” the teddy bear when a carny on the midway singled him out and said, "fella, I like your face. Tell you what I’m gonna do: You get just one ball in the basket and I’ll give you this keychain, and if you amass two keychains, I’ll let you trade them in for one of these galactic-scale teddy-bears."

That’s how the guy got his teddy bear, which he now has to drag up and down the midway for the rest of the day.

Why the hell did that carny give away the teddy bear? Because it turns the guy into a walking billboard for the midway games. If that dopey-looking Judas Goat can get five balls into a peach basket, then so can you.

Except you can’t.

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: *I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!"

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

But then comes the day when the TikTok Star Chamber decides they need to lure in more astrologers, so they take the heat off that one lucky sports bro, and start heating up some lucky astrologer.

Giant teddy bears are all over the place: those Uber drivers who were boasting to the NYT ten years ago about earning $50/hour? The Substackers who were rolling in dough? Joe Rogan and his hundred million dollar Spotify payout? Those people are all the proud owners of giant teddy bears, and they’re a steal.

Because every dollar they get from the platform turns into five dollars worth of free labor from suckers who think they just internetting wrong.

Giant teddy bears are just one way of twiddling. Platforms can play games with every part of their business logic, in highly automated ways, that allows them to quickly and efficiently siphon value from end users to business customers and back again, hiding the pea in a shell game conducted at machine speeds, until they’ve got everyone so turned around that they take all the value for themselves.

That’s the how: How the platforms do the trick where they are good to users, then lock users in, then maltreat users to be good to business customers, then lock in those business customers, then take all the value for themselves.

So now we know what is happening, and how it is happening, all that’s left is why it’s happening.

Now, on the one hand, the why is pretty obvious. The less value that end-users and business customers capture, the more value there is left to divide up among the shareholders and the executives.

That’s why, but it doesn’t tell you why now. Companies could have done this shit at any time in the past 20 years, but they didn’t. Or at least, the successful ones didn’t. The ones that turned themselves into piles of shit got treated like piles of shit. We avoided them and they died.

Remember Myspace? Yahoo Search? Livejournal? Sure, they’re still serving some kind of AI slop or programmatic ad junk if you hit those domains, but they’re gone.

And there’s the clue: It used to be that if you enshittified your product, bad things happened to your company. Now, there are no consequences for enshittification, so everyone’s doing it.

Let’s break that down: What stops a company from enshittifying?

There are four forces that discipline tech companies. The first one is, obviously, competition.

If your customers find it easy to leave, then you have to worry about them leaving

Many factors can contribute to how hard or easy it is to depart a platform, like the network effects that Facebook has going for it. But the most important factor is whether there is anywhere to go.

Back in 2012, Facebook bought Insta for a billion dollars. That may seem like chump-change in these days of eleven-digit Big Tech acquisitions, but that was a big sum in those innocent days, and it was an especially big sum to pay for Insta. The company only had 13 employees, and a mere 25 million registered users.

But what mattered to Zuckerberg wasn’t how many users Insta had, it was where those users came from.

[Does anyone know where those Insta users came from?]

That’s right, they left Facebook and joined Insta. They were sick of FB, even though they liked the people there, they hated creepy Zuck, they hated the platform, so they left and they didn’t come back.

So Zuck spent a cool billion to recapture them, A fact he put in writing in a midnight email to CFO David Ebersman, explaining that he was paying over the odds for Insta because his users hated him, and loved Insta. So even if they quit Facebook (the platform), they would still be captured Facebook (the company).

Now, on paper, Zuck’s Instagram acquisition is illegal, but normally, that would be hard to stop, because you’d have to prove that he bought Insta with the intention of curtailing competition.

But in this case, Zuck tripped over his own dick: he put it in writing.

But Obama’s DoJ and FTC just let that one slide, following the pro-monopoly policies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and setting an example that Trump would follow, greenlighting gigamergers like the catastrophic, incestuous Warner-Discovery marriage.

Indeed, for 40 years, starting with Carter, and accelerating through Reagan, the US has encouraged monopoly formation, as an official policy, on the grounds that monopolies are “efficient.”

If everyone is using Google Search, that’s something we should celebrate. It means they’ve got the very best search and wouldn’t it be perverse to spend public funds to punish them for making the best product?

But as we all know, Google didn’t maintain search dominance by being best. They did it by paying bribes. More than 20 billion per year to Apple alone to be the default Ios search, plus billions more to Samsung, Mozilla, and anyone else making a product or service with a search-box on it, ensuring that you never stumble on a search engine that’s better than theirs.

Which, in turn, ensured that no one smart invested big in rival search engines, even if they were visibly, obviously superior. Why bother making something better if Google’s buying up all the market oxygen before it can kindle your product to life?

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’re not “making things” companies, they’re “buying things” companies, taking advantage of official tolerance for anticompetitive acquisitions, predatory pricing, market distorting exclusivity deals and other acts specifically prohibited by existing antitrust law.

Their goal is to become too big to fail, because that makes them too big to jail, and that means they can be too big to care.

Which is why Google Search is a pile of shit and everything on Amazon is dropshipped garbage that instantly disintegrates in a cloud of offgassed volatile organic compounds when you open the box.

Once companies no longer fear losing your business to a competitor, it’s much easier for them to treat you badly, because what’re you gonna do?

Remember Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator in those old SNL sketches? “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Competition is the first force that serves to discipline companies and the enshittificatory impulses of their leadership, and we just stopped enforcing competition law.

It takes a special kind of smooth-brained asshole – that is, an establishment economist – to insist that the collapse of every industry from eyeglasses to vitamin C into a cartel of five or fewer companies has nothing to do with policies that officially encouraged monopolization.

It’s like we used to put down rat poison and we didn’t have a rat problem.Then these dickheads convinced us that rats were good for us and we stopped putting down rat poison, and now rats are gnawing our faces off and they’re all running around saying, "Who’s to say where all these rats came from? Maybe it was that we stopped putting down poison, but maybe it’s just the Time of the Rats. The Great Forces of History bearing down on this moment to multiply rats beyond all measure!"

Antitrust didn’t slip down that staircase and fall spine-first on that stiletto: they stabbed it in the back and then they pushed it.

And when they killed antitrust, they also killed regulation, the second force that disciplines companies. Regulation is possible, but only when the regulator is more powerful than the regulated entities. When a company is bigger than the government, it gets damned hard to credibly threaten to punish that company, no matter what its sins.

That’s what protected IBM for all those years when it had its boot on the throat of the American tech sector. Do you know, the DOJ fought to break up IBM in the courts from 1970-1982, and that every year, for 12 consecutive years, IBM spent more on lawyers to fight the USG than the DOJ Antitrust Division spent on all the lawyers fighting every antitrust case in the entire USA?

IBM outspent Uncle Sam for 12 years. People called it “Antitrust’s Vietnam.” All that money paid off, because by 1982, the president was Ronald Reagan, a man whose official policy was that monopolies were “efficient." So he dropped the case, and Big Blue wriggled off the hook.

It’s hard to regulate a monopolist, and it’s hard to regulate a cartel. When a sector is composed of hundreds of competing companies, they compete. They genuinely fight with one another, trying to poach each others’ customers and workers. They are at each others’ throats.

It’s hard enough for a couple hundred executives to agree on anything. But when they’re legitimately competing with one another, really obsessing about how to eat each others’ lunches, they can’t agree on anything.

The instant one of them goes to their regulator with some bullshit story, about how it’s impossible to have a decent search engine without fine-grained commercial surveillance; or how it’s impossible to have a secure and easy to use mobile device without a total veto over which software can run on it; or how it’s impossible to administer an ISP’s network unless you can slow down connections to servers whose owners aren’t paying bribes for “premium carriage"; there’s some *other company saying, “That’s bullshit”

“We’ve managed it! Here’s our server logs, our quarterly financials and our customer testimonials to prove it.”

100 companies are a rabble, they're a mob. They can’t agree on a lobbying position. They’re too busy eating each others’ lunch to agree on how to cater a meeting to discuss it.

But let those hundred companies merge to monopoly, absorb one another in an incestuous orgy, turn into five giant companies, so inbred they’ve got a corporate Habsburg jaw, and they become a cartel.

It’s easy for a cartel to agree on what bullshit they’re all going to feed their regulator, and to mobilize some of the excess billions they’ve reaped through consolidation, which freed them from “wasteful competition," so they can capture their regulators completely.

You know, Congress used to pass federal consumer privacy laws? Not anymore.

The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.

The threat of having your video rental history out there in the public eye was not the last or most urgent threat the American public faced, and yet, Congress is deadlocked on passing a privacy law.

Tech companies’ regulatory capture involves a risible and transparent gambit, that is so stupid, it’s an insult to all the good hardworking risible transparent ruses out there.

Namely, they claim that when they violate your consumer, privacy or labor rights, It’s not a crime, because they do it with an app.

Algorithmic wage discrimination isn’t illegal wage theft: we do it with an app.

Spying on you from asshole to appetite isn’t a privacy violation: we do it with an app.

And Amazon’s scam search tool that tricks you into paying 29% more than the best match for your query? Not a ripoff. We do it with an app.

[ladyylesbian]

ripped jeans (18+)

pairing: top!natasha romanoff x bottom!fem!reader

summary: natasha eases her fiancée nerves while stuck in traffic

warnings: MINORS DNI! pretty public sex, car sex, fingering (r receiving), pet names (princess, baby, babe, good girl), daddy kink, degrading (whore, slut, brat, toy), praise kink, nipple play, clit play, exhibitionsm, dash of voyerism 

word count: 2267

a/n: this is the first time i have ever written smut and idk if i will again lol but hopefully this doesn't completely suck. thank you to @kitmoas for encouraging me as i was writing, dealing with the mayhem that was me writing this, and for their loving editing of the fic for me <3

original inspiration: “Your ass looks good in these jeans” @loqov 

you do not have permission to translate/repost my works anywhere! all mistakes are mine and mine alone. likes, comments, and reblogs are always welcome & appreciated <3

GIF by @thelastavenger-3000​

As Natasha leans against the chilled front door she can just make out the sound of the engine of the car trying to warm up. The redhead knows that you’re nervous to meet her family and has been trying to think of ways to help calm your nerves; however even her own nerves cannot always be filtered out, “You need to hurry or we’re going to be late.” 

You release a deep exhale at the sound of your fiancée’s words. Giving yourself a final look in the mirror, double checking that your makeup isn’t smudged and that you don't have a hair out of place, to try and release some of your nerves you give yourself a small shake. Walking out of your ensuite bathroom into your shared bedroom you begin to look for the perfect outfit. You don’t even hear the Avenger open the door as she enters. She notices you trying to decide on clothes to wear and moves quickly to grab her favorite pair of ripped jeans on you.

Natasha tosses the pair over to you, smirking slyly when they land on your head, “You should wear these— your ass looks good in these jeans.” You can't help but smile even as you roll your eyes. Checking the time, you hurriedly put on the pair of pants and throw on a simple white t-shirt before picking up your pair of flats as you rush out the door and get into the car.

----------

Looking over at the redhead you can tell she’s tense as well, but you’re unsure if she’s just sympathetically nervous about your first time meeting her family or something else. However, your thoughts are cut short once you see the standstill traffic ahead of you on the interstate. Natasha’s foot slowly applies pressure on the break as two semi-trucks stop on either side of the car, boxing you in.

You’re pulled from your thoughts as you feel the former assassins hand land on your thigh, “Baby, you’re just going to get more stressed waiting in this traffic, so let me distract you so you’ll relax.”

As your eyes lock with hers you muster up the words, “I don’t think anything would be able to distract me enough to relax, babe.” 

Natasha smirks at the statement, mumbling a quick witted expression of ‘oh I’ll take that challenge’. Her eyes dropped down as her hand started playing with the rips in your jeans causing the premade rips to widen. Quickly removing her hand to move on to untuck your white shirt from your jeans. “I’ll get you to be nice and relaxed, princess. Don’t worry.” 

Pale fingers go to unbutton your jeans with ease, swiftly pushing down the zipper after. The red head ran the pads of her fingers along the fabric of your underwear, reaching down to lightly brush over your clit, causing you to take a sharp inhale. “Natas-”

“Daddy—” the Avenger corrected sternly, her tone unwavering.

You gulped desperately trying to find the redhead’s eyes yet failing before continuing, “D-Daddy… someone could see us.”

A dark chuckle breaks from your fiancée’s mouth, “Oh, princess, I hope someone does.” 

Natasha removes her hands from your body causing a whorish whine to slip past your lips as she goes to move the gear shift into park. A devilish smirk plasters across her face as her eyes illuminate with desire as she scans you over, bringing her hands up to grope your boobs whilst brushing her thumbs over your nipples. “Can Daddy have some fun with her toy?” The former assassin questions, egging you on as she pulls tauntingly on your nipples. A shiver ran through your body at the touch as a breathless ‘yes’ left your mouth.

“As much as I love those jeans on you, I’m going to need them around your ankles now.” A shot of heat hits directly at your center causing you to still before speedily lifting up your hips to push down your pants with vigor. Your fiancée’s hand finds itself back on your thigh squeezing lightly before moving her up and inward.  Her fingers curled into you, dragging her fingertips back up towards the apex of your thighs, leaving slightly elevated red lines from the paths her nails took. 

Natasha moved intricately, her fingers running up your thigh and along the waistband of your black lace underwear, slightly slipping her fingers inside once she reaches the center of your pelvis. Small whines start leaving your mouth as you look over to the driver’s side of the car, a silent and warranted plea coming from you. A pleased smile makes its way across the Avenger’s face, “You need to tell Daddy what you want, princess.”

After a few seconds you finally respond to your partner, “I wan- I want Daddy… I want Daddy to finger me right here…right now.” The smile spread seductively on the redhead’s face, showing just how proud she is at asking for what you wanted. 

Natasha brings her hand up to cup your face as you lean into her embrace, “Now that is my good girl. Daddy is going to take good care of you, don't worry.” 

She dropped her hand from your face, sliding it down to glide over your covered mound. Her fingers slowly curled up and down, stopping right below your aching clit, feeling the wet patch grow tentatively on your underwear. 

“Do you think you’re ready for more?” Natasha broods, watching her own movements. 

You nod your head in anticipation, joining it with mumbled approval. The Avenger guides your legs as she places your feet firmly onto the dash and spreads your knees apart to give herself room. She pulls her finger up slightly to press down on your swollen bud, earning a jerk upwards from your exposed hips. A sharp pinch met your clit with a quick pull and release, the Russian passing a vulgar moan. She ran her fingers out to the sides of your underwear, pushing gradually underneath the edges as her fingers join back together applying fair pressure right at your entrance, “Only a true slut could be this wet when anyone can look to their side mirrors and see my pussy getting played with.”

Another wave of arousal hits, making your center clench around nothing and a grin to appear back on the former assassin's face. Natasha collected your wetness along her slender fingers before sinking them in knuckle deep to only pull them back out. A deep exhale came from your lips, “Daddy please..take me.”

The redhead releases her own soft moan at your begging, bottoming her fingers out inside of your gripping walls, glancing up to meet your eyes as she curls her digits— feeling for that spongy spot inside you and causing your eyes to snap shut.

Natasha removes her finger quickly, giving a firm slap to your inner thigh, making your eyes snap open connecting with Natasha’s, “Eyes open slut. I want you to know exactly the situation you put yourself in for your Daddy.” 

Her words have always left you sputtering, spinning, and weak at the knees. She always knew exactly what to say to get your mind empty and incoherent, completely ready to be whatever she wanted you to be. Your eyes beg to stay locked onto the vibrant green in front of you as you feel your chin being pushed forward to look at the traffic in front of you. Your fiancée’s fingers slowly push back into you. Your eyes threaten to close again but you force them to stay open and remain focusing forward, “That’s my good girl. Such a good princess for me.”

Natasha’s pace is slow at first, wanting to feel every inch of you, to feel every clench and jerk your body makes while her other hand moves to the top of your head, pushing back the strands of hair falling in front of your face, “I don’t want to miss the look on your poor face as you cum on my fingers.” 

After a few more slow pumps the former assassin starts to move at a faster pace. Your hands move from your upper thighs to your fiancée’s wrist, trying to control her movements, but when it comes to strength the redhead has always had you beat. Natasha has never been one to miss a day at the gym, but even more so on arm day. This one fact has always come in handy when she’s out saving the world as an Avenger, yet here she is unable to think of a better reason for her obsessive gym behavior than to have your feet on the dash fingering you as the two of you sat in traffic.

Dropping the hand she had placed on your head to the front of your shirt, she grabs roughly onto your breast as she keeps her ever increasing speed pumping in and out of your cunt, “There is something so undeniably hot about fucking someone when they’re still half dressed.”

Your brain is quickly becoming foggy at the actions and words falling from your fiancée. You desperately try to ground your focus on anything else except the growing tightness collecting in your stomach; so you look towards the traffic searching for something to focus on and notice the head of the semi truck driver in the side mirror. It was impossible to hide the wave of arousal washing over you at the realization all this driver would need to do is turn their side slightly to see you knees spread, panties pushed aside, getting brought to an orgasm. You don’t even notice the small rocking of your hips trying to desperately find the palm of Natasha’s hand to satisfy the pulsing throb in your untouched clit. 

“Such a pathetic little slut. Do you need Daddy to rub some circles on this clit?”, the Russian cooes while placing alternating light and firm taps directly on your clit. No coherent response is able to leave your mouth as the Russian already begins to use her thumb to start applying tight circles on your clit. A moan catches with a gasp, falling trapped in your throat. You use whatever strength you can gather in your arms to lift your body up slightly from the seat, desperate to ease the overwhelming tightness in your stomach, “I’m waiting on an answer whore.”

“Ye-Yes, Daddy, ple-please keep..keep going ”, You stumbled over your words, unable to focus on anything except for your fiancée’s touch. The combination of her fingers filling you up and the attention to your clit had you reaching a new level of pleasure with each passing second. Any thoughts that try to enter your mind are thrown away as you feel a pair of lips start to kiss along your neck. The string of burning kisses coming to a stop right above your sweet spot, Natasha mumbles, “You look so pretty right before you fall apart.”

The former assassin begins to suck down harshly with full intent to leave a dark purple mark against your skin. She was never one to pass up the opportunity to let everyone know exactly who you belonged to. Subconsciously you tilted your head, opening up your neck to welcome the familiar pair of lips back onto your skin. The fire that had been burning in your core is now spreading up your body, the mark leaving behind a pulsing feeling as she pulls away with a pop. Biting down lightly right over the bruise, the redhead then soothes the area with a steady lave across it with the tip of her tongue.

A whine leaves your mouth as you feel Natasha pull out her slick fingers, “Don’t be a brat,” she hisses, adding a third finger. The return of her thumb on your clit has you winding up faster than anticipated. Re-inserting her fingers and adjusting her angle, the Avenger begins a brutal pace with her only focus being on making you cum. 

Your breathing falls rapidly as your chest rises and falls. The feeling of your fiancée’s fingers repeatedly hitting directly into that soft, spongy spot which has your toes curling and your knuckles turning white from your grip on the seat. Right as you were getting familiar with the pleasure, she suddenly changes her movement on your clit. Hums and moans of approval start pouring out of your mouth filling the Russian with motivation as she increases her speed of driving into you. 

“Be a good whore— and cum for me”, the name combined with the command causes your brain to short circuit. The tightening coil in your stomach finally snaps as you release a loud moan, coming undone on your fiancée’s fingers, “God you sound better than anything else on the radio.” 

Panting as you come down from your high, you feel fingers poke at your lips, so you open your mouth to suck on the fingers greedily that had just been giving you intense pleasure.  “Such a good toy” Natasha broods before grabbing your face and connecting your lips in a deepened kiss.

“God, now I’ll need to try and salvage my makeup and hair…” You exhale, pulling down the passenger seat mirror. “Natasha, you left a hickey! We are literally on the way to meet your family! I don’t have any makeup to cover this up!” 

The smirking Avenger tunes you out quickly as she looks forward to that same side mirror, greeted with a smile and curt nod from the semi truck driver that she gladly returns, “I think these jeans could be your good luck charm.”

[kurtie4life96]

hii i would like to request prompts 10+11 from the angst category with steve harrington!

But make it horror, tis the spooky season

The Crybaby/ S.H. x F Reader

Summary: Reader has been haunted by a spirit of a woman for as long as she can remember, and is on a mission to figure out who it is with her best friend Steve by her side.

CW: angst, horror, blood, violence, the paranormal, time is an illusion, mystery, upside down, reader has a nickname, reader lives with Steve but "just friends", and I cannot stress this enough - there is no happy ending.

Lightly edited.

Your eyes shot open as you sat up from your bed gasping, nearly hyperventilating, your lips chapped, split from heavy breathing, as you felt the all too familiar ominous, yet somehow melancholic feeling in the pit of your stomach.

You glanced over to your left at the clock set on a nightstand.

3:37 a.m.

Please, not again.

You've woken up in a cold sweat at this very time every night, ever since you could remember.

You forced your breathing to slow as you dared to scan your surroundings, the dreaded but all too familiar feeling never leaving your body.

The moonlight barely peeked through the window, a cold, blue shade illuminating the bedroom, your quivering skin, the beads of sweat on your face, your closet, the barely cracked open door, your dresser and your clothes scattered about.

And then you heard it again.

The familiar, soft sobs coming from the right side of the room.

You felt your hair raise on the back of your neck, and quietly, slowly turned your head to the right of the room, to the noise.

There she was, her dark figure peering through the window as usual, her back towards you. Her long, black disheveled hair, jacket dirtied and stained with a thick, dark liquid, a putrid, rotten smell filling your nostrils, as if she'd been decaying for some time now.

She always looked the same without fail, every single night.

She continued to weep as she clutched the curtains, the kind of crying you'd hear from someone yearning, mourning, grieving even.

You watched her wail in the darkness for what felt like an eternity, goosebumps scattering your skin, the only other sound in your room being your heart pounding loudly against your chest, as you fearfully waited for what was to come next, because it was routine for you now.

The woman stopped crying abruptly, releasing the curtains from her tight grasp, bringing her arms down gently to her sides, standing, as she peered through the window silently for a moment longer.

You instinctively brought your legs up to your chest and held the comforter close to you, as she slowly began to sit down on the edge of the bed.

She rested her arms delicately on her lap, her bloodied, injured hands overlapping each other as the smell of her decaying flesh grew stronger, stinging your eyes.

You stared at her, waiting for her to make a move, although knowing she wouldn't until you spoke first.

You shuddered, having to remind yourself to breathe, as you would often forget to in this situation.

You gathered up your courage quickly, wanting this nightmare to end as soon as possible.

"Please, stop," you barely croaked.

The woman didn't respond, continuing to stare out the window.

You took a deep, shaky breath.

"Leave me alone, please," you pleaded in a whisper.

Still, no response.

"Why are you doing this? Please, stop. You're scaring me."

Silence.

"Please, just go away, leave me the fuck alone!" You screamed at the top of your lungs.

With that, the woman shot her head over to yours, horrifyingly rapid, a regretful, sorrowful look on her face, eyes blackened, tears staining her face as she reached an arm towards you.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" You screamed, screwing your eyes shut, your heart threatening to jump out of your throat.

"A.J!" A worried voice exclaimed, barging into your bedroom and flipping the light on.

You opened your eyes, hyperventilating, fear stricken.

She was gone.

You glanced over to your left, wide eyed, instantly feeling relief.

"Steve," you gasped, "oh my god."

Harrington clumsily made his way towards the side of your bed, pulling you into a tight hug as your breathing slowed.

He smoothed the hair plastered to your drenched face away, and rubbed your back in an effort to comfort you.

"Another nightmare?" He asked.

You sighed, frustrated at his question.

"It's not a nightmare, Steve. It's real life." You reminded him, your voice cracking.

"I know, I know, but," he pulled away, still staying close, "this happens to you damn near every night."

"Yeah, I know it's every night. And it's fucking real. I know the difference between dreams and what's right in front of me."

Steve clasped his hands together, exhaling.

"The Crybaby ghost again?"

"Of course it's Crybaby, it's never been anyone else," you groaned.

Steve was quiet for a moment, before saying, "You know, we've seen a lot of shit, The Upside Down, Vecna, the demo-everything, but... I've yet to see a ghost."

"Exactly. That's why you, of all people, should believe me!" You spat.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he started, "I do believe you! I do! I believe that you're seeing her, I believe everything you're saying, but maybe it's like... sleep paralysis or something."

You crossed your arms and turned away from him.

"It's not sleep paralysis, asshole."

He sat up from the bed, running his hand through his hair.

"Well, sorry, I guess," he began to walk towards the door, "can I get you a glass of water or something?"

You shook your head, still feeling overwhelmed.

"Alright, well, I'll let you get back to sleep-"

"Steve?" You interrupted him, pleading in your eyes.

His features softened, a knowing smile on his face.

"Yes?"

"Um, do you think you could, you know, sleep in my bed with me the rest of the night? I'm, just... I don't wanna be alone."

He walked back over to you, flopping himself on the bed in a dramatic manner.

"Of course I will. Anytime you want me to, you know I will."

You sniffled a bit, and smiled. "Thank you."

He walked over to turn the light off again.

"Also, do you think you could-"

"Sleep on the side by the window?" He interrupted.

You nodded, feeling a little embarassed. "Yeah."

Steve turned out the light, crawling into bed with you. You pulled the covers tightly over yourself, looking at him with scared eyes.

He let out a breathy chuckle. "C'mere, AJ."

He pulled you in tightly to him, pressing your body against his. You nuzzled into his chest, feeling safe as he cradled you.

"That's what friends are for," he said tiredly, before he quickly fell asleep, snoring. You smiled a bit, drifting off soon after him.

===============================

Steve "The Hair" Harrington had been your friend, one of your closest confidantes since middle school. You were there for him when the two of you started high school, through his douchebag days, through his heartbreak with Nancy, through all the terrors of the Upside Down, and through his redemption and babysitter days, and he was always there for you, too.

He was there for you through your own first heartbreaks, through your awkward blue eyeshadow and red lipstick phase, fighting your bullies for you- although he got his ass kicked nearly everytime- and had saved your ass multiple times through the horrors that lie underneath Hawkins, not to mention your "night terrors".

You were also both there for each other when it came to your families- his almost always absent parents, and your abusive, alcoholic ones. You would sometimes sleep over at his house as an escape, and the first time you did, he'd asked you what you wanted for breakfast. To his amusement, you'd downed three bowls of Applejacks cereal, earning you the affectionate nickname, "AJ".

Once the two of you had graduated high school, and you'd turned 18, he offered for you to move into his empty house to escape your toxic household. You denied his offer at first, telling him you didn't want him to feel like you were just using him for a place to stay, but he eventually convinced you after a year of begging, saying there were plenty of spare rooms, and that you two were best friends, that he knew you would never just use him for a roof over your head.

Best friends.

Sometimes those words stung.

===============================

You'd been living at Steve's house for over three months now. It was definitely a huge weight lifted off your shoulders, and you were eternally grateful for it, but you still couldn't get rid of the entity, the woman who'd had an attachment to you since you were a child.

Steve had always teased you for giving her the name "The Crybaby", saying that she probably kept bothering you because of what you called her, but you didn't know her real name, and she would just... cry. She had never done anything to harm you, except for scare the ever living shit out of you, and it was always the same every night at the same time. You'd wake up, she'd cry at the window, she'd sit down on the bed, and would disappear when she'd reach her arm out to you. It was always the same- until recently.

Within the last week, the routine had slightly changed.

At first, she would began to whisper after crying. It was so quiet, her words were unintelligible. Then, her whispering would get a little louder each night, her words still unclear, until last night.

Last night, she had sat down, reached her arm out to you, and whispered

"The portal. I'm sorry."

"Hey, you there?" Steve snapped his fingers in front of your face, a concerned look on his.

You came back to reality, and cleared your throat. You were sat at the kitchen island.

"Sorry, I was just thinking about something. Um, what'd you say?"

He raised his eyebrows at you, motioning to the pantry, "I asked what you wanted for breakfast."

"Oh, Applejacks, please." You both said in unison, him slightly mocking you.

"Stop!" You laughed as Steve pulled the cereal box out of the pantry.

"Sorry, can't help it. Just know you too well," he poured you and himself a bowl, and grabbed the milk from the fridge.

"So," he started, grabbing spoons, "what were you so lost in thought about?"

He sat next to you and began to eat, as you pursed your lips, not yet touching your breakfast.

"So?" He asked again.

"Well..." you replied, sighing, "I saw Crybaby again last night."

"Yeah?" He took another bite.

"Yeah, except last night, was different."

"Different how?"

You scoffed. "You're just gonna tell me it's a bad nightmare again."

Steve set his spoon down and turned towards you, placing his hands on your knees.

"No I won't. I promise. Tell me what happened. Please." He looked at you with his stupid teddy bear eyes.

"Okay, well," you tried not to blush at his contact, "last night, she actually spoke to me. Like, real words."

"What did she say?"

You glanced at his face, worry on yours.

"She said, 'The portal. I'm sorry.'"

Steve paused, unresponsive for a moment, and looked to the ground, deep in thought.

"The portal?" He repeated.

You nodded.

"The only portal we know of-"

"Is the Upside Down." You finished his sentence.

"Well, the last portal we saw was in the woods, behind Hawkins High." He reminded, glancing back up to you.

"I know." you stared at his hands that still rested on your knees.

"Well, it's probably just a coincidence-"

"You know it's not, Steve," you argued, "after all we've gone through, you know it's not."

He let go of your knees, leaning back. "Well, what are you proposing?"

"I propose that I go down there and find out for myself!" You demanded.

He sighed, frustrated, "Find out what, exactly?"

"I don't know, Steve, maybe I can find out why she's been bothering me, talking to me, how to make her stop!"

He went silent for a few seconds, tapping his fingers on the counter.

"Well, what if it really is just a coincidence? What then?" He raised his eyebrows.

You smirked, staring at him teasingly, before replying, "I'll make dinner every night, for a week."

He clapped his hands together and laughed, "I like the sound of that."

"Sweet," you giggled, "but if I'm right, what's in it for me?"

Steve looked at you questioningly.

You rolled your eyes. "I mean, what if I'm right? What if it's not just a coincidence?"

"Oh, well..." He thought for a moment. "I guess I'll cook dinner for a week, too."

You smiled, and held out your hand.

"Deal."

"Deal," he shook your hand, then yanked you closer to him, "but if you think you're going alone, you're wrong. I'm going with you. No way you're going by yourself, okay?"

You were quiet for a moment, feeling your cheeks turn hot, Steve's face only inches from yours.

"Okay." You breathed.

===============================

After the both of you spent the day debating on how you were going to execute your plan, you both showered up, got dressed into your protective gear, and got into Steve's car. It was the middle of the night now, as you didn't want to draw any attention.

Crickets chirped as he pulled over to the side of the road next to the woods after a mostly silent car ride. The air was chilly as you stepped out of the car, the dried leaves from autumn crunching underneath your feet as you took your first steps into the woods, turning on your flashlights.

"Wait," Steve abruptly stopped, grabbing your shoulder tightly.

"What?" You asked, a little annoyed.

He grabbed both of your shoulders now, looking at you earnestly.

"Remember, you're not allowed to go in there by yourself. You go, I go too. Don't do anything stupid, okay?"

You huffed. "I'm not a little fucking girl, I don't need a man to save me, alright?"

"No, no, no," he assured, "I know you're not. But, it's too dangerous to go in there alone. And... you're my best friend, you know?" He smiled at you, some kind of adoration in his eyes.

"Yeah, best friends," you scoffed, mumbling underneath your breath as you began to walk again.

"What was that?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing, I didn't really say anything-"

"No, sorry, that was a stupid question. I heard you, actually." Steve chuckled nervously.

You stared at him, unsure of what to say.

"Best friends, that's what you said," he started.

"Steve, we should really go-"

"No," he took a step closer to you, close enough to feel his warm breath against your cold skin, grabbing your hands, "Hold on a second."

"Okay..." you responded, hesitance in your voice.

He sighed, "AJ, we've been best friends this whole time, I know, but... have we, really? I mean... we live together, we even cuddle sometimes when you're scared, we know each other better than anyone else does, you know? So, I don't know, maybe it's something different, maybe..." He trailed off.

Your heart began to beat against your chest, as butterflies danced in your stomach. You stared at his face, his stupid face that you loved so much, through wide eyes, as you clutched his hands back tighter.

Is this what's happening right now, of all times?

"Steve," you whispered.

He let go of your hands.

"Just- come here."

He grabbed your face, and pressed his lips against yours, hard, yet so gentle, passionate, warm, desperate, everything all at once.

You kissed back just as quickly, wrapping your arms around his shoulders, raking a gentle hand through his hair. He broke the drawn out kiss, only to take a quick breath and do it again, this time more delicately, at first short and quick, then long and slow. Your tongues just barely glided over each others, kissing in perfect harmony, in perfect sync.

Steve pulled away, and pressed his forehead against yours, the both of you breathlessly laughing in relief, the both of you still holding each other.

"Just in case." He panted.

You smiled.

"Just in case."

He nodded, grinning ear to ear, "Let's go."

He let go of your face and held your hand tightly, leading the way.

After a few minutes of walking through the dark woods, flashlights in hand, Steve stopped in his tracks.

"What's wrong?" You asked.

"Do you smell that?" His face curled up in disgust. "Jesus, that's..."

The stench hit you like a ton of bricks.

"Oh my god."

He quickly glanced at you.

"Steve, that's... that's her. She's here."

You held a death grip on his hand, using your flashlights to look at your surroundings.

She was nowhere in sight.

"Steve, we have to- we have to follow the smell."

His face still scrunched up in revulsion, he nodded, and the two of you kept trekking.

After 20 more minutes of navigating your way through the trees, you stopped when you saw a red light in the distance.

"There it is," Steve said in a loud whisper, "there's the portal."

You stood silent, staring at it, the smell becoming stronger.

"You still sure you wanna do this?" He asked, a hint of hope in his voice, hoping you would say no, hoping that you would turn around and just go home.

You simply nodded. "Yeah. I can't live like this anymore. Let's go."

He looked at the portal, then looked at you worriedly, before hesitantly walking towards it, your hand still in his, guiding you.

As you approached the brightly red lit portal on the ground, you peered into it, seeing the usual dreary environment of the Upside Down, vines snaking through the dead leaves surrounding the opening, hearing hissing and screeches faintly coming through it.

Steve peered into it too, placing a hand on his spiked baseball bat, grasping it tightly, preparing for whatever horrors might come out.

"AJ," he breathed heavily, "I'm really thinking that this is not a good idea, I think we should turn around now."

"No," you continued to stare into the depths, "I have to do this. I feel like... like I'm supposed to do this. Like I'm supposed to be here, in this very moment." You said quietly.

Steve gulped and nodded.

"Okay."

Suddenly, an ominous feeling formed itself in your abdomen. A bone chilling, twisted feeling that made your stomach flip, goosebumps forming on your skin, the hair raising on the back of your neck.

The all too familiar feeling.

"Steve," you barely whispered, "turn off your flashlight."

He glanced over to you, a worried look on his face.

"Okay." He whispered back.

You both switched off your flashlights.

The sound of a woman softly weeping filled the thick air.

You glanced back up from the portal to see her.

Her.

She was standing right in front of you.

Standing right there, holding her dark, bloodied hands up to her face as she cried.

The jacket, stained with a black, thick liquid. Her hair, matted and also stained with a dark liquid. You could barely make out her features in the shadows.

You screamed and tumbled backwards, squeezing Steve's hand, taking him to the ground with you.

You both panted heavily, hyperventilating as you watched the woman before you weep.

"What the FUCK is that?!" He shrieked, a crack in his voice.

"That's her, that's Crybaby." You whimpered.

Sucking in desperate breaths, the air filled with the stench of her rotting skin, the two of you watched in horror as she brought her hands down from her face, placing her arms gently by her sides.

You scrambled on the ground, trying to find your flashlight in desperation as you muttered to yourself in fear.

You found it.

"What do you want?!" You shouted, turning on the light and shining it to her face.

Your breathing stopped.

Steve's breathing stopped.

It was as if the world stopped all around you entirely, as the unsettling realization slowly came to you.

The woman stared at you, her tears streaming down her dirtied, brutalized face.

"Steve," you whispered, your voice shaking, "That's... that's-"

"You."

You looked at each other with fear stricken eyes, the blood draining from your faces, pale, shuddering.

Glancing back to the woman, you saw she was still staring right at you- or, you were staring at yourself.

"I'm sorry." She said quietly, looking down into the portal.

Her body hovered barely inches off the ground, floating over the top of the portal, before she became transparent, disappearing entirely.

"Steve-"

Before you could squeeze his hand again, the vines of the Upside Down rapidly shot out through the portal, wrapping around your legs firmly and began dragging your body as you screamed.

"AJ!" He shrieked, trying to grab your arm, to no avail, only missing you by mere centimeters.

You clawed at the ground desperately as the vines dragged you further, pulling you into the portal.

Your back hit the ground, knocking the wind out of you, as the vines snaked around your limbs and neck, constricting your breathing and holding you tightly to the cold, hard dirt.

Steve's cries were the last thing you heard as he tried to dive in after you, only for the portal to shut completely, his body hitting the ground above it with a thump as it closed.

You tried to scream, tried to call for help, tried to wiggle your way out from the vines grasp, but it was too strong, squeezed onto you too tightly for you to move or make a sound.

A figure stood next to you as you looked over, instantly recognizing your own pants, your own shoes, the only difference being hers was caked in dirt and rotten blood.

She leaned down towards you as you struggled for air, her brushing your hair out of your face delicately with her gashed hand, face brutalized and crying as her blackened eyes stared deeply into yours.

"I'm sorry."

You heard the all too familiar screech of the creatures that inhabited the hell you were stuck in as she disappeared one last time.

A swarm of demobats came flying towards you, and surrounded you as they began to sink their teeth into you instantly, tearing your flesh.

The pain was too intense, like a million knives stabbing you, twisting and turning mercilessly, but there was nothing you could do, as you stared into the red sky, tears streaming down your face as you hoped, prayed that the portal would open, that Steve would fight them off, that he would save you, that the pain would stop.

It didn't.

The demobats ripped nearly all the skin on your body apart as you laid there helplessly, tasting your own blood in your mouth, your eyes squeezed shut from the excruciating pain for what felt like an eternity, until your body went into shock, no longer feeling anything at all, everything completely numb as you began to slip into unconsciousness.

The bats had been long gone now, the vines no longer constricting you, unbeknownst to you. You lay there in a pool of your own blood, awaiting your fate.

It was then you heard a faint noise coming from above you, making you barely open your eyes, and you felt a body hit the ground next to you.

"AJ!" Steve screamed, scrambling over you, "AJ! Oh my god!"

You turned your eyes slowly to look at him, panic written all over his face.

"Steve," you croaked, only to cough, choking on the blood that had now filled your throat.

"AJ, hey, it's okay, I'm right here! Holy shit, holy shit-"

He ripped his shirt hastily, holding the fabric to your neck in an attempt to stop even more blood loss. He slipped his arms underneath your back and legs, holding your cold body close to him.

"Come on AJ, talk to me, please!" He pleaded with you.

Using all of the energy you had left in you, you smiled at him.

"Steve."

He smiled painfully back at you, "There you go, yeah, keep talking to me, it's gonna be alright, we're gonna get you help, get you out of here-"

"Steve," you whispered, "stop it."

Tears filled his eyes as he looked into yours, shaking his head, "No, no, no, you're not dying, whether you like it or not."

He began to lift you up, only to make you gasp in pain.

"Shit, shit," he stopped, gently lowering you again, "I'm sorry, don't worry, we're gonna figure this out, and you're gonna be okay-"

"Steve," you whimpered softly, pleading with him, "please, stop. It hurts."

Tears filled his eyes as he looked into yours, panic stricken, choking back sobs.

"AJ, I'm so sorry. I love you, I love you so much." He pressed a kiss to your forehead as you felt his body tremble against yours.

"I love you," you stuttered between your words, tears stinging your eyes, "I'm..."

Your vision began to cloud, slowly fading to black, your body beginning to slump even further.

"Hey," Steve shouted, "Hey! What are you doing?!"

He grabbed your face and shook your head, slapping your cheek lightly.

"Wake up!"

No response came from you.

"WAKE UP!"

Your last breath audibly escaped your lungs, eyes still open, your heart ceasing to beat.

"Come on, come on," he pleaded, "You need to wake up, I can't do this without you!"

===============================

Quiet.

Steve was finally quiet, after an eternity of his attempts to wake you up, after realizing that you were gone, after realizing that you weren't coming back, after realizing that you really did die, cradled in his arms.

It took him hours to let you go, to leave your body in the Upside Down, him promising that he would come back for you, come back to the portal with your friends, to get help to get you out.

When he did come back with Robin and Nancy, it was daylight, and the portal was gone, much to his dismay.

He spent the rest of the day in the woods, numb, his soul shattered, waiting for it to open again, so he could retrieve your lifeless body from its depths.

When it finally did, your body was no longer there.

He scoured every bit of the environment he possibly could, for months, but was never able to find you.

Steve tortured himself, blamed himself, hated himself, every day for the rest of his life, for agreeing to go to the woods, for taking you there and leading you to your fate.

You weren't exactly a big help, either.

It didn't help that every night, at 3:37 a.m. without fail, you would wake him up, crying, sobbing as you watched him, as the sight of your bloodied, rotted, massacred body, and your disheveled, black hair filled him with terror.

It didn't help that every night, without fail, you would reach your gashed hand out to him, as he forgot to breathe, whispering,

"The portal. I'm sorry."

[jingyismom]

Lan Wangji is so preoccupied on one of his precious, rare nighthunts with Wei Wuxian that he does not feel it when a tiny, quiet curse latches onto him. It is so small and inconsequential that it remains unnoticed until long after Wei Wuxian has gone, and long after it has taken firm hold of Lan Wangji’s meridians.

(Rated T, wangxian, no warnings) (imported from twt and lightly edited)

It doesn't do much, at first. Just sits in his spiritual veins, simmering darkly, weakly. But it grows. Lan Wangji can feel it growing. He researches thoroughly in the Cloud Recesses library, tries every technique he knows. But he cannot shake it.

Most people have no idea anything is wrong. Not even when the pain begins. Not even when Hanguang-jun stops leaving the Cloud Recesses altogether, or when he teaches less and less. He still looks the same. Acts the same. People assume he is focusing on his spiritual development.

The truth is that the pain is constant. It thrums deep in his bones, in his soul. And sometimes it rises up and pulls at his muscles like a child tugging on a sleeve for attention. These are the times that prevent him from nighthunting, from riding his sword. From teaching.

It comes on unexpectedly, and renders him speechless, incapable of moving.

Lan Wangji does not know what it wants.

His family are deeply concerned. Zewu-jun comes out of seclusion. They continue to search for answers.

A month passes.

Sizhui quietly sends for Wei Wuxian.

He meets him at the gate, obviously agitated. Wei Wuxian's building happiness at being asked back, at seeing them all again and wanting to be seen, evaporates.

"What is it?" he asks.

Sizhui vacillates. Hanguang-jun has clearly not told Wei Wuxian anything himself, dashing his rather consciously futile hopes that they've been in secret correspondence about the curse the entire time. He's never gone behind Hanguang-jun's back about anything before. Sending the message was hard enough.

He bows, apologetic. "Come inside first?"

Wei Wuxian follows him to the disciple dorms, and to the room where they take their tea. Distantly fond memories wash over him, discordant with the acute worry he feels now. Jingyi is there, looking even more harried than Sizhui. He seems like he hasn’t slept in days.

Wei Wuxian sits with them. They stare at their teacups. It takes about two distant trills of birdsong before Wei Wuxian gives up on waiting them out.

"Speak!" he demands. "What is wrong with you two??"

Sizhui startles and bows again. "Thank you for coming, Wei-qianbei," he says. "Ah. We have...there is...an academic question that we need help with."

Like most of the Lan who raised him, he's a terrible liar.

"Alright," Wei Wuxian allows.

"If there were a curse...a mystery curse...that just seemed to cause pain. How would you go about removing it?"

"You're cursed?" Wei Wuxian asks, a jolt of fear in his chest. But he looks fine. He turns to Jingyi. "Is it you?"

"No!" Sizhui hurries to assure him. "No. We're not...no. We just need to know. If you could. Direct us toward possible solutions."

Wei Wuxian narrows his eyes at him, trying to guess at what it is he's not being told. He wonders, briefly, if they would tell him if it were Lan Qiren. If they would think him so mercenary as to not help the old man in a time of need.

He hopes that's not it. But either way, they need him.

"Well, it depends," he begins. "I'm going to need more information. And you're going to need to take notes."

They spend the morning in the library, books forgotten, making charts and arrays and talismans based on the information they have. If it weren't so stressful not to know the truth, Wei Wuxian would call it one of his best days in a long while. But then, some time after midday, a long shadow falls across Wei Wuxian's writing desk, and he looks up to see Lan Zhan standing over him.

He looks surprised. Shocked, even. And not exactly happy, though not upset to see him, either.

Wei Wuxian tries a smile, and a tentative greeting. "Lan Zhan."

Lan Zhan merely looks at the two boys beside him, his jaw going tight.

"Sizhui," he says. His tone is admonishing.

Wei Wuxian starts to feel, quite suddenly, extremely awful. The clarity with which he is not wanted here, not allowed, is staggering. He stands.

"Don't blame him," he says, automatic. "I shouldn't have—he just wanted help. It was overstepping on my part, to come all the way here just for an academic question."

Lan Zhan blinks at him, then Looks at Sizhui.

Sizhui straightens. "He's been helping us. With our work."

With an uncharacteristically visible breath, almost a sigh by his standards, Lan Zhan begins to turn away.

"Come and have tea," he says.

Just before he loses sight of his face, Wei Wuxian registers that it looks tired. He's only really seen him look tired once or twice in his lifeHe thinks, probably, that Lan Qiren being ill is the best explanation for all of it. Wei Wuxian's presence would surely make his condition worse, if he knew.

He follows Lan Zhan, still on edge, resigned to a short chat and a kind ejection from the premises. He's so morose about all of it that he doesn't notice Lan Zhan’s stiffness until they're sitting. Until Lan Zhan pours their tea.

Until, slowly, as if moved by gentle, invisible hands, Lan Zhan curls into himself, and gasps.

All thought, all expectation, leave Wei Wuxian's mind.

"Lan Zhan?" he says, panicked.

Lan Zhan holds up one shaking hand, as if it stall him. He gasps again, head bowed, body balled up tight, and then rasps, "It will pass."

Wei Wuxian stares in horror until it does. It feels like hours, like a lifetime of Lan Zhan in more pain than he's ever seen. 

And then, as if nothing has happened, and just as slowly, Lan Zhan straightens once more. He keeps his eyes down as he reaches out, only trembling slightly, to finish pouring their tea.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian says, desperate and quite suddenly afraid. "What's happened?"

"Foolishness," says Lan Zhan. His voice is low, and worn softly ragged at the edges like old paper. How did Wei Wuxian not notice? How did he not notice the way he's holding himself, how he moves as if his robes are made of glass? "I allowed myself to be cursed."

"Allowed? Cursed? When? How?"

Wei Wuxian is bursting with questions, and with the desire to reach out, to comfort him somehow. He keeps his hands folded in his lap, sure they would have the opposite effect on anyone in such pain.

Lan Zhan merely shakes his head carefully. "We have not managed to uproot it," is all he says.

It's clear he won't say more. Whether because he doesn't want to tell Wei Wuxian, or because it hurts too much to speak, is unclear. But Wei Wuxian's mind suddenly works up to full speed, and he combines everything he learned from Jingy and Sizhui with this new and horrible revelation. But it's not enough.

"Why did—" Wei Wuxian stops himself before he says it, wondering if it's too presumptuous. But in the end, he needs information above all else. He needs to fix this. Fast. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Lan Zhan still doesn't look at him. "I would not bother you."

Wei Wuxian grips his cup too hard and spills his tea. "Bother me," he repeats. "How—how could—" he stops himself again, and tries to calm down. He needs to think clearly. He needs to speak clearly.

"Is that really all it is?" he asks. "I won't be offended if any of you didn't want me involved. It doesn't matter, I understand. I want to help, not make things worse. Can I do that? Can I help?"

The air seems to leave the room entirely as he waits for an answer. At length, still very carefully, Lan Zhan nods.

"Okay," Wei Wuxian says, unbelievably relieved. “Okay." He takes his first full breath since Lan Zhan appeared in the library. He holds out his hand. "Can I see?" 

Before Lan Zhan has so much as moved, he snatches his hand back. 

"Actually—does it hurt? To touch things. I don't want to hurt you worse."

Slowly, so slowly, yet elegantly still, Lan Zhan holds back his sleeve and extends his wrist, his fingers held in an approximation of a loose, relaxed curl. But Wei Wuxian can see how rigid it is. How hard he's working to look normal. It's worked, he supposes. He's heard no whispers of anything wrong with Hanguang-jun. And he himself didn't even notice, he reminds himself bitterly. Ridiculous, ungrateful, horrible that he didn't take his first chance to immediately drink him in, to look, to see how he was. Selfish.

"You could not hurt me worse," Lan Wangji murmurs, laying the back of his hand on the table before Wei Wuxian.

It's not an encouraging idea. Wei Wuxian presses the tips of his fingers lightly to his skin, reaching out with his meager energy to sense Lan Zhan’s meridians. They are teeming with something cool and dark that whispers to him wordlessly. He closes his eyes to focus on it, on the gently swaying song it murmurs beneath Lan Zhan’s skin.

He murmurs back, coaxing. Welcoming. It stills, briefly, to listen.

Lan Wangji tears back his arm.

"No." His voice has gone tight with the effort of moving so quickly, his posture bending just slightly from the strain.

"But, Lan Zhan, I could understand it better if—"

"You will not take this upon yourself." His words are clipped, almost angry. Final. His breathing looks less even, and his more pronounced tremor is making one of the jewels on his robes shimmer.

"Okay. I won't," Wei Wuxian says. He holds out his hand again.

"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji implores. 

He looks so shaken, so pained, that Wei Wuxian is forced to capitulate.

He sighs. "I really won't," he says. "Not if it would upset you that much."

"It would," Lan Wangji affirms.

"Alright, then that's settled. Can I see again?"

After only the slightest hesitation, Lan Wangji re-extends his wrist for examination. Wei Wuxian touches him again, and tries to hear what the curse is saying. Tries to understand. Tries to see how it works and what's letting it stay.

"It's not really a curse," he says quietly.

"What is it?" Lan Wangji asks, just as softly.

Wei Wuxian cocks his head. "It is, and it isn't. It's a...thing. It wants something." He opens his eyes. "Do you know what it wants?"

"No," says Lan Zhan. He has sensed this too, and cannot puzzle it out. The hurt is too loud.

"Do you have any unusual cravings?" asks Wei Wuxian. "Like...to kill...or eat spicy food?"

He cocks half a smile, trying to lighten things.

"No."

"Hmm."

He tries to wedge his energy between Lan Zhan’s and the curse. But it won't budge. And not by virtue of its own strength...there seems to be...overlap, somehow. Some common frequency between the two of them.

Wei Wuxian withdraws his hand, at a dead end.

"Well...it's simple," he says. "Almost like a child. It wants something, and when it gets enough of it, it'll let go. If we can't figure out what that is..."

He looks at Lan Wangji, drawn and pale and rigid, and moves without thinking. He lays a hand gently on his forearm as he speaks. "Then I'll just find a way to force—Lan Zhan?"

Lan Zhan’s eyes have widened and fixed on Wei Wuxian's hand. He sways, almost imperceptibly. Wei Wuxian lifts his hand away, but Lan Zhan flinches and makes a small sound like he's been hit with something heavy and blunt.

"Did I hurt you?"

Haltingly, as if he's confused, Lan Zhan shakes his head.

Wei Wuxian takes his wrist back into his clinical, probing hold, and looks at him. He shakes his head again.

On a hunch, Wei Wuxian lets go, only to uncurl Lan Zhan’s fingers and take his hand in both of his.

Lan Zhan’s eyelashes flutter, and his shoulders drop. Something about the longing in the little curse's whispers falls into place

"That's helping," Wei Wuxian states.

Dazed, Lan Zhan nods. "Yes. Why?"

Wei Wuxian smiles at him a little sadly. He has another hunch, this time about what the similarity between the curse and Lan Zhan might be.

"Affection, Lan Zhan," he says. "It wants affection."

He only lets the silence sit between them a moment before he focuses on action.

"I'll go get your brother. And Sizhui? And...or. Send for them. If—it—I shouldn't let go, I guess. Until they get here. Unless you want me to."

Staring down at their hands, Lan Zhan shakes his head. It's a slow, loose shake, so different from his tight movements of just moments ago. Almost like he's drunk. An uncomfortable thought arises at this apparent level of relief.

"How...how long have you been in pain?" Wei Wuxian asks.

Lan Zhan glances up at him, and then away. Silent. Wei Wuxian huffs.

"Fine. Well is it—is it completely better now? Or..."

After another slightly tipsy-looking moment, Lan Zhan shakes his head again.

"Okay. Okay. I'll just—I only need one hand to send a message talisman. Just let me—"

He takes one of his hands back, and Lan Zhan’s entire body goes taut, hunched, before he forcibly straightens. Wei Wuxian hurries to put his hand back where it was.

"Sorry," he says, holding on tight. "I guess it goes by...degrees? Uh...maybe we could both go get them."

Deliberately, Lan Zhan pulls his hand away.

"Thank you for your help," he says, his voice something thick squeezed through too small a space. "I am sorry you came all this way for something so simple."

Wei Wuxian can see his muscles working to expand and contract his lungs. He can see how difficult it is for him to stay upright, to keep speaking.

"I will find a way to act on your advice. Please do not let this keep you from your travels any longer."

Wei Wuxian's empty hands curl into fists. He doesn't want to say it. He almost doesn't say it.

"I know you don't lie, Lan Zhan, but I don't believe you."

Lan Zhan looks down at the table. He takes a breath in. He pushes it out.

Wei Wuxian decides to play dirty.

"Either you want me gone, or you don't want to burden me," he goes on. "Which one are you going to let me believe?"

Suddenly, finally, Lan Zhan looks at him. Wei Wuxian raises his eyebrows in challenge. Lan Zhan’s mouth works.

"Of course I would not wish to burden you," he says. "It is not necessary."

"I wouldn't just leave you in pain. I couldn't."

"I can bear it."

"That's—not—you shouldn't—"

"I have borne it for over a month," Lan Zhan almost snaps. "There is no urgency."

Wei Wuxian stares at him. "You wouldn't even tell them, would you," he realizes aloud. "A whole month in pain, and not one person has—has—" It hits him. "It's been a month since we nighthunted."

Lan Zhan’s mouth, impossibly, goes tighter.

"Did this happen then? And you didn't say anything?"

"I did not know," Lan Zhan says, "until it was too late."

Another difficult breath. And another.

"I did not want you to feel responsible. Or to worry. It was my mistake."

Wei Wuxian has to look away, then, to gather himself. To keep the hurt off his face. He knows it isn't personal, but he still wishes Lan Zhan felt he could tell him anything.

He gets up.

Lan Zhan watches the movement, but quickly pulls his gaze away.

"Be well," he says quietly.

Disbelieving silence follows.

"A whole month," Wei Wuxian repeats. "I'll be well if you will. You won't ask for help, you'll be annoyed and just keep hurting if I try to ask for you." He sighs. "Lan Zhan, I may be a poor substitute for family, but we may have to work with what we have until you're sick enough of me to go to them."

He rounds the table to sit beside him. It takes a moment to make himself move more than that, but he manages. He closes his hands around Lan Zhan’s elbow, and then pats it a little bit hoping it counts as affection.

Lan Zhan turns his face away, but he can't hide the way he sags under the touch.

"Better?"

A nod. Wei Wuxian slides one hand down to his wrist, to check. The little curse-ghost is humming madly, hungrily, and holding on even tighter. Wei Wuxian sighs.

"Sorry, Lan Zhan. It's...going to take a lot more than just me holding your arm."

He pulls his arm closer, hugs it to his side, and Lan Zhan reaches out to grip the edge of the table.

"Is—is that better or worse?"

Lan Zhan is silent.

"Lan Zhan."

"Better," Lan Wangji says, very quiet.

He is finding it difficult to stay upright, to speak clearly as the tension and constant onslaught of pain drain from his body. He wants to lean into him. But he will not presume, will not make a needy spectacle of himself. Wei Ying deserves better.

"This is awful," Wei Ying says.

Lan Wangji tries not to flinch.

"Pain, for a whole month?" he goes on. Lan Wangji guiltily realizes his mistake. "How do you even sleep?"

"I am able to meditate," he supplies.

There is a heavy silence. "Oh, Lan Zhan. Even you need sleep."

Lan Wangji cannot refute this.

"When was the last time someone hugged you?" Wei Ying asks, at length.

Lan Wangji answers without meaning to. He has been thinking of it as well.

"When Sizhui was small," he says. "Previously, before my mother died."

Wei Ying makes a sound similar to choking. "Lan Zhan...why?"

Lan Wangji turns to him, to look at the stiff way he is trying to help while still trying to hold himself separate.

"I am not the sort of person people naturally wish to hug."

Gradually, Wei Ying’s eyes close, and his forehead thunks onto Lan Wangji's shoulder.

"Lan Zhan," he says, "you told me yourself you don't like touching people. You told everyone. With your words and your face."

This is true. "Mn."

Wei Ying gives him a very pointed look, and squeezes his arm. It makes his ears heat.

"I know the Lan aren't big on hugging, but you should seriously try it," he says. "You know Sizhui gives great little hugs. He'd love to."

Lan Wangji can feel his restraint, his strength, ebbing the more relief he is given. He does not know what would happen should the pain cease.

As if in response to this thought, another wave of burning, nauseating, bone-crushing agony screams through him. His body tries to make itself smaller, to escape. He grits his teeth, but it ends abruptly. He becomes aware that Wei Ying is rubbing soothing circles on his back.

Once he has his breath again, he gives him the answer he is owed.

"I would not have him see me in such a state," he says. "It is not for the child to care for the adult."

Wei Ying lets out a deep breath.

"Alright," he murmurs. "Alright. Your brother? Your uncle? Someone else?"

The thought of any of them seeing him so weak and helpless sets his teeth on edge. But this is unfair of him.

"You are not obligated to stay," he says. "If you wish it, I will speak to xiongzhang."

A pause. "Why don't you want to, though?"

Perhaps it is his deteriorating state of mind, or perhaps it is something else entirely, but Lan Wangji tells him.

"He took care of me once, another time. He should not have to do it again. And I do not look forward to reliving it."

He regrets saying it almost immediately. He cannot look at Wei Ying to see what his thoughtless words have done.

"I understand," Wei Ying says quietly. "But you're really leaving me no choice. So, last chance to pick someone else."

Lan Wangji does not quite understand what he means until it is happening.

Slowly, as if he expects Lan Wangji to pull away, as if he is allowing for it, Wei Ying makes of his arms a circle, enclosed within it Lan Wangji.

The pain intensifies, for just a moment, while his arms hover awkwardly. But then they lay against his chest, his back, and Wei Ying’s hands press against his arm.

"Come here," Wei Ying murmurs, twisting him, pulling him.

The pain dims, and all of his muscles relax. All of his muscles relax toward Wei Ying. He could not stop it if he tried.

"Ah, ha, alright," Wei Ying says, taking his weight and holding him up. "Better, right?"

Lan Wangji brings up his hands to try to move himself, to try to brace away, to give him space. Only they are not working properly. It is as if they do not answer to him. He finds them clutching at black fabric instead.

"Excuse me," he forces out.

Wei Ying shushes him, and folds him properly close.

The relief, after so many days, weeks, of steadily increasing pain, is so intense in itself that it frightens him. It feels like death. He struggles to breathe, suddenly heavy and weak.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying says, "is it better? Talk to—oh."

He breaks off when he pulls back enough to see his face. His expression goes from questioning to something soft and sad. He tightens one of his arms, and brings his other hand up to Lan Wangji's face. His thumb brushes his cheek, and comes away wet.

Lan Wangji closes his eyes and turns away, lacking the strength to apologize again.

"Don't," Wei Ying says. He lays the same hand on the back of his head, a warm suggestion. "Relax. Let me...let me do this for you. Please, Lan Zhan."

Lan Wangji takes a deep breath. He lets it out, and lets himself be guided.

Wei Ying turns his head and lays it against his shoulder. He shifts them so that Lan Wangji is almost in his lap, so that he is pressed along his front, wrapped tightly in his arms. Lan Wangji’s chest pangs with how much, how long he has wanted just this. Helplessly, pathetically, he holds onto him, his mind slowing as every tension-taut, pain-strung muscle finally releases.

"There," says Wei Ying, rocking him slightly.

An ominous tightness builds in Lan Wangji's chest and throat, finally releasing in a sob.

"Ah, Lan Zhan," Wei Ying murmurs above him, wiping more wetness from his face. "I know you wouldn't choose this. But I...I don't want you feeling guilty, alright?" He squeezes him briefly. "I have...I have maybe too much affection for you. Let me give you some, hm?"

Lan Wangji presses his face to Wei Ying’s chest, clinging. The words wash over him, and his tears wet Wei Ying’s robes. He feels strange and dreamlike, warm and open. He does not know what he might do, like this. What he might say, or ask. A small part of him is afraid.

He feels pressure at his temple. Soft, hot, and damp. He looks up.

"Ah," Wei Ying says, his mouth, which was just on Lan Wangji's skin, twisting, his eyes serious. "Too much?"

Lan Wangji's breath hitches. "No."

Wei Ying threads careful fingers through Lan Wangji's hair, and Lan Wangji has to close his eyes again.

"Can I take these out?" Wei Ying asks, brushing against Lan Wangji's hair ornaments. "I'll be careful."

Lan Wangji nods against him. He lets himself be held close, and holds still as Wei Ying pulls out the pins and unwinds the sections of hair. It is deeply soothing, the way his touch tingles across his scalp, the way his thoughtful, clever hands relieve the pressure on his skull. He melts against him, insensible. He has only foggy, distant memories of drunkenness, but they share a close kinship with the way he feels now. Hopelessly undone.

"I would," he says suddenly.

"Hmm?" Wei Ying asks, fingers still combing through his hair.

"Choose this," Lan Wangji says. It is important that he knows, that he understands he is not some stopgap to prevent pain. He does not know why he was so hesitant to say it, before. What he thought it might cost. "You."

He feels Wei Ying’s sharp intake of breath, rises with it.

"Good," he says. He kisses the top of his head.

The tail end of Lan Wangji's forehead ribbon slips over his shoulder, into his line of sight. The last thing binding his hair back, which Wei Wuxian was so careful not to touch.

A sound comes from the direction of the still-open door, which sounds roughly like "‼️"

Wei Wuxian turns just in time to see Sizhui's red face, before he slides the door closed and runs.

"S—Sizhui!" he calls. "It's not—ah. Well. I think we're going to have to talk to him."

He looks down, but Lan Zhan hasn't even moved. He doesn't seem to mind what Sizhui might think. Or maybe he hadn't even heard? He's gone so still against him.

Wei Wuxian reaches down to check his pulse. The little curse is still there, just holding on. Weaker, quieter, but still there.

"It's not going to let go for a while, I think," he says. "Sorry."

Lan Zhan’s hands fist tighter in the fabric of Wei Wuxian's robes, and he tucks his head up under his chin. His breath is warm on Wei Wuxian's throat.

Wei Wuxian blinks up at the ceiling in lieu of doing something unacceptable.

"You need rest," he says. "Real sleep. To heal, and recover your strength."

Lan Zhan mumbles something that sounds like, "Sleep here," which can't be right.

"Lan Zhan," he tries again, and jostles him lightly. "Sleep?"

Mn," says Lan Zhan.

"Okay," Wei Wuxian says to himself.

He looks around, suddenly aware that it's just the two of them, alone in Lan Zhan’s house. It's quiet, and dimmer now that the door is closed. He's moved by each of Lan Zhan’s breaths, deep and even, now. He sits a moment longer, his back aching from the awkward position, just to feel the way his ribs expand and contract in the circle of his arms. He tries to memorize it, the feeling it gives him, deep in his chest, in his gut. The feeling of something good and right that belongs to him. He savors it, for those long nights sleeping alone under the stars.

He has a lot of practice, missing things he thought he couldn't live without. He reminds himself it's always easier than you expect, once it comes down to surviving.

But if he's uncomfortable, Lan Zhan must be, too. So he gets his legs underneath them, and his arms around Lan Zhan’s waist, and he gets them up.

"Come on, Lan Zhan, help," he groans. "My foot's asleep, if you don't, we'll both fall."

With obvious effort, Lan Zhan stands. They lean against each other, holding on, like drunks or drowning people. Like something bad will happen if they let go.

And something bad will happen, Wei Wuxian reminds himself. None of this is affection for affection's sake. He’s helping him. There's a purpose.

He walks Lan Zhan over to his bed, and can't help laughing a little bit at how similar it is to the times Lan Zhan has been drunk.

Only this time, he can't just toss him onto his bed and hope he falls asleep. This time, that would be cruel. No, he'll have to suffer all his horrible fondness for him at much closer proximity. He'll have to hold on, and not let go when it feels like too much.

There's no graceful way to do it, really. They end up on the bed in a heap. Lan Zhan seems unwilling to move even then, so Wei Wuxian tries to arrange them to some semblance of a pair of sleeping people. His face burns as he moves them around, as he moves Lan Zhan’s body with his own. It's more overwhelming than he would have thought, to be horizontal together. Wrapped in each other. When he finally gets them settled, heads on the bolster, nothing caught or twisted, he's a little bit breathless.

And then he has to lie there, holding him, staring at his face.

Because he can't help but stare at the best of times, let alone this close. Short, dark lashes against perfect skin. Hair he now knows definitively is very soft. Cute little red ears. Full, relaxed mouth.

He tries very hard not to dwell on the last one. He tries and fails.

It looks even softer than usual, somehow, even more plush. He's wanted to kiss it for so many years, and he thinks, just now, Lan Zhan would let him. It would also, just now, be very unfair to try. He puts it out of his mind. Focuses on the drying tear tracks instead.

"Lan Zhan," he says, "are you still awake? Can you listen?"

He's not expecting Lan Zhan’s eyes to open and fix, alert though they droop with exhaustion, on his own. Too close.

He clears his throat.

"You know you can have this, right?" He's speaking too softly, but he can't help it. "With me," he clarifies, staring at the threads of embroidery on Lan Wangji's collar. "Open offer. Any time you want..." he huffs, "affection."

It's awfully silly, but he can't shake the feeling it needs to be said. A whole month of pain. Alone. Because nobody thought to reach out and comfort him. He's not sure he would have, either, if he's honest.

"You don't even have to ask. I want you to just—you can just—"

He falls silent when Lan Zhan reaches back, runs his hand along Wei Wuxian's arm until he finds his hand on the small of his back, and then picks it up.

The air rushes out of Lan him, and his face contracts gently, his eyes closing again. Wei Wuxian panics, sure he's said too much.

"Lan Zhan! Don't—"

Deliberately, slow with pain, he places his hand on the side of his head. Wei Wuxian rubs a thumb along his temple, and he relaxes, though his expression remains tense. He searches out Wei Wuxian's fingers with his own, and sets them against the knot of his ribbon.

Wei Wuxian's lungs stall.

"Lan Zhan?"

"Do not wear the Gusu Lan forehead ribbon in sleep," he intones.

A huff escapes Wei Wuxian, which is an improvement on the hysterical laughter that wants to break free. He doesn't know if Lan Zhan...means anything by it. But he can't imagine he doesn't. He tries not to think about whether or not he deserves this much trust—Lan Zhan is clearly waiting for...something. He has heard Wei Wuxian's words, and he has asked his own question in return, Wei Wuxian thinks. He's waiting for an answer. It's an easy enough thing for Wei Wuxian to give.

He plucks carefully at the ribbon until the knot comes undone. He tugs it free of his hair, which falls loosely around his face, framing it differently than he's ever seen. In combination with his fragile expression, it makes him look impossibly young.

He wiggles his other arm under him to hold on, to not cause him any more hurt, as he tries to put the ribbon into his hand. But Lan Zhan just glances up at him briefly and folds both their hands closed around it.

"Sleep," says Wei Wuxian, instead of kissing him or screaming and running away.

Lan Zhan lets out a long, slow breath. His eyes stay closed. "Mn."

Wei Wuxian watches his face relax, watches for any sign of something going wrong. He reaches out to check on the curse, to make sure its hold is weakening as it should. He's certain he won't be able to sleep himself—it's still daylight, not to mention his anxieties or the way his very blood seems to be vibrating with Lan Zhan’s closeness, with the way their fingers twine together in blue silk.

But Lan Zhan’s breathing is hypnotically even, and he's so surprisingly soft in Wei Wuxian's arms. It shouldn't be a shock, it's not as if he dresses himself in stiff angles and hard points. But he's always so...solid. Implacable. It's strange to know him now as such a warm, pliant creature. Strange, and wonderful in a way that makes Wei Wuxian's chest ache.

He lies there thinking too much while also thoughtlessly stroking Lan Zhan’s back, his hair, until deep in the night the little curse lets go. Wei Wuxian feels the moment it drifts off, at peace. Liberated. Lan Zhan sighs in his sleep.

Wei Wuxian tries so hard not to wonder what its absence will mean when Lan Zhan wakes, that he sends himself off to sleep, too.

~~

Morning dawns, and an unusually long time after, Lan Wangji wakes.

He is warm, and his body is heavy. So heavy, so weighed down that he thinks he must still be dreaming. His eyes do not want to open, so for many breaths, there is no way to know.

Then, something shifts, and the sensation is so foreign that his eyes open at last.

The warmth, the weight, resolve into a person. Black-clad, and half atop him. Breathing deeply against the side of his face.

The memory of the past month comes back to him all at once. The last day and night, more slowly. He remembers being held. Being...touched. Lovingly.

He closes his eyes again, remembering. He was brought to bed. He was cared for—he had required care.

He is embarrassed. He is filled with something bittersweet. When he tries to cover his

eyes with his free hand, he finds it is not free at all. His ribbon is tangled up in his fingers, and in Wei Ying’s.

It hits him suddenly, a blast of futile adrenaline that prickles under his skin, a wash of cold at the memory that he had been so bold, so selfish as to ask Wei Ying for such a declaration in such an extenuating circumstance. His mind, sluggish, clings to the hope that Wei Ying’s memory had failed him once again, and he had not thought anything of it. That he had not felt obligated to...

Lan Wangji begins clumsily tugging the ribbon from Wei Ying’s fingers. He tries to be gentle, so as not to wake him, but his muscles are not moving as precisely as he is accustomed. He takes a steadying breath, and tries to center himself.

"Reminds me of that cave," Wei Ying says, sudden and quiet.

Lan Wangji's heart hammers.

"Not the Xuanwu. The cold pond. You remember."

It is not a question. This is good, because Lan Wangji could not speak to answer.

"You hated it so much," he goes on. "I always wondered what Lan Yi really thought of seeing us like this." He lifts his entangled hand. "We were just kids, though, and you were already sacrificing one of your rules to help me. I think she saw that, and thought you were good. That it meant good things."

He pauses, and Lan Wangji closes his eyes. If he does not, he might look at him. And he cannot do that.

"Why are so many great heroes destined to always be so right and so wrong about everything?" Wei Ying muses. "She was right about you, of course. Of course. But she had no idea..."

He trails off. He pushes the ribbon off from around his fingers, and presses it into Lan Wangji's palm. Lan Wangji's heart sinks down through the bed, through the floor. 

The sadness in his voice. The regret. As if he has done something wrong. As if the past he speaks of is ancient and fixed, a tragedy they still walk within today.

The curse is gone. But Lan Wangji does not feel relief.

Wei Ying surprises Lan Wangji out of his thoughts by speaking again, instead of taking his leave.

"Do you remember what I said before you fell asleep?"

Lan Wangji tries to think back. To force himself to remember, instead of skirting the edge of it all in shame. The kindness of it staggers him.

He nods.

"Good. Don't forget it. I get...there aren't many people I know, anymore." Wei Ying’s thumb rubs absent circles on the back of Lan Wangji's hand. It sends goosebumps up his wrist. "At least not who would want to...anyway. Just don't forget it. Any time."

They are silent, together, unmoving but for breaths and heartbeats and Wei Ying’s gentle thumb. Until Wei Ying leans closer, and presses a kiss to Lan Wangji's temple, before moving away to stand.

"I did not hate it," is all Lan Wangji's panicked, stricken heart can muster.

Wei Ying pauses.

"I hated the confusion," he goes on. He breathes through the fog of exhaustion and too many other things to name, and he holds up the ribbon. "This has belonged to you since that day. I have never known how to tell you, without obligating you...to claim it."

Wei Ying is very still, until, "Lan Zhan."

"You speak as if my breaking rules for you is the paradigm. You lament it. I reject the notion. This, now, is our paradigm: me, alone, in pain, and you the only balm."

Lan Wangji  hears himself only once the words have left his mouth, and feels a flare of pain down in his bones. He takes a breath. Another.

"Apologies," he says, contrite. "As I said, it is not my wish to make you feel—"

"Shh," Wei Ying cuts him off, suddenly close again. Very close. "Be quiet," he whispers from where he has tucked his face beside Lan Wangji's.

He is wrapped around him again, holding tight, almost lifting him from the bed with the force of it.

"Don't—" he kisses Lan Wangji's cheek, then just presses his face to it. "Don't apologize."

Lan Wangji cannot breathe.

His hands are clutching at Wei Ying’s arm, at his waist. He is too stunned, too overwhelmed, to manage his actions. He turns his head, blinking the morning light from his eyes for a second time.

Wei Ying is there, half a breath away, pink-cheeked and stunning, searching Lan Wangji's face. His clever eyes settle on Lan Wangji's mouth before skittering away. 

Lan Wangji's heart skips a beat, and he parts his lips as if he would speak. No words come, but the movement draws Wei Ying’s eye once more. He stares, and Lan Wangji stares helplessly back, all thought suspended.

Wei Ying kisses him.

Quick, like the pecks to his temple and cheek. Like he is uncertain of making too much of it. Lan Wangji registers this too late. He has already followed, reflexively chasing his mouth. He pauses a hair's breadth away, tense. Wei Ying closes the distance.

He falls against him, pressing him down, heavy once more in a deeply pleasant way. He kisses him, and kisses him, and then pulls away to look. Awed, Lan Wangji dares to touch his face, to map the shape of his cheek, his jaw, and to hold it in his palm. Wei Ying leans into his hand.

"Lan Zhan," he says, hoarse. "Is this alright? You don't—"

Lan Wangji cannot hear uncertainty, and cannot answer. He pulls him down and fits their mouths together, opens his lips to feel the plush give of one of Wei Ying’s between his own.

Wei Ying’s next breath is shaky as it ghosts across Lan Wangji's face, but he only presses closer, opens to him, presses deeper. He shifts, and Lan Wangji's body wakes suddenly from its stupor, his skin abruptly going hot and shivery.

He can feel Wei Ying’s heart pounding against his chest, a mirror image of his own. The kiss stays slow, tentative, a question of boundaries, as it deepens. And deepens. The first shocking spark of something more comes when Wei Ying’s tongue flicks into his mouth.

There is a knock on the door. They break apart, the sudden reminder that they are not alone, that the world at large has not slowed to a stop, jolting them back into it.

"Hanguang-jun?" A tentative, worried voice. Sizhui. "Wei-qianbei?"

Guilt settles back into Lan Wangji's chest, its old home. But then Wei Ying’s face drops atop it, and it is overshadowed by the comfort of this casual use of his body as a convenient surface. He shuts out all thought of what other casual uses Wei Ying might find for him, and gathers himself.

"Sizhui," he calls. "A moment."

Wei Ying sighs dramatically, and twists to peek at him with one eye.

"We can do that again," he says, "right?"

Lan Wangji feels liable to sing.

"Yes," he says. "Whenever you like."

Wei Ying groans, and kisses him again.

"You can't smile at me like that if I have to wait," he says.

He flings himself away to lie on his back. Lan Wangji sits up, and begins the process of getting up and making himself presentable. But Wei Ying’s hand darts out to hold his wrist.

"Whenever you like, too," he says.

He's gone serious again. He holds on, waiting, until Lan Wangji nods. Then he smiles, and stands, and stretches.

"Don't get all neat again, Lan Zhan," he says, grinning. "You're resting today, just let him see you're okay and go back to bed."

He turns halfway to the door.

"This is going to be a different talk with Sizhui than I thought we'd have. His Xian-gege and Youqian-gege are—" he stops, his grin fading. "Ah..." he shakes his head.

Lan Wangji stands, his whole body aching, and goes to him. He cradles his face in both hands, and kisses his forehead, once, for all the times he has wanted to and felt unable.

"We will tell him, and anyone you like, whatever you like. Or," he says, and takes up Wei Ying’s wrist, "for now, if you would rather tell him before we have decided on the words..."

He wraps his ribbon around it, but pauses before tying it off. He looks at him in question.

Wei Ying nods, smiling again, but softer.

Lan Wangji ties the knot, and as soon as it is secure, there are arms around him.

They both take a deep breath before parting. Wei Ying takes his hand, and squeezes.

Awake, together, and curse-free, they open the door.

✨The End✨

(amazing art inspired by this thread in reblogs)

[fallstreakfeathers]

[More] Obey Me Headcanons

[ I didn’t edit this at all, really, but I have around 30 headcanons so far that I’m using for my fic and would like several backups- so, I’m posting it here.) 

The ‘Devildom’ is a planet that is larger than ours. ‘Hell’ refers to a part of each territory the Avatar’s govern that is reserved for retaining and torturing human souls. These areas are actually quite small compared to the rest of the land. Each environment is unique, with its own native flora, fauna, land formations, climates, and dangers.

The Devildom resides on a tall, mountain-ringed plateau that towers over the lands around it. It is not the tallest point in the demon world.

Demons have elemental affinities that also define certain weaknesses. A demon that’s used to the heat and gasses of flowing magma would have difficulties in the colder parts of the world, or fighting against a demon or creature who uses a lot of freezing attacks.

There are many places in their realm that even Demons refrain from going, or simply cannot. One such area is a vast frozen land in the far northeast that drops to temperatures low enough that even demons that are developed for icy area’s cannot survive without magical assistance. However, this also makes the area a great place for criminals and the exiled to live should they be able to fight the cold. Demons and such that failed to pass the test of the cold are frequently found encased in the tall, pointed ice spires that jut from the ground- trapped in an unending preservation until the end of days.

There’s a massive crater in one part of the world, in the land Mammon governs, that’s referred to as the ‘Fear Pit’. It’s the aftermath of a massive battle between two demons, and the entire area is cursed with illusions that prey on your fears. It gets worse the closer you are to the bottom. Demons occasionally travel to test their own resolve, though few ever make it to the center- usually opting to turn back before their fear drives them mad.

Beelzebub dislikes thunder because it sounds similar to some sounds he heard in the war

Demon’s are immortal only in that time cannot destroy them, They can still die from wounds and even disease.

Not all demons can speak human languages. There’s plenty in the Devildom/Hell who’ve never set foot in the human realm and have never bothered to learn the realms languages.

On that note, there are more than a few specific demonic dialects spoken in the devildom. The Avatars and most high nobility are required to be fluent in the most common 3 demonic languages.

Demons who came to the Devildom by falling from the Celestial Realm are not considered ‘true demons’, and many have challenged the Avatars solely because of their origins

Demons may have pacts with multiple humans. If a demon who has more than one pact is ordered to do something by multiple pact holders, the demon will obey whoever has the strongest bond with them OR the orders will cancel each other out.

Many species found in the Devildom/Hell and the Celestial Realm are not exclusive to one or the other- dragons and unicorns are found in both, for example, but with different traits and personalities. Dragons in the Devildom are ugly things that spit an acidic venom, while those in the Celestial Realm are sleek and able to shoot blasts of fire from their throats. Some creatures remain the same in each realm, but are referred to by different names. Many mythic creatures from every human culture can be found in both the Devildom and Celestial realm

Though their human forms look rather perfect, everyone who fought in the Celestial War bears a great number of physical scars, some of which affect their human guise as well

Belphegor's right eye is completely blind in all his forms. He tends to hide it in his human appearance because it’s sometimes seen as a weakness by other demons who might try to challenge him. He has the most trouble with demon’s attempting to fight him because he’s often seen as the weakest Avatar due to his sleeping habits and general outward appearance. This is, of course, a massive mistake.

Belphegor frequently wraps his tail around himself (like a hug) for comfort- particularly when he’s alone

Belphegor’s horseshoe was broken during a fight with a demon who wanted to challenge his title/status.

Demons don't usually bury their dead because many simply disappear upon death. How they disappear depends on their primary sin (Wrath erupts in a blast of fire)

Leviathan changes the order of the smiley pins on his clothes depending on his mood (green for happy/content, yellow for neutral, red for angry/upset)

Satan dislikes chocolate

Demons are practically infertile. Children born naturally (human standard) are extremely rare. As such, all demon children are cherished and protected by modern demonic societies as a whole, and intending to harm one is punished harshly.

Lucifer may have birthed Satan from rage, but a demon can create another being from any emotion so long as it’s powerful enough (love, envy, etc). This is much more common than the physical way of creating children. The offspring will generally exhibit whatever emotion spawned them and will behave accordingly to whoever the emotion was directed at. After their birth, they grow very fast until they appear 10-15 years old, and their growth slows immensely.

A specific ritual is required for a demon( or angel) and human to crossbreed with each other, as they are completely different species. It would be like trying to cross a dog with a giraffe. These births are always extremely dangerous for the human mother. There are a few exceptions to this, such as Incubi/Succubi but successful crossbreeding is still extremely rare.

The older a demon is, the more horrific their true forms are. Anyone who has existed before the Celestial War is referred to as an ‘Ancient/Old World’ demon. Those born after and those who fell are considered ‘New Age/Modern’ demons. There are a handful of creatures referred to as ‘Primordials’. These beings are neither demons nor angels, but are immensely powerful and are very secretive. Not much is known about any of them, and they rarely show themselves. They also rarely partake in the social/political conflicts of the three realms. They did not have a presence in the Celestial War.

These titles have no bearing on how civilised someone may be.

There are technically four realms known. The Celestial, Devildom, and Human realms are commonly spoken about but the fourth realm is known as ‘Oblivion’ and isn’t so much a world as it is multitudes of platforms floating throughout a nebula. It’s useless overall but is used as a prison and punishment for the worst of demonkind. Few have ever made it out, but those that have come back a blubbering, maddened shell of who they were. Diavolo and Barbatos both are capable of opening a portal to it.

All demons/Fallen have the capability to return to a monstrous form, but Ancient demons have a particularly difficult time making themselves look human again (some Ancient’s are incapable of returning at all). New Age demons are able to transform much more freely, but if the transformation is brought on by strong negative emotion (rage, fear, or a physical reaction such as pain), it takes much longer to change back

The final stage of demonic courtship involves seeing each other's truest self. This display is a form of trust in the highest regard, the goal being total acceptance of each other. It should never be taken lightly. Not every couple goes through this, but those that do form a deeply personal and permanent bond.

A demon in full form is rare outside battle, though some choose to remain in their appearance as a way of showing off.

Some demons (nobility and such) have several forms outside of their human/humanoid guises

Demons are compelled to chew on things. There are several businesses specializing in ‘demon chew toys’. Gnawing on these can release both stress and anxiety and also helps maintain healthy teeth.

Demons shed their horns, scales, teeth and fur, and will often use these shed materials in their own clothing, jewelry, and other such items. Shedding season differs for every demon- it happens to some every half year, year, couple years, or even centuries. Being given an item made from a demon’s shed is considered a personal gift

Demons can tell the basic emotional state of any human they have a pact with. Whether they react to it or care is another story.

Despite the common opinion that the Devildom doesn’t have a sun, the sky brightens every 3 human world days thanks to the passing of a dwarf star. However, it would be a mistake to believe that the demon world is devoid of light without it! There are plenty of natural light sources that provide the lands with a way to see (for those without night vision), such as glowing crystals and mushrooms, magma, etc.

The Devildom’s planet’s core burns hotter than ours, which counteracts how cold it would be otherwise (though it’s still quite chilly in many parts of the planet)

When Diavolo ordered that no human be harmed in the Devildom again, he also banned all media portraying humans as prey. These books, videos, and movies are now sold on the black markets and hoarded by those who disagree with Diavolo

[crystalbahamut]

ever onwards

FFXIV Write Day 12 – Make-up for Day 07 Speculate

Summary: G’raha Tia likes to gather facts first, but sometimes he still is surprised by the outcome.

Author’s note: I try to write ambiguous WoL but I always forget to take height into account. Deepest apologies to my lala friends; everyone else is more easily fudged. Also please forgive any mistakes; I wrote the whole thing in third person and found I just…really didn’t like it. I know second person isn’t for everyone, especially when used while shadowing another character’s perspective, but I just liked it better. And this is as edited as it is going to get.

Warnings: G’raha Tia/WoL, Shadowbringers spoilers, Crystal Tower questline, mostly unspecified/ambiguous WoL, romantic sap, fluff, 2nd person

Words: 2,692

 ---

G’raha Tia knew this expedition to explore the Crystal Tower would be the opportunity of a lifetime, but he had no way to know just how much it would change his life. The ruins, the relics, even the enemies left to guard the tower do more to serve his research than any tome he has ever found. It’s fantastic and more than he had ever dreamed it would be.

And part of what makes it all so much more is the presence of the Warrior of Light. It is thanks to you he can even access the tower, but more than that you are one of the few friends he has been able to make in his life. And…well, at first G’raha couldn’t help but start flirting. You are so much more wonderful and human than any story has ever made you out to be, and he can’t imagine anyone spending time in your presence and not becoming irrevocably in love with you. He had resolved to stop immediately should you make your discomfort known, but then…

Then you had started flirting back. And now G’raha doesn’t know what to do. Now that he has thought about it (a bit obsessively, perhaps,) he cannot help but marvel at his own foolish bravery to even try, and he wonders how in the world the Warrior of Light does not yet have a suitor. You have nearly all of Eorzea singing your praises, have even wrested the respect of your enemies, and hobnob with some of the most prestigious personages in the world. So how can it be you will not only laugh at G’raha’s jokes, but sometimes smile so abashedly when he himself praises you?

It is entirely possible you have no one special in your life– and given your favorable response to G’raha’s affections, it is not outside the realm of possibility that you might be interested in him as he is in you. While it may seem too good to be true, G’raha won’t relinquish such an opportunity if there is one…and the wondering thereof is starting to affect his work. If he is ever going to focus on anything other than your love life ever again, he must needs find out for certain.

So he shall end his speculation by collecting data. And today is perfect– everyone on site has the day off and you have told him you intend to spend the day not doing any work. ‘Tis a veritable miracle if he ever heard of one– even Cid had looked shocked. And so when you set off…G’raha sets off after you.

G’raha is not a bad hunter, and so he puts that expertise to use as he follows you around. You hadn't noticed him in the Shroud that first time and his tracking skills remain a point of pride now as he follows you to and around Gridania. You do some shopping– and he can’t help but stifle laughter as you get roped into helping out a stressed merchant, a distressed mother, and a pained courier, in that order.

But you do take the time to buy some things– some supplies for crafting you had mentioned wanting, a snack that makes G’raha’s stomach grumble in jealousy– and then you just walk slowly and take in the city, trading hellos with some few that feel comfortable enough to greet you. But through it all you remain alone, and when you pause to sit on a bench G’raha would say you actually look a bit…lonely.

‘Tis food for thought, for certain. Do you have a paramour who simply couldn’t spare the time today? But you are attuned to nearly every aetheryte in the realm; surely if you wanted to spend time with a beloved it would be no hard feat to manage? In fact, surely anyone lucky enough to have you would travel the world to be with you wherever you want them?

You dust yourself off and leave out of the east gate into the Shroud proper, and G’raha follows from a safe distance. You walk leisurely and G’raha can admit to himself the forest is nice, with the faint sounds of birds and a gentle breeze blowing leaves to and fro. He wonders what it would be like, to walk at your side…perhaps hand in hand…perhaps with his tail curling up your forearm…

There are a couple of times you seem to know you’re being followed and you turn to glance in his direction, but even while daydreaming utter nonsense G’raha is ready for such an event and makes certain you see naught but nature itself. Whether or not you feel a presence, you don’t seem terribly bothered, and he follows you all the way down to the South Shroud.

You cleave a little close to Toto-Rak for comfort, but it is a slight shortcut and nothing comes out to bother you before you’re back on the path to Quarrymill. You stop to talk to someone in the small hamlet and G’raha errs on the side of staying out of the way, so he cannot hear what is said, but he can clearly see when you leave out the other gate, which only leads to…

Urth’s Gift. So much for not working today. G’raha cannot help the way his tail twitches in annoyance as he follows behind you. You’re supposed to be resting and Urth’s Gift is dangerous. Yes, you are clearly capable and he has seen you in action in that very area before, but he can’t help but worry at how relaxed you seem about the whole business. Thankfully he had the foresight to bring his bow, and he follows a little more closely, until he gets the benefits of trees and rock faces to clamber and climb for better sight lines.

He doesn’t realize his mistake until you reach the edge of the water, stop, and fold your arms across your chest.

“Don’t worry; I’m not going to make you race me to Ixali territory,” you say with a raised voice and tilt your head to glance back in his direction. “I just fought Garuda again and I’m not keen to incite another summoning so soon.”

He drops down from his branch and assumes his face must be as red as his hair. “How long have you known?”

“I caught a glimpse of you in Gridania and couldn’t help myself,” you say and walk up to him with a friendly smile. “You know, if you wanted to come with me you could have just accepted the offer when I made it.”

“I ah…didn’t want to impose,” he says weakly and puts his bow on his back again. He would be content to run back to Mor Dhona with his tail between his legs right now, but you reach out and grab his hand and he has not the strength to deny your touch. Sweet Azeyma, how deep is he in already?

“If I invite you it’s not imposing,” you say. “I like your company G’raha.”

He looks at you. “Truly?” It comes out so desperate he coughs into his hand and tries to cover it up. “I simply thought– perhaps your time would be better spent with someone you like more than any other.”

“And who do you think that might that be?” you ask him.

“I…don’t know,” he says. Gods; how rude would it be to rip back his hand and run away? And yet this is too much like the tepid fantasies he had just indulged in. Granted the wild hogs and darker shade aren’t quite as lightly atmospheric as just outside the city, but he is still holding your hand in the forest. It must count. “I simply assumed you…must have someone.”

You step forward and you are so close G’raha’s very breath stutters. “No one has ever said anything to me,” you say and you lick your lips and now he’s staring at your lips by the Twelve why. “But I do have someone I like more than any other. And I suspect he likes me too, though I cannot be certain.”

G’raha’s heart sinks. “Oh,” he says and bites back a sigh. “Well if- if it makes you feel any better, there is no one that could receive your affections and not return them. And if this person does not then they are a fool.”

He cannot help how emphatic he becomes, but the idea that you could fall for someone and that person would squander such a precious–

You put your hands on either side of his face and lean in to kiss him. He can do naught but stare, wide-eyed for several seconds, though thankfully the kiss is chaste enough that his delayed clumsy movements can count for a returned gesture before you pull back, an enigmatic smile upon your lips before you ask him, “Are you a fool, G’raha Tia?”

He puts his hands over yours and, again, it takes his brain several long seconds to comprehend what just happened. “I…” He licks his lips. He wants to taste you, feel you, in ways he could have only imagined before. A world, a future is opening up before him, and he wants to see where it leads. “I may be a fool, but not such a deplorable one.”

You roll your eyes but there’s a faint embarrassed smile trying to hide in your face. “It’s not deplorable to not want me, G’raha.”

“We must agree to disagree.” Something snaps and he whips his head around, but there is nothing to be seen, no hogs in the wind, and he relaxes with a sigh. He winks at you. “I must say though, your choice of locale for such a stirring confession is a bit…odd.”

You chuckle and put your hands on his shoulders. “We first met here, so technically it’s where we first started our working relationship,” you say. “I thought it would be nice symmetry if we started our new relationship here too.”

He finds the suggestion…strangely appealing. Perhaps he is odd too, then. To be as odd as his Warrior of Light– well, there are much worst things in the world to be. He puts his hands on your sides and walks forward, guiding you along, until your back meets a rocky wall and he pushes in for a deeper kiss to sate his newfound hunger. Or perhaps it is a thirst he knows he will never quench. It matters not– you are more precious than water in an oasis, and he intends to savor every drop.

---

Decades later and a world away…

G’raha doesn’t know what he’s in for with your invitation to meet him out by the main gate, but he goes with a sense of curiosity and naught else. The night is cool, with a light breeze that blows pleasantly against his face as he walks. He nods in response to those that greet him as he passes by, but, curiously, there is no one present when he arrives outside the Crystarium– no one but you, and you walk up to him with a smile that reaches his heart. It’s embarrassing how quickly you can reduce him to an adolescent miqo’te with his first crush.

He clears his throat and tries to focus on something else. “Where is the guard?”

“Shift change.” You pull him close by his robes. “We have one minute and thirty-seven seconds at most.”

“To do what?” G’raha asks, laughing.

You answer him with a kiss. A deep kiss, dizzying, more than welcome, and G’raha returns it with all the hunger he has felt for far too long, tasting, touching, feeling you in a way that is so intensely personal and warm and wonderful and familiar in a way that makes him realize how much he has ached without your touch. It is, alas, too short, but you both pant in the wake of it.

“Oh…” G’raha gently touches your cheek and his soul sings as you lean into his hand. He licks his lips. He wants more, but the way you shift your eyes towards the gate makes him conscientious of the privacy you’ll soon lack. “I wasn’t sure if…”

“I’m sorry it took so long to arrange,” you say and take his hand to start leading him up the path back to the city. He will follow you wherever, if only you keep your hand in his to guide him. “I knew you probably didn’t want to do that in front of the guards, so I had to watch them to see when we would have a chance.”

But why do it out in the open at all? Why that road? G’raha doesn’t want to ask a question he should perhaps already know the answer to, but curiosity burns at him until he stops and grips your hand to keep you from slipping away. You turn back to look at him and he clears his throat nervously. “Pray forgive me but…why that particular spot?”

Thankfully you don’t seem offended by his question. Instead you grow a wide smile– nay, a full grin. “Do you remember…it’s been a long time, but do you remember the first time we ever kissed?”

“In the Shroud?” he asks. As though he could have ever forgotten; it was only ninety percent of the daydreams he’d had to soothe his mind and soul when the weight of his duty had nearly gotten to be too much. How you tasted, how you felt, how he had felt towards you– it had never failed to stir his heart and renew his commitment to his course to save you at any cost.

“You had followed me around all morning so I led you back to the Shroud, back to where we first met.” You step closer to him and his arms slide around you in automatic response. “At the time I wasn’t completely sure if you liked me like that, but I took a chance and it seemed appropriate to have our first kiss where we first met.”

Slowly, G’raha starts to understand. “Where we first…met. I see.” He cannot help his smile even though it feels so wide as to be ridiculous, and he pulls his hood over his eyes to try and hide how red his face must be for how warm it feels. But he covers the act with, “Perhaps this would have been more appropriate then?”

You laugh and G’raha thinks it shouldn’t be possible to be this happy, after so many decades of pain and fear and loss and longing, but he surges forward to kiss you again and you return the act in full.

“Mm, well,” you drawl sarcastically and gently run your thumb over his bottom lip. “I admit I did spend many a night wondering why on earth I couldn’t stop fantasizing about the Crystal Exarch’s mouth.”

“Oh?” His lips curl of their own accord as he thinks about it– because you would have a crisis about wanting to kiss a man you thought you didn’t know. The idea of you lusting after him though serves to boost his confidence and he pulls you to his body suddenly, tightly. “And what about G’raha Tia’s mouth?”

Your eyes soften. “Ridiculous man,” you say and kiss him again. “You still are, have always been, my G’raha, even when I didn’t know it. But I do now, and if you’ll have me I promise I love you just as much as I did then.”

“I’m not the same as I was,” G’raha says but leans in to nuzzle you.

“Neither am I. So…” You gesture at the gate. “Here’s to new beginnings?”

G’raha smiles. Perhaps he does not deserve to be so happy when his plans went so awry and only worked out due to your sheer stubbornness, but he has never thought himself so austere as to deny himself what he wants when it seems to want him just as much. So he leans in, takes your lips in his, and kisses you tenderly, savoring every second he can, before he pulls back just slightly and whispers, “To new beginnings.”

[aestheticallyholland]

NEVER NOT | GOODBYES . . .

❃ PAIRING tom holland x fem!reader

❃ DISCLAIMER i do not own the artists (and the reader) that are going to portray the characters, but i do own some of the their names. the plot of the story is inspired to the book and movie 'to all the boys i've loved before' but with changes. the gifs and photos used in this series are edited by me but i get credits to the originals. also, this series is first posted in wattpad by me. PLEASE DO NOT REPOST IT SOMEWHERE ELSE !

❃ WORD COUNT 1.6k words

❃ AUTHOR'S NOTES just to remind those who have come this far of this series that this is the last chapter of the series! if you still wanna be tagged on the last chapter, feel free to comment on this post to see the ending of this series. now sit back, or lay down, and enjoy this second to the last chapter of never not !

NEVER NOT MASTERPOST | LEI'S LIBRARY

"I don't have to be so afraid of goodbye, because goodbye doesn't have to be forever." - Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

FOR THE PAST WEEKS BEFORE TOM WAS LEAVING FOR CALIFORNIA, he and Y/N spent it together as what they have promised to each other.  They would also invite Harrison and Erika with them from time to time.

Tom also spent it with his family since he would be away from them too, not just from Y/N.

Tom and Y/N could not stop exchanging with each other a bunch of 'i love you' and holding on to each other. They would have lunch together while in school and dinner at Y/N's home since her dad would cook for them.

There was a day wherein Aiden and Tom spoke to each other and apologized because of the fight they had before. It was also the time that Tom told Aiden that he was leaving for his acting career.

Few days before he was leaving, he had his last day in school. He already talked with his teachers and the principal regarding his acting career and cannot go to school anymore.

At the same time, he also spent it with some of his friends together with Harrison. Y/N gave him time to spend it with them.

And an unexpected moment happened during that day.

"Hey, Tom and Y/N." A very familiar voice called out for them and the couple looked back at that person.

"Camille?" Tom asked and she just gave them a small smile.

"Mind if we talk for a bit?" She asked and both Y/N and Tom looked at each other in confusion.

They arrived outside the school building to talk since Camille asked. They sat down in the bleachers where the view was the lacrosse team playing. Tom will surely miss playing lacrosse with his teammates.

"Look." Camille started and looked at the couple. "I just want to say that I'm sorry for everything. Most especially to you, Y/N." Camille's eyes focused on Y/N who just looked at her back.

"I'm so stupid enough to call you my enemy just because of some boy that I liked." She pointed at Tom. "All these years, we could've stayed best friends until now you know? But because of my jealousy, I ruined it." Camille continued and already felt tears forming in her eyes. Y/N felt her chest tighten and went near Camille. "I'm sorry, Y/N. I mean it now."

Y/N gave an arm around Camille's shoulder and pulled her closer for a hug. Camille was now crying more when Y/N pulled her for a hug. Y/N felt that everything was better now that Camille apologized for her mistakes. "I forgive you now, Camille." She whispered, loud enough for Camille to hear. Y/N looked at Tom who was smiling at what was happening.

"Really?" Camille asked as she pulled away to look at Y/N. Y/N just gave her a reassuring smile as an answer. Camille hugged her once again by surprise which made Y/N giggle and hugged back.

"Thank you, Y/N. I swear, I'll be better for you this time." Camille said while hugging Y/N.

"I take your word on that, Millie," Y/N said and Camille's eyes widen as soon as she heard that nickname that Y/N just called her.

"You called me Millie again," Camille said and smiled. Millie was the nickname that Y/N made for Camille. She would always call her by that name since they were best friends.

"Millie?" Tom asked Y/N.

"It was the nickname I used to call her," Y/N answered and Tom nodded in agreement.

"So Tom," Camille called him. "I heard that you got that role for the new Spider-man."

Tom scratched the back of his neck before answering. "Well yeah, I did. I'm glad I was the one who got it." He answered.

"Does this mean that you'll be leaving?" She asked.

"Yeah. I'm leaving next Monday already." Tom answered.

"Would you be okay with that, Y/N?" Camille asked Y/N who just smiled and looked at Tom.

"It's his dream after all. I support him for that." Y/N answered.

Camille looked at Tom and Y/N and just smiled. "You really are a perfect match, you know?"

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

[ last week of january 2016 . . . ]

Y/N, together with Tom's whole family, Harrison, and Erika, came to the airport to see Tom leave for California.

"Facetime us from time to time, dear." His mother said while giving him a kiss on the cheek. "I will mom, don't worry," Tom said while hugging her.

"Here is a book of mine to keep you up when you feel stressed out." His father said and gave him a book that he wrote. Tom got it and hugged his father.

"Man, I'll miss golfing with you." Harry, his brother, said when he gave his older brother a hug. "And beating you In golf too." He added which made Tom punch his chest lightly.

"You sure you're not coming with me to pursue your photography career?" Tom asked him and Harry shook his head.

"I have to finish school first," Harry said. "I'm still sixteen, bro." He added.

Tom also gave a hug to Harry's twin brother, Sam, and also had a quick chat with him. Seeing this made Y/N feel so happy that she got a boyfriend who was so loving towards his family.

"He'll be a great actor, you know." Y/N heard Harrison's voice talking to her. "I would show you his performance in Billy Elliot soon." He added.

"You should," Y/N answered Harrison who gave her a smile before Tom approached them.

"Man, I'll miss you," Harrison said. "I'll catch up with you there soon though." They gave each other a hug and patted each other's back.

"I know, mate," Tom answered back to Harrison. "Take care of Y/N for me, okay?" He told his best mate and Harrison nodded. Tom also turned to Erika who was there and gave her a hug too.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of her too," Erika said and pulled Tom closer for her to whisper in his ear, "Don't let the ladies swoon over for you when you get there. Got that?" Erika said and pulled Tom back. "Don't worry, I got my eyes only for Y/N." He said to Erika and she just smiled and gave him a high five.

Lastly, Tom turned his attention to Y/N. Save the best for last, he said to himself.

His family and their friends walked back a little to give them some time alone. As soon as Tom had his eyes on her, she couldn't help but cry a little but she also gave a smile. Tom walked closer to her and wrapped his arms around her.

"Fuck." Tom cursed under his breath. "It's hard to leave because of you, you know? Should I just cancel?" He joked that made Y/N punch him lightly. "I'm kidding, love."

Y/N raised her head up to look at him properly. Tom cupped her cheeks with his hands and leaned his forehead to hers. "Wait for me, okay?" He whispered. He pressed his lips to hers for a while and eventually pulled away.

"I will, Tom. Even if you take years, I'll wait for you." Y/N answered and sobbed. She looked away for a while.

"Look at me, love," Tom said and that made Y/N look up to him again. "I will never not think about you." He said and kissed her forehead that made her smile and held on to his arm.

"And I'll never stop loving you, Tom," Y/N said. "I'll miss you so much,"

"I'll miss you the most," Tom said. He hugged her once again with his head on top of hers for a while before pulling away and gathered all his luggage.  He waved to his family and friend before walking away.

All Y/N could do was watch him leave until she noticed that her hair was tied with the scrunchie that her mother gave to her. Her eyes suddenly widen and had an idea on her mind.

"Tom! Wait!" She called after him and ran towards him before he could go through the gates.

As soon as Tom heard her voice, he stopped walking and looked back to see Y/N running towards him. She suddenly jumped onto him and he caught her and spun her around.

He put her down before saying anything to her, "What's wrong?" He asked her, concerned.

Y/N then untied her hair and handed him the scrunchie. "I just wanted to give this to you. Something that you can keep while you're away. Something that will make you think of me." She said.

"But, isn't this the only thing that you could remember your mom?" He asked her.

"She will always be in my memory, Tom." She answered with a smile and Tom smiled back at her. He held out his hand and Y/N placed the scrunchie around his wrist. They hugged once again and pulled away then Y/N pressed her lips to him. After a few seconds, she finally pulled away and leaned her forehead to his.

"I love you, Y/N Y/L/N," Tom whispered.

"I love you, Thomas, always."

❃ TAGLIST @allthisfortommy @kait4073 @lovebittenbyevans @l0ve-0f-my-life @spiitfiires @robertpattinson-th @jackiehollanderr @butterflies-glitter

[buckysgoldenheart]

Safe House: August Walker x Reader

Summary: Someone threatens you and so your boyfriend, August, must take you to his safe house.

Words: 3463

Following part: Part 2 (One Year Later)

Note: Not AU really, but doesn’t follow Mission Impossible at all. This is just how I picture a fluffy August who loves his woman.

P.S. This was not edited phenomenally. I have no excuses to feed you. I was just tired ;)

(There are not enough August Walker gifs in this world)

Safe House:

On the days he told you he would hopefully be coming home to you, you stayed up all night, always, until sunrise. And if he didn’t come home that night, then you worried until the next night. Night after night after night until he walked through that door and you could finally breathe again.

It was an entire week this time, that August left you wondering. More days had gone by past the day he promised you than ever before. He had sent no note delivered by a random man with a riddle only you and August knew the answer to. And that was only in the most extreme of cases. More often there was a phone call, quick but reassuring. Not this time, and images of him being tortured or dying flashed through your mind, consuming you, as your fingers trembled around your coffee mug.

Just as the tears began to stream down your paling cheeks, the multiple locks August demanded you have on your door turned and opened one by one until he could freely walk inside. The weight on your chest lifted and you let out a tiny cry of relief, but August, your boyfriend you went a month and a half without seeing, stormed right passed you into the bedroom.

You sat up sharply and put the mug on the table, following him into the bedroom you shared. He hadn’t bothered to turn on one of the lamps, so all you could really see was his form grab a suitcase from the closet, throw it on the bed, wide open, and begin to shove as much clothing inside it as he could.

You stood in the doorway, your eyes adjusting to the darkness and pushing through the tears clouding them. “August,” you spoke softly, thankful he was alive, but heartbroken he had ignored you on his way in. “August,” you tried a little louder. “What is happening? Are you leaving again?”

“Not me,” he said, pausing for a moment to meet your stare. “We.” Then he turned back to his task of throwing things into a suitcase. “Are ten shirts, seven pairs of pants, two dresses, and four pairs of shoes enough for you?”

“Enough for what?” You asked. “August, you’re scaring me.” You walked in the room and touched his arm, stilling his movements so he would look at you. “What is happening?” His eyes, sadder than you had seen them before, roamed over every inch of your face as if he would never get to see it again. You scrunched your eyebrows in confusion. “August—”

“Do you love me?”

“W-What?”

“You do, don’t you?” He lightly pleaded.

“Of course, I love you, August, but I still do not understand what is going on.”

He sighed in relief, but you didn’t miss the uneasy look on his face. “I’m…fuck…I’m a bit more…higher up than I told you.”

“In…what? Work?”

“Yes.”

You crossed your arms over your middle and swallowed. “What does that mean?”

“I kill more important people than I told you: prime ministers, presidents, royalty, people with families; all of them bad people, but important. I place bombs, I dismantle bombs, both that could and have destroyed half a city.”

“So…was last month in Istanbul—"

“Yes.” He walked over to your dresser and shoved it aside with ease, unlocked the small vault behind it with the pass-code only the two of you knew, and pulled out three guns before placing them between piles of folded clothes in the suitcase. “I have a safe house,” He said. “One even Hunt doesn’t know about.”

“Dad?”

Your eyes widened and he hummed in acknowledgement.

“Dad is with Ilsa, isn’t he? Something about Morocco. That’s all he could say.”

“Yea, he’s been assigned there for a bit. That’s where I am supposed to be, too; right now interrogating the head of the Crown Prince of Morocco’s security because of—” He met your eyes and paused, then shook his head slightly, always unsure of what information could put you in danger, “…certain reasons.”

“I thought you were in London.”

“Yea, I was. Morocco was next. I was going to call you as soon as I could, but…things got complicated.” August quickly walked to the kitchen and returned with a plastic sandwich bag and paper towel, then went to your jewelry box and pulled out two necklaces: one that was your mother’s, and one that he had bought for you when he told you he loved you for the first time. ‘Just in case you were on the fence about me, I thought this might sway you,’ he had said. You laughed, he clasped the necklace around your neck, and you made love over and over, exchanging ‘I love yous” the entire night. Since then, you wore the one he had given you when he moved into your place with the promise that he would never leave you.

You watched as he carefully wrapped up the jewelry in the paper towel, put them in the baggie and zip them safely into a side pocket of the case. “August, please, please tell me that ‘things got complicated’ does not mean that something got fucked up and now my father is supposed to kill you…again.”

“What?” August stopped in his tracks, noticing how every inch of you tensed with stress. “No, baby. No.” He glanced around the room for anything he might have missed. “Anything else you want to take with us?”

You looked around too, not seeing a thing, but then ran into the hallway and took a photo of the both of you off the wall: you and him kissing at your friend’s wedding, both of you completely unaware of the camera man behind you. It clearly showed your love for him and his for you, and so it became, and remained, your favorite.

Back in the room, you placed it on top of everything else in the suitcase, keeping it in the frame to protect it. August smiled at seeing the picture, grabbed your waist, and pulled you close. “I love you,” He whispered, his lips brushing over yours. You smiled slightly and fully placed your mouth to his. All it took was a moment before his hand began to slide around your waist to cup your ass. Then, you reached your arms up and began to twine your fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, knowing fully well how that turned him on. You had missed his touch so bad, and he yours, so it took no time to feel him hard, pressed against you.

He pulled back fast, huffing out breaths as you chuckled. “We can’t do this now. We really need to get going.”

Your smile fell. “You still haven’t explained.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” He said, closing the suitcase.

“Give me the short version.”

“Short version,” He mumbled to himself as he pulled the bag off the bed, a small smile on his face at your persistence. “Ok, short version: a guy that I really would rather not know about you, now knows about you.”

“What? Like, a bad guy?”

“Not a super bad one, but…yea.” He cringed as he said the last word. This whole thing was one giant nightmare; his worst, actually. How you weren’t panicking he didn’t know. Maybe it was because you were Hunt’s daughter, but August seemed to feel much more stressed about this than you.

“How? Dad changed me in the system. No one knows my real name but you, him, and the team.”

“I know. We don’t know how. But this guy had your picture and your name, and that was enough for Hunt…and me. Hunt has the guy, but you never know what could happen. He might have people to get him out, he might not, but he made some serious threats and we aren’t risking it, so Hunt and I agreed. I come home, get you and take you somewhere safe that no one else knows about and stay there until further notice.”

You crossed your arms. “And dad is just fine with a man he practically cannot stand coming and taking his daughter away to some random location he can’t track down?”

“Right,” August walked towards you, bag in hand, and motioned you out the door. “Well, he kind of knows about the two of us and figured out of anyone, I’d do the best at protecting you.”

You turned fast with a death glare in your eye and placed a hand on his chest to stop him. “What do you mean he knows about us?”

August sighed knowing now was not the time to do this, but well aware that fighting your stubbornness was a losing game. He ran his free hand through his dark curls. “You said he can’t stand me, right?”

“Yes.”

“He ever tell you why?”

“Not specifically.”

“Well, this is why. He does not like that I assassinate by day and sleep with his daughter by night.”

“Oh my God, August!” Both of your hands shoved at his chest, but the brick wall that was your boyfriend did not move an inch.

“Hey, it’s not all me, ok? After we met, he noticed that I asked about you all the time, but apparently you asked about me all the time, too, so you were no sneakier than I was.” He raised a hand in an ‘oh well’ gesture and stepped around you back into the kitchen.

“Oh God,” You groaned and your head fell back. “…Fine.”

“Peanut butter?” He called.

Annoyed, you said, “Yea.”

Arms crossed again, you rounded the corner and watched the muscles of his shoulders shift a little under his shirt as he took a knife full of peanut butter and slathered it on the bread. “We have an eight-hour drive to the helicopter, three hours flying to the boat, and then it’s just an hour on the boat to the house. How many do you want?”

“Eight. Six for me, two for you.”

August whipped around with a pained expression “Cold.”

“Fine. Five for me, three for you.”

“Better, but still chilly.”

You walked up wrapped your arms around his waist. “You keep it up, I’ll make it seven for me, one for you.”

“You do not know where my safe house is, I do. Choose your words wisely, miss,” he said, then dabbed a bit of the peanut-y goodness on the tip of your nose. “Are you going to eat that, or do I need to lick it off?”

You pretended to think for a moment. “Lick it off.”

He did, and your eyes and nose scrunched as you giggled. “Fuck, I’m just going to bring the jar.”

“Why?”

“You’ll find out later.” He smiled seductively and finished spreading the peanut butter on the bread. “Jam for some, honey for the others?”

“Yea.” He knew you too well.

“You have everything you want?”

You took one last look at the house you and August had secretly—or thought, secretly—shared, not knowing when, or if, you would be back. “I think so.”

When you turned back to him, he was shoving the last of the sandwiches in a paper bag. With his free hand he touched your cheek lovingly. ���Baby, I’m so sorry about this. I never wanted to have to take you away from our home.”

“It’s ok.” You placed your hand on his. “You are home.”

August smiled sadly, still feeling guilty, but leaned down to kiss you. “You are home,” He sighed as he touched his forehead to yours. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

With a guiding hand on your back, August led you through the front door of the house no one else had seen before. “Sorry, it’s probably dusty.”

Once inside, he set the suitcase down and flipped a switch that had the lights above flickering before settling into a soft glow. You looked around the small place that was fully and completely him. It was not a perfect place; shabbier and creakier like an old cabin, which it basically was, but it was your boyfriend. His things were scattered around the place, left over from when he probably had to leave quick. It smelled like him. A manly, piney, citrus scent still lingered even though he had mentioned the last time he stepped foot in the place was three years ago, nine months before he met you. You could practically see ghosts of him from the many times he had been there before. You pictured him making the cans of soup you could see in the cupboard from the wide open doors; or reading the book on the small table by a large chair, the spine cracked from where it split to the page he left off on.

“I don’t care.” You smiled. “I like it.”

Though you couldn’t see it, August smiled too and wrapped his arms around your waist from behind to pull your body against his. He placed a long kiss on your shoulder, then your neck, then your cheek, then his fingers slowly tilted your head to the side so he could kiss your lips.

“I’m glad you like it. You’ll be safe here, Y/N. I promise.”

You chuckled. “If you’re the one watching me, I’m pretty sure I’d be safe anywhere.”

“You know it,” He said, placing another kiss on your neck before releasing you and giving your ass a gentle swat. He picked up the bag and took it to what you could only assume was the bedroom.

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

One Month Later

You woke up to the sunlight streaming through a window and turned to find your boyfriend absent from his side of the bed. It was five thirty in the morning when you glanced at the alarm clock on his nightstand; way too early to be awake, and you certainly felt the exhaustion from the three rounds you went with August the night before.

You stood and groaned. Your bones seemed to creak along with the bed, but your mood instantly perked up when you heard August’s voice just outside the bedroom door. It was open just a crack and with an attentive ear you could make out his words as he stood tall in the living room.

“He’s permanently locked up then?” He asked the person on the other end of the phone he had in his hand. He listened and nodded a few times, before saying “She is good, I promise.”

…

“No, she’s still asleep,”

August ran fingers through his hair and pressed a button on the phone he had made sure was untraceable. He set the phone down on the counter so he could start a pot of coffee. Then your fathers deep tone came through clear.

“Look, Walker, I know we don’t always see eye-to-eye, but thank you…for protecting her,” He said, and you smiled at the rare kindness he directed towards your boyfriend.

August poured a few cups of water into the pot and pressed ‘start.’ “You don’t have to thank me, Hunt. You know I love her.” He cleared his throat and ran fingers through his hair again; an action you knew he usually made when his anxiety spiked. “Hunt, about what I asked you before Morocco…”

“I know what I said,” Your father interrupted. “But after all of this…I honestly think you’re the only man for the job.”

And audible sigh of relief slipped passed August’s full lips. “You changed your mind?”

“After I thought about what you said you’re willing to give up, I realized you are serious about this.”

“I am,” August said, a certain determination in his voice.

“You would have to…” Your father paused, ensuring August understood. He had used that tone on you many times as a child. “…you know…give it up.”

August poured a cup of coffee for himself and turned to lean against the counter. You quickly ducked away from the door for fear he could see your eyes spying on him through the small crack, but when you chanced a look back, he seemed to be staring into space, shuffling through his thoughts. “It would be worth it. More than worth it.” August gave a close-lipped smile. “I never really enjoyed this anyway.

You father sighed through the speaker. “None of us really do.”

“That is true.” August’s chest puffed for a second in a silent laugh and took another sip of coffee. “I have to go. Your daughter is spying on me.”

Fuck, you thought. Completely busted. You inched the door open with a guilty look as your boyfriend eyed you and ended the call with a click. After setting the coffee cup on the counter, he crossed his arms and rose an eyebrow at you.

“Not the stealthiest, huh?” You chuckled nervously.

“You might have been had you not been spying on a man in the CIA.”

“Sorry, baby.” August snickered as he reached out a hand. You walked to him and he pulled you in close with a kiss to your forehead. “What were you talking about? It was very cryptic.”

He hummed. “Maybe it’s too dangerous for you to know.”

You looked up and met bright blue eyes. “Is it?”

“…No.”

“Well,” You began, drawing out the word with an innocent smile. “If it wasn’t about a mission, why can’t I know? A civil conversation with my dad is a little suspicious, wouldn’t you agree?”

“No, babe. We are the best of pals when we are on assignment.”

August’s eyes lit up as you let out a loud laugh. “Bullshit. Stop delaying and spill it, Mister.”

He swayed you back and forth in his arms, taking some time to think about how to say what you were demanding he tell you. “I plan to take a demotion…of sorts,” He said, way too casually for you.

You pulled out of his arms and your eyebrows knitted together. “What? August—”

“I want to do it.”

“Why? What does it mean for you if you do?” Slowly, he stepped to you and led you to the couch in the room. When you sat, he lifted your legs, laid them across his thick thighs, and placed a hand on your knee. “August…” You said, pulling his attention away from your legs.

His lips quirked up at the ends. “It means that I will be home more. Much more. It means that I won’t be putting myself in as dangerous of situations. It means you’ll be safer.” He raised a calloused hand to cup your cheek and stroked the corner of your lips with his thumb. Your eyes closed as you settled into his touch. “It means I can marry you.”

Immediately, your eyelids shot back open and as your lips parted, August took the opportunity to run that thumb once over your bottom lip before his fingers left your face. “What?”

“When Hunt tells me we are good to leave here, which should be in about a week, it means it’s over. I’m done. I won’t have to go back in the game if I don’t put myself there.”

“Can you do that? Sloane—”

He shook his head. “Won’t be a problem.”

“How?”

“I made a deal with Sloane a few years ago, when you and I started dating. When the time is right, if I take a step down, I’ll do what she asks, train five new recruits to be even better than I am, and…” He paused, “I won’t reveal certain information about her husband.”

Your hand covered your smile of awe for a moment. “You’re actually doing all of this just so you can marry me?”

“Of course, I am. Marriage doesn’t exactly work well when people do what I do. Hunt had to go through losing Julia for the job, but I don’t want to. Especially not with you.” A tear trailed down your cheek that August immediately swiped away. “Don’t cry.”

You moved to straddle him on the couch. Your arms linked behind his neck, and his hands fell to your waist, rubbing up and down your sides until he wrapped them around to settle on your ass. “I love you,” You sobbed. “I can’t believe you are willing to blackmail your boss for me.”

August beamed up at you and brushed a lock of hair behind your ear. “I wouldn’t blackmail her for anyone but you.” Then he reached a hand to the back of your neck and pulled down until your lips connected with his.

[her-blueberrycheesecake]

Genre: Angst

Warnings: Contains curse word/s, first part is more of angst flashbacks

Word Count: 3,401

“Just do what you want to do, Mark. I don’t want to give any shit anymore.”

Mark furrowed his brows down at your words. He’s clearly taken aback with what you had just said. He’s been trying to talk with you for the past 5 or 10 minutes. You just don’t know anymore. You don’t know how long he’s been bugging you to talk because your mind is in a fog of negative thoughts, with pain, anger, sadness.

This whole ordeal is taking all of your energy to be calm. You’re just so emotionally exhausted after having another week of silence between the two of you. You live on the same roof, sleep on the same bed, yet you both feel so far away from each other now.

“This is your way to work things out now, Y/N?”, Mark finally said after being silent for almost half a minute. His voice is low. You felt that he was hurt from what you just said to him. But you just don’t feel anything right now. You felt numb.

He continued to talk with you in a calm voice, “I get it that you’re tired. But you’re not the only who feels exhausted in here, Y/N. It’s been almost two w-“

“Yes, Mark. Two. Fucking. Weeks.”, you cut him with a louder voice now. “What’s your plan?”

Mark responded with a silence. He’s sitting on the bedside with his hands on his head, facing the window while you sat on the other side of the bed facing the wall.

“I- I don’t know…”, he answered after being quiet for a few more seconds, taking a deep sigh.

You were waiting for him to talk, but you felt a sharp pain in your chest when you heard his response. Not expecting for him to be at lost now with your problem.

He wasn’t like this before. You think to yourself. Now you feel your eyes starting to water. You just want him to wrap his arms around you just like before, after you both had a fight. He always knows how to resolve things between the two of you. He always tries not to do or say anything that might upset or hurt you. And if he did, he always knows how to comfort you. For the four years, 10 months that you’ve been together, he always knows how to make you feel better.

But he isn’t like that anymore.

“I felt like this isn’t a home anymore, Y/N...”, Mark continued. “This... This whole situation. This whole set up. This doesn’t make me feel like home anymore.”

You felt a drop of tear fell on your cheek as he continued to speak. His words echoing in your mind sends air to your head. You wanted to shout. You wanted him to stop talking. Yet, you sat still on the bedside, freezing. His words just passed through your ears.

Another silent set of minutes passed after Mark talked. You tried to keep a steady voice before speaking.

“This isn’t going to work anymore if you felt that way, Mark…”,you said as another drop of tear fell down, and another, and another.

“I cannot force you to stay just because I want to. Tha- That’s not right.”, you continued to speak as you struggled to succumb to your sobbing.

“I still love you, Y/N…”, Mark responded with a low voice. You heard him sniff through his words. You close your eyes to stop yourself from crying harder, knowing that he’s already in tears too.

“I... I do. I still do love you, Y/N…”, he continued to talk.

“But it’s not enough for you to just feel that..."

You paused for a few more seconds, gathering all your thoughts.

"How about me, Mark? What would I do with your words if I can’t even feel it anymore?”, you spoke to him again, now staring at the floor. You’re thinking, how does him saying he loves you brings pain rather than happiness?

“I’m sorry, Y/N… I know I’m lacking these days. I’m failing to fulfill my promises to you. And I cannot stand to see you getting sadder and sadder each day because of me... I’m sorry…”

You don’t know how or what to respond to his words anymore. You hated to hear him saying sorry to you. You took a gulp to suppress the feeling of pain in your chest.

~

Your mind wandered around the time it all started. Mark was struggling to keep focus on his work as stress after stress took part of his job as the director of photography. There were much more projects than usual that was assigned to their production company. The conflict in the situation escalates more when one of their models backed out in the middle of their shooting. You’re just not sure if it was the model or the agency who pulled back. You cannot remember exactly Mark’s ranting on you that day. They already finished half of the set, shooting and editing for two days. They cannot hire another model that day because of their packed schedules which cannot be postponed or re-scheduled. That’s how they came up with the idea of choosing Mark as the substitute model since he already has a background when you were still studying. Mark is still kind of having second thoughts about it because he is aware of how it will add up on his already messed up work schedule, yet he chose to take a go for it because he said, he doesn’t have a choice though. Because it’s either he agreed on it or they will pull out the project and end up with no payment, in which they already had spent a big amount of money. The project came out more successfully than they could ever imagined, resulting to Mark being scouted as a model to some more projects. Tripling, even quadrupling his work in a regular basis.

You watched how Mark’s lifestyle changed over the past three months due to his work. Although you don’t have any problem with it, at first, aside from him not being able to go home regularly and not contacting you to at least let you know. You loved and supported him in every path he took.

A simple and common problem that almost each couple usually go through in their relationships. But that “simple and common” problem quickly arises when you tried to communicate with him about it. You don’t know what have gone wrong, or what did you told him so wrongly for him to change his habits in your relationship. That in the blink of an eye, you didn’t even notice that he just suddenly felt so far away from you. Catalyzing in a cleft in your almost five years relationship.

You tried to talk it out on him for some times. But you had your last straw almost two weeks ago when he suddenly snapped out of you.

“Y/N, can you please drop this out now. I’m already burned-out from working. Are you not getting tired from this? Because I am.”, cutting you and answering another phone call from his co-worker, before storming out of the living room, “Yes, Jae.”

You were left dumbfounded with his words. That moment did scarred you so bad. That’s for sure. You just don’t know him at all.

And that only proliferated the gap between the two of you. Taking you to the situation you are in now.

~

You’re now already bawling, trying to speak clearly as your breathing heaves, “I... I’m not happy with this anymore, Mark… I tried. I tried so hard. I tried so many times to reach out to you. To understand you. I feel like… I don’t even know you anymore…”

Y/N's P.O.V

It's 5 in the morning. Your alarm sets off. Just another normal working day, you think. You opened your eyes but didn't get up. You just stayed in your bed for a good 40 minutes. Laying on your back, you unconsciously fiddled your fingers at the big space beside you.

Thinking. Deep. Eventually losing yourself with the flashbacks in your mind.

You took a deep breath as you found yourself thinking about him again.

Thinking about how you used to wake up next to his pretty face as he snuggled you, showering you with sweet pecks all over your face, preventing you from getting up.

Playfully tickling your sides and you softly patting your hand to his cheeks to stop him.

His deep, soothing voice starting your day, “Good Morning, my angel”, smiling sweetly, as he rubs his tall, pointed nose to yours, always send butterflies to your stomach just by hearing his voice.

God, even his nose is just as fine as his whole being.

Thinking about how two were so happy before, the life you had with him for the past 4 years and 11 months. You both know, including every people around you, thinks that you are an absolute match for each other. You felt that no one and nothing will ever break you.

But with your current situation, you knock your self-thoughts. Leaving you always ending up in to thinking, how did it ever end up like this?

You lightly shook your head to clear out from all these thoughts taking over your mind. You suddenly look at your table side, glancing at the picture of the two of you that you still keep. Clicking your tongue and closing your eyes, you tell yourself, "Wake up now Y/N. That was 2 months ago.", as you take another deep sigh.

You got up from your bed. Walking towards the big stand mirror just beside your bathroom door to check your face and the bags under your eyes that you gained from all these sleepless nights, lightly tapping your face when you suddenly saw the familiar shirt on the floor. You're not even surprised anymore to find some of his left-over things in your apartment that you two used to share. You roll your eyes while shaking your head, "I'll have to clean this room eventually".

You recapture why you haven't even moved any of his things, not even an inch. You didn't even take a chance to pick up those random things he left.

Just once.

Just that one instant when you tried to clean your room from his belongings.

Right. Because when you did that, one week after he left, you didn't anticipate to have a severe breakdown. You are still afraid that you might helplessly bawl again in your bedroom floor just from the lingering scent he left. You remember that day so clearly. You didn't manage to get up from the floor. Didn’t touch any food. You just drank water. You didn't even shower. The definition of a complete disarray.

You're afraid to find yourself being a mess again from all the crying, from all the pain you felt you think that might not subside. Not even a little. You don't want to miss another day of work. Because the last time that occurred to you, you missed three consecutive days just to pick yourself up. If it wasn't for your best friend, Damica, you really thought you wouldn't have the strength to get up for the whole week or the next.

That's why you said to yourself, yes, it's a mess. But you chose not to gamble yourself for this again. You'll have to clean it up though one day. Just not today.

~

You were in a haze as you took your last 15 minutes break at work when you felt a light pat on your shoulder, distracting you from your wandering thoughts.

"Hey, Y/N. We're going to K-Town later to crash after work. You good?", Yugyeom said with a small smile and slightly raises his brows.

You paused to think for kind of long seconds.

Oh, right. K-Town.

Something that reminds you of Mark again.

You felt your chest ached a little bit more when you heard that place. A torture you always feel day by day.

You two would always go to K-Town every other week to spend your Friday nights after work to enjoy the start of your weekend together and of course, to release stress, just drinking and eating. Even if almost all of your friends have gone home, you and Mark would stay for some more time. Just talking about anything and everything. You two would sometimes come home at 2 in the morning. If you enjoyed the night so much, much later than that. After you got off the cab, he would sometimes drunkenly tell the driver, already eating some of his words, "Hey sir. Thank you for dropping me and my beautiful wife home safely.", as he tightly wrapped his arms around your waist, with his head leaning on your shoulder and plants a soft kiss on your neck.

You quickly blink to wake yourself up from the memories to respond, "Uhmm... I'll g–".

"Ow come on, Y/N. It's already Friday. It's been I-DON’T-KNOW HOW MANY WEEKS since you came with us.", Bambam cut you while kind of pouting as he felt that you might reject their invite again.

He is right though. You can't even remember anymore when was the last time you spent time with your friends. All that you can remember is how long you and Mark have called it off. But hey, you have to break yourself from these thoughts of Mark. You think to yourself.

"I was about to say I'll go when you cut me off Bam",you respond with a chuckle.

With your response, Yugyeom and Bambam was clearly surprised and hugged you tightly while screaming of excitement and happiness, sandwiching you between your two tall friends.

"YES!!! At last!!! She's herself again!!!", Bam said loudly as he was jumping. Not caring about your other workmates already looking at the three of you because of their noises. You just shut your eyes tightly and pursed your lips as you felt a little embarrassed, yet in a good, funny way.

"Yah yah yah! Get back to work. You still have an hour before you can leave.", the three of you were kind of startled with your boss' voice. Finally releasing you from their tight hugs.

"Ah, Sir Park! You have to come with us too later!",Yugyeom said to your boss as he playfully teased him by nudging his shoulder.

"Why? Are you going to treat us now?", Jinyoung replied, raising his eyebrows.

"Ah~ Stop it Jinyoung. Y/N's already coming with us. You should come too.", Yugyeom responded.

"Yah! This little pu– That's SIR PARK for you.", Jinyoung told Yugyeom as he jokingly attempted to hit him with his hand.

Looking at you now with Jinyoung's bit confused reaction, "You're really coming Y/N?"

"Yes, SIR Park.", you replied with a sweet smile. "That's why you should come too.", nudging at his arm with your elbow.

Jinyoung was one of Mark's college close friends. While Yugyeom and Bambam were one of the active members of the organization where Mark and Jinyoung are both officers. That's how you got close to them. Them, treating you like their sister, and you treating them as your brothers.

Yugyeom and Bam walked back to their working stations to finish the remaining hour of their work. Jinyoung walked back with you at your desk with his arms crossed to his chest, carefully analyzing your face.

"Are you sure you're okay now?",Jinyoung asked straight with a low, quieter voice so that only you can hear his kind of a personal question. "Let me just remind you that you can always file for a vacation leave, Y/N. Don't push yourself too much."

Your eyes opened slightly at his words. But you managed to compose yourself and put a still reaction. Just how you always react. Like nothing was wrong.

Blinking, you smiled at him, "Yes, Jinyoung. I am fine. Thank you for being such a considerate boss.", trying to put a light tone to every word you said to make the conversation less serious.

"I am not telling you this just because I am a considerate boss. I am still your friend, Y/N. Yugyeom, Bam and I.", Jinyoung replied to you.

You only answered him with a smile and nodded. Implicating that you acknowledged Jinyoung’s comforting words. Because you still don't know how to react or respond properly to your friends after checking up on you, after learning about how Mark and you suddenly broke up. Even you, yourself. You’re still dumbfounded at what happened to your almost-perfect relationship. You’re still at lost.

~

It's only 8 in the evening when your friends got high from drinking. You're only watching them while munching some fish cake at your table. Jinyoung, like the usual older brother to you, advised that you don't drink tonight and you just agreed. You just really didn't feel like drinking tonight. You only want to spend time with them after not being yourself for the past eight weeks. You're giggling at their weirder antics that shows up when they have alcohol in their systems. They just eccentrically yell something, sing some songs that you can’t even recognize if those songs really exist and dance that made you laugh even more.

"Yah! Jinyoung! How about you take off that padding cyclings!", Bambam yelled to Jinyoung as the surrounding's becoming louder, causing you all to crack at how shameless he is for bugging Jinyoung when he got kind of drunk.

"How about I break your chopstick legs, huh?!",glaring, Jinyoung retaliated, causing you to burst in to laughter again.

Your eyes were already tearing up from laughing when suddenly you heard a familiar laugh. You know that laugh too well. You felt a sudden cold chill in your spines. That soft laugh even though he's already laughing his lungs out. You force yourself not to think of him this time, but it's no use. You already know him like the back of your hand. And like a natural reflex, you looked for him. You start to find at who's laughing with that familiar voice. The laugh that you can listen to even though you're sleeping. You're already picturing his face. His perfect set of teeth. His cute canines. The laugh that you always love to hear. That voice.

You thought, Maybe he's here?

Obviously, he knows that you're always here every other week.

Maybe he came back.

You stood up from your seat and looked harder for whose laugh it belongs to. You rubbed your eyes and wiped your glasses at your shirt, squinting your eyes and extending your neck to look sharply. Scanning keenly the noisy surroundings, the people around you.

But he's nowhere to be seen.

There's no Mark here.

He is not here with you tonight.

He is not with you anymore.

You felt another known sharp sting in your chest.

And that pain you felt intensified when you heard Yugyeom tell you all in a loud voice, probably because of the drunken state he is now, “Whoa! Look at Mark hyung!”, holding his phone up, pointing at a posted photo of Mark on his Instagram that he uploaded a few minutes ago. You really tried not to look, but your eyes automatically glance at Yugyeom’s phone when you heard Mark’s name.

You bite your lip and swallowed to conceal your uneasiness and eagerness to see his face again. You felt your mouth dried when you saw his photo.

He became much, much, much more gorgeous than you could imagine.

You thought that he already has the most pretty face you’ve ever seen in your entire life.

Small face, high nose bridge, small alluring lips, his beautiful teeth that accentuates his whole features, and those doe eyes that brightens up his face when he smiles, your most favorite.

Just… his whole appearance is the vivid representation of an ethereal beauty.

Although it is a black and white photo, you can still see how much more gorgeous he has become. He’s now the cover model for a very well-known fashion and lifestyle magazine. He’s wearing a black leather beret and a black tank top, reflecting at a what you think is a window or something, flexing his side profile. A pure beauty. He really is made for this; you think to yourself.

You felt colder. Empty. You told yourself in a small voice, "...Manhattan must be really nice then."

So, here it is guys! My apologies for the late post 🙏🏼 But here it is anyways hehe. Thank you for those who are waiting and still want to read 😊

Also just a thought, I won't promise to put all GOT7 members in this AU unless they fit the characteristics I feel needed in this story.

I'll try to post the next chapter as soon as possible. Stay safe ya'll! -n. wang 💖

COVER, PROMPT

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 2 (working in progress)

CHAPTER 3 (working in progress)

[givelove-always]

I Love Him Not, I Love Him

A/N: Hi! This is my extremely late entry for @bucky-smiles​’ 2K Bollywood Writing Challenge (I’m so sorry for the delay aahhh!)! My prompt was one of my fave songs, Subhanallah from Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, so that’s what this fic is loosely based on! Also a big thank you to @parkerpetey​ for taking the time to edit this and leave hilarious comments throughout the Google doc, ilysm for that. I hope you enjoy!

Summary: The three times you didn’t accept that you were crushing on Peter, and the one time you did.

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Word Count: 7.3k words

Warnings: None, just tooth-rotting fluff and reader being frustrating :)

Something everyone talked about, yet nobody really talked about, was how being the new student in the school, especially given that it was your senior year, was ridiculously tough.

You had recently moved from Toronto to Queens, and you absolutely despised it. You’d spent three extremely long years at your old school creating a name for yourself, be it through your strong academic scores or your commitment to numerous extracurriculars. You weren’t exactly popular, but were definitely spoken of quite highly if you were brought up in conversation, regardless of whether it was teachers talking or your fellow students. You were on the perfect path to becoming valedictorian of your class.

… Until you were uprooted and brought here. Sure, your dad really pulled all the strings he could to help you secure a spot at Midtown, especially given that it was senior year - it’s hard enough as is to secure a spot in freshman year, what with it being insanely competitive and for genius students and all, and while your grades were stellar, it would’ve still been close to impossible securing a spot - and you really appreciated it, but that didn’t mean that you still didn’t miss your school and your friends back in Toronto.

It felt like everyone was talking about you - who was the new girl? how did she manage to get a spot three years after everyone else? was she genuinely smart, or was there some other way she got in? - but at the same time, it felt like you were invisible. People wanted to know more about the circumstances surrounding you than know more about you as a person.

With every day that you went to school and came back home after unsuccessful attempts at restarting your social life and making friends, your morale was deflating. As much as you tried to push it aside, the pang in your chest was becoming more and more undeniable when you constantly saw people surrounded by their friends, laughing and chatting, while you sat to the side all by yourself.

Even then, it was all bearable. Just one year here, and then you could go make friends in university, where life would practically be a clean slate - a fresh start for everyone. Who knows, maybe you could even go back to Canada to a university where some of your old high school friends would be attending. You kept telling yourself that everything would work itself out, and if it had to be after a year of loneliness, then so be it.

The only thing that still felt terrible were the daily walks to and from school all alone. Back in Toronto, you and your best friend would always text each other in the morning to try and coordinate the time that you’d leave so that you could walk together, chatting each other’s ears off the entire way there. If you had time in the morning, you’d often even stop by the Tim Hortons on the way and get yourselves a little breakfast.

Here in Queens, there were tons of cute little cafés and little convenience stores and such on your way to school, and while you would still often stop by to pick up a quick snack or drink (or even just to say a quick hello to Mr. Delmar, the kind man who owned the little sandwich shop around the corner, and pet his adorable little cat), it never was the same as going with a friend. That constant loneliness started to change though when one day, you left home and arrived at Mr. Delmar’s shop earlier than usual.

one

It had been a long night with very minimal sleep. You were up working on a Physics assignment until almost five in the morning and you knew that if you slept then, you wouldn’t wake up in time for your morning classes. The extremely prominent bags under your eyes stood as proof of your exhaustion and you had no energy to make yourself breakfast, hence your early arrival at Delmar’s.

You sat at a little table by the window observing the street outside. Most people look at the way others are dressed outside as an indication of the weather. You, on the other hand, liked to think of it as more of a personification of the weather. If the chilly November weather were to be a person, they would definitely be one of those speedy walkers roaming the streets in some fuzzy boots and a trench coat.

As you sipped on your hot chocolate and tried to assign a more rounded personality to the November weather for no reason other than trying to wake yourself up, the sound of the bells chiming as someone entered the store caught your attention.

Peter Parker.

He was that really smart kid in your Physics class - the one subject you were struggling in. You knew him from that one time you guys were paired up for a quick chemistry lab, but you didn’t know him know him. You remembered vividly and appreciated how nice he was the whole time - it was difficult to find that over the last few months. Either that, or you just somehow managed to keep getting paired up with the wrong people.

You realized you were staring at him when you saw him facing and waving in your direction.

That was unusual, nobody ever really seemed to acknowledge you.

You turned to see if there was someone behind you he might have been trying to talk to, but very quickly realized that you were seated in the corner when your eyes were met with nothing but the plain white wall. ‘Stupid move,’ you told yourself. ‘How do you just forget that you’re sitting next to a wall?’

Grimacing a little, you turned back to face him and waved at him. You gave him a small smile, which he very politely returned before he went up to place his order.

‘Great, you can’t even greet a person normally. What is wrong with you Y/n? This is why people aren’t trying to befriend you right now, if-’

“Hey, do you mind if I sit down here?” a slightly timid voice interrupted. Your eyes locked with Peter’s as your head shot up.

“Oh! Um, yeah- I mean, no! I mean, no, I don’t mind, go ahead!” you stuttered, feeling all the blood rush to your cheeks.

Peter let out the softest giggle you have ever heard as he sat down, and if you didn’t have such sharp hearing, you were sure you would have missed it.

“How are you? How are things going?” he asked as he set his sandwich onto the table.

“Oh, well, they’re going,” you smiled and shrugged. “This point in the semester’s always a little crazy, but it’s not the worst. How are you doing?”

“Yeah, it does get hectic around this time,” Peter sympathized, scrunching his nose slightly in an effort to show mutual distaste over the stress. “I’m not too bad, just really tired from working on that physics assignment. How’d you find that?”

“Oh my gosh, don’t ask,” you groaned, rolling your head before laying it smack against the table. “I literally cannot physics, it took me forever to complete it, and I’m still not confident about a solid chunk of it.”

Peter let out a laugh at your reaction, the sound falling like music onto your ears. You discreetly peeked up from your position on the table to look at his undoubtedly glowing face, and the image you were met with was nothing short of beautiful. His eyes were scrunched up and his perfect teeth were on full display, cheeks turning redder by the second. The sunlight falling on his brown curls gave them a softer hue and made them look even softer than you’d already imagined them to be. Nobody had ever looked this angelic.

It was a sight you wouldn’t mind getting used to.

‘Wait, what? Why did you just think that? Y/n you barely even know the guy, stop being creepy!’

You pulled yourself out of the trance and slowly sat back up, giggling lightly to avoid making it obvious that you had just been staring - that would be awkward to explain.

“I’m sure you did just fine,” Peter chuckled. “And if anything, physics isn’t my worst subject, so um, if you want, I’d be more than happy to help.”

“That’s very sweet, thank you Peter, I appreciate that more than you realize,” you smiled, picking up your backpack. “I hate to cut this conversation short, but we need to start heading to school soon if we want to get to class on time.”

“It doesn’t have to be cut short!” Peter said abruptly standing up, catching you off-guard a little. “I-I mean, we could walk together if you’d like? No pressure though, it’s totally cool if you don’t-”

“Of course, I’d love that,” you cut him off with a smile.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” you nodded. “Let’s head out?”

“Yeah, just hold on one quick second,” he said as he quickly rushed over to the front of the shop.

Eyebrows furrowed, you followed him, only for your expression to instantly morph into one of awe as you were met with Peter petting Murph, Mr. Delmar’s cat, before he jogged back to where you were standing, a goofy smile adorning his face. “I’m ready now.”

Saying a quick goodbye to Mr. Delmar, the two of you made your way out. You shivered a little as the icy wind hit you. Peter picked up on the way you tried to discreetly rub your hands together, your outfit not doing nearly enough to cope with the sudden sharpness of the atmosphere, but stayed quiet, not knowing if it was appropriate to say something or not.

“So you’re a cat person, eh?”

“I’d say so, yeah. I’m just as much of a dog person too, though. Murph trumps all other animals though - I’ve been seeing him since Mr. Delmar got him, and he’s so adorable,” Peter gushed. “What about you, a dog person or a cat person?”

“Oh, a hundred percent a dog person, though I would make an exception for Murph, he is pretty cute,” you chuckled. “My best friend back in Canada has the sweetest little puppy named Maple and I practically lived at her house for the sole purpose of playing with him. Her uncle would drop off his two poodles occasionally too when he was travelling, and there was no way to get me out of her house when all three puppies came together.”

“Maple? That’s the most Canadian thing I’ve ever heard, I love that!” Peter physically had to stop for a minute because he was bent over letting out what could only be described as a ‘hearty laugh’.

If it were anyone else, you would most certainly be offended - what was so funny about having a pet with a stereotypical Canadian name? - but Peter exuded an aura of kindness and innocence, and despite only having spoken to him for such a short period of time, you knew his intentions were nothing but pure. Also, you had to admit, it was a little comedic how stereotypical the name was.

“Anyway, speaking of Canada,” he spoke through light chuckles once he’d calmed down a little and you both continued walking, “I don’t mean to be intrusive, and you definitely don’t have to answer if you’d rather not, but um, how come you transferred here senior year? Was it hard to get in? How did that work?”

“No no don’t worry, you’re not being intrusive at all, I don’t mind! Basically…” you started your not-so-entertaining story of how you ended up at Midtown, and no matter how many times you stopped yourself to apologize for how “boring” you were being, Peter assured you that you were anything but.

The long walk to school couldn’t have been long enough, because you were at your locker way too quick for your liking. And judging by the way Peter stayed with you as you grabbed your stuff and offered to walk you to class, he felt the same way.

You found yourself beginning to set your alarm for just a little while earlier than usual that day onwards, and morning walks together became more common as the month went on. Sure, you adored your sleep, but having a potential chance to run into Peter and walk to school with him again? It was worth it.

Despite having only briefly known him, there was a sense of comfort that you felt in his presence. He made you feel like you could share anything with him. Everytime he smiled, forget full-fledged laughed, you felt like maybe, just maybe, things were going to be okay for you.

To top it all off, it didn’t hurt that he was more than easy on the eyes. Those gorgeous eyes and that cute button-nose, not to mention his beautiful brown curls? You wouldn’t mind signing up for that one bit.

‘Y/n, stop. No. He’s just your friend. He’s just being nice, and you’re just happy you have a friend. You do not see him in that way - there is no chance of anything along those lines happening. You just haven’t had much interaction with people and now you’re playing up a friendship because you have nothing better to do. You do not like him.’

You reminded yourself that every time you caught yourself looking at him for even a moment more than what would be acceptable when you conversed. Peter was a great guy, but you guys were just friends, and you intended on keeping your feelings about him that way.

Besides, the reason you were down to lose some sleep wasn’t just being able to walk into school with Peter. You always had a problem with getting to school just in time to catch the bell, and this gave you an excuse to be more timely.

That’s all it was. A friendship and a way to be more punctual. Not anything more than that.

***** two

“Peter,” you clutched your stomach, loud laughter escaping you, “I’m literally going to pee myself!”

“Y/n, stop entertaining him or he won’t stop making those terrible jokes,” Ned groaned.

Peter had introduced you to his best friends Ned and MJ about three days into your friendship, once you’d gotten the remainder of your paperwork after your transfer completed and could finally sit with the rest of your classmates for lunch, and you’d all instantly clicked.

Here you were, two months later. Colourful lights shining all around you, the sound of squeals and laughter from a multitude of people constantly surrounding you, and a game to play every few steps you took - not to mention the numerous prizes waiting to be won.

Ned has suggested that the four of you go down to the arcade nearby to destress after the exhaustion of your end-of-semester exams, and you all had instantly agreed.

As much fun as you were having playing the different games and winning all those tickets with the people who had grown to be your closest friends, what was absolutely making your day was the way in which Peter would just not stop making hilarious puns and jokes.

“You’re just jealous you’re not as cool or as hot as me,” Peter playfully scoffed and made exaggerated hair-flip movements, grabbing your hand as he dragged a giggling you to the next game. “Come on Y/n, they’ll never know what it’s like to be iconic.”

“Woah Peter, what’s gotten into you today?”

“I’m just happy. I’m a happy boy. A happy boy who’s happy about being at this arcade with his wonderful friends because it’s a happy environment,” he glanced at you over his shoulder as he put in the tokens to play basketball.

You chuckled as you reached out to playfully pull his cheeks. “Well, happy boy, let’s win this thing and win it together. In case you didn’t know, my basketball skills are somewhat impeccable.”

“Y/n, you literally can’t walk five steps without tripping, it’s pretty hard to imagine you being any good at a sport that involves a lot of running,” he sassed.

“Ah, well that right there is the thing - I’m incapable of walking. When it comes to running, I’m a whole other ball game. Basketball game, to be more specific,” you spoke slowly, nodding your head wisely to emphasize your wisdom.

Peter let out a wheeze neither of you had expected, and it sent you both into a fit of laughter. When Ned and MJ made their way over to you a few seconds later, all they saw was the two of you clutching your stomachs, faces red and laughter escaping your throats as though you’d just rewatched another one of those ridiculous ‘5-Minute Crafts’ life hacks.

In the midst of the hysteria, as Peter went to slap his knee, he accidentally slammed the Start button on the game. The ever-so-jolly-yet-ominous-sounding countdown of the machine finally pulling you guys out of your bubble.

“Oh my gosh Peter stand up, it’s starting!” you exclaimed through giggles, smacking his arm repeatedly with the back of your hand to get his attention.

“Oof okay okay, let’s do this thing!” Peter rubbed his palms and cracked his neck, getting in a serious stance and grabbing the first basketball that came through the machine before tossing it straight into the hoop.

“My turn, my turn!” You shoved him with your hip playfully to make room for yourself and get a better angle to shoot.

Ned and MJ, who had been standing close behind and observing this all go down, just looked at each other, heads cocked to the side. Claps and cheers when the other one scored and purposeful bumps into each other every single time you switched, given you guys’ speed and surprising accuracy, were all they could see and hear.

“The two idiots… they really don’t see it, do they?” MJ questioned, looking between the both of you, genuinely puzzled.

Ned groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. “Dude, I swear I can and will cry right now if they don’t stop playing this ‘you’re just my best friend’ game, I’m so tired of it.”

“Are we gonna say anything to them to make them ‘fess up though?”

“Nah, I kinda wanna watch it play out, as much as it exasperates me,” Ned shrugged.

“Alright Petey boy, you wanna take this jackpot shot or do you want me to?” you looked over at him and asked. “No pressure buddy, but it is an extra five hundred tickets.”

“All yours, m’lady,” he curtly bowed, drawing a laugh from you.

You took your stance, legs slightly spread apart and knees bent just a little, preparing for the big shoot. You grabbed the final basketball, dribbled it on the ground twice, and tossed it, aiming straight for the hoop.

“She shoots,” Peter commentated, watching the ball leave your hands, “and… she scores!”

You let out a squeal and jumped straight into Peter’s arms, giving him the biggest hug you could possibly render. Peter caught you and spun you around, cheering and laughing all the while as the machine spewed out your tickets.

“Okay kids,” MJ called out, pulling you both out of your little moment of euphoria. “Chill for a second and pick up your tickets because I will gladly take them if you don’t want them.”

You chuckled her comment and separated from Peter before quickly walking up to grab the tickets. “Hey, Peter and I worked hard for these, back off,” you playfully pouted, hearing Peter chuckle from beside you.

“Okay okay,” Ned laughed. “MJ and I are done with our tokens, are you guys ready to call it a day and get the prizes too or..?”

“I’m ready to go, Y/n?” Peter asked.

“Yup, I’m done too, let’s go.”

You all made your way over to the corner of the arcade where you could total up your tickets and redeem them for prizes. Despite your constant refusal, Peter not only let you take the entirety of the tickets you both won from the basketball game instead of splitting them, but also gave you all the tickets he’d earned that day so that when combined with yours, you’d be able to get the adorable person-sized teddy bear you were planning on saving up for.

Ned decided to splurge on a number of small prizes, like the classic ginormous plastic sunglasses and little notepads, while MJ got herself a Rubik’s cube and a sticker that said “Caution: Falling Rocks”. Nobody knows why she picked that one in particular - she’d simply shrugged when Peter had asked her about it.

You felt bad that Peter didn’t end up getting anything, but he insisted he was totally cool with it. Something about “not having any more space for obscure things to stuff in my cupboards anyway.”

“Guys, I’m hungry,” you said, bringing the attention to you while you all headed out of the noisy arcade. “Let’s go grab a bite somewhere?”

“Ooh yes, I know this place that’s only like five minutes from here - Ned and I went there like last week. It’s-”

Thud.

Peter never really got to finish that sentence. He was walking backwards, trying to make eye contact with the three of you while relaying his expertise on the restaurants in the area, but the man-child had tripped over his own two feet and landed flat on the ground.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” you all rushed over to him.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he assured you guys as he grabbed Ned’s hand and pulled himself up, dusting off his jeans.

You couldn’t help the laugh that escaped you right then. “Hey Pete, what was that you said earlier about me not being able to walk five steps without tripping?”

“Hey, cut me some slack, okay. MJ’s sticker said ‘falling rocks’ and I was just testing the validity of that statement. Now, with experiential evidence, I can confirm that it is, in fact, false.”

You and Ned burst out laughing at what was probably Peter’s only good joke all afternoon. MJ rolled her eyes, but even she couldn’t stop the smile that took over her face.

You all started to head towards the restaurant Peter suggested, Ned leading the way.

“Hey Y/n?” Peter leaned over.

“Yes?”

“Did you lose an electron? Because you’re positively glowing.”

“Oy smarty-pants, make your own puns, don’t steal them from your t-shirt,” you chuckled, shaking your head. You increased your speed and walked up ahead to where Ned was walking to join him and, hopefully, prevent Peter from the bright red that overtook your features from that one little out-of-nowhere compliment.

You and Ned were joking around about the events of the day and how much fun everything was, and as much as you enjoyed Ned’s company, you couldn’t help but let your mind wander a little.

Why did Peter have such an effect on you? How was he able to make you feel so giddy - all he did was give you one punny compliment and you were blushing? How come this never happens with anybody else?

‘It’s because sometimes you just click with some people more than you do with others. Yeah, that’s what this is. That’s all it is. You just click with him slightly more than you do with the others, and so his compliment is just a little bit more meaningful in that sense,’ you rationalized.

That’s definitely all it was. A strong friendship. Not a crush - definitely not a crush.

***** three

It was the end of senior year, and you were finally in Europe for your long-awaited senior trip that the Midtown teachers had organized for your graduating class.

You’d managed to fall sick on the second day of the trip, but despite the absolute nightmare that all the nausea and headaches had been, it had luckily turned out to only be a 24-hour bug, and you’d been up and running, ready to explore the place by the next morning.

Ned and Peter shared a room while you and MJ shared another, and while the four of you would occasionally hang out in each other’s rooms when you weren’t already out and about, Peter had insisted on practically staying in your room when you were sick so he could take care of you.

You’d pushed them all out of the room to go out and have fun, or even just go sit in the other room so they wouldn’t accidentally contract whatever it was you had.

Peter, though, just would not listen - he kept taking MJ’s keycard and coming in to check up on you, making sure you were hydrated and had everything you needed. You’d woken up the morning after to a number of texts from Peter, scattered at different times throughout the night, telling you that he hoped you were feeling better and reminding you that you could call him if you needed anything, no matter how late or early it was.

You’d made it known to him the next time you saw him how much you appreciated him doing that, but also how you wished he’d have slept without worrying about you so much.

He’d only smiled in response.

Once you’d gotten better - which luckily was by the next afternoon - the four of you would spend time in one hotel room all evening. Watching movies together, having popcorn fights, or just talking, laughing and reminiscing about the year that had flown right by you.

During the day, you would all go out and explore whatever city you were in, making sure to cover all the general tourist attractions and getting tons and tons of pictures with and of each other. MJ had become your unspoken designated photographer, capturing breathtaking candids of you all whenever she got the chance.

Mr. Harrington had mandated that anybody who went out to explore or do something that wasn’t on the itinerary report back to the hotel by sunset so he could keep track of everyone, so you would always make it a point to be in your rooms by then.

Most people stayed out anyway, but not the four of you - you didn’t want to worry the poor man. He worked hard all year too, and he was kind enough to supervise this trip - the least you could all do was ensure that you weren’t burdening him with any added stress.

Occasionally, you would end up getting back to the hotel earlier than others in your group. Sometimes, MJ would want to wander by herself, and Ned would try to approach and converse with Betty, who he found really cute.

Times like that, you and Peter would be the only ones in your respective rooms. The very first time that happened, you both very quickly realized that if you were in that situation, boredom would usually follow very soon.

So the next time onwards, even if none of the others were there, you and Peter would just hang out together in one of your rooms. It didn’t really matter what you were doing - just being in each other’s presence made things fun.

It was guaranteed, though, that obscure things would always happen when it was just the two of you left unsupervised. One time, Ned walked into his and Peter’s shared room only to find you and Peter in the midst of a very soulful rendition of A Whole New World from Aladdin - complete with exaggerated dance moves and hairbrush-microphones. Another time, MJ returned from her walk to a nearby park to you and Peter indulged in a heated discussion about whether pop tarts should be considered a sandwich or ravioli.

The four of you would often stay up until odd hours talking about anything and everything. The later it got, the deeper your topics of conversation would get. They would go from sharing nostalgic memories from your childhoods to passionate conversations about how many pets one could get before they’d be considered too many.

One of those days, when you had a one hundred percent free day because the event on your itinerary got cancelled, MJ and Peter decided they wanted to go visit a museum. Ned brought up that he wanted to go shopping around the city instead, and since you were planning the same, the two of you went out together.

You and Ned decided to hop onto one of those red double-decker buses, because if you’re a tourist in London and don’t get on one of those buses even once, are you really a tourist in London? Since neither of you had anything specific you wanted to shop for or any specific place in mind, you decided to take a random bus and get off wherever you felt would be worth it.

After about fifteen minutes of looking around at the hustling streets, you finally passed through an area that seemed to be filled with a variety of stores, making it the perfect place for some obscure shopping.

You both walked around, entering random stores whenever something in the display caught your eyes and buying random articles of clothing. At one point, you found a really cool thrift store and decided to style each other - the results being surprisingly more wonderful than either of you had expected. You both did an impromptu ramp walk for each other, filling the trial rooms with the sounds of laughter and giggles.

As the evening started to set in and the gorgeous colours started to take over the blue sky, you decided that you should start heading back to the hotel soon. It wasn’t too far from where you were though, considering the fact that a quick fifteen-minute ride would get you back, so you two did have time to stop by one or two more stores quickly if you wanted to.

As you strolled around, looking at the displays to see if there was something you might like, a pretty off-white floral sundress caught your attention. “Ned, can we go in here? I want to try this dress on!” you said as you tapped him excitedly on his shoulder.

He agreed, and as soon as you found the dress and tried it on, you absolutely fell in love with it. It was just the right length for your preference, and fit your body just right. In fact, it would even go perfectly with the adorable cross-body bag you’d picked up earlier in the day. You didn’t have to think twice before heading to the cash register to buy it and officially make it yours.

“Today burned a hole in my pockets, but it was so much fun Y/n, thanks for coming with me,” Ned said as you both got seated on the bus.

“Hey, of course! I had so much fun too! It was so refreshing to, thank you for letting me try on eight thousand different things,” you grinned.

The two of you continued conversing and joking around as the bus slowed down at a stop to let passengers on and off.

“Man, as great as museums are, nothing beats the joy one gets from mindlessly shopping - those two definitely missed out on some hilarious jokes and the best fashion show of the century,” you chuckled, making a reference to your antics back at the thrift store.

Ned laughed, shaking his head.

You relaxed in your seats, just letting the feeling of the wind flowing through your hair encompass you. The slight coolness of the evening breeze was euphoric yet also grounding in a sense, and you wanted to let it consume you for as long as possible.

“Y/n, can I ask you a question?” Ned softly broke the silence.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“You like him, don’t you?” he smirked.

You turned to look at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Like who?”

“Come on, don’t act so oblivious,” Ned laughed. “Peter - you like him, right?”

“Uh, yeah, he’s one of my best friends, so I definitely do like him?” You were genuinely confused at this point.

“No Y/n, I mean like like. Like as in more than a friend,” he clarified.

You froze for a split second and the heat rushed quickly to your face for reasons unknown to you. Almost too quickly, you responded, “What? No! Why would you think that?”

Ned rubbed his face, groaning. “Y/n, why are you both so ridiculously oblivious?” He had no clue how both you and Peter, two people so hopelessly crushing on each other, couldn’t see it.

“Wait, what do you mean?” you questioned.

Ned couldn’t stop the knowing smirk that overtook his features at the quizzical look on your face. He wanted to see two of his best friends happy together, but he needed you both to figure out your feelings for each other because it would be unfair of him and MJ to try and get you both together before that happened.

In this moment though, the utter cluelessness in your eyes was absolutely comedic to him.

“Oh, would you look at that, it’s our stop!” he quickly picked up his bags and walked off the bus, leaving a very perplexed you to follow him.

You pestered him to explain what he meant by that the entire way up to your respective rooms, but he wouldn’t do anything but grin. Your split-second panic and silence, combined with the redness of your cheeks as soon as he’d asked you about Peter was confirmation enough for him. He’d lit the spark, the questioning, inside of you, and that was all he felt was appropriate for now. Now, you needed to let it grow into a full flame and come to terms with your feelings.

“Bye Y/n! I’ll see you in a little bit!” he waved at you as he quickly slipped behind his door.

You groaned, stomping back to your room. You tossed your bags to the side and flopped right onto the bed.

‘Why was Ned asking me that? What did he mean by saying Peter and I are ‘oblivious??’ And why did I panic? Is there a chance that I- No, don’t finish that thought. Y/n, Peter’s just your best friend - feelings involved make things messy. You know what though? You don’t have to worry about that, it’s fine, because you don’t have feelings for him anyway. It’s all good. You’re just best friends, it’s nothing more than that, for sure.’

You lay there, staring at the ceiling, and rationalizing whatever supposed “feelings” you had for Peter until you heard MJ swipe her keycard. In walked both Peter and MJ, and you watched as his eyes lit up as soon as he saw you.

You felt your lips curve upwards into a smile, and before you could even realize that your body was moving, you had both engulfed each other in a massive hug.

That was normal though, right? You would hug MJ right after that too - you always hugged your friends. That didn’t mean anything.

Ned was probably just fooling around. Yeah, that’s probably what it was. One of his extended pranks. That explanation made sense.

Either way, you know what your feelings for Peter are: platonic. Absolutely, positively not anything other than that.

***** one

The day you’d been dreading was finally here: the end of your senior trip.

You were in your hotel room, zipping up your suitcase and making sure you had packed all of your belongings.

“I guess this is it, huh?” you squeaked out.

Hotel rooms had become your home for the last almost two months. They were where you and three of the closest people in your life right now spent so much time together, laughing, crying, just enjoying each other’s presence. Now, you were being made to say goodbye to that, and it was too soon for your liking.

“It is, yeah,” MJ gave you a small smile. “Don’t be upset about it though, we’ll all still be together and go out all the time once we’re back.”

“I know, I just…” you sighed. “I just liked this whole ‘no-other-responsibilities-to-tend-to’ version of going out. Time really does fly when you’re having fun.”

MJ placed the last of her clothes in her suitcase and zipped it up. “Well, at least it was fun while it lasted, right?”

You nodded. It was fun while it lasted. Was it insanely tiring walking around every single day because there was always so much to do? One hundred percent. Was your sleep schedule messed up from staying up late hanging out with your friends and waking up early to go grab breakfast and get ready for the day? More than ever before. Would you trade the experience for anything else in the world? Absolutely not.

You did one final sweep of the room to make sure you’d grabbed everything you’d brought in. “Ready to go?” you asked as you placed your suitcase upright on the ground.

“Yup, let’s head downstairs before the bus leaves,” MJ chuckled, shaking her head. “I am so ready to sleep in my own bed again.”

You laughed and grabbed your keycards. MJ placed the remote back on the TV stand and wheeled her luggage out the door and you followed suit, pulling the door shut behind you. Once you double-checked that the door had been locked properly, the two of you headed down to the lobby, where you were supposed to meet the rest of your classmates.

Dropping the keycards off at the front desk, you made your way over to where you could see most of your cohort already gathered.

“Oh good, you’re both here,” Mr. Harrington checked your names off his list. “The only ones left now are Flash and Brad. They’d better come down soon, wouldn’t want to- ah! There they are!” he marched over to where the two boys were.

“Wow, I don’t think I have ever seen him look that relieved. Is it just me or did he get taller?” you heard a voice approaching you.

Peter.

There he was, walking towards you, wearing that blue checkered shirt that looked oh-so-good on him. Something about him today hit you differently. You couldn’t put a finger on what exactly it was, but it was safe to say that you felt your heart skip a beat at how amazing he looked.

“As much as I hate to say it, I agree with you,” MJ joked. “Crazy what lifting some weight off your shoulders can do for you.”

“Crazy how quickly this whole trip is already over,” Ned spoke. “I don’t know if I’m ready to go home yet.”

“Oh hush, just last night you were on the phone telling Betty that you couldn’t wait to take her to the movies once we’re all back in Queens,” Peter quipped, effectively making Ned blush and all of you laugh.

The aura of the lobby was very mixed. On one hand, the atmosphere felt lively as people chatted with their friends about all the fun times they had over the last few weeks, about the constant highs they all felt. On the other hand, there was a certain longing in most people’s eyes, a willingness to hold on to this feeling for just a little longer.

It was a very bittersweet vibe, and very understandably so.

“Alright guys, um- hey, can I get your attention for just a minute please?” Mr. Harrington squeaked. He raised his arms up to try and grab everyone’s attention, and to his own surprise, it worked.

“So, basically, I just wanted to say thank you to every single one of you for attending this trip, and I hope that it was a great experience for you all. Our bus should be here shortly, but before we go, I was hoping to get one quick picture with the entire group, if that’s okay?” After confirming that nobody had an issue with it, he handed his camera over to one of the staff members from the reception desk, who quickly snapped a wonderful picture of you all.

He thanked her, and then went outside to check for the bus.

“Looks like there’s still some more time before we leave,” you stated, peeking out through the glass windows and noticing the absence of a bus.

“Judging by the way Mr. Harrington’s seeming frustrated, I’d say you’re probably right,” Peter chuckled. “Hey, let’s get some pictures of our own in the meantime, I still have some film left on my camera!”

You, Ned and MJ agreed, and Peter pulled out his camera from his carry-bag. You all took turns posing with each other, starting off with simple smiles, but progressively getting goofier and sillier until you’ve hit the point where you were just standing in the middle of the lobby recreating iconic memes, sending you all into fits of laughter.

“Okay, okay, enough of this,” Peter giggles, still coming down from moments ago when he was guffawing at your attempt to recreate that one young Cardi B picture. “Let’s get some group shots now.”

MJ quickly asked Yasmin, another one of your classmates, if she’d be okay with getting a few shots of them and explained to her how to work the camera.

You went to grab a sip of water and stood off to the side, letting the three have their moment. They’d been there for each other for four years, and while you were all close now, you’d only come into the picture recently. You wanted to let the squad - the original squad - get some pictures too, you’d been in enough with them already, it was okay.

Ned said something which you couldn’t hear, but it drew out undoubtedly heartfelt laughs from the other two. Eyes scrunched and faces radiating with nothing but joy, Yasmin saw this as a perfect moment to capture, and you saw her take what you were sure would have turned out to be an amazing candid.

Yasmin went to hand the camera back to MJ, but Peter quickly stopped her.

“Hold on one second please, would it be okay if you got just one last picture? With the whole group?”

She nodded, stepping back.

“Y/n! Why are you off to the side?” Peter rushed over to you, pulling you out of your thoughts. “Come on, we can’t take a full group photo without you in it!”

In that very moment, as Peter grabbed your hand and gently pulled you to where the rest of the group was standing, something in your mind clicked. You laughed as Peter abruptly stopped and you bumped into him, hearing the click of the camera go off. None of it seemed to matter though. All you could see was Peter smiling back down at you, the crinkles by his eyes more defined than ever, but also surprisingly more beautiful than ever.

You could sense the three people around you continuing to throw up more poses quickly, Yasmin capturing them, but the entire while, your eyes wouldn’t leave Peter’s grinning face, your mind slowly stopped registering anything other than the feeling of Peter’s arms around your shoulders. The pure warmth he radiated pulled you in further, and everything around you except his perfect smile blurred.

One thing became very clear in that moment of complete encapsulation though, despite it being a completely foreign feeling to you, as the same words played in your head, over and over.

‘Holy crap, I think I’m in love with my best friend.’

If only you knew, those were the exact same words racing through Peter’s mind.

[devnicolee]

Overworked

Quarantine Writing Challenge

A/N: This is my submission for @chaneajoyyy and @shaekingshitup’s writing challenege. This is my first time participating in one of thesse so very excited! Enjoy! Edited to now include the photo - it has been a long week indeed :) 

Warnings: Some slight angst

Word Count: 2.4K  

Pairing: Black reader x M’Baku

Your head fell forward as you dozed off behind your desk. While this was certainly out of character for you, exhaustion was the unfortunate side effect of working into the early morning hours night after night. You knew you were pushing your body to its limit as you tired to operate on less than 4 hours of sleep each day for the last week. 

Between drafting a new proposal for a partnership initiative for T’Challa, planning tonight’s party and tackling the mountain of tribal work pilling up on your desk, your plate was overwhelmingly full. You were not shocked to find the role of chieftess difficult and demanding, you expected it. But after an entire life spent perfectly organized and on top of everything, you had never felt like this before. There were simply not enough hours in the day to field all the requests for new programs and technology from the lowlanders and requests from tribal members, keep up with your engineering projects, plan your calendar of events, and be a dutiful wife. You weren’t sure which project caused this, which one was officially too much. But you quickly went from expertly juggling all your responsibilities with grace to fumbling and wildly racing between them like a mad woman.

"Y/N… Y/N!!" 

You almost jumped clean out of your own skin as someone’s shouts penetrated your cluttered thoughts. You jumped out of your seat, eyes wide and alert, to find no one other than your husband leaning against the office door frame with an amused smile on his face.

"Oh, my love. I didn’t hear you knock. I am sorry," you laughed, your hand clutching your heart as you tried to calm down from the sudden scare. You closed your eyes for a second, a small bout of dizziness overcoming you from the abrupt movement. 

"I can tell… it’s alright. It is a Saturday, what on Earth are you doing here? I hope you are not stressing yourself out over this party?" he warned as he walked into the office. You stood up to get a glass of water from a table in the office, allowing him to steal your seat behind the desk. You both knew it wouldn’t bother you much, your preferred seat was his lap anyway. Your mind was so clearly preoccupied as M’Baku eyed you suspiciously, so preoccupied that you didn’t even notice the slight tremble in the glass in your hand. But he certainly did. The moment you were in arms length again, he quickly grabbed your curvy hips to pull you into his lap. 

M'Baku was no secret to exhaustion, the long tiring days that came with leadership. He certainly appreciated his chieftess’s willingness to take the majority of work with the lowlanders off his plate, allowing him to focus on tribal matters. And it seemed to be working out masterfully until the last week or two. He realized as he looked at you, properly for the first time in days, that the little things he had noticed recently were now significant things… concerning things. Exhaustion was a prominent fixture on your face, marked with stress and dark bags makeup couldn’t fully hide. "I told you it is a busy time, we do not need a celebration on top of everything else."

"Nonsense. It is your 5th anniversary as chief, M’Baku. We can’t not celebrate your dedication to our people. A celebration you deserve, by the way," you quickly waved his concerns off as you held his face in your hands. Your fingers played with the coarse hair of his beard as you looked at him. "You just hate attention… don’t make this about me."

"This is about you. There is no time for a party right now, you. Between all these random requests from the King, preparing for winter... you do not have time. You know you can say no, right?"

"All of those are part of my duties as chieftess M’Baku." Your body leaned away from him a bit, growing agitated at his sudden interrogation.

"No, don’t try to remind me of your duties like I do not know them. You do me no service when you overload your plate to ease mine. I spoke to your assistant yesterday after you missed dinner for the third night in a row. You have taken on far too much. You cannot personally oversee every project in the lab, every program with the Golden City, and keep up with the everyday tasks of chieftess. You can’t do it all little one and no one is asking you to."

"I am not trying to do everything. I am just trying to be a good chieftess. I don’t want to embarrass you," your voice trailed off at the end as you ran your hands gingerly through the soft fur on his collar. You found a stray, loose string, which you tugged at slightly. You ignored how your vision went in and out, black spots obscuring the small brown strand. "Remind me to re-sew this tomorrow... I don’t want it to tear off."

M’Baku shook his head, frustrated at your deflection. He didn’t understand how you couldn’t see the toll all this was taking on you. His heart ached, as it always did, when you expressed doubt in your abilities as chieftess. He hated the way your eyes avoided his and your gaze fell down to your own lap in embarrassment. His rough hands gripped your grin lightly, lifting your head back to his eye level. His thumb grazed your cheek as he forced you to look at him.

"You could never embarrass me Y/N. You can worry me and you are. Not sleeping or eating... you are distracted, stressed. You just aren’t yourself. You are stretching yourself too thin."

"No, I am not." you responded defiantly. "I know when I am overwhelmed. This is nothing. I wish you would stop worrying. Besides, your party is tonight. It is too late to cancel it."

An intense staring match ensued, neither side willing to back down just yet. M'Baku rolled his eyes before nodding, conceding because even he had to admit this was a losing battle. And you had a point, it was indeed too late to cancel. 

You kissed him on the nose, a silent thank you before he got up to let you finish your day of work before the party. 

****

You sat quietly at your vanity, applying the finishing touch to your makeup as quickly as you could. You cursed yourself for losing track of time earlier, leaving you with only mere minutes to throw on your custom dress and run downstairs to oversee final details. The moment you stood up, you were forced back into your seat as a wave of dizziness settled over you. You leaned your head into your hand, trying to avoid disturbing your hard work, praying that it would pass before M'Baku came out of the bathroom. 

You silently demanded your body pull it together, you just needed to get through a few more hours. A few more hours, you chanted under your breath as you forced yourself back onto your feet. It was only marginally more successful than the first time but you were determined to press forward. Your heart couldn’t take messing up this night for M’Baku. 

"Are you alright, Ikumkani?" M'Baku said suspiciously as he followed behind you into the bathroom to grab his clothes for the party.

"Of course, my king," you answered softly, forcing your voice to maintain its usual timber. But even you knew it was a tall order to get him to ignore the noticeable shake in your words. You slid your white robe off your shoulders, allowing it to fall in a heap at your feet, and stepped into your dress. Pulling the detailed bodice up your frame felt like an Olympic task. Your body was beginning to protest, loudly and defiantly telling you a few more hours would simply not do.  

Your arm held the strapless gown up against your chest as you looked behind you at your husband, "Can you zip me up, my love?" you asked. 

"I would rather tear it off of you. This dress is a vision, as you will be in it." M'Baku showered you with praise as his hands took time to room your body before finding the delicate zipper at the back of the dress. You only partially heard him, offering minimal “hmms” as thanks, too afraid to talk as nausea churned in your stomach. 

"I am done, little one," M'Baku said. You felt his presence move from behind you, his voice seemed so far away as if you were talking through a tunnel. You didn’t move though. You leaned into the wooden case holding your jewelry as if your life depended on it, suspecting that your legs could no longer hold your weight.  

You took a deep breath, deciding to make a break for it, "What di-" you started to say before everything went black. 

****

When you woke up, you were on the floor in M'Baku's arms. You couldn’t comprehend his words, they were flying by rapidly and unable to penetrate the cloud in your brain. But his panic was evident and reached your ears clearly.

"Y/N!" 

You looked around wildly, your brain sluggish and slow as it tried to catch up with the reality around you. Instinctively, you tried to sit up but the grip M’Baku had on your arms kept you flush against his chest.

"It’s ok. You fainted, you just need to relax. It is ok, I got you, my love." 

You nodded softly and allowed your head to lull back at his sweet whispers. Confusion was the paramount feeling at the moment, that and exhaustion. But you had M’Baku, you were in his arms, you were safe and that meant there was little to worry about. You both laid there for a few moments before you felt well enough to squeeze his hand, signaling that you were ready to move. He clearly didn’t trust your judgement so he swooped you up bridal style and carried you into the bathroom. He sat you gently on the edge of the tub. His eyes intently scanned your body, still in your designer gown, his hands rubbing up and down your body, to look for injuries. His face scrunched up in worry, concerned that he had not caught you soon enough. 

"I-I am fine, M'Baku. No pain, just exhausted," you whispered back to him, trying to settle the clear anxiety coursing through him. You could tell by the way his eyes darted across your frame frantically and his rapid movements that you scared him, truly scared him. And now, you felt the burden of that, wanted to do anything within your current physical limitations to make him feel at ease again.

"How long?" M'Baku asked, his hands finally settled on your thighs. His question required no other context or words, you knew he wanted to know how long you had been feeling like this, how long you had been ignoring it and you knew he would not be pleased with the answer. But lying was not an option, it never was with the two of you. 

"The last few days," you answered truthfully, avoiding his eyes. "You were right, I am overwhelmed... I thought I could c-catch up but it was too much and it kept growing and g-growing. I j-just didn't want to admit I failed you." 

M'Baku scoffed, "You can't fail me, you. I will tell you this every day until you believe it. B-but you can't do this ever again. Y/N, I am serious. You can never scare me like that again. The way you looked... I th-... please, you can't just take care of me or the tribe. You have to make yourself a priority too. Promise me." 

You leaned forward, which took great energy on your part, and kissed him on the lips. It was soft, gentle, conveyed more in an apology than your words would. "I promise. I’m sorry." 

That seemed to suffice, he offered you a smile that pushed some of the guilt out of your heart. He stood up and held you for a moment, unzipping your dress so it fell off you. "You are going to take a bath, and then go to bed." He turned on the hot water in their tub, filling it with water and your favorite vanilla bubble bath. 

"B-but the par-" 

The look on his face immediately silenced you. "The party is no longer your concern. We are not going.” 

“It is your party, we have to go,” you insisted, guilt rushing through you at ruining his night. “What if I just go for a litt-”

“Y/N,” he growled, his tone highlighting his frustration at his stubborn wife. “You should be glad I am not calling every healer in this tribe. You will stay here and you will rest. That is final.” 

His face softened slightly at the small nod you gave, you understood you couldn’t fight him on this one. But he also understood how guilty you felt for crashing on his special day, how badly you wanted tonight to be perfect for him. 

“Fine, I will go and show my face for an hour once you are in bed. It will be amazing and everyone will love it. But you will stay here, all I want for my celebration is for you to finally rest, Y/N." 

You nodded, and slid down into the bath, the warm water felt heavenly against your tired body. M’Baku watched you closely, clearly concerned that you may faint in the tub. You looked, to him, as weary and tired as he imagined you felt. That made him feel secure in his decision to make this call. The duties and pressures of the tribe could wait, you needed to just be you for a while. He only left your once, for a few moments as it was nearing time for him to go downstairs, to get dressed. He came back in his slacks and dress shirt with a cup of your favorite chamomile tea in hand.

He helped you out of the bath slowly. If you weren’t already, his gentleness and care would have usually made you weak in the knees. He left you to finish getting dressed but after putting on your panties, you decided you had little energy for other clothes. You slid your robe on and tied a towel around your wet twists, and slid on your reading glasses. 

You lazily walked out of the bathroom, sipping your perfectly-made tea, to find M’Baku putting on his suit jacket. 

"You look perfect. Happy anniversary, M'Baku." 

He pulled you in close for a deep, passionate kiss before he steered you toward the California-King size bed and helped you in. "Thank you. Get some rest, usana. I will be back in an hour." 

He watched you for a minute or two, as you sunk into the bed and your eyes drifted shut. "I love you," he whispered, but all he heard in return were the soft, gentle snores of the very-exhausted love of his life.

He chuckled lightly, kissing you on the forehead this time and removing your glasses before heading toward the door. As he left, he decided an hour was really going to be 30 minutes. He had a wife to tend to.

****

@muse-of-mbaku @dawva @destinio1 @jellybean531 @afrolatinpami