#editing these was fun!! lighting at the shoot was clearly very very nice

[sidsthekid]

media day media day we love sid at media day

[candlewaxandp0lar0ids]

Don’t Go Baking My Heart || Seokjin

Pairing: Seokjin x reader

Summary: You fall in love with Kim Seokjin’s bakery after wandering into it to take advantage of the post-Valentine’s Day discount on the chocolates. Maybe it’s the owner’s bad jokes, maybe it’s the other regulars, maybe it’s the delicious pastries. Or maybe there’s something more that keeps you coming back to that shop.

Also available on Ao3.

Word count: 14.7k

Genre: Strangers (to Friends) to Lovers, Bakery AU, tooth-rotting Fluff, some smut

Warnings & Tags: mentions of insecurities and of former relationships, smut (vaginal sex, oral [male receiving], fingering), Jin makes Bad Jokes, Valentine’s Day themed

A/N: Soooo this was supposed to come out for Valentine’s Day, but it wasn’t ready then, so you guys get it now instead! I’m bad with puns so I definitely had to look online for those used in this oops. Finally, I’d like to give a big thank you to the amazing @elidebrey​ who actually worked in a bakery shop and told me all about (I’m sorry you guys ran out of milk all the time). She’s an amazing writer and you should check her out if you like the Batfam! Hope you’ll enjoy this one-shot!

February 15th

You first walk into Kim Seokjin’s bakery the day after Valentine’s Day. Your eye was caught by the chocolates and cakes you noticed on sale from the outside, and also the name of the place, The Rolling Scones, which is either genius or terrible, you can’t pick. The door bell chimes happily, first when you push the door open and then when it closes behind you.

The place is empty. There’s no one behind the counter, and you find yourself hesitating there for a second, both arms behind your back like a shy schoolgirl — which you once were, but that was a while ago now. Natural light, the cold sun of February, is falling through the bay windows, and the place is cute, clearly decorated with love and care. It makes you feel just a little warmer inside.

Since no one seems to be showing up, you take your time to look at the display. You’ve spent the past week crying over the end of your two year relationship, and you’re desperately craving something sweet and sugary to fill the hole in your heart and in your life. Post Valentine’s Day discount is definitely the best way to do that.

If you’re being completely honest with yourself, you knew this relationship was never going to be your forever. It was just a nice and comfortable situation to be in, and you expected you and him to part ways at some point.

You just didn’t particularly expect it to be now.

“Jungkook!” a strong voice shouts from the back of the shop, startling you. It’s quickly followed by a curse, and then a man walks in, glancing back with a worried expression, tying an apron around his waist and adjusting a small black hat on his head. You notice the ‘Jungkook’ tag on his apron, and it makes you soften in sympathy. The second his eyes fall on you, he recomposes himself, and shoots you a smile that’s professional, though the nervousness doesn’t quite disappear. “What can I do for you?”

“I was just looking,” you say, and he leans forward, probably straining to hear. Your voice has always had that weird tendency to become inaudible when you’re talking to strangers. “You don’t have anything with strawberries, do you?”

“I’m afraid everything we had went yesterday,” he says with a sympathetic frown.

“Oh, right,” you mumble. You’re disappointed to a stupid degree, and you know it’s because your emotions have been running wild recently, to the point where any small contrariety threatens to make you cry. Fortunately, you don’t, right now. That would be horribly embarrassing. “Um, I guess I’ll take that box and, uh, the éclair, please, then.”

“Of course!”

His movements are quick and precise as he takes it out, and you could be mistaken, but you think he’s deliberately not looking at you. You’re not particularly blaming him for it, though, because you’re doing the exact same thing.

“Anything else?” he asks once he’s done, and you shake your head, avoiding eye contact. “For here or to go? We’re also a café,” he elaborates when you give him a surprised — and slightly panicked — glance.

“Oh. To go, please,” you say, not so much because you actually want to, and much more because you’re bad at changing your plans when you had already made your decision.

Except… You eye the bakery. It’s not like you have anyone to come back to, and you don’t particularly want to be back at your apartment to wallow alone. You might even get some things done while you’re here.

“Um, actually, would you mind if I…?” The question dies on your lips. You’re already feeling too embarrassed to continue, but he looks up, eyes wide, and nods.

“No, no, please take a seat! Do you want something to drink as well?”

“That— That would be nice, actually.”

“Alright, just give me a second and I’ll bring you our, er, menu.”

It’s not a menu, it’s a list of drinks the owner printed and coated with plastic, and insists on calling a menu, but he isn’t going to tell you that.

You pick a table that faces the door, and after choosing and ordering your tea, pull out your computer. It’s not that the things you have to do can’t wait, but you don’t like sitting alone doing nothing. The shop is desperately empty, and part of you is terrified by the idea that Jungkook could come over to talk to you. That would probably end up not being completely unpleasant, but you’re not sure you can handle that much interaction with other human beings right now.

While scrolling through the text you are currently working on editing, you pick a chocolate out of the box to eat it and hold back a satisfied moan at the taste. The fact that it’s so good makes you feel a little more upset that you’ve never been in a relationship for Valentine’s Day and therefore have never been given anything like that.

It’s always been bad luck really, because you’ve been in a few relationships, but even with your last boyfriend, the two of you were on a break in February. The others never made it longer than a few months, and never fell at the right time. It’s not even like you want to celebrate Valentine’s Day, you do think it’s mostly a commercial holiday, and you definitely don’t want any expensive gift, but you’d be happy to have someone by your side to make fun of other couples with. Someone to love you, and someone to love.

God, you want to be in love so bad. For a few months, you thought you had it with your ex, and maybe you did, for a moment, but it had slipped from your fingers without you managing to do anything about it, leaving you sad and empty. You want to feel everything the movies and books promised, the butterflies in the stomach, the rush in the beat of your heart. You want to feel like someone holds your world in their hands. You want them to love you back — really love you, so much that you’ll catch them looking at you and see it in their eyes immediately, so much that they’ll remember how you like your tea in the morning.

You don’t think your ex ever loved you, and you don’t really blame him for that. He liked you, certainly, and for a long time that was enough for you. But now, with it being over and him telling you he’d ‘met someone’, you want more out of your next relationship.

Then again, you’d thought that last time as well.

You’re grateful when Jungkook brings you your tea, tearing you away from thoughts you really don’t want to be having right now. He gives you a smile, then is quick to retreat back behind the counter, and something tells you that he has the same difficulties talking to people as you do.

That can’t make his job fun.

You’re soon able to immerse yourself in your work, much to your surprise. Usually, you’re hyper aware of your surroundings, and it’s hard to get work done unless you’re in a place that’s both quiet and familiar, but the atmosphere in here is so warm and pleasant that you’re able to relax and focus, all while drinking your tea and eating your sweets. It’s quite close to perfect, actually.

Which is why you jump violently when someone’s voice booms into the shop.

“Jeon Jungkook!”

You look up, panicked, and Jungkook turns around with the exact same look on his face. You don’t remember the doorbell ringing, so it has to be someone from the shop, and indeed, a tall man with short black hair walks in from the same place Jungkook entered. And your brain short-circuits.

It doesn’t happen all that often, for you to simply find yourself frozen because of how good-looking someone is, but in that case, you just can’t help it. The man who just walked in is tall, with very nice, broad shoulders, and the apron he is wearing underlines the muscles of his chest in ways you didn’t think were possible, but more than that, he’s also, quite possibly, the most handsome man you’ve ever laid eyes on. When you glance at his plump, full lips, you find yourself having a hard time to tear yourself away. You’re relieved that you didn't have to order from him, because you’re sure it would have made you blush and stutter.

“Jungkook, there’s a mess in the back! What are you waiting fo—” Jungkook gives panicked glances in your direction, and the man catches your presence from the corner of his eyes, turning his sentence around as smoothly as is humanly possible, all while his lips curve up into a professional smile. “Ooh, hello, dear customer! I don’t think we’ve seen you here before, have we?”

A smile spills on your mouth, much to your surprise.

“No, it’s my first time here,” you answer. Your voice isn’t as strong as you’d like for it to be, but at least you didn’t choke. You suppose still being heartbroken serves as a shield against the man’s handsomeness. “I figured there’d be some discount after Valentine’s Day, and I was hungry, so…”

“You figured you’d kill two birds with one scone?” the man asks while Jungkook, behind him, silently smacks his forehead. You figure he’s heard it a million time before, but you haven’t, and you can’t help but laugh. That makes the man’s smile widen genuinely and his eyes crease.

“I guess you came up with the bakery name,” you chuckle.

“Absolutely. Isn’t it a great name?”

Jungkook shakes his head in disgust.

“It’s genius,” you say, and the man slams his hand on the table.

“See? I told you! Jungkook keeps saying that I have a terrible sense of humor—”

“I’ll be in the back if you need me,” Jungkook grumbles.

“Hey, what do we say to customers?”

“Ah— It was nice to meet you!” he says, turning around to look at you and he seems somewhat sincere. “I hope we’ll be seeing you again.”

Then he bows his head politely and disappears in the back of the shop. The other man — who you suppose is the owner of the place — watches, laughing fondly, but goes quiet after that, so you go back to your work.

You don’t stay around too long, not wanting to overstay your welcome, but you’re still the only one in the shop by the time you decide to walk out.

“Was the tea any good?” the man asks as you walk by him.

You nod and smile.

“And the chocolates were delicious,” you add. “I’ll make sure to come back.”

“That’s music to my ears,” he says, dramatically putting a hand on his chest. That’s when you notice the ‘Seokjin’ tag on his apron. You don’t know what to do with that information, though. You don’t call strangers by their first name and you also don’t stalk people on line.

Especially not when you don’t have their last name.

You say a quick ‘goodbye’, then walk out. Jin’s eyes follow you for a few seconds, before he sighs and turns around, already taking off his apron.

“Jungkook!”

The boy is quick to appear again, scanning the shop for your presence.

“She’s gone?” he asks, and Jin gives a slap at the back of his employee's head with a groan. There’s no strength in it, though, and Jungkook barely reacts to it.

“How could you run away like that, you little—”

Jungkook easily avoids him when Jin tries to him it again, laughing at his outrage.

“We’re not going to be getting a lot more clients today, are we?” he asks, looking outside at the passers-by that don’t even spare a glance at the little shop.

“No,” Jin groans, letting himself fall on a chair.

The depressing calm that follows what is possibly the busiest day of the year for him is just one of the reasons why he absolutely despises Valentine’s Day.

February 22nd

When you show up at the bakery again, about a week later, you’re feeling surprisingly good about it. Last time went well, you decided, and the people were nice, so you’re not afraid to throw a quiet but polite “Hello!” when you walk in. It’s kind of funny — or is it sad — how it always surprises you when people are nice to you, much more used to passive disinterest at best.

There’s another man in the shop this time, with a laptop and a coffee in front of him, but he doesn’t look up at you. A head lifts up from behind the counter though. You feel vaguely embarrassed that you remember this one is Seokjin, and you only feel more awkward when he gives you a dazzling smile.

A glance at the display tells you that they have restocked on their strawberry-based pastries, and you happily pick a slice of cake for yourself.

“For here or to go?”

“I’ll have it here,” you say with a smile. You feel strangely proud of yourself for being able to say it spontaneously. He has no way of knowing it, but it’s quite the victory for you. Usually, you try to run from the presence of others as fast as you can, and it’s even worse those days. “And I’ll also have Darjeeling tea with it, please.”

“Coming right up, just take a seat and I’ll bring it to you,” he says, and then he winks. He doesn’t stick around to see the surprised look on your face, so you just do as he told you, wondering if he was flirting with you or if he’s just Like That. You think that second explanation might be the answer.

“It’s nice to see you again,” he says when he arrives with the cake and the tea. You’re pretty sure he can’t place you exactly, just thinks your face is familiar, but it still makes you happy.

He tells you he hopes you’ll come back when you leave, and you decide you want to believe it.

June 1st

You’re not sure when you become an official ‘regular’ at the bakery. Maybe it’s when you ask Jin if they even do scones, and he leans over the counter to tell you conspiratorially that he actually wanted to call the shop ‘bake it ’til you make it’, but was told it was too long. That elicits a brief burst of laughter from you, and Jungkook tells you to stop encouraging him, but Seokjin looks so happy with himself when you laugh that you decide not to listen to him. Jin has that way of breaking past your shyness that fascinates you. It might be what keeps you coming back, more than the delicious sweets and how beautiful the two workers look.

Or maybe it’s when Jin tells you that it’s not fair you know their names but they don’t know yours, and that he’d ask you for your ID before selling you stuff if you don't tell him. When you tell him, he repeats it a couple of times, like he’s tasting it, before nodding with satisfaction. After that, him and Jungkook start greeting you with it, and insist you do the same with them. You’re reluctant at first, feeling somewhat confused about the whole thing, but it turns out to feel… nice, to have people to greet, and who also know your name.

Maybe it’s when Jin tells you that you’re late when you come in, or complains when you don’t show up on one of your usual days because you had a meeting with your boss. He doesn’t say anything on the day where you take your pastries to go because you’re visiting a friend at the hospital, though, and you wonder if he can just tell. Regardless, you appreciate it.

You find out about other people who come here frequently, too, and especially the ones who are friends with Jin and Jungkook. Namjoon, who sits with his laptop at the opposite end of the café from you. Yoongi, who usually sits in the same spot as you, and eyes you threateningly when he comes in and you’re there the first time, until Seokjin tells him to knock it off. Taehyung and Jimin, who always come in together, and who Jungkook usually joins to bicker and laugh with them. Hoseok, who likes to waltz in at random times, and whose smile actually rivals Jin’s.

You yourself come in twice a week, getting to your usual place to work — except on the couple of occasions where Yoongi gets there before you and gives you a triumphant smile when he sees you. You enjoy the way you’re always greeted by Jungkook or Seokjin, like they’re genuinely happy to see you. You discover that the old ladies who come here to gossip love to flirt with Jin and that, even though he flirts back outrageously, much to their delight, his ears tend to turn a bright red when he does.

You even bring your friends on a couple of occasion, and Seokjin jokes that you’re responsible for half of his turnover at this point. Your friends enjoy the food, and the drinks, but they enjoy the handsome employees and customers a lot more.

“So this is where all the hot men were,” Hana marvels when you walk out, and you burst out laughing. You like that you’ve shared this place with her, because it’s something that makes you really happy these days, motivates you to come out of your bed, and even to talk to people, something you’ve never been good at.

When you walk into the shop and make small talk with the people you’ve come to know, something you used to consider yourself terrible at, it might be silly, but it kind of feels like home.

June 21st

You are pretty sure you know when you go from regular to friend, though. It’s a day like any other and you hum on your way to the shop. Instead of the joyful “Welcome back, (Y/N)!” that you’ve gotten used to hearing these past few weeks, however, you’re greeted with Seokjin shouting “(Y/N), my savior!”.

You freeze on the spot and give him a worried look. From his table, Namjoon looks up, just as puzzled.

“Is everything okay, Jin?” he asks.

“Jungkook isn’t there today,” Jin tells you. His voice doesn’t sound different from usual, but there is a glint of panic in his eyes.  “I need your help.”

Namjoon stands up.

“Why didn’t you ask me? I could—”

“Stay where you are and don’t even think of approaching my kitchen,” Jin says threateningly. “(Y/N)? Please?”

Well. You suppose your work can get done later. You’re more productive when you come here, so you have some advance on your usual deadlines these days. But you don’t know what Jin wants from you and you’ve never worked in a bakery.

“What do you want me to do?” you ask cautiously.

He grabs your shoulders and your eyes widen at the contact. Not that it’s unpleasant, just unexpected.

“I knew when you first walked in here that you were a godsend,” he tells you seriously, looking right into your eyes, and you tell yourself that if he’s that good of an actor, you should probably watch out. “We’re out of milk.”

You blink.

“Okay. Is there a specific type of milk you want?”

“Just, milk. Get me milk and I’ll worship the ground you walk on until the end of days.”

You roll your eyes at his dramatics, and take your bag off your shoulder, handing it to him.

“Look after that, okay? I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll protect it with my life,” he says solemnly. “Also paper napkins please!” he shouts as you’re already walking out.

“Will do!”

“Bake a leg!”

You want to protest the joke that even you find to be quite bad, but the door has already closed behind you, so you just shake your head at him, only to see him laughing with satisfaction through the glass, and head to the nearest supermarket.

You come back with two big packs of milk and a lot of paper napkins, just as two men are exiting. You’ve seen them before, but they never stay to chat. Inside, Jin is juggling three women, and he looks more relieved than you’ve ever seen him when you walk in.

“I’ll help you with that,” Namjoon says immediately, bumping in the table as he gets up.

“If you break anything, I’ll kill you,” Jin warns him. He’s smiling like he’s joking, and his tone is light, like he doesn’t want to scare off his customers, but his eyes say he’s sincere.

You’re quick in the back, and Namjoon does drop the packs once, but nothing bad happens. He presses a finger against his lips to tell you to keep it a secret, and you grin without a word. Part of you is kind of wondering what you’re doing there, why Jin feels comfortable letting you in the back and why he asked you to do that, but you don’t have an issue with it, not by a long shot. This is… kind of fun, actually.

“Anything else you want me to do?” you ask Jin when you come out, and he looks at you in a pleading way.

“You don’t mind?”

Something tells you you shouldn’t accept too quickly, that you could end up in way over your head faster than you know. But his brown eyes are wide and desperate and you just can’t say no. So you smile and shake your head.

“Of course not. You look like you really need a hand here.”

“I do.”

That’s how you find yourself in an apron, with the cute, black hat Jin and Jungkook always wear on your head. Jin mostly sends you in the back to pick up things he needs, or makes you bring the beverages to the customers, which you’re thankful for, because that way you don’t have to greet anyone. Time flies quickly, and you can barely find a second to breathe for the first few hours.

“Sorry, it’s lunch time,” Jin grimaces as he passes you by, and you think to yourself that at least, it will get better, but it takes a while even after that, and when it’s done, Jin sends you to buy some more stuff from the supermarket, because as it turns out, things go fast.

Before you know it, it’s closing time, and you look outside in disbelief. The sky is starting to turn a nice pink, and other shops are putting up their shutters.

“You can go, if you want,” Jin tells you. He sounds terribly sorry, and that makes you feel bad. It’s such an unusual tone for him to have.

His offer is tempting, of course. Your feet hurt, your head aches a little from all the noise that never bothered you before but turns out to be a lot when you’re there all day, you’ve burned your hand against an oven, and you’ve found out that carrying things ends up really hurting your back. But you know that he’s experiencing the same thing you do, and you just don’t have the heart to abandon him here. Also, you’ve already lost your day, so you might as well help him out now.

“It’s fine,” you sigh. “Do you want me to help with anything?”

Cleaning up goes quietly in the main shop, and that soothes you a little. You don’t mind the silence, even enjoy it, and find yourself relaxing for the first time today. Surprisingly, you’re feeling… satisfied. It’s not something you would particularly look forward to doing again, but you’re happy you did it, happy you helped Jin, and you feel like you’ve accomplished something today, which is always a good thing.

“You have flour everywhere,” he tells you bluntly when you walk in the back of the shop, and you laugh.

“Well, it got everywhere,” you reply, trying to rub some off your face, and it’s Jin’s turn to laugh when you fail miserably.

You know you shouldn’t do it, but you gather a small handful of flour from the table, and throw it at him. A good chunk hangs in the air and makes you cough, but the rest does land on his apron. His mouth falls open into an ‘o’ shape and you know you’ve messed up.

“Listen, I am so sorry—”

“No you’re not,” he says, taking a step towards you. His hand is on the table, which is covered with flour, and you swallow.

“Sure I am, Jin, please—”

But your pleas fall in deaf ears, and flour is soon flying your way. It’s your turn to stare at Jin in disbelief, and then you’re laughing, loud and clear.

Maybe that’s the exact moment when the two of you become friends — really friends.

Or maybe it’s seconds later, when the room you’re in turns into the scene for an all-out flour battle. Regardless, you’re laughing the whole way through, when you’re not choking on the flour hanging in the air. Jin’s laughter is quieter than yours, miles away from the booming and somewhat fake laugh you’re used to hearing from him.

The fight only escalates when Jin picks up an egg. You shake your head, mouth ‘no’, but he doesn’t listen, and after that, things get a lot messier. By the time the two of you, exhausted and bent in half because of how much you’ve been laughing, finally stop, you can feel yoke trickling down your back, and you know the sight can’t be pretty. Jin reaches out to you in a useless attempt to wipe some flour from your face, only to laugh more when it, of course, fails once more.

You try not to think about the jolt of electricity that ran through you when his fingers came in contact with your cheek.

“I’ll clean up in here,” he tells you, “but you should go take a shower upstairs.”

“Are you sure?” you ask, surprised. Suddenly, you’re very conscious of the fact that you don’t know him that well. In recent months, you’ve talked to him more than you do with your close friends, and you did just throw several eggs at him, but you don’t know him. You’re aware of the fact that he lives above the shop, but you’ve never been there. The two of you have never even exchanged numbers.

He makes dramatic hand gestures to signal you to get away, like you’re bothering him, and you leave with a last laugh. You don’t notice the way he looks up when you do, or the way it makes him smile. He can’t help it, he just loves that he makes you laugh.

You’re relieved to step into the shower, both because you’re happy to clean up and because there was something really awkward about being in Seokjin’s apartment for the first time, alone. The place was not quite as decorated as the bakery was, with paler colors. Walking through it, you had noticed big speakers, some books in a shelf, and a couple of cute plushes that you had had to resist not to fawn over. The place worked for him, you had decided. It was more understated than you would have expected when you had just started to know him, but it doesn’t surprise you anymore. Jin tends to be quiet when he doesn’t have to be ‘on’, and it’s something he doesn’t seem to feel he has to do around you anymore.

You sigh in pleasure when the hot water hits you, close your eyes. You’ve been craving it for hours now — long before the food battle with Jin. It helps relax your aching muscles, washes away all the sweat from the day, and you have to resist not to just let yourself fall down onto the floor. Your back hurts, but the worst part has to be your feet. You feel yourself gaining a lot more appreciation for Jin and Jungkook, who are always kind, smiling and polite despite all of this. The only thing that kept you from biting someone’s head off tonight was your crippling anxiety when it comes to interacting with strangers.

It’s almost funny now to think you used to feel that way around Jin.

You look around for some soap you could use, and in your search, you’re surprised to find shampoo that was definitely intended for a woman. You don’t know why you’re surprised. It’s no wonder that Jin would have a girlfriend, really, it’s the opposite that should shock you, but you still didn’t expect it. You force away the pinch in your chest. Jin is a new friend, you can’t have your heart fluttering like that.

You consider using it for half a second, before deciding that it would be very awkward if you came out smelling like his girlfriend. Instead, you do your best to get rid of any egg, and tell yourself you’ll wash your hair at home. You barely hear the sound of the door opening and closing over the water, and you’re startled by Jin’s voice outside the bathroom.

“You can take a towel from the chest of drawers,” he tells you, “and I’ll leave a shirt outside, if you want it.”

“Thank you!” you shout back.

Seokjin stands there a few seconds, before quickly shaking his head and walking away. He knows his ears are turning red, and he hates himself for it, but is it his fault, really? Is he supposed not to think about you, right now, in his shower, water running down your body? He never even thought to pretend he was that innocent.

He occupies himself by preparing a drink for the two of you, and then by cleaning around. He’s not particularly messy, though, and there isn’t much to do, so he ends up sitting on his couch, feeling awkward in his own house, and scrolling aimlessly through his phone. He freezes again when he hears the bathroom door open and close, guessing you’re picking up his shirt. Which means you’re— God what is wrong with him tonight? When did he regress to the state of a hormonal teenager?

He hopes he looks natural when you come out, because he’s doing his best for that. The nervous way he’s running his hands over his thighs would probably give him out, though, if you weren’t feeling just as stressed as him.

“I’m done,” you mumble, your shyness coming back, which you decide is to be expected in that situation.

It vanishes the second Jin looks you over and snorts.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, glancing down, and immediately you know that you’re probably ridiculous in his black shirt. It looks like it’s swallowing you whole. “It’s not my fault if your shoulders are that broad,” you pout.

“You look so small,” Jin chuckles. He sounds endeared, and if you noticed that sort of things, you would absolutely realize that his eyes linger on you in his clothes fondly — and a little longer than necessary.

“Want something to drink?” he asks, gesturing at the stuff he got out of the fridge when he didn’t know what to do with himself.

“Sure,” you smile, letting yourself fall down on the couch next to him and pouring yourself a glass. The brief awkwardness that washed over you when you came in vanishes already, because of how comfortable you feel around Jin. He’s always been good at making you feel that way, and now he doesn’t even have to try.

“So, how did you find your day?” he asks you, and you look at him, surprised by his tone. He sounds quiet, cautious almost, like he’s worried about what your reaction might be, or that he could be bothering you.

“Fine,” you say with a shrug. “I can’t say I’d want to do it again— When is Jungkook coming back?”

Jin chuckles, and again, it takes you by surprise. It’s so… quiet. So discreet, compared to his usual attitude.

“He should be there tomorrow, don’t worry about it.” Then, he grimaces. “But seriously, thank you for helping out today. I owe you.”

“Yes you do,” you say with a grin, bumping your shoulder against his, trying to lift the mood a little, because he sounds genuinely worried. “Just offer me the tea next time, and I’ll consider us even.”

Finally, a smile forms on his lips, and he shakes his head dramatically, putting his hand over his heart.

“No, I don't think I could ever repay you,” he says, and you laugh at his antics, like you always do. He looks a little appeased by that, and that’s a relief. “Your back must hurt,” he says. “Turn around.”

You raise an eyebrow, but do as he says, startling when his hands fall on your shoulders. They’re large, engulfing you easily, but they also move gently as he slowly massages you.

“Oh,” you gasp, leaning back into him. This is— good. This is very very good. For a few minutes — or maybe much longer, you couldn’t tell — you just stay there, eyes closed, lips parted, focused on the delicious feelings of his hands gently rubbing all the pain and soreness of the day away. When he stops, it takes you a few seconds to come back down to reality, and maybe, just maybe you miss the feeling of his hands. “Oh,” you repeat, rolling your shoulders slowly. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Jin says. “It’s kind of my fault.”

You turn around, shaking your head.

“Seokjin,” you say. “It’s fine. I didn’t mind helping.”

“You’re too kind,” he frowns. “You shouldn’t let people take advantage of that.”

“I’m not!”

Then Jin smiles, in a way that only lifts one corner of his lips, and suddenly you feel— you’re not too sure. Something seems to melt inside you, something moves in your stomach like you’re free falling. You probably should recognize the feeling. It’s not like it’s anything new to you, and yet you miss it. You do something you almost never do in that situation, and you take a step back. You glance up from his lips, shoot him a smile, and get up from the couch.

“It’s getting late,” you comment. “I really need to go home.”

Jin is on his feet immediately.

“I’ll walk you back,” he says, concern flashing in his eyes.

“I’m good. It’s not that far and I need to clear my head after, you know, everything today.” You’re not sure you know, but Jin nods, though a little reluctantly.

“You’re sure?”

“Very.”

He sighs. He doesn’t seem too pleased about it, but you guess he doesn’t want to insist too much, either.

“Give me your phone,” he says, and when you hand it to him, he types his number in, pouting as he explains himself to you. “Text me when you get home, alright? Otherwise I’ll just worry all night, because everyone is so unreasonable, and just wants me to lose sleep, and—”

You take your phone back from him with a laugh.

“I’ll text you,” you promise, briefly putting your hand over his. That feels— normal, you decide. It’s not like your hands have never brushed in the months since you’ve started frequenting the bakery. It just feels fine, and whatever there was before could just be a false alert. But then Jin looks into your eyes, and the feeling comes back.

“You better.”

You practically flee the bakery. You’re trying to make sense of the whole thing in your head, and it doesn’t go over great. You let Jin know you got home safe, and then do your best to push the whole thing out of your mind when you go to bed. You refuse to think about it too much. Not because you don’t understand what’s going on, but because somewhere, deep down, you do. This isn’t— this isn’t something you do. You fall hard and fast, that’s— that’s your thing.

Sometimes it’s nice, others it’s disappointing, but most importantly, it means that when the relationship is over, your life just goes back to what it was before. It you ever had feelings for a friend, someone you’re so used to having around… You’re sure it would truly break your heart.

July 15th

Summer is horribly hot this year. Fortunately for you, your favorite bakery has started serving ice cream. There is air conditioning in the store, but with the door constantly opening and closing, gusts of hot air regularly reach even you. No one seems too happy with the situation, with Jungkook seeming to slowly come apart under the temperature. Even Namjoon has abandoned ship, leaving much earlier than usual today. He waved at you when he got out, and you waved back.

Who knew, maybe the two of you would actually talk next time.

Jin uses a lull in the otherwise busy afternoon to drop at your table, and you smile to him. You haven’t really gone through anything like that night ever since, and you decided it was just a one time thing. You were tired from the work, and you were touch-starved, and, surely, there was nothing there, other than you gaining a new friend.

Yup. Nothing to see at all. Even when he’s sitting next to you, trying to fan himself with one of the bakery’s menus, head thrown back in a way that makes his Adam’s apple even more prominent.

You never thought yourself as someone who particularly enjoyed necks, but it seems you were wrong.

Not that that has anything to do with feelings, of course. Jin’s just hot. You already knew that.

“Hey, (Y/N), what’s your favorite cake?” he asks you.

It takes you just a second too long to answer.

“Uh. Anything that has strawberries in it, I guess,” you say, and he nods, but he’s also frowning. “Are my tastes not up to par?” you grin, raising an eyebrow.

“Clearly, your tastes are great, since you keep coming back,” Jin answers immediately, with the confidence that you now know to be mostly facade, but that you’ve still come to love. “No, strawberries are good. I can work with strawberries.”

“I actually wanted strawberries the first time I came here,” you reminisce. “But there weren’t any left because that was after Valentine’s Day.”

Jin clicks his tongue in disgust.

“Worst day of the year,” he says, “though February is a bad month for strawberries in general.”

“You don’t like Valentine’s Day?” you ask, and if you were a dog, your ears would be perking up with interest. You’ve always loved to hear people’s opinion on the holiday, because it’s so divisive. “You guys must make quite a lot of money…”

“I’m wounded that you’d think money is all I care about,” Jin sighs dramatically, though the glint in his eyes lets you know that he’s only joking. “It’s just very busy,” he admits. “It’s a lot of work to prepare, people place a lot of orders, and we basically don’t get a minute to ourselves. Not to mention— do you know what it does to a person to know that the food he lovingly prepared is probably going to be eaten off someone’s body?”

You can’t help it. You burst out laughing. When you do, you’re completely unaware of the fond way Jin looks at you. He’s always liked that he made you laugh, from the very first day you came into the store.

“No,” you admit, “no, I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well I have to.”

“I’m so sorry for you.”

“I’m sorry for me too.”

Then Jimin practically waltzes in and energetically greets everyone in the room, including you, and Jin gets up to serve him and Taehyung because Jungkook looks like he’s about to collapse, and you don’t give much more thought to the conversation.

But Jin remembers that strawberry cake is your favorite.

September 18th

Somehow, you get roped into helping Jin with his grocery shopping. He sat at your table and complained about how Jungkook wouldn’t be able to help him that week, and you voiced your sympathy, and next thing you knew, you were in the supermarket with him.

Well, maybe you’d offered your help. Maybe you just didn’t want to admit it because of that time he’d told you you were too kind.

“You know, I thought I’d be helping you for the bakery,” you comment, “but this mostly looks like it’s for you.”

“I am the bakery,” Jin replies, and you grin.

You watch him as he carefully crosses item after item of his detailed list. You expected him to be messy, to grab whatever he wanted, but he is as meticulous with this as he is with the baking he does for his customers. Which is— strangely endearing to you.

“Most of what we get comes in bigger orders,” he explains to you once he’s done with that aisle. “Sometimes, we find ourselves missing some things…”

“Like milk.”

“It’s always the milk,” he sighs, shaking his head it brings back bad memories. “But that’s not an issue for a lot of thing, unless something very specific comes up. Like a customer wanting  a pineapple pie.”

You tilt your head as he cautiously picks pineapples. You’re not even sure how you can tell if a pineapple is ripe, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing.

“That sounds… interesting?”

“It’s going to sound very interesting when I’ll make you carry half the bags,” Jin says, and you roll your eyes. Does he think you’re going to bail on him? You would never do that.

Well. Until your eyes fall on Minho, standing there, like he hasn’t simply vanished from your life six months ago. There’s a woman with him, and she’s laughing at something he said. You suppose she was the one he met — or maybe another one, there’s no way of knowing, really. But they look like they’re getting along well, and it— it makes you happy. You think.

“Huh,” you mumble. “That’s my ex over there.”

Jin looks up so fast you worry he might hurt his neck.

“What? Where? Do you need me to insult him?”

You’re about to say no when Minho turns around, and his eyes meet yours. He gives you a hesitant nod, and you think that’s going to be it, but then, after a few seconds of obvious inner debate, he makes his way towards you.

Great.

“(Y/N),” he says, a bit awkwardly. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too,” you reply softly and, much to your surprise, you mean it. You did your best not to let yourself miss him, but you suppose you did. It’s been a long time since you last saw him.

“This is, erm, this is Lisa,” he says, gesturing at the woman, who gives you a polite smile. It looks like she knows exactly who you are, and you suppose it must be uncomfortable for her as well. “My girlfriend.”

Yeah. You’d pieced that together. But then, Minho’s eyes move to Jin, and he raises an eyebrow, and you realize what he’s thinking about.

“Oh, this is—”

“Seokjin,” Jin says, extending his hand. “I’m her boyfriend.”

You’re sure that anyone looking at you can tell from your expression, from the way your mouth falls open and from the incredulous way you shake your head that that’s not true, but both Minho and Lisa are looking at him, and miss it completely. When Jin looks at you, he gives an imperceptible nod and puts an arm around your shoulders.

The warmth is— kind of nice. Maybe it even sends a shiver down your back, but you’re sure it’s because you’re still quite touch-starved those days.

Nothing else here.

“That’s great,” Minho says, and he looks relieved. “It’s great that you’re with someone.”

“Isn’t it?” Jin says before you can think of anything to answer to that. “She walked into my bakery and I just knew she would become my favorite client. Basically love at first sight.”

“Love at first sale, maybe,” you can’t help but answer, even if you know, reasonably, that you shouldn’t entertain him. You’re pretty sure he’s trying to show off in front of the two, which is really unnecessary, but you appreciate the gesture. “Jin makes the best cakes you can find in the whole town,” you tell them. Not to show off, but because it’s true. There are a lot of good things you could tell them about Jin, come to think of it. A lot.

“Maybe we should try it then,” Lisa says, smiling. She looks more relaxed than earlier, though you suppose she could also just be trying to get out of this conversation.

“Oh, it’s a must,” you reply sincerely, and Jin laughs, pulling you against his chest a little.

“She’s too nice,” he says, and you immediately protest that no, definitely not, he does, and you’re sure you look like a very annoying couple, because it doesn’t take long for Minho to clear his throat.

“Well, we have to go but it was— it was nice catching up with you.”

“Same,” you nod, and when he leaves, you can’t help but watch him. You don’t really feel anything right now. You were sincerely happy to see him, but it felt like running into a childhood friend you haven’t seen in a long, long time, and now have nothing in common with outside of those memories. Except it hasn’t been a life time since you last met him. Just a little over six months. Soon, he’ll just be someone you used to know.

You wish you were more upset by this. You wish there was anything that told you that what you had with him actually mattered. Instead, this vague indifference lets you know that your paths had probably diverged before the two of you even broke up. And that makes you kind of sad.

“Are you okay?” Jin asks. He has that quiet voice you’ve heard a few times now.

“I’m fine,” you nod, “but you really didn’t have to do that. I wasn’t— Minho and I aren’t— there really was no need.”

“I was happy to do it,” Jin says, and you notice how petty he sounds. “It’s always a joy to let an ex see how much better than them you’re doing.”

You laugh. You probably agree with him on that, but you’re not going to help feed his ego even more. Jungkook would probably never forgive you for it.

“I don’t think your girlfriend would like you doing that,” you observe, and Jin answers that remark with a blank stare.

“When have I ever said anything about a girlfriend?”

“Well, there was a bottle of shampoo at your place that—”

“So a guy can’t like having his hair smell like fruit, huh?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Wow, way to reinforce stereotypes, (Y/N). I expected more of you.”

He ignores your attempts at protesting and strides away from you. It takes you a few moments to catch up, because of his stupid long legs of his.

“If I had a girlfriend, I would never stop talking about her,” he lets you know while you’re catching your breath. “So don’t worry. You’ll know about it.”

“Duly noted,” you say. You maybe feel a little too happy about that new information so, to distract yourself from it, you change the subject. “So I’m your favorite customer?”

He scoffs and glances away from you, refusing to meet your eyes. He thought you hadn’t picked up on that.

“You’re a strong contestant, I guess,” he says reluctantly, and you laugh, not pushing it further.

“Anyway— Minho broke up with me a week Valentine’s Day,” you say. You’re not sure why. Maybe to let Jin that you’ve been over it for a long time.

“That’s rude,” Jin comments with a disapproving click of his tongue.

“He probably wanted to spend it with her,” you shrug. “When we got together, he told me he didn’t cheat. He left. So— I guess that was it.” Then there’s a laugh, and you can’t tell if it sounds bitter. You hope not. “I’ve actually never had a boyfriend for Valentine’s Day,” you confess.

The silence that follows is unusual for Jin. When you glance up at him, he’s just looking at you, and for a second, you think it’s pity you find in his eyes. But, from the way he frowns, you realize it could just be genuine sympathy.

“Would it make you feel better if I tell you it’s a terrible holiday that’s just there to sell things?”

“I already know that,” you chuckle, even if it does make you feel a little better. “I just want someone to buy me roses once, you know?”

Jin doesn’t answer, just looks at you, and something about the intensity of his stare makes you feel— feel things you told yourself you weren’t feeling for him. But then, you just ran into Minho, didn’t you? It makes sense that you would be all over the place emotionally.

“Anything more on your list?” you ask, and Jin blinks.

“Yeah, that way,” he says, sounding a bit off, but then he adds “More things for you to carry,” and you decide to brush it off.

But he stores the information in his mind. Strawberry cake and roses. Duly noted.

October 31st

“So do you actually like Halloween, or is this just another shameless cash grab for you?” you ask Jin when he brings you your tea.

You have to admit, him and Jungkook truly went all out for this. They’ve decorated the shop with pumpkins, and there are fake bats hanging from the ceiling. There are also themed cakes and chocolates shaped like spiders. It’s spooky, and it delights the kids that come in and ask the parents about it. You definitely appreciate the atmosphere it creates — and you also appreciate the way Hoseok jumped when he walked in front of the witch that lets out an evil laugh when someone passes the movement detector.

“Halloween is not terrible, I guess,” Jin says, like him and Jungkook don’t take a full day out of their schedules and bring in some friends just to decorate the shop. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” you answer sincerely, and Jin’s expression softens.

“Hey, we’re having a small get-together after closing tonight,” he tells you spontaneously. “Wanna join us?”

You take a second to answer. It’s not like you don’t want to — far from that — but there’s that voice inside of you that tells you that you’ve been weird around Jin, and you don’t want to be weird around him. You want to keep things as they are, because he’s such a wonderful friend to have around. You’d hate yourself if you changed that.

But if the point is to have him around, then surely, telling him no right now would be counter-productive, right?

“Absolutely,” you say with a smile, and Jin beams, and you feel all warmed-up inside.

You already know that you’ll have fun, and you’ll laugh, and he’ll insist on walking you him and you’ll tell him no. And it sounds exactly like how you want to spend your evening.

January 10th

You first meet Sungho on New Year’s Eve, at Hana’s party. The two of you click immediately, and you enjoy the familiar rush of feelings, the waiting for a text after you’ve given him your number, the anticipation of knowing where this is all leading, if everything goes right. After a week, you run into him at the bakery, or, well, you’re sitting in your usual corner when he comes in. He doesn’t see you immediately, but when he looks in your direction after a little while, you happily wave him over.

“You don’t usually come here, do you?” you ask him. “I would have seen you by now if you were a regular.”

He chuckles, flashes you a bright smile, and you smile in return. Sungho has a nice smile. He doesn’t laugh easily, though, from what you saw when you met him, which is a shame, but definitely not a dealbreaker, even if you love to hear people laugh.

“No, I saw you were talking about this place a lot online, and I figured I would come and check it out. Of course, seeing you here is the best part,” he adds with a wink, and he leans towards you a little. The obvious flirtation sends a wave of heat through your chest, and you don’t hesitate to lean forward as well, resting your elbow on the table and putting your chin on your hand. You enjoy the closeness, the proximity, the chase.

You pull away when Jin arrives with Sungho’s order.

“This looks great,” Sungho comments. “I’m glad (Y/N) advertised you so much.”

“Well, there’s a reason she’s our favorite customer,” Jin replies, smiling, and when you meet his eyes, they’re fond and— and something else that makes it hard to breathe for a second.

But the smile fades when Sungho takes a portion of his cake with the spoon and offers it to you.

“Wanna try it?” he asks, and you do, because you know everything Jin makes will be amazing. You’re not sure you love the gesture itself — it’s kind of cute, but you’ve also just met him and it feels a bit strange — but you still giggle and take the bite.

And all Jin can do is stand there, looking at the two of you. He feels something he has felt before, and it’s that he let something he wanted pass him by. He waited too long to make a move, once again, and once again, it’s cost him something he doesn’t know how he’ll live without, and now he’ll have no choice but to figure it out.

You glance up, and he catches himself, plastering a smile on his lips.

“Enjoy yourselves!” he says, a little too loudly, and he knows, from the way you blink and the puzzled look you give him, that you’ve noticed and it’s— it’s horrible. It’s horrible that you know him that well and that you’ve seen so many facets of him and you’ve chosen someone else. You don’t ask anything, though, and he’s quick to leave.

He’s also quick to ask Jungkook to replace him in the shop, and he, very deliberately, doesn’t ask anything about how things went. Doesn’t want to know if you kissed, or worse, if you left together.

He’ll be fine. It’s not like it’s anything he hasn’t been through before.

February 5th

You feel impossibly excited when Sungho asks you out for Valentine’s Day. You gush about it to your friends, a lot, and Hana is delighted for you — and very pleased that her circles of friends are meeting like that. Jungkook sounds happy, too, though slightly more reserved, but you get the type of enthusiasm you wanted from Jimin and Taehyung.

Jin gets quiet when you let him know, though. It’s not something you haven’t seen before, but it does take you off guard, because you’ve never seen it happen while in the shop, where he’s usually on top of his game.

“Are you okay?” you ask, worried, leaning over the counter to put a hand on his arm. “You look a little under the weather these days.”

He smiles, but it lacks his usual flamboyance.

“Valentine’s Day is coming,” he tells you. “The worst day of the year.”

You laugh at that, relax, and take your hand off. You miss the way his eyes fall on the place you were just touching.

“Well, not this year, hopefully. Not this year.”

Yeah. He’s not so sure about that.

February 14th

It’s your first time, ever, having a date on Valentine’s Day, and you’re determined to do everything right. Sungho is taking you to a fancy restaurant, so you decide there is no issue in going all out. You take the day to prepare yourself, enlist Hana to do your make-up and hair, and you use the opportunity to wear a lovely bright red dress that you had been saving for a special occasion.

Hana whistles when you come out of your room after you’ve also put on half-transparent black tights.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” she says with an appreciative nod.

You glance down at your body self-consciously and try to smooth the fabric of the dress. You do think it looks pretty good, but you could be wrong. Does it show too much of your legs? Does it hug your curves too tightly?

“You think he’s going to like it?” you ask, somewhat shyly.

“He should if he knows what’s good for him,” she replies, expression turning murderous, before softening. “Just… Are you sure you want to be doing that?”

You give her a confused look.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, going out with Sungho,” she says with a vague hand gesture. “I just— I don’t know. Do you like him that much?”

It’s funny. You haven’t really asked yourself that question. You’ve just been going through all the usual motions — the flirting, the dates, and, inevitably, the start of the relationship, which is probably for tonight.

“We— we get along fine,” you answer. “I like him.”

You leave the words ‘well enough’ out of that sentence. You like Sungho well enough. But then, that’s always been good enough for you, so why should it change now?

Hana seems to think about it for a little while, then shrugs.

“Okay then. Do you need my help to walk to the cab? I would not trust these things.”

She’s pointing at your heels, and it makes you laugh. These aren’t even that high, and they’re pretty stable. You don’t think you’ll have any trouble walking in them. Hana wouldn’t abandon her flat shoes to save her life, though, so you suppose the question was to be expected.

“You can just tell me if you want to hold my arm,” you tease, and it seems to take her by surprise, before she chuckles.

“You’ve gotten a little too good at that. I don’t know if I like it.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid Jin has infected me.”

That gives her pause, and she shoots you a weird look, but you miss it. She opens her mouth to say something, then gives up. She could be wrong, after all.

She kind of hopes she’s wrong, or that if she’s right, you’ll realize it soon enough.

The dinner is perfect. You’re dressed perfectly for the occasion, fitting right in the restaurant’s decor, Sungho complimented you when you walked in and you told him he looked great, which is true, the food is delicious, the conversation flows easily, and there are roses on the table. They’re not for you, part of the decoration, and it doesn’t look like Sungho’s gotten you any, which gives you just a little pinch of disappointment in your chest, but it’s also not a big deal. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

And you’re not happy with it.

You can’t place it, and it slowly drives you insane, as you and Sungho make your way through the meal. You try your best not to let it show, but you think he notices your increasing restlessness. You feel bad about it, because really, he hasn’t done anything wrong. You just— something’s not right.

Dammit. It’s your first time having a date on Valentine’s Day, and you can’t make it work.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Sungho says while the two of you are waiting for your desert, and you do your best to snap out of whatever is going on in your head to focus on him.

“Tell me,” you smile, though the smile is polite, rather than genuine.

He takes a deep breath and reaches over the table to take your hand. It’s far from the first time the two of you make physical contact, you’ve even kissed a few times, and it was nice, but something makes you want to recoil, in that moment. You don’t, though. Why would you? It doesn’t make sense. Nothing about you makes sense right now.

“I like you,” he says, and you find the breath knocked out of you. It’s not unpleasant, though, it’s very nice in fact, and it almost completely dissipates your previous discomfort. “And I think— you know. We haven’t said anything about being exclusive yet, so I figured I’d— ask.”

He looks pretty confident, which you thought would put you off, but it doesn’t. The answer seems obvious to you. It’s been just a little over a year since you broke up with Minho, which is a reasonable time, so your lips part to let him know that you’d be happy to—

It’s then that you remember. You remember what you told yourself after that break-up, and what you thought after the break-up before that, and the time before as well. You remember you told yourself you wouldn’t settle for less than what you really wanted. You told yourself you wanted to love and be loved. You told yourself you wanted someone who’d remember how you liked your tea.

And, just like in a movie, Jin’s face appears in your mind. You almost dismiss it, tell yourself it’s just because of the tea, until you realize it’s not. It just isn’t. You should have noticed earlier, you know that, but you’ve never been friends with someone before developing feelings for them. You’ve always told yourself you were an ‘all or nothing’ kind of person, that you were the type to know immediately if things could happen. Maybe you didn’t quite believe in love at first sight, but you’d always thought that love didn’t wait.

Apparently you were wrong.

Jin’s the one who inadvertently makes you pulse rush, when his hand brushes against you. Jin’s the one who lifts your spirits, no matter what. Jin makes you happy, makes you want to get up in the morning, has done that for months now. Jin actually knows you. Jin looks at you like you’re precious to him. Maybe that doesn’t mean love, maybe to him, it’s all just friendship, but to you, it’s much more than that. And the feeling you get is so strong, so powerful, that you understand that you need to tell him. Need to tell him now.

“I’m sorry,” you say to Sungho, who’s been waiting for an answer all this time. “I’m really sorry, I don’t think that can work out.”

His face falls, but he looks far from heartbroken.

“Oh,” he says. “Um. That’s—”

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, already getting up from your chair. You’re buzzing with excitement, with feelings. “I have to go. I’ll pay for the meal, okay?”

“No, don’t—”

“Sorry!”

You stop at the counter briefly before rushing out into the night. You feel that you know exactly where you need to be.

You get to the bakery minutes before closing time, which is exceptionally at 9 p.m. for the day. A couple is just coming out, and that leaves only Jungkook inside. There’s nothing left on display, and you know it’s been impossibly busy, which means Jin is probably in a bad mood, but you can’t wait until tomorrow. When you walk in, Jungkook looks up from behind the counter, clearly surprised by the sound of someone coming in that late, and a puzzled look settles on his face when he notices that you’re out of breath, your previously perfect make-up now looking a little worse for wear.

“Is everything alright?” he asks. He sounds worried, and any other day you would take the time to reassure him, but in that moment you’re pushed by an energy that can’t be stopped, so you just nod quickly as an answer.

“Is Jin here?”

“In the back,” he says, tilting his head in that direction, and you’re pretty sure a glint of understanding lights up in his eyes.

“Can I….?”

He nods, a grin on his lips, and now you’re sure he knows why you’re here. You don’t wait for him to tease you about it, quick to make your way past him.

You freeze the second you walk into the backroom, though. It’s not just because of Jin’s back, though that definitely has more of an effect on you than you’d like to admit — the broad shoulders, the muscular back, and inexplicably, the nape of his neck. It’s also because of the large bouquet of red roses, standing in a vase on the table next to him. Your breath catches in your throat as you look at them. They look beautiful, vibrant, their fragrance floating through the room, all the way to you.

“Who are the roses for?” you ask, making Jin jump.

Any other time, you would have been pleased to take him by surprise for once, but right now you’re hanging on his words, waiting for an answer. The air feels heavy between you, and it doesn’t help that he doesn’t answer immediately, swallowing silently as his eyes travel over your body. You had almost forgotten about the dress you were wearing, and, instead of making you feel comfortable and confident, like it had earlier, you feel naked and vulnerable under his gaze.

Finally, his eyes meet yours, mouth slightly open, and by that point your heart is hammering in your chest. You wonder if he has any idea of how you’re feeling right now. Had he noticed your feelings when even you weren’t aware of them?

“What?” he croaks, voice dry, like he’s forgotten what you said.

“The roses,” you repeat. “Who are they for?”

You need an answer. Desperately.

Jin’s eyes move to the roses, and his face falls. He turns his back to you again as he goes back to whatever he’s cleaning.

“Didn’t you have a date tonight?”

You shrug, though he can’t see it.

“I broke things off with him,” you say lightly, and you don’t miss the way his movements pause, or the way his shoulders tighten, for half a second, before he keeps moving. “Are you— are you meeting someone?”

“No,” he protests immediately. “You know I don’t believe in Valentine’s day.”

You do. You remember that. So you wait for an explanation. It takes a while, and you just wait silently behind him, suspecting that he’s waiting for you to go away. After a few minutes, though, he slams his hand on the table, still not looking at you.

“They’re for you, okay? You said you’d always wanted roses for Valentine’s Day, and I figured, maybe your stupid boyfriend didn’t know that yet, and that I could maybe just drop them off at your place, and—”

“You didn’t ask me why I broke up with him,” you interrupt him, cutting his rambling short, and he falls silent. You catch his eyes from over his shoulder. Finally, you’re feeling yourself calm down, and at the same time you’re practically shaking with anticipation. “I realized I had feelings for someone else,” you say when he still doesn’t ask, just watching you, lips tight.

“…You do?” he simply says in reply. He’s tense, guarded, and you take a careful step towards him.

“Yeah,” you nod. Your eyes aren’t leaving his, not even for a second. “He’s smart, and kind, and handsome.” You take a step for each description you give, and you can’t help but smile on the last word. But your smile doesn’t reach Jin’s lips, and he’s just looking at you like he’s expecting you to tell him someone else’s name, or to make fun of him. “And he makes me laugh,” you add quietly, as you get to him, leaning against the table. “A lot. Some have even said it was a little too much.”

“So who is he?” he asks, and you smile. It’s wild to you that you haven’t understood earlier how absolutely head over heels in love with him you are, especially right now, when you’re standing so close to him. It’s also wild that he can’t see it, because you feel as though you’re radiating with that emotion, feel that anyone should be able to tell.

“It’s you,” you breathe out. “It’s obviously you.”

Then you’re pushing yourself up against his mouth, soft and slow. One of his hands closes around your waist as he leans forward, towering over you. His eyes are shut, and you close your own, reveling in the feeling of his warm body pressed against your own. You feel his tongue darting out to brush against your lips, and they part to grant him access, eager to taste all of him and—

“Couldn’t you tell me that earlier?” Jin protests loudly, tearing himself away from you, and your eyes snap open. “I would have planned the best Valentine’s Day you’ve ever—”

You groan and cut him off with another kiss, faster and harder this time, grabbing his wrists to guide his hands to your hips. You moan in contentment into his mouth when he kisses you back and he swallows it eagerly, pressing you into the table, bodies meeting like they’ve been waiting for it for forever and you—

“I wanted to make you an amazing strawberry cake! Now I don’t have any strawberries left!”

“Jin, please,” you sigh, unable to tolerate any other interruption, “would you just shut up and kiss me?”

And, finally, he does. Holds you like he never wants to let you go, kisses you like there’s no tomorrow, and when the two of you part, he rests his forehead against yours like he can’t bear the thought of being away from you even for a second. The silent stretches, comfortable, only filled with your respirations, until someone clears their throat, and the two of you jump away from each other.

“Sorry,”Jungkook says with a shit-eating grin that tells you he’s not sorry at all, “but I was about to leave. Will the two of you be okay?”

“I’m sure we can work things out without you,” Jin says. “Goodbye!”

But Jungkook doesn’t leave right away, turning his smile to you. You would hide into Jin’s shoulder, but you feel so good you can’t be bothered right now.

“Goodbye (Y/N)!”

“Bye, Jungkook!”

“That kid, I swear,” Jin says, shaking his head, as Jungkook leaves, his laugh hanging in the air behind him for a few seconds.

“I quite like him,” you comment, fingers dancing down Jin’s neck to come trace the border of his shirt.

“Oh, you do?” There is a dangerous edge to his tone and you glance up, surprised.

“Are you jealous?” you ask. “I didn’t know you were the jealous type.”

“I’m not.”

“Because it’s not Jungkook I abandoned my date for.”

“Good that you did. I never liked him.”

“So you are jealous.”

Seokjin mumbles something incomprehensible and you laugh and hug him tighter. And when he asks you if you want to come upstairs, even if he doesn’t have the perfect Valentine’s Day dinner planned, even if really, all he has to offer is himself, you tell him yes, of course.

Because he’s all you want right now.

It turns out, you wouldn’t have eaten the dinner anyway. The second the door closes behind you, you’re pulling him down against you for a kiss, and he doesn’t oppose any resistance, doesn’t protest like he did before, just lets out a moan into your mouth. He’s just as eager as you are to get rid of that tight dress.

“Careful with the tights,” you warn when his hands start roaming your thighs.

“Take them off then,” he groans.

You press a few kisses against his mouth, feeling delighted with the way he restrains himself, hands turning into fists against your hips as he stops himself from tearing off your closes. Finally, you pull away with a giggle. His eyes are wide and dark with desire, and they only get wider when you playfully slide off your dress’ strap.

“Don’t tease,” he says, practically growls, but you decide that you will. You guide him to his couch, push him down onto it, and evade him when he tries to pull you down with him, slipping out of his grasp. You stand just out of his reach, but more than close enough to be tantalizing, and you see in his eyes that it’s working just fine.

You take the time of making a show out of sliding down your dress down your body, letting it pool down at your feet before stepping out of it. The heels are the next thing to go, and then, finally, the offending tights. The second you’re out of those, Seokjin pounces, grabbing your hips and pulling you onto the couch.

“If you want us to move this to the bedroom, now would be a good time to say it,” he says as he kisses your neck, hands traveling up and down your body, large and calloused, but kind and gentle.

“I’m good here,” you say, arching your back to grant him better access — and to roll your hips against him. “Are you good here?”

You feel his breath catching in his throat when you move, as well as something hard pressing against you in his pants, and his voice is slightly choked when he answers.

“Yeah. This would happen at some point anyway.”

You laugh. You can’t wait to try this in all the places the two of you can think of in his apartment.

“Then let’s get to it, shall we?”

Jin doesn’t seem to have anything to answer to that, especially not when you hook your leg around his, using your heel to push him down on top of you. He’s still dressed, but you plan on rectifying that. You stop kissing him to work on the buttons of his shirt, and he lets you, breathing heavily. Your fingers explore the skin you reveal in the process, and you’re delighted when he shivers as you find out where his sensitive spots are — right under his collarbone, his nipples, his ribs.

Finally, the shirt joins your dress on the floor. You take a second to marvel at his body. His shoulders are even nicer to look at like that, you decide. You capture Jin’s mouth again, this time with your hands fisting his hair. You’re feeling yourself growing more impatient, wetter, and while your panties are the only thing still covering your body, he’s still wearing pants — which is far too much clothing.

“I want you so bad,” you whisper to him, and his breath catches in his throat.

“Fuck. You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”

That makes you grin, and you arch your back into him again, pressing yourself against his now rock hard crotch.

“Oh, I think I do,” you reply devilishly, and all Jin does is to bury his head into your neck. His fast breathing tickles your skin, and you love it. You love discovering that you have that effect on him, love how you can make him come undone. Another night, you might really, really enjoy teasing him about it, but you have something else on your mind tonight.

Your hand travels down his body to palm him through his pants, and he groans, bucking his hips against it involuntarily.

“Let me take care of that?” you offer, and he pulls away to raise an eyebrow at you.

Wordlessly, you guide him so he’s sitting on the couch, and then, without breaking eye contact, you drop to your knees. You watch as his eyes go wide and he swallows loudly. You don’t give him time to regain his composure, gently nudging his legs apart so you can place yourself there comfortably.

“Fuck,” he repeats as your hands travel over his thighs before unbuckling his belt.

He lifts himself off the couch so you can slide down his pants and underwear, and that leaves him in his naked glory. And boy, is he glorious, dick standing erect and proud, precum already dripping from the tip. You suppose it’s been a while since the last time he had any sort of intercourse, and so you decide that you will do everything that’s in your power to make it worth his while.

You do your best to maintain eye contact with him while you lean forward to gently take in the head of his cock, wrapping your red lips around it as your hand grips the base.

“Ah,” he gasps, and you wonder if he gets loud during sex.

You hope he does.

You mostly tease him at first, running your tongue over the tip, and you feel his hand grabbing the back of your head gently. He doesn’t try to control your pace or to push you down. He seems to just be anchoring himself as he lets you do whatever you want. Glancing up, you see that he’s thrown his head back and his mouth is hanging open, letting out quiet moans that sometimes get high-pitched.

For some reason, the sight of his exposed throat turns you on impossibly. You slide a hand down your body to try to get some relief as well, and you moan loudly when your fingers finally find your clit. The vibrations have Jin push his hips up as his hands tighten on you. A second later, his eyes snap open.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s fine,” you reassure him, “I don’t mind but— Do you have a condom somewhere?”

He hesitates, then reaches for the coffee table. He opens the drawer, rummages through it quickly, and finds what he’s looking for.

“Taehyung said it was good to have them all over the house, just in case,” he feels obligated to explain to you, even while he struggles to open it and to put it on.

Well, you owe Taehyung one, you decide, but now really is not the time to discuss that, so you pull him down for quick kiss before he can lose himself in his ramble.

“Want you now,” you tell him, and it sounds like an order.

“Yes ma’am,” he mumbles, pulling you back up onto the couch.

Your panties are soon gone, and he spreads your legs open with utmost care. Even if you’re pretty sure he could just slide right in, with how wet you are, he pushes a long finger inside you, then another.

“You’re so wet for me,” he marvels. “So wet, and I haven’t even touched you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself too much yet,” you moan. “There’s still work to be done here.”

His eyes are full of love when he looks at you, taking in your body, now completely naked and offered. Just for him.

“Oh, I’ll do it. Don’t you worry about that.”

You’re about to call him out for his cockiness when he lines his cock with your entrance, tip rubbing against your folds, and you close your mouth instead, wisely choosing not to provoke him when he could so easily make you pay for it by making you wait. Except it seems he’s just as impatient as you, because he pushes himself inside you without pause.

You moan and shift to accommodate the stretch, and Seokjin goes still on top of you.

“Are you okay?” he asks. You’re satisfied with the strain in his voice, like knowing you’re not the only one to be so affected here.

“Hmm,” you hum. “Can you— move? A little?”

He pulls out a little, experimentally, and you moan louder than before. It takes you a few minutes to figure out the pace, as your hips keep moving, desperately searching for more friction, but they’re not unpleasant, filled with kisses, sweet nothings and the feeling of his warm skin against yours. In those moments, you feel like you’re discovering him all over again, and you find yourself enjoying that more than you can say.

Finally, you find yourselves, and the sound of skin against skin fills the room, along with your loud, high-pitches moans, and Seokjin’s — softer, quieter, but definitely there. You meet each of his thrusts, with one hand between the two of you to rub against your clit. When you first clench around him, he finally lets out a moan that’s as loud as yours.

“Fuck, fuck, fffuck,” he says, head falling against you, cheek pressed against your collarbone. “If you— If you do that again I’ll— Wait, please, wait, wanna— wanna cum with you—”

You arch your back, your nipples grazing against his chest, and force up the pace of your hips. Jin is moving incoherently, begging into your neck, and you want to give him exactly what he’s asking for. When you clench around him again, it’s with your orgasm. It’s all it takes to push him over the edge as well, but you barely feel his hips stutter into you, completely taken over by your own pleasure.

It takes you a little while to come back down from your high, and when you do, you meet his eyes. They’re soft and gentle, and, more than anything that’s happened until then, they make you melt.

“Hey,” he whispers, “you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, more than okay, in fact. You?”

“More than okay, too,” he says as a lazy smile spreads across his features.

“Good. That’s good.”

Pillow talk is not your forte.

“Hey,” Jin says, coming to rest his forehead against your shoulder.

“Hmm?”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

You chuckle.

“I think I’m in love with you too.”

“That’s good,” Jin says, but his voice sounds choked up, raspy, and you know he’s probably blushing. So you don’t add anything, just run your fingers over his scalp, the nape of his neck, down his back. Let him know you’re here, that you’ve got him, that you’re not going anywhere.

“Are you— are you staying the night?” he asks.

“Sure, unless you’re kicking me out.”

His arms tighten around you possessively.

“I would never.”

It takes a little longer before Jin manages to get the two of you off the couch to go get cleaned up, and then into bed, but of that night, there is not a second that you would call unnecessary or superfluous. Not one.

Every single one of them, every moment you spend with Jin on that first night, are essential, and you could not pick one of them to take back.

March 14th

The bell chimes happily when you walk into the shop, and even though Jin is busy with another customer, his eyes immediately find you. It’s something simple, yet it’s something you love about him. The way he always seems to find you, and the pleasant warmth that fills you without fail when you see him. You’ve been told that it was just the high of the first months of a relationship, not to get too used to it but you hope that, even if it dims, it won’t go away completely.

“Hey, Jin, your ears are turning really red. Why are your ears turning red?”

You laugh while your boyfriend turns to shoot a furious look at Yoongi. He’s sitting in your spot, in the back of the shop, and he’s looking smug. That comment of his has become a pretty common thing to hear whenever you walk in, or just when Jin and you are speaking. To be completely honest, you’re not too mad about it. Jin is good at acting like you have no effect on him, but the blush betrays him, and it’s been both cute and useful to see what actually gets to him, or bothers him sometimes.

“I’ll kick you out of my shop if you keep that up!” Jin shouts at him. “Don’t think I won’t!”

But Yoongi just chuckles into his mug, clearly not taking him seriously — and he’s probably right for that.

“So, do you know what today is?” Jin asks nonchalantly after he’s turned back to face you, gesturing for Jungkook take over with the other customer.

Your eyes widen in horror.

“Please don’t tell me you want us to celebrate our one month anniversary. I haven’t planned anything for that.”

Jin rolls his eyes.

“I would argue that our one-month anniversary is tomorrow, if we’re being precise, because that’s when we, um, really talked about it.”

He’s not wrong. It had been a pleasant thing, to wake up in his arms the morning after, to the sensation of his lips gently kissing your neck, and an even nicer thing to take your breakfast with him. You couldn’t pinpoint why exactly. It had just been what had absolutely and irrevocably sealed the  deal for you. You knew it hadn’t been a mistake. You wanted to be with him.

“Hmm, but there is still some sort of anniversary to be celebrated tonight then,” you say, leaning over the counter. “I’m sure I could prepare something for that.”

His ears and neck flush, and Yoongi has the delicacy of not pointing it out this time.

“That’s not— That’s not what I’m talking about! Today is the white day.”

You raise an eyebrow.

“That’s when boys are supposed to give chocolates back to the girls they like,” Jin elaborates.

“But I didn’t give you chocolates,” you say.

“No, but you’re still the one who— Yoongi, I swear to God— You know. You’re the one who took the first step.”

Despite his recent outburst, it’s obvious that he feels embarrassed and vulnerable in that moment. You’d kind of gathered that he really regretted not asking you out before Sungho had, but you had never thought that it was actually an issue.

“I’m really happy I did,” you tell him quietly. He’s not fond of PDA, but you still allow your fingers to brush against his. That feels discreet enough.

“I know,” he says, and there’s so much love in his eyes when he looks at you that it’s a real miracle that you don’t melt into a puddle right then and there. “But I still—” He sighs. “You’re really ruining my plans. This was meant to go over smoothly.”

“Sorry,” you apologize with a wide grin while he picks something up from behind the counter.

“There,” he mumbles, handing you the box.

You open it, genuinely curious. You feel the eyes of everyone else in the shop — Yoongi, Namjoon, Jungkook and, of course, Jin — on you, and you want to tell most of them off, but you suppose that since this is where most of your relationship development happened, they’re kind of part of the story too.

The box is filled with chocolates shaped like roses.

“I know it’s not much,” Jin is quick to say, “but I just wanted to—”

“Jin?” you interrupt him.

“Y-yeah?”

“I’m going to kiss you.”

His eyes go wide, and then he sighs, but he can’t force away the smile that’s forcefully making its way on his lips.

“Well, if you absolutely have to—”

But he doesn’t protest when you pull him over the counter to kiss him, hands gently closing over your shoulders. He even brings you back for a second, even briefer kiss, and there’s something fierce in his eyes then. He superbly ignores the cheers that come from your friends in the room.

“I have to warn you, you’re never getting rid of me now,” he says, and it’s light-hearted, but you know there’s a lot of truth behind those words.

“Good,” you simply reply. “I wouldn’t want that for the world.”

He looks like he wants to add something to that, but he chokes on the words, and he falls quiet instead. It’s just as good, really.

There are some things you don’t need words for.

Some things that can be expressed just as easily with a box full of rose-shaped chocolates.

[cursestothemoon]

Parents, Presents, and Girlfriends

Requested: yes

Hermione x fem! gryffindor! reader

Warnings: suggestive towards the end, also a steamy kiss towards the end, mentions of food

Summary: Hermione is nervous to meet her girlfriends parents and spend the Christmas holiday with them, but quickly she realizes how silly she was. That and her girlfriend was cross-eyed as a baby.

also i didn’t edit this due to pure laziness so i am sorry 

Word Count: 2301

***

“Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, meeting your parents is one thing but spending the holiday with them? What if I make a terrible first impression, then they are stuck with me for two weeks? What then?”

The way Hermione paced as she rambled made you chuckle, her eyebrows shooting up and falling down every so often.

“I think you are overthinking it, Mione. They’ll love you.” Your tone was confident.

She gave you a look asking if you were sure and you giggled as you stood up. You made your way over to her, taking her hands and bringing them to your lips. Hermione seemed to relax, her shoulders slumping, as you ran her knuckles across your lips before gently placing a few kisses on them.

“Trains leaving soon, love, I think we should get ready to go.”

Hermione nodded going to grab her bags- they had been packed since last week- and you made your way to your things, shoving in a few last minute socks and knickers before zipping it up. You grabbed Hermione by the hand, and you two walked out of your shared dorm, chatting until arriving at the train.

The train ride was spent in a compartment with Ron and Harry, both going to the Burrow for Christmas, and a plethora of sweets.

“Sixth year, can you guys believe it?” Ron asked munching on a chocolate frog leg.

Harry swallowed Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Bean, the grimace he sported was a dead giveaway that it was not a prefered flavor, before answering, “Remember when we flew the car to school?”

Ron nodded with a fond smile but it was Hermione’s voice that came out, “That was the most idiotic thing you two have ever done.”

“Oh don’t act all high and mighty now, that was when you met Y/n.” Harry teased, nudging his head in your direction.

Hermione turned crimson as she bowed her head with a small smile. Your hand found hers on the seat and gave it a squeeze.

“Yeah, you two weren’t around to make me look bad.” Hermione said, remembering the first train ride with you and how quickly you two had become best friends.

It was true, you two quickly became friends during second year, yet neither of you were able to actually identify your feelings as romantic until fourth year. Both of you had gone to the Yule Ball with a date, Hermione with Viktor Krum and you with Dean Thomas. The Ball was fun, though the jealousy spewing in both your hearts put a bit of a damper on things, fortunately the night ended with you two snogging in your dorm before any of the other girls got back. Surely they put two and two together when they got back however, lipstick smudged, dresses just slightly askew, and hair frazzled.

After the infamous night, you two had started dating. Now you had convinced her to spend Christmas holiday with you and your family, wanting your parents to meet the girl you were certain you were going to marry. Hermione had no reason to be worried, unbeknownst to her, your parents already knew all about her- perhaps a bit too much- from the countless letters you’ve written them gushing about your girlfriend.

“What if they don’t like me? Or-or, oh I don’t know! Does my hair look alright?” Hermione fumbled, hands shooting up to comb down her already neat hair- she had done it during the train ride.

“Your hair looks good, and they will like you. Try mentioning S.P.E.W.” You winked, walking out of the compartment.

Hermoine rushed after you, “Don’t leave me! I’m nervous, take my hand.”

You shook your head with a giggle, offering your hand to her as you waited for her to catch up. She took it gratefully, walking in stride with you to the now open door of the train that led to the platform 9 ¾.

The platform was buzzing with families, all bundled up for winter, greeting their children. A rush of excitement filled your being as you looked for your parents, turning to catch a glimpse of Hermione whose eyes were wide and smile, nervous.

“Y/n! Hermione! Over here!” It was your mum’s voice.

“Merlin, she knows my name.” Hermione mumbled to herself.

You chuckled, pulling Hermione by the hand to where your mum was waving at you two from a little ways down the platform. Upon reaching your mother, Hermione was pulled into a hug leaving you to gasp in feigned offence.

“I am your daughter you know?”

“And I’m your mother. Now that we’ve got titles out of the way let me greet your girlfriend.” Your mom waved you off turning to look at Hermione.

Hermione smiled, a bit overwhelmed by the aggressive hug, “It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. L/n. Merry Christmas.”

“Call me Y/m/n, and it’s even lovelier to meet you. Y/n doesn’t shut up about you in her letters, you’re featured in every single one.”

“Mum.” You groaned, cheeks starting to heat up.

Hermione laughed, the knots in her stomach finally starting to loosen. Your mum seemed to take to her quickly, leaving you to grab most of the luggage. Hermione tried to protest, offering to help but your mother initiated you had it taken care of and she wrapped an arm around your girlfriend's shoulders starting a conversation about school, you presume.

“Yeah, I’m fine, not to worry.” You grumble, finally getting the five bags you were left with off the floor and comfortable enough for you to walk with.

“Carry the bags, Y/n. Let me get to know your girlfriend, Y/n. You can handle it.” You mimicked as you three finally made it to the car, your father sitting at the wheel before catching sight of you three and jumping out.

“Girls! Sorry I wasn’t at the platform, your mum thought it best if we bombarded Hermione one parent at a time.” He smiled, grabbing the bags from your hands quickly.

He watched you drop them with a huff, “Why’d you carry ‘em all, Y/n?”

“Oh you know, just trying to impress Hermione.” You said sarcastically, making him laugh as he shoved the bags into the trunk of the vehicle.

Your dad was a muggle, as muggle as they come really. He had a modest childhood, only ever getting what he needed, wants and luxuries saved for the children who could afford them. Your mother was a pureblood witch, a Gryffindor at that, and had lived in the house just a town over from your father’s. They had been together since they were fifteen, married since they were nineteen.

The backseat of the car held you and Hermione, your mum in the passenger seat and your father driving back to the house. The radio emitted a low tune but other than that a comfortable silence filled the car. You reached your hand across the seat, grabbing Hermione’s and giving a gentle squeeze. She turned to you, a smile nearly splitting her face, and her eyes sparkling. Clearly she was having a good time, and maybe carrying the bags all that way was worth it.  

The ride home was quick, the newly fallen snow nearly blinding on the dark, paved roads. Your home coming into view causes a bubble of giddiness to rise into your belly, mum always decorated for Christmas and you could tell she went all out this year. The pathway leading up to the house had six Christmas trees, three on each side and each one sparkling with twinkling white lights and a red bow on top. The house itself was a good size, wedding present from your mother’s side, and had the same white twinkling lights wrapping around it.

“Welcome home.” You teased, grinning at Hermione.

Christmas Eve had gone without a hitch, dinner went exceptionally well. It felt as though Hermione had been a part of the family for ages, her humour, wit, and intelligence melded very well with that of your family’s. It was evident Hermione realized she had been nervous for nothing, a smile had sat gracefully on her face all night and you couldn’t be happier.

After dinner you and Hermioen had broken away from your parents- still chattering in the kitchen- and made your way to the front steps with hot chocolate cradled in each of your hands. You took a sip from your cup, the whip cream finding a nice spot to rest just at the top of your upper lip making the witch next to you let out a laugh.

“Is there something on my face?” Your tone was painfully oblivious.

She laughed again, “Nope, not at all.”

“Good, now give me a kiss, babes.”

You pucker your lips with exaggeration, leaning toward her. She laughed harder trying to lean away from her girlfriend but realized it was a losing battle so she retaliated. Hermioen grabbed your face and pulled you closer to her, only to bring her tongue out and lick a broad stripe over your mouth, collecting the whipped cream.

The shock was evident on your face as you froze for a moment before grimacing theatrically.

“I can’t believe you just licked me.” You muttered, a hand coming up to wipe your mouth.

“You were asking for it.” Hermione shrugged.

You let out a sigh before looking at her, a feigned expression of thinking drawn on your face, “I think now I deserve a proper kiss for that. Only fair.”

Hermione pretended to think for a moment also before she nodded, “You’re right, I think you do.”

She leaned over, pulling your lips to hers in a heated kiss. Her hand went to your waist, pulling at the material of your pants to bring you closer, you let out a quiet whimper at this making her slide her right hand over your backside, groping at the clothed flesh. You deepened the kiss, bringing one hand up to hold her face, the other one resting comfortable around her neck.

Hermione pulled her lips from yours with a smacking sound making you let out a breathy laugh.

“Apology accepted.”

The comment made Hermione snort, a hand coming up to shove your shoulder gently. A few whipped cream mustaches and far more than a few kisses later, both you and Hermione decided to go inside to get warmed up.

Your mother running around with blankets, your father following with pillows- though he’d rather not run- made you raise your eyebrows in curiosity.

“Mum...what are you doing?”

“Getting Hermione’s room ready.”

“Hermione’s...room...ready?” You tried to understand, really you did.

The way you said the words made your dad snort, before going to drop the pillows off in the spare room.

You turned to your mom, “I thought Hermione would be sleeping in my room...you know… with me?”

“People who date can’t sleep in the same room, that was the rule for your brother, that’s the rule for you. No matter how sweet Hermione is, I know you might try some funny business.” She said, a finger pointing at you.

Hermione laughed, knowing just how true it was before assuring, “I’m alright with staying in the spare room it’s alright.”

You groaned and stammered, not unlike a child complaining, “But- but, Hermione and I share a dorm. And! And! Even if there was any funny business, which there won’t be, don't be weird Mum, but if there was it’s not like either of us would get pregnant.”

Your dad gave a loud snort as he watched your mum try to find something to say.

“Well…”

“I mean, she’s not wrong, Y/M/N.” Your dad added, winking at you.

Your mother thought for a moment before giving in, “Alright, I suppose you’re right. But if her snoring gets too loud Hermione, you are more than welcome to switch rooms.”

You scoffed in offence, holding your hand over your heart dramatically, “I do not snore.”

The silence was deafening, and you turned to Hermione, “Don’t feed into this!”

She brushed you off with a smile before turning to your parents, “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.”

Your parents bid you two goodnight and made their way to their room, both Hermione and you walking in the direction of yours before your mum called out again.

“Remember, bright and early for presents in the morning! Goodnight!”

“Goodnight!” You and Hermione said in sync before opening the door to your room.

You walked in, Hermione following, and turned just as you heard her close and lock the door.

“Should I be worried?” You joked.

Hermione shook her head with a smirk, “Hope they won’t mind if I have you one of your presents early…” She trailed off as she walked toward you slowly.

“And to think, they thought I would be the one to start the funny business. Unbelievable…”

BONUS:

You sat on the floor in between Hermione’s legs as she sat on the couch, thumbing through a photo album your mum had so graciously given her. Your father handed her a few loose photographs, those were the really embarrassing ones that he liked to keep close, that you really wished he would’ve kept to himself.

Hermione would laugh to herself every so often making you look up from the scarf you were knitting to try and see the picture that brought out that reaction. Unfortunately, your seat was not the most fitting for such so you couldn’t catch the picture. That is until Hermione spoke up.

“You were cross-eyed as a baby. Did you know?”

Suddenly you knew the exact picture she was looking at making you groan, dropping your forehead onto her knee in embarrassment.

taglist:

@amourtentiaa

[nona-piccolo]

Obey Me you say ?? Oh HECK yeah, I’ve been thinking of a bunch of stuff ! Feel free to just respond to ones you enjoy, and I wish I had a preference of the brothers or others but that’s also really just up to you! The gender neutral pronouns are amazing, thank you !!! Now that that is out of the way, on to thoughts and questions!

How do you feel the brothers or others would react to a very blunt and honest MC? Like one that is nice as heck, but will not hesitate to tell you their actual thoughts on things- for example the constant bashing on Mammon or maybe helping Solomon out in the kitchen with friendly suggestions kinda vibe !

How do

Oh I love this one! A part of me thinks that the brothers truly need a blunt MC in their lives, especially with how they treat Mammon and such sometimes LOL Because there is no preference, I decided to only do the brothers for now. But I do feel bad, because my Asmodeus, Beel, and Belphie ones appear to be much shorter… Thank you for the request though, I really hope you enjoy the answer 💗

How the boys react to blunt MC

Characters: Lucifer, Mammon, Leviathan, Satan, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, and Belphegor

Reader: gn!reader

Warnings: none :)

Lucifer

I think it’s well known that Lucifer is not the softest guy when it comes to words.

Not only does he say whatever is on his mind, no matter how harsh it may be, but he also doesn’t care at all whose feelings he hurts in doing so. And yet there has never been anyone else to try and voice their opinions fullheartedly towards him.

So when he first begins spending time with you, truly, he was lowkey shocked at how blunt and honest you were.

Especially when it was towards him.

“Lucifer, did you just hang Mammon from the banister… again??” you ask, barging into his office without knocking. He was quite used to this however, and the demon had long since given up trying to scold you for it; it was no use, you would just keep doing it.

It’s not like he minded though. In fact, your presence made his head feel light after the many hours of paperwork he was going at.

“Yes, I did actually. Why do you ask?” he replied, glancing up to see you situated in front of his desk. You had your hands on your hips, obviously looking displeased. For a second, he thought your irritation was directed towards him.

“Why do I ask?” you replied back, no hesitation in your voice. “This is the third time this week. Mammon clearly hasn’t learned to fix his behavior after the first few times, and it’s obvious that hurting him won’t solve a thing!”

Oh… your irritation was directed towards him

Lucifer blinked up at you, his red eyes trying to read your face. No one ever had a problem with him punishing Mammon in the creative ways he could find; in fact, his younger brothers appeared to love watching Mammon suffer.

Apparently… you had not.

“Y/N, I-” Lucifer sighed, hell bent on just straight up telling you that Mammon will never learn.

“No. Stop doing it. He doesn’t deserve that.” You cut him off, the frustration still showing on your face. And before the demon could reply, you had turned around to whisk yourself out of his office. 

The only thing left in the room was him and his thoughts--- and the sound of his pen slipping from his fingers to bounce onto the desk.

Ohhh boy, Lucifer had never had someone stand up to him like that. It wasn’t even like you were trying to be mean, or be the more ‘dominant’ one… you were just saying what was on your mind. And Lucifer wasn’t blind.. He knew how much his other brothers meant to you, so for you to care so much as to voice your opinion to the very avatar of pride himself--- maybe, just maybe, he could give Mammon a break from punishments.

Even though people like to portray Lucifer as someone who is super strict and would want to be around I guess more ‘submissive’ people who would obey him, I think he would certainly not like an MC who allows people to walk all over them. You are the perfect balance between kindness and honesty, making you a trustworthy companion.

And a good ol’ honest comment could never truly hurt Lucifer’s feelings. His skin was as thick as bone, so to finally be around someone who isn’t intimidated to speak their mind around him… it’s almost relieving

I guess you could even say he finds it attractive….

Mammon

Mammon had always enjoyed spending time with you

From the moment he met you, you had always given off a fun and compassionate aura, and so the demon was ecstatic to finally have a partner-in-crime!

Ehhhh… it wasn’t like that though

Although you found humor and joy in going along with his harmless schemes, there were some where you put your foot down without a grain of hesitation.

When you first voiced your opinion on how bad of an idea it was to try and snap a picture of Lucifer when he was sleeping, he instantly thought you were a debby downer with a goody-goody type of attitude. Mammon had groaned out in frustration as if he was a 3-year-old child.

“Oh come on! It’ll be fun! It’s not like Lucifer will even see ya coming,” he responded, pulling out his phone to text Satan and Asmodeus his plans.

You had stared at him after that for a solid minute, your arms crossed and your eyebrows furrowed as if you were thinking. It wouldn’t take a genius to recognize how bad of an idea that was.

“Mammon, you’ll probably be punished again. Respect Lucifer’s privacy please. Besides, I think it’ll be more fun if we watched a movie tonight! What do you say we rewatch the TSL series together?” you had brought up an alternate solution to keep him out of Lucifer’s wrath, hands folded together and eyes wide as you hoped he would agree and listen to you. Mammon was just confused though, looking at you as if you were crazy.

You’d rather watch that series all over again instead of trying to cause trouble for Lucifer??

Ugh… but look at your expecting face… he couldn’t just let you down.

Surprisingly, and begrudgingly though, he had agreed.

And guess who wasn’t thrown from the banister that night?? Mammon.

Your honesty doesn’t just stop there though.

As the family punching bag, Mammon was so used to taking the hits for his stupidity and then moving on. He never fought back. So when you decided to voice out how ridiculous it was that he was being called “stupid” and how ironic it was that Asmodeus was calling Mammon an “attention-seeker” or that Satan was referring to Mammon as an “asshole”, he was whole-heartedly surprised. 

Apparently so were his other brothers.

Everyone just sort of sat there in silence as you shot comments back at them, scolding them for treating Mammon like he was dirt. It wasn’t just one instance either; Every. Single. Time. You told them to knock it off.

And just like that, the harsh insults towards Mammon began to disappear, especially whenever you were around.

The avatar of greed never had anyone to stand up for him in the ways that you had. And he feels his heart swell up with warmth as you berate Lucifer of all people for hanging Mammon upside; the fall causing his sunglasses to slip and break, much to his disappointment.

Mammon made it a goal to always be near you when he voiced his opinion around others; because not only would you acknowledge what he said, but you also made sure the others wouldn’t shoot him down for simply being himself

It was like he could breathe when he was around you. Like every single thing he said wasn’t nitpicked apart and thrown away as a stupid thing. You were different. You told him what was wrong and gave him constructive criticism.

BUT-- that honestly doesn’t protect him from himself

No one is safe from your blunt persona, not even Mammon.

I think this is what he truly needs in his life though; because I believe honesty and bluntness comes from a place of love and comfort. You are blunt because you want Mammon to be the best that he can be, you are blunt because you want to see Mammon succeed, you are blunt because you care about him.

Every honest thing you say about him is to protect him.

So whenever Mammon sneaks into Leviathan’s room at night for a limited edition figurine, or slips down Diavolo’s corridors to try and snatch a vintage portrait that could make him some potential money… he always pauses to think of your reaction to his late night greedy urges. So that when he hesitantly puts down the portrait, he can sleep comfortably knowing that you’d be proud of him.

Leviathan

To be honest… I think it would make him very nervous when he observed that you were an honest person

Even though his brothers are equally as harsh to him-- for example, they don’t hesitate to call him a nerd, or a weeb and otaku-- he doesn’t seem to mind it anyways, since Leviathan has fully absorbed and accepted his otaku persona.

But this situation is a bit different… because even though Leviathan is used to his brothers being honest with him, it’s a whole different thing when Y/N does it.

Someone out of his family circle telling him that he’s a weirdo??

Yikes, he doesn’t think his heart could handle that.

So to cope he’ll at first just stay in his room… far away from you… so he could get to his usual activities.

He is already so used to being locked up in his room away from prying eyes and others’ opinions, so as soon as he takes notice of your blunt tendencies (especially when you had first voiced your thoughts to Lucifer), Leviathan shies away from being close to a normie like you. Besides, he doesn’t even need to leave, right? He has an emergency built stash of food for when he needs to eat, and he could just do school work on his own computer.

He has this whole imaginary field of comfort that he had built up for years and years; a room full of figures and merchandise-- his own personal utopia.

Leviathan doesn’t want you to judge him; he doesn’t want you to think that he’s weird or a loser. His poor introverted otaku heart couldn’t handle it

Clearly, he didn’t understand you at all...

That doesn’t stop you from hanging around him either. You insist he shouldn’t have to wait up all night alone for tickets on Zaramela’s new worldwide tour, and you had dragged Mammon along with you to give Leviathan some company.

He felt cornered, deciding to let you in to stay up late with him. And while Mammon had fallen asleep (much to Levi’s anxiety), he was left to try and entertain you to the best of his ability.

Leviathan hesitantly hopped onto his gaming console, turning on a classic favorite of his. It was simple, it was easy, and he was very familiar with it, especially considering he had played it and completed it over 25 times.

Perhaps his movements will be more shaky and unsure, however. When you sat down to watch him play his video games, he may mess up more often, to his dismay. Your distance to him was decent enough, and you couldn’t help but smile as you watched him begin to get absorbed into the game.

“You know, you’re very good at the game…” you mutter, looking down at his fingers flying across the controller. You wonder for a moment how Leviathan can even stare at the bright screen for so long without any permanent eye damage.

Apparently he took your comment as a sarcastic one, lightly scoffing. “Okay I get it… we can do something else… like uhh..” his eyes flitted down to a random CD he had discarded on his floor a while ago. “We could watch The Girl Whose Grandparents Travelled Back in Time to Tell Her She Was a Princess,” he casually brought up airily; already in the process of turning off his video game. He reached over to grab the CD, realizing too late that this was one of the animes he didn’t really like...

You were a bit confused at the offer though. “Um no thanks. It’s a total rip off of The Girl Whose Parents Time Travelled To the Past to Tell Her She Was a Princess.” Your response was automatic, looking at the CD as if you were bored.

Leviathan paused. “What?! Y-You noticed that too??” he questioned, tossing the CD back onto the ground where it originally was. “Finally someone who understands!! The heroine was almost a complete carbon copy, I can’t believe the studio got away with that!”

You nodded your head, a serious expression on your face. “What a let down. Besides, the original had a better soundtrack 100%.”

Leviathan almost jumped on you with excitement.

Apparently not even Leviathan knew how harsh of a critic he himself was. All that harsh judgement he does on animes and video games… Perhaps you being just as blunt would be new to him. You were somehow both one in the same.

All in all, Leviathan didn’t understand how much of a blessing having an honest person in his life could be. Especially as someone who doesn’t judge; your honesty never crossed the line into personal territory. 

Instead, you gave him an opportunity to gain feedback on animes that you two binge watch together

And for the first time in forever, Leviathan felt like he had someone to indulge in.

Satan

He really really enjoys this

Satan pegs me as the type of guy that would find humor in hearing your honest opinions--- and you notice that whenever you speak your mind towards Lucifer, you can briefly hear a quiet chuckle escaping Satan’s lips.

Of course, as mature as Satan is, it’s not that he actually finds what you say humorous; he just never thought he’d see the day where some mortal human would stand up to a group of demons as intimidating as they could be.

You remind him of himself in some ways… both of you unafraid to speak your minds and both of you able to stand up for what you truly believe in.

And because of this, he registers the fact that instead of going to Solomon or Asmodeus for opinions on his books or feedback for his many essays, he goes to you.

Especially when Satan needs proper and honest feedback from someone who wouldn’t sugarcoat it. And unlike Leviathan, Satan relishes in some proper assessments.

Satan feels more drawn to you than the rest of his brothers, coming up to you for some of his more diabolical actions--- like the many pranks he kept under his sleeve for Lucifer

“Do you think Lucifer will see this one coming?” he asked you casually, sliding you a piece of paper containing a scribbled down--- yet well thought-out and detailed scheme to cause trouble yet again.

You quirk up an eyebrow, glancing away from your phone and down towards the sheet of paper. With a small sigh, you decided to give in and at least entertain the idea. He just didn’t give up, huh?

“Hmmm… didn’t you try a plan like this similar to before?” you replied, eyes raking through the pencil marks.

“Have I?” he mumbled, leaning in to feign involvement. “Yes,” you answered, dropping the paper and acting like you didn’t need to see any more.

“And it didn’t work that time. I don’t think it’ll work this time either Satan. Sorry…”

“Don’t be sorry,” he grinned.

It’s not like it was just Satan who enjoyed your presence; you would grow increasingly more and more comfortable about voicing your opinions around him. There’s only one thing better than a straightforward honest person--- and that is someone who can actually appreciate the honesty

After you recognized that Satan truly does not get bothered by whatever is on the tip of your tongue, things only got better.

I can imagine late nights where you and Satan would stay up until your eyelids became like lead and you couldn’t continue without sleep. Those nights were filled with honesty and intelligence. He thought you had a beautiful mind. He wanted to hear every opinion that popped up in your head

Asmodeus

Hmmm… Asmodeus is a bit trickier. 

As an outward and bubbly extrovert, Asmodeus was bound to hear all types of opinions from all types of different people. And judging by his insane amount of confidence, he doesn’t let any of that negative energy affect him (He says it’s bad for his skin).

It’s not like you’d say anything mean to him to begin with, especially purposefully--- but I feel everyone takes criticism differently, and some take it to heart more than others

Considering you don’t fall for Asmodeus’s mind-controlling charm, your honest and blunt nature just adds the cherry to the cake on what kind of person you are. This just makes you more natural and pleasant to be around.

So instead, he makes his use of it, making sure to drag you along with every one of his shopping sprees around town.

You wouldn’t suck up to him, or brush off his hyper enthusiasm by simply saying ‘yes’ to everything--- much like his brothers do to him

“Y/N, Y/N, do you think this color will look good on me??” Asmodeus excitedly asks, holding up a beige scarf to his neck. Both of you couldn’t care less about the wandering eyes that followed trailed towards the loud demon of lust. “I think this color looks good on me, but definitely not with the outfit I’m wearing currently.”

You smile at his animated gestures, nodding your head in agreement. 

“I do think the color suits you, but didn’t you get a beige outfit a week ago? Maybe a cream color will look better,” you mention, shifting through the scarves on the rack.

Asmodeus pauses to pose in the mirror that was conveniently placed on the store wall. “You could be right~ I heard cream is more in style right now anyways. Thank you darling 💗.” 

Beelzebub

Beelzebub doesn’t even notice you’re more blunt and honest; like, he doesn’t isolate that as your special quality

Instead, he just thinks that that is how you were as a person.

Honestly, it’s quite cute.

Whenever he eats off of the plates of others, or realizes that he just vacuumed down the cookies that you were supposed to deliver to Luke, you don’t hesitate to voice your disapproval. 

“Beel, please don’t eat other people’s food. It’s not nice,” you reprimand gently, noticing that no other brother on the table was going to say anything to reprimand him.

He quietly gulps down the rest of the food that he had finished chewing in time. “Oh… sorry,” Beel mumbled, wiping the remaining crumbs of the cookies that he knew you worked on for Luke.

He didn’t even realize he reached over to take the food.. One moment his stomach grumbled hungrily, and then the next moment he smelled the cookies you had spent all morning baking.

Whenever he ate his brothers’ food, they would always sigh and complain to Lucifer about it---which in turn caused Lucifer to tell them to just grab some more.

He really really didn’t mean it…

You sighed quietly, grabbing a napkin off of the table to aid in ridding the crumbs all over his shirt. “It’s okay Beel. Try not to do it again, kay?” It looks like you needed to throw together another batch of cookies in order to get them delivered to Luke before it got too late.

You glanced behind you, watching as Beel followed you to the kitchen again. The redhead noticed your questioning glance, and he only grinned in reply.

“I’m going to help you make more. It’s the least I can do…” he said.

The gesture must have made you happy, because he could see you return the grin instantly.

Beelzebub also happens to be lowkey blunt in his own way, because while he may hold back in speaking a lot of the time, much of what he does say (besides things food-related) is actually quite honest. He isn’t afraid to tell people what he thinks about them, but on a much lower scale than you.

I think this mixture of two similar people is wonderful--- 

Remember how I said some people take honesty and criticism to heart more than others?? Well… Beel takes to heart what you say and attempts to fix anything he can within his power.

Belphegor

Ha ha ha… ahhh Belphegor. Okay correct me if I’m wrong, but he’d totally be the type to purposefully do things that would make you snap at him or cause you to be more blunt.

He always knew you were kind-- I mean, you were the one to help get him out of the miserable attic. You were also the one willing to deal with Mammon, so… ya know.

But his level of respect for you rose when the demon took note that you were no welcome mat. 

No one could step all over you, and for a human, that was damn impressive to him.

For example, the first time he had fallen asleep in a weird position in front of you was when you, Beel, and Belphie decided it would be fun to bake some muffins for everyone. He was assigned the role of mixing together the mix and well… he fell asleep.

While standing…

You quickly snapped him out of it, voicing your opinion on how it was not the time to be sleeping--- especially if these muffins were to be done before dinner

He liked getting your attention in that way though

Belphegor was another demon with thick skin, and yet another demon who also happens to be blunt and honest (probably one the most in the family)

“You look like shit,” he mumbled into his pillow, watching you trudge into the room tiredly. You had dark under eye circles, probably due to the lack of sleep you had within the past two days, and your hair was unkempt. The strands thrown about your head like a cyclone just hit you. Belphegor had heard that you were taking extra magic lessons with Satan and Solomon, and he only assumed this was a result.

You grunted, flopping down onto the bed right next to him.

“Well, you don’t look too good yourself. But I guess that’s what 10 hours of sleep will do to you,” you bit back, the words were a bit slurred and muffled due to your face plant on the bed.

He chuckled lightly, scooching over to toss his blanket over you.

Belphegor would ask about your little magic experience later on; the loads of opinions you probably had would make due for an interesting listen.

[minimoxha]

Batfam Valentines Day Special

 The batfamily takes Valentine’s Day very...very seriously.

Characters: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wyane, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wyane, Y/n L/n(Batmom), Alfred Pennyworty

Warning(s): None

1,579 Words

Not edited.

(A/N I know Valentine’s Day passed but I got this idea after it so...deal with it.)

All throughout Wayne manor, everyone was preparing for the day known as Valentine’s Day. They were moving so fast it made it seem like they were competing. Probably because...they were. Why? Because today was Valentine’s Day and they all wanted to give you the best day but every one of them wanted to do different things. So when Jason first joined the family, it became a competition to see which one could give you the best time with them.

You woke up to the sweet smell of French toast, a smile Turing on your face. You knew what day it was, possibly one of your favorite days other than Christmas or your birthday of course. Damian was the first to come in your room, Laing down and cuddling with you. No matter how people saw him on the outside, he was a soft and cuddly bear on the inside. “Good morning Mother. You’ll spend time with me first, right? I am your favorite so it’s only natural I go first.” Damien Gloated, making you emit a small giggle. “Dami, I told you that it was dickies turn this year.” You said making the young boy groan in response and get ready to lift up but relaxed his body again once you started to run your hands through his hair. “Who’s cooking for me Dami?” Damien answered your question by counting to five on his fingers. Once he got to five, Jason came through the door holding a tray of food, Bruce with a card and flowers, dick holding cups and apppe juice, (Apple juice is better than orange.), and Tim holding coffee cups.

All four of the men walked into the room, Joining you and Damian on the bed, not before saying good morning to you. “Flowers? For me?” You teased, smelling the roses. “They were from me” Bruce admitted, a smirk crossing his face making Jason roll his eyes. “So who gets you first, ma?”  Jason asked. “Hm...Dickie.” You smiled at your oldest, making him mirror his expression and everyone else groan. It was sweet really, instead of spending time with their friends or significant other they wanted to give the day to you. All of you had busy schedules so these were one of the days they could spend a lot of fun time with their mommy. After everyone finished eating, dick gave you an outfit and waited outside your door for you to change. “So you know that musical you wanted to see? Well I Got tickets, the best seats!” He cheered. You squeezed from inside the room, quickly opening your door. “My outfit looks great on you.” He smiled. You were wearing High waisted black pants and a gray hoodie with no hood that was a little too big for you. 

Dick was right, they were amazing seats. The both of you were in Love with the musical and tried to keep yourselves from singing but failed, earn dirty looks from the people around you. (I didn’t make more because idk but if you want short tories on how the details went during everyones time with Y/n tell me))After you left the theater, the both of you got slushies and cinnamon rolls (Even though it was 11Am, your dentist is pissed rn) and then he returned you home and went to his brothers ti gloat and tell him how the defenitly won and had the best time with you. Next was Jason, right when you walked in he got you and took you back out. “What do you have planned fir me today, JayJay?” You asked following him after he grabbed a bag onto his motorcycle . “You can choose between a Monster Truck Rally and Paint balling Ma.” He said. “Paint-balling” Nodding, he drove off to a paint ball arena with you holding onto his back. He arrived at the place and signed in. The both of you were taken into the back where you got a run down and gear. “Dickies going to be pissed that his outfit is covered in paint.” You giggled, putting on your gear along with Jason and listening to the rules. You didn’t follow them though. The both of you DEMOLISHED every kid, adult, and teen, only getting a few paintballs on yourself. Then it came down to you and Jason. He stalked around you, trying to be be intimidating but failing with a smile. “Theres only room for one paintballer in this town” He said, faking a country accent.  

“Well then, It’ll have to be me!” You yelled, shooting three at him then ducking under a rock. He successfully dodged your attacks making the game go on for what felt like forever for the bystanders but just a couple minutes for you. It seemed like it was going to go on forever until Jason tripped on a rock and fell, giving you the chance to shoot him right in his butt. “Suck it, Jay!” You yelled, doing your victory dance in front of him. Jason smiled, he loved seeing you in this mood. With work, and watching from the batcomptr, you were either on edge or stressed out of your mind, And once you got competitive, you stayed competitive until you won. Constantly, challenging your family to games. “Ill beat you next Time, Ma’” Jason laughed, fist bumping you and standing up to sling his arm around your shoulder and walk to the changing rooms with you. (Not the same one) “Guess what we got the Replacement and Demon Spawn to do for ya.” “Hm I Don't know Jay, What.” 

“I got them to share your time and have a picnic with you.” You sighed then answered, “Jay, I’ll be surprised if there still is a picnic by the time we get there.” Jason laughed at your Joke, getting the both of you on his bike and driving to a beautiful forest. The sun was cutting through the trees who's leaves were falling off. There was an opening, where Damian had lanterns all around while the picnic blanket was in the middle of a flower bed. You got off of Jasons bike and saw through the trees, Damian and Tim arguing, on the verge of turning it into a full blown fist fight. Before things escalated, you stepped in and let Jason leave the three of you alone. “Boys, please don't fight today” With one last glare, they settled down. Damian opened the light brown basket and took your favorite dishes out. “We helped Alfred make all of your favorites, Mother. I hope you enjoy them” Tim opened the Saran Wrap. “Yeah Mom, I hope you like it.” Damian put a couple heart-shaped sandwiches on your plate and poured the drinks while Tim showed you this cool coding project he had been walking on. “So mother, isn’t this the best out of both of the trips they took you on?” Damian asked, smiling slightly after biting into a cupcake and clearly enjoying it.  “I had an Amazing Day with all of you, I won't pick favorites.” You smiled and ruffled both of the boys’ hair. They were amazing children no matter they're faults. The rest of the picnic was amazing, the both of you eating until you couldn’t eat anymore and Joking around. For the first time in a while, you saw a Huge smile on both of the boys’ face. After, Tim called Alfred and he picked the both of you and took you to get your hair done, nails done and a nice dress that they (surprisingly) agreed on. They showed up at the manor and rushed Batmom to the backyard where bruce was standing in a candlelit circle. Inside it , was a couple speakers and Bruce right in the middle. His hair was slicked back and he was wearing a nice suit that matched your dress. He raised his hand out toward you and you excitedly took it.

“May I have this dance?” He smiled, pulling you into his chest. His cologne, being all that you could smell. “you may” The both of you danced like nobody was watching, because nobody was. It wasn’t like the dances you would have at formal events, where you had to dance like professionals. No, it was your own little dance party with only the two of you. You didn’t have to worry about people watching or taking pictures. After about 5 songs, the dancing stopped and Bruce slid a ring on your finger. It was a crown with the tips and middles having diamonds inside of them. “Bruce...this is beautiful” you smiled as you looked at it. Bruce snuck his hands around your waist and put his chin on top of your head. Him being the tall man that he was, he had no problems with hugging or cuddling with you while standing. “Let’s be honest My love, I gave you the best day , yes?” He smirked. Bruce was always very cocky but you found yourself more attracted to him after each word he uttered to you. “You’ll never know, Dear” You teased making him playfully sigh. “I’m the worlds greatest detective, I already know.”

“God, I love all of you so Much” Like every year, Each one of your boys always found a way to surprise you or just make your life better. They meant the world to you and if you could keep life like this you would. This was perfect. Absolute perfection

[writerpeach]

Shutter

Fromis_9 Saerom x Male Reader

5223 words

Categories: smut, oral, model! saerom

---

Read on AFF

Read on AO3

It’s not every day that a model walked into your studio who by every definition of the word, was perfect.

Dozens of gorgeous women came by each and every week, each one more beautiful than the last and you couldn’t ask for a better job.

The elevator doors opened and the woman scheduled for your afternoon appointment stepped inside your studio on the ninth floor, and you had never seen such an attractive woman with such stunning features.

Calling her gorgeous would almost be an insult. Words could not and would not do her beauty justice, or would be enough to describe how attractive she was.

She had dark shoulder-length hair and walked with confidence in an elegant looking black and grey dress and her sexy aura filled the studio.

“Hello, I’m Saerom!” she shyly introduced herself, a small smile on her rosy red lips and you melted just by hearing her voice.

“Nice to meet you, Saerom,” you replied.

“Please take care of me,” she said and bowed politely. Her hair and makeup styled perfectly, nothing looked out of place and the smile on her face only made her look even more beautiful.

“Shall we get started, Miss Saerom?”

Saerom nodded and you directed her to the set as you still had a few things to set up beforehand. She stood against the white backdrop, eyes roaming the bright lights and other equipment spewed everywhere, tripods and lights all ensuring that each model looked as best as you could make them look.

You readied your camera and glanced at Saerom, realizing how busty she was and what a curvy deadly body her dress showed off.

“Ready when you are,” you said as you removed your lens cap, giving one final check to all your equipment hoping to somehow do justice to the actual goddess standing in front of you.

Saerom flashed her best smile as you pressed the camera shutter and took the first shot of the shoot, capturing her beauty as best as possible. Her side profile was perfect, her features flawless in a way that they had been sculpted by the gods. Her striking jawline, her cute nose, her perfectly formed lips. The ideal woman put together as if to say it won’t get better than this.

Your finger moved faster than a cheetah hunting a prey, taking hundreds of shots per minute as Saerom displayed a variety of poses and facial expressions, each one perfect in their own way.

“How am I doing?” she asked.

“You’re doing amazing. The camera loves you.”

Truer words had never come out of your mouth. Saerom behind a camera was a natural fit, her smile beaming with confidence, every pose and angle flawless as she was. After all, when you’re being paid to be beautiful for a living you’ve really made it.

“Make sure to capture my best side.”

“You don’t have a bad side,” you responded. Saerom blushed cutely.

Two hours flew by, Saerom’s experience playing a huge part and even with makeup touch-ups and additional wardrobe changes there was time to spare.

“That should be a wrap. Thank you for your hard work, Miss Saerom” you said. You never wanted to stop taking pictures of her and definitely took more than necessary, but more was always better than less.

“Can I see some?” Saerom eagerly asked.

“It’ll take some time to get them all transferred and processed if you don't mind waiting,” you said as you removed the card from your camera and slipped it inside your laptop on the nearby table.

“Not at all! I’ll wait over here,” she said as she took a seat on the nearby black leather couch.

You had taken literally thousands of pictures and it would take some time to add them all, much less edit them. Sorting quickly through a handful of different outfits and looks you picked the best ones, doing a quick edit on them before transferring them over to the large monitor next to your laptop.

You gestured for Saerom to come over and she scurried over right away. Her eyes grew wide as she looked through the handpicked batch of pictures, proud of the hard work both of you had put in and the satisfying results.

“You’re an amazing photographer,” she shyly said.

“An artist is only as good as their art,” you replied, almost regretting spewing out such a cheesy line but earning another smile out of Saerom.

“We still have some time left don’t we?” she asked. Most of your appointments were scheduled in three-hour blocks, allowing plenty of time for preparations and in case something went wrong. And something almost always went wrong.

“You are correct, Miss Saerom.”

“Perfect. Can you shoot some more of me then?”

“I’d love to.”

Saerom returned to the set, the look on her face uncertain as you went to set up your camera again.

“I don’t have any more outfits to wear,” she said, unsure of herself.

“There’s a closet in the corner with spare outfits, I don’t know your size but they should fit.”

Saerom hesitated for a moment. “That won’t be necessary.”

In a moment’s notice, Saerom acted on impulse and shedded her dress, baring her immaculate body and the incredibly sexy pair of matching lace black lingerie underneath. You weren’t expecting this moment of spontaneity and your jaw dropped.

“What?” she smirked. “You’ve shot women in lingerie before haven’t you?”

“Y-yes, but-”

“Then you won’t mind me getting more comfortable will you?”

“N-not at all-”

“Good.”

Saerom continued with a playful smile and kicked her heels off to the side, leaving her standing in the middle of the set barefoot in her underwear, the insane curves of her tight body front and center for your viewing pleasure.

Her full breasts were barely covered, showing abundant cleavage and the flimsy piece of lace did little to contain them, showing off the size of her perfect chest as if they wanted to escape from their prison. Her gorgeous legs led up to soft creamy thighs, and Saerom’s toned abs looked as delicious as the rest of her body, clearly the result of hours of work at the gym.

"Incredible," you said in awe.

"Like what you see?" Saerom asked with a cute giggle. You found yourself speechless.

"I've always wanted to be an underwear model. My company would never let me though, they love protecting my image," Saerom said sarcastically as her eyes rolled.

"You certainly have the perfect body for it."

"Thank you," Saerom said as her cheeks reddened. "I work very hard for it."

"It shows."

Saerom switched from shy and cute to sexy instantaneously as she flipped her hair seductively, running her hands through it as she lifted her arms over her head. Your camera shutter went crazy as you started shooting your newly undressed model, not wanting to waste a second.

"How do I look?" she asked as she bit her lip.

"You're very sexy, Saerom."

"Am I? How about some closeup shots then?"

Without even responding you practically ripped your heavy camera from its tripod as you detached it, closing the distance between you Saerom, taking a deep breath as you approached.

“Think of these as exclusive shots. Just for us,” Saerom said, showing off to the camera.

While the previous shoot was rather professional, Saerom was rather quiet for the majority of it, focusing on her poses and angles. Now that she was opening up in more ways than one you wanted to get to know her.

“Tell me something about yourself, Saerom.”

“What would you like to know?” she asked, pouting her lips at the camera.

“Something...interesting.”

“Interesting?” she pondered. “I share a place with eight other girls.”

“Eight? That’s insane. I can’t imagine how long the line for the bathroom is.”

“You get used to it, it becomes fun most of the time. Having time on my own like this is actually kind of weird for me now.”

“I’m exhausted just thinking about it.”

Saerom laughed and you could tell she was becoming more comfortable around you,

“It was difficult at first but I think I would be bored living by myself now,” Saerom said as she spun around on her heels and placed her hands on her hips, bending over enough to give a good look at her plump round ass as her eyes kept contact with your camera, trying to keep your pants from tightening.

“Fuck, you have a really nice ass, Saerom,” you blurted out even without thinking. She didn’t seem to mind.

“Thanks. It’s my favorite part of me,” she proudly said.

You couldn’t stop staring at Saerom’s heavenly sculpted backside, wondering how soft those cheeks felt, but you quickly tried chasing those thoughts away as you didn’t want a bulge forming in your pants in front of her.

“You’re one of the best models I’ve had the pleasure to work with,” you said, distracting yourself.

“Really? You’re just saying that to make me feel good.”

“I’m not. Most models that show up don’t give me any trouble, occasionally you’ll get a spoiled diva that shows up late and clearly doesn’t want to be here and it ruins the atmosphere of the whole shoot.”

You made sure to get closeup shots of every part of Saerom’s body, taking extra care in framing her ass perfectly before walking to the front of her sexy body and taking several shots of her wonderful breasts.

“But you walked in and this whole place lit up.”

“That’s sweet.”

“It’s the truth.”

Saerom paused. “What do you think?” Saerom asked, cupping her breasts. You felt your heart racing.

“They’re perfect.”

“How about a closer view then?” she asked. You zoomed in and aimed at her chest, but Saerom shyly smiled and aimed your camera down.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Before you could put any thought into her words Saerom reached behind her back and unclasped her bra, divesting it from her body as she exposed her sizable pale breasts, bouncing as they were freed.  

“Holy shit, Saerom.”

“How about you put that camera down and we have a little fun?”

Without having a chance to respond you got rid of your camera as Saerom’s topless body walked towards you, your eyes immediately drawn to her full round breasts and salivating over them.

“Do any of your models ever let you touch them?”

“I try to keep things professional.”

“That’s boring,” Saerom said with a seductive smirk as she grabbed your hands and guided them to her breasts, helping you squeeze them. You moaned at their softness and how they fit in your hands, the weight of her breasts, and how perfectly shaped they were made you lose your mind.

“You’re so perfect,” you said as you squeezed and groped Saerom’s tits, squeezing two perfect handfuls as her pretty pink nipples hardened against your palms as she looked into your eyes. The fabric of your pants constricted and there was no stopping it this time.

“You can touch all you want. Taste me.”

“I will,” you said hungrily as you crashed your lips against hers and wrapped your hands around her bare waist, The taste of Saerom’s cherry lips entered your mouth. You pulled her in tighter as she returned your advances, tongues dancing together as the scent of her perfume lingered in the air. You wanted Saerom, bad. You wanted to rip her panties off and fuck her against your set, forcing to pace yourself and keep yourself under control.

You broke the kiss and exchanged lustful stares, not wasting a second as you dove into her breasts, licking stripes up and down her cleavage, and brought your mouth to her tits and teased her sensitive nipples. Saerom moaned as you flicked delicate circles around each one before sucking tenderly, earning gasps and whiny moans.

Schedules be damned, you took your time with each of her breasts, giving each equal attention and not leaving your hands from her flesh, not moving on until her hard nipples were covered in your saliva.

“Mmm, fuck,” Saerom moaned, caressing your hair as you devoured and buried yourself in her tits. Playful licking turned into loud slurping, and when that wasn’t enough you nibbled on each of her swollen pink nubs, grazing on her stiff nipples in between your teeth gently as her moans grew louder and whinier.

With all of your attention on Saerom’s tits, you sucked and sucked with no intention of stopping until your lips were numb, looking up every so often to see the pleasure running through Saerom.

Meanwhile, with your mouth full of Saerom’s breasts you felt a hand move down to your crotch and squeezed as she felt you up through your pants which became painfully tight.

“I must be turning you on,” she giggled.

“You are, you really are. Fuck, you’re so hot, Saerom,” you growled.

“I could say the same to you,” she said. “I got you all worked up, didn’t I? It’s only fair I do something about it.”

Saerom stopped you in your tracks and led you over to the couch, playfully pushing you against it as you fell down and took a seat. Slowly lowering to her knees she rubbed up and down your thighs, biting her lip, watching as you removed your shirt in preparation.

“How many women have you fucked on this couch?”

“Not enough,” you smirked.

“Time to add one more to your tally then.”

With a sly grin on her pretty face, Saerom unzipped your pants, quickly yanking them with your boxers down to your ankles with your assistance. Your cock sprang free, throbbing in the cold air and Saerom’s eyes went wide at the sight of it.

Saerom licked her lips, feeling an insatiable desire and hunger deep inside her at the sight of your unleashed manhood. As she admired your rock hard shaft, finding herself unable to draw her eyes away as her long slender fingers wrapped tightly around your hard cock, applying firm pressure and began stroking you up and down, feeling every inch.

“You have a very nice cock,” Saerom said, lips curling wide as she pumped you slowly and drizzled her fingers with your leaking pre-cum. She kissed the very tip of your cock, making your whole body jerk as her soft lips explored your cock and traveled down your base.

Every kiss on your shaft was loaded with hunger, and once Saerom reached the end of your cock she flattened her tongue against your base while you watched her every move. You moaned as her wet warm tongue moved slowly up and down your shaft, giving delicate strokes until she found your sensitive tip and swirled around your swollen head, lapping up every leaking drop.

“Yummy,” she said, spitting on your cock several times and spreading it all over your shaft, jerking you off and keeping eye contact.

Saerom kissed your tip one more time before she parted her plump red lips with your cock, taking the first few inches of you into her warm wet mouth.

“Oh f-fuuck,” you moaned loudly as Saerom hollowed her cheeks and sealed her lips tight around your cock. Saerom sucked you off slowly and tenderly while her sexy gaze was glued to you, full lips sliding up and down your shaft.

With constant eye contact Saerom built up your pleasure, taking her time with sucking your cock, enjoying it just as much as she moaned around your shaft.

“Fuck, Saerom," you moaned and threw your head back."That feels fucking good."

She smiled with your cock in her mouth, the bright studio lights letting you see her face perfectly as she began to bob her head up and down, her tongue playing with the underside of your shaft.

Saerom upped her pace as she swallowed more of your cock inside her warm mouth, the redness of her lips fading as her dark lipstick began smearing on your shaft, combined with streaks of her spit.

Her pretty hands did not stay idle, using one to stroke up and down your thigh, digging her nails in as the other cupped and fondled your balls.

“So heavy and full," she said as her nose nudged against your cock and planted messy wet kisses on your balls."I'll make sure they’re empty when I'm done with you."

Saerom continued to pleasure your balls while jerking off your needy cock, licking wide stripes, and glazing your sack with drool. She sucked on each one tenderly, giving your balls equal attention and hungrily slurping on them individually as you moaned louder, letting your satisfaction be known.

Using both her lips and tongue all over your balls, Saerom blew hot air against each of them before bringing your cock back into her mouth. Those deadly eyes glued to your own as she sucked slowly from tip to base, swallowing up every last inch as you hit the back of her throat without any real effort.

“Oh god, Saerom…”

The satisfaction in her eyes was obvious as she took you down her mouth with ease, her throat tightening around you as she relaxed her muscles, not even letting out a single gag.

Her soft wet lips felt so good wrapped around your cock, and you instinctively grabbed the back of her head, guiding her movements as she bobbed faster, lips kissing your base with each stroke.

It wasn’t long before you encouraged an even quicker pace, Saerom hungrily slurping down every inch that impaled her throat, desperately trying not to go wild and fuck her throat as much as you wanted to.

Saerom kept your wet shaft deep down her throat, working her muscles and keeping her lips sealed around every inch as she played with your balls, drooling all over your cock.

"Fuck, Saerom. You're so damn good at that."

"I've had a lot of practice."

Saerom hummed and gave your cock one more slow satisfying slurp from base to tip, releasing it with a loud messy pop as she furiously jerked off your messy wet shaft.

Not even bothering to wipe off leftover spit and lipstick on her face, Saerom's lust-filled gaze focused on you as she made you wait in anticipation.

Keeping your cock in her small delicate hands, Saerom carefully made a show of

sliding her panties down her toned legs, tossing them onto your set.

"A little present from me. Keep them."

With barely any time to react, you stole a glance at Saerom's beautiful bare pussy as she straddled you, the warmth of her naked body radiating around you as her comforting thighs rested against your own.

Saerom really was like no other woman, as cliché as it sounded. You could see it in her eyes that she wanted your cock, not just for her own satisfaction but for yours, aching to share in mutual pleasure.

The way she held your cock in her hand, aiming it between her spread thighs and between the pink wet flesh of her pussy, slowly rubbing it against her folds was agonizing, deliberately teasing both of you with a sly expression on her face.

You understood what she was doing as Saerom continued to run your cock through the wet warmth of her hole, but that didn’t make it any less easy to hold out, each sensation running through your body making it harder to maintain an ounce of composure.

“Saerom…”

She didn’t say a word as she collected her slick on your shaft, mixing it with leftover saliva, coating your cock in her fluids. Saerom thankfully shared your impatience and knew when enough was enough.

“I’m so wet,” Saerom bluntly said, the first set of words that left her lips in several minutes.

In what felt like the longest few seconds of your life Saerom lifted her wide hips up in the air, aiming herself carefully, and sank down on the first few inches of your cock.

Saerom gasped loudly and you shared an equally loud groan at the feeling of penetrating her body, the intense sensation of entering her pussy for the first time was unlike anything else. There was a lot to take in. Saerom’s wetness surrounded your cock as expected, followed by extreme warmth and tightness that overwhelmed you.

Gently moving her body up and down Saerom took it easy at first, letting her wet walls be parted with more of your hard cock, clinging tightly around your shaft that gradually disappeared in between her thighs.

“How do I feel?” Saerom asked as she wrapped her hands around the back of your neck, using her hips and sliding up and down your cock, coating more of your shaft in her juices.

“So fucking tight.”

She beamed at your response, sinking deeper and deeper until she almost bottomed herself out and stopped just above the base of your shaft.

“You feel really good inside me.”

Her eyes closed and her head whipped back as you both moaned together and felt her tight walls squeezing you tightly, letting herself get used to the rock hard flesh fully entering her body.

“I need every inch inside me,” Saerom pleaded, not that you were in a position to stop her, letting her control every movement. You watched between her beautiful thighs every move she made as her slick lips gripped your cock, ensuring you never left the warmth of her body.

In one swift movement, Saerom lifted herself from your cock, moving so just the tip of your shaft was inside her, and slammed her hips down and impaled herself to the hilt, moaning at being completely filled.

“Fuck!”

Saerom didn’t allow herself any adjustment, she didn’t need it and neither did you as she smiled devilishly.

“Ride my cock, Saerom,” you demanded and your orders were followed right away as she began bouncing on your dick, her mouth agape as she threw her head back in pleasure. You snaked your hands around her slim waist and grabbed her ass with both hands, kneading the soft flesh and encouraging her to continue dictating the pace.

“Stretch me out...stretch my tight little pussy just like that. Fuck, I wish I could ride you all day.”

“I could always cancel the rest of my appointments.”

“F-fuck, don’t tempt me. But I have my own schedules after this too,” she frowned.

“Guess we’ll have to schedule another session then.”

Saerom nodded in response and your hands squeezed her cheeks tighter, giving her ass a few quick slaps as she gasped, looking at the way she was falling apart already as she rode you.

Continuing to test the waters you gave repeated smacks against Saerom’s plentiful backside, the satisfying sounds of both raised palms striking her bare cheeks filled your ears. Saerom whined cutely in response as her walls clenched around your cock with each impact, not using enough force to sting but just giving her body a little something extra.

“You like being spanked, Saerom?”

“I-I do.”

“I’ll have to remember that for next time,” you smirked. Saerom took the opportunity to increase the pace, allowing herself to adjust and found the perfect angle to take your shaft inside her, bouncing her delicious big ass on your cock.

“You’re drenched, Saerom. Do you always get this wet?” you asked. She hesitated before shyly nodding.

“It’s mostly your fault,” she timidly replied, establishing a harsher rhythm as she rode you with more intensity and fervor, her perfect set of tits bouncing hypnotically with every movement.

“I take full responsibility.”

Settling into the sharp pleasure Saerom gave in to her desires and rode your cock faster, covering the entire surface of your shaft in her slick as you explored her voluptuous naked body and ran your hands up every inch of her bare skin you had access to.

You started with Saerom’s creamy thighs, caressing them softly before moving on to her sexy toned tummy, feeling her tight sculpted abs against your fingertips. She reacted to every touch audibly as your hands made their way back to her luscious breasts, cupping them and keeping your hands filled as she slammed her ass harder against your cock, creating more pleasure.

"You ride me so well, Saerom," you said as you pinched her nipples, feeling her pussy tightening and more of her juices leaking out. You kept your hands filled with her wonderful pale breasts as her ass repeatedly slammed down on your crotch, using your cock for her pleasure.

"It helps that I love your cock," Saerom said as she rode you faster and faster as sweat began to mist all over of your bodies, thighs crashing against your own with every bounce.

"And I love you creaming all over my cock."

The mere act of Saerom taking your cock in and out of her body with ease was driving you crazy, her hot wet pussy wrapped so tightly around your cock you felt like you could burst at any moment.

You couldn’t keep up with all the sensations running through your body, each time Saerom’s ass smacked against your body brought you closer to the point of no return, her juices flowing down her thighs confirming that she was equally reaching past her own limits.

Saerom's tight pussy began pulsating around your shaft as she became breathless, every forceful slam of her full hips brought down on your body making her wetter and wetter as she was barely able to keep her eyes open.

"Are you close, Saerom?" you asked. It took several moments before she could form an answer, and even then she could only nod in response.

"I need you cumming all over my cock."

"I w-will, fuck. Can you cum with me?"

"I'd love to," you said as desperation and need filled her eyes, knowing neither could hold on much longer. You watched her riding your cock just a little longer before growing tired of being passive and grabbed onto her hips, thrusting deep into her tight dripping cunt as she impaled herself on you.

You wanted every bit of pleasure out of Saerom's body and you were going to take it.

"Oh fuuuck! Just like that!"

It took a few thrusts to find the perfect timing, hitting Saerom's spot at just the right angle, keeping a firm grip on her sweaty body and trying to match her rhythm, both of you working together to achieve your collective goal of reaching climax.

You couldn’t help but stare at her, watching her gorgeous features contorting every time you filled her to the hilt. The air in the room grew harder to take in as you drove yourself in Saerom with desperation, both aching for release. The loud slapping of hot flesh against flesh fought for dominance against the equally loud moaning escaping Saerom’s lips.

“Fuck, fuck, baby, I-I'm gonna cum!" Saerom cried out, the three most beautiful words you had heard all day as you held onto her body tight, preparing yourself for the intensity of what was about to happen.

"I am too, fuck!"

“Cum inside me, please, I need you to fill my tight little pussy,” Saerom begged, and you did everything you could to hold out just long enough to let her achieve orgasm first. You weakly smiled and savored the last few moments before the inevitable.

The final few seconds arrived as your breathing deepened, looking dead center into Saerom’s beautiful eyes filled with need and desire. Without another word you felt Saerom’s juices overflowing as her pussy tightened almost painfully so, thighs trembling violently as her cunt squeezed the life out of your shaft as she came, leaving a mess over your cock and wrapped her arms tighter around the back of your neck and desperately moaning into your ears as her body turned to jelly.

Saerom looked beautiful as her orgasm took over her body, unable to control the volume of satisfied moans leaving her lips as she slowly came down from her intense high. She rocked her hips back and forth to ride out her orgasm and helped you join her as you felt all the tension in your body being released.

Unable to take anymore your cock throbbed inside Saerom, letting out needy grunts and moans as you exploded inside her, emptying your thick hot cum deep inside her pussy and pumping her full of your seed as her body took spurt after spurt as she was filled to the brim.

She rested her head on your shoulder, swaying her hips to coax every drop out of you, the feeling of your warmth deep inside her satisfying her to no end.

“You feel so warm,” she faintly said as your bodies took a much-deserved rest and stared into each other's eyes, both trying to catch a breath at the wonderful experience you just shared.

“That...was...amazing,” you said, heavily gasping.

“It was. I haven’t been fucked like that in a while,” Saerom smiled and kissed you, giving you one more taste of lips as she savored the warmth left in her body.

She gradually lifted her body off yours carefully as your cock plopped out and the huge thick load you had left inside began slowly dripping out of her pussy, running down her flushed thighs. Responding only in tired gasps she tried to catch her breath, watching the mess inside her continue to show itself.

Both of you too tired to move let alone speak, Saerom knelt and licked your shaft clean and tasted your combined juices, lips slurping slowly from base to tip to not miss a drop.

She headed over to your workstation with your cum still dripping down her thighs, grabbed your camera and took several full-body shots of her naked sweaty body, running her hand through her messy hair and smiling for the camera.

"Thank you," Saerom said as she ended up in your naked lap again.

"For what?"

"For taking such pretty pictures of me."

"It's all part of the job. It's easy when I have such a pretty model."

Her cheeks reddened again, the smile etched across her lips something you couldn’t ever get enough of.

"I can't wait to see the full versions."

"I'll have them sent to your company by the end of the week. Just the ones for the magazine of course,” you said.

"I look forward to it. I had a lot of fun today."

"I did too, Saerom."

"Can I see you again? After work?" she asked.

"I usually don't finish until the sun goes down."

"I don't mind, I'll be pretty busy myself. Maybe I'll even take some photos of my own for you."

"Oh? I didn't know you were a photographer as well."

"I'm just an amateur," she shyly said. "It’s just a hobby when I have the time."

"I'd love to see some shots."

"I'll send some then. They might not be as risqué as what we took today."

"As long as you’re in them I’ll love them."

Saerom accepted your praise with a grin on her features and regretfully dressed and left quietly, leaving you tired, sweaty and in need of a shower with her occupied in your thoughts.

Whoever the next model was you knew they couldn’t compare to Saerom, and you couldn’t wait for work to be over.

[oloreaa]

Daisy Chains

Pairing: Din Djarin/f!Reader

Summary: You fall in love with Din in the summer before he swears his creed.

Words: 3.7k

Warnings: slightly nsfw, non descriptive sex, yes I used those gifs of young Pedro to fuel this, so expect shaggy haired puppy eyed Din who is cocky af

Notes: I wrote this in a span of 5h because my brain could not stop working, also I took some liberties with canon: Mandalorian's come of age when they're 21 in this fic, due to the severity of the creed/ the restrictions that come with it. So Reader is about 19/20 while Din is 20 :) [edit: title and one line are inspired by Lana del Rey's "Summer Bummer"]

▪ Masterlist ▪ Next ▪

……………

The first time you saw him, he was wearing a scowl, staring after the Mandalorian warrior who had given him a slap on the back of the head.

You could not help your giggle, turning away so you could laugh at the grumpy expression on his face. When you looked back, though, his gaze was on you.

Immediately straightening, you sent him the most innocent smile you could muster.

He raised an eyebrow at you, and made his way over to your stall that was filled with flowers in both pots and buckets, ready to be arranged in various possibilities.

"You see something funny?" he asked, shaking the slightly shaggy hair out of his face. Your eyes widened as you took him in, and you felt your face become hot as you realised that he was handsome as hell.

Dark brown hair that was a tad too long, a sharp face with high cheekbones, a jawline to die for, dark eyes you could lose yourself in. Not to mention his voice, like honey wrapped around every vowel and consonant, pleasant to listen to and you would do anything to keep him talking.

"No, sir," you said, and they were the only words you could manage, "nothing funny at all."

The corner of his mouth quirked up, and you could not help but be charmed by those looks, the instant way he had drawn you in, the sharp glint in his eyes.

"Is that so, flower girl?"

You felt your heart flutter in your chest, and bit your lip playfully, suddenly feeling very bold. "Yes," you breathed, tilting your face up playfully.

He scoffed slightly, and put his hands on his hips, resting his weight on one leg. You could place him as maybe one year older than you, two if you had to squint.

"Girls like you should know when to keep their eyes away," he said. 

You leaned against the counter, smiling brightly, overwhelmed by the urge to get to know him better.

"The way I see it, I was just observing a spectacle."

"Uh huh?"

"What are you doing with the Mandalorians, anyways?" You asked, looking at him. Wearing something that approximated armour, a durasteel plate on his torso and some thigh plates, and a vambrace, he seemed better armed than most of the visitors of the market here.

"I'm one of them," he answered, puffing his chest out, raising his chin.

"You're not wearing a helmet," you observed, and you could not help the coy smile that crept onto your face.

"I'll swear the creed soon," he said, clenching his jaw and revealing a twitch in his cheek that almost made you swoon.

"Oh dear, that's a shame," you said, plucking a daisy from the flower pot you were selling.

"Why?" His face was set into a frown, brows pulled together, and it was honestly unfair that he was so good looking even while doing that.

"Face like yours, under a helmet? A damn shame."

His eyes widened, and he stared at you, and with delight you could see his cheeks darkening some. He opened his mouth several times as if wanting to say something, but nothing came out.

You reached over the counter, and gave him the daisy, which he accepted without taking his eyes off you.

"If you care for dancing, come and find me," you invited, and with a shy smile, you told him your name. 

When he repeated it, dark eyes locked onto yours intensely, you swore you just melted a bit.

~

You did not see him for the next week, which was fine. To be honest with yourself, you did not even expect for him to remember you. The way you saw it, it was just a small interaction with a cute guy, some butterflies in your belly and a crush to think back on in the middle of the night. It did not matter that he probably forgot you.

If you gave yourself enough time, you might have completely forgotten him, too.

But apparently, the universe had other ideas.

"Flower girl," someone called from behind, "Do you need help?"

You looked up from the ground, teeth gritted together in effort from the heavy bag of soil you were carrying. When you caught sight of him, your face lit up.

"Not-A-Mandalorian-Yet!" You called out, putting the bag onto the ground as gently as you could, already moving onto giving him a hug. "Hey, how are you?"

He looked at you, startled, and with a hot face you realised you had automatically tried to embrace him like you often did.

"I'm good," he said stiffly, and you gave an embarrassed smile, stomach doing somersaults.

"Oh, Maker, I'm sorry I assumed," you started to say, hands raised to your mouth, "I do that with my friends, I'm so sorry."

He furrowed his brows and gave an equally embarrassed smile back.

"It's fine," he said, "I don't mind."

Yet clearly he did.

You stepped back from him, and bit your bottom lip nervously. "I think I'll get going," you said, fidgeting like an absolute moron and cursing yourself.

He jerked into motion.

"No, I'll- Let me help you with the bag," he said, and if you had not been too occupied with how hot your face felt at the moment, you might have noticed how he was blushing as well.

"That's nice of you," you managed to say, and barely resisted a giggle in both embarrassment and delight when he picked the bag up with no difficulty, putting it smoothly under one arm, before turning towards you and giving you a slightly crooked smile. "Where to?"

You blinked at him, a big smile on your face. "Thank you," you told him, and started into motion. He easily kept up, but did not initiate conversation like you expected.

If he won't talk, I will, you thought, and squared your shoulders in a mini pep boost.

"So, Not-A-Mandalorian-Yet," your mouth chose to say, and you inwardly started to cringe at yourself, "Do you have a name that I can call you by?"

He hesitated, and looked away while you walked, and your heart sank a bit.

"Oh, no- no, it's fine if you don't want to tell me, you don't have to-"

"It's Din," he said, "I haven't sworn the creed yet, so you can know my name."

You beamed at him, and he shyly returned your smile, his dark eyes intense and burning into you.

~

The third time you saw Din, he was on a supply run, walking past your stall with a hovering craft filled with crates. Him and three other young armoured humanoids, fellow Mandalorians, if you had to guess, were walking alongside with it. When his gaze met yours, you held up a small bundle of daisy blooms that was in your hand already, and shot him a smile. You were surprised when he smiled back, sending it alongside with a fluttery wink that made your heart skip a beat.

~

It became a game. 

Everytime he came to your stand, you instantly perked up, heart beating fast in your chest, a broad smile already greeting him.

Whenever you passed each other, you smiled, fleetingly touched each other, found excuses to look into the other's eyes.

He started to greet you with "sarad", and while you were pretty sure that he was calling you something like annoying or cheeky, the gentle tone he used and the tender way he would smile at you let you know that this attraction was not as one-sided as you tried to tell yourselves sometimes.

And you were pretty sure that Mandalorians do not need to buy flowers as often as Din did.

"What does sarad mean?" you asked him once while you finished up a bouquet for another client.

He was quiet, looking at you for a long time, before: "Sarad means flower."

You stared at him, and he visibly blushed even if the rest of his face did not change.

"I like it," you said, a shy smile on your face, "Please don't stop calling me that, all right?"

He smiled brightly at you, his entire face lighting up, and you were pretty sure that if you had not been smitten before, you would have definitely fallen for him in that second.

"Okay," he said.

~

"Do you want to go dancing?" You asked him when you saw him again, this time alone, "It's the weekend soon and my friends often meet somewhere to dance."

He huffed, leaning against the stall, cutting an attractive figure against the bright light of the marketplace. It was a slow day, barely anyone coming to visit in the heat of the midday sun. 

"Do I look like I dance?" Din asked, giving you a wry look. 

You bit your lip, feeling your cheeks heat up. 

"I could teach you," you offered, in a breathier tone than you would have liked. He looked at you, and you could have sworn that his eyes dropped to your lips for a fraction of a second, which made you even bolder, "We could dance alone at first."

He stared at you, jaw slightly ticking.

"I might have to take you up on that," he said, and oh, when did his voice become so deep?

"When do you want to?"

His eyes dropped to your lips again, this time for a longer moment, and when he said "Now," in that sinful voice of his, you knew that he was not talking about dancing at all.

Risking a look around, seeing the marketplace basically abandoned, most of the other vendors having taken a break, you decided that you could have a bit of fun.

"There is a bag of soil in the back, and I might need you to lift it for me," you told him, shooting Din a coy smile that became a full beam when he nodded, a smirk tugging at his lips as well, delightful dimples showing as his eyes crinkled in amusement. 

He followed you without a word, and before you knew it, you were out of sight of everyone else.

"Can I-" you started to say, wanting to ask for his permission first when you turned around and looked at him, but he sneaked a hand behind your head, tilted your face towards him and gave you a chaste kiss on the lips.

You looked at him in surprise, mouth open, flush threatening to burn you alive.

"I'm sorry," he started to say, blushing furiously, "I've not kissed many people before, was it-" 

Before he could say anything else, you had both of your hands cradling his face, tugging him closer to your body.

"That's all right," you said before kissing him again, this time opening your mouth and tasting him properly, feeling him reciprocate clumsily but with enthusiasm. Your lips parted with a quiet smack, and you stared into his face. His eyes were hooded and fixed onto you like he was a hunter and you were prey, a blush high on his cheeks, his lips slightly pinker than before.

"I'll teach you," you whispered, before kissing him again, tugging him even closer.

~ 

After that, his visits became more frequent.

~

"My alor'ad does not approve of this," Din said to you after a few more times you crossed each other's paths.

You had shown him the meadow you often went to, reading there most of the time, a small place not many people would find. The both of you were sitting in the tall grass, your fingers working on making a flower crown for Din. He did not know it was for him, yet, and he was holding his face into the sun, eyes closed as he soaked in the warmth of the summer.

You hummed, and linked your fingers into his, giving him a cheeky smile.

"My mother would not approve as well," you told him, using a long piece of grass to tie off the crown, "Always says something about finding a husband first. Would probably marry me off to the first Imperial officer she could find, to keep me out of trouble."

He opened one eye, looking at you with a smirk.

"You? A trophy wife for some cog head?"

"I would make an amazing trophy wife, thank you very much."

The young man turned onto his side, propping his head up with his hand, giving you a cocky grin.

"That you would," he said, gaze trailing along your figure, and you felt desire building in you at the heat in his eyes.

"Here, for you," you said to diffuse the tension crackling between the both of you, and presented him the wildflower crown.

Din stared at you in bewilderment, and you could not help your laugh at the offended look in his eyes.

"I'm not wearing that," he said, with a small scowl. You walked on your knees towards him, a smile threatening to split your face, and crowned him.

"I declare you king of the meadow," you said as dramatically as possible, before dissolving in a fit of giggles. You could see that he was still embarrassed, but he was grinning as well.

"I'm training to become a Mandalorian," he told you, face becoming very serious, raising his eyebrows at you and tilting his chin towards his chest, his dark eyes making you feel all sorts of butterflies, "I am very dangerous and can kill you with no hesitation."

You nodded, a mocking expression on your face, knowing deep inside that he would never harm you without reason. "That's hot."

He snorted in surprise, a loud laugh ringing through the meadow.

"I can take out a stormtrooper within twenty seconds."

You giggled, slapping his chest slightly. "So could a very determined duck. Or a Gungan!"

He attacked you, tickling fingers trailing along your side, making you shriek as you tried to get away from him.

"Take that back," Din demanded, a playful smile on his face.

"Okay, okay!" You laughed, squirming under his touch, "You're a mighty warrior."

He nodded, and raised his eyebrows at you expectantly.

"Din, are you fishing for compliments?" 

He winked at you. "I might be."

You pushed at his shoulder, chuckling to yourself, before you started off.

"You can take on four men at once."

He furrowed his brows and nodded thoughtfully, lips pursed, "I like those odds."

"You can use those badass jetpacks." You pressed a small kiss onto his knuckles, desperately trying not to laugh when his gaze became self-satisfied. 

"Training in the Rising Phoenix, sarad, don't you forget that."

"You can roundhouse kick a blurrg!"

Dissolving into giggles, you pressed your face into his chest, feeling it rumble with laughter as well.

The both of you cackled for several minutes straight, everytime you caught each other's gazes, starting to laugh again.

It took too long until you could breathe normally again.

"Haven't tried that yet," Din said, making you giggle.

"You're a mighty warrior, we all know that, no need to brag."

He smirked at you, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "But you know that it's not bragging if you can actually do it."

"I'm sure you can," you snorted, "But even warriors can wear flower crowns."

Din scoffed, a big grin on his face. "Is that so?"

He tried to take the crown off, but you pushed it deeper onto his head, flattening his shaggy hair against his forehead. He tried again, crunching his nose at you, a playful smile on his face, but you resisted his charm to the best of your abilities.

He quickly grabbed your shoulder and flipped you around, making you shriek with laughter as he pinned you onto the ground.

"Stop that," he said, and you could feel his belly twitch against you as he suppressed his laughter, "I'm very dangerous and I have a reputation to uphold."

"Of course, Din," you said, smiling up at him, his head eclipsing the sun in your view. Tugging at his hair, he pulled the crown down and set it onto your head.

"It suits you better," he said in a rough voice, and before you know it, he was devouring you in a searing kiss that made your toes curl, a hand on your cheek, tilting your face up to him for better access.

When he groaned your name into your mouth, you almost came on the spot.

~

You had told him to come to the meadow tonight, and you were excited beyond compare. As soon as you saw his familiar frame, tall and lanky but with deliciously broad shoulders, you made your way through the high grass, a basket in your hands.

"I brought food," you told him shyly, before spreading a picnic blanket onto the ground, flattening it carefully.

He dropped to his knees, and helped to make it more even, then put the basket right on the side so one corner would be secured by the weight.

You both took your shoes off, and after a bit of light conversation and nibbling at the various fruits you had packed, relaxed into each other.

"You know I can't do this for long, right?" Din asked, slowly tracing the side of your face with a gentle finger, his head propped up by his hand as you lay side by side under the guise of watching the stars.

You turned your head to him, and stared into his face.

"How long do we have?" you asked him, voice quiet and very small.

"Two months," he said, voice rough. 

To avoid having to answer to that, you kissed him desperately, rolling on top of him, bodies flush together as you straddled his lap, feeling proof of his desire against you. Kissing your way down his neck, you were careful not to leave any marks that Din could be punished for, should the Mandalorians see them. His hands were on you, kneading your sides, pulling you close.

He sat up quickly, and took off his shirt, and with pooling desire you absorbed the sight of his toned upper body, some scars curling around his arms and one slash across his abs.

He was beautiful. And you told him that as well, watching him blush, gaze darkening.

When you looked him into the eyes in the dim starlight, he gave you a slightly nervous but determined smile. You quickly resolved to kiss every single one of the scars he might possess, leaving a trail of wet kisses on his chest, then his stomach, and then lower.

He gasped when you wrapped your lips around him, his fingers tightening in your hair.

~

It was sufficient to say that while his visits were frequent before, now they were a nightly occurrence.

~ 

You could not always finish your explorations of each other, sometimes your commlink blinked and your mother demanded to know where you are, but most of the time it was Din's, the covert sending out messages to several of their trainees, having them run errands. But despite all of that, you learned each other's bodies quite well anyways. Using every moment you had together, touching the other one, feeling your skin against each other, the evidence for your desire never failed to make the other one dizzy. 

You learned a lot about Din during those stolen nights, and days, and little breaks whenever you could manage to sneak away. 

He was just as enthusiastic kissing you on the mouth as everywhere else, which you loved. It was almost as if he was trying to absorb as much of your touch as possible, probably stocking up on touch before he will swear the creed in a few weeks. 

As much as you wished that he would choose you over his tribe, you know he would not. It was too important to him.

So you took everything he had to offer you now, and made the best of it.

You made love under the stars so many times you had lost count, hiding a smile every time you felt the dull ache he left behind, and with Din's passion, you had never been so grateful before that you had the implant.

And it was so unfair, as well, for he had the face of an angel but his voice was sinful, making your head spin in the best of ways. Letting him in your life and between your legs was one of the best things that could have happened to you, even though time was working against you.

Din always let his mouth run while you were warming his ears with your thighs, while he was deep inside you, murmuring against your neck, while his fingers were buried in you, or in your hair as you looked up into his dark eyes, winking as you swirled your tongue around him. 

He never seemed to be able to shut up while you were around him, on him, under him, and it was as if he tried to make up for lost time already.

You pretended that you do not cry yourself to sleep because of his creed sometimes.

~

"I'll be of age in the fall," he told you again when you were hiding in the back of the stall on another slow day with almost no customers. You were on his lap, both of you with flushed faces and heaving chests after you spend several minutes simply making out, hearts fluttering fast in your chests. "I can't stay for long."

Even as your heart broke at hearing that, you decided that, once again, it was a problem for future-you.

"Then we'll make the best of it," you said before capturing his lips again, making him groan deep in his throat.

"You're so pretty," he whispered, his big hands resting on your waist, pulling your bodies close together, his dark eyes burning into you, the shaggy fringe falling into his eyes softening his face, "So, so pretty."

"Even when I'm making you flower crowns?" you teased.

"Especially when you're doing that," he whispered, and you pushed his fringe away from his face, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

"Din," you murmured his name, looking at him tenderly.

"You've wrapped me up in your daisy chains, sarad."

Heart clenching at the genuine affection in his voice, you kissed him to shut him up, feeling him smile against you, knowing that your days together were coming to an end.

……………

Thank you for reading!

Huge thanks at both @mndalorians for listening to me ramble late at night and being amazing, and @teaofpeach for being the beta of this fic, looking over this and constantly encouraging and enabling me. I love you❤

Tags: @binggrae-banana-milk @b0n-chann @pisss-offf-ghostt @chibi-liz05 @din-damn-djarin @soldade @yourexcellentboiiii @chaotic-noceur @ezrasarm @hdlynn @mndalorians @over300books @agirllovespasta @crookedmoonsaultpunk @teaofpeach @shadylightbearherring @mitchi-c @concussed-to-pieces @adikaofmandalore @dadolorian

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Guilty Pleasure

Summary:  Peter and Beck used to be a power couple in the porn industry, but after Beck dumps him, Peter is forced to start over. With no money, no family and nowhere to go, he doesn’t have much choice other than to keep doing porn, so he joins Just4Fans to get back on his feet and then one day he gets a very generous tip from someone under the username of YKWIM. 

All the warnings listed on Part I apply.

Read on AO3

Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V /  Part VI /  Part VII /  Part VIII  / Part IX / Part X /  Part XI / Epilogue

-x-

Almost two months after moving out of Beck’s place, Peter was able to rent an apartment in the same building as Ned and MJ. It was tiny, of course, but pretty inexpensive, compared to other options he found around that area. Besides, with the money he made with Just4Fans over those few weeks, he would be able to afford it comfortably for at least a few months – largely thanks to YKWIM. He still planned on saving up as much as possible, so he put a lot of effort into making his account grow and it was working – by the end of April, he was up to five hundred subscribers.

He didn’t check to see what Beck was doing, he was too afraid to look and see him with his new boyfriend, but he got lots of comments from his old fans, who still followed Beck, telling him that the new boy had nothing on him. Again, he didn’t dare to check, but the ego boost was nice, even if he didn’t really believe them. Also, he was down to crying once every two days instead of every other day, so he was counting that as a win as well.

His apartment was still pretty empty, specially because he spent most of his time downstairs at his friends’ place, but he decorated the bathroom and his room to the best of his ability, since they would be the background of pretty much all his videos and pictures. He also bought some new lingerie sets, a few costumes and sex toys he wasn’t even sure how to use, but he was slowly figuring them out.

Aside from decorating his room and the bathroom, he also bought an armchair and placed it by the  window with a couple of pillows. It was a nice spot to spend the afternoon reading or working on his computer. The light in that apartment was great, sunlight streamed right into his living room and warmed it up nicely. As they approached the end of April, the weather was getting better everyday.

Some days, he felt happy. He felt okay with the fact that he was still doing porn and that it wasn’t a terrible crime. Sure, it wasn’t what he had planned to do with his life, but he was young, he would eventually figure things out. For the time being, he needed that gig and he couldn’t beat himself up for it. Also, it wasn’t so bad now that he was only doing solo stuff.

Some other days, though, were just – hard. He remembered all the videos that were still online and he felt awful for the sole reason that they existed. Not so much for the ones he filmed with Beck, he was somewhat okay with those, the guy was his boyfriend after all, they had sex anyway, the only difference was the camera in the room. But the other ones…

When he started filming with other men, it quickly turned into an unpleasant experience for him. He hated every second of it and always ended up feeling guilty, used and disposable at the end of the day. Beck didn’t make it any better with the way he looked at him afterwards as he told him to get in the shower.

He wasn’t entirely sure of the reasons why those videos bothered him so much, sometimes it felt like it wasn’t even him in them. It was like he was watching a different person, he looked at himself and felt completely dissociated from that boy – at the same time, he looked at him and he knew – he knew – exactly what he was feeling when those were shot.

But that was a lot to unpack and he just wasn’t ready for that particular crisis.  

So in short, sometimes he was still a little unsure about how long he would be able to keep his Just4Fans account, because even though most days he didn’t feel too weird about it, sometimes it reminded him of things he preferred to forget. But that was fine, he was usually able to work around that. Also, most of his subscribers were great and didn’t make him feel like a cheap whore, so he had that going for him as well.

YKWIM was one of the good ones. They chatted almost daily, and Peter always sent him exclusive pictures and videos just because. He never posted those pictures on his feed once he sent them to him, it was their little secret. In return, he got his own collection of short videos of YKWIM finishing himself off. He didn’t know much about the person behind the videos, he’d taken to calling him daddy because most of his subscribers seemed to like it and YKWIM never complained, so it stuck.

Peter did know he lived in New York – which made him shiver – and that he was a businessman of some kind, but he also always talked about a workshop, so Peter wasn’t sure and he avoided asking personal questions. He worked most of the day and into the night, they usually talked when it was late, always around two in the morning.

He traveled a lot, too, and sometimes sent Peter small clips of his hotel rooms or the view from his balcony. In return, Peter sent him pictures of his messy bedroom and the horrible view from his window as a joke. It was nice talking to him, he always made Peter laugh – and then it often ended with a very satisfying orgasm that put him right to sleep, which was awesome.

Peter estimated YKWIM was older than Beck, but not by too much. He clearly had a fit body, which at first led him to believe he was in his thirties, at most; but he noticed YKWIM sometimes talked about the 80’s like he lived them, so he had to be at least in his forties, but Peter couldn’t be sure. He really wished he would show his face, though, it would be nice to have one to fantasize about. But then again, maybe it would ruin the whole thing.

One afternoon, after Peter spent hours taking pictures, shooting videos and editing them so he could post them over the following week, he got a message from YKWIM. He hurried to check it and was shocked to see that he had sent him yet another tip – forty thousand dollars this time.

“For you to buy pretty things so you can show them off to me.” Said the message that came with the money.

Peter almost dropped his phone when he saw it. It had been only five weeks since his last insane tip, so that made fifty thousand dollars in just a little over a month. For, like, thirty nudes. Who even was that guy?

“Wow, daddy, that’s way too much!” He added a flushed face emoji, for lack of something better to say. He was honestly feeling a little overwhelmed, even if the guy had millions to spend, there was no way just giving someone that amount of money was normal.

“That’s not nearly enough for what you’ve given me, baby.” Peter’s cheeks burned.

“I’m very flattered, but please, I really don’t think I deserve all this.” He was pretty sure he sounded pathetic, but that was how he felt, so. Yeah.

“Oh, but you do. Trust me, you really, really do. You’re worth every penny.” Peter bit his lower lip, a little unsure and still a little shocked.

“At least tell me what you’d like to see from me, please. Do you have any kinks that you’d like me to perform? Don’t be shy.” He asked, even though it always made him nervous to offer that kind of thing. Sometimes people were just waiting for the perfect opportunity to make the weirdest requests.

But, to be fair, he had been talking to YKWIM for over a month, so he somewhat trusted him not to ask for anything too absurd.  And then again, the guy had just paid him forty thousand dollars.

“Well, if you insist...” Here it comes, Peter thought, bracing himself. “Red and gold are my favorite colors. I’d love to see you wearing them.” Oh. Not what he was expecting at all.

“Done! Anything else? Come on, there’s gotta be something else.” Again, risky move. But again, forty thousand dollars.

“I’d love to hear you. You’re always so quiet in your videos. If you feel comfortable, I’d love to hear you call my name.” The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end at that request. It sounded… almost sweet? It obviously wasn’t meant like that, it was completely sexual, but out of all the wild things he could have asked for, he wanted to hear Peter call his name.

“What’s your name, daddy?”

“Tony.” Tony. Peter tested the word out on his tongue, saying it out loud once, twice. Tony. It suited the image he had created in his head. Tony.

“I can definitely do that, Tony. Anything else?”

“Buy yourself something pretty and send me a picture wearing it. Nothing sexual. Something you’d wear to a date with me.” Peter’s breath hitched. He supposed it was probably just a weird, rich people kink or something, but his mind went wild anyway. Very, very wild.

“I don’t know what I’d wear to a date with you, daddy. Any advice?”

“I like expensive and beautiful things such as yourself, baby.”

Normally, Peter wouldn’t appreciate being called expensive, like he was a thing to be bought, but he felt weirdly flattered by the answer. He promised YKW – Tony – he would send everything he requested over the next few days, and he was actually excited about the whole thing. And of course he knew that feeling was trouble, there were warning signs flashing like crazy before his eyes, but he ignored them and convinced himself that he was just having fun and he was allowed to have fun if he was going to keep doing porn. He didn’t have to feel miserable and guilty all the fucking time. He could – and should! – take some pleasure from it. He deserved it.

So the following day he asked MJ to go shopping with him, but he still didn’t tell her the whole story, he just said it was for his Just4Fans and she readily agreed to go. They went to Victoria’s Secret and Peter told her what he had in mind.

“So, how’s the job going? You’re doing okay? Not too overwhelmed?” She asked coolly as they searched through the panties section.

“Yeah, it’s fine, it’s different when I’m in control, you know? Like, I know my limits and I don’t need to count on other people to respect them. Well, most of the time. So it’s cool.”

Some subscribers were a little pushy sometimes, asking for things Peter wasn’t willing to do and then getting really aggressive after being told no. But it didn’t affect him as much as it did when Beck ignored his boundaries, because those pushy subscribers could be easily blocked, whereas with Beck, well. It was a different story.

“Don’t ever feel like you need to push your limits, okay?” Michelle stopped what she was doing to grab him by the shoulders and force him to look at her. “If you ever feel like stopping, for whatever reason, just do it. No matter what, you’ll always have me and Ned, understand? We’re family, we’re here for you, we’d never leave you alone. If you want to stop, we’ll figure something out together, you hear me?” The way she looked into his eyes made him understand that she really meant every single word of it.

Family. He had a family with them.

Peter felt silly tearing up in the middle of Victoria’s Secret, so he pulled her into his arms and hid his face in her neck.

“Thank you. I needed to hear that,” he muttered, as she squeezed him a little tighter, before pushing him away.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get all teary-eyed on me, come on, you’ll ruin my reputation.” She looked around, sniffing, then stuck her hands in her pockets. Peter laughed halfheartedly, drying the corner of his eyes. “C’mon, there are panties to be bought.”

They spent a couple of hours searching the store, but in the end he found the perfect set. He bought some other pieces, too, for his feed, people had been asking for lingerie a lot lately, after a slightly weird phase of cat ears and tails. Once they left Victoria’s Secret, Peter was nervous because he had to tell MJ at least part of the truth to get her help with the second part of Tony’s request.

“So, listen,” he started and she turned to him, happily sipping her large coffee as they walked down the street. “I have this subscriber. He’s, like, a rich, old dude who always sends me tips and stuff. Anyway, he gave me some money and asked me to buy something nice and pose for him, but like, not in a sexual way. He wants to see me clothed.” She frowned, staring at him suspiciously. “Um. I was wondering if you could help me with that?”

She was silent for a few seconds, just looking at him with narrowed eyes. He looked away discreetly, trying to avoid her mind-reading skills.

“Should I be worried?” She asked, finally. He shook his head and chuckled nervously, waving a hand dismissively.

“He’s harmless, just some lonely, old dude. So, will you help?” He looked at her expectantly. She was still frowning and definitely knew something was up, but she nodded anyway, to Peter’s relief.

“What do you have in mind?” MJ asked and resumed her stroll down the street, Peter had to jog a little to keep up.

“Something expensive and beautiful,” He quoted Tony, like an idiot, because he honestly had no idea what that meant.

“That’s oddly specific and somehow not helpful at all.” She lifted an eyebrow and looked around the busy street. “How expensive are we talking about?”

“I’m not sure. Very?” He answered nervously, and, yet again, she looked looked like she wanted to rip the truth out of him, but she also knew that was not the way to go with him.  

“How much did this guy give you?”

“Um. for – five thousand dollars.” He stuttered. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the actual amount, because it sounded absolutely insane and she would worry unnecessarily.

“Holy shit!? Fuck, why aren’t I doing porn?!” She screeched and Peter hurried to put his hands over her mouth, because at least three people turned around to look at them.

“Don’t even joke about that, you hear me? You have a bright future ahead of you, don’t fuck it up,” he told her seriously and she looked like she wanted to argue just for the sake of being annoying, but something in the way he looked at her must have made her realize he meant it.

“Chill, I’m joking.” She patted his shoulder and looked away. “So. Five thousand dollars? We can work with that.”

He was a little scared of the weird gleam in her eyes, but followed her anyway.

They spent the rest of the afternoon shopping, it was a lot of fun and he even got her a pair of shoes she kept staring longingly at. She was worried they would go over the budget because she wanted him to save some of the money, but he assured her he could afford it. They managed to put together a great outfit that he was very confident about and then called Ned to meet them for dinner in the evening.

Later, they took the subway home and, for a while, he felt like a normal 20-year-old guy – happy, weightless and just a little heartbroken, like everyone was bound to be at some point in life. He was going to be okay, he realized. That thought hit him like a punch in the face and it felt fucking awesome.

He rested his head on Ned’s shoulder with a sigh of relief, feeling the warmth of MJ’s hand on his thigh.

It was around midnight when he got home, which for him was still a little early, he had developed the terrible habit of going to bed well after two in the morning – he blamed Tony, but to be fair, many of his subscribers were mostly active around that time as well. He debated whether or not he should start working on Tony’s requests, he was a little tired from a long day of walking around carrying bags, but also surprisingly eager to show the older man what he got for him.

He took the Victoria’s Secret bag and displayed the new outfit on the bed. It was a simple, but beautiful lingerie set. What Peter loved most about it was the fabric – it was made of deep red satin, smooth and glossy, and it felt simply amazing on the skin.

He decided to try it on, just to make sure it fit properly.

The top was a delicate bralette, two little triangles only big enough to hide his nipples and a little bit of his pecs. It was the perfect size for him, it sat flush with his skin, no unflattering cup gaps. The panties were tiny, Peter wasn’t too sure about those back in the store, he was worried not everything would fit in it. It did, but just barely, but it actually worked in his favor, in his humble opinion. Lastly, he put on the garter belt, which was just a thin piece of fabric that went around his waist, with two straps that hung down to clasp onto two elastic bands that went around his thighs.

Since Tony said red and gold, he also put on a thick, golden choker, just to see how it would look.

Once he was dressed, he went to check in the mirror. He bit his lower lip, running his hand over the fabric that covered his chest. It felt really smooth, and the way it brushed against his nipples sent shivers down his spine. He closed his eyes and imagined it was Tony’s hands on his body. They looked strong enough to hurt, but he imagined they would be gentle with him, as they traced a path from his collarbone to his neck, to wrap themselves around his throat – but not tight enough to choke him, just a promise.

He sighed, as if to check that he could still breath under the pressure, and slowly slid his hands down from his neck, brushing his hard nipples on their way down to the front of the panties – God, it was so smooth...

For some reason, he imagined Tony would be a gentle lover. Maybe it was the way he talked to him, always so charming, all sweetheart and baby, all praise and compliments. Maybe it was the way he never demanded anything, only asked nicely, all please and thank you.  

Tony wouldn’t ruin him, like he promised so many times in those last few weeks, he would fuck him long and slow, raspy voice whispering sweet praise in his ear, rough hands holding him down, hips snapping with each unrelenting thrust.

He bit his lips, knees buckling as he felt the front of the panties getting wet, while his leaking cock struggled to get free.

Well, then.

He grabbed his camera from the closet and positioned it on a tripod in front of the bed, just a few feet away, and programmed it to take pictures every five seconds. He sat on the bed, facing the camera, feet still on the floor, and just closed his eyes for a minute, letting a sigh escape his lips as the fantasy from before filled his mind again.

He spread his legs and his fingers reached down to the front of his panties again. His cock felt impossibly hard, straining against the delicate fabric, dark pink tip peeking out of over the top of the tiny underwear. He touched himself slowly, hips rocking lightly to match the pace of his own hand, as he listened to the clicks of the pictures being taken.

He had to force himself to stop, before he lost control, and moved to kneel on the bed, with his side facing the camera, and lowered his chest until it was touching the mattress, letting his back curve in a sinful arch, head turned to the side, staring right at the lens. At Tony. Imagining what he would do if he were there.

He sat back on his heels and turned his back to the camera, spreading his knees, each of his hands grabbing one ass cheek, pulling them apart, only a thin, barely there strip of fabric hiding his nakedness. He looked over his shoulder and waited for the camera to take at least a couple of pictures.

Next, he laid on his back, side facing the camera again, left hand rubbing one nipple over the silky fabric, as the right one reached down the front of the panties, to finally give himself some sort of relief. He let out an almost pained moan as he wrapped a hand around his cock, pumping it slowly, once, twice, but all that teasing was driving him a little insane.

He knew he should probably take a few more pictures, but he also knew wouldn’t last much longer.

He got off the bed and went to the dresser where he kept all of his “work stuff”. He grabbed a tube of lube and a vibrator that was neither too small, nor too big, it was a size Peter was comfortable with.

He switched the camera to video mode, pressed record and resumed his position on the bed, knees on the bed, holding his lower body up, and chest resting on the mattress. He squeezed a generous amount of lube onto his fingers, pushed the panties a little to the side and circled his hole gently, slowly, because that was how he imagined Tony would do it. Those big, rough hands would have grabbed him by the hips, put him in that exact position, before teasing him mercilessly.

He moaned quietly and closed his eyes, rubbing slow circles around his rim, pressing a little against his entrance, but not hard enough to breach it. He felt his cock pulsing, begging for attention, but he didn’t dare to touch it, not yet.

“Tony, please...” He whined, pushing his hips back against his own hand, he was so lost in his fantasy he almost forgot he didn’t need to beg. Almost. “I need you...”

Gently, he started pushing one finger inside, knuckle by knuckle, he was so aroused he barely felt the burn, just delicious pressure that made his eyes roll to the back of his head. He started fucking himself on his finger, feeling the muscles around it slowly make way.

“’Been thinking about you, Tony…” he rasped out, hips pushing back against his hand. “Can’t stop thinking ‘bout you...�� When he felt loose enough, he pushed another finger inside, the stretch becoming a little more noticeable as he slowly scissored himself open. He got on all fours and turned his back to the camera to give Tony a better view, all spread out for him, and kept fucking himself, picking up the pace once just those two fingers weren’t enough. “Fuck, daddy, need you so bad...”

He eased the fingers out of himself, sighing at the loss, and reached for the vibrator that was sitting on the bed and turned to face the camera again. He knelt on the bed and, with one hand, he propped the vibrator up on the mattress, holding it down from behind him, as with the other hand he guided its tip to his already abused hole.

He flicked the switch and it vibrated to life, nudging against his hole before finally slipping in. Peter’s breath hitched at the intrusion, feeling the delicious burn on his lower back, as he moved his hips up and down slowly, trying to push more of it inside with each painful thrust.

“Fuck me, Tony,” he begged, as his free hand finally reached for his neglected cock, pumping it hard and fast, matching the maddening pace his hips set. He lost all sense of rhythm when he felt the tip of the vibrator finally – finally – reach his prostate and he pushed it even further in, until the pressure against the bundle of nerves became too much and he exploded in one of the best orgasms he had had in a long, long time. “Oh, f-fuck!” His vision went dark for a second as he let himself fall back on the bed, wasted.

He spent almost ten minutes just lying there, trying to catch his breath and regain consciousness. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt like that, he was boneless, floaty, completely satisfied. It was honestly the best he felt in months.

When his legs stopped shaking, he got up and headed straight to the shower, still feeling a little dizzy and weak, but he wasn’t complaining.

Once he was finished, he debated whether he should just go to bed or send Tony what he had, but with the way he was feeling, he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep so easily. So decided to send at least the pictures right away, even though it was nearing 3AM. Peter knew Tony was probably up, the man did say that he was an insomniac and that he sometimes went days without any real sleep, so it wasn’t a surprise when he answered just a few minutes after Peter sent them.

“Holy fuck, Peter!!” Peter bit his lower lip, burying his face in the pillow to hide his blush, even though he was alone in his room.“What the fuck, baby, it’s three in the morning, are you trying to fucking kill me?!”

“So you like them?” He asked with feigned innocence.

“I fucking love them, you little tease, these are hands down my favorites yet. I swear I’m gonna have them framed and hung in my workshop and I’ll spend the rest of my fucking days just writing odes to you.” Peter giggled into the pillow, turning on his side to get more comfortable on the bed.

“I bet you say that to all the boys.” He joked lightly, blushing again, which was stupid, but he couldn’t help it.

“Fuck no! You’re something else, kitten, and you don’t even know it.” Peter suppressed a smile, biting his lower lip.

“Are you touching yourself right now, daddy?”

“To be honest, I’m so fucking hard I think I’m gonna come instantly if I even brush my fingers on my cock. I’m literally just staring at the pictures right now and worrying I’m gonna come untouched just from that.” Peter laid on his stomach and bit the pillow, gently rocking his hips against the bed.

“That’s so hot. Can I see it?”

Seconds later, there was a video in the chat. He played it immediately and, sure enough, Tony wasn’t kidding. His cock was rock hard, throbbing, the head was an angry purple, already glistening with pre-cum. Tony was just holding it at the base, not daring to touch it, and the whole thing almost made Peter hard again, but he was really exhausted.

“Fuck, daddy, I really wish I could help you with that.”

“Oh, you don’t even know what I wish.”

Tony didn’t say anything for a few minutes and Peter figured he had gone to sleep, but then his phone beeped, alerting him to another message from him. It was, of course, a picture of Tony’s spent cock, resting against his belly, which was covered in come, so much of it Peter’s mouth watered.

“Was it good, daddy?”

“The best, sweetheart. Thank you. I’m gonna sleep like a baby today.” Peter chuckled. Tony always said that was high praise coming from someone who hardly ever slept and the younger man took his word for it.

“Goodnight, Tony. Talk to you tomorrow?”

“Looking forward to it, Pete.”

He knew he was fucked the second he tried to suppress a small smile, but couldn’t.

[mostlymovieswithmax]

Movies I watched in June

Now I think I’m comfortably in a rhythm to get these posts out. For one, I’m writing up short reviews either straight after watching a movie or sometimes it might take a few days. But June was a fairly good month in terms of the amount of films I watched. I got to go to the cinema quite a bit which is always fun. Anyway, let’s get on with it! If you’re looking for something good to watch (or maybe even something bad), I hope this list can help in some way to introduce you to new and different movies that maybe you’ve never heard of, or were thinking of checking out. Here is every film I watched from the 1st to the 30th of June 2021.

Bo Burnham: Inside (2021) - 10/10 Everyone was going off about how great this film is. An hour and a half of Bo Burnham in lockdown, singing songs and being upset is definitely a powerful hook and I have to agree with the general consensus because Inside blew me away. More thoughts on this in my podcast: The Sunday Movie Marathon episode 34.

Bo Burnham: Make Happy (2016) - 7/10 After watching Inside, I figured I’d rewatch some of Burnham’s older stand-up shows on Netflix. Make Happy is a lot of fun, injected with a lot of introspection from Burnham that really makes the special stand out, despite a lot of gags that just didn’t land for me.

Bo Burnham: What. (2013) - 6/10 It’s plain to see just how much Bo Burnham has grown over the years and how he has honed his comedy and music. ‘What.’ is a good stepping stone in the comedian’s career, showcasing loads of promise in him from a young age. There are some jokes that haven’t aged as well and some that straight up dragged, but overall the show is still enjoyable.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) - 3/10 Packed theatre for this one, obviously. People love a Conjuring movie, and I’d also say people love a good scare… but this movie isn’t scary, or good for that matter. More thoughts on episode 35 of the podcast.

The Conjuring (2013) - 6/10 After the horrendously disappointing debacle that was the third Conjuring movie, I decided to watch James Wan’s original movie and man, if this wasn’t better in literally every way. I don’t tend to love James Wan movies but I can’t deny he’s got so much talent in how he makes movies and it makes The Conjuring a lot more fun to see competent filmmaking in the horror genre in a way that actually creates an eerie atmosphere with creative uses of camera-work and editing.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - 8/10 Normally I’m not big into the old slasher movies. I appreciate that for the time, perhaps they hit differently, but now I just don’t tend to connect with them. Wes Craven’s ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ is a bit of an exception. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not particularly scary, though it does employ a lot of interesting techniques and designs. Undeniably, the design for Fred Krueger is a staple in cinema, with the striped jumper, hat, scarred face and knives for fingers not leaving the mind of the general public any time soon. Elm Street doesn’t have too many kills but when it does, it is so effective and fun to watch. Craven was one of the greats, truly.

One Cut of the Dead (2017) - 8/10 This has to be one of the most engaging zombie movies I’ve seen in a long time. There’s a lot to spoil with One Cut of The Dead but I won’t go into that here. It is clever and funny, subverting expectations in ways I really didn’t expect. I really cannot recommend it enough.

Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones (2019) - 8/10 Since we’re watching Chappelle's Show for episode 45 of the podcast, I wanted to get an idea for what I was in for, so I watched Dave Chappelle’s stand-up show from a couple of years ago. Yeah, really funny, which I suppose is what you want from a stand-up special, but what makes it better is Chappelle’s commentary on the world at large and how he’s able to combine humour with intelligent criticism.

Fear(s) of the Dark (2008) - 4/10 A few years ago I think I watched this animated black and white anthology film on a New Year's Day when I had foolishly decided to pull an all-nighter and then go out with mates for ice cream. Never again. But I’d forgotten what I thought of this movie and decided to get the DVD for cheap on eBay. Perhaps I am doomed to watch Fear(s) of the Dark only when I am tired because I popped this on when it was nearing midnight. I was lucid enough to understand what I was watching though… and it was quite boring. These short films emulate the filmmakers’ nightmares - an interesting premise in theory, but pretty weak on execution.

The Bourne Identity (2002) - 3/10 We marathoned the first three Bourne movies for The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, episode 36 so check that out for my expanded thoughts on this, the best Bourne of the three.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004) - 2/10 Immediately after, we did the deep dive into Supremacy, the second Bourne and the worst of the three (albeit by a very slim margin). Check out episode 36 for more.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - 2/10 I really couldn’t care less about these terrible movies. It was a horrible chore to sit through them. Ultimatum was also rubbish. More gripes and discussion in episode 36 of the podcast.

The Father (2021) - 10/10 Another trip to the cinema for this masterpiece. I tried very hard not to sob loudly in the theatre where aside from myself, the audience totalled three people. More discussion of The Father in episode 36 the podcast.

Drag Me To Hell (2009) - 2/10 I’m pretty shocked that Sam Raimi directed this. Usually when I watch one of his films, I can see his staple of fun gore, practical effects, crazy camera movements… but there was none of that here. It just felt like a really bad horror, indistinguishable from the regular affair, with no personality or passion. Drag Me To Hell might even have been one of those movies I’d avoided in the past when I was younger because it seemed too scary but no, it was just boring and bad and I feel like there’s something I’m not getting out of this that other people seem to be.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) - 8/10 At this point, I feel I have to admit Wes Anderson as perhaps my second favourite director. His movies are just so nice and beautiful to watch. Moonrise Kingdom is a quirky love story between two kids and honestly, with any other director, could have been handled poorly because the story is quite simple. But Anderson injects so much of his signature style and personality into the film. A powerhouse of actors with the likes of Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Bruce Willis and Tilda Swinton, among a few of Anderson’s regulars, make Moonrise Kingdom a breeze. Good for a dark day to lift the spirits.

Nobody (2021) - 8/10 I needed something to fill an otherwise uneventful day, so I hopped on a bus and booked a ticket for Ilya Naishuller’s new action movie, Nobody. The film started and to my annoyance, the lights in the theatre were still on. When I go to the cinema I don’t really want to see the other people sitting around me, so I got up from my seat, abandoning the first two minutes of the film to find a member of staff to turn the lights off. After showing them that the lights were in fact still on, I took to my seat and watched the movie for what felt like a little while before the lights went off. Nobody is a really fun action movie. Perhaps similar in a lot of ways to John Wick, but with more personality to the main character. More thoughts on episode 37 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) - 8/10 After procuring the Criterion blu-ray from my local hmv, I delved into all the supplements it had to offer, including a making-of documentary, chats with the director, and a gallery of polaroid pictures from when they were shooting the film in India. The Darjeeling Limited is perhaps not peak Wes Anderson, but I do kind of love it. It makes me want to go on a journey to another country with my brother and sister, perhaps in ten to fifteen years. Here, the main characters are three brothers who travel to India seeking some kind of spiritual experience. Things don’t seem to work out that way, however, because I’m not sure how spiritual an experience you can have when you plan out an itinerary to schedule it. Fantastic performances all round and of course, beautiful direction and cinematography.

Face/Off (1997) - 3/10 Was I supposed to laugh? Maybe I was just too tired but I really couldn’t stand Face/Off. It didn’t feel particularly special and despite a couple of fun ideas, it was mostly quite boring.

Luca (2021) - 5/10 The new Pixar movie leaves a lot to be desired. The animation is really second to none and I can’t fault how beautiful the movie looks, more so when it’s set in this little Italian town than under the sea. The story is so uninspired though, with the basic premise being that the protagonists want a Vespa so they enter a competition to win the money to buy one. Also they’re fish that turn into people on dry land. Maybe that’s enough for some people, but I couldn’t shake the familiarity of Luca. It never went in any interesting directions and basically did exactly what I figured it would do. I don’t believe it’s out here to subvert expectations but I would like some creativity when it comes to the writing. Perhaps if I watched it again, I might like it less. It was pretty dull.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002) - 10/10 I’m a little disappointed with the Criterion blu-ray for Punch-Drunk love. It’s supplements host a couple of low-quality deleted scenes that were clearly deleted for a reason, and some weird artsy music videos that incorporated footage from the movie. I was quite shocked at how low-effort it all seemed. The movie itself is fantastic though and I do believe it to be Adam Sandler’s best performance (and I really liked Uncut Gems). He portrays a man who is constantly put down by his family, clearly has some kind of social disability, and on top of it all he’s getting scammed by a sex line. Amongst all this, he’s trying to navigate a new relationship and it’s so sweet to watch all the interactions between Sandler and Emily Watson. It’s a perfect melding of romance, comedy and anxiety, beautifully directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

Fargo (1996) - 9/10 Another movie you wouldn’t expect to be so funny, especially since it’s based on this horrific true story about murder, deceit and money. But the Coen brothers know how to handle it. Excellent performances, beautiful colour palette, and a story that just gets more and more insane as it goes.

House (1977) - 7/10 House (or, Hausu) was a recommendation for episode 37 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast so check that out for more discussion. Generally speaking, this Japanese horror/comedy was bonkers. Insanely creative and abstract (which at points can detriment the film) with an almost Balamory-esque presentation. I was happy to find that the comedy was not lost on me at all; this is a hilarious film, albeit maybe not all the time.

The Princess Bride (1987) - 10/10 I reviewed this in my May wrap-up but this time around, I had recommended The Princess Bride for the podcast, the discussion for which you can listen to in episode 37. It all clicked this time around. It is such a fun, warm movie with a lot of laughs and superb production.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) - 8/10 Another Rob Reiner joint, a few years before The Princess Bride. This Is Spinal Tap is lauded as a masterpiece in comedic cinema and I might agree; this movie is hilarious. Shot in mockumentary fashion, it follows a band playing shows and trying to get gigs, coupled with the inevitable screw-ups of live performance and creative disagreements. It lost me every now and again but it’s still a must-watch.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - 6/10 A decent Disney flick but certainly not their best. One highlight includes the villain singing a lament about wanting to have sex with Esmerelda and calling her a witch for giving him a boner.

Ponyo (2008) - 4/10 Not sure if I’ve ever disliked a Miyazaki movie before but I did not vibe with Ponyo. It came across as very baby and as such, there really wasn’t much to read into. The animation is fantastic as always but so much of it felt specifically tailored to a younger crowd.

Roman Holiday (1953) - 9/10 Classic romance at its best. I had heard on a podcast that this was the sexiest movie the guest had ever seen and while maybe not in the traditional sense of the word, I do get where they’re coming from. I was tearing up with just how lovely it all was, following a princess who runs away and spends the day with a man she meets in Rome (where it was shot on location), doing all the things she’s wanted to do but never could because of royal responsibilities. Fantastic performances from Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck who sell the chemistry of the characters so well.

F9 (2021) - 2/10 I’ve never seen any of the Fast & Furious movies and after watching the ninth in the series, I don’t want to. This is basically the Vin Diesel show; we watch him drive cars fast and punch people a lot. Wow! I don’t really understand what it (and forgive the pun) driving people to see these movies if they’re all in this same vein. As far as I can tell, F9 is the goofiest of the series so far and I’ll admit I had a chuckle or two at some of the truly implausible moments, such as a part where one of the team gets shot by about ten men with machine guns, yet manages to kill them all without being affected by the bullets… but overall, in this two-and-a-half-hour experience, I was largely bored.

Shaolin Soccer (2001) - 7/10 I love this movie! Shaolin Soccer is so much fun; it is goofy and out there and completely crazy, all by design. Steven Chow knew what he was making when he set out to craft this insane story of a group of guys using Kung-Fu to play football. The basic story itself is nothing new but it’s elevated by the infectious comedy and implausibility of what’s happening. Balls are kicked into space and across fields so fast the very ground is torn asunder. A man eats an egg off a dirty shoe. This is cinema.

Casino Royale (2006) - 7/10 I had seen a trailer at the cinema for the new Bond movie and I have to say, I’ve never really given 007 the time of day, aside from a few of the very first movies I’d tried watching a while ago. But the new trailer kind of got me hyped, so I wanted to watch all of the Craig era Bond movies, starting with Casino Royale. I had a great time! Even though there’s not loads of fighting or weapons or fast cars, the meat of the movie actually comes from this poker game Bond is playing against the villain, played brilliantly by Mads Mikkelsen. I was surprised to witness a bit of cock-and-ball torture in this 12-rated movie but I would be lying if I said it didn’t stick with me.

Quantum of Solace (2008) - 5/10 Immediately after Casino Royale, I jumped into the second of Daniel Craig’s Bond movies, Quantum of Solace. Sadly it’s quite weak, with not much going on aside from the general Bond fare. Mathieu Amalric’s villain lacked a lot of menace or motivation and generally, I’m not super worried about a brilliant story in a Bond movie, but even the action felt weak in this. Quantum of Solace didn’t exactly upset me but it failed to wow me in any way either. The saving grace of the movie is certainly Daniel Craig as the hero, capturing Bond and what he’s supposed to be.

Skyfall (2012) - 6/10 A marked improvement from its predecessor, Sam Mendes helms Skyfall, Craig’s third outing as Bond. Skyfall delves into Bond’s past as he seems to be slipping a bit, not as much the expert operative he once was. It would have been nice to see more of his fall from grace, as they don’t really show us how he’s become less efficient as much as they give other characters expository dialogue telling us how he drinks and does drugs and is haunted by childhood trauma. For me, that’s where the meat of the story lies and I would have preferred more of a character piece if indeed they were delving into that side of the character anyway. That being said, the fights are still better choreographed than the last instalment and the colour grading and scenery is often very visually interesting. Everything in Skyfall is better than its predecessor and it’s surely thanks to Sam Mendes who does a great job at directing.

Howl's Moving Castle (2004) - 8/10 Another go round for Howl's Moving Castle, as this was a recommendation for my podcast, The Sunday Movie Marathon. My opinion, I feel, is unchanged. It's a fantastic film, and you can listen to more of what I have to say in episode 37. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 - 3/10 A pretty poor end to a poor series of movies. I'm surprised I've watched the Twilight movies as many times as I have but I also know I'll watch them again. Part 2 I watched with the YMS commentary track on YouTube which, again made the experience a lot better. But otherwise the series seemed to get better as it went along… until the last movie. Ultimately my biggest problem with it is that nothing actually happens and the plot feels like a late addition rather than a natural progression of the story. It’s basically a whole movie of set-up to a payoff that doesn’t even canonically happen. A big thing with YA adaptations in this era was making a final book into two movies, regardless as to whether it needed that much time or not. Breaking Dawn does not need to be two movies at two hours each. About ten new characters are introduced here and the film is afraid of killing even one of them off. It's the last movie! We're not going to see these characters again! Kill some of them! There's just no emotional weight to any of it and I hate to say I was disappointed with the ending because I have such low expectations for these films but man, this was so unsatisfying.

Frances Ha (2012) - 8/10 Life is hard. And I hate this movie because it shows me so much of what terrifies me about being alive. And I love this movie because it shows me so much of what I’m alive for. Noah Baumbach’s brutally honest depiction of growing up and fending for yourself struck me in a way I wasn’t expecting and I think it’s because I’m at a point in my life where I’m worrying a lot about how it’s all going to turn out. The titular character is burdened with the stress of working low-paid jobs and paying rent while juggling school and making time for her passion of dancing as she tries to connect with people she’s lost, as temporary friends and housemates come and go. She feels like a lonely character despite often being around a lot of people. Frances Ha is fantastic and heartbreaking and uplifting… but it made me feel bad so I hate it.

[nicomacheannothing]

10-7-2021

This is going to sound totally weird, but I've been loving the weather lately. I say it's weird because it's actually been really gloomy and drizzly. In the summer, this kind of weather bums me out, but autumn is a different story. It's been unusually warm here, so I can just wander around the neighborhood without bundling up and just observe the grey haze as it floats over the fallen leaves. It's such a distinctive mood and I love it. It was still pretty dark out when I went for a walk this morning. I love seeing houses at dark times of day with one or two windows illuminated. There's just something so evocative about a single window emanating warm light. It's comforting and mysterious at the same time. Here's one of my favorite snaps from this morning's walk:

I also have to post this pic of my little Halloween lawn setup:

My parents never decorate for Halloween, but I really wanted to do SOMETHING this year. Like, why not? I created a little mock cemetery and put up some lights and garlands inside. This was last Friday while my parents were both at work. When my dad came home, he seemed so happy and amused at the decor. Seriously, my parents never decorate or get into the holidays, but they should! They clearly enjoy having things change every once in a while :p I swear, if I was just able to work 4 days a week instead of 5, I would get so much more done around the house. :p The fact that I was able to clean my room, do a little bit of photo editing for work AND put up Halloween decorations proves it. I might try to do that again tomorrow; 4-ish hours of work from home, then take care of other things. My boss won't be in the office cause his brother will be in town. Sometimes I like being in the office by myself too, though. We'll see what happens. Last Saturday, I shot photos at the Women's March in my city. I'm eager to edit and post them, but I've been a Good Child and focused on my actual work this week 😇 I will say that I LOVE my photo gear right now. I've got my Canon R6 and two main lenses: an EF 16-35 f/2.8 L and the EF 70-200 f/2.8 L. For the non-photographers out there, that's a very wide zoom and a rather long zoom. Both are capable of taking in a lot of light while also getting the background nice and blurry. I never expected to be using zooms primarily; I've been wedded to primes for most of my career. These are really nice zooms, though. Their versatility has saved my butt on more than one occasion. I still use one prime: my RF 50mm. That's a nice little lens too. It fills in the space between the focal lengths of my other two lenses. Even then though, I don't need to use it very often. My favorite lens on my old cropped sensor camera was about a 35mm equivalent, so the long end of my wide usually does the trick for me. Haha, I'm not sure why I feel the need to geek out about photography right now. Point is, the Women's March was the first event that I shot just for fun with my current kit and it was a blast to shoot. I'm still working on getting inspired to draw more. I did a bit of study over the weekend and yesterday. There are some things that I want to convey that I just can't via photography. At least not easily. Like my own original stories and characters, for instance. Maybe someday I can find models and/or friends who would be willing to play my characters on camera, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. Until then, I have a pencil and Procreate and I'm going to learn to use them! Determination!

[monstersandmaw]

Female vampire x female hunter (sfw) - Streaming story

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Hey folks! Here’s the edited version of the story I wrote with your input on my Twitch writing stream. Names were suggested in the chat for Olena (the vampire), our huntress, and the black cat, so thank you! I hope you had fun watching the stream and watching how I write and work, and maybe we can do another one in the future if there’s enough interest.

This feels like a part one to me, so maybe we can continue it together? Also Olena is basically Striga from the Netflix Castlevania series...

Content: (POV vampire) snow, scheming cats, grumpy lesbian vampire, slightly daffy huntress, and a teeny bit of sass. Wordcount: ~2.7k

She’d seen a hundred winters like it, but the sight of dancing snowflakes as winter really sank its teeth into the landscape never failed to ease something inside her. The summers here were intense and hot, but in the dead of winter the sun barely managed to haul itself above the tall row of looming elms on the horizon and everything lay muffled beneath dense blankets of pristine snow.  

Her breath fogged against the leaded panes of the mullioned windows as snowflakes flailed around the dark courtyard beyond and she found her thin, dark lips tugging into a wry, private smile. Yes, winter was her time; it was a time of wolves and hunting; of long nights, solitary stars, and gusting winds.

As she shifted her weight - on the point of turning away from the worsening storm - her light, soft-soled fur boots sounding barely a whisper on the smooth, time-worn flagstones of the bastion which she’d called home for the past two centuries, a movement in the barbican gate caught her sharp eye. Scowling, she focused her gaze on the distant, shadowed arch below. Squinting past her own severe, pale reflection and the flickering of the fire behind her, her heavy, dark brows knotted a little more tightly together when she figured out exactly what she was seeing.  

“No,” she breathed, astonished. “No fucking way. A human? Out in this weather?”

Easy pickings, perhaps. 

It had been long enough since her last feed that the thought of hot, fresh blood straight from the vein enticed her out into the cold.  

With a grunt, she turned away from the window and stalked through the castle on long, lean legs, fur-trimmed cloak swirling behind her like pirate’s sail. It didn’t take much effort to haul open the monstrous, iron-studded castle doors, and the blast of icy air that hit her in the face barely registered. Narrowing moss-green eyes against the biting wind, she stepped out into the drift-riddled courtyard.  

Up ahead she thought she could make out the figure of a young, human leading a horse. “The fuck?” she snarled. While her body didn’t particularly need blood at the moment -  no burning thirst prickling the back of her throat - as she neared the human and caught the faintest traces of her scent on the wind the instinctive urge to feed sparked a dull throb in her canines. It didn’t help that the woman’s pulse was rabbiting, but she could ignore that for now.  

The next scent she caught was the sour tang of horse, and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. Still, the human seemed to have noticed her at last because a voice that would have been too faint for human ears rose above the yowling of the wind a moment later.  

“Oh by the gods,” the young woman practically whimpered, staggering a little into the body of her chestnut horse who seemed to be a little lame on the nearside fore, head nodding with each step. The syncopated motion set a nicely-made, tooled leather quiver rocking on the saddle, revealing a decent number of arrows. The woman was a hunter then, and either her horse had gone lame before she’d managed to shoot anything, or she wasn’t very good.  

Olena stilled and let them approach her, a single, incredulous eyebrow raised.  

“I know it’s late!” the woman continued, tugging fruitlessly on the reins of the mare who had planted her feet and refused to take another step.

Animals could usually sense the supernatural, and this mare clearly had more sense than her owner when it came to marching up to a predator uninvited and introducing itself.  

“But, Buttercup here threw a shoe about half a mile back and it’s twisted the clenches a bit, and I didn’t want to keep riding her with one shoe off, so I got off and walked, but then it got late, and dark, and the snow started to worsen and…”  

Olena remained perfectly still, wondering how the woman’s mouth could be moving so quickly when the rest of her seemed half frozen.  

“So… uh… any chance we could find some help here? At least a roof over our heads til tomorrow? I don’t mind sleeping in the stable with Buttercup. Well,” she added tilting her head a bit and patting the mare’s shoulder, “Maybe not with with, because I don’t want to get crushed, but… you know… On a hay bale or something.”

After a brief pause while Olena’s brain tried to catch up with the sheer speed of the woman’s speech, she said, “I think we have a spare trough for you.”

For a split second, the human didn’t react and Olena wondered if she had, finally, frozen in place. Her eyes were wide and brown, somewhere between the colour of honey and hazel, and she blinked a few times before spluttering, “Wait, are you serious? You’re gonna offer me a fucking trough?”  

A tiny smile played at the corner of Olena’s mouth but she resisted the urge to let it blossom into something more expressive. With a quick jut of her chin, she indicated the stable block - mostly disused these days - and muttered, “Stable the mare in there. When you’re done, come up to the castle.”  

Without checking to see if the human had any more questions or spontaneous monologues to spout, Olena turned on the spot and left her to it.  

As she paced steadily through the falling snow, the vampire’s keen ears caught the soft sounds of the hunter nattering on to the horse - something about creepy castles and grumpy noblewomen - followed by the raucous squeak of the stable door as it opened, the clop of the mare’s hooves on hard stone, and then she was back at the castle doors herself and passing beneath leering carved gargoyles and grotesques.  

She debated fleetingly with herself as to whether she should close the doors again, partly so that the drifting snow didn’t pile up in the hallway again, but mostly so that Luna didn’t decide she wanted to go out all of a sudden, and then disappear for hours, only to turn up in the middle of the day, mewling to come in with something unmentionable dangling from her needle-sharp teeth.  

“Bloody cat,” Olena muttered fondly.

It had been a while since she’d been in any real position to gauge a human’s strength - in any context - but she had the feeling that this woman was probably stronger than her slim build suggested. Perhaps she was wiry rather than slender. A life where someone needed to come poaching deer in the forest, rather than having fine meals made, had a tendency to tip a person towards a leaner constitution. It was a build that had always appealed to her, despite certain expectations that someone as tall and muscular as Olena would prefer someone softer and altogether more delicate. Not that she’d given herself the slightest occasion to sample any kind of pleasure from any kind of woman in the past century or so, but that was on her.  

Despite the thickness of the castle walls between the entrance hall and the kitchens below, Olena could still make out the stump of the woman’s boots as she kicked off the worst of the snow before slamming the doors closed behind her with an echoing boom that shattered the stillness of the castle.  The vampire only realised once she was standing in the empty kitchen that she had no food fit for humans whatsoever. Perhaps there was a solid wheel of what had once been cheese lurking in a far corner of the cellars, but other than offering her a freshly-caught mouse, courtesy of Luna, there wasn’t much to bring up other than a pitcher of water.  

She shook a jar of something that could have been black tea a hundred years ago, but given that it resembled little more than mouse droppings, she returned it to the shelf and left the kitchens with the jug of water and a small earthenware cup. The human would have to be grateful for the fire and the shelter, if not the food.  

With footsteps quieter than even the cat’s, Olena’s progress along the stone corridors was unmarked by any eyes, save for perhaps a stray spider lurking in the vaulted ceilings. It hadn’t been until the strong heartbeat of another being had entered the halls that she’d appreciated quite how alone she was here. Memories, distant and dusty, of parties and gatherings filtered back to her through the layers of dust that seemed to cling to every surface of the castle, and something old and stale and painful stirred inside her at the sound of that new, fresh heartbeat.  

Mixing gradually with the steady rhythm of the new heartbeat came another sound. A soft voice, hoarse from the cold, hummed an old melody from the region that Olena was certain no one alive still knew, and the force of it hit her squarely in the chest. The last person who had sung that in her presence had been gone for nearly two centuries now.  

From her abrupt halt in the corridor, she caught the faint thrumming of another heartbeat. A moment later and Luna coiled softly around her ankles in silent greeting before fluffing up her tail and pricking her black ears forwards, suddenly alert. Then, bold as brass, she trotted into the drawing room, taking a direct path over the rug in the centre of the room, and introduced herself to the hunter without preamble.  

The human’s gentle warbling cut off the moment she spotted the cat, and she let out a little chuckle, crouching down into a childlike pose that almost drew a smile from Olena. She’d clearly been drying her russet-brown hair in the heat blasting off the fire in the grate, and Olena’s green eyes darted instantly to the soft curve of her now exposed neck.

Unconsciously, she licked her lips.  

The colours of the flames glimmered enticingly on the sliver of bare skin, dancing first gold then to a deeper amber.  

Her pulse beat steady and strong.  

Olena blinked and licked her lips again.  

Concentrating harder on her senses, she realised that the ferrous tang of blood tinted the air, and she deepened her habitually stern scowl. The hunter hadn’t seemed hurt. Honing her focus still further, it was with a strange sense of relief that she realised that the blood was not human. A second later, she spotted the source. A tiny mouse had been deposited on the hearth rug, and she grimaced. Luna had clearly been hunting and had left a present there for her on her return.  

The human, upon spotting the grim little offering, pulled a face and then, to Olena’s surprise, laughed. “Well, you did better than me,” she said, scratching the cat under the chin as Luna tilted her dark, fluffy face upwards for a moment before coiling languorously around the stranger’s ankles like a shadow come to life. “So far I’ve caught absolutely nothing.”

It wasn’t until the raucous purring of the traitorous cat reached her ears that Olena realised she’d been standing there staring like a suit of armour for too long.  

The human finally noticed her presence, jumping quietly and gasping, which startled Luna a little. In rebuke, the cat bristled and stalked away. She was acting as if this new arrival to the utter stillness of their castle meant nothing at all to her, though Olena could see that she was secretly fascinated with the human. Remembering how long the cat had taken to warm up to her in the first place brought a fresh sting to her chest and a bitterness to her mouth.  

She rolled her green eyes and shot the cat a look, but Luna just ignored her.  

“Cute,” the human grinned, and Olena frowned, swivelling her gaze to the human and pinning her to the spot with a well-practised glare.  

“Excuse me?”

“Your cat,” the hunter said with a surprisingly girlish giggle for someone dressed like a soldier in supple leathers. “She’s cute.”

Olena had only the merest grunt in answer to that. “I can’t offer you anything to eat, but if you’re thirsty, there’s water. Or wine.”

The hunter tilted her head slightly, more curious than offended. “No servants to cook for you?” she asked archly. “Did you send them all away for the winter festivities and now have no one to feed you?”

She felt her features tighten in response - the urge to flash her fangs at the sheer audacity of this frail little human surged hot and bright in Olena, almost blinding her for a second before she reined herself in.  

The human, however, was apparently not finished. “Or perhaps you rely on the scraps your cat brings you?”

She was the next thing to letting her eyes flare red. Instead, she ground her jaw and set the pitcher of water down on the table near the fire without a word, and left the room.  

Luna, clearly unused to all the drama, let out a soft ‘mrrrp’ from the depths of the squashy chair where she’d apparently set up camp for the evening, and the hunter looked over at her. “I know,” she grinned. “These aristocratic types are so touchy.”

Olena’s last thread of patience snapped and she whirled on the spot. “What would you know?” she hissed, voice low and dangerous, and for the first time, she saw the spark of apprehension begin to kindle in the human’s eyes. The reason this castle was echoing and empty made her insides ache. “Perhaps you should have stayed in the stables if you’re so picky…”

The hunter’s mouth opened and shut a few times before she finally croaked, “Look, I’m sorry. I was out of line. You didn’t have to let me shelter here for the night.” She tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, Olena’s eyes instantly tracking the movement, before adding, “I’ve got some supplies in my saddlebag. I can eat those.”

And with that, the human turned on her heel and left the room.  

The absence of her heartbeat in the vacuum left behind left Olena reeling.

In the days of the castle’s former life, no one would have dared to speak to her like that, and yet, in the snows of winter, a desperate and chilly huntress had just talked back at her like they were village teenagers scrapping over nothing at all, and had abruptly flounced out. If she’d known what Olena was - who Olena was - would she still have been so bold?

Feeling petulant, Olena just let her go, but once she’d heard the doors slam, she slumped down into a fire-warmed chair and let out a long breath and did her best to ignore the nagging sensation at the back of her mind, and forget about the human altogether.  

Luna, however, had other ideas.  

The cat refused to settle, and eventually she trotted from the room and disappeared with a flurry of her black, fluffy tail. “Oh you too, huh?” Olena growled at the cat’s retreating back. The wind had picked up, tugging at the turrets of the castle and battering the glass of the windows with a steady hail of ice and snowflakes, and with a deep, regretful sigh, Olena stood.  

“You’re right,” she grumbled to the memory of the cat who was now nowhere to be seen. “I wouldn’t leave a dog out in this weather…”

The wind caught her full in the face as she cranked the castle doors open one more time, and almost all evidence of their earlier journey across the courtyard had been obliterated by the fresh, gusting snow. The main doors to the stable block had been battened down against the weather, but she had no difficulty in opening them.  

A warning whicker from the mare - who names a horse like that Buttercup anyway? she mused - alerted the human to her approach, and Olena caught the rustle of straw as she stood, heartbeat ticking faster. She could taste the woman’s fear on the air now.  

By the time she reached their stall, the human was on her feet, expression set in a wary glare.  

“You shouldn’t sleep out here.”  

The hunter blinked. “Where else am I supposed to sleep? I’m not staying up in that creepy castle with you.”

Olena almost admired her guts. “Well, it’s that or frostbite. Your choice.” And with that, she headed back to her ‘creepy castle’ alone. Let the stubborn human freeze if she wanted.  

However, she was gratified to hear a short squawk a few seconds later, followed by the crunch of boots in the snow as the human barrelled after her at an unsteady run. “Wait!” she yelled over the fierce wind. “Wait…”

Olena’s footsteps halted and she half turned to look over her shoulder. The human’s cheeks were flushed with the cold, and her breath swirled upwards like campfire smoke before the wind whisked it away.  

“Wait,” the human panted, heartbeat thundering out now despite the noise of the wind. “What’s your name?”

“You can call me Olena,” she replied, setting off again.  

She didn’t have to ask for the human’s in return because the audacious young woman just blurted, “I’m Annika. Please don’t call me Anni though. It’s just Annika.”

“Annika,” Olena murmured, finding that she rather liked the shape of the name on her tongue. “Annika.”

—

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[fandammit]

Look how long this love can hold its breath (1/4)

Part Ben Gross character study, part slowburn adolescent romance. 

*******

I’ve hoarded

your name in my mouth for months. My throat

is a beehive pitched in the river. Look!

Look how long this love can hold its breath.

-Sierra DeMulder, “Your Love Finds Its Way Back”

The first assignment of their Freshman year Honors English class is to write a letter to themselves. 

“I want us to capture this very moment -- who we are, what we love, what we hate, what we want,” Mrs. Allen announces with a grand flourish, and he thinks that maybe she would be better suited for drama kids in Theatre than for neurotic, type-A students of this Honors class. “I want us to trap it in amber -- preserve it so that in four years, I can give you back those very same letters and we can marvel at who we were!”

He sneaks a glance over at Devi and can immediately see they’re both thinking the same thing -- it's ridiculous and cheesy, but they’re both willing to go along with it without any fuss.

English teachers tend to have some kind of corny getting-to-know you activity, and despite this overly sentimental first assignment, he’s only heard good things about Mrs. Allen’s class.

So, that night he loads up his printer with his 32 pound bond paper (to show that he takes this assignment seriously) and goes to work trying to capture this moment of his life in amber.

Even saying it in his head makes him want to roll his eyes (he thinks Devi must be thinking the same thing, then immediately thinks about how he can make his letter better than hers).

He knows what Mrs. Allen said -- that this isn’t really an assignment inasmuch as it is a time capsule; that it isn’t a resume, but just a friendly letter so she can get to know them.

But Ben Gross hasn’t gotten this far with his GPA and academic transcript because he’s taken teachers at face value.

He doesn’t lie  -- he honestly doesn’t need to, really. His list of extracurriculars and hobbies take up nearly half a page on their own, and his write-up about his pathway to becoming a diplomat is incredibly detailed and specific.

It’s only when he gets to the final question that he hesitates.

What’s one aspect of your life that you think would make a fun movie and why? Describe it to me!

He re-reads the question, then re-reads his letter and frowns. He clearly comes across as competent and confident -- which is what he was going for -- but also a little dry. This question is obviously designed to see if he has some personality.

Which, you know, of course he does. He’s just not sure how to put that on paper so that Mrs. Allen will see that he’s a well-rounded, intelligent but not overwhelmingly dull honors student.

He thinks about writing about his Bar Mitzvah and Blake Griffin -- that would be pretty cool to see in a movie -- but a voice that sounds suspiciously like Devi’s pops into his mind and calls him lame. He thinks about the time he sat next to Drake in first class on the way to Toronto with his dad, and this time an image of Devi rolling her eyes pops into his head.

He leans back in his chair and wonders what Devi is writing about. She probably has half a dozen stories to choose from, each one more exciting and endearing than the last, and each one bursting with the kind of personality that teachers -- for the most part -- seem to find charming rather than obnoxious (which is what it is).

He’ll never admit it out loud, but even though he knows that he can be charming when he needs to be, there’s an easy charisma to Devi that he’s never been quite able to replicate.  

He frowns at that thought, then scowls at the rather wide tangent his thought process has taken.

The cursor blinks at him as an idea slowly takes shape in his mind. He writes about the long rivalry between him and Devi -- the back and forth exchanges in class that became back and forth exchanges of first prize and first place and ‘best of’ certificates. The sixth grade disaster of their competing Oregon Trail projects, which almost got them both suspended and lead to a long enough truce for them to divide up any extracurricular and project they might ever take part in.

By the time he’s done with his fictional movie, it’s overtaken his letter; the answer to that one question as long as all the rest of his answers combined.

He reads over it and edits a word here and there, rearranges a couple sentences. Not to toot his own horn, but there’s now a buttload of personality in this letter in addition to proof of his competence, confidence and intelligence.

He ignores the smug-sounding voice of Devi in the back of his mind telling him that he couldn’t have done it without her.

*******

Mrs. Allen takes all their letters with a smile on her face and gathers them close to her chest.

“I can’t wait to get to know you better! Reading these letters is the best way to start my year, and in four years, you guys are going to love reading them back to yourselves.”

She turns and puts the letters in a filing cabinet, which gives him the chance to roll his eyes without her seeing.

She turns back to the class and claps her hands together.

“Now this second one -- it’s not everyone’s favorite, but I personally love it because it lets me see everyone in a different light.”

He groans inwardly, basically sure that she’s going to announce some kind of partner or group project, which he absolutely loathes. It’s way too early for someone to dull his shine in this class (or, in the case of Devi, threaten to eclipse him).

Unfortunately, the second assignment is much, much worse than a group project.

“This assignment isn’t for you,” Mrs. Allen says as she starts to hand out the assignment sheet. “It’s for your parents!”

Anxiety gnaws at the pit of his stomach the minute she says it.

“For homework, I need your a parent or guardian or uncle or aunt or grandparent to write a letter about you to me. It doesn’t really matter who specifically it is, it just should be someone who has helped raise you and shape you to become the person you are today. I give suggestions on that sheet about what I’d like them to write about, but really, those are just suggestions.” She smiles brightly at the class. “Basically, I want to see a different perspective on you. This helps me get to know you better and whoever takes care of you at the same time.”

The anxiety has eaten through his stomach and is now going to town on his liver.

“And I know that your parents are busy people, so they have until the end of the week to complete it.”

He slinks as far down in his chair without seeming disrespectful, trying to figure out a way to keep his anxiety from ravaging his lungs.

“What’s wrong, Gross,” Devi asks to the right of him. “Afraid your dad won’t be able to write anything nice about you?”

He shoots up in his chair and glares at her.

“More like I’m trying to figure out how to make sure my dad doesn’t go over the page limit because I’m so awesome.”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to talk to Fabiola, as he turns his attention back to the paper on his desk.

His parents are both out of town until Friday -- his mom’s at some kind of rejuvenation spa and his father is brokering a deal with some artist named Clairo -- so he knows he won’t be able to ask either of them. It makes sense -- they’re busy and this assignment is stupid, and he should really argue about it except that Devi doesn’t seem to care about it in the slightest and has already put the assignment sheet in her binder.

Putting up a fight about it would admit to a weakness -- his only one, really -- and he’d rather drop out of the class or fail than admit that to her. Er. To anyone.

For just a moment, he considers asking Patti, who does meet all the criteria -- she is someone who’s helped raise him and shape him to be the person that he is. He dismisses the idea in the next moment, because even if she technically fits the parameters, he can only imagine the kind of pity he’d get from Mrs. Allen when she reads a letter written by his house manager. He needs Mrs. Allen to be impressed by him, not feel sorry for him.

He thinks about that letter over the next few days and finally comes up with a compromise -- he writes it himself, but from the perspective of his dad.

He then emails it to his dad, who signs it, scans it and sends it back as an attachment with an email that says Couldn’t have written better myself! You’re so smart! Love you!

He takes that as confirmation that all those things he said about himself as his dad were true, and tries to tell himself it feels just as good as if his dad had actually written them.

*******

The following Monday, he overhears Mrs. Allen tell Devi that her father’s letter was so beautiful and heartfelt that it made her cry.

He doesn’t hear what Devi says in return -- some just-right mixture of pride and genuine gratitude, he’s sure -- just turns away and pretends to rifle through his backpack.

There’s a pang in his heart that he tells himself isn’t jealousy, and an odd sense of relief when Mrs. Allen passes by his desk without saying anything at all.

*******

That assignment is the second thing he thinks about when he hears about Devi’s dad and the orchestra concert (the first thought is something that can’t be put into words -- a kind of bottomless sadness shot through with a concern he doesn’t know what to do with).

He wonders if Mrs. Allen will give that letter back to Devi. If doing so would be an unbearable kindness or an unspeakable cruelty. If Devi would even open it if she did.

Mostly he wonders if Devi is ok, and what would make her feel better.

After hours of thinking about it, he realizes he doesn’t know. It makes him feel sad -- or useless, maybe -- that even though he’s known her for almost his entire life, all he knows is how to piss her off.

He briefly thinks about deliberately tanking a test this week to make her feel better, then realizes that he:

A. Is so smart that he probably wouldn’t be able to tank a test, even if he tried.

and

B. Devi would know -- she always knows when he’s up to something -- and it would do nothing but piss her off even more.

So he studies his ass off and gets a higher grade than she does on their Biology test. Her nostrils flare when she sees the grade on his test, and for a moment he really does feel bad -- maybe he should’ve tried to tank the test after all.

But then her eyes flash with something that isn’t sadness for the first time in weeks, and he’s so absurdly happy to see it that he doesn’t even come up with an insult when she lobs one in his direction.

He tells himself it’s because having a nemesis who’s all in makes him a better student, but when she gives a full-on victory cry in class a week later because she’s beaten him on their English test by half a point, that same absurd kind of glee is back with it.

A small part of him thinks maybe he’s just happy that she’s happy, in whatever small way she can be right now. The larger part of him ignores that, and studies twice as hard for their upcoming Algebra test.

*******

He thinks about that letter again on the way home from the Model U.N. trip, as he watches her freeze the moment an ambulance comes shrieking down the street.  

His mind is a jumbled mess of emotion -- anger at the way the conference ended, confusion at the way things have seemingly ended between him and Devi -- but all that fades away in a wave of concern as he sees Devi force herself to take steady breaths.

He almost wants to ask if she’s ok, but in the next moment she catches him looking at her and snaps a question, and he’s so mixed up and off-balance that he falls back on what the two of them do best -- insults and sarcasm.

It’s comfortable, but it doesn’t settle him, and for the first time (maybe not for the first time) he wishes he could be good at something that isn’t a way to hurt her.

*******

He thinks about that again when he’s sitting across the dinner table from Devi, her insults still ringing in his ears.

Now would be the perfect time to hurt her the way she hurt him, to make her as miserable as he feels right this moment.

But then he remembers that letter, thinks about the girl whose dad loved her so much that talking about her made a stranger cry, about the look of misery on her face as the ambulance went by and how awful it must feel every time she hears a siren.

He remembers the feeling of wanting to be good at something that isn’t supposed to hurt her.

So he swallows his bitterness at the way the Model UN Conference ended and swerves away from hurting her, makes some charming jokes about how good she is at diplomacy instead.

She smiles at him from across the table, and later even laughs when he tells her about his awkward pizza encounter (he won’t say it makes him feel better than he has in the last 24 hours, but something loosens in his chest at the sound of it).

It doesn’t take away the loneliness of the day completely or soothe all his disappointment, but even though the day still stings, at least he knows that he can be alright -- maybe even good -- at something more than just hurting Devi.

*******

He knows he’s had more grandma juice than is advisable when he finds himself staring at his reflection and telling himself that he didn’t throw this party just so Devi would come to his house.  

It’s his birthday, he reasons, and people throw parties on their birthday. It’s what his parents wanted when they left him, and he’s nothing if not a dutiful son. Plus, he has the house for it, and the money for it, and the friends --.

Well, he’s still not drunk enough to say -- even to himself -- that he has the friends for it.

But having parties is what cool kids do on their birthdays, and even if he can admit that he isn’t one of them, he’s at least adjacent enough to cool kids to be able to emulate their behavior.

So, yeah. That’s why he threw this party -- to be cool. Not because Devi asked him about throwing one. Not because seeing Devi look at Paxton like he was a goddamn chiseled marble statue come to life in the style of Pygmalion set off a hot spark of something that felt like jealousy in the center of his chest. His throwing this party had nothing to do with Devi, at all, in any way, shape or form.

He tells himself that a half dozen times as he looks at his blurry reflection in the mirror, as he splashes his face with water in the hopes that it’ll miraculously clear his vision, as he walks down the stairs holding his fourth cup of grandma juice.

Then he sees her come through the door and it’s like his vision clears up completely (if momentarily, because apparently emotions do not supersede biology) and he feels a warmth in his veins that has nothing to do with the alcohol currently coursing through it because Devi is in his house and she actually looks genuinely happy to see him.

He takes her on a tour of the house, pointing out the memorabilia from all his dad clients, showing her the game room and the gym and the two indoor pools (one chlorinated, one a saltwater pool), and she’s complimenting it all without even the slightest bit of sarcasm and laughing at his jokes and mocking him without the usual hard edge to her and he honestly can’t remember the last time he was this happy and --

Oh, fuck.

He totally threw this entire party just to invite Devi over to his house.

[nctinfo]

[TRANS] Jaemin’s interview with Allure March 2020 issue!

How are you? Hasn't it been so long since the last pictorial with NCT DREAM? First off, I turned 21 with the new year. (laughs) After the last pictorial for <Allure>, I was continuously practicing for our concert.

It was DREAM's first solo concert, right? It was completely the first time. We have done the 'DREAM Show' before but rather than calling it a concert, it felt more like a fan meeting. So it was the first time we officially had a concert. So, similarly, this concert was called 'The Dream Show'. We started in Korea and we are now continuing our tour. Anyhow, it's our first concert, so I'm gaining a lot of experience through all the feedback we're receiving.

The first concert is a special experience that doesn't come twice. What kind of stage did you prepare to show? I was all over the place at first. Since I had never done a solo concert, I had no idea how to envision it. Even though we did a run-through rehearsal, it was still very different with the audience present. There was also a time when my head went completely blank. I think it's because I was so nervous, I've never had that happen before. After gathering myself together, I set my mind to have fun. If we don't enjoy it, the fans won't enjoy the stage either. If we're really excited, then the fans will enjoy the excitement together with us. It will definitely feel different.

It seems like you're really connecting (with your fans). Did you also get closer to your members? We were originally already very close. As the concert tour passes, the members would voluntarily come up with ideas. We got better at saying things like: let's add an adlib here, let's run together at this part. The good thing about having someone give an idea like that is that we get to practice it during rehearsals and then apply it immediately to the show.

The album and the performances clearly show the team's growth. I was able to see that at the concert too. The team 'Dream' started as a team of teens. I was really young during <Chewing Gum>. As we grew <Go> came out, <We Go Up> came out... like it was an extension. We just wanted to continue showing our growth as we progress. For <Chewing Gum>, a cuteness that was definitely only possible at that age was shown.

Do you have any regrets? We definitely have a lot of bright and happy songs. It would've been nice if there was a darker song where we could've shown more charisma. If there were such songs, I think we would've been able to show more sides of us.

How did you feel when you saw the fans directly? 'Wah, this is really possible.' When I'm attached to the wire and go up (on stage) I can see all the fans in one glance. We always rehearsed on a stage where there was nobody, and I almost cried when I saw the fans sitting there at our first performance. I was always curious how it would feel when I saw the concerts of our sunbaes. As I got on stage myself, (I realised) the fans gathered together in one place to see us, and I was so touched. Our color is pearl neo champagne, and it's really bright and pretty. It's as bright as two, even if only one is on.

Weren't there many members who actually shed tears...? It was no joke right. (laughs) Everyone but I cried. We'd be in trouble if I cried too. I tried not to cry. If I ended up crying, everybody would be in a sea of tears.

When I think back to the previous pictorial we did for <Allure>, I was impressed with how the members carefully monitor the shoot, even if it was not their own. I like photography, you said that. Since when have you been interested in photography? Since I started uploading videos to the NCT YouTube Channel. As I was filming videos, my interest naturally shifted to photography. I was wondering how I was able to deliver a scene to the fans faster and that's how it started. You need a lot of equipment to take a video, but you only need a camera to take pictures and capture a scene, and immediately show it. I wanted to be able to deliver the scene much faster than videos that needed editing. Since then, I have become more interested in photography.

It's more common for an artist to be captured than to capture. In that case, you might lose interest. I like machines. When I take a picture and I didn't come out as I had imagined it, I need a program to correct it. So I found lectures related to it and got deeper into loving it as I was listening to them. So far, I really like capturing.

You must've already received a lot of reactions, what pictures did the fans like? I'm usually the one to take the pictures, that's why there are not many pictures of myself. I think what our fans like the most is our natural appearance. Even though the fans usually see us on stage or on TV, they can't see our daily lives. I think they like everyday things that they don't see often.

You will be the best at capturing those things then. Yes, and I also have a lot of affection for the members. 

They said equipment is important for taking pictures. What equipment do you use? I have a Sony A9 Body and a G-Master 85mm single lens. I used an iMac Pro with an LG display next to it, and I use a Wacom tablet. After buying one or two I kept buying new equipment. I got greedy. If I see something better, I'll go buy it again. I also have two GoPros and a Pocket Mini that I'm using well. But these days, my cameras are all dark and heavy, hence I want to have a small digital camera.

How do you keep it? I'm upset because I'm not good at equipment management since cameras are a device and you have to maintain it well to use them. Cameras are also very sensitive to temperature and humidity. I'm thinking of buying a device that will manage it for me. Lenses can become moldy if you don't manage the humidity properly, and it takes a lot of money to fix them. But right now, it's just on my desk, and I take it out when I need it.

Are you self-taught? That's why I reach a limit every day. 

What do you do when there's something you have questions about? In that case, I will look up a lecture on that part and listen to it. I watch YouTube too. Nowadays, I want to learn something like how to compose (a picture). I also want to compose a collage to create a picture that I want. Among the people I know, there's no photographer. So I have to find a way myself. For example, when there's no light, I have to use the basic tool to create the light.

What kind of moments are the ones you want to take pictures of? When the light is splitting. It's really pretty.

We're in the 'age of video'. What do you think is attractive to still images? A video cannot express the moment. If there's a big wave, it will come and go in the video. But in a picture, you can see every wave in the wave. I think that's really attractive. The things of a moment. Of course, there are always charms to a video. I like both video and photography. These days I have the greed to shoot 8k videos.

Among all the pictures you've taken until now, which one do you like the most? The picture I took of Jisung at the World Scout Jamboree. It's a picture of Jisung smiling brightly, it's the brightest picture I've ever taken and the sunlight is really bright too. It's hard to capture Jisung like that, so I captured that moment.

How did you take that picture? I was on the way back to the hotel after a shoot. We were coming out of the car, and the light was so good, so I told Jisung to stand there and just suddenly took a pictures of him. I was making jokes to make Jisung laugh. I took about 60 shots at that time, and that was one of them.

You must have a lot of pictures of the members. I have about 500GB of pictures. I hung up all my passwords. (laughs) I have it organized in folders.

It seems like you've often taken pictures of the members. Who is the most cooperative member to shoot? Renjun, Jeno, Jisung, Chenle…

So there is someone who is uncooperative. Everyone except Haechan listens well to me. haha

Today we had the concept of a novice photographer during the shoot, so there were various equipment and props in the studio. Whether it was the light or the cameras, you really took a close and touched it carefully. Is there anything you wanted to have? For the mirror selfie, we used a DSLR camera. I didn't know that DSLRs tasted like this because I use mirrorless cameras. It's really nice. It's a bit heavy to carry around, but since mirrorless cameras are mechanical, it doesn't make a clicking sound and when you take a series of pictures, it just captures it without much feeling. The DSLR felt like it was breathing with me. I had a good taste today.

That's a problem. Wouldn't it be comfortable to have a studio like this filled with your favorite equipment like the DSLR camera? It would be really comfortable. I could be here all day even if I didn't have a shoot myself. The color is the studio is so soothing and the songs the photographers were playing were always good.

How would it look like if you had your own studio someday? Like this one, I hope it to be an underground studio that's completely white. I think a place where all the pipes are exposed looks cool too. And I will be putting in a very comfortable sofa. Ah, and of course, the equipment is the most important.

What is the most interesting subject (to capture) these days? For me, it's people. I'm not really interested in plants or landscapes, I want to capture people. Also, when I take pictures of the members' faces, I feel that their faces are really pretty. (laughs) I show the ones that are well-edited to the members.

What do you think is a good picture? A good picture is one that is 'sincere'. Everything is obvious in a picture. You can tell when it's a fake laugh or angriness when you keep looking at the pictures. So when I take pictures, or when I have my pictures taken, I need to make it sincere for it to be called a picture. Today, was really fun.

Translation: Esmee @ FY! NCT (NCTINFO) | Source: Allure Scan — Do not repost or take out without our permission!

[katiejaynefilms]

Independent Project- Critical Reflection

Our group was quite excited for this project and after the introduction to the task we took a week to individually research and pitch ideas. We really wanted to take this opportunity to create something quite abstract and expressive rather than a more traditional narrative piece. I have personally done portraiture in the past with paint, and I liked the idea of exploring the connections between people, colour and sound. I came across a video of stop motion paint that was put to a scene from fight club and that really inspired me. I shared my idea and we then we put together a group of videos that were much more expressive and messier with paint and clay onto skin. There were other strong ideas that fitted the overall vibe but would have been difficult to combine, so we eventually did settle on the paint.

Research: https://katiejaynefilms.tumblr.com/post/647568626154618880/my-group-has-had-a-few-different-ideas-for-this

We also knew from the beginning that since the last project had focused on pre-production everyone wanted to be involved in shooting this time round. DOCMA had been so much fun that we took on that style with this film, splitting the time to 24 second each and individually shooting each section, without really being sure what everyone else would create. There was not clearly defined roles for all of this, instead it was a much more collaborative project. I had originally pitched the idea, of expressing different emotions, in separate colours in conjunction with sound. Jack added to this suggesting we went with a car crash sequence. I was happy with this as it meant we could explore a sound narrative rather than through visuals.

For my section I had red, and I quickly drew out what I imagined it would be like, as with my segment in the middle representing the crash, I knew it had to be quite intense. I set up my bathroom with a ring light and just explored pitying paint in my brother without overly planning his actions. I shot probably far to much footage and then edited it together with sound I found to send to James who took on the bulk of the editing for this project. I thought it would be easier to imagine with sound added even though it wouldn’t be the sound we finally did use and tried to match up the actions with sound effects to create some cohesion.

After the rough cut was submitted, and we went to the editing workshops is was pointed out that the pacing was not quite right and some of the momentum was lost, especially as the end felt like an overly long outro. We worked on this afterwards and I suggested with make quicker cuts, especially in the middle sections. The first sound edit, although very good, didn’t quite work with the overall film, as the radio section at the start didn’t quite match up. After we had feedback on this, Peer and Jenny had second attempt which I thought was a lot better. The muffled music was much more effective, and although there were a few mistakes they managed to sync sounds to movements which was what it needed. I still felt like some of the segments were disjointed and wanted to experiment with adding a wash of colour to each part. I attempted to do this changing around the intensity before settling on adding a light tint. I think the blue enhanced the deathly feel Peer had talked about at the end.

Colour grading: https://katiejaynefilms.tumblr.com/post/651049908150927361/independent-project-colour-originally-when-i

Overall, I came up with and developed the concept, shot and edited my footage, and experimented with the colour grading, but I was not responsible for any submissions. The group worked well again through having open and ongoing conversation in the group chat and setting deadlines for everyone to stick to, since we were working independently. Although I did feel as though engagement dwindled with some people as time went on.  I felt as though I was not enough help with the post-production last time, so I tried to offer more feedback and opinions this time round regarding the editing and sound work. Especially since after the rough cut this was encouraged, after I expressed that I didn’t want to come across to critical of other roles.

The crit was valuable, and I now agree that the title should have gone at the beginning to provide some context. I think I forgot how weird the film was because I knew it so well, so it really wouldn’t have spoiled anything for the audience and wouldn’t have prevented them putting together their own ideas. It was really nice to hear what different people thought because how people interpret work as a reflection of themselves is important to me. Technically there was many shortcomings with the film, which were pointed out and that we maybe could have fixed and improved with more time. The sound was not completed in my opinion and could have been developed further, the editing could have been cleaned up as well, with shorter cuts. It would have also potentially been nice to try mixing the footage up slightly more.

[garazza]

Action Comics #1023 Review

“The House of Kent: Part 2″

Action Comics #1022 “House of Kent: Part 1″ Review

Hoo-boy.

I actually appreciate this recap page, I really do, but it just rubs me the wrong way. I’m not sure if it’s the content of the recap that pisses me off or if it’s for the fact that they literally just took a page from the previous issue and slapped in some new dialogue (see Bendis’ Man of Steel mini for this to be taken to the extreme).

Most likely the latter, but there’s a good argument for the former because reading objective statements about what Bendis has done tends to do that. I guess what they could be going for is for something similar to when Svengoolie comes back from commercial break and it’s a still from the movie with Sven’s face superimposed somewhere and he makes a quip about the movie before it starts back up again.

But I digress. It fills me in on what’s been happening in the book and that’s what I needed it to do.

The art really goes down in quality since last issue. Romita, Jr.’s pencils aren’t as good, Janson’s inks are heavier and a lot more boring, and Anderson’s colors are bland and flat and not as lively. There are a few good spots and I’ll point them out, but they’re infrequent, and overall, the quality of the art is much more similar to the art in the Metropolis Doom arc than it is to last issue. This leads me to believe that editorial only gave the art team enough time over the pandemic-induced break in publishing to produce one good issue before forcing them back into a deadline where Romita, Jr.’s work is not as good and tends to suffer.

Red Cloud attacks and attempts to kill Jimmy Olsen instead of Lois Lane to send an even greater message to her and Clark.

For those of you that don’t know, the Invisible Mafia speak in code to avoid detection by Superman’s super-hearing and meet in areas surround by lead to hide from his supervision. In the beginning of this confrontation, no one says anything that Superman would respond to if he hasn’t already tuned it out, which is why Lois says out loud her nickname for her husband to get his attention.

It’s a sign of affection for them and could be utilized for such a scenario, but I don’t see why she had to say his nickname over anything else to get his attention. Maybe because since he revealed his identity to the world his real name is being said a lot more often in non-criminal ways, so he doesn’t respond to it as much as he has in the past. I’m not sure if I’m trying to come up with a rational excuse for what is actually a writer’s weird and out-of-character creative choice or if it’s what an actually competent writer intended for a discerning reader to infer and get joy from a successful analysis.

Regardless, it’s what got Superman’s attention at the end of Superman segment in the last issue. I don’t think what was supposed to be conveyed with those panels last issue was accurately conveyed by the art. Either Romita, Jr. didn’t sufficiently depict (but still beautifully rendered) what Bendis had directed him to draw, or Bendis had poorly directed Romita, Jr. in what he wanted him to draw. With this added context, however, these panels do make a lot more sense, but only with the added context. Without it, the scene is a little unclear.

You can clearly see the change in art with the two issues side by side like this. This issue, the art just doesn’t look as good. It’s just kinda blegh. It accomplishes what it needs to convey the story, but in a very boring and unspectacular way.

Also, this panel is very Harry Potter to me. Superman’s more subdued face is similar to that of book!Dumbledore in Goblet of Fire, but the almost hyperbolic dialogue is more akin to that of movie!Dumbledore. It’s very dissonant.

I really want to hate the humor of this panel, but it’s just so fun, so I won’t.

This is a really cool panel, one of the few standout moments, but I have issues.

First, I may have enjoyed the humor in the last panel, but Bendis’ attempt at humor with Jon here just makes me want to cringe. Whenever Bendis makes Jon talk, it just pisses me off and makes me want to stop reading.

Second, I see what they were going for with the glowing eyes, but this is some more of that dissonance between the art and the writing. It actually looks quite menacing, but the dialogue has a more humorous tone. Also, the actual effect for the glow is just two red circles, making their eyes look more like flashlights than radiating energy. I also want you to keep this moment in the back of your minds, I’ll refer back to it in a second.

I think the dissonance is the result of the Bendis-speak, where some of the characters are quippy, but other characters are playing the situation straight and are reacting accordingly to the incorrect behavior. There’s nothing wrong with a superhero comic being light-hearted, but it just doesn’t quite fit here. All the right ingredients are present, but they’re not all in the right proportions.

Another panel I really like. The smoke and its color are really well done, especially in contrast to the all black silhouettes except for their back logos of the Supers.

The eye glow effect looks much better here. It’s simple yet powerful.

I don’t know how important this revelation is actually supposed to be, so I’ll defer to the depiction of the comic instead of playing the fool and acting upset about something I’m ignorant about simply because I’m not a fan of the writer.

This moment is cool and all, but I don’t think Conner has super-breath. He doesn’t actually have the powers of Superman, he uses his tactile telekinesis to mimic some of the powers of Superman.

The “extreme high-velocity super-speed” was this issue’s first indication that Bendis might not know anything about this character he has stewardship over, but that can just be chalked up to Superman not remembering the powers of Conner. We don’t know the upper limit of Conner’s tactile telekinetic flight, nor should we care, it’s supposed to be a fun line.

The second indication is that Conner is shown to have heat vision when his eyes glow alongside Clark and Jon’s. He only has heat vision when he wears special goggles or a visor. Again, he doesn’t have all the powers of Superman. Tactile telekinesis only covers so much of Superman’s powers. But this can be forgiven because it is a pretty cool image.

“Once Is Chance, Twice is Coincidence, Third Time Is A Pattern.” This panel is the third instance of Bendis’ lack of understanding of Conner’s character. If this was the only instance, this would be fine, but it’s not. The moment is cool, but it’s a bridge too far.

Refer to my review of the first issue for more of Bendis not knowing anything about Conner.

EDIT: Thanks to @thebartallenblog​ for pointing out to me that Conner does in fact start developing more Kryptonian powers outside of his tactile telekinesis in the 2003 Teen Titans  book by Geoff Johns, so Bendis does in fact know more about the character than I give him credit for, which is more than I can say for myself in this instance.

Also, this moment goes on for way too long, almost two entire pages. Beautiful, the art of decompression and wasting reader’s time and money.

“Should I super-inhale?” Shut up, Bendis.

Also, why is Red Cloud is so fixated on Superman’s family instead of just Superman. Does the Invisible Mafia have something against his family as well? It was my understanding that they have it out for him specifically, anything that is ancillary to him is extraneous and not worth their time.

“Hey! It’s not my favorite super-move on a good day.” Then why the fuck did you even make him suggest it, Bendis?

I don’t know if loved ones referring to Lois as Ma is something Bendis has been trying to push as a character quirk or if it’s some sort of weird one-off. Either way, I don’t like it. It’s not bad in of itself, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not my thing and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Again, I’m not sure how significant Jimmy figuring out Red Cloud's identity is supposed to be to the plot and the narrative, but this seems to be a bit of lampshading from a writer who literally has no right to be lampshading.

Couldn’t give a shit about the plot, I’m just here to nitpick. Next.

Feels a bit janky in the art department, but the dialogue is surprisingly in character. They all feel like they have their actual voices. It’s a nice little moment.

I would address all the instances of Bendis making Jon talk, but that would make this longer than it already is, so I’ll only do it when it’s particularly egregious.

Red Cloud comes back and attacks not!Jon and I couldn’t care less. Kill the bitch. Please.

The next two pages are a lot of nothing, just a boat load of Bendis-speak.

I’m pretty sure this played out a lot differently and more humorously in Bendis’ head when he wrote it down and Romita, Jr.’s art makes it all the more funny but for all the wrong reasons.

Who’s his partner? Officer Tomasi?

You know when I said that one panel with Lois, Clark, and Jimmy was written really in-character? This panel with Conner and Jon is the exact opposite of that.

Red Cloud and Ms. Leone have a fun back and forth for two pages. It’s a good example of Bendis-speak working well.

“Black Label Club?” One meta-reference is enough, but two is stupid. I actaully feel a little conflicted nitpicking this, but Black Label is in such a weird place right now, so why reference it?

But “Clark Kent walked into a bar...” is a pretty bad ass line, very John Wick.

A very cool sequence, but it’s full of Bendis-speak and very decompressed.

Why the fake-out of the Superfamily executing a gangland-style shooting with Jon being the one pulling the trigger? I get it’s a story beat the narrative is supposed to hit, but still.

The reveal is pretty funny, shrinking the club, so it’s a little forgivable, but the set up and the pay off don’t quite match. It’s just another example of that dissonance I’ve been mentioning.

I know that “supersons” line was put there by Bendis as a deliberate dig at his detractors, so I’m not going to take the bait and get pissed. Nice try, big guy.

All in all, this issue was not as bad as I initially thought. It’s series of some really big highs and lows.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 256: Fucking Superb You Funky Little Hero Eggs

Previously on BnHA: Aizawa and Mic’s frankensteined best friend Shirakumo, better known to us as Kurogiri, had his memories briefly restored through the Power of Friendship, and was all “YO Y’ALLS BETTER GO CHECK OUT THOSE HOSPITALS” before his head started steaming like a tea kettle and he randomly fell asleep. Aizawa and Mic were all “!!” and Aizawa was all “(ಡ ﹏ ಡ)” and Mic was all “Aizawa are you crying” and Aizawa was like “NO!!!” and then they left the prison and Nao called HPSC Lady who called Hawks and was all “eck-chay ethay ospitals-hay” because Hawks, as you recall, is still a secret agent and all that. Anyway so Hawks was all “EUREKA!!” in his head which doesn’t really add up but hey, and then the chapter ended with Dr. Ujiko dancing in sadistic glee as he watched Tomura get all mad scienced. It was pretty freaky. I could use some wholesomeness right about now so let’s see if this chapter will deliver.

Today on BnHA: Class 1-A shows off the fresh skills they learned during their assorted internships, such as “determination”, “enhanced search techniques”, and “becoming a literal blob of acid.” The Wonder Trio is a particular highlight, and All Might is all “my little baby off to destroy people :’)” as he watches Deku shred a robot to pieces using Blackwhip. We then cut to Aizawa and Mic, who may or may not be planning some rogue vigilante style investigations of the whole Noumu thing, or maybe they’re just brooding, but either way they’re interrupted by Mirio and Tamaki who come running in to get them to stop Eri’s quirk from going haywire, which, yikes. The chapter then ends with All Might handing Deku a notebook full of DETAILED, CATALOGED INFO ABOUT THE PAST SUCCESSORS AND THE FUCKING SIXQUIRKS. We just have to wait two more weeks to find out what that’s all about. 2020’s got some fucking zip to it so far huh.

so it’s about a quarter past 7 right now and it’ll be a miracle if I can have this recap up by 10pm tonight. surprisingly the wait for this chapter didn’t really bother me, but this Sunday/Monday release schedule is really doing a number on my punctuality. but anyways we’ll figure it out eventually. if memory serves, there’s about a 90% chance that this week’s jump will also be a double issue, so that gives me another extra week to get my shit together lol

(ETA: so that wasn’t too far off actually! I think a three-hour turnaround time isn’t bad for 3000 words lol. and actually it was more like two hours of reading/blogging and one hour of editing/photo cropping. anyway so in all likelihood either Sunday or Monday night releases will become the norm, depending entirely on how busy that particular Sunday is. not quite the same as getting the chapter on Friday and having the whole weekend to ruminate over it but we will adjust!)

anyway, so I’m somehow remarkably unspoiled for this chapter despite it having been out for nearly a week and a half at this point. so that’s something! let’s see what we’ve got here

yaaaay my babies

All Might was offering free cotton candy, yes? I didn’t expect we’d cut right back to this lol, but you sure won’t see me complaining. I want to see what everyone else learned during their internships, and also what with the break and the last couple chapters being Tartarus-focused, it’s been about a month since I last saw my little hero eggs, and of course I missed them I’m only human

omg

did the original dialogue really reference Skynet. Horikoshi truly gives no fucks about copyright. like one or two episodes ago the anime made some copyrighted reference which you could clearly hear in the Japanese but which the English subs hilariously glossed right over. I’m trying to remember what it was now. damn. anyways we millennials can never resist a good pop culture reference, facts

OH MY GOD AOYAMA

THEY’RE EATING THE COTTON CANDY

TOKOYAMI EATING COTTON CANDY IS THE GREATEST THING TO HAPPEN IN 2020 THUS FAR. LET ME TELL YOU, WE REALLY NEEDED THIS

SHOUTO EATING COTTON CANDY IS THE SECOND BEST THING TO HAPPEN IN 2020. IT WAS VERY CLOSE

I STALLED FOR TIME SO MUCH AND I STILL DON’T KNOW WTF TO SAY ABOUT AOYAMA’S NEW ATTACK OH MY GOD. JUST. I DON’T KNOW YOU GUYS. THIS BOY IS REALLY OUT HERE SLICING ROBOTS IN HALF WITH HIS BRAND NEW LASER PENIS. THE AMOUNT OF FUCKS THAT HORIKOSHI GIVES IS IN THE NEGATIVES I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO SAY

OH ARE YOU STILL GOING

is... what’s... ldkfj okay nothing to see here guys just the naked invisible chick getting all friendly with Aoyama’s beam boner. just manhandling his sparkle shaft. there are children reading this manga. I mean, they’re already mentally scarred from all the dead dogs and child quirk wine and whatnot, but still at what point do we put our goddamn foot down

anyway so somehow she’s redirecting his laser beam?? I guess with her light refracting quirk skills?? great job Hagakure with your help Aoyama can finally shoot lasers at stuff that’s behind him. you’ve mastered the power of making it so that he doesn’t have to turn around great job truly an internship well spent

“now I can yank light and warp it!” you go girl now you can whip that thing around like it’s a fucking fire hose I guess

YOOOOO MINA!!

THIS GIRL LITERALLY COATED HERSELF IN ACID AND DID A FUCKING BARREL ROLL AHHHHHHHHH. NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT, NO OFFENSE TO CAPTAIN DISCO DONG AND COMMODORE “I CAN DO EVERYTHING A MIRROR CAN DO” BUT THERE ARE UPGRADES AND THERE ARE UPGRADES, AND LET’S FACE IT, THIS IS THE REAL DEAL HERE

AHAHAHA I LOVE ITTTTT

is it too late for Mina to actually change her name to Acidman. what is she calling herself now again?? Pinky?? come on Mina strike some fear into the hearts of your enemies

and now All Might and the others are applauding. I don’t see Shouto’s cotton candy anymore. boy fucking inhaled that shit

oh wow, they interned under Yoroi Musha? if memory serves me, and I’m honestly not going to bother to check right now, isn’t that the samurai dude who somehow beat Ryuukyuu in the billboard charts? not that I’m still salty about that, oh wait I absolutely am but anyways

OH MY

IS THAT SOME KIRIMINA CONTENT UP IN MY PANELS. hot damn that is some cute fucking shit. Mina better not get any undue hate for this. everyone please remain calm this cute interaction does not threaten your ship in any way (unless you want it to in which case have at!!) and we can all have fun if we just play nice you guys

lmao All Might

“WE’RE ALREADY ON PAGE FOUR AND THERE ARE TWENTY OF YOU, WE DON’T HAVE ALL FUCKING DAY CHILDREN”

so Satou and Ojiro learned how to punch harder and stuff. again, it’s fine, we can’t all be Acid Men. but meanwhile they interned with some lion guy named Shishido whom I INSTANTLY LOVE so that’s badass. only one character away from Shishida though, but that’s Horikoshi for you

OH MY GOD

BLAH BLAH YES ENHANCED SEARCH TECHNIQUES ZZZZZ BUT FUCKING LOOK THOUGH AT THE FLASHBACK OF HIM YEETING THEM, YESSSSSS. THE OLD WAYS HAVE NOT YET BEEN FORGOTTEN, GANG ORCA YOU ARE THE HERO WE DESERVE

meanwhile Sero, Kami, and Mineta learned how to literally kill people with their quirks flkdjsflk

(ETA: btw I really love that Mt. Lady’s internship emphasized teamwork. now there’s someone who’s come a really long way her own self. anyway I stan and she had better join the other two in the the top 10 real soon. come on BnHA society get with it.)

damn Mt. Lady what the fuck. “if you guys work together you can suffocate and electrocute villains to death with ease!” the government’s plan really is working huh; these children have become bloodthirsty, ruthless killers in a shockingly short period of time

anyways so Iida as we all recall learned how to be more footloose and fancy free, and meanwhile Kouda learned “smooth communication” from Wash, the literal washing machine man whom I also don’t still harbor a grudge against for inexplicably beating my dragon queen in the hero polls, and once again that is a lie because fuck you Wash! you’re adorable but fuck you!!

man this is taking forever why are there so many kids in this class. for anyone wondering why Horikoshi doesn’t focus on class 1-A as a whole more often and leaves them as supporting characters, this right here is why. I love these children to death but we would still be stuck in the basement arc. oh my god I just shuddered

Tokoyami mastered “improvement on all fronts” because I guess he kind of peaked at flying when it came to new moves huh. that’s fine for now

and Kiri mastered “making baddies lose the will to fight real quick” which sounds like some bullshit you’d write while desperately trying to pad your hero resume, except that it’s accompanied by this convincing panel of him chomping a steel bar in two or some shit which YIKES

can confirm, if some demonic rock man came trotting up to me and snapped off some railing from some stairs and fucking snapped it like a twig with his GIANT FOSSILIZED DINOSAUR TEETH, I’d lose my will to fight pretty quickly too

and Ochako and Tsuyu learned “determination” smdh. Horikoshi did you fucking fall asleep towards the end of this segment or what

WHO IS MAJESTIC OMG

excuse me did she just create a bunch of fucking dynamites. is that what those are. is my girl encroaching on my young son’s turf. because if she is, ENCROACH, MOMO, ENCROACH! FEEL FREE TO FUCKING IMPINGE, EVEN!! god, and I know I was bitching just a moment ago about these “lessons” becoming increasingly vague and intangible and motivational poster-y, but I read Momo and “predicting and acting efficiently”, and my thoughts immediately ran to Nighteye and Mirio’s fighting styles, and I was like “YESSSSSSSSS” because, I mean. YES, though

meanwhile Kacchan has learned...

this fucking -- I swear -- YOU LEARNED WHAT YOUR FUCKING HERO NAME IS GOING TO BE YOU TROLLING PIECE OF SHIT. oh my god. Katsuki I swear to god I will take your internet privileges. NO SRIRACHA FOR A WEEK UNLESS YOU TELL ME WHAT IT IS

oh for fuck’s sakes

don’t mind him he learned boom with five b’s and three oo’s what did you all do this week. and somehow Todoroki learned how to be even more fabulous

so All Might’s looking on in pride and giving Endeavor some mental props, and waiting for Deku to go do his thing too

sdfkj he’s thinking about the day he gave Deku THE HAIR and that “[it] feels like ancient history now.” DOESN’T IT THOUGH?

OH MY FEELS

“you don’t look back at me anymore... and you don’t need to.” oh Aizawa’s dry eye has spread to me now huh. must be those January allergies. and that’s some nice bloop there kid. great jorb

someone tell All Might he’s not allowed to look on at Deku with this much fatherly love without giving me at least a week’s notice in advance

sigh. now you’ve done it you two I’m going to become a big cat blob of feels right here and it’s all on you. you did this

oh my god a whole big panel of reactions from the other kids and I’m ( ˊᵕˋ )

lol Kacchan can’t agree with anything even if it’s a compliment. and lmao, who the fuck was that who was all “TODOROKI FINALLY YOU’RE A FAST FUCKING HIMBO HUH!” like they really went and put that “finally” in there, like they were so fucking tired of Todoroki Shouto and his LANGUID FUCKING PACE all the fucking time, GOD, FINALLY SOME SPEED BOY WE WERE DYING OUT HERE

Mineta being happy for Deku also warms my heart, ngl. we’ve gone almost an entire chapter with Mineta not doing anything even remotely perverted, can it be, has Horikoshi finally chilled the fuck out. or did I just jinx it we shall see

also love how Deku is just reduced to an inkblot here and it still is him beyond any shadow of a doubt. and poor Sero, you are also being impinged on huh

lmao Mineta’s just socking Deku in the solar plexus out of comradery and Deku’s fucking vomiting on reflex and not even paying the slightest attention wtf

I love this panel there I said it

so he’s going over and thanking Ochako for “that time” and says he’s using Blackwhip a lot better now. I assume he’s referring to when he first unlocked it and went hog wild and she was all “smh” and went and hugged him to put an end to that nonsense

oh, right!!!!

I forgot about those!! looool Horikoshi’s 2020 resolution is to make everyone Spider-Man now huh. hey everyone guess what I LOVE THIS

oh my god this wholesomeness

I fucking can’t?? yo I’m seriously living for this? I don’t get why some people think Deku inhibits Ochako’s character growth tbh. or that her story is becoming all about him. if it is, then it’s in the same way that Bakugou’s is. Deku keeps inspiring her to be better, ain’t nothing wrong with that. yes she has the crush, and she’s honest with herself and in tune with her emotions enough to be aware of it and to acknowledge it, but she refuses to be distracted by it. I actually really like that, because it shows that romantic feelings can actually exist and not be the central focus of a character’s story or their development. and I think the fear is that it somehow will become the focus, but so far I haven’t seen that happening, so it seems unwarranted to me

anyway

shit’s cute

oh no Mineta’s doing something weird I fucking did jinx it I’m sorry guys. it’s a fucking fistbump dude relax

so All Might seems to be dismissing them now, and he’s saying something about how he reordered (?? rescheduled, maybe??) class so that Aizawa can watch later. that’s nice. he’ll need something to cheer him up, and if Acidman can’t do the trick I don’t know what can

and now we’re cutting back to the dorms!! dorm shenanigans yessssss

oh no shit wait

these are not playful dorm shenanigans these are depressed Miczawa shenanigans to bring me down. nnnn

but Aizawa fucking knows something is up now, shit. that’s right son your babies are in danger

KLJKLGLKSH

okay (1) HOW HOT IS AIZAWA THOUGH HOW DOES HE ALWAYS DO THIS

and (2) is “have a karaoke contest” code for “fuck shit up” or what. son of a bitch, having these two so personally invested in the Noumu arc now is such an unexpected and wonderful gift

MIRIO NO

(ETA: but you all know Aizawa was about to say “I’d go and fuck shit up” though.)

I LOVE YOU BOTH BUT THEY WERE HAVING A SEXY ANGSTING MOMENT, MIRIO CAN YOU NOT READ THE ROOM!! DO YOU NOT SEE THEM BEING ALL ANGSTY AND DARKLY CONTEMPLATIVE!! YOU TWO OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW WHEN LOVERS ARE BONDING OVER THEIR ANGST WHICH ONLY THE TWO OF THEM UNDERSTAND! FUCKING GODDAMN

NO!!!!!

[SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE] HORIKOSHI I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU LAY ONE FINGER ON HER PRECIOUS HEAD

NOOOO MY SWEET BABY GIRL

oh my fuck that sweater is the cutest fucking thing and this girl has had no shortage of cute outfits let me tell you. BUT ANYWAY SHE’S SCARED AND CRYING NOOOO. holy shit her horn is fucking huge now I don’t feel comfortable with this at all, and Nejire is Best Mom for not giving a single fuck and holding and comforting her regardless of the risk, I love her so much

OH THANK GOD

PALPABLE RELIEF. boys I’m sorry it was wrong of me to yell, you did the right thing interrupting their sexy brooding

BREAK ROOM AHHHHH THE SCOOBY SQUAD LIVES AGAINNNN

it means you constantly amaze him!! you have so much potential he doesn’t even know what the limit might possibly be! don’t act like you don’t love it. or stop being so suspicious and trying to look for the hidden meaning and just accept the praise for what it is. you did good. now ask him if he’s heard any news about Best Jeanist :/

!!

that’s right, he was researching and making faces a while back, are we finally gonna find out what all that was about??

DSLFKAJSLDKFH

HE MADE A NOTEBOOK FOR HIM AHHHHHHHH HE KNOWS WHAT HE LIKES THIS IS AMAZING

DOES HIM GIVING HIM THE INFO IN NOTEBOOK FORM MEAN IT’S UP TO DEKU WHETHER OR NOT HE WANTS TO SHARE THIS INFO WITH KACCHAN. HMMM. OBVIOUSLY HE WILL, BUT THAT’S A REAL POWER MOVE THOUGH, DAMN

“PAST SUCCESSORS / QUIRKS” EVERYONE, THIS BOOK CONTAINS THE SECRETS OF THE SIXQUIRKS. AND THE PREVIOUS OFA AVATARS. THAT’S FINE I’M JUST GONNA. ...I’LL BE FINE. FOR TWO WEEKS. FUCK

shit. well I know it was coming, that’s another reason why I didn’t feel particularly rushed to read this chapter lol. I kinda wish I’d had the foresight to save the Korean scanlation though, just to compare. ah well it’s probably still lying around somewhere

and lol and here’s the bonus page, and this one I did see floating around tumblr haha

I’m not sure how the three smartest kids in class are all present and yet not one of them had the foresight to consider that maybe, just maybe, this could be a bad idea. let’s let the kid with the combustible sweat handle the mochi I’m sure it’ll be -- [everyone immediately dies]. anyway so that’s some good friendly advice from Horikoshi there. happy new year friends!