#double engine development | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sugugasm · 8 months ago

Text

☆ CLICK TO PLAY ! ➜ 450 DEGREES

YOUR LEVEL IS STARTING SOON . . .

level quest : pov ur neighbor is a firefighter, and you love a man in uniform . . just as much as he loves your chocolate chip cookies.

☆ — a message from the developer : hiii i missed uguys sm, i’m so glad to be back for realsies this time :p don’t mind any mistakes or errors & before you read — nsfw content up ahead so pretty please read these warnings !!! strangers to lovers !!! age gap alert ➜ toji is 35 and reader is 25, mentions of sexual themes such as oral, vaginal penetration, pet names such as : sweetheart, angel, baby ofc, princess, honey, etc. usage of sexual terms and usage of terms describing female anatomy, uses she/her pronouns. firefighter! toji x baker! blk fem! reader 333 — word count : 8.0K or 9.0K, i lost track LOL

“fuck . .”

toji cut the engine of his ford pickup and sat for a moment, eyes closed, letting the silence wash over him. every muscle ached with exhaustion, the double shift of 48 hours catching up to him. he couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in an actual bed instead of snatching a few hours on the lumpy firehouse couch in between calls.

sighing, he grabs his duffel from the passenger seat and levers himself out of the truck. as he turns toward the house, a flash of color across the street quickly catches his attention. his new neighbor — you, out puttering in your postage stamp front yard, wearing a tank top the same vivid coral as the geraniums you were watering and cut-off jean shorts that barely qualified as clothing to any old, bitter bastard.

he’d seen you before. many times. whether it was while leaving for an early session at the gym as you walked your puppy, or his moving day . . where he could barely order around gojo and geto, struggling to tell them where they should place certain boxes due to hearing your alluring giggle coming from the house next door, your curls flowing in the breeze as you gossiped over iced lemonade with mrs. johnson on her porch.

his thoughts are interrupted when you glance toward him, face lighting up with a friendly smile as you spotted him. “hi there! nice to finally see you in the flesh instead of just passin’ headlights at odd hours of the night.”

“sorry about that.” toji hoped his answering smile passed for normal and not serial-killer exhausted. “i’m toji, toji fushiguro. i jus’ moved in last month.”

“well m’ yn. welcome to the neighborhood!” you propped a hand on one cocked hip, thoughtlessly drawing his eye to the thickness of your legs that almost looked golden in the sun lighting.

jesus.

realizing he was staring, he jerks his gaze back to your face, feeling his neck heat up at the idea of you catching on. “thanks. s’ a nice area. quiet.”

“i like to think we're a pretty welcomin’ bunch. in fact . . .” you bite your lip, looking almost shy for a second. “i was plannin’ to do some baking later, as a housewarming gift for all the newbies. any requests? cookies, muffins, scones? i make a mean cinnamon roll too.”

an unexpected warmth kindled in toji’s chest at the kindness of the offer. even as his stomach rumbled in anticipation, he couldn't remember the last time someone had gone out of their way to do something nice for him. sadly, baked goods didn't really tend to hold up well on 24-hour shifts.

“that’s really sweet of you, thanks. i love a good chocolate chip cookie, but i’ll happily be your guinea pig for anything.”

“sounds like a plan.” you graced him with another one of those classic, southern hospitality miles. “i’ll surprise you. they’ll be over before you know it!”

“looking forward to it. i better let you get back to . .” he waves a hand vaguely at the riot of flowers on your lawn, colors and smells galore.

“oh, right. see you soon then. welcome home!” with a small wave, you bend to retrieve the watering can, giving him an unobstructed view of her perky ass in those obscenely small shorts.

strangling a groan, toji spun on his heel and double-timed it into the house before you caught him ogling you like a creep. so much for a quiet neighborhood, he thought ruefully as the door shut behind him. you were gonna’ be one hell of a distraction, though some traitorous part of him looked forward to the temptation. it’d been way too long since he'd been around a pretty girl. maybe that's what all this edginess was - his libido waking up and taking notice after a long dry spell.

well, he'd just have to keep any wayward urges in check. no matter how mouthwatering you looked in tiny cutoffs, you were practically a decade younger and a neighbor, at that. off limits. he’d accept your baked goods, enjoy a little innocent flirting, but anything more was out of the question.

resolved, he headed for the shower, already counting the minutes until he could taste whatever delights you were whipping up for him.

the next morning, toji was on his second cup of coffee, basking in the rare luxury of an empty day ahead with no responsibilities, when the doorbell chimed. he opened it to find you, juggling a huge wicker basket with an equally enormous smile. the sweet scent of sugar, vanilla and chocolate wafted out to tease his nostrils so blissfully, just like how your sheer presence teased . . . other parts of him.

“g’mornin’,” you chirped. “i come bearing gifts from the sugar fairy.”

“so i smell . .” his mouth waters as he relieves you of the basket and ushers you inside, noting how your flowered sundress set off your peaches-and-cream personality. no shorts today, but the dress was nearly as enticing as it grasped on to your curves. he wondered if your skin would taste as good as you smelled, then mentally slapped himself.

down boy.

“i hope you don't mind me just droppin’ by like this. i wanted to catch you before you got busy.” your smile faltered slightly as you glanced around the spartan space with its generic bachelor furniture and decided lack of personal touches. “if s’ not a good time . .”

toji set the basket on the coffee table and turned to her, hands raised in mock surrender. “you came to my house bearin’ gifts of dessert. trust me, it's never gonna’ be a bad time. i may actually make some sort of sugar delivery beacon to summon you in the future.”

your laugh sounded a little relieved. “aww cute, sounds like my kind of bat signal. i’ll have to get you a spotlight shaped like a cupcake.”

“make it a cookie and you've got yourself a deal.” he grinned at you. “can i interest you in some coffee to go with whatever magic you've got in there? smells incredible.”

“coffee would be great, thank you.”

he led the way into the kitchen, noting how you took in details like the depressing lack of clutter and decoration. the only personal items were a handful of framed photos stuck to the fridge - him and his siblings as kids, his parents' wedding portrait, shots of fishing trips with his buddies — one with snow-white hair and the other with black. it struck him how sterile the space was, more like a way station than a home.

you didn't comment on it, instead you just leaned a hip on the counter and watched him pour a darkened substance into a ‘worlds worst morning person’ mug. there’s a comforting silence as he catches a whiff of your light perfume over the powerful espresso aroma - something floral and citrusy. it suited you.

“i wasn't sure what kind of treats you'd like, so i made a sampler of my greatest hits,” you say brightly. at his gesture, you unpack the basket, setting containers and various utensils on the table. “okay so . . we’ve got triple chocolate chip cookies, blueberry muffins, apple cinnamon scones, and my famous brown butter cinnamon rolls.”

“good lord,” toji shook his head in awe. “you made all this yesterday? after we spoke? do you even sleep?”

you laugh and accept the steaming mug he offered. “who needs sleep when there's sugar? besides, baking relaxes me. i love seeing people enjoy my creations.”

as if on cue, his stomach rumbles loudly, and you bit your lip against a smile. “sounds like someone's ready for a taste test. don’t be shy . . dig in.”

toji didn't need to be told twice. he selected a cinnamon roll, still warm from the oven, and bit in with a moan that would've been beyond embarrassing if his mouth wasn't full of heaven. “shit . . think i jus’ found my religion.”

you giggled that giggle that’d been stuck in his head since the day he heard it. “the cinnamon rolls tend to inspire a cult-like devotion. you haven't even tried em’ with the cream cheese frosting yet.”

he halted with the pastry halfway to his mouth for another rapturous bite. “there’s frosting too?”

in answer, you pulled a container from the basket with a flourish. “i figured you could handle adding your own so it didn't get soggy.”

“you’re an angel.” he slathered a generous amount of fluffy white frosting on the roll, not even caring that he probably looked like an overexcited kid.

watching him take another blissful bite, you cradled your coffee mug in both hands. “soo . . what d’you do that keeps you gettin’ home at such odd hours? i promise m’ not stalking you, but it's a quiet street. hard not to notice the comings and goings.”

toji washed down the sticky-sweet mouthful with a swig of coffee. “i’m a firefighter. we work 24-hour shifts, so my schedule can be pretty unpredictable."

interest sparked in your eyes. “really? that’s so cool! i bet you have some amazing stories.”

“eh. a few,” he allowed. truthfully he tried not to dwell on some of the things he'd seen, the memories that still occasionally jolted him awake in a cold sweat during the night. “it’s rewarding work, but not exactly a picnic for the social life.”

you give him a sympathetic look over the rim of her mug. “i can imagine. is that why you moved? needed a fresh start?”

“somethin’ like that. the job costed me my marriage a couple years back. got tired of walkin’ around the old place alone, so i thought a change of scenery might do me good.”

change of scenery in deed. toji even went as far as to relocate to a different state after his divorce with his wife. even the landscaping around the city had become too much of a heartache. what was once a happy, sensual marriage quickly turned sour the moment toji began working more. the position as chief hadn’t sounded that horrible in his head, but if he knew he’d come home one night - the clock reading exactly 3:17 am, to an unrecognizable man fast asleep in his bed, naked next to his wife, that that position could’ve waited. could’ve been passed on.

there’s a silent second between you two, your face still, “i-im so sorry,” you say softly, and toji feels relief when he sees that your eyes were warm with understanding, free of the pity he'd come to dread whenever his divorce came up in any other conversation he’d have with someone who didn’t know him.

he shrugged. “it is what it is. we married too young, grew apart. my hours didn't help. no hard feelings though.” he mustered up a wry smile. “what about you? you’re a little young to be living the retired grandma life, baking up a storm in the 'burbs.”

you grin, allowing him to lighten the mood. “hey, hey, hey, this grandma can party with the best of em’! fyi, i stayed up past 10 last saturday watching bad girls club.”

toji clutches his chest in feigned shock. “damn, so scandalous! what was the special occasion?”

“all have you know . . i was trying to perfect a new macaron recipe. passionfruit with dark chocolate ganache. they’re a fickle mistress though - one minute too long in the oven and they're as dry as bones.”

“sounds like bakin’ is more than jus’ a hobby for you,” he observed.

you toy with your mug. “it’s my whole life, really. i’m in my second year of culinary school, specializing in pastry arts. when i graduate, i’m hoping to open my own bakery. somewhere people feel welcome and cared for. a safe space, i suppose.” he stares, and you duck your head with an embarrassed laugh. “sorry for the tangent . . it probably sounds so silly.”

“not at all.” toji found himself impressed by the passion and dedication evident in your voice. you had a dream and you were going after it. he remembered that feeling. before the reality of adulthood had started chipping away at his own youthful idealism.

he wanted to say something to encourage you, to protect that light shining in your eyes for as long as possible. “for what it's worth, i think you're gonna’ be amazing,” he told you seriously, holding your gaze. “if this morning’s haul is any indication, you'll have lines around the block.”

you shield your smiling face sweetly. “that’s kind of you to say. i appreciate the vote of confidence. speaking of . .” you hesitate, then forge ahead. “m’ actually working on developing an original signature recipe for my final. multiple components, flavors, textures. the works.”

“sounds ambitious,” he said, eyebrows raised. “what’d you have in mind?”

your eyes sparkle with enthusiasm at the question, the thought of genuine curiosity making your heart flutter. “deconstructed black forest cake. dark chocolate cake, kirsch-soaked cherries, vanilla bean whipped cream. i wanna’ play with it, update it. maybe turn it into a trifle or a parfait of some sort.”

toji was no culinary expert. hell - he didn’t even know what half of those things were, but even he could tell you were on to something special. “that’s incredible, yn. lemme’ guess - you need a guinea pig?”

you bite your lip nervously, smile turning impish. “i didn't wanna’ impose, but since you offered the other day . . how would you like to be my official taste-tester? i can't really pay you, but you'll get free rein to sample every variation.”

“where do i sign up?” he was only half joking. even if your creations turned out to be awful, which he highly doubted, any excuse to spend more time with you sounded like a win.

you laugh. “i think i can waive the usual application process on account of the fact that you're doing me a huge favor. plus, it means you won't be able to avoid me constantly showing up at your door to force-feed you desserts.”

“oh no. however will i cope.” he feigned a put-upon sigh.

you shot him a look of amused reproof as she packed up the empty containers. “try to contain your disappointment. i promise to space out surprise sugar bombings. wouldn’t wanna’ make you sick of me or my baking."

“i don’t really think i ever could . . to be honest,” he declared firmly. on impulse, he reaches out to still your fluttering hands with his own. your skin was so soft and warm, sending a tingle zipping up his arm. your breath pauses at the contact and your eyes flew to his, startled.

“i mean it,” he said, voice gone low and intent as he tries to infuse sincerity into every word. “i can't imagine ever getting tired of you. or your company.”

for a suspended moment you just stare at each other in silence. then you swallow, sounding a little breathless as you replied, “likewise. m’ really glad you moved in, toji.”

“me too,” he said roughly. and though he knew he shouldn't, that he was venturing into dangerous territory, he allowed himself to stroke the delicate bones of your wrist with his thumb. just once, to feel your shiver lightly in response. then he released you and stepped back, moving to hold the door open for you in unspoken signal.

“i’ll get out of your hair now,” you murmured as you gathered the empty basket with hands that trembled just slightly. “but i’ll see you soon? for taste testing purposes, of course.”

“absolutely,” he confirmed. “anytime. y’know where to find me.”

with a final nod and smile, you slipped out the door. he watched you go, admiring the sway of your hips, the bounce of your hair, already counting the minutes until he'd see you again.

you were gonna’ end him, so so sweetly too., he realized with a trace of fatalism.

but what a way to go, huh? death by cinnamon rolls.

the day of the first official tasting arrived, and toji found himself unaccountably nervous as he approached your door. he felt a like an awkward kid picking up his prom date, palms sweaty and heart knocking around his ribs. which was ridiculous. this wasn't a date. just two neighbors getting together to sample some sweets. totally casual.

never mind that he'd changed his shirt three times, vacillating between wanting to look nice for you and not wanting to seem like he was trying too hard. he’d finally settled on a plain black tee and his least disreputable pair of jeans, adding a hint of cologne as an afterthought.

now, standing on your stoop, he wished he'd brought something. flowers maybe — lillie’s like the ones in your garden, or perhaps wine. did people bring wine to taste testing sessions? probably not. you’d most likely think he was a presumptuous idiot.

shaking his head at his own weird bout of nerves, he raised his hand to knock. before his knuckles could connect, the door swung open to reveal you, looking adorably pretty and flustered. you were wearing a frilly pink apron over a gauzy white sundress scattered with tiny red cherries. your hair was bundled on top of your head in a haphazard knot, loose curls escaping to dance around your swelled cheeks. a dusting of cocoa powder streaked one of them.

“toji - oh, you’re right on time! m’ runnin’ a bit behind, so sorry. come on in.” you stepped back to let him enter and he caught a blend of tantalizing scents - rich chocolate, sweet cherries, warm vanilla, and underneath, the subtle floral musk that was purely you. it made his head swim and his stomach clench with a hunger that had absolutely nothing to do with the promise of dessert.

he followed you into the kitchen, blinking a bit as he took in the transformation. when he'd helped you carry in groceries a few days ago, the room had been tidy and quaint, with cheerful yellow walls and kitschy retro appliances. now every surface was strewn with baking detritus - bowls, whisks, spatulas, piping bags. the air was hazy with a fine mist of flour and powdered sugar, swirling in the slanting sunlight.

incongruously delicate paper doilies serving as placemats were scattered with miniature cakes, puddles of sauce, and billows of snowy cream. it looked like a fancy bakery had exploded all over the place.

“as you can see, i’ve been experimenting with a few different iterations of the concept,” you said with a small smile, waving a hand at the sugary chaos. “couldn’t settle on just one. i thought i’d get your input n’ then we could narrow it down together.”

“i’m at your service,” he told you gallantly, skating his gaze over the counter. “i’ll warn you though, my palate isn't exactly refined. you might end up with the bland 'it all tastes good' as feedback.”

you giggled. “i’ll take it. okay, let's start basic.” you gestured for him to take a seat at the flour-dusted table and set a plate in front of him. on it perched a generous slice of cake, glossy with ganache, accompanied by a scarlet swoosh of what he assumed was the cherry compote. a dollop of whipped cream, flecked with black speckles, completing the overall masterpiece look.

toji quickly picked up the fork and took a bite, closing his eyes to focus on the flavors. the cake was intensely chocolate, the ganache dark and silky. tart-sweet cherries burst on his tongue, balanced by the subtle fragrance of the vanilla-specked cream.

“damn,” he mumbled around the mouthful. “fuckin’ fantastic, yn.”

you beam, looking relieved. “yeah? the cake recipe took a while to get right. i wanted something more . . . complex than a standard chocolate cake, so i used black cocoa powder to really amp up the flavor. n’ i even added a little coffee to enhance the chocolate.”

“s’ a winner,” he assured you. “i dunno’ how you could improve on it, honestly.”

“oh i have a few ideas,” your smile turned mysterious. “you haven't seen anything yet.”

over the next hour, you walked him through several variations. chocolate cake layered with cherry compote and kirsch-soaked chocolate cake crumbs, topped with cocoa whipped cream. dark chocolate and cherry bread pudding drizzled with cherry coulis. chocolate panna cotta with drunken cherries and cherry gelée . . . and toji sampled them all, humming with pleasure while you watched him anxiously. your initial nerves seemed to melt away as you lost yourself in describing the ins and outs of each dish - the technical challenges, the way certain flavors complemented or contrasted, ideas for garnishes and plating.

he found himself captivated by your intensity, the way your whole being lit up when you talked about your craft. it was more than just a job or a hobby for you . . . it was a calling. he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt that kind of soul-deep passion for anything. couldn’t take his eyes off the way your slender hands sketched shapes in the air, punctuating your words. delicate, clever hands that created so much beauty.

“earth to toji,” teased, waving one of those mesmerizing hands in front of his face. “did i lose you? too much of a sugar crash?”

toji blinked and refocused on your amused expression, realizing he'd been caught woolgathering like an idiot. “sorry, just slipped into a brief dessert coma. what were you saying?”

“i was asking what you think of this last one. it’s the more . . . wildcard of the bunch.” you pushed a small glass toward him. it looked like a miniature trifle, with layers of cake and cream, a vivid cherry layer in the middle, and a fan of shaved chocolate on top.

he dug in and had to suppress an absolutely obscene moan. the combination was incredible - velvety smooth, creamy, rich, and fruity, with a kick from what had to be a generous glug of kirsch. sweet but not cloying, a sophisticated twist on a classic.

“i think we have a winner,” he managed, not even caring that his voice came out husky. “if you're going for adding a 'wow' factor, this is it.”

you stand on your tippy-toes, looking hopeful. “you think? i couldn't decide if it was too out there. verrines aren't exactly traditional black forrest cake material.”

“doesn’t matter. it’s a showstopper. interesting to look at, fun to eat, n’ the flavor is phenomenal.” he scraped the glass clean with his spoon, not wanting to waste a drop.

your smile could've lit up the city block. “thank you, toji. you don't know how much it means to me, you bein’ here. lettin’ me talk your ear off and stuff you with treats. it really . . helps a lot."

“believe me, it's my pleasure,” he said, returning her smile with one of his own. “i haven't had this much fun in . . i can't even remember how long. i like seein’ you in your element.”

you both just grin goofily at each other for a moment, the air feeling thicker. then you hopped up and began clearing the table, stacking dishes and bustling around the small space.

“y’know i feel bad, you feedin’ me all these goodies without me contributing anything,” toji said, rising to help. “at least lemme’ take you out for a meal that isn't 90% butter and sugar. you must be sick of cookin’, day in and day out.”

you slanted him a glance, tucking a stray curl behind one ear. “m’ not, actually. it never feels like a chore. but i . . wouldn't say no to dinner out. if you're sure you don't mind.”

mind? he’d been trying to come up with an excuse to spend more time with you, and here you were gift wrapping one for him. “i’d love to,” he said firmly. “s’ the least i can do. and i’d like to hear more about this final project of yours. when do you present it?”

“next month,” a shadow crossed your expressive face, there and gone in a blink. “m’ tryin’ not to think too much about it yet. one step at a time, y’know?”

he recognized that look. the flickering uncertainty, the hint of stage fright. he’d worn it himself, back before his first real fire. wanting so badly to prove himself, to show what he was made of, terrified of choking.

impulsively, he reached for your hand, halting her flitting movements. your fingers curled reflexively around his, warm and strong. “look at me . . . you got this. you’re a star, you're gonna’ impress the hell outta’ your professors.”

you swallowed hard, eyes searching his. looking for the belief you couldn't quite muster on your own. “i hope so. i want it so much, toji. this . . all of it. it’s all i’ve ever wanted.”

“then don't let fear hold you back,” he told you gently. “don’t doubt yourself. you have a gift, mama. i know m’ a dumb scrub who can barely tell a macaron from a macaroon, but even i can see that you were born for this shit.”

your hand squeezed his, almost painfully tight. from both the nickname rolling off his tongue so elegantly and the encouragement that you sometimes failed to receive from your closest peers. “thank you, seriously,” you whispered. “for believin’ in me, i guess. it means a lot to me . . .”

he squeezes back, thumb sweeping over your knuckles. he had a sudden, wild urge to haul your into his arms. to soothe the worry from your brow with his lips, to show you with his hands and body and breath how special you were. how much he'd come to care for you in such a short time.

but he couldn't. however strong the pull, however much he wanted to cross that line, he knew it would be a mistake. you weren’t for him, this shining woman with stardust in her eyes. and he was in no position to offer you anything real. he needed to remember that.

so he contented himself with a soft “anytime,” and released your hand, stepping back to a safer distance. “now, about that dinner. friday work for you?”

you blinked, then hitched your smile back into place. it wobbled a bit at the edges, but he pretended not to notice. “friday’s great. s’ a . . . plan.”

even through the awkwardness, the unspoken words clogging the air between you, a little thrill went through him. it’s a date, you’d almost said. and god help him, he wished it was — that’s why you settled on making plans to try the new, cozy italian restaurant that had opened downtown, the one you’d mentioned wanting to visit after a neighborhood watch meeting one night. it was intimate . . . romantic. toji walked home with a lightness in his step, an unfamiliar flutter in his gut. he was in trouble, he knew he was. you were trouble in ways he hadn't encountered before. you made him feel too much.

more than he ever had.

but he was in too deep to back out now. all he could do was try to keep a clear head, keep things casual and platonic. be your friend and supporter, nothing more. his life, his job . . there was no room for complications.

even if he was beginning to suspect it was already far too late.

the days leading up to friday passed in a blur of anticipation and nerves, though toji did his best to ignore both. ‘it isn’t a date. she’s not into you. this isnt a fuckin’ date . . .’ he reminded himself sternly, no matter how much his idiot heart wanted to pretend otherwise. just dinner between neighbors. a thank you for your tireless taste testing efforts. nothing to get all hot n’ bothered about.

so then why the fuck had he changed outfits half a dozen times before settling on the nicest button-down he owned and a new pair of dark wash jeans? why had he agonized over whether to bring flowers or wine or both . . again? this was so embarrassing. he was so embarrassing. he’d think being married once would've meant he had at least a little bit of game . . but nope - he had nothing.

taking a deep breath, he knocked on your door at precisely 7pm. when it swung open to reveal you, his lungs almost stopped in their tracks. you looked no less than stunning in a ruffled dress, in the pretty shade of baby-pink, your hair tumbling over your bare shoulders - half up, half down and bumped at the ends. a slim gold chain nestled in the hollow of your throat, shamefully drawing his eyes down to the swells of your titties.

“fuck . .” he said inanely, tongue suddenly clumsy in his mouth. “m’ so sorry. forgive me, i mean, you look . . absolutely amazing.”

a shy smile curved your lips, brightening your whole face up. “thanks . . so do you, toji.” your eyes skimmed over him appreciatively and he fought the urge to preen.

“o-oh, these are for you.” he thrusts the slightly wilted grocery store bouquet at you, wincing inwardly at his own awkwardness.

but you just smile, cradling the limp blooms like they were something so precious. “how sweet of you! i love daisies. lemme’ jus’ put these in some water and we can go.” you disappeared into the kitchen, leaving him to marvel at how such a simple gesture could delight you so thoroughly. damn, you were so lovely. inside and out.

the drive to the restaurant was filled with easy conversation interspersed with comfortable silences. toji let you be in control of the radio, secretly charmed by your off-key humming to the cheesy pop songs in rotation on your playlist. he could imagine countless nights like this, aimless drives with no destination in mind, just content to be in your company with no one to bother.

and dinner was a laughter-filled affair, trading bites of pasta and garlicky bread, arguing playfully over the merits of various desserts. you entertained him with customer service horror stories from your barista days, confessing your penchant for ‘accidentally’ giving rude patrons decaf.

in turn, toji found himself sharing more than he usually did - funny anecdotes about his buddies at the firehouse, his worries about his little sister starting college in the fall, even a bit about his dad. the words came without effort, drawn out by your natural warmth and empathy.

he couldn't remember the last time he'd enjoyed anyone's company so effortlessly.

when the check came, he wouldn't let you even reach for it. you rolled your eyes but allowed him to pay, primly informing him you were getting the next one. his stomach flipped at the unthinking promise of a next time.

you then lingered over coffee and dessert - the restaurant's version didn't even hold a candle to your black forest verrines, but you were too polite to say so - neither wanting the evening to end. toji watched you lick chocolate from your spoon, entranced by the tiny pink flash of your tongue. wishing he could lean in and taste the sweetness of your mouth. a pleasant shiver chased over his skin, heat simmering low in his belly. he’d never wanted anyone the way he wanted you - this maddening mix of tender and carnal, the urge to both protect and possess.

“mmm,” you purred appreciatively, pulling the spoon from your mouth with an obscene pop. “whoever said that chocolate isn’t better than sex clearly hadn't tasted chocolate like this.”

toji swallowed hard, adam's apple bobbing convulsively in his throat. “playin’ with fire are we?” he manages to rasp, fingers clenching around his mug.

you placed the spoon delicately on your empty plate, fingers lingering just long enough to draw his attention to their graceful dance. “who says i’m playin’, handsome?” you quip.

he was so fucked. so. totally. fucked.

afterwards, he walked you to your door, hands shoved deeply n’ awkwardly into his pockets to keep from doing something stupid like reaching for your hand. you then hovered on the stoop, the sultry summer night pressing in close.

“i had fun tonight,” you softly. in the light spilling from your living room window, your eyes were luminous. hopeful. “we should really do it again sometime.”

“we should,” he agreed, mouth dry. he couldn't look away from your face, tracing the delicate arch of your brows, the dark feathering of your lashes. you swayed closer, tipping your face up to his, and his heartbeat kicked into overdrive. god, you were killing him.

it took every ounce of willpower to step back, to force a chuckle past the ache in his chest. “well i should let you get your beauty sleep. early start tomorrow, right?” your smile faltered, a brief tightening around your eyes hinting at disappointment. he almost caved right then, almost said to hell with his reservations and dragged you into his arms the way he'd been dying to do all night.

but he couldn't. not when he had nothing more to offer you than heartache.

“right,” you murmured. “beauty sleep. so important for . . . baking.” you fumbled for your keys, not quite meeting his gaze. “i’ll see you round’ then.” he could only watch you retreat into the house, torn between relief at the bullet dodged and an overwhelming sense of loss.

wearily, he turned to go back to his own quiet home. he’d done the right thing. the smart thing. so why did it feel so damnably hollow?

avoidance was the order of the day after that near-miss. though it pained him, toji forced himself to keep some distance, to not make up flimsy excuses to show up on your doorstep at all hours of the night. no more dessert development sessions, no matter how much he craved the sight of you gushing and twirling over your latest creations. no more cute, little dinners with furtive hand holding under the table.

he threw himself into work with even more zeal than usual, pulling extra shifts and helping out with the neverending station chores. if the guys ribbed him about his sudden devotion to alphabetizing the equipment room or polishing the engine to a blinding shine, he shrugged it off. it was loads better than going home to an empty house haunted by what-ifs.

he ached to see you though. sometimes he'd catch a glimpse of you catering to your garden or heading off to the market, and his fingers would itch with the urge to go to you, to close the seemingly unbridgeable gap between you both with long strides and strong arms. more than once he'd picked up his phone to call you, thumb hesitating over your smiling face in his contacts until he cursed and tossed the phone aside.

it was for the best, he told himself firmly. you had your whole life ahead of you - school and internships, building your dream from the ground up. he’d only get in the way, bog you down with his everlasting issues and cynicism. he wouldn't, couldn't be the dead weight holding you back.

even if letting you go felt like tearing himself in half.

he should've known you wouldn't let him slink away so easily. that for all your sweetness, you were just as stubborn as he was. you’d never been one to give up on the things - or people - you wanted.

which bring us to now . . you ambushing him on his way home from a grueling 48-hour shift, looking unfairly pretty and indignant as you marched across the street to plant yourself in front of his truck. he barely bit back a groan, exhaustion and longing a potent cocktail in his bloodstream.

“hey, stranger,” you said archly, fine brows drawn together in a scowl. “long time no annoy.”

he cut the engine and climbed out, suddenly self-conscious about his unwashed, smoke-saturated state. “hi, yn. how’s it going?”

“ah, y’know. jus’ workin’ myself to the bone, trying to perfect this dessert that's only the culmination of my entire academic career thus far. while also attempting to figure out how i mysteriously pissed off my friend to the point of complete radio silence.” your arms crossed over your chest, a hint of hurt flickering in your eyes, “so yeah . . the usual.”

guilt lodged under his breastbone, sharp and corroding. he’d never meant to upset you, to make you think any of this was at all your fault. “shit, yn. i’m sorry . . i didn’t mean to ignore you, i’ve just been so -”

“busy . .” you finished for him, mouth flattening. “mhm, i’ve noticed. so busy you ignored all my calls n’ texts - missed our dinner the other night too. you’ve been practically living at the station lately.”

he grimaced, one hand scrubbing over his stubbled jaw. he’d never been any good with words, with making excuses. especially when faced with eyes that seemed to see right through his every defense, “you’re right. i’ve been avoiding you. but not because of anything you did. i jus’ . . needed some space to clear my head.”

your arms tightened, gaze dropping to the oil-stained pavement. “i thought we were having fun,” you said quietly. “gettin’ to know each other. but if i misread things, if i made you uncomfortable in any way i really am so sorr . . .”

“no.” he interrupted fiercely, taking an involuntary step closer. close enough to smell the light, citrusy scent of you, to see the faint mascara smudges of sleeplessness under your eyes. “you didn't misread anything, yn. these past weeks, spendin’ time with you . . . s’ been amazing. the most fun i’ve had in years, if i’m being honest.”

confusion clouded your expression. “then why?”

“because m’ a goddamn mess,” he bit out, the truth clawing its way up his throat. “because you’re brilliant, and you’re goin’ places . . n’ i wouldn’t be able to give you my time in the way that i know you more than deserve. i wanna smell muffins in the mornin’ . . not the smell of musty men and water hoses.”

he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose before sitting his stuff on the hood of his car, “i jus’,” he started, “i’ve done the dating thing, alright? the marriage thing too, y’know that. i jus’ . . i cant afford to lose another person in my life that i care about — not when i’ve come this far to prevent it n’ when they’re as sweet and pretty, and as kind as you.” you stand in silence, letting him vent, “i’m not perfect. m’ terrible at cooking, i sing in the shower, n’ on top of all that i fuckin’ snore like a grizzly bear. ya’ still want me now?”

you took a step forward, hand coming up to fist in the front of his t-shirt. he inhaled sharply at the sudden press of your soft curves against his hard planes, the way your gaze dropped to his mouth.

“yeah, you grumpy old fuck . . i still want you,” you whispered fiercely. “mess, snores and all.”

he softened as you pressed a kiss onto his cheek, gentle and warm with truce, “i have my own damn baggage. y’think thats stoppin’ me from goin’ after what i want? no. so jus’ stop bein’ such an asshole n’ kiss me alread - mmph!” — that was it. that was the straw that’d broken the camel’s back. with a muttered curse, his control had finally snapped. he hauled you flush against him, one arm banding around your waist as the other hand sank into your hair, cradling the back of your head. you made a soft, needy sound and surged up on tiptoe, sealing your mouth to his.

the first touch of your lips was electric, a livewire straight to his core. they were exactly as soft and sweet as he'd imagined, moving over his with an urgency that matched his own. he angled his head to slant his mouth more firmly over your, licking at the seam of your lips as you licked on the scar on his.

he swept his tongue into your mouth, stroking over yours, swallowing the low moan that vibrated in her throat. you tasted like peppermint and the vaguest hint of sugar, an addictive flavor he already knew he'd never get enough of. your arms twined around his neck, blunt nails scraping deliciously at his nape as you pressed impossibly closer.

dimly, he registered the whoops and catcalls of a passing group of neighbors, but he couldn't bring himself to care. let em’ gawk. the whole damn neighborhood could come out to watch and he still wouldn't be able to tear himself away from your sweetness.

he was a man possessed.

the kiss deepened, turning hot and hungry. toji backed you up against his front door, hands roaming greedily over your curves as he pressed the hard length of his body into your soft warmth. you made yet another sound into his mouth, lifting one leg to wrap around his hip, opening yourself up to him.

he tore his lips from yours only to trail open-mouthed kisses down the column of your throat, tasting the salt on your skin from the sweat of the hot summer sun. “fuck . . i want you,” he growled against your pulse point. “wanna’ touch you, taste you, feel you. if you’ll let me . . of course.”

“wow, such a gentlemen,” you gasped, hands scrabbling at his shoulders. “please fuckin’ do, toji.” patience fraying, he fumbled for his keys and somehow managed to get the door open without releasing you. you stumbled over the threshold, shedding clothes haphazardly between searing kisses - your flimsy blouse fluttering to the floor, followed by smoke stained his t-shirt.

toji walked you backwards down the hall to his bedroom, kicking the door shut before tossing you onto the bed. he followed you down, covering your entire frame with his own, reveling in the feel of all your bare skin finally against him. you were a vision in the spill of afternoon light, curls fanned across his pillow, pink lace bra and panties a tantalizing contrast to your brown skin.

he took a moment just to admire you, committing every detail to memory. the rapid rise and fall of your chest, the way your lips parted on shallow breaths. heavy-lidded eyes hazy with want and something deeper, more tender.

“been dreamin’ about you, princess. shit - you’re so gorgeous.” he rasped, nipping at your earlobe with each word, “so pretty, so beautiful, so smart.”

you shivered, fingernails raking over his shoulders, “nngh - c’mon stoppit, toji . .” growling low in his throat, he captured your lips in a nasty kiss, all teeth and tongue. large hands cupping your full titties, calloused thumbs rubbing your nipples into stiff peaks. and you arched into his touch with a moan, shameless in your pleasure.

“someone’s eager, hm?”

breaking the kiss, he began to work his way down your body, mapping every dip and curve with lips and teeth and tongue. he paid thorough attention to your titties, laving at the dark-brown nipples until you were panting and squirming beneath him.

“b-baby, please . .” you whimpered, fingers sinking into his hair to urge him lower.

he only chuckled darkly against your flesh. “patience, sweetheart. m’ not goin’ anywhere. let me love you.”

true to his word, he set about exploring you - kissing a meandering path down your ribs and belly, dipping his tongue into your navel just to hear you gasp. strong hands gripped your thighs, pushing them further and further apart so he could settle more comfortably between them.

hooking his fingers in your lacy panties, he dragged the scrap of fabric down your legs. “fuck yeah, look at you. so wet for me already. look at this pussy . .”

you mewled as he licked a broad stripe up your slit, circling your puffy clit with the tip of his tongue. he sealed his lips around the sensitive nub and sucked, fingers delving into your soaked entrance, curling to find that special spot inside you.

“o-ooh my god — yes!” your back bowed off the bed, a vibration spreading down your chest as he worked you higher. he paid close attention to your most tender skin, alternating between broad, flat licks and quick, targeted flicks. crooking his fingers just so, he rubbed and rubbed until he found — “ah f-fuck!” your g-spot, feeling your thighs start to tremble around his head.

“thas’ it, bunny - cum on my tongue. i wanna’ see it all, mama. c’mon, i know you can do it,” the filthy words combined with the relentless stimulation quite literally pushed you over the edge . . and you came with a sharp cry, gushing your juices all over his lips and chin. he groaned at the taste of you, lapping up every last drop, addicted already.

while you were still quivering and coming down from your high, toji fumbled blindly for the nightstand drawer. he managed to retrieve a condom without taking his eyes off of you. ripping open the packet with his teeth, he sat back on his knees to quickly sheath himself.

you took the opportunity to admire his body, running appreciative hands over his muscular chest and abdomen. he was all tanned skin and chiseled muscle, a sparse trail of dark hair pointing the way to his impressive erection. it jutted from a thatch of coarse curls, thick and flushed nearly purple, the bulbous head glistening with excitement.

wrapping your fingers around his rigid length, you stroked him base to tip, twisting your wrist on the upstroke so that the condom slips right back off. toji grunted, hips bucking into your touch as you rubbed your thumb over the leaking slit. you pause, your mouth watering as you begin to lower your head down. you press the side of your face against his thigh, peering up at him with batting lashes and a poked lip. your ass is arched - high in the air and wiggling as if you just wanted him to smack it.

that’s when you began slapping his heavy dick against your cheek, repeatedly, “so big, baby,” you whisper, now positioning your face to where his cock could sit right on top of it - “can i put it in m’mouth? please . .?”

“yn you don’t have to -”

“i want to.”

toji looked down at you once more, the look of want in your eyes . . . how could he resist?

he gently grabs the side of your neck, firm but not firm enough to cause pain, his other hand curling around the base of his cock as he whispered, “open wide. tongue out,” biting his lip as he braces himself for the sensation of your mouth wrapped around him.

that’s when your wet tongue dances out tentatively, tracing the ridge of his head before retreating back to safety inside your mouth. it was clear that you were just as lust filled as him. toji could feel himself pulsing with need as you took him in deeper and deeper, a low groan escaping him, “shit, doll - got it all to fit . . good girl.” your hands gripped his hips tightly, nails digging into his skin as you bobbed your head up and down. toji swore he could fall in love with the simple, yet beautifully disgusting sound of your throat — gawk, gulp, gawk! ugh, they were such disgusting noises - some gagging here, some moaning there, but he couldn’t have asked for anything better. you were slobbing, spitting, and choking on his dick and the only thing getting in your way from taking him whole was the fact that his size was still fairly new to you.

“sss’ ooh fuck - b-baby . . yn -” he hisses, both your eyes and his rolling to the back of your heads as you continue to gulp him down, spit trickling down to your tits as they jiggled to the rhythm of your mouth. each and every glide against your tongue was starting to overpower him, and before he knew it, if you didn’t stop he was bout’ to —

“cum . . m’gonna cum! m’fuckin’ cumming - asshhit . .” he groaned, eyes tightly closing as you continued to deepthroat him the best you could, “don’t stop, keep suck - y-yes . .” it was a hassle - a big one, but the taste of him warm cum painting your throat felt like a sweet reward.

almost sweeter than your baked goods.

whining and still aching to suck on him some more, toji pulls you off in fear of shaking more than he already was — and the sight of you with his cum dripping out of your mouth only did the complete opposite.

“uh, well then . . how’d i do?” you say shyly, as if you hadn’t just completely slutted out your mouth for your next door neighbor.

a surprised bark of laughter escaped him even as his cock jerked at you eagerly. “don’t exile me, but that mouth . . shit, might be better than your cookies. not gonna’ lie, sweetheart . .” toji growled, and you pout as he’s prowling back over you. you then watch him slowly, his fingers unexpectedly plunging back into your pussy as he scoops some of your wetness onto the pad of them before pulling them back out. he fists the base and tip of himself, smothering his cock in your juices as lubricant as he teases your entrance with a few pats n’ nudges. fuckin’ tease. he kept on until you were angrily swatting his chest to put the damn thing in already.

who could blame your lust? after all . . you’d been dreaming about it for weeks now.

yet again, he snags another rubber, strokes a little, and once he’s in, “oh s-shit that pussy's tight, baby . .” he’s in. you moaned in tandem, dick snuggling into your tight walls inch by excruciating inch. you were warm and wet and perfect around him, gripping him like a silken vise. it was magical, just like you - but the look on your face . . oh that look, almost seemed like you wanted to be broken. with your arms above your head, your titties swaying against your chest and your whines now hoarse n' pleading — he kinda wanted to break you too.

toji started with slow, deep strokes, mindful of your tightness and his considerable girth. he didn't want to hurt you, wanted to savor every clench and flutter around his aching cock. wanted this to last, to burn this moment into his brain forever.

“f-feel so fuckin' good wrapped around me,” he gritted out, hips rolling in a lazy figure eight that had you keening. “y’so wet, honey . . dick feel that good?”

“toji,” you whimpered brokenly, fingernails scoring down his flexing back. “more, please . . need it harder . .”

and how could he deny you anything when you begged so sweetly? bracing his weight on his forearms, he obliged, snapping his hips forward with more force. the headboard started to thump against the wall, the mattress creaking beneath your writhing bodies.

“like that, baby? hm?” he panted against your throat, sweat beading at his temples as he drove into you again and again, his cock damn near slipping out of you from the slippery speed. “this what you need? me splittin' this pretty pussy open?”

“yes d-daddy . . ” you wailed, back arching like a drawn bow. your cunt was fluttering around him, a telltale sign of your impending orgasm. “aah - don't stop, don’t stop, m'so close!”

“shh, i got you,” he promised, shifting the angle of his hips to grind against your clit with every thrust. “gonna’ make this pussy sing for me, gonna’ wring the cum outta’ you 'til you're shakin' on me. you want that?” his filthy words seemed to be your undoing because suddenly you were clenching down on him like a vice, a sharp cry tearing from your throat as you thrashed beneath him. your release gushed hot and slick around his pistoning length, drenching his groin and thighs with sweetness.

“f-fuck yeah,” toji choked out, his own rhythm faltering as your rippling walls threatened to milk him dry. “good girl, sweetheart, cream on this dick, lemme’ feel you.” he managed a handful more erratic thrusts before his own orgasm crashed into him like a freight train. he buried himself to the hilt and stilled, a hoarse shout muffled into your sweat damped shoulder as he spilled himself into the condom. his cock jerked and twitched with every pulse, vision nearly whiting out with the force of it.

for long moments, you both just shook and gasped, clinging to each other as aftershocks rolled through your bodies. toji's heart was thundering so hard he was sure you could feel it through his sweat-slick chest. he'd never come so hard in his life, never felt so utterly shattered and remade.

you made a soft, satisfied sound as he carefully withdrew from your heat, rolling to the side to dispose of the condom with a quick knot. then he was gathering you close again, palm smoothing up your spine as you burrowed into him with a sigh.

“shit,” you eventually mumbled into the heated skin of his throat. “that was . . .”

“ . . fuckin' heavenly,” he finished roughly, a laugh rumbling in his chest as he felt your answering huff of amusement. “m’ sorry i uh . . came so fast. i don’t usually -”

“did you just apologize to me because my pussy is good?” you teased, dragging your nose along the edge of his stubbled jaw. he could feel the curve of your smile, the unabashed joy, and it settled something deep within him. soothed the ragged pieces he'd thought long broken.

“damn straight,” he agreed, arms tightening around you possessively. “i can die a happy man now.”

“well, you're not allowed to die on me now, toji. you're stuck with me. escape if you can.”

“mm, is that right,” he nuzzled into your hair, breathing in the scent of you - all warm woman and satisfaction.

“mhmm. you're not getting rid of me easily. i still have so many desserts to force on you, so many early morning baking sessions to drag you into . .”

he laughed outright at that, at the sheer exuberance in your voice. “promises, promises.”

“oh i always keep my promises, mister. which reminds me . .” you pushed up on an elbow, eyes sparkling with mischief and something deeper. something that snatched the breath from his lungs. “i seem to remember you saying something about round two . .”

“did i? care to refresh my memory?” he growled, even as he was already rolling you beneath him again, mouth seeking yours. you then feel his palm colliding with your ass in a gentle spank. “what am i gonna’ do with you?”

“everything.” you breathed against his lips, a vow. “anything. i want you, toji. want everything with you.” and fuck, what could he say to that? what could he do but kiss you like a promise, a prayer, and proceed to show you just how much he wanted that too? wanted to give you everything, anything, all he had to offer?

he'd never been a man of many words. but this - loving you with hands and mouth and body, breaking you apart and putting you back together again and again until you were both sweat-soaked and shaking . . this he could do. this he would do for the rest of his life if you'd let him.

“you’ve got me.”

and from the joyous half-sob of his name as he sank back into your pussy, the way your body opened for him like a flower to the sun, he had a feeling you just might too.

there would be time for more words later - time for confessions and plans and mapping out a future he'd never even let himself dream of before. time to make good on promises whispered into heated skin, to build something real and lasting brick by brick. but for now, in the honeyed afternoon light with your legs wrapped around his waist and your heart in his hands . . let himself get lost. let himself drown in sensation and emotion, in this miraculous woman he didn't deserve but who'd chosen him anyway.

from lost to found, in the space of a heartbeat. and all because an angel in a garden had smiled at him across a sunny street and offered up a little piece of heaven. he'd never know what he'd done to deserve you, or this second chance. but he'd spend the rest of his days earning this gift, cherishing it.

cherishing you.

that was a promise. and like his beautiful girl . . toji fushiguro always kept his promises.

©️ SATORUBI - please do not copy, translate, or modify my work without my approval ! thank you for playing . . the challenge has only just begun.

#🎀 — www.satorubiwrites/games !#AHHHHH WE HERE #papa toji i luv him #toji x fem! reader #toji x female reader #toji x black reader #toji x black y/n #toji smut #jjk x fem! reader #jjk x poc!reader

5K notes · View notes

treasure-mimic · 1 year ago

Text

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

#Unity #Unity3D #Video Games #Game Development #Game Developers #fuckshit #I don't know what to tag news like this

6K notes · View notes

door-insurance · 1 month ago

Text

Ahm, hello Life is Strange fandom- I got an announcement

I have been working on my own LiS fan visual novel

This is VortexVN,

You play as Victoria waking up from a hangover with no memory of the week prior, you are tasked with piecing together what happened between her and one of the 4 love interests.

And of course the love interests are:

-Chloe (Chaseprice)

-Max (Chasefield)

-Kate (Chasemarsh)

-Rachel (Amberchase)

The game starts with a quiz; you unlock a route by picking answers related to the character you wanna romance (they are very obvious)

It takes place in an AU where the events of LiS1 and BtS didn't really happen and there are no special powers, Victoria's still a bi tch- I guess that's her special powers.

Think of this game as a spiritual successor to Love is Strange by Team Rumblebee rather than Life is Strange 1

Gameplay so far is your typical point and click visual novel affair, you will be given options to explore rooms, examine objects and talk to other characters- the interactions will play a crucial part in how the game ends,

You can win the girl or get rejected or worse... It will depend on how Victoria carried herself throughout the game,

Mistreating certain characters may prove to be a dealbreaker for the love interest,

Each girl has two close friends in the dorm that you should not upset (I'll reveal who in the guide pdf)

This game is also perfect for Victoria haters as you can ruin her life

The game has its own journal system that will be different depending on who you're romancing, it also comes with a read button (I blurred most of the text so you can get curious and play the game)

Read button will display the journal content in Open Dyslexic font

In the demo you'll only get to explore Victoria's room and the dorm hallways and you'll get two encounters from Juliet (Showers) and Alyssa (Hallway)

VortexVN is still in development, I have finished part.1 of the project and will start polishing it soon- the initial build of part.1 will be available to play as a demo!

The cutscenes lack color and proper shading at the moment and you will find placeholders as well, the art style is all over the place- this will change after the polishing phase

Download links:

Mac and Windows

Web browser ver (I don't recommend that you play it on mobile, also the web version lacks animation and takes forever to load graphics)

programs used:

-Renpy (visual novel engine)

-Photoshop CS5 (Drawing/rendering/animating/designing)

-Clips studio (Texturing)

-tablet: XP-Pen Artist 13

Note: I'm not monetizing this project nor do I claim ownership of the Life is Strange ip, all materials and assets presented in this visual novel were either created by me or are royalty free- I did not lift anything from the games via data mining or by leaks

This game is not a response to or a gotcha at Life is Strange Double Exposure or Deck Nine, I didn't really dislike the game

Besides, I've had the idea of a Victoria centric fan game since the first LiS back in 2015

I'm open for feedbacks! You can DM me or reblog this with a review or something- maybe write a comment.

#life is strange #lis #victoria chase #chloe price #max caulfield #kate marsh #rachel amber #chasemarsh #chaseprice #chasefield #amberchase #life is strange before the storm #lis bts #alyssa anderson #juliet watson #VortexVN

661 notes · View notes

naileadevoras · 2 months ago

Text

* taps mic * is this thing on ? hi pookies ! it's the week before christmas & today , i'm presenting to you all a list of different occupations for your muses . i've categorized them based on alphabetical order for a neater look & it'll be easier for you all to read / browse through . i hope you find this masterlist helpful !

a like + reblog would be greatly appreciated . happy holidays !

🎱 𝑨 - 𝑯 .

accountant

activist

actor / actress

aesthetician

animator

apartment flipper

art critique

artist

author

babysitter

baker

bank teller

barista

bartender

bellhop

bike messenger

body builder

body guard

book keeper

bookstore owner

bouncer

cake decorator

camp counselor

cars salesman

casino manager

casting director

chef

civic planner

comedian

computer engineer

concert promoter

construction worker

dentist

dermatologist

dietitian

doctor

disk jockey

diver

driver [ uber , lyft , private ]

emergency medical technician

entrepreneur

etsy shop owner

fast food employee

figure skater

firefighter

financial analyst

fisherman

florist

food deliverer [ postmates , uber eats , etc ]

food critic

former child star

former miss universe

funeral director

game developer

guidance counselor

hair dresser

hair stylist

high school teacher

🎱 𝑰 - 𝑸 .

influencer

interior decorator

investor

janitor

journalist

judge

kindergarten teacher

lab assistant [ biology / chemistry lab ]

lifeguard

line cook

maid

make up artist

manager

marine biologist

marriage / family therapist

massage therapist

matchmaker

mechanical engineer

mobile app developer

mortician

motorcycle mechanic

nail technician

nurse practitioner

nursing professor

obstetrician

pageant queen

physiotherapist

piercer

pilot for commercial airlines

plastic surgeon

police officer

personal stylist

private attorney

private chef

professional athlete [ football , basketball , soccer ]

professional boxer

professional chess player

professional esports player

professional mermaid

professional photographer

professor

programmer

public relations

quality control inspector

🎱 𝑹 - 𝒁 .

real estate agent

receptionist

relationship counselor

respiratory therapist

retail employee

sales person

set designer / illustrator

singer

small business owner

socialite

social media curator

social media intern

song - writer

sports agent

stunt double

tattoo artist

teacher's assistant

tour guide

tour manager

translator

travel writer [ journalist ]

twitch streamer

ultrasound technologist

veterinarian / vet assistant

waiter / waitress

web art director

yoga instructor

zoologist

#masterlist #rph #job masterlist #rpt #roleplay help #indie rp #roleplay resources #mine

640 notes · View notes

tinystepsforward · 5 months ago

Text

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.

#tony muses #tumblr meta #again just bc that's my tag for all this #automattic #wordpress #this is probably really incoherent i apologise lmao #i may edit it

749 notes · View notes

reasonsforhope · 1 month ago

Text

"In the Canary Islands, in Barcelona, and in Chile, a unique fog catcher design is sustaining dry forests with water without emissions, or even infrastructure.

Replicating how pine needles catch water, the structure need only be brought on-site and set up, without roads, powerlines, or irrigation channels.

Fog catching is an ancient practice—renamed “cloud milking” by an EU-funded ecology project on the Canary Islands known as LIFE Nieblas (nieblas means fog).

“In recent years, the Canaries have undergone a severe process of desertification and we’ve lost a lot of forest through agriculture. And then in 2007 and 2009, as a result of climate change, there were major fires in forested areas that are normally wet,” said Gustavo Viera, the technical director of the publicly-funded project in the Canaries.

The Canaries routinely experience blankets of fog that cloak the islands’ slopes and forests, but strong winds made fog-catching nets an unfeasible solution. In regions such as the Atacama Desert in Chile or the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, erecting nets that capture moisture particles out of passing currents of fog is a traditional practice.

LIFE Nieblas needed a solution that could resist powerful winds, and to that end designed wind chime-like rows of artificial pine needles, which are also great at plucking moisture from the air. However, unlike nets or palms, they efficiently let the wind pass through them.

The water is discharged without any electricity. There are no irrigation channels, and no machinery is needed to transport the structures. The natural course of streams and creeks need not be altered, nor is there a need to drill down to create wells. The solution is completely carbon-free.

WATER IN THE DESERTS:

China Announces Completion of a 1,800-Mile Green Belt Around the World’s Most-Hostile Desert

Billions of People Could Benefit from This Breakthrough in Desalination That Ensures Freshwater for the World

Scientists Perfecting New Way to Turn Desert Air into Water at Much Higher Yields

Sahara Desert Is Turning Green Amid Unusual Rains in Parts of North Africa

Indian Engineers Tackle Water Shortages with Star Wars Tech in Kerala

In the ravine of Andén in Gran Canaria, a 35.8-hectare (96 acres) mixture of native laurel trees irrigated by the fog catchers enjoys a survival rate of 86%, double the figure of traditional reforestation.

“The Canaries are the perfect laboratory to develop these techniques,” said Vicenç Carabassa, the project’s head scientist, who works for the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications at the University of Barcelona. “But there are other areas where the conditions are optimal and where there is a tradition of water capture from fog, such as Chile and Morocco.”

In Chile’s Coquimbo province, the town of Chungungo is collecting around 250 gallons a day from a combination of locally-made fog catchers and LIFE Nieblas’ pine needle design, the Guardian reports."

-via Good News Network, December 30, 2024

#water #water shortage #canary islands #deserts #fog catchers #good news #hope

601 notes · View notes

todays-xkcd · 1 year ago

Text

Once he had the answer, Arrhenius complained to his friends that he'd "wasted over a full year" doing tedious calculations by hand about "so trifling a matter" as hypothetical CO2 concentrations in far-off eras (quoted in Crawford, 1997).

Greenhouse Effect [Explained]

Transcript

[At the top of the comic a timeline is shown as a long line. It has three dots, one at each end a bit inside the end of the line and one close to the middle Each dot has a gray curved line going up to it from below. Below the end of these lines a year is given. And beneath the year is a caption. Above the time line are two gray double arrows going from three gray lines above each of the three dots. The lines are broken in the middle where a label is written.]

[Label of arrow that spans from first to second dot:] 120 years

[Label of arrow that spans from second to third dot:] 128 years

[Label for the first dot:] 1776 James Watt develops a steam engine that helps kick off the Industrial Revolution

[Label for the second dot:] 1896 Arvid Högbom and Svante Arrhenius note that industrial activity is adding CO2 to the atmosphere, and calculate how much the Earth will heat up if the CO2 concentration doubles. Their answer closely matches modern estimates.

[Label for the third dot:] 2024 Today

[Caption below the panel:] We figured out the greenhouse effect closer to the start of the Industrial Revolution than to today.

#xkcd #xkcd 2889 #greenhouse effect #global warming #webcomics

1K notes · View notes

nymphomatique · 7 months ago

Text

simulacra

atsv!miguel x fem!reader x comic!miguel

im no geneticist so please forgive me for any incorrect science terms 😁 i have no words for this one i wrote this with my pussy. enjoy!

cw: bunch of word vomit before we get to the sex, miguelcest? two miguel’s like eachother very much, comic!miguel x fem!reader x atsv!miguel, boys kissing, reader fujoshing out, cunnilingus, ass eating (f receiving), blowjobs, ball sucking, handjob, fingering, squirting, voyeurism/cucking?? idk one watches for a bit, double penetration, anal fingering, unrealistic anal 🫡, nipple sucking (f), cum eating, honestly just vibes all around!

wc: 7.9k. im sorry.

—> so this was originally supposed to go up like several weeks ago with a note that i would be gone for school + summer classes (that i just finished!!!) but turns out i drafted it instead of queuing it like a fucking idiot 😁!!!!!! nonetheless, i’m so sorry for the wait. enjoy.

“This is ambitious, even for you Miguel.”

“The worse that could happen is there’s no other dimension, then we take our dinner after this experiment.”

“You’re paying.”

“Only if I’m wrong.”

Geneticist by day, interdimensional scienctist by night, Miguel O’Hara proceeds as one of Alchemax’s brightest employees. A ground breaking research paper with a thesis on the future of genetics and their ability to be bioengineered and spliced with those of non-mammals earned him the title of lead geneticist, nothing short of prodigal in comparison to his peers.

You and Miguel met two years ago during your internship for Alchemax, studying yourself to become a geneticist after reading Miguel’s thesis paper in your freshman year of college. Miguel is a famed alum of Nueva York University, the science department’s crowning achievement in all its years of standing. When you had heard that the genetic science department had opened internship applications for Alchemax, you had been ecstatic. Not only would you have a chance to intern at the company of your dreams, but also get the chance to meet one of your academic idols. Needless to say, when you had read the words “Congratulations! You have been accepted and offered an internship position to study within Alchemax’s genetic science and engineering department.”, to say you were excited would be an understatement.

In the two years you’ve spent interning at Alchemax, you and Miguel have developed a close relationship to say the least. It had been a divine stroke of luck perhaps when you learned that you would be working along side Miguel as a lab technician, you had felt like you died and gone to heaven. Seeing framed photos of the scientific genius in his earlier years had no comparison to seeing him in person. To be crass, he was fucking sexy. Tall, extremely tall, broad and muscular in stature, and tan all over. Brooding eyes and a seemingly permanent frown of dissatisfaction present on his round lips, it was safe to say you had developed a slight workplace crush.

Nevertheless, it seemed to be an unrequited infatuation. Miguel never seeming to want to talk to you about things beyond the study of deconstructing cells on an atomic level or changing the structure of somethings molecular composition, he seemed beyond disinterested in you. Still, you enjoyed the stolen glances and the misinterpretations of a touch or a word or a glance. It’s like a secret you have kept to yourself.

It wasn’t all distaste on Miguel’s part however, after some time with him he began to share some tidbits out his personal life, rather reluctantly however. You caught him one day in the lab after hours, you had decided to stay late to work on a test subject, a spider with more than one type of species’ cells, an epigenetic experiment of yours. You were about to leave the lab when you saw Miguel hunched over his desk in his office fidgeting with a gadget you’ve never seen before. A rather crude looking watch, various types of wiring and exposed circuits coming together to form it.

It was then he had explained to you his after hours personal project; inter-dimensional travel. To think he was ambitious was the least of your thoughts, you concluded in your head that he was downright stupid to think something like that is feasible on a level of understanding basic science and physics. But after witnessing the messy blueprints and nights of coffee and energy drinks, night after night, seeing how truly dedicated he was at just wanting to believe the idea of inter-dimensional travel, you had no choice but to indulge in him, your bubbling crush gave you no choice to object.

So nights of him alone hunched over his desk, became late nights of both of you hunched over his desk together, fidgeting with formulas and logistics of opening a window to an entirely different universe.

Sometimes you brought coffee, and sometimes he brought late night dinner (that he made in his kitchen) for the both of you. Regardless, the both of you had developed a work relationship, platonic of course, in the two years you’ve been present at Alchemax. You had even shared with him a draft of your own personal work for your final thesis before you graduate; the possibility bio engineering spider DNA with human DNA after your successful test of cross species creation of two types of spiders. To your surprise, Miguel had taken great interest in your work, even helping you with your thesis. It made it hard to not develop feelings for him under circumstances like this.

Tonight has been no different than any other. The two of you sat together in his personal office, gearing up to test a new iteration of the dimension opening watch, more sophisticated than one of the prototypes you walked in on Miguel tweaking at all those months ago.

“Did you set up the tripod?”

“Check.”

“And the-“

“Yes, Miguel,” you drawl out, “the recorder is set as well. Can we get the started now? I’m tired and hungry. I’m counting on that burger.”

Miguel’s face goes stale and you hold in a laugh. You really love how easy it is to piss him off. “Get in position so we can start.” The fluttering thought of you and Miguel setting up and getting in position for a different type of movie crosses your mind and you blush a bit. Focus! You move behind the camera set up, and press record, signaling for Miguel to start the video log.

“Miguel O’Hara. Time is 22 hundred and 27. This is watch prototype 14-B. With this experiment, I hope to be the first person on earth to discover inter-dimensional travel.”

You give a very subtle clear of your throat behind the camera and Miguel sighs and rolls his eyes. “I’m also accompanied by my lab technician.” You peek your head around the camera and wave with a smile. Unmoved, Miguel prepares to start with the experiment. A nervous glance to the camera and he twists the mechanism of the watch to the on setting. There’s a moment of silence, the room tense with anticipation, the silent clanking of gears filling the room, until its stops. There’s a short pause in hoping, anticipating something would happen but nothing. Miguel breaks the silence.

“Attempt number 34 is a conclusive failure.”

“Knew you’d be buying me dinner tonight,” you quip, walking away from the camera, ignoring to turn it off.

Miguel rolls his eyes at your comment shucking off his lab coat for the day. “Hurry up so we can catch the cafeteria before it closes.”

You’re hot on his heels, leaving the lab sauntering behind him.

“Attempt number 34 is a conclusive failure.”

“Knew you’d be buying me dinner tonight.”

Miguel was perplexed. Where are those voices coming from?

Sat in his apartment, a glass of scotch on the rocks in his hand, with soft jazz lulling in the background. After a long day of hero work, the unwinding was needed, so such a rude interruption calls for investigation.

“Lyla?” He calls out softly, and with flitting of light she appears. Soft features and blonde hair all an illusion of light.

“Yes?”

“Inspect where those voices are coming from.”

“On it,” and she’s gone once more.

A sip of scotch luls the bulging nerve beginning to head at Miguel’s temple. With a sigh, and another curt sip, he gets lost in the soft jazz, the saxophone carrying him away just for a moment. Until..

“Miguel?” Lyla rouses him from his reverie, and he’s reminded of where he is. “I’m not sure where the sound is coming from. But I am sensing waves of molecular abnormality and instability, suggesting that someone could be-“

“Dimensional travel,” Miguel cuts. “Shock. Who do you think’s behind this?”

“I’m not too sure, but I am worried. I’ll look into it further.” Lyla disappears once more within a moment.

“For shock’s sake,” a sigh and thick fingers come up to pinch his nose bridge. This is the last thing he needs. He stands from the couch and is suddenly taken aback at the intense shaking in his penthouse. “What the sh- Lyla!” he calls out, but as the shaking continues she’s nowhere to be seen. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. A bean of light shoots up from under the ground and blinds Miguel. He’s so fucked if he ends up in the hands of some villain. The floor splits from under him, swallowing him and spitting him out into a void-tunnel-like space, an amalgamation of orange, yellow, red, and pink lights. He feels like he’s everywhere and nowhere, all and nothing at once. He simply closes his eyes and braces himself for wherever this decides to drop him.

Glass breaking alerts Miguel all the way from the cafeteria.

“Did you hear that?” He stalls mid conversation. Quiet. Listening.

You’re confused. “No? How good is your hearing you think you hear things from down here?”

“Sensitive hearing,” he says, still unmoving. There’s another pause, until he starts packing up his food to go. “Stay here. I think someone is in the lab.”

Your eyebrows pull together. “You don’t know me as well as I thought. I’m investigating with you, let’s go.”

Miguel looks at you and any argument dies with the deadpan look you give him. Silently, he walks back to the lab and you’re just as silent, following behind him.

First, Miguel thinks he’s in a hospital. The white lights and broken vials he landed on making him think he fucked up some poor doctor’s office. Then, he looks around and he knows it’s not a doctor’s lab. The bunsen burners and scribbles upon a rolling chalk board riddled with math. Then, he sees the abandoned lab coat embroidered with the word ALCHEMAX. How did he end up here? That’s when he hears it. Hulking footsteps, followed by a lighter tread. Shit. Shit. Shit. He had no gear on. The footsteps were getting closer. He thinks fast, grabbing a piece of a broken beaker in his hand.

The lab door swings open and that’s when he sees the both of you. Him and the stranger in front of him look at each other. Perplexed. You’re like me. Different. It’s unspoken. There’s a pause before you emerge from behind the large man and Miguel looks at you up and down, glossing you with his eyes. Cute, he muses silently. You raise a brow at him blatantly checking you out before you speak.

“Care to explain what’s going on here, or should we call security and let them deal with you instead?” A hand rests on your hip as you pose the question. A feisty one, he can tell.

Miguel sits up and drops the glass. “I.. don’t know how I got here or how. One minute I was in my house and the next..” he shrugs and looks around.

You freeze, looking at the tall man before you both. “You don’t think.. do you?” And he freezes at the question a beat after you ask it.

“It worked.”

“So, uh,” Miguel clears his throat. “Care to clue a guy in?”

You think you’re losing your mind. You can’t believe it worked. A person, a man, from another dimension is here. In your lab. You and Miguel did this. You want to burst with excitement and vomit in fear at the same time.

Holy fuck, dimension travel is real. We did it. We fucking did it.

You introduce yourself and your lab partner to the strange and is face goes staunch.

“What did you say..?”

“This is my- my lab partner Miguel. Miguel O’Hara.”

“No shocking way.. I’m Miguel O’Hara.”

It’s your turn to go staunch next. “You’re- what?” It’s now you take a moment to look, really

look at the other Miguel. First thing you notice is he’s drastically shorter that your Miguel, sitting at five foot eleven compared to the staunch six feet and nine inches of your Miguel. Then, you look at his face. Same brown tresses but less wavy, coiffed in a messy side look instead of the slick back you’re used to seeing. Still, you can’t deny his attractiveness looking at him. Some things seem to carry on between dimensions, like the same thick eyebrows, slightly tanned skin, and soft looking lips in a pout. You trail your eyes down his strong nose to his thick shoulders, muscles visible even through a plain white tee shirt. The small of his waist and the thick of his thighs strained against his denim jeans have your mind trailing off for a moment, with very inappropriate thoughts to have about a coworker and a stranger.

Miguel, your Miguel, has barely said a word, brooding over you and his tether silently. “Yeah. And this is Alchemax, yeah? My father owns this company where I’m from, the piece a’shit. Lyla would lose her head at this.”

Miguel decides to speak finally and it scares you a bit. “Did you say Lyla? As in Lyrate Lifeform-“

“Lifeform Approximation, yeah.”

“Brother?”

“Gabriel, the pain in the ass he is.”

Miguel’s in disbelief. “No way this is- I did this.” He looks at you for a second and away, like he’s thinking, contemplating.

“Are you.. do you take it too? Rapture?” he chooses his words carefully, and you’re confused. Rapture?

“Yeah,” he nods.

You look between the two men, a bit flustered to be honest, and clear your throat, trying not to blush when they look at you. “Sorry to be that guy here gentlemen but uh- how do we get him back?”

“I think the pretty little scientist is right here, my brother. I think you know as well as I do why I can’t stay here for too long.”

He does. A dirty little secret he’s kept from not only you, but all of Nueva York, is that he’s the one and only Spider-Man. Not only does rapture need to be sated, but crime doesn’t allow for vacation time in this line of work. Left to its vices, Nueva York may very well burn itself from inside out.

“Get me the watch,” your Miguel asks you. You twiddle off to the office with broken glass and loose paper rattled all over the floor, picking up the watch in all its fried-wire glory. You grimace, before getting up to leave when you notice the camera from the video logs on the floor tucked away behind a fallen chair. You remember that you forgot to turn it off before you left for lunch. You bring it in jest, hoping maybe there’s something valuable on film. If not, you get to watch Miguel look incredibly handsome in his lab coat again, and you can’t complain about that.

It’s quiet between the pair when you return. You can’t help but look at them, thinking how ludicrous this whole situation is, truly. “I still can’t believe you guys are the same person,” you muse aloud, dropping the broken watch on the counter along with the camera. “I forgot to stop recording, might be something worthwhile on that thing.”

“Thanks. We’ll clean up and uh, head to my place. S’getting late,” your Miguel says, dropping the watch in his pocket.

In the two weeks the other Miguel has been here, you’ve learned two things: One, Miguel, the both of them, are Spider-Man. Other Miguel had let it slip, and your Miguel confirmed it to you. Following a brief moment of shell shock, your mind began to race. His stamina is probably incredible, and he’s so big and durable, I wonder what he looks like under that suit. Speaking of that suit, you’ve never not noticed the bulge but knowing it’s been Miguel under there the whole time you bite your lip. You’re so fucked. Second, you were beginning to develop a bit of a crush on the other Miguel. You delude yourself into thinking it’s an enamourment that’s returned, the flirty jokes and wandering exchanges shared between the two of you.

This was something that unbeknownst to you didn’t fly under your Miguel’s radar in the slightest. When all three of you are together, you notice the way his muscles in his face pull at the borderline vulgar double entendres his doppelgänger makes towards you. The twist of his lips, the hard swallow in his throat. Is he… jealous?

“Red or white?” you hear the other Miguel over the couch ask, and the question grounds you. You’re over at Miguel’s place, in attempts to figure out what missing code is needed to finally send Miguel’s other back to his original dimension. You had showed up on time, but Miguel had been running late with Spider-Man duties, so you and his tether found yourself plenty occupied within the wine cabinet, stocked with aged reds and whites.

“Red,” you reply back. “What bottle is that? If it’s expensive he’ll kill you.”

“Chateau Cheval Blanc. 1947. Aged to perfection,” Miguel says, walking towards you at the couch with two large rounded glasses in hand accompanied with a rather expensive looking wine bottle. When he rounds the couch you quirk an eye at him. “All the bottles he has are expensive. And technically, they’re my bottles too.”

You roll your eyes and can’t help but smile. With a pop, the champagne bottle opens, and the smooth pour of amber liquid fills your glass.

At the first sip, it’s tart, a slight edge to the wine. But with each sip, the notes of fruit and full bodied taste of it begins to hit your taste bud. As you sip, conversation between you and Miguel follows. He tells you about his own perils as Spider-Man, his troubled home life, romantic life, and everything in between.

You laugh. You sip. Your glass empties, and he refills it. You’re warm. Your eyelids become heavier. You’re blinking slower. You’re chewing your lip. You’re nervous.

You’re nervous to be alone with Miguel like this. You’re scared of his charm, his dry humour. His chiseled jaw and rounded lips. You really wanna kiss him.

You realize he’s been talking to you this whole time, sat across the couch, droning on about his own LYLA. You feel the heat in your stare, and you wonder if he can too. You can’t help but look at his lips while he’s talking, his tongue peeking out in a flash of pink to wet his lips after a prolonged sentence.

Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me.

Your hand slowly comes up towards Miguel’s face and the words slowly die out of his mouth until he’s silent, staring at you like you’ve been staring it him.

“S’good wine,” you say, rubbing soft circles into his cheek.

“Yeah?” he asks, and you nod and bite your lip. “How comes, baby?” You blush. He’s teasing you now. This is exactly what you wanted.

“Makes me feel warm.”

You’re meek in your speech, and Miguel finds it adorable, building up the all too palpable feeling of attraction. “Just warm?” he prods, his turn to run circles onto your skin. You’re glad you worse a dress, you think, as his hand trails slowly up your thigh until his fingers are just centimetres away from where you really want them. Then he begins to caress your upper thigh with his thick hand. You’re beyond the point of wanting a kiss now.

You shake your head slowly. “Not just warm. Needy,” you sigh out. Your hand leaves his face and falls on top of his hand on your thigh, and you pull it up ever so slightly until he’s touching you where you really want it, his fingers simply resting against the fabric of your panties. “Feel needy here.”

“Oh, baby..” he drawls, and he pulls you in with a kiss with his free hand. You feel yourself melt into him, a little dizzy. Whether it’s the wine or Miguel, you’re unsure, but you savour this feeling, scared for it to end. Your lips exchange taste, his mouth tasting of the wine, mint and cigarettes. You can’t help but grind yourself into his fingers, and he finally gets the hint and rubs against the crotch of your panties, coaxing the wetness out of you. Your lips don’t leave eachother, the moment you’ve been waiting for being fuelled but the weeks worth of desire for this Miguel, and years worth of repressed feelings for the other. Your hands comb through his thick brown hair, holding onto him as if he’ll disappear if you let go. Your lips leave his to whisper your words of desire into his ear. You can’t wait anymore.

“F-fuck me, please.”

He groans, his lips making his way to your neck to suck, and when your field of vision clears up you freeze. Miguel is home. Standing in the doorway to his apartment, watching you suck face with his tether. You feel like a kid whose hand got caught in the cookie jar, the strong look of displeasure, anger, at catching you in the middle of defiling his couch. Other Miguel eases up off of your neck with a satisfied face that falls flat when he sees the expression on yours, eyes fixed over his shoulder. He sits up and turns around and freezes once he sees what you see.

It’s unbelievably tense in the room. Your mind feeling like it’s going a mile a minute, while also feeling like you’re unable to produce a coherent thought, a combination of Miguel’s touches and that damned red wine.

Your mouth opens and closes over and over, until you blurt out some half-coherent apology for making out with his indimensional counterpart in his home.

“I’ll um- leave.”

You get up and grab your purse, walking past your Miguel on your way to the door, but you’re met with a strong hand on your shoulder. His strong hand on your shoulder. “Sit.”

It’s all he says. And you do.

You slowly stalk back to the couch, sat in the middle trying to keep a respectable distance from the other Miguel, considering the embarrassing position you were caught in. Miguel makes his way over to the couch, looking at the wine bottle and wine glasses on his glass centre table.

“1947. Good year,” he smirks, and you’re feel your stomach twist. What is he playing at?

Finally, Miguel sits beside you, and you feel your face heat up at your predicament. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“I’m not upset about what you two did in here,” Miguel states plainly. He runs his eyes down your neck at the drying spit in between the juncture of it and your shoulder. You look down in embarrassment, but his hand lifts your chin up to look at him once more. “I’m just upset he wasn’t going to wait for me,” he says, brushing his fingers across your cheek and down your chin. You barely have a moment to process what the fuck is happening before his lips crash into yours. Your wine-muddled brain is swirling with so many thoughts but the only one you listen to is the one telling you to kiss him back, so you do. You kiss him back softly, letting him lead you into it. His tongue slips between your lips when you let out a soft moan, and the kiss breaks. Miguel chuckles at your face. He looks beyond you and eyes his twin. “You gonna join or what?”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” other Miguel muses, and grabs your chin to kiss you next. The difference between the two kisses has your mind spinning. One soft but dominating, the other hot and heavy. You want to feel them both forever. You feel another pair of lips on your body, your neck specifically, softly kissing up and down the plane of skin there until the soft kisses turn into lingering nips, and the nips turn into bites and sucks that have you writhing against the couch.

Other Miguel breaks the kiss to move his way down to the juncture of your neck, littering it with bites and kisses as well. The stimulation on both sides feels so good, you can’t help but moan and tilt your head back. With lips preoccupied, a set of hands moves to life your shirt, exposing your bra and the swell of your breasts. Palms move through cups of your bra up, freeing your breasts. They’re only free for so long until a palm envelopes one, and a pair of lips from your neck migrates to your unattended nipple. Your eyes have been closed this entire time, the sensation and sheer circumstance throwing you for a loop. You open your eyes and look down, to see your Miguel sucking and pawing at your breasts, while the other continues to lick and bite at you. You feel sharp teeth graze your nipple and you hiss, your hand moving to the back of Miguel’s head and running your fingers through his brown hair, gripping slightly. He peeks up at your face with a smirk, biting one nipple and pinching the other. Your back arches and you inhale shakily and he chuckles. “Naughty fucking girl. Strip.”

It takes you a moment before your brain processes the words you just heard, but after a moment you realize what he said. Strip. You get up, back facing the two, and you undress slowly, and you become privy the sound of them stripping along with you. you sit back down between the two, hands in your palms and nervous. You’ve had sex before but never this intense, or with two guys at once.

“Can you get on your hands and knees for me, mama? I want your ass this way.” Your Miguel asks.

Ever so pliant, you obey. Ass up, face down in the other Miguel’s lap. You take the time to look at his dick from where you are and your eyes bulge. He’s not the longest but fuck is he thick. He’s well groomed, his curly pubic hair kept primped and cut at his base. In your reverie, you feel something wet lick up at your slit and it sends a chill down your spine. He’s eating your pussy. Miguel is eating your pussy.

“Taste so good down here too,” he muses from behind you, inhaling you before diving his tongue deep within you. Your lower body feels like it’s been set ablaze, your nerves on edge and Miguel’s prodding and licking and sucking and rubbing. His fingers circle your clit slowly as he eats you out and you feel like you’re in heaven.

“I see you’re feeling good, huh baby. Make me feel good too, yeah?” Other Miguel says, caressing your hair away from his face. You nod, and grab his thick cock in your hand, beginning to slowly jerk him off. “Yeah, just like that baby,” he sighs, watching you intensely. You jerk him off for another moment before you lift your head up and lick haphazardly at the tip of his penis, twitching and leaking already. You look up at him as you give his tip kitten licks, and then put the tip in your mouth. “Fucking vixen, you are,” he groans, his hand coming to sit at the back of your head. You bob your head up and down slowly, trying your best not to scrape your teeth against his shaft while your Miguel eats you out so feverishly. You’re sucking and licking as best as you can, reaching a hand around to cup and massage Miguel’s balls, and his hips twitch up and push him deeper in the back of your throat. You moan, at both him and the Miguel behind you, and Miguel notices. He holds your head more firmly before he starts to thrust up into your mouth, fucking your face. Your mouth produces obscene noises, leaking spit around the base of his cock and down your lips. You moan as he fucks your face and suddenly you jolt. A thick finger breaches in you and starts thrusting against your walls, and you can’t help but moan, feeling already full from both ends. One finger becomes two, and Miguel finger fucks you to the pace of other Miguel’s hips. “Taking us so fucking well, baby. Good girl. So good. Take it for us.” You don’t know which one says it, but you keen at the praise. You want more. Your throat feels tight, like you’re gonna suffocate on this thick cock, but you hold out, feeling so good and hot inside. “Almost there baby. Swallow it all.” You muster the energy to flit your eyes up and see Miguel’s eyes closed as he fucks your face voraciously. You feel hot, both at the fingers inside you and the face Miguel is making. With each thrust, your nose hits his pubes and it makes him moan increasingly louder until he thrusts one final time and groans. “Take it for me, baby. Don’t swallow yet, fuck. Fuck!” he moans. He pulls his dick out of your mouth until it’s just the tip your lips wrap around. You breathe deeply through your nose, finally. You let Miguel’s potent cum spurt in your mouth until he finishes and pulls out.

“Show me,” he breathes.

You open your mouth and stick your tongue out, showing him the white ropes of cum in your mouth and how groans, pulling you up to his lips to kiss him messily. You’re dumbfounded before you can even realize that your Miguel pulls you away and towards him next, pulling you into a kiss too. His tongue swirls in your mouth before he pulls away from you. “I told you I wanted to share,” he says, before kissing you again. Your head is spinning. You’re not even sure this entire thing isn’t some mega fucked up erotic dream you’re having. You can’t find it in you to care if it is or not for another moment when you feel Miguel grab your hand and wrap it around his cock. Your fingernails barely touch around the girth of him so you look down and holy shit.

Miguel chuckles at your reaction to his size. He must get this often. His cock is definitely proportional to the rest of him, long and thick all over with a trail of curly dark hair at his base. It’s not as groomed as other Miguel’s but you don’t mind. The leaking, uncut cock in front of has you pulsating inside, and you bend down to lick the precum from his dick. “Such a good girl for me. I don’t even have to tell you what to do,” Miguel says, stroking your hair. You hear movement behind you before lips lick from your clit to asshole, and it takes you by surprise. Your lips pop off of Miguel’s cock and you turn around to see the other Miguel, already semi-errect with a smug smile on his lips. “I-I’ve never.. not there,” you stutter. “Just relax baby. M’here to make you feel good,” a says, rubbing his hand across your right ass-cheek. You nod and go back to sucking off Miguel, feeling the wet tickle of Miguel’s tongue against your asshole. You can’t help but tense as him placing kisses back there. He brings his other hand up to your other ass-cheek and spreads you apart. So vulgar, but you can’t help but find a part of you that likes it.

Miguel spit on your asshole, causing a squeak to leave your stuffed lips, before his plunged his tongue in the hole. Your head starts to fly back before Miguel’s hand stops you and pushes you down, two thirds of his dick down your throat.

“Ah ah, baby. Be a good girl and show me how you suck me off,” he says, rubbing the apple of your bulging cheek with his hand. Be a good girl and show him. With Miguel’s thrusting tongue in your ass, you keep forward and try and fit more of Miguel’s dick in your mouth, sucking him and jerking off what can’t fit in your mouth. “Just like that, baby. Yeah. Make your master happy.”

Your stomach contracts at the word master and something flips in you. You suck his cock until you feel like your jaw is about to dislocate, letting yourself get lost in the praise and the pleasure, feeling an orgasm build up from getting your ass ate. You begin your tremble at the constant stimulation, sucking even harder. Your feel Miguel’s dick twitch in your mouth, an almost there slipping from his lips as you suck and lick and jerk him off. Your hips start to shake when you pull off his dick, placing the tip against your tongue and jerking him, wanting to milk him of his seed.

“Fuck, baby, I’m gonna cum.” Miguel pants.

You brace yourself and open your mouth even wider, jerking him as he cums in your mouth. Miguel’s tart cum falls against your tongue, falling down the side of your face as you hold your mouth open for him. He groans above you and curses. “Swallow it.” And you do. Miguel groans before he leans down to meet you in a dirty kiss, and you can’t hold it in anymore before you’re groaning into his mouth and shivering into him from your orgasm. Other Miguel doesn’t stop licking you, licking up the liquid leaking from your pussy with a salacious sounding moan. “Sweet fucking pussy,” he moans between licks, and you’re trembling at the overstimulation, sending you into a second orgasm. This time, you feel your body tense up, and before you know it, you’re squirting into Miguel’s mouth. You gasp, and move your hips from Miguel’s face, feeling your own liquid leak down your leg.

“Yeah, baby. So fuckin’ sweet,” the words make your clit tremble, the sheer base in Miguel’s voice twisting and turning, prodding and pulling at your nerves. “Don’t run, lemme finish, yeah?”

Your hips buck up and away wildly but to no avail, Miguel proving to be an immovable force to your constant movement. With every suck and lick, you feel your energy depleted as the pleasure crosses the threshold of pain, the overstimulation making your body go both numb and still. You’re engulfed in a haze, your body going limp against the couch save for your pelvis held up by two very large hands.

Distantly, you hear skin slapping and you flit your eyes up for a moment to see your Miguel jerking off at the sight of you, surrendered fully to them both. Your eyes roll towards the back of your head when you feel the wetness of Miguel’s thick tongue lick up from your clit to your ass, prodding the tight rim of muscle lightly with his tongue. Before you can register what’s about to happen, you feel a gush of wetness leave you and you groan, utterly exhausted simply from foreplay. Your ears pick up on the increased speed your Miguel took in jerking himself off, a groan leaving his lips shortly after your own does. You picture him covered in his own cum, white sketched across his tone and tanned abs, and the mental picture is enough to get you excited again, despite the way your muscles protest.

“Such a good girl, taking my mouth like that.”

You suppose you should answer, but your tongue is limp in your mouth, unable to force a sequencing of words out. Instead, you let out a pathetic sounding moan.

“I want a taste too. Holding out on me, baby?”

You half expect the stimulation to start again, tensing up, anticipating a touch to your sensitive clit. After a beat, you finally notice you’re untouched still, and a part of you is graceful for this recovery time, but the shuffling behind you has you finding the strength to lift your head up and—

Oh my fucking god.

Your brain short circuits for a moment, trying to make sense of what you’re seeing above you.

Your eyes flutter open and close a few times, somewhat of a quick blink to make sure you’re not riding off some ecstasy high that has you imagining things, that has you imagining both Miguel’s kissing.

It’s slow, and messy at the same time. Your fluids are being lapped up and exchanged by the two men, who lap up and exchange their own saliva as well. You’re struggling to make sense of the eroticism of it, and sheer absurdity of two Miguel O’Haras making out, both mouths wet of your pussy’s nectar. The cognitive dissonance starts to kick your ass a bit, rationalizing the logistics of self incest and it being plain out sexy.

They break apart, both slightly flushed. Your Miguel eyes you with low, brown eyes while your gaze is transfixed at his wet lips, a singular web of saliva connecting both of the men’s lips as they pull apart. Your breath is caught in your throat and you’ve immediately made your decision about the bullshit logistics of this dimensional anomaly. It’s making you so fucking wet.

You’re sure Miguel notices your face, as a breathy laugh leaves his plump lips, wet with both you and him and another him.

“Knew you’d taste good.” He winks and smiles a smile that has your legs regaining feeling once more.

You slowly sit up, straddling yourself in Miguel’s lap. “Want you in,” your hands wrap around his strong shoulders and you lay your cheek against his chest, grinding your sensitive wet lips up and against his dick slowly. You have other Miguel in your line of sight, and you see him watching you both, cock straining against his stomach. It has you feeling warm, thinking of how he unwound you from the inside like that earlier with only his mouth. You can only imagine how it would feel with him inside you. “I- I want you in me too. Please..”

Your voice comes out as meek, but the raunchy display of your hips grinding, face flushed, is anything but.

“Gotta go slowly, mama. You ready?” Miguel asks you, his large hands resting at your hips now, slowly increasing the friction of your wet pussy lips against his thick cock. You moan a bit, and nod in his chest. The thick tip of Miguel’s dick stretches its way inside your pussy, burning slightly despite how wet you are. You wince in pleasure, savouring the burn of the stretch. Other Miguel sits up and makes his way behind you, kissing your back and neck as you sink down onto your Miguel’s cock.

“Fucking tight,” Miguel groans, just as aroused and affected as you are in all the hazy pleasure. Once you’re fully sat, you can’t help but sit up and look down at your lower stomach, a slight bulge in your lower abdomen. “Holy shit,” you moan. You’re pushed back against Miguel’s chest and you squeak at the sudden movement.

“Gonna fuck your tight little ass, baby. Okay?”

It’s rough the way he spits it out into your ear from behind you. You can hear the arousal and anticipation in Miguel’s voice. He spreads your cheeks, spitting on your taut hole. “Gonna have to relax f’me, baby. Gonna be a real tight squeeze.”

You wince and hold onto your Miguel as the other one enters you from behind. While his size isn’t as big as your Miguel, he’s still insanely thick and long in his own right. It takes a lot out of you to withstand the entrance. Soft kisses to your temple and shoulder, sweet nothings and whisperings of “You’re doing so well”, “Good little girl” tickle your ears. From who, you’re not sure. But the verbal praise makes the pain worth it with the way a concentrated heat builds in the depths of your stomach from their charged words.

“I’m all in baby, tell me when you’re ready.” You blink once, twice, and exhale a curt puff of breath. You can’t wait anymore.

“M-move, but slow.”

As soon as the words leave your lips, the rocking of hips start, and you feel everything. The pain, the pleasure, the push, the pull, the sheer unnerving hot heat and sensation the two men bounce you between.

After the initial moment of processing the moment you’re having with these two men, these two Miguel’s, you feel your body become both wracked and accepting of the pleasure. The cant of hips get rougher, the spill of moans and breath get louder, and you start to feel yourself get lost in the raunchiness of it all. Your hands roam up a plane of firm musculature and it has you reeling. Miguel is so manly you can’t help but let it turn you on.

“Feeling good, hm?” Miguel’s full lips are pulled into a smirk as he fucks up into your pussy and you simply grip onto his biceps as he drives into you harder. One particular thrust has you sitting up and leaving back into the other Miguel, head tucked away into the juncture of his neck as he fucks your ass from behind. “I think- fuck- we broke her, man. Can barely speak.” You can hear the smirk in Miguel’s voice as he says that, but you can’t be bothered to protest, because you feel like if you let them fuck you any longer you’ll enter comatose.

Hands from behind you roam up from your hips to your breasts, squeezing at the expanse of your chest tenderly. Simultaneously, thick hands plant themselves on your hips, squeezing as they bring you down in time to the upwards thrusts of hips. “Oh my god- I’m gonna c-cum,” you breathe out, feeling your body wind itself up, preparing for another explosive release. The hands at your breasts start to squeeze your nipples, pinching and pulling the sensitive and erect buds, and you squeal.

“So fucking sensitive, baby.” You know that’s the other Miguel, his lips are directly next to your ear. You turn your face towards his and plant your lips against his, desperate for a kiss. Your lips tingle as he kisses you back and you moan in his mouth, your hands running through his thick brown hair and gripping gentle for support. You’re sure that if you were to let go you’d fall face first into your Miguel’s chest, which wouldn’t be all bad now that you’re thinking about it.

Your kiss with Miguel breaks when you feel something warm and wet wrap around your nipple- Miguel’s mouth. You gasp, feeling yourself tighten around him inside of your pussy as you watch him suckle at your breast. Lips trail up against your neck and they suck and Oh my god- he bites your nipple and you moan so loud it almost startles you. That signature smirk doesn’t cease to appear on Miguel’s face even with your nipple between his lips, and you’d smack him if he wasn’t fucking you oh so well.

The lips sucking hickeys into your neck stop and the cold air drying the spit there makes you shiver. Miguel chuckles behind you and you feel the reverberation of the sound in his chest up against your back and it makes you feel warm inside. You can’t hold on for much longer if the two keep teasing you like this. “P-please let me cum, I can’t anymore,” you heave out, both exhausted and inexplicably excited.

“What do you say, Miguel. Should we let her finish?” A voice behind you. Your eyes squeeze close at a particularly intense thrust to your ass.

“Mmm, I don’t think she wants it enough.” A gravelly voice from your front says. He unlatches from your nipples. Thick fingers tease at your clit and you keen forward.

“P- please oh my gosh please let me come I want it so bad-“ You feel like you’re on your knees, begging to two unmerciful gods to turn your punishment into something considerably comparable to a torturing pleasure.

“Hold on for juuust a little, baby. We’ll make you feel real good, real soon.”

The thick fingers teasing your clit, which you’ve deduced belong to the Miguel behind you, move on from their teasing to rubbing strong circles into your clit and you feel your legs begin to tremble. The feeling of your body getting ready to unwind feels closer and closer and you feel your ass and your pussy get fucked harder and harder until-

When it happens you feel disjointed from your body, watching from third person. You can see yourself, squirming and twitching and shaking and squirting again all over Miguel’s couch and lap and they’re still fucking you because they haven’t cum yet. Your body begins to go slack and you fall against your Miguel’s chest, lips grazing his nipple as he continues to fuck up into you fervently.

“Looks like we fucked you numb, baby,” he laughs and you hear it- feel it in his chest, and you moan lazily. “Oh baby, I know. I’m almost ready to cum. Just a little more.”

“F-fuck, I’m gonna burst back here,” Other Miguel grunts above you. His hips pound roughly for two- three- four more thrusts before his stills into you and you can feel his cum spurt into you and you shiver. Right behind him your Miguel follows fucking his cum into your pussy with a deep and heavy groan.

“S-So deep…” you breathe out, relishing in the stillness between all three of you. Heavy breathing weighs in the air for few moments before you feel Miguel slowly begin to pull out of your ass, his cum leaking out of you lewdly. You inhale a sharp breath as he moves to sit down on the couch, and that’s when your Miguel lifts you off of his semi-softened cock and onto your back on his lush sofa.

Your chest rises up and down and your eyes flutter closed as you struggle to catch your breath and wrap your head around what happened, but you barely get a moment’s rest before your knees are pushed up to the side of your head and you’re basically balancing yourself on your shoulders. Your eyes shoot open and you see two heads above you.

“Gotta taste our work, don’t we?”

One mouth against your creampied pussy, one mouth against your cum filled ass. You’re not too concerned about who mouth is where- but them sucking at your holes, licking up their cum and yours too is sending your body into overdrive with the overstimulation.

You focus on the image up above you and your eyes bulge in your head at what you see, with each lick up your mounds, the tongues between the two Miguel’s touch. With each lick their tongues touch longer, and longer, until they kiss once more, exchanging each other’s cum with your in their mouths and you’re sure you’ve begun to witness an orgasm induced hallucination. They finish kissing, lips and mouths wet and messy, and your legs come back down from your head to the soft couch cushions.

Your mind is absolutely reeling, processing the last few hours up until moments ago, feeling warm in the face already.

You’re so fucked going back to work.

#miguel o’hara smut #miguel o'hara #miguel o’hara x reader #atsv miguel #miguel spiderverse #miguel x reader #miguel o’hara drabble #comic miguel #comic miguel o’hara #comic miguel o’hara smut #miguel atsv smut #miguel o’hara x you #miguel smut #miguel o’hara imagine #miguel o’hara x y/n #feature films💌

612 notes · View notes

weirdrtvscomments · 4 months ago

Note

in case anyone is struggling with deciding who they want to vote for in the RTVStan/RTVS Nation/RTVSia/RTVS Topia/RTVS Topia-Ville presidential election, i have compiled a list:

Log

Representing the Ethernet Party: “A people with 5 ping to the main server is a people that prospers.”

Will change the name to RTVS Nation

Comic books are a part of the platform

Everybody gets a free moat

Eyes that are twice as big for everyone that wants them

Offload cost to Wifi users

Working on a battery charged snack

Hypnotist is a protected class

Robloxia war veteran

Defenses are proven

Will take your ants and import more

Endorsed by: Soulja Boy, Ken Masters, Stitch

Signature move when President: Snake Trick (no weaknesses)

Punishment for other candidates: Follow him out & about like an RPG party

Mike

Representing the Sweets & Treats Party: “I was just outside eating a sandwich.”

Orange creamsicles will be available in every store

Free Steam Deck for every American citizen

Will lower tariffs and imports on all types of sweets and treats from Canada, while raising tariffs on everything else

Most important snack is Wasabi Peas

Not very good against zoners

Why are ants so bad?

Endorsed by: 2 (anonymous), Trap Snax

Signature gimmick when President: Whenever he eats a yummy piece of candy he gets an install, which gets its own theme

Special move when President: A cool punch like Marissa from Street Fighter 6

Punishment for other candidates: Have to reach into a bin of Bean Boozled that's 90% gross ones and eat it in public in front of cameras and the press. After, push into the alligator moat. Also, Mira’s idea

Mira

Representing the Drinks & Eats party: “I was rooting around in a dumpster out back.”

Will change the name to RTVSia

One of every food and drink, free of charge

Will develop a chemical compound called “Ketracel White,” will genetically engineer ants to be dependent on it

Endorsed by: IceFrog, Yoshi, Yoshi (from Mario), baby Yoshi (might be one and the same), Chun Lee

Signature move(s) when President: Level up system (up to 3), if she gets knocked down she loses a charge of it, gets it when she does some power up move (or something), negative edge inputs (landmine, fireball, that one thing Bison does in Street Fighter 5), install where she gets a command grab, 8-way air dash, guard impact, levels reset between rounds, invincible super (can do it on wakeup)

Punishment for other candidates: Detractors rounded up and taken into woods where they are given a knife, camera, and laptop to make a Youtube channel of them living in the woods (Ethernet in the trees)

Trog

Representing the People’s Choice Freedom Integrity Liberty Justice Prosperity Sovereign Citizen’s Ethical Governance Democratic Renewal Global Sustainability Citizens for Unity (may be part of the Lego Star Wars Party): “We’re all part of God’s nation in my eyes.”

All breakfast restaurants have to be open for lunch & dinner in addition to breakfast

THEY HAVE TO GIVE YOU A LARGE WATER WHEN YOU ASK FOR IT

Desegregate PornHub and GayTube

Everybody gets a free castle

Immediately cease all snack exports

Will start war with Canada

Will mail a bomb if you want him to

Will double your ants and give them to the next guy OR will turn them all into 1 big ant

New category on PornHub for ants

Will build death robots and a spaceship

Will be inventing gorgons, griffins, vampires, Frankenstiens, zombies, mummies, insects, gorgon ants (small)

Endorsed by: The Sims, Captain Video, Half Life 2: Lost Coast (demo), Tobuscus

Super move when President: 1 Sphinx on every tile surrounding, +1 food, +1 culture (if next to a river, +2 food, +2 culture instead)

Theme song: Steppin’ Out by Joe Jackson

Punishment for other candidates: All other candidates have to do an embarrassing pose and gaze into Medusa’s eyes, which will turn them into stone. The statues will be put in front of the White House, where during a nation-wide celebration they will be knocked down with a wrecking ball/individually destroyed with dirty bombs

Wayneradiotv/Wayne John

Representing the California Milk Processors Board: “Enjoy DOGh.”

Every gallon of milk will have $2,000 in it

Free PornHub premium

Any dairy product you want whenever you want it

Will attract more ants

Will rename it to Milk Nation

Pig milk Iron Fist

Endorsed by: Britney Spears, Beyonce, Rhianna, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Shaquille O’Neal, Harrison Ford (all branded with Permanent Milk Mustache & committed their eternal lives), Batman, Mario, Spongebob

Signature move when President: Cow army that walks on their hind legs and shoot milk as projectiles

Punishment for other candidates: Mulched into feed for his cows

Things you need to rememer for the ONLY ELECTION THAT MATTERS!!!!

#rtvs #election 2024 #presidential election #election season

330 notes · View notes

jcmarchi · 29 days ago

Text

Designing tiny filters to solve big problems

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/designing-tiny-filters-to-solve-big-problems/

Designing tiny filters to solve big problems

For many industrial processes, the typical way to separate gases, liquids, or ions is with heat, using slight differences in boiling points to purify mixtures. These thermal processes account for roughly 10 percent of the energy use in the United States.

MIT chemical engineer Zachary Smith wants to reduce costs and carbon footprints by replacing these energy-intensive processes with highly efficient filters that can separate gases, liquids, and ions at room temperature.

In his lab at MIT, Smith is designing membranes with tiny pores that can filter tiny molecules based on their size. These membranes could be useful for purifying biogas, capturing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions, or generating hydrogen fuel.

“We’re taking materials that have unique capabilities for separating molecules and ions with precision, and applying them to applications where the current processes are not efficient, and where there’s an enormous carbon footprint,” says Smith, an associate professor of chemical engineering.

Smith and several former students have founded a company called Osmoses that is working toward developing these materials for large-scale use in gas purification. Removing the need for high temperatures in these widespread industrial processes could have a significant impact on energy consumption, potentially reducing it by as much as 90 percent.

“I would love to see a world where we could eliminate thermal separations, and where heat is no longer a problem in creating the things that we need and producing the energy that we need,” Smith says.

Hooked on research

As a high school student, Smith was drawn to engineering but didn’t have many engineering role models. Both of his parents were physicians, and they always encouraged him to work hard in school.

“I grew up without knowing many engineers, and certainly no chemical engineers. But I knew that I really liked seeing how the world worked. I was always fascinated by chemistry and seeing how mathematics helped to explain this area of science,” recalls Smith, who grew up near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “Chemical engineering seemed to have all those things built into it, but I really had no idea what it was.”

At Penn State University, Smith worked with a professor named Henry “Hank” Foley on a research project designing carbon-based materials to create a “molecular sieve” for gas separation. Through a time-consuming and iterative layering process, he created a sieve that could purify oxygen and nitrogen from air.

“I kept adding more and more coatings of a special material that I could subsequently carbonize, and eventually I started to get selectivity. In the end, I had made a membrane that could sieve molecules that only differed by 0.18 angstrom in size,” he says. “I got hooked on research at that point, and that’s what led me to do more things in the area of membranes.”

After graduating from college in 2008, Smith pursued graduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. There, he continued developing membranes for gas separation, this time using a different class of materials — polymers. By controlling polymer structure, he was able to create films with pores that filter out specific molecules, such as carbon dioxide or other gases.

“Polymers are a type of material that you can actually form into big devices that can integrate into world-class chemical plants. So, it was exciting to see that there was a scalable class of materials that could have a real impact on addressing questions related to CO2 and other energy-efficient separations,” Smith says.

After finishing his PhD, he decided he wanted to learn more chemistry, which led him to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley.

“I wanted to learn how to make my own molecules and materials. I wanted to run my own reactions and do it in a more systematic way,” he says.

At Berkeley, he learned how make compounds called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — cage-like molecules that have potential applications in gas separation and many other fields. He also realized that while he enjoyed chemistry, he was definitely a chemical engineer at heart.

“I learned a ton when I was there, but I also learned a lot about myself,” he says. “As much as I love chemistry, work with chemists, and advise chemists in my own group, I’m definitely a chemical engineer, really focused on the process and application.”

Solving global problems

While interviewing for faculty jobs, Smith found himself drawn to MIT because of the mindset of the people he met.

“I began to realize not only how talented the faculty and the students were, but the way they thought was very different than other places I had been,” he says. “It wasn’t just about doing something that would move their field a little bit forward. They were actually creating new fields. There was something inspirational about the type of people that ended up at MIT who wanted to solve global problems.”

In his lab at MIT, Smith is now tackling some of those global problems, including water purification, critical element recovery, renewable energy, battery development, and carbon sequestration.

In a close collaboration with Yan Xia, a professor at Stanford University, Smith recently developed gas separation membranes that incorporate a novel type of polymer known as “ladder polymers,” which are currently being scaled for deployment at his startup. Historically, using polymers for gas separation has been limited by a tradeoff between permeability and selectivity — that is, membranes that permit a faster flow of gases through the membrane tend to be less selective, allowing impurities to get through.

Using ladder polymers, which consist of double strands connected by rung-like bonds, the researchers were able to create gas separation membranes that are both highly permeable and very selective. The boost in permeability — a 100- to 1,000-fold improvement over earlier materials — could enable membranes to replace some of the high-energy techniques now used to separate gases, Smith says.

“This allows you to envision large-scale industrial problems solved with miniaturized devices,” he says. “If you can really shrink down the system, then the solutions we’re developing in the lab could easily be applied to big industries like the chemicals industry.”

These developments and others have been part of a number of advancements made by collaborators, students, postdocs, and researchers who are part of Smith’s team.

“I have a great research team of talented and hard-working students and postdocs, and I get to teach on topics that have been instrumental in my own professional career,” Smith says. “MIT has been a playground to explore and learn new things. I am excited for what my team will discover next, and grateful for an opportunity to help solve many important global problems.”

0 notes

dailynnt · 1 month ago

Text

FRIENDS WITHIN TOUCHING DISTANCE

⊹ Summary: Jungkook and you, his childhood friend, live together in an apartment, sharing space as roommates. Your relationship, built on years of friendship, is gradually becoming strained by growing sexual tension. You decide to become friends with benefits, trying not to complicate your feelings. But Jungkook's world is not so simple. When you begin to realize that he is hiding something, you open the veil of his double life - a world of mafia, criminal activity, and risk that could ruin not only your deal, but everything you valued in each other.

⊹ Couple: Jeon Jungkook/ Fem!Reader

⊹ Characters: The Reader, Jeon Jungkook, Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, Min Yoongi, Kim Seokjin, Kim Namjoon, Jeon Hoseok.

⊹ 🔞 Age restrictions: 18+

⊹ 👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏻 Relationships: ⚤

⊹ 📘 Number of part: 25/?

⊹ 🖇️ Tags: best friends, friends with benefits, slow longing, sexual tension, protected sex, unprotected sex, alcohol, drunken sex, inexperienced main character, mafia au, illegal trade, deaths of minor characters, weapons, swear words.

⊹ 👩🏼‍💻From the author: ✊🏻✊🏻 Knock, knock… it's me again with my new chapter. I want to assure you right away that I'm not obsessed with sex in the car (after all, this is the third scene where they have sex in the car), it's just that this scene appeared in my head so suddenly, and they were in the car at that time... 🤭😁 Anyway, let me know if you liked this? And also, do you like the plot development?

⊹ 🫂 Dedication: For you, my love @myjungkookthighs. You are my favorite person 😘🥰 You know that I appreciate you so much and love you🥰💜

⊹ ⚠️ Warning: English is not my native language, so there may be mistakes in the text. Please don't get mad at me too much! Those under 18, please don't read this story!

⊹ 📋 Tag list: @myjungkookthighs, @notsevenwithyou, @nikkinikj, @lovelyyylunaa222, @jiminiemanura, @jalexad , @kelsyx33 (If anyone wants to be in my tag list let me know)

≣ Chapter Index ↓

Part 18. Dangerous.

Your eyes are closed, and there are thousands of thoughts in your head. All of them create chaos in your head and you can't understand what is important to think about now and what is not worth attention. This causes anxiety. You should be happy because you finally have a relationship. You have a loved one who is supposed to make you happy. Of course, you are sure that he will make you, but what is happening in your life right now makes you feel like you are in limbo.

Jungkook is your best friend who is now your boyfriend. He belongs to the mafia and does a pretty dangerous job. You imagine, just for a second, what he does and what he looks like, and you feel horror crawling through your body. You feel discomfort mixed with anxiety and open your eyes.

The Mercedes drives smoothly, but with its characteristic engine growl. The interior is warm and smells like unobtrusive citrus. Jungkook is watching the road, holding the steering wheel with one hand.

You look sideways at his profile without turning your head. His perfect face seems to be getting beautifully to you every day. You literally can't stop admiring him.

Jungkook looked calm, almost detached, focused on the road. His sharp features seemed to be carved by God himself: a strong jawline, a straight nose, perfect symmetry of his eyebrows, which moved slightly as he thought about something. His lips, slightly pursed but soft, beckoned to be touched and tasted.

His hand gripped the steering wheel. The tattoos were eye-catching. You looked at his long fingers and imagined them holding a gun. His index finger pulled the trigger and a shot rang out. Someone had died by his hand.

You shook your head slightly to clear away the horrific image you were sure had never happened. Jungkook would never kill a human. But you are saddened by the thought that you doubt. You can't say that you believe that Jungkook is not a murderer. But how can this gentle, caring person take someone's life? You are confused and completely disoriented. You just don't know what to believe.

Why are you thinking about all this while driving in the car? You know about the situation with the devices that Doohoon stole. You have a vague idea of what awaits Jungkook when you arrive in Seoul and he meets Namjoon. You're scared and nervous about revealing this to Jungkook so that he doesn't worry about you. Will Namjoon be really angry? Will he punish him in some mafia-style way or just tell you that another $50 million is added to the blog and let Jungkook go? What a lot of money!

Although everything is perfect between you and Jungkook right now, you can't keep thinking about who he really is. Knowing criminal world, the life will seem to you like a ticking time bomb. Sooner or later it will explode. However, your feelings for Jungkook are growing every day, and you think about how you can save him. What can you do to make him leave the mafia and finally live like a normal person?

You pick up your new phone and look at the time. It's eleven in the morning. It's only a thirty-minute drive to Seoul.

Jungkook notices that you are awake and looks over at you. A smile touches his lips and he reaches out to you. He places his hand on your thigh and squeezes it lightly.

"Did you doze off?" - He asks. His voice is hoarse and gentle at the same time. Your eyes instantly find his and you smile back. In fact, you were awake. You were trying to sort out the chaos in your head. But all you got were not clear thoughts but a headache.

"A little." - You lie. "I lost my sleep rhythm. It was hard for me to wake up at 7 a.m. to get ready for the trip." - You admit.

"How much sleep did you get?" - Jungkook asks looking ahead.

"Three hours." - You say. Jungkook's eyebrows fly up.

"Baby, you need to get more sleep. I'll take you home and you can go straight to bed." - Jungkook is worried. You struggle to smile.

"Okay." - You agree. After a moment, you speak again. "Your mom must have been sad that you had to leave in the morning, right? It would have been better if you hadn't stopped by your parents' house at all." - You say in a sad, slightly guilty voice. Jungkook could have stayed with his parents longer, but he spent a lot of time with you yesterday. And this morning he left because he had to meet Namjoon.

Jungkook heard what you said and laughed softly. He stroked your thigh as if to calm you down.

"That's what my mom said when I told my parents I was just passing through. I told my mother I was on business near Suwon so I came to see them because I was miss, even though I had important business in Seoul since morning. My mother was touched that I wasted time to coming to they and instantly melted." - Jungkook told you. You raised your eyebrows, unhappy that Jungkook was manipulating his mother's feelings with a lie.

"You lie to your mother and think it's okay?" - You asked, irritated. Jungkook gave you a quick glance and the smile disappeared from his lips.

"I wasn't lying. It was almost like that." - Jungkook defended himself. "If I had told her that I had come for a couple of days but had to leave in the morning, she would have been upset. Besides, I promised her I would come back after the new year."

"You've been lying a lot lately." - You complained, even though you knew Jungkook was right. The fact that he lied made sense. But he was really lying a lot, and you were nervous about it. He's the one who can lie to you easily!

"Only the last four years." - Jungkook says ironically, meaning that it started when he met Namjoon. You snort in displeasure.

"More. About six years." - You say. Jungkook raises his eyebrows, wondering why it took so long. He looks at you questioningly, and you stretch your lips into a luscious smile. "You wanted me all along and lied about me not being your type." - You explain. Jungkook smiles again, the smile of a man who has been exposed.

"Is it my fault that you didn't reciprocate for so long?" - Jungkook asks you. You're shocked. Meaning you didn't respond? Did he show any interest in you? He just liked to tease you and make you blush. He's been with a lot of girls, even though he says he's liked you since high school.

"Reciprocated on what? You never even hit on me like a normal guy." - Jungkook bursts out laughing.

"I'm sorry. I did it the best I could." - He says through his laughter.

"No. You didn’t do all the best that you could. You were just a playboy. Who thought, that his best friend wasn't going anywhere anyway." - You said it a little harshly. Jungkook didn't stop smiling, but he raised his eyebrows. It sounded like an accusation.

"Do you know me that well, baby?" - Jungkook jokes, trying to calm you down. Because he can already see you're getting annoyed.

"Yes. I know you very well. I just don't know why it took you so long to ask me out. Did you want to be free longer?" - You ask sharply, trying to be calm.

"I was in a relationship before you, so the 'free' theory isn't true, baby. I dated Minsoo at school for a year, and I dated Jayon for about a year too. And I dated Ha Young for a long time. But when I started working for Namjoon, it became difficult to have a girlfriend. I wasn't a playboy." - Jungkook explains indignantly. The mention of Jungkook's exes makes you even more irritated. You give him an angry look.

"You were!" - You growl. "Do you want me to recall all your passions that wrote to me to stay away from you? For some reason, your last one isn't there, although I'm sure she wanted to threaten me too. That's probably why you stopped talking to me during your first year at university." - Jungkook exhaled nervously. You were angry about this. You sat up straight and crossed your arms over your chest. Jungkook rubbed his palms on the steering wheel.

"Okay, if you think I'm a playboy, so be it. But what are we arguing about? You accuse me of not courted you well, but you've never even flirted with me as a joke. All I ever heard you say was, ‘I'm going to kill you, Jeon.’" - Jungkook imitated you. You choked on your anger and indignation.

"Did I have to do that? I thought you were my friend, and I didn't think it was necessary. But you were flirting with everyone, you didn't miss a skirt. And it spread to me too because I have boobs. That's why I didn't react." - You snapped back.

"You liked me, you could have reciprocated." - Jungkook says lightly.

"No, I didn't. I didn't like you!" - You shouted. Your pulse was pounding in your ears. Jungkook gave you a look full incredulous. "I only started to like you when we started living together." - You lied.

"Are you answering for your words?" - Jungkook asks you in a serious tone. You can hear your heart beating desperately against your ribcage, and you delay your answer for a long few seconds.

"Yes. I'm telling you the truth." - You say with determination, but you're afraid you don't sound confident. "If I would like you, how I was okay with you fucking every girl in town?" - The muscles in his jaw are pulsing. He's irritated. He flicks his tongue against his cheek, and you never miss this gesture.

"You've dreamed of being in those girls' shoes, and don't tell me you haven't, baby." - Jungkook says slyly. Although you expected a more angry reaction, judging by the look on his face.

"Never. You're the one who must have wanted me to be in their shoes, because you've been wanting to fuck me for so long." - You reply defiantly. Jungkook snorts. You approach him, leaning over the armrest. You can clearly see the shine of his perfect skin. "You should have just confess to me instead of sticking your dick in everyone's." - You smile. Jungkook pulls off the road and parks on the side of the road. You fall back on the seat. You stare dumbfounded at the road, trying to understand why Jungkook stopped. Before you can say anything, you feel Jungkook's hand squeezing your cheeks. His face is just a few centimeters away and his eyes radiate something devilish.

"Your big mouth is too big sometimes. I can put my cock in your mouth. That you'd stop saying stupid things." - Jungkook says thoughtfully. He looks at you with authority. You feel a piercing sensation between your thighs, and you think you just wet your panties.

"Try your luck, Jeon." - You say through clenched cheeks. You feel Jungkook's fingernails digging into your skin. Jungkook laughs, but it's a laugh that sounds like something between mocking and maniacal.

"Why do you like provoking me so much? Do you get off on me being rude to you?" - Jungkook asks, and you feel him already undoing the button on your jeans. You get wet in anticipation of Jungkook's fingers on your pussy. He's right that you like his roughness and power. But you can't admit it. Of course you love it when he's gentle and caring, but those eyes, those eyes in front of you, they set your whole being on fire.

"Don't even touch me!" - You scream when you feel his hand slowly slide down your pants. Jungkook's eyes darken even more when you don't let him. His cock instantly hardens. Jungkook captures your lips and his fingers are already touching your folds. You grab his hand, but your strength is not enough, because you can't resist your desire to have him touch you.

Jungkook terrorizes your lips, his tongue literally fills your entire mouth. You return the kiss with the same passion. He caresses your clit and you can't help but moan into Jungkook's mouth.

"Take off your pants quickly and get on my lap." - Jungkook orders you. You are flushed from his kiss and touch. Jungkook pushes his seat back as far as it will go. He notices that you are sitting still. You don't listen to him right away, and he gets mad. "Baby, don't try my patience. Otherwise I will punish you severely." - Jungkook asks you. Although it sounds like a pure threat. You smile slyly. You wonder how he can punish you severely?

"Make me, Jeon. I wasn't planning on sitting on your such promiscuous cock tonight." - You say as if you're testing Jungkook's patience. He's horny and eager to get satisfaction, and you won't bite your cheeky tongue. Jungkook slowly approaches you. He doesn't touch you, he just moves a short distance away. You unconsciously squeeze into the seat.

"You have half a minute to take off your clothes and climb on my lap. Otherwise I'll climb on top of you and you'll choke on my cock. Choose, baby." - He says gently. You look at him and realize that you are too excited. The wetness between your legs and the aching more screaming at you to listen to Jungkook and do as he says. Without looking away from your boyfriend's black eyes, you take off your jeans. Jungkook leaned back a little and smiled victoriously, one corner of his lips quirking up. "What a good girl." - He says and returns to his seat. Jungkook lifts his hips and pulls down his sweatpants along with his boxers. He lowers them to his knees so they don't get in the way.

You see Jungkook's erect cock, eager for attention. The thick vein that runs along its length attracts your attention and you want to feel it with your tongue.

You quickly get rid of your jeans and thong. You don't take off your turtleneck, thinking that you don't need to undress completely for a quick fuck.

Jungkook is waiting for you. He pumps his cock several times, smearing his pre-cum. When you climb onto his lap, he smiles evilly. You don't even expect the punishment you're going to get for your long tongue.

You press your pussy against his aroused cock and bite your lip. Jungkook grabs your hips and lifts you up to enter you right away. He won't stretch you this time. You have to be punished today.

You will feel the head of his cock running over your clit. Jungkook uses it to rub your wetness. When he presses his cock against your entrance, you sigh with anticipation. He plunges into you and you think he's going to go slowly, but his hands on your hips jerk you around and he enters you abruptly. A cry of pain escapes your mouth. Jungkook admires you, his lips curved in a cocky smile. Your eyes are closed, your eyebrows are drawn together, and your mouth is open. This expression could easily pass for pleasure, but your face is pure pain.

"You didn't think I'd be gentle, did you? As I remember, you like me to be rough." - Jungkook says with difficulty. His voice is low and husky. He's trying to withstand the way your tight pussy is squeezing his cock.

"It hurts..." - You whimper. Jungkook squeezes your thighs with his fingers and gives a deep thrust. You scream again, but less painfully. Now it's more pleasant than painful.

"You're being punished, not having lovemaking." - Jungkook tells you. You open your eyes and see his face radiating lust and anger at the same time.

"Why are you punishing me? For I telling that you fucked everyone?" - You say slyly. Jungkook looks at you defiantly and slams his hips into you again, plunging his cock into you as much as possible. It's as if he's knocking all the air out of you when he does this. You forget how to breathe when he starts fucking you intensely. You moan in pleasure, moving your hips to meet Jungkook's.

"You need to be punished for running your mouth. What business is it of yours how many I've fucked?" - Jungkook asks, breathing heavily.

"Business?" - You gasp. "It’s my business, because you could have fucked me a long time ago instead of all those whores." - You say indignantly. You talk as if you're not sitting naked on Jungkook in the car right now, filled to the brim with his cock.

"I'm fucking you right now, and I started doing it when we were friends. Aren't you also my slut too?" - Jungkook asks, smiling. You moan as you bounce on him. Are you his whore? Only he and you can't be compared to them.

"No. I'm not..." - You want to tell him not to put you on the same level as those girls. But his cock pounding into you, making you feel incredible, silences you.

"Oh, yeah. Just look at you. You're sitting on my cock and you can't get enough. You love it when I'm rough with you, like a real whore." - Jungkook's voice is hot. Your head is spinning.

Jungkook catches a glimpse of your erect nipples, visible through your black turtleneck. He takes one hand off your hip to free your breasts from your clothes. Your tits fall out and move in time with your movements.

Jungkook doesn't like the way your clothes are in the way. He stops you and takes off the last thing you're wearing, over your head. He throws the turtleneck elsewhere and pounces on your attractive nipples.

Jungkook grabs one in his hand, kisses it gently at first, then swirls his tongue around it several times. He suddenly sucks on the nipple so hard that almost tears barely appear in your eyes. You hiss, just sitting on his cock. Your pussy is throbbing and you wouldn't mind if Jungkook paid attention to your clit. He sucks on your nipples, and it hurts a lot more than all the other times.

"Does it hurt?" - Jungkook asks, pulling away from your breast. You bite your lip so hard that it hurts too. You nod that it hurts, but that's not the right answer. Jungkook smiles with satisfaction. Your punishment continues as he begins to pound you with his hips again, ruthlessly pushing his cock into you. You are as close together as possible, so you can feel his pubic bone with your clit.

Your knees are getting tired of holding onto the narrow seat on the sides of Jungkook's thighs. But Jungkook doesn't care.

He looks down at your pussy and thinks that you must be finally punished. You continue to ride Jungkook's cock and suddenly you feel a blow to your pussy. It doesn't hurt too much. But fuck, it's so unusual. You stop and watch Jungkook's cruel smile in puzzlement.

"This pussy is responsible for your long tongue. You can apologize to her for your impudence." - Jungkook says sweetly. You want to protest, but another stroke silences you, almost choking. Jungkook touches your clit, just as you wanted him to, and he massages it, making you feel euphoric. But when he pinches your clit, you scream. And Jungkook giggles in amusement. You squeeze his shoulder with all your strength, and if he wasn't wearing a sweatshirt, you would have scratched him.

"But you were right, baby. When I was fucking all those girls, I was imagining you." - Jungkook confesses. His voice is still brutal with no hint of sweetness. "Because all I ever wanted was you. You're my cherished dream come true." - You open your eyes and finally see his loving smile. You feel like everything inside you is on fire. He lights you up with a fire that spreads throughout your body. Your soul trembles at his words, as do you. You lean into him and kiss him, putting all your feelings into this kiss. Jungkook responds. Your lips tell each other that you are in love.

Jungkook squeezes your buttocks as he moves you around on his lap. You lean on the seat with one hand to keep your balance. You speed up your movements. You feel Jungkook's cock grinding against your walls. He touches your G-spot, building up your orgasm. A wave of pleasant pleasure slowly covers you. One moment and the knot in the bottom of your stomach breaks, engulfing your body in blissful pleasure.

You moan into Jungkook's ear and he can't get enough of the sound. He keeps fucking you so he can come himself. He hardens to the maximum and lifts your juicy hips to get out of you. You get up and instantly fall back on his lap. His hot cum paints your pussy and his stomach. You watch his cock twitch, spewing white liquid. When it softens, you finally look up at Jungkook. You see him smiling with satisfaction. You reflexively lift your lips in a smile.

"You didn't come in me, so that's a big success." - You joke. Jungkook grabs your neck and pulls you gently.

"Is that mouth ever going to stop being so big?" - He asks before kissing you one last time. You taste your boyfriend's lips and can't get enough.

"Never. I was given to you so that you would never relax in your life." - You answer, pulling away from Jungkook's lips. Jungkook laughs and you get off his lap. You have to clean yourself up. Before you can make it home.

Jungkook dropped you off at house. He wanted to help you carry your things upstairs, but you assured him that you could do it yourself. You argued for a long few minutes and you convinced him. He kissed you goodbye and left for the main office of «Mono Corp».

Jungkook was almost calm. He could have been nervous. After all, Namjoon had found out about everything. But Jungkook had everything under control. He was in Japan those days while you were away, and he was able to return all the devices. And they in Korea by now. Hayato texted he last night and told him that he and the devices were in the port of Busan.

Jungkook parks the Mercedes and goes up to the top floor of the building. He doesn't meet any of his friends on the way and it's a little strange. Where did they all go? He approaches Namjoon's office and greets the secretary. The woman nods and invites him inside. Jungkook crosses the threshold and finds himself in the sacred place for the boss of an influential mafia clan.

He felt heavy, like a mountain pressing down on his chest. This happens every time he finds himself in this place.

Namjoon's office wasn't just a workspace - it was a zone of authority that Jungkook hated and respected at the same time.

Dark wood on the walls, a large panoramic window overlooking the masterpiece lights of Seoul. A huge ebony desk with papers and documents on it reflected the very essence of this place: everything is under control. Namjoon was sitting at the desk, leaning slightly forward, focused, but his expression was not stern. There was an invisible warmth in him, but it was all deliberate.

"Jungkook." - He said quietly, without the usual pressure and threats that accompanied normal meetings in the mafia world. "Have a seat." - He pointed to the couch, which was located away from the table.

"Hello." - Jungkook greeted, bowing him and sat down on the designated seat. Namjoon put some papers aside. He ordered coffee from his secretary for the two of them and stood up from the table.

Jungkook didn't look at Namjoon, but he knew exactly what he was doing. The sound of his expensive shoes broke the silence. Namjoon sat down across from Jungkook and stared at his subordinate.

Jungkook looked up at the leader and stared intently at his expression.

"What's up, kid?" - Namjoon asked with an uncharacteristic warmth in his voice. Jungkook pressed his lips together, showing off his mole under his lower lip.

"All is right." - Jungkook didn't lie. Namjoon lazily turned his head to the side, his gaze remaining calm but studying. His whole appearance was like a challenge, but not aggressive. It was an intellectual strength, a strength that didn't need to be brutal. He looked at Jungkook, and his eyes reflected a patience that could end at any time.

"Why did you hide everything from me?" - Namjoon asks. Jungkook knows exactly what he's talking about.

"Jimin had nothing to do with it. It's completely my fault. So please don't punish him." - Jungkook says at first. This brings a faint smile to Namjoon's lips. He's always so noble.

"Jimin knows me well, he should have foreseen that I would find out about your affairs anyway." - Namjoon said more coldly, showing that Jimin would not escape punishment for covering up for Jungkook. "It's so funny, kid, that you thought I wouldn't know that 50 million dollars disappeared from under my nose." - Namjoon let out a shrill laugh. The laughter echoed in Jungkook's ears like an intrusive fly.

"I didn't think you wouldn't find out, I just wanted to solve it on my own. Without bothering you." - Jungkook said in his defense.

"Solved it?" - Namjoon asked mockingly, raising his eyebrows. Jungkook wanted to answer, but the secretary came into the office with two cups of espresso. She silently put the coffee tray down, clearly sensing the tension around, and left as quickly as she could. Namjoon took the white, small cup with the black drink and took a sip. The aroma of coffee teased Jungkook's receptors. But he didn't want to drink coffee right now.

"Yes." - Jungkook replied, more firmly than he wanted to. Namjoon tasted the coffee and nodded his head.

"I like how you decided. You took almost a month to find out where the devices were. Beat that asshole to a pulp in front of our Japanese partner. And because of you, I wasted 10 minutes of my life listening to his father complain and demand compensation from me for some reason." - Namjoon said. He put the cup of coffee on the table and adjusted his expensive Rolexes.

"I'll explain..." - Jungkook said. He regretted answering so quickly. How could he explain if everything was tied to you?

"What exactly do you want to explain?" - Namjoon clarified. "Why did Doohoon, as soon as he got to Korea, immediately start make trouble to you? Or why did you beat him up and leave his blood all over the hallway? Or how did you manage to lose my 50 million dollars so easily?" - Jungkook exhaled a long breath. There were no answers to these questions, specifically for Namjoon.

"I returned the devices." - Jungkook said, carefully avoiding the topic of Doohoon.

"So what? I don't want them, I want the money." - Namjoon says dryly, and now Jungkook hears the tone he's become accustomed to.

"I'll sell them personally, I already have a new client." - Jungkook says.

"Are you sure, that I have to give you another chance?" - Namjoon asks a rhetorical question. Jungkook looks him in the eye, not afraid of his boss for a second, even though he should be.

"I'll sell them for 100 million." - Jungkook replies, and a spark lights up in Namjoon's eyes.

"100 million." - Namjoon repeats. He is silent for a second and then answers. "Don't let me down, kid. If you don't sell it for 100 million, you know This amount will be added to your debt." - He says, and it's no surprise to Jungkook. It was expected.

"I won't let you down." - Jungkook says. Namjoon finally smiles. It seems that the sum of 100 million dollars has lifted Namjoon's spirits quite a bit. He is relaxing, his posture shows it, and Jungkook is also relieved.

"But the question of Doohoon is still open." - The clan leader speaks up about him.

"I will deal with him as well. Please give me some time." - Jungkook asks. Namjoon stares at him again with a long, piercing gaze.

"Go ahead. But really deal with this brat, because I have enough problems from his father. I have more important things to do." - Namjoon says and finishes his espresso.

"I'll take care of it." - Jungkook promises. Namjoon nods in acknowledgment.

"Why does that guy Doohoon hate you so much? I remember he didn't like you in high school or something." - Namjoon says. Jungkook doesn't want to talk about this topic at all. So he keeps his mouth shut. "But thanks to him, you work for me." - The clan leader suddenly says, and Jungkook looks up at him.

"I'm only working off my debt, no more. Since Doohoon is back in Korea, you could demand your money from him. He's the one who owes you." - Jungkook says a little sharply. Namjoon's face radiates disappointment. He doesn't like the way Jungkook is talking. He would rather have Jungkook work for him voluntarily. He sees Jungkook's essence, and this job he's doing is perfect for him.

"You'll work off his debt because you're just as involved in this." - Namjoon says coldly.

"I didn't turn you in to the police, and I told you that many times. I'm not the reason you lost the money." - Jungkook defends himself.

"I don't care. Whether you were involved or not, the two of you brought him to my club." - Namjoon cuts him off, referring to the police officer's son. Jungkook stops talking and decides that the conversation is over. He gets up from the couch.

"I have to go. I have things to do." - Jungkook bows and is about to leave when Namjoon's words make him freeze in horror.

"So you two became enemies because of your girl friend?" - Namjoon asks. He said he knew everything, didn't he? Jungkook turns and glares at Namjoon. "She's really pretty, I understand why there's a war. How long have you two been living together? Jimin says she has a temper." - He pauses, enjoying Jungkook's look, and continues. "But kid, lets you make sure that your girlfriend doesn't affect my company's income. Really handle everything yourself, so I don't have to interfere personally."

Jungkook has left and you are standing on the street. There is even more snow in Seoul than in Suwon, but all the roads are well plowed. Your hands are freezing from the slight frost, and so you want to get inside as soon as possible.

To get into the building, you have to cross the parking lot, because that's where Jungkook dropped you off. You wrap your jacket tighter because there is a terrible draft in the yard and grab the handle of your suitcase. You walk away thinking about a hot bath. You don't notice the gray Volvo parked in the parking lot, not far from the high-rise building. When you pass by and hear the horn honking, you jump in surprise.

You want to scold the person who honked the horn, but you drop your suitcase, which falls on the snow compacted by cars. Doohoon stands with his car door open and smiles at you with difficulty. He can't do it normally because his face is so beaten up.

His right eyebrow is cut, and it looks like there might even be stitches because he has a large bandage on it. His lip is split in two places. There are severe bruises under both eyes, purple and burgundy in color, which suggests that they are slowly coming off. Doohoon's appearance is horrifying. Only brown eyes, the color of the whiskey, remain of his handsome face.

"Hello, candy." - He greets you, and you just want to run. You instantly remember everything you've been told Jungkook about Doohoon and you want to made him another bruise. You come to your senses. You pick up your suitcase and walk as fast as you can without saying hello to Doohoon. He catches up with you, grabbing your arm. You pull your hand away.

"Don't touch me!" - You shout. Doohoon presses his lips into a line and almost immediately grimaces in pain. His acting is Oscar-worthy.

"Let's talk, candy..." - Doohoon asks you. You feel a kind of growing anxiety. With Doohoon, you felt this all the time.

"We have nothing to talk about with you. Just like all the times before." - You say angrily.

"You came together and you return to his apartment. I can see that my words about Jungkook didn't impress you at all, although you had a slightly different reaction at the party." - Doohoon says. You pierce him with a look worth a hundred knife cuts.

"What's your business with me and my reaction? Stop following me." - You ask. Doohoon smiles, restrained and almost sweet.

"Do you remember what I said to you that night?" - Doohoon asks, but you don't answer. "I told you that I like you. That's why I can't stand aside while Jungkook is with you. It's not stalking, it's caring." - You raise your eyebrows and get even angrier.

"I don't need your concern. I don't like you for the life of me. And your behavior scares me." - You confess. Doohoon laughs heartily.

"Scares you?" - He repeats mockingly. "Does my caring scare you more than Jungkook whose hands are up to their elbows in blood?" - You freeze with a shadow of fear on your face.

"He didn't kill anyone..." - You say quietly, not believing yourself.

"Candy." - Doohoon calls you gently. "He did. You're a smart girl, you should know that people connected to the mafia are not saints. If you knew what he was doing, you'd change your mind." - You stare at each other for a while. You don't know what to say in defense of Jungkook. But Doohoon is wrong. Jungkook is still a very good person who has been trapped. And it's all thanks to Doohoon.

"Whose fault is that?" - You ask. "It's your fault that Jungkook is working for Namjoon." - Your voice is laced with venom. Doohoon takes a step toward you and you can hear your heart pounding, but you remain unmoved.

"Maybe so. But I'm not the one who pulls the trigger on a gun and beats people to death." - Doohoon says looking down at you. You look bravely into his cold eyes. "He is dangerous to you and you realize it. One day you might get hurt because of Jungkook." - Doohoon reaches out and touches your cheek. "That's why I'm here, to save you." - You're not impressed by his words. You knock his hand away.

"Who gave you permission to touch me?" - You ask harshly. "Get off me. Leave me and Jungkook alone. I don't need your concern because I know who you really are." - You jab your finger at Doohoon's chest. "You envious piece of shit." - Doohoon laughs. His anger has been growing as fast as a fire burning through dry grass. Your stance of resistance only strengthened his desire to possess you. Are you deliberately making him obsessed with you?

You walk away and Doohoon doesn't stop you. He looks at you and thinks you just signed your own warrant. He was trying to persuade you to distance yourself from Jungkook in a nice way. It looks like he need to move on to more effective ways.

You disappear from Doohoon's sight and he walks back to the car. Once behind the wheel, he dials the number he needs. Several long beeps reach his ear.

"Hello?" - Doohoon hears on the other end of the phone.

"I need to hire some guys. Remember when we talked about this?" - Doohoon asks. He starts the car and hears the sound of the engine.

"Kidnapp some girl?"

"Yeah. Find those guys who have a beef with Jungkook. I'll come to you right away and we'll talk about it in detail." - Doohoon doesn't wait for an answer and turns off the phone. His Samsung flies to the seat next to him. Doohoon steps on the gas pedal and leaves the parking lot of your and Jungkook's house.

↰ Previous chapter ⋮ ≣ Index ↓ ⋮ Next chapter ↱

#jungkook x reader #jungkook #bts #bts jungkook #jungkook x f!reader #jungkook smut #jungkook friends with benefits #bts mafia au #bts fanfction

148 notes · View notes